Those pesky BBC4 programmers have slipped an extra TOTP repeat into the schedule this week meaning I have three shows to review rather than the usual two. I think it’s to make up for the fact that they only showed one last week due to the snooker coverage and so, in order to get the 1998 shows to sync with 2025 real time, they’ve had to go with three this week. As if that wasn’t enough, this one features nine instead of the standard eight acts. I’ll never get all my Christmas shopping done at this rate!
Anyway, our host is the increasingly annoying Jamie Theakston and we start with a repeat showing of last week’s performance by the now trio of East 17/E-17 and their hit “Each Time”. With a debut chart position of No 2 and a solid second week of sales sustaining it in the Top 5, this single looked like it would foreshadow a new period of success for the group after the recent negative publicity surrounding Brian Harvey’s ‘drug interview’ and the trauma of chief songwriter Tony Mortimer’s departure. It would prove to be a false dawn though as the poor chart showing of parent album “Resurrection” indicated that there wasn’t a big appetite within their fanbase for a slimmed down version of the band with a new R&B direction and a truncated name. Subsequently, the group were dropped by their label Telstar Records in 1999. Bizarrely, the album would be released by Demon Music Group in 2013 but retitled as “Greatest” despite not actually being a collection of their biggest hits and also ignoring the fact that there were already four Best Of albums in existence by this point. Crucially though, none of those albums contained the word ‘greatest’ in their title. What a shady practice.
2025 Update: It was reported in the press this week that songwriter Tony Mortimer earns about £97,000 in royalties each year from “Stay Another Day”. What a Christmas pension pot!
What was it about the mid to late 90s and Bee Gees cover versions? Take That, Boyzone, N-Trance, Adam Garcia and 911 all had hits with their treatments of classic songs by the brothers Gibb and now here were Steps adding their name to that list with their take on “Tragedy”. As with the 911’s cover of “More Than A Woman”, this was taken from a Bee Gees tribute album but was released as a double A-side with a track called “Heartbeat” from the group’s debut album “Step One” (it would also appear as the first single on their follow up “Steptacular”). I’m sure I can’t be the only person who could genuinely claim to have never heard “Heartbeat” possibly because you couldn’t escape from “Tragedy”. This single just sold and sold and sold and then the next day it would do the same all over again. It would spend a whopping 23 weeks on the UK Top 40 and 15 consecutively inside the Top 10 including (after a wait of two months) one at No 1. It sold more than all their previous three singles put together and was surely the piece of concrete evidence that Steps were going to be around for quite some time.
So why did the nation go barmy for the Steps version of “Tragedy”? Well, it was a tightly produced and faithful-to-the-original cover of a dance classic which helped and maybe the younger elements of their fanbase didn’t even know it wasn’t a Steps original but I think what really propelled it to its commercial heights was the dance that went with it. Involving hand gestures that framed the face, shoulder twists and arm raises, it maybe wasn’t as iconic as vogueing as popularised by Madonna but it was up there. It looks pretty impressive in this performance anyway. I reckon we’ll see loads of this one in future repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.
2025 Update: Steps performed at Blackpool recently as the musical interlude for Strictly Come Dancing to promote the opening of the Steps musical.
Despite being released originally in 1989 and again in 1991, come 1998 the story of “Sit Down” by James still had another chapter to be written in the form of a remix and yet another release. The rather unimaginatively titled “Sit Down ‘98” was commissioned by the band’s label Mercury to help re-promote sales of their first “Best Of” album (which had hit the shops in the March) in the run up to Christmas. As far as I can tell though, this version never actually made it onto said Best Of nor was there a rerelease of it with the ‘98 remix added onto the track listing. It was what was known as a standalone single. Wouldn’t it have been better just to rerelease the hit version of “Sit Down” from 1991 if Mercury wanted to associate it with the Best Of album? I’m guessing that wouldn’t have been creative enough for Tim Booth though and so we got an Apollo 440 mix of the classic track which probably made sense at the time given their high profile and whilst their treatment of “Sit Down” is interesting, it does lose some of its charm in the process it seems to me. It would appear not to have stood the test of time either. Do you ever hear it played on the radio instead of the hit version? Nor did it have the desired effect of re-energising the Best Of album’s sales. As far as I can tell, it spent the whole of November and December skirting around between Nos 75 to 60 in the charts. Could you say the whole idea was ridiculous and touched by madness? Only if you’re trying to squeeze in some pathetically obvious “Sit Down” references to finish this bit off like I am.
2025 Update: In an unexpected turn of events there’s another Strictly Come Dancing story – I’ve just seen “Sit Down” performed by James on the results show. It wasn’t the ‘98 remix obviously but just like in 1998, the band have a new Best Of album out to promote called “Nothing But Love: The Definitive Best Of”.
I’ve checked and this is the fifth time “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith has been on the show over a period of just under three months. FIVE times in THREE months! Those two numbers are remarkable! Firstly that a hit that never got higher than No 4 could be on that many times but secondly that it was in the charts for that long! Actually, I should be more precise with that chart figure – it spent nine consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and 18 (EIGHTEEN!) on the Top 40 in total. This week it was at No 8 but, given that this was the fourth time of seeing that satellite concert performance, were there not any other songs in the Top 40 that could have taken its place in the running order? Hang on, I’ll check…
…well, Marilyn Manson was a new entry at No 12 but maybe he was seen as not a safe enough choice. Further down the chart there are the likes of Tina Cousins, Karen Ramirez and Air but I think I would like to have seen the song at No 39 get a look in – “All I Want” by Puressence. That was never going to happen though.
2025 Update: A collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud topped the album charts just a week or so ago thus becoming the band’s first ever UK No 1 album some 38 years after their chart debut. Quite extraordinary.
I was right in what I said in the last post! There is someone from the Fugees on the show every week! After Wyclef Jean last time, we get Pras in this TOTP. In fact, Pras was also on with Wyclef Jean alongside Queen in that appearance seven days prior so the show really was full of Fugees around this time. “Blue Angels” is the track that Pras is promoting and although it features a sample from Frankie Valli’s “Grease”, there’s another film that is mentioned in the lyrics that caught my attention, one that I’d never heard of before but which seems to have been quite the influence on many a hip hop artist. 1984’s BeatStreet was set in South Bronx with a plot surrounding the hip-hop lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends. Now I’ve never heard of nor come across this film before but it had a cultural reach I would never have imagined. In Germany for example, which was still divided into East and West at this point, it had a particularly seismic impact. Released in the former to supposedly highlight the evils of capitalism, it instead promoted the more visual images of hip-hop and ushered in an emerging scene there. The film has been name checked in tracks by the likes of The Notorious B.I.G., Jay Electronica and AZ.
Now clearly, a white 16 year old living in Worcester in the West Midlands at the time of its release (that’ll be me) was never going to be its target audience but the fact that it bypassed me completely is surprising. I mean, I was aware of the breakdancing phenomenon at least if only via the hits of Break Machine. Did it not get UK distribution? Maybe not. Still, it’s opened my eyes a little. This blog was never meant to be educational but I seem to be learning about things I was never aware of as a by product of it.
2025 Update: In November this year, Pras was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in an alleged criminal conspiracy re: the illegal transfer of funds into the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign.
The first of three new hits now starting with Robbie Williams who made a rather cringeworthy cameo appearance during the James performance earlier trying to convince us all that he was a rock god axeman. After his first No 1 single “Millennium” earlier in the year, presumably hopes were high that he would repeat the trick with follow up “No Regrets”. However, it would debut and peak at No 4 when it was eventually released ten days after this TOTP performance. Why didn’t it go straight to the top of the charts when many press reviews had picked it out as one of the strongest tracks on parent album “I’ve Been Expecting You”? The answer possibly lies with that old issue of timing. Said album had already been out for a month by the time “No Regrets” made it into the shops so perhaps punters who might have shelled out for the single had already bought the album and didn’t feel the need to buy both? Perhaps anticipating that outcome, was that why record label Chrysalis made the single a double A-side with Robbie’s version of “Antmusic” by Adam And The Ants making up the other track? Wait, Williams did a version of “Antmusic”? I don’t recall this! I have to check this out…
…Oh dear God! That’s horrible! Just awful! What was he thinking?! What was Adam Ant thinking letting him butcher it?! Anyway, back to “No Regrets” and I have to say I never really liked it that much. It didn’t have the quirky charm of “Millennium” and always struck me as a bit miserable to be honest. Maybe its source material of his time in Take That meant it was inevitably going to create a less than joyful sound given how it ended and that it was all a bit raw at the time. The overly dramatic ending when Robbie says “Guess the love we once had is officially – dead!” always seems a bit…well…overly dramatic to me, like it was trying too hard. The third single from the album released in March 1999 – “Strong” – was a much more radio friendly, pop track that maybe should have been the song to follow up “Millennium” it always seemed to me. By comparison, “No Regrets” sounded like an album track. Just my opinion of course – I could have it completely wrong but I have no regrets about sharing it.
2025 Update: And now another Yungblud story! This week the singer revealed that he had received a letter of support from Robbie Williams after admitting to mental health struggles.
Blimey! This is a bit of a thing! Madonna on TOTP inperson! Seriously, this hardly ever happened. I checked the wonderful Top Of The Pops Archive website which gives a breakdown of appearances by every artist and this is as only the fourth time ever that she was in the studio over a fifteen year period (not including repeats of performances in things like year end specials or anniversary shows). How had executive producer Chris Cowey managed to pull this coup off? For the record, her previous appearances had been performing “Holiday” and “Like A Virgin” (the one with the pink wig) in 1984 and “You’ll See” in 1995 but here she was again to promote the fourth single of her “Ray Of Light” album called “The Power Of Good-Bye”. As with Robbie Williams before her, this was actually a double A-side with the other track being “Little Star”, another song from the album but I only recall “The Power Of Good-Bye” being played on the radio. It’s essentially a ballad though one that sounded nothing like a traditional slow song with acoustic guitars, strings and almost hypnotic electronic beats. This was the William Orbit effect coming into play again as it had done across the whole of the album which he co-produced and which almost redefined how a pop song could sound.
As for the performance here, Madge has sleek, shiny black hair (almost a negative of that pink wig) and a sheer black outfit but, despite the sombre appearance, you can see that, in 1998, she still retained the presence of one of the most famous people on the planet with those in the studio audience stretching out their hands just to get a touch of her as if she was a deity with life healing properties. I can’t shake the feeling that she has been totally usurped by Taylor Swift in the present day. At the end she still had the grace and humility to say thank you and touch some of those aforementioned outstretched hands. They were simpler times for us all back then.
2025 Update: Just a day ago, Madonna was pictured with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie for first time since their divorce in 2008 when they both attended the latest art show of their son Rocco in London.
After a string of medium sized hits to this point, the Stereophonics suddenly exploded with the release of “The Bartender And The Thief” which debuted at No 3. The lead single from sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails”, it’s a high-octane, relentlessly driving rock track that barely draws breath at any point but which has enough melodic hooks to make the trip totally worth it.
Written by Kelly Jones after an observation in a bar in New Zealand whilst waiting for a plane, it expresses the idea that the bartender must see multiple different characters and their changing moods as they transcend from sober to drunk during the course of their shift. Its success would help propel the album to the top of the charts and nearly two million sales in the UK. Four more hits from it would follow including two further Top 5 placings – Stereophonics were officially big news. As with their debut album “Word Gets Around”, I seem to recall playing “Performance And Cocktails” lots in the Our Price store where I was working, so much so that my wife would scratch that itch for me by buying it me for Christmas that year. The ApocalypseNow themed video for “The Bartender And The Thief” reminded me of a long night with school mates watching that film at one of their houses when I was 17. You can read that particular story here if you feel so inclined…
2025 Update: The band are currently on tour playing a number of Arena dates in December.
Cher is No 1 again with “Believe” for a fourth of seven weeks. This run at the top really wasn’t the norm back then. Only Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins and “It’s Like That” could rival it in 1998 which had six weeks at the top. At the time of this chart, “Believe” was only the fifth single in two years to have spent more than three consecutive weeks at No 1 which just goes to show the power it was wielding over the record buying public.
2025 Update: Cher has denied rumours she is ready to marry her boyfriend who is 40 years younger than her ahead of her 80th birthday next year. And who is her boyfriend? The aforementioned rapper AZ. Sometimes the planets just align and the blog writes itself!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
East 17
Each Time
Negative
2
Steps
Tragedy / Heartbeat
I did not
3
James
Sit Down ’98
No but I had that first Best Of album
4
Aerosmith
I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
Nah
5
Pras
Blue Angels
Nope
6
Robbie Williams
No Regrets
No
7
Madonna
The Power Of Good-Bye
No but my wife had the album
8
Stereophonics
The Bartender And The Thief
No but I had the album
9
Cher
Believe
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
And just like that we appear to have reached a ‘jumping the shark’ moment in the history of TOTP. I ranted a bit in the last post about the Cast of Casualty having a hit record and their continuation of the soul-destroying trend for actors becoming pop stars off the back of their TV series characters performing a song in the show. That was bad enough but just seven days later we have the unedifying spectacle of the resurrection of another TV show inspired hit machine that made little sense back in the mid 70s and even less in the late 90s. We’ll get to that presently but some admin first in that we should acknowledge the fact that Jo Whiley is tonight’s presenter and I may have words to say about her later as well.
We begin though with the Spice Girls who have entered the charts at No 2 with their latest single “Stop”. Normally, a No 2 hit wouldn’t be anything to be sniffed at but in this case, well…it was seen as quite the seismic disappointment seeing as it halted the run of every one of the group’s singles having gone to the top of the charts. Despite Jo Whiley saying in her link that she didn’t think it meant the end of ‘girl power’, the Battle of Britpop aside, I don’t think there’d been as much discussion of a song not getting to No 1 since “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” halted Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s run of chart toppers in the mid 80s. I discussed the potential reasons for “Stop”…well…stopping their imperial run in the last post so I’m not going over all that again but suffice to say that in a way Jo Whiley was right – a No 2 instead of a No 1 single wasn’t the end of ‘girl power’ but the departure of Geri Halliwell a couple of months later possibly was.
We’re at the ‘jumping the shark’ moment already. Now don’t get me wrong. I like TheWombles as much as the next person of my generation who grew up with them in that final, five minute children’s TV slot before the boring old news came on. Everyone child of the 70s knew the names Great Uncle Bulgaria, Tobermory, Madame Cholet, Wellington, Bungo, Tomsk and, of course, Orinoco. I think a very young me had a poster of Wellington on my bedroom wall. That stop-motion animation and the playful voice of Bernard Cribbins was magical stuff. However, the idea to turn them into a pop group…I’m not sure I was ever on board with that even as a small child. Back in the 70s though they were huge. The brainchild of Mike Batt who wrote not just their hits but the TV show theme tune as well, according to Wikipedia they were the most successful music act of 1974 in the UK with more weeks on the singles chart than any other artist. Is that true? My God. It probably is though. In 1977 – the year of punk – David Soul was the UK’s best selling artist so…
Those 1974 hits included “Remember You’re A Womble” (No 3), “Banana Rock” (don’t recall that one but it made No 9), “Minuetto Allegretto” (No 16) and, of course, “Wombling Merry Christmas” (No 2). Back then, there were no Gorillaz-style computer graphics nor holograms to depict The Wombles but people in cumbersome, furry costumes which did actually look like their television counterparts but had no moving mouth parts which kind of undermined the whole idea of them performing.
Back to the late 90s though and why were TheWombles suddenly back on TOTP? Well, they are back in the charts with a rerelease of “Remember You’re A Womble” which would peak at No 13. Again though I ask why? Why did we need to be reminded of this – how to be diplomatic about this? – song that was ofitstime? Apparently it was part of campaign to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the show first appearing on our TV screens. A good enough reason you might say? No and I’ll tell you for why. Firstly, TheWombles were back on our TV screens anyway as a new series of episodes were made after Canadian company Cinar Films acquired the rights from original production company FilmFair. These were shown in the UK by ITV. Secondly, the songs were awful and we really didn’t need them back in our lives and indeed our ears.
At the song’s end, Jo Whiley ponders whether it could be The Verve underneath those Wombles costumes. A facetious remark obviously but it got me thinking about who did occupy those furry suits? Back in the mid-70s, some of the names of those who were in the band as it were included Mike Batt (obviously), session guitarist Chris Spedding who produced the first Sex Pistols demos and had his own hit called “Motor Bikin’”, legendary session drummer Clem Cattini who worked with everyone including pioneering producer Joe Meek and was one of The Tornadoes on mega hit “Telstar” and Robin Le Mesurier (son of the beloved Dad’s Army actor). As for the 90s version, the internet is not giving up much. Apparently whoever were in those costumes didn’t want to remember they’d been a Womble!
Some proper music now with the return of James who have reached that point in their career where a Best Of album is not only due but justifiable and credible. Taking the singles from their four albums on Fontana/Mercury (not including jam sessions album “Wah Wah”), plus two new songs and an track from early EP “James II”, it would go to No 1 and three times platinum. I was one of those who bought it and a good choice it was too but playing the whole album in one session, I had to admit to myself that some of the tracks did tend to merge into each other. I know – that’s fighting talk to some people but I can only call it as I hear it. Maybe that’s just an inevitable consequence of their sound being so distinctive and idiosyncratic.
Anyway, as was the established practice by this point, a new song was released to promote the Best Of which was “Destiny Callling”. Now, you know what I said about their songs merging into each other? Well, band member Saul Davies described the writing process for “Destiny Calling” as “whacking on a capo and playing “She’s A Star” at twice the speed”. Look, I’m not trying to find fault here, I’m just reporting the details. For what it’s worth, I liked it – a fairly obvious dig at the mechanics of the music industry, it was a perfect appetiser for the retrospective of their work…OK, of their chart successful work. What’s great about James though is that they’ve never rested on their laurels. Within 18 months they’d released their eighth studio album and have gone onto produce another ten in the following 25 years. I like Tim Booth’s Ian Curtis type wig out as the performance reaches its climax. Thankfully, nobody in the studio audience shouted at him to “Sit Down!”. Ahem.
