We are well into the Autumn of 1996 here at TOTP Rewind as we enter the month of October and big changes are afoot. No, I don’t mean the show’s new opening titles but rather the fact that Manchester City have just appointed a new manager – Steve Coppell replaced Alan Ball two days after this TOTP aired. This was big news where I worked in the Our Price store in Stockport where many of my colleagues were City fans. Coppell had done wonders over two separate stints at Crystal Palace and big things were expected of him but his reign would last just 33 days and 6 matches after which he quit stating that the pressure of the job was to big for him. What I remember most of this time was that in those 33 days, the Man City calendar for 1997 came out and had a team photo on the cover with Coppell front and centre. The calendar company and the club must have been so pissed off. What were the chances? With Stockport not being far from Manchester, we stocked the calendar and decided we would try and hide the recently resigned Coppell’s face with the price sticker to try and make it seem like it wasn’t an already out of date product which, let’s be fair, is not a good look for a calendar. Anyway, I wonder if there are any artists on this show that had a similarly short career in pop music?
Our host is ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ (that’s was his official name around this time) who looked like he might have a potential career in the media if the whole rock star thing didn’t work out. To be fair to him, his appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks was very good and indicated that a projected media career wasn’t so fanciful. He starts his shift by introducing Sleeper and their latest hit “Statuesque”. The fourth and final single released from “The It Girl” album, it also drew a line under their most successful period. By the time that third album “Pleased To Meet You” came out in the Autumn of 1997, Britpop was in its last vestiges and with no zeitgeist to ride, reaction to it was cool with neither of the singles taken from it making the Top 20. For now though, it was success as usual. “Statuesque” was very much in the same style as its predecessors from the album and secured a No 17 chart peak and a third hit for the band in this calendar year. However, the winning formula of the music wasn’t translating into a ring of confidence when it came to Louise Wener’s stage presence. I’ve said it before but she does look a bit uncomfortable up there in terms of knowing what to do with herself when not singing into the mike. She just sort of shuffles about, swinging her arms and flicking her hair. They could have at least given her a guitar to strum.
Rivalling ‘Tony from Terrorvision’s’ profile at this time, Louise would appear on the Vic Reeves/Bob Mortimer TV game show ShootingStars in December of this year. Actually, the pair would mirror each other’s extra curricular TV appearances with Wener also appearing on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in 1997 having already presented TOTP six months prior to Tony’s slot here. All of this must have only highlighted the gulf of recognition between Louise and the rest of her band mates whose anonymity was seized upon by the music press who referred to them as “Sleeperblokes”. They took it in good spirits though even having T-shirts produced for them to wear with the phrase on the front.
Steve Coppell-ometer: Burnt brightly but briefly in their heyday but were saved from a higher score by reforming in 2017
We’re still in the ‘techno bollocks’ stage of Everything But The Girl’s career and I still can’t get in board with it. “Single” was the third single taken from the “Walking Wounded” album that had seen them take a more electronica direction following the huge success of the Todd Terry remix of “Missing”. This track, like its predecessors from this era, just sounds a bit ‘meh’ to me (for want of a better word). If I’d been out at a club on an all nighter and I’d made it back home in the early hours and wanted some comedown music to chill out to as the sun came up, then maybe “Single” would be a good choice in that scenario but as I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve been in that situation…
I had wondered if “Single” was a clever marketing ploy as per the one used by Public Image Ltd back in 1986 when they released an album called “Album” (the CD version of it was called “Compact Disc” and the cassette format “Cassette”). Its lead single was a song called “Rise” but was packaged as being called “Single”. Sadly, Everything But The Girl’s song was just about being single, as in not in a relationship. Miserabilists.
Steve Coppell-ometer: A very low score for Ben and Tracey who recorded under the Everything But The Girl banner between 1982 and 2000 before resurrecting it in 2021 and releasing the “Fuse” album in 2023. They have also been in a relationship with each other for decades finally marrying in 2009. So they didn’t really know anything about being single did they?
It’s another female lead vocal now. Having gone from a band to a duo we now get a solo artist. Gabrielle’s career might have gone another way after her debut single “Dreams” went to No 1 in 1993. She could have been a classic one hit wonder but a series of follow up hits ranging in size from minor to middling to mighty meant that her time as a pop star would carry on until the present day. “If You Really Cared” was one of those middling sized hits I would suggest, peaking at No 15. It strikes me as typical Gabrielle fare, smooth R&B pop, very radio friendly (some of the guitar parts put me in mind of “You’re The Best Thing” by The Style Council) though not likely to last long in the memory. There’s only really the aforementioned “Dreams” plus “Rise” and “Out Of Reach” from her back catalogue that I could tell you how they went.
There is something else to say about this song though and it’s this: why did Gabrielle put out a single so close to the scheduled release of her duet with East 17? Everyone clearly knew it was in the pipeline as ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ describes her as the drinking partner of the boys from Walthamstow and the TOTP caption says ‘Soon releasing duet with East 17’. “If You Really Cared” was made available in the shops on 23 September whilst “If You Ever” came out on 21 October. Was that really an advisable strategy and whilst we’re at it, having the titles of both singles start with the word “If” – would they not have been slightly confusing for punters and indeed record shop staff?
Steve Coppell-ometer: Hardly a blip on its radar which is understandable given she’s been a recording artist for over 30 years
Things I know about LLCoolJ:
He’s a rapper non
He had a hit in the 80s called “I Need Love”
He’s also an actor (though I couldn’t name any of the films he’s been in)
The name LL Cool J stands for Ladies Love Cool James
Erm…that’s it
Clearly that list doesn’t include this hit “Loungin’” so this must have passed me by despite going to No 7 in our charts. So back in the day, did the word loungin’ mean something other than relaxing (probably) on a sofa? Was it a forerunner of Netflixandchill? Well, the online urban dictionary gives a definition of:
Hmm. Kind of a Netflixandchill vibe then. “Loungin’” would the first of a run of five UK Top 10 hits for LL Cool J including a No 1 with his version of “Ain’t Nobody” for the BeavisandButt–HeadDoAmerica soundtrack. Well, there’s something to look forward to then. Ahem.
Steve Coppell-ometer: Cool James hardly registers a flicker with a career stretching into five decades
This week’s ’flashback’ section features a very famous TOTP performance – it’s Rod Stewart doing “Maggie May”. Yeah, that one with a very hirsute John Peel miming the mandolin. Apparently Rod was told he couldn’t have a non musician up there with him but he insisted on Peel being part of the performance with the latter having to guarantee the Musicians’ Union that he hadn’t received payment for the privilege. The TOTP cameramen were instructed not to focus on Peel but Rod got wind of this and so indulged in some horseplay in and around the DJ so that he would be caught in shot on camera. The performance as a whole is a riot of ill discipline with The Two Ronnies Laine and Wood disappearing off stage mid song meaning that they missed their miming cues whilst scrambling back to their original positions. Sadly in this clip, we don’t get to see the infamous scenes of Rod, Wood and Laine kicking a football about on stage as the song finishes.
“Maggie May” was Stewart’s first solo No 1 and has become perhaps his most enduring song though my first awareness of him would be via his 1975 No 1 “Sailing” which my Mum and Dad liked. They weren’t the only ones. Apparently ex-footballer turned pundit Alan Shearer replied “Sailing by Rod Stewart” when asked by then Blackburn Rovers team mate Graeme Le Saux to name his favourite song ever. Shearer would have been in his early to mid 20s at that point! Le Saux, who is two years older than Shearer and was all about the likes of Jamiroquai at the time, was (perhaps rightly) flabbergasted.
Steve Coppell-ometer: Are you mad?! Rod’s 80 in January and still going strong
There are only nine songs on this TOTP as opposed to what has become the standard ten and I can only assume that was to allow the show to feature the six minutes long video of Celine Dion performing “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. As ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ says, “it goes on and on and on…”. The way that the decks were cleared to accommodate it is similar to the special treatment reserved for a Michael Jackson video exclusive – I know she was shifting some units but really?! You don’t have to listen to the song for long to realise it’s a Jim Steinman composition – legend has it that his on/off pal Meatloaf wanted to record it but Steinman told him to hang fire and he could have it for “Bat Out Of Hell 3” but then gave it to Celine to record. Also unimpressed by that decision was one Elaine Caswell, singer with all female group Pandora’s Box who Steinman put together in the 80s and who first recorded “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. Apparently, the original recording just had her vocals removed and Dion’s added over the top. Elaine was so upset that she couldn’t bear to be in the room if Celine’s version came on the radio. Supposedly Caswell collapsed five times whilst laying down the track in the studio. It is not known whether it was due to physical exhaustion from all that overwrought singing or that the rancid stench of the song overpowered her senses causing her to faint.
As for the video that TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill seems to have made such a fuss over, it’s all very derivative with a “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” promo vibe detectable and substantial nods to the movie Ghost and even to TheRockyHorrorPictureShow* present. Celine emotes all over the place and the whole thing feels like it wasn’t really worth all that bother. “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” would take Celine to No 3 in the UK and No 2 in the US. All of this and we haven’t even got anywhere near that Titanic song yet…
*That bit where the ghost of her dead lover drives his motorbike in the house reminds me of Eddie riding his round and round the stairs before he is ultimately despatched by Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an ice pick. Eddie was, of course, played by Meatloaf.
Steve Coppell-meter: Nothing doing here. Despite health issues, Celine still has the desire to record and perform live. She completed an eight year residency in Las Vegas in 2019.
On and on and on…do you think ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ knew that as well as poking fun at Celine Dion that he was also referencing a song by the next artist. Longpigs would rack up four chart hits in 1996 – “On And On” was the second of them peaking at No 16. This one though – “Lost Myself” – was the fourth and final single to make the Top 40 for them in that calendar year. I thought I didn’t know this one but I did remember it when I watched this performance back – the hook of lead singer Crispin Hunt pausing momentarily between the words ‘live’ and ‘by’ in the lyric “to live by myself I’m far too weak” was very arresting and immediately rang a bell. It did strike me as unusual that there were two bands in the charts at this time with lead singers with very similar and… well…let’s have it right, quite posh sounding names in Crispin Hunt from Longpigs and Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker. Still, what’s in a name. I mean, I couldn’t tell you if that’s a Barbie or a Sindy doll strapped to Hunt’s microphone. Actually, what was that about?
Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally an artist who shows up on it. Longpigs were only in existence for seven years and bar one minor chart entry in 1999, all their hits came in this year.
As in the previous two years, Boyzone (now elevated to being the UK’s premier boy band after the demise of Take That earlier in 1996) looked to that old chestnut of a cover version to secure themselves a massive hit. Having taken both “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds and “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens to a chart peak of No 2, the band’s decision to record a version of “Words” by the Bee Gees would reward them with their first UK chart topper. Sound logic but was it all becoming just a little bit cynical? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least another two covers that they released as singles in Tracy Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You” and Billy Ocean’s “When The Going Gets Tough” (the second one was for Comic Relief at least) so it’s a concept they weren’t done with yet.
“Words” was originally a No 8 in 1968 for the Bee Gees and you can see why Boyzone (or their management) chose it. A wistful, weary ballad that suited Ronan Keating’s wistful, weary voice perfectly and of course, it had that Gibb Brothers stardust that so many other artists had found themselves sprinkled with when covering a Bee Gees song. The lads seem a bit overdressed here in all that stuffy clobber of large coats, scarves and ties – they must have been sweltering under those studio lights. What do they care for what I’m writing about them though? It’s only words.
Steve Coppell-ometer: Nothing registering here. The lads would carry on until 2000 and then again from 2007 to 2019.
And so to the No 1 and it’s “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by DeepBlueSomething and what a divisive chart topper it was. Literally the worst song ever for some online commenters, it was also undoubtedly popular at least briefly. Where do I stand on it? Well, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as the worst song ever but is it a great track? Probably not. However, look it up on YouTube and there are so many videos of people having a go at playing the song – it seems to be quite the busker’s favourite and if the mark of a song is how many times it’s been played then, at least that’s one thing it’s got.
Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally a massive score on this. They came, they saw, they conquered… and then they disappeared having spent as many weeks inside the Top 10 as Coppell had games in charge of Manchester City – six.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Sleeper
Statuesque
Decent song but no
2
Everything But The Girl
Single
Not happening
3
Gabrielle
If You Really Cared
Nope
4
LL Cool J
Loungin’
Negative
5
Rod Stewart
Maggie May
No but my parents liked it
6
Celine Dion
It’s All Coming Back To Me Now
Never
7
Longpigs
Lost Myself
I did not
8
Boyzone
Words
Nah
9
Deep Blue Something
Breakfast At Tiffany’s
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.
It’s another of those episodes where the climax of the show isn’t the No 1 but an exclusive appearance by a featured artist doing a two strong song performance. After Paul Weller the other week, it’s the turn of the Sex Pistols this time around who have reformed for the FilthyLucre tour. As for the rest of the line up, there’s only six other chart hits on the show of which we’ve seen three previously. I have to say I’m not liking this new format that’s been adopted since the move to Friday nights. Thankfully, this is the last of these I understand. Maybe audience reaction to them wasn’t great? By the way, our host tonight is Gina G who is as famous as she’ll ever be at this point after her Eurovision entry “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” topped the UK charts just a few weeks back.
We start though not with Gina but with David Howe from Chingford in Essex. Don’t ask “Who he?” – he literally tells you in his direct to camera message that he’s the first winner of the TOTP meet and greet competition and his prize was a trip to Madrid to hang out with Shampoo. I pondered in my last post what David would have thought of that and he looks rather underwhelmed despite the gloriously sunny backdrop behind him. The Shampoo girls Jacqui and Carrie look miserable with the whole situation. Maybe David was star struck whilst Shampoo were cultivating their abrasive ‘riot grrrl’ image?
It’s one of those ‘new’ songs to kick off the show from EverythingButTheGirl and “Wrong”. Despite being their most commercially successful period with three consecutive Top 10 hits as opposed to just three Top 40 singles in their entire career previously, I was having serious trouble getting on board with this new direction that they’d taken. I could appreciatethat Todd Terry remix which had single handedly rejuvenated their career but I was missing their old stuff like the deserts miss the rain as the song went*.
*It was also the title of a 2002 Best Of album that tellingly didn’t include “Wrong”.
The gorgeous “Baby, The Stars Shine Bright” album was a particular favourite but all this electronica dance stuff was becoming a big turn off for me. Would it be wrong of me to suggest that this latest hit was basically just a retread of “Missing”? They’d even got Todd Terry back in to remix it! Tracey’s voice was as affecting as ever but the track didn’t stand up to repeated plays for me. “Wrong” would effectively draw a line under this era of the band being their last ever single to visit the Top 10 and ushering in a return to more conservative chart positions before Tracey and Ben took a quarter of a century off from Everything But The Girl only returning in 2023 with the “Fuse” album which went Top 3.
By 1996, Britpop had totally embedded itself in UK culture and its musical landscape. The movement’s swagger was hard to avoid but there were signs that a different type of genre was emerging as an antidote to all that Britpop brashness. From small pockets, intelligent, wrily observed, quirky pop music was sprouting. We’d already seen Space in the charts recently with a single that featured a glockenspiel and now came TheDivine Comedy. Channeling the spirit of 60s baroque pop, this outfit from Northern Ireland was mainly just a vehicle for the creative genius of Neil Hannon. Having formed in 1989, they’d already released three albums into the pop void before Radio 1’s Chris Evans championed “Something For The Weekend”, the lead single from fourth studio album “Casanova”. With that backing, a first ever Top 40 hit was achieved when it debuted and peaked at No 14. Hannon’s distinctive, almost spoken vocal delivery style might have almost put the song into the novelty bracket à la The Mike Flowers Pops but there was something more substantial to it. Maybe it was the storytelling in the song which relates the tale of a suitor’s unwanted advances to a young woman who tricks him into looking in the woodshed only for her friends to knock him unconscious and steal his car and money. You don’t get songs detailing that kind of stuff everyday of the week. The line “There ain’t nothing in the woodshed…except maybe some wood” was typical of the humour Hannon would bring to his idiosyncratic songwriting. He even looked unconventional for a pop star but that was also part of his appeal I think. I have a friend who adores him and when she met him and got him to sign something for her, he included the famous woodshed line alongside his signature.
“Something For The Weekend” would usher in a run of chart hits that would last the entire 90s and into the middle of the next decade. Perhaps their best known tune is “National Express” with its lyric about having an arse the size of a small country which made the Top 10 in 1999. That same year, the marvellous Best Of album “A Secret History” was released achieving gold status sales and peaking at No 3. It’s a great starting point for anyone wanting to investigate the band’s catalogue. In a bizarre turn of events, psychedelic Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals would have a hit with a track also called “Something For The Weekend” just a couple of weeks after The Divine Comedy had done so though they changed the title to “Something 4 The Weekend” for the single release.
