Enigma

TOTP 27 JAN 1994

Posted on January 27, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve reached another milestone here at TOTP Rewind. It’s not the fact that following host Tony Dortie’s departure from the show last time, this week it’s the turn of Mark Franklin to bow out after fifty nine appearances. No, it’s much more seismic than that. This is my 200th post for TOTP Rewind the 90s! In fact, by my calculations, in a few weeks I’ll be clocking up my 500th if you add the posts on the 80s blog to that figure! A huge thank you to anyone who has ever taken the trouble to read any of them.

Back to Mark Franklin and his final show though and as ever, he was presiding over a right mixed bag of artists and tunes starting with some rock. “What a rocky way to start the show” trills Franklin (just in case the watching millions were unfamiliar with the concept of rock music) as he introduces Therapy? performing their latest single “Nowhere”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this lot seemed to pass me by somewhat. It’s not that they didn’t make a good sound it’s just I didn’t really hear much of their stuff either on the radio or on the stereo system of the record shops I was working in. I might not know much of their music but I have to admire their work rate. 15 studio albums in 27 years is prolific. Add 31 singles and 5 EPs to that and you have a huge back catalogue.

“Nowhere” was the lead single from the fourth of those albums and the second on major label A&M and would see them at the peak of their commercial powers with it hitting the UK Top 5. Listening to “Nowhere” today, it’s not bad though it does rely heavily on a repeated riff. The CD single of “Nowhere” included some cover versions including “C. C. Rider” (as made famous by Elvis Presley), “Breaking The Law” (Judas Priest) and this classic from The Stranglers…

Guitarist and vocalist Andy Cairns is a big fan of my beloved Chelsea and the way our season is currently going, we could both do with some therapy.

The Top 40 countdown for Mark Franklin’s final show is soundtracked by Depeche Mode and their single “In Your Room”. In my head, there’s a very clear dividing line in the band’s career and that occurs in 1986 and the release of the “Black Celebration” album. Their back catalogue in their first five years is full of gloriously catchy synth pop tunes that culminated in the release of their first Best Of album in October 1985 (which I had). Their material from then on always seemed to me much darker and the pop kid in me sometimes struggled with it. With the passing of time though can come a new perspective and I have to say that the run of eight singles released from their first two albums of the 90s is remarkable in the consistency of their quality. Look at this list:

Personal Jesus
Enjoy The Silence
Policy Of Truth
World In My Eyes
I Feel You
Walking In My Shoes
Condemnation
In Your Room

Wow! Some of them (like “In Your Room”) hadn’t registered with me at the time but discovering them through these old TOTP repeats has been a welcome side effect to accompany all the nostalgia. Depeche Mode have a new album out in March and have vowed to continue despite the tragic passing of Andy Fletcher last year.

It’s that Joe fella up next with his debut single “I’m In Luv”. The performance here, or more specifically, the puffa jackets on display prompted many a ‘won’t feel the benefit’ comment on Twitter. Joe’s rapper mate does a passable impression of Shabba Ranks with his shout outs which is not to be encouraged in my book. Joe has maintained quite the career in the music business releasing 13 studio albums and 30 singles so far. He is also a record producer having remixed for the likes of Barry White and Tina Turner and has been a guest vocalist with names such as Brandy and Mariah Carey. Not your ‘average Joe’ then.

It’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when Celine Dion wasn’t seen (in this country at least) as the multi-platinum selling ‘Queen of the Power Ballads’ and was just the singer who had a hit with the bizarrely named Peabo Bryson with that song from Beauty And The Beast. Or even the woman who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland in 1988. The turning point was obviously her having a big hit and what do you do when you need a career firing hit? You record a cover version. Of course you do. You’ve got to get the song choice right though. It needs to be something that’s well known but which isn’t so definitive that you’d be mad to take it on. Did Celine get it right with “The Power Of Love” by Jennifer Rush? Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ from the point of view that it did give her a first major UK hit when it powered its way to No 4 but also ‘No’ as I would suggest that despite that, the song is still associated most strongly with Jennifer Rush. The original was the UK’s biggest selling single of 1985, the ninth biggest selling of the decade and made Rush the first female artist to have a million selling single over here. Maybe I’m being unfair on Celine. After all, if it’s just about sales then she could point to the fact that her version topped the charts in the US, Canada and Australia, was the eighth biggest selling single of 1994 in America and shifted a total of 900,000 units. And yet…surely “The Power Of Love” isn’t the song that springs to kind first when you mention Celine’s name. That must be that ghastly ballad from Titanic mustn’t it? I can’t believe I’m tying myself up in knots over a debate about Celine Dion and Jennifer Rush! Suffice to say, off the back of her cover, the former went on to have a huge career including a No 1 a few months after this with “Think Twice”.

This is starting to look like a very strange show for Mark Franklin to bow out on. There seems little cohesion to the running order as it jumps around wildly from genre to genre. Hard rock, R&B, power ballads and now country music in the form of Garth Brooks. No doubt the outgoing TOTP producer Stanley Appel would point to the show’s diverse make up. Anyway, back to Garth and he’s put together a performance of his single “The Red Strokes” for us from Nashville and you can’t get more country than that! He’s even recorded a little intro for it which is giving me strong Ed Winchester from The Fast Show vibes…

Garth has also forgotten to wear his Stetson hat for the performance (amateur!) but that’s nothing to the change of image he affected five years later for his “Garth Brooks in…the Life of Chris Gaines” project. This was an ill advised attempt to push the country/ rock music boundaries even further than Brooks already had when he assumed the persona of a fictitious rock star (the titular Gaines). Intended for a film that was never made, Garth released an album of rock songs as Gaines anyway and even promoted it in character.

The album actually sold well but the whole concept has since been derided retrospectively. Brooks probably deserves some credit for having the cojones to try something different though. After all, Bowie’s various incarnations are lauded to the high heavens; the less said about Bono’s The Fly/Mirrorball Man/MacPhisto alter egos the better though.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with…“Hyperactive!” by Thomas Dolby? A song that had already been a No 17 hit exactly ten years previous? Why? It was the old Greatest Hits trick in action again. Although Dolby had actually achieved his first UK Top 40 hits since “Hyperactive!” just two years before in “Close But No Cigar” (No 22) and “I Love You Goodbye” (No 36), the parent album “Astronauts & Heretics” had disappointed commercially. Presumably that’s why his record company EMI thought it was time to raid his back catalogue to try and increase their Dolby revenue streams.

“Retrospectacle – The Best Of Thomas Dolby” was released in the February of 1994 with “Hyperactive!” given a re-release to spearhead the promotion campaign. The CD singles included some remixes of early Dolby classics like “Dissidents” and “Windpower” which no doubt piqued the completist tendencies of his fanbase and may explain “Hyperactive!” making No 23 a second time around. I’ll have reviewed this track when it was a hit initially in my TOTP 80s blog so I’m not going to go through it again. However, I will admit to once giving a rendition of it (with my colleague Mel) to a dumbfounded office of co-workers including the “Tell me about your childhood” opening line.

The second Breaker sees the return of Enigma. The new-age hitmakers who took Gregorian chanting to the top of the charts in 1991 were back but this time they’d replaced monks with some tribal chanting. “Return To Innocence” was the lead single from second album “The Cross Of Changes” which, though not as successful as their debut “MCMXC a.D.”, would still sell 600,090 copies in the UK alone and go to No 1 in our charts.

The track sampled a recording of an Amis chant called “Elders’ Drinking Song” performed by Taiwan husband and wife folk duo Difang and Igay Duana who would end up suing Enigma founder Michael Cretu for unauthorised use of their music. Cretu settled out of court stating that he thought the recording was in the public domain. It also has a more traditional song structure than their most famous hit “Sadeness (Part I)” with vocals added by German pop star Sandra. Listening back to it now, if you take the chanting out, it kind of sounds like a Savage Garden song. That comment, of course, just goes to confirm that the song was all about the chanting.

All of the singles taken from “The Cross Of Changes” had rather pretentious sounding titles suggesting that they somehow might slip you the answer to everything once heard…

Return To Innocence
The Eyes Of Truth
Age of Loneliness
Out From The Deep

Pseuds! Anyway, the Benjamin Button style video (directed by Julian Temple) of the old fella in the orchard passing away and seeing his life flash before him in reverse is quite affecting and definitely added something to the track helping it to a UK chart high of No 3.

Oh and one last thing, remember last week when Tony Dortie made one final gaff on his last ever show by referring to D:Ream’s lead singer as Peter Cornelius rather than his actual name of Peter Cunnah? Well, it turns out that one of the guys behind Enigma was called…yep…Peter Cornelius! Right name, wrong show Tony!

