It’s the Summer of 1998 and there’s only one game in town – the World Cup. Yes, France ‘98 is in full swing and, despite only starting two days before this TOTP aired, Scotland have lost a game already! It was hardly the embarrassment many were expecting (or hoping for if you were English maybe) going down 2-1 to the reigning champions and pre-tournament favourites Brazil to a late own goal. England are there as well for the first time since Italia ‘90 and after the hysteria and heartache of the Euros ‘96 tournament, expectations for Glenn Hoddle’s squad were high despite the omission of Gazza.
Now before you all start thinking I’ve turned this blog into a football fest (again), there’s a valid reason why I mention the World Cup which is the plethora of football themed hits that it generated in the UK Top 40. There’s two on this show but there’ll be a further three on the following week’s as well. Of course, football related songs were nothing new. Going right back to 1970 and the England World Cup Squad’s No 1 “Back Home”, there have always been attempts to merge the two worlds of football and music, some successful, some dreadful. 1972 saw my beloved Chelsea riding high in the charts with “Blue Is The Colour” whilst the 80s saw teams competing in the FA Cup final regularly releasing singles to mark the occasion. Who can forget the cringeworthy “Ossie’s Dream” from 1981 and that line from Spurs legend Ossie Ardilles “In the cup for Tottingham”? Into the 90s, we had the unspeakably awful “Come On You Reds” by Manchester United which topped the charts but at other end of the scale, we also had the sublime “World In Motion” by New Order. Then, of course, came Euro ‘96 and terrace anthem “Three Lions” – we would never see the end of that particular hit. So what are the class of ‘98 football songs like? Let’s find out with our host Jo Whiley (who is a Spurs fan – boo!)…The football songs are coming (I promise/warn you) but we start with two established Top 10 hits that have already been on the show previously beginning with “Horny ‘98” by MousseTfeaturingHot ‘N’Juicy.
Despite just being on the previous week, I’d saved a couple of tidbits to wheel out for future appearances starting with the fact that it was included on “Chef Aid: The South Park” album. Around the end of 1998, the animated sitcom South Park became a TV ratings sensation and made household names of its four protagonists Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. Known for its profane, dark and satiric humour, it soon gained a reputation for being outrageous beyond the normal standards of broadcasting decency. It was also fabulously funny and to this day continues to push the boundaries by being a constant thorn in the side of man-baby Donald Trump. The Our Price chain for whom I worked stocked all the show’s merchandise and, of course, the album and hit single “Chocolate Salty Balls” by Chef which would appear at Christmas. We could never play the album in store because of the Parental Advisory sticker but, having found the version on the album with the conversation between show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker and the character of Sid Greenfield (America’sMostWanted director) bracketing it, that version is much more palatable.
However, that’s nothing compared to this almighty mashup that appeared in 2006 that blended the track with “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols. I’d never been aware of this until now but this is truly epic…
The second song we’ve seen before comes from Lutricia McNeal who is marooned outside of the Top 5 but still in the Top 10 at No 7 this week with “Stranded”. There really isn’t that much to say about this one and indeed, Lutricia doesn’t have the biggest online presence with even her Wikipedia page’s last update on her whereabouts being as long ago as 2011. As such, I’m forced to bang on again about how unusual her first name is. According to the mynamestats.com website, only 785 people in the whole of America are called Lutricia making the name the 10,377th most popular. That means there are 0.25 people per every 100,000 Americans called Lutricia. Even the name Lucretia with all its connotations is more popular. There is a singer called Lucretia – Lucretia Death whose LinkedIn bio refers to ‘vampiric longing’, ‘eternal darkness’ and ‘unholy ascension’! Gulp! Don’t fancy being stranded with her!
Still no football songs! Perhaps I should have realised that there was another trend going on in the charts which was the amount of female artists having hits at this time. Following Lutricia McNeal here’s Shania Twain (and there are two more solo artists and an all girl group at No 1 to come). In my head, Shania’s run of hits started with “You’re Still The One”, continued with “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and culminated in “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”. It turns out that these are just the ones I know and not a reliable account of her discography as there are other hits in that run and loads after it as well. Should I be embarrassed by my lack of Shania knowledge? I’ll live with it thanks. Anyway, one of those hits that I missed out was “When” which having heard it, does sound faintly familiar, presumably because of its catchy hooks. The lyrics however…I mean. Really? Look at these…
“I’d love to wake up smiling, full of the joys of Spring
And hear on CNN that Elvis lives again
And that John’s back with The Beatles and they’re going out on tour
Is it me or do they seem a little bit…unsophisticated? Is that the right word? Clunky maybe? Ham-fisted? I don’t want to come across as a pseud or condescending but I think I prefer a bit more mystery in my lyrics. Maybe I’m missing the point of Shania though which, according to Jo Whiley, is that she’s gorgeous describing her as “drool-inducing” and instructing us to wipes our mouths after her performance. Really Jo?!
It’s another female solo artist now with her second hit single but that term is a complete antonym for the product she released. Nothing to do with the title of her song which was called “Gimme Love” but rather the amount of versions and mixes that were made of it. I’m talking about Alexia whose debut hit “Uh La La La” had made the Top 10 in March which itself had been the subject of multiple remixes that were commissioned by her record company Sony in an attempt to launch their artist in Europe. “Gimme Love” took it to another level with 20 different versions listed on its Wikipedia page. Single? They should have promoted it as a ‘multiple’. Now apparently “Gimme Love” is an example of Europop whereas “Uh La La La” was classified as Eurodance and the shift of genre disappointed her fan base. I can’t say I’m expert enough to be able to pinpoint the differences but what I can say is that “Gimme Love” is repetitive in the extreme which also renders it rather insubstantial – in my humble opinion of course. The initial pressings of the single contained a listing error showing the title as “Gimmi Love” which is rather appropriate as the word ‘Alexia’ can refer to an acquired reading disorder characterised by the inability to read.
We’ve finally got to a football song but this one was not a typical example of the genre. “Don’t Come Home Too Soon” was the official World Cup song of the Scotland squad and was recorded by Del Amitri providing the band with what would be their final Top 20 hit. Eschewing the traditional notion of the singalong football song, this was a slow ballad and, in truth, a rather mournful one and I say that as someone who is quite partial to a bit of Del Amitri. If it’s sound was mournful then its lyrics were positively pessimistic (if it’s possible to be such a thing) referring to the team as “long shots” and saying that the rest of the word “may not be shaking yet” and limiting Scotland’s chances to not being on “that stupid plane” and not coming home too soon. Not winning the damn thing, just staying a bit longer than usual. In fairness, that probably was the limit of their ambitions given that they’d never (and still haven’t) got past the group stage of any major tournament. Even so, the song didn’t go down that well with some of the Tartan Army. I’m sure I read something about lead singer Justin Currie saying he’d been abused in the street for writing such a negative song. As for Jo Whiley’s hope in her intro that Scotland would stuff Norway and Morocco, they drew 1-1 to the former and got hammered 0-3 by the latter leaving them bottom of Group A and on that ‘stupid plane’ home that Del Amitri feared.
Heck, we really were in the era of ‘lad culture’ back in the late 90s weren’t we? In her intro to yet another female artist on tonight’s show, Jo Whiley says “a woman who’ll always get her tassels out for the lads, this is Mariah Carey”. Or does she say “tonsils” not tassels? The subtitles say ‘tassels’. Either way, you were better than this Jo surely?! Or was she perhaps using irony to undermine the “get your t**s out for the lads” line? Nah, I think she was going along with the predominant narrative.
Anyway, Mariah is here with her new single “My All” which was taken from her “Butterfly” album the lead single from which (“Honey”) had combined hip-hop and R&B and gone Top 3. Its follow up – the album’s title track – was a pop gospel ballad which had only managed a high of No 22. As a result, Mariah edged her bets with her next release as “My All” is both a ballad and an R&B dance track. The first 2:20 of the track is in a slow paced, whispered vocals style reminiscent of Toni Braxton but with Latin guitars before the bpm winds up (the subtitles literally say ‘Beat kicks in, audience cheers’) and Mariah gets almost hysterical proclaiming she’d risk her life to feel someone’s body. Blimey! The blending of styles worked and gave Ms Carey a No 4 hit here and yet another Stateside chart topper. As with Alexia before her, there were loads of different mixes of the track to accommodate every radio station sub genre and she also recorded a Spanish version but the first line of that version was mistranslated and was grammatically incorrect. As a blogger, I can confirm that these things matter you know.
And so we get to the second football song of the night and like Del Amitri’s, it’s also the official World Cup song for a competing nation but this time England. After the terrace anthem and official song that was “Three Lions” just two years prior for Euro ‘96, the English FA wanted to go in a different direction for the ‘98 World Cup. The result was “(How Does It Feel) To Be On Top Of The World” by England United who were Echo and the Bunnymen, Ocean Colour Scene, Space and, rather inexplicably, the Spice Girls. The song was written by Ian McCulloch and Johnny Marr though the latter wasn’t officially part of England United. The reaction to it was overwhelmingly negative. ‘You can’t sing it on the terraces’ seemed to be the main complaint about it but I think, in truth, its major failing was that it wasn’t “Three Lions”, a song so durable, it still to this day gets trotted out for every international tournament. Indeed, the first reworking of it would will be along in the next repeat and would easily outsell “(How Does It Feel) To Be On Top Of The World” reaching No 1 again. According to Wikipedia, when the latter was played at Wembley in a pre-World Cup friendly, the crowd that day booed it.
Going against national taste once more, I quite liked the England United effort. Sure, it wasn’t much of a football song but it was a decent track. It’s nicely constructed and has an uplifting, soar away chorus. I wonder actually, if it was ultimately rejected as a potential Echo and the Bunnymen release for being too pop? As for the other artists on the record, I’m not entirely sure what linked them altogether. OK, you could draw a very basic line between The Bunnymen, Space and Ocean Colour Scene as being rock/pop groups whose paths might have crossed at some point or another? The first two were both Liverpool bands of course so there might be a potential association there but the Spice Girls? Mel C was another scouser so was there a link there? Talking of the Spice Girls, as with the “Viva Forever” performance the other week, this TOTP appearance was also clearly recorded some time previous to its broadcast date as the recently departed Geri Halliwell features and executive producer Chris Cowey must have thought himself doubly lucky to have another bit of film with Ginger Spice there in the ranks still. She doesn’t look too unhappy with her lot in life, bouncing around deliriously alongside Mel C and Emma Bunton. If anything you might have thought Victoria and Mel B were the ones potentially uncommitted to the cause, separated from the other three on the other side of Ian McCulloch and Simon Fowler of Ocean Colour Scene and turning in a much more reserved performance. So there you have it. England United. The forgotten English football song. I don’t see it being revived any time soon.
B*Witched remain at No 1 with “C’est La Vie”. Watching this performance back, it’s clear that they were being promoted as purveyors of bouncy, good time, care free pop music. The catchy tune, the hyper-energetic dance routine…and yet behind the image, as all too often happens, there was sadness, despair and dark times. The ridiculously long days the group would work and their relentless schedule was sometimes too much. So much that in the case of Keavy Lynch, it would cause a major mental health issue. Keavy is an interesting figure in pop being an identical twin whose sister was chosen as the focal point of an internationally successful group over her. That must mess with your head! Are there any other cases of this? The Proclaimers are identical twins but they very much come as a pair and are seen as a unit. I love The Proclaimers and I’m not sure I know which one is which! Bros? Again, I’m not sure that the screams and adulation were reserved just for singer Matt Goss. As the vocalist, I guess he commanded more profile than his drummer brother Luke but they had a ready made stooge in bassist Craig ‘Ken’ Logan. Maybe the other B*Witched members Lindsay Armaou and Sinead O’Carroll felt aggrieved as well as Keavy but they didn’t have the mind f**k that the chosen lead singer looked exactly like them. Having to sing a song called “C’est La Vie” just twisted the knife a little deeper.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Mousse T featuring Hot ‘N’ Juicy
Horny ’98
No
2
Lutricia McNeal
Stranded
Nah
3
Shania Twain
When
Absolutely not
4
Alexia
Gimme Love
Nope
5
Del Amitri
Don’t Come Home To Soon
No but I had it on a Best Of album of theirs
6
Mariah Carey
My All
Big NO
7
England United
(How Does It Feel) To Be On Top Of The World
It’s another no
8
B*Witched
C’Est La Vie
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.
We’re still in the early weeks of the Chris Cowey tenure of TOTP and this would seem to be the experimental stage where he’s trying things out to see what sticks. For example, we’ve gone from just seven featured songs from a couple of weeks ago to a whopping ten on this show. TEN! I better get my skates on then…Tonight’s host is Jayne Middlemiss for the second time in three weeks and hopefully she’ll have conquered those nerves which she displayed on her debut appearance. She gets an early opportunity to demonstrate that she has because, as with Jo Whiley last week, our host does a direct to camera piece before the credits have even rolled. There’s no prop for Jayne to kick over though like Jo had. Instead, there’s a shot of a studio clock and an ‘On Air’ sign and Jayne telling us it’s time to dance in front of the telly before doing that head nod thing she does – that might start to get annoying very quickly. It’s probably the nerves again.
We start though with an artist who never seems anything less than serenely confident in her own abilities. Lisa Stansfield had been having hits since the late 80s with the biggest and most well known of those arriving early on with “All Around The World”. Inspired by ‘The Walrus of Love’ Barry White, the track contained a tribute to him in its spoken word intro that was based on the album version of White’s “Let The Music Play”. Eight years on, Lisa would go into full on honour mode by recording a cover of White’s 1974 hit “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up”. In terms of topping and tailing Lisa’s chart career, it couldn’t have been more perfect as it would prove to be her final UK Top 40 hit when released as the second single from her eponymously titled 1997 album. The radio edit is a pretty faithful version but numerous remixes of it by the likes of Hani and Frankie Knuckles would propel it to the top of the US Dance Club Songs chart. The latter would receive a Grammy for the Best Remixed Recording, Non Classical category. Lisa would ultimately satisfy her Barry White fixation by duetting with him in 1999 on “The Longer We Make Love”.
I talked in the past post about not being sure that the presenter links were filmed at the same time and in the same studio as the actual performances due to the cutaway and cutback shots between the two. Well, I’m still thinking that way for this show. Curiously, last week, the only time the two were in sync was when Jo Whiley interacted with Wet Wet Wet who were the second act on and the same pattern is repeated in this show as Jayne Middlemiss is definitely in the same geographical and temporal space as this week’s artist who are second in the running order. Was something going on or am I reading too much into it? For the record, said second artist is Supergrass with their single “Sun Hits The Sky”. Similar to Skunk Anansie, I sometimes think this lot don’t get the credit they deserve. Certainly I’d forgotten or not known in the first place how many great tunes Skin and co had released and although I was more aware of the Supergrass output (I had two of their albums), it’s an easy trap to fall into to immediately think of “Alright” when you hear their name. However, they had so many more great (and better) tunes than that like “Moving”, “Pumping On Your Stereo”, “Caught By The Fuzz” and this one. “Sun Hits The Sky” is a tight, nifty indie rock tune that powers along with some force.
It was the third single taken from the album “In It For The Money” the title of which tied in quite nicely with an event that took place in April of 1996 when lead singer Gaz Coombes met the train robber Ronnie Biggs in Rio. Biggs had his own footnote in music history of course, having recorded with the Sex Pistols on two songs for TheGreatRock ‘n’ RollSwindle plus The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was the basis of the 1985 Paul Hardcastle hit “Just For Money”. “In It For The Money”? “Just For Money”? It’s close enough for a tenuous link isn’t it?
And so to the fourth and final appearance on the show by Eternal on the back of their hit with Bebe Winans, a previous chart topper, “I Wanna Be The Only One”. Fourth?! Yes, four weeks on the bounce they’ve featured but in defence of whoever’s decision it was, the single entered the charts at No 1 and then spent three consecutive weeks at No 2 so it was a very consistent seller. It’s taken until this fourth performance though to find a different way of promoting the single which they do here by doing a ‘live acoustic’ version of the track. Fair play as I think it works pretty well. Were the pure white outfits the girls are wearing a deliberate choice to project the gospel flavour this version has? If so, it’s kind of undermined by the stage they’re performing on which seems to have a leopard print design on it. Bit odd.
Despite its high sales and being the UK’s sixteenth best selling single of the year, it was towards the back of the queue in that list when compared to all the year’s other No 1 records. Only four chart toppers appeared below Eternal in the Top 40 of 1997 – the 1996 Christmas No 1 from the Spice Girls which is understandable but then also their 1997 festive hit which isn’t. The other two below Eternal were the dance hit “You’re Not Alone” by Olive and the Verve’s only No 1 “The Drugs Don’t Work”.
From current “I Wanna Be The Only One” hitmakers to a band whose first single to make the charts was “The Only One I Know” which peaked at No 9 in 1990. In the seven years since that breakthrough hit for TheCharlatans, it hadn’t been a string of subsequent huge chart successes* since then. Of the twelve singles the band released between 1990 and 1995, none had got higher than No 12, five hadn’t cracked the Top 20 and three hadn’t even made the Top 40. Of course, high chart positions are no guarantee of song quality and the public cruelly ignored some cracking tunes. The nation finally got with it in 1996 with the release of “One To Another” which went Top 3 whilst follow up “North Country Boy” made No 4. Then came “How High” which peaked at No 6 giving the band three consecutive Top 10 hits for the first time ever. It was an impressive run of chart numbers but more importantly, they were all quality tracks and not a cover version in sight.
*It was a different story when it came to their albums with three of the five released up to this point having topped the charts.
“How High” is not only a quality tune but surely unique in referencing this TV show from my youth which made a huge impression on me and had kids up and down the country saying “Ah, grasshopper”. Not even “Kung Fu” by Ash mentions it in its lyrics.
We’ve finally arrived at the last Michael Jackson release that I’ll ever have to discuss in this blog, if not quite his final TOTP appearance. As I will be stopping at the end of the 1999 repeats, “HIStory/Ghosts” will be the last Jacko single I have to write about as he would not release another one until 2001’s “You Rock My World”. And there have been oh so many that I have had to comment on. My blogging started way back with the 1983 repeats and “Billie Jean”. Since then, the self styled ‘King of Pop’ had…
*checks Wikipedia*
32(!) UK Top 40 singles! My God! I haven’t gone back through all my posts to see if I reviewed every single one but it must be a pretty high number. So, 32 singles over 15 years (‘83-‘97) is almost exactly two a year, every year except it didn’t work like that of course. Jacko’s singles would come in gluts with the timing of them obviously based around when he had an album out which was pretty consistently every four to five years. And when an album came out, so did a bucket load of tracks released as singles from them. Seven from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”, nine again from “Dangerous” and then five from “HIStory”. The final two of those 32 were taken from the “Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix” album with the very final one being this double A-side. There will be one final TOTP appearance in the 90s for Jacko with this single so I’ll devote this post to the “HIStory” track and the final one to “Ghosts”. So what can I say about “HIStory” the song? Not much apart from it’s hideous. I get that it’s a remix but seriously, Michael Jackson meets what? Italian house is that? I don’t care to find out any more. Even Chris Cowey can’t have been convinced as we get less than two minutes of the promo. There were periods in the early 90s when whole shows were structured around the screening of a video exclusive for his latest release which would command a good seven minutes of screen time.
