Faithless

TOTP 04 DEC 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

We’ve entered December, the month of Christmas, time off work* and office parties talking of which, our presenter, Kate Thornton, looks like she’s come dressed for the party season-in a sparkly red dress and crimped hair. I wonder if any of the tunes on this show might have soundtracked some office parties that festive season.

*I only got Christmas Day off this year as the record shop chain I was working for (Our Price) introduced Boxing Day opening for the first time. Bah and indeed, humbug!

As it’s Christmas, we start with a ballad. Not just any ballad mind but a boy band ballad. Yes, just seven days after Five threw their hats into the ring for a huge hit with a big love song, so did Boyzone. I have to admit that I can’t place “I Love The Way You Love Me” at all but if I had to, it would be in the bin. A country-tinged ballad, it redefines the word ‘cynical’ meaning that it’s an ‘ickle’ song that it was a ‘sin’ to record. Oh alright, it’s not that bad but it’s not that good either is it? Again like Five, the vocal heavy lifting is done by just two of the five members of the band but then that was pretty much always the case with Boyzone – did any of the other three that weren’t Ronan or Stephen ever get a solo spot? I don’t think so, not on the hits anyway. And yet it went straight in at No 2 and but for the Cher phenomenon would have been another No 1 for them. Two and a half years on from the initial demise of Take That, you’d have to say that the five Irish lads had taken their opportunity to be the UK’s biggest boy band. In that period, of the eight singles which they released, four went to No 2 and four went to No 1. They loved the way you loved them.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Unlikely but maybe it could have soundtracked an illicit snog by the photocopier.

A ‘forgotten’ single next or at least one that isn’t well remembered I suspect. “War Of Nerves” by All Saints anyone? The fifth and final track lifted from their debut eponymous album, it was presumably released just so the fans had something to buy at Christmas. Or was it, as we saw recently with the example of James releasing a remix of “Sit Down”, just an attempt to revitalise sales of an album which had already been in the shops for more than a year? Either way, its peak of No 7 was a long way short of the success of their previous three singles which all topped the charts. Was that down to the fact that so many people had already bought the album or was it just that the song wasn’t that strong? I think probably the former as, although “War Of Nerves” is understated, it does have a quiet power and definite charm. Maybe it worked better as an album track? Certainly the performance here is very laid back and not at all pushy nor forward with the group all sat on a sofa or a plush chair possibly due to Melanie Blatt’s baby bump as prefaced by Kate Thornton in her intro. However, if any of us thought that the All Saints bubble had burst with the smaller hit that “War Of Nerves” gave the group, we would all be proved wrong and then some when their next release – “Pure Shores” – was their fourth No 1 hit.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Doubtful. More likely “Never Ever” or “Lady Marmalade” might have got a spin.

Did anyone else watch Ally McBeal back in the day? For a while there it as quite the TV sensation. Winning a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy in its first two seasons, the legal comedy-drama TV series starring Calista Flockhart was seen as groundbreaking in its use of surreal running gags and its uptake of one of the very first internet memes ‘The Dancing Baby’.

My wife and I enjoyed the show at the time but I don’t think we watched it much after those first two series when the ratings started to fall away. Anyway, as well as internet memes, the show heavily featured a soundtrack that was provided by the previously unknown Vonda Shepherd. OK, not completely unknown as she’d had a hit in 1987 in America with “Can’t We Try”, a duet with Dan Hill of “Sometimes When We Touch” fame. In the UK though, zip, nothing, nada. Then came the Ally McBeal break. “Searchin’ My Soul” was the theme tune and would be the single released from the soundtrack album but Shepherd was more than just a one track pony. She recorded the whole album though, in fairness, most were cover versions of pop standards. She even bagged herself a regular cameo spot on the show as the resident singer at the bar the show’s protagonists would often find themselves visiting (usually at the end of each episode). Here’s the thing though. Despite the fact that I used to watch Ally McBeal in its early years, I don’t recognise its theme tune at all. How can that be? Yes, it was never played in full on the show but even so.