The UK record buying public had an almost dysfunctional relationship with Richard Marx through the 80s and 90s. His debut album was a gigantic success in America but was almost completely ignored over here. Two US No 1 singles failed to even make the Top 40 but then the country suddenly buckled and sent rather wimpy ballad “Right Here Waiting” to No 2. We then immediately reverted to ignoring him for the rest of the decade. Come 1992 though, we decided we quite liked the creepy, story-telling single “Hazard” and it made the Top 3. Marx then settled down into a pattern of middling hits for the next two years before finally being beaten into submission by the UK’s collective refusal to look his way. Given that admittedly glib description of his chart fortunes and that we are in 1994 here at TOTP Rewind, it’s no surprise that we encounter him here with one of those final, medium sized hits in “Now And Forever”. The lead single from his “Paid Vacation” album, it would peak at No 13. It’s a gentle, almost acoustic (except for the sizeable string section behind him in this performance) ballad that was written about his relationship with then wife Cynthia Rhodes.

Marx is of the opinion that the hardest part of songwriting for him is coming up with lyrics that aren’t clichéd. He hasn’t got a problem with hackneyed song titles though. He says this of “Now And Forever”:

“I don’t mind a generic title, as long as the lyrics within it are unique…There are probably 600-700 songs in the world called ‘Now and Forever,’ but there’s not one line of lyric in that song that’s like anything else.”
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/richard-marx/now-and-forever

Hmm. Without wanting to get all Ed Byrne dissecting Alanis Morissette about it, let’s have a look at some of the lyrics then. Here’s the first verse and chorus:

Whenever I’m weary
From the battles that rage in my head
You make sense of madness
When my sanity hangs by a thread
I lose my way but still you seem to understand
Now and forever
I will be your man
Writer/s: Richard Marx
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Hmm. Well, for a start, every line rhymes with the next one, a pretty conventional song writing style I would wager and is Richard seriously trying to claim that nobody has ever written the line ‘I will be your man’ before?! George Michael just about did with Wham! for a start. And all that stuff about being weary and losing my way? It’s hardly an original concept is it? Here’s some more:

Until the day the ocean doesn’t touch the sand
Now and forever
I will be your man
Now and forever
I will be
Your man
Writer/s: Richard Marx
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Oceans and sand? Oh come on Marx! You can’t be serious! Listen, by all accounts Richard is a decent bloke – he took on Piers Morgan for not going far enough in calling out Donald Trump’s extremism and helped Korean Air flight attendants pacify an unruly, possibly drunk passenger while he and his wife were aboard a flight bound from Hanoi to Seoul. Admirable stuff but his songwriting claims? Nah.

Wait! What?! After country, R&B, power ballads, new-age ambient, hard rock and soft rock, we now get some boogie rock on Mark Franklin’s last TOTP gig? The poor lad having to deal with a show in the middle of an identity crisis! I really don’t recall ZZ Top having UK Top 40 hits as late as 1994 (a good decade after their commercial heyday) but here they are with “Pincushion”and like Franklin, I think it must be their last ever appearance. This came from an album called “Antenna” and would make a respectable No 15 on our charts. This one sounds like all of their other stuff to me and whilst I don’t mind some of the ZZ Top hits, I would never describe myself as a fan. Sadly, bassist Dusty Hill (on the left here) died in 2021 at the age of 72.

D:Ream remain at the top of the charts with “Things Can Only Get Better”. It’s the video this week but it’s just a run through of the song taken from a live gig (possibly supporting Take That?). It’s been edited into an annoying stop-motion style but even so, I still can’t spot Professor Brian Cox on keyboards. In his final outro at the show’s end, unlike Tony Dortie last week, Mark Franklin makes no mention of the fact that he’s leaving the show though he does state that Radio 1’s Simon Mayo is in the hot seat next week. Franklin always seemed like a safe pair of hands to me – not the most exciting but a competent presenter. I’m not really looking forward to the return of the likes of Mayo, Nicky Campbell and (ugh!) Bruno Brookes!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Nowhere	Nope
2	Depeche Mode	In Your Room	No but it’s a great track
3	Joe	I’m In Luv	Nah
4	Celine Dion	The Power Of Love	As if
5	Garth Brooks	The Red Strokes	I did not
6	Thomas Dolby	Hyperactive!	No but my wife has The Flat Earth album it came from
7	Enigma	Return To Innocence	No
8	Richard Marx	Now And Forever	It’s a no from me
9	ZZ Top	Pincushion	Uh-uh
10	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	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/m001h88t/top-of-the-pops-27011994

TOTP 19 JAN 1991

Posted on June 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Less than three weeks into 1991 and the hopes for a good year to one and all are already in tatters as the Gulf War has escalated with the commencement of Operation Desert Storm two days prior to this TOTP being broadcast. I knew it was serious as the night before, the League Cup quarter final highlights were bumped from the TV schedules to make way for the extra news coverage of the unfolding events. Nothing got in the way of the football. I got the same feeling in 2020 when the pandemic struck – if the football is gone then we are in trouble. Indeed, TOTP itself was shunted to the Saturday night from its regular Thursday slot to allow for extended BBC news coverage.

I remember turning up for work on the Thursday morning and making an enormous faux pas. I was on the counter (as usual) and decided to put some Warren Zevon on the shop stereo as I fancied hearing “Werewolves Of London”. As if that song with its ‘Little old lady got mutilated late last night’ lyric wasn’t unsuitable enough, it all went horribly wrong when we got to track 4 of the album which was “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner”. If you don’t know this song (and I didn’t at the time), here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The fictional character Roland is a Norwegian who becomes embroiled in the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War and Congo Crisis of the 1960s—the lyrics mention a “Congo war” and the years 1966 and 1967, which correspond to the mercenary-led Kisangani Mutinies after the Congo Crisis. He earns a reputation as the greatest Thompson gunner, a reputation that attracts the attention of the CIA. Roland is betrayed and murdered by a fellow mercenary, Van Owen, who blows off his head. Roland becomes the phantom “headless Thompson gunner” and eventually has his revenge, when he catches Van Owen in a Mombasa bar and guns him down. Afterward, he continues “wandering through the night”. Other violent conflicts of the succeeding decade are said to be haunted by Roland, including Ireland, Lebanon, Palestine, and Berkeley, California…

Oh.

Thankfully a colleague did know what the song was about and whipped it off the CD player sharpish and averted any customer complaints about insensitivity. Phew! Incredibly, “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” was not on the blacklist of songs that were banned by the BBC that were deemed inappropriate whilst the conflict raged. Want to know some that were? Here’s just a few choice examples from a list of over 60…

“(I Just) Died in Your Arms” – Cutting Crew : OK, it has the word ‘died’ in it but even so…
“I Don’t Want to Be a Hero” – Johnny Hates Jazz : One of the least offensive groups in history surely?!
“I’ll Fly for You” – Spandau Ballet : What?!
“A Little Peace” – Nicole : A Eurovision winning cry for world peace sung by a 17 year old?
“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going” – Billy Ocean : Just a little tenuous don’t you think?
“Boom Bang-a-Bang” – Lulu : Oh f**k off! Another Eurovision winner whose ‘offensive’ lyrics include “my heart goes boom bang-a-bang boom bang-a-bang when you are near”!

They were all banned but not “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” and not the show’s opening song which is “Hippychick” by Soho. This is a great one hit wonder but its lyrical subject matter was hardly non political. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Tim London: "'Hippychick' was written from the perspective of a young woman arrested by her boyfriend (who is a policeman) on a demonstration. She is basically telling him it's over, because, as a cop, he supports an establishment she wants to get rid of." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 28, 2021

Not only that but the band were threatened by TOTP producers with not being allowed to perform unless they lost the anti war sticker on founding member Tim London’s guitar and the CND emblazoned dresses worn by identical twin singers Jacqui and Pauline Cuff. Somehow, they convinced the producers to let the offending articles stay and “Hippychick” would go on to be a Top 10 hit. It hadn’t started out life quite as successfully though. It had missed the Top 40 altogether when first released in 1990 but it had crucially been a dance floor success in the US where it had sold the best part of a million outselling Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” which was No 1 (the US charts were collated based on radio-play and not just sales). It was this that convinced their label Savage Records to give it another shot over here.

Of course you can’t talk about “Hippychick” without mentioning that Smiths sample in the intro. The start of “How Soon Is Now” must be one of the most distinctive openings to a song ever and yet it it seemed to fit perfectly into this quirky, shuffling dance track. Genius! Johnny Marr supposedly received 25% of the track’s royalties as payment for the use of the sample.

I really liked this one an had already been introduced to it by its inclusion of the near legendary “Happy Daze” compilation album that got hammered in our store over Xmas. Sadly for the band, they were unable to recreate the success of “Hippychick” despite having sone great tunes on their album “Goddess” (including follow up single “Love Generation” which sounded like the B52s crossed with Lone Justice).

So we’ve established that neither Soho’s anti war messaging nor Warren Zevon’s “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” warranted being banned by the BBC in the light of the Gulf War and now we have a video from Belinda Carlisle that clearly depicts a soldier leaving his partner to go off to fight in a war! The lyrics even include the lines ‘I can hear the whistle, military train’! The BBC censors clearly hadn’t learned their lesson from the ‘chicks’ll cream’ “Grease Megamix” debacle the other week.

