Jimmy Somerville

TOTP 25 MAY 1995

Posted on November 18, 2023 by 80stastic

With one notable exception, the line up for this TOTP is one of the most underwhelming and uninspiring I’ve seen for a while. An horrendous No 1 and a load of dance tunes I don’t remember and probably wouldn’t like if I did. At least it’s a ‘golden mic’ presenter slot with an interesting choice of host(s) this week. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring were a comedy duo who met at Oxford University and were contemporaries of the likes of Emma Kennedy. After writing for Chris Morris’ Radio 4 comedy vehicle On The Hour, they switched to Radio 1 writing and starring in Fist Of Fun which would eventually transfer to TV via BBC2. The first series had only just finished by the time of this TOTP so Lee and Herring’s profile was presumably pretty high and bestowed upon them a shot at presenting the network’s flagship music show. I’m not sure that the pair were on my comedy radar at this time though I have seen Stewart Lee live subsequently and he was very funny. The double act seems to be based on Lee being sarcastic and cutting and Herring being frivolous and silly. He strays into something a bit more uncomfortable though at the top of the show by asking if he might be in heaven as he’s surrounded by sweaty, teenage girls. Such a remark possibly wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow back then but in these post Operation Yewtree times, it doesn’t sit well.

Anyway, we start with Incognito who I had forgotten were still having hits as late as 1995. To be fair to myself, my knowledge of them only extends to “Always There” from 1991 and their cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” in 1992. However, there is much more to them than that starting with the fact that they had been in existence since 1979 and have a roster of members past and present (they are still a going concern) they could rival The Fall and The Waterboys. Talking of Incognito members, I had to do a double take but my suspicions were confirmed by @TOTPFacts that the guy on bongos would go on to be pretty famous for something else…

Does Incognito’s white-vest-wearing percussionist look familiar? It should – it’s Max Beesley, future star of TV shows like The History Of Tom Jones, Hotel Babylon and Survivors. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Max Beesley studied percussion and classical piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and toured with/played for the likes of Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Take That and Paul Weller. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Well there you go. Professor Brian Cox wasn’t the only celebrity to play in a 90s band before becoming famous in a different profession. As for Incognito’s tune, “Everyday” is actually quite pleasant as far as it goes but it does smack of being a rewrite of “Always There” which wasn’t even their song in the first place.

After Lee and Herring have a discussion about Jon Bon Jovi’s unusual pronunciation of Milan as ‘Milarn’ from his to camera piece at the top of the show, we move onto a dance tune I certainly wouldn’t have liked back in 1995 (I don’t actually remember it) and definitely don’t like 28 years later. Nightcrawlers were coming off the back of a huge hit in “Push The Feeling On” – you might know it as the “Just Sold My Car” song for the We Buy Any Car ad – and “Surrender Your Love” was more of the same though a bit watered down and (clearly in my case) not as memorable.

Despite or maybe because of his rather extreme look of long blond hair and shades which ages him terribly – he was 31 at the time of this broadcast – the TOTP cameras seem to deliberately avoid having vocalist John Reid on screen for longer than a couple of seconds at a time preferring to focus on the multitude of dancers on stage. It really is quite noticeable. Maybe the show’s producers were trying to recreate the feel of a nightclub where this track would have no doubt gone down well with mid 90s house music fiends. “Surrender Your Love” peaked at No 7.

Next an exclusive live by satellite performance of “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan but, as with many of these ‘exclusives’, it fails to live up to its title. Coming in direct from Los Angeles, you might have thought the location would be the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, the TCL Chinese Theatre, Venice or Santa Monica beach or at least somewhere with the Hollywood sign in the background wouldn’t you? What we get is an outdoor basketball court that could be anywhere. Montell doesn’t even have a cordless microphone so he can’t move around much and it’s left to his three backing dancers to try and liven things up a bit – they don’t. Honestly not sure what executive producer Ric Blaxill was thinking here.

Some more comments from Lee and Herring that have not aged well next. Describing Scatman John as “an old, stuttering man” (Herring) who “didn’t let age or his inability to speak get in the way of having a No 3 hit” (Lee) before introducing him with a stutter (Herring again) might get you cancelled these days or as Lee might say in his stand up shows, “you can get put in jail these days just for presenting Top Of The Pops”. Or something. “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was indeed up to No 3 but it would go no further. Nonsensical novelty hit or genre bending innovation? You decide.

Lee and Herring indulge in a bit of sexual innuendo now reminding the watching audience that if it hurts, you’re not doing it right before introducing “Hurts So Good” by Jimmy Somerville. As with Incognito earlier, I’d totally forgotten that Jimmy was still having hits as late as this. In my head, his chart bothering days pretty much ended with his very successful singles collection album over Christmas 1990. I wasn’t too far off to be fair but I’d forgotten about “Dare To Love” which became his first album released since then when it appeared in 1995. “Hurts So Good” was the second single from it and was a cover of a song made famous by Susan Cadogan who had a No 4 hit with it in 1975. I don’t know Susan’s version and I don’t remember Jimmy’s but I have to say I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Somerville had form for doing reggae-fied covers. He did one of the Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody” to promote that singles collection and “Hurts So Good” falls into the sane category for me. I just don’t think Jimmy’s high falsetto voice suits reggae. For me, he’s always been better on a barnstorming Hi-NRG type track. This would prove to be his final UK Top 40 entry with his first coming back in 1984 with “Smalltown Boy” as part of Bronski Beat.

It’s time for the second live by satellite exclusive performance on the show tonight as Bon Jovi perform “This Ain’t A Love Song” live from Milan (or is it Milarn?). Lee and Herring cue it up for us by the former declaring that he hates Bon Jovi and I, for one, believe him. A simple search of ‘What music does Stewart Lee like’ on Google gives loads of results including a list of his favourite 13 albums. Some of them, I’ve never even heard of the artist let alone the album but the ones I did know include REM (despite him saying how much they’ve disappointed him and are awful), Miles Davis, Madness and The Byrds. He’s also a lifelong fan of The Fall but can no longer listen to Morrissey despite his attachment to The Smiths. I don’t see any room in there at all for Bon Jovi’s brand of rock.

As for said brand, the band were at a bit of a crossroads as to what direction to take after the mega selling “Keep The Faith” album that they’d toured and promoted for two years. That album had seen them develop a more mature sound and lay off the hair metal histrionics of “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey”. The change hadn’t affected their commercial appeal with sales of 8 million worldwide so which direction should they go in now? Some early demos were trashed by Jon Bon Jovi as not being up to scratch and the gap where a new album should have been was filled by a Best Of called “Crossroads” (oh I get that title now) and a couple of new songs. A rethink was required which led the band to a darker album entitled “These Days”. Yet again, a new sound didn’t result in a downturn in sales with the album selling even more than “Keep The Faith” worldwide. It also achieved critical acclaim being ranked No 2 by Q Magazine in their “Top 50 albums of 1995” list. Lead single “This Ain’t A Love Song” would be the first of four consecutive Top 10 singles in the UK taken from the album when it peaked at No 6. It’s an accomplished rock ballad though its verses remind me of their 1987 forgotten hit “Never Say Goodbye”. A word on this TOTP appearance. What’s so exclusive about performing to an empty venue regardless of it being in Milan/Milarn?

Ah, some more dodgy rhetoric from Lee and Herring about following Michelle Gayle around and restraining orders. It sounds awful now but again, was it deemed acceptable back then? Maybe these TOTP repeats should come with those sensitivity warnings that say ‘this programme is from *insert the year* and features themes and attitudes from the time”.

Anyway, Michelle is back with her fourth chart hit “Freedom” though I don’t recall this one either. Nothing to do with George Michael (though Robbie Williams was just a year or so away from a cover version of that particular song), it’s a pleasant if insubstantial pop ditty which Michelle sells enthusiastically even impressively high kicking her way through it at one point. Her all woman set up of two keyboard players and two backing dancers could almost have been designed to flick the V’s at the hosts and their misogyny. I was rather distracted though by the singalong ‘Okay’ bit towards the end which put me in mind of Lenny Henry’s unfortunate early ‘comedy’ character Algernon Razmatazz and his ‘Ooookaaaay’ catchphrase. My god, reviewing these TOTP repeats is a culturally sensitive minefield.