However, I definitely remember something quite specific about this whole Ally McBeal era. The Our Price shop where I was working would sometimes receive promo copies of forthcoming albums to play in store and plug ahead of the release date. We received one such promo for the Ally McBeal soundtrack. It wasn’t the whole album just a sampler with maybe half a dozen songs on it. We hadn’t really played it that much and it was just knocking about near the shop stereo. Anyway, a customer came in and she was desperate to buy the music from Ally McBeal, her favourite TV show. I explained that neither the album nor the single had been released yet. However, I suddenly remembered that promo CD. Now, in theory, such promo material should only be signed out to staff but the poor woman was desperate to go home with something and as I’m a generous type of guy, I said I would ask the manager if it could be signed out to her. In return, I asked if she could make a donation into one of our charity boxes. Everyone’s a winner! Except…the manager was dead against the idea despite my protestations that it might inspire customer loyalty. In the end, he relented but made me feel like I was out of order for even suggesting such a thing. This was the manager who I just couldn’t get along with and who was a protagonist in my deteriorating mental health. He had a problem with trying to do a customer a small favour yet I’d witnessed some of his practices that were undoubtedly not squeaky clean including flouting health and safety rules when it came to his staff. As before, I won’t mention his name but let’s just say he went be getting a Christmas card from me anytime soon.

Would it have made an office party playlist?Probably not well known enough even despite Ally McBeal.

“So which one’s your favourite?” asks Kate Thornton at the end of the next performance which is “Tragedy” by Steps. Clare Richards always seemed to be the vocal focal point of the group but personally, I always had a soft spot for Faye Tozer – can’t think why (ahem). I couldn’t really be doing with the two blokes and that just leaves Lisa Scott-Lee. Have I ever told you my incredibly tenuous connection story to Lisa Scott-Lee? I once worked with someone who was friends with someone who was related to Lisa! Said relative worked in McDonalds at the time which seemed light years away from the life Scott-Lee was living and I always wondered if her relation held any feelings of jealousy towards her? Anyway, apparently she’s the best member of Steps and here’s why…

Lisa Scott-Lee is clearly the best member of Steps and here’s why that is

Would it have made an office party playlist? Most definitely.

Faithless are up next with a second single lifted from their “Sunday 8PM” album. Not quite as impactful as “God Is A DJ”, “Take The Long Way Home” nevertheless adheres to the their usual sonic blueprint of a dominant portentous, ominous sound punctuated by Maxi Jazz’s almost spoken word vocals and those fleeting, shuffling beats. If the track’s title sounds familiar, like me, you may be thinking of that song by Supertramp from their “Breakfast In America” album. It got me thinking what Faithless would have done with a cover version of “Take The Long Way Home” as opposed to their own composition so I asked AI. This is what it said:

“If Faithless covered Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home,” it would likely transform the classic rock ballad into an anthemic, pulsing electronic track, blending Maxi Jazz’s soulful vocals with Sister Bliss’s sweeping synths and Rollo Armstrong’s beats, creating a euphoric dancefloor version full of spiritual depth, contrasting the original’s wistful melancholy with rave energy, akin to their own hits like “Insomnia” but with Supertramp’s narrative heart…Ultimately, a Faithless cover would flip the Supertramp classic from a reflective, almost sad, acoustic-driven song into a hands-in-the-air, communal dance anthem”. 

Hmm. It’s not really telling me anything I couldn’t have thought up or written myself. In fact, it doesn’t really say anything at all other than generic guff. It did do it in seconds though whereas I seem to be taking longer and longer to write these reviews. I guess AI isn’t distracted by cups of tea or mince pies like I am. Or is it?

Would it have made an office party playlist? Not mainstream enough I would have thought but probably caused some dance floor action in a club setting.

After tempting Madonna into the TOTP studio for only the second time in 14 years, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t going to show Madge’s performance of her latest hit “The Power Of Goodbye/Little Star” there just once. Inevitably, it would get re-shown two weeks on and, as that first performance was an ‘exclusive’ a fortnight ahead of the single’s release, Cowey even had the added rationality for featuring it again as it had only just entered the charts at No 6. A canny move by the Mackem TV producer. Kate Thornton rather over eggs her intro by saying “This next lady’s sold over 100 million albums but she still likes to drop into TOTP”. Two in person appointments within a 14 year period would suggest the opposite Kate.

Would it have made an office party playlist? No chance. Far too slow a track. “Holiday” on the other hand…

A grinning Will Smith appearing on screen with a message for his UK fans whilst introducing the video for his latest hit seemed to be a regular event around this time. Here he was again with a segue into “Miami”, his third Top 3 hit of the year. Taken from his “Big Willie Style” album, it was yet again a pop/R&B/rap track based around a retro hit. After borrowing from Sister Sledge and Bill Withers/Grover Washington Jr previously, Smith turned to the 1979 smash “And The Beat Goes On” by The Whispers this time. You’d have to say that the writing team behind those hits were right on the money when it came to nailing their commercial appeal. The formula would continue to be applied into 1999 with a further brace of No 2 hits built around samples from the likes of The Clash, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five and Stevie Wonder.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Yeah, maybe.