“Summer Rain” was the sixth and final single to be lifted from Belinda’s “Runaway Horses” album. The chart performance of said singles were the most inconsistent and frankly bizarre since those taken from Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango In the Night ” album. Look at this:

“Leave A Light On” – No 4
“La Luna” – No 38
“Runaway Horses” – No 40
“Vision Of You” – No 41
“(We Want) The Same Thing” – No 6
“Summer Rain” – No 23

Just weird. Looking at her discography overall, I hadn’t quite realised before that although Belinda would carry on having hit albums and singles here in the UK for the duration of the 90s, “Summer Rain” (and the “Runaway Horses” album) which was pretty much where her success ended in her native US. Check this out:

US Top 40 singles 1991 – 1999: 0
UK Top 40 singles 1991 – 1999: 11
US Top 40 albums 1991 – 1999: 0
UK Top 40 albums 1991 – 1999: 3

Not sure why that would have been. I would have thought her brand of radio friendly soft rock would have been perfect for the genre formatted US airwaves. She would return in the Autumn of 1991 with the “Live Your Life Be Free” album and single and is in October of this year bringing her The Decades Tour to the UK to celebrate 35 years as a solo artist.

Someone who’s an “All True Man” next (whatever that is). Alexander O’Neal seemed to have been trading off his past glories for the past few years before finally returning with some brand new material in 1991. Some of his releases since his massive selling “Hearsay” album of 1987 included the singles “Fake ’88”, “Hearsay ’89” and a medley of his old hits called “Hit Mix (Official Bootleg Mega-Mix)”. His only album releases had been a Xmas album and “Hearsay – All Mixed Up” which was, unsurprisingly, a remix album of “Hearsay” tracks. I guess it would have been his record label squeezing every last drop out of his recent back catalogue rather than Alexander himself but even so. He finally got around to recording some songs for his new album (also called “All True Man”) and released the title track as the lead single. It was written by the go to R’n’B songwriters/ producers of the day in Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and sure enough they supplied O’Neal with what would be his last ever Top 20 hit.

I have to say that Alexander O’Neal’s music has never really done anything for me. I could just about stand “Criticize” but the rest of it? Nah, I’m good thanks and “All True Man” wasn’t going to sway me otherwise. He clearly had a sizeable fab base in this country though as the album peaked at No 2 in the charts and achieved gold status sales although those paled in comparison to “Hearsay”. I did like the way he always dressed in a suit and tie for TOTP though. Standards and all that.

Now here’s a clam from host Nicky Campbell. That Dirty Dancing is the most popular film soundtrack of all time – is that right? Would it have been right in 1991? And what does he meant by popular anyway? The best selling is surely a more quantifiable criteria? In his intro he dismisses the advances of South Pacific, The Sound Of Music and Saturday Night Fever before introducing the re-released “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. According to Wikipedia, the best selling soundtrack album of all time is The Bodyguard but that didn’t come out until 1992 so that can be dismissed in terms of Campbell’s claim. The second biggest selling on Wikipedia’s list though is Saturday Night Fever with Dirty Dancing third. Given that Saturday Night Fever had 10 whole years in existence and therefore years worth of sales before Dirty Dancing was even released, I’m backing it to have been in the lead sales wise back in 1991. It’s all academic anyway as presumably Campbell just needed a link into the song and could have made up anything as long as it segued neatly into the video clip.

“(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” was back in the charts having been re-released to cash in on a second wave of the film’s popularity after it had received its terrestrial TV premier over Xmas 1990. That sort of occurrence couldn’t happen today because of streaming services. Want to hear that song from the film you’ve just watched over and over again? I’m sure it’ll be on Spotify. Back in 1991 though, once releases were out of the charts, they were deleted very quickly and you could only buy an old single from second hand shops or if it was on the Old Gold series via Pickwick Records and the like. This could also be true of albums that weren’t seen as being classics or perennial best sellers. Nowadays just about everything has received the deluxe box set re-issue treatment. Want a double CD expanded edition of ex-Dollar singer Thereza Bazar’s only solo album with 19 bonus tracks even though nobody bought it first time around? Sure – no problem. Your’s for just £11! The mind boggles.

“(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” peaked at No 8 second time around.

OK, 1991 just got a bit more interesting. The time of The KLF is upon us. Although they’d already become chart stars the previous year with “What Time Is Love?”, for me, “3 a.m. Eternal” was when I really started to think that something of great importance was happening. It just sounded sound otherworldly – who the Hell were the Ancients of Mu Mu and what did they want? In reality it was, of course, just Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond playing with the music industry again as they had done before with The Timelords and “Doctorin’ the Tardis” but what a game they played. In the light of “3 a.m. Eternal”, demand for their album “The White Room” rocketed and it hit No 3 in the album chart (well according to Wikipedia – I could have sworn it was a No 1 but maybe that was just in the in-house Our Price chart).

A year later they would perform a version of the track with punk band Extreme Noise Terror at The BRIT awards – yes that one with the machine guns – before announcing their retirement from the music industry but that’s for another post.

Oh and what did it mean, “3 a.m. Eternal”? According to the songfacts.com website, it referred to chucking out time at the Spectrum Acid House club in London.

It will be No 1 soon enough…

Now that the post Xmas slump is over and the record company release schedules have awoken from their slumbers, the Breakers are back starting with The High and “Box Set Go”. I seem to recall a lot of buzz around this lot at the time (well they were in the Breakers section, home of the ‘happening’ records in the charts!). I’m sure their album “Somewhere Soon”, with its distinctive diamond symbol against a mostly black cover, was a Recommended Release at Our Price. The other thing I remember about them was that they had an ex-Stone Roses member in their ranks – one Andy Couzens. For all that though, The High sounded more like The La’s or even The Byrds to me.

Infamously signed to London Records after only one gig, the album was critically well received but could only make it to a..ahem…high of No 59. They’d already had three Top 40 near misses before “Box Set Go” was remixed by the legendary producer Martin Hannet and re-released to give them their only chart hit when it peaked at No 28. Hannet had worked with Couzens before during his Roses days. I worked with another ex-Stone Roses member, the original bass player called Pete later on in my Our Price career and he once told me that Hannet had spent ages trying to get a particular sound on one of their early tracks and when it was finished, Pete said “but I can’t hear it in the mix Martin”. Hannett’s reply was “Ah yes Pete but you know that it’s there”. Marvellous.

Now here’s a great track. A Tribe Called Quest had been around since 1985 but their debut album “People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm” wasn’t released until 1990 from which “Can I Kick It?” was the third single released. Heavily sampling Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” amongst other tracks, it sounded fresh and innovative to me although you could argue that it wasn’t a million miles away from De La Soul’s D.A.I.S.Y. Age sound (indeed, De LA Soul feature in the video). The previous year we had suffered a terrible, terrible cover version of “Walk On The Wild Side” courtesy of Jamie J. Morgan but this was a different flavour altogether.

At the time of its release, I had been given the weighty role of being the Best Sellers CD buyer in the Our Price store I was in, responsible for making sure all those classic albums were always in stock. However, we’d just had a new manager installed after previous manager Greg had left and he wanted to shake things up a bit. To that end, he asked me to order in some extra copies of the “People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm” album for the Best Sellers section on the back of the single’s success as it wasn’t in the chart and therefore would only be stocked in limited numbers. Wikipedia tells me that the album peaked at No 54 so that punt probably didn’t pay off.

Bizarrely, we would get another “Walk On The Wild Side” influenced single later on in the year via Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch which was the follow up to their “Good Vibrations” single but it only made it to No 42 in the charts whereas “Can I Kick It?” would get all the way to No 15 in the UK.

What do you do if you run out of toilet tissue? There’s “Always The Sun” quips Nicky Campbell about the final Breaker from The Stranglers. Ooh, bit of politics as Ben Elton used to day on Friday Night Live (or was it Saturday Night Live?). I wonder if Campbell got into hot water with the BBC bosses for that? So what was this 1986 hit doing back in the charts? It was to promote a Best Of album of course (“Greatest Hits 1977–1990”) which sold surprisingly well going platinum and reaching No 4 in the charts. I think it got a TV Ad campaign behind it which caught a lot of retailers out (I remember our shop selling out of it one Saturday afternoon).

Supposedly the 1990 version is a remix but it sounds pretty similar to me apart from some extra guitar noodling. Hugh Cornwell (who had left the band by this point) had originally though that “Always The Sun” could have been another “Golden Brown” in terms of sales but it peaked at No 30. According to his his book The Stranglers Song By Song he’d been amazed by its poor chart position stating “We’d given CBS something great to work with and I could see in this guy’s face that he knew he hadn’t delivered”. Maybe CBS felt bad about that and tried to repay the debt five years on with that promotional campaign for “Greatest Hits 1977–1990”? Maybe not.

The1991 version peaked one place higher than its 1986 counterpart at No 29.

