Enya

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on November 22, 2024 by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, I travelled the short distance from Manchester to Bolton to see my beloved Chelsea play. They’d been drawn away to Bolton in the League Cup and my Wanderers supporting mate Steve invited me to go with him and his mates to watch the game. Predictably, we lost 2-1 after taking the lead and my hopes of seeing my team finally win a trophy were dealt a severe blow. This was supposed to be the new, exciting Chelsea of Ruud ‘sexy football’ Gullitt, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo and yet we got turned over by rather less glamorous opponents. In short, to paraphrase a football saying, we couldn’t do it away on a cold Tuesday night at Bolton. I returned home a very disappointed man. But at least I returned home. Chelsea vice-chairman Matthew Harding had also been at the game and would lose his life in a helicopter crash on the way back to London. Harding had contributed huge amounts of money to the club helping to finance those exotic signings and also the redevelopment of the Chelsea ground. He also had a great relationship with the fans socialising with them at the games and in the pub. He was one of them rather than a faceless director. He also contributed £1 million to the Labour Party and the helicopter that went down had often been used by Tony Blair as leader of the party and prior to him becoming Prime Minister. In a parallel universe, the future of the whole country might have been different rather than just Chelsea Football Club’s. My wish to see my blue boys finally win something came true just six months later as they won the FA Cup at Wembley. Matthew Harding never lived to see that moment.

After a very sombre opening to this post, let’s get back to the music and hope for some uplifting tunes. Our hosts are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley and we start with a bang via a cracking song from Suede. The second single from their No 1 album “Coming Up”, “Beautiful Ones”, for me, even surpassed previous hit “Trash” in terms of immediacy and…well…sparkle. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised as supposedly it was written by guitarist Richard Oakes purposely to be a chart success and was originally called “Dead Leg” after bass player Matt Osman threatened to give Oakes a dead leg if he couldn’t come up with a Top 10 hit. Presumably that particular punishment was not dispensed as the single peaked at No 8.

The performance here is a curious one. Keyboard player Neil Codling is out front for some reason, thumbs in his pockets, occasionally leaning into his mike to mouth a few lyrics. Why wasn’t he behind a synth or something as per usual? Weren’t there any keyboard parts in this track? Was he auditioning for Brett Anderson’s position in the band? As it turned out, Codling would actually take on a lot more of the vocals duties along with an increased input into song writing later in his Suede career. He left the band in 2001 due to chronic fatigue syndrome though he would return when they reconvened in 2010.

The lyric in “Beautiful Ones” about ‘your babies going crazy’ always puts me in mind of this scene from Swingers which was released in America a week before this TOTP was broadcast. “How long till you call your babies?”…

Next, we’re straight into one of the biggest dance tunes of the year, nay the decade…how about ever?! Steve Lamacq rather undermines my ardour by just referring to it as a “really cool track” but “Insomnia” by Faithless is surely more than that. A regular in all those ‘top club tunes’ polls by the likes of MTV Dance and Mixmag, it remains a timeless classic. Indeed, I have a friend in her late 70s and she loves Faithless!

Comprising of Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto, Sister Bliss and Rollo (yes, Dido’s brother), they’d had two minor hit singles in 1995 with “Salva Ames (Save Me)” and the initial release of “Faithless” which had only made No 27 in the December as it got lost in the Christmas rush. March of 1996 saw another attempt on the charts but “Don’t Leave” could only make one week inside the Top 40 at No 34. Come the Autumn though, “Faithless” was rereleased and this time, it crashed into the charts at No 3 and easily topped the Dance Chart. Its subject matter struck a chord with clubbers who had trouble nodding off after a substance filled night of raving (or whatever it is clubbers did back then). The original album version is nine minutes long but it was edited down to three and a half for radio with the memorable keyboard riff being intended to sound like Underworld. Perhaps unusually for an album by a dance act, their album “Reverence” would go on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK and achieve platinum status and yet weirdly would get no higher in the charts than No 26. Where’s the justice in that? And I thought God was a DJ.

“You’re Gorgeous” by Babybird is up to No 6 on its way to a peak of No 3 which means a reshowing of their studio performance from the other week is required. I recall that when this came on the shop stereo in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working one busy Saturday afternoon, it happens to coincide with a group of ‘lads’ entering the shop and deciding to sing along at the top of their voices very badly. Saturdays were stressful enough in a record shop as it was and I could have done without this as well. I approached the group and asked them to pack it in but this only served to make them sing louder whilst eating their Greggs pasties and dripping flakes of pastry all over the floor (which was another bugbear of mine). Tossers.

Given the song’s much misunderstood subject matter, another thing that springs to mind when I hear “You’re Gorgeous” is another even more unpleasant memory, that of a particularly harrowing episode of the crime drama Prime Suspect the plot of which revolved around a pornographer who murdered a young girl after convincing her that he was a fashion photographer. Bloody hell! Death, murder…this post is bloody miserable so far! Please let there be some joyful tunes coming up to lighten the mood…

Hmm. Future Sound Of London wasn’t really what I had in mind. Experimental, ambient soundscapes are all very well but I need something to cheer me up and “My Kingdom” just isn’t doing it for me. I mean, it’s an interesting sound I guess and the accompanying video was probably cutting edge at the time with its morphing graphics but it’s kind of leaving me cold when I need something to give me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling that tells me everything is going to be OK – there must be a huge demand for such music whatever form it might take given the current state of the world.

You have to hand it to those Future Sound Of London boys though – they were ahead of their time. The album this track was taken from (“Dead Cities”) was promoted by a tour called ‘the f**k rock ‘n’ roll tour’ that allowed them to play live events via ISDN without leaving a studio. This was in 1996, well before the dawn of the digital age we all live in now. Hell, the vast majority of us didn’t even have a very basic mobile phone back then. In 2024, the idea of being separated from our mobiles for even an hour can cause a meltdown amongst many of us – ‘a phone, a phone…my kingdom for a phone’. Ahem.

Hands up who knew that Gina G had more hits than just “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. OK. Keep your hands up if you can name any of them. I thought as much. You’d have to be a superfan to still have your hands in the air at this point. “I Belong To You” was the first of four further hits and it was almost identical to her Eurovision song. And why not? ‘If it’s not broken…’, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’ and so on and so on…It would have made sense for her to go with an almost identical sound – anything other than that would have been folly. Gina surely wouldn’t have been expected to reinvent herself as a serious artist within months of only being known as a Eurovision entrant? If she’d returned with a big ballad would people have accepted it? I’m not sure. Repeating the formula certainly worked for Gina giving her a none too shabby chart peak of No 6. And there’s more…she would have a further three hits after and none of them were a remix of “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” meaning that she never had to plead “Ooh aah…just a little hit…please”. Yeah, sorry about that.

This week’s ’Flashback’ slot features “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” by Enya. I’m far too behind with this post to comment on this so here’s what I had to say about this one in a post from my 80s blog.

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

If it’s good enough for Enya, it’s certainly good enough for E–Motion. Look, I haven’t got the time nor inclination to review something that I commented on as recently as six months ago especially when it’s as big a heap of shit as “The Naughty North And The Sexy South”. Here’s my thoughts on this one from when it was originally a hit in the February of this year and peaked at No 20 (it was rereleased in the October peaking at No 17).

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

By 1996, Madonna’s career had reached the point it was always meant to reach – i.e. that she would play the part of Eva Perón in a film version of Evita. Rumours had been circulating for years that she was destined for this role and it finally came to be. A cinema version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber 1978 musical, its soundtrack was always likely to sell in bucketloads even before you added in the superstar factor that Madonna brought to the project. However, the song we all know from the musical – “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – wasn’t the first one to be released from the project. No, the first track that we heard Madonna singing from Evita wasn’t from the original musical at all – it was a brand new composition written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to promote the film and to secure an Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song). “You Must Love Me” was that song but despite its recognition, it wasn’t the massive hit that many may have expected. It made No 10 in the UK, No 18 in America and didn’t top the chart anywhere in the world. It certainly sounded like a huge hit or rather it sounded like a Lloyd Webber/Rice song with trademark haunting melody and a huge string backing – in fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been part of the original musical soundtrack so seamlessly did it sit alongside those other songs from the 1978 West End production.

The video shown here is just a plug for the film really with clips from the movie interspersed with a heavily pregnant Madonna singing in a room with her bump hidden behind a piano. The film made $141 million at the box office against a budget of $55 million and received mixed reviews from the press with the main criticism being that it was a case of style over substance though the soundtrack was a redeeming factor. It received a total of 23 film award nominations winning 12 including one Oscar and three Golden Globes. I’ve still yet to watch it though my wife took her Mum to see it at the cinema and her review was that it was one of the loudest films she’d ever sat through.

Cast are back next with their biggest ever hit “Flying”. I was a bit sniffy about this song the last time I reviewed it which on reflection was possibly a tad unfair seeing as it crapped all over most of its chart contemporaries (yes, I’m looking at you E-Motion). Originally a non-album single, it was later included in the band’s 2004 compilation “The Collection” which must be one of the least comprehensive retrospectives ever given that it does not feature the hits “Alright”, “Sandstorm”, “Walkaway”, “Guiding Star” or “Beat Mama”. Presumably a licensing issue, I guess you get what you pay for – it was a budget range album that was ineligible for a UK Album Chart ranking. A definitive collection called “Cast: The Singles 1995-2017” was released on white vinyl in 2018 however.

