Fat Boy Slim

TOTP 30 APR 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

The day after this TOTP aired, Andrew Motion was announced as the next Poet Laureate in succession to previous incumbent Ted Hughes. His term would last ten years until he handed the baton to Carol Ann Duffy whilst the current Poet Laureate is Simon Armitage. You know what’s coming now…I wonder if the artists on tonight’s show have any connection with that role or poetry in general?

Our host is Jamie Theakston and we begin with last week’s No 1 (of course we do) which has been deposed and is currently No 3 in the charts. There was clearly a lot of belief, willingness and capacity from the management people behind Martine McCutcheon when it came to ensuring her transition from soap darling to pop star. From signing a significant record deal with Virgin, being given the song “Perfect Moment” as her debut single (a song A&R person Cheryl Robson had been sat on for three years) to having an hour-long television documentary about her journey from EastEnders actress to a singer, all the stops were being pulled out to make sure the project was a success. And a success it was. A No 2, platinum selling album, the 14th best selling single of the year and a pair of No 6 hits to follow.

It couldn’t sustain though. Two more albums quickly followed but failed to match the achievements of its predecessor. It seemed that appetite for Marine as a chart frequenter had been satiated. Why? For me, the cause of her commercial decline was that the initial burst of sales came off the back of her association with her EastEnders persona Tiffany. It’s as if people were in some sort of mourning for the death of that character and needed something to buy as a souvenir or keepsake. Then, the strength of her debut hit spilled over into sales for her album and before you knew it, momentum was created and away she went. However, the larger the distance of time that separated Martine from Tiffany, the less the connection between her and the public. That momentum waned until she was just another pop singer. Maybe she should have reactivated her pop career after her star turn in Love Actually when the public fell in love with another of her character portrayals. That didn’t happen and the last album she released came in 2017 which made a respectable No 17 in the charts but there has been nothing from her since…apart from this of course….

Poet Laureate link: “Perfect Moment” was written by Wendy Page and one J. Marr. In his podcast The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed, Simon Armitage spoke to Johnny Marr about his life as a musician. OK, the J. Marr that co-wrote “Perfect Moment” wasn’t the ex-Smiths guitarist but give me a break!

Just like Suede on last week’s show, Texas were also making a bit of a comeback after being away for a couple of years and also like Brett and the boys, they had to make a decision about which musical direction should be part of their return route. Unlike Suede, it seemed to me that they decided to basically just replicate their previous album which had brought them into the mainstream and delivered all that commercial success associated with such a transition. I’m sure the band themselves would be able to point to all sorts of details that spelt out the differential nuances between “White On Blonde” and “The Hush” but to your average pop music consumer, it surely felt like more of the same. Certainly, lead single “In Our Lifetime” retained that radio friendly polish that we’d come to expect from the second coming of the band. What was different though was the fact that this was the first time that the band had not employed an external producer for an album, preferring instead to keep it in house with guitarist Johnny McElhone twiddling the knobs on the mixing desk.

The chart performance of “In Our Lifetime” suggested that the record buying public were more than happy with a healthy helping of what they’d been served up before as its peak of No 4 maintained the band’s run of Top 10 singles by becoming their sixth on the trot. And why not? It’s a perfectly decent rock/pop tune with its strident yet melodic looped guitar hook and ‘wickedy-wick’ sound effect that introduces the chorus plus, of course, Sharleen Spiteri’s smooth vocals. For the moment, Texas were still in the ascendancy and doing nothing wrong at all.

Poet Laureate link: The state of Texas has its own Poet Laureate designation scheme, appointing a new incumbent every one to two years to promote poetry and recognize the literary contributions of Texans.

Fancy a bit of Busta Rhymes? No, me neither but executive producer Chris Cowey did and to be fair, the rapper was at No 5 with his single “What’s It Gonna Be?!” so…At the risk of sounding like my Dad commenting on my musical preferences as a teenager, this was just noise and a horrible one at that. “The mightiest and fastest rapper” ever to appear on the show is how Jamie Theakston describes Rhymes. Well, he perhaps he was but that doesn’t mean he could make a record that was listenable and he didn’t with this track. Even the presence of Janet Jackson couldn’t save it though I’m not sure I could even hear her contribution over all that shouting which seems to be about making his baby’s body wet. Eeuuww! Cowey could at least have shown the video in full (rather than on a big screen in the background) seeing as it was one of the most expensive ever produced at a cost of $2 million. The sound mix was much better on the promo as well with Busta’s rantings toned down more than in this studio performance. Not for me thank you.