I have no idea who this is or what her hit sounded like so I’m going in with no preconceived notions…
*three minutes later *
…well, what did I expect from a song called “Uh La La La”? This is lowest common denominator Eurodance rubbish that wasn’t even original. Alexia (for that is her who were talking about) clearly ripped off 1995 hit “I Luv U Baby” by The Original for the final line of the chorus (not the words which are clearly not unique but the intonation of the delivery). And what about that title? Clearly pinched from Kool And The Gang’s “Let’s Go Dancin’ (Ooh La,La, La)” but with the ‘Ooh’ adapted to ‘Uh’ to try and disguise the theft even though she’s clearly singing “Ooh”. Was this an attempt to become 1998’s version of Whigfield? I say 1998 but the single had been a hit all around Europe in 1997 but via lots of different record labels so the swines at Sony music ordered a unifying re-edit, remix and rerelease on Almighty Records to launch Alexia in the UK and so we had to suffer like the rest of the continent. A couple more minor hits later and Alexia was gone from our charts forever though she’s still recording music to this day amassing 19 (!) album releases to date including a Christmas album in 2022.
At the end of Alexia’s performance, Jo Whiley makes a remark that “Uh La La La” is about Alexia’s inner feelings but that “it could so easily be about the sex appeal of a Teletubby”. In a recent post, I commented on Jo’s intro for The Lilys who were the latest act to record a song for a Levi’s ad campaign following in the footsteps of Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Freakpower. When mentioning those names, she noticeably grimaced and I remarked this was a bit rich coming from a woman who would argue in favour of the musical significance of The Teletubbies if it kept her on TV. Ha! I wasn’t so far away with my assessment!
We’ve arrived at the final hit of the 90s for Kylie Minogue and although not one of her most well known tracks it might well be one of the most underrated. “Breathe” was the third and final single released in the UK from her “Impossible Princess” album. I think I’ve discussed the problematic gestation ofthat album before but briefly, it took two years to record due to changes of musical direction, various different collaborations and a quest for pure perfection from everyone involved in it. As such, its release was postponed multiple times and then its title was deemed dubious after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997. It was finally made available in the UK in late March of 1998 having been renamed to simply “Kylie Minogue” (the third eponymous album of her career) meaning that all three singles from it were released before the parent album which was unusual to say the least.
“Breathe” is actually very engaging – slinky but not without substance and almost hypnotic with its lyrics about internal contemplation. It could be a prototype for “Pure Shores” by All Saints which is a compliment by the way. It probably deserved better than its chart high of No 14. The 90s had started with a No 1 for Kylie with “Tears On My Pillow” but by the decade’s end, her sound, exemplified by the likes of “Breathe”, was almost unrecognisable from that. Whilst her creativity was in the ascendancy, her commerciality was on the wane but she would get the latter back in spades come the new millennium with “Spinning Around” and those hot pants. Sadly, I won’t be reviewing those TOTP repeats as I’m stopping at the end of 1999 so fare thee well Kylie and thanks for all the content.
Bryan Adams is up next with another track from his “Unplugged” album. Unlike the first single taken from it though, “I’m Ready” was not a new song but nearly two decades old which Adams first recorded in 1983 for his album “Cuts Like A Knife”. Back then it was an out and out rock song but in 1998 it metamorphosed into an acoustic ballad complete with a low whistle played by Irish folk legend Davy Spillane which seems like an attempt to jump on the bandwagon of the Celtic flute sound to be found on “My Heart Will Go On”. I definitely prefer the rockier version of “I’m Ready” though it’s hardly one of his best efforts. Still, compared to The Wombles, this was high art indeed. By the end of the decade, Adams would have released another studio album, a second Greatest Hits collection, teamed up with a Spice Girl and even had a dance hit (courtesy of a remix by Chicane) that had gone down a storm in Ibiza!
By March 1998, “White On Blonde”, the fourth Texas album, had been out for over a year and delivered the band four Top 10 singles. So how do you convince your fanbase to buy a fifth? Easy. Team up with a couple of rappers and re-record the first of those four hits and release it as a double A-side with another track from the album. That sounds overly cynical but that is what happened – the release details at least. I may be being presumptuous about the intentions behind them. However, with follow up album “The Hush” still 14 months away from being available in the shops, it was a way of both maintaining the band’s profile and keeping them in the charts.
The rappers concerned were Method Man and RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan so big names (not quite sure how they knew Sharleen and the gang though) and the track they collaborated on was “Say What You Want” which they retitled “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)”. It was performed at that year’s BRIT Awards and presumably audience reaction was positive enough for a proper release to be considered (maybe that was the real reason behind it being made commercially available). As this version wasn’t on the album, the track on its own wasn’t going to squeeze any more sales out of it so it was doubled up with “Insane” which was on the album. So, starting with “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)” and I have to say I didn’t get it. I’ve read comments online saying how it “just worked” but I couldn’t/still can’t hear it. The rap bits don’t blend with the pop song – they just sound really incongruous next to each other. Then there’s that layer of strings introduced to the chorus that wasn’t in the original which sounds discordant or even out of tune. Am I missing something?
As for “Insane”, I’m not convinced that it’s quite strong enough to have been a single but it’s a moody number that has something going for it. The smouldering brass parts remind me of Portishead (or is it Groove Armada?) and Sharleen’s vocals are as on point as ever but it’s maybe just a bit too downbeat? I think it probably makes more sense in the context of the album.
We have a new No 1 and it’s from Run D.M.C.vsJason Nevins. The track “It’s Like That” had actually been the rap trio’s debut single all the way back in 1983 but had largely been overlooked in favour of its B-side “Sucker M.C.’s”. Fast forward 14 years and, with Run D.M.C’s legacy as one of the most influential hip-hop artists ever assured, the track was revisited by producer and remixer Jason Nevins and became a massive international hit, going to No 1 in multiple countries. I seem to remember that it had been available in other territories way before an official release was secured in the UK meaning that imports of the single made their way into record shops over here first. I think we may have had a few copies in the Our Price in Stockport where I worked. Its phenomenal (and maybe unexpected) success would lead it to spend six weeks at No 1 and become the third best selling single of 1998 in the UK. As well be seeing plenty more of this one, I’ll leave it there for now.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Spice Girls
Stop
Nah
2
The Wombles
Remember You’re A Womble
What do you think?!
3
James
Destiny Calling
No but I had the Best Of album
4
Alexia
Uh La La La
Definitely not
5
Kylie Minogue
Breathe
Negative
6
Bryan Adams
I’m Ready
Nope
7
Texas / Wu-Tang Clan
Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day) / Insane
No but I had a promo copy of the album
8
Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins
It’s Like That
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.
A day after this TOTP aired, scientists at Roslin Institute, Midlothian announced the birth of a cloned sheep called Dolly seven months after the event. Dolly was named after country legend Dolly Parton apparently. Anyway, it’s kind of apt that this story about cloning was in the news back then because tonight’s show is co-hosted by Ant & Dec who in the early years of their career were subject to the claim that people couldn’t tell them apart! Ba dum tss! Alright, alright. It’s a poor start to the post from me. Things can only get better right? And no, that doesn’t mean D:Ream are on the show.
Things are looking up immediately though as the show is opened by James and one of their best known hits “She’s A Star”. As the caption says, this was the band’s first hit for three years and first new material since the double album project of “Laid” and “Wah Wah” in 1993 and 1994 respectively. In the meantime, there had been some significant events and shifts within the group. Firstly, guitarist Larry Gott had left to become a designer and spend more time with his family (although he still contributed to the writing and recording of 1997 album “Whiplash ”). Lead singer Tim Booth had wandered off to do a side project titled Booth and the Badman with Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti whilst the band’s manager Martine McDonagh resigned. The band also discovered that they owed a £250,000 tax bill. Against that background, they still had to keep delivering the goods and they duly did with the lead single from the aforementioned “Whiplash” album. “She’s A Star” is a monster of a tune – one of those that is familiar from the very first moment you hear it even though you know that can’t be possible. Superbly crafted with that huge, elongated chorus delivered by Booth’s falsetto vocals, for me though, it’s the bridge into that chorus which is the best part. The whole thing just soars – a complete anthem from the first note to the last. Now, some of the observant of you might say “Hang on, the last time you banged on about an elongated chorus it was slagging off Mark Owen for having one in his hit “Clemente” so what’s the difference, hypocrite?”. Well, I guess it’s that, to me (and it’s just my opinion) the chorus was all “Clementine” had whereas “She’s A Star” was a much more complete song hence my comment about the bridge part.
The fright masks and freaky wigs displayed on mannequins on stage with the band were from the cover of the single and were designed by a friend of Tim Booth’s and photographed for the artwork in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York. Is it me or do they look a bit like Sid Vicious and if so, presumably the photoshoot location was intentional given Sid’s history with that place? The video featured a young Keeley Hawes who would find fame in AshesToAshes, TippingThe Velvet and Spooks to name just a few TV series. She was also in the promo for Suede’s “Saturday Night” a performance of which we saw on TOTP just the other week. Sadly for Keeley, neither video were played on the show.
Who on earth is/was this?! DJ Kool? Seriously?! That was his stage name? DJ Kool?! I don’t remember him atall. What was his hit called? “Let Me Clear My Throat”?! Is this a wind up? Have I slipped through a time portal entered a parallel universe or something? None of this really happened did it?! Right, let me listen to the track…
…hang on! I do know this or at least I know the sample it’s based around. That’s “Hear The Drummer Get Wicked” by Chad Jackson. Except it isn’t as that track used a sample as well. So what’s the original sample? My research pointed me in the direction of this…
…but even that’s not the original which as far as I can tell is this…
Mystery solved. As for DJ Kool, what a load of old tripe. He displays a distinct lack of creativity in his choice of sample and then just shouts a load of disjointed, cliched phrases over it before descending into call and response, lowest common denominator behaviour. He even nicked the track’s title from a Beastie Boys song called “The New Style”. Thank heavens we never heard from him again because he was as welcome as…cough, cough, splutter, splutter…phlegm.
Next to a case of art imitating life imitating art or something as we have the song from a soundtrack to a film about a fictional mid 60s band who shoot to fame off the back of a hit song that actually becomes a hit in real life. The film is That ThingYouDo! and was the writing and directorial debut of Tom Hanks (whose name Ant & Dec manage to turn into a double entendre in their intro). The movie tells the story of TheWonders from Erie, Pennsylvania who win a local talent contest when their newly recruited drummer Guy speeds up the tempo of their self penned song and wins them a shot at the big time when they are picked up by major label Play-Tone Records. The film charts the band’s rise to prominence in parallel with their song rising the charts with each stage showing their fame getting bigger and bigger until they find themselves performing to the whole of America on TheHollywoodTelevisionShowcase. Inevitably, it all ends in disappointment with the band imploding though there is a happy ending.
At the time, I thought that Tom Hanks had also written the song “That Thing You Do!” but he didn’t (though he did contribute to two songs on the soundtrack album). That was written by Adam Schlesinger, one time member of Fountains Of Wayne about whom I know very little except the song “Stacy’s Mom” from 2003. Anyway, the title track is an exceptional example of a perfect pop song that would also fit easily into a 60s compilation album without anyone realising that it was written three decades later. It’s just as well that the song works as you get to hear it over and over in the film in various different performances and guises yet it’s a tribute to Schlesinger that you never tire of to – well, I don’t anyway. I think its ubiquity is rendered less dominant by the dedication of the actors who apparently spent weeks in rehearsal learning their instruments so that when it came to miming the song for the shooting of the film, they looked and played liked authentic musicians.
You might have guessed already that I am a fan of this film but then I am a sucker for a music based narrative which shows the progression from early beginnings to fame. Some of my favourite films and books include That’ll Be The Day and its sequel Stardust starring David Essex and the novel Espedair Street by Iain Banks which all fit into this category. Despite not being a massive commercial hit at the time, the film That Thing You Do! has become a bit of a cult hit with fans to the extent that in 2021, a Wonders Night was staged in Erie where the film was partially set with cast members attending and participating in a panel discussion, autograph session and auction. As a result of funds collected from the event, raised $25,500 for Notice Ability, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping students with dyslexia.
As for the song “That Thing You Do!”, it didn’t match the chart high of its fictional counterpart peaking at No 41 in America and No 22 in the UK. As for art imitating life imitating art, Tom Hanks established a film and television production company named Playtone based on the record label in the film and a music arm of the operation is actually called Playtone Records label. Playtone has had an exclusive television development deal with HBO since the company was formed. Playtone’s projects for HBO have won 46 Emmy Awards while garnering 113 Emmy Award nominations.
Unlikely chart heroes Space were really getting the hang of this pop star lark by 1997. “Dark Clouds” was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit all taken from their debut album “Spiders”. Although it’s made of much the same stuff as their previous hits, it’s perhaps a little more mellow than its predecessors. Actually, listening to it now for the first time in years, there’s something about it that is giving me Summer of 1983 vibes. Why would that be? Well, I think that it’s putting me in mind of “Long Hot Summer” by The Style Council. Can you hear it? No? You might have to wait for the dark clouds to drift away to reveal the sunshine.
This trend for rap artists remaking old hits around this time is becoming tedious. There was Coolio who topped the charts with a treatment of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” and just the other week we had LL Cool J at No 1 with his version of the old Rufus and Chaka Khan hit “Ain’t Nobody”. Now here was WarrenG who himself had already gone down that route with his take on Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” a few weeks prior. With that going to No 2, he clearly thought another attempt on going one better was justified using the same formula hence we got “I Shot The Sheriff”, the Bob Marley classic that Eric Clapton also had a hit with.
Picking up the protest song theme of the original, Warren G added some lyrics about police brutality and institutional racism. Sadly, despite this being 1997, these issues would continue to raise their ugly heads in the years to come both in America and the UK. The poignancy of the track didn’t make it any more listenable for me though with Warren’s flat vocals on the song’s title phrase especially off putting. Despite my reservations, the single would be a massive hit but it still missed out on a No 1 by a single place just like its predecessor.
And now to one of the most revered dance tracks of all time made by one of the most influential dance artists of all time. Despite the superlatives in that statement, Daft Punk weren’t that well known back in early 1997. Well, not to the non-dance heads in the mainstream like…well…me. That would all change with seminal track “Da Funk”. Having originally been released in a limited run pressing on 12” only via independent label Soma back in 1995, the track was reactivated after endorsement by The Chemical Brothers and Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale. A bidding war ensued between the majors with the French duo (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homer-Christo) signing with Virgin ultimately. Their new label were keen to rerelease “Da Funk” and with their backing and promotional budget, it would go Top 10. Combining house, funk and EDM, it had the music press salivating at its bass and beats. Even I could appreciate this one as being something special.
Its accompanying, Spike Jonze directed video was equally groundbreaking. The plot of Charles the Dog Boy with his leg in a cast and hobbling on a crutch around New York has the feel of an indie, art house short film. All very intriguing though I was left wondering if it was the best way to promote the single with the track low down in the mix to allow the characters in the video to speak their lines and interact. Having said that, it was certainly ahead of its time and must surely have been an influence on the 2024 Robbie Williams biopic Better Man which sees Williams portrayed as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee with no other characters in the movie reacting to his appearance (meant to portray his state of mind) just as in the “Da Funk” promo and its protagonist Charles.
From one Spike (Jonze) to another Spike (Dawbarn) as the latter is name checked by Ant & Dec alongside his band mates in their intro to 911. It’s not Spike that I’m focussing on here though but lead singer Lee Brennan as we return to the theme of Dolly the sheep and cloning. Look at Lee and then look at Dec. If they’re not a case of cloning then they were surely separated at birth! Anyway, Lee, Spike and Jimmy are here to perform their latest hit “The Day We Find Love” and what a wimpy, feeble track it was. However, the strategy of releasing a ballad around Valentine’s Day certainly paid off when it debuted at No 4, the band’s biggest chart hit to date at that point. Watching them perform it though, their stage choreography (especially from Spike and Jimmy!) seem incongruous to the song. All jerky arm movements and shrugging shoulders like someone shoved ice cubes down their back. “The Day We Find Love”? Nah, Give me “The Day We Caught The Train” any day.
It’s a seventh different No 1 in seven weeks as NoDoubt debut at the top of the charts with “Don’t Speak”. Now, as I recall, there was a huge buzz about this one due to its massive airplay – it was the most played song on American radio up to this point in 1997. I’m sure that a communication came from Our Price Head Office informing stores that due to unprecedented demand for the single, an unusually large order of initial stock of it had been placed for the chain. I don’t think we’d ever had anything like that from the company before. It would happen again the following year though when Britney Spears appeared from nowhere with her “…Baby One More Time” single. Anyway, back to No Doubt and I can’t say that they’d been on my radar despite working in a record shop and despite the fact that they’d already appeared in the UK Top 40 (albeit briefly) when their single “Just A Girl” spent one week at No 38 in October of 1996. However, we all knew about them a few months later when this monster track was unleashed. It would break the sequence of consecutive different UK No 1s by staying at the top for three weeks and would go on to be our seventh best selling single of the year. Actually, I would have thought it would have been higher. What was above it?