The Spice Girls are straight in at No 1 with their second single “Say You’ll Be There”. It’s interesting that although it is the desert based, high-tech ninja warriors video that I immediately think of when I hear this song, TOTP did not once show that promo instead having the group in the studio every time (although I think one may have been a just a repeat of a previous appearance). Which raises the question how had I seen the promo at all? On The Chart Show? Maybe but that was on TV on Saturday mornings when I would have been at work most weeks. I can’t think of any other music shows from around that time? They weren’t such a big deal already that they’d made it onto national news programmes surely? However I had seen it, I wasn’t alone. One David Beckham, legend has it, was so taken with Posh Spice in her black PVC catsuit that he vowed there and that they would become a couple. And lo and behold, two became one…or something.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Suede	Beautiful Ones	No but I had the album
2	Faithless	Insomnia	I did not
3	Babybird	You’re Gorgeous	Nope
4	Future Sound Of London	My Kingdom	Never happening
5	Gina G	I Belong To You	You didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6	Enya	Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)	Nah
7	E-Motion	The Naughty North And The Sexy South	Definitely not
8	Madonna	You Must Love Me	No
9	Cast	Flying	Negative
10	Spice Girls	Say You’ll Be There	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/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 NOV 1995

Posted on April 17, 2024 by 80stastic

After last week’s show was all about ‘new’ hits, this time out we have five (out of nine) that have already featured on a previous TOTP including the final four songs. We also have a ‘golden mic’ host again tonight in Jack Dee who must have done a good job in the eyes of executive producer Ric Blaxill as he returned just a month later to co-host the TOTP Christmas show with Björk.

For now though, he’s in his customary suit introducing Berri who was recently in the charts with a cover of the old Elkie Brooks hit “Sunshine After The Rain”. After that was a Top 5 hit having been rereleased and branded as being by just Berri (as opposed to New Atlantic/U4EA featuring Berri the first time around), a follow up was required. “Shine Like A Star” didn’t deviate much from the formula even going so far as to recycle the word ‘shine’ in the title. That decision paid dividends by producing the desired chart hit though its peak of No 20 meant it was a more of a blinking star in the night sky than a full blown super nova. An album was released though only in Japan and Berri as a chart comet was officially burnt out. The person behind the persona Rebecca Sleight continued to work in the music industry contributing backing vocals to various dance projects and recording as part of the folk duo The Raggy Anns. She’s also performed at the odd festival on the nostalgia circuit. As Holly Johnson once sang on the Frankie Goes To Hollywood hit “Welcome To The Pleasuredome”, ‘Shooting stars never stop even when they reach the top’.

Whether you liked or loathed them, you couldn’t ignore PJ & Duncan around this time not least because they seemed to release a single every couple of weeks. Jack Dee even says that the pair were on the show the last time he hosted it. This hit – “Perfect” – was their fourth of 1995 and eighth in total since April 1994. Of those, seven made the Top 20 but only one made the Top 10. This latest one seemed to divide the vocals up into PJ/Ant on rapping and Duncan/Dec doing the singing not that I was really paying that much attention as the whole sorry shower of a song washed over me. However, what I did notice was the former’s spiky hairdo which Boyzone’s Ronan Keating was also sporting the other week. Was there something going on with this hairstyle back then that I either didn’t notice at the time or had completely forgotten about?

The first of those five songs that have been on the show before now. “Miss Sarajevo” by Passengers was at its No 6 peak. I went into this in some detail the first time it was on the show so I’ll allow myself to keep it brief here (and because I’m way behind in writing up these TOTP repeats). So my only comment here is this – was that deliberate editing by the show’s production team to perfectly synchronise the moment when Bono sings “a time for East 17” with the chart rundown caption revealing East 17 at No 12 with “Thunder”?

Here come Garbage with a second Top 40 hit on the spin in “Queer”. The follow up to “Only Happy When It Rains”, its peak of No 13 was validation that the band were on to something and would pave the way for five of their next six singles to go Top 10 including their biggest ever hit “Stupid Girl”. It would also help their eponymous debut album go double platinum both here and in America.

There really was something quite inventive about this lot that I don’t think I picked up on on enough at the time. Had I done, I think I would have been a massive fan but instead I was more of a casual bystander, aware of them and their hits but not really affording them the appreciation they deserved. I asked Alexa to “Play Garbage” whilst I was decorating recently and I was very impressed with what I heard, not just the hits but the deeper cuts (that’s what we say these days isn’t it?) as well. Despite my instruction, Alexa didn’t serve me up any rubbish.

We saw them in the direct to camera message at the top of the show and I have to say I was confused about what was going on. My initial thought was that the multitude on screen were all of the artists to feature on this particular TOTP all put together just to shake the format up a bit but no, all these people were just one act – it’s (nearly) Christmas time and there is a need to be afraid as this is Childliners with “The Gift Of Christmas”. Judging by the online reaction to this single when this BBC4 repeat aired, most people seem to have either banished the memory of it so deep in their brains that they can’t recall it at all or literally never knew it existed in the first place. Either way, that’s not good news for a charity single trying to raise money for and awareness of their cause. Obviously, this particular cause was Childline, the charity launched by Esther Rantzen in 1986 which had already had two charity singles released in its name before this – “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Wet Wet Wet in 1988 and “You’ve Got A Friend” by Big Fun and Sonia in 1990.

In his intro, Jack Dee asks the watching TV audience to see how many pop stars we can spot in the performance here. So I did. Here’s who I could identify:

Boyzone (including Ronan with his aforementioned spiky hair)
East 17 (this apparently was the time for them)
Danni Minogue (who hadn’t had a substantial chart hit in nearly two and a half years by this point)
Sean Maguire (of course he was, he was so desperate to be a pop star back then)
The little guy from Ultimate Kaos
That bloke from Nightcrawlers
Is that pissing Peter Andre in there? He hadn’t even had one hit yet!
The two identical, peroxide blonde twins at the back were a duo called Gemini (geddit?) whom I only remember because their record label pushed and pushed for them to get a big hit record but they never did (if you don’t count this one)
Erm…is that someone from MN8?

Wikipedia tells me they also in there are C.J. Lewis, China Black, Let Loose, EYC, Deuce and a pre-fame (at least in the UK) Backstreet Boys. Yeah, all the greats then. The song itself is an abomination and those lyrics! Look in disbelief at this:

“Make all the children smile and grin

Some of them small, some of them look thin“

Or these:

“How quickly we forget, just what Christmas is

The wise men and the shepherds, they started up this thing“

Read that last line again. Just unbelievably bad. Then there’s a rap in the middle which starts with this line:

“Another child cries while Mama dies“

Given the gravitas of those words, Sean Maguire’s decision to start pulling out some gangsta rap moves (or whatever they are) at this point seems a little ill judged. He should have shown some of the decorum of his namesake, Manchester United’s Harry, who shook the hands of every Coventry City player immediately after the winning penalty went in during the shoot out in yesterday’s epic FA Cup semi final.

The single peaked at No 9 so hopefully made some money for its charity but you almost never hear it played at Christmas despite the existence of radio stations playing only festive songs continuously from the 1st December. Truly a lost Christmas song and thank the Lord for that.

That’s it for ‘new’ songs so we carry on with another screening of the video for “Free As A Bird” by The Beatles. Having spoken about the song last time, I guess I should concentrate on the video. I’ve watched it a few times now and though it’s packed with references to the band, their lives and songs – some obvious, some very oblique* – which must have kept Beatles obsessives busy – I’m not sure it is really that engaging in its own right. I get it’s meant to be a ‘bird’s eye view’ in keeping with the song’s title but it doesn’t really convey the sheer excitement and mania that constantly surrounded the band. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to but I think I’d liked to have seen more imagery of them in their early mop top days. Just my personal opinion of course. Those of a different opinion would argue that’s what The Anthology TV series was for which is fair enough.

* My favourite, if intentional, is that the bouncer at the door of The Cavern has a flat top haircut as in the lyric “Here come old flat-top” from “Come Together”.

Despite being at No 1 a month or so ago, Coolio (with L.V.) is back in the studio with “Gangsta’s Paradise” as it is holding at No 2 having gone back up the charts from No 3. Quite extraordinary sales for a single that had been in the charts for around six weeks by this point. I say ‘back’ on the show but you can tell by the cutaway that it’s clearly just a replay of an earlier performance.

The widely known fact about “Gangsta’s Paradise” is that it interpolates Stevie Wonder’s track “Pastime Paradise” from his celebrated 1976 album “Songs In The Key Of Life”. However, I’m guessing what isn’t widely known (I didn’t know until now anyway) is that the wonderful and sadly departed Billy Mackenzie of The Associates did a cover of “Pastime Paradise” on his 1992 solo album “Outernational”. Want to hear it? Of course you do…

A small insight now into the thought processes that went into how to stage artists on TOTP. I have no experience nor evidence as to who made the decisions about the best way to set up an act for a studio appearance (was it floor managers, artist management, the artists themselves or ultimately the show’s executive producer Ric Blaxill?) but someone looked at Enya’s last time on TOTP performing “Anywhere Is” and thought “Yeah, it was good but I think a few tweaks are required”. Compare and contrast this first performance…

…and this follow up appearance…

I think the changes can be summed up in the following table and I’m sure that you’ll agree they were well worth making (ahem)…

Same	Different
Enya sat at a piano	Enya’s top
Piano covered in flowers	Less flowers on studio floor
Enya staring down camera in an unsettling way	Six drummer boys instead of two
Two cello players in blonde wigs	Two violinists in blonde wigs instead of three

It’s a fourth and final week at No 1 for Robson & Jerome with “I Believe” which means, apart from the 1995 Christmas Special show which I won’t be reviewing, we won’t be seeing these two again for nearly a whole year of repeats when they will return with their third and final No 1 single. Hurray! Given that this single sold a million copies, I wonder if Simon Cowell (who’d pestered the two actors to do the whole pop star thing) had mistimed its release date and had he delayed it by a couple of weeks, whether it would have been the Christmas No 1? Presumably, he’d wanted the decks clear for the release of their album and not wanted the single to distract punters from buying that? The album’s release date would have been carefully chosen to maximise sales from the Christmas period and in the event, was in the shops from 19th November. That means the single managed one week at the top despite the album being out so maybe Cowell misjudged the duo’s ability to shift some serious units? Ultimately, of course, all that really mattered was, just like with the current government’s tenure, the answer to the question “when would this heinous period be over for good?”

