Janet Jackson | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 10 MAR 1994

Posted on February 20, 2023 by 80stastic

Welcome to TOTP Rewind where I, a man now in his mid-50s, have spent the last six years reviewing every BBC4 repeat of the fondly remembered music show. Why have I done/continue to do this? It’s a question I have repeatedly asked myself especially when they start to back up and I find myself in catch up mode as I am now. Well, I’m a nostalgic person and hiding away from present day concerns with a trip down memory lane seems quite appealing right now. Mark Goodier is our host for tonight’s show so let’s do it…

We start with a belting tune from Primal Scream. After the critical, commercial and chemical highs of the groundbreaking, inaugural Mercury Music Prize winning “Screamadelica” album, the band went in a different direction for the follow up “Give Out But Don’t Give Up”. Rejecting the acid house beats that informed its predecessor, they embraced a retro, rock ‘n’ blues sound that was no more evident than on lead single “Rocks”. The very definition of a stomper, I liked the kitchen sink approach to it in that they threw everything but it into the mix. It kicks off with a purposeful opening drum beat before being joined by that muscular guitar that elicits a searing, slide of the fretboard and then it really gets going. A T-Rex style riff hammers out the song’s template before Bobby Gillespie delivers the those opening eight lines:

Dealers keep dealin’, thieves keep thievin’
Whores keep whorin’, junkies keep scorin’
Trade is on the meat rack, strip joints full of hunchbacks
Bitches keep a bitchin’, clap just keeps itchin’
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert Young / Bobby Gillespie / Andrew Innes
Rocks lyrics © Complete Music Ltd.

How did they get past the BBC censor?! I don’t think there’s ever been a sanitised radio edit of the song has there? Apparently, Theresa May walked off stage to “Rocks” following her speech at the Tory Party conference in 2011. For a woman who is on record as stating that the naughtiest thing she had evet done was to run through fields of wheat as a child, it does seem an unlikely song choice. However, if you factor in that she was Home Secretary at the time, the fact that she chose a song that includes lyrics like “dealers keep dealing”, “thieves keep thieving” and “junkies keep scoring” hardly speaks well of her ability to keep law and order.

Reaction to this ‘new’ Primal Scream sound was mixed. Some (like me) loved it while others found it too derivative and accused the band of just doing their best Rolling Stones impression. I think retailers expected “Rocks” to do big things sales wise though. I recall that we had a big scale out of the single from Head Office at the Our Price I was working in at the time but although it performed well initially leading the band to achieving their second highest chart peak ever of No 7, it fell away quickly. Maybe the release of the album just three weeks later had something to do with it.

The original recordings of the album were made in Memphis using the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section but were rejected by Creation boss Alan McGee. Said recordings eventually surfaced in 2018 and an entertaining documentary about the rediscovery of them was aired on the BBC. There wouldn’t be another Primal Scream album for three years when “Vanishing Point” appeared which was the first album to feature ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani who had joined the band in 1996. I was working in the Stockport Our Price by then with original Roses bassist Pete as my manager. I distinctly remember Mani coming into the shop one day to have a catch up with Pete but also to buy up all the Primal Scream albums we had so he could learn the bass parts.

The performance here with Denise Johnson on vocals alongside Bobby Gillespie is just glorious. Sadly, the band have seen much tragedy in recent years with three members dying fairly close to each other starting with Robert ‘Throb’ Young in 2014, then the aforementioned Denise Johnson in 2020 and finally Martin Duffy just last year.

Now, what links M People with Primal Scream? Apart from being on the same TOTP together and both having recordings with very similar titles (“called “Movin’ On Up” and “Moving On Up”) obviously. Well, they both have had a song used to soundtrack a speech at a Tory Party conference. Yes, just as Theresa May used “Rocks” in 2011, the six-week Prime Minister Liz Truss used the aforementioned “Moving On Up” in 2022. There’s more similarities though. Both artists were extremely pissed off that their material had been used by a political party they were adamantly opposed to and both songs used included lyrics that were totally unsuited to the purpose for which the song was chosen in the first place. Given her precarious position as Prime Minister, did nobody in her inner sanctum listen to these lyrics?

You’ve done me wrong, your time is up
You took a sip from the devil’s cup
You broke my heart, there’s no way back
Move right out of here, baby, go on pack your bags

Just who do you think you are?
Stop actin’ like some kind of star
Just who do you think you are?

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Mike Pickering / Paul Heard
Moving On Up lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Royalty Network, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

FFS! Anyway, M People are on the show to perform “Renaissance” not “Moving On Up” which was their fifth Top 10 hit in just over a year. Quite the achievement. This was the fourth and final single released from the “Elegant Slumming” album and was a track that many had expected for a while to be given such a release seeing as it had been used as the title song to early reality TV show The Living Soap. It would also provide the title for the band’s 11 disc 2020 retrospective box set.

There’s a little teaser trailer before the next artist as we cross to New York for a roof top chat with Bon Jovi who are on the show later doing an exclusive live by satellite performance. Presumably new producer Ric Blaxill wanted to make more of this slot by working in a bit of extra mileage with it courtesy of this little clip which actually gets Jon Bon Jovi to introduce the next song. It’s quite a neat trick and works quite well in the safe hands of the unflappable frontman.

Said next artist is Janet Jackson and like her music or not (and I don’t especially), you have to admit she’s prolific. Her discography tells me she has released 70 singles during her career and this one – “Because Of Love” – was the 10th of the 90s already. The fourth of six singles released in the UK from her “Janet” album, it was the follow up to the surprisingly robust Christmas No 6 hit “Again”. In a ever more familiar trend for singles in general, it would get no further than its entry week high of No 19 (see also Primal Scream’s “Rocks”). By the end of the decade, singles would be in one week and out the next on a regular basis due to record company pricing strategies with heavily discounted prices in week one.

It’s not one of Janet’s more memorable tunes despite the “shoop, shoop, doop, doop” hook she sings. Apparently, it was her first single since “The Pleasure Principle” in 1987 to miss the Top 5 in the US and is regarded as one of the last New Jack Swing records to make the charts.

From “Doop Doop” courtesy of Janet Jackson to “Doop” courtesy of…well…Doop. This Charleston based dance track was the highest new entry of the week straight in at No 3 on its way to the top of the charts. So what the Hell was all this all about? Well, they were a Dutch production duo who hit upon the ludicrous idea of added a house beat to a big band sample and turned it into a European dance craze. Supposedly this was always going to be a huge hit due to the buzz created in the clubs for this record but nowhere was it a bigger hit than in the UK. Yay, well done us!

As there’s no lyrics in this apart from the occasional “doop”, it’s left to a load of dancers obviously dressed in 1920s style dresses and headgear to deliver some sort of performance. If it wasn’t from the obligatory two male DJ nerds lurking around at the back of the stage (one looking like Rick Wakeman), this could be a dance routine by Pan’s People. I know Ric Blaxill had brought back some of the Radio 1 DJs from the 80s as hosts of the show but this was ridiculous!

Doop would become only the third ever Dutch act to have a UK No 1 after Pussycat with “Mississippi” and “No Limit” by 2 Unlimited. In a bizarre twist of fate, it would become the first instrumental chart topper since “Eye Level” by the Simon Park Orchestra in 1973 which was the theme tune for Van der Valk about a Dutch detective. And that reference just might be more oblique than the angle from which Marco Van Basten scored his wonder goal for Holland in the 1988 European Championships.

A largely forgotten hit next though a pretty good song. Just two short years after Shakespear’s Sister took “Stay” to No 1 for six weeks, Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey’s working relationship had been dissolved and the former was striking out on her own with a solo album. Wikipedia tells me that it wasn’t her debut though as that came in 1982 after a protracted gestation period but failed to sell in any territory. Marcella looks pretty different on the cover with an 80s perm and highlights. Her transformation into a Louise Brooks coiffured model type is almost as huge a change as that of Alanis Morrisette who made a similar image change from her early incarnations to her commercial peak.

So, 12 years and one pop duo later came her sophomore album “Jewel” which got mixed press reviews but which sold reasonably well going to No 15 in the charts. The lead single was “I Believe” which also sold steadily rising to No 11. Its a very accomplished, nicely produced song which makes the most of Marcella’s dynamic yet pure vocals. It probably should have been a bigger hit.

The performance here employs a very basic black and white to colour change just at the moment where the song really blooms at the chorus. I wonder if whoever came up with that were really pleased with themselves? To be fair, I was when, as a student at Sunderland Polytechnic, our group came up with the same wheeze when producing a video as part of a module. Our plot revolved around a bored student falling asleep in a tedious lecture and daydreaming about being pushed into a swimming pool at which point he wakes up. We called it Wet Dream (genius!) and had the lecture part in black and white and the dream sequence in colour (also genius!). I really must find it out and get it online one day.

Anyway, back to Marcella (or Marcy as host Mark Goodier calls her). We (my wife and some friends) were supposed to go and see her live at the Academy in Manchester but she called off the gig at the last minute. We all went out drinking at a pub called Briton’s Protection instead. My friend Robin was delighted as he hadn’t wanted to go to see Marcella in the first place and the pub had his favourite ale (Jennings) on tap. Fast forward 25 years and Marcella and Siobhan would work out their differences and reunite for a tour and EP of new material. I never did see Marcella live but Robin continues to enjoy a nice pint of Jennings to this day.

Some Breakers now starting with The Beautiful South and their new single “Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)”. I seem to remember many people believing the title to be “Carry On Regardless” due to the phrase featuring heavily in the lyrics and also possibly because of the Carry On film of the same name. The band hadn’t released anything in 1993 so this was a taster from new album “Miaow”. It was still cast from the same mould as some of their earlier material with catchy melodies and socially observant lyrics to the fore but there had been one big change since we last saw/heard them. Vocalist Briana Corrigan had left the band with rumours abound that she was less than impressed by some of Paul Heaton’s lyrics including on the single “36D” which criticised the glamour industry by making targets out of the models. Briana was replaced by Jacqui Abbott who would stay with the band for four albums before leaving and then rekindling her creative relationship with Heaton in 2014.

Sales of the album would not halt the decline that third album “0898” had suffered from after predecessors “Welcome To The Beautiful South” and “Choke” had both gone platinum but by the end of 1994 they would have the Christmas No 1 album and the second best selling record of the whole year in their first Best Of album “Carry On Up The Charts” (Heaton was clearly a bit of a fan of the Carry On franchise). For the second time in the band’s history, the artwork for the album’s cover got them into hot water. After thejr debut received a ban from Woolworths for originally featuring a woman with a gun in her mouth, “Miaow” had to undergo a change of image as well when HMV objected to the picture of a crowd of dogs seated in a music hall with a gramophone on stage as it impinged in their legendary logo.

“Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)” remains one of the Beautiful South’s most well known songs I think despite it only making it to No 23 in the charts. The follow up would be the second song made famous by Harry Nilsson to return to the charts this year after Mariah Carey’s take on “Without You” when the band released a cover of “Everybody’s Talkin’”.

Hell’s teeth it’s Therapy? again! “Trigger Inside” was these Irish rockers fifth Top 40 hit in the past year and second of 1994 already! Talking of teeth, the band seemed to have a bit of a dental obsession. Having already released a single called “Teethgrinder” with a particularly graphic front cover, this one starts with the lyric

Here comes a girl with perfect teeth
I bet she won’t be smiling at me
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Andrew Cairns
Trigger Inside lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The very next line name checks serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer which TOTP wisely avoids showing in this short clip. This track seems to be at the heavier end of the rock scale and not especially radio friendly (and that’s before considering the Jeffrey Dahmer reference) but the band’s fanbase was by now large enough to guarantee them a chart placing. “Trigger Inside” was at its No 22 peak despite it being its first week on the charts.

Apart from one solitary entry at No 40, Alison Moyet hadn’t had a UK chart hit since her cover of “Love Letters” made No 4 in 1987. That outcome would have seemed unlikely back then. After all, she’s had two massive hits from her album of that year “Raindancing” in “Is This Love?” and “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty”. However, a delay of four years until her next album “Hoodoo” had seen her lose her place amongst pop’s big hitters and the album sold respectably but significantly less numbers than its predecessors.

Commercial success wasn’t what mattered to Alison though who fought her record company Sony for artistic control of her work which led to a confrontation over the release of her next album “Essex”. Sony refused to release it unless tracks were re-recorded and re-produced to make a more radio friendly pop album that stood a better chance of success. The result of this stand off was “Whispering Your Name”, a 1983 song written by Jules Shear but originally recorded by Ignatius Jones, leader of shock rock band Jimmy and the Boys. In an act of compromise, Alison committed to two versions of the song; an acoustic “MacArthur Park”* style ballad that appeared on the album and the danced up version that was released as a single.

*The Richard Harris version, not Donna Summer’s

The former is clearly the better version to my ears with the latter sounding like something Dusty Springfield might have recorded as a B-side during her Pet Shop Boys collaboration era. Mind you, even that version is a million times better than the Ignatius Jones take which is an abomination:

Mark Goodier makes a big deal in his intro of the fact that Dawn French appears in the video for “Whispering Your Name” just as she’d done seven years prior for the “Love Letters” promo. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Dawn French (we even had a French And Saunders VHS on our wedding present list!) but I don’t think her ‘zany’ antics added anything to the video at all. Maybe I felt differently back then but viewed in 2023 it all seems a bit tired. The single would make No 18 perhaps validating Sony’s strategy but it would be Alison’s last ever chart entry as a solo artist.

Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’s time as chart dwelling pop stars was entering the final bend come 1994 – in short, it turned out that they could be stopped after all. After the unlikely gold selling albums that were “30 Something” and “1992 – The Love Album” (a chart topper no less), subsequent releases suffered from a dose of diminishing returns. Not that they were suddenly outside of the charts being refused entry but the numbers were in decline. This single “Glam Rock Cops” and its predecessor “Lenny And Terence” were their lowest peaking singles (Nos 24 and 40 respectively) since their first ever chart hit, the 1991 reissue of “Sheriff Fatman”. The quality of their material was still there though. “Glam Rock Cops” is a great song and the performance of it here shows how comfortable Jimbob and Fruitbat had become by this stage with the whole idea of being pop stars. As ever, the lyrics are clever and intriguing though were they influenced by The Jam’s “Going Underground” with the line “The public gets the music that no public could deserve”?

We rejoin Bon Jovi now who have come in off that roof in New York and are performing on, yes you guessed it, yet another nondescript stage that could just as easily have been located round the corner from the TOTP studio as where it actually was, 3,500 miles due West. Really? I thought new producer Ric Blaxill was trying to get away from all that and have artists performing against landmark backdrops.

Anyway, the single the band are plugging is “Dry County” which was the sixth and final single to be released from their “Keep The Faith” album. Remember, this was an album that had been released on 3rd November 1992 and this TOTP aired on 10 March 1994 – that’s 16 months later! This was almost Michael Jackson-esque! As well as the length of time between album and single releases there was also a small (or large as it happens) matter of the length of time of the track itself. Apparently, this is Bon Jovi’s longest song clocking in at 9:52. It was edited down to 6:00 for single release. The band and or their record company clearly had plenty of confidence in the track’s potential for success. Hey! They must have ‘kept the faith’ in it (I’ll get me coat). Or maybe it was just their “Bohemian Rhapsody” moment.

The title referred to a county that prohibits alcohol but here it also acts as a metaphor for the decline of the US oil industry with the song describing the effects of such on the inhabitants of towns whose economies were reliant on the resource. It’s a bit of a retread of Tommy and Gina’s struggles in “Livin’ On A Prayer” or, indeed, most of Bruce Springsteen’s back catalogue. “Dry County” managed a very respectable peak of No 9 in the UK. They would end the year with the 21 million selling Best Of album “Crossroads” which was also the UK’s best selling album of 1994.

Oh and one last thing. The BBC censors were asleep at the wheel again as for the second time on tonight’s show we get the use of the word ‘whore’ in a song’s lyrics:

Man spends his whole life waiting, praying for some big reward
But it seems sometimes the payoff leaves you feeling like
A dirty whore

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Dry County lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing, Polygram Int. Publishing, Inc.

It’s a fourth and final week at the top for Mariah Carey and “Without You”. As successful as Mariah’s version of the song was, she isn’t the only artist to have taken on this monster pop song. The list of those who have tackled it includes Air Supply, Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark, Glen Campbell, Elaine Paige, Rose Marie…wait. Rose Marie? I know a story about her and it involves my time at Sunderland Polytechnic again. My friend Robin (he with the passion for Jennings ale) had a friend named Cess (short for Cesspit) come to visit him in Sunderland. Unfortunately for Cess, Robin was out when he arrived at his gaff and so, in an era before mobile phones, he had some time to kill. Looking for something to do, Cess wandered into Sunderland town centre and noticed that there was a matinee gig going on at the Empire Theatre. “That’ll do” thought Cess and in he went. The gig was by Rose Marie – the Irish Bette Midler as some named her – and the audience was mainly made up of elderly ladies having a nice afternoon out. I should have pointed out that Cess was a bit of a punk back then and at the time was sporting a pink Mohican hairstyle so I’m not entirely sure the rest of the audience were really his people but apparently he spent a great afternoon singing along with Rose Marie and her fans.

