Level 42

TOTP 04 AUG 1994

Posted on May 8, 2023 by 80stastic

Due to BBC4’s relentless schedule of broadcasting two TOTP repeats a week (which is killing me by the way), we’ve already reached August of 1994. And we know what August means…the start of a new football season. On the very day this show aired, Spurs bought Jürgen Klinsmann from Monaco and despite playing for them for just one season, would become a fan favourite, rebuilding his reputation in England as being a ‘diver’ thanks to this celebration on his debut…

Thank God tonight’s presenter isn’t Spurs fan Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo or we’d have to suffer a whole show of him making endless ‘hilarious’ football references. Instead it’s Mark Goodier who I don’t think has ever even attempted to make a funny quip in his life. Looking at the running order for this show, it’s pretty underwhelming I have to say. So underwhelming that to try and big it up, Goodier announces as a future ‘highlight’ that Status Quo will be making their 100th appearance on the show. TOTP seemed to have a weakness for and reliance on The Quo when it came to creating a buzz about the show. In the first show of the ‘year zero’ revamp, they had them on to perform “Let’s Work Together” as a track from their latest album which seemed counter productive to an attempt to relaunch the show for a younger audience. That tie between the BBC and the band was severed though in 1996 when Radio 1 blacklisted their single “Fun Fun Fun” (a collaboration with The Beach Boys) on the grounds that they were repositioning themselves as a youth station and Status Quo were…well, no longer the status quo. The band took it badly and launched an unsuccessful legal action for a judicial review of the ban on their records. In 1994 though, they were still seen as a draw by the Beeb and they’ll be along soon enough.

If Messrs Rossi, Parfitt et al would find themselves in a metaphorical boxing ring with Radio 1, we start the show in an actual boxing ring as Maxx have decided to perform their new single in one. The follow up to No 4 hit “Get-A-Way”, “No More (I Can’t Stand It)” was more of the same, in other words a huge steaming pile of Eurodance dung. Has there ever been a more apt song title? So why the boxing ring? I’ve no idea but the track certainly doesn’t deliver a knockout punch. As it’s nearly 30 years ago, there’s still some sexual stereotyping going on with the boxers being men and the women on stage (apart from singer Linda Meek) are styled as ring girls announcing what round it is. Actually, is that still how it works in 2023? I know that the profile of women boxing is much higher these days but are ring girls still a thing? I’m not a big fight fan. Definitely still a thing are Maxx who reactivated in 2016 after initially folding in 1995, although Linda Meek now goes by the name of Elyse G Rogers and rapper Gary Bokoe has been replaced by someone called Twitch.

Right, I’m calling it. This must be the very last appearance on TOTP by Level 42. Not only is “Love In A Peaceful World” their very last UK Top 40 hit (it made No 31) but the band broke up in the October of this year and didn’t reform until the new millennium and didn’t release any new material until September 2006, two months after the last ever TOTP aired. I think that’s a cast-iron defence of my opening statement. Despite metamorphosing from Britfunk pioneers into a mega-hit making machine, the band have often been pigeonholed as vapid and bland. I have to admit to liking a handful of their songs – “Hot Water” is a great track – but I’ve never been tempted to actually buy any of their stuff.

Looking at their career in terms of a story arc though, a decent documentary could be made of it. A group of friends from the Isle of Wight relocate to the big smoke where one of them learns the bass and becomes one of the world’s most renowned bass guitarists. They start playing a brand of jazz funk fusion attracting record company interest before a change of musical direction towards pop brings huge mainstream success. Alas, the march of time catches up with them and they find themselves marginalised in the musical landscape. Add to that relationship breakdowns within the band causing line up changes (over 20 people have been band members at some point over the years) and finally tragedy with a founding member committing suicide and it’s quite a tale.

As a valedictory single, “Love In A Peaceful World” isn’t the worst way to bow out. A pleasant tune with an admirable message, I could imagine it being used in a rom com film to great effect. Sadly, and as an indication of where the band were, it only got to No 31. They remain, however, active within and a big draw of the live circuit.

https://youtu.be/vk2v6F7i_Gw

Right who’s next? Ce Ce Peniston with a song that isn’t “Finally”? Eh? Yes, well she did have more than the one hit – in fact, she had seven of which “Hit By Love” was the sixth. I think most of us would struggle to name more than “Finally” though wouldn’t we? What? “We Got A Love Thang”? Oh yeah. It made the Top 10. Surely no more than that though? Sorry? “Somebody Else’s Guy”? That’s Jocelyn Brown’s big hit! Say again? Ce Ce Peniston had equally as big a hit with it in 1997 to promote her Best Of album? Oh come on! Nobody associates that song with her! “Hit By Love” sounds like a rewrite of “Finally” to me, trying to recreate that winning formula but not quite getting there. A bit like in Breaking Bad when Todd takes over the production of the blue crystal meth and can’t get the content as pure as Walter White. Erm…anyway, Ce Ce doesn’t need a methamphetamine hit as she is high on love according to her song but the biggest chart high she could achieve with it was No 33. Unlike Roxy Music, love was not the drug for her.

And so to Status Quo who are in the studio for the 100th time with a little ditty called “I Didn’t Mean It”. I don’t remember this one at all and have to admit that my expectations for it were low. It was the lead single from their 21st studio album “Thirsty Work” and was written by one John David, a Welsh producer, songwriter and musician who had performed with some big names like Springsteen, Clapton and Sting and written for the likes of Cliff Richard, Shakin’ Stevens, Alvin Stardust and Samantha Fox. Hmm. I’m noticing a slight disparity between the calibre of artists he performed with and those he wrote for but never mind. He also worked with Dave Edmunds which is not surprising as “I Didn’t Mean It” has a flavour of Edmunds about it or maybe Nick Lowe with some honky tonk piano to the fore. Now I like both Edmunds and Lowe so I’m probably doing them a disservice by associating them with this track which isn’t really worthy of their name. It’s all very predictable and what I would have expected Status Quo to have been churning out at this time. It seems very anachronistic compared to their chart peers at the time. Maybe they should have seen the BBC bust up writing on the wall.

The cover of the single is more interesting than the song with images of famous people that maybe had regrets about what they had done (I didn’t mean it -geddit?) so there’s Ken Dodd (tax evasion court case – acquitted) Diego Maradona (‘Hand of God’ goal – cheated ) Lester Piggott (tax fraud case – guilty), Richard Nixon (Watergate scandal – resigned) Robert Maxwell (Mirror Group Pension Fund scandal – fraudulent misappropriation), Mike Tyson (rape conviction – guilty) Graham Taylor (failed to get England to World Cup in USA) and Ben Johnson (disqualified for doping in 1988 Olympics and stripped of gold medal). The inclusion of some of those names seems a little ill judged, especially Mike Tyson and Robert Maxwell given the damage they did to people’s lives. Sadly for Status Quo, Radio 1 did mean it when it came to not playing their records any more when 1996 rolled around.

Another diminutive dance diva who’s probably best known for just one song next. After Ce Ce Peniston earlier comes Rozalla who is surely best known for her “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hit from 1991 but who was still knocking about the charts three years later with this track “This Time I Found Love”, the second single from her “Look No Further” album. I haven’t got that much to say about this one – not really my bag but I will comment on the solo male dancer up there with Rozalla. I’m not sure that he really adds anything to the performance with his Marcel Marceau routine. In short, he looks like a prat. While we’re at it, did the two keyboard players need to be there either? Couldn’t Rozalla have just done her turn on her own? Maybe some rules about musician unions were at play. “This Time I Found Love” peaked at No 33.