It’s six weeks out of seven in the top spot for Cher with “Believe”. Keeping the challenge of Boyzone at arms length this time around, the sales of her hit were showing no signs of slowing down. Could she manage to hold on to not only have the biggest selling single in the UK that year but also the Christmas No 1? History shows that she didn’t with *SPOILER ALERT* the Spice Girls securing their third consecutive Yuletide topper but “Believe”’s chart position of No 4 in Christmas week, over two months on from its debut showed how much hold it still had on the record buying public.

Would it have made an office party playlist? Absolutely!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1BoyzoneI Love The Way You Love MeNever
2All SaintsWart Of NervesNo but I think my wife and the album
3Vonda ShepherdSearchin’ My SoulNope
4StepsTragedy / HeartbeatNo
5FaithlessTake The Long Way HomeNah
6MadonnaThe Power Of Goodbye/Little StarSee 2 above
7Will SmithMiamiI did not
8CherBelieveAnd 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

TOTP 04 SEP 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

With Jo Whiley having vacated her seat in the TOTP presenter merry-go-round recently, it’s time for Kate Thornton to take centre stage. Having already passed the audition with her guest stint back in July (when Jayne Middlemiss was ill supposedly), here she was as a fully fledged member of the team. I quite liked her – she seemed like a safe pair of hands and, crucially, didn’t do that knowing head tilt/smirk thing that Middlemiss did ALL THE TIME!

Speaking of things that happened on the show all the time, here are Boyzone singing “No Matter What” for the fourth week in a row. Yes, I know they were also the last artist we saw on the previous show thereby making a curious set of bookend appearances but that was no unusual occurrence in the Chris Cowey era. And yes, I know they had slipped from No 1 to No 3 but again, that was no obstacle to consecutive appearances under Cowey. However, he was really taking the piss this time though as this was literally just a reshowing of the same performance that ended last week’s show! Unlike their previous appearances, the lads weren’t all in matching outfits this time – it was hardly dress down Friday stuff but it was a more casual approach all the same. According to Kate Thornton, the reason for them being on the show again was to acknowledge that that their latest album “Where We Belong” had gone back to No 1 in the album charts off the back of “No Matter What”. Having checked, this is true – it had debuted at No 1 back in June and then spent three months kicking around the upper end of the charts before jumping from No 21 to the top again this week. OK, so you could argue that was, indeed, reason enough to grant them another slot in the running order (I don’t agree as it goes).

What doesn’t make sense here though is that “Where We Belong” originally didn’t include “No Matter What”, the song that was sparking all this interest in the album and generating all those sales. A special edition came out in the November that included it plus “I Love The Way You Love Me” which was subsequently released as a single but back in September, the original UK version of the album didn’t feature “No Matter What”. This clearly didn’t matter to the record buying public as they helped create a Joe Cocker / Jennifer Warnes* moment for the lads pushing “Where We Belong” up to the top spot.

*”Up Where We Belong”? No? Please yourselves.

Steps weren’t helping themselves when it came to dispelling those ‘ABBA on speed’ accusations were they? Third single “One For Sorrow” actively encouraged those comparisons with its pure pop confection ways. I know I’ve previously dismissed them as bubblegum/ candy floss but time retrospectively seems to have been kind to this particular track with the Official UK Chart inducting it into their ‘Pop Gem Hall of Fame’. Clearly taking inspiration from the traditional children’s nursery rhyme about counting magpies, it would peak at No 2 becoming their then biggest hit. For any one of my age though, the phrase ‘one for sorrow’ will always be associated with the legendary kids TV programme Magpie…

For those who don’t know it, Magpie was the delinquent cousin to BBC’s Blue Peter. Way cooler and with much hipper (and attractive) presenters, it was to Blue Peter what Tiswas was to Multi Coloured Swap Shop. So would Steps have been Magpie or Blue Peter viewers?