I saw The Divine Comedy live back in 2017 when they supported Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott at Craven Park, home of rugby team Hull Kingston Rovers. As good as Hannon was, I wish it had been in a smaller setting rather than a stadium gig. Maybe something like that woodshed if they cleared out all the wood.
It can’t be time for Celine Dion again already can it?! I think this is the third time she’s been on with “Because You Loved Me” and to add insult to injury, it’s that concert performance once more that the TOTP producers tried to convince us was a live satellite link up when it obviously wasn’t. I hadn’t noticed before but the camera picks out members of the audience some of whom are visibly touched by what they are witnessing. One woman had clearly been crying. Now, I’m not going to go down the musical snobbery route – people like what they like and may have a strong emotional attachment to a song based on some event from their own private lives – but it did take me by surprise. Haven’t seen tears on TOTP like that since that teenage girl was highlighted sobbing on the Duran Duran video for “The Reflex”.
Right, it’s time for that exclusive performance from Madrid by Shampoo now that was the mystery prize for the meet and greet competition won by Dave from Chingford. Presumably he was watching from the sidelines off camera. Shampoo were one of a number of female duos that were successful in the 90s including Shakespears Sister, Scarlet and Alisha’s Attic. Jacqui and Carrie though were a curious outfit. A handful of moderately sized hit singles in the UK and yet they sold a million copies of their debut album “We Are Shampoo” in Japan and Asia. There’s probably some deep connection at play there which warrants some detailed cultural analysis but I haven’t got time to go into all that now. All I will say is that their sound and image didn’t seem to be anything particularly new. Hadn’t we seen something similar from the likes of Transvision Vamp and Fuzzbox previously?
Anyway, it’s time to address the elephant in the room which is the title of this their last ever hit. Literally in the week that the phenomenon that would become the Spice Girls released their debut single “Wannabe”, Shampoo were in the charts with a song called “Girl Power”. Yes, the slogan that Sporty, Posh, Baby, Scary and Ginger used to promote themselves around the world was already out there in the cultural vernacular. Now, I’m not suggesting some act of dishonest appropriation not least because Shampoo didn’t invent the phrase themselves. The origins of ‘girl power’ are recognised as belonging to US punk band Bikini Kill who used it as the subtitle to their second feminist zine in 1990. However, it is quite the coincidence don’t you think? Could the Spice Girls management have been influenced by the Shampoo single or is that just me forcing an event that never happened to create my own narrative? Surely the marketing strategy for the Spice Girls had been months in the formulating and hadn’t just adopted something as pivotal as the ‘girl power’ mantra on the hoof? Well, apparently it was. The Spice Girls did just nick it off Shampoo! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the story:
"Girl Power" charted a week before The Spice Girls' "Wannabe". In a 2016 interview, Geri Halliwell said she got the phrase from Shampoo. “I saw them and I thought, 'Oh my God, that is so good.'” #TOTP
"Girl Power" was previously the title of a 1991 zine by US riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, which is presumably where Shampoo saw it. Mel C: "It was very much in existence already. It was then Geri who shouted it during an early television interview and it stuck." #TOTPpic.twitter.com/GvXkqjixWX
Ha! Well, I guess Shampoo themselves must have nicked it off Bikini Kill then. After all, it was sometimes spelt ‘grrrl power’ after the ‘riot grrrl’ movement they aligned themselves with in their early days. What’s undeniable is that the fortunes of Shampoo and the Spice Girls went in wildly different directions from this point on. The latter would conquer the world in less than six months while the former never returned to the charts and whose last single release was a desperate cover version of a song by Christmas playlist perennials The Waitresses. Rubbing salt in the wound, whilst Jacqui and Carrie were having to entertain Dave from Chingford in Madrid, they were missing out on being in the TOTP studio at the same time as their heroes the Sex Pistols. For what it’s worth, I preferred Shampoo’s brand of “Girl Power” to anything the Spice Girls released under that banner.
Right, what’s wrong with this picture with said picture being BlackGrape performing “England’s Irie” with their mates Keith Allen and Joe Strummer? Well, two days before this went out, the England football team lost their Euros 96 semi final with Germany in heartbreaking fashion on penalties. Thus, the timing of this exultant performance of a song about them seems slightly off. Surely they should have released it a few weeks earlier when “Three Lions” came out? By the time it was finally in the charts, all the expectation, excitement and general sense of positivity that had engulfed the nation had completely dissipated. I did mention recently that the release schedule for Black Grape’s singles had been too tight when “Fat Neck” came out the month before “England’s Irie”. Maybe someone at the label messed up? Or maybe they’d banked on England making the final which would have given the record a whole weekend’s trading before the game on the Sunday evening to rack up some monster sales? Either way, this performance was rendered a bit after-the-Lord Mayor’s-show by the events of the Wednesday evening.
Talking of which, who can forget Gareth Southgate’s tortured face after being the only person to miss his penalty? I recall that the next morning, the aforementioned Chris Evans conducting a debrief of the match on his breakfast show (he always was a bandwagon jumper and being a footy fan was now seen not just as acceptable but the done thing in the era of ‘lad culture’). He pronounced that Southgate was a “top man” and played “Walkaway” by Cast as a tribute to him and the team whilst the nation cried into our cornflakes. As for Black Grape, they would only trouble the Top 40 compilers once more after their second album “Stupid Stupid Stupid” was poorly received though they are still releasing new material to this day with latest album “Orange Head” having come out earlier this year.
The Fugees reign supreme still at the top of the charts with “Killing Me Softly”. Yet again we have the same studio performance we’ve always had, presumably as it was the only time they were in the country. They could have mixed it up a bit and showed the official promo video for it at least once. After all, it did win an MTV Video Music Award for Best R&B Video. Interestingly, the TOTP producers let the ending credits roll over the top of it even though we still have the Sex Pistols to come creating a false ending effect. There are no further credits when the Pistols finish.
Lauryn Hill had a small acting career that briefly ran in tandem with her singing one. Most notably she starred in SisterAct2: BackInTheHabit. I think this is my favourite scene from the film:
Somebody remarked on Twitter that Gina G must be really tall as she seems to be stooping in every link that she does and they’re right. It’s like she’s a mime artist performing being trapped in a cube. Most odd. Not as odd though as the ‘punk’ outfit she has on to introduce the Sex Pistols. What’s with the feather headdress? That look is more Hiawatha than high priestess of punk.
Anyway, the Sex Pistols are finally here to perform for us. I was just too young when they were at the height of their fame/infamy in 1976/77 to be caught up in the punk phenomenon though I was aware of the band’s name (which seemed very dangerous to the then eight year old me) and that two of the band were called Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. I couldn’t have named any of their songs or told you what they sounded like though. My next encounter with the band came a few years later in a music lesson at Grammar school (I’d passed my 11 plus exam) when the hardest kid in class Paul Dukes convinced the recently qualified and wet behind the ears teacher that “Friggin’ In The Riggin’” from “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” album was a suitable song for composition appreciation. Inevitably, the needle was abruptly removed from the record long before the song’s end. As I got older and more into music, I expanded my knowledge of rock history which included getting to know the band’s story and music though mainly the holy trinity that is “Anarchy In The UK”, “God Save The Queen” and “Pretty Vacant”. I eventually bought the “Never Mind The Bollocks” album as well.
There had been a mini Pistols revival in 1992 when Virgin raided the band’s rather limited back catalogue to release the “Kiss This” compilation that achieved gold status and made the Top 10 on the charts. Four years later, a full on reunion including original bass player Glen Matlock was put into effect for the six month long FilthyLucre tour. One of the dates was at Finsbury Park on the 23td June, the day after England had defeated Spain in a quarterfinal of the Euros on penalties. Yes, the one with that Stuart Pearce celebration…
Pearce and Gareth Southgate somehow found themselves at Finsbury Park introducing the Sex Pistols on stage the following day. No, really look:
Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate introducing the Sex Pistols on stage at Finsbury Park – the day after England beat Spain on penalties at Euro ‘96. 🏴🎸#Euro96Relivedpic.twitter.com/CjmnQQEE0b
— Stu’s Football Flashbacks (@stusfootyflash) May 12, 2020
Also there that day was my manager at the Our Price where I was working, the late, great Pete Garner original bassist with the Stone Roses. I had to cover his Sunday shift in the shop so he could go. I only know this as it’s all in my recently found diary that handily covers the whole of 1996. It also tells me that I listened to the Sex Pistols gig live on the radio that evening. Back to this TOTP performance though and inevitably the band do one of the ‘holy trinity’ tracks. “Pretty Vacant” made No 6 in the charts when released in the Summer of 1977 and would usher in the band’s first ever appearance on TOTP so I guess there’s some history and symmetry at play in the band choosing to perform it here. It was the follow up to the press baiting and BBC banned single “God Save The Queen” released at the height of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee celebrations. That ban clearly had zero effect on the band’s sense of daring as they then released a song that included John Lydon’s surely deliberate annunciation of the word ‘vacant’ as ‘vay-c**t’. Twenty-six years later, The Darkness tried a similar linguistic trick on their festive hit “Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)”. Bells End? Bellend? We all caught up? Good.
For the second track, the band went for a less obvious choice in “New York”, a song generally perceived to be about US glam rockers New York Dolls whom, of course, Malcolm McLaren used to manage before switching his attention to the Pistols. Clearly the passage of time had softened the band’s edges as they presumably relented to BBC demands about the song’s lyrics with the word ‘shit’ sung by Lydon as ‘it’ and ‘faggot’ as ‘maggot’. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Everything But The Girl
Wrong
I did not
2
The Divine Comedy
Something For The Weekend
No but I had that Best Of album
3
Celine Dion
Because You Loved Me
No
4
Shampoo
Girl Power
Nah
5
Black Grape / Joe Strummer / Keith Allen
England’s Irie
Nope
6
The Fugees
Killing Me Softly
No but my wife had the album
7
Sex Pistols
Pretty Vacant
I have the Never Mind The Bollocks album
8
Sex Pistols
New York
See 7 above
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.
Who the heck is / was Beertje Van Beers? Why? Because she’s hosting this TOTP and I, for one, haven’t a clue as to why. Hang on, she’s not the singer with Technohead of “I Wanna Be A Hippy” fame is she?
*checks internet*
No, I don’t think so. I’ll have to do some more research.
*checks internet again*
Well, it seems I wasn’t the only person confused but inevitably someone had the answer…
Right so basically she was Bis in presenter form? Anyway, the first artist tonight are TheWildhearts who were a favourite of TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill according to the tweet above which seems to accuse him of employing some favouritism when it came to the running order. Is that fair? Well, let’s look at the evidence. The Wildhearts were no strangers to the charts having had five UK Top 40 hits to this point though only one had made it into the Top 20. This single – “Sick Of Drugs” – would become their biggest when it peaked at No 14 so they were on an upwards trajectory which would add weight to the claim that a place on TOTP was justified. The counter argument would be that those chart positions were inflated by the band being shoe horned onto the show and benefiting from the exposure. Where lies the truth? I think I’ll leave (literally) the final word on this to the band’s lead singer Ginger who says at the end of the performance “If you wanna hear the rest of the song go and buy the single”. The full track clocks in at 4:43 in length but this TOTP performance is about 2:30 long. I think Ginger’s frustration at being cut short suggests the band were not in receipt of preferential treatment from Ric Blaxill.
Now to another artist who wasn’t revelling in huge hit singles. However, she was positively ripping it up when it came to albums sales. AlanisMorissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” had been in UK charts since August of 1995. However, it didn’t make it into the Top 10 until January of the following year. That slow burn was possibly due to the fact that it hadn’t furnished any massive hits with the three singles taken from it up to that point having peaked at Nos 22, 24 and 26. Respectable but not the kind of numbers to propel an album into the stratosphere. However, playing the long game would prove to be a much more successful strategy ultimately. Word of mouth promotion and an organic growth of the album would see it spend 41 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 once it had got there with 11 of them at No 1. This was quite the phenomenon. Compare that to say Babylon Zoo’s album which crashed into the chart at No 6 off the back of the enormous “Spaceman” single but which was out of the Top 40 within a month, never to be seen again. With sales of “Jagged Little Pill” showing no signs of tailing off, a fourth single was released from it and this one would not only be the second highest charting of the six ultimately take from it but also the most infamous of them.
“Ironic” is a great tune based around a simple yet effective narrative but unfortunately for Alanis, her choice of title for the song didn’t match what she was singing about. Much cultural analysis has gone into dissecting the lyrics of “Ironic” and pointing out that the scenarios depicted in the song are not examples of irony but rather just bad luck. Such criticism opened the song up to parody, the king of which, “Weird Al” Yankovic, was always going to join in the pile on which he duly did with his song “Word Crimes”. Perhaps the most famous take down of it though came courtesy of Irish comedian Ed Byrne:
Ed made a career for himself out of that skit! Had we all noticed the irony of a lack of irony in a song about irony back in 1996 though? If we did, I don’t remember it. That Ed Byrne clip came from a Channel 4 show broadcast in 1999. In fairness to Alanis, she took it all on the chin and even extracted the piss out of herself in this updated performance of the song on TheLate Late Show With James Corden in 2015:
Time to check in on how Bertje Van Beers doing as host? Well, she’s enthusiastic, I’ll give her that. Perhaps ever so slightly the wrong side of annoying? Maybe. Her next link is for a live by satellite performance by PresidentsOfTheUnited StatesOfAmerica and their biggest hit “Peaches”. This is a great left field song which, like “Ironic” before it, created a bit of discussion about its lyrics. Unlike “Ironic”, said discussion was of a much baser nature. Now I just thought this was a quirky song about a guy who liked to eat peaches. However, there is a school of thought that it’s actually about eating something altogether different. I’ll say no more than that.
Lead singer Chris Ballew though says it was inspired by overhearing a homeless man walk past him muttering “I’m moving to the country, I’m gonna eat a lot of peaches” over and over. Apparently that line could have been inspired by a song by John Prine called “Spanish Pipedream”…
So there’s that but there’s also a second part to the inspiration for the song also from Ballew who recounts going to the house of a girl he fancied whilst under the influence of recreational drugs, finding her not at home and so waiting for her sat under a peach tree, having an hallucinogenic experience whilst crushing fallen peaches in his hands. I think I’ll choose to go with Ballew’s story as to what the song’s about. Not everyone agrees though. Here’s Captain D from Cincinnati on the Songfacts.com website:
I’m a pervert so I thought it was sexual too
Well, I guess the Captain is honest at least. The Presidents Of The USA would have two more UK hits before disbanding in 1997. “Peaches” remains their signature hit though. Such was its renown that it even permeated our culture to the point that the character of Hank from King Of The Hill knew it:
EverythingButTheGirl have finally moved on from “Missing” after it stayed in the charts for six months but they weren’t leaving their new direction behind them. “Walking Wounded” (both the single and album) saw the duo continue to embrace dance beats and in particular those of a drum and bass variety that were ripping up the nation’s dance floors and starting to enter the mainstream. Whilst their repositioning of themselves as a dance act no doubt won them some new admirers, I wasn’t one of them. I’d grown up with the Ben and Tracey era of “Each And Everyone” and the wonderful “Baby, The Stars Shine Bright” album, not this electronica, trip-hop material. I just couldn’t get into it. Sure, I could appreciate “Missing” for its musicality that could see it be effective as both an acoustic ballad and dance anthem but did I want to hear an Everything But The Girl album that went further than that? No thanks. The record buying public disagreed with me of course sending the album to No 4 and a platinum certification selling three times as many copies as predecessor “Amplified Heart”. However, it could be argued that this new direction only brought short term gains. Follow up album “Temperamental” continued the dance experiment but received a lukewarm reception and sales. Appearing in 1999, it would be the last Everything But The Girl album for nearly a quarter of a decade with the band’s output becoming mired in a haze of Best Of compilations and collections. Their legacy deserved better.
After a terrible decade so far in terms of his legal battle with Sony over the fairness of his recording contract, 1996 was turning out to be a splendid year for George Michael. Sure, he’d had two No 1s (a duet with Elton John and his version of “Somebody To Love” from The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert) but he lost that litigation with the court wholly rejecting his claims of restraint of trade. However, when Sony sold his contract to Virgin in 1995, he was able to resume his career and he did so in some style. “Jesus To A Child” gave him his first truly solo UK No 1 since 1986’s “A Different Corner” and he followed it with a second chart topper in “Fastlove”. Based around an interpolation of Patrice Rushen’s 1982 hit “Forget Me Nots”, it was a stark contrast from the haunting balladry of its predecessor, a funk-based number celebrating one night stands over committed relationships. The track had a very sophisticated, highly polished production sound to it with the saxophone part played by Andy Hamilton who was responsible for the memorable saxophone break in Duran Duran’s “Rio”. Somehow, the BBC censors missed George singing the line “all that bullshit conversation” at the start of the song.
