TOTP 15 JUL 1993
The day after this TOTP aired, Jurassic Park opened in UK cinemas. A ground breaking film both in terms of box office receipts and its revolutionary use of CGI, it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there at the time quite what a big deal this film was. The hype and sense of excitement around it was palpable. I was working in the Rochdale Our Price at the time and there was only one other record shop in the town. The manager of it used to come into our store all the time and I recall him telling me that he’d been to see Jurassic Park the night before and how blown away he’d been by it. He specifically went on and on about the scene where the T-Rex has a torch light shined in its face and the pupil in its eye dilates. Like I said, it’s hard to explain now how advanced the film seemed to an audience like me who had been brought up on the special effects of Ray Harryhausen in the likes of Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. Of course, that original film spawned a whole franchise with the latest film coming out just this year. I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP could be described as dinosaurs back in 1993?
I don’t think Dannii Minogue would have qualified as a dinosaur back in 1993. She was still only two years into her fledgling pop career. However, things weren’t going quite as well as they had been in 1991 for Dannii. After scoring two Top 10 successes and a couple of Top 20 singles from her debut album, the hits had dried up rather. Her version of The Jacksons’ “Show You The Way To Go” had spluttered to a high of No 30 whilst follow up “Love’s On Every Corner” had missed the Top 40 altogether. However, 1993 afforded an ideal opportunity for Dannii to kickstart her career as a disco revival was in full swing. Now bearing in mind that she’d already scored a disco styled hit with a version of Stacy Lattisaw’s 1980 hit “Jump To The Beat”, it made perfect sense for Ms Minogue to go there again and so she did with a cover of Melba Moore’s 1976 hit “This Is It”. It did the job too easily being the biggest of the five singles taken from her sophomore album “Get Into You” when it peaked at No 10. The album itself though bombed, vastly underperforming when it peaked at No 52 after her debut “Love And Kisses” had gone Top 10. It would be another ten years before she would return there with “Neon Nights”.
Dannii gives her usual energetic performance to sell the song backed with some equally perky dancers though why they have a backdrop of a sprawling metropolis lit up at night and some palm trees I don’t know. Even more confusing is what Dannii’s then fiancé is doing on the show. Host Tony Dortie introduces him at the end of the song with news of the couple’s impending nuptials. Julian McMahon was his name and he met Dannii on the set of Home And Away. According to Wikipedia, he appeared in the video for “This Is It” but sadly their marriage only lasted eighteen months. It can’t have been his dance moves that first attracted Dannii – in his brief time on screen here he looks like a pissed uncle at a wedding and even after the song has stopped continues to bob up and down like a pigeon’s head when walking. All very odd.
Ah, Tony Dortie has joined me on the Jurassic Park references. “We’ve got no dinosaurs on the show tonight, just Paul Weller’s prehistoric haircut” he chortles to himself. Blimey! If he thought the 1993 version of Weller’s barnet was bad, what would he have made if its current incarnation?
Anyway, this felt like the point in Weller’s solo career where he achieved full lift off. His debut solo album had reminded people of his abilities as a songwriter after it had looked like the 90s might just pass him by. However it was his second album “Wild Wood” which would go platinum in the UK and show that Weller was a force still to be reckoned with. It’s worth remembering that he was only 35 at the time so we shouldn’t have been surprised at his re-emergence and that reports of his musical death were greatly exaggerated.
“Sunflower” was the lead single from the album and I’d forgotten what a strong song it is. It whipcracks away with a spiky rhythm and rapier like guitar riff – mesmerising stuff. It reminds me in parts of a song that Weller himself covered whilst in The Jam – “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd.
The simple yet effective video with its quick cutaways and a camera revolving around Weller imbues it with even more urgency and energy. “Sunflower” peaked at No 16. It should have been higher.
OK, no real dinosaur connections with 4 Non Blondes other than to say on the soundtrack to Wayne’s World 2, the running order has “Out There” by Dinosaur Jr. followed immediately by “Mary’s House” by – yes – 4 Non Blondes. Tenuous I know.
I can’t find a clip of this particular performance of “What’s Up?” so I have had to use one from a previous week but Linda Perry has swapped her rastacap style headgear for something that Slash might have worn. It hasn’t affected her vocals though as she belts the song out. Whatever you thought of the song (and many didn’t like it), Linda had some pipes on her. Her performance here has echoes of Shakespear’s Sister “Stay” in that Perry has a touch of Siobahn Fahey about her. Not her voice as I’d have to say that is superior to the ex-Banana’s (sorry Siobahn!) but for her twisted, almost demonic delivery especially when she opens her eyes wide amongst all that eye shadow.
Now there’s some I’m sure who would have been happy to describe Deacon Blue in 1993 as dinosaurs (not me obviously). How did they fit into a dance obsessed chart with their well crafted pop songs about hardship, hope and heartbreak? Well, the truth is that they did try to fit in with fourth studio album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” being co-produced by legendary dance DJ Paul Oakenfold (somebody I once worked with told me I looked like Oakenfold – I don’t). This new musical direction received mixed reviews and commercially underperformed compared to all three of its predecessors.
Now I would count myself as a fan of the band and have a few of their records but I really don’t remember a fourth single from “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” but here it is. “Hang Your Head” was the lead song of a four track EP and was very un- Deacon Blue like with its driving beat and rock guitar licks – it was no “Dignity” – but actually it sounds OK to me. Not enough of the wonderful Lorraine McIntosh in this performance though.
A Best Of album came out the following year but the band split after that before reforming five years later. They continue to record and perform live with their last album being as recent as 2021.
This week’s Breakers start with Jon Secada who’s chart career wasn’t quite extinct in 1993 but surely that dinosaur-destroying asteroid was on its way. Having scored an unlikely Top 5 hit with “Just Another Day” the previous year, Jon stalked another hit raptor like and came up with a trio of them though none got any higher than No 23. This one, “Do You Really Want Me”, was the last of them and from the few seconds afforded it on the show sounded like a lost squawking seagull. Where’s an asteroid when you need one?
Ah, now. Here’s an interesting one and an example how quickly the pop world can turn. Back in 1991, Jesus Jones bestrode the charts T-Rex* like, the dominant species of the Top 40. Then that aforementioned asteroid hit in the form of the music press who decided that the band had been the inkies’ darlings for long enough and that they were crap after all.
*I’m meaning the dinosaur here but I guess my point would also work with Marc Bolan’s band.
To their eternal credit, the band carried on regardless and are still together today. Back in 1993 though, “Zeroes And Ones” was the final single to be lifted from their “Perverse” album and would prove to be their last ever UK Top 40 hit. It also provides the title for an upcoming Best Of album due out in October 2022. As for the track itself, it’s pretty standard Jesus Jones fare and I must admit it passed me by at the time.
Also on the end of a music press backlash were Blur who had experienced a slump after the success of debut album “Leisure” and a poorly received US tour. Unlike Jesus Jones though, Blur were able to evolve from their dinosaur state to become one of the 90s (and beyond’s) biggest bands. Enabling that leap from the thrills of “Leisure” to the glories of “Parklife” was inbetweener “Modern Life Is Rubbish”* from which “Chemical World” was the second single to be released. Although it didn’t pull up any trees at the time sales wise, it has retrospectively been labelled as one of the defining albums of Britpop with its Small Faces and The Kinks influences and lyrics that spoke of the experience of British life.
Immediately though, it didn’t appear as if Blur’s fortunes had been reversed. These were the chart peaks for every single release since “There’s No Other Way” made the Top 10 in 1991 until “Girls And Boys” did the same in 1994:
24 – 32 – 28 – 28 – 26
“Chemical World” was responsible for the penultimate entry in that sequence but it probably deserved better. If Paul Weller would come to be seen as one of the Godfathers of Britpop then Blur (alongside Oasis of course, where else would they be?) were its pin up boys. Blur’s and our own worlds would look very different just twelve months later.
*I actually picked up the “Modern Life Is Rubbish” album whilst on holiday in New York. Naturally it was in the bargain bin.
Being a musical dinosaur was the last thing that you could accuse Utah Saints of in 1993. They were at the cutting edge of making groundbreaking, mainstream dance music with their penchant for sampling pop records from the likes of Eurythmics and Kate Bush and repurposing them. However, after three consecutive Top 10 hits, was the writing on the wall for them when fourth single “I Want You” only made No 25? All of them came from their eponymous debut album but apart from a couple of stand alone singles, there was nothing then until 2000 – the equivalent of the Jurassic period (56 million years) in the world of pop.
Why did “I Want You” fail? Well, maybe sampling thrash metal band Slayer’s “War Ensemble” was just a little too niche to secure the band a fourth massive crossover hit. Just a thought.
Like Jesus Jones and Blur before him, Kenny Thomas was facing the challenge of following up on initial success with more hit-worthy material. Even host Tony Dortie talks about the soul crooner being under pressure to do so in his intro. “Stay” was the song that was chosen to relaunch Kenny but unlike the aforementioned Shakespear’s Sister and their track, it wasn’t a resounding success peaking at No 22.
Kenny’s music left me cold at the best of times but this one made me fell like I was locked in a freezer. Sorry Kenny but if this song was a scene from Jurassic Park, it would have been the bit where the guests on the island take a tour in those electric vehicles and none of the dinosaurs appear prompting the two kids to say “I don’t see anything. Do you see anything? There’s nothing there.”
Now, in much the same way that the dinosaurs were wiped off the surface of the earth by that asteroid, the next act seem to have been expunged from the history of 90s music in that you hardly hear them mentioned at all nowadays. In 1993 though, Oui 3 were bona fide chart stars with three Top 40 singles to their name. OK, none of them got any higher than No 17 and two of them were actually the same song (one single was re-released eight months after it initially came out) but that’s three chart hits all the same. That re-release was their Buffalo Springfield sampling song “For What It’s Worth” which, as he told us in his intro, was Tony Dortie’s favourite single of the year to that point. What he didn’t tell us was the name of Oui 3’s new hit which was “Break From The Old Routine”. Bet their record label weren’t too impressed by that. Schoolboy error Tony!
I liked both singles and my wife enjoyed them so much she bought their album “Oui Love You”. Not many other people did though as it peaked at No 39. A second album was never released and after one final minor hit (“Facts Of Life” – No 38) and a couple of stand alone singles that flopped, it was all over – Oui 3 were no(n) more. What I hadn’t realised until now was that one of the band was Blair Booth who was one third of late 80s collaboration Terry, Blair and Anouchka featuring Terry Hall and who were responsible for the marvellous non-hit “Missing”:
Oui 3 though were nothing like Terry, Blair and Anouchka, coming on, as they did, like Stereo MC’s cooler, more laid back cousin. The rapping was on point (though I’m no judge of what makes a good rapper to be fair) and they had what I can only describe as some good grooves. I would have been interested to see what that second album would have sounded like.
Despite having been around for the best part of a decade by 1993, Madonna was nowhere near being a dinosaur what with all the controversy over her “Erotica” album making her still seem exciting and contemporary. Fast forward to 2022, and Madge is plodding around the music landscape like a ponderous brontosaurus desperately seeking Susan validation that she is still relevant.
Anyway, “Rain” was her latest single and the last to be released in the UK from “Erotica”. I’ve said before that when I first heard the album that was the track that stood out to me as a potential hit single. I was right as well but it took a while. As it turned out it would make No 7 meaning that all five of the singles from “Erotica” made the Top 10 over here. Well, there was the evidence if you needed any that Madonna wasn’t a dinosaur back then.
Compared to the other singles, “Rain” felt like it didn’t really belong on the album. It was in many ways a very standard, though lushly produced, big ballad. The lyrics are based around that well worn literary (and indeed cinematic) metaphor of rain being a cleansing agent and washing away previous sorrows to be followed by the sunshine and redeeming warmth of a new love. Or are they? This was a track from “Erotica” remember so were lines like “I feel it…It’s coming…Rain…Feel it on my fingertips” actually referring to something rather more sexual? Does the video give us any clues? Well, it’s much safer than something like “Justify My Love” being a sort of film within a film with the plot depicting Madonna as the star of a promo being directed by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto no less. There is a scene of her kissing a man behind a glass screen while water falls but it’s pretty tame stuff. What do I know though as it won two MTV Video Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.
Take That are straight in at No 1 with “Pray”. Straight in! To think just a couple of years before when Gary Barlow popped into the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester where I was working, my colleague Craig followed him round the shop floor mouthing “nobody buys your records” behind his back!
To say that the group were very much seen as five individuals with each one having a devoted fan base (I’m guessing!), what comes across in the performance here is that the other four very much look like Barlow’s backing dancers. The lead vocals were shared out more equally over subsequent releases. As I recall, Mark Owen took centre stage on “Babe”, Robbie Williams did “Everything Changes” and Howard Donald got the job on “Never Forget”. Did Jason Orange ever get a go to show us his vocal talents? I’m not sure he ever did. No wonder the poor lad ended up leaving the band.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Dannii Minogue | This Is It | Not likely |
| 2 | Paul Weller | Sunflower | No but I had the Wild Wood album |
| 3 | 4 Non Blondes | What’s Up? | No but I found a copy of their album behind a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester |
| 4 | Deacon Blue | Hang Your Head | No |
| 5 | Jon Secada | Do You Really Want Me | As if |
| 6 | Jesus Jones | Zeroes And Ones | Nope |
| 7 | Blur | Chemical World | No but I had the album Modern Life Is Rubbish |
| 8 | Utah Saints | I Want You | I didn’t actually |
| 9 | Kenny Thomas | Stay | Never happening |
| 10 | Oui 3 | Break From The Old Routine | No but my wife had their album |
| 11 | Madonna | Rain | Nah |
| 12 | Take That | Pray | And no |
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c1qq/top-of-the-pops-15071993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 