Crystal Waters

TOTP 30 JUN 1994

Posted on April 19, 2023 by 80stastic

Despite my recent outrage at the omnipresence of Eurodance in the UK charts in the mid 90s (and therefore also on TOTP), I’m sure if I did some proper statistical analysis of the musical genres represented on the show, it would tell me that the mix of categories was eclectic. No, not eclectic but mad, bonkers, all over the place. Tonight’s show is a prime example. Yes, there are plenty of dance tunes (of varying quality) but there’s also some out and out pop, an exponent of the New Wave of New Wave (whatever that was), the debut of a rock ‘n’ roll band (definitely not indie…erm…maybe) who would dominate the 90s, a mega selling cover of an old 60s tune and hell, even a memorable No 1 from 1979! What a basket case of a show! The host is Bruno Brookes who I have to say I have warmed to since his return to the programme after the ‘year zero’ revamp era. I couldn’t be doing with him during his 80s pomp but compared to Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo, I’m finding his matey presenting style a bit more acceptable.

First up is a tune that I reviewed as part of the TOTP that was broadcast on 29 July 1993. Back then, “Caught In The Middle” by Juliet Roberts was a Breaker but as that section doesn’t exist anymore, she’s opening this show with a performance in the studio. In that first review, I drew some comparisons with Shara Nelson who was also on that day but there’s no Shara this time round so I’ll have to think of something else to say. Well, back in 1993, the single made No 24 and was produced by Danny D (of D-Mob fame) and remixed by Roger Sanchez. However, a David Morales remix that lit up the dance floors of clubs in 1994 demanded a release of its own and so it was that it was put out again, this time peaking at No 14. What are the differences between the two versions? I’m afraid my lack of dance music knowledge embarrasses me here but the Morales remix does seem to have a faster bpm which requires some controlled breathing and singing techniques from Juliet to get through it. This would prove to be Juliet’s biggest ever hit and she has not released any material since 2002 though she remains in demand as a backing singer.

That pure pop record next as Let Loose are finally given free rein to showcase themselves to the UK at large. I say ‘finally’ as they’d actually been around Take That style for over a year before this appearance and their single – “Crazy” – had originally been released back in April of 1993. It had just missed the Top 40 then but their record label Mercury obviously believed in the song and so it was re-released with a big promotional push and a chart entry at No 24 was achieved. There then followed a climb that was becoming most atypical within the UK Top 40 around this time whereby the single rose in small increments five weeks on the trot to get a foothold on the No 4 position. The story didn’t end there though. It stayed within the Top 10 for a further six weeks including two at No 2 when only the extraordinary sales of Wet Wet Wet kept it off the top spot. In total, it spent sixteen weeks inside the Top 40 and nine inside the Top 10. Perhaps most remarkable of all was that it would become the UK’s eighth best selling single of 1994, shifting more copies than D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” which spent four weeks at No 1 at the start of the year.

How can all this be explained? Well, it was supremely radio friendly becoming a staple of daytime playlists to the point that the band’s lead singer himself – Richie Wermerling – had this to say of the song (courtesy of @TOTPFacts):

Let Loose lead singer Richie Wermerling wrote "Crazy For You": "It was around for months and even I had to turn off the radio after a while. It used to come on everywhere I was – sometimes I'd have to hide behind counters in supermarkets." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 7, 2023

The single’s success led to the re-release of another early single (“Seventeen”) which though nowhere near the sales phenomenon of its predecessor made a respectable No 11. Despite being pin up material and playing catchy pop music, Let Loose were never going to seriously worry Take That as the nation’s favourite boy band. The position of contender for that role would be filled by Boyzone come the end of the year. However, they did notch up seven Top 40 hits over two years before disbanding.

And here it is. The inevitable appearance of some nasty dance music in the form of Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman. After the gravity defying chart run of “I Like To Move It” that remained aloft in the Top 40 for seventeen weeks, there were no surprises for guessing how main man Erick Morillo would follow it up. Just chuck out something that sounds exactly the same! What to call it? Something with the word ‘move’ in the title will do again. No need to overthink it. Just shameless. The ‘lyrics’ to “Go On Move” bang on about women shaking their bodies and then there’s some nonsensical scatting at the start. Look at this:

Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, house go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, jazz go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, house go mad
Bibidy, bom bi bom, mek, jazz go mad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Erick A. Morillo / Mark H. Quashie / Peter Tulloch
Go on Move lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

The use of the word ‘Bibidy’ isn’t inspired by the “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” song from Disney’s Cinderella animation but, according to my research, a Jamaican term for men’s underwear. Nice. In trade publication Music Week, reviewer James Hamilton described it as:

“Gruff ragga ‘g’wan move’ shouting and ‘blippily bebop’ scatting drily percussive ‘I Like To Move It’ type bogie shuffler”
Hamilton, James (June 25, 1994). “Dj directory” (PDF). Music Week, in Record Mirror (Dance Update Supplemental Insert). p. 5. Retrieved April 18, 2021.

That just about sums up this whole shoddy affair. Somehow, the good old British public bought enough copies to send it to No 7. Thanks for that.

It’s that No 1 from 1979 next. Surely one of the most memorable chart toppers ever, “I Don’t Like Mondays” was the second consecutive No 1 single for The Boomtown Rats after “Rat Trap” the year before. They were the biggest band in the UK. I was only 11 at the time and not exactly in tune with current chart trends but even I knew this song and The Boomtown Rats. The elder brother of a kid I knew up the street was a big fan. Not that I knew it at the time but so was my wife who asked her parents for their “Tonic For The Troops” album for Christmas ‘78 (they bought her “Nightflight To Venus” by Boney M instead).

By 1981 though, the hits had started to dry up. The New Romantics movement was in ascendancy with blousy young heroes like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran capturing the nation’s imagination and The Rats were seen as old hat. By 1984 they were completely washed up. And then came that news report from Ethiopia that Bob Geldof couldn’t ignore leading to the Band Aid record and the Live Aid concert and that moment when he sings the line “And the lesson today is how to die”…

Go to 3:08 for that moment

The origins of the lyrics of the whole song are well documented of course. The school shooting in San Diego by 16 year old Brenda Spencer who fired at children in a school playground because, by her own words, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens the day up” is pretty bleak source material. Geldof couldn’t have known that just a few years later it would provide an iconic moment in rock history as part of an effort to use the power of music for the good of humanity.

* For my full review of Live Aid, follow the link below:

https://80spop.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/live-aid-13-jul-1985/(opens in a new tab)

None of the above explains why “I Don’t Like Mondays” was back in the charts in 1994 though. It was a pretty obvious reason in truth. A Boomtown Rats / Bob Geldof retrospective Best Of album entitled “Loudmouth” had been released and the track was re-released to promote it. The album made the Top 10 though the single only made No 38 so I’m a little surprised that it warranted a whole slot to itself. It would have been a Breaker under the old regime no doubt.

The moment has finally arrived. It wouldn’t be 1994 – the year Britpop took off according to many – without them. Stand by (me) for the time has arrived for the TOTP debut of Oasis! Working in a record shop in the centre of Manchester at the time, it was kind of hard to avoid Liam, Noel and co but I have to say I’d not got on board immediately. Whilst some of my work colleagues were all over debut single “Supersonic”, I was picking fault in their rhyming of Elsa with Alka-Seltzer in the lyrics. Second single “Shakermaker” didn’t quite do it for me either but by the time third release “Live Forever” came along, I could resist no longer and was all in. I’m pretty sure that I could tell that something big was brewing and I didn’t want to miss out. Record breaking debut album “Definitely Maybe” was duly purchased and eighteen months later I was at the second of their first outdoor headline gigs at Maine Road.

Back in the Summer of 1994 though, why wasn’t I immediately swept up in the Oasis tsunami? Admittedly, I had some previous when it came to ignoring huge Manchester bands just as they were breaking. The Smiths? No thanks, not poppy enough for me. The Stone Roses? Erm no. I rather like the look of Scottish rockers Gun instead. And so to Oasis. Why didn’t I watch this TOTP performance and think “Sign me up. I’m totally here for this”? Was I put off by the Genesis apeing practice of having drummer Tony McCarroll centre stage? It’s interesting to note that the focal point of the group Liam and Noel are furthest away from the stage here. Presumably that was deliberate but it seems out of character. Rather more predictably, poor old Bonehead and Guigsy hardly get a look in.

“Shakermaker” would peak at No 11, considerably higher than “Supersonic” (No 31) so we should have all been on alert at this point to the rise of the band. Although it would continue to sell throughout the next few years along with the band’s other singles (we were still regularly ordering copies of all of them for years), it remains the band’s only single released from their first two albums not to be certified gold.

Another dance tune now but I didn’t expect this one to sound like it does. Crystal Waters burst into the charts in 1991 with the hypnotic house sound of “Gypsy Woman” (“La da dee, la dee da”) but this single “Ghetto Day” (a double A- side with “What I Need”) sounds like something off Betty Boo’s second album. Seriously, it sounds like “Let Me Take You There” doesn’t it? She even seems to have changed her hair to a Boo style bob. It turned out though that the record buying public weren’t too keen on the Betty Boo version of Crystal Waters and, despite this appearance, the single got no higher than this week’s chart position of No 40. To be fair, the record buying public hadn’t been too keen on this Betty Boo version of Betty Boo so Crystal had no chance.