The B-side was a funked up but slowed down version of “I’m Your Man” showing that George hadn’t totally turned his back on his rich pop past. Although it’s hard to beat the effervescence of the Wham! original, the ‘96 remake is definitely worth a listen:
The song’s futuristic video gave George the opportunity to have a dig at Sony re: the aforementioned court case with one of the promo’s dancers wearing a set of headphones displaying the word ‘FONY’ in the style of the Sony corporate logo. That didn’t stop it from being nominated for three MTV Music Video Awards winning the one for International Viewer’ Choice. Watching it back now, it seems to draw inspiration from the film Logan’sRun, in particular the scene where Logan meets Jessica on ‘the circuit’, the tinder of 2274:
As with a few artists, I kind of lost touch with TheCranberries after a while. I’d enjoyed their early hits and had been to see them live in October of 1994 I think but by 1996, they’d definitely slipped off my radar. “Salvation” was the lead single from their third album “To The Faithful Departed” and was definitely more in the vein of “Zombie” than “Linger”. It would become their joint biggest hit when it peaked at No 13 which seems an awfully low bar for a band that turned out a few cracking hits. I guess they were more of an albums band?
Featuring Dolores O’Riordan stomping all over the track with a strident vocal and almost shouted chorus, “Salvation” was seen as an anti-drug song though Dolores herself described it more as anti anything that took control of you. Sadly for her, she was unable to live by the lyrics of her song and was found dead in 2018 in a hotel room in Mayfair, London with the inquest ruling that she had died by accidental drowning following sedation by alcoholic intoxication.
Here’s something unusual – a controversial Michael Jackson single. I jest of course. Jacko’s whole life (and death) was surrounded by controversy. However, “They Don’t Care About Us” was certainly up there for generating a storm of headlines. The fourth single taken from the “HIStory: Past, Present And Future, Book 1” album, it attracted unwanted (by Jackson) attention both for its lyrics and video. The former were accused of being anti-Semitic with its use of the phrases “Jew me” and “Kike me” which Jackson strenuously denied and, indeed, agreed to re-record the track for subsequent copies of the album with the offending phrases replaced with “sue me” and “strike me”. In the end though, they were just covered up with some abstract noises – you can hear said sounds in the video shown on this TOTP.
The video was filmed in a favela or ghetto in Rio de Janeiro and caused concern for their Secretary of State for Industry, Commerce and Tourism who was worried showing the poverty in the area would adversely affect tourism and Rio’s bid to host the 2004 Olympics. A judge banned the filming of the video but a counter injunction saw it go ahead. Some supported Jackson’s claim of highlighting the poverty in the area whilst others criticised his production team for negotiating with local drug dealers for permission to film in the favela. It’s interesting to note that we only get about 2:20 of the video shown here where in the past TOTP have devoted huge sections of their half hour to showcasing a Jacko exclusive. Could they have been put off by the negative press? As for the song itself, its samba beat and chant like chorus actually make it stand out for me within Jackson’s catalogue – was the “hooo-aaargh” shout halfway through the song and attempted by Beerjte Van Beers in her intro the impetus for Leigh Francis to choose Jackson for one of his outlandish Bo’ Selecta! characters?
The caption accompanying this performance by TheCure says that they haven’t been on TOTP since April 1990. That can’t be right can it? They’d had five Top 40 hits since then. Didn’t any of those justify an appearance on the show? Anyway, “The 13th” was the lead single from the “Wild Mood Swings” album and well, I’m sorry but it’s awful. The Cure do Mariachi? No thanks.
The album was not well received by fans or the music press and it was the band’s poorest selling for 12 years. Even Robert Smith himself has said that he was disappointed with it – maybe he should have taken more heed of the lyric he sang in “The 13th” of “I just know this is a big mistake”. I recall that we didn’t sell many at all in the Our Price where I was working at the time. Though they would never regain their commercial edge, the band are still together and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 which gave us this marvellous Robert Smith moment…
Mark Morrison has completed his slow slither up to the No 1 position with “Return Of The Mack”. It’s taken six weeks to get there which was an eternity in 1996 when we were used to singles debuting in the top spot in week one. True to his dubious character, he sidles up to Beertje Van Beers at the end of his performance and drags her away with him as the credits roll. Maybe this was cooked up between the pair of them pre-show but even if it was, it looks terrible especially through 2024 eyes.
For the first time in a while, we have a play out video of a current chart hit rather than a clip from the archives to promote TOTP2. In this case, we get a football song but not that one. Yes, in 1996 if your single about the beautiful game wasn’t called “Three Lions” then it was destined to be forgotten. Who remembers “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” by The1996Manchester United FA CupSquad? Well, you might if you’re a United fan I guess but when it’s not as memorable as the odious “Come On You Reds” from 1994, then you know the game is up. For the record, it was a horrible Reel 2 Real facsimile which is never a good thing.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Wildhearts
Sick Of Drugs
Negative
2
Alanis Morissette
Ironic
No but I had the Jagged Little Pill album
3
Presidents Of The United States Of America
Peaches
No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
4
Everything But The Girl
Walking Wounded
Didn’t happen
5
George Michael
Fastlove
Nope
6
The Cranberries
Salvation
It’s a no from me
7
Michael Jackson
They Don’t Care About Us
I did not
8
The Cure
The 13th
Nah
9
Mark Morrison
Return Of The Mack
No
10
The 1996 Manchester United FA Cup Squad
Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)
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.
Here we go again…it’s another new year of BBC4 TOTP repeats which means a whole lot more blogging for yours truly. This is my eighth year (real time) of doing this and my fourteenth TOTP year that I’ll have reviewed. “Why?” is probably the question you’re about to ask and it’s one I have posed to myself many a time. I nearly gave it up after finishing the first TOTP year (1983) as it was taking so much time but I didn’t and so resolved to finish the decade. Then another big decision – do I carry on with the 90s repeats? I resolved to at least give it a go as it coincided with my time of working in record shops so I thought that would be a good tie-in and also the provider of potential material for the posts. My personal circumstances changed around this point also which meant that I had more time to devote to it and now I can see the end in sight. Once the 90s repeats are done (assuming we all get that far) I’ll stop. I left record shops behind in 2000 so it seems reasonable to end it all there. By my reckoning, that will be in roughly two years (real) time.
For now though, it’s back to early January 1996. As the singles chart is fairly slow moving and congested after the Christmas sales period, of the nine hits featured on tonight’s show, we’ve seen five of them before. We start with one of those from TheOuthere Brothers with Molella and their single “If You Wanna Party”. I have zero left to say about this pair of pillocks and I’m really hoping this is the last time we have to see them on the show. Their discography says they had one more hit after this called “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole Ole” which made No 18 in 1997. Well, even if this isn’t their last time on the show that’s at least a year off from the chance of them appearing again. Their very last single was a little ditty called “Ae-Ah” which sounds like the noise I make when I bend down these days.
You never hear Dubstar mentioned when conversation turns to Britpop artists do you? That’s maybe because they weren’t really part of that movement although that didn’t stop us adding them to the Britpop display on an end panel in the Our Price I worked in. “Not So Manic Now” was their third single and then biggest hit before it was trumped by a rerelease of debut single “Stars” in the wake of its success. I quite liked both tracks – they were kind of like a poppier version of Portishead and Sarah Blackwood’s fragrant vocals have an aroma of Kirsty MacColl listening back to them now, a connection I didn’t make at the time. Parent album “Disgraceful” had Robert Steel’s memorable ‘pencil case vulva’ artwork on its cover which certainly made it stand out though the album never quite achieved the sales its singles hinted at when it peaked at No 30. I had no idea until researching this post that “Not So Manic Now” was actually a cover version having been recorded by local Castleford band Brick Supply. Want to hear it? Yeah me too…
…wow! I think I actually prefer that original version. The sort of thing I would have lapped up in the 80s had I been aware of it. If you look online, there is some debate as to what the song is about with some very grim scenarios put forward so I think I prefer to think of it like my mate Robin who would use the song’s title to describe the canon of the Manic Street Preachers material post the disappearance of Richie Edwards.
Two back to back hits we’ve seen before now beginning with “Oh Father” by Madonna. As with every Madonna song, there is reams of stuff written about this online though for myself, having reviewed it once, I’m not inspired to say much more about it. I sometimes think with these prolific artists like Madge and Prince, if you record so much material, it can’t all be good can it? Scanning through her singles discography for example, are the likes of “Gambler”, “Who’s That Girl” or “Hanky Panky” really that great? Sure, she’s made some wonderful pop records over the decades but there has to be the odd duffer in there occasionally surely? For what it’s worth, I don’t think “Oh Father” is one of them though it is rather a ‘lost’ Madonna single which you rarely hear played on the radio.
So by my reckoning, this is the fourth time that Boyzone have been on the show performing “Father And Son” including one from months earlier when they featured in the ‘Album Chart’ slot. That seems like an awful lot of times – when Ronan says to the studio audience mid song “Boyzone back on Top of the Pops” he wasn’t wrong was he? He probably should have added the words “yet again” though. This is clearly just a reshowing of one of those four appearances – you can tell because Roman’s got his hair gelled in spikes but he has it flattened in one of the later performances.
The song has longevity in other ways as well. It was originally a hit for Cat Stevens in 1970 then, of course, Boyzone twenty-five years later. In 2004, the two joined forces with Ronan Keating doing a virtual duet with Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam) which also rose to No 2 with the profits going to the Band Aid Trust. Then, sixteen years on from that, Yusuf put together a duet of the song with himself using his original 1970 vocals for the ‘son’ part and recording his 2020 self voice for the role of the ‘father’. Johnny Cash also recorded two versions of the track, once in 1974 and a version also turned up on his posthumous 2003 album “Unearthed” as a duet with Fiona Apple. Just for good measure, psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips got involved in the song’s story when their track “Fight Test” was deemed in a lawsuit to be so similar to “Father And Son” that 75% of any royalties from it have to go to Yusuf Islam.
I thought I didn’t know this next song – “Lump” by the PresidentsOfTheUnited States Of America – but as soon as I heard it, everything came rushing back. My lack of memory isn’t easy to understand given the song’s hook is pretty basic. Maybe I just haven’t heard it agin in the intervening 28 years since it was in the charts. I’m guessing it doesn’t get that much radio play. If you do hear the band on the airwaves these days, it’s probably their biggest hit “Peaches” anyway. To my utter surprise, their discography tells me that they had two other Top 40 entries in the UK singles chart. Maybe I’d remember them too if I heard them but I really can’t be arsed to put that theory to the test. There is however one other song that they did that I do recall and guess what? It’s a cover version of a huge song. No wonder I remember it. In 1998, Presidents Of The United States Of America recorded their take on the iconic song “Video Killed The Radio Star” by British synth pop band the Buggles which I only knew because it featured in the Adam Sandler film TheWeddingSinger as it wasn’t a hit peaking at No 52 here. I quite enjoyed their version actually when I would have thought it was impossible to hold a torch to the Buggles so kudos to them.
Anyway, back to “Lump” and its garage rock channelling, unsophisticated sound was a welcome presence in the charts as an antidote to all those over processed, homogenised Eurodance tunes and, some might say, a decent alternative to the ever pervasive Britpop movement. As for that band name, I’m guessing they chose it so they could be introduced on stage at gigs with “Ladies and gentlemen…the Presidents Of The United States Of America”.
Whatever the truth was behind the departure of Louise Nurding (as was) from Eternal, as with Robbie Williams exit from Take That, it didn’t look like losing a high profile member was going to derail the group; at least initially anyway. Second album “Power Of A Woman” sold two million copies worldwide (although that was half the amount of debut “Always And Forever”) and furnished the reconfigured trio with four Top 10 hits the second of which was “I Am Blessed”. Presumably, this huge ballad was released with the Christmas market in mind though looking at its chart run, something somewhere didn’t quite go to plan. Debuting at No 14 two weeks before Christmas, the chances of it sweeping all others before it to become the festive chart topper looked remote at best. A two place move the following week and then a one place drop the week after would suggest that maybe the marketing or promotion of the single was off. Did it get swallowed up in the Christmas glut of competing releases? And then, curiously, an upturn with three consecutive weeks of chart climbs saw it break into the Top 10 finally coming to a halt at a high of No 7. It just doesn’t seem like the record performed how it would have been expected to by the group’s label.
Maybe that rise up the charts had something to do with, if not divine intervention, then at least papal influence as the trio did indeed (as referenced by host Nicky Campbell) perform “I Am Blessed” for then Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. Rather than being a gospel number though, it sounds like the type of power ballad that could have sat comfortably withinthe track listing of the soundtrack to TheBodyguard with Easther Bennett doing her best Whitney Houston impression. There was, however, a bona fide gospel number as an extra track on the CD single with the trio taking on “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. As if performing for the Pope wasn’t enough, Eternal were still a year or so away from the band’s commercial high point of achieving a No 1 single with “I Wanna Be The Only One”. Hallelujah!
Again? Seriously? As good as song as it is, this must be about the fifth time that EverythingButTheGirl have been on the show performing “Missing”. What else can I say about this song? Well, nothing really but then there is more to Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt than this track. I guess like most people, I first came across the duo in 1984 when “Each And Every One” made No 28 on the UK Top 40. From then, I kind of lost sight of them until 1986 and the wonderful “Come On Home” single. It was taken from the album “Baby, The Stats Shine Bright” which my wife loved and is one of the records that I always associate with first meeting her when we were both 18. A couple more albums followed including “Idlewild” which housed their then biggest hit single, that Rod Stewart cover, which took them to No 3 but which I was never that fond of. They put that right though with their sumptuous “Covers EP” in 1992. “Amplified Heart” arrived in 1994 with the original version of “Missing” before that Todd Terry remix changed everything.
In amongst all of this, Ben would suffer the potentially fatal and certainly life changing Churg-Strauss syndrome, an autoimmune condition that resulted in him having 5m of necrotised small intestine removed. In 1997, Ben wrote a book called Patient about his experience and I was lucky enough to catch him talking about it during a personal appearance at Waterstones on Deansgate, Manchester as part of the book tour to support its publication. It really is a remarkable story and I urge anyone to read the book if you come across it – it was out of print for a few years but was republished on the Bloomsbury imprint in 2014. There, that’s better than rehashing what I’ve already said about “Missing” because you know what? I don’t want to talk about it (ahem).
And here’s another song I don’t want to talk about – Michael Jackson is still No 1 with “Earth Song” but I’m going to skip this completely as in a few repeats time, we’ll be entering February, the month of the BRIT awards and that protest by Jarvis Cocker against Jacko’s performance of this track at them. Consider my powder kept dry…
Nicky Campbell! What are you doing man?! Whose idea was this to get him to pose naked with just a guitar to cover his modesty?! Do you think he is actually nude? I didn’t want to look too closely to investigate further. He could be as I’m pretty sure that bit was recorded on a closed set – there’s no sign of any studio audience in shot. The apparent reason for the…what should we call this?…’sketch’ (?) is because the video for the new George Michael single was rumoured to feature some nudity but didn’t so Campbell added some of his own. A likely story.
What is true is that this was the first self penned single by George in nearly four years so it was kind of a big deal. On top of that, it was the first new material with new record label Virgin since leaving his contract with Sony Music after a protracted legal battle. “Jesus To A Child” was the lead single from George’s third studio album “Older”. It would be a huge commercial success – No 1 in the UK, the fifth best selling album here of 1996 (eventually going six times platinum) and giving George six hit singles all of which went Top 3 or higher; this was the first time this had ever been achieved in this country. The front cover of the album features a simple close up of George’s face half covered in shadow. He’d changed his look significantly since we’d last seen him in public (his performance at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert?). The bouncy hair and designer stubble had been replaced by a buzz cut and sculpted facial hair which puts me in mind somehow of Mr. Claypole (if you know, you know). I’m sure there was a story at the time about how the initial designs for the artwork for the album had been stolen and turned up in somebody’s dustbin or something but maybe I’m mistaken.
As for “Jesus To A Child”, it was a deeply personal song written about the death of George’s partner Anselmo Feleppa who’d died from an AIDS related brain haemorrhage in 1993 (Michael was not yet out about his sexuality but he retrospectively went on record saying the clues were there for those who were listening). In many respects it was a brave sound to come out with as your first new material for years. A brooding, sombre mature ballad that was completely at odds with a musical landscape of Britpop and dance tunes. It was definitely more aligned to “Different Corner” than “Too Funky”. The UK record buying public reacted positively to it though; so positively that it went straight to No 1 albeit for a solitary week. My main memory of this song though is being asked by a punter in the Our Price store I was working in what the new George Michael single was called. I must have been distracted that day as I came back with the answer “Jesus To A Lizard” mixing up George with US hardcore rockers The Jesus Lizard. I felt as embarrassed as Nicky Campbell should have been.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Outhere Brothers with Molella
If You Wanna Party
I do, I do…but not with you two berks – NO!
2
Dubstar
Not So Manic Now
Liked it, didn’t buy it
3
Madonna
Oh Father
No
4
Boyzone
Father And Son
Nah
5
Presidents Of The United States Of America
Lump
It’s a no
6
Eternal
I Am Blessed
Negative
7
Everything But The Girl
Missing
No but I must have it on something surely?