Next up is one of the shortest chart hits of the year. Clocking in at just two minutes long (though Kate Thornton gets her maths wrong by calling it “178 seconds of pure Mansun action” which by my reckoning is nearly three minutes – maybe she wasn’t such a safe pair of hands after all?) “Being A Girl (Part 1)” was Mansun’s ninth consecutive Top 40 hit. Taken from their “Six” album, in its original format it was 7:53 long but it was chopped up and its opening two minutes were released as the lead track from their “Nine EP” (hence the “Part 1” suffix). Its frenetic, almost pop-punk pace was at odds with the band’s previous output. Apparently, “Part 2” is of a much more experimental rock nature though I can’t say I’ve ever listened to it. Now, when I said that “One For Sorrow” by Steps was inspired by the children’s nursery rhyme about counting magpies, I hadn’t bargained on it being completely trumped by the origin of one of Mansun’s lyrics. Check these out:

Blimey! I reckon Zhou would have been a Blue Peter fan rather than a Magpie viewer then.

Before the revolving door of members that was/is (?) the Sugababes, there was the Honeyz. Yes, perhaps the most notable thing about this lot was the times that their line up changed with individuals leaving and returning multiple times. Here though, they were in their infancy with their original members and debut hit “Finally Found”. Its smooth production and sound with a trip-off-the-tongue chorus was always going to find a home in the upper echelons of the charts at this time when you couldn’t move for all girl groups peddling a pop infused R&B sound. However, I did find myself asking whether saturation point was being reached? I mean, they weren’t really offering anything new were they? It could have been Eternal up there on stage singing that song couldn’t it?

Just like Eternal, the Honeyz had a member leave the group just as their success began but for Louise Nurding read Heavenli Roberts (formerly Abdi) who dropped out after just two singles. Unlike Louise though, she would rejoin the group, leave again, rejoin again, leave again, rejoin, leave one more time before finally rejoining with her current status being a fully paid up member of Honeyz. Confused? You will be. Her replacement the first time she left was Mariama Goodman who we saw on TOTP just the other week as part of Solid HarmoniE. Her time with her new group was short lived (about 14 months) before she left and was replaced by the retuning Heavenli Abdi. She would remain with the group until 2003 when they spilt following diminishing commercial returns and being dropped by their label. However, following an appearance by the original line up on ITV’s Hit Me, Baby, One More Time show in 2005, the group was reactivated and went back out on tour. However, Naima Belkhiati wanted to pursue an acting career and so was replaced for said tour by Candace Cherry, sister of lead vocalist Célena. By August of 2006, it was all change again as Heavenli Abdi departed for the second time and was replaced by Mariam Goodman (again). They continued with this line up until 2010 when the group went into hibernation. Two years on and Honeyz were back once more, lured together by another ITV show The Big Reunion and for this convening, the trio was Cherry, Abdi and Goodman, the first time that the latter two had been in the same line up together. The trio toured throughout 2013 before Abdi left for a third time in 2014. The duo of Cherry and Goodman released the first Honeyz single for 14 years in 2015 but it failed to chart. Over the next few years the duo would appear in reality TV shows such as Celebrity Coach Trip and Pointless Celebrities before, in 2023, Abdi announced she had rejoined the group. Within a year Goodman left again was replaced by Candace Cherry which is the current state of the line up. Phew! I’ve finally found the end of the story of the Honeyz group changes. Got all that? Good.

“Now watch out Songs Of Praise. The big fella’s got a new job. Haven’t you heard? God’s a DJ”. So says Kate Thornton in her intro to the next hit which can only be “God Is A DJ” by Faithless. I can’t recall such casual blasphemy since football commentator Alan Parry called Liverpool legend “the creator supreme” back in the early 80s. As Danny Baker said in his Match Of The 80s series, “The creator supreme? One in the eye for Christians everywhere there”.

Apparently, the inspiration for the track’s title came from a slogan on a T-shirt that the band’s guitarist Dave Randall used to wear to rehearsal if you were wondering. This was the lead single from the band’s second album “Sunday 8PM” and whilst there appears to be a lot going on sonically, my main take away from re-listening to it was that it seemed like there was a void where maybe some lyrics could/should have been. I get that it’s a dance track and so maybe words aren’t the thing but if you call said track a provocative title like “God Is A DJ”, I was hoping for a bit more than the late Maxi Jazz repeatedly telling us “This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts”. I know he says (and literally says, not sings nor raps) more than that and that there are fuller lyrics to be found on the internet that maybe exist in different remixes to the edit we get here but still. Is the message as simple as ‘music is my religion’? Conversely you could say it’s full of words and meaning if, as I suspect, Maxi was doing some sign language of what he was saying in this performance. Was that what he was doing? I think I’m just confused by the whole thing and better move on to…

…The Corrs…for the second time in consecutive weeks with “What Can I Do” despite dropping from No 3 to No 7. The technique of superimposing the presenter over the artist in the intro is already starting to look really tired and jaded, probably even back in 1998. When Kate Thornton moves towards the camera at one point, it really emphasises the clunky nature of the technology and looks like a special effect from a 70s episode of Dr. Who or something. Compare Kate with the guy hovering in this clip…

As for The Corrs, they were on the verge of their imperial phase with their next two singles going to No 6 and No 2 before they scored their first and only No 1 in the summer of 2000.