Yes! The notable exception to tonight’s underwhelming running order is here. After being an ‘exclusive’ last week, McAlmont & Butler have crashed into the charts at No 10 with…ahem…”Yes”. There was some debate online about whether Richard Herring calls his co-host a ‘wanker’ or a ‘wassock’ in the intro to this one after this repeat aired but he clearly says the latter. The man himself took to Twitter/X to confirm:

Important correction. #TOTP https://t.co/Kz80NCr52Z
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

This brilliant song has helped me through some difficult times at work in the past and remains a permanent in my life. I was meant to see Bernard Butler live in Manchester around 1998 when he was touring his fine debut solo album “People Move On” but he cancelled at the last minute. Years later though I did catch David McAlmont live in Hull when he did a show of Prince songs. An engaging storyteller, he did a fab version of “Raspberry Beret” restyled as “Guyanan Beret“ – his mother was from Guyana. Sadly I can’t find any clips of it online.

Aargh! I’d forgotten that Robson & Jerome’s No 1 was a double A-side! Not content with hacking their way through “Unchained Melody” they’ve also taken the musical equivalent of a dull spoon to “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. The song recorded by ‘Forces’ Sweetheart’ Dame Vera Lynn in 1942 and one of the songs most associated with WWII has also been covered by the likes of Connie Francis, Bing Crosby, Jim Reeves, Acker Bilk and Steeleye Span. It was also recorded by The Righteous Brothers and was a hit for them in the UK in 1966. Was that the reason why Robson & Jerome laid down a version of it? Because it dovetailed neatly with “Unchained Melody” which Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield also famously recorded? Or is that just me trying to add some synchronicity that isn’t there? It’s just that it seems an odd choice of song – or was it? Was this just more cynical positioning from Simon Cowell. Did he look at the Soldier Soldier audience and work out that an album and single by two of its characters might be most likely to be purchased by an older demographic who maybe wouldn’t normally buy anything that was in the charts and so a version of “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover” would be the perfect track to reel them in?

We end with one of the weirdest song titles of the year, no any year. “The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman” was the latest of EP by The Future Sound Of London. As a pop kid, none of their stuff ever made any sense to me. This one is no different. It sounds like the incidental music to Blakes 7 put through a high spin washing cycle. Thankfully we only get a few seconds of this as the credits kick in.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Incognito	Everyday	I did not
2	Nightcrawlers	Surrender Your Love	No
3	Montell Jordan	This Is How We Do It	Nope
4	Scatman John	Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)	Never happening
5	Jimmy Somerville	Hurts So Good	Nah
6	Bon Jovi	This Ain’t A Love Song	Negative
7	Michelle Gayle	Freedom	It’s another no
8	McAlmont & Butler	Yes	YES!
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	What do you think?!
10	The Future Sound Of London	The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman	As if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001s8tj/top-of-the-pops-25051995

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!

https://youtu.be/AwiNFgjljv4

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.

https://youtu.be/WrPb3tfmt40

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.

https://youtu.be/Hxw_Ft9Mu1o

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.

https://youtu.be/5dXGU_51-kY

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 22 NOV 1990

Posted on April 9, 2021 by 80stastic

22nd Nov 1990. A momentous date in British history. Why? Thatcher was finally going after her Cabinet refused to back her in a second round of leadership elections. I’m pretty sure I was in work with my newly acquired Xmas temp job at Our Price when the news broke. A Downing Street statement was issued at 09.30 in the morning after Thatcher had informed her Cabinet and the Queen of her decision to stand down. The timing of the news meant that the whole day would have been taken up discussing it (whilst serving some customers as well no doubt). I was just 10 years old when Thatcher came to power. I was now a married man of 22. This was huge. I have a memory that I couldn’t quite believe it when I first heard. After all, less than 24 hours earlier she had vowed to ‘fight on and fight to win’ after winning the first round of the leadership contest but not with the required majority. I should state that I wasn’t in a state of denial and couldn’t accept what had happened – I despised Thatcher and her government. It was just that it felt like her reign would never end and then suddenly, she was done. It didn’t seem real. There was a very staunch socialist working in the shop at the time who was besides himself with excitement the whole day. There was no mention of the news on that night’s TOTP although host Anthea Turner, whom I’m pretty sure she is a Tory supporter, seems to be sporting a rather sensible haircut that would prove to be an inspiration for Theresa May decades later. That apart, the BBC steered clear of any political comment. Enough of the politics though, who were the acts that were campaigning for your sales to make them the new chart leader?

We start with new chart sensations EMF who have gone Top 5 already with “Unbelievable” and were no doubt eyeing that No 1 spot. I’d certainly never heard of them before their Smash Hits Poll Winners Party slot but apparently the ‘buzz’ around the band had been building for a while. When they toured as support for Adamski, there were more EMF baseball caps and T-shirts sold than the “Killer” hit maker’s. As a result the group were banned from selling merchandise in the concert venues. With a loyal following in place and a fantastic, fresh sound, they seemed destined to have a No 1 record…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXf6_JPOWPg

…and then this bloke happened! If it’s late 1990, it must be Vanilla Ice! Rising to the attention of the UK via the same route as EMF (appearing on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party), it seems crazy to recall now but Vanilla Ice wasn’t always regarded as a complete joke. I’m fairly confident that his “Under Pressure” sampling hit “Ice Ice Baby” was seen as, if not cutting edge, then inventive? No? How about ‘clever’? Still not having it. OK, ‘resourceful’ then? Right then smart arses, what word would you use? ‘SHITE’. Yes, agreed but I’m taking about back in 1990 without any revisionism in play. Still ‘shite’. Ok, you win. Even so, it was the first ever single by a rap artist to go to No 1 in the US. That must count for something surely?

Very much seen as the white MC Hammer, the two seemed inextricably entwined for a while – Ice toured with Hammer and “Ice Ice Baby” was nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Rap Performance alongside Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” (which took the award).

Real name (unbelievably) Robert Van Winkle, Vanilla Ice took “Ice Ice Baby” straight to No 3 (a record highest entry for a new act in the UK Top 40 at the time -it was eventually usurped by Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night”) before making the short jump to No 1 a week later. We were in the grip of Vanilla Ice fever! Sensing they were onto something potentially very big record company SBK, once the single had hit the top spot in the US also, pulled “Ice Ice Baby” from sale in an attempt to force people to buy Ice’s album “To The Extreme”. It worked as it went onto go 7× Platinum in the States. Like I said, Vanilla Ice fever.

And yet…at some undetermined point, the world seemed to wake up to the fact that we’d all been duped. This guy wasn’t the real deal, he was a fraud! His success disappeared almost as soon as it had started. One further Top 10 single followed (a cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”) and then…pretty much nothing. No, not nothing, ridicule. Suddenly nobody was owning up to having bought any Vanilla Ice records. The spell was broken and music fans came to their senses. Maybe it had all been a bad dream.

As for Vanilla Ice himself, various career changes were undertaken to maintain his celebrity. An attempt at becoming a serious rapper appealing to the hip hop market fell on deaf ears. There then followed acting, motocross, becoming a Rastafarian and growing dreadlocks and then eventually, inevitably, reality TV. Oh dear. A little part of 1990 however will always remain Vanilla Ice’s. Yo, VIP, let’s kick it!

Perhaps the least remembered of their hits, so what was the deal with The Proclaimers doing a cover of Roger Miller’s “King Of The Road” then? Well it was from a film soundtrack (of course it was), the film in question being an Australian romantic drama called The Crossing – no I’ve never seen it either. Anyway, I should say for all the pedants out there that “King Of The Road” was actually an EP (remember EPs were all the rage in 1990 – The Wedding Present, Ride, Inspiral Carpets etc) with three other tracks on it including their take on a song mostly associated with Johnny Cash called “Long Black Veil”).

The performance by Charlie and Craig here strikes me as a bit odd. Why the tuxedos and bow ties? Is it some sort of ironic comment on the subject of the lyrics (a drifter of no fixed abode)? Then of course there is the Jonathan King sticker on the double bass – that hasn’t aged well. I was only mentioned King in the last post in relation to the Righteous Brothers. I had no idea I would be referring to him again so soon. At the song’s close, the sound seems to dip to almost a whisper. Is that how it was on the record or a sound fault in the studio? Oh and I don’t recall anybody seriously suggesting that “King Of The Road” might be the Xmas No 1 as Anthea informs us. Really?! As it turned out, it peaked at No 9.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtNkB4N8vzo

Right, who’s idea was this because I need to have a serious word with them? Did we really need a version of “It Takes Two” by Rod Stewart and Tina Turner in our lives? I didn’t. Look, I don’t mind the original by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston of course but this duet seemed so cynical and… well, just money for old rope. What? It was part of a Pepsi TV advert campaign you say? Well, look I’m not about to take on the might of a multinational corporation so I’ll let this one go.