Sting again next and after last week’s play out video position in the show’s running order, he’s been promoted to a place in the main body of the programme as befitting his rock star status (ahem). Not that it did him much good as “All This Time” would actually go down form its peak here of No 22 the following week.

I’m sure I’ve told this story before but it’s worth another outing. My friend Robin has a friend who is a professional musician and he has toured with some major names including Sting and erm…Westlife. Anyway, he found himself at a dinner party at Sting’s gaff through this work connection and in the middle of the meal, all the guests were asked to relocate to another room and where a TV was. Sting then proceeded to get them to all watch a documentary…about Sting! I did say last week that he could be a right knacker.

Something out of the ordinary now. No, not the fact that this is the third different studio appearance for Seal and his “Crazy” single (although that does seem like unusual overkill). Rather, it’s that the Top 10 countdown stops at No 3? Why? So that Nicky Campbell can introduce Seal at No 2. Why not just have Seal on before the countdown. Unless there was some sort of race to be that week’s No 1 that had gripped the nation Oasis v Blur style, I can’t understand why they would do that.

Anyway, the heightened exposure didn’t work for Seal as his hopes of climbing to the top of the charts were torpedoed by *SPOILER* the returning Queen and their chaotically mad “Innuendo” single which went straight in at No 1 the following week. He can’t have been too disappointed though as his debut album would similarly go to No 1 when released in May achieving double platinum sales (including one bought by me).

So it’s definitely not Seal at No 1 meaning it must be Enigma and “Sadness (Part I)”. It’s taken 6 weeks for the record to make it to the top (including 4 in the Top 10) yet it would only get 1 week at the pinnacle. It would stay in the Top 40 for another 5 weeks though demonstrating the longevity of its appeal. Curiously though, it would only be the 37th best selling single of the year. That 6 week long run up to becoming No 1 would become an almost extinct practice by the end of the decade as discounted pricing by the record companies in a single’s first week of release to drive sales would mean records going in at No 1 immediately before falling away dramatically. I have to say I wasn’t a fan of discounting new releases. It created a false sales history and, if you worked in a record shop like I did, it was a bloody nightmare to ensure you never sold out of anything.

I started this post talking about my potential incident of insensitivity when I played “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” on the shop stereo the day after the commencement of Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. By way of contrast, here’s a man full of “Sensitivity” – it’s Ralph Tresvant! This guy was the latest former member of Jackson 5 rip off merchants New Edition to try and further his musical career following the success of Bobby Brown and Ronnie DeVoe, Michael Bivins and Ricky Bell (Bell Biv DeVoe collectively).

As with Alexander O’Neal earlier on, this track was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and can’t you just tell by the song’s intro. Those tumbling, percussive drum beats are the exact same ones they used when producing “Human” for The Human League back in 1986. Waste not want not I guess. The rest of it is pretty unremarkable 90s R’n’B to my ears but then I’m no expert.

“Sensitivity” was the lead single from Ralph’s eponymous debut album which featured his old pal Bobby Brown on one track. It also includes a track called “She’s My Love Thang” – of course it does. “Sensitivity” peaked at No 18 in the UK but was a Top 5 hit in the US and also an R’n’B No 1 single over there.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Soho	Hippychick	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Belinda Carlisle	Summer Rain	Nope
3	Alexander O’Neal	All True Man	I didn’t buy this – tru dat
4	Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes	(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life	Nah
5	The KLF	3am Eternal	Don’t think I did
6	The High	Box Set Go	Box Set No
7	A Tribe Called Quest	Can I Kick It?	Though I might have but it’s not in the singles box
8	The Stranglers	Always The Sun ‘91	No but I bought that Greatest Hits 1977-1990 CD
9	Sting	All This Time	I did not
10	Seal	Crazy	No but I bought the album
11	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
12	Ralph Tresvant	Sensitivity	Definitely not

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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000wfdn/top-of-the-pops-19011991

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 10 JAN 1991

Posted on May 29, 2021 by 80stastic

Already 10 days into the new year of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and yet tonight’s host Jakki Brambles still takes the opportunity to wish us a Happy New Year. Keep up Jakki! This show mainly features songs that were ‘new’ to us back then and we start with one from Bananarama and “Preacher Man”. Not to be confused with Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man”, this was the second single to be released from the nanas fifth album “Pop Life” but actually came out a whole six months after lead single “Only Your Love” due to Sara Dallin contracting meningitis which delayed its release. Despite its difficult birth, it would end up being the most successful of the four singles released from the album when it peaked at No 20.

The single was well received critically as being a strong, hooky pop song but for me it doesn’t stand out as being one of their most memorable tunes. I think it’s the reedy sounding vocals that let it down. The “Karma Chameleon” style harmonica solo in the middle doesn’t help either. As ever with Bananarama TOTP performances, Keren and Sara mark themselves out as the power couple of the trio by wearing the same outfit while Jacquie is still very presented as the new girl and odd one out three years on with her alternative togs. This sartorial separation was also evident even when Siobhan Fahey was still in the group and the signs had been there for some time that she was not on the same page as the other two – it wasn’t the biggest shock ever when she departed.

Bananarama would not return to the Top 20 for another 14 years.

Here’s Whitney Houston next with one of her trademark power ballads. After the uptempo “I’m Your Baby Tonight”, it wasn’t a surprise that she reverted to this genre and indeed, “All The Man That I Need” didn’t seem that different to the likes of “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Oh, check this out – on the The Bodyguard World Tour of 1993–94, she performed the song as part of a love song medley that included …yep…”Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”. Well there you go – identikit Whitney. You have to admit though that she had the pipes to be able to pull it off.

In the US, it gave her a 9th No 1 single from 11 releases but it stalled at No 13 over here. Maybe we didn’t like the video which is as dull as a night down the pub with George Eustace. It’s just Whitney mooching around various rooms in a big house (one of which includes a John Lennon “Imagine” type white piano) before she is joined by a gospel choir for the climax.

The song had already been recorded by Sister Sledge and someone called Linda Clifford before Whitney got her mitts on it and then, in 1994, Luther Vandross preformed a gender swap on it by recording at as “All The Woman That I Need”. There can’t be that many songs where that has occurred can there? Top of my head I can think of “I Saw Him Standing There” which was Tiffany’s version of The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There” and sticking with the Fab Four, there’s The Carpenters take on their “Ticket To Ride” when Karen Carpenter changes the lyrics from ‘the girl that’s driving me mad’ to ‘the boy that’s driving me mad’. Oh and Tracey Ullman converting “My Girl” by Madness to “My Guy’s Mad at Me”.

This is more like it! This is what the kids wanted! Some grebo rock! Or were they a hip-hop/dance/rock sample heavy hybrid? Whatever, “X, Y & Zee” became Pop Will Eat Itself’s biggest ever hit up to his point when it peaked at No 15. It was also their fourth Top 40 hit as well after “Can U Dig It?”, “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina” and the delightfully entitled “Dance Of The Mad Bastards”. Oh and I make it their 10th single Jakki, not their 13th as you suggest in your intro.

Part of the extraordinary story of how the West Midlands market town of Stourbridge became the epicentre for…whatever we’re calling this genre…when it spawned not one, not two but three bands in The Wonderstuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Pop WIll Eat Itself. How did this happen? I’m not sure but there’s surely a film to be made out of this phenomenon (if there hasn’t been one made already). There is definitely a book on the subject in existence – the rather wonderfully titled of The Eight Legged Atomic Dustbin Will Eat Itself.

Back to “X, Y & Zee” and I always quite liked this wistful track with a twist and its brilliantly quirky lyrics like:

Mother Nature and Father Time
Used to be good friends of mine
But now we’ve put them in a home
Filed them under “uses unknown”

Apparently, lead singer Clint Mansell went onto become a Hollywood film score composer creating soundtracks for the likes of Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan. I haven’t been that surprised since a lovely lad I used to work with at Our Price called Scott ended up being a bank manager. Scott was a right laugh and the most unlikely future bank manager I could ever imagine.

We’re back with that “Grease Megamix” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John next. Presumably its sales had been helped by Xmas and New Year’s Eve parties across the nation. The last time this was on TOTP, they only played the “Summer Nights” section of the mix but this time they feature the other two tracks in “You’re The One That I Want” and “Greased Lightnin'”. Now of course, the latter song has some lyrics that probably wouldn’t be suitable before the watershed and indeed the following line has been edited out.

You know that it ain’t shit, we’ll be gettin’ lots of tit, greased lightnin’

However, the censors clearly didn’t know what they were doing as they left in:

You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream, for greased lightnin’

and

You know that I ain’t braggin’, she’s a real pussy wagon

What did they think Travolta was singing about FFS?!

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3.

Right, don’t remember this one at all. “I Can’t Take The Power” by Off-Shore anyone? Even the ever reliable @TOTPFacts could only come up with this info about it.