8
Michael Jackson
Earth Song
Team Jarvis all the way! That’s a no by the way
9
George Michael
Jesus To A Child
Nope
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.
As the 7th December show wasn’t repeated on BBC4 due to the issue of it being hosted by Gary Glitter, we’ve jumped a week and find that this week’s presenter is someone we hadn’t seen in that role for nearly nine years! John Peel was last seen on TOTP in February 1987 so why was he suddenly back on our screens? The answer would be revealed at the end of the show when Peel is ambushed by Michael Aspel who informs him that he is the subject for an episode of ThisIsYourLife. Supposedly, the whole thing had been orchestrated by the BBC but it begs the question of why Peel himself thought he had been brought in from the cold for what would prove to be a one off return to the show. Didn’t he suspect something was afoot? After all, this was the era of the ‘golden mic’ slot – surely executive producer Ric Blaxill could have wheeled in a current celebrity or pop star for hosting duties over plucking Peel from the dusky corridors of late night Radio 1? Wouldn’t that have occurred to the experienced, seen-it-all Peely? Perhaps not as he seems genuinely surprised by the appearance of Aspel at the close of the show.
As for what John made of the artists he was presenting on this particular episode, well, I cant speak for him but, you know what, I’m going to have a go anyway. We start with EverythingButTheGirl and “Missing”. Is this the third time on the show for this one? Or maybe the fourth? This was bound to happen when a hit has the staying power that this one did. Fourteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10? TOTP couldn’t ignore that sort of chart run.
Just as all roads seemed to lead to The Beatles at this time, there’s an element of The Fab Four to the story behind this song. The Beatles were turned down by record label Decca on New Year’s Day 1962 with manager Brian Epstein being told that guitar groups were on the way out – a year later Beatlemania broke out across the world. In 1995, after the original version of “Missing” had failed to become a hit, Ben and Tracey were let go by their UK record label Warner who told them that it was time to call it a day despite being played the Todd Terry mix of “Missing” and the track “Protection” that they’d worked on with Massive Attack. That remix would sell 1.2 million copies in the UK alone. Bloody record labels – what do they know?
WouldJohn Peelhaveliked it? Surely he’d have liked this one
On account of us missing that Gary Glitter episode, I fear we’ll be served up the same songs that we saw in the last TOTP repeat. That certainly seems to be the case with “The Gift Of Christmas” by Childliners and what an unfortunate case it is. They’ve got the ‘galaxy of stars’ that was this charity collective into the studio again which presumably was a logistical nightmare so I’m surprised that the TOTP producers went for this option again. Just to prove my point, Michelle Gayle is front and centre in the line up this time – I’m sure she was missing the first time around. Boyzone, at least, were booked on the show in their own right to make the scheduling slightly easier. After seeing PJ/Ant had nicked his spiky hairstyle which he was sporting last time, Ronan Keating has completely flattened his locks for this appearance slightly giving him the look of a choirboy. I’ve no doubt that wannabe pop star ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire didn’t need asking twice to turn up given his desperation to traverse from the world of acting to the charts. Look at him jumping up and down at the end of the song trying to get into shot as our host does his next link. Had he no respect for himself nor Peel?
Would John Peelhaveliked it? He’d have had no truck with this rabble, charity record or not
This is definitely a third time on the show for the video of “Free As A Bird” by TheBeatles. Obviously the video had to be the promotional tool for this single. There was no way that Paul, George and Ringo were going to rock up to the TOTP studio and perform the song with – what? – an image of John projected onto a screen behind them and Jeff Lynne lurking about in the background? Never happening and would we have wanted that anyway? I’m not sure. Having said that, such an appearance might have upped the single’s sales enough to overtake Michael Jackson and make it the Christmas No 1. Talking of which, I’m sure that “Free As A Bird” would have been the favourite for the festive chart topper crown as soon as news of its release came out. However, as the chart announcement neared, predictably Boyzone were in the hunt with Björk being seen as the ‘out of left field’ decent each way bet. The Beatles’ chances were further undermined by the late emergence of the perhaps even more left field The Mike Flowers Pops and their version of “Wonderwall” (more of whom later).
Perhaps they were also hampered by the fact that once people had heard “Free As A Bird”, they realised that it wasn’t all that after all. Sure, the huge fan base were always going to buy it and those intrigued by its status as a piece of pop history maybe bought it for that reason and not what it sounded like but it was never going to sustain as a classic track. An appearance by the then remaining Beatles on TOTP twenty-five years after splitting? That really would have been a moment in cultural history.
WouldJohn Peelhavelikedit? Trickyonethis. He was born on the Wirral and was famously a massive fan of Liverpool FC so he must have felt a connection to The Beatles. Indeed, during his early career in the States, he was hired by Dallas radio station KLIF as their official Beatles correspondent. However, would he have liked this particular track. I doubt it.
After achieving their first and so far only No 1 single with their last release “Fairground”, Simply Red must surely have expected a bigger hit than this follow up – “Remembering The First Time” – gave them when it peaked at No 22. Or would they have? Mick Hucknall and co were always more of an album band when it came to shifting units. Of their twenty single releases before “Fairground”, only four of them made the Top 10 with seven not piercing the Top 40 at all. When it came to albums though, well, just look at these numbers;
Album
Released
Chart peak
UK sales
Picture Book
1985
No 2
5 x platinum
Men And Women
1987
No 2
3 x platinum
A New Flame
1989
No 1
7 x platinum
Stars
1991
No 1
12 x platinum
Life
1995
No 1
5 x platinum
I have to say I don’t recall this one at all but then it is almost instantly forgettable though its lyrics should live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons.
Sitting here looking at the table, it’s just like a photograph, there’s you and me, fruit, drink, good food
All the things we did, the things we did, from the shower we took to the very first look
Words and music Mick Hucknall EMI Music Publishing Ltd/So What Ltd
Ugh! The notion of Hucknall in the shower should never be articulated! Then there’s the chorus which ends with Mick singing “diddly dip, diddly dip” which sounds like the musical equivalent of The Flowerpot Men’s catchphrase “Flobabdob” which is in no way any sort of endorsement. In short, this was a bit of a stinker. Maybe that shower was desperately needed.
WouldJohnPeelhavelikedit? No way! No way did Peel like Simply Red. He confirms this in his undoubted piss take comments after the performance about how Hucknall is the master of melody and that he can’t get enough of him.
1995 gave us a whole pan full of shit music and in many varieties of stool but surely none stank the charts out more than TheOuthere Brothers. These two arses somehow wiped up two No 1s in “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” and “Boom Boom Boom” and a further Top 10 hit with “La La La Hey Hey”. They rounded off the year by joining forces with Molella on “IfYouWannaParty”. Who was/is Molella? An Italian DJ and producer of course (weren’t they all?) who, judging by his Discogs entry, has worked with a load of names from the world of dance that I’ve never heard of. Would his input make any difference to The Outhere Brothers’ sound? No chance. This was more of their usual call and response bullshit – the musical equivalent of “Oggy Oggy Oggy, Oi Oi Oi!”. Their hits were more like ringtones than songs. Thankfully, they will only have one more UK chart hit after this – 1997’s “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole Olé’” – with their final single being a remix of their debut release, a rather aptly titled little ditty called “Pass The Toilet Paper”.
WouldJohn Peelhavelikedit? Bollocks he would!
It’s the aforementioned Ronan Keating and his Boyzone mates now as they’re back in the studio once more to perform their version of “Father And Son”. I think I’m right to give Ronan top billing as it really does feel like the rest of them are his backing band on this one, ‘oohing and aahing’ away behind him. As per his previous two appearances, Ronan takes it upon himself to address the studio audience mid song to big up the band, this time with a “we’ve had a great year” comment. I suppose they had; a No 1, triple platinum selling album and four huge hit singles, they were positioning themselves as the natural successor to Take That even though the lads from Manchester were still a going concern despite having very publicly lost a member. Maybe Boyzone or their management had some insider knowledge – literally just two months after this TOTP aired, almost to the day, Gary Barlow uttered these infamous words at a press conference “Unfortunately the rumours are true…from today there is no more”.
“Father And Son” would sell 600,000 copies in the UK peaking at No 2 and Ronan would revisit the song in 2004, recording a virtual duet with Cat Stevens to promote his solo Best Of album “10 Years Of Hits” and matching the chart position he achieved with Boyzone.
Would John Peel have liked it? The Cat Stevens original? Possibly. The Boyzone cover? I don’t think so
It’s another of those songs that had a long chart life next. Everything But The Girl, Boyzone and now Björk racked up a total of 32 weeks inside the Top 10 between the three hits on this show tonight – that’s well over half a year! I’m guessing that these singles experienced longevity of sales beyond what would normally be expected because of the time of year they they happened to be in the shops. The Christmas retail period would usually artificially inflate sales as members of the public, who wouldn’t normally frequent their local record emporium, would make an annual pilgrimage with shopping lists in hand. Even so, there was clearly something about these records that made them crossover into the mainstream consciousness. Boyzone’s single was always going to be a big hit I suppose but Everything But The Girl and Björk’s offerings were less obviously huge sellers.
In the case of “It’s Oh So Quiet”, I think the fact that it was a song from the 50s and had a big band backing helped it to appeal to an older audience despite Björk’s rather unique vocal stylings. The staging of the performance here works really well I think with the brass section hit by spotlights every time they burst into life and Björk cavorting about like a mischievous Nordic pixie sprinkled in fairy dust.
WouldJohn Peelhavelikedit? Oh I reckon so don’t you?
And so to that late entrant to the race to be Christmas No 1. A complete outsider coming up on the rail from nowhere, with what was considered by many to be a novelty hit are TheMike FlowersPops with their rendition of “Wonderwall” by Oasis. Despite working in a record shop at the time, I had no idea who this lot were or where they had come from but their backstory was that they’d been on the live circuit since 1993 and were seen by the producer of Radio 1 DJ Kevin Greening’s show who asked them to record easy listening versions of chart songs for a section called ‘Hits of 95’. “Wonderwall” was the first one they did and it was picked up by Chris Evans who told listeners of his breakfast show that it was the original version of the song. What larks! I heard a story that someone at Creation got spooked and rang Noel Gallagher to ask him if he was absolutely sure that he’d written “Wonderwall” and that he hadn’t just copied an obscure easy listening track because someone had discovered it and found Noel out! I didn’t listen to Kevin Greening’s show so just thought this was a case of someone finding a new angle to cash in on the success of Oasis*
*Tribute band No Way Sis would do a similar thing but in reverse when they bagged a chart hit in 1996 by releasing a version of easy listening classic “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” by The New Seekers in the style of Oasis.
To me, The Mike Flowers Pops version of “Wonderwall” was entertaining the first time you heard it and maybe a couple more after that but I couldn’t really understand why it turned out to be such a big hit going all the way to No 2. Maybe it was just that Christmas factor again. My wife liked it enough to go and see them live at the Manchester Academy though and enjoyed the evening. With their profile raised, the band would play at much bigger venues and were in demand for a while. Two more minor Top 40 hits followed in the new year but they will surely be defined by “Wonderwall”.
By the way, that Christmas Day TOTP that John Peel mentioned was shown on BBC4 in 2020 and in that repeat, they announced The Mike Flowers Pops as the festive chart topper. How so? Apparently, they’d recorded two chart rundowns as the Christmas chart wasn’t announced until December 24th and so they wouldn’t have known at the time of recording who was No 1. Somehow when they aired the repeat, they showed the wrong version with Michael Jackson not in pole position. Well, it was the Christmas of COVID so we were all a bit stressed out to be fair.
WouldJohn Peelhavelikedit? I think he would have got on board with it at least initially anyway.
And so to the aforementioned Michael Jackson who is at No 1 and will stay there for Christmas with “Earth Song”. In total, it would spend six weeks stop the UK singles chart going on to sell over a million copies here. I have to say that I’m surprised it was such a success – it has always sounded so overwrought and the wrong side of melodramatic to me (and Jarvis Cocker too we would go into find out at the 1996 BRIT Awards but that’s all for a future post).
WouldJohn Peelhavelikedit? No way. Peel stood with Jarvis on this one I reckon.
As John Peel does his sign off at the end of the show, Michael Aspel appears like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn at his side and does the whole ThisIsYourLife thing. Brilliantly, the sardonic Peel says that he was “rather looking forward to going home actually Michael”. Unbelievably, he’ll have been gone 20 years this October.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Everything But The Girl
Missing
No but I must have it on something surely?
2
Childliners
The Gift Of Christmas
Not even for charity
3
The Beatles
Free As A Bird
Nah
4
Simply Red
Remembering The First Time
I did not
5
The Outhere Brothers / Molella
If You Wanna Party
Not with you guys thank you – bo
6
Boyzone
Father And Son
No
7
Björk
It’s Oh So Quiet
Negative
8
The Mike Flowers Pops
Wonderwall
Nope
9
Michael Jackson
Earth Song
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.
It’s all about ‘new’ songs on this episode of TOTP. To clarify, I mean songs we haven’t seen on these BBC4 repeats before (obviously). Of the ten hits on the show, only three have featured previously and of the new songs, one is a very big deal indeed. Yes, late November back in ‘95 was a very special time if you were a Beatles fan. Not only was there a single being released of new material under the name of The Beatles for the first time since 1970, not only had the compilation album “Anthology I” just been released containing rarities, outtakes and live performances from the period 1958-64 but the first episode of the documentary series The Beatles Anthology was about to air the Sunday after this TOTP was broadcast. We’ll see the video for the single at the end of the show. Before then though, there’s lots to get through so let’s get into it.
By the way, this week’s host is Nicky Campbell who seems to have toned down his barely concealed spite for everyone and everything on the show since returning to presenting duties after the ‘year zero’ experiment was officially shut down. He seems much more affable and blissed out as is shown by his intro to the opening act which is MPeople with their version of “Itchycoo Park” by Small Faces. By any measure, this didn’t seem like a good idea and indeed it wasn’t. ‘Why?’ is the word that springs to mind. Well, it all seems rather cynical when you look into it. Having bled five times platinum selling album “Bizarre Fruit” dry and with no new material on the horizon (next studio album “Fresco” wouldn’t be released until 1997), presumably someone at record label Deconstruction looked at the onrushing festive ‘95 sales period and thought “Hang on, we haven’t got a new M People album out for the punters to buy for Christmas. What are we going to do?”. The solution was to repackage “Bizarre Fruit”, tweak the track listing slightly, bundle it up with an extra disc of remixes and live versions and sell it to those same punters who had bought the original album just twelve months previously. On reflection, it seems fairly shameful though I don’t recall being outraged at the time.
To promote the misleadingly titled “Bizarre Fruit II”, a new track was required as its lead single. Enter the band’s version of “Itchycoo Patk”. It seems to me that some songs should just be left alone period. This is one of them. A No 3 hit for Small Faces in the Summer of Love that was 1967, its sound and groove (both enhanced by the then cutting edge technology of flanging) made for a perfect time piece of the period. I, for one, did not think the world needed another take on it and certainly not M People’s. It just doesn’t suit Heather Small’s powerhouse voice and the mid 90s production on it sounds so clunky now. I’m wondering if it’s chart high of No 11 was a slight disappointment to the band and label. Eight of their previous nine hits had gone Top 10 (only “Love Rendezvous”, the final single from the original “Bizarre Fruit” album spoilt that run). Though there were more hit singles and albums to come before they split (initially) in 1999, for me, “Itchycoo Park” was a line in the sand that signified the end of M People’s imperial phase.
After looking as though they might be seen as hoary old rockers who should have been locked in a cupboard labelled ‘The 80s’ as the new decade began, Bon Jovi had so successfully remodelled themselves that by 1995, especially in the UK, they were flying. On the back of that success, they had (ahem) flown into the UK to do a studio performance for TOTP of their new single “Lie To Me”. The third single from their 10 million selling album “These Days”, it would be the band’s seventh of eight Top 10 hits on the spin in the UK at this time. I have to stay that I don’t remember this one at all but listening to it now, it seems in keeping with this era of the band’s sound. They’d dialled back on the bombast and bluster of those stadium anthems that characterised their ‘poodle rock’ phase and gone with a more, toned down reflective type of rock ballad. Not bad but not destined to be one of their most well known tunes to the uncommitted or casual fan. The studio audience seem genuinely excited about the band (or more specifically Jon Bon Jovi) being before them in person or is it the work of a floor manager prompting the crowd with a sign with the words ‘scream now’ on it?