Rod, of course, was no stranger to cover versions. Just the previous year, he’d had a hit with Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train” and he seems to have spent huge chunks of the latter part of his career churning out covers as part of his “Great American Songbook” series of albums. Rod maintained his Motown theme when he released a single literally called “The Motown Song” in 1991. Both that and “It Takes Two” were included on his “Vagabond Heart” album of the same year.

“It Takes Two” is one of those songs that was made for a duet and as such many, many versions of it have been recorded down the years – Donny and Marie Osmond, Cliff Richard and Cilla Black even Rod returned to it again in 2019 when he partnered with Robbie Williams (yuk!). Even worse than that though was a version by Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw! At least such a ghastly creation cold never happen again…could it?

Rod and Tina’s version of “It Takes Two” peaked at No 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HE1gmkPeZc

Ah, this is better – a genuinely affecting (if slightly disturbing) ballad in “Falling” courtesy of Julee Cruise. Sadly, Anthea can’t remember her chart placings and although she has just announced that it is at No 11 this week in her chart rundown section, she then introduces it as being at No 10. FFS! You were hosting a show literally based around the Top 40 Anthea!. These things mattered!

Julee gives a very ethereal performance befitting the song that she is singing. She refuses to look into the camera and her ‘I’m not really here’ persona gives the impression that she has been transported to another far away dimension entirely. I think it worked pretty well.

The song’s co-composer Angelo Badalamenti would achieve another Top 40 hit six years later when he teamed up with James’s Tim Booth for the Booth and the Bad Angel project which produced an album and this single called “I Believe” but really, it sounded just like something from Booth’s day job to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33bWZR4yXY

Like “It Takes Two” earlier, here’s another song that has been widely covered. Jimmy Somerville‘s take on “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was to promote his “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” which was a big seller over Xmas as I remember. That album seemed to draw a line under Jimmy’s career for a while. It would be another five years before he released his next record and indeed he has only recorded four solo albums in total since 1990.

For someone with such unique vocal talents, a lot of Jimmy’s hits seem to have been cover versions. I’m thinking “Don’t Leave Me This Way and “Never Can Say Goodbye” with The Communards and ” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and the medley of “I Feel Love / Johnny Remember Me / Love To Love You Baby” with Bronski Beat. Then there’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and this one as a solo artist. I’m not making a judgement just an observation.

“To Love Somebody” was Jimmy’s last Top 10 hit peaking at No 8.

Definitely not a cover version is double A-side “Cubik/Olympic” by 808 State. We get “Cubik” this week and back then, that menacing, heavy dance riff would have sounded exhilarating to me but listening back 31 years later, it makes me feel a sense of dread. Damn you middle age!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-NRG0yyYM0

To be fair though, even in my 30s I was a delicate flower and I did find myself nearly having a panic attack every time the staff in the Our Price I was working played “Higher State of Consciousness” by Josh Wink over the in-store sound system.

The fourth and final week at No 1 for The Righteous Brothers with “Unchained Melody”. Unlikely as it seems, there is a connection between The Righteous Brothers and Scottish stadium rockers Simple Minds. How so? Erm…simple really. The Minds 1984 single “Speed Your Love To Me” was influenced by the line in “Unchained Melody” ‘God speed your love to me’. When asked in an interview with Songfacts.com if there was a connection, Jim Kerr replied:

Yes, there must have been. We loved that song. I think it was [producer] Steve Lillywhite that said, “You know, there’s, ‘God speed your love to me’ in The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody.'” And, of course, it’s wonderful. Such a great sentiment.

As far as I can tell, Simple minds have never covered “Unchained Melody” and The Righteous Brothers have never given us their take on “Speed Your Love To Me”.

What fresh Hell is this?! Bloody jinxed it didn’t I with my comment about Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw before because here they are with the official Children In Need charity single for 1990. Their version of “It Takes Two” had been the previous year’s official single for the charity and it made it all the way to…No 53! Great effort. “Let’s Dance” was the old Chris Montez number and this time Bruno and Liz pulled out all the stops and got the record to…No 54. There have been worse performing Children In Need singles but not many. It’s hardly “Perfect Day” is it?

I always found Brookes and Kershaw’s ‘love-hate’ on air relationship tedious at best and creepy at worst.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hhUweVafM8

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	EMF	Unbelievable	Unbelievably not at the time but I did buy a later single of theirs called Afro King, the CD of which was like a mini greatest hits which had it on
2	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
3	The Proclaimers	King Of The Road	Nah
4	Rod Stewart and Tina Turner	It Takes Two	But not you two – no!
5	Julee Cruise	Falling	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
6	Jimmy Somerville	To Love Somebody	No but I had that 84-90 Best Of with it on
7	808 State	Cubik / Olympic	Nope
8	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
9	Bruno Brookes and Liz Kershaw	Let’s Dance	Charity single or not, this was simply appalling. NO!

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tpzk/top-of-the-pops-22111990

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 08 NOV 1990

Posted on April 3, 2021 by 80stastic

This schedule of reviewing two retro TOTP shows a week is killing me! Plus my Mac is now so old that it can’t cope with any software updates which means the formatting of my posts has gone to pot recently so apologies for that. Enough of my IT issues though. Just a reminder of what is going on here. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, have been reviewing these BBC4 TOTP repeats for over four years now. Having started in 1983 we are now into 1990 and with it being November, the release schedules are starting to get busy with the all important Xmas market on the horizon. As such there are six new singles on the show tonight but we start with a second studio performance for a song that surely didn’t warrant a repeat.

Despite being voted the Best Male Solo SInger in the Smash Hits Readers Poll of 1990 for the second year running (he was also voted the worst Male Solo Singer) and having a string of hit singles to his name this calendar year, all was not well in Jason Donovan world. The hits were getting smaller and the teeny bopper fans had new idols to worship in the form of New Kids On The Block (Donovan trailed in third behind two of them in the Most Fanciable Male category). His latest single “I’m Doing Fine” was doing nothing of the sort and had not even yet made it into the Top 20. A second TOTP outing was called for and so here he was opening the show in a determined effort to re-establish himself in the upper echelons of the charts.

If you compare and contrast this SAW produced ‘song’ with the glorious “Step Back In Time” that we saw on last week’s show from Kylie Minogue… well, it’s like comparing Boris Johnson with the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern; one’s a fine example of statecraft the other is…well…just a state. And talking of states, what the Hell is Jason wearing here?! It appears to be a suit over the top of a gold lamé tracksuit top and the only person I can think of who used to wear such a garment was that now unmentionable name from Radio 1’s past and the host of that show about fixing things for people (no, not Repair Shop – you know who I’m talking about!).

This TOTP performance did nothing to alleviate Jason’s chart fortunes (literally nothing as it went down from No 22 to No 29 the following week). In 1991, the classic (but desperate) record company trick of releasing a Best Of album saw his profile at least maintained and brought him a couple of Top 20 hits (one a cover version obviously) but his true resurrection came from left field when he scored a No 1 with “Any Dream WIll Do” from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Another song at its chart peak next. Paul Simon‘s “The Obvious Child” was very well received critically (as was parent album “The Rhythm Of The Saints”) but what was it actually about? Well, according to one review in Rolling Stone magazine, the lyrics referred to the process of growing old and the fact that ‘days have become defined by their limitations and dogged ordinariness’. Wow! That could just as easily be describing living through the COVID pandemic.

Apparently the song is also the namesake of a film which I never knew until now. Obvious Child is a 2014 American rom-com about a drunken one night stand which leads to the lead character (played by Jenny Slate) deciding to have an abortion. I’ve never seen it but it gets rave reviews with Slate receiving numerous awards for her performance. A bit like Paul Simon then.

“The Obvious Child” peaked at No 15 and it would be another 16 years before Simon had another UK Top 40 single.

What the f**k?! A single that includes the line ‘What the f**k?’ in its lyrics and yet seems to have gone unnoticed for three decades and never been censored nor banned?! Unbelievable! OK, I’ve overplayed the puns a bit there but it is quite extraordinary. You could say the same about the whole EMF story though. Hailing from the Forest Of Dean in Gloucestershire, this lot appeared almost fully formed with an irresistible song and stardom seemed theirs for the taking.

I think I first became aware of them when they appeared on the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party 1990 show which my research tells me took place on the 11th November (so presumably I hadn’t watched this TOTP from three days earlier). I recall saying to my wife as we watched it in our flat that we had just moved into “who the Hell are EMF?”. To be fair to me, what were they doing on a show about the chart stars of the year winning awards when they had only just released their debut single? I would find out soon enough. Their song “Unbelievable” blew me away. It was the right sound at just the right time; they were perfect for late 1990 – right on the money. Coming over like the younger, cheekier siblings of Jesus Jones, they rode the rock-dance crossover zeitgeist flawlessly and were rewarded with a huge hit. “Unbelievable” was a No 3 hit in the UK and a No 1 in the US.