Off Shore was the project of German DJs/producers Jens Lissat and Peter Harder. A couple of other DJs/producers were involved in this single release: Eric Kupper provided some keyboards, and Justin Strauss remixed it. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

Oh and apparently the titular sample is from “Love’s Gonna Get You” by Jocelyn Brown. Was it supposed to be some sort of response record to Snap!’s “The Power”?

Whatever. “I Can’t Take The Power” peaked at No 7.

Yes! TOTP on it tonight with what the kids like! After Pop Will Eat Itself comes Jesus Jones and although not from Stourbridge, they were definitely in the same musical universe. “International Bright Young Thing” ushered in an era of a band at the peak of the powers.

No doubt about it – Jesus Jones were big…for a time

Taken from their forthcoming second album “Doubt”, it would become their biggest ever hit whilst said album would go to No 1. It had, without… erm…doubt…been one of the most enquired about albums over Xmas (along with “Spartacus” by The Farm) in terms of when it was coming out. The world really did seem to be at their feet. Sadly, the band suffered a press backlash (maybe the ‘International Bright Young Thing’ tag was too much for some publications) and they would wind up being seen as very irrelevant very quickly especially after grunge happened.

For the moment though, they are leading the gang of dance/rock groups who are in the charts with their long, flicky hair and wayward keyboard players – look at the state of the Jesus Jones ivories tinkler here; a total dereliction of playing duties and clearly under the influence of something.They’d have been banned from the show back in the early 80s for much less (Pigbag were for a very similar offence).

“International Bright Young Thing” peaked at No 7.

A couple of videos we’ve seen before next starting with MC Hammer and “Pray”. I’m sure this has been on a couple of times already but it’s a climber of two places within the Top 10 to a peak of No 8 so I guess its presence again could be justified by the TOTP producers.

There were numerous remixes of this track including:

Slam The Hammer Mix
Slam The Hammer Piano Dub
Jam The Hammer Mix
Hit ‘Em Hard Mix
Nail ‘Em Down Chant

The titles of the remixes sound like they more belong to an Iron Maiden track than the pious Mr Hammer. Check out this from @TOTPFacts again:

Speaking of praying: MC Hammer was previously in a Christian rap group called The Holy Ghost Boys. He became a preacher in the late '90s, with a Christian ministry programme on Trinity Broadcasting Network. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 21, 2021

The second previously seen video is for “Sadness (Part 1)” by Enigma. This is up to No 2 and will be top of the heap soon enough. Watching the video back, it’s all a bit Wicker Man. For a start, the scribe encounters Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell (depicting a scene from Dante’s Inferno) which kind of relates to Police Sergeant Howie’s discovery of all the pagan Celtic imagery on Summerisle. Even more of a parallel though is the fact that the scribe seems to be being tempted by the undressed woman on the other side of the gate who whispers all that ‘Sade, donnes moi’ (‘Sade, give it to me’) Marquis de Sade malarkey to him. Remember that scene in Wicker Man when the Britt Ekland character tries to seduce Edward Woodward through the walls of his room in the pub? Come on! It’s the same thing! Well, almost.

The ever suave Robert Palmer is up next with his Marvin Gaye mash up single “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You”. It was a brave move to cover not one but two Marvin Gaye tracks (Palmer himself admitted to being very nervous when he debuted the song on US Television during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show) but I think he gets away with it.

Palmer was becoming quite the regular hit-maker by this point. This would be his second consecutive Top 10 hit following his UB40 collaboration on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” at the back end of 1990 and would help propel parent album “Don’t Explain” into the Top 10 as well. It would be the last time he would have either a single or album in such upper echelons of the charts though.

Oh, and is that Boon Gould from Level 42 on bass up there with Robert? Could be.

The aforementioned Iron Maiden are still at No 1 with their sneakily released “Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter” single. I’ve commented before on that book that Jakki Brambles mentions at the end of the song written by Bruce Dickinson (Lord Iffy Boatrace) – it’s complete bawdy filth including a character who invents the ultimate sex machine. Didn’t mention that did you Jakki?

A musical heavyweight is the play out video. For all his success with The Police, Sting‘s solo career had not resulted in anywhere near the size of hits that his band had generated. By the 90s, he had yet to achieve a Top 10 hit and in fact, of the 10 solo singles he released in the 80s, only 3 of them made the Top 40. However, he had begun the new decade in better shape when a Ben Liebrand remix of “Englishman in New York” made the Top 20 in 1990 to be followed by this, “All This Time”, the lead single from his new album “The Soul Cages”.

I remember the release of the album being seen as a big deal and the Our Price store I was working in certainly had lots if stock of it. Big sales were expected but although it went to No 1, I don’t recall selling many. It would achieve gold status for 100,000 copies sold but was far less than his previous solo albums “…Nothing Like the Sun” (platinum – 300,000 sales) and “The Dream Of The Blue Turtles” (double platinum – 600,000 sales).

For all that talk of disappointing sales figures, I quite liked “All This Time”. Despite its dark lyrics referencing the recent death of his father, it had an uplifting melody and although he can be a complete knacker at times, I’ve always quite liked Sting’s voice. Interesting that he’s only the play out video though, not deemed worthy enough of kicking off the show or having his own little premiere moment in the middle of it. Sting would regroup and return in 1993 with the much more successful “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album when he would also finally get that Top 10 hit when “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers soundtrack went to No 2 in the charts…but it was with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams so I’m not sure if that actually counts.

“All This Time” peaked at No 22.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bananrama	Preacher Man	Nah
2	Whitney Houston	All The Man That I Need	Nope
3	Pop Will Eat Itself	X Y & Zee	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Grease Megamix	Negative
5	Off-Shore	I Can’t Take The Power	Buy it? I don’t even remember it!
6	Jesus Jones	International Bright Young Thing	No but it was on that first Q magazine album that I did buy
7	MC Hammer	Pray	It’s a no
8	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
9	Robert Palmer	Mercy, Mercy Me / I Want You	No but it’s on my Robert Palmer Best Of CD I think
10	Iron Maiden	Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter	Definitely not
11	Sting	All This Time	I did not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w6t9/top-of-the-pops-10011991

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 20 DEC 1990

Posted on May 18, 2021 by 80stastic

Xmas 1990 is upon us meaning that we are just days away from finding out that year’s festive No 1 record. This also means that there is precious little time for record companies to stimulate enough sales to get their particular act to the coveted top spot. Activity is frenzied and to paraphrase David Bowie, you can almost see the record pluggers sliding down chimneys.

As for me, I’m working my first Xmas at Our Price and am just longing for some time off after day after day of huge queues of customers all needing serving. Back then, Our Price still had what must now been seen as an archaic ‘masterbag’ system where the contents of a CD, tape, VHS etc were kept filed behind the counter with just the empty case on the racks. This meant serving someone could be quite labour intensive as you had to go and find what they wanted behind the scenes first. If you were on the counter all day, it felt like a long shift.

Added to this was the impending pressure that all the temps felt which was who (if any of us) would be kept on after Xmas was over. As it stood, I had nothing lined up work wise if I wasn’t kept on and we had the rent on our flat to make. My wife was also in temporary employment at a toy shop but we knew that was definitely ending as the store was to close after Xmas. This was proper adult stuff. It came to pass that I did end up being offered a permanent job by the store manager whist I was out for a drink one night in the achingly trendy Dry bar with my wife one evening. I think it was the first time we’d been in there as we were skint most of the time. The manager (Greg) happened to be there as well and he just sidled up to me and said did I want to stay on after Xmas. I immediately accepted and that was that. The biggest phew of all time (or at least it felt like it)! Was it just a case of serendipity that secured my employment (and our rent)? That I just happened to be in the right bar at the right time? I guess I’ll never know now but I will always be grateful to Greg. It turned out that only a couple of us got permanent jobs so the relief was even bigger once this became apparent.

Back to the music though and we start with “Mary Had A Little Boy” by Snap! The fourth and final single to be lifted from their “World Power” album, it extended their run of Top 10 singles by peaking at No 8. Although superficially based around the Mary Had A Little Lamb nursery rhyme, there’s not actually much of the source material on display save for the chorus the lyrics of which paraphrase its opening couple of stanzas. The rest of it seems to be about Turbo B working up the courage to chat up the titular Mary. It’s all pretty nasty stuff as well with him rapping about Mary’s ‘fantasy body’ and describing himself as a ‘ruthless chiller’ and a ‘ladies killer’. Was there a more objectionable pop star this year than this guy? Oh yeah, there was Timmy Mallett of course but even he wasn’t sure about this track, describing it in Smash Hits (as the guest singles reviewer) as sounding “as though they’re scraping the barrel by doing what is basically a nursery rhyme.” Having your music dissed by Timmy Mallett? Ouch!

Three songs now that were all Breakers on the previous show starting with The Carpenters and (They Long To Be) Close To You”. Although their songs are instantly recognisable to us, I hadn’t checked out their chart history before nor realised quite how many of their songs had actually been hits over here. I was thinking it would resemble Barry Manilow who, for all his fame, only ever had one Top 10 record in the UK. Not so Richard and Karen. Although not as successful as in the US where they had three No 1 singles, a haul of seven Top Tenners (of which two were No 2 hits) in this country is pretty impressive.