As highlighted by Nicky Campbell, five of tonight’s ten acts have names that begin with ‘B’. Four of them debut inside the Top 10 with The Beatles not joining that group only because their single wasn’t yet released. So, after Bon Jovi, we now get Blur who are attempting to follow up that No 1 with the second single from their album “The Great Escape”. Ultimately they would fail with “The Universal” getting no higher than its position here of No 5. It’s such a better song than its predecessor though. A wondrous, sweeping, panoramic track that showcased a maturity to the band that was sadly nowhere to be heard (or seen in the case of the respective videos) on “Country House”. It really is quite stunning. Ah yes, the video. Clearly an homage to AClockworkOrange with the band styled as Droogs, Damon Albarn looks positively unsettling with his Alex DeLarge eyeliner.
It’s worth noting that, in the aftermath of The Battle of Britpop, Oasis, despite moving down the chart from No 2 to No 3 with “Wonderwall”, they were still outselling the Blur single. Also worth noting, just for its complete randomness, is that the golf ball speaker featured in the video for “The Universal” was bought at a charity auction by ex-footballer and now pundit Garth Crooks! What?! I mean, if it had been country singer Garth Brooks it might have made some sense but Garth Crooks?!
Nicky Campbell is totting up the Beatles references in his segues. We’ve already had “The Long And Winding Road” and now we get the use of the word ‘anthology’ when he jokingly predicts that Blur will have their own such collection out in 25 years time. Obviously, none of us knew then how long Blur would go on for back then but I don’t suppose many would have believed that they would be an ongoing entity to this day albeit with some lengthy sabbaticals in amongst their timeline. Campbell’s comment made me wonder if such a Blur product existed so I checked. There’s nothing called an ‘anthology’ but there are a couple of box sets – one is called (in a rather linear way) “The 10 Year Limited Edition Anniversary Box Set” which collected all the singles (plus extra tracks) from their first six studio albums. The second is “Blur 21” released in 2012 commemorating 21 years since the release of debut album “Leisure” and including everything the band had recorded to that point including a disc of bonus material for each album plus three DVDs, a book and a 7” single from when the band went by the name of Seymour. Although neither box set was released in 2020 (the 25 years mark pinpointed by Campbell), their existence does rather piss all over the intended humour of his remark.
EverythingButTheGirl have made it to No 3 in the charts equalling their biggest ever hit, their cover of “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” in 1988. However, “Missing” would prove to be much more enduring. Fourteen weeks on the Top 10 and nineteen inside the Top 40 and selling over a million copies in the UK. I think it’s only right that (presumably) “Missing” is the duo’s most well known song and not a bloody Rod Stewart cover (though they wear it well) as that would seem to be a complete misnomer as a calling card for them.
I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a superfan but I’ve always felt an affinity for Everything But The Girl what with Ben and Tracey meeting and forming the band at university in Hull – my wife is from Hull and I have lived there for twenty years now. I also used to work at the university and suggested Tracey as being a suitable person to officially open the refurbished library building in 2015 but they went with then poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy (who was very good in fairness).
Just as they scored their first UK hit single with a ballad from the 70s at Christmas time, Boyzone repeated the trick just twelve months later but for The Osmonds read Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf). Like “Missing” before it, “Father And Son” would prove to very chart durable spending a solid ten weeks in the Top 10 including three at No 2. It was certainly a contender for the Christmas No 1 before ultimately losing out to Jacko. They would finally get that first UK chart topper the following year with, you guessed it, another cover; this time of the Bee Gees classic “Words”.
This appearance is all about Ronan Keating as it was the last time they were on the BBC show performing “Father And Son”. What’s that you say? They’ve done this one on TOTP before? Yes, yes they have. How is this possible when this is the single’s first week in the Top 40? Ah well, they were on about three months back when Dale Winton hosted the show and they sneaked onto the running order via the album chart slot to promote their debut long player “Said And Done”. Back then, Ronan broke away from his singing mid performance to say to the audience “Boyzone live on Top of the Pops…ah”. He does the same thing during this second visit to the studio but this time says “Boyzone back on Top of the Pops…” and then cackles to himself. Was this really necessary? Weren’t they an established pop act by this point. Surely Keating didn’t need another ‘pinch himself moment’ as if to say “How did I get here?”. It was hardly Bob Geldof stopping in his tracks at Live Aid when singing the line “and the lesson today is how to die…” and then repeating that moment 20 years later at Live 8 was it?! Unlike their first appearance performing “Father And Son” when the group were all sat down on stools, they’re stood up this time. Not sure if this is significant but clearly a young version of Westlife sat at home watching preferred the stools version.
Back to Ronan though, and this was the time when he started doing something odd with his hair with it styled into punk-like spikes almost. Most peculiar. I think this might have also been the song that caused some of my Our Price colleagues to start doing Keating impressions by hitting themselves repeatedly in the throat with the sides of their hands to create his distinctive tremble. I think it was a technique also used for Belinda Carlisle impersonations. Work days must have been very long back then.
Now to one of the most poignant songs of the year and tragically its subject matter of the absurdity of war is still as prevalent and relevant today. The Siege of Sarajevo, as part of the Bosnian War following the break up of Yugoslavia, would last 1,425 days, the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. The heavy shelling of the city would lead to mass killings of civilians and a life of suffering and fear for those who lived with no access to transport, water, gas or electricity. American journalist Bill Carter travelled to Sarajevo in 1993 to help the humanitarian aid effort and having seen the cost of the conflict to human life and feeling that western media were ignoring the war, contacted U2 who arranged satellite link ups on their ZooTVTour to give a platform to the population of Sarajevo to the outside world. This relationship led to Bono agreeing to direct a documentary made by Carter about life during the siege and a collaboration between U2, producer Brian Eno and Luciano Pavarotti that resulted in the track “Miss Sarajevo”.
Inspired by the story of a beauty pageant organised by Bosnian women as an act of defiance of the war, the surreal nature of the act spoke to Bono and inspired the writing of the song. Considered a side project by the band and so released under the pseudonym of Passengers, the song is undeniably affecting. Epic yet understated, quintessentially U2 but with a vocal by opera giant Luciano Pavarotti woven in seamlessly with not a trace of incongruity, it towered above just about everything else on the chart. In my humble opinion, this would have been a much more worthy Christmas No 1 than Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” in spite of the latter’s laudable green credentials. A simple ‘list’ style lyric structured around the question “Is there a time…?”, the stand out line was “A time for East 17”. I’m guessing that most of us on first hearing the song did a double take and asked ourselves “Did Bono just sing East 17?”. Now there was an incongruity in the song but I read it as Bono highlighting the contrast between the horrors of war happening under our noses but possibly being more aware of something as trivial as a pop band. I could be wrong of course.
The video we see here is a mixture of clips from Bill Carter’s documentary, the performance of the song at the traditional Pavarotti & Friends concert in Modena, Italy and images of the aforementioned beauty pageant described in the song. A superficial detail given the gravitas of the song is that The Edge performs without his usual headwear leaving it to Bono to uphold that particular tradition.
Another song now that looked like it had a shot at Christmas No 1 at one point and it came from the most unlikely source. Björk had made her name first as part of Icelandic indie band The Sugarcubes before going solo and releasing her eclectic debut album…erm…”Debut” to critical praise and substantial commercial popularity. Follow up album “Post” continued her pursuit of diversity with techno, trip hop, house and ambient dance genres all in the mix. However, the third single released from it, despite the smorgasbord of styles that was the album, still managed to surprise most of us. “It’s Oh So Quiet” – a cover of a 1951 tune originally recorded by American singer and actor Betty Hutton (whom was unknown to the majority of people including Nicky Campbell judging by his “No idea” facial expression in his intro) – was so out there as to almost seem like a novelty. Adding to the bonkers-ness of it all is this performance with the pantomime-esque costumed backing entourage.
None of this stopped it from crossing over into the mainstream causing people who’d never heard of Björk before to not just become aware of her but actively seek out her single to buy. Anyway, whatever it was about the extreme styles in the song – hushed, whispered tones and idiosyncratic little yelps and squeals give way to that huge big band chorus – “It’s Oh So Quiet” would become not just her highest charting and biggest selling single in the UK (it has been certified gold for 400,000 sales) but also her most well known. I wonder if that annoys Björk at all? If not, then maybe this…erm…tribute from Coronation Street actor Vicky Entwhistle from 2001 on StarsInTheirEyes does?
I’m guessing some thought went into the running order of this show as we go from one Nordic act to another with Swedish band Whale following the Icelandic avant-garde artist that is Björk. Yes, it’s a second trip to the TOTP studio for the “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” hitmakers which is not bad going for a single that only made No 15 in the charts. For this second performance, singer Cia Berg seems to have donned a platinum blonde wig since we last saw her. Maybe, inspired by Björk, she was channeling her inner Betty Hutton who had the image of what they used to describe I believe as a ‘blonde bombshell’ back in the day. There are other similarities with Björk like the quirky vocals and the over the top props of the band behind her (feather boas and Max Wall style wigs) but whereas her career as a recording artist is still ongoing today (her last album was 2022’s “Fossora”), Whale would be done by the end of the 90s.
The nation is still under the spell of Robson&Jerome whose “I Believe” single is No 1 for a third of four weeks. Doubling down on this inexplicable phenomenon, the British public also bought the duo’s album that was released this week in enough quantities to send that to No 1 as well. As the recently tragically departed Karl Wallinger once sang on the World Party hit “Is It Like Today?”, ‘How did it come to this?’
And so to the main event. As it’s TheBeatles, despite being the play out video, we get nearly three minutes of “Free As A Bird” as opposed to the usual sixty seconds the closing song is quite often allocated. I guess the first thing to say about it is that it’s not very good is it? I wasn’t the only person who thought that; reviews were mixed to say the least. Most of the criticisms seemed to be about the fact that it sounded more like ELO or possibly The Travelling Wilburys than The Beatles but then it was produced by Jeff Lynne so what did people expect?
More of an issue for me was that it was a mechanical plodder devoid of any of the artistry and creativity that was prevalent in the Fab Four’s back catalogue. Based on a demo of a song John Lennon wrote in 1977 and donated to the ‘Anthology’ project by Yoko Ono, I wonder if he would have envisaged the studio recording turning out like this had he lived to see it finished? I understand that there was still a massive appetite amongst the fanbase for any new material but let’s be honest, it just didn’t stand up to any type of comparison. Put it this way, if you were on a blind date and the conversation turned to The Beatles and in answer to the question what’s your favourite song of theirs your date said “I think I’d have to say Free As A Bird”, you’d want to be sure that your tracker on your mobile phone was active, that’s all I’m saying. I think the definitive view on the track though comes from the record buying public. After weeks of press and buzz about the single (it wasn’t even released until the 4th December, eleven days after this TOTP aired), it was widely expected to go straight to No 1. After all, this was a first new single for twenty-five years by the biggest band the world has ever seen, something that perhaps we thought would never happen – how could it not top the charts? And yet it didn’t, entering the chart at No 2 but getting no further, it was unable to shift “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson from the throne. Ironically, Jackson had purchased the publishing rights to The Beatles catalogue ten years before.
As for the video that was made to promote the single, it was directed by Joe Pytka who, in another link to Michael Jackson, had already directed music videos for the King of Pop such as “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Dirty Diana” and “Heal The World”. The sepia tint gives it a grainy feel which I’m guessing was to tie it into the 60s? Apparently there are over 80 visual references to the band’s songs, lyrics and story inserted into the promo for Beatles fanatics to pore over. I would describe myself as a fan rather than a fanatic so when I saw the car crash scene, I thought it was a reference to Paul McCartney’s RTA in 1966 that was the basis for the whole ‘Paul Is Dead’ conspiracy theory but it actually relates to the lyrics of “A Day In The Life”. That song references the death of John and Paul’s friend Tara Browne who was heir to the Guinness fortune. Maybe putting in a ‘Paul Is Dead’ reference would have poured to much petrol on the fire of that particular rumour? Watching the video back now, it doesn’t have the same impact as it did back in 1995 but it still stands up I think.
A second single called “Real Love” also based on a Lennon home demo and taken from the “Anthology 2” album was released in 1996 peaking at No 4 in the UK before the final ever Beatles single – based on yet another Lennon 70s home demo called “Now And Then” – was released in November 2023 which though making it to No 1, seemed to be less well received even than “Free As A Bird”.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
M People
Itchycoo Park
Nope
2
Bon Jovi
Lie To Me
Nah
3
Blur
The Universal
No but I had The Great Escape album with it on
4
Everything But The Girl
Missing
No but I must have it on something surely?
5
Boyzone
Farther And Son
Never happening
6
Passengers
Miss Sarajevo
No but could /should have
7
Björk
It’s Oh So Quiet
No
8
Whale
Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe
Liked it, didn’t buy it
9
Robson & Jerome
I Believe
As if
10
The Beatles
Free As A Bird
I did not
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.
Tonight’s TOTP sees yet another ‘golden mic’ host at the helm. I find Lee Evans an interesting guy not because I especially liked his physical brand of humour but more because he took the unusual to retire from stand up comedy and retreated from the world of celebrity at the age of just 50 to spend more time with his family. Apart from a couple of stage roles, he’s rarely been seen since. Anybody who walks away at the height of their fame makes for a fascinating case study in my book just because you don’t see it that often. In the world of music, off the top of my head there’s Rick Astley though he subsequently came back to the world of pop music with a level of success that must have surprised even him. I guess you could also include Take That in this category who split in 1996 whilst still wildly popular though again they came back to the charts with a vengeance. How about Syd Barrett? The co-founder of Pink Floyd withdrew from public life completely in 1972 though to be fair, he’d already been fired from his band over concerns about his drug taking and mental health but he did release two solo albums before disappearing to concentrate on his gardening.
Anyway, Lee Evans had been pulling in huge crowds on his stand up tours playing to a record breaking 10,108 people in 2005 at the Manchester Arena. His 2008 “Big” tour was the biggest selling comedy DVD that Christmas. In 2011, he was honoured by the British Comedy Awards with the Channel 4 award for Special Contribution to Comedy. In short, he was huge. And then, in 2014 he announced his retirement from stand up comedy. Presumably, he could have carried on with the massive grossing tours but he quit at the top and fair play to him. I wonder if there’s any acts on tonight’s TOTP that also went out at the top?
Well, I don’t think the opening turn tonight could be put into that category. One No 13 hit could hardly be described as being at the top! Who the heck were Ruffneck featuring Yavahn anyway? Having listened to their hit “Everybody Be Somebody” they appear to have been the creators of one of the worst dance tracks of the 90s. This is just horrible! Totally repetitive with Yavahn basically singing the title over and over with some bloke screeching it back to her somewhere in the mix. Seriously, this was awful. And yet, incredibly, in one chart – the US Hot Dance Club Play chart – this Swedish act were actually at the top as this track went to No 1 for three weeks. Ruffneck? I’d rather have Rednex and that’s saying something!
Talking of dreadful Swedish pop groups, here’s another one right on cue. AceOfBase had first entered our lives in 1993 with the odious chart topper “All That She Wants”. The hits kept coming with no upturn in quality – “The Sign” was as bad as its predecessor whilst their cover of Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” was execrable. “Lucky Love” was the lead single from their second album “The Bridge” and was more of the same turgid, insipid euro-pop that they made their name with. And the lyrics! They must have taken all of the time it took for Lee Evans to start sweating to write…
What the hell does that mean?! Pure gibberish. The track was so insubstantial and unmemorable that even the TOTP caption person couldn’t remember its title and so we got a graphic declaring it was called “Lucky Cove” which sounds like a location on a pirate map where ‘X’ marked the spot where the treasure was to be found. “Lucky Love” was less treasure and more cheap baubles and despite it being a No 1 in their home country and Finland, it rightly stalled at No 20 in the UK.
Next, a true legend of popular music who potentially could have gone out right at the top of their game but, unlike their erstwhile rivals The Beatles, chose to carry on…and on…and on…and on. By 1995, TheRolling Stones had been on the go for 33 years – the fact that they are still an ongoing entity a further 29 years later is utterly remarkable. A career lasting 62 years and counting? It’s just mad, crazy and probably never to be repeated. Sure, there’s versions of other bands still touring but they’ve had so many line up changes that you’d have to apply the spade law* to them. The fact that The Stones have only ever had eight official band members in all those years surely marks them out as unique from everyone else. Ronnie Wood is the youngest of the current band line up at the age of 76!
*If you replace the handle of your spade and then subsequently its blade, is it still the original spade or a different tool entirely?
Anyway, in late 1995 the band had not long finished TheVoodooLoungeTour. Instead of taking a well earned break, they released “Stripped” which was an acoustic album made up of a mixture of live tracks from the tour (including rehearsals performances in some cases) and studio reworking of songs from their back catalogue. I’m guessing that new label Virgin had their eyes on the upcoming Christmas market and took inspiration from the then in vogue MTV Unplugged show to come up with the idea for “Stripped”. To promote the album, a single was needed and in a move that seems so calculated yet obvious you can’t believe they hadn’t done it before, the band released a version of the Bob Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone”. It’s a great song and a decent enough version but come on! Dylan has always been a conundrum to me – a great songwriter but I don’t like his voice. I suppose it’s all subjective. The same could be said of Tom Waits but I really like Tom’s vocals. The Stones’ version of “Like A Rolling Stone” made No 12 giving them their biggest UK hit since “Undercover Of The Night” twelve years earlier. Ah, the power of a cover – and in this particular case, that cover by this band.
