Cliff Richard

TOTP 23 OCT 1998

On the day this particular TOTP aired, Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown was sentenced to four months in prison for threatening behaviour towards an air stewardess and banging on the cockpit door on a British Airways flight from Paris. He would serve two months in Strangeways. Manchester. While he was inside, Roses bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield sent Brown a box of Maltesers and a note saying “Hope everything is OK”. It was a typically sweet gesture from Mani who passed away on the 20 November this year aged just 63. Generally regarded as one of the good guys in a sometimes dirty industry, his death was treated with shock and genuine sadness by music fans everywhere. As such, it seems timely to tell this story. For a number of years I worked in Our Price with the Stone Roses original bassist, the late, great Pete Garner and various members of the band would pop in to see Pete including Ian Brown and Mani. One time, one infamous time, Mani, who was always a down to earth gent and never played up to his rock star name, after queuing with the rest of the lunchtime punters, approached the counter with every Primal Scream album we had in stock and, with that wicked smile of his said “Gotta new band init”.* RIP Mani.

*Thanks to Paul Manina who remembers this story better than me and from whom I copied some of the details via his Facebook post.

In TOTP world back in October 1998, Jamie Theakston was out host, introducing the usual mixed bag of pop, rock and dance tunes so I guess I should get on with it. We start with 911 who we last saw on the beach at Cannes performing “More Than A Woman” on the previous show. There they were on a tiny stage with three dancers all jostling for space and screen time but in the TOTP studio, the production had been scaled up big time with a whopping ten dancers on stage with the band – four behind them and six on a lower level right at the front of the stage. It looks a slightly odd arrangement as if there’s a bit too much going on to take it all in at once. Also odd looking is Lee’s spiky hair. Didn’t Boyzone’s Ronan Keating sport that style some four years prior? C’mon Lee, keep up!

The next artist also has a legion of people up there on stage with him (well, seven* anyway). Cliff Richard had started the 90s with a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and he would end them with another chart topper in the very decisive “Millennium Prayer”. In between those hits though, this wasn’t his most successful decade. Stats-wise, that would seem to be a churlish statement as he racked up 19 Top 40 hits including seven Top Tenners. However, how many of them can you remember apart from those No 1s? Looking at the list, there a few cover versions, three singles from the poorly received Heathcliff musical all of which underperformed and a completely forgettable theme song from a completely forgettable BBC drama (Trainer anyone?) with lyrics written by Mike Read! We’d all be forgiven for forgetting any of these.

I was about to include this one – “Can’t Keep This Feeling In” – in the above list of forgettable Cliff hits and I’d be justified based on its completely lacklustre, nay positively dull sound but then, when reading up on it, I remembered that there was something else to this particular release, something (whisper it) almost interesting. Fed up of being blacklisted from UK radio stations airplay plans for reasons of perceived ageism, Sir Cliff released a dance version of “Can’t Keep This Feeling In” and distributed it to 240 radio stations under the name Blacklight. Response to the track was very positive and led to it being play-listed by stations such as Choice FM and Kiss 100. When it was revealed to the press who was actually behind the track, the radio stations who had championed it continued to play it and Cliff had made his point. Well played Sir!

*Yes, one of them was that bloke from Modern Romance who had been with Cliff for at least 10 years and whose mane of hair looked exactly the same as it did back then. At least Lee from 911 was only four years out of date.

What was it about 1998 and Swedish pop acts? Look at this lot…

Ace Of Base
Deetah
Eagle-Eye Cherry
Robyn
The Cardigans

Add to that list Meja who was in the charts with a song that I swear I’ve never heard in my life before. “All ‘Bout The Money” was, however, “one of the catchiest songs in the charts” according to Jamie Theakston and he wasn’t wrong. However, having a catchy hook isn’t always a clear indication of quality especially when said hook consists of the ‘lyrics’ “dum dum da da da dum”! Seriously?! She couldn’t find anything else to fit there?! It’s surely not slang for ‘money’ is it? Was it a Swedish thing? Well, there was a Swedish rapper known as Melodie MC who had a hit over Europe in 1993 called “Dum Da Dum” so maybe it was. Or perhaps Meja was adapting perhaps the most famous ‘da da da DUM’ in musical history for the basis of her song – that of the opening four note motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No 5? Listen again to the intro of “All ‘Bout The Money” – is that actually a clever manipulation of Beethoven’s work? It might just be as it reoccurred throughout the track. After all, Sweden can claim to having given the world the masters of intelligently crafted pop in ABBA…

Ay up, this is new! Theakston casually wanders into the show’s backstage area to give us plebs a look at what the rock and pop royalty get up to either pre or post performance. Surely this was a set up and not natural as we see 911 sharing a sofa with Billie and Cher whilst Phil Collins is shown deep in conversation with Cliff Richard. Now Cher and Phil Collins weren’t actually on this particular show though I’m guessing the latter was there to pre-record a performance of her single “Believe” which would *SPOILER* be at No 1 the following week. As for Collins, I’ve got nothing. He did release a single at the start of the month – a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colours” to promote a Greatest Hits album. That only got to No 26 though and didn’t manage a TOTP appearance. Maybe he’d been recording some sort of Phil Collins special for the BBC? It’s all very unconvincing.

Anyway, someone who wasn’t backstage in person but who delivered an intro to the video for his band’s new single was REM’s Michael Stipe. After riding the peak of their commercial popularity since the dawn of the 90s beginning with “”Out Of Time”, by the middle of the decade their sales had started to wane as had my interest in them. 1996’s “New Adventures In Hi-Fi” had topped charts around the globe but it just didn’t shift the units that its predecessors had especially in the US. Given that scenario, was there a lot riding on the release of “Up”? Not according to the band themselves who said that they didn’t expect anything from sales and that they didn’t judge the quality of a record by them. Probably just as well as “Up” didn’t reverse the trend. The first album recorded without drummer Bill Berry who had left the band after suffering a cerebral aneurysm and the first since 1986’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” not to be produced by Scott Litt, it was generally well received critically but with the caveat that it was a hard listen for those with just a casual interest in the band whereas a more committed REM fan would find reward in it after repeated plays.

The track chosen as the lead single to promote the album (against the band’s wishes) was “Daysleeper”. Written about the plight of night workers and the effect on their body clocks of the hours that they keep, it had that distinctive Peter Buck guitar sound but doesn’t really have that much substance to it to my ears. Still, any song that can get the phrase “circadian rhythm” into its lyrics can’t be completely dismissed. And yes, I did quite like the stop-frame video Michael.

Nothing was going to stop Billie being in the TOTP studio this time. Not the illness that prevented her being there last week (“she’s fitter than a butcher’s dog” a rather un-PC Theakston says of the 16 year old in his intro) and certainly not the fact that she’s dropped from No 1 to No 3 in the charts thanks to executive producer Chris Cowey’s appearance policy.

Now, is it just me or does “Girlfriend” sound a bit like “Party In The U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus? Just me? Then what about that “shooby dooby doop” intro? No, I’m not thinking of that Meja song from earlier. It’s on the top of my tongue but I can’t quite place it….

….got it! It’s this lesser known Betty Boo track…

What do I know about Dru Hill? Barely anything to the point that I thought that this single – “How Deep Is Your Love” – must have been yet another Bee Gees cover to add to the litany of them that littered the charts at this time. However, it isn’t though I’m wishing that it was. This really isn’t/wasn’t my bag and my opinion was not going to be changed by this ludicrous performance by lead singer Mark ‘SisQó’ Andrewsand yes, I didn’t know he was the SisQóof “Thong Song” fame untilIjustreaditonWikipedia. Why is he wearing a leather visor on his head and why does he have it pulled down so far down that it completely obscures his face? Still, it’s nothing compared to his flamboyant appearance of the silver hair and bright red leather jacket and strides outfit of his “Thong Song” era. Watching him here, it’s clear he wanted to be the main man out on his own – he literally leapfrogs over one of his band mates to get to the front of the stage at one point although I get the impression it was rehearsed and he lowered his back deliberately. How deep is your love? More like how low can you go?

And now to one of the more controversial pop moments of the year sparked by perhaps the most controversial moment – the video for “Outside” by George Michael. Directed by Vaughan Arnell, it was a clear retaliation to George’s arrest for engaging in a lewd act in April by an undercover sting operation in a public toilet in Beverly Hills, California. The incident led to Michael’s outing of his sexuality. Featuring various people both gay and straight engaging in kissing, foreplay or having sex all in public places (the titular “Outside”), it also has Michael himself dressed as an LAPD cop dancing in a toilet which becomes a nightclub complete with flashing lights and disco balls. There was no doubt what was going on here nor the point George was making. Just to absolutely make sure he rammed it home, there’s a scene at the video’s end where two male police officers kiss unaware that they have been caught on camera before the very final shot pops the cherry on top with a neon sign saying ‘Jesus Saves’ before the words “…all of us. All” appear on screen. Wow!

I’m surprised that they got away with some of the scenes being shown pre-watershed (there appears to be some cunnilingus going on during one shot and it did feature a couple of porn actresses!) – did Theakston’s words “It’s not quite a blue movie but it will raise a few eyebrows” in his intro have to be very tightly scripted so as to warn but not offend? I’m not sure what the reference to not being able to show the full video last night was all about but it certainly did ruffle a few feathers including those of one Marcelo Rodriguez, the police officer who had arrested Michael as he claimed the video was mocking him and sued for $10 million. Ultimately his claim was dismissed with the judgement stating that Rodriguez, as a public official, could not legally recover damages for emotional distress.

If ever there was a moment that showed the influence dance music had on the charts in the mid to late 90s, surely this was it. 911 had been predicted to be No 1 this week and was in that position in the midweek chart. However, they were overtaken by a track that was essentially the soundtrack of a keep fit class down your local gym. How did this happen and why? I can give you the back story to the first part of that question but as to the second part, I’m at a loss for an answer.

The origins of “Gym And Tonic” by Spacedust lay not with the protagonists who had a hit with the record but with someone else entirely. French record producer and DJ Christophe Le Friant aka Bob Sinclair, together with Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, came up with the track “Gymtonic” that sampled “Arms”, a workout recording by the actress Jane Fonda who forged a second career in the 80s with her Jane Fonda Workout series of keep fit videos. Once aware of the existence of Sinclair’s track, Fonda’s lawyers refused to give clearance for her vocals to be sampled. A deal was eventually reached which allowed for “Gymtonic” to be included on Sinclair’s album “Paradise” but not to be released as a single. The track had been much sought after in the UK after being played in the clubs in Europe in the Summer but the only way to get hold of it was by purchasing an import copy of the “Paradise” album. Enter British production duo Paul Glancy and Duncan Glasson to the story. Sensing there was a big hit to be had if they could only find a way past the legal straightjacket that was restraining distribution of the track, they hit upon the idea of basically doing a cover version of the Bob Sinclair original but with a session vocalist doing the Jane Fonda parts. With the copyright hurdles negotiated, a single release followed under the pseudonym of Spacedust and with a demand for the track already established, a huge hit was assured.

So, that’s the story behind the release but as for the ‘song’…well, it’s not really worthy of being described as such. Keep fit class music at No 1? How on earth did this happen? I think timing might have something to do with it – the single was the lowest selling No 1 of the year with it trailing in position No 109 in the year end chart of 1998. It can’t have been anything to do with the video which, intended as an homage to the exercise workout videos of the 80s, it was made with a budget of just £10,000 and guess what? It just ended up looking cheap. Quite who the dancers are that we see on stage for this TOTP appearance, I haven’t a clue. Specifically hired jobbing dancers? The lead dancer looks a bit like Claire from Steps. Was that intentional? Nothing about this release made any sense except for maybe that 911 were so poor that they lost out to the worst selling No 1 of the year with one of the worst videos of all time. What did that say about them?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	911	More Than A Woman	NO!
2	Cliff Richard	Can’t Keep This Feeling In	There was more chance of me having that year’s Christmas No 1
3	Meja	All ‘Bout The Money	Nah
4	REM	Daysleeper	No
5	Billie	Girlfriend	Nope
6	Dru Hill	How Deep Is Your Love	Not my bag at all
7	George Michael	Outside	I did not
8	Spacedust	Gym And Tonic	Never!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002mggl/top-of-the-pops-23101998

TOTP 08 DEC 1994

Posted on June 29, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming but the charts aren’t full of facts. The Top 40 announced on the Sunday before this TOTP contained incorrect information. Apparently there were some Woolworths shops that couldn’t retrieve their sales data to send to chart compilers Millward Brown so the tech guys were deployed to extract it. This they did except it was the wrong data. They just duplicated the Friday sales figures instead of Saturday’s and by the time the mistake was noticed it was too late as the Top 40 had been published and announced on Radio 1. Millward Brown chose to style it out by retrospectively compiling the correct chart but it was never made available to the public other than by using it as the basis for the ‘last week’ positions for the following week’s chart. It must have played havoc with the minds of all the Top 40 ~~nerds~~ devotees out there. TOTP decided to go with the chart that Radio 1 had initially announced rather than the revised one but in the end, the cock up hadn’t made that much difference to many records with only minor adjustments of a place or two being required – I think the biggest was that Mariah Carey should have been at No 5 rather than No 6.

Anyway, none of the above is mentioned by guest presenter Neneh Cherry who is the holder of the ‘golden mic’ chalice this week. Neneh had been back in the charts of course in a big way in 1994 alongside Youssou N’Dour on “7 Seconds” but even so, I’m not sure that she had the pull that she would have had 5 years previously. Still, she had a nice delivery style and brought a certain amount of credibility to proceedings. Her first job is to introduce the opening act who is Whigfield who had the unenviable task of trying to follow up a massive selling debut single somehow. And how do you do that? As we have seen so many times in the course of these TOTP repeats, you take the original record, add a few minor changes, give it a different song title and release it all over again. Listen to the banking track on “Another Day” – exactly the same as “Saturday Night”. To try and fool the record buying public into purchasing a single they’d already bought once, the producer behind the Whigfield brand – one Larry Pignagnoli – mixed things up by stealing the groove from Mungo Jerry’s 1970 No 1 “In The Summertime” (main Mungo Ray Dorset would receive a writing credit ultimately). It’s all very unsatisfactory and underhand really but it got Whigfield a Top 10 hit just in time for the Christmas party season. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – nice work if you can get it.

Of course, party dance tunes wasn’t the only way to bag yourself a Christmas hit. A nice ballad was also a strong and proven strategy. Many an artist had pulled off the trick of coming out with a ‘slowie’ in contrast to their previous material over the years – Wet Wet Wet (“Angel Eyes”), The Christians (“Ideal World”) and Bros (“Cat Among The Pigeons”) from the late 80s spring to mind but I’m sure there’s loads more examples. Not impervious to this idea were PJ & Duncan whose previous hits had all been uptempo examples of their brand of pop rap but the fifth single from their album “Psyche” and their fourth hit of the year broke that mould. I guess with a title like “Eternal Love” we shouldn’t have been surprised. Aimed squarely at the teenage girl’s market, it’s as wet and drippy as a poor quality nappy. Do you think this was their attempt at following in LL Cool J’s footsteps when he slowed things down for his hit “I Need Love”?

At this fledgling stage of their career, there were still a few things the duo had to sort out and come to a decision on. Firstly, PJ / Ant’s hat – what was that all about?! So that we could tell them apart?! I’m not sure how long this style affectation lasted but at some point it was ditched. Another style decision that was yet to be resolved was actually more of a staging conundrum. Who should stand where. These days, the fact that Ant stands to the left and Dec the right as we look at our TV screens (in reverse for them of course) is well established but it’s the other way round in this performance and I think it has been like that for every TOTP appearance so far. I wonder when and why they changed it? Is there some sort of feng shui consultant but for people whose services you can call upon?

Next up it’s the familiar video for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” after the The Ronnettes pastiche promo last time. Presumably it wasn’t that familiar back in 1994 though. You can’t avoid it now, so immeshed is it in our festive culture. You could just as easily make a case for a game of Mariah-geddon as Wham-a-geddon. In fact, so ubiquitous is the track that I think the fact that she did a whole album of Christmas songs is almost overlooked. Can you name any of the other tracks on that “Merry Christmas” album without either owning it or looking it up?

Apparently, there were other singles lifted from it (either for commercial release or promotional purposes) though not in the UK I believe. In other territories, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) both charted but I’m fairly confident in saying that if you were to hear those songs played on radio in this country it would be the Bruce Springsteen and Darlene Love versions. Despite being No 1 in certain countries, the album only managed a peak of No 32 in the UK. Still, it’s all about that song isn’t it and it’s so far generated $80 million in royalties.

The first TOTP appearance next of a boy band that would last the decade and beyond despite the most inauspicious of beginnings. Boyzone were put together by Louis Walsh (who later found fame himself as a judge on TV shows X Factor and Popstars) with the direct intention of forming an Irish Take That (who were themselves put together by Nigel Martin-Smith to be a British New Kids On The Block). After auditioning 300 hopefuls, an initial six-piece outfit was established and they appeared on Irish talk show The Late Late Show in late 1993 to do…erm…this:

So when I said inauspicious beginnings earlier, what I actually meant was perhaps the most mortifying, ignominious debacle ever witnessed on TV. Sheesh! What were they thinking?! What was Louis Walsh thinking?! Was anybody thinking?! Despite that…whatever it was…the group weren’t killed stone dead by it and somehow got signed by Polygram. There were casualties though. Two of the original line up were ditched and were replaced by Mikey Graham who joined Roman Keating, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy for the release of their debut single, a cover of the Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons / The Spinners hit “Working My Way Back To You” which was a success on the Irish chart but nowhere else. That was all the impetus they needed though and another cover of “Love Me For A Reason” (made famous by The Osmonds) would make them bona fide chart stars when it made No 2 over Christmas in the UK singles chart.

Watching this TOTP performance back, it’s clear that some drastic styling had gone on since that turn on The Late Late Show. They’ve all been kitted out with suits and super wide collar shirts to create a sense of unity and their dancing has been stripped back to a few synchronised arm movements and sidesteps. No more freestyle workouts for these boys. It just about hangs together well enough to deliver the song. They would go on to have another fifteen hit singles before the decade was out including six No 1s and six No 2s. The time of Boyzone (not Boys’ Own Neneh) was upon us.

Gloria Estefan does U2? Of course not – it’s not the same song at all although their similar titles could cause confusion I guess. Gloria’s hit is a cover of the 50s song “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” taken from her album of the same name. U2, on the other hand, contributed a song to the soundtrack of the movie Batman Forever called “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”. Hope that clarifies everything.

