Joe

TOTP 27 JAN 1994

Posted on by 80stastic

We’ve reached another milestone here at TOTP Rewind. It’s not the fact that following host Tony Dortie’s departure from the show last time, this week it’s the turn of Mark Franklin to bow out after fifty nine appearances. No, it’s much more seismic than that. This is my 200th post for TOTP Rewind the 90s! In fact, by my calculations, in a few weeks I’ll be clocking up my 500th if you add the posts on the 80s blog to that figure! A huge thank you to anyone who has ever taken the trouble to read any of them.

Back to Mark Franklin and his final show though and as ever, he was presiding over a right mixed bag of artists and tunes starting with some rock. “What a rocky way to start the show” trills Franklin (just in case the watching millions were unfamiliar with the concept of rock music) as he introduces Therapy? performing their latest single “Nowhere”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this lot seemed to pass me by somewhat. It’s not that they didn’t make a good sound it’s just I didn’t really hear much of their stuff either on the radio or on the stereo system of the record shops I was working in. I might not know much of their music but I have to admire their work rate. 15 studio albums in 27 years is prolific. Add 31 singles and 5 EPs to that and you have a huge back catalogue.

“Nowhere” was the lead single from the fourth of those albums and the second on major label A&M and would see them at the peak of their commercial powers with it hitting the UK Top 5. Listening to “Nowhere” today, it’s not bad though it does rely heavily on a repeated riff. The CD single of “Nowhere” included some cover versions including “C. C. Rider” (as made famous by Elvis Presley), “Breaking The Law” (Judas Priest) and this classic from The Stranglers…

Guitarist and vocalist Andy Cairns is a big fan of my beloved Chelsea and the way our season is currently going, we could both do with some therapy.

The Top 40 countdown for Mark Franklin’s final show is soundtracked by Depeche Mode and their single “In Your Room”. In my head, there’s a very clear dividing line in the band’s career and that occurs in 1986 and the release of the “Black Celebration” album. Their back catalogue in their first five years is full of gloriously catchy synth pop tunes that culminated in the release of their first Best Of album in October 1985 (which I had). Their material from then on always seemed to me much darker and the pop kid in me sometimes struggled with it. With the passing of time though can come a new perspective and I have to say that the run of eight singles released from their first two albums of the 90s is remarkable in the consistency of their quality. Look at this list:

  • Personal Jesus
  • Enjoy The Silence
  • Policy Of Truth
  • World In My Eyes
  • I Feel You
  • Walking In My Shoes
  • Condemnation
  • In Your Room

Wow! Some of them (like “In Your Room”) hadn’t registered with me at the time but discovering them through these old TOTP repeats has been a welcome side effect to accompany all the nostalgia. Depeche Mode have a new album out in March and have vowed to continue despite the tragic passing of Andy Fletcher last year.

It’s that Joe fella up next with his debut single “I’m In Luv”. The performance here, or more specifically, the puffa jackets on display prompted many a ‘won’t feel the benefit’ comment on Twitter. Joe’s rapper mate does a passable impression of Shabba Ranks with his shout outs which is not to be encouraged in my book. Joe has maintained quite the career in the music business releasing 13 studio albums and 30 singles so far. He is also a record producer having remixed for the likes of Barry White and Tina Turner and has been a guest vocalist with names such as Brandy and Mariah Carey. Not your ‘average Joe’ then.

It’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when Celine Dion wasn’t seen (in this country at least) as the multi-platinum selling ‘Queen of the Power Ballads’ and was just the singer who had a hit with the bizarrely named Peabo Bryson with that song from Beauty And The Beast. Or even the woman who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland in 1988. The turning point was obviously her having a big hit and what do you do when you need a career firing hit? You record a cover version. Of course you do. You’ve got to get the song choice right though. It needs to be something that’s well known but which isn’t so definitive that you’d be mad to take it on. Did Celine get it right with “The Power Of Love” by Jennifer Rush? Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ from the point of view that it did give her a first major UK hit when it powered its way to No 4 but also ‘No’ as I would suggest that despite that, the song is still associated most strongly with Jennifer Rush. The original was the UK’s biggest selling single of 1985, the ninth biggest selling of the decade and made Rush the first female artist to have a million selling single over here. Maybe I’m being unfair on Celine. After all, if it’s just about sales then she could point to the fact that her version topped the charts in the US, Canada and Australia, was the eighth biggest selling single of 1994 in America and shifted a total of 900,000 units. And yet…surely “The Power Of Love” isn’t the song that springs to kind first when you mention Celine’s name. That must be that ghastly ballad from Titanic mustn’t it? I can’t believe I’m tying myself up in knots over a debate about Celine Dion and Jennifer Rush! Suffice to say, off the back of her cover, the former went on to have a huge career including a No 1 a few months after this with “Think Twice”.