*checks list*
Ah, well. It was never going to top “Candle In The Wind ‘97” but “Barbie Girl” and The Teletubbies?! What was going on?! Anyway, “Don’t Speak” is a very accomplished rock/pop power ballad but not in the vein of something from Cher or Celine Dion. It had more credibility than anything by those two. Maybe it was the band’s ska punk beginnings or Gwen Stefani’s unconventional vocals that lent them that. However, the song’s success undoubtedly brought the band into the mainstream with parent album “Tragic Kingdom” selling 16 million copies worldwide. The success of “Don’t Speak” would usher in a rerelease for “Just A Girl” which would go Top 3 the second time around. For a while, No Doubt was the bomb. And then…well…as noted many a time before, a band with a female lead singer and an otherwise all male line up was always going to have its publicity centred around the vocalist and Stefani certainly was who the press were interested in. With her looks compared to Madonna’s and much attention paid to her midriff, tensions within the band were high but that’s a discussion for a future post.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
James
She’s A Star
No but I had the album
2
DJ Kool
Let Me Clear My Throat
No
3
The Wonders
That Thing You Do!
Great track but its a no
4
Space
Dark Clouds
Nah
5
Warren G
I Shot The Sheriff
Nope
6
Daft Punk
Da Funk
See 3 above
7
911
The Day We Find Love
Never
8
No Doubt
Don’t Speak
See 3 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.
It’s the end of March 1994 and new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill is implementing his ideas for the show slowly but surely. Unlike the ‘year zero revamp ‘ of 1991 which seemed to want to change everything all at once, this was more of an organic approach. Yes, he’d brought back some of the Radio 1 DJs overnight and ditched Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin without flinching but some things remained the same. The logo, theme tune and titles were unchanged and so was the day of broadcast. All of these elements would be replaced or shifted in time but for now it was essentially the same show. However, Blaxill did take the decision to ditch the Breakers section meaning there were less Top 40 singles showcased but there seemed to be more emphasis on getting artists into the actual TOTP studio in person. Of the 10 acts on this show, seven were in studio performances. He’d also started putting a personal, direct to camera message from the ‘exclusive’ artist at the top of the show beforethe titles had even got underway. Last week it was Salt ‘N’ Pepa and this time around it was the Bee Gees. Little alterations but alterations nonetheless.
We start though with Haddaway and his fourth consecutive UK hit single “Rock My Heart”. I think I’ve said this before but it seems like a real anomaly to me that this guy was in the charts in 1994 despite the fact that we’d only first become aware of him less than a year before. He was definitive 1993 in my head. After, switching to a ballad for his previous hit “I Miss You”, he was squarely back with the Eurodance formula for this one and it’s all very repetitive stuff. Not even his overly energetic backing dancers can liven this up. Haddaway was just about done after this No 9 hit. He did manage two further minor UK hits but his second album released in 1995 – “The Drive” – stalled completely and tanked over here though he did retain some of his European fanbase.
I should mention that tonight’s host is Bruno Brookes and that his hair by this point was taking on a life of its own. He’d always had a bit of a mullet back in his 80s heyday but the dawn of a new decade hadn’t persuaded him to go for an into the 90s haircut. No, Bruno went the other way and doubled down on long hair to the point that it seemed to be trying to form an enclosure around his face. Never mind Haddaway being an anomaly, Brookes was an uber – outlier.
Anyway, back to the music and sometimes it’s easy to think you know a song but you really don’t. What am I talking about? Well, you can identify a song when it comes on the radio easily enough because you’ve heard it enough times to be buried in your memory banks but do we know how it came about, its origins, the motivations behind its composition, what are the lyrics actually about? Here’s an example…”Say Something” by James. Now, I might hear it and think “yes, that’s James. Unmistakably them from around the mid 90s I would imagine when they were having lots of hits”, tick myself as being correct and refile the song in my brain until the next time I hear it. Yet the hours and process that might have gone into bringing that song to the public maybe deserve more than that brief acknowledgment.
Why am I picking on James for this narrative? Well, after touring their fourth album “Seven” extensively it was time to return to the recording studio to begin work on their fifth “Laid”. Desperate to work with the legendary Brian Eno, their wish was granted and he duly agreed to act as producer. The band had historically always had song-storming sessions whilst jamming in their Manchester rehearsal rooms out of which the seeds of new tracks would be germinated. Eno observed this and thought that this organic (there’s that word again!) practice was just as valid for recording as the finished product and got the band to agree to letting him record said sessions as a second album, a companion piece to “Laid”. Originally meant to be released simultaneously or as a double album, reticence from their label meant it didn’t see the light of day until August 1994 when “Wah Wah” was released nearly a year after “Laid”. At 23 tracks and 68 minutes long, it divided opinion. To the casual fan who liked their big, anthemic hit singles, it wasn’t what was required but for the strong devoted it was a great insight into how the band worked and their motivations. Now, “Say Something” was actually track five on the “Laid” album but it was paired with a track called “Jam J” for release as a double A-side single which was track 3 on “Wah Wah”. There is a song on “Wah Wah” called “Say Say Something” but it bears no resemblance to its “Laid” counterpart. To further hammer home this point about song composition and not usually getting to know the full gestation period of a track, “Wah Wah” includes an early take of “Sometimes” which would become the second single released from 1997 album “Whiplash”.
As for the performance here, Tim Booth delivers a great vocal but it is combined with a strangely static stance with him only loosening up in the middle eight with some snake-hipped shimmying. The single would peak at No 24 and we won’t see/hear from them again for nearly three years when they would release “She’s A Star” as the first single from that “Whiplash” album.
A video now as we get to see the promo for “I’ll Remember” by Madonna again. Like The Beatles and The Clash before her, Madge didn’t really go in for personal appearances on the show. Off the top of my head there’s two from 1984 – her debut performing “Holiday” in the January, all armpits and bangles and then there’s the infamous pink wig appearance in December for “Like A Virgin”. A bit of digging in the internet tells me that over a decade later she was in the studio in November of 1995 to perform “You’ll See” from her ballads collection “Something To Remember” and 1998 saw her on the show twice for run throughs of “Frozen” and “The Power Of Goodbye”. I think that’s it for the 80s and 90s. Not many really when you consider her global reach and the amount of hits she had during that time. The new millennium brought a handful more of appearances before the show was axed in 2006.
Who said Eurodance acts all sound the same?! Well, I’m pretty sure I have at some point in this blog but just as Haddaway shook things up with a ballad for his third single, so Culture Beat lowered the bpm and mood for their fourth hit “World In Your Hands”. This was actually very different to all their previous stuff with an almost trip-hop backbeat and some very sombre raps courtesy of Jay Supreme. The whole track feels pretty dark watching it back. It’s almost Massive Attack-esque. Well, not quite but maybe ‘Medium Sized Rebuke’. Did we really need the very literal stage dressing of a massive spinning globe though? “World In Your Hands” peaked at No 20.
New producer or not, TOTP wasn’t going to turn its back on Eurovision and so here was the UK’s 1994 entrant – Frances Ruffelle with a song called “Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)”. Although the song was chosen two weeks earlier by a public telephone vote on ASongForEurope, Frances was already nailed on as the artist to sing it as she was pre-chosen for the gig. She actually performed all eight contending songs over four preview shows during a one week period in March. Although a new name to me, Frances actually came from a very showbiz background. Her Mum is Sylvia Young, founder of the legendary Sylvia Young Theatre School in London and Frances had already made a name for herself in her own right starring in West End productions Starlight Express and Les Misérables. She has furthered that showbiz legacy by being the mother of pop star Eliza Doolittle.
I have to say I don’t remember this song at all (can’t have bothered watching Eurovision that year) but it sounds like Culture Beat weren’t the only people who had been listening to Massive Attack. France’s song had a whiff of the trip hop collective – even the song title bears a resemblance to their most famous song! “Lonely Symphony” is nowhere near as memorable as “Unfinished Sympathy” though and that proved to be its undoing on Eurovision night as Frances trailed in a distant 10th place. It faired better on the UK singles chart where it peaked at a respectable No 25.
Twitter users watching this BBC4 repeat got themselves into a bit of a lather when they realised that Frances was wearing Union Jack underwear beneath her rather sheer dress. I wonder if a then 21 year old, pre-Spice Girls Geri Halliwell was watching back in 1994 and thinking “Hang on a minute. That’s interesting…”
Unlike the Breakers section , Ric Blaxill hadn’t jettisoned the ‘exclusive live by satellite’ slot and continued to keep perhaps misplaced faith with it in the same way that Todd Boehly still believes that Graham Potter is the best person to be my beloved Chelsea’s manager (for now). There’s no denying the size of the name who’s occupying that slot this week but yet again it seems to me to be a wholly uneventful…well…event.
As the onscreen caption states, Bruce Springsteen was enjoying his biggest ever hit with “Streets Of Philadelphia” which was up to No 2 by this point. Not only was the size of the hit impressive but also its longevity. It spent 7 weeks inside the Top 10 alone including a run of 4 where it placed no lower than No 3. Somehow though, The Boss couldn’t manage to topple some Dutch chancers who’d revived the Charleston from the top of the charts. The performance here might be interesting to Bruce aficionados (I know a few) but it’s a tad on the dull side isn’t it? OK, given the sombre mood of the track and the gravitas of the film it came from, you couldn’t expect Bruce to be jumping around stage as if he was singing “Dancing On The Dark” or something but it seems to disrupt the tempo of the show. The fact that it’s in black and white (mostly) doesn’t help. Maybe I’m missing the point. I probably am.
See, now Blaxill’s gone completely the other way mood wise. Talk about polar extremes! Some might say this was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Get ready for S*M*A*S*H! Now, I spent the 90s working in record shops and so felt reasonably across what was happening in UK music but I have to admit that the ‘New wave of new wave’ was a scene that I don’t recall but it turns out that it was an actual thing and it wasn’t just some clever/nonsense line that Bruno Brookes came up with. Apparently some sort of Britpop forerunner, it was characterised by new bands who wore their original New Wave artists’ influences on their sleeves. All sounds a bit myopic to me. S*M*A*S*H were just one of the bands in the scene though the ones that I’m familiar with are surely more closely associated with Britpop – Sleeper, Echobelly, Shed Seven, Elastica…
So, S*M*A*S*H then. I’m assuming the name was a play on the title of Korean War based comedy drama M*A*S*H? They came from Welwyn Garden City, they made loud records with provocative, ban-inducing titles (“Lady Love Your C**t” anyone?) and somehow managed to get onto TOTP without having released a single (the first act ever to do so). Here’s @TOTPFacts on how they ended up on the show:
Although Pulp were hoping for a call that week ("Do You Remember The First Time?" had entered the top 40 at 33), #TOTP producer Ric Blaxill instead decided to take a punt on S*M*A*S*H, whose non-chart-eligible EP had charted in the album chart 28. "Shame" was the lead track.
S*M*A*S*H's Ed Borrie explains: "Our radio plugger… brought Ric Blaxill to see us in Luton at this sports hall… and then a couple of weeks later he had us on Top Of The Pops." #TOTP
Simples! OK, maybe not that simple. Their story does have a few more details. The song they performed here – “Shame” – was the lead track from an EP that chart regulations excluded from being eligible for the singles chart but which did qualify for the album chart where it reached No 26. They did finally get a proper hit single later in the year when “(I Want To) Kill Somebody” made No 26 but it’s controversial subject matter got it banned. Listening back to “Shame”, I have to say I don’t mind it. A bit derivative but then if you’re part of a scene whose name harks back to to another well established movement what do you expect? They seem like a prototype of the noisier moments of The Libertines. Just like their frontman Pete Doherty, I’m guessing S*M*A*S*H’s singer Ed Borrie had some issues with drug abuse given his wide-eyed, staring performance here. Surely he’d taken something beforehand? Sadly, I think I’m right. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:
S*M*A*S*H bassist Salvatore Alessi went on to join Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, while drummer Rob Hague was in These Animal Men. Singer Ed Borrie, meanwhile, disappeared into (in his words) "North London's drug scene". #TOTP
Happily, Ed is on better form now and is still doing live gigs having supported the likes of My Life Story in 2019. One last thing, how did they get away with singing “You’re girlfriend’s a bitch” on pre-watershed, prime time TV?
We move from Ric Blaxill shaking things up with a cutting edge new band to yet another extreme of giving a part of the pop establishment a pat in the back. Bruno Brookes stands in front of a huge disc that he’s presenting to the BeeGees to mark 30 years in the business and 100 million sales worldwide. This bit of staging was another small change – hadn’t Simon Mayo stood with a load of 2 Unlimited gold discs the other week as a prop to introduce them? The massive disc only serves to make Bruno look even smaller than he actually is and seems to have made him stumble over his words in his segue. “With me three members of the Bee Gees…” he begins. Aren’t you missing a ‘the’ there Bruno? How many more members of the Bee Gees did you think there were? In truth, it’s all just a big set up to promote their latest single “How To Fall In Love Part 1” and what a curious thing it is. It never seems to get going properly and is so lightweight that it’s hardly there at all. Nowhere near as accessible as previous Top 5 hit “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, it was also nowhere near as successful peaking at No 30. Another curious thing about this was why does Barry Gibb sing the whole song with his right hand in his pocket?
It’s the final week at the top for Doop with “Doop”. Can we just try to forget that this ever happened and never talk of it again? Great.
The play out music is “How Gee” by BlackMachine. Yeah, I haven’t a clue either but it sounds very familiar presumably because it’s made up of a load of samples from other songs? Seems that was the case. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:
Sampled in Black Machine's "How Gee": some sax from "Soul Power 74" by Maceo & the Macks (1974) https://t.co/FgVufeq7J6, and a snippet of "Sho Yuh Right Sho Yuh Right" by Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers (1985) https://t.co/ZvL0YvIFhN#TOTP
Apparently they were an Italian electronic group that had a few hits in the 90s mainly in Austria and The Netherlands with “How Gee” being the biggest in the UK where it got to No 17. They’re the first act on the next show as well so heaven knows what I’ll find to write about them then!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Haddaway
Rock My Heart
Never happening
2
James
Say Something
Not the single but I have their Best Of album with it on
3
Madonna
I’ll Remember
Nope
4
Culture Beat
World In Your Hands
No
5
Frances Ruffelle
Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)
Not even patriotic duty made me buy this
6
Bruce Springsteen
Streets Of Philadelphia
Nah
7
S*M*A*S*H
Shame
I did not
8
Bee Gees
How To Fall In Love Part 1
As if
9
Doop
Doop
See 1 above
10
Black Machine
How Gee
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.
We’re well into September 1993 here at TOTP Rewind and the Top 40 continues to be completely batshit in its make up. Look at the running order for this TOTP. We’ve got Eurodance, grunge, a singer-songwriter, some Scottish rock/pop, perhaps the ultimate in bonkers artists from Iceland and f*****g Motörhead! Like I said, batshit!
We start with someone who may or may not be full on batshit but whom I have certainly found to be a curious figure at the very least. In 1993, Moby was yet to be catapulted into the celebrity stratosphere due to the ubiquity of his “Play” album but he was still a pioneering name in dance music circles and had already brought his take on it to the mainstream via 1991 Top 10 hit “Go”. A second entry into the charts had been a minor affair when “I Feel It / Thousand” scraped in at No 38. However, he would go much higher with “Move – The EP” from which this track “Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)” came.
Like Black Box and Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch before it, the track sampled “Love Sensation” by Loleatta Holloway but that isn’t what is keeping my attention in this performance. No, it’s the inverting of roles that we normally see from a dance act on TOTP. How many times have we witnessed an anonymous bloke at the back of the stage twiddling with some keyboards with a female vocalist belting out the (usually limited amount of) vocals upfront whilst trying to live thugs up with some dance moves? Well, it’s loads of times I can tell you but that template wasn’t for Moby. No, his female singer stands rigidly still with her arms behind her back for the entire performance. Meanwhile, it’s Moby who hogs the spotlight, leaping about and energetically pounding his synth drums. At one point he crouches Gollum- like on his keyboards before standing fully erect and then jumping down onto the stage! Like I said about him earlier, a bit odd.
“The Move EP” peaked at No 21.
There have been some famous princes over the years. How about Prince Charming for a start? Then there’s our new King who was Prince Charles for years (don’t mention Andrew – I said don’t mention…never mind). More recently there’s the villainous Prince Hans from Frozen and…erm…yes, Prince of course (as in the genius recording artist RIP). The best rapping Prince though? This guy must be in with a shout. I refer to The Fresh Prince (of Bel-Air), one half of the rap duo DJ Jazzy JeffAndTheFreshPrince.
The last time these two (Will Smith and Jeff Townes obviously) were in our charts was two years prior when “Summertime” went Top 10. Now they were back with the biggest hit of their career with *SPOILER* future No 1 “Boom! Shake The Room”. Seriously, who couldn’t like this hook laden platter of rap, hip-hop and a massive shout-a-long chorus? A perfect antidote to all that Eurodance nonsense – was it the record that knocked “Mr. Vain” of the top of the charts? I certainly hope so.
This was a watershed moment for Will Smith’s recording career as it just about brought the curtain down on DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince as a recording artist with future releases coming under his own name. I’m pretty sure that Townes continued to work with Smith on his solo artist output though. It would prove to be a commercially successful decision with Smith racking up eight Top 5 singles including the No 1 “Men In Black“. The Prince is dead, long live…erm…Will Smith?
Next to that bonkers artist from Iceland I mentioned earlier. I’m not a big Björk fan on account of her voice. I may have even gone as far as to state on occasion that she just can’t sing. I was wrong about that on reflection – she can sing it’s just that I don’t like it. Her performance here on “Venus As A Boy” being a case in point. The track itself I don’t mind. It’s got a tinkling charm to it that draws you in somehow but then Björk starts singing and it all becomes about her and that voice. Maybe I’m missing the point.
The performance here isn’t quite as out there as I would have expected with Björk giving a fairly orthodox delivery (I can’t believe she was out-bonkered by Moby!) albeit with an outfit that looked highly flammable. Here’s host Tony Dortie with an insight:
#totp there really was a big Health and safety meeting on whether Bjork cld perform with no shoes…
But…but…you couldn’t see her feet under that outfit so what was the point?! What we could see though was her clearly Space 1999 influenced eyebrows:
Oh and what were the model ships on plinths all about? Her backing band look like they are expecting something to kick off with her at any point but then she could be volatile…
Finally a live by satellite performance that is interesting! First there’s a little to camera intro from the band and then the execution of the song is simple yet somehow bewitching. I talk, of course, of James. You can always rely on the poetic Tim Booth to provide some high brow drama.