Poet Laureate link: Poetry? Busta Rhymes? Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for this one.

Some blatant and shameless self promotion next as the Beeb uses its historic, flagship music show to advertise another of its programmes. If Miami 7 doesn’t ring any bells then the collective noun for its stars certainly will. S Club 7 were put together by pop impresario Simon Fuller when he was left at a loose end after the Spice Girls gave him the boot as their manager and his first action was to put together another pop group but this time he’d recruit more compliant people who he perceived wouldn’t tell him where to get off as his previous charges had.

Despite the fact that the Spice Girls project had turned into a global marketing operation encompassing different media and more merchandising than anyone could possibly want or house, Fuller reckoned there were yet more promotional opportunities to be explored. He envisioned a brand that was cross-media marketable, that could conquer both the music charts and TV ratings. Teaming up with his brother Kim (who wrote the Spice World movie story), they devised the TV show Miami 7 which the BBC picked up and broadcast on their CBBC channel. It was only a month into its run at the point of this TOTP broadcast and so, with show still on our screens, the Beeb indulged in some cross channel promotion and we got to meet the show’s stars in the TOTP backstage area. Although the first S Club 7 single – “Bring It All Back” which also acted as the Miami 7 theme tune – was still a whole five weeks away from release, that didn’t stop us from being given a preview of the video for it which, quelle surprise, also included some clips from the show.

Of course, this whole pop group/TV show wasn’t an original Fuller idea. The Monkees project from the 60s famously got there first but even in the 90s it had been tried with the show No Sweat following the adventures of boy band North & South who would have four Top 40 hits between ‘97 and ‘98. That didn’t stop Miami 7 being a hit though and it would run for four seasons albeit under a different title for each series. Its success is widely acknowledged as being the motivation for bringing the world shows like High School Musical and Glee.

As for “Bring It All Back”, it would top the charts when finally released. An insanely catchy slice of bubblegum pop which inevitably and obviously generated comparisons with The Jackson 5, it also contained one of the greatest key changes in all of pop music history. As we’ll be seeing it another three times in these TOTP repeats I’ll leave it there for now but suffice to say that the S Club story would run for years involving success, heartbreak, solo careers, controversy, a juniors version spin off, splits, reunions and ultimately tragedy. Someone really should make a TV show or movie about it.

Poet Laureate link: Not really though there was a literary club known as Authors‘ Club whose membership included three Poets Laureate – Alfred Austin, John Masefield, and John Betjeman.

From a request to ‘Bring It All Back’ to a plea to “Bring My Family Back” courtesy of Faithless. They did make some dark records didn’t they and this one is no different with Maxi Jazz recounting the tale of a man who grew up in a broken family, whose wife left him with the kids after his infidelity with a work colleague and who slips through the cracks and end up living in a derelict slum and regretting his life decisions. At least, I think that’s what it’s about. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan, I did quite like this. It’s kind of got an hypnotic quality to it which means you can’t help listening despite the grimness and misery of the lyrics. Someone who is a fan is a friend of mine who will become an octogenarian this month proving yet again that age can be just a number when it comes to musical taste.

Poet Laureate link: A genuine connection! Caleb Femi, who was named London’s first Young Poet Laureate (2016–2017), features on the 2020 Faithless album “All Blessed”. He delivers a rap/spoken-word performance on the track “I Need Someone”. The band’s Sister Bliss commented on the collaboration that for the album, they wanted to work with “thoughtful fresh talent” like Femi to honor the high lyrical bar set by their late frontman, Maxi Jazz. 

Right what was going on here then? Watching this back without any prior knowledge/information, it looked like an attempt by TOTP executive producer Chris Cowey to really shake the format up which it was I guess but he couldn’t really lay claim to a totally original idea here. So, the dance music continued with the next two hits also coming firmly from that genre but there was a deliberate decision to tie the two together as Jamie Theakston gives them a combined intro – “This is Armand Van Helden versus Fatboy Slim”. We then get a studio performance by the former (featuring guest vocalist Roland Clark up front) and the video for the latter’s latest hit but the two are interspersed with clips of both of them entering a boxing ring. What gives?