This is starting to look like a very strange show for Mark Franklin to bow out on. There seems little cohesion to the running order as it jumps around wildly from genre to genre. Hard rock, R&B, power ballads and now country music in the form of Garth Brooks. No doubt the outgoing TOTP producer Stanley Appel would point to the show’s diverse make up. Anyway, back to Garth and he’s put together a performance of his single “The Red Strokes” for us from Nashville and you can’t get more country than that! He’s even recorded a little intro for it which is giving me strong Ed Winchester from The Fast Show vibes…

Garth has also forgotten to wear his Stetson hat for the performance (amateur!) but that’s nothing to the change of image he affected five years later for his “Garth Brooks in…the Life of Chris Gaines” project. This was an ill advised attempt to push the country/ rock music boundaries even further than Brooks already had when he assumed the persona of a fictitious rock star (the titular Gaines). Intended for a film that was never made, Garth released an album of rock songs as Gaines anyway and even promoted it in character.

The album actually sold well but the whole concept has since been derided retrospectively. Brooks probably deserves some credit for having the cojones to try something different though. After all, Bowie’s various incarnations are lauded to the high heavens; the less said about Bono’s The Fly/Mirrorball Man/MacPhisto alter egos the better though.

https://youtu.be/6qXEEeYycCs

Just the two Breakers this week starting with…“Hyperactive!” by Thomas Dolby? A song that had already been a No 17 hit exactly ten years previous? Why? It was the old Greatest Hits trick in action again. Although Dolby had actually achieved his first UK Top 40 hits since “Hyperactive!” just two years before in “Close But No Cigar” (No 22) and “I Love You Goodbye” (No 36), the parent album “Astronauts & Heretics” had disappointed commercially. Presumably that’s why his record company EMI thought it was time to raid his back catalogue to try and increase their Dolby revenue streams.

“Retrospectacle – The Best Of Thomas Dolby” was released in the February of 1994 with “Hyperactive!” given a re-release to spearhead the promotion campaign. The CD singles included some remixes of early Dolby classics like “Dissidents” and “Windpower” which no doubt piqued the completist tendencies of his fanbase and may explain “Hyperactive!” making No 23 a second time around. I’ll have reviewed this track when it was a hit initially in my TOTP 80s blog so I’m not going to go through it again. However, I will admit to once giving a rendition of it (with my colleague Mel) to a dumbfounded office of co-workers including the “Tell me about your childhood” opening line.

The second Breaker sees the return of Enigma. The new-age hitmakers who took Gregorian chanting to the top of the charts in 1991 were back but this time they’d replaced monks with some tribal chanting. “Return To Innocence” was the lead single from second album “The Cross Of Changes” which, though not as successful as their debut “MCMXC a.D.”, would still sell 600,090 copies in the UK alone and go to No 1 in our charts.

The track sampled a recording of an Amis chant called “Elders’ Drinking Song” performed by Taiwan husband and wife folk duo Difang and Igay Duana who would end up suing Enigma founder Michael Cretu for unauthorised use of their music. Cretu settled out of court stating that he thought the recording was in the public domain. It also has a more traditional song structure than their most famous hit “Sadeness (Part I)” with vocals added by German pop star Sandra. Listening back to it now, if you take the chanting out, it kind of sounds like a Savage Garden song. That comment, of course, just goes to confirm that the song was all about the chanting.

All of the singles taken from “The Cross Of Changes” had rather pretentious sounding titles suggesting that they somehow might slip you the answer to everything once heard…

  • Return To Innocence
  • The Eyes Of Truth
  • Age of Loneliness
  • Out From The Deep

Pseuds! Anyway, the Benjamin Button style video (directed by Julian Temple) of the old fella in the orchard passing away and seeing his life flash before him in reverse is quite affecting and definitely added something to the track helping it to a UK chart high of No 3.

Oh and one last thing, remember last week when Tony Dortie made one final gaff on his last ever show by referring to D:Ream’s lead singer as Peter Cornelius rather than his actual name of Peter Cunnah? Well, it turns out that one of the guys behind Enigma was called…yep…Peter Cornelius! Right name, wrong show Tony!