The New Wave of New Wave was a terrible name for a musical movement but then so was Britpop I guess. Unlike the latter, it didn’t live long in the memory either. So what was it and who was in it? Well, it pretty much did what it said on the tin. Bands that played guitar driven rock music that had post punk and new wave influences. And its exponents? Well, one of the main bands of the movement were These Animal Men whose name I remember but whose sound I do not. I’m guessing though that it was similar to S*M*A*S*H who were the first band of that sub genre to appear on TOTP the other week. Initially, there were other names associated with the New Wave of New Wave but as that scene petered out and Britpop became the dominant force, it was the latter that they became known for. I’m talking about Sleeper, Echobellly, Shed Seven and Elastica amongst others.

The only thing I can recall of These Animal Men was that they released an EP called “Taxi For These Animal Men”. So was a taxi required? Let’s have a listen to “Speeed King” then…

As I thought, they sound like S*M*A*S*H with maybe a bit of Menswear thrown in though I think they had a bit more to them than this These Animal Men who seemed to peddle a very specific (dare I say one trick pony) style of music. Host Bruno Brookes introduces them as being the ‘TOTP showcase’ which seems to have been another way of saying “this lot don’t have any hits but we’ve shoved them on the show to prove how hip we are”. “Speeed King” got no higher than No 95 and These Animal Men were done and dusted by 1998 when they split.

The Grid again? Is this the third outing for “Swamp Thing”? Despite this being a brand new performance, it’s basically exactly the same as they did the last time they were on including the rather odd set up for the banjo player. This single was one of a number that just sold and sold that Summer alongside Let Loose, Aswad and of course Wet Wet Wet. I must have sold hundreds of copies of those titles to the punters in the Manchester Piccadilly Our Price store where I was working at the time. One day I served a guy who asked if he could have discount on what he was buying. As there was no valid reason for his request I replied in the negative. He then came back with “I’m asking you politely for discount” to which I again replied “No”. My customer then advised me that he knew people who would come and kneecap me if I didn’t do as he wanted. It was that kind of place. A swamp thing? More like a cesspit of humanity. For the record, I still didn’t give him any discount and nobody did turn up to kneecap me.

https://youtu.be/wQ5Y0QKo2gA

Wet Wet Wet remain steadfastly secure in the No 1 spot with “Love Is All Around”. To try and mix things up a bit, TOTP have got hold of a piece of footage from a concert the band did at Wembley that week and show that instead of another studio performance or the video.

In the clip, Marti Pellow has a curious affectation where he twirls around making a welcoming gesture which put me in mind of Stephen Rea’s turn in Interview With A Vampire:

I’d have to say that Marti has a better smile than a vampire though.

The play out song is “Living In The Sunshine” by Clubhouse. The follow up to “Light My Fire”, ah…really though…who cares? Certainly not me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Let Loose	Crazy	No but I think my wife succumbed to its charms
3	Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman	Go On Move	Never!
4	The Boomtown Rats	I Don’t Like Mondays	No but I must have it on something surely?
5	Oasis	Shakermaker	Not the single but I bought there album. Didn’t we all?
6	Crystal Waters	Ghetto Day / What I Need	Nah
7	These Animal Men	Speeed King	No
8	The Grid	Swamp Thing	I did not
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	And no
10	Clubhouse	Living In The Sunshine	As if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001krcc/top-of-the-pops-30061994

TOTP 21 APR 1994

Posted on March 14, 2023 by 80stastic

So I’m 500 not out in TOTP Rewind posts but there’s no time for patting myself on the back as I’m behind with the BBC4 repeats schedule so it’s on with No 501 and we start with Bitty McLean. I’ve genuinely run out of things to say about Bitty – mate of UB40? Tick. Penchant for reggae-fied versions of classic songs? Obvs. What he did post fame? Yep, been there done that. Little Britain joke? Yeah, yeah. He is the uncle of a retired professional footballer called Aaron McLean who spent his career in the lower leagues and played for the England C team (yeah, I didn’t know there was such a thing either) but is that really such an interesting fact especially in a music blog?

OK, how about the song he’s singing here? Well, “Dedicated To The One I Love” was originally recorded by an American R&B group called The “5” Royales in 1957 and then by girl group The Shirelles who took it to No 3 to in 1961. Surely the best known version though is that of The Mamas & The Papas who had a No 2 hit with it in 1967. The track features Michelle Phillips on lead vocals for the first time as opposed to Cass Elliot. Phillips would go on to have an acting career after the band broke up in 1970 and starred in the acclaimed crime biopic Dillinger earning a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer. Roles in TV films followed until she joined the cast of US soap Knots Landing in 1987 where the tale of “Dedicated To The One I Love” comes full circle. In a 1992 episode in which Phillips featured, the Mamas & The Papas’ version of the song plays in the background. The producers even called the episode Dedicated To The One I Love. Yeah, that’s it for this one – that’s all I’ve got.

Right, what’s next? Oh no. Not another ragga version of a pop standard?! Unlike Bitty McLean who specialised in putting an almost lovers’ rock sheen on his covers, C. J. Lewis fancied himself as the UK equivalent of Shaggy as he takes on classic 60s pop song “Sweets For My Sweet” by festooning it with loads of ‘toasting’ including the classic cliche shout out “Hear Me Now!”. Oh gawd. This was just a racket both sonically and artistically. Horrible stuff.

The version we all now by The Searchers from 1963 was a UK No 1 and is it immeasurably better than this load of nonsense. Whilst I prefer Manchester rivals The Hollies, it’s hard to resist the charms of this Merseybeat combo – “When You Walk In The Room”, “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”, “Needles And Pins”, “Sugar And Spice” and of course this one are all great 60s pop tunes…all of which makes C.J. Lewis’s dreadful cover even more heinous. Even the single’s artwork adds to the nastiness of the thing as it appears to depict a woman lifting up her skirt as Lewis looks on from his sofa. WTF? Everything about this guy was wrong including his stage name. Why did he go by the moniker of C. J. Lewis when his actual name was Steven James Lewis? He would stick with the formula of applying a ragga tip to established hits when he followed up “Sweets For My Sweet” with a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Everything Is Uptight (Alright)” and The Emotions’ “Best Of My Love”. Heaven help us.

Yes! Finally a proper song made by a proper artist! Despite being a huge name, The Pretenders hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since “Hymn To Her” in 1986. In their defence, they’d not actually released much material in that time with their only album since “Get Close” (from which “Hymn To Her” came) being 1990’s underwhelming “Packed!”. There had also been a successful Best Of compilation in 1987 (“The Singles”) and Chrissie Hynde had renewed her relationship with UB40 to guest on 1988’s “Breakfast In Bed” single. Oh and not forgetting that Moodswings song “Spiritual High (State Of Independence) Pt.II” that featured Chrissie on vocals and samples Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. It’s not a lot though in an eight year period. Having said all of that, it seemed a bit churlish of the TOTP caption person to just put ‘Back after 8 years’ as their comment. They couldn’t have put something about how many records they’d sold in their career or the fact that they had the first new No 1 record of the 80s with “Brass In Pocket”? 1994 though did see the band return in good form with Top 10 album “Last Of The Independents” and its storming lead single “I’ll Stand By You”. Supposedly, Chrissie wasn’t sure about the song initially. Written specifically to be a hit with songwriters Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, she doubted her motivations about the song when it was finished. However, having played it to some friends outside of the music industry who were reduced to tears by the track, she relented and let it be released. It’s not a million miles away from “Hymn To Her” to my ears which is a compliment by the way. I like both songs. “I’ll Stand By You” has a power to it I think and Chrissie’s vocals are always right on it.

They say you can tell the quality of a song by how many times other artists have covered it. If so, “I’ll Stand By You” is a tune a few times over. It was done by Girls Aloud in 2004 as that year’s Children In Need single and three years later was also chosen as a charity record when American Idol artist Carrie Underwood recorded it for the Idol Gives Back campaign. Three years after that it was again recorded for a charitable concern when Shakira released it as a fundraiser for the Hope For Haiti Now effort after the earthquake there in 2010. I guess the track’s meaning had a major crossover quality which leant itself to supporting people in crisis as well as its original intention of describing being loyal and faithful to a person.

There’s something very appealing I think about this TOTP performance of the song; something to do with Chrissie’s dress down image and the fact that you can see her panic ever so slightly when she struggles to pick up her guitar halfway through. Nice to see founding member Martin Chambers up there on drums who had rejoined the band after leaving in 1986 after problems with his drumming after cutting his hand badly on tour and also struggling to deal with the deaths of band members James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon in 1982 and 1983 respectively following issues with drug use. I guess that caption was pretty accurate in the case of Chambers then. “I’ll Stand By You” peaked at No 10 whilst the album went gold for selling 100,000 copies.

https://youtu.be/yrLfKS_iGTk

It’s the video for “Always” by Erasure next and it’s quite a thing. Set against an ancient China backdrop with Andy Bell dressed as some sort of mythical spirit, the plot revolves around the passing of the seasons as metaphors for good and evil with a battle ensuing between Bell’s character and a bad dragon type dude with the former trying to protect a Mother Nature type figure. Sheesh! The length of that sentence shows how much was going on in the video. It works pretty well though I think but then Vince and Andy always seemed to want to put some drama into their promos. Actually, I don’t think Vince is in this one at all unless he’s under that bad spirit costume which seems unlikely given Vince’s slight frame. “Always” would peak at No 4 and would also provide the title for their fourth Best Of compilation from 2015 celebrating the 30th anniversary of the formation of the band.