Right then, what’s going on here? Two artists squeezed into just over a minute and a half of screen time? We’re not going back to having a ‘Breakers’ section are we? Well, no we’re not – it makes less sense than that. It seems to be essentially a plug for upcoming performances by artists on the show but here’s the thing – the clip used is just that; a minute long clip sourced from the actual performance that would be shown in full the following week. Why didn’t they just show the whole thing now? In the case of the first artist featured Blur, their single “On Your Own” had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired as far as I can tell so why not just have played the song in full? They could have labelled it as an ‘exclusive’ if need be seeing as it hadn’t charted yet. Oh well, maybe it’s for the best given that we won’t see the full performance episode due to the Puff Daddy/P Diddy issue – a minute and a half is better than nothing at all as it’s a great track.
The third single from their eponymously titled fifth studio album, it tends to get overlooked when lined up against the No 1 that was “Beetlebum” and the memorable ‘woo-hoo’ of “Song 2” but it’s a good track in its own right. Damon Albarn has described it as the first ever Gorillaz track and you can understand where he’s coming from. It might not have the whiplash energy of “Song 2” but it has its own irresistible momentum and a huge hook in the singalong chorus. I have a distinct memory of being in a Birmingham nightclub six months later (I was visiting my younger sister) and being slammed around the dance floor along with the rest of the ravers when the DJ played “Song 2” and “On Your Own” one after the other. I was approaching 30 at the time so I don’t know what I thought I was doing but my sister is five years younger than me so I guess she would have still been in her club going years?
“On Your Own” would debut and peak at No 5 maintaining a fine run of hit singles for the band. Check these numbers out:
1 – 5 – 7 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 5
Their album sales weren’t too shabby either. Blur would return in 1999 with a fourth consecutive No 1 album called “13”.
We encounter the same curious plugging strategy that was reserved for Blur also applied to the Pet Shop Boys whose version of “Somewhere” from West Side Story is given a 30 seconds slot to big up the fact that the full performance will be on the show not next week even but in two weeks time! Just play the whole thing now for chrissakes! The single was released three days after this TOTP so surely it would have helped build anticipation for its release?
Anyway, why were Neil and Chris putting their stamp on this Bernstein and Sondheim classic? Well, it was to promote their mini residency at the Savoy Theatre in London called Pet Shop BoysSomewhere (Ok, we get it guys). The single would also be added to a rerelease of their latest album “Bilingual”. Of course, the duo had some history with cover versions stretching back to their 1987 Christmas No 1 “Always On My Mind”. They followed that with a mash up of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” and Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to glorious, extravagant effect in 1991 before taking on a one of the campiest of camp disco classics in “Go West” two years later. All of these had worked out pretty well to my ears (especially “Always On My Mind”) but I don’t think they quite pulled it off with “Somewhere”. Maybe, Neil doesn’t gave the vocal chops for such a towering song and attempting to turn it into a club anthem by adding a techno beat just to suit his voice isn’t the answer. Maybe the answer would have been to leave well alone. My wife loves West Side Story but can’t stand Tennant’s singing so I’m pretty sure she was not a fan of this one. Pet Shop Boys had twenty UK hit singles in the 90s of various sizes of which “Somewhere” was the eighteenth. There’s not much further to go now my wife will be pleased to hear.
They’re not hip, they’re not cool but, as Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, “they’re top turns” and I’ve always got room for a bit of Del Amitri when the chance arises. Often criminally overlooked and undervalued, the Scottish pop rockers have a very decent back catalogue albeit that their chart positions weren’t always a standout. The band had notched up 11 UK Top 40 hits to this point in their career but none had got any higher than No 11. And yet…in an unlikely turn of events, they had managed to go Top 10 just two years earlier in the US with the surprise hit “Roll To Me”. Did it make them happy? Not likely. In true dour Scot style, they weren’t big fans of the song (despite having written and recorded it) and considered it rather a throwaway tune. No pleasing some people.
Anyway, they were back in 1997 with a new single (which hopefully they did like as it was the lead track off new album “Some Other Sucker’s Parade”) called “Not Where It’s At”. Was it a musical demonstration of self knowledge about their image? Probably not but listening back to it now, it does prick something in my mind about identity. Is it me or is there a smidgen of a whiff of XTC about this one? I may be committing an act of musical heresy but it just came to me all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the jangly guitars, I don’t know. I was so taken with the idea though that I asked ChatGPT what “Not Where It’s At” would sound like done by XTC. The answer I received was almost instantaneous but it also showed how AI is based on assumptions that don’t always hold water. In its final reckoning it seemed to me to be saying if XTC had come up with the track, it would have been…well…better which I’m not sure is fair. Maybe my question wasn’t fair so I asked ChatGPT a control question – “Who was I?” It’s answer? That I was a former TOTP presenter! AI – it’s not where it at.
Next up is a guy you don’t hear much about these days but whom, for a while back there, was going to be the next new music superstar after winning a MOBO and a BRIT. Finley Quaye came from a musical family – his Dad was jazz and blues pianist Cab Quaye whilst his Mum would take him to see sets at Ronnie Scott’s legendary jazz club in his childhood. Almost inevitably, he moved into a career in music in his early 20s and appeared, fully formed, in 1997 with his double platinum selling album “Maverick A Strike” and a clutch of hit singles the first of which was “Sunday Shining”, a Bob Marley track from his 1978 album “Kaya”. It’s a radically different version though blending the reggae of the original with an accessible 90s soul sound that carried itself with an air of knowing conviction – or maybe that was the super confident Finley himself?
Talking of which, as with Beck, the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth to name a few, just about all the cool kids that I worked with at Our Price loved this guy. Given this statement, it is of no surprise that my eternally ever cooler than me wife had his album and I think she caught him live as well. Can’t remember what she thought of him but at least he turned up which he failed to do whilst playing Hull (where I now live) in 2022 and, as I understand it, failed to rock up at the venue with paying customers already inside. Mind you, he has form in that area. He was booted off stage in 2015 after just 30 minutes of a gig by the promoter of a venue in Gloucestershire for being shambolically awful. Bloody mavericks! I’d strike them off.
New show director Chris Cowey is still tinkering with the format and this week has turned his attention to the chart rundown. Having already dispensed with a full run through of the Top 40 in favour of just the 20 best selling singles that week, he’s now tacked it on to the Top 10 countdown and it’s voiced by host Jayne Middlemiss. There’s no run up to this – we’re just straight into it after Finley Quaye’s performance. It’s all a bit jarring. Anyway, Hanson are still at No 1 with “MMMBop” but it’s the last of their three weeks at the top. It’s an unusual title for a song so what’s it all about? According to band member Zac Hanson in an interview with the Songfacts website in 2004, it’s about holding on to the things in life that matter and that MMMBop represents “a frame of time or the futility of life”. Mmm…(Bop). Whatever. I do recall a lady coming into the Our Price where I worked at the time to buy the single for her granddaughter and she was pretty sure that she had asked for the right thing at the counter but wanted to double check and so asked again what it was called. My colleague Jim who was serving her said, rather understandably, “It’s called MMMBop” and we both looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh at the oddness of him saying those words out loud*.
*I should probably be absolutely clear that we were laughing at the song title not the lady buying it!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Lisa Stansfield
Never, Never Gonna Give You Up
Nope
2
Supergrass
Sun Hits The Sky
Negative
3
Eternal featuring Bebe Winans
I Wanna Be The Only One
Yes but for my wife
4
The Charlatans
How High
No but I had a Best Of with it on
5
Michael Jackson
HIStory/Ghosts
Nah
6
Blur
On Your Own
No but I had the album
7
Pet Shop Boys
Somewhere
No
8
Del Amitri
Not Where It’s At
See 4 above
9
Finley Quaye
Sunday Shining
No but my wife had the album
10
Hanson
MMMBop
Yes but for my six year old goddaughter
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.
We’re four weeks into a make over that saw TOTP adopt a new logo, set, title sequence and theme tune but we should probably remind ourselves that this was nothing compared to the changes going on at Radio 1 under controller Matthew Bannister at this time. Determined to rid the station of its Smashie and Nicey image, Bannister had overseen the exits of such names as Gary Davies, Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini in the 18 months since his appointment and had also made the decision that the station would not playlist any ‘old music’ (typically anything recorded before 1990).
However, there was still a dinosaur clinging on to its very existence that had somehow avoided succumbing to Bannister’s hatchet. Hiding away in the early hours slot was 80s throwback Bruno Brookes. I used to listen to this guy back in the mid-80s when he did the drivetime show and quite liked him but then I was a callow, know-nothing youth. As I matured though, he became irritating to me – the older I got, the more annoying I perceived him to be. And yet, when he was one of the Radio 1 DJs brought back into the TOTP fold by Ric Blaxill in 1994, his presence was almost reassuring and he actually seemed like a safe pair of hands. This wasn’t the view shared by Matthew Bannister and his Head of Production Trevor Dann though. In the 2001 documentary BloodontheCarpet: WalkingwithDiscJockeys, Dann recalls how he asked the question “…why is Bruno on?” if there was meant to be a cull on all the dinosaur DJs. Apparently, he did have a loyal audience of truckers tuning in to his early morning show but it wasn’t enough to save him. The day after this TOTP was broadcast, Brookes was sacked by Dann. Brutal stuff.
There were also no Radio 1 DJs on this edition of the BBC’s prime time music show as it was another ‘golden mic’ week, this time filled by D:Ream’s Peter Cunnah. I’d have to say, he’s not a natural presenter. I think his nerves got the better of him to the extent that he overly relies on the prop of his microphone and almost obscures his mouth. The first act he introduces are PerfectoAllstarz with “Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)”. I spewed out a rant about how egregious I found this track recently when compared to the glorious 1982 original and I haven’t changed my mind in the meantime. For this performance they’ve ditched the guys in the skeleton outfits and replaced them with dancers who are dressed like they’ve just hot-footed it from Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” world tour. Were combat trousers a thing in 1995? Oh, I can’t remember. The vocalist tries to join in with some of the dance moves but can’t keep up and so styles it out with some vague arm waving and a toss of her hair. Not entirely convincing, a bit like the track itself. Not many agreed with this assessment of mine though. The single spent five weeks inside the Top 10 even going back up the charts after dropping the previous week. It eventually peaked at No 6.
Excellent! Another PJ&Duncan hit! Just what we needed! Obviously not but clearly the record buying public of the time couldn’t get enough of them. “Our Radio Rocks” was the duo’s fifth consecutive Top 40 hit and sixth single released from their album “Psyche”. After trying to exploit the Christmas market with a slushy, romantic ballad (“Eternal Love”) last time out, they’re back to the familiar rap/pop formula as typified by “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. An homage to the the power and appeal of radio (sort of), the ‘lyrics’ are primary school level of word play. It begins badly with a chant of “Here we go” and never really recovers. I once started an essay at school with the sentence ‘Thud, thud, thud, thud, his footsteps echoed around the empty street’. My English teacher was appalled but even he would surely agree that my composition was intellectually superior to PJ & Duncan’s effort. The rap starts with an obvious paraphrase from a classic pop hit:
Oh. I may consider my schoolboy writing a cut above Peej and Deej’s lyrics but when it came to sartorial choices, I’m sad to report I was no better than them. I too once wore a gilet like Dec/Duncan in a moment of fashion madness. My friend Robin, who was staying with us at the time, thought it was marvellous and ripped the piss out of me mercilessly. I bet Ant/PJ would never have done that to his mate!
For Bon Jovi’s last single “Always”, TOTP producer Ric Blaxill had the band perform the song against the stunning backdrop of Niagara Falls. It worked so well that the show repeated the clip a couple of times. The band were at it again for the follow up single “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” with them playing in the New York Giants Stadium. Known alternatively as The Swamp, it was also home at the time to the New York Jets but Peter Cunnah doesn’t mention that in his intro. Maybe the Jets weren’t as big a name as the Giants? I’ve no idea. Obviously it doesn’t work as well as a backdrop as Niagara Falls in the wow factor stakes. The stadium lighting doesn’t help as they seem to dazzle too much to me and undermine the shot. Still, credit should be given for trying something different at least.
Like “Always”, the single was another new track taken from their Best Of album “Crossroads” and has proved to be a pretty durable Bon Jovi tune. It’s a crowd favourite live and its flexible structure has enabled the band to perform it in lots of different styles. The style on display in this TOTP here though was that of censorship. The line “all the good shit’s gone” is sung by Jon Bon Jovi as just “All the good is gone”. He could have at least replaced ‘shit’ with the word ‘stuff’ surely?
The problem with these in studio exclusive performances that would showcase a single that hadn’t even been released yet is that they’d crash into the charts the following week thereby requiring another TOTP appearance. Back in the day, only the No 1 record could have guaranteed appearing on consecutive shows. Come 1995, it seemed to be happening all the time. I know it wouldn’t have troubled Ric Blaxill but it’s playing havoc with my blog writing 28 years later. It’s hard to come up with new content on a subject I might have only just posted about a few days earlier. Plus these are events that happened in the past that are immovable; I’m not commenting on Rishi Sunak changing his mind on HS2!
Anyway, all of the above is leading me to Elastica and their single “Waking Up”. Fortunately, the band have provided me with an alternative angle for a write up. Conveniently, they’ve roped in Justine Frischmann’s then boyfriend Damon Albarn of Blur to appear on stage with them. Damon was in the TOTP studio anyway with his own band who followed Elastica in the running order so it probably wasn’t that hard to arrange. The interesting point here though is who’s idea was it? Was it a cross label agreement to help promote both bands? How about a devilish plan by Blaxill to spice up the show? Or perhaps just an impromptu decision between a boyfriend and girlfriend because it would be a laugh? Certainly Albarn seems to be playing his role for comedic effect with his goofy stare from behind his heavy rimmed glasses. There’s no denying that the celebrity couple generated publicity for Elastica but wouldn’t Justine have not wanted to ride on the coat tails of her boyfriend? Perhaps the biggest question of all was what was the deal with the motionless male model looking guys wearing just a towel that were positioned around the stage? They looked like they needed waking up. Ahem.
The inevitable segue into Blur happens immediately. Now bearing in mind that the band’s last single release was “End Of A Century” the previous November and that they wouldn’t release their next for another six months when they squared up to Oasis in The Battle of Britpop, it seems likely to me that this appearance to perform a track from their “Parklife” album (“Jubilee”) was a record label engineered exercise. Billed as an ‘album performance’ by the TOTP caption, it was supposedly to celebrate the band winning four awards at the recent BRIT awards. Well, maybe. It’s true that the show introduced an album chart section during the ‘year zero’ revamp but this wasn’t highlighting a new entry into said chart or the No 1 album. Having checked the officialcharts.com archive, “Parklife” was at No 12 and going down and guess what? After this TOTP appearance, it went up the charts the following week to No 2! Hmm. Is it just me or does all that sound ever so slightly cynical? Or maybe Ric Blaxill could see which way this was all going and decided to be an early adopter of the Britpop movement and embrace and celebrate it?
As for the track, it’s a banger but not the best on the album which is probably “This Is A Low” in my opinion. I’m guessing that the downbeat, melancholy of the song wasn’t seen as suitable for the high octane nature of TOTP not to mention that it was almost double the length of “Jubilee” which might have played havoc with the show’s timings.
Special mention should go to drummer Dave Rowntree for his piss take of Prince’s ‘slave’ stunt where the purple one had the word written on the side of his face to protest at his struggles with record company Warner Bros. Well played Mr Rowntree!
Back in the 80s, I could probably have listed all of Madonna’s singles, possibly in release order but by the mid 90s I’d completely lost my way with her. This despite having worked in record shops since October 1990. Her 90s output just didn’t appeal to me that much. Between 1984 and 1989, Madge was the queen of the pop single, churning out doozy after doozy but for me, something changed after we entered the new decade. It was as if she decided that she was done with all that pop stuff and wanted to develop a more mature sound and be seen as an artist rather than a pop star. Now of course, that was totally within her remit to do so. The Beatles sound changed dramatically from the lovable moptops to the material released from say “Revolver” onwards. George Michael totally reinvented himself after leaving his Wham! pop origins behind. Why shouldn’t Madonna be allowed to take her creativity in a different direction? Absolutely. I’m just saying I didn’t like her 90s hits as much as her 80s ones. That’s not to say she didn’t release anything good during the decade. “Vogue”, “Ray Of Light”, “Justify My Love” are standouts from those years but some of her stuff just didn’t cut through with me.
“Bedtime Story” is a case in point. The title track from her album and co-written by Björk (not a selling point for me), it just seems what we would have called ‘pseudy’ back in the day. A tale of the delights of the unconscious world, it’s far too arty for my pop sensibilities with its ethereal trance beats and pulsing bass. Oh and then there’s the lyrics. Whereas PJ & Duncan’s were lowest common denominator crap, “Bedtime Stories” are painfully highbrow. Check these lines which are spotlighted in the video:
“Words are useless, especially sentences. They don’t stand for anything“
Writer/s: Björk Gudmundsdottir, Marius De vries, Nellee Hooper Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Hmm. One in the eye there for linguists everywhere. Talking of the video, my God! Pretentious? Moi? It was the most expensive video ever made at the time (though it was outdone by Janet and Michael Jackson’s “Scream” just one year later). Channelling the imagery of surrealist painters like Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo, it includes scenes such as Madonna giving birth to doves, in a pool with skulls and finally the unnerving sight of her with her mouth where her eyes should be and vice versa. That final image brought to mind the dark fantasy horror of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth taking the video into the realms of high art. Maybe that’s what Madonna wanted all along. “Bedtime Story” peaked at No 4 thereby banishing for the moment the memories of Madonna’s last single (“Take A Bow”) being the first to not make the UK Top 10 since “Lucky Star” in 1984.