The UK record buying public had an almost dysfunctional relationship with Richard Marx through the 80s and 90s. His debut album was a gigantic success in America but was almost completely ignored over here. Two US No 1 singles failed to even make the Top 40 but then the country suddenly buckled and sent rather wimpy ballad “Right Here Waiting” to No 2. We then immediately reverted to ignoring him for the rest of the decade. Come 1992 though, we decided we quite liked the creepy, story-telling single “Hazard” and it made the Top 3. Marx then settled down into a pattern of middling hits for the next two years before finally being beaten into submission by the UK’s collective refusal to look his way. Given that admittedly glib description of his chart fortunes and that we are in 1994 here at TOTP Rewind, it’s no surprise that we encounter him here with one of those final, medium sized hits in “Now And Forever”. The lead single from his “Paid Vacation” album, it would peak at No 13. It’s a gentle, almost acoustic (except for the sizeable string section behind him in this performance) ballad that was written about his relationship with then wife Cynthia Rhodes.

Marx is of the opinion that the hardest part of songwriting for him is coming up with lyrics that aren’t clichéd. He hasn’t got a problem with hackneyed song titles though. He says this of “Now And Forever”:

“I don’t mind a generic title, as long as the lyrics within it are unique…There are probably 600-700 songs in the world called ‘Now and Forever,’ but there’s not one line of lyric in that song that’s like anything else.”

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/richard-marx/now-and-forever

Hmm. Without wanting to get all Ed Byrne dissecting Alanis Morissette about it, let’s have a look at some of the lyrics then. Here’s the first verse and chorus:

Whenever I’m weary
From the battles that rage in my head
You make sense of madness
When my sanity hangs by a thread
I lose my way but still you seem to understand
Now and forever
I will be your man

Writer/s: Richard Marx 
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Hmm. Well, for a start, every line rhymes with the next one, a pretty conventional song writing style I would wager and is Richard seriously trying to claim that nobody has ever written the line ‘I will be your man’ before?! George Michael just about did with Wham! for a start. And all that stuff about being weary and losing my way? It’s hardly an original concept is it? Here’s some more:

Until the day the ocean doesn’t touch the sand
Now and forever
I will be your man
Now and forever
I will be
Your man

Writer/s: Richard Marx 
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Oceans and sand? Oh come on Marx! You can’t be serious! Listen, by all accounts Richard is a decent bloke – he took on Piers Morgan for not going far enough in calling out Donald Trump’s extremism and helped Korean Air flight attendants pacify an unruly, possibly drunk passenger while he and his wife were aboard a flight bound from Hanoi to Seoul. Admirable stuff but his songwriting claims? Nah.

Wait! What?! After country, R&B, power ballads, new-age ambient, hard rock and soft rock, we now get some boogie rock on Mark Franklin’s last TOTP gig? The poor lad having to deal with a show in the middle of an identity crisis! I really don’t recall ZZ Top having UK Top 40 hits as late as 1994 (a good decade after their commercial heyday) but here they are with “Pincushion”and like Franklin, I think it must be their last ever appearance. This came from an album called “Antenna” and would make a respectable No 15 on our charts. This one sounds like all of their other stuff to me and whilst I don’t mind some of the ZZ Top hits, I would never describe myself as a fan. Sadly, bassist Dusty Hill (on the left here) died in 2021 at the age of 72.

D:Ream remain at the top of the charts with “Things Can Only Get Better”. It’s the video this week but it’s just a run through of the song taken from a live gig (possibly supporting Take That?). It’s been edited into an annoying stop-motion style but even so, I still can’t spot Professor Brian Cox on keyboards. In his final outro at the show’s end, unlike Tony Dortie last week, Mark Franklin makes no mention of the fact that he’s leaving the show though he does state that Radio 1’s Simon Mayo is in the hot seat next week. Franklin always seemed like a safe pair of hands to me – not the most exciting but a competent presenter. I’m not really looking forward to the return of the likes of Mayo, Nicky Campbell and (ugh!) Bruno Brookes!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Therapy?NowhereNope
2Depeche ModeIn Your RoomNo but it’s a great track
3JoeI’m In LuvNah
4Celine DionThe Power Of LoveAs if
5Garth BrooksThe Red StrokesI did not
6Thomas DolbyHyperactive!No but my wife has The Flat Earth album it came from
7EnigmaReturn To InnocenceNo
8Richard MarxNow And ForeverIt’s a no from me
9ZZ TopPincushionUh-uh
10D:ReamThings Can Only Get BetterAnd 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/m001h88t/top-of-the-pops-27011994