What the hell are Whitesnake doing on TOTP in 1994 with a song from 1987?! It’s no great mystery really. “Is This Love” was rereleased to promote a Greatest Hits album that was presumably to plug a gap in the band’s career – they hadn’t had a studio album out since 1989. The Greatest Hits package was a reasonable success peaking at No 4 and going gold in the UK. It essentially covered their final three albums of the 80s but curiously didn’t include the two singles from 1984’s “Slide It In” that were actual UK Top 40 hits – “Guilty Of Love” and “Give Me More Time” though the former did feature in a 2022 reissue of the album.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – the intro to “Is This Love” always catches me out as it sounds like the start of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”. That slowly rising synth fade in is almost exactly the same in both. The 1994 rerelease of “Is This Love” made No 25 (it peaked at No 9 in 1987) and was Whitesnake’s final UK Top 40 entry. Oh, one final thing, why isn’t there a question mark at the end of the song title? Bugs the hell out of me!

It’s PJ & Duncan next with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. Although this is probably their most well known tune, the duo clocked up an impressive thirteen Top 40 hits in the UK before the end of the 90s with eleven of them peaking between Nos 16 and 10. The last four were released under the names Ant & Dec. They would return to the charts twice more, once in 2002 with the official England World Cup song “We’re On The Ball” (No 3) and again in 2013 when “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” was rereleased and went to No 1 with sales being donated to the charity ChildLine.

Of course, these two weren’t the only pop band to come out of the children’s TV series Byker Grove. There was also Byker Groove (clever) featuring Donna Air, Jayni Hoy and Vicky Taylor who got to No 48 with “Love Your Sexy…!!”. Two years later, they returned without Taylor and rebranded as Crush with the single “Jellyhead” which should have been a huge hit but which stalled at No 50. With its name checks for Bros and The Prodigy in its lyrics, it’s what The Reynolds Girls should have sounded like and perhaps what Girls Aloud would go on to sound like. It did well in America where it was promoted without any reference to their acting past. Donna Air would go on to have a career as an actor and TV presenter but you’d have to say that she didn’t quite scale the same heights of fame as her two Byker Grove chums.

Finally a record of interest. Even if you didn’t appreciate it sonically, you could hardly ignore this single, probably because you couldn’t avoid it – “7 Seconds” by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry was the second most played song on UK radio in 1994. The very definition of a sleeper hit, it took nine weeks to break into the Top 10 before rising to a peak of No 3. Such a chart trajectory was unusual around this time and would become almost unheard of as the 90s progressed and record companies discovered heavy discounting of singles in their first week of release to create high chart entry positions. Yet there was something about the summer of 1994 which saw a swathe of records that had incredibly long stays within the Top 40. I’m thinking “Crazy For You” by Let Loose, “I Swear” by All 4 One and of course Wet Wet Wet’s 15 weeks chart topper “Love Is All Around”.

Whilst all of the above though were propelled by a traditional momentum (a classic piece of airplay friendly pop, a big swoonsome ballad and a cover version of a well known song given huge exposure by a runaway box office hit film), “7 Seconds” was different. For a start, the artists involved were not chart guarantors by any stretch of the imagination. Youssou N’Dour was a huge name in World music but had never had a hit single before (his collaboration with Peter Gabriel on “Shakin’ The Tree” was the closest he had ever come). Meanwhile, Neneh Cherry was a long way from the huge breakthrough star she had been in 1989 when the likes of “Buffalo Stance” and “Manchild” were huge Top 5 hits. Her second album “Homebrew” had not done anywhere near the numbers of her debut “Raw Like Sushi” and had provided just two minor hit singles. The combination of the two of them on a track seemed an unlikely proposition for huge chart success. And yet…there was something about this haunting, rich synth heavy ballad that was sung in three different languages that gave it global appeal. A huge hit around Europe (it was No 1 in France for 16 weeks – have that Marti Pellow!), it was a monster both on the airwaves and the cash registers. Youssou would never have another UK hit single whilst Neneh would score a No 1 with “Love Can Build A Bridge” in 1995 as part of the charity collective for Comic Relief and a Top 10 single in “Woman” the following year.

It’s week 10 for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around” which means we are two thirds through their reign at the top. I struggled to say anything else about this record in the last post and things haven’t improved since. I’ve got some things to say about its demise but I need to keep those back for use in a few posts time. OK, how about addressing one of the record’s most distinctive bits, the guttural sound that Marti Pellow makes as the song heads into its climax. I think he growls “yeah!” and it sounds like that on the version that was released but I’m sure in some of the performances we’ve seen on the show over the weeks it sounds more like a “hey!”.

Whatever. It did get me thinking about songs with grunts, growls, screams or generally unusual vocal noises in them. First to come to mind was the “Ohhh!” by John Travolta in “Summer Nights” quickly followed by the “Ooo!” by Lionel Richie in “Easy” by The Commodores. Then there’s Paul McCartney’s strangled yelp in “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” and who could ignore Robert Plant at the start of “Immigrant Song”? think my favourite though comes at 1:43 in this clip…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Maxx	“No More (I Can’t Stand It)”	I couldn’t have said it better myself
2	Level 42	Love In A Peaceful World	Nope
3	Ce Ce Peniston	Hit By Love	No
4	Status Quo	I Didn’t Mean It	As if
5	Rozalla	This Time I Found Love	Negative
6	Whitesnake	Is This Love	Not in 1987 nor 1994
7	PJ & Duncan	Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble	Nah
8	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	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/m001ldnz/top-of-the-pops-04081994

TOTP 28 APR 1994

Posted on March 17, 2023 by 80stastic

As ever it seems, this TOTP is a right mixed bag of huge, stellar names and those that perhaps haven’t lingered in the memory anywhere near as long. To illustrate that point, two of the artists on the show are from the furthermost extremes of the spectrum. One is an absolute legend of the world of music and show business and the other…well, let’s just say I’d be surprised if many people could recall them.

We start though with a band who I had forgotten all about but do recall their name now I’m presented with them in front of me. Skin (terrible name)* were part of that early 90s UK rock movement populated by the likes of Little Angels and Thunder (indeed they toured with both of them) and also had affiliations with Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson – Skin’s drummer Dicki Fliszar (not a stage name apparently) had played in Dickinson’s tour band. This led to them signing with Maiden’s management company and record label Parlophone. The link with Dickinson even got them a place on a hit single albeit under the pseudonym of Smear Campaign on the 1992 Comic Relief single “I Wanna Be Elected”. A debut EP (under their own name) called “The Skin Up” failed to crack the Top 40 but this follow up – “The Money EP” – hit pay dirt when it climbed to a peak of No 18. Watching this performance back, they clearly had pretensions to be the next Led Zeppelin with lead singer Neville MacDonald channeling his inner Robert Plant to full effect. Just because the band were called Skin, did we really have to see two of them displaying some here?

* When my mate Robin caught Spinal Tap live around 1992, he was in the front row and managed to touch the hand of one of the group or as he described it “I got skin off the band”. I don’t think Skin, the band, would have got the same reaction from him.