The play out song is “Rock My Heart” by Haddaway. Hadn’t we all had enough of this bloke by this point? This was the fourth and final hit from his debut album and, just like the preceding three, went Top 10. After doing a ballad for his last single, he’d cranked up the beats again for this high tempo Eurodance number which was not a million miles away from his biggest hit “What Is Love”. I wasn’t going to any of the clubs that might have played this sort of stuff back then (indie night at Fifth Avenue in Manchester was more my scene) so maybe I wasn’t its target audience but why was this guy so successful? Really though, why?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Primal Scream	Rocks / Funky Jam	No but I bought the album
2	M People	Renaissance	No but my wife had the album
3	Janet Jackson	Because Of Love	No
4	Doop	Doop	Of course not
5	Marcella Detroit	I Believe	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	The Beautiful South	Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)	No but I have that Best Of album it on
7	Therapy?	Trigger Inside	Negative
8	Alison Moyet	Whispering Your Name	Nah
9	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Glam Rock Cops	See 5 above
10	Bon Jovi	Dry County	No but I had a promo copy of the album
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Nope
12	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hyxn/top-of-the-pops-10031994

TOTP 25 NOV 1993

Posted on November 30, 2022 by 80stastic

I write this a couple of days after Wales were knocked out of the World Cup in Qatar by England. Twenty-nine years ago to the month, Wales also tumbled out of the World Cup at the qualifying stages when they looked set to make it to the finals for the first time since 1958. Needing to win against Romania and with the scores tied at 1-1, Wales were awarded a penalty. Up stepped the unfortunate Paul Bodin, an accomplished penalty taker, who slammed his kick against the crossbar. Almost inevitably, the game slipped away from Wales and with it their chance to become legends. Redemption for the nation would not arrive until 2022. I wonder if there’s any acts on this TOTP that messed up their shot at legendary status?

Does one big hit and a clutch of middling ones make you a dance legend? I’m not so sure but that was the fate of K–Klass. 1991 had seen them in the Top 3 with “Rhythm Is A Mystery” but they had struggled to solve the puzzle of how to follow that up. Neither of their two subsequent singles hit higher than No 20 but they were back in 1993 (a whole year since their last release) to try again. Another monster hit looked on the cards when they crashed into the charts week one with “Let Me Show You” at No 13 and the attendant TOTP appearance seemed likely to push it into the Top 10. Needless to say, I couldn’t have told you how this one went without hearing it back first but I found it better than I was expecting actually though I’m not sure why. I mean, there’s a bit of a tune in there which always helps – it reminds me of “Show Me Love” by Robin S though I was no fan of that – and singer Bobbi Depasois sells it well but I can’t put my finger on its appeal. Maybe it’s the comedic value of the obligatory anonymous blokes on keyboards who do a cracking job of being long haired, tech nerds who really can’t dance – no seriously, they REALLY can’t dance.

Despite this performance, “Let Me Show You” got no higher than the No 13 peak it was already at here. One further Top 40 hit followed before the collective embarked upon a career of producing and remixing for the likes of Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue and M People.

Whatever you think of him (and I know somebody who has dismissed any and every song he’s ever recorded as unlistenable), surely you can’t deny the status of legend that Elton John carries. He’s sold over 300 million records worldwide and has been in the music business for 60 years! For a third week on the trot, he’s on the show with his duet with Kiki Dee of “True Love”. Kiki is an interesting character. In my head, she was one of those artists that would be the musical interlude in light entertainment programmes like Barbara Dickson on The Two Ronnies (though I don’t know if that’s actually true) but there’s so much more to her than that. For a start, she was the first white British artist to be signed to Motown and in her early career as a session singer she sang backing vocals for the likes of Dusty Springfield*. Her early recordings on the Fontana label all failed to chart but one of them – “On A Magic Carpet Ride” – remains a firm favourite on the Northern Soul scene. After signing to Elton’s label The Rocket Record Company, she started to have hits in her own right like “Amoureuse” and “I’ve Got The Music In Me” before that duet with with The Rocket Man himself on “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”*.

*Coincidentally, there was another link between Kiki and Dusty Springfield as the latter was Elton’s original choice of duet partner but she was too ill to do the recording at the time. She would eventually duet with a current pop act to great effect in 1987 with Pet Shop Boys on “What Have I Done To Deserve This”.

She’s supported Queen at Hyde Park in front of 150,000 people but topped even that figure by reprising “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with Elton at Live Aid in 1985. She’s also had a career in musical theatre appearing in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers on the West End taking on the role originally performed by Barbara Dickson (ah! Maybe that’s the reason for the connection in my head I mentioned earlier). So, Kiki Dee; maybe not a musical legend but it’s been quite a life.

Now I think legends might be too big a word for the next act but they certainly knew their way around a good tune or two. The Wonder Stuff were onto maybe the fourth period of their career by this point by my reckoning. Having started out as indie grebo darlings with tunes like “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” and “Wish Away” they expanded their sound on second album “Hup” with the addition of new band member and multi instrumentalist Martin Bell (not ‘the man in the white suit’) before becoming major chart stars with out and out pop singles like “Size Of A Cow”. By 1993 they were onto their fourth studio album “Construction For The Modern Idiot” and seemed to me to have developed a more mature rock sound with songs like “On The Ropes” and this one, “Full Of Life (Happy Now)”. However, the chart placings had dropped off alarmingly. Yes, “On The Ropes” had made the Top 10 but it seemed to be a fanbase purchase thing. It had gone straight in at No 10 but dropped out of the charts completely three weeks later. “Full Of Life (Happy Now)” followed a similar trajectory but on a diminished scale entering the charts at No 28 where it would peak and spend just two weeks inside the Top 40. It was a decent tune nonetheless. A Best Of album restored them to the Top 10 the following year before they took a six year sabbatical.

This next band may not amount to more than a few soft rock hits in the late 80s and early 90s over here but in America they are bona fide legends I would suggest. If I judge them by the same criteria I used for Elton John then that suggestion becomes a full on statement of fact. They’ve been in existence in one form/name or another since 1967 and have sold 35 million records worldwide. They were inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. I speak of Heart who are back with a new single called “Will You Be There (In The Morning)”.

I think I was first aware of Heart around the mid 80s when I used to listen to the US chart rundown show on Radio 1 hosted by Paul Gambaccini. Back then, they were having those soft rock hits like “These Dreams” and “What About Love”. I had no idea of their more rockier back catalogue from the 70s. The UK market was resistant to them though and it wasn’t until “Alone” broke through in 1987 that they had a seriously big UK hit on their hands. In the wake of that success, their previously ignored US mid 80s hits were rereleased and became successful in our country as well. I recall that they were huge airplay hits, inescapable whilst I was a second year polytechnic student. As the new decade dawned and the UK went baggy-tastic, enthralled by the sounds of ‘Madchester’, Heart seemed unwanted and no longer relevant. Somehow though, they bagged themselves a rather salacious Top 10 hit in “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You”. Then…nothing. A live album bombed over here but improbably they managed one more UK chart hit in this year of Eurodance anthems. Well if Meatloaf could be huge all over again, why not them?

“Will You Be There (In The Morning)” would be the band’s last chart entry in both territories (UK No 19, US No 39). It’s a more toned down sound to some of those shiny, over produced 80s hits but it never really gets going for me. The band are still together surviving a rather unsavoury family incident when Ann Wilson’s husband assaulted her sister Nancy’s 16 year old twin sons after they left the door to his RV open.

Just like Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “True Love”, this next single is on the show for a third consecutive week. As such, I’ve very little left to say about “Again” by Janet Jackson. What? Is she a musical legend? Well, you can’t deny her success but can you really be regarded as legendary when you’re not even the most famous artist in your own family? “Again” peaked at No 6.

Just the three Breakers tonight starting with an act that is completely out of the leftfield in terms of being on TOTP in 1993 but who is regarded as one of the most influential artists in electronic music ever. A legend then. Probably. Aphex Twin is Richard James, a Cornwall DJ who rose to prominence by featuring on the achingly trendy Warp Records compilation “Artificial Intelligence” which was ground breaking in terms of redefining dance music identity and giving birth to the genre of Intelligent Dance Music (IDM). The “On EP” was his first Top 40 chart entry although he’d already released four previous EPs and an album prior to this and that was just under the Aphex Twin moniker. He also recorded as Polygon Window, The Dice Man and Bradley Strider to name but three.

Unsurprisingly I never got the boat going to Aphex Twin island being a pop kid at heart and all but he/they were all the rage with some of my more dance aware colleagues in Our Price who would always be trying to get the likes of them and Rochdale electronic pioneers Autechre on the shop stereo on a Saturday afternoon when we really should have been playing…erm…I dunno…Lightning Seeds?

Right. Quick question. Kate Bush – legend or not? Here’s what Graeme had to say in his comments posted against the video for “Moments Of Pleasure” on YouTube:

I class her in the same company as Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh and Mozart

Blimey! Talk about superlatives. Having said that, I once made the case to a friend that Brian Wilson should be considered in the same breath as Beethoven so…Anyway, this was the second single from Kate’s “The Red Shoes” album and is typically representative of her work in that its an epic, swooping, tender ballad though it never seems to quite reach full bloom to my ears if that makes any sense. It made No 26 in the charts which was pretty much par for the course with Kate’s singles around this time. Her last massive hit had been “Running Up That Hill” which made No 3 in 1985. Her last Top 10 hit came the following year when she duetted with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up”. The chart positions for the singles after that and up to “Moments Of Pleasure” were:

23 – 12 – 25 – 38 – 12 -12 – 26

Still, it’s not all about hit singles is it? Her albums sold consistently, every one making the Top 10 with two of them topping the chart. Legend? Yeah, she must have a shot at it surely?

The Doobie Brothers?! The Doobie Brothers in the UK charts in 1993?! What was going on here?! It was all down to a remix of their 1973 song “Long Train Runnin’” doing the rounds. The remix was by a duo called Sure Is Pure one of whom had previous in turning classic songs into awful dance hits. Remember Candy Flip who did that dreadful version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles back in 1990? Well, one of their number was Danny Spencer who formed Sure Is Pure with his brother Kelvin. That was just the start though. Do you recall the mini disco revival earlier in 1993? Those remixed Sister Sledge singles that were a big part of it were the work of Danny and Kelvin. Quite why they chose the Doobie Brothers as their next target though I have no idea. The band behind 70s hits like “Listen To The Music” and “What A Fool Believes” which were big in America but not over here hardly seemed ripe for a revival. I suppose the guitar kick on “Long Train Runnin’” was pretty funky so maybe that was what attracted the remix duo. The 1993 version went all the way to No 7 making it easily the band’s biggest UK hit ever. A Best Of album was inevitably released off the back of it. As for the legends question, like Heart before them, The Doobie Brothers were inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 and have sold 40 million albums worldwide but legends? Not in my universe.

Belinda Carlisle has been a regular performer on TOTP since the ‘year zero’ revamp – I think she may have even been on the first show of the new regime back in October ‘91 – but I wasn’t expecting to see her on the show in November of ‘93 as I didn’t know she had a hit single to promote at that time. She did though and here it is. “Lay Down Your Arms” was the follow up to “Big Scary Animal” (which I did remember) but it only got up the charts as far as No 27. It doesn’t sound like traditional Carlisle fare but then it is a cover version. The original was recorded by a band called The Graces featuring Belinda’s ex-Go-Gos band mate Charlotte Caffey who co-wrote it. It’s not a bad little tune with some twangy guitar riffs even giving it an “Out Of Time” era REM vibe.

None of Belinda’s releases were becoming hits in the US at this time and maybe it seemed like they were drying up in this country as well. However, she regrouped for one final hurrah in 1996 bagging herself a gold selling album in “A Woman And A Man” and four hit singles from it including two Top 10s before the well of commercial success finally ran dry. She remains a live draw (she’s touring in the UK early next year) and is probably a legendary figure to many a young lad growing up in the late 80s and early 90s.

We’re up to six weeks for Meatloaf at No 1 with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” so I’m nearly out of content for this one. Oh yes! The legend question. I think it has to be a ‘yes’ doesn’t it? His “Bat Out Of Hell” trilogy of albums has sold 100 million copies alone with the first of those staying in the charts continuously for nine whole years and still sells an estimated 200,000 units per year. That sounds like a legend to me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	K-Klass	Let Me Show You	Nope
2	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Never happening
3	The Wonder Stuff	Full Of Life (Happy Now)	I didn’t
4	Heart	Will You Be There (In The Morning)	No
5	Janet Jackson	Again	Nah
6	Apex Twin	On EP	Not my bag
7	Kate Bush	Moments Of Pleasure	Not for me
8	The Doobie Brothers	Long Train Runnin’	Negative
9	Belinda Carlisle	Lay Down Your Arms	I did not
10	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do 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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fh28/top-of-the-pops-25111993

TOTP 18 NOV 1993

Posted on November 26, 2022 by 80stastic

What were you doing twenty-nine years ago? I know, I know. It’s hard enough remembering why you’ve just come upstairs some days but I’m pretty sure that I had just begun working at the Our Price store in Altrincham, Cheshire. I’d been employed by the company for three years by this point and was onto my fourth different shop. I’d done nearly two years in Market Street, Manchester then a promotion saw me move to Rochdale for a year. A transfer to a bigger store in Stockport followed but it hadn’t really worked out for me. I never settled and found the whole place a bit overwhelming. When another move suddenly presented itself, I was relieved. Whether area management knew I was struggling and took pity on me I don’t know. I doubt it but I immediately felt better at Altrincham. It was a much smaller store (similar to Rochdale) and just felt more manageable. The staff were welcoming and I really got on with the manager Cathy. I think there were eight of us altogether including Christmas temps and it was a good little team. I loved it there in fact. Sadly, it would all come to an abrupt end immediately after Christmas but that’s for a future post. I wonder if any of the songs on this TOTP will ring any bells with me?

Well, this one should do. Not that I remember it specifically but because it sounds the same as all their other hits. I refer, rather obviously, to 2 Unlimited. I think it was all starting to wear a bit thin by this point wasn’t it? “Maximum Overdrive” was their eighth UK hit in a two year period five of which had made the Top 5 including the No 1 single “No Limit”… and they all sounded…the…same. Too harsh? OK, they all followed a very similar pattern then. I get that they might have gone down well on your local nightclub’s dance floor but could anybody have listened to a whole album full of this stuff?!

*checks 2 Unlimited’s discography*

What?! Two of their albums went to No 1 in this country (“No Limits!” and “Real Things”) selling 350,000 copies between them?! This can’t be true can it?! This is as baffling as who the hell voted for Matt Hancock to stay in the jungle that long!

When I first saw Anita and Ray’s outfits for this performance – full black and white chequered leathers with a number 2 prominently displayed – I wondered if they’d gone all Two-tone but it was all to do with that motorbike at the back of the stage. Presumably that was meant to be a play on the theme of the single’s title with the backing dancers meant to be pit stop crew? Nah – this is how you incorporate motorbikes into your song. A masterclass from David Essex…

Why were the TOTP producers obsessed with informing us that artists that had been booked to appear in the studio could no longer do so because they were ill/indisposed so we’d have to make do with the video instead? Why bother telling us? Surely we wouldn’t have known they were meant to be there in person anyway would we? Methinks they protest too much. Unless…it was some sort of ploy to make the show still appear credible and valid by showing us that artists did still want to make the effort to appear in person – “we’re still the biggest music show on TV, honest we are!”. Anyway, that’s what happens here with Terence Trent D’Arby who was meant to be in the studio to perform his single “Let Her Down Easy” but had come down with a case of Beijing flu* according to host Tony Dortie so it’s the video instead.

*There was an actual epidemic of it in the winter of 1993/94 though whether TTD had actually contracted it or it was just Dortie trying to be topical I don’t know.

1993 had been quite a year for Terence on the quiet. A No 4 album in “Symphony Or Damn” which was also well received by the critics (it received a five star rating from Q Magazine) with four Top 20 singles from it that achieved these very consistent chart peaks:

14 – 16 – 14 – 18

“Let Her Down Easy” was the final one of the four and though I don’t remember it, I really should have as it’s a striking piece of music. Almost entirely a piano led composition (there’s some orchestration low in the mix) with just Terence’s pure, isolated vocal, it’s quite the stand out track even today. It got the attention of George Michael who knew his way around a decent tune and he performed it live on his 2011-12 Symphonica tour which was recorded for his 2014 “Symphonica” album.

Back in a Eurodance dominated 1993 though, the track must have seemed like a complete anomaly. It should have been a bigger hit but maybe it got caught up in the Christmas rush. I liked the diversity of the album’s four singles with each one quite different from the other. Like I said, he had quite the year in 1993 but Terence Trent D’Arby rarely gets a mention in retrospectives of those twelve months.

Remember in 2001 when Kylie Minogue grabbed herself a No 1 single with the insanely catchy “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”? Back then, we remarked on how clever the lyrics and title were in that they worked on two levels; the object of Kylie’s affection but also the ear worm that was the actual song. Eight years earlier Culture Beat pulled off a similar coup with “Got To Get It”. ‘Got to get it, got to get it out of my head’ they sang referring to a relationship that had ended but of course it could also have referred to the track itself. Culture Beat are, of course, mostly remembered for that bit of pop trivia about “Mr Vain” being the first UK No 1 not to be released on 7” vinyl whereas Kylie is known as the ‘Princess of Pop’ and revered as a style icon. Get that out of your head Culture Beat!

In 1996 Crowded House released a Best Of compilation called “Recurring Dream”. The TV ad campaign for the album used a tag line that was spoken by a voice over guy who said “you’ll know more songs than you think by Crowded House”. Clever stuff. However, here’s one of theirs that I don’t think most of us will know. I didn’t remember it and possibly Mr Voice Over Guy wouldn’t either as it’s not included in that “Recurring Dream” Best Of.

“Nails In My Feet” was the second track taken from the band’s “Together Alone” album and unlike its predecessor “Distant Sun” and subsequent release “Locked Out”, it didn’t seem like an obvious choice of single. It feels like it should be something special but flounders around in search of a tune and never actually finds one. The rather odd, almost off key middle eight that sounds a bit like the theme to 70s action-comedy series The Persuaders! doesn’t help either.