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Berri	Shine Like A Star	Nah
2	PJ & Duncan	Perfect	No
3	Passengers	Miss Sarajevo	No but maybe should have
4	Garbage	Queer	See 3 above
5	Childliners	The Gift Of Christmas	NO!
6	The Beatles	Free As A Bird	Nope
7	Coolio / LV	Gangsta’s Paradise	I didn’t
8	Enya	Anywhere Is	Nah
9	Robson & Jerome	I Believe	Never!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xz4d/top-of-the-pops-30111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 16 NOV 1995

Posted on April 7, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s yet another ‘golden mic’ presenter hosting for this episode of TOTP. This innovation from Executive Producer Ric Blaxill was becoming ever more pervasive since being introduced in 1994. Looking ahead to the 1996 shows, there seems to be a celebrity/pop star at the helm nearly every week punctuated occasionally by a Radio 1 DJ like Lisa I’Anson or the duo of Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley. Come 1997 though, new Executive Producer Chris Cowey would phase the ‘golden mic’ slots out and instead return to a more settled, rotating roster of young BBC presenters like Jayne Middlemiss, Jamie Theakston and Zoe Ball. Whether this was a good thing or not is down to your own personal preferences but as long as it kept Simon Mayo out in the cold and away from the show, it worked for me.

Anyway, the pop star hosting this November ‘95 show was Louise, late of Eternal and now embarking on a solo career. A symbiotic relationship – TOTP got some girl next door charm and a stage school trained presenter whilst Louise had her profile raised at a crucial time of her career, just one single into her time as a solo artist. Actually, had she started seeing Jamie Redknapp by this point? That was another symbiotic relationship in terms of heightening each other’s fame. I’m not casting any aspersions on their devotion to each other by the way; they were married for 19 years and have two children together after all. However, if you look at David and Victoria Beckham as the model for building a brand back then, you can’t help but draw comparisons. Again, I’m not doubting the sincerity of their personal relationship but they certainly didn’t shy away from the Posh and Becks image. I’m not sure that Jamie and Louise pursued that power couple badge as keenly as P & B did but the inevitable press interest in them must have increased their fame surely?

We start with a rerelease of a dance tune. Of course we do – this was 1995 after all, the year of this practice. We really should be familiar with the name of said dance tune as it wasn’t just released twice but five times over an eight year period! Not only that but it shared the same title as this week’s No 1 record. “I Believe” by Happy Clappers was originally released in 1994 but failed to even make the Top 100. A rerelease in June 1995 saw it become a No 1 on the UK Dance chart whilst also securing a not too shabby peak of No 21 on the UK Top 40. However, following the trend of the time, it came out for a third time less than six months later becoming a No 7 hit. Hurray and a big hand for the Happy Clappers! Two years later it was back again making No 28 before a fifth and final outing in 2003 thanks to a Carl Cox remix saw it fail to make any meaningful impression on the charts. As a pop kid, I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to dance music but if pressed for an opinion, I’d say the track doesn’t really warrant all that attention and multiple releases. I’m sure it packed out dance floors in clubs up and down the land but rather than make me want to applaud it, I’m more likely to give it a massive thumbs down.

When it comes to soap stars turned pop stars, Sean Maguire was pretty unusual. A good looking lad who’d made his name on first Grange Hill and then EastEnders, you could understand him wanting to give pop music a go but by the mid-90s, hadn’t we all had enough of this particular subset of pop star? After all, it had been a whole nine years since Anita Dobson and Nick Berry swapped Albert Square for the pop charts and opened the door for a bath full of soap stars to slip through. Most famously there were Kylie and Jason but also Craig McLachlan, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Stefan Dennis, Sophie Lawrence and of course Ant & Dec. Seemingly though we were still willing to accept pretty much anybody as pop stars as long as they’d been in a soap. After Sean Maguire came Sid Owen (EastEnders), Will Mellor (Hollyoaks), Natalie Imbruglia (Neighbours) and Adam Rickitt (Coronation Street).

Maguire though seemed different – like this was a serious career move for him not just a quick, cheap cash-in on his soap fame. To this end, he had eight Top 40 hits all peaking somewhere between No 27 and No 12. It’s not a bad haul I suppose. When it came to albums though, Sean couldn’t convince people that he was a serious artist. His first album peaked at No 75 whilst his second and final one could only make it to No 43. This hit – a cover of The Real Thing’s 1976 chart topper “You To Me Are Everything” – came slap bang in the middle of his run of hits making it to No 16. A cover version normally means an artist being desperate for a career reviving hit and that may be the case here after the lead single from his second album “Spirit” only made it to No 22. In Maguire’s defence, this was the first time he’d released a cover as a single (he would release one further one subsequently) but there is still a case to be answered here as to why he’s plodded through a disco classic so laboriously. A very obvious choice of cover badly executed would be my assessment.

Now, the unusual sight of a former No 1 being back on the show just a week or so after it had been toppled. This wasn’t a case of some creative running order manipulation on behalf of the aforementioned Ric Blaxill though. No, this was a legitimate slot allocation as “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio was going back up the charts from No 3 to No 2! Quite remarkable.

We get the video this time which though inevitably including clips from the Dangerous Minds film (the soundtrack of which the song appears on), also introduced a different element to the whole promo concept. By getting the star of the movie Michelle Pfeiffer to agree to film some scenes with Coolio himself, a whole new dimension to the visuals was created. Though Pfeiffer herself does little other than stare at Coolio whilst he raps in her face, the intensity between them and brooding nature of the interaction (somehow accentuated by Pfeiffer’s cut glass cheekbones) is visually arresting. As a result, the promo won Best Rap Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1996.

Enya was never your typical chart star was she? In a parallel universe, she was the ultimate one hit wonder with her 1988 chart topper “Orinoco Flow” making her famous for a month before the novelty of her Celtic, new age sound was replaced by the next latest craze. Except that, in the real world, she didn’t disappear. Or at least she did but kept coming back every couple of years with a new, commercially successful album. “Watermark”, the parent album for “Orinoco Flow”, went four times platinum in both the UK and America, selling 11 million copies worldwide. Three years later, she returned with “Shepherd Moons” which matched those numbers. Another four years would pass before her next studio album “The Memory Of Trees” appeared. Although there was a dip in sales, it still shifted 3 million units in the US and went double platinum over here. That’s about 30 million sold over the course of seven years and three albums! And yet I would wager that Enya wasn’t seen as a musical heavyweight unless you were maybe a record company executive. Did the punters or the music press consider her as a peer of other mammoth selling artist like, I don’t know, Michael Jackson or Mariah Carey? I’m guessing not but these are just my own thoughts of course. Maybe I’m underestimating and misrepresenting Enya.

Anyway, the lead single from “The Memory Of Trees” was “Anywhere Is”. A more upbeat, dare I say almost jolly track than some of her more ethereal work, it would become her second highest peaking UK hit after “Orinoco Flow” when it got to No 7. Enya seems to almost propel the song along in this performance by pure will power hypnotising the watching audience into enjoying it via the intense stares she constantly gives to the camera. Seriously, it’s a bit Stepford Wives or probably we’d say AI these days.

This was always going to happen – another showing of Madonna’s in studio appearance from the other week, her first for 11 years. Fortunately for Ric Blaxill, as with Coolio before, he could claim that a repeat of Madge’s turn was legitimate as “You’ll See” was going up the charts. This was quite the stroke of luck as songs climbing the Top 40 was becoming more and more seldom with the trend for singles careering in and out of charts at high speed was more the norm. Even an artist s big as Madonna couldn’t be guaranteed a hit to climb steadily anymore. This was her first single to go up the charts in successive weeks since “Erotica” went from No 10 to No 4 to No 3 in 1992.

The Beautiful South released 34 singles during their career but I’m guessing that this one is not one of their best remembered. Not because it’s not any good, it’s yet another one of their bittersweet pop confections but because it’s one of those rare things – a non-album single. Plugging the gap between their 1994 six times platinum selling compilation “Carry On Up The Charts” and their 1996 studio album “Blue Is The Colour”, “Pretenders To The Throne” was a medium sized hit peaking at No 18.

As far as I can tell, the band only released one other non-album single but this one wasn’t made available in the UK. Their version of The Mamas & The Papas hit “Dream A Little Dream” was only released in Germany and the way to get hold of it in this country was to buy the soundtrack to the Meg Ryan / Kevin Kline romcom French Kiss for which it was recorded. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport at the time and can only assume that a local radio station had picked up on the track and was playing it as we kept getting asked for it all the time in the shop. This was in an era before digital streaming platforms and so customers used to get quite narky after having made the effort to come into the store to get that song off the radio they liked only to be told it couldn’t be purchased.