Skin would go on to collect a handful of UK Top 40 hits and a Top 10 eponymous debut album and a support slot at Gateshead Stadium for Bon Jovi. Sadly, what should have been a career high turned into a disaster when a voltage converter was put to US settings by a stage hand which resulted in their guitarist’s amplifier being blown as well as the keyboard player’s Hammond organ. When I was working in the Civil Service in the early 2000s (stick with me, I do have a point), one of my colleagues was a huge Dexys Midnight Runners fan who actually got to know some of the people from the band’s history and those of The Bureau who formed out of the ashes of the first Dexys incarnation. A man who had a foot in both camps was Mick Talbot (later of The Style Council) who told my colleague that shortly before Live Aid started (The Style Council were second on that day), Mick noticed the same issue with the sound equipment (i.e. it was configured to US settings) and so, knowing it would blow, quickly changed them thereby averting a technological disaster and a late start to The Global Jukebox. There you go – the inside track on one of the biggest musical events ever courtesy of TOTP Rewind!

Here’s a band in the process of making a name for themselves – Eternal with a third consecutive hit. “Just A Step From Heaven” would follow “Stay” and “Save Our Love” into the Top 10. I’ve noticed with all their TOTP performances that it always seems to be Easther Bennett on lead vocals with the other three group members acting effectively as backing dancers. Now you could have maybe levelled the same accusation at male peers Take That in their early days with Gary Barlow always out front doing the heavy lifting vocals wise and the rest of the boys popping some moves behind him. However, they did diversify with Robbie Williams, Mark Owen and even Howard Donald all getting a shot at being lead singer (I don’t think poor old Jason Orange ever did). Did Eternal ever swap roles about like that? Was their a vocals rota? I’m not sure.

During this performance though, they did have those ‘circles’ lighting effects gliding around the stage that look like those scenes from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons when the latter used ‘retrometabolism’ to create facsimiles of people and objects that they could control. Easther as a Captain Black figure doing away with her band mates and replacing them with replicants under her power so they remain in her shadow? Nah, you’re right. It could never have happened because Louise left the band of her own accord in 1995.

As for the song, it sounded a bit bland to me lacking the star quality of their debut hit. I much prefer this similarly (but not quite the same) titled song from the criminally overlooked The Adventures…

Next a song that turned the band responsible for it from a hardcore funk metal outfit to mainstream rock stars. That journey for Red Hot Chili Peppers had begun with a stumble in the UK when the sublime “Under The Bridge” could only make No 26 in March of 1992 but in the US they travelled much further going all the way to No 2 becoming a huge airplay hit in the process. You can’t keep a good song down though and we finally caught up with our American counterparts in 1994 when, after an energy booster in the shape of Top 10 hit “Give It Away”, we went full throttle in our appreciation of the Chili Peppers making a re-release of “Under The Bridge” a runaway chart success. OK, runaway might be pushing it for a song that peaked at No 13 but it fits with my ‘journey’ metaphor and it was literally twice the hit it was before. I was one of those that succumbed to its charms second time around.

Starting out as a poem written by Anthony Kiedis about his struggles with heroin addiction, its hit potential was seen by producer Rick Rubin and after being worked up into song form by bassist Flea and guitarist John Frusciante it found its way onto the band’s “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album. The titular bridge refers to a bridge in LA where Kiedis found himself hanging out with drug dealers trying to score his next hit so desperate had his addiction become. Los Angeles looms large in the song with these opening lines clearly referring to it:

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, the city of angels
Lonely as I am, together we cry
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Anthony Kiedis / Chad Gaylord Smith / John Anthony Frusciante / Michael Peter Balzary
Under the Bridge lyrics © MoeBeToBlame, Peermusic Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Words & Music A Div Of Big Deal Music LL

Now it’s my turn to sneak a reference in but it’s not about LA but Captain Scarlet again. In the episode ‘Place Of Angels’, the good captain foils a Mysteron plot to release a deadly virus into the Los Angeles reservoir. And of course, the female pilots of the Spectrum fighter jets were known as The Angels. What’s that got to do with Red Hot Chili Peppers? Nothing but artistic license and all that. The video by director Gus Van Sant has a “Streets Of Philadelphia” feel to it with Kiedis walking through various LA locations to make the bond between song and city absolutely clear if it wasn’t enough already. Just like Springsteen, the Chili Peppers would also record material for soundtracks in the 90s when they supplied songs for The Coneheads, Pretty Woman and Beavis and Butt-head Do America movies.

Next that name that surely is lost to most in the mists of time. Except…Club House you say? Wasn’t that the name of the people who did that awful Steely Dan /Michael Jackson mash up “Do It Again” in 1983? I think it was but this can’t be the same lot returning in 1994 can it?

*checks Wikipedia*

Bloody hell it is! That’s a more unlikely comeback than Boris Johnson recovering from Partygate (please privileges committee, don’t make a fool of me by finding him innocent!). What had they been doing for a whole decade? Well, according to their bio, they’d done another medley record in 1987 mixing Mory Kanté’s “Yé ké Yé ké” with The Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m A Man” and had a US Dance No 1 with the Deee-Lite sampling “Deep In My Heart” in 1990. In addition to those two tracks, the vocalist here – one Carl Fanini – sang in that Eurodance hit by Eastside Beat “Ride Like The Wind”.

Suddenly though, like the nightmare of a returning Liz Truss, they were back with a track called “Light My Fire” which obtusely was nothing to do with The Doors song of the same name. It had failed to make the UK Top 40 when released in September of 1993 but a Cappella remix released on Pete Waterman’s PWL label sent it to the Top 10 the following year. God knows how though as it’s an abominable record, all pulsing Italian Hi-NRG beats and the phrase “Burn Baby Burn” (surely pinched from “Disco Inferno” by The Trammps) repeated over and over. If you require any more evidence that this was a steaming pool of piss, ask yourself why, if it’s such a great tune, is there the need for a man on stilts juggling, a woman fire eating and four dancers dressed as devil figures in bright red spandex suits up there on stage? Even all of the above can’t distract from the reality that this was just awful.

Of course, for all my previous talk of nobody remembering Club House or their single, the track did carve out its own little piece of pop history by being an infamous part of the origin of one of the biggest boy bands of the 90s. Ladies and gentlemen…Boyzone!

Level 42 on TOTP in 1994? The year widely acknowledged as being the lift off point for Britpop? It seems as wrong as tomato ketchup on a Sunday roast yet here they were with their second hit of that year. “All Over You” came from their “Forever Now” album and was the follow up to the title track and it sounds like it has the potential of being a decent tune akin to something like “Hot Water” from their past but it never really goes anywhere. Yes it’s got a chunky, funky rhythm courtesy of Mark King’s trademark slap bass but it meanders aimlessly with its sole intention seeming to be how many rhyming words it can get into the lyrics which end in ‘-ing’. And then. And then there’s that middle right when keyboardist Mike Lindup breaks into a solo bit that has very strong Spinal Tap “Stonehenge” vibes:

Through the heat-haze and the blue
I will shimmer and distort
And become what you always knew
But were never taught in this sad time
Take on board the things I say
Just be sure that you’ll be mine someday
Justify the things I do
Just believe that it’s all over you
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Mark King / Michael David Lindup / Philip Gould
All Over You lyrics © Peermusic (uk) Ltd.