Neil Finn does his best to sell the song with an expressive performance but it just doesn’t work for me and I say that as someone who’s seen them in concert twice. “Nails In My Feet” was supposedly inspired by Finn’s purchase of a pair of sandals with nails in them that were used to aerate the grass on his home’s tennis court rather than any religious imagery and achieved a respectable chart peak of No 22.

Tony Dortie’s at it again next telling the viewers at home that U2 should have been in the TOTP studio but for reasons he doesn’t want to bore us with, they haven’t made it. Tony, you can’t makes statement like that and not give us the whole story. You could have said nothing and we’d have been none the wiser but the cat’s out of the bag now so you have to tell all!

1993 was an odd chapter in the U2 story. Having finished 1992 with accumulated sales of “Achtung Baby” standing at 10 million and ticket sales for the supporting Zoo TV Tour reaching 2.9 million, the band paused for breath as there was now a six month break before the tour resumed with the Zooropa leg. The problem was that the band weren’t ready to just stop after months of touring. As Bono explained it:

“We thought we could live a normal life and then go back on the road [in May 1993]. But it turns out that your whole way of thinking, your whole body has been geared toward the madness of Zoo TV… So we decided to put the madness on a record. Everybody’s head was spinning, so we thought, why not keep that momentum going…?
Scholz, Martin; Bizot, Jean-Francois; Zekri, Bernard (August 1993). “Even Bigger Than the Real Thing”. Spin. Vol. 9, no. 5. Spin Media LLC. pp. 60–62, 96.

With loops created from tour sound checks and unused “Achtung Baby” demos being employed as starting blocks for recording sessions, the next decision was what format this new material would be released as. A four track EP was the original idea but such was the speed of their creativity, Bono suggested a whole album. Then it all got very confusing. The track chosen to promote the “Zooropa” album was “Numb” but in an unexpected turn of events, it was only released as a VHS video. I recall we got a couple of copies in the Our Price store in Rochdale but I’m not sure if we sold any of them. The then chart rules disallowed its sales from counting on the record singles chart so it kind of sunk without trace. After that rather spectacular own goal, a second track was summoned from the bench to promote the album – “Lemon”. Then it was going to be a double A-side release with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, Bono’s duet with Frank Sinatra. Then Ol’ Blue Eyes’ people wanted a stand alone release and then finally that track was paired with the confoundingly titled track “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”. I do remember this coming out but twenty-nine years on, I couldn’t have told you how it went before re-listening to it. Now that I have listened to it again, I still can’t tell you so unmemorable is it. I don’t mind a bit of U2 now and again and you have to admire their longevity and willingness to reinvent themselves but this one is dreary as. Allegedly, Bono has previously labelled it as the band’s greatest song but I can’t hear it. It was actually written for the similarly titled Wim Wenders film Faraway, So Close! but I’ve never seen it.

I suppose I should say something about the Bono/Frank Sinatra duet as well seeing as the single seems to have been a double A-side. How did this come about? Well, Frank had maybe been talking to Elton John as, just like the ‘Rocket Man’, he’d recorded an album of duets and, also like Elt, just called it “Duets”. Featuring collaborations with the likes of Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett and Liza Minnelli, it sold well over the Xmas period peaking at No 5 in the UK. I say collaborations but it was a very mechanical process with Sinatra not actually being in the recording studio with any of his duetters at the same time. They sang along with his pre-recorded vocals with instructions to make their parts complement his. Frank ‘takin’ care of business’ as always. In that respect it was similar to the Natalie Cole (who appeared on the album with Sinatra on “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”) duet on “Unforgettable” with her deceased father Nat King Cole. The track “Under My Skin” recorded with Bono was chosen as a single to promote the album. Bono (along with the rest of the band) had already met Sinatra though in 1987 at a boxing match in Las Vegas between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler. I bet Bono and the guys got a kick out of that.

The Breakers now beginning with DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince who are trying to follow up on the huge and slightly unexpected success of “Boom! Shake The Room” with new single “I’m Looking For The One (To Be With Me)”. This is yet another track that I have no memory of (clearly working in a record shop didn’t mean that I knew every song in the charts) but it sounds a bit like their previous hit “Summertime”. Even the home made style video is reminiscent of that track. Maybe that Summer vibe was a bit misplaced on a record released as Christmas was coming into view and perhaps that’s why it got nowhere near replicating the success of “Boom! Shake The Room” when it peaked at No 24.

This next song has quite the back story. “Demolition Man” was written by Sting in the Summer of 1980 as a potential track for The Police album “Zenyatta Mondatta”. When it didn’t make the album it was offered to Grace Jones who recorded it for her 1981 “Nightclubbing” album and released it as its lead single.

Thinking that they could do a better version themselves, the band recorded it for their next album “Ghost In The Machine”.

Then over a decade later, here it is again as a solo release from Sting to promote the film of the same name starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. As with Faraway, So Close! earlier, I’ve never seen it but reading its Wikipedia entry leads me to believe it’s one of those fun but dumb action movies that are good if you’re recovering from a hangover and have very little brain power available. The video has Sting rather gratuitously performing the song naked from the waist up with very little if any clips from the film inserted. One for his fan base there.

Sting of course has quite the connection with the world of movies. He’s acted in over a dozen films including Quadrophenia, Dune, The Bride and Stormy Monday and has contributed music to many a soundtrack. Aside from Demolition Man, he’s featured on Lethal Weapon 3 (“It’s Probably Me” with Eric Clapton), The Three Musketeers (“All Four Love” with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams), Stars And Bars (“Englishman In New York”) to name but three of a long list. There’s even a CD called “Sting At The Movies” that collects many of them together. The one burnt into my memory though is “Spread A Little Happiness” from Brimstone And Treacle in which he also starred. This seemed to be played all the time by Terry Wogan on his Radio 2 breakfast show which my Mum used to have on in the background on a school morning.

Oh the folly! Tony Dortie’s casual dismissal of the next act as “apparently once controversial” illustrates perfectly the smugness contemporary music has for its elders. Back in 1984, Frankie Goes To Hollywood were everything and everywhere, exploding onto the charts like nothing witnessed since The Beatles. Three No 1 records amounting to sixteen weeks at the top, every other person in the country wearing a ‘Frankie Says…T-shirt’, a Radio 1 ban for the corrupting nature of the lyrics to “Relax”, a video for “Two Tribes” featuring actors playing out a wrestling match between Reagan and Chernenko at the height of the new Cold War…according to Dortie that just warrants an “apparently once controversial” remark. Know your musical history mate!

Frankie were back in the charts in 1993 thanks to a Best Of album and the rerelease of the “Relax” single to promote it. After that had made No 5, record label ZTT decided it was worth reissuing another of their hits. Surely “Two Tribes”* was the obvious choice or even “The Power Of Love” seeing as Christmas was coming and it had that video but no – “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” was selected. Now, nothing against the song which still stands up today in my book but it does carry with it that stigma of being the first single by the band not to go to No 1 despite ZTT using an advertising campaign declaring it their fourth No 1 before it was even released. As it turned out, it couldn’t dislodge “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey and has retrospectively been deigned to be the beginning of the end for the Frankie phenomenon. The 1993 remix still managed a Top 20 position but it seemed a missed opportunity. As it turned out, “The Power Of Love” was hastily rush released the week before Christmas and achieved a high of No 10 but with a bit more thought, a longer lead in time and better promotion, could it have challenged for the Christmas No 1 or would the power of Mr Blobby have easily seen it off?

* “Two Tribes” was eventually rereleased in February of 1994 making it to No 16.

The final two Breakers were both featured in full length on the previous show and are both due to be on the following week so I’ll leave my comments short for both for fear of running out of things to say about them. The first is “Again” by Janet Jackson. After her live by satellite performance the other week, we get the video this time which was directed by René Elizondo Jr. As well as being Janet’s then husband, he is also the man whose hands are covering her breasts on the cover of the September 1993 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine that formed the expanded artwork for her “Janet” album. So now you know.

The final Breaker is from Elton John and Kiki Dee or ‘Alton’ John as Tony Dortie pronounces it. Their rendition of “True Love” is up to No 8 on its way to a high of No 2, not quite the Christmas No 1 the bookies were predicting as per Dortie’s intro. The video is clearly aimed at creating a Christmas vibe with Elton and Kiki wearing prominently placed winter scarves whilst the black and white film depicting them as the guardian angels of the lyrics reeks of It’s A Wonderful Life. Guiding the boy and girl love interests to ensure they don’t miss each other at the train station, the film suddenly turns colour as they find each other. OK, I can live with that but the nun dancing with a homeless looking fella? Really?!

Tony Dortie tries to increase his street cred next by getting Public Enemy into his next intro. However, that credibility is stretched to its limits when you realise he’s crowbarred the hip hop legends into a segue into a performance by soprano and opera singer Lesley Garrett. So what was going on here then? Well, Lesley teamed up with 12 year old pianist and leukaemia patient Amanda Thompson to record a version of “Ave Maria”, the Latin prayer set to music by Charles Gounod when he superimposed a melody over Bach’s “Prelude No 1 in C Major”. It was a charity record raising £160,000 for the Malcolm Sergeant cancer fund and came about after Amanda had featured heavily in the ITV documentary series Jimmy’s about St.James’s hospital in Leeds. I think Esther Rantzen was something to do with it as well. There was even some fanciful talk of this being the Christmas No 1 but it topped out at No16.

Right, what are we up to now? Fourth week? Fifth? I’m losing count of how long Meatloaf’s been at No 1 with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’tDo That)”. I suppose I should mention the incredible business parent album “Bat Out Of Hell 2: Back Into Hell” was also doing. In the UK alone it went six times platinum (1,800,000 sales) whilst in America it went five times platinum equating to 5,000,000 sales. Obviously it was also topped the album charts in both those territories. We sold a lot of it that Christmas in that little store in Altrincham. We did an end of year poll for the staff asking for their Top 3 albums of the year, fave single etc. “I’d Fo Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” was one member of staff’s pick. Didn’t see that coming.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Maximum Overdrive	Never
2	Terence Trent D’Arby	Let Her Down Easy	Good song, didn’t buy it
3	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	See 1 above
4	Crowded House	Nails In My Feet	I did not
5	U2	Stay (Faraway, So Close!)	No
6	DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince	I’m Looking For The One (To Be With Me)	Negative
7	Sting	Demolition Man	Nope
8	Frankie Goes to Hollywood	Welcome To The Pleasuredome	Not in 1985 nor 1993
9	Janet Jackson	Again	Nah
10	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Of course not
11	Lesley Garrett / Amanda Thompson	Ave Maria	It’s a no from me
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’tDo That)	Unlike my Our Price colleague, no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fh20/top-of-the-pops-18111993

TOTP 11 NOV 1993

Posted on November 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The 14th November 2022 saw the 70th anniversary of the UK’s official singles chart. That inaugural chart was published by the NME with the very first No 1 record being Al Martino’s “Here In My Heart”. Back in 1993 when this TOTP was broadcast, we were just three days away from the 41st birthday of the charts. Were there any celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary the year before? I can’t remember but what I do know is that as part of the 70th festivities, seven charts have been produced detailing the most streamed songs for each year of the charts’ existence. Some results were obvious – the most streamed track that was originally released in 1975 for example is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Others were a little more surprising- 1990’s most streamed song is “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. As we’re up to 1993 in these TOTP repeats, let’s check out which was the most streamed track that was released in that year…oh that’s just plain wrong! “What Is Love” by Haddaway? Ha’way and shite man! That just about sums up the terrible year that was 1993. Still, we’re nearly through it and then Britpop is just around the corner. For now though, ‘turn and face the strange’ as we navigate another thirty minutes of nostalgia…

Hang on. Captain Hollywood? I thought we were in 1993 not 1990! Didn’t this guy have a hit called “I Can’t Stand It” as the decade began?

*checks official.charts.com

Well, sort of. It was officially credited to Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood but I was right about the year – it was a No 7 in 1990. There was a follow up too called “Are You Dreaming” which went Top 20. At that point the good captain (real name Tony Dawson-Harrison) left the project to begin his own new…erm…project called…erm…Captain Hollywood Project. Their first single was “More And More” which, and this is now almost becoming as regular an admission as Rishi Sunak claiming he was unaware of the latest scandal to engulf one of his cabinet before he appointed them, I have no memory of at all. Listening to it now, it sounds f*****g dreadful! Was this really what the pop fans of 1993 wanted? The heated up leftovers of what was rejected from the recording sessions of Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”?

The rapper is, I believe, the aforementioned Tony Dawson-Harrison who sounds like that voice over guy who does all those film trailers that begin with “In a world where…”. Apparently his voice was electronically modified to sound deeper. Why? Unless his true voice sounded like Joe Pasquale I don’t get why you would do that. I also don’t understand why all the guys on stage have a ponytail and are dressed like waiters at a high class restaurant. The whole thing is completely baffling, almost as baffling as how the record managed to get to No 23 in the charts.

As it’s nearly mid-November, the run up Christmas has started and that means, as host Mark Franklin points out, Best Of albums and plenty of ‘em. Artists peddling collections of their biggest hits around this time included Diana Ross, Wet Wet Wet, Soul II Soul, Bette Midler, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Christians and this guy – Bryan Adams. His “So Far So Good” album would end up as the sixth best selling of 1993 in the UK. This was quite astonishing when you consider that until the record breaking run at No 1 in 1991 by “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Bry’s biggest UK hit was “Run To You” which peaked just outside the Top 10 at No 11. Look at the chart standings in this country for every track on “So Far So Good”

Title	Chart peak
Summer of ’69	42
Straight from the Heart	51
It’s Only Love	29
Can’t Stop This Thing We Started	12
Do I Have to Say the Words?	30
This Time	41
Run To You	11
Heaven	38
Cuts Like A Knife	Did not chart
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	1
Somebody	35
Kids Wanna Rock	N/A album track
Heat Of The Night	50
Please Forgive Me	2

Maybe they were big airplay hits and that’s how people knew them? Remember those streaming charts I mentioned earlier? The most streamed song that was released in 1985 was “Summer Of 69”. Or maybe Bryan had always been more of an albums guy until his Robin Hood moment? Even his 1987 album which generated zero UK Top 40 hits went gold and made our Top 10. Perhaps it was just all about that No 1 song but surely enough people had bought the single to not need to buy a Greatest Hits album to own it? Was it the new song “Please Forgive Me” that reeled people in? I don’t know why that should’ve because it was a right dirge. Its promo video was no better – a right snoozefest showing Bryan and his merry band of musos laying down the track in the studio. Even his dog who’s there for no apparent reason looks bored. Somehow the single made it to No 2.

Here’s another track specifically recorded to promote a Best Of album – it’s the aforementioned Soul II Soul with “Wish”. Who was doing the singing for Jazzie B and co by 1993? Caron Wheeler had long since departed by then. Well, my research (by which I mean Wikipedia) tells me that’s the now sadly passed away Melissa Bell on stage who was actually pregnant at the time. One of her four children (not the one from this pregnancy though) would turn out to be pretty famous herself – singer and actress Alexandra Burke who won the 2008 series of The X Factor. As well as bagging herself three No 1 singles, she was also on the charity record by The X Factor Finalists who covered Mariah Carey’s “Hero” that I mentioned the other week.

Presumably Melissa’s pregnancy explains her cover-all outfit in this performance. The feathers on it reminded me of this long forgotten BBC costume drama from 1978 featuring the Welsh Robin Hood Twm Sion Cati and his rather ludicrous outfit.

Five Breakers again this week starting with Paul Weller and a third single from his “Wild Wood” album. “The Weaver EP” actually featured four tracks including Weller’s cover of Neil Young’s “Ohio” but the title track was the only song actually on the album. By this point, the rejuvenation of Paul was well under way with “The Weaver” peaking at No 18 after previous singles “Wild Wood” made No 14 and “”Sunflower” No 16. More than these solid chart performances though, it seemed to me that Weller was being accepted back into the fold of artists that meant something – it wasn’t just about nostalgia for The Jam. He was suddenly relevant again.

After The Style Council disappeared up their own arse as the 80s ended, it seemed like Weller had lost his mojo completely. Without a record contract for the first time since he was 17 he took a sabbatical for the whole of 1990 before restarting his musical career with some low key live gigs playing old Jam standards as well as some new songs before dipping his toe back into recording music with the release of No 36 single “Into Tomorrow” as The Paul Weller Movement. That paved the way for his debut, eponymous solo album in 1992 which in itself was in effect a trailer for “Wild Wood”. As for the song itself, it’s not too dissimilar to “Sunflower” with its ringing guitar licks albeit that it probably has more of a groove to it whereas “Sunflower” is a bit more strident sounding. Even the videos are alike being straightforward performance run throughs in a mixture of black and white and colour film. Both are resounding and engaging tracks however.

Ah shit! It’s Bollers time! Michael Bolton that is who’s turned up with a song the title of which suggests he’s doing his best Meatloaf impression. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was actually written by Bollers himself alongside Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange who also co-wrote that Bryan Adams stinker that was on earlier. And guess what? This one’s terrible too! Lange seems to be the enemy of music, constructing anti-songs that go nowhere and do nothing. He has worked with some huge names like AC/DC and Britney Spears but his biggest claim to fame is producing Shania Twain (to whom he was also married) and her “Come On Over” album which is the best selling country album of all time and the best selling of the 90s but I always hated that so…ahem…that don’t impress me much. As for Michael Bolton, as usual he had an album out for Christmas called “The One Thing” from which “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was taken. It would peak at No15 in the UK and No 6 in the US, the last time Bolton would visit the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10.