Right, I’m just going to put this out there now. I like Del Amitri. Always have. Not in a superfan type of way but I like what they do in the same way that I like Deacon Blue. Both bands, it seems to me, have something in common and it’s not that they’re both Scottish. No, it’s that they both suffer from being perceived as unfashionable, not edgy enough and, in some people’s minds, even dull. This seems grossly unfair to me. Both have forged longstanding careers (albeit with not insubstantial sabbaticals at times), both have written some pretty darn good songs and both have musicality to spare. So what’s the issue here then? Their images? Sure, they’re not that much to look at (except Deacon Blue’s Lorraine McIntosh who I’ve always had a thing for plus I have female friends who regard Ricky Ross similarly) but surely Del Amitri lead singer Justin Currie’s lambchop sideburns weren’t a deal breaker were they? So what is it that people object to so much? Their lyrics? What’s wrong with writing from the heart about things that you know about? Whatever the reason for the looks of scorn when you admit to liking them, I’ll not be apologising for liking good songs.
Take “Here And Now” for example. The lead single from their fourth album “Twisted”, it’s a great tune. Melodic, excellent laid back Summery feel, lyrics that stick in your head, nice guitar fade out. There’s even some falsetto vocals in there just to mix things up a bit. It’s a nice song. Ah, I’ve answered my own question haven’t I? Nice. That dreaded word that no musician wants to be described as. Oh, I don’t care. I still like it and it’s fairly simple chords mean I can just about strum it on the guitar which is always a bonus.
“Here And Now”only got to No 21 but then Del Amitri have never been about huge selling singles have they? Fifteen Top 40 hits but not one of them got higher than No 11 with most peaking somewhere in the 20s. Albums are a different story though. Of their seven studio albums, only two peaked lower than No 6. The band are back together again now with their last album being as recent as 2021 and they have a tour booked for 2024 as support for Simple Minds. Oh and you can stop that sniggering at the back about the credibility of Simple Minds while you’re at it!
I quite often use this phrase but who the hell were this lot?! Seriously, anybody remember The Glam Metal Detectives? Well, too be fair to us all, they weren’t a proper band but a fictional group in a BBC TV series of the same name. I can honestly say that I never watched any of its episodes but then there were only seven ever made as it only lasted for one series. Wikipedia tells me it was some sort of comedy which combined sketch and sitcom elements. Ah, the BBC trying to be all innovative and subversive eh? No wonder it was shown on BBC2 then. It did have some decent names in the cast including Phil Cornwell and Doon Mackichan both of whom appear in this performance. Their song – “Everybody Up” – was the show’s theme tune and was dreadful despite being written and produced by Lol Creme and Trevor Horn yet somehow managed to spend a whole week inside the Top 40 at No 29.
I think what we have here is a case of TOTP being used not as a reflection of the country’s musical tastes but as a promotional tool for a new show (the first episode was broadcast just an hour after this TOTP aired). There was certainly some manipulation going on this week what with this and the Blur appearance.
Celine Dion is at the top of the pile again this week with “Think Twice”. Despite it being No 1 in half a dozen countries around the world, in the US it only managed to get to No 95. Obviously, with the power of blockbuster film Titanic behind it, they were powerless like the rest of the world to resist “My Heart Will Go On” three years later.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Perfecto Allstarz
Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)
Nope
2
PJ & Duncan
Our Radio Rocks
As if
3
Bon Jovi
Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night
Negative
4
Elastica
Waking Up
No
5
Blur
Jubilee
Wasn’t released as a single but I had the Parklife album . Didn’t we all?
6
Madonna
Bedtime Story
Nope
7
Del Amitri
Here And Now
No but I have it on a Best Of CD
8
The Glam Metal Detectives
Everybody Up
Buy it? I can’t even remember it!
9
Celine Dion
Think Twice
Definite 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
There’s a new president in the White House as the day before this TOTP aired, Bill Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd POTUS. I can’t really think about Clinton without this coming to mind…
And then this of course…
Politicians lying. Fast forward thirty odd years and literally nothing has changed. If anything, it’s got worse. And that’ll do for the intro this time. I’ve done a few lengthy ones lately so I’m due a more succinct start to a post.
We start the show with yet another 70s disco revival. After Boney M and their recent megamix single and Greatest Hits album returned them to the charts for the first time in well over a decade, now strode SisterSledge straight into the Top 10. What was going on?
The last time we saw the sisters in the UK charts was eight years previous with a No 1 hit that was, for me, one of the worst hits of…well…ever. I refer of course to the execrable “Frankie”, a song so bad that it didn’t just stink the place out but dissolved its foundations with its foul stench. After that inexplicable chart topper, nothing, zip, nada. And then this comeback with a remix of 1979 hit and their signature tune “We Are Family”. Entitled the ‘Sure Is Pure Remix’, this is was to promote, like the aforementioned Boney M, a Greatest Hits compilation simply called “The Very Best Of Sister Sledge 1973-93”. Well, I guess you couldn’t blame their record label for wanting a piece of the retro action but this wasn’t the first time that there’d been a Sister Sledge revival. Back in 1984, Chic remixes of “Lost In Music” and “We Are Family” had graced the Top 40 to the tune of Nos 4 and 33 respectively yet here they were back again for another go. It seems you really can’t keep a good tune down and “We Are Family” is a good tune no doubt. The 1993 version peaked at No 5 and inevitably led to a follow up which was a re-release of, yes of course, “Lost In Music”. A bit less obviously there was a final rerelease of their 1984 hit “Thinking Of You” which would give the group their third hit single of the year.
As for the performance here, the first thing that I noticed is that there’s only three of the group on stage immediately rendering untrue the lyrics “I got all my sisters with me”. I’ve tried to work out who is there and who is missing. Kathy is definitely doing the lead vocals and I think that’s Kim and Debbie up there with her meaning it’s Joni who was missing (I think). Was it Joni who did most of the singing on “Frankie”? Sadly Joni passed away in 2017 but the group is still going via the family’s next generation as the sisters’ kids are now involved. Their website welcomes visitors with the intro:
Welcome ”FAM”, to the official Sister Sledge website! Keep it real, keep it “SLEDGENDARY®”!
They’ve copyrighted the word ‘sledgendary’. Excellent!
It’s the 40-11 chart rundown next over the top of the video for FaithNoMore’s cover of “Easy” by the Commodores or “I’m Easy” as they have inexplicably taken it upon themselves to retitle it. The band are on record as saying that even though their version is very faithful, the video featuring some transvestites shows that they were ‘up to something’ in their decision to record it and that it was all very tongue in cheek. Was it the case then that they were trying to subvert and expose the mechanisms of the music industry by releasing the song and were in fact some sort of US version of The KLF?! I’m not sure I get nor am buying this.
“I’m Easy” peaked at No 3 in the UK but was only a minor hit in the US where it stuck at No 58. Cultural differences and all that.
Here’s a thing. I would never have thought that there was a connection between UK blue eyed soul merchants GoWest and US West Coast rapper 2Pac but there is and it’s this song called “What You Won’t Do For Love”. Nothing to do with Meatloaf and his similar sounding single that would be the year’s best seller, this was actually a cover version (another one) of a 1978 track written by US singer-song writer Bobby Caldwell.
The 2Pac connection is courtesy of it being sampled for posthumous single “Do For Love” whist Go West recorded it for their “Indian Summer” album.
Peter Cox and Richard Drummie were on a bit of a roll come 1993. This was their third Top 20 hit on the bounce after “King Of Wishful Thinking” and “Faithful”. Who could have predicted that when the hits had dried up in the late 80s? I’m surprised it was a hit though as the duo’s version is a real plodder and sounds lumpen next to the original. To be honest I’m more drawn to their backing band than the song. There’s a sax player who looks like Eric Catchpole from Lovejoy and a guy on keyboards who resembles JustGoodFriends actor and “Dancing With The Captain” hitmaker Paul Nicholas.
Go West saw out 1993 with two more UK hits both taken from their Best Of collection “Aces And Kings”. Their cover (another one!) of “The Tracks Of My Tears” by The Miracles reached No 16 whilst a re-release of debut hit “We Close Our Eyes” just scraped in at No 40. The band gave never returned to the UK charts since.
Snap! are waiting on the next stage to perform their hit “Exterminate!”. They were really keen on the use of exclamation marks weren’t they? I say ‘they’ but this seems to be mostly being promoted as a Niki Haris single if the on screen graphics and host Mark Franklin’s intro are anything to go by. She has had quite the career though. As well as her time with Snap!, she’s toured extensively with Madonna and collaborated with the likes of Anita Baker, Prince, Ray Charles, Tom Jones and Luther Vandross to name but a few. That Billie Holiday tribute thing that Franklin mentions though, well I struggled to find much online about that at all. Was it a film, TV special, album, concert? I found a listing on the BFI database but only scant details about it. Did it ever happen? Maybe it was exterminated? I’ll get me coat.
Yay the Breakers! This is where I have to comment on a load of songs some of which we may only ever get to see/hear for 30 seconds or so. Seems like a good deal. We start with a song for Bill Clinton – “Dogs Of Lust” by TheThe. Just as I have previously posted about XTC and Prefab Sprout, The The really don’t get the commercial success their catalogue deserves. Not in terms of the charts anyway and with TOTP being a show predominantly based around the Top 40, we rarely got to see them on our screens. I say ‘them’ but I mean Matt Johnson as the band really are basically a vehicle for his creativity.
This single was his first chart hit since 1989’s “The Beat(en) Generation” and only his third ever at the time. It feels wrong to say that “Dogs Of Lust” was typical The The fare as if the word ‘typical’ could ever be applied to Matt Johnson but it was in the respect that it was as uncompromising, startling and in your face a track as everything he does always is. The opening harmonica riff which becomes a repeating refrain is reminiscent of the theme tune from TheOldGreyWhistleTest and came courtesy of everyone’s favourite in demand collaborator Johnny Marr.
The track was the lead single from the album “Dusk” which, in a chart statistic that seeks to undermine my earlier claims about lack of commercial success, peaked at No 2. It produced three hit singles in all though none were bigger than “Dogs Of Lust” and its No 25 chart high.
Matt’s next two albums achieved very modest sales and he busied himself with creating film soundtracks as the new millennium dawned though he has recently released a No live album of his comeback gig at the Royal Albert Hall.
I’d totally forgotten that there was a fourth single release from Del Amitri’s “Change Everything” album despite it being the second biggest of the lot with a chart peak of No 20. The title of this one is almost a single by The Jam (“When You’re Young”) and very nearly a Bucks Fizz hit (“When We Were Young”) but “When You Were Young” it was and a pleasant little ditty it was too if a little formulaic.
There had been a gap of five months or so since their last single “Just Like A Man” but that was a marketing strategy decision apparently as “When You Were Young” was kept back to avoid the Xmas rush. I think the plan worked.
AliceInChains? To quote Roy Chubby Brown, “Who The F**k Is Alice?”. Well, they were one of those grunge bands of course that were meant to flood the UK music scene in the wake of Nirvana but which never really materialised. “Would?” was actually from the soundtrack to the film Singles which I loved but which my friend Robin who I saw it with hated. In essence, it was your basic romantic comedy/ drama but set in Seattle against the backdrop of the grunge movement. Following the love lives of two couples and one single person, its soundtrack featured big grunge hitters like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and of course Alice In Chains as well as alternative rockers like Paul Westerberg and The Smashing Pumpkins. I’m pretty sure I even gave it a play on the shop stereo of the Rochdale Our Price I was working in. “Would?” is a heavy sound that wouldn’t normally have floated my boat but then I had liked “Alive” by Pearl Jam so maybe my tastes were changing back then.
Alice In Chains would rack up a string of minor hits in the UK during the 90s though none as big as “Would?” which peaked at No 19. They also had songs feature on two other films, Arnie’s Last Action Hero and slacker comedy Clerks. Oh, and the reason Robin hated Singles? There’s a character called Steve in it who is a town planner but who used to be a DJ. In a scene in his flat with new girlfriend Linda, they’re perusing his record collection and the vinyl is in PVC sleeves. Even his punk records. This disgusted Robin so much he barely paid any attention to the rest of the film.
A lot of the dance anthems that have featured on these TOTP repeats have failed to ring any bells with me but I do recall “Open Your Mind” by U.S.U.R.A. This piece of Italian techno sampled “New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)” by Simple Minds and was a dance smash around Europe including over here where it peaked at No 7. I even recall that it was on the very hip Deconstruction Records label because it had that generic red and yellow single cover with a band looping a ‘d’ and ‘c’ together.
The face morphing video caused a bit of a stir not for its effects – it was no “Black And White” – but because of the faces chosen which included Joe McCarthy, Benito Mussolini, Richard Nixon, Ian Paisley, Ronald Reagan, Josef Stalin, Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse. Interestingly no Bill Clinton though.
Now to a very underrated band with a song that’s actually a bit of a banger in a very understated way. TheBeloved had come to popular attention in late ‘89/early ‘90 with the hit singles “The Sun Rising” and “Hello” and an album “Happiness” which gained positive reviews for its fusion of house and pop music. Fast forward three years and the band had been through a seismic shift with founding member Steve Waddington having left the fold. Remaining original member Jon Marsh replaced him with his wife Helena. Nothing like keeping it in the family eh?
This new line up returned in 1993 with “Sweet Harmony” the lead single from new album “Conscience”. It was still that combination of dance beats and a pop structure on which they’d made their name but this time that sound had been refined right down to the most precise of details. This was so slick that it worked as a club anthem and as a great pop song as substantiated by its Top 10 chart placing. Clearly the TOTP producers didn’t quite know what to do with this genre bending hit as exemplified by that classic default strategy of flooding the stage with dry ice.
However, it wasn’t their appearance on the show that everyone was talking about but rather the single’s accompanying promo video. You know, the nudity one. Yes, the staging of a naked Jon Marsh surrounded by similarly nude women (infamously including then unknown but future TV presenter Tess Daly) was meant to promote the idea of human unity but instead got the likes of the aforementioned Mary Whitehouse outraged at the indecency.
There were at least two people who did like it though…
What was it this week with acts who felt the need to turn their names into faux acronyms. After U.S.U.R.A. earlier, we now have T.H.E.S.O.U.L.S.Y.S.T.E.M. Didn’t these people realise I’d be writing a blog thirty years later and have to type this nonsense out?!
After being a Breaker last week, this Clivillés and Cole project were in the studio seven days on to perform “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day”. Yes, that’s TV’s Michelle Visage up there with the Nosferatu talons and she’s giving me some heavy PM Dawn / “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” vibes with her rapping style.
Taken from the soundtrack to TheBodyguard, it was already at its No 17 peak which was 13 places lower than the chart high achieved by a Ben Liebrand remix of the Bill Withers original back in 1988.
Now I knew there were at least two singles taken from Def Leppard’s “Adrenalize” album in the odious “Let’s Get Rocked” and “Make Love Like A Man” but I had no idea that it had gifted the world six! “Heaven Is” was the fourth of those and lead singer Joe Elliott is on record as saying the song was ‘more Queen than Queen’ and that the backing vocals sounded like The Beach Boys. Hmm. Let’s have another listen then…
*3 minutes 37 seconds later*
…nah, that’s just the same old Def Leppard shite.
“Heaven Is” peaked at No 13.
Is this week eight at the top for Whitney Houston and “IWillAlwaysLoveYou”? I’m losing count now. I’m also running out of things to say about it so instead, here’s Dolly Parton’s original…
…and Whitney’s version for comparison…
*So which is best?
*It’s Dolly. Obviously.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Sister Sledge
We Are Family (Sure Is Pure Remix)
Nope
2
Faith No More
I’m Easy
No
3
Go West
What You Won’t Do For Love
I did not
4
Snap!
Exterminate!
Nah
5
The The
Dogs Of Lust
No but I maybe should have
6
Del Amitri
When You Were Young
Not the single but it’s on my Best Of of theirs that I have
7
Alice In Chains
Would?
Negative
8
U.S.U.R.A.
Open Your Mind
Remembered it, didn’t buy it
9
The Beloved
Sweet Harmony
See 5 above
10
T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M.
It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day
And no
11
Def Leppard
Heaven Is
Not this – no!
12
Whitney Houston
I Will Always Love You
She’ll never beat Dolly for me
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.
It’s a rare consecutive TOTP after weeks of skipping shows due to the Adrian Rose issue. I think we might be getting to the end of his 14 episodes that we are having to miss. We’re exactly a third of the way through September of 1992 and the biggest album release of the week is “The Best Of Belinda Volume 1” by, unsurprisingly, Belinda Carlisle. Singles wise, the two new releases doing the briskest trade are probably Bob Marley’s “Iron Lion Zion” and “Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless)” by Manic Street Preachers.
As for me, I’m pretty sure I’d have started my new post as Assistant Manager of the Our Price store in Rochdale by now. I got off the bus that first morning and went into the first newsagents I saw to ask where the shop actually was. Once I found it, I realised how much smaller it was than the two trading floor store I’d left behind in Manchester. So small in fact that they had sale stock on display in cardboard boxes shoved under the racking. Behind the scenes there was a small processing area and staff kitchen but quite a large, cavernous stock room that wasn’t really used other than as a dumping ground for various unsold stock that had accumulated over the years. Nobody spent much time in there. The staff consisted of Adrian the manager who was about to leave for Virgin, Emma and Rachel both of whom I’d worked with briefly at Manchester and Phil who was also about to leave the company for pastures new. And then there was newbie me. It was a time of significant change for the store.
I spent much of that first morning serving customers on my own whilst the regulars sorted out the new releases upstairs. However, as I didn’t know where anything was filed I kept having to buzz them to help me out. I probably didn’t make the best first impression. Presumably the product I sold that first morning would have included some of the songs on this TOTP. Let’s see if I remember…
Opening the show are a band who were very much billed as the anti-Take That and a rivalry was developed (or at least created by the press) between the two that brought back memories of Duran Duran vs Spandau Ballet from the 80s. East17 were the brainchild of former Pet Shop Boys manager Tom Watkins who came up with the genius idea of launching this tougher, more street wise version of Take That after song writer Tony Mortimer was offered a recording contract on the condition that he form a band around himself as a vehicle to sell the songs. Taking their name from the postcode district of their hometown Walthamstow (after which they then named their debut album), they scored an immediate hit with first single “House Of Love”. Mortimer’s version of a rave anthem, I thought this sounded great. Think of the twee, cynically put together hits Take That started their career with and then listen to this. There’s no comparison. It put me in mind of the chart battle between Girls Aloud and One True Voice that same out of the Popstars: TheRivals TV show in 2002. The former’s single “Sound Of The Underground” was so superior to the latter’s…I can’t even remember what it was called it was so forgettable…it was almost embarrassing.
For a while these boys from Walthamstow traded blows with their nemesis and matched them punch for punch. They even bagged themselves a No 1 (a Xmas chart topper no less). Ultimately though they would lose the pop war and imploded after singer Brian Harvey encouraged drug taking on a late night radio interview. The ramifications included both Mortimer and Harvey leaving the group and returning multiple times and a change of band name. A number of tabloid headlines including the frankly bizarre incident of Harvey being run over by his own car after eating too many jacket potatoes damaged the band’s reputation beyond redemption. Currently they perform as a trio with only one original member (Terry Coldwell) in their ranks.