Well, I didn’t have a clue so I looked it up and it turns out that Armand van Helden and Fatboy Slim were connected by their 1999 “A Date With Destiny” DJ battles. These high-profile, head-to-head gigs featured them competing in a boxing ring at venues like Brixton Academy. Ah, so that’s where that boxing imagery footage comes from! Basically Cowey just got permission to use it rather than it being anything that he set up himself. The boxing match theme is backed up by the fact that Van Helden’s last hit “You Don’t Know” knocked Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” off the top spot. There was a rematch when their follow ups (“Flowerz” for Van Helden and “Right Here, Right Now” by Fatboy Slim) were released in the same week. This time it was a knockout victory for the Fatboy with his single landing at No 2 whilst “Flowerz” couldn’t punch its weight and was left floundering at No 18. That’s a pretty decisive result despite Theakston saying in his segue that “Fortunately, there were no judges to pick a winner in this particular heavyweight contest so judge for yourselves”. Well, I think the record buying public were the judges Jamie and they made it very clear who their winner was. To be fair, it was a mismatch as “Flowerz” didn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor and never really gets itself off the canvas and into any sort of rhythm. There was no long lasting grudge held though as the duo reunited for performances at The Warehouse Project in Manchester and Drumsheds in London in November 2024.

Poet Laureate link: Ian Henery, the first ever Poet Laureate for Walsall, hosts a radio show on Black Country Xtra and has specifically named Armand Van Helden as a personal favourite from the golden era of house music.

OK, so. This is actually interesting as we just about see a DJ style fade from the Armand Van Helden tune into the video to “Right Here, Right Now” by Fatboy Slim. Fair play to Chris Cowey whom I’ve given a lot of stick to in this blog but the presentation on these two hits has been clever and effective. This was the fourth single lifted from the album “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” and it was yet another banger – Norman Cook really was in the groove here. It’s got the usual samples in it from sources I haven’t a clue about but it also has a sense of foreboding, imbuing the listener with the feeling that they’re about to hear something monumental. Then the Big Beats kick in and you’re off on an aural journey signposted by the creativity of Cook’s imagination.

The video hooks into that idea of a journey by depicting the course of human evolution from a single celled amoeba via a jellyfish, an amphibian, a primate an homo erectus before finally becoming a human. It was supposedly inspired by the 70s French animated educational television series Once Upon A Time…Man which I remember from reruns in the 80s, typically shown mid morning during the Summer holidays. It was a clever way of engaging kids in history and tracked the development of humans from the creation of the Earth through to a prediction up to the year 2150. I liked it as I recall though I’m not sure that I caught all 26 episodes.

Anyway, not long before the end of the “Right Here, Right Now” video, Cook himself pops up in a burger van with a message apologising for not being on the show in person before we return to the promo. I get that Cowey wouldn’t have turned down the chance of using such a piece of VT but it does come across as incongruous and doesn’t really add anything which is a shame. The final transformation sees the now fully developed human being turn into the kid on the cover of the “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” album but it must be a lookalike or CGI as Cook was never able to track that person down to pay him some royalties for the use of his image.

Poet Laureate link: As a member of The Housemartins, Cook had a connection to the city of Hull (where I have lived for the past 22 years). The poet Philip Larkin was the Librarian at the University of Hull and he was offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1984 which he declined.

Some things in life are just inexplicable. The Bermuda Triangle, the Great Pyramids of Giza, the England football team’s inability to win a trophy since 1966…and the appeal and success of Westlife. Yes, we’ve arrived at that point I’m afraid. The point where somehow the UK decided that far from having had enough of boy bands littering the charts throughout the 90s, that despite the sea change to the popularity of girl groups in the second half of the decade, and never minding that we’d already had years of one Irish boy band dominating everything…we needed another one! Why for chrissakes? WHY?! I just didn’t get it with this lot. They were so dull and, it seemed to me, inherently a one trick pony. How could anyone distinguish between one overwrought, schmaltzy ballad from another?! They all sounded the same! And not just that, they were all performed the same with those grinning berks sat in a line on stools, sometimes getting up if they had a solo. And yet, they were successful. Incredibly so, breaking chart records at will whilst racking up No 1 after No 1. They had four just in 1999 despite the first one “Swear It Again” – coming with four months of the year gone already. They weren’t even that good looking were they? Given the amount of times they will no doubt appear in these TOTP repeats, I’m leaving it here. For now.