Next a single that I would have sworn came out at least two years later than this*. Leftfield are electronic dance duo Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who back in 1993 were about to break through into the mainstream with the release of “Open Up” which had its own secret weapon in the guest vocalist on the track, one John Lydon. Not seen in the charts for three years when PIL’s “Don’t Ask Me” made No 22 (another one of those Best Of promoting singles), Lydon’s growling vocals intertwined with some progressive house beats was an unlikely but winning combination. Anything he sings on is always installed with an instant sense of peril and brims with dread and it works a treat in this anxiety inducing track. The line ‘Burn Hollywood burn’ led to it being withdrawn from play on ITV’s The Chart Show due to an unfortunate case of timing which saw it in heavy rotation at the time of the Malibu bush fires in Los Angeles. Lydon’s own LA home was in peril at one point.

*Having checked Leftfield’s discography, I think the reason for my own case of wayward timing re: when this single was released is down to the fact that their album “Leftism” on which “Open Up” featured didn’t come out until January 1995.

Remember that awful hit “To Be With You” by a US band called Mr. Big from 1992? Well, here’s the 1993 version. Soul Asylum were the perpetrators of this year’s mournful, acoustic power ballad though they had actually been in existence for over a decade by this point. “Runaway Train” was their song and it would be the biggest hit of their career by far, going Top 5 all around Europe and in their home country of America whilst peaking at No 7 in the UK.

And then you watch the video and the song is transformed into something else altogether and your initial assessment of it is no longer valid. The decision of director Tony Kaye to use the promo as something practical rather than just aesthetic changes not just people’s perception of the song but actually changed people’s lives. Originally written by lead vocalist Dave Pirner about depression, the use of imagery in the video of children witnessing or fleeing from abuse convinced many that the song was about runaway and missing children. The disturbing scenes of domestic abuse, child prostitution and kidnapping weren’t gratuitous though as they were interspersed with stills of actual missing children with their names published alongside how long they had been missing. Pirner appears at the end of the video to advise “If you’ve seen one of these kids or are one of them, please call this number”. The children’s details were changed and tailored to whichever country the video was being shown in (i.e. UK children were featured in the video released in this country). The ultimate impact of the video which received high rotation on MTV was that twenty-six children featured in the video were found. Tragically, there were also horrific denouements to the stories of those children featured the details of which I don’t need to go into in a blog about music. Predictably, even the brief glimpse we get of the video in the Breakers has been heavily edited by the TOTP producers. As for Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train” became an albatross around the band’s neck and Pirner refused to perform it live for a while. They would have one more chart hit in 1995 with “Misery” but are still active to this day.

The final Breaker comes from The Orb and their ambient house classic “Little Fluffy Clouds”. This track seemed to have been around for ages and indeed it had having been originally released in 1990 when it was big in the clubs but not on the charts and it peaked at No 87. However, with the commercial success The Orb had received with a No 1 album in “U.F.Orb” and attendant hit singles like “Blue Room” and “Assassin”, the decision was taken to rerelease “Little Fluffy Clouds”. It proved to be the right choice as the 1993 version made it all the way to No 10.

Borrowing heavily from Ennio Morricone, and a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich performed by Pat Metheny, its most prominent sample though was from an interview with US singer songwriter Rickie Lee Jones. Describing the sky in Arizona from her childhood, her hippy-ish tone fits perfectly with the chill-out vibes of the track. Unfortunately Rickie’s attitude to The Orb’s use of her voice on the track wasn’t so laid back. In a 2019 interview she described them as:

those fuckers
“Joy and Defiance: A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones”. Aquarium Drunkard. 10 May 2019.

As much as I quite enjoyed “Little Fluffy Clouds” (and I did), it’s not my favourite song about the sky in Arizona. This is…

1993 was full of dance hits of all types of flavour – it felt like you couldn’t escape from them. However, if you were a dance act with a big club hit that crossed over into the mainstream charts, did that then change your identity and therefore your aspirations? If you were now a bona fide chart artist, were you then obliged to have a follow up hit and if so, was that possible? It wasn’t always. The Goodmen of “Give It Up” fame never had another hit and neither did Sub Sub after “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Similarly, dancehall rapper Snow bagged a No 2 record in 1993 with “Informer” and then nothing ever again.

Making the case the other way though were Culture Beat who followed up on their chart topper “Mr.Vain” with two Top 5 singles in “Got To Get It” and “Anything”. And then there was this lot – Urban Cookie Collective whose “”The Key, The Secret” just missed out on being a No 1 record but, contrary to popular theory, weren’t a one hit wonder and here’s the proof. “Feels Like Heaven” may have sounded almost exactly the same as its predecessor (no really, what’s the difference?) but that didn’t stop punters buying it in enough copies to send it to No 5. They even had a further two Top 40 hits (all four came from debut album “High On A Happy Vibe”) but really, they are only remembered for “The Key, The Secret” I think it’s fair to say. To be honest, if I wanted a song called “Feels Like Heaven” I’d go for these true one hit wonders from 1984…

November and December of 1993 saw a trend for ballads that stuck around the charts for ages. There was “Hero” by Mariah Carey, “Don’t Be A Stranger” by Dina Carroll, “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by The Bee Gees and this one – “Again” by Janet Jackson. The third single to be taken from her “Janet” album, it was actually written for the film Poetic Justice, Janet’s debut into the world of movies. It was the closing song in the film though it didn’t feature on the rap heavy official soundtrack. Was that a deliberate ploy on behalf of Jackson and her writers/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to potentially build sales for her own album by ensuring fans hadn’t got access to it via the soundtrack? I’ve no idea but what I do know is that there were fourteen songs that featured in the film that didn’t appear on its soundtrack which seems like a lot.

“Again” is one of those ballads that Janet throws into the mix every so often (see also “Let’s Wait A While”, “Come Back To Me”) although it holds back on the sugary schmaltz in favour of trying to purvey a sense of real emotion. Whether Janet achieves that by appearing overcome and teary at the song’s finale is open to debate. There’s no doubting the song ebbs and flows though and Janet does a good job of the live vocals in this TOTP performance. The song clearly struck a chord with the public who bought it steadily over a prolonged period providing it with this Top 40 run:

12 – 6 – 8 – 10 – 16 – 15 – 17 – 12 – 33

Like the aforementioned “Hero” by Mariah Carey, it manages to reverse a decline in sales on two occasions to move back up the charts. Impressive stuff. Being a Jackson, Janet would release another four singles from “Janet” after “Again”, the last one coming out over 18 months after the album.

And another one! Yes, it’s another of those ballads of longevity, this time from Elton John and Kiki Dee. After the success of the “Two Rooms” tribute album of 1991, there must have been some discussion in his inner circle as to how to further plunder the Elton John brand whilst he was in between studio albums (there was a three years gap between “The One” and “Made In England”). The plan that was devised was to do a duets project resulting in an album called…erm…”Duets”. The idea was sound. Get a few of Elton’s pals round to record a mixture of standards and his own compositions and shove it out in time for the Christmas market. Bish, bash bosh!

Elton of course was not shy about recording a duet or two. A quick glance of his discography reveals collaborations with the likes of Cliff Richard, Millie Jackson, George Michael, Jennifer Rush, Aretha Franklin…However, surely the most famous and enduring of his duets was with Kiki Dee on “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, their No 1 from 1976. So guess who was first in line to get an invite for the project and who would end up being on the lead single for the album? The song chosen for Elton and Kiki was the Cole Porter standard “True Love” from the film High Society made famous by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. I don’t think I knew the song back in 1993 and their version of it was never going to turn me onto it. Having played both interpretations of it this morning back to back, I definitely detected that Elton and Kiki’s take on it had pissing sleigh bells in the mix! The cynical sods! Clearly trying to stack the odds in their favour of the Christmas No 1 and indeed many bookies had it nailed on as favourite for the top spot. I kept a close eye on Elton’s face during this performance to see if I could spot any signs of smugness thinking he had the coveted crown in the bag but my powers of observation were slain by his jiggling eyebrows! WTF?! Sadly for Elton and Kiki, they underestimated the appeal of an idiot in a pink and yellow spotted costume to sell records and so never did make No 1 though they got mighty close peaking at No 2 and staying in the Top 10 for seven weeks.

It’s a fourth week out of seven at the top for Meatloaf and “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. It’s the video again – I don’t think Meat ever made it into the TOTP studio did he? There was a satellite performance weeks back to premiere it but after that I think it was always the promo.

The lyric ‘I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that’ was first used in a Bonnie Tyler track called “Getting So Excited” from her “Faster Than The Speed Of Night” album that Jim Steinman produced. If you can manage to listen to it in the clip below (it’s utterly dreadful), stay with it until the 1.35 mark when you get the campest utterance of a line since that bloke in The Sweet on “Blockbuster”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Captain Hollywood Project	More And More	As if
2	Bryan Adams	Please Forgive Me	No I don’t Bry
3	Soul II Soul	Wish	No
4	Paul Weller	The Weaver EP	No but I had the Wild Wood album
5	Michael Bolton	Said I Loved You…But I Lied	Never
6	Leftfield / John Lydon	Open Up	No but I had it on one of those Best Album In The World Ever compilations
7	Soul Asylum	Runaway Train	Negative
8	The Orb	Little Fluffy Clouds	I did not
9	Urban Cookie Collective	Feels Like Heaven	Nah
10	Janet Jackson	Again	Nope
11	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Definitely not
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do 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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dzyp/top-of-the-pops-11111993

TOTP 29 JUL 1993

Posted on September 24, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late July 1993 and the BBC’s musical output has gone stale. The seismic changes of the TOTP ‘year zero’ revamp happened twenty-two months ago and many are no longer with us most obviously the majority of the slew of new presenters that were introduced. In fact, the only two remaining are Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie who have been presenting solo on alternate weeks since October 1992. The show’s audience has plateaued at a level of 6.5 million which was less than it was attracting pre the revamp.

Meanwhile, over at Radio 1, whilst it seems like the ‘Smashie And Nicey’ image propagated by the likes of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and Gary Davies will carry on forever, change is a-comin’. The era of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1 is nearly upon us and he will action a root and branch transformation that will strip away the old, rotting wood. The culture of change would prove to be contagious. Within months, TOTP would also change head producer and the incoming Ric Blaxill would reverse most of the ‘year zero’ changes. For now though, it was the calm before the storm. Let’s see who was afloat before the sea of change appeared over the horizon…

We start with an act that was having some success under the current regime but who would flourish under the new. “Unforgiven” was D:Ream’s third of four consecutive Top 40 hits in 1993 though none would get any higher than No 19. Solid but not spectacular. Come early 1994 though they would go off like a rocket with the re-release of “Things Can Only Get Better” soaring to No 1.

Like most people I’m guessing, I don’t remember “Unforgiven” but on listening back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s OK. A bit more grit to it than their most famous tune, the most impressive part of it is the bridge into the chorus which Peter Cunnah almost growls – quite the feat in a dance record. Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes seems to have started a trend for tall hat wearing given the millinery of one of the backing singers. Where will it all end? Well, I’ll tell you where it won’t end – with me making the almost obligatory reference to Professor Brian Cox on keyboards…oh shit.

“Unforgiven” peaked at No 29.

“Show Me Love” by Robin S was not just one of the biggest dance tunes of 1993 but of the whole decade and beyond. How do you follow a hit line that? Easy! Just release virtually the same song again but change its title. “Luv 4 Luv” is “Show Me Love”, not just sonically but linguistically with the same three syllable title and chorus but with a slight change of spelling. Money for old rope? This was, to reference the film maker Stanley Kubrick, money for pieces of string too short to be useful*. Even Tony Dortie can’t resist a jibe by stating tongue-in-cheek that it’s “nothing like her first single”.

*Kubrick was a massive hoarder and when his family were sorting through his estate after his death, they found a box labelled ‘pieces of string too short to be useful’. His archives now reside at the London College of Communication .

Amazingly, enough people bought the single to send it to No 11 in the UK charts. I don’t get this. Presumably if a punter liked it enough to buy “Luv 4 Luv” then said punter must have felt the same about “Show Me Love” and also bought that so essentially you have the same record twice. Surely there can’t have been people who only bought “Luv 4 Luv”?! “I wasn’t bothered about “Show Me Love” but this new one by Robin S is great and I must have it”…said no-one ever.

When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, Queen’s most iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rereleased and almost inevitably became that year’s Xmas No 1. Four months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at Wembley Stadium with the remaining members of Queen all involved. Such was Freddie’s popularity though, there was still a clamour for his recordings and so the band’s label raided his back catalogue as a solo artist. For a name as big as Freddie’s, there wasn’t actually that much solo work to raid. He only recorded two studio albums (and one of those was the “Barcelona” collaboration with Montserrat Caballé) plus the standalone single “The Great Pretender”, a couple of tracks for the Dave Clark musical Time and “Love Kills” from Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. That didn’t stop Parlophone coming up with the unimaginatively titled “The Freddie Mercury Album” compilation in 1992 which included elements of all those recording projects. That album had already seen the release of “In My Defence” from Time and a rerelease for the aforementioned “The Great Pretender” which had both charted.

What came next though, nearly two years after Freddie’s death, was a surprise. A posthumous No1 record with a single that had stumbled to a peak of No 50 when originally released eight years prior? How did that happen? Well, it was all down to a team of remixers called The No More Brothers who took the track “Living On My Own” which had been on Freddie’s 1985 solo debut album “Mr Bad Guy” and that 1992 compilation and turned it into a dance hit. A chart topper all over Europe including the UK, it was a sales sensation. Me though, I didn’t get it. I hadn’t been aware of the 1985 original but this 1993 version didn’t make me want to seek it out. It just sounded so bland and I hated the lines ‘Dee do de de, Dee do de de, I don’t have no time for no monkey business”. What?! Written down, the first part looks like a script for a Harry Enfield’s The Scousers sketch whilst the monkey business bit was just hackneyed. How was this a No 1 record? The video is the same one used for the 1985 release and uses footage of Freddie’s 39th birthday party in Munich where he recorded the “Mr Bad Guy” album.

The general perception amongst the fanbase of Manic Street Preachers is that their second album “Gold Against The Soul” is also their worst. There is also an agreed opinion that the one stand out track on it is “La Tristesse Durera” which was released as its second single. I disagree on both counts. I love this album and though “La Tristesse Durera” is a fabulous track, it’s not my favourite from it. That honour switches between “Roses In The Hospital” and “Life Becoming A Landslide” on a regular basis.

Actually, I need to correct myself here and give the song its full title which is “La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)”. No brackets, no points. I make this clarification not just for the sake of accuracy nor to be a pedant but to highlight a peculiar oddity about the track that has a tie in with another song I love that has brackets in the title. For some reason, when released in the US, the the song’s title was changed to “Scream To Sigh (La Tristesse Durera)”. Why? I have no idea but nearly a decade earlier, The Icicle Works’ single “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” had its title changed to “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the US market. What was it about US record labels and brackets and the word ‘scream’?

As for the performance here, would there have been outrage at Nicky Wire wearing a dress? There shouldn’t have been. It’s not as if we hadn’t seen it before. There was Bowie on the cover of his “The Man Who Sold The World” album and that bloke from Mud who wore one on the actual show.

“La Tristesse Durera (Whisper To A Scream)” peaked at No 22.

“Live from the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End…” Don’t get too excited it’s just Craig McLachlan in a revival of Grease the Musical and I have to say that, based on this short clip of “You’re The One That I Want” he doesn’t seem too convincing as Danny Zuko. Maybe it’s his curly hair, or his average singing voice or maybe it’s just that he’s not John Travolta which is not his fault of course. Debbie Gibson on the other hand belts it out and wears that iconic leather outfit well.

As Tony Dortie says, the cast included Shane Richie who played the role of Kenickie but as for him being “very funny” – if he performed anything like he did when on 3–2–1 in 1987…Perhaps he should have changed his name to Shame Richie…

Five Breakers again this week (bastards!) starting with Juliet Roberts and “Caught In The Middle”. I had no idea at the time but this wasn’t Juliet’s first Top 40 record – she was the vocalist on “It’s Over” by Funk Masters way back in 1983. She then joined smooth jazzers Working Week whose single “I Thought I’d Never See You Again” I quite liked though nobody else seemed to much when it peaked at No 80. Fast forward eight years and Juliet finally had a hit in her own right.

There’s a couple of parallels between Juliet and Shara Nelson who was on the show the other week. Both were having success under their own names after supplying the vocals for other artists (Shara sang on Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”) and both were on the Cooltempo label. Also like Shara, Juliet’s solo career seemed to peter out rather. “Caught In The Middle” made No 24 though a David Morales remix the following year peaked ten places higher. A couple more Top 20 singles followed before the decade was out but that didn’t translate into album sales with her debut long player “Natural Thing” only making No 65. She continues to be in demand as a backing singer though.

The first of two huge stars now who are experiencing a drop off in singles sales as their latest offerings fail to tempt UK record buyers. After her last single “That’s The Way Love Goes” went to No 2 over here, Janet Jackson might have expected the follow up to perform similarly. It didn’t. “If” was the second single from her “Janet” album which I thought was meant to be a more smooth, sensual sounding soul record but this single could have been on the more strident previous album “Rhythm Nation 1814” with its hard beats and rock guitar riff. Yes, the lyrics aligned with the album’s sexual theme touching on fantasy and voyeurism but sonically it was nothing like the previous single.

The video plays on the voyeurism subject with scenes involving touch screen monitors and web cams, seemingly jumping on the bandwagon of Sliver, the erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone that was popular at the time. Maybe the racy video worked against the single’s commercial potential – was it too racy for anything other than a short Breaker spot on TOTP? Whatever the reason, “If” only made it to No 14 in the UK.

Oh crap! It’s “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. Now I like Billy and some of his back catalogue (especially the earlier stuff) is great. Even his last album prior to this (“Storm Front”) had some good singles on it. This track though rivalled “Uptown Girl” for sheer, undiluted awfulness. The title track off his only studio album of the 90s and the last to be comprised of pop songs*, it was and remains shockingly bad.

*His 2001 set “Fantasies & Delusions” contained only classical compositions.