Another example was when a station started playing “The Masterplan” by Oasis convincing listeners that it was their new single only to be told by us that actually it was just an extra track on their “Wonderwall” CD single. This wasn’t too much if a problem as we routinely kept all the Oasis singles in stock regardless of whether they were in the charts or not but I could have done without those conversations where the punter was convinced of their own information and that I was in the wrong.

And so we come to the latest in what seems like an endless conveyor belt of Michael Jackson video exclusives that we were served up by TOTP throughout the 90s. By my reckoning, “Earth Song” was the twelfth single released by Jackson by this point in the decade and everyone had been a hit in the UK so I’m assuming that we had to endure the unveiling of each accompanying promo the same amount of times. The whole thing was bloody exhausting!

Perhaps best known on these shores not for *SPOILER ALERT* staying at No 1 for 6 weeks nor indeed being our Christmas No 1 that year but for being the song that Jacko was performing at the BRITS in 1996 when Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker protested at his Christ complex antics by wafting his behind in Jacko’s direction.

As this is a video ‘exclusive’, we get around 5 minutes and 45 seconds of the promo. I’m assuming this won’t always be the case in subsequent weeks. Given, how much we’ll be seeing this in future TOTP repeats, can I get away with leaving this one here for now? I think I can.

It’s a hat-trick of superstars for TOTP. After Madonna and David Bowie on the past two shows, this week it’s Tina Turner in person in the studio. I’m not sure I watched her performance here though as I don’t recall it at all. In fact, I have little memory of the song either. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Tina’s singing a Bond theme – “Goldeneye” – and I’ve never been much of a Bond fan. Consequently, a new film and associated theme song was never going to get me that excited. Secondly, despite this being the first film in the franchise for six years, the song didn’t actually pull up any trees chart wise. In at No 10 and then a slide down the chart week on week that not even the opening of the actual film could halt. Maybe I don’t remember it much because it didn’t hang around for long.

Listening to it now, it sounds like a Bond theme and looks like a Bond theme with all those 007 lookalikes on stage with Tina but somehow it doesn’t seem like one of the great Bond themes to me. Inevitably, at the time, there were comparisons with Shirley Bassey, the artist behind two of the most memorable Bond songs ever but I just don’t find it convincing. Others, however, did. A 2022 Classic FM list ranked all 24 Bond themes based on their musical merit. “Goldeneye” came in at No 3! I was astonished when I read that. For me, the greatest of them all is McCartney’s “Live And Let Die” – I thought that was a universally accepted given. Apparently not as that came a lowly 17th on the list. What about those classic mid to late 80s songs by Gladys Knight, Duran Duran and A-ha? Nos 7, 9 and 23 (!) respectively. Hmm. Maybe there’s a reason I’m not a massive Bond fan. I just don’t get it. I mean, I thought Daniel Craig was good in the ones of his that I’ve caught but there’s loads I’ve never seen that including Goldeneye which was the first of the Pierce Brosnan years.

Watching Tina’s performance here, it struck me what a strange gig it must have been for those six ‘Bonds’ on stage with her. Presumably they were from a modelling agency? What brief were they given? All you have to do is stand there with a gun and look as suave as you can?

It’s a second week of four at No 1 for Robson & Jerome with “I Believe” giving a strange top and tail arrangement to the show after it opened with “I Believe” by Happy Clappers.

The guys have gone for a more casual look this time with their black jackets of last week now removed to reveal plain white shirts (and breaches in the case of Jerome). 29 years on and I still am not sure how to explain the popularity of the duo. They had the best selling album and single of the 1995 in the UK! I think I’ll leave the final word to Alan Partridge..,

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Happy Clappers	I Believe	Defo no
2	Sean Maguire	You To Me Are Everything	Ha! No
3	Coolio	Gangsta’s Paradise	Nah
4	Enya	Anywhere Is	Nope
5	Madonna	You’ll See	Negative
6	The Beautiful South	Pretenders To The Throne	Not the single but I think I have it on a subsequent Best Of
7	Michael Jackson	Earth Song	I did not
8	Tina Turner	Goldeneye	Never happened
9	Robson & Jerome	I Believe	As if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xqx3/top-of-the-pops-16111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 JUL 1992

Posted on March 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The TOTP repeats are still coming thick and fast. We’re already at the end of July ‘92 whilst in real time of 2022, we’re only halfway through March. Keeping up with them is becoming increasingly difficult. I may not have a job currently but I have got other things to do you know like…erm…well, there’s the daily wordle and…look, never mind about that. I need to get on.

Thirty years ago Alan Shearer – the all time top Premier League goal scorer but as we found out in a recent post, an unknown in the US – has just broken the English transfer fee record by signing for Blackburn Rovers from Southampton for £3.5 million. Two days after that, another big transfer went down as Nottingham Forest’s Des Walker signed for Sampdoria for £1.5 million which must have upset Nottingham group KWS whose recent chart topper “Please Don’t Go” was released as a tribute to the defender (apparently). As for me, I was still trundling along working for Our Price in Manchester but a transfer of my own would soon be in the offing but that’s for a later post.

So here’s a question. How many Top 40 singles do you reckon The Shamen had? Three? Four? I think I would have gone with five. I’d have been miles out. It’s actually twelve! I know! To be fair to myself, four came well after their annus mirabilis of 1992 and were minor hits one of which was a remix of “Move Any Mountain” anyway. In my original guess, I’d miscalculated how many singles were released from their “Boss Drum” album (six if you’re counting) including this one “LSI Love Sex Intelligence”. Now I did include this in my guess of five as it was a pretty big hit (No 6 if you’re still counting) and therefore much more memorable. This really felt like the moment that the band consciously decided to pursue chart stardom with rapper Mr C pushed out front and centre as their public face. I say that but watching this performance, it’s vocalist Jhelisa Anderson that stands out with Mr C restricted to a few shouts of “Come On!” and of course his obligatory rap halfway through. I think the reason that it’s his face that comes to mind when I think of this era of The Shamen is because he looked off it most of the time. Apparently that’s because he was. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Mr C: “We did Top Of The Pops about seven or eight times [It was eight]. Every single time I was on acid or E or both. I wasn’t on three pills, I was on one. So I remember it. It’s only when you bosh that third pill you start losing it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 11, 2022

That’ll be it then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHrSxpx0vQM

Michael Jackson is next with a proper showing of his “Who Is It” video after last week’s insulting slot in the Breakers. Many in the music press made comparisons between this track and “Billie Jean” which got me thinking about some of the other tracks on “Dangerous”. The conclusion I came to was that “Who Is It” may not have been the only time he recycled some of his own source material. The sixth single from the album was the syrup drenched, sickly ballad “Heal The World” which was a direct rewrite of the Jackson penned USA for Africa charity single “We Are The World”. The one after that “Give In To Me” has more than a whiff of “Dirty Diana” about it. Hmm. “Who Is It” asked Jacko. The answer was clear. It’s you Michael. Endlessly you.

“Who Is It” peaked at No 10.

Just about teenagers Kris Kross are next but for some reason host Mark Franklin (back to the solo presenter this week) gives them no intro whatsoever and then at the end of their performance gives them a meagre three word mention (“There’s Kris Kross”). Had they upset the show in some way or was it yet another attempt to shake up the show’s format. It just looks incongruous like they aren’t really part of the show (is that even the TOTP studio they’re performing in?) and somebody has hacked the BBC broadcast and interrupted the running order to get the rapping duo on illegally.

On they were though with their new single “Warm It Up” which is another song I don’t remember from this period. Lacking the immediacy of “Jump”, it comes over like they’re trying to convince us all that they really are proper gangstas (yes, I meant to spell it like that) with lyrics that mention guns and knives but in the end the most threatening they manage is with the line “You can get the finger, the middle”.

A year or so later, the UK version of Kris Kross was unleashed on the world. They were a little bit older (18 years of age) and as with their US counterparts where we didn’t know which one was Mac Daddy and which was Daddy Mac, we also had trouble distinguishing between them but boy did they have some tunes!

The first of two exclusive performances tonight is next and it’s from someone who caused quite a reaction on Twitter when this TOTP repeat aired, most of it of a salacious nature (including the rhyming slang J. Arthur). Betty Boo (for it is she) went missing for the whole of 1991 after she had taken the UK by storm the previous year with hits like “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?” (note the use of a question mark Michael Jackson!). Presumably she was writing material for her second album.

The first glimpse of her labours came in the form of the single “Let Me Take You There” and what an underrated single it was. Like most of the work from her second album period, it’s largely forgotten despite its No 12 chart peak. A gloriously lilting track, it also had plenty of little hooks thrown in throughout for good measure. Betty is really selling it in this performance. She’s ditched the space cadet togs and bob haircut of the “Boomania” era and has returned with grown out locks and a revealing outfit (hence the Twitter reaction). She’s also ditched the Booettes but her all female backing band have followed her sartorial lead.

I’m pretty sure I had a promo copy of the second album entitled “GRRR! It’s Betty Boo” and it was pretty good especially follow up singles “I’m On My Way” (not The Proclaimers song) and “Hangover” but neither made the Top 40 despite being excellent pieces of pop confection. After the failure of the album, Betty withdrew from the music industry and was seemingly lost to the world of pop forever until she reappeared as a songwriter for the likes of Hear’Say, Girls Aloud and Dannii Minogue and lookee here…a brand new single released just this year that samples The Human League! Open your heart!