Apparently the “oh” and “It’s unbelievable” samples were taken from controversial (and pretty offensive) US comedian Andrew Dice Clay which I never knew until now. I do recall though that there was a big fuss about what the initials EMF actually stood for. The official line was ‘Epsom Mad Funkers’, a name taken from a New Order fan club although rumours persisted that it referred to ‘ecstasy mother f**ker’ as that phrase featured in a hidden song simply called “EMF” on the band’s debut album “Schubert Dip”.

Despite a string of singles after “Unbelievable” that all made the Top 40, their chart peaks were in decline and after three albums they eventually split. Multiple reunions have taken place since but the band’s history also included tragedy – Zac Foley, the band’s bass guitarist, died in 2002 aged just 31 due to an overdose of non-prescribed drugs.

One of my abiding memories of EMF and “Unbelievable” comes from a long forgotten TV show called Tom Jones: The Right Time which chronicled the history of pop music and how it had been influenced and shaped. The first episode included this performance with EMF and audience members getting on stage to literally hang off Tom’s Neck.

Whilst not a super fan (although I do have their Best Of CD), I would be able to name quite a few Del Amitri songs including “Spit In The Rain” but I had no idea it had actually made it into the Top 40. As far as I can tell, this was a non-album single* released in between the “Waking Hours” and “Change Everything” LPs and actually made No 21 in the charts. In my head, everything the band released between “Nothing Ever Happens” in 1990 and “Always The Last To Know” in 1992 missed the Top 40 but clearly not. It’s fairly typical Del Amitri fare but that’s fine by me with the ‘spit in the rain’ simile a clever lyrical tool.

The band are due to release a new album later in 2021 entitled “Fatal Mistakes” which again could be a reference to the COVID 19 panademic.

*It did eventually appear on a two -disc reissue of “Waking Hours” in 2014

The Top 5 albums feature is still with us so for all the completists out there, these were the best selling albums in the UK for October 1990

Paul Simon – “Rhythm Of The Saints”
The Three Tenors – “In Concert”
Status Quo – “Rocking All Over The Years”
George Michael – “Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1”
The Charlatans – “Some Friendly”

Some pretty mainstream names in there although The Charlatans creeping in at No 5 to remind us that this was 1990 after all. ‘Madchester’ and all that.

Definitely not part of ‘Madchester’ were Liverpool’s The La’s and if EMF’s story was extraordinary, even that had nothing on this lot. The legend of Lee Mavers remains a mystery up there with Richie Edwards of the Manics. Often referred to as a scouse Brian Wilson, his refusal to dance to the music industry’s tune and reputation for studio perfection means he has become a mythical figure with just that one, solitary La’s album to show for his talent.

I think I’d first heard “There She Goes” when working in the toy department of Debenhams at Xmas in 1989 – a colleague had played it to me (it was originally released in November of 1988) and so immediately familiar did it sound that it felt impossible that it hadn’t been in existence for years and years. A timeless melody indeed. The 1990 re-release here was remixed by Steve Lillywhite and this time, resistance was futile. If The Stone Roses could be treated as the new gods of popular music then surely The La’s were also assured a place in musical heaven? For all the plaudits that their album received, I was amazed to discover that it only made No 30 on the chart. It got played to death in the Manchester Our Price I was working in at the time. Sadly, there was to never be a follow up. Bassist John Power got fed up of the inertia and left at the end of 1991 to form the super successful Cast (who Mavers has expressed his extreme dislike for) whilst The La’s went into hiatus for 14 years before a brief reunion in 2005 that resulted in some live shows but no new music.

I saw The La’s twice live; once supporting Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently told my wife that their band name was pronounced The L.A.s (as in LA, California) and once with a friend called Jane who was a fan – that gig was cut short when one of the band possibly Mavers, possibly Peter “Cammy” Cammell (the John Bishop lookalike in this performance I think) stormed off stage never to return, a bit like the hope of any new La’s material.

Just like “The Obvious Child” being name checked in a film, BBC comedy-drama TV series There She Goes was named after the song by The La’s.

To quote EMF, What the f**k?! A single by Gazza?! Yep, despite Italia ’90 having come to its sad conclusion (for England fans) four months prior, we still couldn’t get enough of Mr Gascoigne (supposedly). “Fog On The Tyne” was re-written by Lindisfarne just for the man himself and released as “Fog On The Tyne (Revisited)”. Well, if Timmy Mallett could be a pop star, why not Gazza? Surely he was more popular than that berk? Well, not quite it seemed as Gazza’s debut waxing peaked at No 2 whilst Mallett scored a No 1 as Bombalurina. Still, No 2 was pretty impressive to say that the record was a load of shite.

Was he inspired by his Spurs and England team mate Chris Waddle whose “Diamond Lights” as part of Glenn & Chris had been a hit three years before? Or was it his involvement in New Order’s “World In Motion” England song from the World Cup that made him think he could be a pop star? Well, according to an interview in Smash Hits, when asked ‘why did you decide to embark on a career as a pop star?’ Gazza replied:

“Somebody asked us if I wanted to do a record and I said I would do it”.

There you go then. Simples.

To my mind, Gascoigne’s well documented problems seem to have been exasperated by being surrounded by a lot of people trying to catch a ride on his fame. That Smash Hits article commented that the video shoot was ‘packed with Gazza’s family and Gazza’s mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates and Gazza’s mates’ mates’ second cousins’. Says it all really. Bet Jimmy Five Bellies was there.

Not content with one single, Gazza released a follow up and an album (!) called “Let’s Have A Party” (of course it was) which included four Jive Bunny style medleys – a disco one, a Motown one, an Elvis one (Gazza’s favourite) and a Gilbert O’Sullivan one (yes, a Gilbert O’Sullivan one). Even allowing for the madness of the aforementioned Jive Bunny phenomenon, surely nobody bought Gazza’s album? Surely?

A massive seller over this Xmas period was “The Singles Collection 1984/1990” by Jimmy Somerville covering his solo, Bronski Beat and The Communards career. To promote the album, Jimmy did a cover of The Bee Gees hit “To Love Somebody” which actually suited his voice I thought. Well, I suppose you could join the dots between the Jimmy’s falsetto voice and Barry Gibb’s (who wrote the song) quite easily. I like the way in which Jimmy never seemed to dress up for his TOTP appearances. Check him out here in his plain grey T-shirt and jeans. Quite the contrast to Jason Donovan’s attire at the top of the show. If you’ve got the pipes, that’s all that is really required, eh Jase?

“To Love Somebody” peaked at No 8.

The Righteous Brothers remain in pole position with “Unchained Melody” which, in 1999, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers called one of the 25 most-performed songs and musical works of the entire 20th century! It’s been covered by everyone from Elvis to Bing Crosby to LeAnn Rimes to U2…no really….see?

It’s the Righteous Brothers version that is the definitive take though surely? So pervasive is the song’s influence that Ghost (the film that generated its re-release) was originally going to be called Unchained Melody.

Inevitably, Family Guy has its own take on Ghost and “Unchained Melody”:

The play out video is the new one from 808 State. Double A-side “Cubik / Olympic” would peak at No 10. The “Olympic” track was recorded in support of Manchester’s 1996 Olympic bid. That bid would be unsuccessful with Atlanta getting the nod but Manchester would try again for the 2000 Olympics and I was was working in Our Price in Stockport the day that decision was announced. There was an event down at the Castlefield area in Manchester city centre with thousands of people congregating to hopefully celebrate the good news. The trams were packed ferrying party goers to the venue. Sadly, the Manchester faithful were disappointed again as Sydney was announced as the host city. That great city that was our home for the best part of the 90s would ultimately get its time in the sun when it hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games – two years after we left Manchester.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Jason Donovan	I’m Doing Fine	No of course not
2	Paul Simon	Obvious Child	No but it was on that first Q Magazine album that I bought.
3	EMF	Unbelievable	Unbelievably not at the time but I did buy a later single of theirs called Afro King, the CD of which was like a mini greatest hits which had it on
4	Del Amitri	Spit In The Rain	No but its on my greatest hits CD of theirs
5	The La’s	There She Goes	Not the single but I have their album
6	Gazza and Lindisfarne	Fog On The Tyne – Revisited	NO!
7	Jimmy Somerville	To Love Somebody	No but I had that 84-90 Best Of with it on
8	The Righteous Brothers	Unchained Melody	It’s a no
9	808 State	Cubik / Olympic	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th92/top-of-the-pops-08111990

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?