SaintEtienne have always been a band who do things on their own terms it seems to me so they had it in them to quit while they were ahead as it were but chose to carry on a career which has been going 34 years now. Never let it be said that it hasn’t been a diverse one though. 60s pop, house music, electronica and even folk have been influences incorporated into their sound. The very definition of eclectic. With support from the ‘inkies’ press, they really should have had bigger hits but they’ve never even had one Top 10* hit.
*If you don’t count “7 Ways To Love” under the guise of Cola Boy which I don’t.
Their lack of huge selling singles makes the decision to release a singles collection album literally called “Too Young To Die: Singles 1990-1995” seem a rather odd one. A Japan only Best Of called “Fairy Tales From Saint Etienne” had been released earlier in the year so maybe they wanted a more official documentation of their work so far? Whatever the reason, the album did OK sales wise reaching No 17 in a crowded pre-Christmas market place though failed to match the chart highs of previous two studio albums “So Tough” and “Tiger Bay” which both went Top 10.
To promote the album, the single “He’s On The Phone” was released. The song’s origins were rather convoluted. A remix by producer Motiv8 of their track “Accident” from the band’s “Reserection” EP (and no that’s not a typo) that they made in collaboration with French singer songwriter Étienne Daho, “Accident” itself was a reworking of Daho’s 1984 French language hit “Week-end à Rome”. That’s Daho in this TOTP performance, the bloke who wanders on stage towards the end of the song to mumble some words in French. I’d forgotten what how much of a dance track this one was. I think I was confusing it with “You’re In A Bad Way” which was much more pure pop. There seems to be an awful lot of PVC on show here with the overly energetic backing dancers kind of jarring against the smooth delivery of Sarah Cracknell who’s very good at looking straight down the camera. “He’s On The Phone” became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 11.
A proper One Hit Wonder now (in the UK at least) as Whale get their fifteen minutes of fame. Can such an artist that falls into this category be able to quit at the top? I suppose it depends on whether they carry on in search (unsuccessfully) of more hits. I’m guessing that most do. In Whale’s case, they pushed really hard just to have the one. “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” was on its second mission to seek out the strange new world of the UK Top 40 having peaked at No 46 on its first release back in 1993. Its second incarnation beamed down into the Top 20 at No 15. And what a curious, almost alien life form it was. The music press tied itself up in knots trying to define it. Many tried to describe the song by referring to it as a hybrid of other bands, usually Beastie Boys/Dee-Lite/ Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Sugacubes. Others just made shit up like Stephen Dalton from the NME:
Dalton, Stephen (12 August 1995). “Long Play”. NME. p. 42.
“Scuzz–metalriffola? Anyways, what did I make of it? I suppose I have to give you my attempt to describe it now. Well, I liked it – let me say that for starters. An otherworldly, wailing (no pun intended) vocal from the female singer on an undulating, almost hypnotic verse before the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” like chorus not just kicks in but kicks the door down. There’s even some death-metal-esque random shouting in there. How’s that for a description? I seem to recall a fair bit of discussion about what a ‘slobo’ was so here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:
What is a “slobo”, exactly? Er, a misunderstanding. Whale’s Henrik Schyffert: "I heard that 'slobo' was a nickname for Chelsea girls. 'Hobo Humpin' Sloane Babe' would have been right. So there's a cute Swedish misunderstanding for you.” #TOTP
I like the way singer Cia Berg pops up beside Lee Evans in his intro before joining the rest of the band on stage. I thought she was a cheeky, inventive studio audience member at first. Whale would have one more (even bigger) hit in their native Sweden but after two albums they were done and split before the end of the decade.
Having described Saint Etienne as the very definition of eclectic earlier, where the hell do I go to talk about EverythingButTheGirl? Their Wikipedia entry uses the following categorisations of their music:
Sophisti-pop
Electronica
Drum and Bass
Trip-hop
Folk pop
Jazz pop
Indie pop
Pick the bones out of that lot. However you think of them, perhaps the first song of theirs that will come to mind is “Missing” or rather the Todd Terry remix of it. Already inside the Top 10 by this TOTP appearance and therefore their biggest ever hit even at that point, it would spend 14 weeks inside the Top 10 peaking at No 3. The success of the single saw them head off to explore more possibilities of a dance sound with 1996’s album “Walking Wounded” embracing electronica and finding acceptance amongst the record buying public by going platinum in the UK. Not everyone was in favour of their new direction though. I recall Tracey and Ben in an interview talking about a crowd reaction to a gig they did around the time of “Walking Wounded” and recalled that one disgruntled punter had said of the music on the way out “Well, that was a load of techno bollocks!”. Can’t please them all I suppose.
Now here’s a band that probably should have called it a day long before they did but in 1995, there was no bigger name in British music than Oasis. After losing out in the Battle of Britpop to Blur, the lads from Burnage would go on to win the war when it came to album sales. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 (seventeen!) times platinum in the UK alone becoming the second best selling album here of 1995 despite only being out for three months. Fast forward 13 years and the band’s final album “Dig Out Your Soul”, whilst still selling well and going to No 1 would go just double platinum with some parts of the music press accusing the album of being “generically Oasis”. I have all their albums bar one (2000’s “Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants”) but even I as a fan, could see that they had gone on about two albums two long.
Back in November 1995 though, they were unstoppable. Well, almost. In fact, they were stopped twice around this time and on both occasions by the same act. More of that later though. The third single to be released from the album was “Wonderwall” which has become possibly their most well known hit. I say possibly as it’s maybe a toss up between that and the following single “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. Fine margins and all that. Sadly for me, “Wonderwall” was so ubiquitous that it’s become one of those songs that it’s hard to listen to anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good song or that I didn’t enjoy it at the time but merely that, for me, it’s suffered from overexposure. However, I have to also say that it sounded like a classic from the get go. Spare and brittle yet perfectly conceived and executed. It would become a staple of the busker’s repertoire. Apparently bass player Guigsy didn’t play on the actual recording of the track with Noel taking on bass duties instead. He also didn’t feature in the official promo video for “Wonderwall” as he had temporarily left Oasis due to nervous exhaustion with his place in the band and promo briefly being taken by Scott McLeod. I’m sure that’s Guigsy in this TOTP though. Maybe it was a case of timing as this performance looks pre-recorded so maybe it was done a bit before the single was released.
The song’s title was inspired by the 1968 film Wonderwall and its soundtrack album called “Wonderwall Music” by George Harrison, the first solo album by a member of The Beatles. Sometime in the early 2000s, I was working and living in York and used to attend a pub pop quiz on a Tuesday evening. One night, one of the questions was ‘What was the 60s film whose title is also the name of an Oasis single?’. I confidently wrote down “Don’t Look Back In Anger” but soon discovered I’d got confused with the 1959 kitchen sink drama LookBackInAnger based on the John Osbourne play of the same name. I’ll never make that mistake again.
As confident as I was in my incorrect answer, so was Lee Evans in his false prediction that “Wonderwall” would be No 1 soon enough. It never made it though it has sold 3.6 million copies making it the biggest selling Oasis single in the UK. As for the Mike Flowers Pop version, I’ll get to that all in good time.
After Madonna in the studio last week, seven days on TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill had pulled off another coup – that of getting David Bowie on the show in person! OK, 1995 wasn’t peak Bowie but still; David Bowie! As much as it’s generally accepted that the 80s weren’t The Thin White Duke’s finest years, I’m not convinced that the 90s were much, if any, better. Before I go any further, I should state that whilst I like Bowie (who doesn’t?) that I’m no aficionado and so my opinions come from a place of limited knowledge – if you are a mega-fan and are offended by anything else I may write from this point, it was not my intention to irk you. So…in my humble opinion, of the four albums he released during the 90s, I would venture that none of them rank highly in the Bowie canon. His fanbase ensured that four of them went Top 10 including a No 1 in “Black Tie White Noise” but none achieved massive sales. In fact, I think I’m right in saying that Bowie’s biggest selling albums of the decade were both compilations – 1990’s “Changesbowie” and 1993’s “The Singles Collection”.
Come 1995, the latest Bowie album was “Outside” and as with any album by The Master (as Lee Evans refers to him in his intro), there’s a shit load of words written about it online which I couldn’t hope to summarise in this post. Suffice to say, the main themes are that it was inspired by Twin Peaks (and possibly Cluedo) with a concept narrative about the murder of a 14 year old girl being investigated by a detective Nathan Adler. The album (though I talk about it in the surety that I’ve never heard it) features a bewildering mix of styles including rock, jazz, electronica, industrial rock and ambient. This single – the second taken from it – “Strangers When We Meet” – was originally a track on Bowie’s soundtrack album to the BBC series TheBuddhaOf Suburbia based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi. That album did the sum of naff all sales wise though has retrospectively come to be regarded as a ‘great lost album’. I don’t know how much the original version of “Strangers When We Meet” differs from its later incarnation (if at all) but for what it’s worth, I quite like what we get in this performance. I don’t remember it at all but it’s a good tune if a little pedestrian for Bowie and though it will certainly never be regarded as one of his classics, it probably deserved a better UK chart placing than No 39. As ever, Bowie looks effortlessly cool here and is the natural opposite when juxtaposed to the upcoming act at No 1.
P.S. I’m saying that Bowie was still at the top of his game when his final album “Blackstar” was released in 2016. Obviously, his premature death wasn’t the same as him calling time on his career. He surely would have released more albums post 2016 had he lived on.
And so to the act that not only kept Oasis from scoring a No 1 single with “Wonderwall” but also pipped them to the accolade of having the best selling UK album of 1995. How did theabominationthat was Robson&Jerome happen? Well, as with most musical abominations, it was all Simon Cowell’s fault. It was him who pursued the SoldierSoldier actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn to release a version of “Unchained Melody” after their characters had performed the song in a plot line in the show and the phenomenal public response to the record (it sold 1.8 million copies) meant that more would follow. Cowell wasn’t going to let this cash cow go out to pasture without milking it dry first. And so, the inevitable follow up arrived and of course, it was another cover version. “I Believe” had been a massive hit in 1953 for Frankie Laine – no, like really massive – it went to No 1 on three different occasions registering 18 weeks at the top of the charts in the process. The Bachelors also had a big hit with the song when their version got to No 2 in the UK in 1964. Cowell would have known this and also that the age demographic who would buy a Robson & Jerome single would also know the song from years before. It smacks of cold, calculating strategy. R&J’s take on “I Believe” would top the charts for 4 weeks though they were unable to last the extra 3 weeks that would have been required to become the Christmas No 1. Ha! You got that calculation wrong didn’t you Cowell?! Thankfully, the song is only just over 2 minutes long so the performance here is mercifully short.
Talking of mercifully short, Robson & Jerome at least had the good sense and self knowledge to understand when to cut short their pop career. A second album and third single followed in 1996 – all of which went to No 1 in their respective charts – but these were their last releases (if you don’t count a couple of subsequent compilations shoved out by their label RCA). This means we’ve finally found an act on this TOTP that went out at the top just like Lee Evans!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Ruffneck featuring Yavahn
Everybody Be Somebody
Never happening
2
Ace Of Base
Lucky Love
No
3
The Rolling Stones
Like A Rolling Stone
Nah
4
Saint Etienne
He’s On The Phone
I didn’t
5
Whale
Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe
Liked it, didn’t buy it
6
Everything But The Girl
Missing
No but I must have it on something surely
7
Oasis
Wonderwall
This was one of the few of their singles I failed to buy for some reason
8
David Bowie
Strangers When We Meet
Nope
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.
After four consecutive shows of not having to suffer the frankly insufferable Simon Mayo as host, the smug one is back and this time he’s brought his mates with him. Yes, lingering around the studio for this TOTP is Chris Evans and his breakfast show crew but more of them later. The last time he was on, Mayo did that whole ‘Rhymin’ Simon’ schtick which was just intolerable. We don’t have that this time at least but he does start with some line that relates to a news story about a supermarket sandwich not being fresh. What that news story was actually about I have no idea but if you asked Mayo today what it was about I bet he would know. He’s the sort of bloke who’d have a spreadsheet of all the times he was on the show, what his links were and a laughter rating system as to how funny he was.
Anyway, let’s get to it with the music. 1995 was the year of rereleases with those afforded another chance becoming a much bigger hit second time around. However, the recipients of this exercise were generally dance tracks – TheLightningSeeds were most definitely and defiantly pop and none more so than the tracks on their “Jollification” album. This one – “Lucky You” – was initially the lead single from the album when released in August of 1994 but somehow missed the Top 40 when it peaked at No 43. Three hit singles and 14 months later it was made available again and this time made it all the way to No 15 becoming the album’s second highest charting single in the process. “Lucky You” is such a model example of a pop song that you would think it had been created in a laboratory. Crafted and perfected to within an inch of its life, it was ideal for daytime radio. The Lightning Seeds were my go to band on a Saturday afternoon in the Our Price store I worked in at the time if we needed to shove something on in a hurry as the last CD had finished playing. As a consequence, many of my colleagues hated The Lightning Seeds with a passion.
Ian Broudie has always maintained pretty much the same look throughout his career – mop(top) of hair, goatee beard and shades permanently attached. Only the flecks of grey these days indicate the passing of any time. As much as he knows how to write a good pop tune, I’ve never been overly convinced about his voice which isn’t the biggest you’ve ever heard. He wrote “Lucky You” with Terry Hall and it would suit the sadly deceased singer’s voice better I think. I much prefer Hall’s version of “Sense” which he also co-wrote with Broudie.
In direct contrast to Ian Broudie comes Meatloaf and his massive voice. In this week’s chart, he found himself in a four way tussle for the coveted No 1 spot. His new single “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” was up against another new release from Coolio whilst the previous week’s No1 and No 2 from Simply Red and Def Leppard respectively were both performing well. In the final sales count, Meatloaf would just fall short of repeating the feat of “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by entering the Top 40 at No 2. It was still quite the achievement though for an artist who had only had one UK Top 10 hit prior to the biggest selling single of 1993 and confirmed how much the success of the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” project had done to revive Meatloaf’s career and profile.
Oof! What on earth is this? Well, obviously it’s a horrible remix of one of the classic pop singles of all time. The more pertinent question is why? After TheHumanLeague made a successful if rather unexpected return to the charts earlier in 1995 with the album “Octopus” and its hit singles “Tell Me When” and “One Man In My Heart”, their previous record label Virgin decided to cash in on their ex-artist by rereleasing their first Greatest Hits album from 1988 which had gone double platinum in the UK. In a clever piece of negotiation with the band’s new label East West, they managed to licence the aforementioned “Tell Me When” and a new song entitled “Stay With Me Tonight” to be included on the album’s track listing thereby ensuring it lent it a veneer of authority and comprehensiveness.
A third track was added to the album which was a remix of “Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)” by Snap! and it was this abomination that was chucked out into the shops to promote the collection. Maybe it’s just that people of a certain age who were around at the time of its original 1981 release (like me) have an emotional attachment to it (especially as it was also that year’s Christmas No 1) that we find it hard to accept any deviation from its true form. Or, perhaps more obviously, the 1995 remix was a just piece of worthless shit and that’s why we hate it. There was certainly no love for it on social media when this TOTP repeat aired on BBC4 recently. The 1995 remix somehow got to No 16 in the charts but as for who was buying it, I can only assume completist super fans or the tone deaf.
Next we have perhaps the ultimate rerelease of the whole decade let alone 1995. I say rerelease but it’s actually a remix of a 1994 single that originally only made No 69 on the chart. By 1995, despite critical acclaim and being eight albums into their career, Everything But The Girl had only ever had three Top 40 singles of which two were cover versions. All that changed with “Missing”. Originally a lo-fi electronic dance single from their “Amplified Heart” album, the duo’s American record label suggested that it be reworked by the legendary remixer Todd Terry to be played in New York clubs. His beefed up house beats treatment of the track combined with Tracey Thorn’s enchanting, ethereal vocals and the killer line “like the deserts miss the rain” propelled the song into becoming a monster hit of epic proportions all around the world. In the UK it peaked at No 3 but even more impressively, it spent 14 (!) weeks inside the Top 10. Look at these chart positions:
How’s that for consistency?! It would sell over a million copies here whilst in America it got all the way to No 2 after a 28 weeks climb to get there. It would spend a then record breaking 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. These were unbelievable stats – this is Everything But The Girl we’re talking about! They were hardly a gargantuan unit shifting monster. As much as I’d always liked them, I would never have predicted that they could sell this many records but then “Missing” was no ordinary song. It had that much sought after but rarely achieved quality of being able to crossover into lots of different markets. Punters who would never have listened to a dance track let alone buy one were queuing up at the local record shop to purchase a copy. The track transcended its supposed status as a song of the pop charts to become a part of the cultural tapestry. Tracey Thorn herself has said that “Missing” has been played at funerals and memorial services. Given its chart run detailed above and that we’ll likely be seeing EBTG a fair few times over the forthcoming repeats, I think I’ll leave it there for now.