TOTP 20 JAN 1994

Posted on by 80stastic

And so the party is finally over. Not the TOTP party as the grand old show will carry on for another twelve and a half years from this point. No, it’s the end of the line for presenter Tony Dortie whose innings finishes after 57 shows stretching back to the 3rd October 1991. So who pulled the plug on Dortie? Well, presumably it was incoming new producer Ric Blaxill who replaced ‘year zero’ innovator Stanley Appel and decided to shake things up by…erm…getting some of those old Radio 1 DJs back in on presenting duties. That hardly sounds like a creative genius teeming with new ideas at work does it? To be fair to Blaxill, he did come up with some other plans to overhaul the show including the ‘golden mic’ where TV celebrities, pop stars and comedians were invited to present the show. Curiously, this change seems to already be in place before Dortie has left the building as he is joined on his final show by Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot as co-host. I presumed initially that this was just to introduce his own band’s video but he does get extra presenting duties later on in the show. The subsequent show would be Dortie’s presenting partner Mark Franklin’s last appearance. The times they were a-changin’…

…talking of which, we start the show with a tune that seemed out of time. It was now nearly four years since Inspiral Carpets burst into our lives as part of the ‘Madchester’ scene and whilst that movement had withered whilst main protagonists The Stone Roses were still missing presumed disbanded and the Happy Mondays having self destructed, these Oldham lads had carved themselves out a little niche which revolved around Clint Boon’s farfisa electronic organ and its swirling 60s retro sounds. By 1994 though, they were coming to the end of their initial incarnation and that year’s “Devil Hopping” would be their last album for twenty years after being dropped by Mute Records. The lead single from it was “Saturn 5” which seems to borrow a fair bit from “Telstar” by The Tornados. Yes, I know that 1962 No 1 transatlantic hit was an instrumental track but it was named after the Telstar communications satellite that was launched into orbit that year. Similarly, “Saturn 5” was named after the space rocket that launched all the Apollo missions. Then there’s the almost distorted, futuristic (back in 1962!) organ sound on “Telstar” which “Saturn 5” isn’t a million light years away from.

According to Boon, the song is about hope and achieving your ambitions. Here’s @TOTPFacts with an explanation of that Rockette lyric:

I went to New York for the very first time in 1994 and me and my wife did the Radio City Hall tour and met a Rockette. It was a a bizarre experience. Anyway, some of the other lyrics refer to the assassination of JFK (“the lifeless corpse of President 35”) and his grieving wife Jackie Onassis (“the lady crying by his side is the most beautiful woman alive”) and Boon’s mother-in-law going on a first date with her husband in a Ford Mustang (“Lady take a ride on a Zeke 64”). In my head, I’d made the line “An Eagle lands” into a reference to 1970s sci-fi series Space 1999 whose spacecrafts were called ‘Eagles’. Either that or the Eagle comic and its space captain hero Dan Dare. Both theories kind of fit with the space theme but further research on my part suggests it’s more probably to do with the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where JFK learned to fly and whose nickname is ‘Eagles’. Regardless of its subject matter, I liked “Saturn 5” and its incongruousness with the rest of the charts. Yes, it was a bit formulaic – my work colleague Justin remarked on first hearing it “Ah, there’s the distinctive organ” – but it was well constructed and had charm as well as hooks. It would make No 20 on the chart while the album went to No10.

I saw singer Tim Hingley years later as a solo artist at tiny venue Fibbers whilst I was living in York. Can’t remember if he played “Saturn 5” though. I also caught Clint Boon do a DJ set of ‘Manchester’ tunes as a warm up for a Happy Mondays gig a few years ago. That really was money for old rope.

https://youtu.be/xjWm0OSA6iE

And so to that first Joe Elliott intro which, rather obviously, is for his own band. He actually does a decent job and seems much more at ease than an over excited Dortie. They do have some decent banter (note banter not ‘bants’) as Tony chides Joe for his Sheffield United shirt who responds with with “Hold your tongue philistine Spurs freak”. Nice comeback!

As for Def Leppard’s cover of The Sweet’s “Action”, I pretty much said everything I had to say about it in the last post. Erm…OK, did they do any other cover versions?