Poet Laureate link: W.B. Yeats who was a Nobel Laureate (an Irish equivalent of a poet laureate) and Westlife share a connection with Sligo with the former famously associated with the town and its landscapes and the latter having grown up there (well, three of them anyway). Because of this shared hometown, Sligo’s tourism and cultural boards often promote the “poetry of Yeats and the music of Westlife”!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Martine McCutcheonPerfect MomentNo
2TexasIn Our LifetimeNope
3Busta Rhymes / Janet JacksonWhat’s It Gonna Be?!Never
4S Club 7Bring It All BackNot likely
5FaithlessBring My Family BackI did not
6Armand van HeldenFlowerzNah
7Fatboy SlimRight Here, Right NowNo but I had the album
8WestlifeSwear It AgainNo – I swear!

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/m002rxqf/top-of-the-pops-30041999

TOTP 15 JAN 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re in mid January 1999 and Christmas is long gone and well behind us. The release schedules have woken up and been reactivated so there are some ‘new’ songs on tonight alongside some of the older hits that are still knocking about the charts which executive producer Chris Cowey doesn’t seem able to let go of. To that end, two of the first artists on tonight both featured in the last show. Indeed, they were the first two songs in that episode from seven days prior. As Men At Work once sang – “it’s just overkill”. Anyway, Kate Thornton is our host and we start with “End Of The Line” by the Honeyz. This was its third appearance on the show and this performance was just a repeat showing of the previous week’s. Having said that, it was a very hardy hit spending five weeks inside the Top 10 including the busy festive period when singles can get swept away in the Christmas rush. With nothing much else to say about this one, I looked to the internet for inspiration and found a piece online that talked about the purple outfits the group are wearing here which they also donned in the video. The article says:

“…the purple overcoats, which were low-key iconic in that they never permeated popular culture but remain a recognisable visual reference point within the Honeyz’ narrative.”

Paul Begaud – cantstopthepop.com – Dec 2020

Look, I’m no expert on the Honeyz so I should defer to Paul but, on the other hand, really?! Iconic?! They were purple overcoats not Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress!

The mid to late 90s fascination with the disco era of the Bee Gees was quite a thing. Seriously though, look at all of these hits that were either cover versions or featured samples of the Gibb brothers’ work around that period:

  • “How Deep Is Your Love” – Take That – 1996
  • “Words” – Boyzone – 1996
  • “Stayin’ Alive” – N-Trance – 1995
  • “We Trying To Stay Alive” – Wyvlef Jean – 1997
  • “Night Fever” – Adam Garcia – 1998
  • “More Than A Woman” – 911 – 1998
  • “Tragedy” – Steps – 1998

The trend continued apace in early 1999 with the highest chart entry of the week – “You Should Be…” by Blockster. This was a vehicle for DJ, producer and remixer Brandon Block whose career had seen him play all the ‘super clubs’ such as Up Yer Ronson, Ministry Of Sound and Republica. In 1999, he became a chart star with this reworking of the Bee Gees classic “You Should Be Dancing”. Given the glut of Bee Gees hits at the time, it doesn’t seem a very inventive concept but I guess he executed it pretty well. He’s the guy on the turntables (obviously) who looks a bit like The Apprentice reject, Strictly Come Dancing loser and JD Vance hanger on Thomas “Bosh” Skinner. However, for some of us non-dance heads, he is best known for this incident at the BRITS 2000…

Supposedly he was off his face and was convinced by the friends he was with that he had won an award and that he should go and collect it on stage. Ah, we’ve all been there. For instance, I was once on holiday in New York and found myself in a bar called The Slaughtered Lamb, a horror-themed bar in Greenwich Village. It had props like caged skeletons and werewolves. I’d had a few (OK, a lot!) and my friend Robin convinced me that the werewolf figure had blood dripping down its face and that I should report it to the bar staff. So I did. The woman behind the bar dismissed me like the fool I was whilst Robin and the rest of our group guffawed.

Anyway, Brandon Block seemed to learn from his public embarrassment and in 2009 agreed to take part in an anti-drugs campaign for the government. He followed that up by working with Blenheim the London drug and alcohol treatment service as a project worker and has also been employed by the NHS, working with people who have multiple complex needs. He currently works as a Stress Management and Goal Mapping Coach with people suffering from mental health issues.