Gloria’s single did surprisingly well for her just missing out on the Top 10 by one place and thereby becoming her biggest hit since “Megamix / Miami Hit Mix” made No 8 promoting her Best Of album two years prior. You had to go back to 1989 and “Don’t Wanna Lose You” for her previous Top 10 hit. Maybe it was the Christmas factor that allowed Gloria to hit big with a familiar if not well known love song? She would never have such a high placing single in the UK charts again though she has continued to release albums up to the present day with the last being 2022’s Christmas collection. What with Gloria and Mariah both having done Christmas albums, all we need now is one from Madonna for a full set. Or maybe we don’t…need a Madonna Christmas album that is.

Now here’s EYC following the same game plan as PJ & Duncan earlier in that they’re ditching their usual high tempo mix of pop and R&B for a slow smoocher for the Christmas market. “One More Chance” was all sighs and harmonies but very little in the way substance or indeed a tune. In short, it was a stinker.

PJ & Duncan weren’t the only influence on the trio though. They must have been watching Boyzone in rehearsals with their shirts and suits and decided that they wanted a piece of that action. Are they morning suits they’re wearing?! They also seem to have pinched some of Ronan and co’s stripped back dance moves but then completely blow the whole effect by attempting to outdo them with the addition of a totally incongruous accessory. What were the white gloves all about? They look like snooker referees on the pull! Utter nonsense. Talk about “Snooker Loopy”! Brave heart though as I think this lousy lot have just one more hit single in them and then their table will have been cleared.

Cliff Richard is no stranger to a duet. He’s performed alongside the likes of Sarah Brightman, Elton John, Van Morrison, Olivia Newton John, Cilla Black and this guy – Phil Everly and not just once but twice. Back in 1983, Cliff and Phil took “She Means Nothing To Me” to No 9 in the UK charts. I didn’t mind it actually although obviously I never let anyone at school know this. Fast forward 11 years and the two were reunited for a curious collaboration. How so? Well, there was nothing particularly odd about their choice of song; “All I Have To Do Is Dream” had been a No 1 for The Everly Brothers in 1958 so it was a song Phil had been performing for over 35 years. Cliff meanwhile had his first hit “Move It” in the very same year so was a contemporary of Phil’s and would of course know the song. Cliff was promoting a Best Of collection for Christmas in 1994 called “The Hit List” which rounded up all his highest charting singles to date (those that went Top 5 or higher) but curiously also included one that only made No 15. “Miss You Nights” was a hit in 1976 but was included on “The Hit List” as it was a fan favourite.

“So what?” you may ask. Well, a remix of “Miss You Nights” was released as a single to promote the album which seems an unexpected choice of song given the nature of the album’s track listing criteria. That wasn’t all though. It was released as a double A-side single with a live version of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” which wasn’t on the album at all! OK, then maybe it was on an album by Phil Everly and it was promoting that? Not according to my research – his last solo album had been in 1983. There was a 105 track Everly Brothers box set released in 1994 but surely that would have been for super fans and completists only. I can’t believe the Cliff/Phil single was anything to do with that. So what was the rationale behind its release? Yes, obviously Christmas was on the way and Cliff had absolutely cornered the Christmas singles market in recent years but did his record company EMI really think he could garner another festive No 1 with this? In the end, it scampered up the charts to No 14 so nowhere near replicating the success of “Mistletoe And Wine” or “Saviour’s Day”. Phil never released another solo single after this whilst Cliff would return in 1995 with his musical project Heathcliff which he conceived, starred in and allowed him to release an album of songs from.

https://youtu.be/9W5h34PAumY

Next up is “the very attractive Jimmy Nail” according to Neneh Cherry. Jimmy’s transition from Oz in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, who was an extremely likeable character but hardly a pin up, to the sleek, some may say chiselled, pop star/actor we see here was quite a thing. Obviously he’d lost quite a bit of weight since he first appeared on our screens but was it also something to do with the more endearing roles we were seeing him perform in Spender and Crocodile Shoes? I think it’s a possibility.

Talking of roles, a reader reminded me in reply to a previous post where I wondered whatever happened to Jimmy that as well as the two shows mentioned above, he was also kept busy with a third and fourth series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet in 2002 and 2004 respectively and two hour long episodes called Au Revoir that were broadcast in the Christmas of 2004. As for “Crocodile Shoes” the single, was at its chart peak of No 4 this week; a significant success though I don’t think it ever really had a chance of being the Christmas No 1.

East 17 are No 1 with “Stay Another Day” and will remain there for 5 weeks to become the festive chart topper as well. As I recall, the Christmas chart was actually announced on the TOTP broadcast on the big day itself and I was convinced that Oasis would pip both East 17 and Mariah Carey to the crown with their standalone single “Whatever”. They seemed to have timed its release just right with it being available for the first time just the week before and with the buzz about the band reaching boiling point and judging by the amounts we were selling if it in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, it seemed like a shoo-in to me. I was amazed when they were announced at No 3 and cried foul, stating something didn’t smell right. However, there were no such stories of rigging in the papers and media. I clearly was letting my Oasis tinted glasses cloud my judgement.

The Walthamstow boys were rightly crowned the Kings of Christmas and their song has gone into the great cannon of festive tunes. Although we get another studio appearance here, there were actually two promo videos made for the single though I only remember seeing one of them at the time. I assume they were made at the same time but the one I saw back in 1994 was the one of the bend seen laying down the track in a recording studio. The one that we now see every December of the band in oversized, white fur trimmed parkas shot in black and white floating about in a snow storm shocked me when I first saw it as it was many years after 1994 and I’d long since left working in record shops behind. How could I have missed seeing it in all those intervening years?

And that’s a wrap for 1994 here at TOTP Rewind. The shows broadcast on the 15th and 22nd December were pulled from the BBC4 repeats schedule as they both featured Gary Glitter. I’ve checked the running order for those shows though and we’re not missing much. Rednex, Mighty Morph’n Power Rangers, Celine Dion, Zig & Zag…it couldn’t be much worse. They did show the Christmas Day edition hosted by Take That (obviously) but it didn’t feature any hits I hadn’t already commented on and so I’m not regurgitating all that again. I will do my own review of 1994 post (the epilogue) as usual though.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Whigfield	Another Day	As if
2	PJ & Duncan	Eternal Love	Infernal racket more like! No!
3	Mariah Carey	All I Want For Christmas Is You	Nope
4	Boyzone	Love Me For A Reason	No
5	Gloria Estefan	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me	Nah
6	EYC	One More Chance	No chance more like!
7	Cliff Richard & Phil Everly	All I Have To Do Is Dream	Didn’t happen
8	Jimmy Nail	Crocodile Shoes	I did not
9	East 17	Stay Another Day	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001mwfx/top-of-the-pops-08121994

TOTP 16 DEC 1993

Posted on December 11, 2022 by 80stastic

To paraphrase Frankie Valli, here at TOTP Rewind it’s mid December back in ‘93 and very much like the temperatures in 2022, I recall it being very cold. I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham and travelling there from Manchester every day by a bus and then a tram. As such, it was an early start and I have a distinct memory of standing next to the radiator in our little flat not wanting to go outside to start the commute. The radio was playing “Babe” by Take That which didn’t help my mood as it brought to mind the song’s video which had lots of snow themed scenes including Mark Owen wandering around in what appeared to be Russia looking for his former lover in a bit of a blizzard. Aside from the cold, the work days were long and busy as this was a time before streaming where you had to physically go out to a record shop and buy a CD or cassette if you wanted an album or single. We packed so many customers into that little shop on George Street that at times it felt like the floor would collapse*.

*That did happen once when I was working in the Rochdale Our Price. A floor tile just cracked one day to reveal a gaping hole underneath. Just one of the many mishaps that occurred during my retail years including a man walking through the window which he mistook for the door, the shop’s fuse box starting to smoke, alarm call outs in the middle of the night, blocked toilets, failed central heating systems etc etc.

Despite all of the above, I was loving my time in Altrincham to the extent that me and my wife even contemplated moving there and even looked around a flat or two. Fortunately, we never made that move as in the first couple of weeks after Christmas came the word from area management that I was being moved again. I wouldn’t get back to Altrincham for five years. Enough of my personal life though, which songs were those busy shoppers snapping up as the big day approached…

If your hear the names Chaka Demus and Pliers, what immediately comes to mind? Apart from the ridiculousness of that second name obviously. For me it’s 1993 and their hit “Tease Me” and yet that No 2 (in more ways than one) was eclipsed by this single, their version of “Twist And Shout”. Somehow though, it seems to have escaped my memory banks despite it going to No 1 one in early ‘94. Maybe it’s because there have been so many different releases of this perennial song. I’m guessing most of us know it from The Beatles take on it in 1963 but it was very first recorded before them by The Top Notes. The first time it was a hit was when The Isley Brothers took it into the charts in 1962. Brian Poole and The Tremeloes had the temerity to release a version just four months after The Beatles (though they claimed they were already playing it live in shows before anybody else) and had a hit with it. It’s also been attempted by The Searchers, The Kingsmen, Bruce Springsteen and then in 1988, it was given the hip-hop treatment by Salt-N-Pepa and became a No 4 single in the UK.

Fast forward five years and here it was again courtesy of Chaka Demus and Pliers (plus Jack Radics and Taxi Gang). Maybe they were inspired by Salt-N-Pepa – if it could be hip-hopped, then maybe the song could be also be reggae-fied? Or maybe they took inspiration from ragga duo Louchie Lou and Michie One who took another song originally done by The Isley Brothers but made famous by another artist (“Shout” by Lulu) and bagged a Top 10 hit earlier in 1993 . Whatever the reason, Chaka Demus and Pliers’ version of “Twist And Shout” didn’t work for me as I could never got on board with all that toasting. Also, wasn’t this more of a Summer tune than a Christmas one? I know host Tony Dortie goes on about what a big party tune it is which could crossover into festive celebrations I guess but clearly the TOTP producers saw it as a Summer song judging by the palm trees in the set they designed for the performance here.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more blatant example of record company cashing in than this. Not having had Meatloaf as their artist for a decade by this point didn’t matter at all to CBS when it came to exploiting the back catalogue of their previous charge. With “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” and its single “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” tearing up the charts everywhere on the planet, of course CBS we’re going to rerelease probably his most famous song. So it came to pass the Meatloaf managed to be in possession of two UK Top 20 hits simultaneously in 1993 when “Bat Out Of Hell” got to No 8 beating its original 1979 peak by seven places. Who was buying it though? The parent album is one of the best selling in history so many, many people would surely already own the song so that leaves two options to my mind. One, Meatloaf completists or two, young music fans who’d only just discovered him via his latest success and either thought this was his latest/new single or wanted to explore his older stuff.

All of this just goes to show how perceptions can change in the wake of a huge success. Two years prior to this, “Bat Out Of Hell: Re-vamped” was released -basically a straight reissue but with “Dead Ringer For Love” added – and to promote it “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” was rereleased. It peaked at No 69.

You know that debate that rages about this time of year about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not? Well, there’s surely a musical equivalent to that argument about whether “Stay Another Day” by East 17 is a Christmas song isn’t there? Why am I going on about a track that is twelve months away from being the festive No 1? I guess because looking at their performance here of “It’s Alright”, it’s clear that they weren’t averse to pushing a Christmas agenda if it suited which it did literally here as all four members are Santa suited-up. I actually beat East 17 to it by four years. In Christmas 1989, I was working in the toy department at Debenhams and used to stand in for the guy playing Father Christmas in the grotto on his breaks. That suit stank to high heaven. The store had a fire alarm go off whilst I was in it and we all had to evacuate the building. I got a few comments from the rest of the employees whilst stood outside waiting to be allowed back in.

Back to East 17 though and Tony Dortie says two things that peaked my interest in his links. Firstly that Brian Harvey was “flu affected”. We’ve been here before just the other week when Gabrielle appeared on the show in person to say she couldn’t perform her single as she had flu. Harvey goes one better by having flu but still managing to sing and jig about on stage. Flu my arse! Secondly, Dortie announces that he’s off on tour with East 17 shortly. On tour? Doing what exactly? They already had two guys in the band who appeared to do not very much at all. Surely they didn’t need a third?! Was Dortie just going to introduce them on stage each night? Was that all? Nice work if you can get it. It’s alright indeed.

In Christmas 1993, Diana Ross had a Best Of album out called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which was a huge seller over the festive season going four times platinum and selling 1.2 million copies in the UK. We sold loads of it in that Altrincham Our Price where I was working but we had to go against company policy to do so. The CD was officially priced at something like £11.99 but all the other outlets in Altrincham (Boots, Woolies etc) were selling it for £9.99. Myself and the manager Cathy came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t sell any at £11.99 and so price matched. We didn’t ask permission or tell any other stores, we just did it and it worked – we sold loads and maintained a decent market share on the album. However, when the Area Manager turned up unexpectedly for a store visit we nearly shat ourselves thinking he would notice. He had this thing he did at Christmas where he would help out serving customers and so we were sure we would get busted as somebody in the queue would have the Diana Ross CD. Myself and Cathy joined in serving trying to spot anyone in the queue who would give the game away and head them off at the pass by jumping in and getting to them first. Somehow we got away with it. Phew!

Diana did an extensive tour to help promote the album an Our Price colleague went to see her on one of her dates. When I asked him how it had been the next day, he’d convinced himself that he was Ms Ross’s long lost, illegitimate child so consumed by the experience was he. I’m assuming she performed the single “Your Love” which was a new track added to the album to help promote it but it was hardly up there with some of her classic recordings for me. It peaked at No 14.

WTF?! Eight Breakers?! EIGHT?! You have to be kidding me?! That must be a record! Five is pretty much maximum capacity usually. Presumably the TOTP producers have done this because the chart at Christmas are usually clogged up with new records strategically released to cash in on the extra sales at this time of year. Even so. Eight Breakers means a whopping grand total of fourteen songs on this show! Tossers! Don’t they realise how much work this is for me?

We start with another boy band, this time of the American variety who time would surely have forgotten if not for a gimmick surrounding their name. EYC (it stood for Express Yourself Clearly) had this annoying habit of signing off from any promotional appearances by saying “E Y See ya”. Ugh! Somehow this trio of ex-New Kids On The Block backing dancers (no, that’s literally what they were) somehow managed to bag themselves six UK Top 40 hits the first of which was “Feelin’ Alright”. It had a sub House Of Pain vibe to it tailored for the teen market but it was pretty lame all the same.

My main memory of this lot came the following year. I was now working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester where I first started three years previously. I was on the counter with the manager and he served a young girl with one of their singles. As he went behind the shelving to get it (the stock wasn’t in the racks live at this point) he said to me in a really loud voice which the customer must have heard, “This is crap isn’t it?”. How I cringed.

Next up a tune so intensely and annoyingly catchy it’s still in my head nearly thirty years on. I would have said that “Come Baby Come” by K7 was from 1994 not 1993. I’m kind of right. It reached its peak of No 3 in the January of ‘94 but was actually released in December ‘93. K7 was essentially US all rounder Louis Sharpe. A rapper, songwriter, record producer, he also went by the name of Kayel. He’s only really known over here though for this single. Employing that call and answer style of rap (is it meant to be him and his homies who he’s hangin’ with?), it kind of reminds me of that drill instructor song from the late 80s. What was it called again?

*googles ‘drill instructor song’

That’s it! “Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)” by Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding…

Anyway, it also had that drive-you- insane shouty chorus that once heard is never forgotten*. Maybe it was just meant to distract you from those innuendo loaded lyrics which were actually pretty filthy. I guess the clue was in the song title but check these out:

Better move it fast so you can pump it (pump it)
Two balls and a bat (hoo), a pitcher with a hat (ha)
Slidin’ into home base, tryin’ to hit a home run
Swing batta batta batta batta batta swing
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Louis Sharpe / Joey Gardner
Come Baby Come lyrics © Universal Music – Z Songs, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Blue Ink Music, Third And Lex Music

You don’t have to be Finbarr Saunders to work out what’s going on here! I’m sure we’ll be seeing and hearing more of K7 in future TOTP repeats. For those of a delicate nature, you have been warned!

*Such an ear worm is it that thirty years later, when I want my dog called Benji to come to me, I often say “Come Benji come, Benji, Benji come come”.

Ah now, talking of delicate…how to approach this one? OK well, the facts around the record are that “Gone Too Soon” was the ninth and final single taken from Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album (the first – “Black And White” – had been released an incredible 25 months earlier). As the ninth single from an album that had been out for two years, even Jackson couldn’t eke out a big hit from it and it stalled at No 33. This was his lowest UK chart placing since a rerelease of “Girl Your So Together” in 1984.

Jackson recorded the track as a tribute to Ryan White, a US teenager who was haemophiliac and became infected with the HIV virus from a contaminated blood treatment. This was the dark ages of 1984 and Ryan was subsequently barred by his school from attending due to concerns from other parents that he would spread the virus. Given just six months to live, Ryan lived on for another five years in which time he became a high profile figure for HIV/AIDS research and public education attracting the attention of Jackson.

Unfortunately for the singer (and this is where the delicate bit comes in) the release of the song coincided with allegations of child sexual abuse against him made by the then thirteen years old Jordan Chandler. I’m guessing the single’s cover with a picture of Jackson walking around his Neverland ranch with Ryan maybe didn’t do the King of Pop any favours in the eyes of anyone who wanted to believe the allegations. The case was eventually settled out of court with the plaintiff reportedly receiving $23 million. Speculation about Jackson’s private life (already a media frenzy) had gone onto another, darker level. The scrutiny and effects of the accusations would never leave him and indeed resurfaced in 2003 with a second set of allegations. Jackson was acquitted on all counts in 2005. Four years later, he would be dead himself from cardiac arrest. At the memorial service, Usher performed “Gone Too Soon” and the circle was complete.

After being on the show last time, Cliff Richard is into the charts but it’s more with a loud fart than a bang at a lowly No 27 with “Healing Love”. The single would struggle on gamely to a high of No 19 but it was a far cry from the massive Christmas hits of “Mistletoe And Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”.

I can’t even find the official promo video for the single online so unloved is the song but from the few seconds we see here there seems to be a lot of billowing drapes behind Cliff as he sings. Haven’t seen as much material being wafted about since Spandau Ballet and “Only When You Leave” in 1984.