Not everyone agreed with my assessment though. It was a huge global hit and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 1994 losing out to, by coincidence, the next artist to feature on the Breakers. Why couldn’t I stand it? It was just so twee and I hated that harmonised intro that goes “In the middle of the…I go walking in the…”. I think ultimately though it reminds me of a time when I wasn’t that happy at work but that’s for a post in the near future.

Long after I’d finished working in record shops and stopped listening to Radio 1, I found myself at the radio home for the newly middle aged and listening to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and he used to play this constantly. It nearly broke me.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Now to that second artist (alongside Janet Jackson) suffering an unexpected downturn in sales of their latest single and also the winner of that 1994 Grammy for Record of the Year. “Run To You” was the fourth single released by Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard soundtrack and was basically a retread of the third single “I Have Nothing” in that they were both towering ballads executed with precision by Whitney over a shiny production. So similar were they that Natalie Cole performed a medley of them at the 1993 Academy Awards (I’m guessing Whitney was indisposed).

Presumably due to the fact that the so many people already had the song due to buying the soundtrack album, “Run To You” failed to work itself into a sprint up the charts peaking at No 15 in the UK and No 31 in the US.

The video looks a bit crap by today’s high CGI standards with Whitney running against a backdrop of clouds although maybe it was a homage to the film of the aforementioned Grease when Danny and Sandy’s car takes off into the sky and they fly off into the clouds?

Neither “Run To You” nor Janet Jackson’s “If” were shown in full on TOTP which you maybe wouldn’t have expected for two such huge names.

Another huge name who had already had her video shown in full on the show is the final Breaker this week. Madonna is up to No 7 with “Rain” from her “Erotica” album. The tickets Tony Dortie refers to are for the two concert dates in September that Madonna played at Wembley Stadium as part of her The Girlie Show world tour.

“Rain” ended the first act of the show and was interspersed with “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” by The Temptations and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Want to hear it? Here you go but having sat through the whole thing myself, I must warn you that you won’t get these 9 minutes and 48 seconds of your life back…

Back in the studio we find Dannii Minogue performing her rendition of Melba Moore’s “This Is It”. You know I said earlier about Juliet Roberts being an in demand backing singer after her solo career ended? Well, she must have been moonlighting back in 1993 as she provided backing vocals on Dannii’s previous single to “This Is It” which was called “Love’s On Every Corner”.

Twenty years after she had a hit with “This Is It”, the track supplied the title for a Best Of Dannii album which included a duet with sister Kylie of the ABBA standard “The Winner Takes It All” – I wonder which of the two of them that was then?

“This Is It” peaked at No 10.

There’s only one Bee Gees song I remember from 1993 and it ain’t this one. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” was a surprise Top 5 hit over Xmas that year that just seemed to keep on selling even when you thought it must have run out of steam. “Paying The Price Of Love” though? Nah, I’ve got nothing. Their previous hit to this had been the shameless rewrite of “Chain Reaction” that was “Secret Love” in 1991. Did this one sound like any of their other songs? A slight hint of “You Win Again” maybe? Maybe not.

Barry Gibbs’ falsetto here is quite remarkable. That’s not a compliment though – a better descriptor would be ridiculous. I know it works somehow on most of their back catalogue especially their disco era peak but taken in isolation it’s quite mad. If he turned up on a talent show like The Voice for example and did that, would the judges turn around or would they look at each other and break out into a fit of uncontrollable giggling? What if they did turn around and then saw his mane of hair?! I can only really think of Barry Gibb and Queen’s Brian May that have always maintained the same hairstyle throughout their careers. Honourable mentions should also go to Rod Stewart and Paul Weller for sustaining comedy haircuts but they have tweaked them down the years.

“Paying The Price Of Love” peaked at No 23.

You can’t really argue with Tony Dortie’s assessment that Take That were “simply the biggest pop band in the UK” at this time as “Pray” notches up a third week at No 1. The boys are back in the studio this week and what I’m noticing from this performance is the clear division of hairstyles between them (and yes, I know I seem to be obsessed with pop star barnets yet again this week). Mark, Howard and Robbie all have that classic mid 90s long at the the sides curtains style while Jason and Gary have a more classic crew cut. I think I know which has aged the better.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	Unforgiven	Nope
2	Robin S	Luv 4 Luv	Never
3	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	I did not
4	Manic Street Preachers	La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)	Not the single but I had the album
5	Craig McLachlan and Debbie Gibson	You’re The One That I Want	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Caught In the Middle	Negative
7	Janet Jackson	If	Nah
8	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Hell no!
9	Whitney Houston	Run To You	No thanks
10	Madonna	Rain	It’s a no
11	Dannii Minogue	This Is It	No it isn’t
12	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	I didn’t pay the price
13	Take That	Pray	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c948/top-of-the-pops-29071993

TOTP 06 MAY 1993

Posted on August 13, 2022 by 80stastic

When I decided to carry on doing these TOTP reviews into the 90s repeats, the one year I really wasn’t looking forward to revisiting was 1993. In my mind’s eye, it was all nasty Eurodance anthems, the dreaded three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow and the worst Xmas No 1 of all time. Well, we’re into May now and whilst the horror of Mr Blobby is still a way off, we’ve already had plenty of the of the other flavours of shite. Let’s hope a new month brings new hope of better things to come…

Well, that hope didn’t last long did it! FFS! Straight off the bat we have some more Eurodance nonsense courtesy of one of the genre’s biggest acts. After driving us all insane with the abomination that was “No Limit”, 2 Unlimited have not been able to resist the temptation to do it all over again with a tune that is so similar they should have just called it “No Limit 2.0” and be done with it. In truth, all their tunes pretty much sounded the same though didn’t they? And yes by saying that, I now sound just like my Dad speaking to me about pop music circa 1983. “Tribal Dance” was the latest of their musical oeuvre to annoy the shit out of us and it would rise to No 4 in this, the biggest year of their career. This track supposedly includes more of Ray’s raps than usual but still less than the version that the rest of Europe would get. I have to say that I don’t feel short changed.

There was a lot of talk online about this TOTP performance and it mostly revolved around the words ‘inappropriate’ and “cultural appropriation’ and you can see why? What the hell were those costumes the backing dancers were wearing all about?! Yes, obviously somebody was trying to pursue a theme of ‘tribal’ as per the song’s title but this?! Of course, it’s quite possible that nobody made any sort of dissenting comment back in 1993 but you like to think we live in more enlightened times these days. Or perhaps we don’t. I’m sure I could be accused of being too ‘woke’ about it by someone. In truth though, all you need is Michael Caine a red tunic and you’ve got a re-enactment of the film Zulu.

The official video for “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Janet Jackson soundtracks the Top 40 countdown to No 11. It’s also the second of three new entries inside the Top 5 this week that we will see on the show tonight. Reading some of the online comments about the video, I’m now wondering if I’m missing something. People seem to love this promo and describe it as being “a timeless classic”, “visually stylish” and “one of the most creative videos ever made” with the protagonists “chillin’ and vibin’ out together”. And yet. All I’m seeing is Janet surrounded by some sycophants (including a very young Jennifer Lopez) in a loft apartment imploring her to play a tape of her new single before mooching and smooching about with each other. I’m probably just a grumpy, middle aged man who’s forgotten how to have fun and enjoy anything anymore though.

“That’s The Way Love Goes” peaked at No 2 in the UK and was a No 1 record in the US.

After starting the show with some frenetic Eurodance beats before sliding into some slinky R&B vibes we now arrive at a huge slice of stadium house courtesy of Utah Saints (U-U-U-Utah Saints)*. “Believe In Me” was the third of their trilogy of Top 10 hits and although I thought it was OK, it didn’t quite have the immediacy of “What Can You Do For Me” and “Something Good”. After turning to Eurythmics and Kate Bush for source material for those two tracks, they’ve stuck with the 80s by sampling The Human League for this one. It works but doesn’t seem as clever as its predecessors, a bit too obvious somehow.

*Sorry, contractually obliged to do that

In their wisdom, the TOTP producers have decided to overlay the whole performance here with a green wavelength graphic which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but which feels intrusive in retrospect. And what on earth is that the guy with the tied back dreadlocks playing? It looks like a key-tar but has some sort of built in computer where a keyboard should be. It’s like a prototype for the controller in the Guitar Hero computer game. Oh and the “This is the Utah Saints calling all humanoids” line is entirely lame. Reminded me of this sketch:

I wasn’t wrong about 1993. It really was the year that kept on giving – the problem was that it was serving up huge dollops of horseshit. Here’s another steaming clump – “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. This was one of those songs that came from nowhere and was suddenly huge immediately. That’s how it felt anyway. It must have been picking up plenty of airplay before it went massive as I’m sure we kept getting asked about it in the Our Price I was working in before it was in the charts. We didn’t have a clue what it was the punters were talking about but Head Office soon cottoned on and ordered it in for stores in bulk. How this cod reggae/ lowest common denominator Europop mash up made *SPOILER ALERT* three weeks at No 1 is as mystifying as the rise and rise of Liz Truss. I always hated that little sax parp that introduced the chorus and also the way the vocalist sang the line ‘She’s the hunter, you’re the fox’ with that elongated, descending stress on the last word. Heinous isn’t a strong enough word for it. The performance here didn’t help to endear me to the song either. Who did the two women arm dancing think they were? Susan and Joanne from the aforementioned Human League?

Ace Of Base were, of course, from Sweden and are the third biggest selling band from those shores after ABBA and Roxette but when the competition for that particular bronze medal includes the likes of Rednex (of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame), Dr. Alban and Europe, it rather undermines the achievement of a place on the rostrum.

I really feel the need for something decent in this week’s Breakers to lift the mood, nay standard. We start with something unusual though. I knew Sounds Of Blackness were a gospel group but that’s all that I knew and I certainly couldn’t have named any of their songs.

However, having looked them up on Wikipedia I do remember the cover for their 1993 album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum” from which this single – “I’m Going All The Way” – came. It was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who were nothing if not versatile – they were also the producers behind Janet Jackson who was on the show earlier of course. Look, I can appreciate gospel music but back in 1993 I don’t think it was what I was looking for and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find it in the Top 40.

In my head, there’s a definite line drawn in 1985 that marked the end of Depeche Mode as, for want of a better description, a pop band and their going forwards as, for want of another better description, a rock band. Now I do know that those terms are far too simplistic to do justice to the career of the band. I think it’s just that 1985 saw the release of their first Best Of album “The Singles 81>85” and that felt like a real marker in the sand that said, ‘OK, here’s a a physical reminder of everything we’ve done up to this point but from here on in, we’re going in a new direction”. The following year “Black Celebration” was released and everything did feel different starting with its dark lead single “Stripped”.

By 1993, Depeche Mode had perfected that new, harder sound into something massively commercial. The 1990 ”Violator” album sold seven and a half million copies worldwide and housed four classic singles. Then came “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” starting with strident lead single “I Feel You” which we didn’t get to see on TOTP for some reason. The follow up single was “Walking In My Shoes” and this little snippet on the Breakers was all we got of it. What was going on here? It’s another great track, doomy yet melodic and the video sees Dave Gahan in his full on rock god phase. Tragedy of course struck the band in May this year with the unexpected death of Andy Fletcher. Just today though, photos have been released of Gahan and Martin Gore back in the studio which is good news.

The second hit for Rage Against The Machine now. After “Killing In The Name” had been a No 25 hit earlier in the year (sixteen years before its Xmas No 1 sideshow), “Bullet In The Head” did even better piercing yer actual Top 20.

The band have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on four occasions (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) but failed every time to get voted in. Rage Against The Machine there, the Nigel Farage of funk metal. And yes, I know their political views couldn’t be more diametrically opposed but I need to put this post to bed and a cheap line is all I’ve got for this lot.

Oh do f**k off! Even in 1993 at the height of his infamy, nobody needed any more Shabba Ranks surely?! After the Top 3 success of “Mr. Loverman” (itself a rerelease), record company Sony were always going to give 1991 single “Housecall” another tilt at the charts. It peaked at No 31 on its initial release but a remix saw it leap into the Top 10 second time around. A collaboration with Maxi Priest (whom I have no beef with BTW), it gave rise to the “Shabba!” sample on “Mr. Loverman” that was both ubiquitous and pilloried in 1993.

Finally some genuine relief from all this musical crud! Kingmaker hailed from Hull (my home for these last eighteen years) but in 1993 I was living in Manchester and working in Rochdale so I missed what surely must have been a sense of excitement in the band’s hometown at having the first authentic chart act since The Housemartins in the 80s.

“Ten Years Asleep” was their third Top 40 hit and came from their sophomore album “Sleepwalking”. Unbelievably, its lead single “Armchair Anarchist” which is a fab tune had stalled at No 47 in October of 1992 but its follow up did the trick rising to No 15, the band’s joint highest chart placing. True, it wasn’t a million miles away from the sound of acts like The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but at a time when decent indie pop tunes were at a premium, this was wonderful. Dealing with the vexing and existential subject of the passing of time and the inevitable conforming behaviours that seem to affect all of us, the lyrics showed what a great writer Loz Hardy was even though his hand had been forced by the band’s record label demanding that he essentially write a hit record. In this performance he looks like Ian Hart playing John Lennon in The Beatles biopic Backbeat.

It seems odd to consider it now but Kingmaker had been a bigger deal than the likes of Radiohead and Suede both of whom had supported them on tour in 1992. However, disputes with their record label about approaches to writing, recording and formatting of their music hampered their progress and by the time that third album “In The Best Possible Taste” came out in 1995, they’d been sunk by the good ship Britpop. They split soon after but reformed briefly in 2010 without Hardy as Kingmaker MMX.

Oh dear. In fact, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is just cringe (the kids don’t use the ‘worthy’ suffix do they?). Nobody can deny Elton John his place in musical history (except my mate Robin who once told me that he didn’t like even one of his songs) but this is just…wrong.

“Simple Life” was the fourth and final single from his 1992 album “The One” and it failed to make the Top 40 despite this ‘exclusive’ TOTP performance from Atlanta. Literally, what was the point of this? The song is turgid enough but the sight of Elton all togged up on a stage with just a black backdrop for company and deprived of his piano thereby forcing him into attempting to (gulp) ‘dance’…well, it’s just cruel. He even flicks his wig at one point as if to say ‘look I’ve got hair’ even though we know he didn’t. Please, I know I said spare me from all the Eurodance crap earlier in the post but this really wasn’t the lifebelt I was hoping for.

While Elton was struggling around the edges of the Top 40, his mate George Michael was still at No 1 as part of the “Five Live” EP. Last week we had his version of Queen’s “Somebody To Love” but this time it’s his duet with Lisa Stansfield on their 1991 Xmas No 1 (double A-sided with “Bohemian Rhapsody”) “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”. Recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert of the previous year, I’d never liked the original but in the hands (or rather mouths) of George and Lisa it sounds pretty good. The former wouldn’t release any new music after this until 1996’s “Older” album but the latter would return later in 1993 with her third studio album “So Natural”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Tribal Dance	Definitely not
2	Janet Jackson	That’s The Way Love Goes	Nah
3	Utah Saints	Believe In Me	I did not
4	Ace Of Base	All That She Wants	As if
5	Sounds Of Blackness	I’m Going All The Way	No
6	Depeche Mode	Walking In My Shoes	Good song but no
7	Rage Against The Machine	Bullet In The Head	Nope
8	Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest	Housecall	Away with you!
9	Kingmaker	Ten Years Asleep	I seem have been asleep as it’s not in the singles box
10	Elton John	Simple Life	Hell no!
11	Queen / George Michael / Lisa Stansfield	Five Live EP	Don’t think I did

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019tp2/top-of-the-pops-06051993

TOTP 22 APR 1993

Posted on August 4, 2022 by 80stastic

Ever broken an arm or a leg? I once had a hairline fracture of my forearm when somebody pushed me down the stairs at school. I had a plaster cast on it and everything. My injury however was nothing compared to what happened to Arsenal footballer Steve Morrow four days before this TOTP aired. The unfortunate Belfast born utility man managed to break his arm after a game had finished! He’d just scored the winning goal in the League Cup final versus Sheffield Wednesday and in the jubilant celebrations afterwards his captain Tony Adams tried to carry him on his shoulders. Adams slipped, Morrow fell and fractured his arm so badly he needed oxygen and was rushed to hospital. He missed the rest of the season.

That got me thinking of accidents that had befallen pop stars. There’s been a few. For a start, there’s the nicest man in rock Dave Grohl who fell off stage during a Foo Fighters gig in Sweden. He famously finished the gig after the medics patched him up and played the rest of the tour sat down in a chair. Or how about Jessie J who fell off stage whilst rehearsing in 2011, broke her foot and required a bone transplant. Then there’s the youngest Hanson brother who broke his collarbone and cracked three ribs and his scapula when he came off his motorcycle in 2019. Possibly most famously, Ed Sheeran broke his right wrist and left elbow after coming off his bike in 2017. Ed was hardcore though and went to the pub after the accident before giving into the pain in the early hours and undertaking a trip to A&E. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s TOTP have any broken limbs stories…

We start with something that I not only don’t remember but that I couldn’t really conceive of happening. Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville anyone? So what was this all about? Well, it was a project by the record label Food Records to support the charity Shelter’s ‘Putting Our House In Order’ homeless initiative. Not only did they get Jimmy and VOTB together, they got various other artists (many as duets) to perform versions of “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones. The recordings were put on four separate singles sorted by musical genre – pop, rock, alternative and dance. I’m not going to list them all here but there’s a few intriguing ones like New Model Army and Tom Jones…

How about Cud and Sandie Shaw…

Surely the oddest though must be Hawkwind and Samantha Fox….