After finally becoming a bona fide chart act with the re-release of “Sit Down” going to No 2 in 1991, the band consolidated on their success with the well received “Seven” album and its attendant four singles. Not people to rest on their laurels, they were back in 1993 with fifth studio album “Laid” of which “Sometimes (Lester Piggott)” was the lead single. I think I may have been guilty at the time of thinking that their output was starting to stick to a formula and lumped “Sometimes” in with that but it’s actually a superbly crafted song with striking imagery in its lyrics of a child facing a monsoon wanting to be hit by lightning. It deserved a higher peak than its ultimate No 18 resting place.
I really like the staging of the performance here with the band proving that all they needed was an empty space to work in to come up with something interesting. The static five band members behind Booth strumming their guitars in unison creates an hypnotic effect although the guy on the end with the long hair (sorry, not up on all the members of James) who can’t resist swaying his head along to the beat is distracting. It’s sort of like a gender-reversed Robert Palmer backing band for “Addicted To Love” but without the pouting. Meanwhile, Tim Booth dances with a Spanish looking lady dressed entirely in black. I would have expected nothing less. Almost perfect.
Oh and that Lester Piggott suffix in the song title? Here’s Tim courtesy of @TOTPFacts:
The full title of "Sometimes" is "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)" – Tim Booth explained the bit in parentheses by saying "it has a racing beat". It was produced by Brian Eno, who also provided additional vocals. #TOTP
Back in the studio we find StoneTemplePilots performing their single “Plush”. I know I made the comparison in a previous post but this is just “Alive” by Pearl Jam isn’t it? Not that that’s a bad thing (I like “Alive”) but the similarities are quite stark.
The guitarist Dean DeLeo looked a bit like a young John Bishop on first glance but having sought out more images of him online, he actually looks like someone I used to work with at the Civil Service. And yes, I realise that comment won’t mean anything to the vast majority of you reading this but he does so there. “Plush” peaked at No 23 in the UK.
The Breakers are next starting with Guru featuring N’Dea Davenport. Now I find all this very confusing. Why? Well, while I don’t remember this single “Trust Me”, I do recall the album that it came from which was “Guru’s Jazzmatazz Vol 1 (An Experimental Fusion Of Hip-Hop And Jazz)”. So why my confusion? Wikipedia tells me that the album only got to No 58 in the UK charts and yet I remember selling loads of it in the Our Price store in Altrincham where I was working at the time. How can this be? I refuse to believe that a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester with a population of 52,419 was/is the centre of the hip-hop/ jazz fusion world!
N’Dea Davenport was of course the on-off singer with acid jazzers the Brand New Heavies with whom Guru (real name Keith Elam) collaborated on their second album “Heavy Rhyme Experience Vol 1”. Do you think Keith nicked not only the band’s singer but also the idea for his album title off them?
In my head, Texas didn’t have any chart success between their debut single “I Don’t Want A Lover” in 1989 and their Chris Evans championed resurrection in 1997 with “Say What You Want” but that isn’t the case. I was aware that they released two whole albums in the intervening years but I erroneously thought that neither yielded any Top 40 hits. “Mother’s Heaven” supplied No 32 hit “Alone With You” in 1992 and now here was “So Called Friend” from third album “Rick’s Road” which made it to No 30*
*They also had a non-album single, a cover of Al Green’s “Tired Of Being Alone” go to No 19 in 1992.
“So Called Friend” is pleasant enough without being anywhere near approaching exceptional although it was considered special enough to be the theme tune to US sitcom Ellen from series three onwards.
Go to 5:40
WHO??!!! Zhané (pronounced Jah-Nay which was actually the title of their debut album) were a US dance duo who scored a massive hit over there with “Hey Mr. DJ” which got to No 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was one of those tracks that never really crossed over here where it peaked at No 26. I’m not sure why that would be when American RnB acts like Jade and SWV were having Top 10 hits over here in this year but there you go. They would have two other minor UK chart hits in the 90s before disbanding in 1999. I, obviously, don’t remember it.
YES! It’s Motörhead which means I get to tell my Lemmy story! Well, it’s not actually mine but rather my friend Robin’s who has given me clearance to use it here. This is it. A few years back whilst living in London, Robin had some friends from his student days (including my wife but not me) stay over at his gaff in Marylebone. It turned out to be a heavy night and unfortunately one of those staying was sick in the bed of one of his flat mates who was away at the time. Feeling guilty and knowing his flat mate was returning that day, the following morning he took the sick-covered duvet to the local dry cleaners. On the way there, he was approached by a man asking the way to a boozer (The Angel In The Fields on Marylebone High Street for all you London pub enthusiasts out there). That man was Lemmy. Despite the weird experience of meeting a rock legend unexpectedly whilst carrying a bag containing a sick-splattered duvet, Robin managed to keep his wits about him and say to Lemmy that he’d been to a Motörhead gig the other week and told him how great they’d been. Lemmy’s reply? “Keep The Faith”. Now that’s definitely perfect.
Why was “AceOfSpades” back in the charts? I think it was to promote a Best Of album released by Castle Communications hence the single actually being called “Ace Of Spades – The CCN Remix 1993”.
I have posited a theory in past posts that there were clues hiding in plain sight that Siobahn Fahey was bound to leave Bananarama because she always had a slightly different outfit to Sarah and Keren when appearing on TOTP. While the other two would match sartorially, Siobahn would shake things up a bit by customising her version of the chosen ensemble. Talking of ‘the other two’ (a reference for the NewOrder super fans there), here are Barney, Hooky and…erm…the other two with their “World (The Price Of Love)” single.
That ‘other two’ reference isn’t the only connection to the Nanas though as I think that clothes theory is visible again. Look at Hooky with his mane of hair, his leather trousers and his ‘rock god’ posturing and compare him to the rest of them – of course he would end up leaving the band! “World (The Price Of Love)” peaked at No 13.
1993 saw the return of Beverley Craven but nobody really noticed. I mean, judging by the chart performance of this single “Love Scenes” that seems to be true as it struggled to a peak of No 34. After the dizzy heights reached by “Promise Me” two years prior, this surely wasn’t what her record label Epic were hoping for from the lead single of a new album (also called “Love Scenes”).
But then watch Beverley’s performance here and my claim that nobody noticed her return is blown out of the water. What was going on here?! Who decided to plonk her in a chair with a microphone centre stage wearing a dress that gives a new definition to the word ‘revealing’?! My God! Sharon Stone would have been embarrassed! No wonder Beverley looks like she’s on the edge of a cliff knowing any moment a gust of wind could blow her over (or indeed up her dress)! Where was her trusty piano that she always performed with?
As for the song itself, it’s a curious thing both in its sound and as a choice of single. It kind of reminds me of the theme tune to 70s action-comedy series ThePersuaders!. Beverley would never return to the UK Top 40 after this single and retired from the music industry to bring up her three daughters. She returned to the recording studio in 1999 for the largely ignored “Mixed Emotions” album before embarking on another ten year hiatus. After battling cancer she has both recorded and toured with Julia Fordham and Judie Tzuke under the Woman To Woman banner and are currently playing live at a venue near you this month with special guest Rumer.
CultureBeat are still going strong at the top of the charts with “Mr. Vain”. There are a lot of links between them and Snap! Both made Eurodance music, both had UK No 1 singles, both had a rapper in their ranks who did their US military service in Germany (Jay Supreme and Turbo B) and both had a revolving door policy for female vocalists. And they were both crap of course.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Moby
Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)
No
2
DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince
Boom! Shake The Room
Liked it, didn’t buy it
3
Björk
Venus As A Boy
I did not
4
James
Sometimes (Lester Pigott)
No but I have it on their Best Of album
5
Stone Temple Pilots
Plush
Nah
6
Guru featuring N’Dea Davenport
Trust Me
Negative
7
Texas
So Called Friend
Nope
8
Zhané
Hey Mr. DJ
Not likely
9
Motörhead
Ace Of Spades
I must have it on something surely?
10
New Order
World (The Price Of Love)
No
11
Beverley Craven
Love Scenes
Didn’t happen
12
Culture Beat
Mr. Vain
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.
As with last week’s show, all the songs on tonight are ones we haven’t seen in these TOTP repeats previously bar the No 1. All the congestion in the bowels of the Xmas charts has been evacuated and there are new entries galore in the Top 40. Talking of new entries, the world of football was days away from a player making an explosive entrance into the English league who’s legacy is still remembered to this day and not always for how well he could play the beautiful game. I talk, of course, of Eric Cantona.
The day after this TOTP aired, King Eric rejected the offer of a contract at Sheffield Wednesday and 24 hours later signed for Leeds United instead. His galvanising arrival and goals helped power them to the final 1st Division title before the Premier League began and the first for Leeds since 1974. A move to Manchester United followed where he would become a legitimate legend. Then came the 25th January 1995 and the ‘kung fu’ incident where he launched a kick at Crystal Palace ‘fan’ Matthew Simmons leading to a lengthy ban and that “when the seagulls follow the trawler” press conference. His rehabilitation into an Old Trafford idol was astonishing. All of that though was still to come. For now, I, like most football fans, had no idea who he was.
Unfortunately, I did know who the first group on the show tonight were. The Pasadenas burst onto the UK music scene back in 1988 with their Top 5 hit “Tribute (Right On)” and Top 3 album “To Whom It May Concern”. Briefly they were going to be the next big thing in UK R&B though they did absolutely nothing for me. In their TOTP performances, they seemed more interested in doing back flips than singing – they were the JLS of their day in that respect – and so I wasn’t arsed in the slightest when they seemed to have disappeared completely by the end of the 80s.
A change of musical direction however saw them return to the charts for a short stay with 1990’s “Love Thing” but when the follow up single stiffed and their second album’s release was delayed for a year, I really thought it was the end for The Pasadenas.
However, if we have learned one thing from these TOTP repeats it’s that when an act is in need of a career rejuvenating hit, just record a cover version. So what did this lot do? No, they didn’t record a cover version, they made a whole album of covers! “Yours Sincerely” included their takes on songs by such legendary names as Bob Marley, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye and…erm…Steve Arrington. Oh and “I’m Doing Fine Now” by 70s US R&B group New York City. I mean it was a canny choice in terms of getting them played on the radio and by logical extension back in the charts but if they’d played it any safer they might as well have called themselves Steve Davis and be done with it.
To be fair to them, they’ve cut down on the dance moves for this performance and concentrated on their harmonies – presumably the TOTP live vocal policy had forced a rethink on back flips!
“I’m Doing Fine” lived up to its name by becoming the group’s biggest hit reaching No 4. Three more Top 40 hits followed but by the mid 90s, their story had reached the final chapter. The epilogue came in 2005 when they appeared on ITV show Hit Me Baby One More Time. They lost to T’Pau’s Carol Decker. Pop careers eh? Like china in your hand.
By the way, the presenters tonight are Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon who are literally serving up the most banal, hackneyed and embarrassing gibberish in their segues. For example:
TD: We are cool rockin’ down here with just an unbelievable collection of happening tunes
CS: We are gonna be movin’ and groovin’ live down here bringing some hot sounds to your ears
Was this stuff scripted or was this how they really spoke in normal life?! Claudia compounds the crime by shouting every line as loud as she can.
Now when I mentioned Eric Cantona earlier it wasn’t with one eye on an act that was on the show that would make a nice little link with him however fortuitous it may seem. Still, Cantona’s taking out of Matthew Simmons could have easily been described as him being someone who Kicks Like A Mule and no mistake.
So who were these guys? Apparently they were Richard Russell and Nick Halkes who both worked at the XL Recordings label who were responsible for recent successes by The Prodigy and SL2. The label would become a huge player in the dance scene but would also diversify to sign artists like Badly Drawn Boy, Super Furry Animals and Electric Six. Having said all of that, their single “The Bouncer” wasn’t on XL Recordings but came out on Rebel MC’s independent Tribal Bass label. Talk about contrary!
This sounded like so much peripheral nonsense to me – almost a novelty record of the ragga genre with all that ‘Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ bullshit. There was meant to be an album of this stuff but thankfully it never materialised. They have continued as an occasional project though, their most recent incarnation as K.L.A.M. supported The Prodigy on a 2010 tour. In their day jobs, Russell is still the owner of XL Recordings whilst Halkes left to form the Positiva label that brought us Reel 2 Reel, Bucketheads and The Vengaboys. Yeah, cheers for that mate. Halkes also goes in for a spot of lecturing on the music industry at University of Westminster. I don’t think any of my lecturers at Sunderland Poly were ever that cool.
Some proper music now courtesy of James who are back in the charts with their new single “Born Of Frustration”. Having finally become bona fide chart stars when a re-recording of “Sit Down” went to No 2 the year before, the band followed up on that success with a Top 10 hit in “Sound” (which we didn’t get to see due to the Adrian Rose issue) in the November. “Born Of Frustration” followed soon after with both tracks being forerunners of new album “Seven” which was released two weeks after this TOTP appearance.
Now if you google ‘James Born Of Frustration’, one of the things you’ll find out about the song which I never knew until now was the criticism it attracted in the music press for sounding like Simple Minds, specifically “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. I’d never made that connection in my life before but now I know of it, I can’t unhear it. It’s the ‘la, la, la, la, la’ refrain. God, it is the same isn’t it?! Tim Booth swears down that he’d never heard “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” before writing the song (really?!) so any influence must have been unconscious. This didn’t satisfy the press though with the inkies accusing the band of selling out after becoming commercially successful after years of being indie darlings. For me, it wasn’t that it sounded like Jim Kerr at all but that it sounded like…well…James in that it sounded a bit too like “Sound”. When “Ring The Bells” came out in the March, that sounded like its predecessors as well. I did like what I was hearing but was it all becoming a bit too samey?
Regardless of all of those accusations, their performance here is still pretty convincing. I’ve always thought of Tim Booth as a UK Michael Stipe somehow and seeing him in his youth here is quite startling with his fresh facedness and hair. He looks like a Bond villain these days. It’s a similar story with Stipe if you see images of him in REM’s early days with all his hirsuteness. I also like the guy who’s come in his nightshirt (or is it a dress) on trumpet.
“Born Of Frustration” peaked at No 13.
The first video of the night is from The Wonder Stuff with “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” Now as I recall, this was an EP wasn’t it?
*checks Wikipedia*
Yes it was. In fact it was two EPs, one of which featured this rather straight version of The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment”:
As for the title track of both EPs, it was another song lifted from their “Never Loved Elvis” album and of course featured the wonderful Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. I’m guessing that its release stemmed from a rather cynical decision by record label Polydor to cash in on the success of their recent No 1 collaboration with Vic Reeves on “Dizzy”. The album had been out for eight months by this point and the last single from it called “Sleep Alone” had been released in the August of ‘91 and hadn’t even made the Top 40. Surely they weren’t thinking of plucking another track from it for release as a single until “Dizzy” happened? And weren’t Polydor The Jam’s record label which would explain the “That’s Entertainment” cover. The whole cynical operation is being exposed. It did the trick though as “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” went Top 10 peaking at No 8.
I was listening to Magic radio today (don’t judge, I’m 53!) and the DJ was playing “Come On Eileen” (for the eighth time this week probably) and she started going on about what a floor filler it was at wedding discos. She then tried to name other such tunes and came out with (and I swear to God this is true) “Size Of A Cow” by Dizzy! Excellent product knowledge! Not sure I’ll listen again.
Did someone mention Steve Arrington before? Well, yes that was me obviously and it was on purpose as I needed the “Feel So Real” hitmaker for a nice link into the next act who are Dream Frequency with their single…yes of course…”Feel So Real”. Despite their vocalist Debbie Sharp being an American, the rest of the combo were actually from Preston, Lancashire. Founding member Ian Bland (chortle) had this to say about writing the track:
Ian Bland: "I remember listening to Sylvester’s disco hit 'You Make Me Feel So Real (Mighty Real)' on the radio, and bingo I’d got the chorus for the song.' #TOTP
So influenced by the Sylvester song was Ian that he would eventually record a cover version of it as a subsequent single in ‘94 but it failed to chart. As for “Feel So Real”, it would be Dream Frequency’s biggest hit when it peaked at No 23 but for me it was just another house track on the endless conveyor belt of house tracks with nothing to distinguish it from any of its peers.
The Breakers are back this week starting with an artist who only has two Top 40 hits to her name but that statistic doesn’t tell anywhere near her whole story. Back in 1988, Julia Fordham was going to be the next big UK female singer-songwriter off the back of a gold selling debut album and hit single “Happy Ever After”. She’d even been on Wogan, a sure fire sign of having made it back in the 80s. Sophomore album “Porcelain” came just a year later and consolidated her profile with sales of 60,000 units despite the lack of any hit singles.
1991 would deliver her second and final hit single “(Love Moves In) Mysterious Ways”. Nothing to do with the recent, similarly titled U2 single, it was actually from the soundtrack to a film which I can’t remember at all called The Butcher’s Wife starring Demi Moore. The film was a flop but Fordham’s song sustained. In a twist of irony for an artist who has 18 albums to her name, her biggest ever hit (it peaked at No 19) wasn’t actually written by Julia. Its success led to her third album, 1991’s “Swept”, being re-released in 1992 with the track cobbled onto it. Even with that re-promotion, the album struggled to a high of No 33.
Julia continued to release albums throughout the 90s to diminishing returns but has continued to record material to this day and is a popular live draw having toured with Judie Tzuke and Beverley Craven under the Woman To Woman banner.