Back in 1992 though, they were fresh faced lads who looked like they could just as likely be working in McDonalds as performing on TOTP. Somehow though, instead of dying on their arses in this frankly ludicrous performance (what the hell was the washing line all about?) it all somehow just worked. Instead of being laughed off stage, we took them on face value as proper pop stars. Things were just starting to get interesting in the boy band stakes.
I’d totally forgotten that TheChristians were still having chart hits this far into their career. It had been over five years since they burst onto the scene with their eponymous debut album (the biggest selling debut album in their label Island Records’ history) but here they were still in the Top 40 and still on TOTP in the Autumn of 1992. Listening to “What’s In A Word” it sounds vaguely familiar though I couldn’t have told you how it went before reacquainting myself with it. Didn’t their last chart hit feature ‘word’ in the title?
*checks The Christians discography *
I was right! “Words” made No 18 over Xmas/ New Year in 1989/90. They seemed to be as fixated on the subject of the lexicon as Martin Fry. I bet they were elated when that bloke invented Wordle.
Anyway, it’s a nice enough tune though hardly outstanding which may explain its lowly peak of No 33. Lead singer Garry Christian feels the needs to hold a drum stick throughout this performance that comes live from Paris for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, it seems Henry Priestman was still with the band at this point as I’m pretty sure that’s him on keyboards. I saw him as a solo artist live at Beverley Folk Festival in 2010. He was great. Barbara Dickson was also there and I stood next to her at one point watching the worst game of football I’ve ever seen on TV (England 0-0 Algeria in the World Cup). She was tiny.
The Christians, like East 17, still exist today (albeit not in their original form) and released a single in December 2021 called “Naz Don’t Cry” in support of the recently released Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who had been detained in Israel since 2016.
Here’s a question. If you’ve made your name by covering other people’s songs, is the decision to call yourselves Undercover genius or incredibly lame? I’m going for the latter. The ‘drum and bass’ version of “Baker Street” as host Tony Dortie ridiculously describes it is up to No 3 so another trip to the TOTP studio is in order for the band. Vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United (I think it’s the slight resemblance to Gazza) but he’s actually a massive Arsenal fan. Look at this interaction with a Spurs fan on Twitter when this TOTP repeat aired:
Not as bad as your trophy cabinet sunshine! #Spursy 😂👋👋👋
Ha! Talking of fans, someone who wasn’t a fan of Undercover at all was the man responsible for “Baker Street” Gerry Rafferty. According to Wikipedia, he had this to say about it:
“Dreadful- totally banal. A sad sign of the times”
Presumably he was happy to pick up the writer’s cheque their version brought in though that Tony Dortie refers to in his intro which was for £1.5 million! Like East 17 and The Christians before them, a version of Undercover featuring John Matthews are still a going concern today.
Freddie Jackson hadn’t been seen in the UK charts for six years before he turned up rather randomly with a cover of Billy Paul’s “Me And Mrs Jones”. Taken from his album “Time For Love”, this could be the most pointless cover version of all time. Firstly, he gives a completely straight take on it hardly deviating from the original at all. Secondly, he was never going to rival Billy Paul’s original. I’m putting this out there – I suspect some chart rigging was afoot getting this into the Top 40. Even if there was, it wasn’t that successful as it only made No 32 and the album bombed just about everywhere.
One of my favourite albums of 1992 was “Welcome To Wherever You Are” by INXS. The eighth album by the Aussie rockers was meant to be a rejection of the more polished studio sound that they had perfected on previous album “X” with an emphasis on a rawer sound. To my ears though it still had plenty of hooks to draw me in and includes one of the great album segues from opening track, the Eastern sounding “Questions”, into the album’s lead single “Heaven Sent”. We haven’t seen the latter on TOTP – I’m not sure why. It only made No 31 on the chart so it could be that it never made the cut at all or maybe it was in the Breakers on a show that we skipped because of the whole Adrian Rose debacle? Happily, second single “Baby Don’t Cry” has made it onto the show and it’s an unashamedly bold and out there stadium rock anthem with an exuberant, singalong chorus. Apparently it was recorded with the 60 piece Australian Concert Orchestra – so much for that raw sound the band was supposedly going for.
I thought this was going to be a massive hit but it stalled at No 20 and wasn’t even released in America. The album debuted at No 1 here making INXS the first Australian act to have a UK chart topper since AC/DC with “Back In Black” in 1980. However, that success was not repeated in the US and the album marked a decline in their commercial fortunes over there. The decision not to tour the album was probably not the correct one in hindsight.
Back in the studio we find Del Amitri who are in the midst of probably their most commercially successful period of their career. Their “Change Everything” album had been as high as No 2 in the charts and it would furnish them with four hit singles which all made the Top 30. “Just Like A Man” was the third of those and though I rather dismissed it as ‘just another Del Amitri song’ at the time, it’s actually a pretty decent tune. Do they get enough credit for their back catalogue? I’m not sure they do. My perception is that they’re somehow not seen as cutting-edge enough, not quite the real deal, perhaps even too…comfy? Also, for all that I said about the success they were having at this time, they never had one Top 10 single in this country. They’re not alone in that of course. Goth rockers The Mission clocked up 12 Top 40 singles without ever getting any higher than No 11. I guess they were more album than singles bands. “Just Like A Man” peaked at No 25.
Four Breakers now but we’ve seen three of them before as ‘exclusive’ performances/videos. To quote Ian Dury, “what a waste”. First up is Sinéad O’Connor with “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home”. This was the lead single from her covers album “Am I Not Your Girl?” which I don’t think I’ve ever heard properly. Looking at the track listing, there a few songs I know like “Secret Love” (Doris Day), “Love Letters” ( Ketty Lester/ Elvis /Alison Moyet) and of course “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from Evita. The latter was released as the second single from the album and I would have thought it was a safe bet for another chart hit given that it is surely better known than its predecessor. After all, it had been a No 1 for Julie Covington in 1976. Sinéad’s version didn’t even make the Top 40. Four years later, Madonna did what Sinéad couldn’t and had a massive No 3 hit with it over Xmas 1996 but then she was starring as Eva Perón in Alan Parker’s film version of Evita so a hit was almost guaranteed. “Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home” peaked at No 18.
Even the only Breaker we haven’t seen on the show before we actually have. What am I going on about? Imeanit’sarereleaseof a song that was a hit back in 1985. “How Soon Is Now?” was the latest element of WEA’s release strategy for their newly acquired back catalogue of TheSmiths. Possibly the greatest song in their canon, it’s certainly one of their most well known. Johnny Marr himself describes it as their “most enduring record”. It was originally released as the B-side to “William, It Was Really Nothing” alongside “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” which surely must make it the best B-side of a record ever.
The 1992 rerelease peaked at No 26, eight places higher than its 1985 outing. Maybe it benefited from a younger audience knowing it from it being sampled in Soho’s hit “Hippychick” of just one year earlier. The band detested the promo video for the song which was made by their US label Sire and which Morrissey described as “degrading”. I wonder what he thought of this one made for Psychedelic Furs spin off project Love Spit Love’s cover of it for TV series Charmed and movie TheCraft?
Oh come on now! How many times have I had to find something to write about yet another Michael Jackson video recently?! OK, well there is a school of thought that says the video for “Jam” was the inspiration for the 1996 film SpaceJam starring Michael Jordan. Is that likely? Well, Jordan was in the “Jam” promo in which he teaches Jacko to play basketball while in SpaceJam MJ teaches some LooneyTunes characters to shoot some hoops to win a b/ball match against invading aliens so there might be something in it I suppose.
The final Breaker is “Rest In Peace” by Extreme. The video for this one really should have been prefaced with a warning about flashing lights. If the stop motion sequence of two neighbours fighting over a TV set didn’t induce queasiness then the band performing against that flickering black and white backdrop would surely bring on a migraine. It’s a real sensory overload. It was also litigious as it copied rather too closely the 1952 anti-war film Neighbours by Norman McLaren and the band got sued but settled out of court. “Rest In Peace” peaked at No 13.
Time for another ‘exclusive’ now as we see yet another return of Boy George, this time with a cover of the sixties hit “Crying Game” So was this the third time George had been on the comeback trail? After Culture Club imploded in the mid 80s, George had fashioned himself a swift and initially very successful solo career with a No 1 single with his take on Ken Boothe’s “Everything I Own”. Three more smaller hits followed but the album “Sold” didn’t sell well and he disappeared from the charts for four years. He reappeared in 1991 under the pseudonym Jesus Loves You and the gloriously quirky “Bow Down Mister”. Again the parent album (“The Martyr Mantras”) failed to shift many units and another George revival had finished almost as quickly as it had started. You couldn’t keep a good Boy down and George was back on TOTP once more.
His rendition of “The Crying Game” was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name, a thriller starring Stephen Rea set against the backdrop of of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The real pull of the film though was the plot twist which I won’t reveal for those who have never watched it but which was seen as very controversial at the time. Maybe it would be today but no way am I getting into that subject on here.
I didn’t mind George’s version – he seemed like a good choice to sing it to me (not that he was serenading me personally Romeo And Juliet style you understand). Was this the start of him always being seen in public with a hat on? He’s permanently got some design of chapeau on his bonce these days. Actually, he always wore a hat when he was with Culture Club didn’t he? Am I talking bollocks again?
That’s it! I knew there must be a reason. When I said earlier that Undercover vocalist John Matthews looks like he should be playing in midfield for Newcastle United because he looked a bit like Gazza, there was a memory lurking in my mind that was the trigger for my observation. I couldn’t put my finger on it before but I have it now. Do you remember The Comic Strip Presents… The Crying Game? It came out in 1992 like the Stephen Rea film but it was a football based tale of a young English player called Roy Brush (clearly a parody of Paul ‘daft as a brush’ Gascoigne aka Gazza) with the world literally at his feet after scoring an important goal for England. He is also gay and a tabloid paper tries to out him. Keith Allen stars as Brush and at one point in the story he records a single – yep you guessed it – a cover of “The Crying Game” (Gazza’s tears and all that). He even appears on TOTP and is introduced by Mark Franklin! Go to 11.45 in the YouTube video below:
After all that excitement, the No 1 brings us back to earth rather than takes us to a peak as it’s Snap! yetagain with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. I think this is the last week though. Don’t worry though! They’ll be back before the year is out with another big hit and another line up change. You lucky people you!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
East 17
House Of Love
No but my wife had the album Walthamstow.
2
The Christians
What’s In A Word
Nope
3
Undercover
Baker Street
Nah
4
Freddie Jackson
Me And Mrs Jones
Definitely not
5
INXS
Baby Don’t Cry
No but I bought their album Welcome To Wherever You Are
6
Del Amitri
Just Like A Man
No but I have their Best Of with it on
7
Sinéad O’Connor
Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home
No
8
The Smiths
How Soon Is Now
No but I have Hatful Of Hollow with it on
9
Michael Jackson
Jam
I did not
10
Extreme
Rest In Peace
Nah
11
Boy George
The Crying Game
Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12
Snap!
Rhythm Is A Dancer
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.
In the last post, as it featured Curiosity aka Curiosity Killed The Cat, I tried to fit in a few feline themed comments. Well, guess what? My research tells me that immediately after this TOTP was broadcast, we saw the last ever appearance on Eastenders of Ethel’s dog Willy on our screens before he retired. Sadly for Willy, his retirement was short lived as he passed away just two weeks into it. All of this means I can use dear old Willy as an excuse for a dog themed post. Be prepared for lots of ‘the dog’s bollocks’, ‘canine cahoonas’, ‘every dog has its day’ etc.
We start tonight with the follow up to one of the year’s biggest hits. “Stay” by Shakespear’sSister spent eight weeks at No 1 and although the duo’s next single also went Top 10, you very rarely hear it on the radio these days such was the ubiquity of its predecessor. It’s not as if ”I Don’t Care” doesn’t have its merits either. A pop song that really bounces along yet is quirky enough to elevate it above the bog standard. I’m not wavered by accusations of sounding a bit too like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” by The Pretenders (it does) as it’s got enough of a bark (oh, here we go!) to make itself heard in its own right. In fact, it’s even got a highfalutin intellectual element to it. Here’s @TOTPFacts:
The spoken bit in "I Don't Care" is "Hornpipe", a poem by Dame Edith Sitwell. It's one of a series of studies in word-rhythms and onomatopoeia, designed to be read to musical accompaniment, and first performed in 1922: https://t.co/NbsjZbDuCz#TOTP
The performance here continues with the theme of Detroit and Fahey being oppositional to each other. They couldn’t be more contrasting with Marcella all sharp, angular haircut and tight control of her guitar and Siobahn… well I’m not sure what look she was going for but I’m guessing it wasn’t the one in my head which was as Aunt Sally after a night on the grog with her pal Worzel Gummidge.
“I Don’t Care” peaked at No 7.
If it’s 1992 then it must be time for another chart hit by TheWeddingPresent. Of the twelve “Hit Parade” singles released by the band in this calendar year, “Come Play With Me” would be the highest charting when it made it to No 10. My memory of working in a record shop whilst this project played out was that there was huge punter demand initially but that fans got fed up of it eventually, trying to track down these limited release singles or pre-ordering them every month, sometimes having to put down a deposit. This is just about borne out by the arc of the chart peaks achieved by each release:
26-20-14-14-10-16-22-19-17-17-23-25
OK, it’s not a perfect parabola but I think there’s a definite peak about half way through followed by a tailing off as the year comes to a close.
There’s no studio appearance this time presumably because the band were on tour as host Claudia Simon references so it’s the video instead. It strikes me that both the promo and indeed the song are almost The Wedding Present doing their best Beautiful South impression. No? Just me then. This was my peak The Wedding Present era. Not because I was one of those hardy souls trying to purchase every one of those limited edition singles but because this was the time I most resembled David Gedge. I was just about to be 24, I was lean and my hair didn’t have a wisp of grey in it. I may have even had something approaching cheekbones. These days…well let’s just say I have not been unaffected by the travails of middle age! Even in dog years I’d now be considered a senior.
Next a band who had been absent for the whole of 1991. Del Amitri had presumably spent the previous year recording new material and “Always The Last To Know” was the first of it that we got to hear. The lead single from their third album “Everything Changes”, this sounded to me like a distinct attempt to write a hit single and they pulled it off perfectly. A Rolling Stones-esque opening riff led into a well executed pop song that was perfect for daytime radio about the realisation that your partner has been unfaithful. Supposedly it’s one of author Stephen King’s favourite ever songs – “It’s so goddamn sad” he told Rolling Stone magazine. I wouldn’t say I was in total agreement with King – it’s not one of my favourite ever songs – but I liked it enough to buy the single. I’d liked most of their stuff that I’d heard before without ever being compelled to purchase any of it but I caved on this one.
The album would prove to be the band’s most successful going all the way to No 2 and generating four Top 40 singles of which “Always The Last To Know” was the biggest peaking at No 13. And that huge, sheepskin jacket that Justin Currie is wearing under hot studio lights? Here’s @TOTPFacts again:
"In a desperate attempt to keep me fit, we got some nurse to come out and give me an injection in the arse – some vitamins which didn’t do any good whatsoever… So I ended up with that stupid sheepskin thing because I was really freezing and sweating." #TOTP
If I think of the year 1992 in terms of the Top 40 singles chart, this next song always comes to mind. It wasn’t always like that. The first time I ever heard the name Kris Kross was when some young lad came up to the counter and asked if we had anything by them in stock. I thought he meant “Sailing” and “Arthur’s Theme” hitmaker Christopher Cross. This lad must have been listening to the US charts where Kris Kross were tearing it up. Their debut single “Jump” would be No 1 there for eight weeks.
Of course, there are two things that have to be mentioned when discussing Kris Kross – their ages and their jeans. Chris ‘Mac Daddy’ Kelly and Chris ‘Daddy Mac’ Smith were only 13 years of age when they had their biggest success after being discovered by record producer Jermaine Dupri in a shopping mall. Dupri wrote “Jump” for the duo which would go on to be the fastest selling single in the US for 15 years. Inevitably it would crossover to the UK market where we were unable to resist its Jackson 5 bass line and high speed raps.
We also seemed unable to resist their penchant for wearing their jeans back to front. In some cases literally. The duo were scheduled to do a PA at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester just up the road from where I worked in the Market Street store and the manager there couldn’t stop the staff from wearing their jeans Kris Kross style. My recollection is that they never turned up to the PA for some reason but I could be wrong. They called their fashion style ‘totally krossed out’ which was also the name of their debut album that topped the US charts and went four times platinum. We were only focussed on the single here though which was bought in enough quantities to send it to No 2. The album by contrast peaked at No 31.
As is often the case with child stars who found fame and celebrity so early in their lives, the Kris Kross story ended in tragedy when Chris Kelly died in 2013 at the age of just 34 after an extensive history of drug abuse.
Just a slight pause before the next act to make an observation about the staging of the show tonight. The hosts for this one are Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon but you’d be forgiven for that fact having passed you by. After we see the pair on screen after the Shakespear’s Sister performance at the top of the programme introducing the Top 10 countdown, apart from a brief glimpse of Mark as he introduces the Breakers, we only see them again at the end of the show (and even then as images on TV screens). All their segues have been voice overs and as for the link between Del Amitri and Kris Kross…there wasn’t one! Nothing. Just the camera sliding over from one stage to the other. What was that all about?
They’re still not on screen as we head into the next song which is “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” by EnVogue. The video for this won an MTV Video Music Award for best choreography. I’m not sure if that relates to the group’s moves or those of the featured dancers one of whom appears to be in full on gimp clobber but which Wikipedia informs me is actually a zentai suit and are often used for video special effects. Talking of which, I quite like the fact that at one point in the video the group are shown against just a blue background. I’m sure today that would be a green screen with all sorts of imagery going in behind them as they strutted their stuff.
“My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” peaked at No 4 in the UK.
Some Disney schmaltz now and our very first sighting of a singer who would come to dominate / blight (delete as appropriate) the UK charts throughout the 90s. For their 30th animated film, Disney chose the 1756 fairy tale Beauty And The Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont as its source material. To promote the film, they decided to release the title track from the soundtrack as a single. Not the actual track from the soundtrack featuring the vocals of Angela ‘MurderSheWrote’ Lansbury though. No, they wanted it re-recorded for a pop audience and so settled on Canadian balladeer Celine Dion. Unsure though that she was well known enough globally to promote the song, they roped in Peabo Bryson to record it as a duet. Peabo of course is the go to guy for male/female duets. You may recall his ghastly 1983 No 2 hit “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” with Roberta Flack but he’s also collaborated with Natalie Cole and Minnie Riperton amongst others.