Oscar Wilde famously said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that is true of many a music artist. Perhaps the biggest indication of your standing is if you are so well respected that you have your own tribute album. The Carpenters achieved this in 1994 when “If I Were A Carpenter” appeared featuring covers of their songs by artists including Sheryl Crow, The Cranberries and Sonic Youth. This one was my favourite though…

Some INXS now as “Disappear” does the very opposite by climbing three places to No 21. This was peak INXS in many ways, consolidating on the staggering commercial success of “Kick” by pretty much repeating the formula and thereby keeping the record company and fans alike happy. This was pre-grunge and before the mainstream emergence of Nirvana that overnight seemed to make every other contemporary rock band irrelevant. Things were pretty sweet in the band’s world. Michael Hutchence even had a nice, steady girlfriend in Kylie Minogue.

In a review of “Disappear” on the songmeanings.com site, there is a comment by a user that says the song sounds like the theme tune to a kids TV show called Super WHY!. OK then, lets’s see if there’s anything in this….

…no, that claim is just utter nonsense.

Enigma now and there’s no disputing it that “Sadness (Part 1)” is going to be massive as it rises from No 27 to No 6 in one week prompting ideas of it even being No 1 for Xmas. It didn’t quite achieve that but it did rise to the top spot eventually in the New Year for one week whilst spending an impressive seven whole weeks in the Top 10. I have to admit that I thought it was at No 1 for much longer than that. This Gregorian chant inspired piece of ambient, new age pop (if there is such a genre) was soon seen as a massive cash cow by Virgin records who proceeded to flood the market with a series of ‘mood’ music compilations, the most successful of which was “Pure Moods” featuring artists like Vangelis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Enya and, of course, Enigma. Included in the comments on YouTube for the video to “Sadness (Part 1)” was this lovely little observation:

If you’re here because you remember this from the Pure Moods CD as a kid – I regret to inform you your parents definitely were banging to this song

Dear me! Thankfully this statement does not apply to me. I must stop reading these user comments!

Oh, I neglected to mention that the host for this one is Bruno Brookes who displays some shocking musical ignorance by declaring “The 80s return and remember this film…” before introducing the “Grease Megamix”.The 80s Bruno? The pissing 80s?! Are you out of your mind?! Grease came out in 1978 you cretin! It was based on a musical that opened in 1971 depicting life in a US High School in the 50s – what on earth is 80s about Grease?! What’s that?! Bruno also says it was mixed by Pete Waterman so maybe he was referring to him? No, not having that. Let me listen to his intro again…

…no he’s clearly referring to the film Grease. Just unforgivable. Oh and on checking , it wasn’t remixed by Pete Waterman but by Phil Harding and Ian Curnow of PWL.

Enough of Brookes and his inaccuracies though. Why were John Travolta and Olivia Newton John back in the charts in 1990? It was to celebrate / promote the release of the film on home video. OK, that makes sense but why, if it’s a megamix, does it only feature one song? The actual record featured three songs from the soundtrack ( “Summer Nights” / “You’re The One That I Want” / “Greased Lightnin'”) but TOTP just showed “Summer Nights”. I’m guessing it was a timing issue as the full megamix is 4:46 in length so maybe they just showed the end of it which happened to be solely “Summer Nights”? It does look odd I have to admit.

“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3. Xmas party anyone?

Back to the songs we’ve already seen now as MC Hammer brings us “Pray”. Taken from his album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” which went diamond (note, not platinum but diamond) in the US. Now either I didn’t know or I had erased from my memory but in conjunction with the album, there was a film imaginatively entitled Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie. Ye Gods! I looked it up on IMDB and the storyline is listed as:

MC Hammer returns to his hometown and, with the help of some funky tunes, defeats a druglord who is using kids to traffic his stuff.

WTF?! That sounds…no, I’ve got no words. And of course, you know what’s coming next…user reviews! Yes, I had to go there again didn’t I? Now these reviews were either deeply ironic or deeply insane. I’m not sure which. Here’s one…

“This movie is clearly about the epic, nay, cosmic struggle of good and evil, that films like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now can’t even begin to address. Even though Hammer is a rapper, and generally that would be a bad thing, this film depicts him as the sword of justice fighting the evil drug dealers of Oakland with his “posse”. Hammer plays dual roles in this film: one as himself (i.e. MC Hammer) and another as the Reverend Pressure who is known for his jaw dropping performances. This leitmotif is similar to the star turns of Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in films like “Coming to America” where they play multiple characters except that Hammer is clearly better. This film also has a really important message: say yes to Jesus and Hammer, no to drugs and violence. I cannot imagine a film that does a better job of capturing the essence of the nineties, except perhaps Cool As Ice. Sadly, however, this film was overlooked by the Academy.”

Wow! A lot to unpack there but basically Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie is better than Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now according to somebody called cindi0724. Not only that but it can only be eclipsed by the film Cool As Ice which of course was Vanilla Ice’s acting debut. Starting to see a theme in cindi0724’s thinking yet? I like the way she notes that the film was ‘overlooked by the Academy’. Overlooked?! Completely disregarded and ignored and with good reason more like.

Want to hear another review? Here’s someone called Pilgurn’s take on MC Hammer’s film:

“Without a doubt sending out an inspiring message to the youth of all our great cities around the globe. Just to free your legs and to dance and rap your way through disputes and even into a girls heart. Absolutely fantastic bombastic, watch it any time you wanna get jiggy.”

As a mantra for life, it’s hard to argue against freeing your legs and dancing and rapping your way through disputes isn’t it?

“Pray” peaked at No 8.

After the “Grease Megamix”, we now get another 50s inspired medley, this time courtesy of Status Quo. Unlike Enigma who took 26 years to record “Sadeness (Part II)”, the Quo only took 80 days to release “The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)” as the follow up to Part I. To put this in context, Michael Palin managed to circumnavigate the world in 80 days back in 1989 whilst it took Rick, Francis and co the same amount of time to come up with some money for old rope, Jive Bunny style medley bullshit. Quite the achievement.

Following Part 1’s formula to the letter, this was some rock ‘n’ roll standards from the likes of Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry all cobbled together but unlike Jive Bunny – and this was the band’s crucial differential – they were all recorded live. There was even a a small sketch of a rabbit on the record sleeve to make the point. You weren’t fooling anybody boys – this was unmitigated shite. Even so, their army of fans still bought enough of it to send it to No 16 in the charts proving you can actually fool all of the people all of the time if they are Quo fans.

OK so this was the last TOTP to be broadcast before the Xmas Day show (which I won’t be reviewing as there’s nothing in there that I haven’t already passed comment on) but when did we actually find out the Xmas No 1 for 1990? Well, it was officially announced on Sunday 23rd December 1990 meaning the chart run down featured in this programme did NOT tell us who it was. All of which was just as well for Cliff Richard as he was only at No 2 by this point with “Saviour’s Day”. Was it this this TOTP performance that ensured he got enough last minute sales to get over the line? Possibly. We know that he also did The Des O’Connor Show in the run up to Xmas which Andy, the singles buyer at the Our Price store where I was working, put great stock in and predicted it would win Cliff the race.

Aside from being his 13th No 1 record, “Saviour’s Day” was also the single that meant that he was the first recording artist to achieve a chart topper in five different decades – a fact that was much trumpeted at the time I recall. He would only last one week at the top due to some dastardly, cunning ploy by Iron Maiden to manipulate the singles sales in the slowest week of the year after the Xmas rush but that’s all for a future post.

Close but no cigar time for Vanilla Ice as “Ice Ice Baby” will fall just short of becoming the Xmas No 1 by one week despite it spending its fourth week at the top here. He would follow up that single’s success by releasing a cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” in the new year which would make the Top 10 but it was all down hill from then on in with no subsequent releases even making the Top 20 over here….until that Jedward mash up thing in 2010 but let’s not go there again.

Inevitably after two megamix singles already on the show, we end with the most famous medley transgressors of them all. “The Crazy Party Mixes” was the seventh (!) hit for Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers who couldn’t resist the lure of Xmas and just had to release a festive party single to delight us all. It was taken from an album called “It’s Party Time” (of course it was) and, like all their releases, it was hateful.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
2	The Carpenters	They Long To Be (Close To You)	No but we all have a Carpenters Greatest Hits CD don’t we?
3	INXS	Disappear	Not the single but I have it on something somewhere I think
4	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
5	John Travolta and Olivia Newton John	Grease Megamix	Negative
6	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
7	Status Quo	The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)	Are you joking me?
8	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
9	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
10	Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers	The Crazy Party Mixes	And once again Hell no!