Something weird has happened to the Breakers section. Two of the four songs featured have already been on the show before. Enya had her own ‘exclusive’ slot just last week and Billy Ray Cyrus was shown recently as part of the US chart and yet they’re both designated as Breakers this week. I’m guessing the TOTP producers would argue that neither was actually in the UK Top 40 when first on the show and now they are classified as big movers within it and therefore Breakers? Surely this section was for singles we hadn’t seen before and had now just got into the charts? Seems a waste to show a short clip of artists we’ve already seen in full before.

Anyway, a song that we hadn’t seen before was “Jesus He Knows Me”, the fourth single from Genesis’s “We Can’t Dance” album. After the Genesis by numbers ballad “Hold On My Heart” and the indulgently epic “No Son Of Mine”, this was more like the well crafted pop of “Invisible Touch” but with the added bit of jeopardy of having the word ‘Jesus’ in the title. Would that have scared off some US radio stations? Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” was originally called “A Deal With God” but changed due to fears of being on an airplay black list. Well, it was a No 23 hit over the pond so it didn’t do too badly.

The video was similarly provocative sending up as it did the cult of the televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker who as critic Christopher Thelen put it were “more concerned about fleecing their flocks than shepherding them”. Fair play to Phil, Mike and Tony for trying to do something challenging with the video rather than just have some in concert footage cobbled together for example.

What?! Sarah Brightman and José Carreras had a song in the charts in the 1992? I don’t remember this happening. Apparently “Amigos Para Siempre (Friends For Life)” was recorded for the Barcelona Olympics and was sung at the games closing ceremony. I can’t have watched it I guess. If it’s Sarah Brightman then it must have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and indeed it was.

The only song I associate with those Olympics was “Barcelona” by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé but both tracks were included on a compilation album called “Barcelona Gold” which was released to coincide with them. I’d forgotten all about this and its utterly bizarre track listing. It’s bookended by the two aforementioned tracks but what comes in between is ludicrous. There’s DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, INXS, Rod Stewart, a couple of soul divas in Anita Baker and Natalie Cole, Marc Cohn, a live version of “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton and “This Used To Be My Playground” by Madonna which couldn’t be licensed for the soundtrack of the film it featured in (A League Of Their Own) but which was OK for this bonkers hotchpotch of an album. It also had one of the worst album covers ever. Madness.

Marc Cohn celebrates his inclusion on the “Barcelona Gold” album

And so to those hits by Enya and Billy Ray Cyrus starting with the former and her “Book Of Days” single. Haven’t got much else to say about this one except, in keeping with the sporting theme, it was used as background music during the medal ceremonies at the 2009 IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

As for “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus, I literally have nothing else I want to say about it.

My use of the word Madness to describe that “Barcelona Gold” album was deliberate as here are the Nutty Boys themselves in the second ‘exclusive’ performance of the night with a re-release of “My Girl” to promote their “Divine Madness” Best Of album. Originally their third ever hit in 1980 when it went to No 3, the song is also a small but special footnote in the history of TOTP as it was the first to be performed on the show at the start of the 80s.

After officially splitting in ‘86, the band being back together on TOTP six years later was quite the throwback. I saw them years later at one of their pre-Xmas concerts in Hull. They were fabulous though I have to say I haven’t seen so many middle aged men trying to relive their youth under one roof before or since.

Back in the 90s though, 1992 really was the year of a Madness revival. Aside from the three times platinum selling “Divine Madness” retrospective, there was also the very first Madstock! festival as referred to by Mark Franklin. This two day jamboree at Finsbury Park in London was supposedly so loud that it caused nearby tower blocks to shake! The event was repeated in ‘94, ‘97, ‘98 and ‘09.

The reissued “My Girl” peaked at No 27.

https://youtu.be/N4p6cu628hQ

Blimey they’re slamming them in tonight! Here’s the tenth artist on the show and we’re only two thirds of the way through. It’s Roxette who seemed to be on TOTP every other week around this time. They don’t seem to be friends of the show though as Mark Franklin doesn’t utter one word about them. No intro, no outro, no name check, nothing. Even worse than his treatment of Kris Kross.

With no plug from the programme, they’re going to have to promote their latest single “How Do You Do” by the sheer power of their performance but the song doesn’t lend itself to a cohesive turn at all. The lead single from their “Tourism” album, it’s a light, bright daytime radio friendly ditty but the vocal parts don’t work for me. Per Gessle takes the opening lines rather than powerhouse singer Marie Fredriksson and he seems to be doing his best Jimmy Nail impression as they are mostly spoken and not sung. Compare Per saying this line:

‘Well here we are crackin’ jokes in the corner of our mouths and I fell like I’m laughing in a dream’

With this from “Ain’t No Doubt”:

‘She says it’s like in the song remember? If you love somebody, set them free. Well that’s how it is for me.’

OK. The words are not the same but the intonation is similar I would argue. The similarities continue as Marie joins in for the chorus just as Jimmy has a female vocalist (who seems to change with each TOTP appearance) do the same for his song. Although Jimmy has grown his hair longer since his Auf Wiedersehen Pet days and I’m really not sure about it, compared to Per’s barnet he’s the epitome of stylish. What was he thinking?! Unbelievably, his isn’t even the worst on stage as up there with him is a bass player with an incongruous 80s cut (long at the back, short at the sides). It’s the 90s now mate!

“How Do You Do” provides another nice sporting tie in for this post as the video for it was played at half time in the recent Euros ‘92 final between Denmark and Germany. It doesn’t excuse that hair though. By the way, the track was recorded in a studio in Sweden called Tits & Ass Studio talking of which…

https://youtu.be/m5MQ1ERb_D0

It’s one of those satellite link ups next as we cross live to Seattle for…nope not Nirvana despite the city being the home of grunge but for some fella called Sir Mix A Lot who has been No 1 in America for five weeks Mark Franklin informs us with his single “Baby Got Back”. As my friend Robin would say, this is like pissing off the top of a multi story car park – wrong on so many levels…or is it? Ostensibly a rap objectifying women with large buttocks, could it also be a challenge to the mainstream norms of female beauty? Sir Mix A Lot himself says of the track:

“The song doesn’t just say I like large butts you know? The song is talking about women who damn near kill themselves to try to look like these beanpole models that you see in Vogue magazine.”

I’ll be honest; I think I may have been more on board with this argument if he hadn’t performed the song against the towering backdrop of a pair of naked butt cheeks.

At one point the video for the song was banned by MTV and yet despite all the controversy it generated and its five week run at the top of the US charts, we never got it over here in dear old conservative Blighty and the song never made our Top 40 peaking at No 56. Maybe we got confused and bought the wrong thing as his album was called “Mack Daddy” as in those cheeky scamps we saw earlier Kris Kross.

Jimmy Nail still reigns at the top of the charts with “Ain’t No Doubt” which would shift enough copies to end up as the 8th best selling single in the UK in 1992. The parent album “Growing Up In Public” would achieve gold status yet curiously there were no other hit singles from it. The follow up to “Ain’t No Doubt” was called “Laura” and it didn’t even make the Top 40. Maybe it’s predecessor was do ubiquitous that nothing else Jimmy released could compete.

That ubiquity was taken to extraordinary lengths by a guy who drove his neighbours insane by playing the song at top volume for 24 hours solid after splitting with his girlfriend after she’d cheated on him (“she’s lying…”). At least I’m think that’s what I read in the paper at the time though I can’t find any mention of it online anywhere.

Despite his success being cut short, Nail would return in ‘94 with the soundtrack to his next TV series Crocodile Shoes the title track of which would score him a No 4 hit.

It’s that Madonna track from the “Barcelona Gold” album to close the show. “This Used To Be My Playground” was a short stopping off point before Madge unleashed her controversial “Erotica” album and “Sex” book on the world. For some it was a step too far. I recall seeing a local news item where a Madonna super fan who had slavishly bought everything she had ever done on every format drew the line at “Erotica” and turned his back on Madonna forever. Instead he directed his obsessive tendencies towards someone much more wholesome – Gloria Estefan. I have a mental image of him holding up the picture disc of “This Used To Be My Playground” and saying this was the last Madonna product he would ever buy. I’m not sure she was that bothered.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Shamen	LSI Love Sex Intelligence	Nope
2	Michael Jackson	Who Is It	I did not
3	Kris Kross	Warm It Up	No
4	Betty Boo	Let Me Take You There	No but I had that promo copy of the album with it on
5	Genesis	Jesus He Knows Me	Negative
6	Sarah Brightman and José Carreras	Amigos Para Siempre (Friends For Life)	Jesus no!
7	Enya	Book Of Days	Nah
8	Billy Ray Cyrus	Achy Breaky Heart	See 6 above
9	Madness	My Girl	No but I had the Divine Madness album
10	Roxette	How Do You Do	How do you don’t more like – no!
11	Sir Mix A Lot	Baby Got Back	I was far too mature for such nonsense
12	Jimmy Nail	Ain’t No Doubt	It’s a no
13	Madonna	This Used To Be My Playground	And a final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00156d2/top-of-the-pops-30071992

TOTP 23 JUL 1992

Posted on March 14, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re in mid Summer ‘92 at TOTP Rewind. The Euros have been and gone (and with them Graham Taylor’s credibility as the England manager) and the Olympics in Barcelona are just about to start and we all know what that means…yes that bloody song by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe will be everywhere including the top end of the charts very soon. For now though, we have a TOTP which is, yet again, a right mix bag of music and artists. We’re back to a presenting duo rather than the solo host we have seen recently with Tony Dortie being paired with Claudia Simon. The producers are sticking with the small changes to the format they made recently meaning we get to see Claudia and Tony do an intro even before the titles roll and then do the Top 10 countdown before we see/hear any artists. I’m not convinced about any of it.