As the performance begins, Celine walks on stage against a backdrop showing a motif of the film. It’s not the Celine that we would get used to seeing as the decade progressed and her hits stacked up though. That massive 80s style hair! Eventually Peabo ambles on to join in but the whole thing is so anodyne that the performance has to be propped up with some video clips from the film.
Within two years Celine would be at No 1 with some proper dog shit called “Think Twice” whilst Peabo would score another Disney hit later in 1992 with “A Whole New World” from Aladdin which was, yes you guessed it, a duet with Regina Belle.
“Beauty And The Beast” peaked at No 9 in the UK and won an Academy Award for Best Song.
Three Breakers this week starting with a song that seemed to receive praise and criticism in equal measure. For some, “Everything About You” by UglyKidJoe was the missing link between the dumb ass joy of hair metal and the nihilism of grunge rock. For others, it was just a joke record, an opinion reinforced by its inclusion in the goofball comedy Wayne’sWorld. And me? I just accepted it as the knockabout fun I perceived it to be and didn’t mind it.
These Californian rockers took their name from spoofing LA glam band Pretty Boy Floyd (see what they did there?) and the inspiration for “Everything About You” from their friend Farrell T. Smith’s cynical take on life – we all know someone like that don’t we? The single was a Top 10 hit in the US but an even bigger hit over here where it went Top 3. Often thought of as a one hit wonder, they actually had a second hit the following year when their cover of Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s In The Cradle” was a UK No 7. Hang on, “Cat’s In The Cradle”? How’s that helping with my dog theme for this post? What’s that? There’s a sheepdog in the video for “Everything About You”? Oh well, that’s OK then.
I have a memory that at the time, the only other Ugly Kid Joe product that you could buy in addition to the single was an EP called “As Ugly As They Wanna Be”. Now I seem to remember that “Everything About You” wasn’t included in its six tracks causing some disappointment to punters but Wikipedia tells me it was. Yet when I checked the EP out on Spotify it isn’t included. ‘Goofy’ or what?
SaintEtienne were achingly trendy back in 1992 it seemed to me, at least with a lot of the Our Price colleagues I worked with but being fashionable hadn’t yet translated into chart success. Even record label Heavenly weren’t overly convinced of their charges commercial potential; so much so that when the band argued for their track “People Get Real” to be their next single release, they refused without there being a much more commercial track to go with it as a double A-side.
Undaunted, the band came up with “Join Our Club”, a song written to highlight how commercially viable they could be. To that end they referenced contemporary hits in the lyrics like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and some classics like Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘bout A Thing” (itself soon to be a current hit courtesy of Incognito). The result was a joyous anthem perfect for the forthcoming Summer.
The single rose to a high of No 21 in the charts becoming at a single stroke their biggest hit to date at that time.
The final Breaker is oneofthose ‘story’ songs’ from Richard Marx. I know at least one person for whom “Hazard” is a guilty pleasure not to be widely publicly acknowledged. Marx had a shit load of huge hits (or a huge load of shit hits if you prefer) in America but in the UK, he was barking up the wrong tree (nice). His only significant chart success over here came in 1989 with “Right Here Waiting”. The chances of him bagging a huge, chart munching hit single as the 90s we’re getting under way seemed remote at best. Factor in it being about the disappearance of a young woman with the main suspect being the singer of the song and well…Ladbrokes would have struggled to work out the odds. And yet…here he was back in our Top 40 and on TOTP.
There’s no denying it, “Hazard” is a weird song and even Marx himself wasn’t convinced – he only recorded it to disprove his wife’s conviction that it would be a hit. His wife (actress Cynthia Rhodes) was right and bizarrely, after years of ignoring his music that the US lapped up, it was a bigger hit here (No 3) than over the pond (No 9). In its wake came a trickle of middling to minor hits but nothing ever came close to replicating “Hazard”.
Marx does seem to be a decent sort though. In 2016, he helped Korean Air flight attendants pacify an unruly passenger and then took on Piers Morgan in a Twitter spat over his soft interviewing of then US President Donald Trump.
Back in the studio we find CeCePeniston giving an ‘exclusive’ performance of her new single “Keep On Walkin’”. I really don’t have much to say about this one. I certainly don’t remember it – surely Ce Ce is pretty much just remembered for “Finally” – and it sounds like an unremarkable pop/dance/RnB number. Indeed, so unremarkable is it that the TOTP production team felt the need to intercut Ce Ce’s turn here with snatches of the official promo… which is just Ce Ce performing the song. Yes, the video mirrors what we are actually witnessing in the studio. What was the point of that? She’s even wearing a similar style jacket in both, only the colour is different.
“Keep On Walkin’” peaked at No 20 in the UK and was a No 1 on the US Dance chart.
We arrive at the current UK chart topper via another sound only presenter segue and a panoramic camera angle. Right Said Fred have been deposed to be replaced by…KWS? Who were these guys? Well, they were a dance act from Nottingham who got lucky with their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s 1979 hit “Please Don’t Go”. It was one of those hits that came from out of nowhere, a real club tune that went mainstream. They got into the Top 40 on limited airplay let alone any TV appearances before rising almost unnoticed to the top of the charts in just three weeks. At that point, we finally got to see them as TOTP had to give the No 1 act its rightful exposure. They have that feel of an act who have been performing at Butlins who suddenly find themselves plucked from obscurity and thrust into stardom. They can’t believe their luck.
“PleaseDon’t Go” is one of those songs that feels immediately familiar even if you don’t know who made the original. That’s how it felt to me anyway the first time I heard KWS’s version. Did I know that it was originally performed by KC at the time? Not sure I did. I definitely knew their unlikely 1983 No 1 “Give It Up” and “That’s The Way (I Like It)” from Dead Or Alive’s hi-energy cover from the following year but I must have also heard “Please Don’t Go” at some point without properly registering it as a KC tune. Apparently there were some legal issues surrounding a German act who had released their own version at the same time but we’ve got a few weeks of KWS at No 1 so that story can wait for another post.
And that’s that. All the dog poo has been scooped up and it’s time to put it in the bin. OK. That’s unfair. Not all the acts on tonight’s show were excrement – I bought at least one of them – but I need to bring this dog theme to an end somehow.
RIP Willy
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Shakespear’s Sister
I Don’t Care
Nope
2
The Wedding Present
Come Play With Me
No
3
Del Amitri
Always The Last To Know
Yes – this is in my singles box
4
Kriss Kross
Jump
Fun but not purchase worthy
5
En Vogue
My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)
Yes this is in the singles box and well though I think my wife actually bought it
6
Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson
Beauty And The Beast
Never happening
7
Ugly Kid Joe
Everything About You
See 4 above
8
Saint Etienne
Join Our Club
Negative
9
Richard Marx
Hazard
Nah
10
Ce Ce Pension
Keep On Walkin’
I’d rather take out dog for a walk in the pissing wind
11
KWS
Please Don’t Go
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.
And there you have it – 1990 all done and dusted. As with many of these years that I have reviewed retrospectively, it was quite the disappointment. Very much touted as the year of ‘Madchester’ in the press at the time, if you actually examine the artists that were successful and the songs that were hits in this year, it was very mainstream and very old guard. It reminds me of the year 1977 – the year that punk was everywhere – and yet one of the biggest selling artists of the year was one half of Starsky And Hutch in David Soul. The Top 10 selling albums list was filled by the likes of ABBA, The Shadows, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles. Fast forward 13 years and we see a similar story – the Top 10 albums are represented by Phil Collins (twice!), Elton John (twice!), The Carpenters, Pavarotti (twice!) and bloody Michael Bolton!
As for singles, these were the No 1 records of the year:
18 songs had travelled to the summit of the charts. Of them, I would say they broke down like this:
4 x established stars (Kylie, Madonna, New Order and Beautiful South)
3 x brand new artists we had not seen before (Snap!, Adamski and Vanilla Ice)
3 x artists having their breakthrough moment in the sun (Beats International, Sinéad O’Connor and Maria McKee)
3 x film / TV Advert tie ins (Partners In Kryme, The Righteous Brothers and Steve Miller Band)
2 x old fogeys (Elton John and Cliff Richard)
1 x charity record (Band Aid II)
1 x latest teeny bop sensation (NKOTB)
1 x novelty record shite (Bombalurina)
I bought exactly zero of them. How many of them were halfway decent songs? 6 or 7? The run from July through to October was particularly bad. Where were The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and the Inspiral Carpets? These were the bands the kids wanted weren’t they? Although all these acts had chart hits this year, none of them got higher than No 4 in the charts. Maybe ‘Madchester’ wasn’t about chart positions though – it was a statement of rejecting the old and embracing the new indie-dance hybrid, of fashion, of belonging. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.
The charts were certainly influenced by film and TV this year. Levis continued its campaign of resurrecting old pop hits to sell some jeans and scored a No 1 with “The Joker”, Pretty Woman spawned numerous hits for the likes of Roxette and Go West, Days Of Thunder produced an unlikely No 1 for Maria Mckee and the best selling single of the year was from the film Ghost courtesy of The Righteous Brothers. Hell, even film hits from previous years were massive all over again (“Take My Breath Away” by Berlin). We were all so easily manipulated it seemed.
Euro dance hits were all the rage this year as well. The charts were full of hits from the likes of 49ers, Rob ‘n’ Raz featuring Leila K, Technotronic, Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood, Ya Kid K and of course Snap! who bagged themselves a No 1 record with “The Power”. None of it did anything for me really. It all seemed like a very nasty, homogenised form of dance music and couldn’t hold a light to authentic dance anthems by Deee-Lite, 808 State and The KLF. Were punters really dancing to this cheesy nonsense in the clubs? I wouldn’t have known as my clubbing days declined steeply this year after its high point of the last three years of being a student; mainly because I was skint for most of the year.
Talking of myself, as with previous years, most of my purchases (of singles) seemed to come from outside of the Top 40 (see Hits That Never Were further on in the post). Was I trying to prove some sort of point that I couldn’t be bought or swayed by the forces of film / TV and media promotion? Or was it just that non hits could be found much cheaper in the record shop bargain bins than their Top 40 counterparts? As I said, I did spent most of the year financially embarrassed. I bought the occasional chart hit (The Beloved, Gun, The Soup Dragons, World Party) but they weren’t many, not even when I ended the year working in an actual record shop. Despite being a very memorable 12 months for me personally in which I got married, moved to Manchester and began a 10 year career in record retail, it wasn’t a vintage year musically.
Hits We Missed
During these reviews of the year in my other blog TOTP Rewind – the 80s, a lot of the entries in this section were songs and artists that had made it onto the show but those shows were not repeated by the BBC for reasons of taste surrounding hosts that were totally unpalatable today or in the case of Mike Smith because of legal restrictions. This was not the case in 1990. Every TOTP of that year has been re-shown on BBC4 so any chart hits we missed seeing was because they never actually featured on any episode. Exhibit A m’lud…
James – “How Was It For You?” / “Come Home” / “Lose Control”
James must have seriously offended the TOTP producers in some way in 1990. How else do you explain them having three Top 40 hits and still not getting to appear on the show? OK, they weren’t massive hits (that wouldn’t happen until the following year when a re-release of “Sit Down” hit No 2 and the TOTP bosses could no longer ignore the band) but still.
I have to admit to not really being aware of James before this point despite them being in existence since 1982. Early albums like “Stutter” and “Strip-mine” hadn’t registered at all and neither had they with the majority of the UK record buying public. Sure, they were big hitters in the indie charts but mainstream success eluded them. When 1989 singles “Sit Down” (the original version) and “Come Home” peaked at Nos 77 and 84 respectively, the band made the decision to shift labels from legendary independents Rough Trade to Phonogram sub-label Fontana Records.
That move brought immediate dividends with the band’s first Top 40 hit in “How Was It For You?” released in May of 1990. Backed up by some heavy promotion in the press from their new label and a tour in June which included festival dates at WOMAD and Glastonbury, it entered the charts at No 35 before peaking at No 32 the following week. Some sharp (some may say manipulative) record company tactics saw the band release the single in five different formats with new and live tracks split across them all meaning that completist fans would have to shell out multiple times to acquire every bit of the band’s previously unavailable material.
It turns out that the band did manage to shoot themselves in the foot rather when it came to appearing on TOTP. The promo video that they shot featured Tim Booth singing underwater but also some overly suggestive fruit eating and snogging action that was deemed unsuitable for primetime TV and whoops… there went the crucial TOTP exposure that could have made “How Was It For You?” a major rather than minor hit. Had the video been shown in the show’s Breakers section maybe that would have led to a studio performance and then….ah well. On reflection maybe it was the song’s lyrics that did for it. There was that title for a start and then lines like ‘I’m so possessed by sex I could destroy my health’ surely didn’t help?
Released: 12 May 1990
Peak Chart Position: 32
Weeks On Top 40: 2
Still, a hit was a hit and “How Was It For You?” provided a solid base for the release of parent album “Gold Mother” in June. The album sold well peaking at No 16 (in its original format) and a follow up single was required. It was decided that a re-release of “Come Home” was in order and Flood (who had produced Erasure’s “The Circus” album) was called in to do a remix. To be fair, it doesn’t sound that different to the original to me although it was reduced in length presumably to make it more radio-friendly. The original release of the song had been plagued with issues – pluggers weren’t sent copies and record shops were left without any or with insufficient copies of the single. There was even an error in the charts at Music Week that meant it wasn’t listed in its second week of release. All of these problems led to a stand off between Rough Trade and the band which would ultimately lead to them decamping to Fontana.
A second Top 40 hit was good consolidation for the band but it still didn’t tempt the TOTP bosses to invite them onto the show. Maybe it was all those naked chests and pant daubing antics in the video that put them off. Despite a second consecutive Top 40 entry, I was still somehow managing to avoid James altogether. Maybe it was the distraction of the World Cup. I didn’t really become aware of “Come Home” until later in the year and after I had started working at Our Price. The track was included on a compilation called “Happy Daze” which got hammered on the shop stereo. Compiled by Gary Crowley, it showcased the year’s breakout indie artists with a heavy (though not exclusive) slant on the dance rock crossover sound from artists like Primal Scream, Jesus Jones and The Shamen. Riding on the ‘Madchester’ zeitgeist (although by no means were all the artists from Manchester or even part of that movement), it had assumed legendary status amongst music fans of that genre and time. Having just moved to Manchester myself, it felt the perfect soundtrack to those days and “Come Home” by James was certainly a part of that.
Released: Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 32
Weeks On Top 40: 2
And so to the last of this trio of TOTP ignored hits. “Lose Control” was originally released as a stand alone single between albums to coincide with and help promote the band’s short UK tour. Not included on the original release of “Gold Mother”, it would appear on the 1991 re-release alongside “Sit Down” with the tracks “Hang On” and “Crescendo” jettisoned to make way for them. Our Price did a promotion whereby fans that had bought the original album could effectively trade it in for the updated version no questions asked – a “Gold Mother” amnesty if you like. I remember one day a colleague called Paul taking back a customer’s vinyl format of the album and swapping it for the new as per the offer but when he looked at the traded in copy it was in a terrible condition. Showing it to the store manager in a ‘check this out’ type of way, poor Paul received short shrift from the boss for agreeing to swap it. It seemed harsh on Paul at best.
I must admit to “Lose Control” passing me by back then – released close to Xmas and only appearing in the bottom reaches of the Top 40 for one week though are I think mitigating circumstances for which I can be forgiven.
And so there it is, the curious tale of the chart career of James during 1990. Finally a Top 40 hit and not one but three (waiting for a bus and all that) and yet zero TOTP appearances. However, they now had a much enlarged national platform from which they would leap the following year via the “Sit Down” re-release to spawn a flurry of hit albums and singles throughout the decade, not to mention creating that T-shirt phenomenon that no self respecting, teenage indie kid would leave the house without.
Released: 08 Dec 1990
Peak Chart Position: 38
Weeks On Top 40: 1
The Stone Roses – “Made Of Stone” / “Elephant Stone”
James were not the only Manchester band in 1990 experiencing multiple hits after years of being ignored by the record buying public and mainstream media. As the new decade unfolded, The Stone Roses star went super nova as they blazed a trail as the de facto leaders of the ‘Madchester’ movement. Having gatecrashed the Top 40 back in 1989 with “She Bangs The Drums” in the Summer of ’89 and then residing in the actual Top 10 with “Fool’s Gold / What The World Is Waiting For” as the 80s gave way to the 90s, there was a sudden rush on to get more Roses product out there to satiate demand. First to try and cash in on the band’s popularity were previous label Revolver (they of the infamous paint incident) who re-released early single “Sally Cinnamon” against the band’s wishes. Although it stalled at No 46, it remained on the Top 100 for 7 weeks. Not bad for a single originally released in 1987 that failed to chart at all.
Current label Silvertone weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and so they took the step of re-releasing two singles within the same month. “Made Of Stone” was taken from their iconic debut album and had originally been released in March of ’89 peaking at No 90. Exactly 12 months later wit the world at their feet, it was made available again and went straight in at No 20 where it would peak. Many more worthy of commenting on this song than I have already waxed lyrical of its power but it’s my blog so…
…as I’ve said before I didn’t get The Stone Roses initially. My elder brother was in a full on Manchester United match going obsession by this point and so he was more into them than I was as their songs were the soundtrack to many a coach journey up to Old Trafford. I just wasn’t sure though. I didn’t think the lead singer could actually, you know, sing and I wasn’t into the fashion that they were popularising – I’d had my fill of flares growing up in the 70s. And why did all their dongs have to include the word ‘stone’ in the title? On reflection I was wrong. Massively so. “Made Of Stone” is great, a hugely evocative track whose lyrics paint some very full on images (‘When the streets are cold and lonely and the cars, they burn below me’). It should have been a much bigger hit than it was either time.
Released: Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 20
Weeks On Top 40: 2
Released exactly the same month as “Made Of Stone” came “Elephant Stone” (seriously though, what was it with the word ‘stone’?). They’d call it doubling down now. This one had originally been released in 1988 but had failed to register on the national chart. Come 1990, it was prime for a second outing. Debuting inside the Top 10 was a demonstration of the band’s pull and profile and it’s another great track with that searing, scythe of a guitar refrain opening leading into an irresistible, propelling rhythm. The original doesn’t have the same intro but rather has a much less explosive cymbal entrance segueing into a rather laboured drum and bass. The 1990 version is definitive I think.
And what was an Elephant Stone? Wikipedia suggests it was a reference to one William George Keith Elphinstone, an officer of the British Army during the 19th century. His legacy is one of incompetence as his entire command was massacred during the British retreat from Kabul in January 1842 during the First Anglo-Afghan War. Not your average source of inspiration for a song then. There’s an alternative rock band from Canada who go by the name of Elephant Stone who formed in 2009. Surely not a coincidence – they must be massive Roses fans.