I just about remember this next lot, their band name anyway, though what they sounded like I’m not sure. The Blessing released an album called “Prince Of The Deep Water” as their debut long player and such must have been the buzz around them that it was promoted as a Recommended Release in the Our Price chain where I was earning a living at the time. It featured guest musicians such as Toto’s Jeff Porcaro, Ricki Lee Jones and Bruce Hornsby. OK, I’m getting a feel for how it might have sounded now. Let me have a listen to the single “Highway 5 ‘92” and I’ll come back to you. Talk amongst yourselves….
OK. A few points to note:
As the No 92 in the single’s title implies, this was a re-release. It originally came out in ‘91 and peaked at No 42. I’m not convinced that addition was really necessary.
It did finally ring a few bells with me. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who it was though if I’d stumbled across it in the radio without resorting to Shazam.
The initial vocal sounds like Chris Rea. The verses sound like “Ain’t No Doubt” by Jimmy Nail.
I thought it was unspectacular but OK. Presumably that was the judgement most people came to as it only got as far as No 30 despite being remixed and repromoted.
The album sold 125,000 according to Wikipedia. We’re they a bigger deal in the US? Their sound was very American though the band actually hailed from London. The cost of that album and restructuring at record label MCA, The Blessing we’re considered commercially unviable and disbanded soon after.
Right. Who’s this bloke then? Well it’s Cicero and against all odds, it turns out that was actually his real name and not some pretentious affectation involving the Roman philosopher. David John Cicero was born in Long Island, New York but relocated to Livingston, Scotland in his youth. A big Pet Shop Boys fan, he got to live out his dreams when, after seeing them live and giving a demo tape to their personal assistant, found himself being offered management and a recording contract by Chris and Neil themselves!
His debut single on their Spaghetti label failed to find an audience despite his idols patronage but second single “Love Is Everywhere” did the trick taking Cicero into the Top 20. This one must have passed me by completely at the time as I’m sure I would have remembered that distinctive Scottish brogue in the spoken verses followed by the uplifting chorus. If The Proclaimers were ever to record a song inspired by “I Beg Your Pardon” by Kon Kan (unlikely I know), it might sound like “Love Is Everywhere”. It also conjures up images of Ewan McGregor and Trainspotting. Maybe it should have been on the soundtrack.
Sadly for Cicero, it never got any better for him than early ‘92. Subsequent singles failed to crack the Top 40 and even a Pet Shop Boys produced album and a support slot on a Take That tour couldn’t save him from the ignominy of appearing in the identity parade on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
Now, is this the debut studio appearance on TOTP by Manic Street Preachers? I think it is. It’s quite a thing even 30 years on. James Dean Bradfield stripped to the waste with “You Love Us” emblazoned across his naked chest, Nicky Wire with an intimidating black stripe painted across his eyes and Richey Edwards with his Andy Warhol / Marilyn Monroe print T-shirt making a statement that they weren’t just some dumb rock band but that they had a whole creative agenda to push (probably). I’m guessing the incongruous use of a bubble machine was not the band’s idea though maybe the controlled explosions later were.
As with The Blessing before them, the single had actually already been out once before in May ‘91 on the Heavenly label but had been re-recorded for Columbia and released as the third single from debut album “Generation Terrorists” after “Stay Beautiful” and “Love’s Sweet Exile/Repeat”. It would end up achieving the highest chart placing of all six singles released from the album (a peak of No 16) and became an anthem uniting the band and their fan base.
And me? What did I make of it all? Well, I’m afraid my reliable instinct for dodging the zeitgeist when it came steaming down the road that had already seen me fail to fall in life with The Smiths and The Stone Roses was at it again. I knew there was a band out there called Manic Street Preachers and that the music press was getting very excited about them but I seemed to ignore them. It wasn’t until “Motorcycle Emptiness” was released six months later that I finally cottoned on. I even bought their next album “Gold Against The Soul” (generally considered to be their weakest amongst the fans) and have seen them live twice (albeit that one was supporting Oasis at Maine Road) though I don’t think I have bought an album of theirs for myself since “Everything Must Go”. I did listen to their latest “The Ultra Livid Lament” on Spotify the other week and liked it if that’s any form of redemption. I even watched a documentary about them the other day. And enjoyed it.
DNA? They were the people who did they remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” weren’t they? Yes they were and here they are again, this time teaming up with soul star Sharon Redd for a remix of her minor 1980 hit “Can You Handle It”.
I’m not sure I understand the criteria for the differentiation between those tracks they just remixed and were credited for by the application of the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin suffix ‘DNA remix’ (e.g. Kylie’s “Shocked”) and those that they released with themselves as the artist like this one. Oh well.
Sharon has come dressed as a cross between a zebra and Jay Kay from Jamiroquai (or is it the Mad Hatter). Nice. As for the tune, if asked before this TOTP repeat aired, I would have said this was by somebody like Incognito or The Brand New Heavies. Clearly I would have been wrong.
“Can You Handle It” – the DNA version – peaked at No 17.
Wet Wet Wet are No 1 again with “Goodnight Girl”. On the surface this seems to be a fairly straightforward love song but there is plenty of intrigue online as to what the lyrics mean. Some think it’s a tale of forbidden love, some about a man who can’t express his true feelings whilst at least two people thought it was about prostitution! I’m not sure but I do know that although my wife really liked this song and I bought the album for her off the back of it, she had (and still has) an issue with the line “It doesn’t matter how sad I made you” because…well, in a relationship, it does. Wise words from my better half.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Pasdenas
I’m Doing Fine Now
Nope
2
Kicks Like A Mule
The Bouncer
I’d rather have been kung fu kicked by Eric Cantona
3
James
Born Of Frustration
No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
4
The Wonder Stuff
Welcome To The Cheap Seats
I did not
5
Dream Frequency
Feel So Real
Of course not
6
Julia Fordham
(Love Moves In) Mysterious Ways
No but I think my wife may have a Best Of CD with it on
7
The Blessing
Highway 5 ’92
Nah
8
Cicero
Love Is Everywhere
But not here for this song – no
9
Manic Street Preachers
You Love Us
No
10
DNA featuring Sharon Redd
Can You Handle it
I couldn’t – no
11
Wet Wet Wet
Goodnight Girl
No but my wife 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.
Those generous TOTP producers have seen fit to cram 14 (FOURTEEN!) songs into this particular show which means lots of typing and putting my grey cells through their paces for old muggins here. They’ve shoe horned 5 Breakers in this week which is the reason for the high song count and having timed it, they are squeezed into just 1 minute and 21 seconds of screen time. That’s 16 seconds per song. What was the point of that?! OK, there weren’t too many places that you could watch a music video back in 1991 so was it a case of something was better than nothing? I’m not sure. There was The Chart Show which was a staple of Saturday morning TV by this point having moved from Channel 4 to ITV in 1989 so maybe they were trying to compete with that? There was also MTV Europe though how may of us had access to that back in the day? Whatever the reason, I hope for my sake that this was a one off and the TOTP producers showed some self control in the future.
Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and for some weird reason concerning how the brain stores totally irrelevant and throw away bits of info for years, there are some parts of this show that I can really remember mainly surrounding Jakki’s to camera bits. More of that later though as we start the show with James and “Sit Down”. The boys are at No 2 by now and still have designs on that No 1 spot. *SPOILER ALERT* However, the fact that they spent three weeks there and were unable to dislodge Chesney Hawkes must have rankled with not only the band but also their army of fans. Possibly music lovers in general saw it as a monstrous injustice. Possibly.
Anyway, they’re in the studio this week and look happy enough with life especially guitarist Larry Gott who laughs and smiles his way through the performance. After leaving the band in 1995, Gott took up studying Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, specifically furniture design. Somebody I worked with at Our Price in Stockport was also on the course with him and said he didn’t talk much about James at all preferring to just be a student with the rest of the cohort. He graduated in 2000 and won awards for his ‘reaction recliner’ design including the Allemuir Award for Industry and the Blueprint Award for Creativity. Not to be outdone, my colleague at Our Price became a successful freelance graphic designer and photographer. “Outstanding” – as Kenny Thomas might have said.
So if it wasn’t James who would dethrone Chesney, who did do the deed? In an unlikely turn of events, the honour fell to Cher who, despite her last album “Heart Of Stone” being a Top 10 success in 1989, hadn’t had a UK No1 single for 26 years when she topped the charts with “I Got You Babe” as part of Sonny & Cher. The song that rectified this for her was a cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” which had originally been a minor hit for Betty Everett in 1968. Cher’s version was taken from the soundtrack to her latest film project called Mermaids. This family comedy-drama which also stars Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci is rarely shown on TV these days but, and I haven’t seen it since going to the cinema to catch it in 1991, is actually OK as I recall. A little too heavy on the quirkiness and I found Winona’s character a tad annoying but not bad.
The film’s soundtrack featuring original 60s tracks by the likes of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles sold reasonably well off the back fo the success of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” but I never realised until now that there was a second Cher track on the album called “Baby I’m Yours” (another cover) which had been released as its lead single but which did bugger all in the charts.
So why did the UK go mad for the second single? I really don’t know. Was the film a massive commercial success? According to IMDB, it was ranked the 20th top film in the UK for 1991 – not too shabby but hardly a phenomenon. “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” on the other hand was the third best selling single of the year in 1991 behind only 16 weeks at No 1 “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams and Xmas No 1 “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”These Are the Days of Our Lives” by Queen. Sadly, my purchase of it added to its popularity. Now just hold on before you all pile on. The whole thing was a mistake. Firstly, I bought it for my wife and not me. Secondly, she didn’t even want it either as I had purchased the wrong thing entirely in Cher. She had wanted a completely different single that features in next week’s TOTP. Quite how I managed to make such a mistake, I have no idea. The fact that back in 1989 I had bought another Cher single (“If I Could Turn Back Time”) had nothing to do with the whole sorry escapade at all and that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God!
Whoah! OMD? In the charts in 1991? Yes, it was true. One of the most surprising comebacks of the year (maybe even the decade) was the return of OMD but they weren’t the same beast we had last seen in the Top 40 way back in 1986 with “(Forever) Live And Die”. No, for one, founding member Paul Humphreys had done a runner and left the band! How so? Well, after reaching a commercial peak around the middle of the 80s with the huge US hit “If You Leave” from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, things had started to unravel. Their next album “The Pacific Age” had been recorded under duress and the results were patchy. The aforementioned “(Forever) Live And Die” had been a sizeable hit but it was the only one from the album which received mixed critical reviews.
Suffering from a creative drought, a Best Of album was released in 1988 which was a huge success going three time platinum but the band were clearly trading on former glories. By 1989, Humphreys (along with two other band members ) had had enough and left to form footnote-in-electronic-music-history band The Listening Pool whilst Andy McCluskey committed to carry on under the OMD name.
“Sailing on the Seven Seas” was the first post Humphreys single and a curious thing it was too. Listening to it now, it seems quite pedestrian though I don’t recall thinking that at the time. That almost shuffling glam rock back beat allied with McCluskey’s plaintive vocals and a decidedly weird Jean Michel Jarre style keyboard solo in the middle and yet the UK record buying public lapped it up. The single would rise all the way to No 3, OMD’s highest charting hit since “Souvenir” some 10 years earlier. I don’t think either McCluskey or record label Virgin really expected that sort of success if they were being honest.
Things would get even better though as “Sailing on the Seven Seas” paved the way for the successful launch of parent album “Sugar Tax” which would go platinum in the UK and spawn a further Top 10 single in “Pandora’s Box”. Remarkable stuff really. OMD were back and how!
Seriously?! Still with Black Box?! That ship hasn’t sailed, struck an iceberg and sunk yet?! This must surely be their last TOTP appearance (please!)? Anyway, they’re here once more with “Strike It Up” and…hang on…did Jakki Brambles say “Will you welcome Black Box featuring Steps”?! Steps?! As in Steps that did “Tragedy”? As in ‘H’ from Steps? Relax, it will be a few years before that lot appear in these TOTP repeats. No, this was Stepz (with a ‘z’ see?) who was the rapper dude on the track. And who was he? Well, as far as I can ascertain, he also went by the names Stepsi and Stepski but his real name was Lee Bennett Thompson and he also worked with Quartz who did that Carole King cover with Dina Carroll. Yeah, I don’t care either. Next!
After the Levis-inspired success of “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, it was inevitable that a follow up single was released by The Clash and what more obvious candidate could there be than “Rock the Casbah“. Similarly pulled from their “Combat Rock” album, it made complete sense even though it had already been a No 30 hit in the UK 9 years previously. I certainly remember it being in the charts back in 1982 but curiously have little memory of it being an even bigger it (No 14) in the charts in 1991.
The video prompted some controversy featuring as it does a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jew befriending each other on the road on the way to a Clash gig which, according to director Don Letts, was all “about breaking taboos”. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant whilst later on the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer. Although the track was initiated by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, that isn’t him in the video as he had been sacked for continuous drug abuse by then. That’s actually original drummer Terry Chimes on the drums that we see on screen.
Despite the recent Gulf War BBC black list, the track was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm and to Joe Strummer’s horror, the phrase “Rock the Casbah” was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the the conflict. Commercially, it was the biggest US hit that the band ever had and, alongside “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, is predominantly what The Clash are known for ever the pond in some quarters and let’s be fair, it is a f*****g tune!
It’s The Mock Turtles again with “Can You Dig It?”! Excellent! The last time they featured in this blog I rambled on and on about how they had done an instore PA at the Our Price where I was working in Manchester and that I had got on the guest list for their gig that night at The Manchester Academy and about their connection to Jude Law. This week I have dredged up my signed copy of their “Two Sides” album from that PA. I didn’t queue up to have it signed I should add. Rather it was a left over copy after they had finished and I recall having a long discussion with the Assistant Manger about how it should be treated as a promo as it was part of a promotion event. I seemed to put a lot of stock in the fact that it was signed I think rather than if it had cost the shop any money to get it in which surely was the deciding factor when it came to its promo status. For the life of me I can’t recall if it was supplied by the record company FOC or if the shop was charged fo it but the AM won and I had to cough up the readies to buy it. It’s a pretty good album with some lovely pop tunes on it but it does have an awful cover, signatures or no.
“Can You Dig It?” was a hit all over again in 2003 when it was used in that Vodafone advert featuring David Beckham who was still in his Hoxton Fin hairstyle period back then…
…but for me, they will always be a part of my 1991.
“Can You Dig It?” peaked at No 18 on its initial release and at No 19 in 2003.
It’s those pesky, high speed Breakers next, four of which were never shown on the show in full. Five write ups for me then all for the sake of 1 min and 21 seconds worth of videos. Cheers TOTP producers! We start with “My Head’s In Mississippi” by ZZ Top which I have zero recollection of. It only got to No 37 in the charts so I could be forgiven I guess. It sounds a bit like the band doing their best Johnny Cash impression from the 16 seconds we got to hear of it on TOTP – I couldn’t be bothered to root out the track in full to be honest. It was taken from an album called “Recycler” which I don’t remember either though it did have the track “Doubleback” included on it from Back to the Future Part III apparently.
ZZ Top would return the following year with a cover of the Elvis track “Viva Las Vegas” to promote a Greatest Hits album which was much more fun.
Nope, don’t remember this either. “Seal Our Fate” by Gloria Estefan was the second of four singles taken from her “Into The Light” album all of which made the UK Top 40 but none of which made the Top 20. Make of that what you will. If we saw ZZ top channelling their inner Johnny Cash before, this was like Gloria being Britney Spears some 7 years before Britney was Britney. Apparently the video was well received by her fans as if Gloria could do its choreography routine then this was proof that she had made a full recovery from her injuries sustained in a coach crash in March of 1990.
Next on the Generation Game style conveyor belt of Breakers is Silver Bullet with “Undercover Anarchist” which was the follow up to “20 Seconds To Comply”. Again I don’t remember this one at all but then that’s hardly surprising as the TOTP graphics team seemed to have forgotten what the single was called whilst it was still in the charts as their caption reads “Under Anarchist”.
It doesn’t really matter as if I’d wanted to listen to a track with the word ‘anarchist’ in the title then I would have gone for this by one Hull’s finest…
There was a definite hint of 80s chart acts making a comeback in this particular TOTP. After OMD earlier in the show here were Transvision Vamp who had been AWOL for the whole of 1990 after their last chart appearance with “Born To Be Sold ” at the end of 1989. They hadn’t been idle though as they had been recording their third album, the ludicrously entitled “Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble” and inevitably they wanted to move away from the bubble gum glam pop that had brought them fame and fortune with tunes like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care”. However, record label MCA weren’t that keen on the idea of the band maturing and refused to release the album in the UK. Instead, it was given a limited world wide release with copies only available in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The idea was to see how it did in those territories before a UK released was sanctioned. This lead to many an import copy of the album finding its way into UK record stores. We certainly had one in the Our Price I was working in and we had a Wendy James devotee who would come in week after week to see if the UK release was out yet. I can’t recall if he was tempted by the £20 import CD that we had in stock but if he didn’t buy it then nobody would have.
The lead single from the album was “(I Just Wanna) B with U” and it was the first track that Wendy received an official co-writing credit for. Was it any good though? Well, I was underwhelmed and I’d liked a lot of the band’s previous singles. I wasn’t the only one unimpressed as it struggled to a high of No 30, the band’s last ever UK chart hit. Follow up single “If Looks Could Kill” missed the Top 40 by one place and that was that. By the time that MCA had authorised an UK release for the album, the band had split anyway. Even now, the album is not available on Spotify although its singles are on a Best Of album which can be streamed. Was it the new material that let them down or were the band just an anachronism in the new decade? Who knows but they did burn brightly during their time in the sun.
Talking of 80s pop stars making a 90s comeback, here’s Pete Wylie and he’s joined forces with fellow scousers The Farm to do a re-working of “Sinful”. Yes, despite being completely wonderful, this was the first time Pete had been in the Top 40 since “Sinful” had been a No 13 hit back in 1986. His lack of chart success really is a crime against music.