Bizarre doesn’t quite cover it. Anyway, there were some more obvious takes on the song mainly on the rock CD with the likes of Thunder and Little Angels doing their bit for charity but it was Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville that were chosen to promote the project on TOTP and there’s a bit to unpack here:

I quite like it
Why does Jimmy sing his opening verses in such a low register?
Jimmy’s T-shirt is right. Shabba Ranks is a bigot
Why was Woody not on the drums?
I have no information on whether any of the people on stage have ever broken any bones

All formats of the single included a live version of “Gimme Shelter” by The Stones to keep on the right side of chart eligibility rules enabling it to get to No 23. It was officially credited to Various Artists and each format had the same catalogue number meaning it counted as one record sale whichever version you bought.

The Bodyguard cash cow was still going strong in April 1993. Not only had the film being doing the business at the box office but the soundtrack album was No 1 around the world and there seemed to be a single lifted from it permanently in the charts. “I Have Nothing” was the fourth such single and the third by Whitney Houston (the other coming courtesy of Lisa Stansfield). In truth, it could have come from any of Whitney’s albums up to this point as it was a classic power ballad the type of which she had made a number of times previously. I’m thinking “All The Man That I Need”, “One Moment In Time”, “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” etc. I mean she did it very well and could knock these out in her sleep but it was all a bit Whitney by numbers for me. She also seemed to have a penchant for songs with ‘I’ in the title. There was “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “I Will Always Love You” (obvs), “I’m Your Baby Tonight” – she even did a version of “I Know Him So Well”. All those ‘I’s put me in mind of when Dr Who regenerated from Peter Davison to Colin Baker…

The single went to No 3 in the UK and No 4 in the US where, due to the stagnant nature of their chart, her previous two singles were still selling and it meant she became the first artist since 1991 when their chart compiling software changed to have three songs in the Top 11 chart positions.

The video follows the format of “I Will Always Love You” and is basically a trailer for the film with lots of clips of it all thrown together around Whitney performing to camera. Not content with this power ballad, the next release was also one (and also from the soundtrack album) with “Run To You” being released in June.

It’s a third consecutive appearance on the show for New Order with “Regret” next. After the Baywatch incident then the official promo video, they are finally in the TOTP studio. Despite the live vocal policy in place on the show at this time, this isn’t a shambles of a performance as with “Blue Monday” ten years earlier. It all feels pretty slick although Hooky’s unique bass playing technique and stance never looked slick. It’s as if it weighs a ton and he stretching every sinew to keep it off the ground. He might not have broken it in an accident but as @TOTPFacts says:

Peter Hook's back must be absolutely fucked. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 29, 2022

Talking of guitars, it feels quite odd to see Bernard Sumner with one in his hands. Now I’m no Eric Clapton and am just a bit of a chord strummer but it looks like his fingers never change from that one chord shape (‘C’ if I’m not mistaken or derivatives of it). Was there really just one chord in the song? And they used to take the piss out of Status Quo!

We swoop over to America next for a live satellite performance of the country’s No 1 record. You’ll probably know the song but not the group. How come? Well, “Freak Me” is the track in question and it will go to No 1 here as well but not for another five years and it won’t be sung by the people we see here but by some chancers called Another Level. Yep, them. Dane Bowers and his mob. Anyway, that’s way down the line. For the moment it’s all about Silk… or rather it’s not as their version of this Keith Sweat written and produced song never even made the Top 40 over here despite this performance.

Slik were from Atlanta, Georgia and had given themselves some truly terrible nicknames. There was Tim ‘Timzo’ Cameron, Gary ‘Big G’ Glenn, Gary ‘Lil G’ Jenkins and my favourite Jonathan ‘John-John’ Rasboro. The lyrics to their big hit are…well kind of explicit and leave the listener in no doubt as to what they are singing about. For example:

Let me lick you up and down till you say stop, let me play with your body baby, make you real hot

Then there’s:

I love the taste of whipped cream, spread it on, don’t be mean

Blimey!

Meanwhile back in the TOTP studio we find Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams and their big hit tune “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Melanie’s come with a big, zebra print floppy hat that she didn’t wear last time. Maybe it was meant to be in keeping with the tune’s retro disco feel?

It’s suddenly struck me that Sub Sub were a bit like Deee-Lite. One huge, crossover dance anthem then pretty much nothing in terms of further chart success. I know that’s not strictly true in that Deee-Lite had one minor hit single after “Groove Is In The Heart” before all you chart enthusiasts get on to me but you get my drift.

Mick Jones (he of the Man Utd score update story the other week) has informed me that when Melanie Williams was in her previous band called Temper Temper, she did a PA at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester and was absolutely lovely with all the male members of staff under her spell. Thought I’d pass that on. By the way, I have no info on whether she’s ever broken her arm or leg but there is a Melanie Williams serious injury solicitor based in Fitzrovia, London but that’s probably not the same person is it?

There’s four Breakers again this week starting with a band who I genuinely never realised had more than one hit in this country. Aussie rockers Midnight Oil had a huge global hit in the late 80s with “Beds Are Burning” and although they continued to have success back home, they did zip in the UK until this track – “Truganini” -made our Top 30. As with “Beds Are Burning” which was about the territorial rights of native Australians, the song carried a political message (a debate over the future of the Australian monarchy) whilst name checking Truganini who was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman and one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian language.

The track came from their album “Earth And Sun and Moon” which is nearly exactly the same title of an album my very own country music loving Dad made a few years back. He included ‘the stars’ in his title though.

You wouldn’t have believed that I worked in a busy record shop at this time as here’s yet another song I don’t remember. What was I doing whilst I was there? Listening to football on the radio if the Mick Jones story is anything to go by.

Anyway, this is a bit weird as after Midnight Oil, we get another song about indigenous people. “Power Of American Natives” was by Dance 2 Trance and was a big club hit that broke through to the mainstream chart. It’s all a bit techno (don’t tell The Bluebells!) and frenetic for me but incredibly there’s another (tenuous) link with Midnight Oil as the album this was taken from also has the word ‘moon’ in its title (“Moon Spirits”). OK, you got me. I’m filling desperately here.

“Power Of American Natives” peaked at No 25.

Despite some considerable album sales, Sting (the solo artist) had never really made many inroads on the singles chart. In the early 90s though, he was finally doing something about that. After just three Top 40 hits in the entire previous decade, by April 1993 he was already up to five. “Seven Days” was the third on the spin if you include “”It’s Probably Me”, his collaboration with Eric Clapton from the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack.

This was the second single from his well received “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album and would peak at No 25. It’s quite a nice tune but the lyrics seemed very familiar. And then it struck me. He’s rewritten “Can’t Stand Losing You”. I mean not exactly but there’s a theme of violence arising from a failed relationship in both. In The Police tune the threat comes from a brother who’s gonna kill the protagonist and “he’s six feet ten”. In “Seven Days” it’s from a love rival who’s…yep…”over six feet ten”. I see you Sting! To try and throw us off the scent he’s added in a breakdown of the week Craig David style and then actually goes off into “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” at the end with the exact lyrics included. Didn’t he do that on another of his solo songs as well?

*thinks for a bit*

Yes he did! Right at the end of “Love Is The Seventh Wave” he slips in a line from “Every Breath You Take” and then…and I love it when the artists on the show are in sync with the theme of the post…he changes the lyrics and sings “every cake you bake, every leg you break”. Excellent! Nice one Sting!

“Seven Days” peaked at No 25.

Now when I think of D:Ream (which isn’t often) I think of 1994 not 1993. 1994 was the year they had a No 1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” or perhaps even 1997 when that song was used as the official anthem for Labour’s successful General Election campaign. But 1993? I had nothing down for that. I’m completely wrong though as here is Peter Cunnah in the charts with “U R The Best Thing”. I thought that came out after “Things Can Only Get Better”. It turns out it did but that was a re-release. Hang on, a rerelease when it had already been a hit earlier? How did that work? Well, simple really. The 1993 single only made it to No 19. After their No 1 in early 1994, a Perfecto remix was put out and it went to No 4. Seems sometimes they did know what they were doing these record labels.

It turns out that D:Ream we’re all about rereleases. This was already the second time “U R The Best Thing” had been out as it was initially released in 1992 when it limped to No 72 in the charts. The ‘94 version made it a trio of releases for the track. Not to be outdone, “Things Can Only Get Better” racked up four goes at the chart. It had already been a hit earlier in ‘93 (it can’t have made it into the show) when it peaked at No 24. Then came that No 1 a year later, a No 19 placing in ‘97 due to the election and then a final release in 2014 (not sure why) when it peaked at No 66. Phew!

Oh and in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph last year, Cunnah said that he’d broken his foot once but that was it and he’d been injury free for most of his life. The things you can find out online!

I’m kind of surprised that the next artist got granted a full performance slot on the show rather than a place in the Breakers. Not because I don’t think they were any good (I always liked them) but because they seemed to be going through a difficult, experimental phase that wasn’t bringing in the big hits. Deacon Blue’s last six singles had resulted in just one Top 10 hit with all but one of the rest not cracking the Top 20. Now you could argue in their defence that they were more of an album band than a singles one but even their album sales were in decline. Their current album at this time (“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”) wasn’t a disaster commercially but it certainly sold less than all its predecessors.

“Only Tender Love” was the latest single taken from it to try and boost its fortunes but I don’t think it was ever up to the task. It’s a bit overwrought and laboured and the band’s performance here doesn’t help as they seem to be taking it all far too seriously. Where had the band that had whooped it up on “Real Gone Kid” gone?

“Only Tender Love” made it to No 22 whilst one final single from the album peaked one place higher. A Greatest Hits album appeared the following year and actually went to No 1 which made the relative failures of their singles even less fathomable.

Tony Dortie is giving it the big ‘un in the intro to the penultimate act on tonight’s show and why not? After all she had recently signed a recording contract with Virgin worth between $32 and $50 million. It made her the world’s highest paid recording artist at the time. I talk of Janet Jackson of course who had fulfilled her obligations to A&M which left her free to sign to Virgin. I recall there being a big fuss about all of this at the time which only heightened the expectations of her first material with her new record company. “That’s The Way Love Goes” didn’t disappoint Virgin as it went to No 1 in the US for eight weeks. Not a bad initial return on their investment. To date it holds the record for the most weeks at the top of the charts for any single released by a member of the Jackson family. It fell one place short of repeating that chart position in the UK.

The track had a much smoother R&B feel to it than some of the harder sounds from her last album “Rhythm Nation 1814” like “Miss You Much”, “Black Cat” and the title track. The lead single reflected the more sensual nature of parent album “Janet”. Just in case anybody was still in any doubt of Janet’s new direction, then the picture on the back cover of her naked from the waist up with her breasts cupped from an unseen man’s hands from behind her surely made it clear.

As with much of Janet’s work, the track was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and featured that sample from “Impeach The President” by The Honey Drippers that I mentioned in the last post. As for injuries resulting in broken limbs, I’m not aware of anything in particular relating to Janet but there was of course that Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction incident in 2004 otherwise known as ‘nipplegate’.

It’s the last of four weeks at No 1 for The Bluebells with “Young At Heart”. It’s as if the band knew the game was up and have decided to go out with a bang as they’re all dressed in white top hats and tails. The set is like a scene from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film complete with cane wielding dancers.

Although a Singles Collection album was released to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, nothing else from their back catalogue was rereleased which I think demonstrates the band’s relaxed attitude to their unexpected second go at pop success. As much as I would have loved to see “I’m Falling” and “Cath” back in the charts, I think it was the right decision to literally make it a one off exercise.

The band still perform sporadically at specific events including supporting Edwyn Collins at a 2009 Glasgow gig.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Voice Of The Beehive and Jimmy Somerville	Gimme Shelter	I didn’t
2	Whitney Houston	I Have Nothing	Nope
3	New Order	Regret	I regret that I did not
4	Silk	Freak Me	Never happening
5	Sub Sub featuring Melanie Williams	Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)	See 3 above
6	Midnight Oil	Truganini	No
7	Dance 2 Trance	Power Of American Natives	Not my bag at all
8	Sting	Seven Days	Nah
9	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	Negative
10	Deacon Blue	Only Tender Love	No but I have that ’94 Greatest Hits album with it on
11	Janet Jackson	That’s The Way Love Goes	Didn’t do much for me
12	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019mbq/top-of-the-pops-22041993

TOTP 13 AUG 1992

Posted on March 19, 2022 by 80stastic

The curse of Adrian Rose has struck again meaning we have missed another show and therefore gone straight to the middle of August 1992 and what an exciting time it was. Two days after this TOTP aired, the all new, singing and dancing (literally in the case of Sky Sports cheerleaders the Sky Strikers) FA Premier League started. My beloved Chelsea prepared for this new era by signing striker Robert Fleck from Norwich City for a club record £2.1 million just 24 hours previously. It would prove to be a disastrous waste of money as Fleck scored just 4 goals in 48 appearances for Chelsea and started a ongoing trend of the club buying big reputation forwards that would turn out to be flops.

Tonight’s opening act similarly came with a big reputation as pop’s next big thing and although they suffered a few flops initially, they would eventually find the form to bag themselves a shed load of massive chart hits and certainly more than the four times Fleck rippled the net.

Having scored their first chart hit with “It Only Takes A Minute” just a few weeks before, Take That weren’t hanging around when it came to a follow up. Now I always thought that like its predecessor, “I Found Heaven” was a cover version but it isn’t. It was written by producer Ian Levine and singer Billy Griffin, the guy who replaced Smokey Robinson as lead vocalist of The Miracles. It turns out that the band always hated the track with a passion. Gary Barlow described it in his autobiography as “truly fucking awful” and “the worst song of my and Take That’s career”. Ouch! It is the only song recorded by the group, aside from covers, that was not written by themselves. It features both Barlow and Robbie Williams on joint lead vocals hinting at the competition that was to define their relationship as the band’s fame grew. Poor old Jason Orange didn’t get to sing on it at all apparently as his vocals weren’t considered good enough. Bit like when Robert Fleck didn’t play for Chelsea for six months after being dropped as he was basically pants.

“I Found Heaven” peaked at No 15. Though not completely disastrous, given that “It Only Takes A Minute” had gone to No 7, this probably wasn’t the result that their management team and record label had hoped for. At the very least it must have increased the pressure on their next single release to outscore its predecessor. In the end, they turned to the Gary Barlow penned ballad “A Million Love Songs” to provide another winner and it duly did the business returning them to the Top 10 and securing their continued success. Their cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” would give them a fourth consecutive hit when it went all the way to No 3 over Xmas. In comparison, it took Robert Fleck the best part of two years to put the ball in the net four times for Chelsea.

Fleck wasn’t the only striker involved in a high profile transfer around this time. On 7th August, Manchester United signed Dion Dublin from Cambridge United for £1 million. Like Fleck, the future Homes Under The Hammer presenter didn’t have a great time at his new club as a broken leg restricted him to just 12 appearances for them. He still scored more than double the goals Fleck did in those games but that’s not the point. The reason I mention him is because I was working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester at the time of Dixon’s signing and one day he came into the shop! My colleague Justin was a big United fan and soon came onto the shop floor to ask him for his autograph. For some reason Justin decided to get him to sign a picture of Dublin’s team mate and England star Bryan Robson. Why Justin thought that was appropriate or why he had a picture of Robson with him at work I know not. Dion seemed to take it all in good humour though and duly signed.

Back to the music and we find one of the more curious hits of the year. A dance version of a Gerry Rafferty easy listening classic? Are you sure? It seemed an insane proposition but then I have personally witnessed in the flesh Robert Fleck score for Chelsea so anything is possible. Seen by some purists as the lowest form of dance music, the masses disagreed and sent “Baker Street” by Undercover spiralling up the charts to No 2.

So who were these chancers? Well, they were a London trio consisting of vocalist John Matthews plus Steve Mac and John Jules who rode a wave to short lived fame much in the same way that KWS did with their cheesy cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Please Don’t Go” earlier in the year. What with those two and, as referenced by host Tony Dortie in his intro, East Side Beat’s danced up treatment of Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like The Wind” in ‘91, this was fast becoming a very lucrative craze.

The unlikely nature of these hits could not be explained by watching the acts performing them on TOTP. Look at this appearance by Undercover for example. Jon Matthews is hardly shimmering with star quality though he has turned up in his best grown up party clothes bless him. The whole thing reeks of the entertainment on a ferry crossing. Actually, I’m not that far off from the truth with that observation for Undercover were a part of the story of that inaugural Premier League season. Whilst watching the documentary Fever Pitch: The Rise Of The Premier League, I noticed that amongst the razzmatazz that Sky brought in to help launch their coverage which included cheerleaders and giant inflatable sumo wrestlers, they also had pop acts do a turn at half time. The idea was that they could do better than the traditional military band that was wheeled out for cup finals during the break. Guess who is clearly sighted as the entertainment in one of the clips? Yep, Undercover.

They would repeat the trick with their next release, their version of Andrew Gold’s “Never Let Her Slip Away” which would be a No 5 hit. One final chart entry (Gallagher and Lyle’s “I Wanna Stay With You”) followed before the game was well and truly up.

One final thing – when Tony Dortie describes it as the “drum ‘n’ bass version of Baker Street“ – what was he thinking?! Here’s Tony with the answer:

I think you'll find I have no idea what I'm talking about, so ignore anything I type x
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 19, 2022

From football to the Olympics as the one chart hit that everyone could have predicted happening this year did indeed…erm…happen. I couldn’t stand “Barcelona” by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé first time around in 1987 and its inevitable rerelease for the ‘92 Olympics in Barcelona didn’t change my opinion. What I had never realised was that the track had always been intended to soundtrack the games but had been recorded as early as it was as the selection process for the Olympic theme took place in 1988. As well as being the official song of the games, the BBC used it for the music to their coverage of the action. It was inescapable.

The video shown here has some inserted sporting footage highlighting Team GB successes including Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell, Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent and the Searle brothers Greg and Jonny and their very emotional cox Garry Herbert.