Next up a duet featuring a man who, despite being around since the time of disco, is only known in the UK for three songs, all of them collaborations with a female singer. Peabo Bryson first had a – no wait! You’re right. Let’s address that name of his before anything else. Peabo…you don’t get many of them to the pound do you? I’ve never heard anyone calling out “Peabo, come here now!” or “Have you seen our Peabo?”. However, I do know someone who once heard these immortal words come out of the mouth of a tired and frustrated mother:

“Oi! Cleopatra! Pack it in or I’ll twat ya!”
Hessle Road, Hull sometime around 2010

Only in Hull. Anyway, Peabo isn’t his real name. No, of course it isn’t! Sadly his real name is worse if anything – Robert Peapo Bryson. Peapo! That’s what you say when playing with a baby! As I was saying though, he first had a hit in the UK in 1983 with “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”, an horrendously schmaltzy ballad that went all the way to No 2. There then followed an eight year gap until he returned with the title song from the Disney animation Beauty And The Beast alongside Celine Dion which bagged them a Top 10 hit. Clearly onto a good thing, he returned in 1993 with another Disney film song. This time it was “A Whole New World” which was from Aladdin and was, of course, another duet. The lucky lady this time was US singer songwriter Regina Belle who had been releasing records since 1987 without much commercial success. That was rectified and then some by “A Whole New World”. Not only was it an American No 1, it also is noteworthy for being the record that finally knocked Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” off the top spot after fourteen weeks over there. The reception to the record was a bit more lukewarm in the UK where it peaked at No 12.

It’s been covered a few times including by ex- One Direction member Zayn Malik (alongside Zhavia Ward) but the one that really stands out is the version by the god awful Peter Andre and his then wife Katie Price who included it on their album of covers also called “A Whole New World”. The track listing includes their takes on “Islands In The Stream” and the aforementioned “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love For You”. Hell’s teeth! That’s a whole new world of pain more like!

Next another of those rappers that the white middle class kids of Altrincham, Cheshire would fawn over. Ice T had a reputation for controversy that far outweighed any commercial success he achieved, certainly in this country. By 1993, he’d already released five albums but had never had a UK Top 40 hit…until “That’s How I’m Livin’”. We kind of knew already how he was living (that’s with a ‘g’ rather than as a ‘G’) and that was tendentiously. He’d provoked the ire of the POTUS George Bush no less with the release of “Cop Killer” by Body Count a track he wrote and a band he was a member of. He is also recognised as one of the defining influences of gangster rap and had well publicised disputes with fellow rappers like LL Cool J. However, Ice T was also savvy enough to diversify and forged an acting career for himself, starring in dozens of films and TV shows like New Jack City and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. “That’s How I’m Livin’” was taken from his album “Home Invasion” and peaked at No 21.

We didn’t know it at the time but the “Spooky” single would be the last material released by New Order (barring Best Ofs and rereleased singles) for eight years. For five of those years, the band didn’t see each other at all whilst the concentrated on personal projects. Yet again I have zero recall of this track. New Order singles of 1993? “Regret” of course. “Ruined In A Day”? Yeah. “World (The Price Of Love)”? Just about. This one though? I’ve got nothing, zero, nada. Like I’ve never heard it before. Why put out a fourth single from an album that been out for months during the Christmas rush? Consequently, “Spooky” only made No 22 which is actually higher than I would have expected. Maybe they just wanted to set a personal band record. This was the first time that New Order ever achieved four hits from the same album.

Tellingly, Tony Dortie says he doesn’t think the band have ever made a bad video. A bad video? Is that what they’d become reduced to by this point? What about the music? There were worst times ahead though with Peter Hook leaving under very acrimonious circumstances. Oh dear.

The final Breaker is a song that had already almost been the Christmas No 1 once and was rush released in 1993 to try again. Back in 1984, the whole of the UK record buying public seemed to be enthralled by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Two No 1 singles clocking up fifteen weeks at the top between them meant that when it came to the runners and riders for the festive chart topper, they were the bookies favourite. They had an epic, bowl-you-over ballad that was perfect for Christmas. They even had a nativity themed promo video. “The Power Of Love” duly went to No 1 on its first week of release. What hadn’t been figured into the odds was Bob Geldof and Band Aid which, when the list of high profile pop star contributors to the record became known, was always going to be the Christmas chart topper. Frankie were dethroned after just one week. Could the 1993 rerelease do what the 1984 original couldn’t and be No 1 for Yuletide? For Bob Geldof read Mr Blobby. They never stood a chance though “The Power Of Love” remains a firm favourite on Christmas playlists to this day. Mr Blobby on the other hand…

One of the success stories of 1993 now (and it pains me to say it) as we catch up with Haddaway in Disney World, Florida. Didn’t we see PM Dawn and Boy George there this year as well? Did TOTP have some sort of arrangement with Disney? Anyway, after No 2 and No 6 hits in the UK charts, the big question for Haddaway wasn’t “What Is Love?” but “how do I get a third hit? Well, one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from these hundreds of TOTP repeats is that if you’re a new act with a shiny, uptempo pop song, you can replicate that formula for the follow up but you need something different for the third release and what is more different than a ballad? Haddaway clearly knew the rules and his third release was indeed a slow, romantic number called “I Miss You”. Sadly though, it’s not only slow but completely laboured and ponderous. It literally never gets out of first gear. Just dreadful. The lyrics sound like they came out of a one minute brainstorming session about the most obvious themes of love and regret.

I miss you, oh I miss you
I’m gonna need you more and more each day
I miss you, more than words can say
More than words can ever say
Copyright © 2000-2022 AZLyrics.com

Dreadful stuff. Somehow though, this nonsense got to No 9 to give Haddaway his third consecutive Top 10 hit. 1993 really had a lot to answer for.

Take That have gone straight into the charts at No 1 for the third consecutive time with “Babe”. No other act had done this at the time. Not the aforementioned Frankie, not The Jam (they managed two) not anyone. It really was quite the rise when you consider that eighteen months earlier, their biggest hit to date had been the No 38 single “Promises”. By Christmas 1993, they were the undisputed heroes for a generation of teenage girls. Of course, it’s not like we hadn’t seen bands being screamed at before. Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Bros…and yet none of them attained this particular chart achievement.

Tony Dortie joins the band on stage at the song’s end for a cosy chat about how well they’re doing and so high on success are they that they take the piss out of dethroned No 1 Mr Blobby by doing some Blobby impressions (led by Robbie Williams naturally). The pink and yellow dotted buffoon would have his revenge a week later when, rather improbably, he returned to the top of the charts to bag the Christmas No 1. I remember thinking that this was nuts and how had it happened? I was no Take That fan obviously but at least “Babe” was a proper song. Somebody who was a fan was my younger sister and years later she went to see a Robbie Williams tribute act where, in an unlikely turn of events, the worlds of Mr Blobby and Take That collided once more. The impersonator was a rather rotund figure and so his stage name was Blobby Williams and he was part of Take Fat. Marvellous.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chaka Demus and Pliers	Twist And Shout	Nope
2	Meatloaf	Bat Out Of Hell	No
3	East 17	It’s Alright	Yes, yes I did
4	Diana Ross	Your Love	Never happening
5	EYC	Feelin’ Alright	As if
6	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
7	Michael Jackson	Gone Too Soon	Nah
8	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Of course not
9	Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle	A Whole New World	Noi chance
10	Ice T	That’s How I’m Livin	Not my bag
11	New Order	Spooky	Negative
12	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	The Power Of Love	Not in 1984 nor 1993
13	Haddaway	I Miss You	Awful – no
14	Take That	Babe	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/m001fy5t/top-of-the-pops-16121993

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Posted on December 7, 2022 by 80stastic

In the last post I made a claim that the No 1 was a bit of an anticlimax on the grounds that it followed the biggest boy band around who performed in the studio against a backdrop of 3D images (ooh!). By comparison, the No 1 was in its seventh week at the top and we were surely all getting a bit fed up of its video. It doesn’t seem right though does it? TOTP was always a chart based show highlighting which songs were the most popular in a chronological way via the chart countdown. Despite the use of such a linear tool, the implication is that the excitement heightens as we get to the nation’s favourite song. But what if said record doesn’t deserve such a reception? I realise this leaves me open to accusations of musical snobbery but if the No 1 is so heinous, what’s the plan? The question is especially relevant to this particular TOTP as, like a Tory minister doubling down on a failed economic policy, the ending of this show has two terrible songs.

Having said all of the above, the start of the show is pretty ropey as well. Bad Boys Inc were one of the many awful boy bands that appeared in the wake of Take That during the 90s. The whole thing reeked of cynicism with no more of a bigger example than this slushy ballad aimed at the Christmas market. After, two uptempo pop singles had made them bona fide chart stars (albeit in quite a minor way), they took that well worn path of releasing a slowie as their third single to, you know, showcase their diversity. The fact that it was shoved out into the marketplace as Christmas approached was surely just coincidence no? “Walking On Air” (note the similarity of title to established festive tune “Walking In The Air” from The Snowman) was ghastly whilst the performance here (I can’t find it in YouTube as nobody seems interested in recording it for posterity) is just as dire. The lead singer out front forever putting his hand to his heart to show his sincerity backed by three twirling, sliding goons all performing on a bed of dry ice. What a shower!

Disregarding the Bee Gees, I haven’t heard such high pitched vocals since Modern Romance did their ballad “Walking In The Rain” a decade earlier. What is it with ballads and the word ‘walking’? “Walking In Air”, “Walking In The Rain”, “Walking In Memphis” and of course who could forget George Michael’s ‘guilty feet’ in “Careless Whisper”. The record buying public showed their lack of affection for Bad Boys Inc with their own feet by walking past their local record shop and therefore not buying their single. It peaked at No 24.

Now here’s a very old track (even in 1993) which was suddenly and maybe surprisingly a very big hit. Sudden because it’s gone straight into the chart at No 5 and surprising because when it was first released in 1981 it did nothing at all sales wise. There is a reason for its explosion of popularity though and as usual it’s to do with record company promotional activities. “Controversy” was the title track from Prince’s fourth studio album and by 1993 he’d added another ten to that number so why was it plucked for single release at this point in his career? To advertise a Best Of album of course. “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The Hits / The B sides” was a triple headed beast of a release documenting The Purple One’s best/most well known/biggest (delete as applicable) songs so far. Previous single “Peach” was released in the October to promote the set but that was a brand new composition I think. To give the Best Ofs an extra push for Christmas, another single was required and “Controversy” was selected for the job. Did I know this track? Don’t think I did. I only cottoned onto Prince from about 1983 when conversely “1999” was in the charts the first time around. Did I like it? Not that much. Was I surprised that it was such a big hit? Yes I was. As with “Peach” though, the two CD singles contained hits that weren’t included on the Hits albums plus there was a William Orbit remix of “The Future” so maybe that was it?

We’re back to this trend of the TOTP hosts telling us that an artist should have been on the show but can’t be because they’re ill/indisposed etc. I asked the other week why they bothered with this practice as they could have just shown the video without saying anything and we wouldn’t have known any better. This week, they’ve doubled down like…ah I’ve been here before haven’t I? They have made a complete spectacle of this issue though with Gabrielle. According to presenter Mark Franklin she can’t perform in the studio tonight and the reason is…Well, let’s ask Gabrielle herself because she’s in the actual studio! What?! Mark asks her if she’s OK and Gabrielle days “Not at the moment because I’ve got flu”. Got flu?! Got flu?! Why aren’t you in bed Gabrielle?! This is madness! Look, when I’ve had flu I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom if I needed the loo on my hands and knees. The idea that I could have got myself into a TV studio and been interviewed in front of a TV audience of millions is just unconscionable. I don’t wish to doubt her but really?!

Anyway, enough of the health issues, what about the music? Well, I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s record label were ever so slightly uncomfortable at this point. After the euphoria of a No 1 single with her debut single “Dreams”, might they have been expecting a bigger follow up hit than the No 9 that the unfortunately entitled “Going Nowhere” supplied? If so, then a lot must have been riding on “I Wish”. Sadly, it wasn’t really up to the task being a fairly average piece of soul/pop and it peaked at No 26. Maybe it just got lost in the Christmas rush. Gabrielle would recover to bag a further eight Top 10 hits including No 1 “Rise” in 2000. Seems like Gabrielle’s wish came true.

The Bee Gees are up to No 6 in an unexpected tilt at the Christmas No 1 spot with “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. To mark the event we get a live by satellite performance from New York. As with the vast majority of these satellite specials, it’s a total let down. Maybe I’m viewing them through 2022 eyes and in 1993 it may have been a major event but I can’t help but think it’s totally lame. A completely uneventful run through of the song performed underneath Brooklyn Bridge is interlaced with some totally non related shots of ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. And that’s it. Yes, it’s a cinematic backdrop I guess with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background and a helicopter comes into view at one point but I was more fascinated by who the fourth Bee Gee was up there with Barry, Maurice and Robin.

There’s an easy line to be written here about the next artist and the title of her latest single but I’m not that obvious. All I’ll say is that 1993 is surely a year that Dina Carroll would never forget. Five hit singles and an album that was the highest selling debut by a British female artist in UK chart history at the time? It was the stuff of dreams. The last of those five hits was “The Perfect Year” which was from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard. It seemed a bit of an anomaly to me at the time. Firstly, it wasn’t on the aforementioned album (“So Close”) which confused and upset a few punters in the Our Price store I was working in and wouldn’t appear on an album until Dina’s sophomore effort “Only Human” appeared a whole three years later.

Secondly, the schedule for its release had clearly been set to cash in on the Christmas holidays market with the lyrics even referencing New Year’s Eve but it was hampered by the extended success of previous single “Don’t Be A Stranger”. So well received had it been that it was still in the Top 10 and outsold “The Perfect Year” on the latter’s first week of release. Clearly, record label A&M would not have wanted her previous hit to be splitting sales of her new one but because of the latter’s Christmas theme, they couldn’t keep it back any later. Dina having two simultaneous hits added to the customer confusion in store:

Customer: Do you have the Dina Carroll single?

Me: Which one? There’s two

Customer: The one that’s in the charts

Me: They both are

Customer: The one that’s a big ballad

Me: They both are

Customer: Well, I’ll get her album then I’m covered

Me: Her album doesn’t have both singles on it

Customer: Are you having a laugh?

Me: Not really, no

Dina’s performance here is very professional but then she’d had plenty of practice at being on TOTP that year. It felt like she was on the show every other week. Her black and white outfit is very effective against the Wintery backdrop though those impractical, oversized sleeves must have been a nightmare at the dinner table. Also, why did they feel the need to insert some clips (presumably) from the video while Dina was singing? They looked so incongruous. Children running across a field and then staring at the camera motionless – why? Then there’s the old fella. The expression he had on his face reminded me of something and it’s this. My sadly departed mother-in-law used to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery and would sometimes bring home freebies from the pharmaceutical companies like mugs. She had one that was just an old man grinning on it. The first time I saw it I couldn’t understand why anyone would have that image on a mug and then I turned it around and saw the drug it was advertising – it was a brand of laxative. Aaah…

“The Perfect Year” had to settle for a chart peak of No 5, two places lower than “Don’t Be A Stranger”.

https://youtu.be/oIwVk6aFuek

Four Breakers now starting with UB40 whose single “Bring Me Your Cup” I don’t recall at all. It was the third track lifted from their “Promises And Lies” album and listening to it now, it’s actually a lot better than I was expecting. It starts out very understated but forms an unexpected ear worm very quickly with its lilting rhythm allied to Ali Campbell’s soothing vocals. Should probably have been a bigger hit than No 24 but then the album had been out for over four months by then so maybe it was to be expected. Not a bad effort though.

In amongst the endless diet of Eurodance bollocks that 1993 served up there were the occasional morsels of unexpected taste. Songs that would appear for no apparent reason and then the artist would pretty much disappear again. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Spin Doctors, The Frank and Walters and this lot – Blind Melon. These US psychedelic rockers reminded me of fellow countrymen Jellyfish who similarly are known in this country for one hit and not much else despite there being so much more to them. Blind Melon’s contribution to the story of 1993 was “No Rain”, a hippy, trippy, winsome tune with some Beatles influences thrown in for good measure. It sounded like an antidote to some of the god awfulness populating the charts and yet again a complete outlier.

Helping to promote the song was the video featuring the ‘bee girl’, a tap dancer in a bee costume and large glasses who gets laughed off stage and then spends the rest of the film trying to dance for anyone who will let her. She eventually finds an unlikely outlet for her routine – a field of similarly dressed people all dancing together. The girl playing the character would become a bit of a star, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna at the MTV awards before having a career as an actress appearing in two episodes of US medical drama ER. Blind Melon themselves would have two further very minor UK chart hits before disbanding in 1999. They have reformed a couple of times since despite the drugs overdose death of vocalist Shannon Hoon.

Name a Pet Shop Boys single released in 1993? “Go West” right? Has to be. No? “Can You Forgive Her” then? Still not the one you’re thinking of? “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing” – well, no I don’t habitually spend hours trying to remember the titles of Pet Shop Boys singles but…oh, of course! That was the third track released from their “Very” album and in many ways is the quintessential PSB song. Eccentric title? Check! Swirly synth back beat? Check! Gloriously catchy, camp melody? Check! Typically deadpan vocals from Neil Tennant? Check! This was what they did best. Sadly, I think it got caught up in the Christmas rush and didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking at No 13.

The kaleidoscopic video features Chris and Neil in daft wigs that make the former look like Mike Flowers of Mike Flowers Pops (two years before anybody knew who he was) and the latter like Louis Balfour, host of The Fast Show’s Jazz Club. Nice!

The final Breaker comes from “the most successful rap group of 1993” according to host Mark Franklin. Were Cypress Hill that big?

*checks their bio*

Seems they were. The band have sold 20 million albums worldwide and in 1993 their second album “Black Sunday” went straight into the US charts at No 1 selling 261,000 copies in its first week. Their eponymous debut album was also still on the charts at the same time and they became the first hip hop artist to have two albums in the Top 10 simultaneously.

From “Black Sunday” came this third single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. I’d liked the House Of Pain sounding “Insane In The Brain” (who couldn’t?) but by this one I’d probably lost interest. Maybe I had a beef with them as the album was one of those that always needed a temporary inlay card to display it otherwise the real CD cover would get nicked especially as the booklet contained 19 facts about the history of hemp and the positive attributes of cannabis. The middle class, white kids in Altrincham where I was working loved all of that stuff and especially those T-shirts and posters with the image of an alien on them with a massive reefer blazing up bearing the legend ‘Take me to your dealer’. Laughed their arses off at that every time.