I’m not totally secure in my knowledge of the circumstances around this release. The Farm were at their commercial peak having secured two Top 10 singles in 1990 with “Groovy Train” and “Altogether Now” from their No 1 album “Spartacus” which was released in the spring of 1991. However, their commercial fall was imminent. They released a third single from the album the Monday after this TOTP aired but “Don’t Let Me Down” peaked at a disappointing No 36. This re-working of Sinful retitled “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” was a non-album single but presumably it was a live favourite as showcased by the video here.
Later in the year, Wylie would release the criminally ignored album “Infamy! Or How I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today” whilst The Farm would release an album called “Love See No Colour” in 1992 which would fail to chart making them, along with the aforementioned Transvision Vamp and purveyors of blue eyed soul Johnny Hates Jazz as acts that followed up a No 1 album with an LP that failed to chart.
A terrible accident would befall Pete later in the year when he suffered a near fatal fall when a railing gave way in Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool causing him to fracture his spine and his sternum. The legend goes that when the ambulance crew turned up and did their usual checks including to ask what the injured party’s name was, Pete replied ‘You should f*****g know who I am!”. I love Pete Wylie!
“Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” peaked at No 28.
Next a song that was… well…just bizarre and yet it just worked. Despite no longer being the chart topper he was in the 80s, Paul Young was doing a decent job of keeping his career going into the new decade with a couple of Top 40 hits in 1990 from his “Other Voices”. By the time 1991 came around though, he had also had a couple of flops. So what do you do when your career needs a lift? Release a Best Of album of course! “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” was a huge success going to No 1 and three time platinum in the UK off the back of an extensive TV ad campaign.
The album included three new tracks that were in fact cover versions that all ended up being released as singles. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was the first of those and was actually a duet with some geezer called Zucchero. I’d never heard of him before at the time but, as Jakki Brambles says in her intro, he was a very big deal indeed in his native Italy. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was actually his song and he had released it himself back in 1987. When Paul Young heard it whilst on holiday there, he approached the Z man about covering it but the reply came back ‘why don’t we do it as a duet?’. And so it came to pass that Paul Young would have his biggest hit since “Every Time You Go Away” back in 1985 stood next to a bloke who, according to the reaction on Twitter when this TOTP was re-shown the other week, looked very much like Keith Lemon. They have a point.
I think it’s the lyrics which make this record so curiously memorable. Certainly some of the lines have stayed with myself and my wife all these years. For example, ‘Look at me, I’m a flower’ and ‘You got to dig a little deeper lady’ stand out – maybe they didn’t translate too well from Italian to English. It’s the ‘even doing my own cooking’ line though that steals it. At the time, I wasn’t the most handy in the kitchen and so anything that I did produce would be met with a retort of ‘even doing my own cooking’ by my wife. I have got a lot better now! Zucchero’s inspiration for the line came from his own culinary trials…
Zucchero on "Sensa Una Donna": "At the time, I was almost divorced by my ex-wife and I was living in a small house by myself, trying to save my marriage. I was very sad and upset. I was in the kitchen and I had to cook by myself for the first time!" #TOTP
"So I started to cook some really terrible spaghetti, and I said, ‘I can’t live without you, because I can’t cook by myself!’ That’s why I say in the song: ‘I’m here cooking by myself.’ The song came out very quickly – music and lyrics in about half an hour." #TOTP
OK, just to clarify, I wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t have cooked some pasta nor was I in the process fo getting divorced!
It’s the first of Jakki’s lines that have stuck with me now as she says at the song’s end “Senza Una Donna which means Without A Woman – bare faced liars the pair of them”. Well, I’d have to say that Paul looks pretty cool with a sharp haircut but Zucchero? I can’t unsee Keith Lemon now.
Another Jakki Brambles line that for some reason has stuck in my brain these last 30 years next as she introduces Chesney Hawkes who is at No 1 for the 4th week with “The One And Only”. After starting off her intro with “What else can we say about our next man…” and listing all his ‘achievements’ which include having “a bit of a famous Dad” – Whoah! Stop right there! A bit of a famous Dad?! Len “Chip” Hawkes was the bassist in The Tremeloes it’s true but was he really that famous? It’s also true that Decca famously chose The Tremeloes over The Beatles for a recording contract back in 1962 so the band do have a place in pop music history but Hawkes wasn’t anything to do with it as he didn’t join the band until 4 years later. And yes, he did co-write some of their Top 10 hits but would anyone have really recognised him walking down the street back in 1991? Was he doing lots of TV appearances as some sort of talking head aficionado on pop music Paul Gambaccini style? I don’t think so. I suppose Jakki did say “a bit of a famous Dad” as opposed to “celebrity royalty” but even so.
Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway, finally Brambles gets to her killer line as she says “All that remains for me to say is Chesney Hawkes…GET YOUR HAIRCUT!” She had a point. Chesney’s Barnet was a disgrace. He’d clearly grown it out since appearing in Buddy’s Song and it now resembled a bob. Thankfully, he no longer has said style now that he is nearly 50.
The play out video and the final of 14 songs on the show tonight is “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. When I was a small child, my Dad had the “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” single by Benny Hill. I thought it was funny at the time as I had an undeveloped sense of humour. My Dad thought it was funny because…I’m not sure why…I think it must have been the ridiculousness of the tale that Hill’s distinctive voice imparted. As I grew older (and so did my Dad), that record never got played again in our house because it was a novelty record and novelty records don’t age at all well. Suffice to say, “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was a timeless classic compared to “Deep, Deep Trouble” which has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of popular culture.
For the sake of posterity, I include the chart run down below:
I bought the original in 1986 but not this version
12
Paul Young / Zucchero
“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)”
No but I have it on Paul’s Best Of album
13
Chesney Hawkes
The One And Only
Nah
14
The Simpsons
Deep, Deep Trouble
Hell 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.
Sibling rivalry. Healthy competition or the bringer of long lasting family fractures? I have siblings and, as a football obsessed youngster, grew up knowing that my elder brother was so much better at the game than me. I could barely get into my school team whilst he had scouts from professional clubs sniffing around. It was….character building. There are of course many examples of sporting siblings but how many of them attain an equitable level of success and fame. My theory would be that one is always more successful / well known than the other. Off the top of my head…
Serena Williams vs Venus Williams? Definitely Serena
Andy vs Jamie Murray? Andy surely
Anton vs Rio Ferdinand? Easily Rio
Gary vs Phil Neville? Hmm, I’d have to go Gary
OK, I’m sure you could all come up with anomalies to debunk my theory but I’m sticking with it. More than that, I’m going to try and extend it to musical siblings. Who have we got? Ray and Dave Davies from The Kinks, The Gibb brothers of the Bee Gees, Noel and Liam Gallagher, the three Wilson brothers in The Beach Boys, Hanson(!)… I’m beginning to see a problem with this in that these siblings were in bands together so it’s harder to make a definitive judgement. OK, some of them pursued their own solo careers so you could assess those I suppose but I’m not sure that’s a fair yardstick and yes, you could make a case for Brian Wilson over Dennis and Carl but then what about the twins Charlie and Craig Reid of The Proclaimers? They were tied to each other biologically and musically. So we’re am I going with all of this? In a very clunky and laborious way to the the first act on tonight’s TOTP who is Dannii Minogue – Kylie’s sister. And those last two words go straight back to my original point. Was Dannii always destined to be in the shadow of Kylie? Or as author Kathy Lette put it that there was always a perception that Dannii was the B-side to Kylie’s A?
It wasn’t how it started though. Dannii, despite being 4 years younger than her sister, was the most well known of the two in the beginnings of their careers as she appeared on Australian TV variety show Young Talent Time and indeed it was Dannii that got Kylie invited on the show to perform with her. After that, their careers seemed to run in tandem. Kylie became known to us in the UK as Charlene from Neighbours whilst Dannii took the role of Emma Jackson in Home And Away. Crucially though, Kylie had met Stock, Aitken and Waterman and beat her sister to chart stardom with her No 1 single “I Should Be So Lucky”. Was that the moment that their paths separated and Kylie was fused onto the nation’s consciousness ahead of Dannii?
By the time that Ms Minogue junior was releasing her “Love And Kisses” single, Kylie had already racked up 3 hit albums and 12 Top 10 singles including 4 No 1s in the UK. Dannii had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t helped by the fact that “Love And Kisses” wasn’t released in the UK until a whole year after its Australian release. When it finally did arrive, it performed pretty well rising to No 8 over here despite it being a fairly insubstantial, Janet Jackson style bit of pop fluff. Its parent album of the same name (it had been changed from its original “Dannii” title in Australia) also clocked up enough sales to achieve gold status and provided Dannii with a further four Top 40 singles.
1991 was Danni’s highpoint of the 90s though. The rest of the decade saw mainly dwindling sales (with the odd exception) and by around 1995/6, she was peddling her calendar that included naked shots of her. We definitely sold a few of those in the Our Price store I was working in (ahem). However, 2003’s “Neon Nights” dance album was well received and went Top 10 and she followed that up by appearing as an X Factor judge on our TVs every Saturday night from 2007 to 2010.
Did someone mention The Bee Gees before? Here are the Brothers Gibb with their “Secret Love” video. I’ve been sat here at my computer for a good five minutes now and I can’t think of anything else to say about this record other than it really wasn’t one of their finest moments. How about I just pad it out with some sales stats? Yeah? OK, well even their US record label had lost faith in them by this point and subsequently didn’t do that much promotion for the parent album ‘High Civilisation” in the States. Consequently, it didn’t chart at all over there though it did struggle to a high of No 24 in the UK. It was more popular in the rest of Europe specifically in Germany (No 2) and Switzerland (No 6). No further singles from the album were big hits anywhere on the planet.
We wouldn’t see The Bee Gees in the charts for another two years.
Right, who’s this fella? He looks like a scaffolder or something rather than a pop star. What’s that Bruno Brookes? He used to be a scaffolder actually? Oh right. Presumably that’s why you’re dong this link from the studio gantry and with the camera pointing up at you to give the impression of height – not something you were ever very good at eh?
This fella was, of course, Gary Clail (and his On-U Sound System) with “Human Nature”. I was never quite sure what the On-U Sound System bit was all about but it was a nod to the On-U Sound Records label which specialised in dub music. Clail himself had been releasing record since 1985 (presumably when he wasn’t atop a scaffold somewhere) and also worked with legendary hip hop artists Tackhead but I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him before 1991.
“Human Nature” though was a great track and deservedly went Top 10. Despite his dub roots, the sound on this seemed like The Shamen meets The KLF to me but then I knew very little about dub music so I was probably way off. It was the lyrics though that I noticed most – their themes of intolerance and social divisions and the inability of mankind to empathise sound as relevant today as back then which doesn’t say much for the progress of society in the last 30 years. I say it was the lyrics I noticed most but you couldn’t fail to catch an eyeful of Lana Pellay (aka Lanah P aka Alan Pillay). Wow! Now Ru Paul’s Drag Race might well be seen as mainstream these days but back then, drag queens weren’t on your TV that often. I don’t think even Lily Savage had cut through to the masses by this point so Lana’s performance seemed to imbue the whole act with an element of outrageousness it seemed to me. It may have even outraged some viewers I guess.
However, Bruno Brookes seemed more taken with Clail himself as he referred to him as ‘Mr Cheeky Face’ at the end of the track. Well, I suppose he did have a glint in his eye that reminds me a bit of Robbie Williams . No? Maybe? Gary would have one further Top 40 hit in 1991 but has continued to release material as recently as 2014.
Oh please. Not again. Not another Eurodance mega mix single! After Technotronic and Black Box pulled off the same cheap stunt of releasing a single made up of all their other previous hits mixed together because…well just because they could, here were Snap! getting in on the act. Theirs was called “Mega Mix” – as opposed to Black Box’s “The Total Mix” and Technotronic’s “Megamix” – they were so imaginative with their titles weren’t they?
“Mega Mix” peaked No 10 which seems remarkable given all the tracks on it had all been Top 10 hits themselves in the last 12 months (including a No 1). How did people keep falling for this shit? Was it a club DJ thing? Thankfully, we won’t see Snap! for another 12 months or so but when they do return it will be as serious as cancer.
Finally, finally James are in the TOTP studio. After having three (albeit smallish)Top 40 hits in 1990 without being invited onto the show, the producers could ignore them no longer when the re-release of “Sit Down” went straight in at No 7. Originally released on Rough Trade in 1989 when it peaked at No 77, the band were convinced by new label Fontana to re-record it with Pixies producer Gil Norton and, propelled by a major marketing campaign (which even included appearing on Wogan before the single was released), it became a huge hit spending three weeks at No 2 behind Chesney Hawkes (sorry Chesney lad but there’s no defending that).
In a way, the song is the total antithesis of Gary Clail’s “Human Nature”, reassuring us that we are not all alone in the world with our worries and anxieties and to reach out (sorry, hate that phrase) to our fellow human beings and sit down next to each other to succour some comfort. When played live in Paris before it was released, the Mancunian element of the audience spontaneously sat down on the floor eventually triggering the whole 1000 strong crowd to do the same. This communal sitting down was repeated at a show at the G-Mex, Manchester in December 1990 thereby setting a trend tho be repeated at every show for the last 30 odd years. And yes, I’ve seen James live and sat down with them.
“Sit Down” success would pave the way for the band to become a huge mainstream success. The time of James had arrived.
It’s Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks up next with their horrendous treatment of The Beatles song “She’s A Woman”. Having watched it back, quite what is it that Shabba Ranks adds to the record? There’s a mini rap breakdown towards the middle of it when he blathers on about ‘crazy music lovers’ or something but it only lasts a few seconds. Other than that he seems to be making some indecipherable noises in the background throughout -presumably he was extorting us to ‘wind it up’ or some other such nonsense.
I’ve always sided with Mark Lamarr when it comes to Shabba Ranks. Apart from his repulsive views, I’ve always viewed him as ridiculous for his tendency to shout out ‘Shabba’ in what felt like all his records which was beautifully lampooned in Phoenix Nights…
…Ray Von there who, like James before him, was also asking for people to “Sit Down”.
“She’s A Woman” peaked at No 20.
Now then, Bruno Brookes in a half way decent segue shock now as he finds a way to bridge the gap between Shabba Ranks and the next act Definition Of Sound. “Shabba Ranks who once said of himself I’m not a star I’m a galaxy. There you are that’s the definition of self confidence…” I don’t need to join the dots for what comes next do I?
Definition Of Sound were Kevin Clark and Don Weekes although they went by the monikers of Kevwon and The Don. That’s Kevwon not Rayvon. As well as the single “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, they also had an album out called “Love And Life: A Journey With The Chameleons” which was a bit confusing as there was also the Manchester band called The Chameleons. Anyway, I looked up the album on Amazon and saw some customer reviews of it. One was positively brimming with enthusiasm for it:
There is not one bad track on this excellent album. It sounds as fresh today as it did back in the early nineties and is a real feel good collection of songs.
There was also this courtesy of marinegirl who simply said:
Dreadful
Well, you can’t please everyone.
I’m guessing that the lucky number seven the chorus is linked in with the title of the track given its significance and the regular occurrence of it in the New Testament. There’s also some nicely squeezed in reference to drug taking in the lyrics:
Oi, I change my angle and my point (Oooh) In fact it’s time to roll up a joint.. venture
There also seems to be a lot of talk about women and the pursuit of them and yet Kevwon told Smash Hits magazine that he was “as sexy as a wet stamp”. Well, if you’re a philatelist …wet stamps…just saying.
The start of the 90s had seen The Rolling Stones on the road with their Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour but recordings wise, they would not release an album of new material until 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge”. To fill the gap between that and 1989’s “Steel Wheels”, a live album of the tour was released. Entitled “Flashpoint”, it featured 15 live tracks and two new studio recordings one of which was the single “Highwire”. Supposedly written about the international arms trade and the events that led to the first US war with Iraq, I have no recollection of this at all but I don’t mind it actually but then I’m hardly a Stones aficionado. The song’s first line (“We sell them missiles, we sell them tanks, we give them credit, you can call up the bank”) was considered far too politically sensitive by the BBC and duly the video shown on TOTP begins with the second verse. However, it wasn’t on their list of banned songs presumably because it was released after the conflict had ended.
“Highwire” peaked at No 29.
He’s done it! Chesney Hawkes is No 1! Yes, Chesney mania is in full swing as people can’t seem to get enough of his “The One And Only” single. He’s back in the studio tonight with his band although, they’re not quite the same people that adorned all the covers of the pop press. By the end of its five week run at the top, the band line up had changed to include that guy who looked a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips on bass and the black guy on keyboards who gets very over excited during this performance had been replaced by a white dude. Also, the drummer has been changed so that it’s Chesney’s brother Jodie up there on the sticks.
Ah yes, Chesney’s drummer. I promised you a boring Chesney story last time and here it is. I was once in the same room as Chesney’s drummer! It was for an album playback event at a bar in Manchester (I think it was for Ricky Ross) and the record company rep had got a load of us from the Our Price store I was working in on the guest list. It was a free bar and a very messy do. I didn’t speak to Chesney’s brother though I did manage to grab a few words with Ricky. That’s it. Thats’ my Chesney story…
…ooh, and I’ve found another example to support my musical sibling rivalry theory that I posited at the start of the post. Whatever you might think about Chesney (and James fans clearly hate him) he was, is and will always remain more famous than his brother.
See, this post should really be over now what with that final bit of sibling theme tying it altogether nicely but sadly, there is still one ‘song’ left. The play out video is “Over To You John” by Jive Bunny. FOR F***’S SAKE! The end of March 1991 and these pillocks are still in the charts. Thankfully it is the last time we shall ever see them. Yes, it is finally all over.
“Over To You John” reminds me of the 1983 single by Pink Floyd called “Not Now John”. Thankfully, there isn’t a Jive Bunny style Pink Floyd mega mix. Or is there…..yikes!