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000v4b8/top-of-the-pops-20121990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 13 DEC 1990

Posted on May 14, 2021 by 80stastic

And we’re back! After a two week hiatus due to BBC4’s coverage of the snooker, TOTP Rewind is back in the groove as we hoover up the last couple of shows from the year 1990. This episode picks up the story of the year with just 12 days to go until Xmas and I am working my very first Our Price yuletide retail season. Despite being frenziedly busy, I’m enjoying it.

I was working in the Market Street store in Manchester which was a three floor unit (two of them trading) so the number of staff employed there was pretty sizeable – although this was certainly not the case in future years – meaning there was always somebody to chat to. This was especially true if you got yourself to work early. An early arrival you see meant that you could grab yourself a place at the processing table upstairs, set yourself up with a brew and a fag (yes in 1990 you could still smoke in work premises kids!) if so inclined, a stash of stock for processing and settle in for a comfortable day off the counter chatting to your processing neighbour. Hell, if you were really organised, you could commandeer the staff cassette player and relax with some tunes of your choice as well. The store seemed to run itself to a point (or that’s how it seemed to me). There was very little delegation of tasks. If you were a temp (like me) then you were counter fodder whilst the permanent members of staff would only come down if buzzed due to a customer queue build up. Ah yes, the buzzer system. I’m pretty sure it went like this:

1 buzz = it’s busy, help serving required

2 buzzes = management required (refund, swap etc)

3 buzzes = a very attractive woman has entered the shop. Cue a stampede of male staff members rushing down the stairs for a look.

It sounds horrendous to me now but that sort of thing seemed to be much more prevalent and tolerated back in the un PC early 90s. I can honestly say that I never used the three buzzes signal!

Right that’s enough record shop reminiscences for now, back to TOTP and if it’s Xmas it must be Shakin’ Stevens right? Sadly, this was the case as despite it being five years since his Xmas No 1 record “Merry Christmas Everyone”, Shaky still thought it was worth a go bunging a festive ditty out there again. Somebody would buy it wouldn’t they? Apparently so as here is the Welsh Elvis with “The Best Christmas Of Them All”.

This really was bottom of the barrel stuff. Shaky’s chart career had been in decline for a while by this point. This was only his second hit of the calendar year and also only the second time he had made the Top 20 in three years. There would be only a further three Top 40 singles after this one – yet another Xmas effort in 1991, a collaboration with Queen’s Roger Taylor in 1992 and a cover of Pink’s “Trouble” in 2005 which I think was linked to him winning ITV’s entertainment show Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.

“The Best Christmas Of Them All” was utter crud with Shaky phoning it in over a formulaic 50s honky tonk rhythm and some banal festive lyrics about Santa Claus, Rudolph, presents and peace in the world. Just horrible. He’s backed in this performance by some bizarre looking characters. There’s two fellas dressed as waiters one whom looks like Jason Donovan (if you squint) and the other who seems to have modelled his hairstyle on Francis Rossi of Status Quo. The rest look like they should be down the Queen Vic pub for a right old cockney Xmas knees up except for the drummer – isn’t that Boabby the landlord of The Clansman from Still Game?

“The Best Christmas Of Them All” peaked at No 19.

The most predictable re-release of the year up next as following the phenomenal success of The Righteous Brothers‘ “Unchained Melody” due to its use in Ghost, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” was hastily put out into the market place as a follow up. One of the most recognisable songs of all time (in 1999 it was ranked by performing rights organisation the BMI as the most-played song of the 20th century), this was always going to be a surefire hit all over again and it duly sped up the charts all the way to No 3.

I had no idea until now that this track was at the centre of one of the most bizarre chart battles ever back in 1965 when it was first a hit for The Righteous Brothers. Apparently Cilla Black had recorded her take on the song as well and both versions were released in the same week. Cilla hit the front early and maintained a lead over Bobby and Bill until peaking at No 2. with The Righteous Brothers right behind her at No 3. In the heat of the battle for No 1, the US boys were flown into the UK to spend a week promoting their version and it tipped the balance in their favour as they won the battle for top spot with Cilla falling away to No 5. Forget your Oasis V Blur, this was the mother of all chart battles.

As with “Unchained Melody”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” was also heavily featured in a hit film (albeit a few years previously)…

It’s been covered by just about everybody – aside from Cilla, it’s also been recorded by Dionne Warwick, Elvis and Hall & Oates to name a few. Oh and this lot…

Yazoo? In 1990? What was this all about? I really don’t know and despite searching the internet I can’t find a reason why “Situation” was released in 1990. There was no Best Of compilation to promote (the first Yazoo Greatest Hits album didn’t arrive until 1999) and it wasn’t featured in a film Righteous Brothers style. Originally hurriedly recorded as the B-side to their debut hit “Only You” (the only other song they had was “Don’t Go” which was deemed to good to throw away as a B-side) it was actually released as the duo’s first single in the US and although only a minor hit, on the Billboard Hot 100, it topped the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart there. This 1990 incarnation was named the Deadline Mix and was produced by French DJ, producer, remixer and label owner Francois Kevorkian and it was he that also produced that original 1982 12″ mix for the US market back in the day.

My abiding memory of the 1990 version is watching a work colleague called Scott getting ribbed mercilessly by the rest of the staff for dancing to it while listening on headphones on the shop stereo after the store had shut for the day. He was really going for it (in silence to the rest of us) before he eventually realised that he had attracted a crowd. Scott’s reaction? “Fuck you, it’s a great track”. Well said Scott.

“Situation ’90” peaked at No 14.

Right, who’s this then? Malandra Burrows? Oh yeah, I remember this. In an attempt to prove that it wasn’t just Aussie soap stars that could have chart hits in our country, a star of one of our own soaps was pushed into the world of pop. Malandra played a character called Kathy Glover in Emmerdale (or Emmerdale Farm as it was when she first appeared in it) and by 1990 had been on our screens for about 5 years (her character was called Kathy Merrick by this point). With that established profile, perhaps she was seen as a safe bet for popularity and appeal with UK pop fans?

“Just This Side Of Love” was the song with which she debuted as a pop star and incidentally is also very nearly the same title as the aforementioned Yazoo’s third single release. Apparently the song was actually featured in an Emmerdale plot line as it was sung by Malandra’s character at a village concert. In that respect, it was more Letitia Dean and Paul Medford than Kylie and Jason. Malandra gives a confident performance here and she would go onto release three more singles before the decade was out but none of them made the Top 40.

My abiding memory of this song was that when copies of the 7″ single arrived in store and we opened up the box, they were all damaged in a rather peculiar way as the silver bit in the middle with all the song credits on seemed to have spilt over onto the actual grooves of the record. It was like a thermometer had exploded and there was mercury everywhere.

Oh and that was a terrible pun Simon Mayo on Emmerdale Farm and The Farm. Idiot.

Blimey, these next four songs were leaving it late for a title at the Xmas No1 spot. Breakers they may have been but time was against them if they wanted to get anywhere near the summit of the charts. We start with INXS and “Disappear”. The second single from the band’s “X” album, I always preferred it to the more organic (yes I do sound like a knacker!), frantic “Suicide Blonde”. It was a more polished production and the track had room to breathe – a good , sold, proper record. The difference between the two reminded me of my feelings towards the U2 singles “Desire” and “All I Want” from “Rattle And Hum”. I guess it was the pop kid in me coming out again.

In the US, “Disappear” was a much bigger hit where it went Top 10 but it was left stranded at No 21 over here. I think it just got lost in the Xmas rush. The fact that it was released a whole three months on from “Suicide Blonde” (and indeed the album) seems like an error of judgement by the record company in hindsight.

The mostly black and white video showcases Michael Hutchence at his lithe, rock god peak. There would be terrible tragedy to come but for the moment, INXS were maintaining their status as one of the world’s top rock acts just nicely than you very much and it would lead to perhaps the band’s ultimate high of performing at Wembley Stadium in July of the following year to a sold-out audience of 74,000 fans.

Oh God! Remember this? The Gregorian chant phenomenon? This was truly strange wasn’t it? The Enigma project was the brainchild of producer Michael Cretu who wanted to create a new form of music that didn’t follow the traditional blueprints and that had an added element of mysticism. He found the ingredient he was after in Gregorian chant which he combined with an almost hypnotic, downbeat rhythm and some whispered vocal parts in both French and Latin on the hit “Sadness (Part I)”. Who would have though that those disparate parts would make a huge No 1 record? In the wake of Enigma’s success, a plethora of Gregorian chant albums were suddenly released and became massive sellers. The one I remember the most was called “Canto Gregoriano” by Coro De Monjes Del Monasterio Benedictino de Santo Domingo de Silos. It was a double album but the cassette version came in individual cases which was a bugger to display on the shelves. Cue the sellotape!

Having been a No1 hit all over Europe, it was inevitable that “Sadness (Part I)” would make its way to these shores and indeed it did but with one small difference – for the UK release the title was changed from its original spelling of ‘Sadeness’ to ‘Sadness (Part I)’ dropping an ‘e’ like a late 80s raver. I recall this being pointed out to me by an Our Price colleague called Sarah though I had no idea that it was all to do with the sexual desires of Marquis de Sade! This makes more sense when you realise that the French bits roughly translate to ‘Sade tell me’ (‘Sade dis moi’) and ‘Sade give it to me’ (‘Sade donne moi’). It’s kind of like a Gregorian chant version of “Je t’aime… moi non plus” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Pure filth in other words!