A new name appears from nowhere with a dance smash that gives them the highest ever UK chart entry for an unknown artist when it crashes in at No 3, enjoys a huge hit with the record and then pretty much disappears again bar a couple of minor follow ups. A footnote in musical history is created and that’s the end of the story. Right? Wrong. Who had money on a Crystal Waters comeback? No you didn’t! I’m sure even Crystal would have been surprised. Back though she was with “100% Pure Love”. Yes, the artist who brought us “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee La Da Da)” had set her sat nav for the Top 40 once more and with a track that didn’t stray too far from the blueprint of her monster hit. As with Chrissie Hynde earlier, Crystal’s voice is distinctive to the point of being beyond replication but unlike with The Pretenders’ singer, that wasn’t a positive for me. I could never get on board with her vocals, catchy hook or not. Plenty of people disagreed with me though and the single was a sizeable hit in the US and around Europe (it went to No 15 in the UK).

I have to admit to not really remembering this one. If I think of the phrase ‘100%’ in the mid 90s, I think of the Telstar compilation series which started with the title “100% Dance Hits” and expanded out to cover musical genres such as Acid Jazz, Christmas, Blues & Soul, Reggae etc. There must have been one called “100% Pure Love” surely?

Now here’s a song that divides opinion. “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies received a lot of positive reviews at the time for being original, melodic and taking on the difficult issue of the suffering and humiliation that children can experience if there was something in their life that marked them out as different. Retrospectively though, the track regularly appears in various ‘worst song ever’ type polls. For what it’s worth, I’d place myself in the former group. It seems to me that much of the criticism it receives is about its title and by extension chorus. What is it that people object to? That it’s lazy? Silly? That doesn’t really add up though. There have always been songs with nonsensical titles – some by major artists. Look at “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles or “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da Da” by The Police. Or is it vocalist Brad Roberts’ deep singing voice that offends listeners so? Again, there have always been singers with low registers whose work people love. Look at Johnny Cash for example.

Anyway, the song was a huge international success including the UK where it made No 2. Bizarrely though, it was probably least successful in their home country of Canada where they’d already had a huge hit with “Superman’s Song” in 1991. Subsequent releases from parent album “God Shuffled His Feet” were more successful there than “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”. All very curious. One of those releases, “Afternoons & Coffeespoons” gave the band a No 23 hit in the UK whilst a cover of “The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead” by their heroes XTC for the movie Dumb And Dumber supplied their final hit over here when it made No 30.

Talking of dividing opinion, this next band have always been rather good at that. Some see them as master crafters of intelligent pop music whilst for others, they are the antithesis of that, inauthentic chancers with an overblown sense of their own worth. I’m talking about Deacon Blue -and I’m firmly in the former camp. Some people really do hate them though. I found someone online who’s written a piece about how he’d been reminded about how much he hated them when he saw them live. Eh? Well, in his defence, they were the support band for Simple Minds so he hadn’t chosen to catch them in concert per se, he was there for the headline act. He despised them so much that when they were on stage, he took the opportunity to delete some emails off his phone rather than raise his head to look st them. Simple Minds though we’re great according to him. Hmm. Another who shared this view was my Our Price manager at the time who commented on the band’s TOTP appearance here that it was the most cliched, hackneyed performance they could possibly have come up with. Again, hmm. Show some dignity guys.

Ah yes, “Dignity”. Ricky Ross, Lorraine McIntosh (swoon) and…erm…the others were on the show to plug their first Greatest Hits album “Our Town” which would be a platinum selling No 1 (so there were quite a lot of us who liked them after all). The album featured all but two of their singles and three new tracks including “I Was Right And You Were Wrong” (another song title for the doubters) which had been released as a single and made No 32 but which didn’t generate a TOTP appearance. Instead, we get “Dignity” which was actually given a formal rerelease as a single (its third time in total) and it made No 20, its highest ever position on the UK charts. Deacon Blue would split up in this year only to return in the new millennium from which point they have released six further studio albums.

https://youtu.be/YV4AZCMDtSY

It’s that Tony Di Bart fella now, possibly the most unlikely and unconvincing pop star since…well, who? Chesney Hawkes? Glenn Medeiros? At least they had pin up appeal. Is it too harsh to suggest that you couldn’t say the same thing about Tony? Maybe it was all about the song in this case and not the guy who was delivering it? Time has been kind to “The Real Thing” with it being seen as a genuinely great pop record as opposed to part of the handbag house brigade that was all the rage in 1994. I can’t say that I share that opinion though. I found its success bewildering. Maybe I wasn’t going to the right type of clubs? Host Mark Goodier (who seems to have spent the whole show lurching about like he’s got a bad back) was wrong in his rather insensitive (given who was standing next to him) chart prediction – Di Bart wasn’t No 1 the next week though he was the week after.

Wait! What? Was that bloke stood next to Mark Goodier and who did the personal message to camera at the top of the show not Prince?! Was it just a very good lookalike?! I ask because at no point does Goodier actually refer to the guy nor acknowledge his presence and in that VT clip he does send himself up for the whole symbol moniker. If it was a lookalike, what was the point? Just to mess with our minds?

On the other hand, maybe it was the real thing as we don’t get the standard video promo but an exclusive pre-recorded performance. But then, if he was actually in the country and at the studio, why wouldn’t he have done a regular run through of “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” like all the other artists on the show did with their songs? This was just weird as was the version that Prince recorded for the show. The slowed down, sexy take might have been the bedroom choice but it wasn’t the song that everyone was hearing on their radios and buying in the shops was it? Anyway, it was Prince’s first and only UK No 1 having missed out twice before when the 1985 reissue of “1999/Little Red Corvette” and 1999’s “Batdance” both peaked at No 2.

The play out song is “Back In My Life” by Joe Roberts but who was/is Joe Roberts? Well, he’s English and had a handful of minor hits in the mid 90s before disappearing whence he came. Ironically, the single that came out after this No 39 hit was a cover of Prince’s “Adore” so not only did he follow the Purple One on the TOTP running order but his singles release schedule also followed him. He sounds a bit like a poor man’s Curtis Stigers whilst one promo shot of him that I found sees him looking like Bo Selecta’s characterisation of David Blaine. Shazam!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bitty McLean	Dedicated To The One I Love	No
2	C. J. Lewis	Sweets For My Sweet	God no!
3	The Pretenders	I’ll Stand By You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Erasure	Always	Nope
5	Crystal Waters	100% Pure Love	Nah
6	Crash Test Dummies	Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm	See 3 above
7	Deacon Blue	Dignity	No but I had the original Raintown album with it on
8	Tony Di Bart	The Real Thing	Not my bag – no
9	Prince	The Most Beautiful Girl In The World	I did not
10	Joe Roberts	Back In My Life	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/m001jn48/top-of-the-pops-21041994

TOTP 12 SEP 1991

Posted on October 10, 2021 by 80stastic

After last week’s massive rave up of a show, surely the TOTP studio wouldn’t be taken over by mad ravers ‘avin’ it large again this week? Well, yes and no. Dance music is definitely represented by the artists in the actual building again but when you add in the videos chosen by the producers to be shown this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were back in the 70s or at The Royal Variety Performance. No seriously, two of the artists on this TOTP had either already been on Her Majesty’s favourite night out of the year or would appear on it in the near future, those acts being Cliff Richard (13 times!) and Right Said Fred (once in 1992). The mainstream acts didn’t stop with just those two though. No, also on TOTP tonight were Bryan Adams (twice!), Roxette and Julian Lennon who’s Dad John had also appeared at The Royal Variety Performance as part of The Beatles with his infamous “just rattle your jewellery” remark in 1963. Oh, and despite having only released one new song in the 90s so far, The Stone Roses are suddenly back on the show with a re-release of a track from their 1989 debut album for some reason. This has all the makings of a curate’s egg of a programme.

Before all that though, what’s the rather cryptic announcement from host Simon Mayo at the top of the show all about? “If you got your tickets for tonight’s show through Keith Prowse, you can watch through to 7.30 but cheer and applaud louder because you are watching for free. Seems fair enough to me.” Eh? What was the story there then? Some dispute between the BBC and the legendary ticket agency and music publisher Keith Prowse? Was Mayo legally obliged to say that? It just seems so utterly incongruous and bizarre.

Talking of bizarre, the opening act tonight are Bizarre Inc with “Such A Feeling” and these guys were definitely ‘avin’ it. In an attempt to stand out from the rest of the rave crowd, they have employed a couple of podium dancers to give a visual form to their track. Watching it back, it remains me of the time that I was working in the Our Price in Rochdale and on a night out found myself in the town’s Xanadu nightclub having become detached from my colleagues. My God! The sights I saw – including podium dancers! I loved working at that store but the delights of a night out in Rochdale I was not prepared for.

Bizarre Inc were from Stafford and at one point included a band member who would find their way into Altern-8 who were also having mainstream chart hits at this time. It all sounds a bit incestuous to me.

“Such A Feeling” peaked at No 13 but Bizarre Inc would return before the end of the year with a Top 5 hit in the re-released “Playing with Knives”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9GscEY_LkY

“20th Century Boy” by Marc Bolan & T. Rex is next having been re-released off the back of a Levi’s advert. The marketing guys at Levi’s had struck a rich vein of 70s tunes to help promote their jeans at this time, having worked through a load of 60s songs at the back end of the 80s. They’d already turned to The Steve Miller Band and Bad Company in their pursuit of soundtracks to their iconic advertising campaign but suddenly they had struck on the idea that some glam rock was now what was required. I guess you can’t knock their choice; T.Rex had lit up the charts with some huge tunes that had turned Marc Bolan into a superstar. Between 1970 and 1973 the chart peaks of their singles read:

2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4

with the No 3 in the list being the original release of “20th Century Boy”. Come 1974 though, the spell appeared to be broken. The release of the “Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow” album met with a downturn of sales and a critical backlash. The return to all those complex song titles from the band’s psychedelic folk era when they were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex maybe wasn’t the best idea – as well as the album’s title, the tracks on it included “Painless Persuasion v. The Meathawk Immaculate” and “The Leopards Featuring Gardenia & the Mighty Slug”. The album wasn’t even released in the US and the band were dropped from their label. Bolan split from producer Tony Visconti and the group splintered.