Back when Madonna was still relevant and hadn’t been totally eclipsed as the most famous woman on the planet by Taylor Swift, her releasing a new single was still a major deal. Faced with such an event, Chris Cowey’s ridiculous no video policy wilted before the power of her Madgesty. However, Cowey would still get his bit in by allowing just 1:45 worth of screen time to be shown of the promo for “Drowned World (Substitute For Love)”. There may have been good reason for Cowey to cut short the video for the third single from and opening track of Madge’s “Ray Of Light” album but he didn’t exercise that here. There was some controversy surrounding the scenes where Madonna is chased in her car by paparazzi on motorbikes which critics likened to the events that led to the death of Princess Diana the year before amid accusations of insensitivity and crassness. However, we get to see those scenes in this short clip so it’s shortened length clearly wasn’t due to the editing out of the offending images. In Madonna’s defence, her publicist Liz Rosenberg said that they were nothing to do with Princess Diana and were a reflection of Madge’s own personal experiences with the paparazzi. As for the song itself, it’s a bit of a lost classic that deserved a higher chart placing than its No 10 peak. That William Orbit production that permeates the whole album is very much in evidence with Madonna, whose voice I’ve never really considered as her biggest asset, giving a great vocal performance. Is it fair to say that “Ray Of Light” is Madonna’s best ever album? Quite possibly.

As we saw earlier, Boyzone no longer had the No 1 single but who had knocked them off? I can’t decide if the next occupants of the top spot were a surprise or not? What do we think about “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” by Manic Street Preachers being No 1? I don’t mean the quality of the song but that they could sell enough copies to outstrip everyone else. On the one hand, they’d nearly achieved that chart feat two years earlier when perhaps their best known song “A Design For Life” made No 2. This was backed up by a three times platinum selling album and the fact that all four singles released from it went Top 10. That album – “Everything Must Go” – had seen the band breakthrough into the mainstream so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that anticipation for new material would have increased off the back of it, thus contributing to the sales of “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” when it was finally released. Maybe I’ve already answered my question with an earlier comment though when referring to “A Design For Life” as ‘perhaps their best known song’. Is that why, in retrospect, I’m surprised? The fact that ‘their best known song’ wasn’t their first chart topper? Or is it even that the song that did do it for the band has such an unwieldy* title? Is it a purely a case of me being offended by the linguistic aesthetics?

*Apparently, it’s in the Guinness World Records as the No 1 single with the longest title without brackets

So what about the song itself? Inspired by a Spanish Republican propaganda poster warning of the horrors of not resisting Franco’s nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, it’s suitably epic sounding with those trademark broad sonic brush strokes whilst James Dean Bradfield manages to make that elongated title fit into a chorus somehow. It’s a good song but not a great one in my opinion and certainly not my favourite Manics tune. In the end though, it was their first No 1 single and so has its own individual elevated place in the band’s history but somehow I can’t help thinking whether it would have topped the charts without that other factor which I haven’t considered before – the dastardly record company tactic of first week discounting.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Boyzone No Matter WhatNever
2StepsOne For SorrowI’d rather listen to the Magpie theme tune
3MansunBeing A Girl (Part 1)Negative
4HoneyzFinally FoundNope
5FaithlessGod Is A DJNo
6The CorrsWhat Can I DoNah
7MadonnaDrowned World (Substitute For Love)No but my wife had the album
8Manic Street PreachersIf You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be NextI 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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002lj3p/top-of-the-pops-04091998

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

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

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

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

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

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

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

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SuedeBeautiful OnesNo but I had the album
2FaithlessInsomniaI did not
3BabybirdYou’re GorgeousNope
4Future Sound Of LondonMy KingdomNever happening
5Gina GI Belong To YouYou didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6EnyaOrinoco Flow (Sail Away)Nah
7E-MotionThe Naughty North And The Sexy SouthDefinitely not
8MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo
9CastFlyingNegative
10Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereAnd no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced