“England versus Scotland – the biggest clash since…ooh…Geri Versus Emma” proclaims host Jayne Middlemiss at the start of this particular TOTP thereby neatly summing up what was happening in the worlds of both sport and music in mid November 1999. The day after this show aired, the first leg of a play off between the English and Scottish national football teams took place to decide which nation would proceed to the 2000 European Championship tournament after both teams had finished as runners-up in their respective qualifying groups. England would win that first game in Scotland 2-0 thanks to a pair of goals from Paul Scholes and would ultimately go on to the finals in Belgium and the Netherlands despite losing the second leg four days later 0-1. I remember watching the first game in a bar in Manchester with a couple of friends and then watching perhaps the worst England display for years in the second leg on TV in our flat.

If England overcoming the auld enemy would have been the shortest odds outcome at the bookies, the battle between Geri Haliwell and her Spice Girls ex-band mate Emma Bunton was less easy to predict. Not quite up there with Oasis v Blur and the whole Battle of Britpop saga, it was still quite the pop music story as both artists released singles in the same week with both having eyes on the No 1 spot. There could be only one winner though and the result was announced almost immediately with the opening act (and therefore not this week’s chart topper) being Tin Tin Out and Emma Bunton with their version of “What I Am” which debuted at No 2.

So was this clash of release dates accidental or deliberately engineered? Certainly, the generated press coverage wouldn’t have done either protagonist any harm promotion-wise but then, would both have been guaranteed a No 1 if they’d have gone to market seven days apart? There was a train of thought which predicted a surefire win for Emma Bunton given that this was her first ever solo release which wasn’t available on anything else whereas the Geri Halliwell track was the third to be taken from her “Schizophonic” album which had already been in the shops for five months by this point. However, Geri had another ace up her sleeve which kept her on the front pages for a week which was an “are they or aren’t they?” tabloid frenzy about whether she was dating Chris Evans. That was convenient that the story broke that week. Hmm.

Anyway, in the final reckoning it was Geri who won out even though Emma had potentially the more interesting release. Working with electronic dance duo Tin Tin Out, the decision to cover Eddie Brickell And The Bohemians’ 1988 minor hit “What I Am” was sound. A familiar but not over saturated song that actually could potentially not have been known by the Spice Girls fanbase at all and therefore mistaken for a Bunton original. To say the track was a decade old, it translated pretty well into the pop climate of the very late 90s which is just as well as Tin Tin Out/Emma deliver a pretty faithful version. Bunton would get her No 1 in 2001 when she answered her own question with the single “What Took You So Long”.

So what do you do after one of your first hits is a global smash, your debut album is massive but the lead single from your sophomore collection doesn’t go down so well? You return to the formula of that initial worldwide hit of course. That’s certainly how it appeared with Savage Garden who had topped charts everywhere with “Truly Madly Deeply” but had found sales harder to come by for “The Animal Song” which trailed second album “Affirmation”. Time to bring out the big guns then and “I Knew I Loved You”, just like “Truly Madly Deeply”, was a huge, shimmering, harmonies-laden pop ballad.

However, it wasn’t quite a case of copy and paste though as Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones hadn’t recorded the track as part of their original submission of the album to record label Columbia who challenged the duo to come up with another “Truly Madly Deeply”. Although not keen to rinse and repeat, Hayes and Jones agreed that the album lacked a ballad and so “I Knew I Loved You” was written. It would go Top 10 in the UK but critically, in America, replicated the success of “Truly Madly Deeply” by going to No 1on the Billboard chart. So, who was vindicated? Those Columbia executives for insisting on another big ballad or Savage Garden themselves for coming up with it? I think those dastardly record label executives won the battle but their artist won the war with their stance that “Truly Madly Deeply” was a one-off song as its legacy surely outshines that of “I Knew I Loved You”.

Beck might not be the greatest singer in the world (as this TOTP performance demonstrates) but you can’t doubt his creativity. Seven studio albums in seven years by 1999 proves he had ideas in him that he wanted to get out there. Album No 7 was “Midnite Vultures” from which “Sexx Laws” was the lead single. If your only acquaintance with Beck was via 1994’s slacker anthem “Loser”, then this track must have blown your expectations out of the water although Jayne Middlemiss’s intro of “This next track has been described as LA Punk, Memphis Funk and Chicago Blues with Hawaiian guitar and a Mississippi banjo” should have given a clue that you were in for something different. Jayne failed to specifically mention the brass section that leads the number that was almost jaunty in nature. Subject-wise, as Tim Booth of James once sang, it “messed around with gender roles” and expectations of how the sexes behave. I’d forgotten how good it was to be honest and it deserved better than its No 27 chart peak.

One last thing – that spelling of ‘sex’ as ‘sexx’? It’s either a play on the age rating system (as in an x-rated film) or it signifies two X-chromosomes, thus saying nothing is wrong with same-sex relationships.