Watching this next video, I’ve realised that I really don’t know that much about TheSmashingPumpkins. Sure, I know the titles of their first three albums and I could recognise their covers from having sold them to punters whilst working in record stores throughout the 90s. What they actually sounded like though? I wouldn’t be so sure. I know their hit “Tonight, Tonight” which I like but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge of their back catalogue. Take this single for example. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” was the lead single from third album “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” and reached No 20 on the UK Top 40 and yet I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it before. How is this possible if I worked in a record shop you ask? Sadly, the stereotype of leaning on the counter all day, brew in hand listening to all the cool and groovy new sounds and being rude to any customers who attempted to ask you anything wasn’t true at all. Sometimes you were so busy that if I’d been asked at gunpoint to tell you what had been played on the shop sound system that day, I couldn’t have.
So now I’ve heard “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, what is my considered opinion of it? Well, it’s OK I guess. An interesting chorus but it seems to take forever to get to it with the verses being as dull as. I wasn’t that keen on Billy Corgan’s voice either. Give me this instead by the Mock Turtles for a song about butterfly wings any day of the week…
“Ain’t Nobody” by Rufus and Chaka Khan is such an enduring song. 40 years old now and it is still a staple of radio playlists whether you’re Radio 2 or Retro Soul Radio. It’s a remarkable legacy for a song that was a big hit but not one of the biggest sellers of all time. It made the UK Top 10 in 1984 and No 22 in the US though it did top the R&B charts over there as well. Its long lasting nature is perhaps partly due to how many times it has been covered by other artists. “Ain’t Nobody” has been recorded by Jaki Graham, LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige, Natasha Bedingfield and as an interpolation with the Human League’s “Being Boiled” by Richard X vs Liberty X as “Being Nobody”.
And then there’s this version by Diana King. Needing a follow up to her mega selling hit “Shy Guy”, she (or her record label possibly) went for that tried and trusted strategy of releasing a cover version of a well known song. And it worked – sort of. It reached No 13 in the UK and made No 4 on the US Dance Club Play chart but it was nowhere near the seller that “Shy Guy” was. Perhaps deservedly so in my opinion. It seems fairly ordinary to my ears despite Diana trying to put a ragga tweak in there early on by randomly shouting out “Have Mercy!” in the intro. There then follows a fairly faithful rendition of the original but with a horrible, tinny sounding backing which loses all the smooth groove of the original. The whole performance is not helped by the location for this satellite exclusive which appears to have been filmed in the car park of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yep, a car park. Diana is joined by two guys in flasher macks one of whom looks like he’s going to have a piss in a flower bed when he turns his back to the camera. At one point there’s a shot which is a close up of a tree because it has a small street sign which says ‘Top Of The Pops’ on it. A close up of a tree! This was a real low for these satellite performances. Bon Jovi at Niagara Falls this was not! Sadly, I can’t find the clip on YouTube though. Diana would have one more UK hit two years later with another cover version (this time of ”I Say A Little Prayer”) before the hits ran out completely.
The aforementioned Chris Evans finally appears on camera for this next link though mercifully he says nothing choosing instead to eat from a packet of crisps. Instead, Simon Mayo ignores Evans (presumably this was cooked up by the pair beforehand) and instead introduces the Radio 1 Breakfast Show newsreader Tina Ritchie to do the link. Ritchie does her job well enough despite Mayo doing a gyrating movement opposite her while she speaks. He seems to lower himself down her body while she speaks (though that may be the camera angle) as if he’s lap dancing for her. It’s a truly sickening sight. Why was he allowed to do it?! Horrible man.
UB40 is the act that Tina Ritchie introduces with a song I have zero recollection of. “Until My Dying Day” was released to promote the band’s second Best Of album snappily titled “The Best Of UB40 – Volume Two” which collected all their hits from 1988 to 1995. The first volume had gone six times platinum in the UK but its follow up did nowhere near the same business despite including their 1993 No 1 “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”. Its sales can’t have been helped by “Until My Dying Day” which, dearie me, is dreary to the point of being soporific. @TOTPFacts says that the track was originally written for the soundtrack of the James Bond film Goldeneye. That can’t be right can it? Goldeneye? UB40’s song is more like Jap’s Eye!
Wait, wasn’t Cher on the show and in the studio last week? She bloody was you know! As if to distinguish between the two appearances, she’s come in fancy dress as Elvis this week seeing as her hit – “Walking In Memphis” – is all about him (sort of).
It’s an attempt to do something different I guess but she doesn’t really look like Elvis, rather a tired stereotype of a 50s Teddy Boy. It’s all a bit silly and Cher’s dance moves don’t add any authenticity at all. Maybe I’m missing the point and should just accept it as a bit of fun but I can’t get past the fact that Annie Lennox beat Cher to this look by a good 12 years and did it so much better…
And so to another new No 1 and this one has gone straight into pole position in week one making it the ninth single to do so up to this point in 1995 and the third on the bounce following Shaggy and Simply Red before it. Coolio was the winner of that aforementioned four way chart tussle with his “Gangsta’s Paradise” song. I say Coolio but I should also give props to his oppo LV who was also formerly credited on the track. This was an absolute monster of a record and similar to “Missing” earlier in the post, stayed on the UK Top 40 for what seemed like an eternity. Two weeks at No 1 but then three at No 2, two at No 3 and a further five inside the Top 10 on top of that.
Famously interpolated (there’s that word again) with Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”, it was also featured heavily in the hit film DangerousMinds starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Also like “Missing”, it was a huge crossover hit with record buyers who wouldn’t normally listen to rap music purchasing the single. It also garnered airplay support from radio stations that wouldn’t normally touch rap with a barge pole. In a 2020 poll by digital publication ThePudding, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was one of the most recognisable 90s songs amongst Millennials and Generation Z’ers.
I’m wondering now if our appetite for the song hadn’t been whetted by the film Pulp Fiction. The opening line “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” from Psalm 23:4 is very reminiscent off this scene courtesy of Samuel L. Jackson whilst the whole film, like the song, is about gangsters…
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Lightning Seeds
Lucky You
Not the single but I think I may have had the Jollification album at some point
2
Meatloaf
I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)
Definitely not
3
The Human League
Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)
Love the original but not that remixed shite!
4
Everything But The Girl
Missing
No but I must have it on something surely?
5
The Smashing Pumpkins
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Negative
6
Diana King
Ain’t Nobody
Nah
7
UB40
Until My Dying Day
Nope
8
Cher
Walking In Memphis
I did not
9
Coolio / LV
Gangsta’s Paradise
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.
Look, there’s no way of putting a nice bow on this, 1992 was yet another crappy year. Nothing happened! Well, not literally obviously but it was like the UK was waiting for the next big thing to arrive any minute but whatever it was going to be, it hadn’t even done its packing by the end of the year let alone have any sort of ETA. Nothing sums this up more than this fact. The biggest selling album of the year was “Stars” by Simply Red which was also the biggest selling album of the previous year. Where was the influence of the much vaunted grunge rock movement? It was certainly conspicuous by its absence in terms of both the singles and albums charts. The singles market had a disastrous year with sales slumping dramatically. There were only 12 different No 1 songs, the smallest number for thirty years. I guess we should have a look at them….
Dearie me! Less than half of the twelve were by brand new artists and of that number only two were British. There were at least four big ballads in there (none bigger than Whitney Houston’s), three cover versions and the return of a man who hadn’t had a hit for seven years and he was better known as an actor than a singer! Three of the total of eight British acts in the list had made their name in the 80s whilst the hang over Xmas No 1 from 1991 was by Queen. The only vaguely interesting song on the list was “Ebeneezer Goode” by The Shamen. Even if you didn’t like it, at least it ruffled a few feathers. Of the twelve, I bought none at all although my wife did buy the Wet Wet Wet album with “Goodnight Girl” on it. There wasn’t quite a Bryan Adams event with Shakespear’s Sister coming the closest with an eight week run at the top. Whitney Houston would better that by two weeks but that run was spread over 1992 and 1993. There were some decent singles like…erm…give me a minute…it’ll come to me…Utah Saints? The Wedding Present “Hit Parade” project? There was an awful lot of shite though from the likes of Tetris, Ambassadors of Funk, The Chippendales and WWF Superstars. What the hell was going on?!
The best selling albums weren’t much cop either. Half of the Top 20 were Best Of / Collections with the highest placing studio albums coming from Michael Jackson, Genesis and Right Said Fred with only the latter being released in 1992 itself. The Top 50 reads like a register of rock/pop royalty. Elton John, Diana Ross, Bryan Adams, Queen, U2, Mike Oldfield, Madonna, Tina Turner, ABBA, Cher…Only the likes of REM and The Shamen (again) stand out as even vaguely interesting. Rock music was represented by some already well established names in Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard. Even Nirvana (oh there’s grunge!) were hardly a new name come the end of 1992 and although their No 20 placing in the best sellers list with “Nevermind” was laudable, where were all the other bands following in their wake? Special mention should go to Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine who did score a No 1 album this year against the odds though it doesn’t appear in the best selling Top 50.
Hits We Missed
This section hasn’t been that busy in reviews of recent years because we haven’t missed any TOTP episodes due to issues surrounding presenters but that all changed again in 1992. I should be clear that the Adrian Rose repeats were not broadcast because he refused to sign the waiver and nothing to do with any unpalatable reasons. I haven’t checked exactly how many shows were missed but it was certainly double figures. Then there were songs that made the charts but somehow never made it onto the show, not even a few seconds in the Breakers. Maybe they could gave fitted a few more in if they hadn’t gone so heavy in all those live by satellite exclusive performances. Anyway, whatever the reason, here’s a few we missed.
Buffy Sainte Marie – The Big Ones Get Away
The name Buffy meant nothing to me in 1992. Not even in terms of vampire slayers as the Joss Whedon TV series* didn’t premiere until five years later. Buffy Sainte Marie certainly didn’t register but my store manager in the Our Price in Manchester knew her and was keen to listen to her first new album for sixteen years on the shop stereo. So it was that I came to hear “The Big Ones Get Away” which sounded like it came from a different time altogether and a million miles away from much of the dross that was populating the charts. No, not from a different time but timeless, shining like a beacon through the grey mists of contemporary trends. So understated yet powerful. Genuinely affecting.
*The original film was out this year but it passed me by.
I said earlier I’d never heard of the name Buffy Sainte Marie until 1992 though I had heard unknowingly one of her songs. She co-wrote the Oscar winning “Up Where We Belong” for AnOfficerAndAGentleman. Her legacy will be much more than that though. She is also an artist, pacifist and social activist campaigning to highlight the issues affecting the indigenous peoples of the Americas of which she is one having been born in a reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada to Cree parents.
Released: January1992
Chartpeak: No39
Daisy Chainsaw – Love Your Money
This lot were a riot (or should that be riot grrl?). Forging a reputation for anarchic live gigs with lead singer KatieJane Garside performing in soiled clothes and drinking from a baby’s bottle, these indie rockers gained an unlikely foothold in the actual Top 40 with their “Love Sick Pleasure” EP which featured the track “Love Your Money”. Their USP was Garside’s vocal stylings which ranged from childlike whispering to outright screaming. They hit the spot though on “Love Your Money” which made No 26 in the charts. Perhaps inevitably given Garside’s vocal techniques, the reason we never saw Daisy Chainsaw on TOTP was nothing to do with Adrian Rose nor that they just weren’t asked; they were but had to turn it down due to Garside having a throat infection!
Garside left the band in 1993 becoming a recluse until reappearing in 1999 with Queenadreena.
Released: February1992
Chartpeak: No26
Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart – Visions Of You
I just started watching Danny Boyle’s Pistol last night so including this next artist seems appropriate. Jah Wobble’s name is inextricably linked with John Lydon despite him leaving PiL after their first two albums. He formed Invaders Of The Heart in 1982 but it wasn’t until ten years later that they had a bona fide chart hit.
“Visions Of You” featured the vocals Sinéad O’Connor which perfectly suited this blissed out, vibes heavy track that appeared on the “Rising Above The Bedlam” album. This wasn’t the first time the charts had been home to such an Indian influenced song of course. There was The Beatles’ later work and some of George Harrison’s solo material in the 60s and 70s and Monsoon’s “Ever So Lonely” in 1982. It wasn’t the last either with Kula Shaker ploughing that furrow in 1996 with their “K” album and in particular the track “Govinda”. And yet “Visions Of You” seemed like a genuine outlier back in early 1992.
A colleague I worked with at Our Price in Manchester loved this track and it would get a regular airing in the shop stereo which is probably why I know it as I don’t recall hearing it on the radio much.
Released: February1992
Chartpeak: No35
The Lightning Seeds – Sense
The Lightning Seeds probably get a tougher rap than they deserve. Sure, “Three Lions” has become unlistenable due to it being reactivated every international football tournament that England are in and from “Jollification” onwards it all became a bit formulaic but for me, you can’t doubt that Ian Broudie is one talented guy. Just look at his past history and where he came from. He was a member of Big In Japan with Holly Johnson and Bill Drummond and also in John Peel favourites Original Mirrors. Then he formed Care with ex Wild Swans singer Paul Simpson who came up with one of the best singles of the 80s not to make the Top 40 in “Flaming Sword”. As that decade ended came The Lightning Seeds whose “Pure” single was a highlight of 1989. In between that and the band’s golden period surrounding “Jollification” and “Three Lions” came sophomore album “Sense”.
Remembered mainly for lead single “The Life Of Riley” and its use on MatchOfTheDay’s Goal Of The Month section, it was also home to title track “Sense”. Released as the album’s second single, this largely forgotten track was co written with the legendary Terry Hall and is a wonderful pop record. Hall recorded his own version of the song in 1994 for his album “Home” and it probably trumps Broudie’s vocals version for me but I can’t put it in a review of 1992!
I bought the single and was delighted to discover that “Flaming Sword” was the B-side! What’s not to love!
Released: May1992
Chartpeak: No31
Vegas – Possessed
Talking of Terry Hall…Mr Misery (I love Terry but he is quite dour!) was on a roll with collaborations this year. After Ian Broudie came Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. I think there were more than just the two of them in Vegas but all the publicity surrounding the project focussed on them (I think it was a Tears For Fears or OMD type arrangement). The fusion of creative minds generated one album and three singles but the only one to garner even a sniff of chart action was the lead single “Possessed”. This really does come under the title of ‘lost gem’. Literally lost as the album has long since been deleted and has never appeared on streaming services.
In the most recent issue of ClassicPop magazine within an article on Dave Stewart, there is a little box out on Vegas. In it, Stewart texts the head of a music investment firm whilst being interviewed to ask them to investigate making the album available again (fingers crossed!). He also says record company BMG gave them some money to record a making of the album documentary but instead they spent it arseing about in a disused hotel casino in France remaking sections of The Shining. Apparently that footage is in the faults somewhere but I don’t think there is the same clamour for that to be made available as there is for the album!
The single is almost pop perfection with Terry’s downbeat vocals aligning somehow perfectly with an uplifting chorus that speaks of recovery and rejuvenation. There’s a line in there that speaks probably to many of us but certainly to me – “I even like myself again”. A nice trick if you can pull it off.
Released: September1992
Chartpeak: No32
The Beautiful South – Old Red Eyes Is Back
One of my favourite albums of 1992 was The Beautiful South’s “0898” which contained four great singles including this which was the first to be released. Technically it came out in 1991 (30 Dec) but it was on an Adrian Rose TOTP in the January so I think I’m OK to include it here.
With its clever Sinatra reference in the title, “Old Red Eyes Is Back” was a very literal yet heart wrenching depiction of alcoholism and also a nifty little tune to boot. Despite not making the Top 20, it’s become one of the band’s best remembered tunes I think. Maybe it’s the subject matter that speaks to so many. A sad indictment indeed.
This was actually an EP entitled “Dixie-Narco” rather than a regular single release though “Movin’ On Up” was the track that got all the airplay and indeed was the only track on it that came from their seminal “Screamadelica” album. The other tracks on the EP were “Stone My Soul”, a cover of “Carry Me Home” written by Dennis Wilson for the Beach Boys’ “Holland” album (though never included) and “Screamadelica” which had been recorded at the time for its namesake album but which only made it onto the 20th anniversary Limited Collectors Edition.
The opening song on”Screamadelica”, “Movin On Up” was surely destined to always be released as a single (of sorts as it turns out). Who could resist its uplifting, gospel tinged vibe and the sadly departed Denise Johnson‘s vocals? I couldn’t and the EP duly rests in my singles box.
The performance we missed seems fairly restrained for Bobby Gillespie though he does seem to have a case of restless leg in his right one which involuntarily keeps…ahem…movin’ on up.