Here’s that other hit that was on just last week from Bryan Adams and Melanie C. I’ve got nothing left to say about “When You’re Gone” so I’m going to shamelessly pinch a story from a podcast I’ve discovered called the Eighties Archive Podcast. It’s basically two fellas talking about 80s music but not the obvious stuff. They interview people from back then who may or may not have had hit records and it’s actually very engaging mainly because of their enthusiasm for the period. So you might get say, Leigh Gorman from Bow Wow Wow who was brilliant or Richard Jobson of The Skids and The Armoury Show (again brilliant) or some bloke who used to be in Roman Holliday (not so brilliant). Anyway, in their latest show, one of the presenters told a tale of how he was working in the Our Price store in the Lakeside shopping centre in 1991 at Christmas when all the punters seemed to want to buy was “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen (rereleased after Freddie Mercury’s death and that year’s festive No 1) and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams. So fed up was the presenter with this situation that, fuelled by the bravado of youth (him and his mates thought they owned the shop), he started shouting at people that they didn’t have any more Bryan Adams singles. One customer took offence and said “You’re meant to be a record shop” to which the presenter replied “And you’re meant to have taste!” and flicked him the V’s! Scandalous behaviour that was witnessed by an Area Manager on a store visit which led to the presenter being sacked and quite right too. The moral of the story? Don’t disrespect Bryan Adams…nor flick the V’s at a customer when working in a shop.

A classic case of a record label indulging in careful release scheduling now. Ultra had bounded into the charts the previous year with their debut hit “Say You Do” landing at No 11. However, subsequent hits had seen diminishing returns at play so another big hit was required. The best way to do that? Release a single – “Rescue Me” – when it doesn’t take as many sales to get you up the higher end of the charts of course – early to mid January. Then you double down by copying the sound of somebody else’s recent huge hit – in this case Savage Garden – and bingo! Your boy band has a Top 10 single. Beware though. The effects of a reviving January hit will wear off fairly quickly and you’ll be left with that underlying cause of discomfort which is the absolute knowledge that your charges are, in fact, worthless crud and you’ll have to accept the truth that they are going nowhere. Which is exactly what happened to Ultra who were never seen nor hear from again after this hit. Hurray!

Oh this is just taking the piss now! Why is Chris Cowey showing a performance from four months ago of “Millennium” by Robbie Williams? I suggested in a recent post that the reason behind a repeat showing of him doing “No Regrets” was because he’s Robbie Williams and I stand by that given the decision to re-show this. Just as Jamie Theakston had eulogised about him in his intro the other week, so Kate Thornton bangs on about how everyone loves Robbie including her and her Mum! Cowey justifies the clip’s inclusion in the show by tying it to the fact that his second album “I’ve Been Expecting You” is at No 1 (which was true) but it does rather feel like it was shoe-horning it into the show. Anyway, I’m not about to comment on this one again so here’s what I wrote about it in the 18 Sep 1998 show:

TOTP 18 SEP 1998

And the 28 Aug show:

TOTP 28 AUG 1998

What the Hell is this? Why was Cowey encouraging presenter Kate Thornton to engage with the artists ‘backstage’ in some horribly cringeworthy interactions (they don’t qualify as interviews) that weren’t funny, entertaining nor worthwhile. There have been numerous attempts to spice up the format over the years by conversing with the artists or sometimes just celebrity guests and I can’t think of one that has ever worked. Moving on…

And yet another 70s disco era song revived in the late 90s. At least this one wasn’t a Bee Gees tune. After Blockster earlier comes Da Click, a UK garage group on the FFRR label, who took Chic’s anthem “Good Times”, added a load of rapping all over it, interpolated the vocals from Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much”, called it “Good Rhymes” and had a No 14 hit with it. The words ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘feather’ and ‘macaroni’ come to mind. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It also wasn’t any good. I always got this lot confused with Da Hool who is a German DJ and producer. I think my confusion is understandable which is more than I can say about Da Click’s decision to record this rubbish. It gets worse. Two years later, one of Da Click’s number – DJ Pied Piper – was responsible for one of the worst No 1 records ever – the execrable 2-step garage ‘anthem’ “Do You Really Like It?”.