There is a football connection with “Barcelona” as it was performed by Caballé along side a video of the sadly departed Mercury before the 1999 Champions League final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona. I didn’t see that performance though as I was working in Our Price in Altrincham that day and was rushing from pub to pub to try and find one that wasn’t packed out already to watch the game.

And another Tony Dortie conundrum – why does he call it Basss–er–lona?

Breaking news! Check this out! More Dortie madness! Dion Dublin and Tony Dortie joined together by the power of #Laterz!

Wow this is madness can some1 please tweet her and ask coincidence or what… hey @GRB1 can you help our #totp Friday Hustlers get to the bottom of this..I've actually never ever heard any1 else ever say #Laterz on TV besides me B4 https://t.co/HmM9fd1SoC
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) March 20, 2022

Stand by for another Twitter outpouring of swooning and lust as it’s time for Betty Boo again! “Let Me Take You There” is her latest single but little did we know it would be her last ever chart hit. I think I’ve commented on what happened to Betty (real name Alison Clarkson) before but in the light of her return to making music under her own name this year, The Guardian did an interview with her just days ago. They asked her about disappearing from the world of pop and the circumstances behind it. She’d lost her Mum, Dad and Aunty within a short space of time and so retreated into family life, looking after her Gran. As Alison described it:

“To be a pop star you have to be full-whack all the time and I just melted.”

The last time she was on the show, Betty had an all female backing band but this time the TOTP producers have got her completely solo and performing against some sort of Summer beach background complete with palm trees, a deck chair and sea shells. They’ve obviously decided it’s a Summery song and should be styled accordingly. Would you wear that check outfit Betty has on to the beach including high heels though?

“Let Me Take You There“ peaked at No 12.

We might all have been forgiven for thinking this would be the last we would see of 2 Unlimited. A run of three Top 5 singles all taken from their “Get Ready!” album was brought to an end when a fourth single release “The Magic Friend” didn’t make the Top 10. Had we finally got fed up of their brand of brainless Euro techno rave? This one was particularly banal with it seemingly just consisting of a collection of disparate synthetic noises held together by a headache inducing synth riff, some Jean Michel Jarre flourishes and Ray chanting “The magic friend is what I am”. To mix it up a bit Anita would chime in with “The magic friend is what he is”. Ah, I see what she did there. I for one did not predict them returning the following year with a No 1 album and single in “No Limits”. The year of TOTP repeats for 1993 is shaping up to be utterly dreadful.

There’s five Breakers this week – one more than Robert Fleck’s two year total goal tally for Chelsea! We start with Queensrÿche who I knew little of then and my knowledge hasn’t improved over the last 30 years. What I did know though was that they weren’t from Germany as Tony Dortie informs us – they’re from Bellevue, Washington in the US Tony!

Apart from sounding like a song title Muse might come up with, “Silent Lucidity” was a single from their “Empire” album which is the only album of theirs that I could name but I certainly don’t remember how it went. Let’s have a listen now…

…hmm. A lot more melodic sounding than I was expecting. I thought they were a heavy rock act. Must have been one of their more reflective moments. “Silent Lucidity” was the band’s biggest hit peaking at No 18.

For the first half of 1992, if you were browsing the racks in your record shop of choice, the chances were that when you got to the divider that said The Smiths on it you’d find an empty space. They was certainly the case in our shop anyway. After Rough Trade went bankrupt at the end of the 80s, the band’s back catalogue was purchased by WEA Records (later to become Warner Music). As they planned a whole re-issue strategy for the band’s music, once any existing copies were sold they could not be reordered. I guess the plan was to aggrandise The Smiths material thereby creating a whole new appetite for it.

The first release that WEA put together was a compilation called “Best…1”. At the time, one of my work colleagues was Our Price legend ‘Knoxy’ who’s brother worked for Warner and who was heavily involved in The Smiths re-issue project. He may have even been responsible for choosing which tracks would go on “Best…1”. It was a thankless task as the band’s fan base were/are very protective of and precious about their heroes’ material. These things mattered. The album was finally released the Monday after this TOTP aired and despite mostly unfavourable reaction from fans and press alike to the track listing which seemed a bit random and included B-sides and album cuts as well as singles, it went straight to No 1 on the album chart. A second volume followed in November but only managed a high of No 29.

“This Charming Man” had been decided upon as the single to promote the album – their first chart hit and one of their most recognisable songs. It made sense I guess. So much has been written about the track (including by me in my TOTP 80s blog) that I don’t intend to regurgitate its history again here. Suffice to say that the 1992 rerelease went to No 8 in the singles chart making it, at a stroke, the band’s biggest ever hit.

Who’s this? Felix? Felix da Housecat?

*checks Wikipedia*

No, that’s someone else apparently. This Felix was a guy from Chelmsford, Essex called Francis Wright and who was responsible for this dance anthem “Don’t You Want Me”. Unlike Betty Boo’s recent return to pop music with her “Love Action (I Believe In Love)” sampling new single, this was nothing to do with The Human League. As with many these dance tunes, I remember the riff but I couldn’t have told you the artist or track details. Maybe that was the whole point – if you were off on one in a club, just recognising the riff might be enough to trigger you into action on the dance floor? Did you need to know who was behind the tune or what it was called? I dunno. I wasn’t in any clubs at this time as I was skint.

“Don’t You Want Me” was a hit three times in the 90s in various remixes but none were bigger than this 1992 original which made it to No 6.

They’re doing that weird thing with the Breakers again in allocating one of the slots to an act we’ve already seen on the show in full due to an exclusive performance or in the case of Jon Secada, the US charts feature. “Just Another Day” is up to No 8 this week which surely makes it a bona fide big hit rather than a Breaker?

The video is Jon performing with his band mainly in black and white apart from when he’s cavorting about on a beach when the film turns a sepia tone. Apparently Gloria Estefan turns up at the end of the video but I can’t be arsed to watch the whole thing just to confirm or deny this on account of the whole thing being terminally dull.

The final Breaker is a duet from Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson taken from the soundtrack to a film I never got round to seeing – Mo’Money. People seemed to go crazy for “The Best Things In Life Are Free” as it soared up the charts to No 2 though it did very little for me. It was one of those songs that also hung around the charts for ages clocking up 13 weeks in total. Apparently this was a New Edition reunion of sorts with Bell Biv DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant appearing on the track (the latter’s involvement though was restricted to one spoken line).

The video doesn’t actually feature Luther or Janet (even though the lyrics do when they name check themselves) but instead has the leads from the film Damon Wayans and Stacey Dash lip synching to it set against the backdrop of a fairground.

The best things in life are free eh? Someone should have told Chelsea in 1992 – Robert Fleck wasn’t free at £2.1 million and he certainly wasn’t the best.

It’s another ‘exclusive’ performance again and a second one this year for Annie Lennox I believe. “Walking On Broken Glass” was the third single from her “Diva” album (we seem to have missed her second single from it “Precious”) and like lead single “Why”, it was a huge airplay hit. Radio ubiquity aside, there were no other similarities with its predecessor certainly not in musical terms. Sprightly where “Why” was downbeat, its spiky, jagged strings lay down an engaging foundation for Annie to layer her soulful vocals on.

The staging for this one with orchestral string backing and a shed load of candles works pretty well. The show did seem to throw some resource at these ‘exclusive’ slots I have to say. Annie herself looks great. She recently released a no filter/no makeup photo of herself at 67 years of age and she still looks amazing.

BBC4 had a mini Annie evening last Friday showing a gig of hers from 2009 at LSO St Luke’s and an interview from 1992 to promote her “Diva” album. In the interview she said that she wasn’t missing Dave Stewart after two years of not working with him but give it another seven years and the two would reconvene for one final Eurythmics album in 1999 called “Peace”.

“Walking On Broken Glass” would go Top 10 just as “Why” had and as I recall helped instigate another wave of sales for an album that had already been out four months.

There’s a Top 10 countdown in the proper place in the show finally as we segue in a timely fashion into the No 1 record which is Snap! with “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. Taken from the group’s “The Madman’s Return” album, I had always assumed it was the lead single from it but it wasn’t. There was a single before it called “Colour Of Love” which was a massive hit all around Europe…except here. In the UK it was a flop peaking at a lowly No 54.

Not even we could resist the follow up though which went to No 1 in a dozen or so countries. Apparently rapper Turbo B had insisted on “Colour Of Love” being the lead single as he hated the ‘serious as cancer’ lyric in “Rhythm Is A Dancer” but the group’s producers had disagreed. They won the battle for the follow up single though and the rest is history. Turbo B would leave the band before the third single “Exterminate!” was released.

Postscript: Robert Fleck left Chelsea in 1995 to return to Norwich City. He played four times for Scotland scoring zero goals (obvs). After a spell in football management , he now works as a Teaching Assistant at a school for children with special needs. He also funded trips for 18 months for a child with a terminal condition. Robert Fleck then. Terrible Chelsea striker but one of life’s good guys.

Laterz!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Take That	I Found Heaven	Of course not!
2	Undercover	Baker Street	No
3	Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé	Barcelona	Barce-no-na
4	Betty Boo	Let Me Take You There	No but I had a promo copy of the album
5	2 Unlimited	The Magic Friend	Hell no!
6	Queensrÿche	Silent Lucidity	Nah
7	The Smiths	This Charming Man	No but I have Hatful of Hollow with it on
8	Felix	Don’t You Want Me	No I didn’t
9	Jon Secada	Just Another Day	Nope
10	Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson	The Best Things In Life Are Free	Negative
11	Annie Lennox	Walking On Broken Glass	No but my wife has the album Diva
12	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015f8z/top-of-the-pops-13081992

TOTP 13 SEP 1990

Posted on March 5, 2021 by 80stastic

September 1990 was a big month for the BBC. After banging on about the bringing back of The Generation Game in my last post, Auntie Beeb had another big happening for the second week running as on the very day this TOTP was broadcast, it showed the 1000th episode of Neighbours! Yes, the Aussie soap that had the nation fascinated by the goings on in Ramsey Street and that made household names (and pop stars) out of Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue (more of whom later) had reached this massive milestone in what seemed to be a short amount of time. In fact, it had been on the BBC since October 1986 so just under four years but that still doesn’t seem like much time for 1000 episodes. What’s that, 250 per year? So nearly four shows a week? How many episodes of Coronation Street and Eastenders were on our screens per week back then? Anyway, for what it’s worth, the 1000th episode concerned the engagement party of Des and Jane (or ‘Plain Jane Super Brain’ to give her full title) which is gatecrashed by Jane’s old squeeze Mike who’s not too keen on the whole idea of them getting hitched. And yes, I had to look all of that up – I’d long since stopped watching the show by 1990.

Appropriately for Mike’s dramatic entrance to confront Des and Jane, the first song of the night is entitled “I’ve Been Thinking About You” by Londonbeat. You all remember this lot right? They’d had a Top 20 hit back in 1988 with an almost a cappella song called “9 A.M. (The Comfort Zone)” but had been absent from the Top 40 since despite a nice enough follow up single called “Failing in Love Again” which I’d quite liked. “I’ve Been Thinking About You” however was nothing like either of those two tracks. This was…well…danceable but with a pop sensibility (that’s what the music journalists say isn’t it?). It also had that lodge-in-your-brain guitar riff running through it that people found hard to resist. The result? By far the band’s biggest ever hit. It was even a No 1 in the US (although it peaked just short of that at No 2 in the UK) and was a hit pretty much everywhere else. This was all fairly surprising stuff for a band who had a pretty small track record of success. To come back out of nowhere with a No 2 single was as impressive as it was unexpected. Apparently the song had been recorded in demo form as way back as 1987 but the band’s record label advised them to hold it back for release until they were more established. Seems they knew what they were talking about.

I’m not sure I made this connection at the time but two of the vocalists in the group had been the backing singers with Paul Young on his “Secret Of Association” album and tour and had also appeared with him at Live Aid. However, it’s not them that catch the eye in this performance. It’s hard not to keep staring at guitarist Willy M (real name William Henshall). I think it’s a combination of his stage presence and image. That floppy blonde hair and shades was an unusual look back then and I don’t think it’s any less unusual now. He’s also pretty tall and gangly and seems to love the attention this affords him. His twangy guitar solo allows him to take centre stage which he milks for all it’s worth. He’s now a neuroscience based technologist/inventor (according to his Twitter bio) living in LA.

As for me, I wasn’t overly enamoured by “I’ve Been Thinking About You” and actually preferred their follow up single “A Better Love” but I have to admit, there were a lot worse records in the charts at that time.

It’s back to back appearances for Janet Jackson and her latest single “Black Cat“. Obviously it’s the video again which is basically footage of Janet performing the song in concert. Dressed in a white top and black trousers and with her dark hair at that length, if you squint you could almost believe that was her brother Michael up there on stage – pretty sure one of his latter stage looks was very similar plus you could really imagine him singing “Black Cat”. It’s not a million miles away from the likes of “Dirty Diana”.

Supposedly “Black Cat” was very influential on Alanis Morissette in terms of the transition from her early pop career to the edgy rock sound of the “Jagged Little Pill” album whilst it has been covered by the likes of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. Indeed, Alanis herself performed it while part of Canadian band The New York Fries. As for Janet, she would release a seventh and final single from her “Rhythm Nation 1814” album before disappearing to record the multi platinum selling follow up “Janet” which would see the light of day in 1993.

Tonight’s presenter is Gary Davies who finally has a sensible haircut after all those mullets in the 80s but being shorn of some locks hasn’t reduced his Samson like power for patronising, casual sexism. While introducing Sonia he describes her and her record -breaking single “End Of The World” thus:

“She’s the only British girl to have her first five singles go into the Top 20”.

Girl Gary? You couldn’t have said ‘woman’ or even ‘female singer’.? I know you she was only 19 at the time but that’s still very much adulthood isn’t it? Am I being too PC, too easily offended on Sonia’s behalf? Maybe nobody batted an eyelid back then but it just jarred a bit whilst watching this back in 2021.

I have to admit I’m not sure I was aware that Sonia was a record breaker. They should have got her on Record Breakers with Roy Castle. Was it still on in 1990? In my mind’s eye it’s a 70s TV show. Those of us who can recall it will surely remember the theme tune with its ‘if you’re the fattest, the thinnest’ lyric. Now that really was politically incorrect. Makes Gary Davies look positively broad minded.

The return of INXS next. After the massive commercial success of their sixth album “Kick” towards the end of the 80s, the band had taken a sabbatical to work on other projects. Michael Hutchence threw his energies into the mystifying Max Q project whilst other band members took time out to work on side projects such as producing other artists. By the start of the new decade, they had reconvened to set about recording a follow up to “Kick” and the expectation to repeat the trick after their global commercial breakthrough must have been immense. “X” (named to commemorate the 10th year of the band’s existence) saw them pretty much pull it off. Despite selling only half of what its predecessor did, it still shifted 10 million units worldwide and contained a clutch of hit singles. “Suicide Blonde” was the first of those and despite the blues harp intro on the track, it didn’t sound too different to their “Kick” era to me.

And what was it all about? Well here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer and making good on my earlier promise of more Kylie:

"Suicide Blonde" was inspired by Michael Hutchence's then-girlfriend, Kylie Minogue. Kylie: "[It] came from me talking about my character in The Delinquents – we met just after that. My hairdresser called the wig I had to wear 'suicide blonde'." #TOTP pic.twitter.com/WoK3QmSoig
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 26, 2021

Hutchence and Kylie had gone public about their relationship in November 1989 and were still a couple at this point I think. How Kylie’s ex Jason Donovan felt about it all I’m not sure – maybe he pulled a Mike from Neighbours style confrontation with the pair at Hutchence’s 30th birthday party bash back in January of that year. Maybe not.

I must admit that I thought that following Hutchence’s tragic demise in November 1997 that we would never hear “Suicide Blonde” played on the radio ever again but I was wrong. Not only does it continue to be played but INXS themselves continued to perform the song in concert after Michael’s death. This next bit is spooky though – “Suicide Blonde” was the last song that he performed live. It was the closing number at the final INXS show before his death at a concert in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania on September 27, 1997.

“Suicide Blonde” peaked at No 11.

Despite me not being the biggest dance music fan in the world, I always liked this next track. In fact, to say that 1990 seems to have been full of cruddy, half-baked dance tunes, we’ve seen a few very creditable examples of the genre in recent weeks. Deee-Lite, The Soup Dragons and now this lot…Bass-O-Matic with “Fascinating Rhythm”. These genuine one-hit wonders, like every act producing dance music in 1990 it seemed, came from Sheffield and included producer legend William Orbit in their ranks.

I don’t know what it was about this tune but it just really appealed to me. It seemed quite melodic I guess for an out and out dance track and it had some hook laden samples in there as well. I’m not sure if it was still in the charts by the time I started in Our Price in Manchester a few weeks after this but “Fascinating Rhythm” always reminds me of that time. Happy days.

There’s just time for Gary Davies to fluff his outro for Bass-O-Matic (“That’s gone up…err.. a lot this week” he states clearly forgetting his basic chart numbers) before we’re onto The KLF . For a band who wanted to expose the cynical workings of the music industry, they sure seemed happy to play the game when it came to TOTP. I think this is the third time they’ve been on with with “What Time Is Love” isn’t it? Or maybe their appearances were proving some sort of point that I’m not quite getting. To be fair to them, I think this is just a reshowing of a previous performance rather than an actual new studio appearance.