TOTPshowfeaturedon: 6February1992
Chartpeak:No11
Everything But The Girl – Love Is Strange
Another EP! Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt have made some great records but the truth is that until the Todd Terry mix of “Missing” went stratospheric, their biggest hits were cover versions. The last time we had seen the couple on TOTP was four years prior to this when their cover of “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” went Top 3. Two albums and no hit singles later, they returned to covers and released an EP of them called…erm…”Covers EP”. The track listing was eclectic rather than obscure featuring “Tougher Than The Rest” by Bruce Springsteen, “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper, “Alison” by Elvis Costello and this one, Mickey and Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange”. Originally released in 1956, its use in the film DirtyDancing brought it to the attention of a whole new generation. Ben and Tracey’s take on it erred towards sweet and gentle but I didn’t mind that at all. Twee did someone say? How dare you?!
Although this was a stand-alone release in the UK, a whole album was cobbled together for the US. Called “Acoustic” it comprised the “Covers EP”, a version of Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train” (that’s how you cover that song Rod Stewart!) and six acoustic versions of EBTG songs. I seem to recall that their record label rereleased their 1991 album “Worldwide”, which had underperformed commercially, with the “Covers EP” tacked onto it in the wake of its success. I could be wrong though.
Damn! We missed a Kim Wilde episode! Oh…erm….yes, anyway…in 1992, after a total of zero chart hits in the decade so far, Kim Wilde set upon a course of reinventing herself as Belinda Carlisle. OK, it wasn’t quite as literal as that but the resemblance of “Love Is Holy” to something like “Heaven On Earth” can’t be ignored. There was good reason why though. It was written by one Rick Nowels who had written some of Belinda’s previous hits. The plan worked with the single returning Kim to the Top 40 for the first time since 1989.
It was only a temporary reprieve though. The album “Love Is…” was a moderate seller and failed to produce any further hit singles. A final chart hurrah arrived the following year when Kim took a cover of Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You” to No 12 to promote her “Singles Collection 1981-1993” album.
Kim is still a massive live draw and her 2018 album “Here Come The Aliens” charted at No 21, her best position since the aforementioned “Love Is…” thirty years ago.
My first impression of Tori Amos was that she was an American Kate Bush. Now that might be seen as a compliment by many but there was much more to Tori than my initial crude assessment. She’s a classically trained pianist with a mezzo-soprano vocal range for a start. A child prodigy, she was admitted to the Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University aged just five. She briefly fronted synth pop band Y Kant Tori Read who failed dismally, the demise of whom inspired Tori to write material for herself. One of them was “Crucify” which would become her second consecutive UK Top 40 hit after “Winter” made No 25 in March. Both were taken from her debut album “Little Earthquakes” which was well received by critics and fans alike.
With a title like “Crucify”, the song was bound to cause some controversy and it was duly banned in the US Bible Belt for being sacrilegious and blasphemous. Conversely, the aforementioned Kate Bush changed the title of her single “Running Up That Hill” from its original name of “A Deal With God” so as to avoid such a reaction in certain territories. Admittedly she was under record company pressure to do so but a difference between her and Amos all the same.
Tori’s performance on TOTP couldn’t have been more different from the ‘91 vintage of female singer songwriter sat at a piano as personified by Beverley Craven. She looks like she can barely keep her bum on the seat and that at any moment she’ll cock a leg onto the piano Little Richard style.
Tori Amos returned in 1994 with a huge hit in “Cornflake Girl” and even bagged a surprise No 1 in 1997 when an Armand van Helden remix of “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big”) topped the charts.
Having started life as buskers on Dublin’s Grafton Street, The Pale eventually came to widespread public attention with the release of their major label debut single “Dogs With No Tails”. As I recall, the track was picked up on by Radio 1 breakfast DJ Simon Mayo who gave it substantial airplay on his show. I’m pretty sure that will be where I heard it first. He had a habit of trying to break records that he had stumbled on as well as being responsible for the resurrection of songs like “Donald Where’s Your Troosers”, “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” and “Kinky Boots” for no discernible reason. He often came across as full of his own importance to me.
“Dogs With No Tails” sounded completely out of sync with the dominant music movements of the time coming on like an Irish Les Négresses Vertes (“Zobi La Mouche” and all that). Maybe that was its appeal. Something to remind us that music didn’t have to be formulaic and homogeneous.
Despite that Mayo endorsement, it just failed to make the Top 40. My wife was one of those who tried to make it a hit and it duly resides in our singles box to this day. Undeterred, the band changed tack, left A&M and released a number of critically well received albums independently. They are still an ongoing entity touring extensively and with their last album being as recent as 2019.
Released: June1992
Chartpeak: No51
NaturalLife – NaturalLife
Seemingly now just a footnote in pop history to inform us that this was Shovell from M People’s first band, there was a bit more to this lot than that. They were the only London band to appear on the bill for the two day CitiesInThePark mini festival to commemorate the recently deceased legendary producer Martin Hannett in 1991.
More exposure came from Radio 1 who’s listeners voted their debut single “Strange World” as their Record of the Week. Despite not charting, there was enough of a buzz about the band got a second tilt at the Top 40 in the shape of the band’s eponymously titled second single. This was again voted Record of the Week and got decent airplay. I was sure this one would be a hit and I duly bought it. I loved its rock guitar / dance percussion hybrid and memorable lyrics (“Business man you’re 21, said you carry your pen like a soldier’s gun”). Sometimes though airplay doesn’t translate to sales and it fell short once more by just seven places. Had the promised land of the Top 40 been reached, maybe a TOTP appearance would have followed and then who knows what. Sadly, that’s a tale for a parallel universe.
Released: Feb 1992
Chartpeak: No47
XTC – TheBalladOfPeterPumpkinhead
XTC really are a criminally underrated band. How can the genius of their work correlate to the lack of commercial success they have received. By 1992, they hadn’t had a Top 40 hit for ten years, the last being the incredible “Senses Working Overtime”. Maybe it didn’t matter to Andy Partridge and co by that point. They had a loyal fanbase and had arguably produced some of their best work in the intervening time.
Then, out of the blue, came another chart entry via the wonderful “Disappointed” which made the giddy heights of No 33. I could have gone with that track for the Hits We Missed section as it didn’t warrant a TOTP appearance. However, I’ve gone with the follow up “The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead” as despite missing the Top 40, is probably better known via its association with the film Dumb And Dumber courtesy of the cover of it by Crash Test Dummies in 1995.
It’s a cracking song (oops! Went a bit Wallace And Gromit there or is it Dominic Raab?) which pulls you in right from the deceptively slow intro which then explodes into life via a harmonica riff and keeps you locked in for the next four minutes helter skelter ride. The Crash Test Dummies version is almost identical apart from featuring a female lead vocalist (Ellen Reid) instead of the distinctive bass-baritone of Brad Roberts. Had the Canadian band already got permission from XTC to record it prior to the film coming out or was it specifically recorded for the soundtrack? If the latter, why didn’t the film makers just ask to use the original? The Crash Test Dummies did what XTC couldn’t and took the song into the charts where it peaked at No 30.
I bought the XTC version and the “Disappointed” single which both came from the band’s “Nonsuch” album.
Released: May 1992
Chartpeak: No71
Spinal Tap – TheMajestyOfRock
How many times have I watched ThisIsSpinal Tap? I’ve lost count but every time I do catch it, I find another little detail of brilliant comedy. And oh please let the rumour that has recently surfaced about a sequel actually happening be true. Back in 1992, the main protagonists of the project had already reconvened but not for a follow up film. No, they had recorded an album – the pun-tastic “Break Like The Wind” – and even did some live dates to promote it. For me, that blurring of the lines between fiction and reality that helped add layers of intertextuality is what’s made the project endure all these years.
The marketing campaign for the album included the brilliant tool of getting the Our Price chain to amend their weekly instore charts to include “Break Like The Wind” going in straight at No 0. Positioned above that weeks No 1 album, it was all too much for one customer I served who came to the counter looking for an explanation as to what on earth had happened to the chart. “But you can’t have position zero” he argued. I tried to explain it was just a promotional joke on behalf of the record company but he wasn’t satisfied with my explanation and wandered off muttering the words “number zero” and “pah”!
The album’s actual chart position was a peak of No 51 and it included two singles – “Bitch School” which was a minor Top 40 hit and this one, “The Majesty Of Rock” which missed the chart altogether. The lyrics are gloriously ridiculous:
To the majesty of rock, the pageantry of roll
The crowing of the cock, the running of the foal
And that’s the majesty of rock, the mystery of roll
The darning if the sock, the scoring of the goal
Lovely stuff. My mate Robin caught the band at the Albert Hall on the tour. Here he is attempting to get some skin off the band…
Released: May1992
Chartpeak: No61
Tom Cochrane – LifeIsAHighway
This was a Top 10 hit in the US which never translated to the UK. I’d never heard of Tom Cochrane before and I never heard anything about him after this track but apparently he was the the leader of Canadian 80s rockers Red Rider. During the Summer of ‘92, my Our Price colleague Knoxy spent a few weeks on holiday in America and when he came back said that he’d heard this song everywhere he went. Based on that, I thoroughly expected it to be huge over here but it just didn’t happen. Maybe it was too formulaic US rock for a a UK population who were enamoured with KWS at that point!
Years later, a version of it by an outfit called Rascal Flatts covered the song and it was used in the soundtrack to the Walt Disney/Pixar animation Cars. See what they did there?
Released: June1992
Chartpeak:No 62
A House – Endless Art
Now I have to admit that I didn’t know of this tune at the time but it definitely is of 1992 vintage. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered it randomly on Spotify (randomly in terms of I wasn’t looking for it anyway. I know the algorithms make pure randomness impossible). Like The Pale earlier, this lot were from Dublin and just like “Dogs With No Tails”, “Endless Art” was not your typical indie rock song. Yes, the idea of a ‘list’ song wasn’t original (think “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel, “Nothing Ever Happens by Del Amitri etc) but the way they executed it made it stand out for me. Maybe it’s just Dave Couse’s Irish accent that brings it to life. The list of artists from various fields and eras is remarkable easy on the ear with a couple of rhyming names placed in close proximity to aid the song’s flow. I think my favourite is “Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse RIP”. The innovative stop-motion video for the single drew lots of praise but even that wasn’t enough to propel it into the Top 40. They finally creeped in two years later with “Here Come the Good Times (Part 1)” but the band split a couple of years after that.
Their legacy far outstripped their commercial achievements with the Irish Times rock critics voting their “I Am The Greatest” album the third best Irish long player of all time behind only “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine and “Achtung Baby” by U2. Indeed, some have argued that they were more important than Bono et al.
A House. RIP.
Released: June 1992
Chart peak: No 46
Martin Stephenson And The Daintees – Big Sky New Light
I’d known about Martin Stephenson since the mid 80s when The Daintees (as they just were back then) released “Trouble Town”, a marvellous, uplifting little pop tune on Kitchenware Records. Then came the switch to major label London Records, a repositioning of the band as Martin Stephenson And The Daintees and the “Boat To Bolivia” album which attracted superlative praise from the critics but not much in the way of sales. “Gladsome, Humour & Blue” became their highest charting album in 1988 and then just as I was leaving the bubble of being a student came “Salutation Road” which is just a great album.
Their final album for London was “A Boy’s Heart” and “Big Sky New Light” was the lead single from it. Not my favourite Stephenson tune by any means but in a year that saw Mr Big and Nick Berry very nearly top the charts, I wasn’t going to miss out this little bit of quality to balance the equation. A gently driven yet solid song, it saw Martin enliven it with some shouted vocals and even the odd ‘yeah!’. I bought the single though I have to say it was from the bargain bin.
Martin went onto a prolific solo career beginning with the following year’s “High Bells Ring Thin” album and he has also reactivated the Daintees to re-record all four of their albums on the 30th anniversary of their release.
Released: June 1992
Chart peak: No 71
Pele – Megalomania
Hailing from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire (I once knew a girl from Ellesmere Port – that’s it, that’s the story. Not great is it?) this lot built up a strong live following and were quickly picked up by M&G Records and set to work recording their debut album “Fireworks”. When it finally came out it was a Recommended Release in the Our Price chain and hopes were high that it would accrue some steady sales but ultimately it didn’t really light up the sky. It did however feature three very good singles that received decent airplay but which all failed to chart.
The middle one of those was “Megalomania” which was a bright and breezy pop tune that was perfect for daytime playlists. All the singles were to be fair. Listening back to them now, they’re kind of like a poppier version of Pale Fountains who I loved. Despite being ignored by the UK record buying public, “Megalomania” was a No 1 in South Africa and the band toured with the likes of Del Amitri and The Pogues. A record company dispute caused the band to split but main man Ian Prowse carved out a successful music career forming Amsterdam and striking up a working relationship with Elvis Costello.
Released: February1992
Chartpeak: No73
Their Season In The Sun
Charles And Eddie
They arrived out of nowhere with a retro sounding yet broad church appealing song that would conquer the charts. Not quite the classic definition one hit wonder of one huge song then nothing – they had three further UK hits though none made it any higher than No 29 – but it was damn close. Certainly Charles And Eddie (terrible name) were never bigger than they were in the Autumn of 1992.
Curtis Stigers
An unlikely pop star, Curtis came from a jazz club background but emerged with the backing of major label Arista as some sort of rock ‘n’ soul artist, Daryl Hall and John Oates style. Amazingly it worked and Curtis racked up two consecutive Top 10 hits in the first half of the year. Suddenly the spell was broken and his biggest hit after that would be a No 28 five years later.
Curtis returned to his jazz roots recording multiple albums for the Concord Jazz label and if his Twitter account is anything to go by, remains a thoroughly decent chap which is all that matters to me.
KWS
The biggest band to come out of Nottingham since Paper Lace. It’s quite an accolade (don’t tell Tindersticks I said it though). Similar to Charles And Eddie, they weren’t quite the one hit wonders people might suspect they are. They actually accrued five UK Top 40 singles including a follow up Top 10 hit but it’s their cover of KC And The Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” that they will forever be associated with.
This really sounded like lowest common denominator stuff – never mind the quality, feel the sales. They were the soul brother to Undercover’s poppier take on the genre (more of them later). Inevitably, their story ended as all such short lived encounters with fame do – with one of them appearing on the Identity Parade round on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
The Shamen
It seems a bit unfair to include The Shamen in this section as they existed long before 1992 and for many years after too. This 12 month period though brought them commercial success like no other before or since. A Top 3 album and four Top 10 singles including the controversy raking No 1 “Ebeneezer Goode”. It was a level of profile that they would never reach again. Maybe they took too long (three years) to release their next album “Axis Mutatis” or maybe they were undone by the rise of Britpop? Either way, The Shamen will always have 1992 to remind them how big they once were.
Shanice
Finally the classic one hit wonder! One enormous single and then no further Top 40 entries ever – not under her own name at least. “I Love Your Smile” bounded to No 2 propelled by that infectious ‘de der dup dup der der der’ vocal hook but then nothing. Zip. Nada. Shanice paid the bills by doing backing vocals for the likes of Toni Braxton and Usher whilst also branching out into acting and even reality TV with her show with her husband Flex And Shanice. Flex?!
Tasmin Archer
An intriguing marketing campaign (‘Who is Tasmin Archer?’) helped launch this breakthrough artist into the stratosphere but in reality it was the strength of her debut single “Sleeping Satellite” that achieved success which she couldn’t have conceived of in her wildest dreams. So radio friendly was it that it was surely cooked up in the hit song laboratory. It soared to No 1 and hinted at huge things for Tasmin but those “Great Expectations” were never really fulfilled. Her album went Top 10 and three more singles from it were hits though none bigger than No 16. Even an EP of Elvis Costello covers couldn’t reactivate her career. By the time of her second album in 1996, she’d been mostly forgotten leaving people to ask ‘Who is Tasmin Archer?’ all over again.
Undercover
This lot’s short lived success was almost inexplicable. Lame dance versions of rock/ pop standards fronted by a guy who looked like he’d turned up after his other job as a bingo caller? Come on! Seriously? Two big and one smaller hit was the extent of their success before obscurity beckoned. For a short while though they were Top of the Shop Pops.
Last Words
And it’s done. Another TOTP year reviewed and another stinker. A completely directionless 12 months with the charts full of all sorts of crap. In the non music world, there was another General Election win for The Tories (BOO!) and my beloved Chelsea were still awful and five years away from actually winning anything. Personally, there was a big change for me work wise with an unexpected promotion and move to a different shop which I loved. TOTP itself was still finding its way after the sweeping changes of the ‘year zero’ revamp. For my money, those changes hadn’t worked in that the show wasn’t substantially any better than the complacent dinosaur it had become. The endless ‘exclusives’ were tedious and the four Breakers in under two minutes supremely annoying. By the end of the year, most of the new presenters had gone leaving a hardcore of just Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin. Clearly it wasn’t working for new executive producer Stanley Appel either. And so 1993 beckons. In my head , this year was one of the worst of the whole decade. Please, please let me be wrong…
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.
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 