So why were neither of these singles shown on TOTP? What was more important to feature on the show at this time? Well, according to my research the producers felt that Bros (by now in steep decline) were more relevant to the UK audience and they featured on the show around now alongside Guru Josh and Gloria Estefan. Hmm. The following week’s broadcast featured both Primal Scream and Inspiral Carpets. Surely Ian Brown and co would have been perfect for that particular episode? Had they been banned alongside Happy Mondays in that legendary TOTP back in late ’89?
Not on the original 1989 track listing of their debut album, “Elephant Stone” has been included on subsequent pressings.
Released: Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 8
Weeks On Top 40: 4
World Party – “Put The Message In The Box”
Released: 09 Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 39
Weeks On Top 40: 1
In that parallel pop universe where acts that deserved commercial success actually got it, World Party would have racked up multiple chart hits. Instead, back in the reality that exists, they amounted to just four Top 40 entries of which only one actually made the Top 20. One of those chart interlopers was “Put The Message In The Box” which was the lead single from their critically acclaimed (Q Magazine‘s album of the year) but criminally under bought “Goodbye Jumbo” album.
Released at the start of the Summer when the UK record buying public were in thrall to “Nessun Dorma” and unfeasibly Elton John’s most turgid of tunes, “Put The Message In The Box” sounded somehow both fresh and completely retro. The guitar work was undeniably Beatles-esque (“Rubber Soul” era maybe?) while Karl Wallinger’s vocals could have qualified him as a member of The Travelling Wilburys. The false ending when the final guitar ring explodes out of the ether is also rather marvellous. I thought this was great and duly bought the cassette single, the B-side of which was a lovely 50s style ballad called “Nature Girl”.
That parallel universe finally materialised three years on from this when their third album “Bang!” unexpectedly went all the way to No 2 but the momentum of that release wasn’t realised and it remains a commercial high point and anomaly in the band’s fortunes. A fourth album “Egyptology” returned the band to the land of disappointing record sales although it did include the ballad “She’s The One” later recorded and taken to No 1 by Robbie Williams. I’m pretty sure that none of Robbie’s adoring fans knew nor cared that the song with that ice skating video was actually written by Karl Wallinger though. Indeed, Williams himself would introduce the song when performing it live as one of the best songs he’s ever written prompting much ire and fury within Wallinger who was not reticent in declaring his opinion of Williams (the ‘c’ bomb was used!). Justice finally prevailed in this 2019 advert for Williams’ album “The Christmas Present”.
And yes that is Chris Sharrock on drums in the video formerly of the Icicle Works and later drummer for, yes, Robbie Williams.
House Of Love – “The Beatles And The Stones”
Released: 07 Apr 1990
Peak Chart Position: 36
Weeks On Top 40: 14
Having finally secured a bona fide Top 40 hit in a re-recording of debut single “Shine On” a few weeks earlier, House Of Love were getting the hang of this pop star business by claiming another one immediately with follow up single “The Beatles And The Stones”. Essentially their version of a ballad, it’s a gentle, melodic sound and much more laid back than its frenetic and urgent predecessor. There’s even some “A Day In The Life” strings shoved in the mix. What was it about? Going by the lyrics, I’m guessing it was something to do with The Beatles relationship with the press which turned sour after John Lennon’s ‘more popular than Jesus’ quote and how they were then pursued for their political views on subjects such as Vietnam.
It probably should have been a much bigger hit than its No 36 peak but this being 1990, that was probably never going to happen. Sadly for the band, it would prove to be their last ever chart hit.
Hits That Never Were
The Blue Aeroplanes – “…And Stones”
Release date: 26 may 1990
Peak Chart Position: 63
Weeks On Chart: 2
From “The Beatles And The Stones” to “…And Stones”. I always thought that I should have really been into The Blue Aeroplanes in a big way but somehow it never really happened for me although I did like this single. These Bristolian art rockers had been around for nearly a decade by this point albeit with a revolving door policy on band line ups (Wikipedia lists 88* names as either a primary or supporting member over the years) but the mainstays were Gerard Langley, brother John Langley, and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski – yes, a dancer was one of the group members who stayed for thew whole duration. To put it in context, that would be like mime artist Jed ‘Mental Chains’ Hoyle having been on every single Howard Jones performance from 1983 onwards. Or just being Bez I suppose.
By 1990, the band had reached a critical peak with the release of their album “Swagger” from which “…And Stones” was taken. The single had a…erm…swagger to it with a driving, rocking beat that also would have appealed to dance heads and Gerard Langley spoken word style vocals setting it apart. Was it not quite radio friendly enough for day time audiences? Their loss. Ultimately they had to settle for being influential rather than commercially successful (that old chestnut) – you can hear their style in bands like Flowered Up and A House I think – but they could have been as big as Happy Mondays in another world.
The band are still together and released an album as recently as 2017.
*Is that more than The Fall?!
Power Of Dreams – “100 Ways To Kill A Love”
Release date: 02 Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 94
Weeks On Chart: 1
I bought this! I have no recollection of how I came to know about it but presumably I must have heard it on Radio 1 – I’m guessing Mark Goodier’s drive time show as this would have been the sort of stuff he liked to champion. I’m also guessing I picked it up cheap in the bargain bin of whichever record store I got it in but we shouldn’t judge it purely on its historical monetary value. It’s quite an urgent, rock sound that has a hint of The Wedding Present about it in terms of its incessant, jangly guitar back bone.
Not sure that I knew much about Power Of Dreams at the time but thankfully the internet was invented in the intervening 30 years and I can now rest easy in the knowledge that they were from Dublin and were nominated by the NME no less as one of the ‘stars of tomorrow’ in late ’89 alongside Cater USM and The Charlatans. Unlike their peers though, Power Of Dreams never managed to achieve a UK Top 40 hit despite releasing numerous singles and five albums before they spilt in 1995. The band reformed in 2009 and have gigged sporadically since.
The Shamen – “Make It Mine”
Release date: 22 Sep 1990
Peak Chart Position: 42 * 3 straight weeks at No 42
Weeks On Chart: 5
Do The Shamen get the credit they deserve? Indeed, do they deserve any credit at all? Whatever your answer to those questions, nobody can deny that theirs is an engaging story featuring tragedy, critical acclaim and ultimately accusations of being a sell out as commercial success came their way. I first became aware of the band in 1990 (although they had been around since 1985) when I heard “Pro-Gen”. I wasn’t a massive dance music fan and yet despite undeniably being a dance anthem, the track also had a great pop tune lurking under the layers of production and endless remixes which appealed to me. The single would miss the Top 40 but, as it was re-released the following year as “Move Any Mountain” and became a Top 5 hit, I’ve chosen another single from their “En-Tact” album that should have been a hit in 1990.
“Make It Mine” was the follow up to “Pro-Gen” and was of a similar flavour combining an industrial strength guitar riff hook with an infectious rhythm to great effect. It missed out on being the band’s first bona fide chart hit by the tiniest of margins. Indeed, you could make a case that it was the unluckiest record ever to not make the Top 40 when it remained at its peak of No 42 for three consecutive weeks! That close encounter was followed by definite chart contact when “Hyperreal” (the fourth single from the album) made No 29 in early 1991 and then a full on visitation with “Move Any Mountain”.
That moment of chart success though was engulfed by the tragedy of the death of the band’s bass player/keyboardist and songwriter Will Sinnott when he drowned off the coast of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, while the band were shooting the video for “Move Any Mountain”. Deciding to carry on the band in tribute to his former band mate, Colin Angus recruited rapper Mr C as a permanent full time member and in 1992 they would achieve a platinum selling album in “Boss Drum” and a controversial No 1 single in “Ebeneezer Goode”…and that’s where it all went a bit naughty, naughty, very naughty…
Billy Joel – “I Go To Extremes”
Release date: 03 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 70
Weeks On Chart: 4
While the whole country seemed to be going rave mad in 1990, I, perpetually behind the zeitgeist, found myself increasingly embroiled in Billy Joel’s singles release schedule. What on earth was I thinking? After Joel had returned to our Top 10 for the first time in five years with the often ridiculed “We Didn’t Start the Fire” from his “Storm Front” album, it seemed he may be about to embark upon a run of hit singles akin to his “An Innocent Man” period.
However, despite releasing a further four singles from the album, none of them pierced the Top 40 even. I didn’t own “Storm Front” but seemed to afford the singles released from it an inordinate amount of attention. “Leningrad” was the follow up to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” written about a clown whom he met while touring the Soviet Union in 1987 (there’s surely joke in that sentence somewhere) while “The Downeaster ‘Alexa'” depicted the plight of an impoverished fisherman off Long Island struggling to make ends meet against the depletion of fish stocks and restricting environmental regulations. Fast forward 31 years and it could be an allegorical tale of the woes of Brex-shit. The final single to be released was “That’s Not Her Style” which was sort of a sequel to “Uptown Girl” in that it again it was written about/for Christie Brinkley although it was infinitely better than that piece of crud widely recognised as Joel’s worst ever song.
The one I have highlighted here though is “I Go To Extremes” which was the third single from “Storm Front”. There was something about the way the rolling piano drove the song forward that appealed. Apparently written from the point of view of a manic depression sufferer, it certainly made an impression on troubled actress Linday Lohan who allegedly has its lyrics ‘clear as a crystal, sharp as a knife I feel like I’m in the prime of my life’ from this song tattooed on her rib cage. I wasn’t that affected by the song though I did buy it (yes I actually bought it!) and I stand by my actions. It’s a good song. Bloody music snobs!
Age Of Chance – “Higher Than Heaven”
Release date: 03 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 53
Weeks On Chart: 8
Another peculiar pop tale now. It’s that weird story of how a band starts out as one thing and morphs into something almost unrecognisable from their origins later in their career. I can think of a few examples where the artists has almost completely changed musical genre as it were – the Roxy Music of “Virginia Plain” is a million miles away from their slick “Avalon” era, whilst those early Simple Minds albums bear little resemblance to the bombastic, stadium rock hits of their commercial peak. Similarly, when the Beastie Boys advised us that “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” in 1987, few would have imagined that they would come up with such a musically diverse album as “Ill Communication” a few short years later. And who could have foreseen the almost teen bop version of Depeche Mode with hits like “Just Can’t Get Enough” building a career of huge longevity making brooding and dark electro-rock songs? And tht’s befpre we’ve even mentioned Talk Talk…
Back to Age Of Chance though and this lot started out as a Leeds based industrial rock/ dance hybrid and like most people, I only first knew of them via their striking cover of Prince’s “Kiss” in 1986. Favourites of John Peel, they even contributed a track of the now legendary NME C86 cassette compilation (described by writer and broadcaster Andrew Collins as “the most indie thing to have ever existed”). They played a gig at Sunderland Poly whilst I was studying there but I failed to attend for some reason. A move to major label Virgin followed but, almost inevitably, that seemed to be the point where things started to change. Debut album “One Thousand Years Of Trouble” was a critical success but failed to deliver the required commercial sales.
By the time that second album “Mecca” was being recorded, founding member and vocalist Steven Elvidge had had enough and jumped ship leading the rest of the band to recruit a replacement – gospel voiced soul singer Charles Hutchinson was chosen. The result meant that “Mecca” was much more of a polished effort but crucially wildly different from the band’s previous sound. Being the pop kid that I am/was though, I liked this incarnation better and thought lead single “Higher Than Heaven” was almost the perfect pop song and felt compelled to buy the single. Hutchinson could have been a star as big as Seal (but he was beaten to it by…erm..Seal) and their sound was reminiscent of the similarly criminally overlooked Ellis, Beggs And Howard from a couple of years before. Despite being voted Record of the week by BBC Radio 1’s breakfast show listeners, the single failed to make the Top 40 and the band would ultimately spilt in 1991. Shame really.
The Icicle Works – “Motorcycle Rider”
Release date: 17 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 73
Weeks On Chart: 3
You can’t do a Hits That Never Were section without an entry from Icicle Works. They’ve been in multiple reviews of the year that I’ve done. 1990’s representative was “Motorcycle RIder” – however, this was a very different Icicle Works to the outfit who had gone so close to chart glory before.
After 1988’s “Blind” album had taken the band’s commercial fortunes backwards and nullified the small gains made by preceding long player “If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy Sing His Song” and with tensions within the band on the rise, the original line up disintegrated. Drummer Chris Sharrock decamped initially to The La’s before embarking on a career as an in demand musician working with the likes of The Lightning Seeds, Robbie Williams, Del Amitri, Oasis and Beady Eye. He is currently the drummer for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. In addition, bassist Chris Layhe also departed finding an alternative career as events organiser in Liverpool and teaching guitar at the Manchester Adult Education Service. No disrespect to the guitar teacher I had in Hull when I finally tried to master the instrument who was great but I would have loved to have been taught by Mr Layhe! I believe he still does some live gig work – somebody I used to work with in Our Price knows him and by all accounts he is a top bloke.
In the light of these departures, the band’s were dropped by their label Beggars Banquet and their future looked uncertain to say the least. Remaining founder member, Ian McNabb kept the name going though and recruited a new line up (including Zak Starkey for a period) and released their final album “Permanent Damage” on Epic. “Motorcycle RIder” was the lead single and though I liked it (it was a bit like “Evangeline” part II), I’d kind of lost track of the band by this point and took little interest in discovering the rest of the album’s material. When the single stumbled its way to No 73 and the album failed to chart at all, the game was up and the band broke up officially in 1991.
McNabb would continue to write, record and perform his solo material to this day and even achieved a Mercury Music Prize nomination for 1994 solo album “Head Like A Rock”. He has reactivated the Icicle Works name a few times in the intervening years without Sharrock and Layhe – I caught them/him live in Manchester around 2006/7 but it wasn’t the same. Sometimes you really can’t go back but a part of me will always have real affection for the original Icicle Works.
The Lilac Time – “All For Love And Love For All”
Release date: 28 Apr 1990
Peak Chart Position: 77
Weeks On Chart: 2
My allegiance to Stephen Duffy would have been five years old by this point dating back to “Kiss Me”, “Icing On The Cake” and the vastly underrated “The Ups And Downs” album. However, much like with Icicle Works, I was starting to lose track of him as an artist. Having ditched both his ‘Tin Tin’* and ‘A.J.’ affectations and with his commercial fortunes waning to the point of being dropped by his label, he switched his attention to new, folk-rock project the The Lilac Time. I’d liked their debut single, the very hummable “Return To Yesterday” but they’d disappeared from my view by the end of the decade – they’d recorded and released two whole albums by this point but I hadn’t invested in purchasing them and radio didn’t seem that interested in playing them so I had little clue what their sound was.
Come the new decade though, come two new producers in XTX’s Andy Partridge and the man at the helm of The Stone Roses’ mixing desk John Leckie. The result was a more beefed up, polished production on third album “& Love for All”. Almost title track “All for Love And Love for All” was the lead single and it seemed to be a definite attempt to court that missing airplay that could give them a chart hit. Unusually it begins with its catchy chorus, hammering its hooks into your brain from the off. Deriving its title from a word play on the Three Musketeers motto, it undoubtedly borrows its sound a little from “Magical Mystery Tour” but at least Duffy acknowledges his influences with a lyrical reference to early Beatles incarnations The Quarrymen and Johnny & the Moondogs whilst sonically there’s the inclusion of the harmonica riff from “I Should Have Known Better”. As ever with Duffy compositions, this was well crafted, perfect pop and yet also as ever with Duffy compositions, nobody seemed interested. The single failed to make the Top 75 and the album bombed completely.
*’Blistering barnacles!’ indeed!
The Trash Can Sinatras – “Obscurity Knocks EP”
Release date: 24 Feb 1990
Peak Chart Position: 86
Weeks On Chart: 4
A bit like The Lilac Time, this lot seemed to be peddling a genre of music that was an anomaly in 1990. Drawing comparisons from the music press with The Smiths and Aztec Camera, their brand of melodic, jangly guitar driven pop tunes seemed out of kilter with the Eurodance dominated Top 40 charts of the year. Hell, even Aztec Camera didn’t sound like Aztec Camera in 1990! As I recall though, their was a definite buzz around them. Hailing from Irvine, Scotland, they were signed to the Go! Discs label whose other artists like Billy Bragg and The Beautiful South gave them some credibility by association.
Also like The Lilac Time, their single carried a title that was nice word play on an established phrase which was continued in the lyrics with lines like ‘Looking at my watch and I’m half-past caring’. On reflection, their sound was derivative but they definitely had musical ability and knew their way around a decent tune. Parent album “Cake” only made No 74 in the charts and despite having some success stateside (especially on the Billboard Modern Rock chart) the band never managed to hit it big in the UK. They are still a going concern to this day last releasing an album in 2018.
Del Amitri – “Kiss This Thing Goodbye”
Release date: 24 Mar 1990 *
Peak Chart Position: 43
Weeks On Chart: 4
*Originally released 12 Aug 1989 and peaked at No 59
You would be forgiven for thinking that this one didn’t belong in a section called Hits That Never Were at all. This wasn’t a hit?! What even with all that radio play it got?! Yes, taking its place alongside the likes of “Summer Of ’69” by Bryan Adams and “I Would Die 4 U” by Prince, “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” was not a Top 40 hit for Del Amitri despite being released twice! It originally chanced its arm in the singles market in 1989 to no avail but was shoved back out again in the wake of breakthrough hit “Nothing Ever Happens” but still the UK record buying public said ‘nothing doing’. Bizarrely, it was though the first song by the band to break the US Top 40, reaching No 35.
Quite why it failed to chart in the UK is not easily explained. Perfect for daytime radio with its rousing chorus, it seemed much better placed than the much more unusual sounding “Nothing Ever Happens” which would have been an outside bet at best. Maybe it was the banjo picking that put people off? It didn’t matter too much in the end as, far from kissing goodbye to chart stardom, the band would notch up 11 consecutive Top 40 entries after the failure of “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” between 1990 and 1997. Sometimes UK music fans had to be given a bit of a run up before taking an artist to their hearts it seems.
The Blow Monkeys -“Springtime For The World”
Release date: 26 May 1990
Peak Chart Position: 69
Weeks On Chart: 2
And what were The Blow Monkeys up to in 1990? I’m glad you asked because not many were enquiring after their health back then. Having finally achieved proper mainstream success with 1987’s Top 5 hit “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way”, they’d seemed to reject the sophisti-pop sound that had made them pop stars by pursuing a distinctly dance-orientated direction with the release of their next album “Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood”. Dr. Robert had doubled down on that decision when he collaborated with ‘The First Lady of House Music’ Kym Mazelle on Top 10 single “Wait”. That success apart, their new sound wasn’t as popular with the fans (me included) and the album peaked at a lowly No 46. Record label RCA panicked and released a Best Of album entitled “Choices – The Singles Collection” which was a big seller peaking at No 5 and becoming the band’s highest-charting record. But if that Best Of album was meant to be a reminder to the band of the formula for more chart success, they didn’t heed it. Standing at a cross roads as the new decade dawned, they chose to follow the signpost pointing to dance world.