When we do get to the actual music, the first intro is very odd. As the camera alights on Claudia and Tony, the latter says “This record is massive on the dance floor” but the camera keeps moving down towards the stage. Claudia says out of shot “Making their debut on Top of the Pops…” and then…nothing. Surely Claudia was teeing up actually saying who the first act was?! What happened? Did her mike fail? Did she forget who she was introducing? Or did the producers say “Just forget it. Too late now anyway. They’ve started and the artist graphic is on screen already”?

That artist graphic told us that the band were Sunscreem with “Love U More”. So who were these lot? I remember the name but the only other thing I recall about them was that they were a Sony artist (the curse of opening all those deliveries while working for Our Price in the 90s strikes again!). Turns out that they weren’t just another anonymous dance act put together to front a hit single. They were a house band from Essex- no I don’t mean they were the resident band for the whole of the county but that they played ‘house’ music – and actually performed live concerts.

Having been tipped as the next big name in dance music during ‘91, they finally broke into the UK Top 40 with “Love U More”. Listening to it now, it does ring a few bells one of which reminded me of “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” by Zoë. If that bell was ringing though then there was an air horn going off in my head about their performance which is giving me heavy D:Ream vibes. It’s not just their sound, the lead singer even has a tartan suit on!

That singer is Lucia Holm who recorded a fine version of one of my favourite ever songs “Heaven” by The Psychedelic Furs in 2005.

Not only that, check out this fact from @TOTPFacts about her involvement in another of my favourite tunes:

Sunscreem singer Lucia Holm also played cello on "Life In A Northern Town" by The Dream Academy – from which her playing was later sampled by Dario G for his dance track "Sunchyme". https://t.co/s2CrslZ6jO #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 11, 2022

I had no idea! I was also in the dark that Steps covered “Love U More” on their debut album. Look!

Nice to see some actual, proper musical instruments on display in a dance outfit performance though I’m not sure about the two dancers throwing some shapes. Sunscreem would go on to have eight UK Top 40 hits though none would get any higher than No 13. “Love U More” itself would make No 23.

Snap! are up to No 2 with “Rhythm Is A Dancer” and it’s obvious now that it’s going to be a chart topper. I’m not sure I would have predicted it spending six weeks as the nation’s best seller though but then what did I know eh? Oh yeah, I was working in a record shop at the time so maybe I should have had my finger in the pulse a bit more.

The track routinely features in the ‘Best No 1s /dance anthems of the 90s’ polls but I bet nobody involved in the record could have foreseen its influence extend to this extent…

Thought Shakespear’s Sister only had one hit? You are sorely mistaken for they had six UK Top 40 hits in total though I’m guessing this one would have a decent chance at being a very low scorer on Pointless. “Goodbye Cruel World” was actually the lead single from their “Hormonally Yours” album and not the all conquering “Stay” but nobody noticed it when it was initially released in late September ‘91 and it struggled to a high of No 59. Maybe that would have been the end of the band had they not had that Dave Stewart penned No 1 song up their sleeves but up their sleeves it was and the rest is (you’re) history.

Essentially a straightforward rock/pop song, it had enough quirkiness about it to make it stand out from the crowd. However, it never made it above its chart position here of No 32 in spite of this TOTP exposure. To be fair, the whirling dervish routine of Siobhan Fahey was starting to irritate and they did seem to shoehorn in a platform for Marcella Detroit’s to display her operatic range every song. Siobahn seems to think it’s Xmas time judging by the white fur trim in her outfit but it’s their bass player that my eyes are more drawn to. She looks ever so familiar and judging by the #TOTP tweets for this show, a fair few people thought the same and wanted to identify her. General consensus was that its Claire Kenny who has worked with the likes of Orange Juice, Sinéad O’Connor and Brian Eno though I think it’s Amazulu that I recognise her from which probably says quite a lot about me.

The Breakers are in a much more sensible place in the show this week and we start with the poster boys of grunge Nirvana. To say how influential they were, their career was pretty short and their back catalogue fairly small. Three studio albums and six UK Top 40 hits in a seven year existence. Yes, you could argue that The Beatles only existed for a decade and look at their legacy but they released thirteen albums in that period. You could also make the case that Nirvana’s potential for longevity was truncated by Kurt Cobain’s death but I think that the band were never likely to pull a U2 and carve out a 40 year career. Cobain’s heroin addiction was always an issue and the group almost broke up after disagreements surrounding Kurt’s attempts to reorganise their royalties structure so that he got more to reflect his songwriting input. There’s also that theory that those who shine the brightest burn out the quickest and that the band were always destined to fulfil that particular narrative but is that just a lazy take on their story?

Anyway, one of those six hit singles was “Lithium” which was the third track to be released from “Nevermind”. It’s a good song and all that but it doesn’t stray far from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” template in that the verses are subdued lulling us into a false sense of security before the violent eruption of the go apeshit chorus.

The video is a collage of gig footage. Cobain had originally had an idea for an animation to tell the story of a girl called Preggo who lives in a forest and takes some eggs she found in her closet to a king in a castle. This was shelved when it became apparent that it the video would take four months to make. They couldn’t think of anything else to do than just cobble some concert clips together?

“Lithium” peaked at No 11 in the UK singles chart.

Still bleeding the “Stars” album dry are Simply Red or more accurately their record label EastWest. I’m wondering about the wisdom of releasing a fifth single (“Your Mirror”) from an album that had been out for 10 months by this point and which had sold so many copies in the first three of those months that it became the biggest selling album of the whole year.

Were EastWest hoping that there were still some punters out there who hadn’t yet been persuaded into buying “Stars” by the first four singles off it but who might be convinced by the fifth? Surely not. Was it designed to appeal to completist super fans who couldn’t resist the lure of Simply Red product? Did such people exist? Were there exclusive extra tracks on the single? Or was it as I first thought just a case of milking the label’s elite cash cow as much as they could?

“Stars” was the band’s fourth album – would that have bought them to the end of their current record deal? Were EastWest concerned they might lose their lucrative charges? As it turned out they didn’t but it would be four years before the next Simply Red album. Had they thought that might be the case and so wanted to maximise sales of the current one by going all Michael Jackson on its singles release schedule? Were the band on tour and so the single was to promote that?

So many questions to which I’m not sure I actually care what the answers are. This is Simply Red and Mick Hucknall we’re talking about here after all! Suffice to say “Your Mirror” did nothing for me but it reached a respectable No 17 on the charts which presumably meant something to EastWest.

Talking of Jacko…after the first three singles from Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album had been given the ‘exclusive’ treatment by TOTP, the video for his latest single only warrants a slot in the Breakers! Possibly to prevent litigation from The King of Pop’s lawyers, it gets a full outing on the following week’s show.

The single in question is “Who Is It” and the critical reception it received at the time suggested that it was “Billie Jean” 2.0. I can certainly hear that in the bridge into the chorus but is there a bit of “Dirty Diana” in there as well?

It managed to get to No 10 in the UK despite it being the fourth single off the album but curiously wasn’t released simultaneously in the US where they went with “Jam” as the fourth single release. I didn’t really care for it at all. Oh, and never mind ‘who is it’, the question I wanted to ask was why doesn’t the song title have a question mark at the end of it? Answer me that.

So who did get the ‘Exclusive’ slot this week instead of Jackson? It’s gone to Enya? Really?! Are you sure?! Yes, for she was in the studio to promote her single “Book Of Days” from the album “Shepherd Moons”. As Tony Dortie says, it also featured in the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman film Far And Away. I think I went to the pictures to see that one. It was OK but far too long and the ending is one of the worst in cinematic history.

As for the performance here, there’s a few things to unpack. Firstly, is she singing live as per TOTP policy? She could be but with all those vocal effects on the record it’s hard to tell. Secondly, what was the deal with the platinum blonde wigs on the cello players? Was it a tribute to Gerry Anderson’s UFO and the purple wigs worn by the female staff at moon base? Finally, the flowers on the piano and studio floor – was that an influence on the cover to the Oasis single “Don’t Look Back In Anger”?

“Book Of Days” peaked at No 10.

https://youtu.be/5hTo-3TF0Nw

Obviously “Sexy MF” by Prince was never going to get any airplay if the true word behind the acronym hadn’t been blanked but it’s not like the rest of the lyrics were squeaky clean. Some of them were filthy:

You seem perplexed I haven’t taken you yet

Can’t you see I’m harder than a man can get

I got wet dreams comin’ out of my ears

I get hard if the wind blows your cologne near me

Sheesh! Where was the censor? Presumably on the dance floor.

“Sexy MF” peaked at No 4.

Action from the US chart next as we get a first look at an artist who’s about to bring his success over here. I say first look but if we’d have been watching Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine carefully we’d have seen his guy before. I have to admit that as a teenager I was probably more interested in directing my gaze at Gloria rather than her band! Anyway, enough of that! The guy in question is Jon Secada and “Just Another Day” would be first and biggest hit.

I could never see the appeal of this song and found it quite laborious and dull. I seemed to be in the minority though as it went to No 5 both in the UK and the US. Now I’m not saying the guy can’t sing but, as someone commented on Twitter, he doesn’t half make a meal of this performance which is a flurry of gurning expressions, mike stand wielding and fist clenching. He makes Spandau’s Tony Hadley look like a wallflower. No doubt we’ll be seeing more of Mr Secada in future repeats.