“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” peaked at No 15.

We have arrived at the first of those two terrible songs that end the show. By 1993, Cliff Richard was absolutely synonymous with Christmas. Not only had he claimed the festive No 1 twice since 1988 (thrice if you count his contribution to Band Aid II) but he seemed to have a tilt at it every year. “We Should Be Together” was his offering in 1991 peaking at No 10 and “I Still Believe In You” was strategically released in late November the following year to try and capture those Christmas sales making it to No 7. Come 1993 and Cliff was chancing his arm once more with “Healing Love”. Not a specifically Christmas themed song for once, it was actually the last of five singles released from his “The Album”…erm…album. It was co-written by Nik Kershaw who knows his way around a decent pop tune but this definitely wasn’t one of them. It’s not just that it’s a sluggish, turgid, completely unexceptional tune but the lyrics are dreadful. Really hackneyed stuff about losing the battle but winning the war and how about this for a line a seven year old could have written…

“Now I can see that you’re feeling sad…”

Come on! For this performance, Cliff has turned up in a jacket and tie and looks like he’s got his schedule wrong and was expecting to be on Wogan and not TOTP. As ever, he’s brought with him that guy from the aforementioned Modern Romance as one of his backing singers who’s been with him since “Mistletoe And Wine”.

“Healing Love” never hit a sniff at topping the charts peaking at No 19 but Cliff never really gave up on his quest for another Christmas No 1. The following year, he teamed up with his old pal Phil Everly for a double A-side of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and a remix of his old hit “Miss You Nights” but it topped out at No 14. He couldn’t have come any closer in 1999 with the divisive “The Millennium Prayer” which actually went to No 1 and was still top of the pile with just one week to go before being toppled by Westlife. Undeterred, he went again in 2003 (“Santa’s List” – No 5) and 2006 (“21st Century Christmas” – No 2) and this year he has released a Christmas album. Cliff was 82 in October. You have to admire his longevity if not his music.

Just…just…f*****g WHY?! What were people thinking?! Oh, yeah. Of course. There was no thinking happening at all. A complete lack of brain activity. How else can you explain this total failure of any sense of taste on such a widespread scale? This monumental aberration. Nothing about “Mr Blobby” by Mr Blobby deserved anything but our complete contempt. So why was it f*****g No 1? Were 5 year olds (or their parents) buying it? When The Teletubbies became a phenomenon a few years later with the pre school population and released a record, I could just about understand parents doing just that but Mr Blobby wasn’t quite the same type of character. His beginnings weren’t on children’s TV but an early evening light entertainment show presumably not being watched by toddlers so who was his single appealing to? It certainly wasn’t funny and neither was its accompanying video which featured a number of celebrity cameos. Obviously, Edmonds was there being responsible for the whole debacle but there’s also a very young looking Jeremy Clarkson as Mr Blobby’s limo driver, Carole Vorderman, Wayne Sleep and bizarrely ex-footballer and pundit Garth Crooks. Mr Blobby is seen in various scenes where he inevitably falls over destroying everything in his path which includes parodies of four well known recent pop promos – “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” by Snap!, “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis and “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister. The last one particularly grinds my gears for the pure reason that it uses actual footage of the original in the parody – why? We all knew which video it was lampooning when the camera switched to the lookalike Marcella Detroit so why try and install some credibility by using images of the real one? I don’t know why this especially offends me but it does. Anyway, this madness will all be over soon as Take That will be top of the charts next week and surely also the Christmas No 1 won’t it? Won’t it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bad Boys Inc	Walking On Air	Of course not
2	Prince	Controversy	No
3	Gabrielle	I Wish	Nope
4	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	I did not
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nah
6	UB40	Bring Me Your Cup	Negative
7	Blind Melon	No Rain	No but maybe should have
8	Pet Shop Boys	I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing	No but I assume it’s on their Pop Art Best Of which I have
9	Cypress Hill	I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That	It’s another no
10	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Never happening
11	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	What do you think?

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001frnn/top-of-the-pops-09121993

TOTP 10 JUN 1993

Posted on September 3, 2022 by 80stastic

June 1993 saw the demise of two big names in the world of comedy – one a performer and one a TV show. The former was comedian Les Dawson who died on the same day this TOTP aired aged just 62. The latter was US sitcom Cheers which ended this year after 275 episodes over 11 seasons. Channel 4 broadcast the final three shows over the weekend following this TOTP. Both had a musical element to them. Dawson included his wonky piano playing in his act whilst Cheers had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time…

Let’s see if any of the tunes on this TOTP are anywhere near as good as Gary Portnoy’s famous song…

Certainly not this one! As I said in the last post when confronted by Eurodance merchant Haddaway opening the show, I’d totally had enough of that particular genre of music by this point. This time it’s the turn of Snap! to be the first act on with their new single “Do You See The Light (Looking For)”. The TOTP producers often seemed to top the show’s running order with a dance act. In recent weeks we’ve had Stereo MCs, Felix and 2 Unlimited in addition to Haddaway. I guess it made sense to try and begin proceedings with a bang. The year zero revamp hadn’t quite let go of the party atmosphere era of Michael Hurll. Having said that, the performance here of Snap! featuring Niki Harris seems to suggest a soirée rather than a massive rave-up. I have to say that as objectionable as his views were, the group seemed to lose something when rapper Turbo B left. The performance here seems very lacklustre. Maybe if the set hadn’t been so sparse it might have sparked things into life a bit. And why do the backing singers resemble water nymphs?

This track was taken from “The Madman’s Return” album and the album version of it is quite different with vocals by Thea Austin instead of Niki Harris, a rap by the aforementioned Turbo B and even a (slightly) different title in “See The Light”. The single version peaked at No 10 and No 14 in 2002 when it was remixed and rereleased.

Spin Doctors are still going up the charts? Checking its stats, “Two Princes” remained on the chart for 18 weeks so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty nifty tune all said and done and there was a brief moment in time when the band seemed to be the next big thing. Parent album “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” went to No 2 and achieved platinum sales in Europe and yet somehow it all seemed to stall and fall away on both sides of the Atlantic.

If I’m honest, the follow up singles just weren’t as good. “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” just didn’t capture the imagination in the same way as “Two Princes” although in the case of the latter, in a three way race of Superman themed singles, they definitely finish above Laurie Anderson and Black Lace.

“Two Princes” peaked at No 3 in the UK.

A proper pop moment next as TOTP brings us the return of Pet Shop Boys. Neil and Chris had been away for only 18 months or so but their last release had been their first official Best Of album “Discography” which on reflection felt like a line in the sand drawing to a close the first part of their career. What would the first material of their next phase be like? Well, not too dissimilar to their previous work to be fair. “Can You Forgive Her” didn’t feel like a massive departure from what had gone before but then Neil Tennant’s voice is so distinctive that it overrides sometimes any potential musical deviation on their behalf. Not always of course. For example, something like “Jealousy” or “Se A Vida É” sound nothing like “West End Girls” but in the case of “Can You Forgive Her”, it didn’t seem, to me anyway, like a radical new sound. Not that it wasn’t any good either though. It had a strident feel to it, enabled by a punchy chorus that demanded to be heard. And heard it was as it gave the duo their first Top 10 hit in two years after their previous three singles all failed to make that achievement.

Somehow though it always feels overshadowed by the second single to be lifted from parent album “Very” which was the enormous hit that was the cover of Village People’s “Go West”. Initial copies of the album came in an orange CD jewel case featuring raised bumps which resembled Lego. In those days, the Our Price chain I worked for didn’t use security tagging and so the CDs we sold weren’t ‘live’ on the shelves as it were. The actual CDs were filed away behind the counter so the cases were empty. However, the manager of the store I was working in when the album came out thought the Lego case so nickable that we kept those behind the counter as well and had a dummy case on display that used the inner back sleeve to say what it was. Genius! Except it was a pain in the arse to put together when selling it to a customer and we also had a few people ask if our dummy sleeve was somehow a different version of the album. It would be another five years before I worked in an Our Price that displayed CDs live.

Anyway, back to the show and this performance really does give us the pop moment I referred to earlier. There’s so much to unpack here. The over exaggerated pointy dunce hats, Neil Tennant in a high chair, the cricket bat wielding space cadet backing dancers, a huge egg on stage for no reason but most of all there was Chris Lowe. The perennially motionless man moved more in that one performance than in all his previous ones added together. What had got into him? There were even what passed for dance moves! Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps this really was a different Pet Shop Boys to what had gone before.

1993 really was the year ragga/dancehall took over the charts. After Shaggy, Shabba and Snow came the ludicrously named Chaka Demus And Pliers. Opening themselves up to all sorts of tool related jibes, this pair of toasters joined forces in 1991 and released “Murder She Wrote” the following year in America to great acclaim. The follow up was “Tease Me” and the hordes lapped it up sending it to No 3 in the UK Top 40. The lyrics were fairly clear about the song’s subject matter with references to ‘reaching climax’ and its title of course. There’s also that shout out line which seemed to encapsulate the whole movement – “Number One In The World”. I’m sure that seemed to feature on every song of this type after that.

Chaka Demus and Pliers have bought all their mates with them to the TOTP studio for a jolly up whilst the camera man seemed very intent on giving us multiple views of the gyrating female backing dancers. Ahem. We’ll also be seeing lots more of CD and P before 1993 is out.

And the fascination with all things erotic thriller continues. I’m guessing Indecent Proposal must have been performing well at the box office to generate this much of a profile. It’s another outing for “Ordinary Love” by Sade which was featured heavily in the film but was not actually on the soundtrack. After last week’s glimpse of the mermaid promo video, we get a live by satellite performance from New York this time. Sade Adu looks stunning as ever but it’s the two guitarists in the background who have caught my eye. They spend the first half of the performance not even bothering to mime playing their instruments but doing the nerd shuffle together whilst clicking their fingers in unison. It doesn’t really seem appropriate for an artist as sophisticated as Sade. Bet they got a bollocking when the cameras were turned off.

Therapy? were enjoying a huge breakthrough year in 1993. After the “Shortsharpshock EP” featuring lead track “Screamager” made the Irish rockers bona fide Top 10 artists in March, the follow up was also an EP. “Face The Strange” featured four tracks of which “Turn” was chosen to promote it. Clearly the EP’s title is a David Bowie reference being a lyric from his song “Changes”. I learned recently that I know someone who met Bowie and not just met but took him out for a drink around about 1972 just as he was launching his Ziggy Stardust era. I know! There’s a few Bowie super fans that I know who would be blown away by my friend’s recollections. What’s that? The Therapy? song? Oh, I didn’t like it much. Sorry.

The Breakers are their usual eclectic/bonkers mix of artists starting with the evergreen Cliff Richard. Despite being 52 at the time and having had his first hit 25 years ago, Cliff was showing no signs of slowing down in 1993. In fact, the decade was going pretty well for him so far. He’d already clocked up a No 1 in “Saviour’s Day” and four other Top 10 hits. Also having a fine old time of it around now was Maxi Priest who’d had a hit twice with Shabba Ranks (albeit with the same song in both cases) and who’d supplied the ‘Shabba!’ sample for the massive selling “Mr Loverman” single. To add to his collection of chart connections came “Human Work Of Art”. You see, Maxi had released this as a single from his “Bonafide” album three years prior but it had failed to chart.

It was recycled for Cliff’s 1993 album called…erm…”The Album” and this time made No 24. It sounds every inch a Cliff record and you’d be hard pressed to guess at its reggae-fied earlier incarnation. It’s also utterly awful under his guardianship. Yes, it’s a polished production but then you can polish a turd of course.

I can’t find the official video online so here’s it being performed on Surprise Surprise.

From the despair of another banal Cliff record to…where? Well, fortunately it’s Manic Street Preachers with their new single “From Despair To Where” (ahem). OK, firstly weren’t they have meant to have split up by now? Wasn’t that their mission statement to make one blow your socks off, anarchistic album then dissolve the band? Clearly that was just bravado then. What they actually did was to record second album “Gold Against The Soul” which I liked enough to buy but which the fan base has always dissed as the worst album in their back catalogue. I’m sure I heard an interview with James Dean Bradfield once where he was asked to rank the band’s albums in order of merit and even he put it bottom of the list.

Maybe debut “Generation Terrorists” had raised the bar and expectations too high but the music press gave it mixed reviews at best. Maybe fan favourite and third album “The Holy Bible” would have been a more acceptable choice with its themes of human suffering and bleakness. Was “Gold Against The Soul” seen as too radio friendly, too (gulp) corporate rock? It sounded alright to my ears with the lead single ticking all my aural boxes. It swoops and soars but bites as well with lines like ‘there’s nothing nice in my head’. It had all of that and yet wasn’t even the best track on the album for me. I liked this version of the band a lot but then I’m not a paid up member of the Manics army who could shoot my opinion down in flames I’m sure.

What I’m not sure about is the video which is basically some moody shots of the band (Richie looks especially cool) intertwined with some sepia tinted clips which seem to suggest a sci-fi /horror film but it’s all a bit blurry to make a clear judgement although that look like an alien autopsy in the thumbnail below.

The Manics of course did do a TV show theme tune when they covered “Suicide Is Painless” – the theme tune from M*A*S*H. Better than the theme to Cheers? It’s a tough call but yes possibly.

The Sister Sledge revival bandwagon continues apace with a rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You”. Remixed as the (RAMP Radio Mix), it was the last of three singles taken from the Greatest Hits compilation “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93” following “We Are Family” and “Lost In Music”. It would peak at No 17 just six places lower than its 1984 counterpart. However the song dated back to 1979 when it was a track on the “We Are Family” album and issued as the B-side to the initial release of “Lost In Music”.

Reading that paragraph back it seems like the group made a 40+ year career based around just three songs that have been recycled over and over again. Lead singer Kathy Sledge even did her own cover version of “Thinking Of You” with house duo Aristofreeks in 2015. OK look, I know there’s also “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “Frankie” in their repertoire but the former is very similar to the “Family/Lost/Thinking” trilogy and the latter is one of the worst recordings of all time (and I’ve just had to listen to Cliff Richard’s “Human Work Of Art”). I doubt even the Sledge sisters want to be remembered for that one.

Sister Sledge have only released one more single since this. And guess what? It was a rerelease of “We Are Family” in 2004 which made No 93 on our charts.

Who? The Time Frequency? Sounds like a phrase Dr Who might say. Have we seen this lot before? Can’t remember now. So many of these dance acts about. Anyway, “The Ultimate High” was a track off their “Power Zone EP” and sounds very much like a knock off version of “Insanity” by Oceanic to me but then, as I’ve said many times before, I’m no dance music aficionado.

The Time Frequency were from Scotland so I wonder if they knew fellow Scottish dance acts Primal Scream and The Shamen or is that a bit like an American, who on meeting someone from London, asks them if they know their cousin who lives in Notting Hill?

Lisa Stansfield? Again? It can’t be! She seems to be on every week at the moment. Given the high level of exposure it got, I’m surprised that “In All The Right Places” didn’t get higher than its No 8 peak. She’s back in the studio this time and has gone full on Louise Brooks with her haircut. No messing about like the other week with that half hearted Brett Anderson-esque wedge style. The way the stage has been set up with her first name and first name only in lights gives it a feel of a residency at Las Vegas. In fact, I could just imagine Liza Minnelli up there belting this one out.

Lisa will be back in October with her “So Natural” album and single.

UB40 have made it to the top spot deposing Ace Of Base in the process. Were they on tour at this time as it’s the video for “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” yet again this week? I’m guessing that the director got the band to perform emerging into a tight corridor to link in with the themes of claustrophobia and paranoia that the film it was taken from (Sliver) clearly was based around. Ironically, a few years down the line, the band fractured into two different identities due to internal arguments and there’s no way that Ali and Robin Campbell would ever be in such close proximity to each other like that again.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Snap!	Do You See The Light (Looking For)	Never happening
2	Spin Doctors	Two Princes	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Pet Shop Boys	Can You Forgive Her	No but I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Tease Me	As if
5	Sade	No Ordinary Love	Nope
6	Therapy?	Face The Strange EP	Nah
7	Cliff Richard	Human Work Of Art	Of course not
8	Manic Street Preachers	From Despair To Where	No but I bought the album
9	Sister Sledge	Thinking Of You	No
10	The Time Frequency	Power Zone EP	Not likely
11	Lisa Stansfield	In All The Right Places	Negative
12	UB40	(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You	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/m001bdx3/top-of-the-pops-10061993

TOTP 25 MAR 1993

Posted on July 16, 2022 by 80stastic

I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about the unholy trinity of the three S’s of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow dominating the charts. Well, guess what? I’m still doing it in this post as two of them are on the show again this week. It’s come to my attention though that they weren’t the only members of the ‘S’ brigade. This week’s show is jam packed with them and no I didn’t like a single one!

We start with an ‘S’ and it’s ‘S’ for Sybil, she of the hit “When I’m Good And Ready”. Sybil was never as popular again as she was at this moment in terms of sales. Her run of two consecutive big hits comprising this single and previous No 3 smash “The Love I Lost” with West End was brought to an abrupt halt when the next single “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” peaked outside of the Top 40 at that most unfortunate of places No 41. It wasn’t for the want of trying though. She even did two different versions of the song- a pop ballad version for the UK market…

And a hip-hop remix with a rap in the middle for the US territories…

It made no difference as neither version was a hit. Off the top of my head I can only think of Climie Fisher also doing a similar thing where there was a straight ballad version of their single “Rise To The Occasion” and a hip-hop remix complete with the ubiquitous and annoying ‘aaah yeaaah’ sample.

The track had also previously been recorded by Lonnie Gordon and released as a follow up to her “Happenin’ All Over Again” hit but had also missed the chart peaking at No 48. All of this despite the claim by writers Stock, Aitken and Waterman that it is one of the best songs they ever penned. And if you thought the chart performance of “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” was unlucky, Sybil followed up taking it to No 41 in the charts by releasing another single from her “Good ‘N’ Ready” album called “Stronger Together” and that peaked at…yep…No 41.

https://youtu.be/BaFT-kpD3Og

No S’s in sight next as we once again witness the power of an advert to make us buy a song that had already been a hit once all over again. This time the product being soundtracked by an old hit was the Volkswagen Golf and the song that benefited from it “Young At Heart” by The Bluebells. Normally I don’t go back and see what I’ve already written about a chart hit that I’ve reviewed in a previous blog post for fear of just regurgitating the same words but I did in this case. I think it’s because I view their chart histories separated by nine years as almost completely different entities, relating to two disparate records.