Their first (and it turned out only) album of the 90s saw them continue with their dalliance with that genre when they released “Springtime For The World”. The lead single was the title track and though I hadn’t been expecting much, I honestly thought it was OK. There was more of a tune in it than on the material I’d heard from “Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood” like “This Is Your Life” and it had some interesting elements to it like the jagged sounding strings and the repeated crash of the Rank Organisation style gong. Dr Robert (with his new smart mod haircut) sounded in good voice backed by some lush gospel backing vocals and the while thing had a nice vibe to it. ‘Yeah, this could work and be a hit’ I thought at the time. I was wrong, crushingly so. The single stalled at No 69 and the album failed to chart at all. The band would split shortly after its release and would not reconvene for another 17 years. Since reforming though, they have been very active recording five studio albums and performing live gigs. You can’t keep the good doctor down it seems.
Energy Orchard – “Belfast”
Release date: 27 Jan 1990
Peak Chart Position: 52
Weeks On Chart: 4
Following a rock band from Dublin in Power Of Dreams, we return to Ireland but the northern part of it. Energy Orchard hailed from Belfast and were led by singer-songwriter Bap Kennedy who would go on to work with such musical heavyweights as Steve Earle, Van Morrison, Shane MacGowan and Mark Knopfler. Their debut single “Belfast” was also their highest charting just missing out on the Top 40.
Their sound was more folk-rock in nature than their indie inclined, post -punk peers Power Of Dreams, more U2 than Undertones. They maybe suffered from coming across as too earnest at a time when the UK was still under the influence of dance music, club culture and having a good time. It did however feature on Eastenders apparently. I’m guessing it was on the Queen Vic’s juke box? Sting’s “Love Is The Seventh Wave” was similarly featured back in ’85.
Energy Orchard carried on until 1996 with Kennedy forging a successful solo career until his death in 2016.
Their Season In The Sun
Bombalurina– Why oh why oh why oh why oh why…?
Deee-Lite – They came, they brought us a gigantic and wonderful dance hit that should have been No 1, they left.
Guru Josh – 1990 was indeed time for the guru but it was definitely a time limited offer.
Halo James – “Right, first item on the music genre agenda. Can I just confirm that we are all done with the sophisto-pop movement? Any objections? What’s that Halo James? You haven’t had your turn yet? Oh alright but just one hit and that’s it. Agreed? Motion passed.”
New Kids On The Block – Filling the gap between Bros and Take That, this bunch of pretty boys had some terrible tunes. Thankfully, the collective insanity that gripped the nations teenage girls only lasted 12 months.
The Soup Dragons – It looked for a while like these Scottish groovers would become major stars. They had the right sound at the right time. “I’m Free” and “Mother Universe” were great singles. And then, one minor hit and the inevitable band break up. What a waste.
Vanilla Ice – To quote the character of Porter Lee Austin played by Larry Hagman in one of my favourite ever films Stardust: “He was a monster, I’m telling you, a monster! We couldn’t ship enough of that mother’s records he was so big. You know, at one time, both Capitol and Columbia had plants over in Detroit and Cleveland pressing for us. He was that big, that big. Like King Kong, he was, for a time. And then the branch broke. After that…no kind of hype in the world was going to get him back up on his perch. Ooh! You couldn’t give that mother away!”
Last Words
In many ways,1990 has been one of the most disappointing of these TOTP years that I have reviewed. So much excitement and anticipation for a new decade but the charts were a massive let down, full of generic Euro dance, pop and rock ‘royalty’ that refused to abdicate and a stack of movie and TV generated hits. It was different outside of the Top 40 and TOTP though wasn’t it? ‘Madchester’ had become a vibrant movement, uniting the youth who wanted something other than Mutant Ninja Turtles and Elton John. Yet it would quickly dissipate as its two prime movers The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays struggled to create new material leaving a gap that would be filled by…well…we’ll have to wait for those 1991 BBC4 repeats won’t we…
This schedule of reviewing two retro TOTP shows a week is killing me! Plus my Mac is now so old that it can’t cope with any software updates which means the formatting of my posts has gone to pot recently so apologies for that. Enough of my IT issues though. Just a reminder of what is going on here. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, have been reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats for over four years now. Having started in 1983 we are now into 1990 and with it being November, the release schedules are starting to get busy with the all important Xmas market on the horizon. As such there are six new singles on the show tonight but we start with a second studio performance for a song that surely didn’t warrant a repeat.
Despite being voted the Best Male Solo SInger in the Smash Hits Readers Poll of 1990 for the second year running (he was also voted the worst Male Solo Singer) and having a string of hit singles to his name this calendar year, all was not well in Jason Donovan world. The hits were getting smaller and the teeny bopper fans had new idols to worship in the form of New Kids On The Block (Donovan trailed in third behind two of them in the Most Fanciable Male category). His latest single “I’m Doing Fine” was doing nothing of the sort and had not even yet made it into the Top 20. A second TOTP outing was called for and so here he was opening the show in a determined effort to re-establish himself in the upper echelons of the charts.
If you compare and contrast this SAW produced ‘song’ with the glorious “Step Back In Time” that we saw on last week’s show from Kylie Minogue… well, it’s like comparing Boris Johnson with the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern; one’s a fine example of statecraft the other is…well…just a state. And talking of states, what the Hell is Jason wearing here?! It appears to be a suit over the top of a gold lamé tracksuit top and the only person I can think of who used to wear such a garment was that now unmentionable name from Radio 1’s past and the host of that show about fixing things for people (no, not Repair Shop – you know who I’m talking about!).
This TOTP performance did nothing to alleviate Jason’s chart fortunes (literally nothing as it went down from No 22 to No 29 the following week). In 1991, the classic (but desperate) record company trick of releasing a Best Of album saw his profile at least maintained and brought him a couple of Top 20 hits (one a cover version obviously) but his true resurrection came from left field when he scored a No 1 with “Any Dream WIll Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Another song at its chart peak next. Paul Simon‘s “The Obvious Child” was very well received critically (as was parent album “The Rhythm Of The Saints”) but what was it actually about? Well, according to one review in Rolling Stone magazine, the lyrics referred to the process of growing old and the fact that ‘days have become defined by their limitations and dogged ordinariness’. Wow! That could just as easily be describing living through the COVID pandemic.
Apparently the song is also the namesake of a film which I never knew until now. Obvious Child is a 2014 American rom-com about a drunken one night stand which leads to the lead character (played by Jenny Slate) deciding to have an abortion. I’ve never seen it but it gets rave reviews with Slate receiving numerous awards for her performance. A bit like Paul Simon then.
“The Obvious Child” peaked at No 15 and it would be another 16 years before Simon had another UK Top 40 single.
What the f**k?! A single that includes the line ‘What the f**k?’ in its lyrics and yet seems to have gone unnoticed for three decades and never been censored nor banned?! Unbelievable! OK, I’ve overplayed the puns a bit there but it is quite extraordinary. You could say the same about the whole EMF story though. Hailing from the Forest Of Dean in Gloucestershire, this lot appeared almost fully formed with an irresistible song and stardom seemed theirs for the taking.
I think I first became aware of them when they appeared on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party 1990 show which my research tells me took place on the 11th November (so presumably I hadn’t watched this TOTP from three days earlier). I recall saying to my wife as we watched it in our flat that we had just moved into “who the Hell are EMF?”. To be fair to me, what were they doing on a show about the chart stars of the year winning awards when they had only just released their debut single? I would find out soon enough. Their song “Unbelievable” blew me away. It was the right sound at just the right time; they were perfect for late 1990 – right on the money. Coming over like the younger, cheekier siblings of Jesus Jones, they rode the rock-dance crossover zeitgeist flawlessly and were rewarded with a huge hit. “Unbelievable” was a No 3 hit in the UK and a No 1 in the US.
Apparently the “oh” and “It’s unbelievable” samples were taken from controversial (and pretty offensive) US comedian Andrew Dice Clay which I never knew until now. I do recall though that there was a big fuss about what the initials EMF actually stood for. The official line was ‘Epsom Mad Funkers’, a name taken from a New Order fan club although rumours persisted that it referred to ‘ecstasy mother f**ker’ as that phrase featured in a hidden song simply called “EMF” on the band’s debut album “Schubert Dip”.
Despite a string of singles after “Unbelievable” that all made the Top 40, their chart peaks were in decline and after three albums they eventually split. Multiple reunions have taken place since but the band’s history also included tragedy – Zac Foley, the band’s bass guitarist, died in 2002 aged just 31 due to an overdose of non-prescribed drugs.
One of my abiding memories of EMF and “Unbelievable” comes from a long forgotten TV show called Tom Jones: The Right Time which chronicled the history of pop music and how it had been influenced and shaped. The first episode included this performance with EMF and audience members getting on stage to literally hang off Tom’s Neck.
Whilst not a super fan (although I do have their Best Of CD), I would be able to name quite a few Del Amitri songs including “Spit In The Rain” but I had no idea it had actually made it into the Top 40. As far as I can tell, this was a non-album single* released in between the “Waking Hours” and “Change Everything” LPs and actually made No 21 in the charts. In my head, everything the band released between “Nothing Ever Happens” in 1990 and “Always The Last To Know” in 1992 missed the Top 40 but clearly not. It’s fairly typical Del Amitri fare but that’s fine by me with the ‘spit in the rain’ simile a clever lyrical tool.
The band are due to release a new album later in 2021 entitled “Fatal Mistakes” which again could be a reference to the COVID 19 panademic.
*It did eventually appear on a two -disc reissue of “Waking Hours” in 2014
The Top 5 albums feature is still with us so for all the completists out there, these were the best selling albums in the UK for October 1990
Paul Simon – “Rhythm Of The Saints”
The Three Tenors – “In Concert”
Status Quo – “Rocking All Over The Years”
George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”
The Charlatans – “Some Friendly”
Some pretty mainstream names in there although The Charlatans creeping in at No 5 to remind us that this was 1990 after all. ‘Madchester’ and all that.
Definitely not part of ‘Madchester’ were Liverpool’s The La’s and if EMF’s story was extraordinary, even that had nothing on this lot. The legend of Lee Mavers remains a mystery up there with Richie Edwards of the Manics. Often referred to as a scouse Brian Wilson, his refusal to dance to the music industry’s tune and reputation for studio perfection means he has become a mythical figure with just that one, solitary La’s album to show for his talent.
I think I’d first heard “There She Goes” when working in the toy department of Debenhams at Xmas in 1989 – a colleague had played it to me (it was originally released in November of 1988) and so immediately familiar did it sound that it felt impossible that it hadn’t been in existence for years and years. A timeless melody indeed. The 1990 re-release here was remixed by Steve Lillywhite and this time, resistance was futile. If The Stone Roses could be treated as the new gods of popular music then surely The La’s were also assured a place in musical heaven? For all the plaudits that their album received, I was amazed to discover that it only made No 30 on the chart. It got played to death in the Manchester Our Price I was working in at the time. Sadly, there was to never be a follow up. Bassist John Power got fed up of the inertia and left at the end of 1991 to form the super successful Cast (who Mavers has expressed his extreme dislike for) whilst The La’s went into hiatus for 14 years before a brief reunion in 2005 that resulted in some live shows but no new music.
I saw The La’s twice live; once supporting Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently told my wife that their band name was pronounced The L.A.s (as in LA, California) and once with a friend called Jane who was a fan – that gig was cut short when one of the band possibly Mavers, possibly Peter “Cammy” Cammell (the John Bishop lookalike in this performance I think) stormed off stage never to return, a bit like the hope of any new La’s material.
Just like “The Obvious Child” being name checked in a film, BBC comedy-drama TV series There She Goes was named after the song by The La’s.
To quote EMF, What the f**k?! A single by Gazza?! Yep, despite Italia ’90 having come to its sad conclusion (for England fans) four months prior, we still couldn’t get enough of Mr Gascoigne (supposedly). “Fog On The Tyne” was re-written by Lindisfarne just for the man himself and released as “Fog On The Tyne (Revisited)”. Well, if Timmy Mallett could be a pop star, why not Gazza? Surely he was more popular than that berk? Well, not quite it seemed as Gazza’s debut waxing peaked at No 2 whilst Mallett scored a No 1 as Bombalurina. Still, No 2 was pretty impressive to say that the record was a load of shite.
Was he inspired by his Spurs and England team mate Chris Waddle whose “Diamond Lights” as part of Glenn & Chris had been a hit three years before? Or was it his involvement in New Order’s “World In Motion” England song from the World Cup that made him think he could be a pop star? Well, according to an interview in Smash Hits, when asked ‘why did you decide to embark on a career as a pop star?’ Gazza replied:
“Somebody asked us if I wanted to do a record and I said I would do it”.
There you go then. Simples.
To my mind, Gascoigne’s well documented problems seem to have been exasperated by being surrounded by a lot of people trying to catch a ride on his fame. That Smash Hits article commented that the video shoot was ‘packed with Gazza’s family and Gazza’s mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates’ second cousins’. Says it all really. Bet Jimmy Five Bellies was there.
Not content with one single, Gazza released a follow up and an album (!) called “Let’s Have A Party” (of course it was) which included four Jive Bunny style medleys – a disco one, a Motown one, an Elvis one (Gazza’s favourite) and a Gilbert O’Sullivan one (yes, a Gilbert O’Sullivan one). Even allowing for the madness of the aforementioned Jive Bunny phenomenon, surely nobody bought Gazza’s album? Surely?
A massive seller over this Xmas period was “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” by Jimmy Somerville covering his solo, Bronski Beat and The Communards career. To promote the album, Jimmy did a cover of The Bee Gees hit “To Love Somebody” which actually suited his voice I thought. Well, I suppose you could join the dots between the Jimmy’s falsetto voice and Barry Gibb’s (who wrote the song) quite easily. I like the way in which Jimmy never seemed to dress up for his TOTP appearances. Check him out here in his plain grey T-shirt and jeans. Quite the contrast to Jason Donovan’s attire at the top of the show. If you’ve got the pipes, that’s all that is really required, eh Jase?
“To Love Somebody” peaked at No 8.
The Righteous Brothers remain in pole position with “Unchained Melody” which, in 1999, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers called one of the 25 most-performed songs and musical works of the entire 20th century! It’s been covered by everyone from Elvis to Bing Crosby to LeAnn Rimes to U2…no really….see?
It’s the Righteous Brothers version that is the definitive take though surely? So pervasive is the song’s influence that Ghost (the film that generated its re-release) was originally going to be called Unchained Melody.
Inevitably, Family Guy has its own take on Ghost and “Unchained Melody”:
The play out video is the new one from 808 State. Double A-side “Cubik / Olympic” would peak at No 10. The “Olympic” track was recorded in support of Manchester’s 1996 Olympic bid. That bid would be unsuccessful with Atlanta getting the nod but Manchester would try again for the 2000 Olympics and I was was working in Our Price in Stockport the day that decision was announced. There was an event down at the Castlefield area in Manchester city centre with thousands of people congregating to hopefully celebrate the good news. The trams were packed ferrying party goers to the venue. Sadly, the Manchester faithful were disappointed again as Sydney was announced as the host city. That great city that was our home for the best part of the 90s would ultimately get its time in the sun when it hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games – two years after we left Manchester.
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
Order of appearance
Artist
Song
Did I Buy it?
1
Jason Donovan
I’m Doing Fine
No of course not
2
Paul Simon
Obvious Child
No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
3
EMF
Unbelievable
Unbelievably not at the time but I did buy a later single of theirs called Afro King, the CD of which was like a mini greatest hits which had it on
4
Del Amitri
Spit In The Rain
No but its on my greatest hits CD of theirs
5
The La’s
There She Goes
Not the single but I have their album
6
Gazza and Lindisfarne
Fog On The Tyne – Revisited
NO!
7
Jimmy Somerville
To Love Somebody
No but I had that 84-90 Best Of with it on
8
The Righteous Brothers
Unchained Melody
It’s a no
9
808 State
Cubik / Olympic
Nope
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.
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.
It’s Summer 1990 and World Cup fever is on the rise. The England national team have just secured a place in the quarter finals of the competition two days prior to this TOTP broadcast when David Platt produced a swivelling volley moments before the end of extra time against Belgium to win the game 1-0 for England. Platty’s memorable intervention saved the nation from a penalty shoot out, something we had no experience of back then but which, by the end of the tournament, we would know the heartache and darkness of only too well.
But for now, the nation rejoiced and, labouring under the misapprehension that we had a bye into the semi finals as we faced Cameroon next, were starting to believe something truly special might be afoot. So were there any ‘special’ tunes in the chart to match the nation’s mood? Let’s see…
…well we start with “Oops Up” by Snap! and a bizarre performance that includes a rubber duck (supplied by presenter Gary Davies from the side of the stage via a throw of admirable accuracy) that appears to get squeaked throughout the song. I hadn’t noticed that sound effect on the original recording but, having checked, it is there.
If the rubber duck was meant to soften the image and reputation of rapper Turbo B, it had a lot of work to do. Around this time, he was involved in a very unsavoury incident at a benefit show. The group had been asked by a promoter to do a PA at a nightclub for a benefit event but what Turbo hadn’t realised was that it was for an AIDS charity and the event took place in a gay nightclub. When the lights went up, Turbo found himself in a room full of drag queens and freaked out. Demanding to see the club owner, he allegedly proclaimed “If you ever book me in a place like this again, I’ll kill you”. The owner replied, with hands on his hips, “This is a gay club seven nights a week” at which point Turbo got him by his throat and began throttling him and then all hell broke loose. In a Smash Hits interview when quizzed about the incident, Turbo B’s version was a bit different:
“…if a man gets his ass grabbed by another man he tends to be upset. I tried to talk to this guy and tell him this is not supposed to be like this. His justification of my ass getting grabbed was that it was cool. It wasn’t, so he got choked.”
Despite his protestations that he wasn’t anti-gay later in the interview, it seems pretty clear that Turbo B was not exactly well informed nor accepting of anything that wasn’t strictly heterosexual. As a result of the incident, an organisation called Zap Snap! formed who would protest at Snap! gigs and this would inform singer Penny Ford’s decision to leave the group. In a songfacts website interview she stated:
“And that was another reason why I decided to leave Snap! Because my sister was a serious, staunch gay advocate, and it was like a blow to my family to have me out there being represented with a gay basher. So that’s what started Turbo’s decline“.
Sadly, I think we will be seeing more of Turbo B and his prejudiced views before 1990 is through.