You wait ages for one ‘Exclusive’ (that never comes if you’re Michael Jackson) and then two come along. The second one after Enya earlier is from Elton John and Eric Clapton who have collaborated on a little ditty called “Runaway Train”. The second single released from Elton’s “The One” album, I have to say that this is utter garbage. A right dirge and money for old rope for the pair of them. This did nothing for either protagonist’s reputation. Even the video effects are horrible and only serve to increase the strength of the headache listening to the song will give you.

Unfortunately Claudia Simon stumbles over her words in the intro to this one saying that the video was “shot at the Wembley during Elton’s worldwise tour’. Sadly, there was nothing wise about this train wreck of a release and it peaked at a lowly No 31.

Jimmy Nail is No 1 again with “Ain’t No Doubt” and he’s in the studio again doing his weird, shambling performance that he’s done every week so far in that same dark suit and T-shirt ensemble. He almost motionless and it’s left to his brass section to provide all the movement on stage. The dinner jackets, black bow ties and shades they’re all wearing remind me of the backing singers Nick Heyward had for his single “Warning Sign” back in 1984:

Jimmy was riding high on the back of the success of his Spender TV series which was huge back in the day and regularly pulled in audiences of 14 million. I’m pretty sure I was one of them though I can’t recall any of the episodes or stories now. In keeping with my own memory, it’s almost as though that it’s entirely forgotten now. Never repeated on TV and never even released on DVD or video and yet his first big hit series Auf Wiedersehen Pet is never off the likes of ITV 4 or the Drama channel.

We play out with “Shake Your Head” by Was (Not Was). Some of the things that the lyrics say you can’t do are palpably untrue. ‘You can’t win money at the horses” for example. I’ll wager some of the thousands attending this week’s Cheltenham festival would disagree. The biggest whopper though is “And you can’t influence the masses”. Vote Leave campaign anyone?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sunscreem	Love U More	Nah
2	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	Nope
3	Shakespear’s Sister	Goodbye Cruel World	I did not
4	Nirvana	Lithium	No
5	Simply Red	Your Mirror	Certainly not
6	Michael Jackson	Who Is It	Negative
7	Enya	Book Of Days	It’s a no from me
8	Prince	Sexy MF	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of CD I’m sure
9	Jon Secada	Just Another Day	Never happening
10	Elton John and Eric Clapton	Runaway Train	I’d have rather bought Runaway Train by Soul Asylum and that’s shit as well
11	Jimmy Nail	Ain’t No Doubt	And no
12	Was (Not Was)	Shake Your Head	Not the single but I bought their Best Of album Hello Dad…I’m In Jail with it on

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/m00156d0/top-of-the-pops-23071992

TOTP 17 OCT 1991

Posted on October 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid October 1991 and therefore week three of the new TOTP format – had we all got used to it yet? I recall some of these performances so I must have carried on watching it whether I liked the show’s new style or not (pretty sure it was the latter). I would have been 23 by this point – was that too old to have been watching TOTP? In my defence, I was working in a record shop (Our Price) for a living so I could make a case that it was work related. Looking back, I didn’t feel too old to still be a TOTP viewer but as I say, I was working in a mainstream, chart led record shop so it kind of felt the obvious thing to do.

Now if I was too old to be watching the show, tonight’s opening act were surely too old to have been performing on it?! Presenter Tony Dortie correctly advises us that even back in 1991, it was 20 years since Slade had scored their first No 1 single (“Coz I Luv You”) and in 1991 the youngest member of the band was Jim Lea at a sprightly 42 while the rest of the band were all 45. That makes them 8 year younger than I am now and I would like to think I’m not an old man yet but mid 40s for being on a pop music show that had recently gone through a revamp to show it was still ‘hip for the kids’? Clearly new producer Stanley Appel hadn’t learned his lesson from two weeks ago when one of the bands booked for the first show under his tutelage were Status Quo!

So why exactly were these gods of glam rock in the charts and on TOTP in 1991? Well, after their resurrection in the mid 80s due to hits like “My Oh My” and “Run Runaway”, the band’s chart fortunes had once again been on the slide and they’d descended into a world of greatest hits packages for the Xmas market and endless re-releases of that festive single (8 separate occasions in the 80s). However, 1991 racked up a quartet of a century of the band’s existence (in one form or another) and the Slade fan club-organised a 25th anniversary party to celebrate. Wanting to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, their record label Polydor floated the idea of yet another Greatest Hits compilation album but backed with a TV advertising campaign and two new singles to add interest for the fanbase. “Radio Wall of Sound“was the first of those two singles and it’s a right old stomper and no mistake but why is bassist Jim Lea doing most of the singing and not Noddy Holder? Well, it was written by Lea for a solo project and when the band came to record it, they found that it was not in Noddy’s key and so Lea did most of the vocals with the Nodster just joining in on the chorus. Around this time, Noddy had come into the Our Price where I was working and I ended up serving him. I can’t recall what he bought but I was delighted to note that his credit card was emblazoned with the legend N Holder on it. However, my joy was cut short when I realised that his real name is Neville and so the ‘N’ of course referred to that and not ‘Noddy’.

Back to “Radio Wall of Sound” though and despite it definitely sounding like a Slade record, for me it also displayed another influence. The radio DJ voice-over bits were undeniably channelling Starship’s “We Built This City”. Apparently, the DJ in question is Mike Read who had presumably taken time off from writing the theme tune for BBC horse racing drama Trainer and had also had to miss a UKIP fund raiser dinner party to record his lines.

To be fair to Stanley Appel and his production team, they’ve gone in hard straight away to create a buzz with some pyrotechnic explosions behind the band before they even start singing. Happily, they haven’t reverted to that practice during their mid 80s revival of handing out nasty, cheap looking and probably highly flammable Slade scarves to the studio audience to wave around.

“Radio Wall of Sound” achieved a decent chart high of No 21 but was undone by, according to Noddy Holder, a lack of TV slots to promote it. Apparently they’d tried to do Wogan but couldn’t get on the show. I checked the listings for the week that this TOTP was broadcast and the two musical guests on Wogan were Alison Moyet and Texas both of who performed their latest singles – Alison’s track “This House” peaked at No 40 and The Texas single “In My Heart” stalled at No 74. Neither were pulling in huge hits in the early 90s so it seems odd that a space couldn’t be found for Slade (especially Texas who at this point had only scored one hit single in 1989 and were six years away from their commercial peak of the “White On Blonde” album). The second of those new Slade singles was called “Universe” and was released as the follow up to “Radio Wall of Sound” in the December but got lost in the Xmas market and failed to chart. As such, Polydor went cold on the idea of the band recording any new material and they broke up in 1992 with Lea and Holder leaving whilst Dave Hill and Don Powell carried on under the banner of Slade II.

As Tony Dortie walks up the gantry steps at the end of the song to do the link into the Top 10 countdown, you can hear what I assume can only be Noddy Holder making some guttural noises that sound like an alarm going off. Maybe he was making it up to the studio audience for his lack of vocal participation on “Radio Wall of Sound”?

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

Oh crikey, Enya‘s back! Yes, she of the No 1 song “Orinoco Flow” that everyone went overboard about back in 1988 for being so dreamlike and haunting and blissful and all those other epithets that the press and media bestowed up on her. The single propelled her to international stardom and the album it was taken from (‘Watermark”) sold 11 million copies worldwide. Well, it took her three years to record the follow up which was an album called “Shepherd Moons” of which “Caribbean Blue” was the lead single. I remember that the album was expected to shift a huge number of units over Xmas in the Our Price store I was working in and therefore a huge amount of units were ordered in. It didn’t disappoint going to No 1 with 13 million copies purchased world-wide. All this sales were achieved without the massive promotional pull of a No1 single that its predecessor “Watermark” had benefitted from. “Caribbean Blue” went to No 13 in the UK but was not a huge hit globally only making the Top 10 in her native Ireland.

For this studio performance, the stage has a back drop that seems to be some sort of lost temple in an overgrown jungle but which fortunately still has functioning dry ice machines. Enya herself sits statically at the piano but unlike with Julian Lennon’s keyboard performance the other week, new TOTP producer Stanley Appel resisted the urge to beef up the performance with clips of the official promo video (even though it featured future Eastenders star Martine McCutcheon).

The intro to the song by presenter Mark Franklin is a bit sycophantic…

“She’s live in the studio tonight playing the unique sound of Enya…”

What sound did you expect her to play Mark? She is Enya after all so she was hardly likely to come out and do a tribute to Liberace was she?!

Moving on and it’s another studio performance by another returning female solo star in Lisa Stansfield. Like Enya before her, Lisa had also scored a massive No 1 back in the late 80s with “All Around the World” but hadn’t been seen in the charts for a good 18 months by this point. “Change” was the lead single from her second solo album called “Real Love” and that album would help to establish Lisa as one of the UK’s most prominent soul singers by going double platinum over here and reaching No 3 in the charts. It housed four UK Top 40 singles including one of her most well known songs in “All Woman” though the track I would have liked to have seen released was “Soul Deep” that remained an album track.

Lisa’s grown her hair a bit since the days of “All Around the World” and that short cut and kiss curl look. She still looks fabulous. I worked in Our Price Rochdale (Lisa’s hometown) for a whole year between ’92 and ’93 and the only time she came into the shop, I was on my day off. Damn it!