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Dannii Minogue
Love And Kisses
Not likely
2
The Bee Gees
Secret Love
If I’d wanted Chain Reaction (which I didn’t), I’d have bought back in 1986
3
Gary Clail and O-Nu Sound System
Human Nature
No but I easily could have
4
Snap!
Mega Mix
Hell no
5
James
Sit Down
Not the single but I have their first Best Of album with it on
6
Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks
She’s A Woman
Horrendous stuff – no
7
Definition Of Sound
Wear Your Love Like Heaven
No but I think I downloaded it off iTunes years later
8
The Rolling Stones
Highwire
Nah
9
Chesney Hawkes
The One And Only
Nope
10
Jive Bunny
Over To You John
Now please f**k off John and never come back
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.
And there you have it – 1990 all done and dusted. As with many of these years that I have reviewed retrospectively, it was quite the disappointment. Very much touted as the year of ‘Madchester’ in the press at the time, if you actually examine the artists that were successful and the songs that were hits in this year, it was very mainstream and very old guard. It reminds me of the year 1977 – the year that punk was everywhere – and yet one of the biggest selling artists of the year was one half of Starsky And Hutch in David Soul. The Top 10 selling albums list was filled by the likes of ABBA, The Shadows, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles. Fast forward 13 years and we see a similar story – the Top 10 albums are represented by Phil Collins (twice!), Elton John (twice!), The Carpenters, Pavarotti (twice!) and bloody Michael Bolton!
As for singles, these were the No 1 records of the year:
18 songs had travelled to the summit of the charts. Of them, I would say they broke down like this:
4 x established stars (Kylie, Madonna, New Order and Beautiful South)
3 x brand new artists we had not seen before (Snap!, Adamski and Vanilla Ice)
3 x artists having their breakthrough moment in the sun (Beats International, Sinéad O’Connor and Maria McKee)
3 x film / TV Advert tie ins (Partners In Kryme, The Righteous Brothers and Steve Miller Band)
2 x old fogeys (Elton John and Cliff Richard)
1 x charity record (Band Aid II)
1 x latest teeny bop sensation (NKOTB)
1 x novelty record shite (Bombalurina)
I bought exactly zero of them. How many of them were halfway decent songs? 6 or 7? The run from July through to October was particularly bad. Where were The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and the Inspiral Carpets? These were the bands the kids wanted weren’t they? Although all these acts had chart hits this year, none of them got higher than No 4 in the charts. Maybe ‘Madchester’ wasn’t about chart positions though – it was a statement of rejecting the old and embracing the new indie-dance hybrid, of fashion, of belonging. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.
The charts were certainly influenced by film and TV this year. Levis continued its campaign of resurrecting old pop hits to sell some jeans and scored a No 1 with “The Joker”, Pretty Woman spawned numerous hits for the likes of Roxette and Go West, Days Of Thunder produced an unlikely No 1 for Maria Mckee and the best selling single of the year was from the film Ghost courtesy of The Righteous Brothers. Hell, even film hits from previous years were massive all over again (“Take My Breath Away” by Berlin). We were all so easily manipulated it seemed.
Euro dance hits were all the rage this year as well. The charts were full of hits from the likes of 49ers, Rob ‘n’ Raz featuring Leila K, Technotronic, Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood, Ya Kid K and of course Snap! who bagged themselves a No 1 record with “The Power”. None of it did anything for me really. It all seemed like a very nasty, homogenised form of dance music and couldn’t hold a light to authentic dance anthems by Deee-Lite, 808 State and The KLF. Were punters really dancing to this cheesy nonsense in the clubs? I wouldn’t have known as my clubbing days declined steeply this year after its high point of the last three years of being a student; mainly because I was skint for most of the year.
Talking of myself, as with previous years, most of my purchases (of singles) seemed to come from outside of the Top 40 (see Hits That Never Were further on in the post). Was I trying to prove some sort of point that I couldn’t be bought or swayed by the forces of film / TV and media promotion? Or was it just that non hits could be found much cheaper in the record shop bargain bins than their Top 40 counterparts? As I said, I did spent most of the year financially embarrassed. I bought the occasional chart hit (The Beloved, Gun, The Soup Dragons, World Party) but they weren’t many, not even when I ended the year working in an actual record shop. Despite being a very memorable 12 months for me personally in which I got married, moved to Manchester and began a 10 year career in record retail, it wasn’t a vintage year musically.
Hits We Missed
During these reviews of the year in my other blog TOTP Rewind – the 80s, a lot of the entries in this section were songs and artists that had made it onto the show but those shows were not repeated by the BBC for reasons of taste surrounding hosts that were totally unpalatable today or in the case of Mike Smith because of legal restrictions. This was not the case in 1990. Every TOTP of that year has been re-shown on BBC4 so any chart hits we missed seeing was because they never actually featured on any episode. Exhibit A m’lud…
James – “How Was It For You?” / “Come Home” / “Lose Control”
James must have seriously offended the TOTP producers in some way in 1990. How else do you explain them having three Top 40 hits and still not getting to appear on the show? OK, they weren’t massive hits (that wouldn’t happen until the following year when a re-release of “Sit Down” hit No 2 and the TOTP bosses could no longer ignore the band) but still.
I have to admit to not really being aware of James before this point despite them being in existence since 1982. Early albums like “Stutter” and “Strip-mine” hadn’t registered at all and neither had they with the majority of the UK record buying public. Sure, they were big hitters in the indie charts but mainstream success eluded them. When 1989 singles “Sit Down” (the original version) and “Come Home” peaked at Nos 77 and 84 respectively, the band made the decision to shift labels from legendary independents Rough Trade to Phonogram sub-label Fontana Records.
That move brought immediate dividends with the band’s first Top 40 hit in “How Was It For You?” released in May of 1990. Backed up by some heavy promotion in the press from their new label and a tour in June which included festival dates at WOMAD and Glastonbury, it entered the charts at No 35 before peaking at No 32 the following week. Some sharp (some may say manipulative) record company tactics saw the band release the single in five different formats with new and live tracks split across them all meaning that completist fans would have to shell out multiple times to acquire every bit of the band’s previously unavailable material.
It turns out that the band did manage to shoot themselves in the foot rather when it came to appearing on TOTP. The promo video that they shot featured Tim Booth singing underwater but also some overly suggestive fruit eating and snogging action that was deemed unsuitable for primetime TV and whoops… there went the crucial TOTP exposure that could have made “How Was It For You?” a major rather than minor hit. Had the video been shown in the show’s Breakers section maybe that would have led to a studio performance and then….ah well. On reflection maybe it was the song’s lyrics that did for it. There was that title for a start and then lines like ‘I’m so possessed by sex I could destroy my health’ surely didn’t help?
Released: 12 May 1990
Peak Chart Position: 32
Weeks On Top 40: 2
Still, a hit was a hit and “How Was It For You?” provided a solid base for the release of parent album “Gold Mother” in June. The album sold well peaking at No 16 (in its original format) and a follow up single was required. It was decided that a re-release of “Come Home” was in order and Flood (who had produced Erasure’s “The Circus” album) was called in to do a remix. To be fair, it doesn’t sound that different to the original to me although it was reduced in length presumably to make it more radio-friendly. The original release of the song had been plagued with issues – pluggers weren’t sent copies and record shops were left without any or with insufficient copies of the single. There was even an error in the charts at Music Week that meant it wasn’t listed in its second week of release. All of these problems led to a stand off between Rough Trade and the band which would ultimately lead to them decamping to Fontana.
A second Top 40 hit was good consolidation for the band but it still didn’t tempt the TOTP bosses to invite them onto the show. Maybe it was all those naked chests and pant daubing antics in the video that put them off. Despite a second consecutive Top 40 entry, I was still somehow managing to avoid James altogether. Maybe it was the distraction of the World Cup. I didn’t really become aware of “Come Home” until later in the year and after I had started working at Our Price. The track was included on a compilation called “Happy Daze” which got hammered on the shop stereo. Compiled by Gary Crowley, it showcased the year’s breakout indie artists with a heavy (though not exclusive) slant on the dance rock crossover sound from artists like Primal Scream, Jesus Jones and The Shamen. Riding on the ‘Madchester’ zeitgeist (although by no means were all the artists from Manchester or even part of that movement), it had assumed legendary status amongst music fans of that genre and time. Having just moved to Manchester myself, it felt the perfect soundtrack to those days and “Come Home” by James was certainly a part of that.
Released: Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 32
Weeks On Top 40: 2
And so to the last of this trio of TOTP ignored hits. “Lose Control” was originally released as a stand alone single between albums to coincide with and help promote the band’s short UK tour. Not included on the original release of “Gold Mother”, it would appear on the 1991 re-release alongside “Sit Down” with the tracks “Hang On” and “Crescendo” jettisoned to make way for them. Our Price did a promotion whereby fans that had bought the original album could effectively trade it in for the updated version no questions asked – a “Gold Mother” amnesty if you like. I remember one day a colleague called Paul taking back a customer’s vinyl format of the album and swapping it for the new as per the offer but when he looked at the traded in copy it was in a terrible condition. Showing it to the store manager in a ‘check this out’ type of way, poor Paul received short shrift from the boss for agreeing to swap it. It seemed harsh on Paul at best.
I must admit to “Lose Control” passing me by back then – released close to Xmas and only appearing in the bottom reaches of the Top 40 for one week though are I think mitigating circumstances for which I can be forgiven.
And so there it is, the curious tale of the chart career of James during 1990. Finally a Top 40 hit and not one but three (waiting for a bus and all that) and yet zero TOTP appearances. However, they now had a much enlarged national platform from which they would leap the following year via the “Sit Down” re-release to spawn a flurry of hit albums and singles throughout the decade, not to mention creating that T-shirt phenomenon that no self respecting, teenage indie kid would leave the house without.
Released: 08 Dec 1990
Peak Chart Position: 38
Weeks On Top 40: 1
The Stone Roses – “Made Of Stone” / “Elephant Stone”
James were not the only Manchester band in 1990 experiencing multiple hits after years of being ignored by the record buying public and mainstream media. As the new decade unfolded, The Stone Roses star went super nova as they blazed a trail as the de facto leaders of the ‘Madchester’ movement. Having gatecrashed the Top 40 back in 1989 with “She Bangs The Drums” in the Summer of ’89 and then residing in the actual Top 10 with “Fool’s Gold / What The World Is Waiting For” as the 80s gave way to the 90s, there was a sudden rush on to get more Roses product out there to satiate demand. First to try and cash in on the band’s popularity were previous label Revolver (they of the infamous paint incident) who re-released early single “Sally Cinnamon” against the band’s wishes. Although it stalled at No 46, it remained on the Top 100 for 7 weeks. Not bad for a single originally released in 1987 that failed to chart at all.
Current label Silvertone weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and so they took the step of re-releasing two singles within the same month. “Made Of Stone” was taken from their iconic debut album and had originally been released in March of ’89 peaking at No 90. Exactly 12 months later wit the world at their feet, it was made available again and went straight in at No 20 where it would peak. Many more worthy of commenting on this song than I have already waxed lyrical of its power but it’s my blog so…
…as I’ve said before I didn’t get The Stone Roses initially. My elder brother was in a full on Manchester United match going obsession by this point and so he was more into them than I was as their songs were the soundtrack to many a coach journey up to Old Trafford. I just wasn’t sure though. I didn’t think the lead singer could actually, you know, sing and I wasn’t into the fashion that they were popularising – I’d had my fill of flares growing up in the 70s. And why did all their dongs have to include the word ‘stone’ in the title? On reflection I was wrong. Massively so. “Made Of Stone” is great, a hugely evocative track whose lyrics paint some very full on images (‘When the streets are cold and lonely and the cars, they burn below me’). It should have been a much bigger hit than it was either time.
Released: Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 20
Weeks On Top 40: 2
Released exactly the same month as “Made Of Stone” came “Elephant Stone” (seriously though, what was it with the word ‘stone’?). They’d call it doubling down now. This one had originally been released in 1988 but had failed to register on the national chart. Come 1990, it was prime for a second outing. Debuting inside the Top 10 was a demonstration of the band’s pull and profile and it’s another great track with that searing, scythe of a guitar refrain opening leading into an irresistible, propelling rhythm. The original doesn’t have the same intro but rather has a much less explosive cymbal entrance segueing into a rather laboured drum and bass. The 1990 version is definitive I think.
And what was an Elephant Stone? Wikipedia suggests it was a reference to one William George Keith Elphinstone, an officer of the British Army during the 19th century. His legacy is one of incompetence as his entire command was massacred during the British retreat from Kabul in January 1842 during the First Anglo-Afghan War. Not your average source of inspiration for a song then. There’s an alternative rock band from Canada who go by the name of Elephant Stone who formed in 2009. Surely not a coincidence – they must be massive Roses fans.
So why were neither of these singles shown on TOTP? What was more important to feature on the show at this time? Well, according to my research the producers felt that Bros (by now in steep decline) were more relevant to the UK audience and they featured on the show around now alongside Guru Josh and Gloria Estefan. Hmm. The following week’s broadcast featured both Primal Scream and Inspiral Carpets. Surely Ian Brown and co would have been perfect for that particular episode? Had they been banned alongside Happy Mondays in that legendary TOTP back in late ’89?
Not on the original 1989 track listing of their debut album, “Elephant Stone” has been included on subsequent pressings.
Released: Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 8
Weeks On Top 40: 4
World Party – “Put The Message In The Box”
Released: 09 Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 39
Weeks On Top 40: 1
In that parallel pop universe where acts that deserved commercial success actually got it, World Party would have racked up multiple chart hits. Instead, back in the reality that exists, they amounted to just four Top 40 entries of which only one actually made the Top 20. One of those chart interlopers was “Put The Message In The Box” which was the lead single from their critically acclaimed (Q Magazine‘s album of the year) but criminally under bought “Goodbye Jumbo” album.
Released at the start of the Summer when the UK record buying public were in thrall to “Nessun Dorma” and unfeasibly Elton John’s most turgid of tunes, “Put The Message In The Box” sounded somehow both fresh and completely retro. The guitar work was undeniably Beatles-esque (“Rubber Soul” era maybe?) while Karl Wallinger’s vocals could have qualified him as a member of The Travelling Wilburys. The false ending when the final guitar ring explodes out of the ether is also rather marvellous. I thought this was great and duly bought the cassette single, the B-side of which was a lovely 50s style ballad called “Nature Girl”.
That parallel universe finally materialised three years on from this when their third album “Bang!” unexpectedly went all the way to No 2 but the momentum of that release wasn’t realised and it remains a commercial high point and anomaly in the band’s fortunes. A fourth album “Egyptology” returned the band to the land of disappointing record sales although it did include the ballad “She’s The One” later recorded and taken to No 1 by Robbie Williams. I’m pretty sure that none of Robbie’s adoring fans knew nor cared that the song with that ice skating video was actually written by Karl Wallinger though. Indeed, Williams himself would introduce the song when performing it live as one of the best songs he’s ever written prompting much ire and fury within Wallinger who was not reticent in declaring his opinion of Williams (the ‘c’ bomb was used!). Justice finally prevailed in this 2019 advert for Williams’ album “The Christmas Present”.
And yes that is Chris Sharrock on drums in the video formerly of the Icicle Works and later drummer for, yes, Robbie Williams.
House Of Love – “The Beatles And The Stones”
Released: 07 Apr 1990
Peak Chart Position: 36
Weeks On Top 40: 14
Having finally secured a bona fide Top 40 hit in a re-recording of debut single “Shine On” a few weeks earlier, House Of Love were getting the hang of this pop star business by claiming another one immediately with follow up single “The Beatles And The Stones”. Essentially their version of a ballad, it’s a gentle, melodic sound and much more laid back than its frenetic and urgent predecessor. There’s even some “A Day In The Life” strings shoved in the mix. What was it about? Going by the lyrics, I’m guessing it was something to do with The Beatles relationship with the press which turned sour after John Lennon’s ‘more popular than Jesus’ quote and how they were then pursued for their political views on subjects such as Vietnam.
It probably should have been a much bigger hit than its No 36 peak but this being 1990, that was probably never going to happen. Sadly for the band, it would prove to be their last ever chart hit.
Hits That Never Were
The Blue Aeroplanes – “…And Stones”
Release date: 26 may 1990
Peak Chart Position: 63
Weeks On Chart: 2
From “The Beatles And The Stones” to “…And Stones”. I always thought that I should have really been into The Blue Aeroplanes in a big way but somehow it never really happened for me although I did like this single. These Bristolian art rockers had been around for nearly a decade by this point albeit with a revolving door policy on band line ups (Wikipedia lists 88* names as either a primary or supporting member over the years) but the mainstays were Gerard Langley, brother John Langley, and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski – yes, a dancer was one of the group members who stayed for thew whole duration. To put it in context, that would be like mime artist Jed ‘Mental Chains’ Hoyle having been on every single Howard Jones performance from 1983 onwards. Or just being Bez I suppose.
By 1990, the band had reached a critical peak with the release of their album “Swagger” from which “…And Stones” was taken. The single had a…erm…swagger to it with a driving, rocking beat that also would have appealed to dance heads and Gerard Langley spoken word style vocals setting it apart. Was it not quite radio friendly enough for day time audiences? Their loss. Ultimately they had to settle for being influential rather than commercially successful (that old chestnut) – you can hear their style in bands like Flowered Up and A House I think – but they could have been as big as Happy Mondays in another world.
The band are still together and released an album as recently as 2017.
*Is that more than The Fall?!
Power Of Dreams – “100 Ways To Kill A Love”
Release date: 02 Jun 1990
Peak Chart Position: 94
Weeks On Chart: 1
I bought this! I have no recollection of how I came to know about it but presumably I must have heard it on Radio 1 – I’m guessing Mark Goodier’s drive time show as this would have been the sort of stuff he liked to champion. I’m also guessing I picked it up cheap in the bargain bin of whichever record store I got it in but we shouldn’t judge it purely on its historical monetary value. It’s quite an urgent, rock sound that has a hint of The Wedding Present about it in terms of its incessant, jangly guitar back bone.