Subsequent albums releases fared even worse but the explosion of the punk movement in ’76 seemed to re-energise Bolan and he even toured with The Damned as well as reinstating his public profile with his own TV show Marc. I was too young to experience those early hits in real time being aged just 2 when “Ride A White Swan” bestrode the charts in ’70 but I have faint memories of that TV show and I think my elder brother had a pin badge with Bolan’s image on it.

Of course, tragedy was just around the corner (or more specifically a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride Barnes, southwest London) when Marc was killed in a car accident when his girlfriend Gloria Jones lost control of the mini they were travelling in. His legacy lives on though with names like Johnny Marr and Siouxsie and the Banshees crediting him as being a major influence with the latter recording their own version of “20th Century Boy” as the B-side to the single “The Staircase (Mystery)” single in 1979.

Simon Mayo’s having a nightmare here. After the weirdness of the Keith Prowse comment he’s started going on about Paddy Ashdown now. Was Ashdown in the news back then? Was this when all the ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ stuff was happening?

*checks internet*

No that scandal blew up in the run up to the ’92 election. I can’t find a Paddy Ashdown story for Sep ’91 so I’m not sure what Mayo is going on about. Surely he wasn’t using the show as a platform for his own political views?

Anyway, the act he is introducing via this political lay-by is Roxette with “The Big L.” The circus themed video for this one includes a scene where there’s five greased up body builder types huddled together on a small circular platform all playing mouth organ. What was that all about?! Maybe the video director had been influenced by the recent bare-chested antics of Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch or maybe even the “Do What U Like” video by Take That (the one with the bare arse cheeks and a ton of jelly) which had been creating waves of controversy around this time? With it being a Roxette video though, it just comes across as a bit safe and lame rather than daring.

“The Big L.” peaked at No 21.

Is it me or is there a bit of an echo in the studio tonight? I thought I’d noticed one in a couple of Simon Mayo’s links before but it seems to have spread to the performers now. There’s a distinct trace of reverb on Sabrina Johnston‘s live vocals on “Peace”. Or was that a deliberate sound effect? Sound quality issues aside, this was up there with Oceanic’s Insanity” in the bangin’ tunes stakes. Sadly for Sabrina, she also followed the same career path as Oceanic in that she could never really follow up on the success of “Peace’ . An album was released and two further singles from it but none of them managed to indent the charts. Indeed, Sabrina’s only other chart entry was when a remix of “Peace” made No 35 as part of a double A-side with Crystal Waters to promote the HIV/AIDS charity album “Red Hot + Dance” (the one with George Michael’s “Too Funky” on it). In later years though, she did go onto appear as a backing vocalist on Lauryn Hill’s album “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill”.

More Paddy Ashdown quips from Simon Mayo next. Give it up mate! “I Wanna Be Adored” by The Stone Roses is the the prompt for him to get in another Paddy joke (as it were). Had Ashdown done a particular poorly received press conference or something back then?

“I Wanna Be Adored” was the opening track on the band’s iconic eponymous debut album from ’89. So why was it being released as a single two and a half years later? Well, I think it was to do with the legal battle with their then-record label Silvertone. The band wished to terminate their five-year contract with Silvertone whose owners Zomba Records took out an injunction against the Roses in September 1990 to prevent them from recording with any other label. The courts ruled in favour of the band in May 1991 but Silvertone appealed the decision thereby delaying the release of any new material from the band further. I guess Silvertone wanted to make as much dough out of the band as they could before they were their act no longer and so released a number of tracks from that debut album that had never previously been released (or indeed intended for release) as stand alone singles. “I Wanna Be Adored” was followed by “Waterfall”, ‘I Am The Resurrection” and a re-release of “Fool’s Gold” in ’92. Bit naughty that.

“I Wanna Be Adored” was also one of the tracks that my one time Our Price manager Pete played on as the band’s original bass player. The Martin Hannett produced album that Pete featured on never saw the light of day as the band weren’t happy with it until it was released as “Garage Flower” in 1996 against the wishes of everyone involved in the original recordings.

I said in the last post that I didn’t think we’d be seeing this act until her next hit in about three years time. I was wrong. Following her appearance in the Breakers Crystal Waters has moved up the charts sufficiently to qualify for another appearance this week with her “Makin’ Happy” single. The single edit of this was remixed by Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley who I very much see as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing death to music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 single in 1987.

The video is a typical dance track promo with Crystal’s face superimposed over a background of abstract, dancing figure images and some very literal interpretations of the song’s lyrics – some Rocky Horror Picture Show style lips for ‘She screams Ah ooh’ and a camera for ‘Now picture you with me’. To be fair, most of the lyrics seem to be comprised of ‘ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh-wee ooh-wee’. It’s hardly Proust is it?

“Makin’ Happy” peaked at No 18.

Having gone after Paddy Ashdown for a cheap laugh, Mayo now sets his sights on pop royalty in Cliff Richard. Asking the audience the question who has appeared on TOTP most across its then 27 year history, he mimes us a clue of who it is. For some reason he thinks giving a double thumbs up and waving his arms about as if protecting himself from some falling debris is a dead ringer of an impression of Cliff! Surely the thumbs up gesture would be more likely to be Paul ‘Whacky Thumbs Aloft’ McCartney and although Cliff has been known to do some very odd arm movements whilst performing, Mayo’s interpretation seems very wide of the mark.

As for the song Cliff is singing, I have no memory whatsoever of “More To Life” but then I didn’t watch the TV show Trainer which it was the theme tune for. Apparently Trainer was a follow up (of sorts) to mid 80s yachting drama Howard’s Way but was set in the word of horse racing. As with Howard’s Way, Simon May (not Mayo) wrote the instrumental theme tune for the opening credits but lyrics were added for the version over the closing credits which were supplied by Mike Read (yes, the Radio 1 DJ). In later years of course, Read would pen “UKIP Calypso” for a UKIP dinner that he was attending and, with the endorsement of Nigel Farage, it was released as a single. It was widely panned as being racist for Reads’s mock Caribbean accent and the lyrics ‘The leaders committed a cardinal sin / Open the borders let them all come in / Illegal immigrants in every town / Stand up and be counted Blair and Brown’. That’s Mike Read there, friend of Nigel Farage and writer of racist songs. Arsehole. Read of course was very matey with Cliff as I recall and often did impressions of him. There really was no end to his talents was there?

“More To Life” the song is just bland, Cliff-by-numbers pop and the whole story saga should be condemned to the rubbish tip of terrible cultural ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nv_1GrQiN4

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch are up next with “Good Vibrations”. Now I’ve always quite liked Mark Wahlberg as an actor. I know some of the films he’s been in have had bad reviews like Planet Of The Apes and The Happening and he’s certainly no De Niro or Pacino but even so, like I said, I quite like him.

However, I didn’t know until now when I’ve read up on him that he did some terrible things as a teenager like racially aggravated assault for which he was sentenced to two years in jail but served only forty-five days of his sentence. Eighteen years later he apologised to his victim in person who stated publicly that he had forgiven Wahlberg. Now knowing this information and reading an interview back with him in Smash Hits magazine as Marky Mark, he clearly was a prick back then. In said interview he refers to women as ‘bitches’ and the Smash Hits writer describes his conversation as “…the blokiest tirade you ever did hear this side of an Eddie Murphy Live video…” – like I said, a prick.

He followed this up a year later in December ’92, while performing on the cult late night Channel 4 show The Word, by praising fellow guest Shabba Ranks who had stated gay people should be crucified for which both he and Ranks were widely condemned and criticised (not least by The Word presenter Mark Lamarr on the show). Supposedly Wahlberg doesn’t like to be reminded or asked about his music career these days. It’s not hard to see why.

The huge dance anthems just keep on coming as Rozalla enters the game with “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Having been massively popular on the dance floors of the clubs in Ibiza in the Summer, it was no surprise that it became a huge hit in the UK charts when the returning hordes went searching for a memento of their holidays in the nation’s record shops. Well, at least we’d moved on from those foreign holiday hits like Ryan Paris from back in the day.

Rozalla was born in Zambia though moved to Zimbabwe aged 18 where she scored five No 1 singles. She relocated again in 1988, this time to London where she worked with production duo Nigel Swanston and Tim Cox and the collaboration bore fruit in the form of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Looking at her performance here, you wouldn’t have imagined that such a huge sound could have come from such a diminutive and slight looking person. She absolutely bosses it though and has the crowd in the palm of her hand when she takes her very sparkly jacket. She would go on to have a eight UK Top 40 hits in total including a re-release of this track re-titled as “Everybody’s Free (Ca$ino Mix)” in 1996.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seUZPn_WTYQ

Moving the Breakers to just before the No 1 is really starting to piss me off now. It’s lulling me into a false sense of security before hitting me with the realisation that there are at least three more songs to review even though the show is nearly over. We start with a man not seen in the Top 40 for seven years but who topped all the Best Newcomer and Most Promising New Act polls at the time of that success. Julian Lennon had already released three albums by ’91 but they had spiralled into a pattern of diminishing returns since the success of debut “Valotte”. Subsequently, his return to the Top 40 with “Saltwater” was quite the surprise. Tackling the issues of environmental conservation and world poverty in a pop song wasn’t unique but neither was it a regular occurrence back then. Obviously there was the whole Bad Aid project to address famine in Ethiopia and wasn’t “Crazy Horses” by The Osmonds about pollution? Then of course there was “Save The Whale” by …erm…Nik Kershaw. I’m sure there are plenty more examples but my point is that unlike sewers and non disposable wipes, the charts weren’t clogged up with them.