Originally a hit in the Summer of 1984 when I had not long turned 16, “Young At Heart” was never off the airwaves. Radio 1 seemed to play it four or five times a day at least which was not good for me as I couldn’t stand it. In my post on the track in my 80s TOTP blog, I made a point of saying I liked the band but hated this song and I stand by that. I still have a soft spot for The Bluebells but their most well known song is also their worst to my ears. Back in 1984, they followed up “Young At Heart” with the wonderful “Cath” but it only just scraped into the charts at No 38. A final single called “All I Am (Is Loving You)” was released which missed the charts completely and the band fizzled out.

The song’s second coming seemed nothing to do with the band and indeed it wasn’t. They weren’t actually even together in 1993 and hadn’t been for some years. I think I’m right in saying that the story behind its 1993 reactivation was that the person working for the ad agency that was looking after the Volkswagen account had come up with a song for the advert but that there were some issues with copyright and it couldn’t be used and so she had to come up with another song fast. Thinking back to her childhood, she remembered that jolly song that she used to hear on the radio. The rights owners were sought out and contacted and the rest is history.

For many record buyers though, they may not have known anything of the record’s past or the career of the band who made it. They just knew it as the song from that car advert with the twist at the end when instead of getting married, it turns out that the ‘bride’ is actually celebrating getting divorced. The single’s cover was just a still of said actress from the advert reinforcing this new identity for the song as something separate and somehow itself divorced as it were from the band. It even has the Volkswagen logo in the corner. It was corporate and false and in some way, it devalued the original even though I hadn’t liked it.

On hearing of the success of the rerelease (it outstripped the original’s chart peak easily in the first week) the members of The Bluebells reconvened and agreed to reform to promote the single with appearances like this one on TOTP. They look like they’re treating it as a laugh which is probably the correct attitude to have taken. They weren’t under any record company pressure to maximise sales presumably. Whatever it did commercially was a bonus. Subsequent performances would be taken even less seriously as the band struggled to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events. “Young At Heart” would go to No 1 for four weeks and be the twelfth best selling single of the year in the UK in 1993.

We’re back with the S’s now and it’s the most hateful of the lot – Shabba Ranks with “Mr Loverman”. I could never understand the appeal of this record. I mean, I didn’t like Shaggy nor Snow’s songs either but I could just about appreciate why they were successful. “Mr Loverman” though? Nah, that was just nasty. Aside from Ranks’s own despicable views which were enough to put any sane thinking person off anyway, I just couldn’t take the song seriously with all those ridiculous ‘Shabba!’ shout outs. Now I learn it’s not even Ranks name checking himself but Maxi Priest sampled from their “Housecall” single.

The whole stupid business was parodied in a sketch by the team behind the US comedy TV series In Living Color to whom I shall leave the last word…

All female US R&B groups seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. At the start of the decade we had En Vogue and then as the years passed we saw the likes of SWV, TLC and Brownstone right up to the titans of the genre Destiny’s Child. And those were only the ones that crossed over to the UK. Back in America there were groups who never managed to translate acclaim at home into huge overseas success. I’m thinking of Xscape, 702 and Total. Here’s one for you that did manage to straddle the pond as it were but who rarely get talked about anymore.

Jade were Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed from Chicago who are best remembered for their hit “Don’t Walk Away” though they did have a few others. In 1993 they were always going to be compared to En Vogue who were having transatlantic hits at the time and I guess their sound wasn’t too dissimilar. “Don’t Walk Away” was a radio friendly piece of sassy R&B that enabled the trio to pull out some slinky dance moves when performing it. It rose to a lofty No 7 position in the UK charts and an even higher peak of No 4 in the US selling 2.5 million copies worldwide. Their album “Jade To The Max” racked up substantial numbers and a lengthy tour had them looking fair set for superstardom. They appeared in both film (The Inkwell) and TV (Beverly Hills 90210) and contributed tracks to a couple of soundtracks as well. A second album followed in 1994 and then…nothing. Everything just seemed to stop. Were they dropped from their label? Did they just decide themselves to jack it all in?

I think they all stayed in music one way or another and two of them reunited in 2021 with the improbably named Myracle Holloway (a finalist on The Voice). The curious tale of Jade – a gemstone amongst the Brownstones.

https://youtu.be/IKGd_KiRAWg

We’re back amongst the S’s now and it’s another stone related artist – Robin Stone better known as Robin S. This New York singer songwriter’s legacy would be formed upon and based around this one track, the house anthem “Show Me Love”. We sold loads and loads of this in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. And then we went home, had a sleep, came back to work and sold some more of it the next day. I’m surprised that it wasn’t a bigger hit than its final chart placing of No 6 though it did return to the Top 40 a further two times as remixes. In fact, it seems to have been released eight times in total. See what I mean about Robin’s legacy being totally built around this one track? I’m sure there are some Robin S super fans out there who would dispute that claim but it’s true. And there’s many would say that being known for “Show Me Love” would be recognition enough. It regularly appears in lists of the best dance tunes of all time and its influence is still felt today in the music of the likes of Clean Bandit and is sampled in Beyoncé’s latest single “Break My Soul”.

Interesting to note the difference here between Sybil’s performance at the top of the show with her three backing singers and Robin’s with nothing but some dry ice for company while she belts her tune out. I recall the cover of the single was just a very basic generic design in green with a cream header with the label’s name (Champion) repeated in lines all over it. Very poor. Maybe they didn’t expect it to be a big hit outside of the clubs and so didn’t bother designing a cover to be shipped in huge quantities to retailers?

Oh Hell! Cliff’s back again. Yes, despite the charts being jam packed with dance tunes of every hue and genre, a little corner of them was still reserved for Cliff Richard and whatever piece of garbage song he was peddling in 1993. “Peace In Our Time” was the offending article this time and it was at its peak of No 8. This is just a horrible tune with its backing that sounds like a speeded up version of “The Living Years” by Mike And The Mechanics and its insipid lyrics but it’s Cliff’s performance which really grabs the attention.

As with his last time on the show the other week, I can’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Unlike then, Cliff has ditched all his entourage of backing singers and has done a Robin S and gone solo albeit that he still has the remnants of the Sting set from the other month with him for company. It’s Cliff’s movements that are so spellbinding though – spellbindingly awful that is. They’re just so weird and unnatural. Plus he’s turned up in the bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket and trainers combo. It looks…completely unconvincing and actually very safe. In the 50s he would have been seen as a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth in that get up but in 1993, he just looked lame. The 90s weren’t kind to Cliff. Yes, he had two Xmas No 1s at the start and end of the decade but they were both gut wrenchingly awful and the intervening years were populated by instantly forgettable singles like this one. Those great airplay hits of the late 70s and early 80s like “We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Carrie” and “Wired For Sound” seemed like a life time ago even then.

And onto the Breakers and I’ve realised that we have arrived at a rather poignant moment as this blink and you miss it moment is the last we’ll see of Bananarama on TOTP for twelve years! Regulars on the BBC show since their first hits in 1982, this was, by my calculations (I make host Tony Dortie wrong with his figure of thirty-one) their twenty-third Top 40 hit, ten of them being Top 10 hits. None of those Top Tenners had been in the 90s though and their commercial appeal was definitely on the wane. The decision to leave the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable to make records with hip producer Youth had not resulted in healthy sales of the “Pop Life” album and so a revamp was required for next album “Please Yourself”.

That revamp took the form of jettisoning ‘new girl’ Jacquie O’Sullivan (who had actually been in the group since 1988) and re branding themselves as a duo. To quote one of their previous album titles, wow! Would it work, could it work and indeed should it work? To give themselves some extra insurance on this bold move, Sara and Keren returned to their previous producers who were now a duo themselves, Stock and Waterman. It was the latter who came up with the theme that the album should promote a new hybrid sound of ‘ABBA -Banana’. It would turn out to be a good idea but not for Bananarama.

The album was poorly received and limped to a chart peak of No 46. It produced just two hits, a pair of No 24s, in “Movin’ On” and this one, a cover of the Andrea True Connection song “More More More”. I’m guessing this was released as previous single “Last Thing On My Mind” had missed the charts completely and as we all know, if you find yourself in need of a hit, what do you do? Altogether now… you release a cover version! It’s a pretty faithful take on the disco classic and probably made sense as a choice of single given the resurgence of disco songs in the charts at that time from the likes of Boney M and Sister Sledge. In fact, the Bananas would maybe have done better with a whole disco themed album than an ABBA one. Maybe the ABBA revival had been sooo 1992? Either way, it gave them a chart hit, the last they would have for twelve years by which time TOTP itself was on its last legs.

As Bananarama seemed to be slipping into pop oblivion, Pete Waterman looked for another vehicle for his ‘ABBA-Banana’ concept – thankfully though the era of Steps was still four years off. As for the Nanas, they would continue to perform live as a duo before pulling off the event that their fans had almost never dared to hope could happen- a reunion tour with Siobahn Fahey in 2017. The tour was a huge success and led to Keren and Sara being revitalised to write and record new material. “In Stereo” was well received on its release in 2019 and they have a new album called “Masquerade” due out literally in a few days time.

Another ‘S’ now as the band called Sunscreem are on the show with yet another hit. Sunscreem are becoming quite the curiosity for me. I was always aware that there was a band called Sunscreem because they were a chart act and I worked in a mainstream record shop and we stocked their music. I could even tell you that they were a Sony artist. What they sounded like though was a different matter. I haven’t recognised any of their tunes that have featured in these TOTP repeats so far and “Pressure US” is no different. Apparently this was a remix of the band’s debut single which had been a No 1 hit on the US Dance chart. Given its success across the pond, it was rereleased in the UK with the ‘US’ suffix added to make it clear it was a remix.

In the nicest possible way, Sunscreem were my ghost poo*. You know when you know you’ve had a poo but there is absolutely no evidence on the toilet paper or in the toilet bowl that anything actually took place. So it was for me with Sunscreem. I knew they existed but my memory banks have zero evidence about what they sounded like.

“Pressure US” would peak at No 19, a whole forty-one places higher than the original version from 1991.

*There is no nicest possible way is there?

Now I might have been pushing it earlier to suggest the existence of Robin S super fans but I know for a fact the next artist has a multitude of them so I need to tread carefully here. David Bowie spent much of the very early 90s dicking around with (no, think of the fanbase – definitely not dicking around, think of something else) ‘experimenting’ with his side project rock band Tin Machine the results of which had failed to convince many of their merits. However, 1993 saw the first proper Bowie album for six years with the last being the poorly received “Never Let Me Down”. Expectations were high for a return to form though with “Black Tie White Noise” and it duly went to No 1 though it got a mixed reception in the press.

Lead single “Jump They Say” though was pretty good I thought and it would provide Bowie, rather unbelievably, with his first Top 10 hit since “Absolute Beginners” in 1986. Inspired by the tragic story of his half brother Terry who committed suicide in 1985 by walking out in front of a train, it also had a powerful video that has been described by some critics as Bowie’s finest hour as an actor in a music promo. Bowie’s acting credentials though are a mixed bag. Brilliant in The Man Who Fell To Earth but hammy in Labyrinth and downright awful in Jazzin’ For Blue Jean (Shush! Remember the fan base!). “Jump They Say” was easily the biggest hit of the three singles released from the album but my favourite of his in 1993 was none of those but the theme song he wrote for the TV adaption of Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha Of Suburbia novel.

In a post a few weeks back, I admitted to my complete dislike of Lulu. Imagine my delight then when I read the running order for tonight’s show and saw that she’s on again. I remembered her single “Independence” that she performed then but I really thought we were shot of her until much later in the year when she would pop up on Take That’s “Relight My Fire” single. I was wrong as she literally sings “I’m Back For More” on her duet with Bobby Womack. I have zero memory of this song probably because it is so unmemorable. A complete drag. Don’t get me wrong, Bobby’s vocals are as great as you’d expect them to be but Lulu’s scratchy, annoying voice really grates.

Of much more interest are the dance moves of the studio audience members positioned behind the pair. I’m especially drawn to the guy extreme right of the screen who’s turned up in clobber as if he’s expecting a call up to be the sixth member of the aforementioned Take That. That ‘curtains’ haircut and waistcoat combination is oh so early 90s.

“I’m Back For More” peaked at No 27. The parent album “Independence” stalled at No 67. It was Lulu’s only studio album of the decade and yet bizarrely her record label saw fit to release a collection album in 1999 called “I’m Back For More: The Very Best Of Her Nineties Recordings”. Eh? Isn’t that just the “Independence” album then? Well (or rather ‘wellllllllll’) I checked and yes, it pretty much is. If she could sell that then maybe she was the woman who sold the world.

It’s a final week of two at the top for the final ‘S’ of the night – Shaggy and his “Oh Carolina” single. I’d forgotten that the track appeared on the soundtrack to the film Sliver, a erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone (wait, add another three S’s to the tally!). That soundtrack would also feature another No 1 song which would become the second biggest seller in the UK of 1993 – UB40’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.

https://youtu.be/raZ5vIGcCs0

As it’s the final week for Shaggy, I’m going to shoehorn in another and much more tenuous link between “Oh Carolina” and Sliver. Shaggy of course was also the name of a character in the legendary cartoon Scooby Doo the theme tune of which includes these lyrics:

Come on Scooby Doo, I see you pretending you got a sliver

But you’re not fooling me ‘cause I can see the way you shake and shiver

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
2	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Not in 1984 and not in 1993 either
3	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Mr Dickhead more like – NO!
4	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	Nope
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my thing
6	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	As if
7	Bananarama	More More More	No No No
8	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
9	David Bowie	Jump They Say	I didn’t…jump or buy it
10	Lulu and Bobby Womack	I’m Back For More	No
11	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	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/m00196dt/top-of-the-pops-25031993

TOTP 11 MAR 1993

Posted on July 10, 2022 by 80stastic

1993 was not a year I was looking forward to reviewing and one of the main reasons for that has now arrived in this TOTP – the unholy trinity of the three S’s. I speak of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow. The first two are both on tonight’s show whilst the latter makes his debut entry into the Top 40 this week. Somehow these three crystallised for me everything they was wrong with the charts around this time. The fact that they all arrived together at the same time probably had something to do with it. Could I have been wrong in my initial assessment? Let’s see if a gap of twenty-nine years has changed my perspective.

Opening the show though are another act who were all about the S’s so much so they had two of them in their name – it can only be Sister Sledge. Well, it could also have been Sam Smith or Sandie Shaw or Shakespear’s Sister or (God forbid) Shakin’ Stevens but let’s not go there. Seriously.

After they’d scored a hit for the third time in fourteen years with yet another remix of “We Are Family” earlier in 1993, perhaps the most obvious rerelease of all time was unleashed upon us – yes it was time once more for “Lost In Music”. Why obvious? Well, every time one song was released as a single, the other came out shortly after. Look at this lot:

26 May 1979 – “We Are Family”
21 Aug 1979 – “Lost In Music
07 Sep 1984 – “Lost In Music”
17 Nov 1984 – “We Are Family”
24 Jan 1993 – “We Are Family”
13 Mar 1993 – “Lost In Music”

I mean they’re both disco standards but is that just a teeny bit of overkill? Couldn’t they have mixed it up a bit? How about a rerelease of “Thinking Of You” instead? What? They did do that as well! It was their third hit single of 1993 when it came out again in the June. Oh come on! Wait…

*blogger is gripped by sudden panic*

They didn’t rerelease “Frankie” as well did they?! Please God no!

*checks Sister Sledge discography*

Oh thank f**k for that. They didn’t. I couldn’t have hoped with a second helping if that on the show. I’d have barfed for sure.

The 1993 version of “Lost In Music” peaked at No 14.

What’s that you say Tony Dortie (in your daft hat)? Bruce Dickinson is leaving Iron Maiden? Did he? I have to say that this piece of blockbusting news must have passed me by at the time. Having read up on the story, it seems that Bruce had announced he was leaving the band before they headed out on a forty-six date world tour. It doesn’t sound like a good idea and indeed it wasn’t. Both his band mates and their fanbase were pissed off with Dickinson for putting the group’s future in doubt. Maybe keeping schtum about leaving to pursue your solo career until after the tour is done may have been the way to go Bruce?

Anyway, this live single “Fear Of The Dark” wasn’t from Dickinson’s final tour as it hadn’t yet happened. Instead it was, rather obviously, from the previous year’s Fear Of The Dark tour which was enshrined forever in the resultant album “A Real Live One”. Now, I wouldn’t need every finger of one hand to list the number of Iron Maiden songs that I like but this one starts off in a rather un-Maiden-esque style with Dickinson laying off on the over the top throaty vocals and with a low key intro but then they resort to type and it loses my interest immediately. It peaked at No 8 thanks to that newly pissed off but still sizeable fanbase.

And so we return to those pesky S’s now as we find Shaggy on his way to the top of the charts with “Oh Carolina”. Up to No 2 this week and with 2 Unlimited now in their fifth week at the pinnacle, Tony Dortie’s prediction of it being No 1 the following week was hardly the stuff of Nostradamus. Yet it was, at the same time, an unlikely chart topper. Apparently “Oh Carolina” would be the first ‘reggae’ No 1 since Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” in 1988 if you can classify that as a reggae track and if you ignore the dub reggae of “Dub Be Good To Me” by Beats International in 1990. The following week, Snow’s “Informer” would storm to No 8 meaning there would be three reggae influenced singles in the Top 10 simultaneously for the first time ever. It was a strange time in the UK charts but why and how had this shake up of the charts come to be? Maybe it was just the law of averages and probability – it had to happen some time.

I worked for Our Price throughout the 90s and we used to source the majority of our reggae stock from the supplier Jetstar. In my memory, they are who we ordered the Shaggy single from though I could be wrong about that. Whenever you used to ring their telesales team with an order, you were guaranteed to talk to someone effortlessly cool on the other end of the line. It always sounded like the atmosphere in the Jetstar office was just one long, chilled out sesh with the occasional bit of work done now and then if they felt like it. I’m sure they are all really hard working but that was the vibe that was projected. I was jealous. Also having a good time is Shaggy who is clearly enjoying himself in this performance probably riding on the confidence of knowing he’ll have a No 1 record soon enough.