And so the brief time of Another Level was at an end – “Bomb Diggy” was their eighth and final hit. Clearly, I wasn’t the target audience for this lot but even allowing for that, I found their success inexplicable. This last chart entry was a case in point. It came over like an R’n’B nursery rhyme but with decidedly non children-friendly lyrics. Read this:

“You know it’s the bomb diggy diggy
When we get jigyy let my piggyback
Ride on it all night long (all night)
While I’m singing my song, all through the hoody hoodywanna get the goody goody
You know It’s the bomb diggy diggy bomb bomb diggy
Can I get some of your bomb diggy?
Jello jello goody chocolate puddy
Want to get a little bit of your goody goody
Oh goody goody”

Songwriters: Dwight Reynolds

Bomb Diggy lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Now in her intro (and outro), Jayne Middlemiss says she doesn’t know what the song is about. Really Jayne?! “When we get jigyy let my piggyback, ride on it all night long”?! Come on! We all know what he’s singing about there don’t we?! I can only assume she was being ironic or deliberately obtuse. As for the phrase “Bomb Diggy”, apparently it’s a combination of two 90s slang terms – “The Bomb” and “Diggity” (derived from the older phrase “hot diggity dog!“) Then, of course, there’s also “no diggity“ (meaning “without a doubt”), which was popularized by the 1996 R&B song by Blackstreet. I’m not really interested in any of this but maybe you are and I’m nothing if not concerned with public service.

It’s Jenny from the Block! Not that anyone called her that yet as that particular song wouldn’t be released for another three years. In 1999, Jennifer Lopez was just two singles and one album into her discography with that second single being “Waiting For Tonight”. More of a pop tune than her debut hit “If You Had My Love”, it did the job of consolidating her image as a singer rather than purely an actress when it was another big hit. Although we get an in person, studio performance here, the accompanying music video followed in the footsteps of Will Smith by pursuing a Y2K theme and specifically the millennium bug element. At a New Year’s Eve party, there is a power outage as the clock strikes midnight and everyone is plunged into darkness but it comes back on after a couple of moments because…well, it wouldn’t have been much of a music video if it didn’t I guess.

Going back to that TOTP appearance though, clearly a wind machine must have been installed at the front of the stage but off camera judging by how the Lopez locks were tossing about. Bizarrely, the performance is intercut with images of Jennifer from the video with lots of shots of her armpits. Given the aforementioned wind machine, am I the only one getting Madonna “Into The Groove”/ Desperately Seeking Susan vibes?

WHOOOO?! Who on earth was Mr. Vegas?! Well, he wasn’t Johnny’s Dad but apart from that I haven’t a clue. Zero memory of this so…

*googles Me. Vegas*

…he’s a Jamaican dancehall singjay (a style of vocals combining toasting and singing) who was born Clifford Smith who came to prominence in the late 90s, picking up a MOBO award and airplay for his track “Heads High”. When legendary reggae label Greensleeves got involved and gave it an official release, the Top 40 awaited. I can’t say it does much for me but at least he was a genuine artist unlike, I don’t know, Shaggy who always seemed like a grifter to me. On a nostalgic note, the name Greensleeves conjures up memories of the record distributor Jet Star who handled the label’s product. When working for Our Price, if I ever had to ring up Jet Star to place orders for the shop, the telesales guys on the phone lines were always so sound and laid back, like they were just chilling rather than at work and I always imagined them either about to blaze up or already with reefer in hand. They were different times.

Not sure I remember this charity single. Artists For Children’s Promise anyone? This collective of pretty big names from the world of music (plus a couple of actors) added their own personal contributions to a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It)” to spearhead a campaign backed by Marks and Spencer to encourage UK citizens to donate the value of their final hour’s earnings before the millennium which would be split between seven children’s charities. It wasn’t a major hit, peaking at No 19 but you can’t doubt its intentions.

Right, so if you’ve watched the video, how many artists did you recognise? I think I got most of them though there’s a few on the list in its Wikipedia entry that I didn’t see. Maybe they were blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos or perhaps we didn’t see the entire promo? A few things did pique my interest though. Why did the Spice Girls get their own shouted intro mid song before adding their vocals? Nobody else did. Then there’s the lines about “suicide right on the stage” and “teenage lust” – could they be deemed controversial in a song designed to raise money for children’s charities or am I being overly sensitive? Finally, I’m not sure the contributions of Robin Williams and Eric Idle really added anything entertaining, big names or not.

And so to the winner of the chart battle of the Spice Girls as we witness Geri Halliwell bag her second consecutive No 1. I have to say that, listening back to “Lift Me Up”, it’s a fairly innocuous track. Not unpleasant but hardly outstanding and, remembering that musical opinion is subjective, possibly not deserving of topping the chart. Remember, musical opinion is subjective! That wind machine was obviously in use again here and although Geri covers her armpits up, I’m not sure why she performs in a bra.

So do you think Geri and Emma Bunton were in the studio together and if so, what would they have said to each other? Well, disappointingly, I don’t think they were. My evidence? Well, judging by the long outro shot segueing from Emma opening the show into the next act, Jayne Middlemiss was clearly in the actual studio at the same time but when she introduces Geri, she clearly isn’t due to the green screen effect going on behind her indicating that Halliwell’s performance was pre-recorded not in the presence of our host. Oh well.

Geri would come up trumps with a third consecutive No 1 early in 2000 with “Bag It Up” and then a fourth a year later with a cover of The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men” before the hits became smaller and then dried up altogether. She would rejoin the Spice Girls in 2007 for a number of reunion dates and again in 2019 for their fourth and so far last concert tour.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I like it?
1	Tin Tin Out / Emma Bunton	What I Am	Nope
2	Savage Garden	I Knew I Loved You	Nah
3	Beck	Sexx Laws	Good song but no
4	Another Level	Bomb Diggy	Never
5	Jennifer Lopez	Waiting For Tonight	No
6	Mr. Vegas	Head High	I did not
7	Artists For Children’s Promise	It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It)	Negative
8	Geri Halliwell	Lift Me Up	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002wnjr/top-of-the-pops-12111999