All that was missing was some dwarves dancing around an 18” model. “All Over You” peaked at No 26 but Level 42’s chart years were nearly over. They would visit the Top 40 just one more time.

Time for that legend of music now as we get an exclusive performance from Miss Barbara Streisand (like ~~Diana Ross~~, Miss Diana Ross, you have to prefix her name with Miss). I’m not about to do a potted history of Barbara’s career here as it would take too long and I’m behind with these reviews but suffice too say, host Nicky Campbell just about sums it up in his intro. I was aware of Miss Barbara Streisand initially from her No 1 single “Woman In Love” from 1980 when I was 12 but I didn’t really regard her as a singer that much as she didn’t really have another major hit throughout the decade when I was consuming pop music avariciously. I regarded her more as a film star, that woman that was in Funny Girl, Hello Dolly!, A Star Is Born and Yentl, none of which were movies that particularly interested me at all growing up. I was aware that she was a huge name though, so much so that by the time she was touring in 1993/94 – the first time since 1966 – tickets were going for astronomical prices. A friend managed to get one for one of her four nights at Wembley Arena (from where this satellite performance came) and I think she might have paid around £200 even in 1994! It looks like a lot of the ticket price revenue went on paying for the very stylish stage set. The tour grossed $50 million playing to 400,000 people.

The song she performs here – “As If We Never Said Goodbye” – is from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard which made it the second chart hit from the show in recent months following Dina Carroll’s version of “The Perfect Year”. It also featured on Miss Barbara Streisand’s most recent album “Back To Broadway” which had been a huge success going double platinum in the US and gold over here. The single made it to No 20 and she would clock up another three chart hits in the UK during the 90s, all of them duets with Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and Vince Gill to add to those from the 80s (Don Johnson) and perhaps her most famous in the late 70s with Donna Summer (“No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”) and Neil Diamond (“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”).

Were Ride a big name? I guess the were amongst the ‘shoegaze’ community and the TOTP caption says their career record sales at that point was 500,000. It seems a bit unfair of the producers though who put up a similar caption for Miss Barbara Streisand detailing her 7 million album sales. Still, as Nicky Campbell says in his intro, she’d never headlined the Reading Festival. I quite liked a couple of their tunes like “Leave Them All Behind” and “Twisterella” from 1992’s Top 5 album “Going Blank Again”. This track, “Birdman” was from their third album “Carnival Of Light” which showcased a departure from the band’s usual songwriting style with Mark Gardner arriving at the studio with fully formed compositions rather than crafting tracks from jamming sessions. It also displayed a different sound with a deliberate move away from ‘shoegaze’ to a more classic rock sound. Another change was obvious in this performance as that’s not Gardner up there on vocals but guitarist Andy Bell (later of Hurricane #1, Oasis and Beady Eye). Bell had written half of the tracks on the album (including this single) so I guess he wanted to make like UB40 and sing his own song? Despite the album replicating the chart peak of its predecessor, it alienated some of their original fanbase and drew unfavourable reviews from the press whilst even the band themselves fell out of love with it referring it it as “Carnival Of Shite”. Hmm. Ride released another album (1996’s “Tarantula”) before disbanding only to reform in 2014.

The final three names tonight are all very much part of the rock/pop music establishment starting with the guy who did the personal message at the top of the show Michael Bolton. Interestingly, he did seem to plug Miss Barbara Streisand’s appearance more than his own. Even Mr Mullet Head had to bow before the ‘Queen of the Divas’. Bollers is on the show to plug his latest offering, a cover of the Bill Withers classic “Lean On Me”. This was literally money for old rope (or hair). Bolton had already done an album of cover verists in 1992 called “Timeless: The Classics” and yet he didn’t see any issue with recording yet another for his next album “The One Thing” and even less compunction about releasing it as a single when he was in need of a hit. After all, he’d done a similar thing in 1991 when, after the first two singles from his “Time. Love And Tenderness” album had failed to pull up any trees sales wise, he released a cover of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” to restore him to the Top 10. Just shameless really. Bolton gives his usual over emoting performance here which also features Michael J. Mullins on backing vocals. “Who?” you may ask. Well, he’s the guy who sang on all the later hits for Modern Romance and who was the perennial backing singer for Cliff Richard. Now if Bollers had done a cover version of “Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey” I might have had a bit more respect for him. As it was his, version of “Lean On Me” peaked at No 14.

Prince is the next huge name on the show as he is still at No 1 with “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”. As with many other artists, his highest charting single in the UK is certainly not his best – in my humble opinion at least. I could name a load of other tracks I prefer. Off the top of my head there’s “Purple Rain”, “Alphabet Street”, “Take Me with U”, “Raspberry Beret”…I could go on. Prince would only return to the our Top 10 twice more after “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” and one of those was with a rather obvious release of “1999” as 1998 drew to a close.

The play out song is another single that didn’t actually make the Top 40 despite the artist being one of the biggest names in in music. “We Wait And We Wonder” was the third single from Phil Collins‘ “Both Sides” album and was written as a response to the Warrington bombings and the whole situation of the Irish Troubles peaking at No 45. Despite all his success as a solo artist, Phil has had his fair share of non charting releases as well, some of them coming immediately after a huge hit. “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away” only made No 45 despite being the follow up to the chart topping “You Can’t Hurry Love”. Then there’s “Do You Remember?” which failed to make the Top 40 despite coming from his multi platinum album “…But Seriously”. “Wear My Hat” from 1997’s “Dance Into The Light” would suffer a similar fate all of which just goes to show that no matter how big your name or reputation, you cannot take the vagaries of the charts nor the record buying public for granted.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Skin	The Money EP	Nah
2	Eternal	Just A Step From Heaven	No
3	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Under The Bridge	Yes, yes I did
4	Club House	Light My Fire	As if
5	Level 42	All Over You	Never happening
6	Barbara Streisand	As If We Never Said Goodbye	I did not
7	Ride	Birdman	Negative
8	Michael Bolton	Lean On Me	See 4 above
9	Prince	The Most Beautiful Girl in the World	Not for me thanks
10	Phil Collins	We Wait And We Wonder	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/m001jvps/top-of-the-pops-28041994

TOTP 24 FEB 1994

Posted on February 11, 2023 by 80stastic

Musical comebacks – there have been a few across the decades, some more successful than others. Take That made a remarkable return to the charts in 2006 ten years after they had disbanded with a No 1 album and single and sold out tour dates, all without the presence of Robbie Williams in their ranks (at least initially). In 1983, Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” album would bag her four Grammy Awards following years in the commercial wilderness after finally escaping her abusive relationship with husband Ike. And what about Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV Special which would become unofficially known as ‘The ‘68 Comeback Special’, reinvigorating his career which had declined into a spiral of those awful movies he made. Even in these BBC4 TOTP repeats, we’ve seen both Meatloaf and Duran Duran rise from the ashes of their past careers to record huge sellers in 1993.