The parent album “MCMXC a.D.” was also a No 1 and a 3 x platinum seller in the UK seller despite neither of the subsequent singles issued from it making the Top 40. Enigma returned in early 1994 with a Top 3 hit in “Return to Innocence” which had a more world music flavour to it and another No 1 album in “The Cross Of Changes” before a dose of diminishing returns set in. Oh and by the way, any idea how long it took before “Sadeness (Part 2)” was released? 26 years! Yes, it wasn’t until their 2016 album “The Fall Of A Rebel Angel” was released that part II came into existence as its lead single. Truly an enigma.

Despite its near iconic status these days, George Michael‘s “Freedom ’90” only achieved a chart high of No 28 in the UK (No 8 in the US). Was it third single from the album syndrome? The Xmas rush? We’ll never know for sure but it does seem a very meagre peak for a song that has had so much written about it over the years. My contribution to the word count (for what its worth) is that clearly George was in turmoil at this point. Legally trying to disentangle himself from record company Sony and artistically trying to free himself of the “Faith” era image, “Freedom ’90” was a statement in more ways than one. Intensely autobiographical charting his career from Wham!…

Heaven knows we sure had some fun, boy
What a kick just a buddy and me (what a kick just a buddy and me)
We had every big-shot good time band on the run, boy
We were living in a fantasy (we were living in a fantasy)

via “Faith”…

I went back home, got a brand new face
For the boys on MTV

and onto a declaration of intent to move away from all that into his next phase as an artist…

But today the way I play the game is not the same, no way
Think I’m gonna get myself happy

The lyrics were backed up by the hard hitting video. After not doing one at all for “Praying For Time” and with something cobbled together off a South Bank Show documentary for second single “Waiting For That Day”, a video was produced for “Freedom ’90” but George refused to appear in it. Instead a quintet of super models (Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford) were the stars of the show lip synching the lyrics while the storyline literally dismantled George’s “Faith” persona image by image.The iconic jukebox was usurped by a CD player before being blown up whilst the leather jacket was set on fire. Powerful stuff. Michael would use the promo video format to make an even more explosive point when his “Outside” video depicted him dressed as a police officer kissing another male officer in retaliation to his arrest by an undercover police officer for ‘engaging in a lewd act’ in a public toilet in Beverly Hills.

The comments about the “Freedom ’90” video on the songfacts.com website include one which states

‘I have heard that Michael added “90” to the title so that it would not be confused with the song by Wham! with the same title. Yeah, like that would ever happen!’

Well, I can confirm that this did actually happen. How do I know? Because it was me that made that error. Sitting in the staff room at the Our Price store I was working in I was checking out the official chart rundown in Music Week (the go to trade paper for the UK record industry). Seeing the title “Freedom” against the name George Michael, I had a senior moment (despite being aged just 22 at the time) and exclaimed to my assembled work colleagues ‘Why is “Freedom” by Wham! back in the charts?’. After much guffawing and comments from the assembled throng such as ‘Oh shit, have Wham! broken up?’, I finally realised my mistake. What a schmuck.

The song was covered in 1996 by Robbie Williams to celebrate his emancipation from boy band Take That. I remember looking at the single’s track listing and thinking ‘So there of the four tracks on here, one is a remix, one is an instrumental and one is an interview?! Where are your songs Robbie?’. He would confound me a year later with his mega successful “Life Thru A Lens” album with its five hit singles. Who knew? Well, Guy Chambers probably.

I have no recollection whatsoever of The Carpenters being in the charts again in 1990. I an only assume that the re-release of “(They Long to Be) Close to You” was part of the promotion campaign for greatest hits compilation “Only Yesterday” which was released in 1990. Or was it a cynical Xmas cash in by label A& M as it seems to have been a double A-side with “Merry Christmas, Darling”. Whatever the reason, it was statistically their first UK Top 4 hit since 1978’s “Sweet, Sweet Smile”.

You have to love The Carpenters don’t you? C’mon. This track has been covered by many an artist including Stevie Wonder, Dian Ross and Gwen Guthrie but I also want to give a shout out to Rick Moranis who gamefully took the song on in the film Parenthood…

The 1990 release of “(They Long to Be) Close to You” peaked at No 25.

Now then, here comes Seal throwing off his Adamski / “Killer” cocoon to emerge beating his wings as a fully fledged pop star in his own right. “Crazy” sounded like a hit instantly, from the very first time I heard it. Boasting a tight yet atmospheric production courtesy of Trevor Horn, it was packed full of hooks, a propulsive beat and Seal’s soulful vocals tying it all together. It seemed like a great deal of thought had gone into its composition but not in a cynical, let’s just pour all the currently popular ingredients into the pot and see what concoction brews way; it was more organic (there’s that word again!) than that.

It was also the first single from his debut album that appeared 6 months later and which would become a No 1, double platinum seller. Indeed, I bought it myself and I even caught him in concert where he was as confident as he was in this performance. He’s definitely giving off a vibe that says ‘look, being a pop star is the only thing I could possibly do – I have no choice’. Adamski who?

“Crazy” peaked at No 2 , the highest charting single of his career.

Oh come on! This is really taking the piss! After Technotronic had released a megamix of their previous hits called…erm…”Megamix” just a few weeks earlier, now Italian house outfit Black Box were jumping on the bandwagon! Ah, but they weren’t totally stealing the idea. Yes, it was a mash up of their previous chart hits just like Technotronic but there’s was called “The Total Mix” – different eh? See? Bloody snake oil salesmen the lot of them. Oh and you can add Snap! to the list of shysters who released “Mega Mix” the following year.

“The Total Mix” peaked at No 12.

Right, home stretch now as after ten hits that were new to the show, we end with three that we had seen before. We start with Chris Isaak who is up to No 10 this week with “Wicked Game” (it will rise no further however). I have to say that I’ve always admired Chris’s hair – always immaculate. Only potentially bettered by Mark Ronson.

What? The music? Oh, well, yes…I liked “Wicked Game” and I think my wife bought the album. So atmospheric was its sound that it was always destined to be used as the soundtrack to a car commercial and director Jeffrey Darling duly delivered in 2001 with this advert for the Jaguar X-Type.

It’s still Vanilla Ice at No 1 with “Ice Ice Baby” and it’s become one of those songs that’s taken on a life of its own way beyond the parameters of its original release. Not convinced? OK, here it is being ‘officially paroled’ on US TV show Glee in 2010…

and here’s the song coming full circle with Jedward and Vanilla Ice! Yikes!

Back to 1990 though and could Mr Ice keep all opposition at arm’s length in the battle for the Xmas No 1?*

*SPOILER ALERT!

No he couldn’t – Cliff toppled him at the death obviously

The play out video is Dimples D with “Sucker DJ”. Who was Dimples D? Well, she was only the first female hip hop artist to achieve a No 1 record in Australia. That’s who. As for the phrase ‘Sucker DJ’, well it was used by Cameo in their “Word Up” single. Witness:

Now all you sucker DJ’s
Who think you’re fly
There’s got to be a reason
And we know the reason why

but were Run DMC the true originators with their “Sucker M.C.’s” track back in 1983?

You try to bite lines but rhymes are mine
You’s a sucker M.C. in a pair of Calvin Klein
Comin from the wackiest, part of town
Tryin’ to rap up but you can’t get down

Or was it in fact Dimples D all along…

"Sucker DJ" was first recorded in 1983, when Dimples D was still in school. Here's the original version: https://t.co/G87HCd7Ghs #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 7, 2021

“Sucker DJ” (the 1990 version) peaked at No 17.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Shakin’ Stevens	The Best Christmas Of Them All	The word ‘Best’ and Shaky don’t really belong together do they? Of course not!
2	The Righteous Brothers	You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’	Nope
3	Yazoo	Situation ‘90	I did not
4	Malandra Burrows	Just This Side Of Love	The wrong side though Malandra – no
5	INXS	Disappear	Not the single but I have it on something somewhere I think
6	Enigma	Sadness (Part 1)	No
7	George Michael	Freedom ‘90	No but I have the Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 album
8	The Carpenters	They Long To Be (Close To You)	No but we all have a Carpenters Greatest Hits CD don’t we?
9	Seal	Crazy	No but I bought the album
10	Black Box	The Total Mix	Total shit more like – no
11	Chris Isaak	Wicked Game	I think my wife had the tape of the “Wicked Game” compilation album once upon a time but no idea where it would be now
12	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
13	Dimples D	Sucker DJ	Nah

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000v4b6/top-of-the-pops-13121990

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

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 27 JAN 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 19 JAN 1991

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TOTP 10 JAN 1991

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TOTP 20 DEC 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 13 DEC 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?