Not sure that I knew much about Power Of Dreams at the time but thankfully the internet was invented in the intervening 30 years and I can now rest easy in the knowledge that they were from Dublin and were nominated by the NME no less as one of the ‘stars of tomorrow’ in late ’89 alongside Cater USM and The Charlatans. Unlike their peers though, Power Of Dreams never managed to achieve a UK Top 40 hit despite releasing numerous singles and five albums before they spilt in 1995. The band reformed in 2009 and have gigged sporadically since.
The Shamen – “Make It Mine”
Release date: 22 Sep 1990
Peak Chart Position: 42 * 3 straight weeks at No 42
Weeks On Chart: 5
Do The Shamen get the credit they deserve? Indeed, do they deserve any credit at all? Whatever your answer to those questions, nobody can deny that theirs is an engaging story featuring tragedy, critical acclaim and ultimately accusations of being a sell out as commercial success came their way. I first became aware of the band in 1990 (although they had been around since 1985) when I heard “Pro-Gen”. I wasn’t a massive dance music fan and yet despite undeniably being a dance anthem, the track also had a great pop tune lurking under the layers of production and endless remixes which appealed to me. The single would miss the Top 40 but, as it was re-released the following year as “Move Any Mountain” and became a Top 5 hit, I’ve chosen another single from their “En-Tact” album that should have been a hit in 1990.
“Make It Mine” was the follow up to “Pro-Gen” and was of a similar flavour combining an industrial strength guitar riff hook with an infectious rhythm to great effect. It missed out on being the band’s first bona fide chart hit by the tiniest of margins. Indeed, you could make a case that it was the unluckiest record ever to not make the Top 40 when it remained at its peak of No 42 for three consecutive weeks! That close encounter was followed by definite chart contact when “Hyperreal” (the fourth single from the album) made No 29 in early 1991 and then a full on visitation with “Move Any Mountain”.
That moment of chart success though was engulfed by the tragedy of the death of the band’s bass player/keyboardist and songwriter Will Sinnott when he drowned off the coast of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, while the band were shooting the video for “Move Any Mountain”. Deciding to carry on the band in tribute to his former band mate, Colin Angus recruited rapper Mr C as a permanent full time member and in 1992 they would achieve a platinum selling album in “Boss Drum” and a controversial No 1 single in “Ebeneezer Goode”…and that’s where it all went a bit naughty, naughty, very naughty…
Billy Joel – “I Go To Extremes”
Release date: 03 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 70
Weeks On Chart: 4
While the whole country seemed to be going rave mad in 1990, I, perpetually behind the zeitgeist, found myself increasingly embroiled in Billy Joel’s singles release schedule. What on earth was I thinking? After Joel had returned to our Top 10 for the first time in five years with the often ridiculed “We Didn’t Start the Fire” from his “Storm Front” album, it seemed he may be about to embark upon a run of hit singles akin to his “An Innocent Man” period.
However, despite releasing a further four singles from the album, none of them pierced the Top 40 even. I didn’t own “Storm Front” but seemed to afford the singles released from it an inordinate amount of attention. “Leningrad” was the follow up to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” written about a clown whom he met while touring the Soviet Union in 1987 (there’s surely joke in that sentence somewhere) while “The Downeaster ‘Alexa'” depicted the plight of an impoverished fisherman off Long Island struggling to make ends meet against the depletion of fish stocks and restricting environmental regulations. Fast forward 31 years and it could be an allegorical tale of the woes of Brex-shit. The final single to be released was “That’s Not Her Style” which was sort of a sequel to “Uptown Girl” in that it again it was written about/for Christie Brinkley although it was infinitely better than that piece of crud widely recognised as Joel’s worst ever song.
The one I have highlighted here though is “I Go To Extremes” which was the third single from “Storm Front”. There was something about the way the rolling piano drove the song forward that appealed. Apparently written from the point of view of a manic depression sufferer, it certainly made an impression on troubled actress Linday Lohan who allegedly has its lyrics ‘clear as a crystal, sharp as a knife I feel like I’m in the prime of my life’ from this song tattooed on her rib cage. I wasn’t that affected by the song though I did buy it (yes I actually bought it!) and I stand by my actions. It’s a good song. Bloody music snobs!
Age Of Chance – “Higher Than Heaven”
Release date: 03 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 53
Weeks On Chart: 8
Another peculiar pop tale now. It’s that weird story of how a band starts out as one thing and morphs into something almost unrecognisable from their origins later in their career. I can think of a few examples where the artists has almost completely changed musical genre as it were – the Roxy Music of “Virginia Plain” is a million miles away from their slick “Avalon” era, whilst those early Simple Minds albums bear little resemblance to the bombastic, stadium rock hits of their commercial peak. Similarly, when the Beastie Boys advised us that “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” in 1987, few would have imagined that they would come up with such a musically diverse album as “Ill Communication” a few short years later. And who could have foreseen the almost teen bop version of Depeche Mode with hits like “Just Can’t Get Enough” building a career of huge longevity making brooding and dark electro-rock songs? And tht’s befpre we’ve even mentioned Talk Talk…
Back to Age Of Chance though and this lot started out as a Leeds based industrial rock/ dance hybrid and like most people, I only first knew of them via their striking cover of Prince’s “Kiss” in 1986. Favourites of John Peel, they even contributed a track of the now legendary NME C86 cassette compilation (described by writer and broadcaster Andrew Collins as “the most indie thing to have ever existed”). They played a gig at Sunderland Poly whilst I was studying there but I failed to attend for some reason. A move to major label Virgin followed but, almost inevitably, that seemed to be the point where things started to change. Debut album “One Thousand Years Of Trouble” was a critical success but failed to deliver the required commercial sales.
By the time that second album “Mecca” was being recorded, founding member and vocalist Steven Elvidge had had enough and jumped ship leading the rest of the band to recruit a replacement – gospel voiced soul singer Charles Hutchinson was chosen. The result meant that “Mecca” was much more of a polished effort but crucially wildly different from the band’s previous sound. Being the pop kid that I am/was though, I liked this incarnation better and thought lead single “Higher Than Heaven” was almost the perfect pop song and felt compelled to buy the single. Hutchinson could have been a star as big as Seal (but he was beaten to it by…erm..Seal) and their sound was reminiscent of the similarly criminally overlooked Ellis, Beggs And Howard from a couple of years before. Despite being voted Record of the week by BBC Radio 1’s breakfast show listeners, the single failed to make the Top 40 and the band would ultimately spilt in 1991. Shame really.
The Icicle Works – “Motorcycle Rider”
Release date: 17 Mar 1990
Peak Chart Position: 73
Weeks On Chart: 3
You can’t do a Hits That Never Were section without an entry from Icicle Works. They’ve been in multiple reviews of the year that I’ve done. 1990’s representative was “Motorcycle RIder” – however, this was a very different Icicle Works to the outfit who had gone so close to chart glory before.
After 1988’s “Blind” album had taken the band’s commercial fortunes backwards and nullified the small gains made by preceding long player “If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy Sing His Song” and with tensions within the band on the rise, the original line up disintegrated. Drummer Chris Sharrock decamped initially to The La’s before embarking on a career as an in demand musician working with the likes of The Lightning Seeds, Robbie Williams, Del Amitri, Oasis and Beady Eye. He is currently the drummer for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. In addition, bassist Chris Layhe also departed finding an alternative career as events organiser in Liverpool and teaching guitar at the Manchester Adult Education Service. No disrespect to the guitar teacher I had in Hull when I finally tried to master the instrument who was great but I would have loved to have been taught by Mr Layhe! I believe he still does some live gig work – somebody I used to work with in Our Price knows him and by all accounts he is a top bloke.
In the light of these departures, the band’s were dropped by their label Beggars Banquet and their future looked uncertain to say the least. Remaining founder member, Ian McNabb kept the name going though and recruited a new line up (including Zak Starkey for a period) and released their final album “Permanent Damage” on Epic. “Motorcycle RIder” was the lead single and though I liked it (it was a bit like “Evangeline” part II), I’d kind of lost track of the band by this point and took little interest in discovering the rest of the album’s material. When the single stumbled its way to No 73 and the album failed to chart at all, the game was up and the band broke up officially in 1991.
McNabb would continue to write, record and perform his solo material to this day and even achieved a Mercury Music Prize nomination for 1994 solo album “Head Like A Rock”. He has reactivated the Icicle Works name a few times in the intervening years without Sharrock and Layhe – I caught them/him live in Manchester around 2006/7 but it wasn’t the same. Sometimes you really can’t go back but a part of me will always have real affection for the original Icicle Works.
The Lilac Time – “All For Love And Love For All”
Release date: 28 Apr 1990
Peak Chart Position: 77
Weeks On Chart: 2
My allegiance to Stephen Duffy would have been five years old by this point dating back to “Kiss Me”, “Icing On The Cake” and the vastly underrated “The Ups And Downs” album. However, much like with Icicle Works, I was starting to lose track of him as an artist. Having ditched both his ‘Tin Tin’* and ‘A.J.’ affectations and with his commercial fortunes waning to the point of being dropped by his label, he switched his attention to new, folk-rock project the The Lilac Time. I’d liked their debut single, the very hummable “Return To Yesterday” but they’d disappeared from my view by the end of the decade – they’d recorded and released two whole albums by this point but I hadn’t invested in purchasing them and radio didn’t seem that interested in playing them so I had little clue what their sound was.
Come the new decade though, come two new producers in XTX’s Andy Partridge and the man at the helm of The Stone Roses’ mixing desk John Leckie. The result was a more beefed up, polished production on third album “& Love for All”. Almost title track “All for Love And Love for All” was the lead single and it seemed to be a definite attempt to court that missing airplay that could give them a chart hit. Unusually it begins with its catchy chorus, hammering its hooks into your brain from the off. Deriving its title from a word play on the Three Musketeers motto, it undoubtedly borrows its sound a little from “Magical Mystery Tour” but at least Duffy acknowledges his influences with a lyrical reference to early Beatles incarnations The Quarrymen and Johnny & the Moondogs whilst sonically there’s the inclusion of the harmonica riff from “I Should Have Known Better”. As ever with Duffy compositions, this was well crafted, perfect pop and yet also as ever with Duffy compositions, nobody seemed interested. The single failed to make the Top 75 and the album bombed completely.
*’Blistering barnacles!’ indeed!
The Trash Can Sinatras – “Obscurity Knocks EP”
Release date: 24 Feb 1990
Peak Chart Position: 86
Weeks On Chart: 4
A bit like The Lilac Time, this lot seemed to be peddling a genre of music that was an anomaly in 1990. Drawing comparisons from the music press with The Smiths and Aztec Camera, their brand of melodic, jangly guitar driven pop tunes seemed out of kilter with the Eurodance dominated Top 40 charts of the year. Hell, even Aztec Camera didn’t sound like Aztec Camera in 1990! As I recall though, their was a definite buzz around them. Hailing from Irvine, Scotland, they were signed to the Go! Discs label whose other artists like Billy Bragg and The Beautiful South gave them some credibility by association.
Also like The Lilac Time, their single carried a title that was nice word play on an established phrase which was continued in the lyrics with lines like ‘Looking at my watch and I’m half-past caring’. On reflection, their sound was derivative but they definitely had musical ability and knew their way around a decent tune. Parent album “Cake” only made No 74 in the charts and despite having some success stateside (especially on the Billboard Modern Rock chart) the band never managed to hit it big in the UK. They are still a going concern to this day last releasing an album in 2018.
Del Amitri – “Kiss This Thing Goodbye”
Release date: 24 Mar 1990 *
Peak Chart Position: 43
Weeks On Chart: 4
*Originally released 12 Aug 1989 and peaked at No 59
You would be forgiven for thinking that this one didn’t belong in a section called Hits That Never Were at all. This wasn’t a hit?! What even with all that radio play it got?! Yes, taking its place alongside the likes of “Summer Of ’69” by Bryan Adams and “I Would Die 4 U” by Prince, “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” was not a Top 40 hit for Del Amitri despite being released twice! It originally chanced its arm in the singles market in 1989 to no avail but was shoved back out again in the wake of breakthrough hit “Nothing Ever Happens” but still the UK record buying public said ‘nothing doing’. Bizarrely, it was though the first song by the band to break the US Top 40, reaching No 35.
Quite why it failed to chart in the UK is not easily explained. Perfect for daytime radio with its rousing chorus, it seemed much better placed than the much more unusual sounding “Nothing Ever Happens” which would have been an outside bet at best. Maybe it was the banjo picking that put people off? It didn’t matter too much in the end as, far from kissing goodbye to chart stardom, the band would notch up 11 consecutive Top 40 entries after the failure of “Kiss This Thing Goodbye” between 1990 and 1997. Sometimes UK music fans had to be given a bit of a run up before taking an artist to their hearts it seems.
The Blow Monkeys -“Springtime For The World”
Release date: 26 May 1990
Peak Chart Position: 69
Weeks On Chart: 2
And what were The Blow Monkeys up to in 1990? I’m glad you asked because not many were enquiring after their health back then. Having finally achieved proper mainstream success with 1987’s Top 5 hit “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way”, they’d seemed to reject the sophisti-pop sound that had made them pop stars by pursuing a distinctly dance-orientated direction with the release of their next album “Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood”. Dr. Robert had doubled down on that decision when he collaborated with ‘The First Lady of House Music’ Kym Mazelle on Top 10 single “Wait”. That success apart, their new sound wasn’t as popular with the fans (me included) and the album peaked at a lowly No 46. Record label RCA panicked and released a Best Of album entitled “Choices – The Singles Collection” which was a big seller peaking at No 5 and becoming the band’s highest-charting record. But if that Best Of album was meant to be a reminder to the band of the formula for more chart success, they didn’t heed it. Standing at a cross roads as the new decade dawned, they chose to follow the signpost pointing to dance world.
Their first (and it turned out only) album of the 90s saw them continue with their dalliance with that genre when they released “Springtime For The World”. The lead single was the title track and though I hadn’t been expecting much, I honestly thought it was OK. There was more of a tune in it than on the material I’d heard from “Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood” like “This Is Your Life” and it had some interesting elements to it like the jagged sounding strings and the repeated crash of the Rank Organisation style gong. Dr Robert (with his new smart mod haircut) sounded in good voice backed by some lush gospel backing vocals and the while thing had a nice vibe to it. ‘Yeah, this could work and be a hit’ I thought at the time. I was wrong, crushingly so. The single stalled at No 69 and the album failed to chart at all. The band would split shortly after its release and would not reconvene for another 17 years. Since reforming though, they have been very active recording five studio albums and performing live gigs. You can’t keep the good doctor down it seems.
Energy Orchard – “Belfast”
Release date: 27 Jan 1990
Peak Chart Position: 52
Weeks On Chart: 4
Following a rock band from Dublin in Power Of Dreams, we return to Ireland but the northern part of it. Energy Orchard hailed from Belfast and were led by singer-songwriter Bap Kennedy who would go on to work with such musical heavyweights as Steve Earle, Van Morrison, Shane MacGowan and Mark Knopfler. Their debut single “Belfast” was also their highest charting just missing out on the Top 40.
Their sound was more folk-rock in nature than their indie inclined, post -punk peers Power Of Dreams, more U2 than Undertones. They maybe suffered from coming across as too earnest at a time when the UK was still under the influence of dance music, club culture and having a good time. It did however feature on Eastenders apparently. I’m guessing it was on the Queen Vic’s juke box? Sting’s “Love Is The Seventh Wave” was similarly featured back in ’85.
Energy Orchard carried on until 1996 with Kennedy forging a successful solo career until his death in 2016.
Their Season In The Sun
Bombalurina– Why oh why oh why oh why oh why…?
Deee-Lite – They came, they brought us a gigantic and wonderful dance hit that should have been No 1, they left.
Guru Josh – 1990 was indeed time for the guru but it was definitely a time limited offer.
Halo James – “Right, first item on the music genre agenda. Can I just confirm that we are all done with the sophisto-pop movement? Any objections? What’s that Halo James? You haven’t had your turn yet? Oh alright but just one hit and that’s it. Agreed? Motion passed.”
New Kids On The Block – Filling the gap between Bros and Take That, this bunch of pretty boys had some terrible tunes. Thankfully, the collective insanity that gripped the nations teenage girls only lasted 12 months.
The Soup Dragons – It looked for a while like these Scottish groovers would become major stars. They had the right sound at the right time. “I’m Free” and “Mother Universe” were great singles. And then, one minor hit and the inevitable band break up. What a waste.
Vanilla Ice – To quote the character of Porter Lee Austin played by Larry Hagman in one of my favourite ever films Stardust: “He was a monster, I’m telling you, a monster! We couldn’t ship enough of that mother’s records he was so big. You know, at one time, both Capitol and Columbia had plants over in Detroit and Cleveland pressing for us. He was that big, that big. Like King Kong, he was, for a time. And then the branch broke. After that…no kind of hype in the world was going to get him back up on his perch. Ooh! You couldn’t give that mother away!”
Last Words
In many ways,1990 has been one of the most disappointing of these TOTP years that I have reviewed. So much excitement and anticipation for a new decade but the charts were a massive let down, full of generic Euro dance, pop and rock ‘royalty’ that refused to abdicate and a stack of movie and TV generated hits. It was different outside of the Top 40 and TOTP though wasn’t it? ‘Madchester’ had become a vibrant movement, uniting the youth who wanted something other than Mutant Ninja Turtles and Elton John. Yet it would quickly dissipate as its two prime movers The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays struggled to create new material leaving a gap that would be filled by…well…we’ll have to wait for those 1991 BBC4 repeats won’t we…
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 