Page 1 - Smash Hits - Issue 311 - 31st October - 13th November 1990

TOTP 29 MAR 1990

Posted on November 24, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to Britain 1990. The furore about the hated Poll Tax is about to erupt when 393 people get arrested after violence broke out at a 200,000 strong protest in Trafalgar Square. These events happened two days after this TOTP aired and the day after that, the Strangeways Prison riot in Manchester began and would last 25 days as prisoners protested against conditions there. It’s pretty grim stuff. Meanwhile in TOTP land, the increasingly unlikeable Nicky Campbell is in the chair for this particular show and he seems to have gone to town on the hairspray to ensure his bouffant hair remains in place for the whole 30 minutes.

Guess what we open tonight with? Yep, another unremarkable dance tune. This one is by Bizz Nizz and is called “Don’t Miss The Partyline” which I barely remember at all. Turns out they were Belgian and this annoying track was their only UK hit. It’s based round an annoying keyboard riff that allied to some rudimentary rapping reeled in enough record buyers to send it all the way to No 7 for some reason. The keyboard riff is a double whammy of irritation for both sounding like an early ringtone and being mimed in this performance on a keytar! If we thought this was the pinnacle of annoying that these pillocks could create then look out as Bizz Nizz shout ‘hold my beer’ and return in a couple of years having put together that well known antidote to quality music known as 2 Unlimited. For shame!

From an infernal racket to some excruciating lyrics next as the video for Heart‘s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” gets an airing for a second consecutive week. I’ve already dissected said lyrics in a previous post so let’s have a look at the video this time. Surely it can’t be as bad as those song words? Well, it’s basically a literal retelling of the song’s plot interspersed with footage of the band miming in a studio setting with the obligatory power lighting and smoke. It was directed by Andy Morahan and Mike Southon. Here’s the latter from his own website on the making of the video :

“The record company were worried about Ann Wilson’s weight. They suggested she wore black, that I’d photograph her against black and just light her face with a spotlight. I said that that would look ridiculous and that such a powerful singer and performer did not need trickery to sell her image. In the end they relented and let Andy and I do it our way.”

As misogynistic as their stance was, it seems to me that the record company still managed to get their way in the end as the promo is very heavily edited so that singer Ann Wilson doesn’t actually get much screen time at all. She is only shown for the waist up and there seems to be much more focus on her sister Nancy. Even when she is on screen, the camera only stays on her for a couple of seconds at a time. Southon still seems pleased with how it turned out though:

“It’s a pretty classic vid of its genre. Rain, downtown LA cheap motel, smoke, beams of light, beautiful couple making love. What’s not to like?”

Hmm. Give me the much pilloried “Rio” video anytime over your effort Mr. Southon. “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” peaked at No 8 in our charts and No 2 in the US.

Back in the studio, the increasingly snidey Nicky Campbell advises us “Here’s what we’re all going to be wearing this Summer – well you maybe – dig those flares…”. You can just tell that he desperately wanted to add the word ‘plebs’ after ‘you’ and before ‘maybe’ in his intro. And who were the flares wearing act up next? Candy Flip of course with their danced up version of “Strawberry Fields Forever”.

Apart from the obvious flares that Campbell was referring to, what else was this new strand of fashion that we would all be wearing? Well, look I’ve never been any sort of fashionista but even I know something of the baggy style that the ‘Madchester’ era ushered in. Alongside the flares there were brightly coloured or tie-dye casual tops (probably bought from Joe Bloggs) and possibly a bucket hat to top the look off as per The Stone Roses drummer Reni. Is this what those Candy Flip boys are wearing here? Sort of although it’s hard to see quite how wide their flares are because of all the dry ice. They do have their own version of Bez on maracas behind them though. We’ll get to see the real thing on these repeats soon enough.

As for the actual record, it seems remarkably dull and lifeless to me listening back to it now and I can’t quite see what all the fuss was about.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” peaked at No 3. and was the band’s only UK hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w_FmC9IKkA

Ah now then. Here’s the real deal. After the faux bagginess of Candy Flip come a bona fide ‘Madchester’ band. Inspiral Carpets are back on TOTP for a second time with their hit single “This Is How It Feels” but…hang on a minute…. apart from singer Tom Hingley’s ridiculously oversized red duffle coat complete with toggles, the rest of them look pretty nondescript; not even one ‘Cool As F**k’ T-shirt on view anywhere!

Ah yes, those T-shirts. A few month on from this I relocated to Manchester and you could hardly move down Market Street for youths in Inspiral Carpets T-Shirts with the cow logo on them. In an innovative marketing campaign, their record label arranged for a quarter of a million milk bottles in the Manchester area to be emblazoned with an advertisement for their album “Life”. Despite those initial numbers, they’re pretty rare these days but you can still pick one up online for around £30 if you are so inclined. Moo!

The band revisited the milk bottle campaign
for the promotion of their 2003 Greatest Hits album

Now supposedly when the band travelled down to London on the train for this TOTP appearance, they sat opposite some girls from Manchester who were also going to the TOTP recording to be a part of the studio audience. Crushingly for the band, the girls didn’t recognise that their fellow travellers were Inspiral Carpets but did ask them what they thought of The Stone Roses though! You should have gone more heavy with the baggy togs lads!

“This Is How It Feels” peaked at No 14 making it the band’s second biggest hit ever behind 1992’s “Dragging Me Down”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJmsIRcd1iM

Next up is little Jimmy Somerville with his single “Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)”. In this performance he’s wearing an ACT UP T-shirt to promote the direct action gay rights organisation he was a member of and whose causes the song’s lyrics espouse. In a Smash Hits interview later in the year Jimmy wondered if his being so outspoken on gay rights had stopped him from becoming more commercially successful. Apparently his record company commissioned a survey to find out who liked him and why. Here’s Jimmy taking up the rest of the story:

“They found that a lot of boys between 15 and 23 like the music but won’t go and buy the records because they think people will think they’re gay. So I’m sure if I kept my mouth shut I would have higher singles. But then again, it’s also a little victory because it means these people know what I’m about. The survey said that really young school girls like what I do – they know that I’m gay and they just wish I’d shut up!”

I’m not sure that I appreciated what “Read My Lips” was about at the time although I knew Jimmy was gay and a gay rights activist. With lines like…

‘Here we are and standing our ground, and we won’t be moved by what they say‘

and…

‘Finding cures is not the only solution, and it’s not a case of sinner absolution‘

…I probably should have cottoned on earlier.

Right, it’s all dance tunes from here until the end of the show (no Breakers this week) and we start with “Ghetto Heaven” by The Family Stand. Not to be confused with JT And The Big Family who were in the charts at the same time, this lot were a trio from Brooklyn although the singer Sandra St. Victor was from Dallas originally as Nicky Campbell states in his intro. If you asked me before this repeat aired what they sounded like I wouldn’t have had a clue but hearing “Ghetto Heaven” back it does ring a few bells. Like Bizz Nizz at the top of the show, the employed a keytar player (urgh!) but unlike Bizz Nizz (whose single must have seemed dated even back in 1990), The Family Stand’s sound just about still stands up today. This single was remixed by Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and it certainly sounds like it with that familiar ‘thumpin’ bass’ and cool groove vibe.

After splitting in 1997 they reformed in 2007 and are still a going concern to this day although St.Victor has also had a parallel solo career and has toured with the likes of Freddie Jackson and Chaka Khan. She also once recorded a song called “I’ll Never Open My Legs Again”. Blimey! And I thought Heart song was risque!

Moving on to Jam Tronik now and their unspeakable version of “Another Day In Paradise”. This was just proper dog shit, real gruesome stuff. Who the hell was dancing to this in the clubs back in the day? Having said all that, back in 2013 I went on a friend from work’s stag weekend in Leeds and after a night of drinking we all ended up in a club called The Cockpit. It was a right dive. God knows what the DJ was playing but it sounded awful. To my utter amazement the next track he ‘dropped’ (that’s what you’re meant to say these days isn’t it?) was “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey! And there were people (young people I may add) dancing to it! WTF?! Apparently they were being ironic the youngest person in our group advised me. And again I say WTF?!

Back to Jam Tronic though and the singer up front is called Nikita Warren but apparently, according to Wikipedia, like so many before her, she wasn’t the actual singer on the track! Well I never! Incidentally, in later life she would go into artist management and one of her clients was Jimmy Somerville! How weird is that as they were on the same show together back in the day? Nikita was just the front for the act but the whole Jam Tronik project was put together by one Charlie Glass. No, not the goal scoring Carlisle United keeper. That was Jimmy Glass. Who you say? This is Jimmy Glass….