There have been a few very famous Justins in the world of music. Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness but before all of them came simply Justin. Only 15 years old here, this kid became a name after appearing in a BBC TV show called The Fame Game which followed the hopes and aspirations of young people wanting to be stars. Off the back of it, Justin (Osuji) would have a small Top 40 hit with a cover of “This Boy” by The Beatles. The follow up was “Over You”, a nothing ballad with the most ridiculous opening lines ever given to a 15 year old boy to sing who sounds like his voice hasn’t broken yet…

“I′ve had many many setbacks, misendeavours in my life

But it’s never gotten to me, all that trouble and my strife”

Writer(s): Cody Miller, Justin Stokes, Laurel Tessa Mahoney, Miranda Leigh Berdahl, James Colter Schaffner, Zach Inmon Walker

“Many, many setbacks”? By the age of 15? Now, of course, some kids have had terrible lives by that point and witnessed some awful things but in the context of trying to sell a love song to a TV audience, it just doesn’t seem authentic. Thankfully I don’t remember “Over You” at all. The only one of his that springs to mind is a cover of “Let It Be Me” by The Everly Brothers in early 2000 which would be Justin’s last Top 40 hit. Although his original pop career would end there, Justin would reinvent himself as Sonny J Mason working as a singer-songwriter and producer, collaborating with the likes of Craig David, Sugababes and So Solid Crew whilst also releasing his own solo recordings.

Yes! Finally! A great track gets its just deserts! Although it maybe felt unexpected that Fat Boy Slim was at No 1, it probably shouldn’t have done. After all, “Praise You” wasn’t the first chart topper he’d been involved with. As part of The Housemartins, he’d just missed out on being the Christmas No 1 by a week in 1986 with “Caravan Of Love” and at the very start of the 90s, his Beats International vehicle rose to the summit with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Then, of course, his Fat Boy Slim persona had already delivered him two big hits in 1998 with “The Rockefeller Skank” and “Gangster Trippin” so the writing had been on the wall for us all to read. And yet I do recall being slightly taken aback that he’d done it again in 1999 despite the quality of the track.

I’m not going to list all the source material that Norman Cook sampled to create “Praise You” – all that information is available via a quick search of the internet and in any case, I don’t know any of the originals at all so I can’t see the point in referencing them. What I do know is that he created an almost perfect dance track that had that curious, undefinable quality of being able to cross over into the mainstream. How did he do it? Musical genius? Pure luck? Cosmic forces at work causing the stars to align? If the answer was that obvious we’d all be raiding our record collections and looking to put together a patchwork of sounds that shouldn’t go together but somehow do. Something else that shouldn’t have worked but did was the promo video. Yes, that one. Directed by and starring Spike Jonze, it had the effect upon first viewing of making the audience exclaim “What the f**k was that?” so amateurish and so bizarre looking was it. Its protagonists, the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group, essentially invented the ‘flash mob’ phenomenon when filming the chaotic dance routines unannounced at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles. Indeed so low were its production values (the whole thing only cost $800 to make) that MTV refuses to air it initially until Cook advised them that it was supposed to look like that. It would go on to win three MTV Video Music Awards making their initial stance look ludicrous.

A small gripe though, why did we only get to see it once? Yes, it only had a solitary week at the top of the charts but that didn’t stop Chris Cowey from allowing multiple repeats of previous No 1s which were now descending the charts. Was he worried about the quality of the video as well?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1HoneyzEnd Of The LineNah
2BlocksterYou Should Be…Negative
3Bryan Adams / Melanie CWhen You’re GoneNo
4UltraRescue MeNo thanks
5Robbie WilliamsMillenniumNope
6Da ClickGood RhymesI did not
7JustinOver YouNever happening
8Fatboy SlimPraise YouNo but I had the album

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 16 OCT 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

I ended the last post with the statement that pop was definitely back in 1998 having laid claim to the notion that many of artists who’d had the biggest and most hit singles that year had been almost defiantly of a pop nature. B*Witched, Billie, 911, Cleopatra and Five were just some of the names I mentioned. Well, as if they were forming an orderly queue to prove my point and say “Yes, he’s right”, three of those acts are featured in this show.

Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with what was fast becoming a TOTP tradition let alone a practice – that of starting the show with last week’s No 1 which had now been deposed. I can’t comment about this anymore as I’m boring myself let alone any regular readers of the blog. All I will say is that this means we start the show with “Rollercoaster” by B*Witched who are “staying on for one more ride” says Middlemiss so that explains that executive producer policy decision then. Much is made of the group’s double denim fashion item of choice but for this single, they also employed an unlikely accessory in the form of boxing gloves which are utilised both in the promo video (which we don’t get to see) when they box a strongman in a fair’s boxing ring and on the front cover of the single. Well, they did say they fight like their da’s.