Luckier than me was presenter Mark Franklin who gets to interview Lisa at the end of her performance for one of those embarrassing interviews in which he asks Lisa about her forthcoming tour and we find out that she is going on tour (surprise surprise), that it begins in February and is going pretty much everywhere on the planet. Quality in depth interviewing there. He reminds me of Lady One Question from early noughties Channel 4 comedy gambling game show Banzai…

So after Stevie Wonder and Queen in weeks one and two of the show’s new format, week three brings us another big hitter in the ‘video exclusive’ section as we get U2‘s latest promo for their new single “The Fly”. Their first release of the 90s, this was the lead single from their multi-platinum “Achtung Baby” album. Very much seen as a change of style at the time with its multi layered guitars and distorted effects on Bono’s vocal, it was certainly no “With Or Without You”. Indeed, Bono is on record as describing the song as “The sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree”. For me though it sounded like U2 doing their best INXS impression but that wasn’t a bad thing in my book although I was surprised to find a copy of the 7″ in my singles box as I don’t recall buying it. I would also end up buying the album on which there are much better tracks than “The Fly” for me.

The song would also announce Bono’s ‘The Fly’ character which was meant to send up the stereotype of an egomaniacal rock star. Sadly for Bono, I’m not sure everyone got the joke and his wearing of large wrap-around sunglasses backfired on him in many ways. Attending press conferences in ‘The Fly’ persona was probably not the best idea Bono ever had either and didn’t help his cause.

Whatever any of us thought about the song, it created itself a space in chart history as the single that eventually toppled Bryan Adams’ 16 week run at the top of the charts. Ironically, although it went straight in at No 1, “The Fly” was only made available for three weeks before the band’s record label Island deleted it so that they could clear the release schedules for further singles to be pulled from the album. How many music fans wished that Bryan’s record label A&M had done a similar thing with “(Everything I Do) I Did It For You”?

Dannii Minogue‘s annus mirabilis continues a pace with her fourth hit single of 1991 “Baby Love”. Not a cover of the Diana Ross & The Supremes number but a cover version all the same as this track was originally recorded by one hit wonder Regina and was a US No 10 hit in 1986. Dannii would have been better off going for the Motown track in my opinion as the Regina song doesn’t seem to have much going for it to my ears. Interesting to note that now the acts have to sing live on the show, Dannii’s dance moves are considerably curtailed – in fact she hardly moves at all leaving all the “nifty dance moves” (as promised by Tony Dortie in his intro) to her trio of backing dancers. To be fair to her, you couldn’t have expected anything but an out of breath vocal if she’d also attempted all the dancing we saw for her performance of previous hit “Jump To The Beat”.

The film that she is starring in that will be released the following year that Tony Dortie references, I hadn’t realised I’d seen until I researched it for this post. Success (also known as One Crazy Night) tells the story of four Beatles obsessed fans (plus an Elvis fan who can’t stand them) who find themselves locked in the basement of the hotel that the moptops are staying in whilst in Australia during their touring years period. While waiting to be rescued, they start to share their deepest secrets with each other. Often compared (unfavourably) to The Breakfast Club, it attracted criticism for the use of Beatles songs that didn’t belong in the time period the film was set. The plot takes place in 1964 but some of the songs used are from much later albums like “Abbey Road” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” which does seem unforgivable. However, the fact that I even remembered the film at all suggests it must have done something right to stay in my memory banks although I’d certainly forgotten that Dannii Minogue was in it.

“Baby Love” peaked at No 14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uqo01s83XU

The video for “Wind Of Change” by Scorpions is next. As Tony Dortie says, it was giving Bryan Adams a run for his money by occupying the No 2 spot in the charts this week although I have no idea how many copies it was actually selling and whether it was indeed anywhere near to knocking the Canadian off his throne.

The song was the subject of an eight part podcast in 2020 which raised the possibility that the song was written by or connected to the CIA. What?! The premise goes that the CIA may have wanted to engender anti Soviet Union sentiment by utilising pop culture and the result was the writing of this people unifying, Cold War busting anthem. I haven’t heard the podcast but it’s an interesting theory and all. However, I get the impression it involves lots of internet rabbit holes and reminds me of all those conspiracy theorists out there who believe that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash in 1966 and replaced with a lookalike as the Beatles obsessed nation couldn’t have handled the truth. I’m not buying either story.

This week the album chart feature is fulfilled by Paul Young whose Best Of collection “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” is at No 5 this week. I’m guessing that neither Paul nor his record label Columbia could have foreseen the album going straight in at No 1 and being certified triple platinum but that’s exactly what happened. To be fair to Paul, it was a quality package filled with substantial hits from 1983 to the present (i.e. 1991) plus four newly recorded tracks one of which was this cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over“. I’d bought the original back in 1987 and although Paul’s version is inferior, he does a decent job of it all the same.

The performance here is interesting with Paul sat down for the duration and strumming a guitar! Don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before or indeed knew he could play. And isn’t that Paul Carrack on keyboards once of Ace, Squeeze and Mike + The Mechanics? It is you know. Bizarrely, Carrack had shared lead vocal duties with another Paul Young whilst in Mike Rutherford’s Genesis offshoot project but this one was the ex lead singer of Sad Café who passed away in 2000 rather than the singer of such hits as “Love of the Common People”, “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” and “Everytime You Go Away”.

Paul’s version of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” peaked at No 20.

Mark Franklin goes in for another interview about tour dates when he grills Paul Young about his forthcoming Xmas tour and then we’re into the Breakers starting with Ce Ce Peniston and “Finally”. Hang on – I thought this was in the charts much later than this and after she’d had already had a hit with a track called “We Got a Love Thang”

*checks officialcharts.com*

Yes I was right…and wrong. It was a much bigger hit (No 2) when re-released in March of ’92 after “We Got A Love Thang” had been a Top 10 hit at the start of the year. I had completely forgotten that “Finally” was also a No 26 hit in ’91. The track has routinely featured in various publications and music stations polls usually called something like The Biggest 90’s Dance Anthems of All Time etc and was also a huge smash in the US where it peaked at No 5. There was also a parent album called “Finally” which also performed well in the UK peaking at No 10.

I always quite liked it and much preferred it to “We Got a Love Thang”. It was kept off the top spot in ’92 by another long running No 1 song – Shakespears Sister’s “Stay”.

The second Breaker comes from Moby with “Go”. As with Ce Ce Peniston, I get a little confused over the chart history of this one. Various sources say that it was either released in March ’91 or July of that year – either way, it took a long time then for it to get into the Top 40. Maybe it was a sleeper hit, big in the clubs but not being played on mainstream radio?

The track was originally the B-side to Moby’s debut single from the previous year “Mobility” but was remixed with added samples from the obligatory Jocelyn Brown (the ‘yeah’ bit) and David Lynch’s mystery-horror TV series Twin Peaks and it would eventually (ahem) go Top 10. It wasn’t really my cup of tea although I would end up working with someone at Our Price who adored Moby well before his record-busting “Play” album of 1999 (which I did succumb to buying).

The clip that we see on TOTP of the kaleidoscopic video for the track was pretty standard dance tune fare and gave no idea to the identity of Moby who would turn out to be a little bald headed American bloke (although he does feature if you watch the whole promo).

Oh, it’s one of those TOTP performances that get talked up as memorable but was it actually any good? I refer to Monty Python and “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. I say Monty Python but it’s really just Eric Idle surrounded by what seemed to be a cast of thousands but was in fact a few blokes in Python-esque housewife fancy dress and a fake band. I guess it’s quite well choreographed with various explosions, instruments being broken and parts of the set falling down (hopefully the Health & Safety risk assessment was rigorous) and Idle does a good job of leading us all through it (and the studio audience through the set) but was it that funny?! That walk through the studio reminded me of similar performances by Adam Ant for “Goody Two Shoes” and that time Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood took a stroll to relieve the boredom of miming to “Two Tribes” on the show for the ninth (?) time. In all honesty, I preferred Adam and Holly’s excursions. The taxi at the end to whisk Idle away brought to mind Blur in that milk float at the start of the TOTP in the week of the legendary Blur v Oasis chart battle.

“Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” went all the way to No 3 whilst the re-release of the “Monty Python Sings” album off the back of it peaked at No 62.

And it’s STILL there at No 1 – Bryan Adams records a 15th consecutive week at the top of the charts with “(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”. Bryan must have got a taste for doing songs for film soundtracks as he would record three more before the decade was out – “All for Love” (with Rod Stewart and Sting) reached No 2 in the UK charts in 1994 from the film The Three Musketeers whilst “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” a year later from Don Juan DeMarco peaked at No 4. A final soundtrack song was recorded with Barbara Streisand in 1996 called “I Finally Found Someone” from her The Mirror Has Two Faces movie. Into the new millennium, he recorded “Here I Am” for the DreamWorks animation film Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron. I don’t think I liked any of them.

Just before the closing credits, Eric Idle returns to pie presenters Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie in the face. A watching nation cheered him on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Slade	Radio Wall Of Sound	Nope
2	Enya	Caribbean Blue	No
3	Lisa Stansfield	Change	Yes! Well, it’s in my singles box but I think my wife bought it actually.
4	U2	The Fly	Yes! Two on the trot! When was the last time that happened?
5	Dannii Minogue	Baby Love	This was never going to complete a hat-trick of purchases – no
6	Scorpions	Wind Of Change	Nah
7	Paul Young	Don’t Dream It’s Over	No but I bought his Best Of album with it on
8	Ce Ce Pensiton	Finally	I did not
9	Moby	Go	Go? No.
10	Monty Python	Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life	Never happening
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”	Negative

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010rl4/top-of-the-pops-17101991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

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TOTP 30 NOV 1995

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TOTP 16 NOV 1995

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TOTP 30 JUL 1992

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TOTP 23 JUL 1992

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TOTP 17 OCT 1991

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