The band made headlines again in 2021 despite leaving the music business nearly 30 years ago when they finally relented to letting their back catalogue be made officially available on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. During my Our Price years, one of the most sought after import CD was that of their “White Room” album which was deleted along with all their other output back in 1992. Said import was bloody expensive too as I recall. I guess that was them having the final laugh in their grand plan to expose the music industry. So why the sudden Tory-esque U-turn? The band’s official YouTube page put out this statement:

“KLF have appropriated the work done between 1 January 1987 and 31 December 1991 by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords [and] The KLF. This appropriation was in order to tell a story in five chapters using the medium of streaming. The name of the story is Samplecity Thru Transcentral. If you need to know more about the work done by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords or The KLF, you can find truths, rumours and half-truths scattered across the internet. From these truths, rumours and half-truths, you can form your own opinions. The actual facts were washed down a storm drain in Brixton some time in the late 20th Century.”

Future No 1 incoming! One of the year’s most unlikely chart toppers came from Maria McKee. I suppose her rise to the top was similar to that of Sinéad O’Connor in the unexpected stakes. Maria was, of course, the lead singer of country rockers Lone Justice until they split in 1987. I’d always quite liked their sound and my wife had even been to seem them live (at Newcastle’s Riverside venue I think). However, her solo career had not been a success and her 1989 debut self titled album had tanked commercially. Suddenly, from out of nowhere seemingly, she was back in the charts with a powerful yet tender ballad called “Show Me Heaven”. How had this happened? Well, it was all down to film soundtracks again. Yes, after having already seen the effect Pretty Woman and it soundtrack had on generating hit singles and revitalising the careers of seemingly forgotten pop acts, the UK public saw that commercial force unleashed once more. This time it was due to the Tom Cruise flick Days Of Thunder, the soundtrack of which included “Show Me Heaven”.

Maria’s live performance here was very affecting and no doubt helped to propel the song up the charts. Maria herself thought so anyway:

Maria McKee: "I remember getting very carried away with being on Top Of The Pops and very excited and really doing one of my best vocal performances on live TV for that… I really believe that my live performance on #TOTP helped to push it up to number one."
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 26, 2021

Inevitably, following the success of ‘Show Me Heaven”, McKee’s debut album was re-released but crucially it did not contain that song. Cue a queue of disgruntled punters wanting their money back in record shops across the land. At the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I started, there was a huge promotional poster for that album on the wall in the staff kitchen. Some wag on the staff wrote ‘she’s got such amazing grace’ on it.

It’s a new No 1! Yes! Mallett has been toppled and is gone, banished to the nightmares of those of us who lived through his time. In his place is…oh…the Steve Miller Band. Well, perhaps not the most exciting act and song but I’d have accepted pretty much anything instead of Bombalurina at this point. “The Joker” was of course back in the charts due to its inclusion in a Levi’s ad. So popular were the adverts that a compilation album of all the songs used in them was put together and released in 1991 featuring the likes of The Clash, Percy Sledge, Ben E King and of course Steve Miller Band. It was called “The Levi’s 501 Hits (Originals Stand The Test Of Time)” and it sold well enough to spawn a second volume. Like The KLF’s back catalogue (until this year) it is now very much deleted.

The play out video is “Epic” by Faith No More. I think this was the first song of theirs which really made me sit up and take note of them a bit more seriously. The chorus on it is a monster (you might even say ‘epic’ but obviously I wouldn’t be so…erm…obvious). I was never going to fully commit myself to funk metal (or whatever it was) but this certainly made me think twice. There’s even a gentle piano outro at the end just to add to the intrigue. Sadly for Faith No More, they are probably best known in the UK by non fans as that band who did a completely straight cover of “Easy” by The Commodores for no discenible reason.

“Epic” peaked at No 25.

Fo posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

If you really want to watch the whole show over, somebody has helpfully added it in its entirety to YouTube. Fill your boots!

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Londonbeat	I’ve Been Thinking About You	But I didn’t think about buying this
2	Janet Jackson	Black Cat	Don’t think I did
3	Sonia	End Of The World	No
4	INXS	Suicide Blonde	No but I’ve got it on their Best Of
5	Bass-O-Matic	Fascinating Rhythm	Could have but didn’t
6	The KLF	What Time Is Love (Live At Trancentral”	Nope
7	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
8	Steve Miller Band	The Joker	It’s a no
9	Faith No More	Epic	I was intrigued but not committed – 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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 06 SEP 1990

Posted on March 3, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally left the long, hot Summer of 1990 behind (well almost) as we move into September of that year here at TOTP Rewind. However, the BBC were probably not fully focussed on their flagship popular music show this particular week as the day after this TOTP aired, we saw the return to our screens of one of Auntie Beeb’s jewel-in-the-crown shows from back in the day. The Generation Game had been off TV for nearly the whole of the 80s before it was revitalised in the new decade for a run of series between 1990 and 1994. Our family had been avid watchers back in the 70s when I was growing up and Saturdays would be a regular diet of the football scores on Grandstand followed by hiding behind the sofa with Dr Who and then Brucie Forsyth in that once hallowed early evening light entertainment slot with Anthea Redfearn giving us a twirl before a cuddly toy on the conveyor belt at the show’s climax. Even when Brucie left, the show continued to flourish under the stewardship of new host Larry Grayson who pulled in an audience of 25 million on one occasion. By the early 80s though, ITV had upped its game and The Generation Game was being whopped by Game For A Laugh (which I never really got on board with) and was axed after Grayson decided to leave the show.

What has all this got to do with the charts of September 1990? I would love to be able to say that “Cuddly Toy” by Roachford was in the charts but that occurrence had already happened back in early ’89. How about there being a Bruce in the Top 40 courtesy of Mr Springsteen? Sadly no. However, as with the comeback of The Generation Game, this TOTP also sees the return of two acts that were mostly synonymous with a different era of music – OK it was only the recently departed 80s but that was still in the past yeah?

And talking of the return of a golden oldie, we start with Adamski and his latest hit “The Space jungle”. What? Adamski? He was one of the hottest stars of dance music on the planet back in 1990 wasn’t he? He’d just had a massive No 1 in “Killer” and his latest single has a groovy, futuristic title? How on earth does he qualify as a golden oldie? Alright, calm down. It wasn’t Admaski I was referring to per se but his new single. Despite its title, it was actually just a cover version of the old Elvis hit “All Shook Up”. Admittedly, it was a bit out there with the added house piano motifs and rapping courtesy of Ricardo da Force but a cover version of an old 50s rock ‘n’ roll number none the less. As I said, a golden oldie.

So the obvious question about this release was why? When quizzed about it in a Smash Hits interview, Adamski (real name Adam Tinley) said that the track had started life as an instrumental but when performing it at Glastonbury he just started singing “All Shook Up”. ‘I think it must have been a message from Elvis from the grave’ he quipped.

I wasn’t taken by this track at all I’m afraid. The juxtaposition of Elvis and house music was too much for me to process but plenty of punters bought the single sending it to No 7. However, it would be Adamski’s final ever Top 40 hit. Of course, this wasn’t to be the last we saw of an Elvis song receiving the dance-it-up treatment. In 2002, Dutch musician Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL or JXL took a version of “A Little Less Conversation” all the way to No 1. And that, Adamski, is how you do a remix of Elvis.

“Now Mariah Carey is a 20 year old singer songwriter from New York City” states tonight’s host Jakki Brambles and it’s interesting to note that she has to advise the watching millions at home who she is – Mariah that is not herself. Yes, there was a time when we didn’t know all about Ms.Carey and that time was 1990. To be fair, “Vision Of Love” was her debut single so we didn’t have much to go on. She would of course become one of the biggest singers on the planet in due course. What is also interesting about that intro is the description of Mariah as a songwriter which I think probably gets overlooked – I’m pretty sure I haven’t given it much thought before now. As far as I can tell though, she writes all her own lyrics and contributes to the music on every track of her albums and yet I’m betting that songwriter isn’t the first thing we think about when we hear the name Mariah Carey. There’s her voice and vocal range to start with, then there’s the diva reputation, her sex symbol status, her gay icon standing….does songwriter come behind all of these things? Seems a bit unfair. I’m sure if you’re a huge Mariah fan (do they have a collective noun?) then you would maybe have her ability to craft songs higher up the list.

“Vision Of Love” peaked at No 9 in the UK but was the first of four consecutive No 1 records all taken from her debut album in the US.

Not sure if a hit from four years previous counts as being an ‘oldie’ but this next tune was certainly golden. Talk Talk were back in the Top 40 for a second time in 1990 due to the commercial success of their “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” album. After “It’s My Life” earlier in the year, it was the turn of “Life’s What You Make It” to get the re-issue treatment this time. The difference between the two was that the former had never been a Top 40 hit in its initial release but the latter had already made No 16 when first in the charts back in 1986. Whilst not quite scaling those heights a second time around, its No 23 placing wasn’t bad going. The Best Of album itself was a huge success rising to No 3 in the charts which for a band that never even had a solitary Top 10 single was remarkable. EMI would try and repeat their “It’s My Life” trick of making a hit out of an initial flop record when they re-released yet another single to promote the album in “Such a Shame” which is a great song but it was a release too far and it stalled at No 78, a whopping 29 places further down the charts than its 1984 initial outing.

Within two years and after one final very experimental album, Talk Talk would disband. Lead singer Mark Hollis would pretty much retire from the music business, releasing just one solo album in 1998. Sadly, he died just over two years ago at the age of 64. Talk Talk, however, remain one of the most influential groups of their era.

Ooh now, in contrast to all this golden oldie stuff, here comes a brand new group! Except that…. they weren’t brand new as The Farm had been around since 1983, releasing numerous independent singles before hooking up with Suggs from Madness who produced their next single, a cover of “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”, the old hit by The Monkees. This brought them national attention when it peaked at No 58 in the charts. Wearing their Liverpudlian credentials on their sleeves, the band were very much associated with a ‘lads’ culture of music and football and were often referred to as a ‘scally’ band, a term they rejected in favour of something they called ‘urchin rock’ (I don’t think that ever took off as a genre did it?).

The release of “Groovy Train” saw them go mainstream with the single gatecrashing the Top 10 before peaking at No 6. Its musical style was very much in line with the sound of the year – that baggy/indie dance movement – and would pave the way for their next and biggest single “All Together Now” which would go Top 3 later in the year. The buzz around their debut album on a major label (“Spartacus”) was enormous by this point. I can clearly recall that the two pre-release albums we got asked most about when I joined Our Price in late 1990 were “Doubt” by Jesus Jones and “Spartacus” both of which would top the charts when released in 1991.

Liverpool set soap Brookside played a part in the band’s fortunes. The guy who played grumpy old git Harry Cross in the show starred in the promo video for “Groovy Train” but I’m sure that the character of Sammy Rogers wore a “Groovy Train” t-shirt in one episode as well.

As it’s the first show of the new month, we get that weird Top 5 albums feature again. For the record, the best selling albums of August 1990 were:

1. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

2. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

3. Phil Collins – “…But Seriously”

4. Luciano Pavarotti – “The Essential Luciano Pavarotti”

5. Madonna – “I’m Breathless”

None of this is very interesting except for the footnote maybe of TOTP actually playing a single that didn’t ever make it into the Top 40. Yes, the video used to promote Elton John’s “Sleeping With The Past” album was for his current single “Club At The End Of The Street” which peaked at No 47. Had that ever happened before or since?

Right who’s next? Well it’s Caron Wheeler with “Livin’ in the Light“. Caron, of course, was the voice and very much the public face on two of Soul II Soul’s biggest hits in “Keep on Movin'” and “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)”. So why the solo career move? Here’s Caron herself in a Smash Hits interview on that subject:

“Soul II Soul was always really a collective but I was always a featured artist. A lot of people misconceived it as being my group. Within themselves, it’s like a family with certain key members who were always there but I was never really part of that family.”

Oh OK, so a bit like Beats International then. In fact, you could say Caron was the Lindy Layton of Soul II Soul…or should that be Lindy Layton was the Caron Wheeler of Beats International? Anyway, as Jakki Brambles rightly says, “Livin’ in the Light” was Caron’s debut hit single and taken from her album “UK Blak”. To my uncultured ears it didn’t sound that different to that Soul II Soul sound she had left behind or was that just because she was the singer on those songs so it was always going to be a little bit reminiscent of her past? Great things were predicted for Caron and although the album sold well enough, she only returned to the Top 40 singles chart once more (literally at No 40) with the album’s title track. She seemed to spend the next 30 odd years rejoining and then subsequently leaving the Soul II Soul family at various intervals. I’m sure she’s done lots of other things but if you check her Wikipedia entry, that’s the impression you get.

“Livin’ in the Light” peaked at No 14.

“Just deee-lovely and delicious”…yes it’s Deee-Lite (three ‘e’s in the spelling or no points) with their dance floor banger “Groove Is In The Heart”. Is it fair that they are still very much seen (in this country at least) as one hit wonders? Let’s examine the evidence:

Exhibit A (m’lud): They actually had another Top 40 hit in this country in “Power of Love” / “Build The Bridge” which was the follow up to “Groove Is In The Heart” and peaked at No 25.

Judge: Erm..I see. Well, case closed then.

Except that doesn’t really tell the whole story of what happened to Deee-Lite. Why didn’t they go on to dominate the dance music landscape for years with their brand of innovative yet supremely infectious sound? Was it internal strife within the band? Or the emergence of grunge perhaps? Something else altogether or both of these things? Well, their album “World Clique” sold steadily, eventually securing gold sales of 100,000 units but the two subsequent albums released over the next four years shifted vastly reduced quantities. Apparently group member Towa Tei wasn’t into the touring aspect of the band at all causing divisions within the trio whilst his musical interests moved away from the Deee-Lite manifesto. Meanwhile, Lady Miss Kier and DJ Dmitry’s relationship finished around 1994 which maybe had something to do with the group’s demise. Whatever the reasons behind their story, a little bit of 1990 (nay the whole decade) will always belong to Deee-Lite and their calling card “Groove Is In The Heart”.

Definitely back on the golden oldie theme now as we welcome back an act who we haven’t heard from for five years according to Jakki Brambles. Except that isn’t strictly true. What Jakki should have said is that Loose Ends hadn’t been on TOTP in the last five years. They had actually been making and releasing music in the interim period, it was just that their commercial fortunes had dipped a bit. Back in 1985, Loose Ends were the darlings of the UK R&B scene with hits like “Hangin’ on a String (Contemplating)” and “Magic Touch”. However, of the seven singles released after these hits, only one breached the UK Top 40 (and presumably wasn’t chose by the TOTP producers to appear on the show). Their 1988 album “The Real Chuckeeboo” only made it to No 52 in the charts. It was a different story across the pond though where they continued to chalk up hits on the US R’n’B charts. Over here though it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Good old musical differences took hold and members Steve Nichol and Jane Eugene left leaving Carl McIntosh as the only original member (Jakki was on the money with that info). Undeterred, he returned with a new line up and new album called “Look How Long” of which “Don’t Be A Fool” was its lead single supposedly about his previous band mates (see also “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel). The single restored their chart fortunes but it proved to also be a final hurrah with “Look How Long” being the last studio album released under the Loose Ends name. Mackintosh would go onto produce many an artist including …yes…Caron Wheeler. I love it when a post comes together like that! Talk about tying up loose ends!

It’s a third week at No 1 for Bombalurina and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“. When will this nightmare be over? Please let this be the last week of this nonsense. This time we get the hitherto unseen promo video on the show. Ok, let’s see what that was like then. I’m not expecting much….

…well, unsurprisingly it’s basically a young woman in a skimpy yellow polka dot bikini. She’s joined on the fake beach scene by those ever present two blonde dancers throwing some shapes whilst Timmy Mallett lounges around on a hammock. It’s shockingly bad, redeemed only slightly by Mallett falling off said hammock in the final freeze frame.

The awfulness of the video should have been the fart pebble on the top of this particular shitcake but there’s a side story that even steals that crap-olade. So bad were Mallett’s vocals that they had to get someone else in to record them. Look at this:

In 2008, teacher Everton Barnes (a budding R&B singer back in 1990) claimed that he sang on "Itsy Bitsy…", not Timmy Mallett. "When they got him into the studio, his voice was as flat as a pancake. I sang the whole vocal track and Timmy's was shunted into the background." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 26, 2021

1990 – hang your head in shame.

The play out video is “Black Cat” by Janet Jackson. This was the sixth of an incredible seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and for my money, this was the best one. Very much in an all out rock vein as opposed to her more urban dance pop numbers, it was also the highest charting of those seven singles in the UK. It was Janet’s third No 1 hit from the album in the US making her the first solo artist to achieve two No 1 hits over there in the 1990s. Further accolades came in the shape of a Grammy Award nomination in the category of Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Although losing out to Alannah Myles for “Black Velvet”, Janet became the first artist to earn nominations across all five categories of Pop, Dance, Rock, Rap,and R&B for the same song.

However, the first thing that I think of every time I hear “Black Cat” is nothing to do with awards and laurels but relates to my early days at Our Price. There was a guy working in the Manchester store that I started in called Mark who put this on the shop stereo and spent a good few minutes just playing the panther growl sound effect at the very start of the track and skipping back to it constantly so that all anyone in the shop could hear was this repeated loop of a panther snarling. Pretty much cleared the shop which was the whole point as it was nearly closing time and we all wanted to go home.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

If you really want to watch the whole show over, somebody has helpfully added it in its entirety to YouTube. Fill your boots!

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Adamski	The Space Jungle	Nah
2	Mariah Carey	Vision Of Love	Nope
3	Talk Talk	Life’s What You Make It	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of of theirs somewhere I think
4	The Farm	Groovy Train	No but I easily could have
5	Caron Wheeler	Livin’ In The Light	Not my bag at all
6	Deee-Lite	Groove Is In The Heart	Where’s my copy of this?! I must have bought this surely?!
7	Loose Ends	Don’t Be A Fool	See 5 above
8	Bombalurina	Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini	How does f**k off sound as an answer?
9	Janet Jackson	Black Cat	Don’t think I did

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.

Some bedtime reading?