And so we come to easily the most objectionable of the three S’s of 1993 – “Mr Loverman”, Shabba Ranks. I hated everything about this; the song, its success and of course Ranks himself not least of all because of this interview on The Word:

https://youtu.be/8WQ_xoCkSds

Let’s have it right, what a f*****g arsehole! Thankfully Mark Lamarr was on hand to call him out unlike Dani Behr who wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and move on. That took place in 1992 and by March 1993, Ranks had put out a public apology for his grotesque words. Funnily enough it coincided with the rerelease of the “Mr Loverman” single. Do you think his record company Sony put some pressure on him to retract what he had said so that their product wasn’t dead in the water before it started? Yes, I did say rerelease as the single had already been a hit once the previous August when it got to No 23. Presumably the rising profile of dancehall and the success of Shaggy convinced Sony to roll the dice again and so it became a No 3 hit second time around.

The track became infamous for the use of the ‘Shabba!’ shout out which became a catch all catchphrase for just about any situation. My favourite use of it though was by Ray Von from Phoenix Nights…

It’s a third time on the show for Bryan Ferry and his treatment of “I Put A Spell On You”. Now originally I had thought that this might be just a rebroadcast of the first time Ferry did a studio performance as the staging is almost exactly the same but it isn’t as the cut away to the next act reveals. This raises the question of quite why Ferry just gave an identikit performance again? I mean I think there’s less dancers this week but everything else including the performers outfits are the same. I guess I expected a bit more creativity from Bryan than that.

“I Put A Spell On You” peaked at No 18.

I find it hard to remember but there was a time when Jamiroquai’s sound was regarded as fresh and new and exciting. That sensation didn’t last long as petty soon everything they released sounded exactly the same as..well…everything else they’d ever released. Back in 1993 though Jay Kay was a hip, young groover bringing his brand of acid jazz, soul/funk vibes to the nation. I guess he’s always been a divisive figure though. Early on he suffered from accusations of plagiarising Stevie Wonder and of being a hypocrite for espousing environmental themes in his lyrics whilst having an obsession with the collection of fast, expensive cars. Subsequent misdemeanours like being charged with assaulting a photographer and waxing lyrical in concert about how great his then partner Denise Van Outen’s breasts were didn’t do his image any favours.

I always thought “Too Young To Die” was Jamiroquai’s first single but there’d been one before it called “When You Gonna Learn” in 1992 which had made No 28 on the charts but which had escaped my attention completely. It was their first single for Sony though which may account for my confusion. As for the performance here, you have to admit that Jay Kay (it’s all about him really in much the same way that Simply Red is all about Hucknall) makes quite the impression. His vocals are good (though the ‘de de de de do’ chorus is unmistakably Wonder-esque) but it’s his look which grabs the attention. Watching him now, the first thing that springs to mind is how hot he must have been under the studio lights in his oversized clobber. Ah yes, the clothes or more specifically that hat! It would become Kay’s signature look and inform the ‘buffalo man’ logo that would be the face of the band’s brand featuring on the art work for the covers of their first four albums. Some thought had clearly gone into this from a marketing point of view.

Did I like their sound? Yeah, initially. My wife liked it so much she bought that first album “Emergency On Planet Earth”. I think I got bored with it quite quickly though. “Too Young To Die” made it all the way to the Top 10 and the album was a platinum selling No 1. The time of Jamiroquai had begun.

Next a band who, like many before them, suffer from the misguided belief by many that they were a one hit wonder. PM Dawn really weren’t though their biggest and most memorable success did rather overshadow the rest of their back catalogue which is a shame. The Spandau Ballet sampling “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” was that huge hit of course from the Summer of 1991 and we hadn’t heard that much from the duo since. The follow up single “Paper Doll” had been scrunched up and binned when it failed to make the Top 40 whilst two further singles had at least charted though neither got further than No 29. “Looking Through Patient Eyes” would correct that though when it peaked at No 11.

Turning from Spandau Ballet to George Michael for inspiration on this one – the track heavily samples “Father Figure” – it was another great example of their wordy rapping (hood) allied to a mellow yet catchy sound. It was taken from their second album the title of which confirmed their verbose credentials – “The Bliss Album…? (Vibrations Of Love And Anger And The Ponderance Of Life And Existence)”. They really did have a thing about word heavy album titles. Their debut was called “Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience” whilst their fourth carried the title of “Dearest Christian, I’m So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here. Love Dad”. Like the Ferry album “Taxi”, Our Price got a promo copy of the album which ended up in my possession. My wife even made a cover for it.

Sadly, Prince Be died in 2016 after suffering for years from diabetes related conditions including having one of his legs amputated at the knee due to gangrene.

If it’s…we’ll any year since 1958 actually…then there must be a Cliff Richard single out. 1993’s first offering of that particular year was a song called “Peace In Our Time”. This is yet another song I don’t recall at all. I wonder what it sounds like?

*watches Cliff’s performance back*

Oh this is just a glorious tune. So full of life and positivity and…nah, you got me. It’s just the same old Cliff shite that he’d been peddling for years. Apparently a hit for Eddie Money in the US in the late 80s, it’s just sanctimonious crap about having faith, putting songs in our hearts and building a heaven on earth. It even goes on about turning water into wine! Just horrible. If I want a song called “Peace In Our Time”, there’s always this…

Cliff’s got all his usual mates with him here backing him up – Janey Lee Grace, that bloke from Modern Romance – whilst the main man himself does his usual weird arm movements. At one point he’s only a flick of the wrist away from doing a Bruce Forsyth pose. Cliff, of course, was at Wimbledon last week doing his usual cringe fest crowd singalong. For the love of God Cliff, give it a rest and grant us some peace in our time! By the way, I can’t find the TOTP performance so here’s a clip from some German pop show:

It’s the final week at the top for 2 Unlimited with “No Limit”. After positing the theory the other week that dance acts couldn’t sell albums, Ray and Anita completely debunk this by having a No 1 with parent album “No Limits” (note the plural). Released on the PWL label in the UK, Pete Waterman made the decision to remove Ray’s raps from the tracks which only increased the ‘there’s no lyrics’ jibes in the press. The ribbing was continued in later weeks by some unlikely critics – the Scottish popsters The Bluebells who had some fun at 2 Unlimited’s expense by shouting out ‘Techno, techno, techno, techno’ during a TOTP performance of their rejuvenated hit “Young At Heart”. Those cheeky scamps!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	Sister Sledge	Lost In Music ’93	Nope
2	Iron Maiden	Fear Of The Dark (Live)	Never
3	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	Nah
4	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Hell no!
5	Bryan Ferry	I Put A Spell On You	No but I had a promo of the album
6	Jamiroquai	Too Young To Die	No but my wife had the album
7	PM Dawn	Looking Through Patient Eyes	See 5 above
8	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	What do you think?!
9	2 Unlimited	No Limit	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/m0018zst/top-of-the-pops-11031993

TOTP 10 DEC 1992

Posted on May 23, 2022 by 80stastic

When I was a lad (can’t believe I’ve started a post with that phrase!) things seemed straightforward, linear even. Timelines of events were uncomplicated. Things happened then finished. Then something else happened. What on earth am I talking about? Well, I’m thinking about musical movements.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it seemed to me that flavours of music would rise to popularity, burn brightly and then fizzle out whereupon something else would take over. So glam rock was prevalent from 1971 to 1975 approximately before punk rock pressed the reset button in a whirlwind of filth and fury. By 1978 with The Sex Pistols in disarray, punk had served its purpose and was superseded by New Wave and a Mod revival. When that bit the dust the New Romantics took centre stage with swagger and outrageous outfits. With the pin up boys of that movement aspiring to be more than cult status, New Pop was born with Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club dominating the charts. See what I mean? Yes, that’s a very simplistic view that could easily be debunked I’m sure (where was disco in all this for example?) but I’m going with it to enable my point. Talking of which, what is my point exactly? It’s this. By the time we got to late 1992, what musical movement were we in because I have no idea going by the running order on this edition of TOTP. Yes, obviously we had seen a dance explosion happen from at least 1988 onwards (some may even date it as early as 1986) but by this point it was the movement was so refracted that there was a kaleidoscope of sub genres. I remember whilst working for Our Price in the 90s a memo coming out from head office entitled ‘scary areas of your shop and how to deal with them’. First on the list was how to classify the dance collections section of the racks, so unwieldy had that section become.

Anyway, back to TOTP and this show featured a boy band, a Motown superstar, a part of the establishment that was into his fifth decade of hit records, the Queen of Latino pop, a posthumous release from one of the biggest and most flamboyant rock stars ever, some US R’n’B a cappella style, some indie rock, a collaboration between some Manc electronic dance pioneers and the kings of Brummie reggae and…descending from a parallel universe a troupe of wrestlers! Pick the bones out of that! What the Hell was going on?! Let’s find out..,

We start with that boy band – Take That. After having lived with the next big thing tag for a year or so without delivering on it, these lads had finally started turning potential and promotion into sales. Their cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” was their fourth chart hit of the year and this one was the biggest of the lot, ascending ultimately to a high of No 3. Now Take That weren’t the first teen sensation to do a cover version – I’m thinking The Bay City Rollers doing “Bye Bye Baby” by The Four Seasons for example – but this did seem to set a template for the conveyor belt of acts that followed in their wake. Look at this lot:

911 – “More Than A Woman” by the Bee Gees
A1 – “Take On Me” by A-ha
Boyzone – “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens
Five – “We Will Rock You” by Queen
Let Loose – “Make It With You” by Bread
OTT – “Let Me In” by The Osmonds
Upside Down – “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago
Westlife – “Mandy” by Barry Manilow

All fine versions I’m sure you’ll agree! To be fair though, Take That’s cover of “Could It Be Magic” was pretty good I think although their reworking of it had more to do with Donna Summer’s 1976 disco rendition than the Manilow version. I seem to recall it being received pretty well as an unexpectedly strong version which wrong footed most people’s expectations of what they would do next. Sure it was a cover but of a different flavour to their take on “It Only Takes A Minute” by Tavares that gave them their first big chart hit. Should they have reversed their release schedule and put “Could It Be Magic” out earlier and then gone big time on ballad “A Million Love Songs” for the Xmas No 1? For what it’s worth I think they got it the right way round.

This was the first time that Robbie Williams took on the vocals on his own. Little did we know what was to come in just a few short years. Gary Barlow is demoted to rank and file status – he’s on backing dancer/ vocals duties with the rest of the group. You can almost see him counting the dance steps in his head. I’d watch your back Gary if I was you.

Despite having passed away in late 1991, Freddie Mercury still retained a massive presence into 1992. In April, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at Wembley stadium and in November came “The Freddie Mercury Album”, a collection of his solo work released to commemorate the anniversary of his death. It was a nice idea for the fanbase and no doubt record label Parlophone always had it in mind to ring every drop of revenue they could out of his existing catalogue. What I didn’t quite get though was how they were going to put together a Best Of out of such scant source material. Freddie only released one, pure solo album in his lifetime which was 1985’s “Mr Bad Guy”. Yes, there was that “Barcelona” album with Montserrat Caballé but who, apart from superfans, really knows anything from that but the title track? What else is there? Well, he had a hit single in 1984 called “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic silent film Metropolis. Then there’s his No 4 hit from 1987 which was his cover of The Platters oldie “The Great Pretender”. And…erm…oh yes! There’s “I was Born To Love You”, the only single to chart from that “Mr Bad Guy” album. Erm…except that isn’t on “The Freddie Mercury Album”! I presume it was a licensing issue as “Mr Bad Guy” was released by CBS rather than Queen’s EMI label. There are other tracks from it on “The Freddie Mercury Album” but maybe CBS/Sony didn’t want to give away the rights to its (then) best known tune.

Given all the above, Parlophone chose to promote the album with “In My Defence”. This was a track from the Dave Clark musical Time. This was the production that had already given us Top 40 singles by Cliff Richard (“She’s So Beautiful”), Julian Lennon (“Because”) and indeed Freddie himself who took “Time” to No 32 in 1986. I guess Parlophone could have rereleased “The Great Pretender” (which they ultimately did after “In My Defence”) but not “Barcelona” which had already been re-issued for the 1992 Olympics. “In My Defence” it was though and it’s a perfect vehicle for Freddie’s voice, all overblown drama and huge notes but it works pretty well. It could easily have been a Queen composition really. The single went Top 10 but there was an even bigger hit to come from the album the following year that had been hiding in plain sight but that’s for a future post…

https://youtu.be/44eEOAEC5z8

Something from the US chart now as we see a song that would end up being a big hit in the UK four years down the line but not for the original artist. I don’t recall the Shai version of “If I Ever Fall In Love” but then, despite this TOTP appearance, it only made it to No 36 in our charts. In the US however, it was a huge hit staying at No 2 for eight weeks!

Was the version they perform here the version on the record? A cappella I mean?

*checks Spotify*

I found two versions. One is the TOTP version and the other has a bit of instrumentation on it but not much. I’m not mad on a cappella I have to say and Shai haven’t made me change my mind. What was the deal with the guy with his coat half on and half off?!

Oh that version that was a hit in 1996? That was by East 17 and Gabrielle of course. They changed the title to “If I Ever”, dropped the a cappella style and took it all the way to No 2. Don’t think it stayed there for eight weeks though. I didn’t like that version either.

Right it’s time for those wrestlers! Despite the charts having been infiltrated in recent weeks by novelty tripe like computer games tunes “Tetris” and “Supermarioland” and a ‘song’ by stripper troupe The Chippendales, it seemed 1992 hadn’t done with us yet in the utter shite stakes. You may not be surprised that WWF Superstars was the idea of Simon Cowell. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Slam Jam" was Simon Cowell's idea: "I read in one of our newspapers that [The WWF] sold out 82,000 seats in 27 minutes. Hang on, there's not a rock band in the world that can do that. I also found out that they were selling about two and a half million videos a year…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

"… It didn't take a lot of time to realise that if they were selling that many seats and that many videos, there would be a lot of kids who would want to buy an album from the wrestlers as well." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Hmm. It reminds me of a scene from one of my favourite ever films Stardust starring David Essex which tells the story of the rise of fictional rock star Jim MacLaine. After he has split from his band and gone solo, MacLaine’s manager Mike (played by Adam Faith) plans a worldwide TV and cinema simultaneous broadcast of a concert to promote MacLaine’s latest album. A conversation between Mike and Jim’s American manager Porter Lee Austin (played by Larry Hagman) plays out like this:

Mike: See, what we do is this. We get the cinemas and TV companies all over the world to put up a big enough advance to cover the cost of the album and the show. Well, I mean that way we can’t lose. I mean…If they can pick up money putting on boxing shows, just think what we can pick up putting Jim MacLaine on satellite. For every one boxing fan there must be at least 5,000 pop fans. I mean, to coincide with the concert what we can do is put the album out worldwide. Well, just think of all that promotion Porter Lee. It’s all or nothing this one Porter…

Porter Lee: What kind of concert Mike?

Mike: Don’t worry about the concert eh? Just leave that to me. I tell you one thing, it be like something you’ve ever seen before

Porter Lee: That’s a pretty good idea Mike. Maybe I can do something.

Mike: He’ll be bigger than Aldof Hitler after this lot.

OK, we probably didn’t need the Hitler reference but you get my drift. The WWF Superstars single was called “Slam Jam” (presumably after a wrestling move?) and it was, of course, dreadful. Produced by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman (it just gets worse doesn’t it?), the vinyl came in a poster sleeve bag as I recall (Cowell never misses a marketing trick) and it would reach No 4 in the charts. I’m guessing it was bought by 10 year old boys because if not, I have no idea how to explain what occurred here.

“Connecticut, we have a problem”. Host Mark Franklin advises us that there was meant to be an exclusive satellite performance by Diana Ross of her latest single “If We Hold On Together” from Connecticut but technical problems have put paid to that so we have to make do with the official video instead. To be honest, I’m not too fussed either way.

Now this was taken from the soundtrack to the Universal Pictures animated film The Land Before Time but I’m confused because it came out in 1988 so why was a song from it a hit in the UK four years later? I can only assume it had a terrestrial TV premiere around this time. Another thing that’s confusing me is what this video is that TOTP are showing? I can’t find it on YouTube. The only one I came across featured wall to wall scenes from the film whereas the TOTP version also includes footage of Diana herself. To add to the mystery, Wikipedia says there was no official video for the song. Maybe there wasn’t in 1988 but there was in 1992? I refer you to my earlier comment. I’m not really fussed either way.

As for the song, it sounded exactly as you expected it would. Basically “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail. “If We Hold On Together” peaked at No 11.

One of the surprise breakout stars of 1992 were KWS who bagged an unlikely No 1 with their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go”. A Top 10 follow up (another cover of George McRae’s “Rock Me Baby”) consolidated their success. On reflection, KWS were like the soul version of Undercover. However, by the end of the year their shtick was starting to wear thin. Yet another cover version was chosen as their third single release of the year – “Hold Back The Night” by The Trammps – but to spice it up a bit, they (or more likely their management) decided to team up with the original hitmakers on the track.

Now it’s easy in this performance to see who are The Trammps as they’re the older fellas who have taken their tuxedos and bow ties out of the back of the wardrobe. I’m assuming the KWS guys are the two on keyboards at either end of The Trammps but are they ‘K’, ‘W’ or ‘S’? Remember that their band name came from the initials of the band’s surnames – King / Williams / St. Joseph. And where was the one that wasn’t there?

“Hold Back The Night” peaked at No 30.

Ah the Breakers. Marvellous! After the Boney M “Megamix” single last week, there’s another one tonight courtesy of Gloria Estefan. Known as “Miami Hit Mix” in the UK, this was to promote Gloria’s first “Greatest Hits” album which was a huge seller over Xmas reaching No 2 and eventually going triple platinum in the UK. I recall that by opening time on Xmas Eve, the only chart stock line that we had ran out of in the Our Price in Rochdale where I was working was the cassette version of the album. We knew we had some on order that were due to come in on the day but the record company were out of stock when the delivery came in. Ian the store manager wasn’t too arsed saying “nobody will find it anywhere else in Rochdale today”. He was probably right. There wasn’t much competition record shop wise in Rochdale. There was somewhere in the Exchange shopping centre but it was very hit and miss and the manager of the place was obsessed with our shop and used to buy his records from us!