Then there’s the less well received comebacks. When Guns N’ Roses self destructed causing a massive delay of fifteen years between albums, by the time “Chinese Democracy “ finally came out, there was little appetite for Axl Rose and his new band line up. Spandau Ballet did pull off a successful reunion in 2009 with a sell out tour, an album of re-recorded versions of songs from their back catalogue and a feature length documentary biopic Soul Boys Of The Western World. However, when lead singer Tony Hadley left for good in 2017, the band tried to carry on by replacing him with relative unknown Ross William Wild. They only lasted a handful of gigs before realising that a Hadley-less Spandau wasn’t really what the people wanted. Nor did people have any room in their lives for the second coming of Vanilla Ice who attempted a comeback in 1998 with a nu-metal influenced album called “Hard To Swallow” (indeed it was). And then there was Level 42 who kick off this edition of TOTP. Was it a return to their glory days of the mid 80s or did they illicit an indifferent reaction?

The dawn of the 90s saw the band looking every bit the 80s anachronism. Their long term record label Polydor allegedly rejected their first new material of the decade (the 1991 album “Guaranteed”) which led to the band relocating to RCA but the album wasn’t well received when it finally appeared. Could they achieve an unlikely comeback three years on just as Britpop was brewing?

“Forever Now” was the title of both their tenth studio album and lead single from it. It was also the last album to feature three members of the original line up in Mark King, Mike Lindup and Phil Gould with the latter returning to the fold for the first time since 1987. It was a short lived return for Gould who refused to tour the album due to his lack of confidence in the record company. The fan base saw the album as very much a return to form but for an uncommitted observer like me, it sounded a bit directionless. They’d added a load of horns into the mix alongside King’s trademark slap bass but it just seems to meander along without really going anywhere ultimately. Maybe channeling the origins of the band’s name (with 42 being the answer to “the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything” as per The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), the song’s lyrics seem to ponder the existential mystery of time, coming up with the conclusion that we should all just live for the moment. However, it expresses that sentiment in the most cack-handed of ways with these words:

Holy grail, holy cow

I just want to live forever now
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Frank John Musker / Mark King / Richard Simon Darbyshire
Forever Now lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Dear oh dear. Later in the year, another song would appear with the lyrics “live forever” in it. It was so much better than Level 42’s effort, you could see the difference in quality between them from space.

“Forever Now” the single did achieve a respectable peak of No 19 though whilst the album made the Top 10. The band would break up in the October of 1994 before reappearing with King and a new touring line up in 2001.

https://youtu.be/Y7Jfa_-b0GE

Level 42 weren’t the only ones in revival mode on this show as the host was also on the comeback trail. Bruno Brookes hadn’t been on the show since 1991 just before the ‘year zero’ cull but was brought back into the fold alongside Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Nicky Campbell by new producer Ric Blaxill. So here he was in 1994 with the same hairstyle that he had on his first TOTP appearance back in 1984. Quite remarkable. Bruno Brookes introducing Level 42 on TOTP – this really was an 80s flashback.

The next act weren’t exactly looking to make a comeback as they’d had a No 1 single less than 12 months earlier but the comparative lack of success of its follow ups had led me to believe we’d maybe already seen the last of them. How wrong I was. Ace Of Base have sold an estimated 50 million records worldwide to date making them the third best selling artist from Sweden ever behind the mighty ABBA and..ahem…Roxette. Their debut album sold 9 million copies in the US alone and it’s from that album that this track – “The Sign” – came. Sort of. As with Red Hot Chili Peppers the other week, Ace Of Base’s release history was a bit complicated. Originally entitled “Happy Nation”, it was initially released in the UK in June 1993. However, it was kept back for nearly 6 months in the US and retitled “The Sign” with that track plus two others added to it. When the title track went to No 1 over there for 6 weeks, the single was given a release in the UK whilst the “Happy Nation” album was also rereleased with those extra tracks added and retitled “Happy Nation (U.S. Version). Got all that? Good.

In my head, “The Sign” went to No 1 over here just as it had done in the US but Wikipedia assured me it was a No 2 record. Depending on your point of view it’s either incredibly catchy or intensely annoying (I’m in the latter camp) yet it many circles it is cherished. Katy Perry has acknowledged it as a big influence on her music and it regularly appears in those 50 Best Songs of the 90s polls. For me though, it was always a very slight, lowest common denominator pop song. Its Wikipedia entry refers to it as ‘techno-reggae’ whatever the hell that was. As with all of Ace Of Base’s hits, I couldn’t get along the overly nasal vocals. As for its legacy, it surely doesn’t get any bigger than Pitch Perfect?

Another comeback of sorts now as we find the rather unusual event of a record going back up the charts having already peaked once. There’s no great mystery to why this happened though. “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting had entered the charts at No 7 back in mid January before making its way to a peak of No 2 and then descending the charts. However, the film it was from – The Three Musketeers – was released to UK cinemas just two weeks before this TOTP aired and so, with it playing over the end credits, people’s attention was drawn to it once more resulting in a sales spike. It’s still a shocking song though.

No comebacks here – “Stay Together” was a bit of a stop gap single though between Suede albums. Crashing straight into the charts at No 3, was this official proof that they were not just the next big thing but indeed, the current big thing? As for that by rather out there Derek Jarman reference by Bruno Brookes, here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind it:

No, you didn't dream that, Bruno Brookes just mentioned avant garde filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 19 February 1994. Jarman directed the video for Suede's "So Young". #TOTP https://t.co/p1HxIRGrJy
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

They’ve also got the info on drummer Simon Gilbert’s 16 T-shirt:

Suede drummer Simon Gilbert's "16" t-shirt was a message in support of lowering the gay male age of consent to 16. At this point it was still 21. On 21 February 1994, the House of Commons had voted to reduce it to 18. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Look, it takes a long time to write these reviews so sometimes I allow myself a shortcut by relying on other sources to tell the stories – OK? And anyway, Suede were only just in the TOTP studio performing “Stay Together” the other week so I’ve already said everything I wanted to say about it.

An artist next who would achieve a couple of comebacks during her time and in 1994, her career trajectory would suggest she’d be in need of one soon enough. After bursting into the charts in 1993 with a debut No 1 single in “Dreams”, Gabrielle had failed to replicate that success with the follow up singles which had peaked at Nos:

9 – 26 – 24

“Because Of You” was the last of those figures and, in its defence, it was the fourth and final track released from an album that had been out for four months already including the busy Christmas period. Even so, these were surely disappointing numbers for both artist and record company. Another reason why “Because Of You” underperformed could be that it was basically “Dreams” without the killer chorus. However, Gabrielle would pull off the first of those aforementioned comebacks two years later with a Top 5 single in “Give Me A Little More Time” and a platinum selling eponymously titled sophomore album. In 2000 she would produce an even better comeback with her chart topping “Rise” single and album.

Oh, and if you need a song called “Because Of You” in your life, there’s always this…

Here come the Breakers starting with an artist who had already made a comeback at the start of the decade after his last two albums of the 80s had seen his sales fall away dramatically. Both 1986’s “Leather Jackets” and 1988’s “Reg Strikes Back” had underperformed commercially and 1990’s “Sleeping With The Past” looked to be going the same way until a rerelease of “Sacrifice” coupled as an A-side with “Healing Hands” made Elton John relevant again by giving him his first solo UK No 1. Elton built on that success with a No 2 album in “The One” and a platinum selling “Duets” album. It was from the latter that this ghastly single was taken – a reworking of his 1976 No 1 with Kiki Dee “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” but this time fine with US drag queen and TV celebrity RuPaul.

This was just a terrible idea badly executed. Elton’s last single had been a duet with the aforementioned Kiki Dee on the Cole Porter song “True Love”. Couldn’t he have ditched that and done a revamped version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” with her instead? The nasty, tinny sounding production on the Hi-NRG RuPaul version here does nothing for either of the protagonists’ careers. And the video is just a cringe fest. Perhaps due to its then recent performance at the BRITS, the 1994 version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” peaked at an inexplicable No 7.

No comebacks here as this was one of the first chart hits for Soundgarden that took them from being just another grunge rock band from Seattle to global recognition. I have to admit to not knowing that much about Soundgarden. I knew there was a small, dingy club at Back Piccadilly, Manchester called Soundgarden as we had an Our Price Christmas do their once – caterer ran off with the food budget without supplying any actual grub – but the band? Not much. Did they do one called “Black Hole Sun”?

*checks their discography*

Yes, that was them and that track was the third single from their 1994 album “Superunknown”. The first though was this one – “Spoonman”. Nothing to do with Noel Gallagher’s quote about sibling Liam being “as angry as a man with a fork in a world of soup” nor Mr Spoon from Button Moon, it was actually inspired by something I did have some knowledge about – the film Singles. The plot revolves around the love lives of some Generation X’ers in Seattle including the wannabe rock star character Cliff played by Matt Dillon. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam worked on songs for the soundtrack with the latter’s bass guitarist Jeff Ament tasked with coming up with names for Cliff’s fictional rock band in the film. ‘Spoonman’ was one of his suggestions but in the end they went for ‘Citizen Dick’. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell used the title as the basis for this track. It didn’t appear in the soundtrack album initially though a version was included on a 2017 super deluxe edition. It would peak at No 20 on the IK charts.

This next song is from a band not so much attempting a comeback as being at the centre of a rerelease campaign for their decade old back catalogue. “Two Tribes”, perhaps surprisingly, was the last of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s first four singles to get the 90s remix/rerelease treatment after “Relax”, “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and “The Power Of Love” before it. Surprising in the respect that it was No 1 for 9 weeks in 1984, the longest running No1 record in the UK during the entire 80s. Is it their most popular/well known song though? Could a case be made for “Relax” which is, after all, the 7th best selling single in the UK of all time. Or how about “The Power Of Love” what with its festive season associations and place on many a Christmas playlist? What is not surprising is that none of the singles from Frankie’s second album “Liverpool” were deemed worthy of a second outing. “Two Tribes (Fluke’s Minimix)” achieved a peak of No 16 whilst “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” made No 4.

A second helping of Sting on the show now as we go live by satellite to Sydney, Australia for a performance of his latest single “Nothing ‘Bout Me”. This exemplified new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s approach to these live by satellite links to have artists doing a turn in front of a famous landmark (in this case Sydney Opera House). This was the final single from the “Ten Summoner’s Tales” album which brought a nice symmetry to the tracks taken from it if you include one that originally featured on the Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack but ended up on the Sting album. Why? Well, it was called “It’s Probably Me”. Mr Sumner was obviously keen on three word song titles where the last one was ‘me’ at this time.

It’s a fairly jaunty number and was written as Sting’s retort to all the attempts by the music press to dissect his psyche every time he released an album. It suffered from being the last single from an album that had already been out for nearly a year and got no higher than its No 32 chart position it was at here. Bruno Brookes talks about Sting having “a cast of thousands” with him in this performance and there’s certainly a fair few there with him including seven backing singers! However, even that’s not the most noticeable thing about this performance. Where did you get that outfit sir?!

https://youtu.be/x8jTa6ksKVI

So here’s a bit of a thing as UK music fans get their first look at Beck. What an interesting artist this guy is but he would probably say that the least interesting thing about him is his debut hit “Loser”. There’s so much to unpack and discuss about Beck but I’m pushed for time again this week so let’s start by dispelling a couple of myths:

He is not related to the Hanson brothers of “Mmm Bop” fame. His surname is spelt Hansen.
“Loser” is not a stoner rap or anti-establishment slacker anthem that speaks of Generation X ennui. The ‘loser’ theme is, according to Beck himself, merely a description of his lack of skill as a rapper, made up on the spot when he was writing the song.
It has nothing to do with Nirvana nor Kurt Cobain’s death a few weeks after it was a hit despite their label Sub Pop selling T-shirts emblazoned with the word ‘LOSER’ on them.

It remains, however, a great track in my humble opinion despite Beck declaring it interesting but ultimately unimpressive. It would not be indicative of his future musical direction though with many fans of the song being caught out by the rest of his material. A bit like when those people who loved “More Than Words” by Extreme being disappointed at the rest of their funk metal back catalogue perhaps?

“Loser” with its bizarre lyrics (“beefcake pantyhose” indeed!) would go Top 10 in the US though we were slightly more conservative in our liking of it over here where it peaked at No 15. By the way, I’ve no idea who these old fellas are up there on stage with Beck or why they are there but they’re great all the same.

https://youtu.be/KJ7mEbf29lk

There is a rather tragically poignant version of the song in the TV series Glee. Both the actors featured in the performance are now no longer with us. Cory Monteith died in 2013 of an accidental drug overdose whilst Mark Salling committed suicide by hanging in 2018.

No comebacks apparent in the No 1 slot as Mariah Carey holds steady for another week with “Without You”. The popularity of her version led to a surge in sales for parent album “Music Box” which had been out for six months already giving her the double whammy of a No 1 single and album simultaneously. Curiously, despite eight of her previous ten singles going to No 1 in the US, it peaked at No 3 over there. Mariah would eke out another UK Top 10 hit from “Music Box” in “Anytime You Need A Friend” before undertaking another cover of a love song when she duetted with Luther Vandross on Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love”. She would end 1994 by releasing that Christmas song.

The play out song this week gives us one final comeback and how unlikely was this one?! Anyone who had a bet on the Charleston dance craze being back in 1994 must have coined it in. “Doop” by Doop was a mash up of ragtime, the aforementioned Charleston and some house beats and would be at No 1 in the UK soon enough. Criminally, it denied Bruce Springsteen what would have been his first and so far only solo UK chart topper.

Although the bpm are completely different, it does put me in mind of this intensely creepy single that was released in 1982. A synth pop version of Irving Berlin anyone? Although UK record buyers were unable to resist the ‘charms’ of Doop in 1994, back in the 80s we had a bit more taste as this drivel bombed over here whilst going to No 4 in the US.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Forever Now	Nah
2	Ace Of Base	The Sign	Never happening
3	Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting	All For Love	See 2 above
4	Suede	Stay Together	Could have but didn’t
5	Gabrielle	Because Of You	Nope
6	Elton John and RuPaul	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart	As if
7	Soundgarden	Spoonman	No
8	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	Two Tribes	Bought it in 1984 but not 1994
9	Sting	Nothing ‘Bout Me	I did not
10	Beck	Loser	See 4 above
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	Negative
12	Doop	Doop	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/m001hqvk/top-of-the-pops-24021994

TOTP 15 AUG 1991

Posted on September 26, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid August 1991 and the nation is still in the grip of Robin Hood fever with the Kevin Costner film having been out at the cinemas for around a month and doing great business whilst the theme song from the soundtrack by Bryan Adams is not even half way through its historic run at the top of the charts. Now obviously Costner’s performance in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves was rightly put in the shade by the over the top portrayal of The Sheriff Of Nottingham by Alan Rickman but for my money, Rickman produced an infinitely better turn in another film that came out the day after this TOTP aired. It received critical acclaim but made peanuts at the box office compared to Robin Hood. Long before Savage Garden had a hit with a song called Truly Madly Deeply, it was also the title of a film starring Rickman and Juliet Stevenson written and directed by Anthony Minghella and it was kind of like a British Ghost but understated and without the Hollywood sheen and was so much better for it. It remains my favourite Alan Rickman movie. Despite Rickman’s character being a cellist and there being a motif of music running throughout the film, there was no chart-chomping hit single from its soundtrack thank God as that would have really spoilt the whole thing.

Back to TOTP though and we start this particular show with a band who would definitely have benefited from a huge hit single. Level 42 hadn’t been seen once yet in the new decade and had last released an album back in 1988 but they were back with a new single and album both entitled “Guaranteed”. Come 1991 though, they looked and sounded like a complete anachronism. The single had all the composite Level 42 elements with Mark King’s driving slap bass to the fore and Mike Lindup’s falsetto vocals still there in the background and centre stage in the bridge section but where was the tune? The whole thing just sort of meandered along for a while before giving up and disappearing up its own arsehole.

Although it was the second highest entry in the Top 40 that week as host Gary Davies advises, it never got beyond that number despite this TOTP appearance. The album did achieve a high of No 3 but its sales were nowhere nears those of previous albums like “World Machine”: and “Running In The Family”. I certainly can’t remember selling any in the Our Price store I was working in. Their imperial phase of the mid 80s was long gone and the band would split in 1994 before reforming in the new millennium.

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

Oh come on now! Color Me Badd again! I’m plain out of anything to say about this bunch of chancers. I mean just look at them. How did anybody fall for this crud?! Watching this video for “All 4 Love” back, they kind of remind me of Pinky and Perky the singing puppet pigs with their high pitched squealing voices and jerky dance moves.

I think Color Me Badd’s legacy (if it can be described as such) is summed up by the following: if you google their name, in the questions that appear in the People Also Ask section after the Wikipedia entry, the second one down is ‘Was Kenny G in Color Me Badd?’.

Now there was some unexpected Twitter love for this next act when the TOTP repeat was broadcast. Sophie Lawrence was never going to be the British Kylie but her version of Donna Summer’s “Love’s Unkind” seems to be much more fondly remembered than I had bargained for. It was produced by one Pete Hammond who had left the Stock, Aitken and Waterman team earlier that year and although it is an out and out sugary pop production, I think I prefer it to what SAW did to the actual Donna Summer when she teamed up with them in 1989 for hit singles like “This Time I Know It’s for Real” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt”.

Of course, Sophie wasn’t the first EastEnders star to infiltrate the pop charts. Back in the mid 80s there seemed to be an Albert Square resident featured in the Top 40 countdown every week. So how does Sophie compare to those who went before and indeed after her…

Actor	Character	Single	Year	Chart peak	Was it any cop?
Anita Dobson	Angie Watts	Anyone Can Fall In Love	1986	No 4	Indescribably bad track set to Eastenders theme tune
Nick Berry	Wicksy	Every Loser Wins	1986	No 1	Painful piano weepy
Letitia Dean and Paul Medford	Sharon Watts and Kelvin Carpenter	Something Outa Nothing	1986	No 12	Clunky, mechanical pop. Dreadful
Tom Watt	Lofty	Subterranean Homesick Blues	1986	Did not chart	Astonishingly bad Dylan cover
Peter Dean	Pete Beale	Can’t Get a Ticket (For the World Cup)	1986	Did not chart	World Cup tie in “song” that couldn’t get any sales for obvious reasons
Sophie Lawrence	Diane Butcher	Love’s Unkind	1991	No 21	Passable Donna Summer cover
Michelle Gayle*	Hattie Tavernier	Sweetness	1994	No 4	Credible and catchy pop
Sean Maguire*	Aidan Brosnan	Good Day	1996	No 12	Breezy but nasty cliche of a song
Martine McCutcheon*	Tiffany Mitchell	Perfect Moment	1999	No 1	Surprisingly classy sounding big ballad
Sid Owen	Ricky Butcher	Good Thing Going	2000	No 14	Sugar Minott cover designed to make him the next Peter Andre. The mind boggles

* Biggest of a number of hits

I’d say that puts Sophie about mid table. Could have been worse although the competition wasn’t up too much.

Although lacking that star quality of the aforementioned Kylie, Sophie seems likeable enough in this performance although the suggestive eye wink that she has deemed necessary does jar a bit by the end. There was some also a Twitter reaction to Sophie’s backing singers and you have to say that the TOTP cameraman does seem to give them at least as much screen time as Sophie herself. Can’t imagine why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMbxf7s2Nk

It’s the video for “Winter In July” by Bomb The Bass up next. There seems to be a lot of love still out there for this period of the band’s career with comparisons between their album “Unknown Territory” (from which “Winter In July” came) and Massive Attack’s classic “Blue Lines” made by fans. Somehow though, whilst “Blue Lines” routinely appears in various best album polls of varying categories, the same can’t be said of “Unknown Territory” – odd really as both albums achieved similar chart peaks (No 13 for the former and No 19 the latter) whilst “Winter In July” was by far the biggest hit single of those released from both albums peaking inside the Top 10 at No 7. Apparently there’s a sample of “Ghosts” by Japan in the there somewhere but I’m not sure I can spot it.

Ah, this next track is peak summer of 1991. “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” by PM Dawn was basically musical Radox washing over you and gently smoothing out the wrinkles in your aural senses. Now admittedly I couldn’t hear the Japan “Ghosts” sample in “Winter In July” but nobody could miss the sampling of Spandau Ballet’s “True” in this track. Much was made of its use at the time and I’m sure that many a customer asked for “that song that has Spandau Ballet in it” rather than “the PM Dawn single”. What a great choice of sample though – it totally makes the track.

As for PM Dawn, they’d had an earlier minor hit “A Watcher’s Point of View (Don’t ‘Cha Think)” but I don’t think that had registered with me so, as for many people, they were a pretty new name to me. There seemed to be something transcendental about “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” though that made me take notice from its trippy sounding title to its lyrics that were at turns both indecipherable (“Rubber bands expand in a frustrating sigh”) and existential (“Reality used to be a friend of mine”).

The duo behind this wonderful sound were New Jersey brothers Attrell and Jarrett Cordes who went by the stage names of Prince Be and DJ Minutemix respectively. Looking like the missing members of De La Soul in their D.A.I.S.Y. Age phase, they scored a huge global hit with this single which went to No 1 in the US. It would peak at No 3 over here kept off the No 1 spot by Bryan Adams and even denied a No 2 berth by Right Said Fred. Where’s the justice eh?

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

A second screening for the video to ‘Monsters And Angels” by Voice Of The Beehive next (and the third outing in total for the song on TOTP). I watched Gary Davies very carefully during this link. Why? Well, at the end of the song he advises us that the band’s latest album had been released on the Monday of that week. Yeah and…? The title of it of course! The pun-licious “Honey Lingers”! I can’t be sure if Davies has grasped the cunnilingus connection by his expression but he does seem to take extra care to make sure he pronounces the album title correctly.

The Beehive sisters certainly weren’t shrinking violets when it came to naming things. Apart from “Honey Lingers” there was also an album called “Sex & Misery” and some live appearances in London in the Summer of ’91 that were entitled Orgy Under The Underworld. Blimey!

A staple of Summer compilation albums next as we get DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with “Summertime”. Whilst it is an indisputable seasonal anthem, for me the song of that year’s Summer was “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” that we saw earlier in the show. I mean, I thought “Summertime” was good and all that but PM Dawn’s track was shimmering perfection in comparison.

One of the landmarks that features in the video is the Philadelphia Museum of Art – yes, the building where Rocky runs up the steps at the end of his legendary training routine montage. That act of adrenaline pumping and lung bursting physical exertion being pretty much the opposite of what DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince were doing as they saunter past.

“Summertime” peaked at No 8.

This lot were inescapable in the Summer of ’91 and I’ve already mentioned them in this blog but here they are in the flesh (as it were) – it can only be Right Said Fred with “I’m Too Sexy”. Did any body else get a ZZ Top vibe off this lot back then. Not a musical vibe obviously but looks wise. Ok Ok, they clearly did not look like the Texas blues rockers but the make up of the band with two bald geezers (brothers Richard and Fred Fairbrass) who looked very similar and the guitarist (Rob Mazoli) who looked nothing like them. Compare that to ZZ Top and the very hirsute Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill out front with the clean shaven and most ironically named musician ever Frank Beard on the drum stool behind them. No? Nothing? Just me then.

The Freds were defiant about their image though. In a Smash Hits interview Richard Fairbrass stated:

“When we were on Top Of The Pops the other week, everyone else look really boring like Deacon Blue and their stupid student look. We’re different.”

Well, he was right about them being different. Nobody elsel looked like that on TOTP. I thought they might have shaved off their hair due to encroaching male pattern bald ness but it seems not. Fred Fairbrass went on to say in that Smash Hits interview that:

“When I had it in a ponytail it always looked a bit naff so I just thought ‘Shave it all off’.”

And his brother? Why did he shave off his hair? Here’s Richard Fairbrasss again:

“I did it because he did it.”

Oh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I-5uOII4mE

Three Breakers this week starting with the lesser spotted Midge Ure who had not been seen on the show since…

*checks notes*

Wow! Since 26th June 1986! That’s a lifetime in pop music! Yes, very nearly five years on from his last appearance on the show when the video for his “Call Of The Wild” single played over the closing credits, Midge was back with a new hit called “Cold Cold Heart”.

What had he been up to in those missing five years? Well, he’d reconvened Ultravox in the latter part of 1986 to record the “U-Vox” album which I’d always assumed was a commercial failure but apparently went gold and achieved a chart high of No 9. However, all was not right in the band. Drummer Warren Cann had been sacked and the album recorded with Big Country’s drummer Mark Brzezicki. The singles taken from it were only minor hits – “Same Old Story” peaked at No 31. ‘All Fall Down” No 30 and “All In One Day” an unimaginable No 88 – and the band’s chemistry was no longer intact. Maybe Midge’s successful solo career in 1985 with the No 1 single ‘If I Was” had pissed them right off?!

Anyway, the band split in 1987 after the U-Vox tour and Midge returned to his solo career releasing “Answers To Nothing” the following year. Despite including a duet with Kate Bush and a couple of decent singles in the title track and “Dear God”, the album was only a minor commercial success. And then….not much. I’m guessing he was still touring but no new material was released over the next three years. Maybe he spent much of it in dispute with Chrysalis who had been Ultravox’s record label since the “Vienna” album in 1980 and also for all of Ure’s solo output up to this point? Come 1991, he was with new label Arista for his “Pure” album from which “Cold Cold Heart” was taken.

So what was his new material like? I wasn’t a fan of the single to be honest. It sounded like a twee folk infused nursery rhyme bulked up with some synths and a plodding bass. I really couldn’t see why this had propelled Midge back into the charts. He’d already experimented with a Celtic sound much more successfully to my ears on the aforementioned “All Fall Down” Ultravox single which had been recorded with The Chieftains. “Cold Cold Heart” sounded amateurish next to it. Still, it did provide Midge with one final trip to the UK Top 40 to where he has yet to return if you’re not counting the 1993 re-release of “Vienna” (which I’m not).

A US No 1 next from Karyn White in the form of “Romantic”. Although I remember her album “Ritual Of Love” from its cover, the actual music doesn’t ring any bells. It sounds very much like a Janet Jackson song to me and there’s good reason why as it was produced by regular Miss Jackson collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Didn’t Karyn White have an earlier hit that sounded nothing like “Romantic”?

*checks YouTube*

Yes she had this slushy slowie called “Superwoman” in 1988…

Think I preferred that version of her rather than the Janet tribute act. “Romantic” couldn’t repeat its US success in the UK as it peaked at No 23.

REM‘s run of hit singles in 1991 continued with “Near Wild Heaven”. The third track to be lifted from their “Out Of Time” album, it consolidated on the success of previous singles “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People” when it peaked at No 27. It was the first single to be released by the band that had its lyrics both co-written and sung by bassist Mike Mills. He had written the lyrics to early single “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” and sung lead vocals on a cover version called – and get this for a nice little link with the previous Breaker – “Superman” but never both writing and vocals on the same track before. He does a pretty good job as well I think. I certainly don’t recall thinking it would have been better if sung by Michael Stipe. REM would garner a fourth and final UK Top 40 hit for the year when “Radio Song” was released in November.

We’re at week number six of sixteen of Bryan Adams being at the top of the charts so not even half way through his reign yet. It’s worth remembering that prior to this single, Adams hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since “It’s Only Love”, his 1985 duet with Tina Turner. Indeed, up to 1991, he’d only ever had four hits in this country at all and none had made the Top 10. So he hadn’t always been this interminable music figure that the Summer of 1991 made him into. I guess he certainly made up for lost time with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.

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

The play out video is “Time, Love And Tenderness” by Michael Bolton. There’s bit at the very start of the video which we don’t see on TOTP where Bollers is sat at his piano surrounded by members of a gospel choir rehearsing the song and he says “Ok , so we come right in with …”and then sings the words ‘Time, Love and Tenderness’. I say sing but he rasps them out. It sounds horrible.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Level 42	Guaranteed	I did not and that’s a guarantee
2	Color Me Badd	All 4 Love	Of course not
3	Sophie Lawrence	Love’s Unkind	Nope
4	Bomb The Bass	Winter In July	Negative
5	PM Dawn	Set Adrift On Memory Bliss	Yes I bought the cassette single but I don’t know where it is now
6	Voice Of The Beehive	Monsters And Angels	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince	Summertime	Nah
8	Right Said Fred	I’m Too Sexy	A definite no
9	Midge Ure	Cold Cold Heart	Negative
10	Karyn White	Romantic	Never happening
11	REM	Near Wild Heaven	It’s a no
12	Bryan Adams	“(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”	I didn’t
13	Michael Bolton	Time, Love And Tenderness	Hell no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000znwp/top-of-the-pops-15081991

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

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TOTP 28 APR 1994

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TOTP 24 FEB 1994

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TOTP 15 AUG 1991

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