Literally a schoolboy error from Nicky Campbell next as we get to the new No 1 from Snap! with “The Power”. Name checking the members of the band he says the rapper is called Turbo D when it’s actually Turbo B. Come on Campbell – it’s as easy as ABC! The other person that he mentions – Jackie Harris – wasn’t the person who did the actual singing, she just appeared in the video. That was ex Chaka Khan backing singer (another one!) Penny Ford whose musical pedigree is pretty impressive – her father produced James Brown, her brother founded Kool & the Gang, and her sister was the singer Sharon Redd. So who was Jackie Harris then? A random woman the record’s producers found at the German army base where Turbo B had been stationed for his national service in the US army. Hmm. As a back story it’s not really up there with my father produced James Brown is it?!

The Big Brother / 1984 imagery at the start of the video helps to crank up the intensity of the track I think. And if you were in any doubt of…erm… the power of “The Power” check out this anecdote that I found on the Songfacts website:

On July 5, 2011, the top 19 stories of the 39-story building housing the Gangbyeon branch of the Techno Mart shopping mall in Seoul shook violently for 10 minutes, causing the building to be evacuated for two days. Instead of an earthquake, it was found that an exercise class on the 12th floor was playing “The Power,” which happened to match the building’s resonant frequency and caused it to violently shake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BNcSBApOU

The play put video is “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children” by Queen Latifah and Del La Soul. In addition to his Turbo B error, Campbell also mispronounced Queen Latifah’s name as Queen La-fit-ah in the chart run down earlier. Didn’t Gary Davies make a similar mispronunciation the other week as well? How many times have I said this? “You had one job…”

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhjrSP9tCoU

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Bizz Nizz	Don’t Miss The Party Line	Miss it? I gave it a massive wide berth!
2	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
3	Candy Flip	Strawberry Fields Forever	Nope
4	Inspiral Carpets	This Is How It Feels	No but I’ve got their Greatest Hits I think
5	Jimmy Somerville	Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)	No
6	The Family Stand	Ghetto Heaven	Nah
7	Jam Tronik	Another Day In Paradise	NOOOOOOO!!!
8	Snap!	The Power	Not for me thanks
9	Queen Latifah and De La Soul	Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children	It’s another no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pjdn/top-of-the-pops-29031990

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?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 22 MAR 1990

Posted on November 19, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s two thirds of the way through March in 1990. The 21 year old me is still unemployed and has been since the start of the year. My girlfriend is miles away in Hull while I languish in poverty and hopelessness back in my parents’ house in Worcester. The only highlight of this particular week was my beloved Chelsea winning an actual trophy on the Sunday after this TOTP was broadcast. Back then, Chelsea were not the trophy winning machine they are now so any cup win was a big deal. The Zenith Data Systems trophy may seem like a joke to johnny come lately fans now but winning a final at Wembley was a huge deal for us diehards back then. Unfortunately, this was 1990 and very few games were being shown live on terrestrial TV so I couldn’t witness it live but my brother’s mate who has a Sky dish taped it for me and I watched the whole thing back on a VHS the following day. Apparently Moore’s Leisure Centre in Stockton was the place to go though. There was even a fellow Chelsea fan in there…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8f7G26wO4o

Enough football though. This is a music blog so play on sir and after last week’s ‘TOTP in decent tunes shocker’ episode, the question now is will that continue into this week’s show?

It’s a poor start. In fact, it’s a shocking start as the opening act are those three berks collectively known as Big Fun though why anybody would derive any fun (big or otherwise) from this turd fest, I have no idea. They’re in the studio after last week’s Breakers slot to perform their hit single “Handful Of Promises” and guess what? Absolutely everything about this is dreadful. The song, the bag of a fag packet dances moves …everything. Smash Hits ran a competition to win a copy of this single and I think the question they posed says it all about Big Fun:

Which of the following is an anagram of one of the Big Fun hunks’ name?

Is it :

BIG WOBBLY NETHER REGIONS
CHEST LIP WRICK
DIPSTICK OF THREE

Heh. “Handful Of Promises” peaked at No 21.

I sometimes wonder if Erasure get the credit they deserve. Their longevity alone should be recognised (2020 is the duo’s 35th year together) whilst their creativity and productivity has been prolific. Their stats alone are amazing:

35 x Top 40 singles
16 x Top 10 singles (including 1 x No 1)
18 x studio albums
4 x No 1 studio albums
1 x No 1 Greatest Hits album
1 x Ivor Novello award for Most Performed Work
1 x BRIT award for Best British Group
1 x Mercury Music prize nomination

Despite all of the above, I wonder if they are unfairly seen now as a retro act permanently tied to the 80s and early 90s of their imperial phase. I would also put Duran Duran in that category and yet a peer like U2, who although undoubtedly having their critics and detractors, are seen as somehow more ‘credible’? Is it just a rock v (electro) pop prejudice?

Anyway, that Ivor Novello award mentioned above was actually for this single “Blue Savannah” which had a limited edition 30th anniversary re-release this year as part of Record Store Day.

One of those pesky electronic dance acts next that caused the TOTP producers so many problems with what to do with them on the show. When dance music exploded at the end of the 80s, permeated the mainstream and produced bona fide chart hits, TOTP was left with the problem of how to put them on the show. The hypnotic beats as pop songs and faceless DJs as pop stars format was TV kryptonite for a popular music TV show and so it came to pass that Orbital (brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll) served up one of the most lacklustre performances in the show’s history when they were on to promote their dance anthem “Chime”. The brothers give a wonderful interview in the TOTP – The Story of 1990 film about said performance. They pushed just about every TOTP producer button when they :

Refused to mime
Left plugs on their keyboards to show they weren’t playing live
Refused a dancer on stage with them and so when one was forced upon them, refused to acknowledge she was even there
Wore T-shirts with political slogans on them (‘No Poll Tax’) when they had been explicitly told such behaviour was outlawed

Excellent work all round lads!

I always get Orbital confused with The Orb (not being a dance head and all) which to an 80s pop fan must be the same as a clubber confusing Howard Jones with Nik Kershaw! Blasphemy!

“Chime” reached a high of No 12 and the duo would return with even bigger hits later in the decade with “Satan” and the theme tune to the The Saint film reboot.

Fed up of dance tunes yet? No? Good because here’s another from 49ers who are back in the charts with their second of two Top 20 hits in “Don’t You Love Me”. Please note that these Italo Housers from Brescia are just 49ers and not The 49ers (think Eurythmics and not The Eurythmics). This is important as there is another musical act called The 49ers who are a hip-hop duo from Newark, Delaware who consist of members Jas Mace and Marchitect (I’m not making this up).

Yeah…you got me. I’ve got nothing else to say about 49ers so I’m just filling time….

…until the Breakers! Thank God! We start with another tune that I don’t remember at all and it’s a collaboration between Queen Latifah and De La Soul with “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children”. Queen Latifah is one of those artists who seem to have been around forever but I’d be hard pressed to name any of her songs as demonstrated by me not knowing this one. I’d probably know her filmography better than her discography to be honest. She’s great as Motormouth Maybelle in the 2007 version of Hairspray for example.

Having listened to “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children” though, it’s definitely a tune and De La Soul provide that extra special ingredient to make it a potent dish. An embarrassing spoonerism from Gary Davies when he introduces the Queen as Queen La-feet-ah doesn’t take anything away from the track.

Now despite all this dance music bouncing around the charts back in 1990, somehow there was also room for some soft metal from a band that we hadn’t seen for a couple of years. Heart had staged a delayed assault on the UK charts back in 87-88 when they broke big with Top 3 hit “Alone” before belatedly finding an audience over here for their back catalogue which also made the charts when re-released off the back of that breakthrough hit. Fast forward to 1990 and here are the Wilson sisters again back with a new song in “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” which turns out to have some of the most excruciatingly cringey lyrics ever committed to vinyl.

It’s basically one of those story songs but it’s completely ill advised. For a start there’s the plot about a woman who picks up a male hitch-hiker with the sole intent of taking him to a motel to have sex in an attempt to get pregnant. She then departs the next day leaving a note for the guy saying not to try and contact her. Inevitably they then run into each other years later with his child and she admits to him that she only did it because the man she is in love with is not able to father children. Look, I’m not making any judgements about the protagonist’s behaviour at all but is that really the best subject matter for a song? The band themselves hated it – they didn’t write it, rather it was penned by producer ‘Mutt’ Lange and they felt pressurised to record it. Here’s singer Ann Wilson from a 2017 ultimateclassicrock.com interview:

“I didn’t believe in the way the original lyrics were devaluing the man in the story. Just going, ‘Yeah, I can pick you up. We can have a night of love. We can never even know each other’s names. You can be so miraculous, and then I can just get up and leave you a note and walk out on you. Have a baby and sort of gloat about your surprise when you see the kid.’ To me, that was kind of an empty, weird, sort of hateful story.”