Anyway, back to Gloria and the “Miami Hit Mix”. There were five tracks in the medley from various stages of Gloria’s career. You can tell that as they were released under three different Gloria monikers:

Song	Gloria Moniker
Dr Beat	Miami Sound Machine
Conga	Miami Sound Machine
Rhythm Is Gonna Get You	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
1-2-3	Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine
Get On Your Feet	Gloria Estefan

As with Boney M, the Xmas party market meant that sales of the single were brisk enough to send it into the Top 10. Also like Boney M, it was the last time Gloria ventured so high in the UK charts.

Fed up of all the cover versions in the charts? Tough because here comes another one courtesy of The Lemonheads. I had no idea who this lot were at the time but their cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs Robinson” sounded pretty cool to me back then. According to some of the online reviews I have found, I was in the minority. Ultimateclassicrock.com describe it as ‘terrible’ and ‘meh’. Even Evan Dando himself can’t like it that much as he is on record as hating the original and indeed Paul Simon. So why was their cover even recorded then?

Apparently it was to celebrate the 25th anniversary home video release of The Graduate, the film it features in. The Lemonheads cover brought the band more coverage and success than they’d ever had up to that point. The band had already released four albums to little fanfare since their formation in 1986. The first three had been on indie label Taang! before they were picked up by major Atlantic for their fourth “Lovey”. However, it was fifth album “It’s A Shame About Ray” that would see them gain much wider recognition. Initial pressings of the album didn’t include the “Mrs Robinson” cover but its success meant that the album was re-released with its omission now corrected. It would achieve gold status sales in the UK and a rerelease of the title track brought the band a second Top 40 single the following year.

The pinnacle of the band’s success came with the release of the “Come On Feel The Lemonheads” album in October of 1993 which made the Top 5 in the UK charts. I had transferred from the Our Price in Rochdale to the much bigger store in Stockport by that time. The manager there when I started was a guy called Paul who looked a bit like Evan Dando and certainly the image of Dando on the cover of the album bore that out. Paul moved on to HMV (or was it Virgin?) not long after I got to Stockport. On my first day I asked him what lunch he wanted to go on. He replied “lunch is for wimps”. I visibly gulped.

“Mrs Robinson” peaked at No 19.

Right, what’s this then? 808 State vs UB40? What the Hell? Electronic dance music meets reggae pop? Who’s idea was this? OK, that’s enough questions. Time for some answers. Well, I haven’t got many to be fair. This remix of the Brummies 1981 Top 10 single “One In Ten” came from the Mancs’ fourth studio album “Gorgeous” which featured other guest artists like Ian McCulloch. Why they chose to tackle UB40’s unemployment referencing classic I’m not sure. Judging by some of the comments on YouTube against the single’s video, people are very divided on whether the remix was genius or a crime. For me, I’m always going to favour the original.

The remix of “One In Ten” peaked at No 17. 808 State would not return to the Top 20 for another five years when they did so with another collaboration, this time with James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers on “Lopez”.

After all the cover versions and medleys, here’s a proper, original song courtesy of Madonna. I say original but “Deeper And Deeper” does delve into one of her most iconic hits when it morphs into “Vogue” in the coda. Oh, and there’s a “La Isla Bonita” borrowing bridge that features flamenco guitar and castanets. And…it does pinch some lyrics from “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound Of Music. Apart from that though, totally original.

“Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

There’s only two weeks to Xmas so Cliff Richard is making his move for the festive No 1 with “I Still Believe In You”. He resorts to his usual over emoting performance tricks that he’s been peddling for years. I’m sure it’s just a case of slowing down with age but he could mix it up a bit. The other thing that doesn’t seem to have changed for years is Cliff’s hair. It seems to have been the same since the mid 80s at least. Cliff mate, it’s 1992 and you’re still sporting a mullet! Now granted I myself cultivated one during the period ‘84-‘86. Not a Chris Waddle but it was definitely long at the back. It was fashionable back then. By 1987 though, mine was gone forever. Cliff on the other hand was determined to keep the style going single handedly…erm headedly.

Cliff never did make the Xmas No 1 this year because of this next record…

A second week at No 1 for Whitney Houston with “I Will Always Love You” and I think it was becoming obvious by this point that this was no ordinary record. I don’t have actual sales figures to hand but in the Our Price in Rochdale, it felt like it was outselling everything else in the Top 5 combined. With just a couple of weeks to go to Xmas, the idea of there being a race to be the festive chart topper felt like delusion. It was never in doubt.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	Could It Be Magic	Good cover but I wasn’t buying Take That thank you very much!
2	Freddie Mercury	In My Defence	I did not
3	Shai	If I Ever Fall In Love	Nah
4	WWF Superstars	Slam Jam	As if
5	Diana Ross	If We Hold On Together	Never happening
6	KWS / The Trammps	Hold Back The Night	Nope
7	Gloria Estefan	Miami Hit Mix	No
8	The Lemonheads	Mrs Robinson	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	808 State vs UB40	One In Ten	Not for me
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Negative
11	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	The feeling is not reciprocated Cliff
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	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/m0017731/top-of-the-pops-10121992

TOTP 03 DEC 1992

Posted on May 19, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve clicked over into December 1992 here at TOTP Rewind which means that the population would officially have been starting to get into Xmas mode. Working at the Our Price store in Rochdale, my own days were getting busier and felt very long as sales got brisker. So what were some of the albums that were doing the business as Xmas loomed 30 years ago? The Top 10 albums were made up of eight Best Of / compilations from the likes of Cher, Erasure, Genesis, Gloria Estefan and Simple Minds. Only two were proper studio albums which were “Automatic For The People” by REM and “Stars” by Simply Red which was still in the Top 10 after being the best selling album of 1991! Now I’m all for a good Best Of album but 1992’s Xmas offerings did seem quite cynical on behalf of the record companies.

Whilst the record shops were getting prepared for a frenzy of activity, something else in the world of music was coming to a full stop. Cult TV programme The Hitman And Her broadcast its final show two days after this TOTP went out. It seems odd to recall now but there was a time when TV stations didn’t broadcast all night, when there weren’t any late night schedules and when if you suffered from insomnia then there were no old episodes of Come Dine With Me to keep you company during the wee small hours. So when Pete Waterman’s nightclub based show appeared in our screens in 1988, it felt truly transformative.

Filmed on a Saturday night in various clubs throughout the UK but with a definite North/Midlands bias, it would be televised in the early hours of Sunday morning. Performing hosting duties alongside Waterman and securing her cult status amongst the UK’s young male population was Michaela Strachan. Ever the businessman, Waterman ensured that the programme showcased a number of his PWL artists as well as some of the acid house tunes that he loved. The clubbers themselves were as much the stars of the show as the hosts, with many a punter, eager to get themselves on TV, happy to embarrass themselves by participating in some ‘hilarious’ games. Some of the regular dancers on the show included a pre-Take That Jason Orange and the two blokes who weren’t the singer in naff 90s boy band 911. I wonder if any of the tunes on tonight’s TOTP made the Hitman And Her playlist?

Well, possibly this one. If you’ve finally had a hit after years of trying, what’s your next move going to be? Yes, release a very similar sounding follow up of course! OK, “Step It Up” isn’t an exact replica of “Connected” – its got a faster bpm for one thing – but it didn’t fall far from the tree. Stereo MC’s were on a roll by this point. Their third album “Connected” missed the top of the charts by one place and would go on to sell 420,000 copies. “Step It Up” was their second consecutive Top 20 single after the album title track. They were the bomb (or something). This performance is surely the mental image that most people who were around at the time would conjure up when hearing the name Stereo MC’s. The main protagonist of course is the Catweazle-esque Rob Birch. With his oversize trousers and glimpse of a bare chest, he was a Frankenstein’s monster mash up of MC Hammer and Peter Andre. Then there were his moves. The knees bent, hip swivelling action that Birch brings to the party surely influenced Vic Reeves and his thigh rubbing antics on Shooting Stars. In fact, the whole thing reminds me of our Maltese puppy rolling on his back exposing his bits when being sniffed by some of the local neighbourhood dogs. Yeah, sorry about that mental image. Anyway, you have to give it to Rob; he certainly left it all out there as it were. Here’s his take on his performance courtesy of the ever excellent @TOTPFacts:

Rob Birch on this Stereo MCs #TOTP performance: "You know you've only got three minutes to try to get the crowd going. You're like, 'I've got to go at it like hell for leather. And because you're buzzing on nerves, your voice starts jumping out of your body."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Rob Birch: "I could just be a bit like some kind of plant in a gale and just, like, let it all hang out… That #TOTP wasn't a pretend performance. it had a fluidity to it."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 13, 2022

Letting it all hang out indeed. “Step It Up” peaked at No 12.

If it’s TOTP in 1992 then there must be a Michael Jackson video due and here comes the latest. “Heal The World” was Jacko’s fifth single released in the UK during the year and the sixth from his “Dangerous” album overall. I’m guessing this was always going to be the track released for the Xmas market given that it’s a huge, saccharine drenched ballad with oh so worthy lyrical subject matter. So about the song’s sound – you can’t ignore its similarity to “We Are The World” which Jackson co-wrote with Lionel Richie. I mean it’s essentially the same song. Supposedly though, it is the track that Jackson was most proud of. It even inspired him to create the Heal The World Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving conditions for children throughout the world. You can’t deny the philanthropy but it doesn’t make the song any more palatable.

I really remember the rather clunky and obvious design on the cover of the single of a plaster covering a crack across the globe which is held between the hands of a black child and a white child. It was one of those fold out sleeves that turns into a poster as I remember that were awful to refold once opened to its full extent.

Sensibly, the video for the song doesn’t include Jackson himself only children set against a backdrop of images depicting war, guns and even the Ku Klux Klan. The theme of healing is portrayed by the final scene of a candle lit vigil of children coming together as one. That restraint was not in evidence at the BRITS in 1996 when Jackson celebrated the receipt of his Artist Of A Generation award with a performance of “Earth Song” that depicted him as a Christ like figure surrounded by children. Thank God for Jarvis Cocker! In any other year, the mawkish song would surely have gone to No 1 but this was 1992 and it was up against the all conquering “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and had to make do with the runners up spot.

Next we have another studio performance of the reactivated “Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)” by Heaven 17. There’s a couple of differences between this and the previous 19th November show turn. Firstly, Carol Kenyon has a proper name check in the title graphics this time and secondly, she’s up there belting it out alongside Glenn Gregory without the two blokes on keyboards (the titular brothers presumably) for company. Still conspicuous by his absence though is Martyn Ware. Carol and Glenn don’t really need anybody else though certainly not the former who gives a masterclass in doing a live vocal performance for TV.

The original recording of “Temptation” featured a 60 piece orchestra and I’ve heard the aforementioned Ware say in an interview how mad it was back in the early 80s that they would just say to their record label that they required the services of an orchestra to play on one track and the label didn’t bat an eyelid at the cost. The 80s really were a time of excess within the record industry it seems. The Brothers In Rhythm remix of “Temptation” peaked at No 4.

The curious case of Dina Carroll next. Curious? Well, just in the respect that her success seemed to come in stages rather than via the classic overnight sensation mode. Sort of the musical equivalent of that ref who went down in stages when pushed by Paolo Di Canio back in the 90s…

Anyway, Dina had first come to national attention as the vocalist on Quartz’s dance version of Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” in 1991. Despite that flush of success, the Quartz project fizzled out and Dina disappeared from view. Behind the scenes though, a decision by her management company to launch Dina as a solo artist led to her being signed to A&M and the following year she returned to the charts with “Ain’t No Man”. “Special Lind Of Love” replicated its predecessor’s success exactly by peaking at No 16 before this single “So Close” made it a hat trick of Top 20 hits in 1992. Pretty impressive stuff which led to host Tony Dortie describing in his intro that Dina had enjoyed “an amazing year” and that she was “definitely in contention for female vocalist of the year”.

Come January 1993 her album was released and debuted at No 2 staying in the Top 20 for six months. And yet, it seemed to me that the album only really went into hyperdrive sales wise when the sixth single “Don’t Be A Stranger” was released in the October. I’ll type that again. The sixth single which was by far the biggest of the lot taken from the album when it peaked at No 3. Now surely that is curious?! We sold loads of the album in the wake of that single. Did A&M have it up their sleeves all the time, holding it back until the optimum moment? The single was different from the album version in that it was re-recorded with added orchestra strings to give it a dramatic feel. When was that decision taken? Either they got lucky or they had a long term strategy all along. Her success in 1993 led to Dina being named Best Female Artist at the BRIT awards in 1994 – again a marker that her success came in stages with her becoming award winning a whole year after Tony Dortie’s prediction.

As for “So Close” the song, it’s pleasant enough but never had the capacity to rival the sales of “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Maybe it was meant to just keep Dina‘s profile ticking over until the album was released? Surely the clamour for the album would have increased if “Don’t Be A Stranger” had been the third single anyway? Oh I don’t know. The bottom line is that it all worked out pretty well for Dina in the end unlike Paolo Di Canio who received an eleven match ban for his shove on ref Paul Alcock.

We’re back to cramming in the Breakers again this week with four of the little blighters in total. We start with one of REM’s best known songs I’m guessing which makes me wonder why these few scant seconds are all that were ever shown of it on TOTP. “Man On The Moon” was the second single to be released from the “Automatic For The People” album and is one of those songs that just works. Beautifully.

It manages to combine genuinely eccentric lyrics with ear worm producing hooks. Nominally about surrealist performance artist Andy Kaufman with references to his Elvis impersonations and work with wrestler Fred Blassie, it also seemed to be asking the listener to open their mind to multiple different realities. What if the moon landings were fake? What if Elvis wasn’t dead? Ultimately it returns to Kaufman and the conspiracy theory that he faked his own death. It’s a heady concoction. The black and white video with the image of Michael Stipe wearing a cowboy hat walking nonchalantly down a desert road before hitching a ride with a truck is in turns memorable and befittingly random. The original demo without lyrics was known by the band as “C to D slide” due to the opening which includes that shift of chords. When I attended a guitar class a few years ago, this was one of the songs we learned including that slide. It’s actually OK to play but does have some quick chord changes. By the way, I’m really not much of a guitarist. Just a chord strummer really. “Man On The Moon” peaked at No 18.

Another huge band that we only got to see a glimpse of as a Breaker were U2. To be fair they were promoting a fifth single from “Achtung Baby”, an album that had been released almost exactly a year ago so maybe they were pushing it a bit. Did the TOTP producers think that a fifth single from a year old album wasn’t a big enough story? It hardly qualified as an ‘exclusive’. Indeed, perhaps the real reason that a fifth single was released was to complete the last piece of the jigsaw that formed a picture of the band driving a Trabant car when you put all five single covers together. A nice bit of marketing by record label Island there.

The single in question was “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” which I always quite liked. Apparently the gestation of the song had been quite laboured and the band had several failed attempts before they laid down a version they could live with. I always presumed that the song’s title was inspired by The Rolling Stones track “Wild Horses” but I haven’t seen anything online that comes anywhere near confirming that.

The singles from “Achtung Baby” achieved the following chart positions:

1 – 13 – 7 – 8 – 14

It’s not a bad haul for an album that was seen as a gamble in many ways with it being a definite shift in musical direction from where their success had led the band. It remains their second biggest selling album after “The Joshua Tree”.

Think of Xmas and then think of Cliff Richard. What song is currently running around your head? “Mistletoe And Wine”? How about “Saviour’s Day”? Bet it isn’t this one. It tends to get forgotten given the success of those aforementioned festive chart toppers and their ubiquity in Xmas playlists but Cliff didn’t just do those two Chrimbo tunes. There was “Little Town” in 1982, “We Should Be Together” nine years later and this one – “I Still Believe In You”.

This completely passed me by despite me working in a record shop at the time and despite it going Top 10. That’s probably because it had about as much staying power as wrapping paper come mid morning on Xmas day. In fact, it hardly even qualifies as a Xmas song with the only reference to Yuletide in the lyrics being one mention of Santa Claus. Just terrible. Cliff didn’t give up on the concept of making festive records though. In 1999, he scored an unexpected No 1 with “The Millennium Prayer”, in 2003 went Top 5 with “Santa’s List” and in 2006 got to No 2 with “21st Century Christmas”. There have also been numerous chart re-entries for “Mistletoe And Wine”, “Saviour’s Day” and even “I Still Believe In You” down the years when December rolls around once more.

The final Breaker comes from Rod Stewart and his cover of “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)” by Tom Waits. We saw this the other week as an ‘exclusive’ live by satellite performance and the video here looks very similar to that as it’s just Rod wandering around an empty stage with a solitary piano player for company. I defy anybody to watch the video in full and be able to look at anything other than Rod’s beard for the whole four and a half minutes.

What on earth was this all about?! Boney M on TOTP?! In the 90s?! Well, it’s a straightforward answer. It was clearly another case of money for old rope. Record label Arista released this “Megamix” single with an eye on the Xmas party scene figuring the UK’s work force, pissed up and ready to party, wouldn’t be able to resist these 70’s tunes all over again. And so it came to pass that the single – a medley of “Rivers Of Babylon”, “Sunny” and “Daddy Cool” – returned Boney M to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1979. I say Boney M but was this really them? Where was the guy with the mad Afro (Bobby Farrell) who used to leap about all over the place like he’d sat on an ants nest? Yes, there was a guy in the line up doing his best impression of Farrell but it’s clearly not him. In fact, there’s only the lead singer up there on stage that looks vaguely familiar. A bit of research tells me that it’s original member Liz Mitchell doing the singing but the rest of the group were just some randoms that were drafted in to promote the single. In an act of utter shamelessness / good business practice depending on your point of view, a cash-in “Greatest Hits” album was released early the following year which made the Top 20.

Apparently there were a number of different touring line ups of Boney M after the original line up was finally disbanded in 1986. I know! Boney M were still a thing in 1986?! They were not alone in this of course. There are plenty of examples of concurrent versions of groups following the disintegration of the originals. Off the top of my head there’s been The Temptations, Bucks Fizz, The Bay City Rollers and more recently UB40. All three female members of the original line up are still with us though sadly Bobby Farrell died of heart failure in 2010 while on tour with his version of Boney M. Unbelievably, he died on the same date and in the same city (St Petersburg) as Rasputin who was of course the inspiration behind one of the band’s biggest hits and whom Farrell used to dress up as when performing the song.

1992 had been a busy old time for Madonna. She starred in a well received film in A League Of Their Own and wrote a hit single for its soundtrack. She founded her own entertainment company called Maverick with production arms in records, film, music publishing, book publishing and merchandising. Not content with that, she released her controversial coffee table book Sex and her fifth studio album in “Erotica”. She was only 34 at the time and yet still had been a global superstar for nearly a decade.

“Deeper And Deeper” was the second single taken from “Erotica” and seems to have undergone some retrospective critical revisionism. It seems to me at the time that it didn’t create much of a fuss – how could it compete with Sex and the “Erotica” single for fuss to be fair? It now though seems to be recognised as one of Madonna’s better tracks. Indeed some may even say a banger. Certainly it was a return to that more mainstream dance sound on which she made her name but also embracing the house music movement. I have to say it never did that much for me though. At least the Andy Warhol inspired video with Madonna playing an Edie Sedgwick style character isn’t laced with whips and dominatrix style imagery like those for her recent singles “Erotica” and “Justify My Love” though there is some very loaded and deliberate peeling of bananas. “Deeper And Deeper” peaked at No 6.

This seems like a bit of overkill on behalf of the TOTP producers. This is the second time Simply Red have been on the show with two different tracks from a live EP recorded at a jazz festival. Really? “The Montreux EP” had four songs on it and after “Drowning In My Own Tears” was on a couple of weeks ago, this time we get “Lady Godiva’s Room”. Apparently this song had originally been released as the B-side to the band’s 1987 single “Infidelity” which kind of makes sense as it really sounds like B-side material to me. Uninspiring and a bit of a dirge, I was surprised that the EP got as high as it did (No 11). Make the most of this appearance though as we won’t be seeing Hucknall and co again for nearly three years (hurray!) when they will return with 1995’s “Life” album including No 1 single “Fairground”.

Right, strap in for a ten week run at the top of the charts for “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. Not quite Bryan Adams but still ten weeks of having to find something to say about this song. I’m going to start off by not talking about the song but about the film it was taken from. The Bodyguard seems to get quite a bad rap from critics but I don’t mind it actually. My theory is that the negativity stems from perceptions of Kevin Costner or more specifically his lack of acting ability. OK, he’s done some turkeys like Waterworld and The Postman but he’s also been in some decent films. His run of four films in the late 80s of The Untouchables, No Way Out, Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams is impressive and then there was Dances With Wolves which won seven Oscars including Best Director for Costner. Not too shabby. I actually think he’s decent in The Bodyguard too.

Maybe a lot of the anti-Costner stuff comes from his lack of an English accent in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (which is ludicrous) and Madonna sticking her fingers down her throat in reaction to him describing her show as ‘neat’ in her documentary In Bed With Madonna. Seems a bit unfair.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MC’s	Step It Up	No
2	Michael Jackson	Heal The World	Nah
3	Heaven 17	Temptation (Brothers In Rhythm remix)	No but my wife has the Luxury Of Life album
4	Dina Carroll	So Close	…but no cigar. No
5	REM	Man On The Moon	No but I had the Automatic For The People album
6	U2	Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses	No but I had the Achtung Baby album
7	Cliff Richard	I Still Believe In You	…but I don’t believe in you Cliff. No
8	Rod Stewart	Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)	No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
9	Boney M	Megamix	No but one of the first albums my wife ever had was Night Flight To Venus
10	Madonna	Deeper And Deeper	Nope
11	Simply Red	The Montreux EP	Never!
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	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/m001772z/top-of-the-pops-03121992

TOTP 12 DEC 1991

Posted on December 20, 2021 by 80stastic

Christmas is coming! Unlike in 2021 where the certainty of what our festive period will be like is now under threat again from the pandemic (or more accurately the government’s handling of it), 30 years ago, some of the most pressing issues we were facing included whether we had enough wrapping paper and remembering to buy a Radio Times to plan our TV watching (very important in the pre-digital age). If, like me, you were working in retail at this time, another consideration was when we could fit in any Christmas shopping of our own after facilitating everybody else’s by working behind a shop counter for hours on end. Oh, and what the Christmas No 1 would be… and please let it not be Cliff Richard again this year. Well, as it turned out, Cliff didn’t really get a look in but which records were in the charts back then? Let’s find out…

We start tonight’s TOTP with one of the year’s biggest breakout stars in Cathy Dennis who is in the studio to perform her fourth Top 40 hit of 1991 and her fifth overall. “Everybody Move” was the final single to be released from her gold selling No 3 album “Move To This” and was a return to the radio friendly dance material of her earlier hits after previous single “Too Many Walls” had seen her go down the slow ballad route.

In all honesty, “Everybody Move” should probably have remained an unreleased album track. It’s pretty lightweight stuff and certainly it doesn’t require a great leap of imagination from this to the kind of stuff that Cathy would end up writing for the likes of S Club 7 and Hear’say later in the decade. Accordingly, it only made it to No 25 in the UK Top 40.

Whilst the reaction on Twitter to this performance focussed on Cathy’s Joker-esque outfit, I was more drawn to her dance move which comes over like a half-hearted Mick Channon windmill celebration…

Now I know I quite often draw on football references for this blog and that I’ve just done it again immediately above but quite why presenter Tony Dortie decides to do the same in his intro to the Top 10 countdown remains a mystery. “It’s day 12 on the Advent calendar, Hearts and Leeds are currently topping things in the football world but let’s see which musical crackers are doing the business in the Top 10” he trills. Hmm. For completions sake, I should note that Leeds Utd would indeed go onto win the old Division 1 league title come May the following year however the 1991–92 Scottish Premier Division season was won by Rangers, nine points ahead of Hearts. Dortie messes up the countdown straight away when he announces that Nirvana are at No 10 with “Smells Like Teen”. What happened to your ‘spirit’ Tony?! Unlike Boris Johnson, at least Tony owns his mistakes…

And he failed miserably x
— DORTIE (@TonyDortie) November 19, 2021

There’s some more curious missing word action next as we get what would probably have been described as a ‘banging’ tune’ back then called “Running Out Of Time” by Digital according to co-host Claudia Simon. That wasn’t their full name though Claudia, was it? No, that was Digital Orgasm – ooh and indeed err missus! This wasn’t anything to do with presenter error by the way as the on screen artist and title graphics confirm that Claudia hadn’t just messed up her intro. This, it would seem, was a TOTP policy decision. Presumably, the use of the word orgasm would have been seen as far too offensive pre the 9 o’clock watershed and so was dropped.

As with all of these dance tunes from this era, I have zero recall of it despite working in a record shop while it was in the charts. Listening back to it now, it sounds like it’s been concocted in a rave laboratory with the basic tune of “Insanity” by Oceanic spliced together with snippets of “Charly” by The Prodigy. Both were huge hits so I guess if that really was the formula behind “Running Out Of Time” then it was a sound one.

As for the performance, it looks as if the TOTP producers have given a bit more thought to how to portray this seemingly endless conveyor belt of dance acts. There appear to be loads more camera cuts and in quick rotation meaning we get lots of different angles of the performers which I’m guessing was meant to try and replicate a more clubby experience. There’s also some slightly different distorted visual effect for the non vocal bits – they’ve lost the Doctor Who green which never worked for me anyway. The woman doing the singing looks almost otherworldly like one of Captain Kirk’s alien love interests which kind of helps things along as well.

“Running Out Of Time” peaked at No 16.

Oh no! It’s the dreaded Cliff Richard! Oh yes though as he’s not No 1! He’s nowhere near the top of the tree actually being at No 19 and there’s only two weeks until Christmas! Talking of trees, the show’s production team have pulled out all the stops for Cliff to make the stage look like his front room at Christmas. A fully decorated tree, a mock fireplace, cards and candles – were Health and Safety informed?! – and Cliff himself in an armchair dressed in a sparkly jacket. For some reason though, they haven’t bothered with the prop of a telephone for the faux phone call part at the beginning of the record leaving Cliff to mime speaking into an imaginary one and then putting it back in its cradle. It just looks weird. I was hoping that Cliff might go full Val Doonican and sing the whole song from that armchair but he’s up on his feet in no time to look sincerely into the camera at us and do some of those wavy arm moves of his.

Does anybody really remember “We Should Be Together”? It’s surely Cliff’s forgotten Christmas single after “Mistletoe And ~~Whine~~…sorry..Wine” and “Saviour’s Day”? You never hear it played on the radio come December despite some of the commercial stations like Magic having cleared all of their playlist schedules to play exclusively Christmas tunes. Somehow it did get to No 10 in the UK Top 40 though it was never a serious contender for the top spot.

We get the video for “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims next. It’s introduced by Claudia Simon who says Kym is “kickin’ up a flavour” (that’s probably ‘flava’ isn’t it?) whilst all the time a youth from the studio audience gurns away behind her looking remarkably like a young Mark Ronson.

It turns out that “Too Blind To See It” is a dance record that I do remember (finally)! I think it’s that shuffling back beat and the ‘no man in the world’ sample that must have lodged in my brain. It’s a pretty nifty tune I think and yet it was written and produced by my arch nemesis Steve “Silk” Hurley /aka the man who killed music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 in 1987. Hmm. Anyway, on reflection it has a ring of “Finally” by Ce Ce Pension to it which is probably no surprise as Kym was the co-writer on her hit “Keep On Walkin'”.

Wikipedia tells me that “Too Blind To See It” was released on the East West Records label who were responsible for a string of dance hits around this time including “Peace” by Sabrina Johnston and “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” by En Vogue. They all had that simple yet distinctive, generic East West cover as I recall or was that only used if they’d run out of the official picture sleeve? Can’t remember now.

“Too Blind To See It” was Kym’s biggest hit peaking at No 5 in the UK although she would have two further and smaller Top 40 hits by the end of 1992.

“Salt n’ Pepa are in the house and rockin’ the mic!” says Tony Dortie as we move back to the studio for their performance of “You Showed Me”. They’ve all come dressed in what looks like black latex jackets while their three dancers have dungarees in the same material making them look like a kinky version of Rod, Jane and Freddy.

The staging of the performance has a feel of West Side Story to it but the choreographer hasn’t really worked out what to do with DJ Spinderella who seems redundant when the rapping kicks in and is left to wander off with her allocated dance partner and act out an argument between them. At the song’s finale she retreats to the back of the stage, goes up the stairs erected there and assumes a rather risqué position by wrapping her legs around his crotch area. I take it back about Rod, Jane and Freddy – they’d have never got up to such vulgar antics! Or would they?…..

Meanwhile over on the other stage we find Right Said Fred about to perform their next hit single “Don’t Talk Just Kiss”. Before we get to the Freds though, I noticed something that I don’t believe we’ve seen before in these TOTP repeats which was the studio audience actually running across the floor to be in place for the next performance. There’s literally about a dozen people behind Tony Dortie all in a rush, vying for a view of the next pop stars on the show. I always imagined that the studio audience was shepherded around the set, the flock to the floor manager’s sheep dog. However, they all seem like they have been let off the leash to roam (or run) wherever they wish. This year zero revamp has a lot to answer for!

Anyway, I must admit that I for one thought we had heard the last of Right Said Fred when “I’m Too Sexy” finally dipped out of the Top 40 and dismissed the whole thing as a one off novelty hit. How wrong I was. “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” was not only another smash for the trio but it was (SHOCK!) a decent tune to boot! How had this happened? Well, proving that they weren’t as daft as they looked, the Fairbrass brothers (and the other one) got soul diva Jocelyn Brown in to sing on the track. Jocelyn’s vocals had already been sampled for Snap!’s 1990 No 1 hit “The Power” whilst her own 1984 hit “Somebody Else’s Guy” would form the hook for George Michael’s 1992 Top 5 hit “Too Funky”. Here though, she was actually singing on the song rather than being sampled although she didn’t actually get any credits on the record. That seems a bit weird as she’s up there front and centre on stage alongside the band for this TOTP appearance so they obviously weren’t trying to play down her contribution.

“Don’t Talk Just Kiss” would prove to be another massive hit peaking at No 3 whilst their album “Up” (released in March of the following year) would top the charts and go double platinum. Over the pond though it was a different story and the band did indeed become the one hit wonder I had thought they were destined to be. “I’m Too Sexy” had been a US No 1 but “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” stalled at No 76. Supposedly radio stations were still playing that first hit when the follow up was released and there was little interest in any Right Said Fred material that wasn’t “I’m Too Sexy”. They would have no further hits Stateside.

The camera pans around to Claudia Simon up in the gantry for the next link and she advises us of four Breakers three of which are stone cold stinkers starting with Jason Donovan and the “Joseph Megamix”. After his surprise No 1 hit earlier in the year with “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it was always on the cards that some abomination like this medley would end up being churned out to cash in. With the Christmas party season upon us, it probably seemed like a decent bet that it would be a hit but can anyone say that they’ve ever been to a party where this was put on the turntable and if so, did they not leave immediately?!

“Joseph Megamix” peaked at No 13.

Another megamix! Are you kidding me?! What’s this one then? “The Bare Necessities Megamix” by UK Mixmasters?! Sorry? What? Pardon? And crucially, why? This was a Jungle Book medley that actually only featured two songs – “I Wanna Be Like You” and the titular “Bare Necessities”. You won’t be surprised to know that this heap of shit had Simon Cowell’s fingerprints all over it as it was released on his BMG subsidiary label IQ Records. UK Mixmasters was actually some bloke called Nigel Wright who was also responsible for the equally odious act Mirage who scored some hits in the late 80s doing medleys of house records under the umbrella title of “Jack Mix”. He also did that Saturday Night Fever medley earlier in 1991. What a talented guy!

Talking of talented guys, that’s all round entertainer Gary Wilmot up there promoting this garbage. However, when the track was performed in the TOTP studio the following week, another Gary (Martin) took over the vocalist role. I had to look this guy up but apparently he went onto make his name as an acclaimed voice over actor. We won’t get to see the TOTP with Martin as it’s one of those episodes hosted by Adrian Rose who didn’t give this consent for the repeat to be aired so we’ll miss it. So….just for you… here’s that performance below you lucky people!

Finally some proper music…even if it is U2! Only kidding I liked the “Achtung Baby” era of the band and “Mysterious Ways” was the second single to be released off that album. As a follow up to their No 1 song “The Fly” it was a strong if bold choice. There’s plenty going on in “Mysterious Ways” and most of it was maybe not what we would have expected from the band at the time. This was no po-faced, earnest rock anthem like “With Or Without You” but a groovy, exuberant tune that starts as it means to go on with that wah wah peddle guitar effect from The Edge setting the tone. It sounded so much better to me than “The Fly” and should have been a bigger hit than its No 13 placing although it did make the Top 10 in America. U2 would take this path towards dance experimentation again in 1997 with the electronic influenced No 1 single “Discothèque” but for me, “Mysterious Ways” trumps it by some considerable distance.

What?! New Kids On The Block were still in our charts in December 1991? Hadn’t that particular craze blown out long before this point? Well. yes it kind of had. This single “If You Go Away” was a final hurrah of the initial phase of their career before they briefly regrouped in 1994 for a less than glorious return. They would finally return as an entity in 2008 and are still touring to this day (I think).

“If You Go Away” is a soporific ballad that you can imagine Michael Bolton having rejected as too banal. It was included as the only new track on their first Best Of album called “H.I.T.S.” that was released for the Christmas market. I was the chart cassette buyer at the Our Price store I was working at then and have to admit to a gross over estimate of demand for that album. We hardly sold any and my over optimistic ordering left us with quite a few copies to go into the New Year sale when they again failed to sell. Ah well, yuh learn.

The black and white video is meant to make us perceive them as serious artists as opposed to the unobtainable desire of teenage girls. That and the fact that they had changed their name to NKOTB was a giveaway that they were looking for a new audience. For me though, they would always be more T’KNOB than NKOTB (over ordering of their album aside).

“If You Go Away” peaked at a surprisngly high No 9 in the UK Top 40.

Oh God! I’m in “Martika’s Kitchen”! Yes, it’s time for one of the stupidest song titles of the year courtesy of…well, Martika. On reflection, is it stupid or misunderstood? I don’t think I twigged it at the time but the general consensus on the internet is that “Martika’s Kitchen” is actually filthy! How did I not pick up on this back then?! Firstly, it’s written by Prince which should have been enough evidence of its salacious nature to close the case right there and then. Exhibit B (m’lud) comes in the form of the lyrics, for example:

The table is set, the oven is hot
Baby, when we get started, we won’t ever ever stop

and:

I don’t care I’ve got the chair, if you think your butt’ll fit it
You turn me all the way up, I admit it

In my defence, I think the fact that Martika has chosen to wear some very non-revealing clothes in this performance maybe misled me. As for the sound of the song, at the time it seemed very pop-orientated compared to previous single “Love… Thy Will Be Done” (also written by Prince) but which didn’t seem like it could possibly have been written by the same person. However, on reflection, “Martika’s Kitchen” has some definite Prince hallmarks attached to it although parts of it also remind me of Janet Jackson’s “Nasty”.

This was the second single from her album of the same name and although it sold reasonably in the UK, like T’KNOB before it, I’m pretty sure we had plenty of copies left over for the New Year sale. Perhaps I wasn’t that great at being chart cassette buyer!

George Michael and Elton John are still No 1 with “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. With two weeks to go, they must have been in the running for the festive chart topper but once “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released on the back of Freddie Mercury’s death, all bets were off. George would, of course, score a further No 1 with another cover version two years later, this time of Queen’s own “Somebody To Love” as part of the “Five Live EP” recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert the year before. Elton meanwhile would return in 1992 with his “The One” album the title track of which really was a bit of a dirge.

As we’ve skipped the 19 December show, the next post will be the end of year review.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cathy Dennis	Everybody Move	Nah
2	Digital Orgasm	Running Out Of Time	No chance
3	Cliff Richard	We Should Be Together	Never happening
4	Kym Sims	Too Blind To See It	Nope
5	Salt n’ Pepa	You Showed Me	No
6	Right Said Fred	Don’t Talk Just Kiss	Negative
7	Jason Donovan	Joseph Megamix	As if
8	UK Mixmasters	The Bare Necessities Megamix	Ditto
9	U2	Mysterious Ways	No but I bought the album
10	NKOTB	If You Go Away	I wish they would – No
11	Martika	Martika’s Kitchen	I did not
12	George Michael and Elton John	Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me	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/m0011myd/top-of-the-pops-12121991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 23 OCT 1998

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TOTP 16 DEC 1993

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TOTP 09 DEC 1993

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TOTP 10 JUN 1993

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TOTP 25 MAR 1993

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TOTP 10 DEC 1992

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TOTP 12 DEC 1991

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