Enter Julian with a rather drippy yet heartfelt take on it all with his 6th form poetry-esque lyrics bemoaning man’s capability to land on the moon but not be able to stop children starving back on earth. Musically, it inevitably drew comparisons with his Dad especially the “Strawberry Fields Forever” beginning whilst the Beatles connection was continued by the guitar part that was written but not performed by George Harrison. I quite liked it and its themes seem more relevant today than ever. Like his debut single “Too Late For Goodbyes”, it peaked at No 6 whilst his only other Top 40 entry was his cover of Dave Clark Five’s “Because” for the 1986 musical Time soundtrack winch literally crept in at No 40.

What?! Shabba Ranks was in the charts?! The Shabba Ranks that was discussed earlier for his vile homophobic comments on The Word? Yep, the very same but this was a year before that controversial moment broke so presumably, in ’91, he wasn’t courting the condemnation that followed. Here he’s teamed up with Maxi Priest for a single called “Housecall” which sounds horrific to my ears and which thankfully passed me by at the time. Fortunately we only get 18 seconds of it in the Breakers, a feature which now seems to be a totally pointless exercise in boosting the amount of songs featured in the show (we’ve gone up from 13 to 14 in recent weeks). Julian Lennon only got 24 seconds and the final Breaker Bryan Adams gets 17 seconds! This was ridiculous and presumably just a ploy to be able to say it was keeping up with ITV competition The Chart Show. Utter nonsense (as was Shabba and Maix’s collaboration).

Hang on! Did I just say Bryan Adams was in the Breakers? But *spoiler* he’s still at No 1 isn’t he? Yes, but both statements are true because he’d been at No 1 so long now that his next single was due for release. “Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started” chart life would would come and go within a mere five weeks peaking at No 12 whilst “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was still riding high in the Top 40. This was the time when it really started to get nuts I think. His new (and infinitely better in my opinion) song had been rejected in favour of a record buying public continuing to purchase his previous single that had been No 1 for over three months. This was just bonkers!

In the US, it would peak at No 2 but you know what they put on the B-side of the US release? Yes, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”! It had been No 1 in America for seven weeks! Why make it at the B-side?! In the UK the flip was a live version of his duet with Tina Tuner “It’s Only Love”. I quite liked the speeded up stop animation in the video which enlivened an otherwise straight performance promo.

So it’s a 10th week for good ol’ Bry with that Robin Hood song. The video for “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was directed by Julien Temple which I don’t think I knew before. Bit of a contrast to his punk origins of the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. Apparently it was shot in Sheffield. You’d have thought that he would have chosen Nottingham as his location wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s only about 30 odd miles from Sheffield anyway. And, the day it was being shot, Nottingham Forest were playing in the FA Cup final against Spurs. All the omens and references surely pointed to Nottingham not Sheffield? I wonder which football team Bryan Adams supports? Oh he must have a team. Look at Sylvester Stallone (Everton), Tom Hanks (Aston Villa) and Kevin Costner (Arsenal). Then you’ve got Robert Plant being a Wolves fan and Dave Grohl supports West Ham.

*checks internet*

I knew it! Bryan is a fan of….my beloved Chelsea! Who said he had/was bad taste?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpeEWfonhKA

It’s Right Said Fred and “I’m Too Sexy” to play us out but before that, Simon Mayo ends his last show before the ‘year zero’ revamp by signing off with “I’ll see you sometime”. He definitely knew didn’t he?

Back to the Freds and there’s a link between them and the aforementioned Julien Temple as the latter directed the Jazzin’ For Blue Jean short film for David Bowie to promote his 1984 “Blue Jean” single which starred none other than Richard Fairbrass as one of the band for fictional pop star Screaming Lord Byron. As toe curlingly awful as Jazzin’ For Blue Jean is (and I’ve watched it) it still knocks the promo for “I’m Too Sexy” into a cocked hat. What do you think about that Fairbrass?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bizarre Inc	Such A Feeling	Bizarre Inc? Godawful stink more like! No
2	Marc Bolan & T. Rex	20th Century Boy	No but I have a Best Of CD with it on
3	Roxette	The Big L.	No
4	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	The Stone Roses	I Wanna Be Adored	No but I’ve got the album
6	Crystal Waters	Makin’ Happy	It didn’t make me happy – no
7	Cliff Richard	More To Life	God no!
8	Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch	Good Vibrations	Nah
9	Rozalla	“Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”	I did not
10	Julian Lennon	Saltwater	No but I didn’t mind it actually
11	Shabba Ranks/ Maxi Priest	Housecall	NO!
12	Bryan Adams	Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started	Negative
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	Double negative
14	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	It’s a final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00103fx/top-of-the-pops-12091991

TOTP 06 SEP 1991

Posted on October 6, 2021 by 80stastic

CORRECTION: In the post relating to the TOTP broadcast on 22 Aug 1991, I mistakenly reported that this was Bruno Brookes’ last ever appearance as a host on the show as he was removed along with all the other Radio 1 DJ presenters in the ‘year zero’ revamp. I also stated that we would see valedictory appearances by Mark Goodier, Jakki Brambles, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell and Gary Davies in the following weeks. Whilst it was true that the above names were replaced by a batch of new presenters from Oct 1991 onwards, it has been brought to my attention that four of those six would return to the TOTP family in 1994 as the year zero revamp was reversed. Only Gary Davies and Jakki Brambles did not reappear. Consequently, my claim about the show not being presented again by Bruno Brookes, Mark Goodier, Simon Mayo and Nicky Campbell is not true although we won’t be seeing them for over two years. Thank you to Matthew James for pointing this out.

Right, now that’s cleared up, I can say that this show was Jakki Brambles final TOTP appearance. Jakki always gave off the impression to me that she was quite disinterested in all this pop music lark and I never found her that convincing as a host. She also seemed to have an issue with the temperature in the TOTP studio with many a Winter coat being worn when surely it must have been boiling under those hot studio lights. She emigrated to the US in 1994, changed the spelling of her name to ‘Jackie’ and stayed there for eleven years as a news radio morning anchor and occasional television news anchor for the CBS network. She returned to the UK in 2005 and presented Loose Women until 2009 and owns her own digital media business called Broadstance Digital Media Production. She currently works on Greatest Hits Radio which seems to be some sort of retirement home for ex Radio 1 DJs as their roster also includes, yes you guessed it, Simon Mayo and Mark Goodier alongside other ‘star’ names as Andy Crane (has no brain) and Pat Sharp.

Right on with the show as we have 14 (FOURTEEN) songs to get through in this one. We start with Oceanic and “Insanity”. I’m pretty sure that this one would have been labelled as a ‘banger’ back then (and maybe even today). A huge anthem, it started life on a short run promo 12″ sending crowds of North-West ravers erm…insane.. whenever it was played. Inevitably, it was picked up for a wider commercial release by Dead Dead Good records and would go on to spend four months on the Top 40 and three months in the Top 10 including three weeks at No 3. Could it have made it to No 1 if that Bryan Adams song had never been released? Possibly although it would probably have got stuck at No 2 behind Right Said Fred. We’ll never know. What I do know however, is that around this time, rave music seemed to be taking over the world or at least the UK anyway. Just about anything that was a ‘dance’ track seemed to attract the ‘rave’ label. Oceanic obviously came under that umbrella but there were also Bassheads (from the same neck of the woods as it happened), K-Klass, Bizarre Inc, Altern 8 etc. Predictably, the scene became homogenised when all these club anthems started to be lumped together on compilation albums like Virgin’s “The Ultimate Rave”. Was that the point where it all started to go wrong? Look, when it comes to dance music, I freely admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about despite having spent the majority of the 90s working in record shops.

As for Oceanic, despite two further Top 40 hits, they were never able to move on from the success of “Insanity” but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the band. Back in 2012, in an interview with The Liverpool Echo in a piece about the reopening of a Liverpool nightclub called The State where the band were due to play a set, singer Jorinde Williams said:

“I love getting the metaphorical rave horn out now and again and singing Insanity. It still gives me shivers to see a crowd of grinning, dancing strangers singing back these words I wrote 20 years ago, and that it means something to them.”

The metaphorical rave horn?! That either sounds like something very rude or a band that did a session for John Peel in 1993.

Talking of rave, this next lot were also one of the acts that must have featured on that “The Ultimate Rave” compilation. The Prodigy were up to No 3 by this point with their Public Information Films themed hit “Charly”. Famously sampling the 1973 cut out animation warning children of the dangers of strangers, falling in the water, matches etc via the characters of a boy called Tony and his ginger cat, I notice that the spelling of the cat’s name originally was ‘Charley’ but The Prodigy dropped an ‘e’ (ahem) for the title of their single. That must have been deliberate and an in joke within the band surely?!

Sonia was still having hits into the Autumn of 1991?! That was over two years since her Stock, Aitken and Waterman produced No 1 single “You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You”! In the intervening period she’d eked out a further six hits all of which had gone Top 20. Clearly Sonia wasn’t going to give up on this pop star lark easily. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” however would break that run of Top 20 singles when it peaked just outside at No 22. Our Sonia’s got a band of seven up there on stage with her to deliver the song but no amount of hired hands can distract from the notion that this seemed so incongruous with the rest of the contemporary charts acts. A rave anthem this was not! However, it was a firm favourite amongst the Northern Soul scene – no not Sonia’s version obviously but the version by The Tams which was a minor UK hit in 1970.