The song was actually banned in Ireland because the main character was a woman advocating random sex with a hitchhiker and the band didn’t play it live for years.

Then of course there are those lyrics. Here are a few of Lange’s (ahem) ‘beautiful’ words:

So we found this hotel
It was a place I knew well
We made magic that night
Oh, he did everything right

He brought the woman out of me
So many times, easily
And in the morning, when he woke
All I left him was a note

Eewww! And pray, what did the note say?

I told him I am the flower
You are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree

I mean really. It reminds me of another salacious story song – “Platinum Blonde” by Prelude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcHUvZIVv6A

Enough muck! Something a little more edifying please? Oh come on! What fresh hell is this? A dance version of a Phil Collins song? Talk about a double whammy of crapness! As far as I can tell, Jam Tronik were a German dance project who specialised in making naff dance versions of well known songs. There only UK hit single (peaking at No 19) was “Another Day In Paradise” – like the world really needed such a thing! Some of the other artists whose work they bastardised included The Carpenters, Meatloaf and Ben E. King.

As hateful as this is, it’s not the worst Phil Collins incident I have been witness to this week. I was watching some TV quiz show about music presented by that bloke from JLS and his partner the other day and they had AJ Pritchard on it – you know, that Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer whose now on I’m A Celebrity...Well, played the intro to “Mad World” by Tears For Fears, he had to identify who the artist was. His answer? “Is it Phil Collins?”. I despair.

Back in the studio now and it’s one of the biggest songs of the year (the 10th best selling in fact). Snap! were a German Eurodance group formed in 1989 by producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and “The Power” would become the first of two UK No 1 singles for them. As with Black Box before them (and Milli Vanilli almost simultaneously), there was a ‘who’s the real singer?’ scandal attached to Snap! I think the female vocalist up there on stage with rapper Turbo B is one Jackie Harris who didn’t actually lay down the vocals for the track. That was Chaka Khan backing singer Penny Ford. With the Milli Vanilli lip sync scandal about to break and with Snap! being on the same record label as those two charlatans, a second miming furore was not what was required and so Penny was found pretty quickly and officially restored to the Snap! line up.

As for the song itself, it wasn’t my cup of tea at all but you certainly couldn’t ignore the blistering force of it. It fair smacked you about the face the first time you heard it. It will be No 1 soon enough.

This again?! This is the third time the video for “Lily Was Here” by Candy Dulfer and David A. Stewart has been on the show and I’m out of things to say about it now. Erm…oh yeah! I’ve got Dave Stewart’s autobiography. I wonder what he had to say about this record?

*much flicking of pages and skip reading later*

Well, he said….precisely nothing about it. I couldn’t find one mention of “Lily Was Here” or Candy Dulfer. Bit rude. I mean, I know he’s worked with just about everyone in both the music and movie worlds so it might have been hard to fit every collaboration into one tome but even so. I wouldn’t expect a Christmas card from Dave anytime soon Candy. He’s well moved on…

“Lily Was Here” peaked at No 6.

In amongst this seemingly endless ocean of generic (and frankly mostly dreadful) dance tunes, there comes the odd life raft of relief….and ‘odd’ is certainly the word for this next act. Quite how US alternative art rockers They Might Be Giants came to score a UK Top 10 hit at this time is almost as big a mystery as the lyrics to “Birdhouse In Your Soul”. This curious and beguiling piece of pop still intrigues me 30 years on. Everything about it from its peculiar song structure to its oblique lyrics screams ‘this is not a hit record’ and yet it somehow works. Ah yes, those lyrics. Making references as disparate as Jason and the Argonauts and The Longines Symphonette whilst including phrases like ‘filibuster vigilantly’ which really should have no place in a pop song, the piece is supposedly written from the perspective of a a blue nightlight shaped like a canary. As you do.

The performance here is delightfully bonkers with front man John Linnell throwing some very David Byrne-esque shapes. I also liked the follow up to this which was called “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” but it failed to make the Top 40 but they returned there again one final time in 2001 with “Boss Of Me” which was the theme tune to the US TV sit com Malcolm In The Middle.

“Birdhouse In Your Soul” flew all the way up to No 6 in the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FRiKeu70Go

A fourth and final week at No 1 then for Beats International with “Dub Be Good To Me”. I’m guessing that they might be on TOTP at least once more as their follow up single “Won’t Talk About It” hit the Top 10 but they never appeared in the Top 40 again after that. Why did they break up? Who knows? Maybe Norman Cook was disillusioned with the project after the commercial failure of the ska/reggae influenced second album “Excursion On The Version”? Maybe he wanted to pursue a different musical direction as he did with the acid jazz inspired Freak Power? Or maybe he just wanted to widen his palette of production skills by working with lots of other artists? Whatever the reason, thank God they made “Dub Be Good To Me” with its stretch at the top of the charts that thereby deprived Jive Bunny of a fourth consecutive No 1 single.

The play out track is “Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)” by Jimmy Somerville. This was the title track of his debut solo album and came on the back of two other hit singles taken from it in “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Comment Te Dire Adieu”. Unlike the previous two, this was a Somerville original and he wrote it to promote gay rights. Indeed, there was a definite association between the song and the ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) movement and that organisation’s ‘Read My Lips’ kiss-in events to demonstrate positive expressions of queer sexuality.

Aside from its political overtones though, it’s a bloody good disco record to boot. I like the way that Jimmy wove in the phrase ‘enough is enough’ into the song – I’m guessing it was a small homage to “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” the 1979 disco stomper by Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand.

“Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)” peaked at No 26.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppdfoTcdLw

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Big Fun	Handful Of Promises	…and a pocketful of shite, NO!
2	Erasure	Blue Savannah	No but It must be on their Greatest Hits collection that I own.
3	Orbital	Chime	Nah
4	49ers	Don’t You Love Me	No I don’t
5	Queen Latifah and De La Soul	Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children	Nope
6	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
7	Jam Tronik	Another Day In Paradise	NOOOOOOO!!!
8	Snap!	The Power	Not for me thanks
9	David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer	Lily Was Here	Another no
10	They Might Be Giants	Birdhouse In Your Soul	Not the single but it’s on a Q – The Album compilation LP that I bought
11	Beats International	Dub Be Good To Me	No but my wife had their album
12	Jimmy Somerville	Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000p9v4/top-of-the-pops-22031990

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?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 11 JAN 1990

Posted on October 16, 2020 by 80stastic

OK, so last week’s damp squib of a show was a bit of a false start to the new decade with loads of songs on we’d already seen and 1989’s Christmas No 1 still at the top of the tree. Let’s see if this week is any better and I can confirm already that there is a new No 1 but don’t get your hopes up….

This week’s presenter is Simon Mayo who appears to have gone for a “Faith” period George Michael look complete with leather jacket and shades. He does apologise for the wearing of sunglasses indoors at least – the ever unfunny Mike Read never saw the need to – stating that he looks like he’s gone five rounds with Mike Tyson without them and that he might show us later but there is no explanation as to what he had actually been up to….

…anyway, on with the tunes and …well this is odd. The opening act is also the same act that closed last week’s show. Has that ever happened before? The plot thickens as the act in question is FPI Project with their version of “Going Back To My Roots” and last week they performed without vocalist Sharon D Clarke for some reason but fast forward seven days and here she is miraculously. There must be a story behind this happening but I really can’t be arsed to look into it further.

This performance makes much more sense with Sharon taking centre stage as opposed to the two dancers who stood in for her last week. Unfortunately, the studio audience chant of “Woo! Yeah!” is still audible though. This was by no means the highlight of Sharon’s career by the way. Oh no. It turns out that she has had a very full and varied acting career on both TV and stage appearing in the likes of Dr Who, Holby City and Eastenders whilst also starring in the role of Killer Queen in the Queen jukebox musical We Will Rock You. However, the most pertinent thing she did in terms of this blog (which is about 90s music after all) was to be the vocalist for the huge 1991 dance floor hit “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion” by Nomad.

Back to Simon Mayo who regales us of a story from his youth about him and his 12″! Calm down, he was referring to the 12″ single of disco classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester which he claims he queued up to buy in 1978. Hang on how old was he in 1978?