Why are we back in The Riviera again?! After Billie performed in Cannes Beach in the last show, we’re back in the exact same spot with the exact same stage seven days later. Were the BBC trying to sell TOTP to a foreign broadcaster or something at the Cannes TV festival? You know, I don’t think that’s a bad shout actually. On the Top Of The Pops Wikipedia page, it says that executive producer Chris Cowey was actively looking to export the brand overseas with localised versions of the show on air in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Italy by the end of his tenure in 2003.

So if that’s what the Beeb was up to, which artist had they got lined up to promote the show? A big name surely? Oh…911…is that right? 911…the trio of a Dec Donnelly lookalike and two dancers who look like bouncers or extras from Brookside? That’s who they went with? OK then. In their defence, they were in the middle of a run of ten consecutive Top 10 hits which was maintained by their cover of “More Than A Woman” which gave them their then biggest hit when it charted at No 2. Originally recorded for a Bee Gees tribute album, it would also serve as the lead single from the group’s third studio album called “There It Is”. A pretty faithful rendition of a song that was recorded by the Bee Gees and Tavares on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, it did whiff a bit of jumping on the bandwagon when you consider how many other artists had turned to that album for a hit around this time. N-Trance, Adam Garcia, Take That, Kim Wilde and Tina Turner had all gone down that route. Buoyed by the success of their decision to join them, 911 would repeat the trick for their next single which was a cover of Dr. Hook’s “A Little Bit More” which actually got them to No 1.

Watching this Cannes Beach performance, the stage looks a bit overcrowded what with the three lads and three female backing dancers all throwing some shapes in a confined space. Indeed, said backing dancers seem to determined to elbow themselves into camera shot. If the performance was meant to create a buzz around the show then an assembled crowd of eight (presumably paid) women in TOTP T-shirts huddled together in front of the stage didn’t really achieve that.

I’ve said it before but here I am saying it again – are Garbage one of the most underestimated bands of this era? Sure, they had a good run of hit singles including six inside the Top 10 and a No 1, multi platinum album but do they get the credit they deserve? Do they routinely get mentioned as one of the top bands of this era? Maybe I should be directing this question at myself as I did pretty much ignore them apart from the big hits back in the day. I really must investigate their back catalogue more. Take “Special” for example. The third single from “Version 2.0”, I don’t remember it at all but it’s a cracking track that with a retro yet up-to-date sound that even references “Talk Of The Town” by The Pretenders in its outro (they did get personal clearance from Christie Hynde for its use). Then there’s Shirley Manson who is magnificent as the lead singer but is she regularly mentioned when there’s any discussion of the best front people of a rock band? I’m not sure she is. The band themselves are still recording and releasing new material so they possibly don’t welcome being talked about in the past tense but the name of this blog is TOTP Rewind so I’m afraid they’ll have to live with that. I’m a ‘special’ interest blogger as it were.

From one female fronted band to another as The Cardigans return with brand new material and a brand new sound. After the quirky but insanely catchy singalong that was “Lovefool” the previous year, the Swedish indie-pop outfit were back with a much harder style in the form of “My Favourite Game”, lead single from their fourth studio album “Gram Turismo”. Built around a recurring two note guitar riff, it fair stomps along until it stops to draw breath whilst Nina Persson teases out the “I’m losing my favourite game, your losing your mind again” lyrics that create an unlikely hook. It almost shouldn’t work as a track as it shuns established song structure but work it does and then some. Persson looks effortlessly cool up there on stage in this performance with her peroxide blond hair backlit by the studio lights making her look more like Debbie Harry than Debbie Harry did in the late 90s. They would follow “My Favourite Game” with another strong single in “Erase/Rewind”’ paving the way for the album to sell three million copies worldwide.

After Brandy last week, it’s time for her partner in crime Monica to re-establish her solo career this time in the wake of the huge success of their duet “The Boy Is Mine”. I couldn’t be doing with Brandy’s song at all but I’m finding myself a little bit more predisposed to Monica’s. A very little bit. A tiny bit. I believe that is because “The First Night” samples Diana Ross’s marvellous “Love Hangover”. Yes, that must be it as there’s not much else to recommend it although my eyes were drawn to Monica’s two backing dancers. No, not for any salacious reasons but because of the high octane dance moves that they’re busting (or something). Maybe they’re so noticeable because Monica only half joins in with them (sometimes) or maybe it’s because the studio audience, who are crammed together in a semi circle around the small stage area, only have room to perform a half-hearted nerd shuffle behind the dancers.