Looking at Sonia’s discography (not something I would have thought I would ever be doing) I can see that she still has another three Top 40 entries stretching into 1993 to get through before her well of chart hits finally ran dry. However, two of those were more cover versions and the final one was the UK’s Eurovision entry – so much for Jakki Brambles comment about ‘self-penned tunes’ on Sonia’s second album called …erm…”Sonia” that was released a month after this TOTP appearance. Jakki also refers to her as ‘a good old girl’ at the song’s end. She was 20 when this show was broadcast!

It’s the video for “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt ‘N Pepa next. In a Rolling Stone magazine article in 2017, Salt (Cheryl James) made the distinction that:

“The song was about talking about sex. The song was not about sex. The song was about communication and talking about a subject that nobody wants to talk about”

Pepa (Sandra Denton) added:

“It wasn’t a dirty song. It was an enlightenment song”

So powerful was the song’s message that it was re-worked in 1992 to help promote discussions about AIDS and HIV. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

At the suggestion of ABC News anchor Peter Jennings (who heard his daughter listening to the song), Salt-N-Pepa later reworked "Let’s Talk About Sex" as "Let's Talk About AIDS" for 1992 ABC special Growing Up In The Age Of AIDS. Watch it here: https://t.co/fq1Qt9wbXx #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

However, the song has also been used in a much more light hearted way. After Liverpool had secured their sixth European Cup when winning the Champions League in 2019, manager Jurgen Klopp was so overjoyed that he couldn’t help bursting into a rendition of it with the lyrics altered to reflect his club’s achievement. Someone then mixed it with the original track and….

In direct contrast to Sonia earlier with her seven piece backing band packing out the stage, here’s Zoë with with just a sole guitarist for company as she performs her hit “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”. Was Zoë’s style of dancing a thing back then? You know, feet rooted to the floor with the arms supplying all the movement? I guess Susanne and Joanne from The Human League made a 40 year career out of a similar thing.

As the track is coming to an end there’s a shot where you can see Jakki Brambles in place to do the next link in the gantry. What surprised me was that she isn’t even looking at the stage as Zoë is still performing. Look I know she had a job to do but it’s a good 20 seconds before the camera actually comes to her. Remember earlier when I said Jakki always seemed disinterested in the whole pop music thing…? “Good to see that one in the charts at long last” she tells us as she segues into the next act. Well, you didn’t see it Jakki, you weren’t even looking in the right direction! “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” peaked at No 4.

So that next act is Martika with the video for “Love…Thy Will Be Done”. As Jakki tells us, her latest album “Martika’s Kitchen” (terrible, terrible title) has four songs on it that were co-written with Prince including the current single which I think we were all meant to take on board as meaning that she was leaving her pop past behind and becoming a serious artist.

We also knew this because the accompanying video was shot in black and white, that classic trick to ensure that we understood what we were watching had some gravitas to it. No pop fluff this you know. When I was a student at Sunderland Poly we had to make a video short for one of the modules and my group employed the black and white tactic for ours. The point we wanted to make though was that black and white meant dull and boring before the film came alive with the introduction of colour. Out of our way Federico Fellini! Our video was entitled Wet Dream but it’s not what you might think. The black and white footage had a guy called Ian falling asleep in a particularly dull lecture before he went into a dream in colour where he is kidnapped and thrown into a swimming pool. As he awakes from his dream back in black and white he is soaking wet. Genius! We were all do pleased with ourselves! Ah, the folly of youth. I must get around to uploading it one day. “Love…Thy Will Be Done” peaked at No 9.

Meanwhile back in the studio we find some more ravers in Utah Saints with a guy up front on bass guitar looking like what I’m sure Boris Johnson (but not me) would describe as a ‘crusty’. Their performance of “What Can You Do For Me” illustrates perfectly the issues TOTP was facing with showcasing this new fangled rave music. There are no vocals apart from the short samples from Gwen Guthrie, Eurythmics and an intro from a Kiss concert. That leaves the four members of the band having to fill the time somehow. So we have the aforementioned bass player strutting about, a drummer, someone on keyboards and a DJ scratching like his life depending on it. No wonder the show’s producers decided to pad it out with some images from the promo video. To be fair, the track was good enough to not be undermined by the performance and would go up the charts the following week.

Jakki Brambles’ comment on Utah Saints? “They’re a good bunch of lads”. Hang on didn’t she say something similar about Sonia? Yes she did (“ a good old girl”). Presumably this was her default style of phrases she would go to to fill time. A bit like a Tory politician being asked a difficult question and replying “I don’t accept your characterisation of ***”.

Kylie Minogue is up next adding to the female pop star count for this show. We’ve already had Sonia, Zoë, Martika, Salt ‘N Pepa plus Oceanic fronted by Jorinde Williams and now here’s Kylie with her latest single “Word Is Out”. As Jakki says it was her fourteenth consecutive hit but it was also the first to fail to reach the Top 10. Were UK pop fans getting bored of her? No I don’t think so – it was just a shit song. Really weak. It was the lead single from her fourth and final album with Stock, Aitken and Waterman and she seemed to be a bit lost in this stage of her career. Maybe she was just finding her feet in the creative process (she shared song writing credits on six of the tracks). The album had a mixed reception both critically and commercially (it also failed to make the Top 10, her first album to do so). Very much a forgotten Kylie single (when was the last time you heard it on the radio?), its failure to rack up massive sales wasn’t due to a lack of effort on Kylie’s part as she gives the usual energetic performance here, crammed full of more dance moves than Zoë could wave her arms at. That would all be gone come her next single though which (psst… pass it on) was a big R’n’B ballad with Keith Washington. The word was out.

This is totally unfair! Just six minutes left of the show and they cram in another six songs in that time! My poor fingers! This is due to there being four Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe with a song called “Primal Scream”. What? I’d rather that sentence read Primal Scream with a song called “Motley Crue”.

This blog appears to have gone umlaut crazy. After the nonsense of the Marc Bölan story the other week and the appearance tonight of Zoë, we have the LA hair metallers with a single to promote their first Greatest Hits album. Hang on, what hits? They’d had just three Top 40 entries before this in the UK and none had hit higher than No 23. To be fair, they were more successful in the US where they’d had six including two Top 10s but I’m not about to let something like the truth get in the way of a petty swipe at them! According to the band’s Nikki Sixx, the song was written about Arthur Janov’s 1970 book The Primal Scream. Yeah, maybe or maybe they just stole the idea off Tears For Fears who named themselves after said book. “Primal Scream” the Mötley Crüe song kept their run of UK singles that failed to breach the Top 20 going when it peaked at No 26.

Another dance anthem now. Sabrina Johnston may only be known for this single “Peace” in this country but she’s not without musical pedigree. She toured with The Sugar Hill Gang in the 80s and was signed to Sugar Hill Records as part of West Street Mob so you know…respect and all. “Peace” was just a huge, uplifting chunk of positivity in the form of a gospel -ish dance track that was written during the Gulf War as an antidote to the feelings of dread and horror that conflict engendered. It was a tune! Peaking at No 8, it returned to the charts the following year as a double A-side with a remix of “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters to promote the “Red, Hot + Dance” charity album.

Talking of whom….now I would have laid money on Crystal Waters having been a one hit wonder but no as here she is with the follow up to No 2 hit “Gypsy Woman” with a song called “Makin’ Happy”. I didn’t much care for her first hit and this one wasn’t going to do it for me either seeing as it was very much in the same mould – indeed it was described as ‘Gypsy Woman, Part II’ in some of the music press. Even in this short clip it just seemed so damn repetitive. Her discography tells me that she had nine Top 40 hits in this country. NINE?!! Don’t panic though, I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again until these TOTP repeats hit 1994 (assuming that they carry on that long).

Roxette complete the Breakers with the third single from their third studio album “Joyride” called “The Big L.” (no punctuation after the ‘L’ , no points). It’s a bit bland this one and it really reminds me of another song (who said anything else by Roxette?!) but I can’t put my finger on it. An ABBA song maybe?It wasn’t released in the US for some reason – not sure why their American record company wouldn’t have had faith in it given their last seven singles released there had peaked at:

1 – 14 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2

Now, remember that guy who interviews Jurgen Klopp in that ‘Let’s Talk About Six’ video. Well, his name is Jan Åge Fjørtoft (the theme was umlauts Jan not…whatever they are) who is an ex-professional footballer who turned out for Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United and Barnsley in this country but that’s neither here nor there. Look at him again. He could be the guy in Roxette surely?

OK, what week are we onto now with Bryan Adams and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”? Nine? Ten? I’m struggling for any more content on this song now. What has @TOTPFacts got for me…

Sorry, I'm now considering this part of the show a tea break until the 16 weeks are over. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 1, 2021

Oh, great, thanks very much! Balls! Well, in a Smash Hits interview (Bryan was not only in the magazine but on the front cover -who’d have thought it?!) he was asked:

Are you mightily chuffed with the single then?

His reply was:

“You could say that”

Bryan Adams there with a magnificently downbeat show of being chuffed about something that has only been matched by David Batty when he was interviewed in Lee Chapmans’ house in Boroughbridge when Leeds Utd won the league in 1992. Asked how he felt about the achievement he replied:

“Well, it’s a bonus”.

Who’s this? Runrig? Oh yes, I remember them. Like a celtic Dire Straits weren’t they? Too glib? OK, well “The Hearthammer EP” was their first Top 40 hit despite having been around since 1973 and as I recall they were a very popular live draw. Indeed, there are almost as many live Runrig albums as studio albums. To prove the point, the video shows the band playing what seems to be a massive outdoor gig. The single was taken from an album called “The Big Wheel” which went gold in the UK. This really does sound like Dire Straits though.

And that’s it from Jakki Brambles. Her comment at the show’s end “Right, I’m off to the Darby and Joan Club” suggests maybe she knew she was for the bullet?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Oceanic	Insanity	I didn’t
2	The Prodigy	Charly	Nope
3	Sonia	Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy	As if
4	Salt ‘n Pepa	Let’s Talk About Sex	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Zoë	Sunshine On A Rainy Day	See 4 above
6	Martika	Love…Thy Will Be Done	Nope
7	Utah Saints	What Can You Do For Me	See 4 above
8	Kylie Minogue	Word Is Out	Nah
9	Mötley Crüe	Primal Scream	Never happening
10	Sabrina Johnston	Peace	See 4 above
11	Crystal Waters	Makin’ Happy	Soundin’ crappy more like – no
12	Roxette	The Big L.	F******g ‘ell more like – no
13	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	I did not
14	Runrig	The Hearthammer EP	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/m00103fv/top-of-the-pops-06091991

TOTP 16 MAY 1991

Posted on August 4, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid May 1991 and I have been working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester for about 8 months and life is OK. Except there’s one thing wrong. I haven’t yet had a Saturday off. Obviously as a Xmas temp (as I was when I started) I didn’t expect any whilst the Xmas rush was on but having secured permanent employment with the company, I have worked every Saturday since. Saturday 18 May would change all that though. How do I remember this date? Because I’d booked the Saturday off to watch the FA Cup final. Now as I have mentioned just a few times over the course of this blog, I have always been a Chelsea supporter (46 years and counting now) but I had never missed watching the Cup final regardless who was playing and 1991 wasn’t going to be any different. That year the finalists were Spurs and Nottingham Forest and I had invited some mates from out of town around to watch it. It was an eventful game but it would always be remembered as the Gazza final for all the wrong reasons…

Gazza, of course, had been a pop star less than 6 months earlier off the back of his tears at Italia ’90. His performance in the FA Cup final was more wretched even than either of his two hit singles though. Spurs and hit singles wasn’t a new phenomena restricted to just Gazza mind. The football club had released FA Cup final songs for the previous three occasions they had made the final back in the 80s, all of them with cockney rhyming slangers Chas ‘n’ Dave with the most memorable being the 1981 song “Ossie’s Dream” – ‘in the cup for Totting-ham’ and all that. 1991 was no different as “When the Year Ends in One” was released. Unlike its predecessors, it failed to make the Top 40…because it was shit. Anyway, I finally got my Saturday off to watch the game but before that was the small matter of Thursday night and TOTP. I wonder of host Bruno Brookes will mention the footy*?…

*SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t.

What on earth is he wearing?! That clobber he’s got on makes him look like a member of a Formula 1 track side race team, ready to speed change a tyre when the driver pulls in for a pit stop. Just ludicrous! Stood next to him is a kid with floppy ‘Madchester’ hair wearing a Revenge T-shirt , Revenge being New Order’s Peter Hook’s side project band in the early 90s. The contrast is startling. Not sure that the kid’s enthusiastic clapping for acts on tonights’s show that include Danni Minogue, Jason Donovan and Cher is that sincere given his choice of T-shirt. I suspect opening act New Kids On The Block wouldn’t have been one of his faves either. Now don’t be fooled by any the studio audience whoops and hollering, by this point in their career, the band’s popularity was not at the heights it had scaled previously. In short, the wheels were coming off and they were heading down the dumper. To arrest this slide, Donnie Wahlberg convinced them to pursue a new musical direction that was more urban. “Call It What You Want” was the first offering of their new style and came from something called “No More Games: The Remix Album” which did what it said on the tin and featured hip-hop-upped versions of their previous hits. In the history of very bad ideas, this was surely in the Top 10. I get they were trying to grow and change with their pre-teen audience as they themselves grew older but surely those kids wanted grunge not dirge. The album sold moderately but didn’t really halt the band’s decline.

Apparently this was their one and only TOTP studio appearance. As such, they’ve decided to try and make it a bit special by performing the vocals live. Big mistake. Wahlberg raps adequately but Jordan Knight’s vocals, never that convincing, sound exposed and flat. Give them their due though, they could dance in sync very well.

“Call It What You Want” peaked at No 12.

One of the best known songs of the 80s making a comeback in the 90s now as we see “Tainted Love ’91” by Soft Cell re-released and back in the charts. Why? Well, there was a Best Of album released by record label Mercury called “Memorabilia – The Singles” and “Tainted Love” was back out to promote it. It was actually a re-recorded version of the song as were all but two of the eleven tracks on the album. There had already been a Soft Cell Best Of album released in 1986 simply entitled “The Singles” but it had got swallowed up in the Xmas rush and scraped to a lowly No 58 in the charts. Fast forward five years and it was deemed the right time for another compilation to boldly go where its predecessor hadn’t. Advertised as a Soft Cell / Marc Almond album, it only actually included two Almond solo originals plus his 1989 No 1 with Gene Pitney “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” and his collaboration with Bronski Beat on 1985’s “I Feel Love (Medley)”. You can imagine a conversation at Mercury about the crucial need to include “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” in the track listing but that would mean marketing it as a Soft Cell/ Marc Almond combined project. It worked though as the album went Top 10 and the single Top 5.

For many years, I couldn’t listen to “Tainted Love” due to the amount of times I had already heard it played on radio. It got hammered at the time and is regularly given a spin whenever anything vaguely to do with the 80s is broadcast. I had reached saturation point (see also “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen). I think I might just be coming out of that phase now though. I can’t hear that much difference between the original recording and this 1991 version – maybe a slight difference in the emphasis Marc puts on some of his phrasing and a slightly less lush production? Right until this very minute I had always believed that “Tainted Love” was the best selling single of 1981 but Wikipedia tells me that the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 giving the title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. What?! Why did they feel the need to do that 40 years on? One of the great chart swizzes ever surely?

The other week Simon Mayo was telling us how Cathy Dennis was going to be No 1 in the US with “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and now here’s Bruno Brookes saying that she is No1 in the US. Slightly disingenuous as she was actually No 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart (their equivalent of our Top 40) but she was No 1 in the US Dance Club Songs chart. I’m being pedantic of course. Suffice to say she was doing very well commercially.

Now, is that a catsuit she’s wearing in this performance? I do believe it is. I’ve told my woman in a catsuit story before haven’t I? OK, here it is again. In my early days at Our Price, there was a woman in our shop called Natalie who also did some modelling on the side I think. Anyway, one day she turned up for work in a catsuit and asked me if I thought it was a bit too much. Suffice to say I didn’t know where to look. One day Mick Hucknall rang the shop asking to speak to Natalie (I think she met him on a night out and he was quite enamoured). I answered the phone and when I asked who it was asking for Natalie he replied ‘Mick’. I knew it was Hucknall as Natalie had told us all that he was interested in her but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a claim to fame, it’s pretty poor I admit.

“Touch Me (All Night Long)” peaked at No 5 in the UK.

When I saw in the running order that Dannii Minogue was on this show, I assumed it was to perform her “Love And Kisses” single but it seems I’ve written so many of these reviews that I’ve lost tracks of the weeks. “Love And Kisses” has been and gone and we are now on to Dannii’s follow up single called “Success”. Wikipedia tells me it was also known as “$ucce$$” which was a really naff idea if true.

Like its predecessor, this was lifted from her debut album and was about the trappings of celebrity (probably). It’s got a bit more of a heavier beat to it than the much lighter “Love And Kisses” but it’s still pretty anonymous. Dannii clearly tries to deliver the song’s harder edge with a sassier performance as she takes off her jacket early doors to reveal a tattoo on her right arm which appears to be an elephant (?) and a dress with the straps dangling so perilously low as to run the risk of dropping altogether potentially causing a Janet Jackson style wardrobe malfunction. Even Bruno declared that he had been concerned (well it was pre-watershed I suppose). Also, whoever styled Dannii’s hair, what was the deal with the long straggly bit covering the left side of her face? It didn’t look practical at all. The whole thing looks like she’d just dashed out fo the back of a taxi at the last second before taking to the stage.

Talking of taxis, apparently when recording her album in Brooklyn, there has been some shootings near the studio meaning taxicab drivers were reluctant to take Dannii’s fare for the journey there. She supposedly found the recording experience in New York City both “awesome” and “terrifying”. Also potentially terrifying was the prospect of Dannii repeating that TOTP performance, droopy shoulder straps and all, before the Queen at the The Royal Variety Show that year. Thankfully, I can report that although there was a fair amount of flesh on display (especially from her backing dancers), Dannii kept her modesty intact at all times (unlike when she did those nude calendars back in the mid 90s).

“Success” did a good job of consolidating the success of “Love And Kisses” by peaking at No 11 where it stayed for three weeks.

More breakneck speed Breakers again this week as we get four songs crammed into in 1 min and 20 seconds. I’m sure the TOTP producers were beginning to worry about the competition from ITV’s The Chart Show with its video only show format and were trying to redress the balance. We start with “Shiny Happy People” by REM who Bruno reckons have got a ‘massive cult following’ in the UK. I think they may have surpassed that particular status by this point with the release of the “Out Of Time” album but the arrival of this single certainly left any remnants of being a cult way behind them. Very much the band’s marmite moment, it surely can’t be denied that “Shiny Happy People” brought them to the attention of people that had never heard of them before. We sold copy after copy after copy of the album in the Our Price store I worked in off the back of this song.

Apparently written ironically with the title and chorus being based on a Chinese propaganda poster, Michael Stipe however disputes this theory. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Shiny Happy People" is "not meant to be ironic at all", Michael Stipe says. "We wrote it because we were challenging ourselves. I grew up a child of the '60s listening to The Monkees and the Archies and The Banana Splits…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

"… The guys threw me the stupidest song that sounded so buoyant and weird and I was like, 'Okay, I accept the challenge.' So it was bubblegum music made for kids." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

Of course, you can’t mention “Shiny Happy People” without referring to Kate Pierson from the B-52s whose vocals on this really did add something to it. Kate’s band were enjoying a commercial renaissance themselves after the success of 1990’s “Cosmic Thing” album so that, allied with the fact that both band’s were from Athens, Georgia made the fit between them kind of inevitable.

Not convinced that this was the song that made mainstream superstars of REM? How about this evidence then. “Shiny Happy People” was used as the theme song to the unaired pilot for the sitcom Friends, known at that time as Friends Like Us.

Still not having it? Well how about this then? REM singing a version of it called “Happy Furry Monsters” on Sesame Street. Come on. Is there a safer TV show in the history of television?

“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6 in the UK, easily their biggest hit at the time and still their joint third highest charting UK single to this day.

“A new name to us all” next (according to Bruno Brookes) as Flowered Up breach the Top 40 for the first time. So were they a new name? Well, they had formed two years earlier and had released two singles in 1990 which made Nos 54 and 75 so not totally unknown I would wager Bruno. In fairness to Brookes, had I heard of them before “Take It” was a hit? I really can’t remember but I do recall talk of them being ‘the next Happy Mondays’ at the time. That may have been less due to their sound and more to do with them having a Bez like dancer figure in their ranks, the brilliantly named Barry Mooncult who actually looked more like Peter Gabriel (in his Genesis days) on stage with his flower petal costume.

Their chart breakthrough coincided with a move from indie label Heavenly Records to major London Records so that may explain why it happened (major label promotion budget etc). Debut (and only) album “A Life With Brian” was released later in the year and the band had already appeared on the front covers of both Melody Maker and NME before then. I think they were quite well known in the end then Bruno. Flowered Up will perhaps forever be mostly associated with their biggest hit “Weekender”, the massively epic 12 minute long single that made the Top 20 in 1992 and which the band steadfastly refused to edit for airplay reasons. Hopefully we’ll get to see that in future TOTP repeats. In the meantime, “Take It” peaked at No 34.

Giving Dannii Minogue a run for her money in the strappy top stakes is Carol Decker of T’Pau who are back in the charts with “Whenever You Need Me“. No, really. Going against all known logic, 80s popsters T’Pau were somehow still having hits into the 90s. It really did rally against the status quo as when they returned two years after their last Top 40 hit, they sounded exactly the same. Now I’d had a soft spot for this lot back in their 80s heyday but even I couldn’t have cared less about them come 1991.

“Whenever You Need Me” was the lead single from their third album “The Promise”. I remember we had lots of it in stock in our store and hardly sold a copy. Somehow it made No 10 in the charts whilst the single made No 16 (although it was their last ever trip to the Top 40). Thinking back now, I wonder if there was some chart manipulation going on from the record label with lots of FOC stock being given to chart return stores in return for a few beeps of the album barcode on the Gallup scanner. That might well be a scandalous claim, it’s just that we really didn’t sell many at all. Whatever was going on, it didn’t really work as the band called it a day after “The Promise” (two further singles released from it did nothing at all chart-wise) although there have been reunions and sporadic gigging since then. I saw Carol Decker on the bottom of the bill on one of hose Here And Now tours about 20 tears ago and she still turns up on the music TV channels every now and again presenting things like Carol Deckers 40 Ultimate Rock Chicks or something.

After getting a little too overexcited about Dannii Minogue’s dress straps, Bruno Brookes now starts getting himself in bother over a “threesome of girls”. A threesome Bruno?! You couldn’t have just said ‘trio’?! Anyway, It’s Wilson Phillips that he’s referring to and the rest of his intro makes little sense either as he says they have had No 1 success in America and are now making it big in the UK. Whilst all of that is true – “You’re in Love” was their third single taken from their debut album to top the US charts – Bruno makes it sound as if they are only just starting to make waves in the UK. Actually, they had a Top 10 hit over here the previous year with “Hold On”. Had he forgotten that already? The UK had kind of lost interest in Wilson Phillips already though. “You’re in Love” peaked at No 29 this side of the pond and they would score just a further two hit singles on our shores, neither of which was especially big.

The highest new entry next and it’s a big one. A single going straight in at No 3 wasn’t something that happened every week back in the early 90s (especially by a new, unknown act) so there must have been a big buzz around Crystal Waters and her song “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”. So unusual was it that, at the time, it meant that she was the highest debuting female artist ever*.

*She was subsequently relieved of that title by Gabrielle in 1993 when “Dreams” debuted at No 2 who was in turn usurped by Whigfield a year later when “Saturday Night” went straight in at No 1. Crystal Waters didn’t quite top the charts as Bruno suggested she might, peaking instead at No 2.

The song is actually about homelessness (it was released as “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” in some territories) but for me, it almost bordered on novelty status with that incessant and extremely annoying ‘La-da-dee/la-dee-da’ hook. Apparently though, it was very much seen as a house music classic and, more than that, it was a trailblazer of the genre in that it combined social conscience with beats. It routinely appears in music polls as one of the greatest dance tunes of the 90s! I had no idea! Maybe I should have guessed at its house music reputation judging by the dance moves Crystal gives in this performance – she performs the song as if she’s busting some moves in a club rather than in front of an audience of millions on the UK’s premier pop music show. The track is of course nothing to do with the country singer Don Williams’ song “I Recall a Gypsy Woman” which my Dad does a pretty good version of.

Talking of novelties, here was something you didn’t see that often – a contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist breaking through to have a monster hit in the mainstream charts. Amy Grant is known as ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ but here she was back in 1991 with yet another song that had been a US No 1. How many has that been just on this TOTP? Three? If you include Cathy Dennis’s dance chart topper? “Baby Baby” was one of those radio friendly, feel-good pop songs that you found yourself humming along to even though you didn’t particularly like it. Now my wife really did like this one to be fair and even today she can sometimes be heard humming it absent-mindedly.

The heart-warmingly sweet / nausea inducing (delete as appropriate) video received a nomination for Best Female Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. Totally lacking in special effects but just portraying Amy and her on screen love interest doing luv’d up things seemed to appeal to a simpler sense of what life should all be about. Love, friendship, fun…and rolling oranges back and forth to each other apparently. I’m trying to think of any other Christian Music artists that I know of. Stryper? Were they a CCM artist?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes! They are Christian Rock band! Two things here. How did I dredge that up from my memory banks and what the Hell is Christian Rock?!

“Baby Baby” peaked at No 2 in the UK.

When I think of Jason Donovan and 1991, only one thing comes immediately to mind – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and his No 1 record “Any Dream Will Do”. Despite Bruno advising us that the show starring Donovan is opening in June, Jase isn’t here with that song. No, it’s a little ditty called “RSVP”, a single that’s so forgettable, nobody ever did reply to him. Apparently it was a ‘not released before’ track from his forthcoming Greatest Hits album but top points to anyone who remembered this bilge. In line with his recent chart track record, it wasn’t a major hit peaking at No 17. Not even Jason’s guitar playing and some leather trousers could save this one.

Cher is still at the top of the pile with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”. Now as its the third week of its reign at the top and I have nothing else to say about it, I dug about for some tenuous links between Cher and other artists on this TOTP and I found one! “Baby Baby” wasn’t Amy Grant’s first US No 1. That came in 1986 when her duet with Peter Cetera “The Next Time I Fall” hit the top. And who has had a massive hit duetting with the ex-Chicago man? Yes, Cher of course whose “After All” went Top 10 in the US in 1989. Small world and all that.

To finish off, we have a forthcoming No 1 record by perhaps one of the most useless bands in the whole of the decade (in my humble opinion). Color Me Badd were an R’n’B four piece who briefly threatened global dominance after their “I Wanna Sex You Up” single became a hit all around the world. The group described their style as ‘hip-hop doo-wop’ although I seem to recall a lot of talk of them being part of this new jack swing movement but maybe that was purely because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack to the film New Jack City. For the record, I described Color Me Badd as atrocious shit and yet the UK seemed unable to resist their …erm…charms and sent it to No 1. Was it just that it had the word sex in the title and chorus? I can just imagine loads of beered up young men sidling up to women on the dance floor in clubs up and down the country crooning “I Wanna Sex You Up” to them. Ugh!

As for Color Me Badd themselves, I have to say that the word sex wasn’t what came to mind when looking at them. If you were trying to put a hip hop boy band together, I don’t think I’d have included a Kenny G lookalike and someone trying (and failing) to look like “Faith” era George Michael but with a long bob haircut in their ranks.

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	New Kids On The Block	Call It What You Want	Ok, I will. It was shit
2	Soft Cell / Marc Almond	Tainted Love ’91	Nope
3	Cathy Dennis	Touch Me (All Night Long)	Nah
4	Danny Minogue	Success	Failure – no
5	REM	Shiny Happy People	I didn’t
6	Flowered Up	Take It	No
7	T’Pau	Whenever You Need Me	Negative
8	Wilson Phillips	You’re In Love	But not with this song – no
9	Crystal Waters	Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)	I’d have rather listened to Crystal Tips and Alistair sing
10	Amy Grant	Baby Baby	I didn’t. Not sure if my wife did or not
11	Jason Donovan	RSVP	Dear Jason, this is a shit song – no
12	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was all a genuine mistake
13	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Hell no!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000y2fl/top-of-the-pops-16051991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 30 JUN 1994

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TOTP 21 APR 1994

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TOTP 12 SEP 1991

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TOTP 06 SEP 1991

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TOTP 16 MAY 1991

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