*checks Wikipedia entry*

Wow! he was 20! He must have been older than he looked in 1989 as he was 31 when this show was broadcast. Fair play although I didn’t like him making a point that it was the 12″ that he bought thereby suggesting that this gave him some extra cool points. I suppose it may have been for DJ-ing purposes but even so.

The reason for all this preamble is that the song is back in the charts courtesy of Jimmy Somerville‘s cover of it. Having just had a hit with his debut solo single “Comment Te Dire Adieu” (albeit assisted by June Miles-Kingston), Jimmy wasn’t hanging around and catapulted himself back into the Top 40 at the first available opportunity with a well chosen cover. Jimmy’s unique, soaring falsetto voice was perfect for this disco stomper and it was no surprise to me that it became his biggest solo hit peaking at No 5. It was also of course a huge club hit not that I was out dancing to it as I was unemployed and skint at the time with no money for cutting some rug down at the local nightspots in my hometown of Worcester where I was now re-ensconced.

It was included on his debut solo album “Read My Lips” which furnished another (smaller) hit in the title track. By the end of 1990, Jimmy had a massive selling album with his first greatest hits to include all his work with Bronski Beat, The Communards and solo called “The Singles Collection 1984/1990”. We sold buckets of that in my first Xmas at Our Price.

Back to Mayo who has adopted a peculiar one sleeve rolled up / one sleeve rolled down look with his leather jacket. Why Simon? Why? Anyway, the act he is introducing in this weird sartorial style are D-Mob with their fourth consecutive Top 20 single. Fourth! D-Mob had four hit singles?! Yes, yes they did. D-eal with it. The last time we saw Danny D was with Cathy Dennis who was on vocals for “C’mon and Get My Love” but this time he’s teamed up with someone called Nuff Juice for the track “Put Your Hands Together”. I’m assuming Mr Nuff and Mr Juice were the two guys up front (pretty sure that Danny D is on keytar) and I know nothing else about them. However, the guy doing all the rapping sounds like Gary Byrd the US radio DJ who had a Top 10 hit in the UK in 1983 with “The Crown” to me. It’s not him though is it?

To my ears, “Put Your Hands Together” sounded like the previous two singles (granted “We Call It Acieed” was a horse of a different colour completely) and therefore had very little interest for me. It would prove to be their last Top 20 hit although they did return to the Top 40 four years later with another Cathy Dennis fronted tune in “Why”.

Yet another dance tune next from the mysterious Mantronix with “Got To Have Your Love”. Now, I knew the name of these electro-funk hip-hopsters back then but as for what they sounded like….I’d have a better shot of explaining the latest government lockdown restrictions. Having listened back to this though it sounded very familiar. Well it was a No 4 hit so maybe it had lodged itself into my brain via general airplay back in the day and remained dormant and unaccessed for decades. And then I saw this tweet and realised the awful truth…

"Got To Have Your Love" was a hit again in 2002, when a cover by Liberty X peaked at no 2. https://t.co/eUD8XYwrvu #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 9, 2020

…yes I knew this song because of Popstars rejects Liberty X! To be fair to them, their No 1 single “Just A little” was a very decent R&B/pop crossover track whilst previous band member Kevin Simm bagged himself the gig as Wet Wet Wet’s lead singer after Marti Pellow absconded but still.

The Mantronix version of “Got To Have Your Love” peaked at No 4.

What…on…earth? Fish dressed in some sort of Uncle Sam outfit?! There are so many questions here but I’m not sure I actually sure that I want the answers. OK, first off, Fish had solo hits? Well he did, three of them in fact with “Big Wedge” being the second and biggest of them peaking at No 25. I swear I’ve never been aware of this song in my life before. Taken from the album “Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors” (no, not a pretentious title but a science fiction metaphor for disinformation apparently), “Big Wedge” is a shot across the bows of American capitalism and materialism hence Fish’s outfit which mirrors the image on the cover of the single.

As for the song’s sound, Fish seems to have cultivated a very 80s AOR sound here with its added brass bits courtesy of UK horn section The Kick Horns. Close your eyes (and who wouldn’t to avoid the sight of Fish here) and it could almost be Mike and the Mechanics up there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knxsqROLG5g

FIsh has also had an occasional sideline career as an actor appearing in shows such as The Bill, Rebus and Taggart but my favourite Fish role is as Derek Trout (see what they did there?) in The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rock Star. Fast forward to the 4 minute mark in the clip below for his portrayal of an off his rocker record producer…

Some indie goth rock to counteract all those dance tunes now from perennial doomsters The Mission with “Butterfly On A Wheel”. The Times editorial reference that Simon Mayo makes in his introduction was actually a comment made by one William Rees-Mogg (father of haunted pencil Jacob) in 1967 in reaction to the severity of sentences given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drug offences. That little footnote in the history of rock is far more interesting than the actual music on display here. For me, “Butterfly On A Wheel” is a drawn out, dullard of a song and about as interesting as listening to the aforementioned Jacob Rees- Mogg carping on endlessly about Brexit. However, the band’s fan base was big enough to send it all the way to No 12.

Deacon Blue are up next with “Queen of the New Year”. The fifth and final single from their “When The World Knows Your Name” album, this track was always going to be released strategically to coincide with the start of the new year (and indeed decade) but it’s a decent romp of a tune all the same. It fair rattles along before culminating in a break neck speed climax. Not sure about Ricky Ross’s Frank Spencer-ish headgear here though. Maybe he was having a bad hair day, quite possible judging by the tufts of a mullet visible at the back of his head. By contrast, Ricky’s wife and co vocalist Lorraine McIntosh looks amazing in her hat. Absolutely beautiful. Erm…moving on…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAzYfpGvt_E

…to the new No 1 “Hangin’ Tough” by New Kids On The Block – well I did tell you not to get your hopes up! The NKOTB phenomenon always seemed a strange happening to me. Quite why did it happen in the UK? I guess I can understand them being massive in the US being American and all but over here? Was there a gap in the teen market with the decline of Bros and Brother Beyond? Maybe. They weren’t even that good looking were they?

Thankfully the whole thing was very short lived and had pretty much blown itself out come the end of the year. By the time that grunge became a thing in 1991, the world had turned their back on the New Kids and they split within a couple of years before reforming in 2008. What is their legacy if indeed they have one? Paving the way for the likes of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC to make in roads into our charts come the mid point of the decade? The Wahlberg acting dynasty? I’m clutching at straws now.

At the show’s end, Simon Mayo finally removes his shades and reveals….a pair of closed eyes. Talk about an anti climax! No black eyes, no bruising…a case of someone trying to whip up some shameful self promotion about nothing I think.

The play out song is “Could Have Told You So” by Halo James. Hands up if you remember Halo James…

*blogger raises his hand*

…yeah I do actually. As I recall they had long been tipped to be the next big thing pop wise but they actually turned out to be a one hit wonder. I say ‘they’ as Halo James were a band and not a solo artist despite the attention that the lead singer Christian James received. Despite debut single “Wanted” having failed to make the charts, “Could Have Told You So” turned out to be prophetic when it came to predicting that it would be a hit as it soared to No 6 in the UK charts. I’m pretty sure that the band secured a front cover of Record Mirror magazine at the time with the publication simply repeating the single’s title as their headline so obvious did their success seem.

To me they seemed no better than the likes of Breathe in their sophisti- pop ambitions even though that particular genre had crashed and burned long before. “Could Have Told You So” was paint by numbers chart guaranteed. A movie star looking front man, catchy hook and slick production were ingredients that the UK record buying public felt powerless to resist. I mean, they had a pleasant enough sound but it was totally and utterly insubstantial. Such a brew couldn’t sustain and it didn’t and Halo James were over almost before they had begun, another in the long list of pop casualties.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiZd7iieNgM

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The FPI Project	Going Back To My Roots	Nope
2	Jimmy Somerville	You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)	No but I had that Singles Collection 1984/1990 Best Of album with it on
3	D-Mob featuring Nuff Juice	Put Your Hands Together	No
4	Mantronix	Got To Have Your Love	Definitely not
5	Fish	Big Wedge	I’d rather have a wedgie inflicted upon me
6	The Mission	Butterfly On A Wheel	Nah
7	Deacon Blue	Queen Of The New Year	Not the single but I had their album it was taken from
8	New Kids On The Block	Hangin’ Tough	No but I think my younger sister may have been into them and bought it
9	Halo James	Could Have Told You So	Could have told you No more like

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nfp1/top-of-the-pops-11011990

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.

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