*checks internet*

They’ve done loads! Some are obvious like T. Rex, Bowie and Thin Lizzy but some less so. How about these? “Rock On” by David Essex and…No! “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode?! I’ve got to hear this…

…well, it doesn’t eclipse Johnny Cash’s take on it but it’s not bad I’ll admit. I suppose that’s testament to how much of a great song it is. “Action” peaked at No 14 but Def Leppard returned with their equal biggest hit ever in 1995 with “When Love And Hate Collide” which peaked at No 2 matching the high of 1992’s “Let’s Get Rocked”.

Here’s something a bit different. Tori Amos might be an acquired taste and suffer from continual accusations of being a Kate Bush wannabe but I’ve always quite liked her. I’m pretty sure we even had her first album “Little Earthquakes” at some point. It sold respectably and steadily but 1994 saw her up the ante with the release of sophomore album “Under The Pink” which went to the top of the charts. The lead single was “Cornflake Girl” which would give Tori her highest charting single by far at that point when it peaked at No 4. I said in the last post that I was surprised that Toni Braxton’s “Breathe Again” was such a big hit and “Cornflake Girl” also falls into that category. Nothing to do with the quality of the song – it’s a great track – but because it felt like such an outlier in the charts. A haunting piece with a striking melody that allows Tori’s otherworldly vocals to flourish, it sounded like nothing else in the Top 40 at the time (and no smart arse remarks about Kate Bush not having a single out that month!).

The song has some dark origins. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

Out of this discussion came the song’s title which was a name that Tori and her peers would use growing up to describe girls who would hurt you despite a close relationship. On a lighter note, Amos appeared in an advert for a Kellogg’s cereal in 1984 but apparently that was nothing to do with her writing the song.

Interestingly, Billy Bragg also name checks the phrase on a track called “Body Of Water” on his 1991 album “Don’t Try This At Home”.

Summer could take a hint
Seeing you in a floral print
Oh to become a pearl
In the wordy world of the cornflake girl

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Billy Bragg / Philip Douglas Wigg
Body of Water lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

In an unlikely turn of events, as I was checking my Tori Amos facts for this post, I discovered that she is a very close friend of the author Neil Gaiman who is actually godfather to her daughter. The book literally next to me on the coffee table as I read that information? The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

For me though, the one thing that always comes to mind when I hear “Cornflake Girl” is this TV theme for a show that always seemed to be on the late night schedules growing up in the Central ITV region…

Talking of cover versions as we were before about Def Leppard, Tori has quite a few in her live set lists. I think my favourite is this unlikely coming together of styles…

Oh come on! Still with Haddaway in 1994? Surely he was a one year phenomenon? Sadly, he’s still knocking about with his “I Miss You” single. Everything about this performance is just odd, from Haddaway’s cringeworthy spoken intro to the presence of the woman on stage with him? Quite why was she there? She spends the first part of the song sat on a chair looking miserable. I’ve not seen someone look so upset in a pop song since that woman in the video for Eddy Grant’s 1982 No 1 “I Don’t Wanna Dance” when she’s left fuming on the beach whilst Eddy noodles around on his guitar whilst sat on an unlikely floating platform in the sea.

https://youtu.be/ZFT5ZVUsPIw

Back in 1994, the woman on stage with Haddaway finally gets up to wander around a bit before miming some “ooh, woohs” backing vocals. Is that why she was there all along? For that? It really wasn’t worth it. “I Miss You” peaked at No 9.

As with Def Leppard earlier, here’s another of last week’s Breakers getting a full spin on the show. Toni Braxton gets the live by satellite treatment to perform her “Breathe Again” hit. They’ve plonked her on a stool sat between two candelabras on the stage of the Apollo Theatre, New York where she belts out her song…to nobody. They even have a shot from behind Toni facing the empty theatre and its non existent audience just in case anyone was under the misconception that somebody (anybody) was actually there. Madness. I hope Ric Blaxill got rid of this nonsense when he took over the TOTP reins and resuscitated the show. Hey, maybe he made it breathe again! I’ll get me coat.

https://youtu.be/Pp_OMu3top0

Four Breakers this week starting with some bloke called Joe (just Joe) who I hardly remember and couldn’t tell you anything about before reading up on him but who somehow managed to have ten UK Top 40 hits the last of which came some ten years on from this, his debut single, “I’m In Luv”. Tony Dortie is clearly giving zero f***s seeing as he’s been given the chop and this is is final appearance as he says the following in his intro “…I know it’s politically incorrect to say so but there’s some mighty fine ladies in this video”. Well! Tone had some previous with this sort of thing dropping similar comments about Jade, En Vogue etc during his time on the show. He also says that Joe “…at last gives us the missing note between hip hop and R&B…”. Wasn’t that called New Jack Swing?