Onto much safer and non-threatening ground next (or is it?*) as we get Jason Donovan and his latest single “Another Night”. From late ’88 to the end of ’89, Jase’s run of hit singles looked like this in terms of their chart peaks:
5 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2
However, as the new decade dawned, the spell appeared to be broken. His first single release of 1990 (“Hang On to Your Love”) peaked at No 8 whilst “Another Night” would really set alarm bells ringing when it failed to even make the Top 10 (topping out at No 18)! When asked about the charts and his position within them in Smash Hits at this time, Donovan had this to say:
“Do I worry about where my records get to in the charts? Oh yeah, of course I do. It wasn’t so great that “Hang On to Your Love” didn’t do as great as some of my other singles have done but looking back on it, I think I would have to put the blame on the strength of that particular song….I think it was a bit of a grower and not nearly as catchy as say “When You Come Back to Me”.
So how did you explain the chart performance of “Another Night” then Jason? It didn’t shift the required amount of units because it was a basically proper dog shit? It is actually dreadful. It sounds like a failed Song For Europe entrant, not good enough even for the Eurovision Song Contest.
*Donovan of course had his own homophobic incident in 1992 when he sued The Face magazine for publishing allegations that he was homosexual. The lawsuit led to a backlash in which he was accused of being homophobic. In his 2007 autobiography, Jason stated that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life.
Pretty sure we are on safe ground finally with Maureen and her version of “Thinking Of You”. I’m very doubtful that there are any scandals surrounding Ms Walsh. As Gary Davies mentioned, she was the vocalist on Bomb The Bass’ “Say A Little Prayer” back in ’88 and…what? She lied to Tim Simenon about what she did for a living when she met him in a nightclub by telling him she was a singer when she wasn’t? So there is a skeleton in her cupboard (albeit a small one). So what was her job at the time? Well, it was either (depending on the date of that nightclub meeting) working in Miss Selfridge or working in an admin position in the police force. Lying whist she was employed by the rozzers? Shameful.
Back to the music though and that guy who comes on and raps in the middle? What was with the cane?
Three Breakers next and we start with Double Trouble and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Were these the guys who had a hit with “Street Tuff” along with that Rebel MC bloke? A quick search of Wikipedia says they are and that their cover of the Rose Royce classic was actually on their album “As One” which features ‘Street Tuff”. Coincidentally, they also did a remix of tonight’s opening song “Oops Up” by Snap!.
I don’t recall them doing this track though and on hearing it back, I’m not sure why they bothered. Jimmy Nail’s version back in ’85 was far more interesting and I’m not joking.
Hell, I’d even choose Madonna’s version over Double Trouble’s and her take on it was rubbish.
“Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (the Double Trouble version) peaked at No 21.
Right, what’s this? Bobby Brown and Glenn Medeiros? WTF?! Really?! How? Why? So many questions. This seems an even more unwanted pairing than last week’s Sonia and Big Fun coupling. So, apparently this collaboration came about through Medeiros’s friend Rick James who …wait a minute! Rick James?! Funk legend Rick James?! He was a friend of wimpy Glenn Medeiros of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” fame?! That requires more explanation than the Bobby Brown connection even. Anyway, it was Rick who put Glenn in touch with Bobby Brown who was looking for someone to produce while he had some free time on his hands and so they worked on a song called “Love Me Little Lady” *pause while blogger vomits* which went on Glenn’s latest album. After Brown called him up to say how much he liked said album, Medeiros asked him to put a rap on the track “She Ain’t Worth It”. And the rest is…
“She Ain’t Worth It” was a No 1 record in the US and a no 12 hit in the UK. This was Glenn’s attempt to beef up his image (he even got a new haircut!) and sound but it’s like something New Kids On The Block would have rejected as trying too hard. In short, it wasn’t worth it Glenn.
Oh OK. I hadn’t realised that Del Amitri had another Top 40 hit in 1990 after “Nothing Ever Happens” at the start of the year but here they are on TOTP again. I knew that they had re-released “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” as a follow up to “Nothing …” but it had failed to be a hit for a second time despite some heavy radio play. I mistakenly believed that the same fate befell “Move Away Jimmy Blue” but it crawled to a high of No 36. Not as intriguing as “Nothing …” nor as immediate as “Kiss This Thing…”, it’s still a pretty good tune I think although not one of my favourites of theirs.
Now then, here was a chart anomaly and a half! A Irish jig complete with accordian, fiddle and a double bass? What the Hell was this?! It was, quite simply, magnificent in my book. The perfect antidote to all this homogenised house music, when asked about the sound of “The Great Song Of Indifference” in a SmashHits interview, Bob Geldof admitted that it wasn’t a modern sound:
“Nope, it’s not a current record but then I’m hardly a major force in modern music. I’m frankly tired of hip hop and house and that. I know nothing about it except that I hear it a lot but it just sounds old hat”
Well said Sir Bob! This was only the second chart hit of Geldof’s solo career and it remains his last. His first had been the rather worthy sounding “This Is The World Calling” back in ’86 but “The Great Song Of Indifference” was a different beast altogether. Made with his band The Vegetarians Of Love (which was also the name of the accompanying album), its subject matter of world apathy in the face of humanitarian disasters and horror was in stark contrast to its knock about, almost joyful sound. Witness:
I don’t care if the Third World fries It’s hotter there I’m not surprised Baby I can watch whole nations die And I don’t care at all
Supposedly Bob had wanted to infuse it with a cajun feel and had spent some time in Louisiana soaking up the cajun vibe before recording the album. The Irish dancing element of the performance here from the wee guy in the shirt and dickie bow at the front pre-dates Riverdance by four years! Marvellous stuff all round.
A couple of personal tie -ins to Bob and this record before I move on. At some point either myself or my wife must have bought this single as we used to dance around our one room flat to it when we first married. We used to really fling ourselves around. We were skint at the time and this would be what passed for a Friday night’s entertainment. Skint or not, they were happy, simpler times. Right at the end of the record there’s a bit when the musicians fall about laughing before Geldof’s distinctive tones clearly cut in with “Let’s listen…”. One of the guys laughing really sounds like Nick Heyward but I’m guessing it’s not.
And that second Geldof story? I once had a friend who did some freelance PR work and one of the people she worked for was the sadly departed Peaches Geldof. My friend found it all a bit demanding and was ready to jack it in. The final straw that broke the camel’s back? It was when Bob got involved and began calling her to to sort stuff out for Peaches. Not known for his tact and diplomacy, Bob’s phone calls prompted her to throw her work phone into the Thames whilst mid conversation with Geldof!
Damn. I thought for a moment when Gary Davies said “Still with the charts here’s Bruce…” in his intro to the next artist his next word would be Springsteen. Unfortunately for me, it was Dickinson. Yes, the Iron Maiden front man’s video for “All The Young Dudes” gets another airing for some reason. What? He went up 9 places to No 23 that week? I don’t care! His version of the Mott The Hoople* classic was awful! To be fair to Bruce Dickinson, he does seem to be a man of many talents. He’s a fully trained pilot and worked for a commercial airline for a while. He’s also a published author, he’s been a champion fencer (once rated the 7th best fencer in England), he’s presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010 and he’s even created a successful beer called ‘Trooper’ with Robinsons brewery in Stockport. If only he’d left the singing alone.
*When I first started working in Our Price there was guy who used to come in who was obsessed with Mott The Hoople. He would come in regularly to check what albums we had of the band in stock (not many!) and would hang around for ages hoping to strike up a conversation with an unsuspecting member of staff about his faves. Takes all sorts I suppose.
Nest it’s a re-run of Maxi Priest‘s performance of “Close To You” from the other week next although Gary Davies tries to make out that Maxi is actually in the studio again.
Maxi never really did it for me and I got nothing else to say about this one. Do me a solid @TOTPFacts and help me out will you?
Maxi Priest was named after Max Bygraves. "He's my mum's favourite singer." He changed his surname from Elliott to Priest after discovering Rastafarianism. "It comes from the Priest Levi, a figurehead of the 12 tribes of Israel."#TOTP
Still at No 1 we find Elton John with “Sacrifice / Healing Hands”. Infamously, both songs on this double A-side had been flops when initially released individually at the end of ’89 but parent album “Sleeping With The Past” also had a truncated route to the top of the charts. Although it debuted at No 6 when released in Sep ’89, it departed the Top 10 the following week and fell out of the Top 40 completely after a month. Inevitably, once the success of the re-activated single kicked in, so the album was also revitalised. After knocking around the lower reaches of the Top 100, it climbed from No 54 to No 2 in one week! After three consecutive weeks in that position it embarked on a five week run at No 1 eventually going three time platinum in the UK alone. Yet for all that, it’s hardly regarded as one of his best albums I would speculate. Apart from “Sacrifice” and “Healing Hands”, are any of the other tracks on the album well known? Follow up single “Club at the End of the Street” didn’t even get into the Top 40. Elton in the Summer of 1990 was a very curious phenomenon indeed.
The play out video is “Unskinny Bop” by Poison. Having checked out their discography, I was amazed to discover that Poison had eight UK Top 40 hits. I could have named …let me think…four absolute tops. “Unskinny Bop” would have been one of the four. The timeline of their hits would have been beyond me though, not helped by a re-release of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with nearly 18 months in between releases. I could not have told you when “Unskinny Bop” had been a hit for example but I can tell you that it did very little for me. It was a bit like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” (i.e not that good). And what the Hell was an “Unskinny Bop” anyway? Is ‘unskinny’ even a legitimate word? Supposedly it was just a guide lyric according to guitarist C.C. DeVille, a phonetic place holder until the proper lyrics had been written but it stuck (see also the lyrics to “The Riddle” by Nik Kershaw).
“Unskinny Bop” peaked at No 15.
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
11
Poison
Unskinny Bop
No
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.
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.
After a raft of new acts and songs in the last couple of TOTP shows, the charts of early 1990 seem to have slowed down a bit with only three of the performances tonight not having featured before. Also, there’s only ten artists in total as opposed to the thirteen that have been crammed into the last couple of broadcasts which means less writing for your truly. Thank f**k for that!
Tonight’s presenter is Gary ‘safe pair of hands’ Davies and opening the show are Yell! with their version of “Instant Replay”. Now these two were definitely not a couple of talentless bimbos. Says who? Erm…those two talentless bimbos up there on stage. Yes in a rather tetchy Smash Hits interview, Yell! rejected all accusations of a dearth of perceivable musical ability in their camp:
“We’re not a couple of talentless bimbos”
Well, that clears that up then. Anything else you want to say for the record:
“People tend to think if you’re doing something like this you don’t have any brains…’cause we lift our arms and go ‘Instant Replay!!!’…’cause we click our fingers at the same time…’cause we’re doing a cover…We’re saying ‘this is for now!’, let’s have a good time and get serious later…”
Hmm… bit of protesting too much going on there I think. So did Yell! ‘get serious later’? Well, they released another cover version of a dance tune (Average White Band’s “Let’s Go Round Again”) and erm…this. *Does this count as getting serious?
*No, no it really doesn’t.
Right, what’s with the guys in hard hats in the studio audience crowding around Gary Davies? I don’t get it. Bob the Builder wouldn’t become a chart sensation for a further ten years so it can’t be anything to do with that. Just weird.
On with the music though and here’s Janet Jackson with a song I don’t recall at all in “Come Back To Me”. Taken from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album, it sounds very much like one of her earlier singles “Let’s Wait A While” to me. Like brother Michael, Janet wasn’t adverse to releasing multiple tracks of her albums as singles. There were seven off this album alone none of which got any higher than No 15 over here. Contrast that to their performance in the US where she clocked up four No1s, two No 2’s (including “Come Back To Me”) and a No 4. Cross-Atlantic differences and all that.
A huge record up now and indeed a future No 1 from the latest incarnation of a post Housemartins Norman Cook. Having already released two singles under his own name the previous year in “Blame It on the Bassline” and “For Spacious Lies” (albeit aided by MC Wildski and Lester respectively), he decided to formalise his collaborations under the banner of Beats International (which on reflection is a pretty crappy name). More of a collective than a stable band including singers, musicians, rappers and dancers, their first single “Dub Be Good to Me” was a huge hit straight off the bat. Mashing up The Clash’s “Guns Of Brixton” and SOS Band’s “Just Be Good To Me” proved to be a genius idea which was then expanded by lacing it with other samples from Ennio Morricone and Johnny Dynell (the “Tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty, you’re listening to the boy from the big bad city, this is jam hot” rap at the start of the track). Featuring the lead vocals of an unknown Lindy Layton, there was just something about this almighty groove that captured the public’s attention and affection and it was soon a chart topper.
Parent album “Let Them Eat Bingo” however was only a moderate seller and generally perceived by the critics as a bit of a curate’s egg (my wife bought it though and second album “Excursion On The Version”). Cook called time on the project after that, moving onto form Freak Power and then assume the FatBoy Slim alter ego before the decade was out.
It’s those deadly serious looking Scottish lads Del Amitri next with their folk pop dirge of tune “Nothing Ever Happens”. Folk pop dirge? Look, they’re not my words but only those of lead singer Justin Currie himself who tweeted along to this performance as the BBC4 TOTP repeat went out. See…
Not very good clappers in the crowd this week. Probably traumatised by having to stand through our folk pop dirge.
Despite this being the second time the band appeared on TOTP, the producers just reused their original performance clip for this show (there’s an abrupt cut away from Gary Davies to the band with no long, lead in shot) so this was their debut. In keeping with the acoustic nature of the song, it’s a very downbeat performance, almost as if they’re busking. It must have been a strange experience for the rest of the band. Finally, after years of trying they have a genuine chart hit and have made it onto the legendary show that was TOTP where careers are made or broken. The next three and a half minutes were vital to their career and what are they doing as the camera turns to them and they beam direct into the watching nation’s sitting rooms? They’re sat down with their arms draped over their guitars, not knowing where to look. After what must have seemed like an age whilst Justin Currie sings the unaccompanied intro, the rest of the song kicks in and they can mime along. Meanwhile, the normally excitable studio audience just sort of stand there, no clapping, no cheering and certainly no dancing.
They did go onto sell six million albums worldwide after this (and got to meet Sinéad O’Connor in the BBC bar afterwards!) so it all turned out alright in the end. Nothing ever happens indeed!
The last of the ‘new’ tunes next as Lisa Stansfield attempts to follow up her huge No 1 hit “All Around The World” with her new single “Live Together”. I was never much of a fan of the former and much preferred this one. The orchestral strings in the mix gave it a fuller, more lush sound that that of its predecessor. However, when you get such a big seller that early in your career, trying to emulate its success is never going to be easy and although achieving a very respectable No 10 peak, “Live Together” never looked likely to bring Lisa the same returns.
Lisa’s image in the video reminded me of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Dick Dastardly but instead of his twirly moustache, she’s got twirly kiss curls. Despite working in the Our Price store in Rochdale (Lisa’s hometown) for a year in the early 90s, I never saw her in the shop once. The one time she finally did come in, I was on my day off! Drat and double drat!
After appearing in last week’s Breakers section, The Beloved have moved up sufficient places in the Top 40 to warrant a studio appearance this time around to perform their single “Hello”. I loved this quirky dance / pop crossover tune and despite being on the dole, purchased the cassette single from my local record emporium.
I really like Jon Marsh’s dancing in this with his finger pointing hand guns and swishing poncho. Sadly, the song gets cut short before we get to the Jeffrey Archer name drop. I would have liked to see if Jon would have incorporated his ‘wanker’ gesture from the promo video into the studio performance. As fate would have it, I write this post on the day after one of the celebrities that we do get to hear name checked in the lyrics, comedian Bobby Ball, died. RIP Bobby and Rock On.
Those hard hat guys are back again as Gary Davies introduces the next act. There are also two young girls with matching Deirdre Barlow spectacles and frizzy perms in shot! Quite extraordinary! Very much the opposite of extraordinary though is the artist that Gary is introducing as it’s Phil Collins who plods his way through latest single “I Wish It Would Rain Down“. I’m sure I’ve told this story before but as Phil is so boring, I have no other recourse than to wheel it out again…
I once attended a wedding where the music that was played in the registry office as we waited for the bride to arrive appeared to be a Phil Collins Greatest Hits CD. As such, the three songs that were played one after the other before she arrived were:
“I Wish It Would Rain Down” (surely not on your wedding day?)
“Against All Odds” (with its lyric ‘you coming back to me is against all odds’)
“Separate Lives” (perhaps not the best song to celebrate the union of two people in matrimony)
Skid Row‘s video for their “18 And Life” single is the next thing we get to see on the show despite it only being on just last week. Its rise of 11 places to No 12 though was deemed justification enough by the TOTP production team to reshow it. Written about the plight of an 18 year old who received a life sentence for the murder of his friend with a gun he thought was not loaded, the full version of the video incorporates this element of the song with many scenes showing the use of a firearm. Uncomfortable with this, MTV refused to air the video.
Comparing the full video below with the version shown on TOTP, it’s clear that the BBC had similar concerns and all of the images involving a gun have been edited out. They even removed the scene where the protagonist’s father chucks him out of the house threw a plate glass window. Well, it was before the watershed and Mary Whitehouse was still in post as President of the National Viewers and Listeners Association to be fair.
Sinéad O’Connor is still at No 1 with “Nothing Compares 2 U” and this week it’s the video that TOTP uses rather than her in studio performance. The promo won three Moonmen at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year (O’Connor became the first female artist to be awarded with it), Best Female Video and Best Post-Modern Video.
With all the accolades though inevitably came the piss takes. This one is courtesy of Gina Riley on Australian comedy show Fast Forward…
The play out song this week is “The King And Queen Of America” by Eurythmics. I’m kind of surprised this video got a second airing considering it peaked at a lowly No 29 and had already been shown last week but it did go up five places in the Top 40 that week which seemed to be the criteria for inclusion on the show at the time (see also Skid Row and The Beloved earlier).
Apparently, the 7″ single was issued in an incorrect sleeve initially and had to be withdrawn on the day it went on sale. Those copies that slipped through the net have become one of the most collectable Eurythmics items and command around £1000 resell price. Sort of their version of the A&M release of The Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” though not quite as desirable – a copy of that collectible sold for £13,000 at auction in 2019.
For posterity’s sake I include the chart rundown below:
No but it’s on a Q magazine compilation album I bought
5
Lisa Stansfield
Live Together
Nope
6
The Beloved
Hello
Yes! I did buy this one! The cassette single no less!
7
Phil Collins
I Wish It Would Rain Down
As if
8
Skid Row
18 And Life
Haddaway and shite
9
Sinéad’ O’Connor
Nothing Compares 2 U
Don’t think so
10
Eurythmics
The King And Queen Of America
That’s a no
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 