Unless you’re a superfan (and I’m sure they do exist), for the wider population, Natalie Imbruglia is always going to be predominantly known for one song – “Torn”. It’s really unfair and dismissive but it’s true even though she has released six studio albums and eighteen singles over the course of her music career. One of those singles was “Smoke”, the fourth and final single to be lifted from her debut album “Left Of The Middle”. Now this potentially had a lot going for it – intriguing, dramatic and atmospheric but it takes an age to get going and when it does it has an identity crisis. There’s shades of Tori Amos to it but when the strings kick in, it seems to have Bond theme pretensions. I couldn’t really get on with the “what’s up with that?” lyric either. It strikes me that it’s more of an album track than a single.

In 2007, Natalie released a Best Of album called “Glorious: The Singles 97-07” which would seem to dispute my claim about her only being remembered for one song especially as it went Top 5 and achieved gold sales status. However, of the 15 tracks on the album, five of them were new songs which kind of undermines the point of a Best Of collection no?

The time of Fat Boy Slim is upon us. I purposely didn’t use the name Norman Cook as the time of Norman Cook had been with us since about 1986 in his various guises. The Housemartins, Beats International, Freak Power, Pizzaman, The Mighty Dub Katz and then perhaps his most famous incarnation Fat Boy Slim. Even then, that particular alias had been with us a while. There had already been one Fat Boy Slim album – 1996’s “Better Living Through Chemistry” – although it had failed to make much of an impression chart-wise. Then in June of 1998, the single “Rockefeller Skank” had gone Top 10 though I don’t remember it featuring in any TOTP shows for some reason (Chris Cowey was probably still obsessing with Five or someone). However, when “Gangster Trippin’” came out and went straight to No 3, then we all had to stand up and take note. Parent album “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby” was released the Monday after this TOTP aired and would debut at No 2 which was impressive enough. However, it exploded early in 1999 in the wake of the “Praise You” single going to No 1 and subsequently the album would match that achievement with four consecutive weeks at the top.

Before that though we have “Gangster Trippin’”, a track immediately recognisable as Fat Boy Slim but obviously made up of lots (and lots!) of samples of other people’s work including DJ Shadow and Dust Junkys both of whom were favourites of some of my much hipper than me Our Price work colleagues. Mention must be made of the Norman Cook cameo in the introduction to the video for the track (yes, a rare actual video in the Chris Cowey era). Voicing an intro from behind a cardboard cut out of the kid from the album cover, Cook confirms my earlier suspicion that he hadn’t been on the show before under the Fat Boy Slim moniker by saying it was his first TOTP appearance. That kid from the album cover is a bit of a mystery. The iconic photograph of him was taken at the 1983 Fat People’s Festival in Danville, Virginia and provided by the Rex Features photo library. His identity though remains a mystery despite many attempts by Cook over the years to find him in order to remunerate him for the use of his image. As for the video itself, it’s essentially just a load of furniture being blown up shown from different angles and in slow motion. Well, it was directed by Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford Coppola whose many film credits include Apocalypse Now. Maybe Roman loved the smell of burning furniture in the morning.

Billie is No 1 this week with her second single release “Girlfriend”. She’s not in the studio because she’s not very well Jayne Middlemiss informs us so instead we get a presumably pre-recorded performance in what looks like a nightclub but without any patrons in it. Was this from her time in Cannes as well? Wasn’t there a video they could have shown? What was Chris Cowey’s aversion to promo videos anyway and why did he make an exception for Fat Boy Slim’s? “Girlfriend” would last just one week at the top but guess what? Billie will be back on the next TOTP performing it because…Cowey wanted her to?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1 B*Witched RollercoasterNah
2911More Than A WomanAs if
3GarbageSpecialGood song but no
4The CardigansMy Favourite GameSee 3 above
5MonicaThe First NightI did not
6Natalie ImbrugliaSmokeNope
7Fat Boy SlimGangster Trippin’No but my wife had the album
8BillieGirlfriendAnd 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/m002mggj/top-of-the-pops-16101998