A genuine sales phenomenon next as Garth Brooks makes his first TOTP appearance. No. Really. Check these stats out from @TOTPFacts

Told you. It was an unlikely occurrence though for a country artist. Or was it? Certainly in the UK, that genre had traditionally struggled to gain a foot hold commercially but in the US? I’m thinking there was a much bigger market and appetite for country music. Randy Travis, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Dwight Yoakam, George Strait and loads more artists had huge careers over there as country acts. However, Troyal Garth Brooks (that’s his actual name! Troyal!) was somehow different. His melting pot of country with elements of rock and pop allowed him to crossover into the mainstream markets and he did so like nobody before him. We’d resisted in the UK for the early part of the decade despite promotion by his record company of his albums like “Ropin’ The Wind”, “No Fences” and “The Chase” but we finally caved to his fifth one “In Pieces” which rose to No 2 in our charts. The single from it that broke the dam was “The Red Strokes” – (actually a double A-side with “Ain’t Going Down (‘Til The Sun Comes Up)”) – a pleasant but unremarkable ballad to my ears and the biggest of only three UK hit singles which peaked at No 13. Hold onto your Stetson though as we’ll be seeing more of Garth Brooks on the next show.

I’d totally forgotten about the final single from Depeche Mode’s “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” album. “In Your Room” was a powerful slab of gloom rock in line with the rest of the album which was influenced by the emergence of grunge. Despite the album having been out for nearly a year by this point and despite it being the fourth track released from it, “”In Your Room” still went Top 10 displaying the loyalty and purchasing power of the band’s fanbase.

The video references much of the band’s past work with homages to “Strangelove”, “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy The Silence” amongst others. There’s also a heavy David Lynch vibe with scenes of bondage set against the red curtain drapes reminding me of both Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. The band themselves were in turmoil at this point with Dave Gahan struggling with his heroin addiction whilst the single would be the last to feature Alan Wilder who left the group after the completion of the album. We would not see them again for four years when they returned with “Ultra”.

Well, I suppose this was totally inevitable. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown had been married for eighteen months when they decided they needed to record a song together to further publicly display their love for each other. I’m surprised it took that long. “Something In Common” was the chosen track but if they were expecting a gigantic hit off the back of them joining forces, it didn’t quite happen. A No 16 peak was all it could achieve over here whilst it also failed to make the Top 10 in the US. How come? I mean, Whitney was on a very hot streak with the success of The Bodyguard whilst Brown’s 1992 album “Bobby” had gone double platinum. Maybe the song was just no good? It’s uptempo and probably right on the New Jack Swing zeitgeist but it doesn’t live long in the memory. Seriously, how far down the list would you have to go when naming Whitney or Bobby Brown songs before you got to “Something In Common”?

Joe Elliott is back to do a link for the next artist who is Phil Collins. How many times was Phil on TOTP as a solo artist doing a mournful ballad? I don’t know and I’m not about to count but I’m pretty sure he did what he does whilst performing “Everyday” on every appearance; that Everyman, shuffling turn whilst wearing oversized, casual clothes to create the impression that he’s only turned up at the studio to sing a song whilst he’s waiting for the first coat of creosote to dry on his garden fence before applying the second. I’m not buying it Phil nor indeed any of your records. “Everyday” peaked at No 15.

They’ve done it! D:Ream are No1 with “Things Can Only Get Better” a year after it originally peaked at No 24. Despite it being his last ever TOTP show, Tony Dortie still has one last presenting gaff in him when he refers to their lead singer Peter Cunnah as ‘Pete Cornelius’! Watching Pete perform here in his trademark checked suit, I can’t help but notice that there’s an element of Robbie Williams about his performance. All that energetic cavorting and arm waving and a desperation to make everything about him on stage. Well, D:Ream had just been on tour with Take That at the time so maybe he did indeed learn from the master!

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Inspiral CarpetsSaturn 5No but I have it on a Best Of CD of theirs
2Def LeppardActionNah
3Tori AmosCornflake GirlLiked it, didn’t buy it
4HaddawayI Miss You…but I don’t miss you. No
5Toni BraxtonBreathe AgainNope
6JoeI’m In LuvI’m not – no
7Garth BrooksThe Red StrokesNo
8Depeche ModeIn Your RoomI did not
9Whitney Houston and Bobby BrownSomething In CommonNegative
10Phil CollinsEverydayNever!
11D:ReamThings Can Only Get BetterAnd 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/m001h88r/top-of-the-pops-20011994