Lighthouse Family

TOTP 25 JUN 1998

As host Jamie Theakston acknowledges in his top of the show intro, World Cup fever is still sweeping the nation as the England team remained in France. How much longer though was yet to be decided. Having comfortably overcome Tunisia in their opening game, disaster had befallen with a last minute defeat to Romania in the second match. All hope of progressing now hinged on the last group game against Colombia which was played the day after this TOTP was broadcast (presumably the show was moved to Thursday this week to avoid clashing with the BBC coverage of the game on the Friday).

As I said, Theakston talks about TOTP being the antidote to World Cup fever in his intro but then the first song in the show is a football song – “Vindaloo” by Fat Les. This was just a rerun of the performance from last week that incorporated both the EastEnders set and TOTP studio but in the intervening seven days, the ‘censored’ caption over the lady on stage who has an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction has been edited out. So what do we make of “Vindaloo” 27 years on? Was it an attempt to demonstrate the multiculturalism of England by getting the masses to sing a song that espoused Indian cuisine as an example of Englishness? Or was that message lost on/ignored by those same masses who instead adopted it as what many saw as a rallying call for the anti-social behaviour of the hooligan? Or was it both? Could it be both simultaneously? Certainly Keith Allen is on record as making the case for the former. However, I think we might have strayed into Alf Garnett territory with the infamous character created by Johnny Speight for the sitcom Till Death Do Us Part meant to be a figure of ridicule but for many of the watching TV audience, the satire of his portrayal was lost on them. In the political climate of 2025 and in the wake of flag-gate, who knows how it would be perceived? Rest assured, I’m not going there.

Now, when I saw this next song on the forthcoming new releases information sheet that we used to get on a weekly basis in the Our Price chain for whom I worked, it filled me with dread. My first thought on reading the title of this next song was “Oh god, someone’s doing a cover version of Nick Heyward – the greatest living Englishman!”. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. “Whistle Down The Wind”, as well as being the name of Nick’s debut solo hit from 1983, was also the title of the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with the title song being recorded by “Chains” hitmaker Tina Arena. Based on the rather wonderful 1961 film of the same name starring a very young Haley Mills, it was initially not a success when it opened in the US and a stint on Broadway was cancelled. However, a reworked version that ran in the West End was better received and played solidly until 2001. Subsequent productions have toured the UK and US whilst the most recent incarnation came in 2022 at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire. However, I would argue that it remains one of Lloyd Webber’s lesser known and celebrated musicals.

As for the show’s music, Lloyd Webber collaborated with Meatloaf’s writing partner Jim Steinman including on the title track and it’s a suitably overwrought, soaring ballad that I found almost unlistenable to be honest. It’s more like a vocal warm up exercise than a song although Tina seems pleased with her own performance visibly mouthing “Yes!” at its climax and giving herself a double fist clench salute. The single would only make No 24 on the charts but the follow up single was extraordinarily successful. “No Matter What” by Boyzone would spend three weeks at No 1, be the fourth best selling single of 1998 in the UK and was voted the winner of the inaugural Record of the Year award. Despite all of that, I’m sticking by my assertion that Whistle Down The Wind is not one of the best known Lloyd Webber shows and that the Boyzone single is not immediately associated with it, having developed its own identity separate from its source.

I know I say this a lot in this blog but…WHO?! Imajin anyone? Well, back in 1998, according to Jamie Theakston, they were the latest US R&B sensation – like we needed another one of them. Their song was called “Shorty (You Keep Playing With My Mind)” and it’s all fairly routine stuff though the female contingent in the studio audience seem highly excited by the whole thing. Talking of 1983 as I was earlier re: Nick Heyward, watching Imajin (terrible name) I was reminded of another hit from that year – “Candy Girl” by New Edition and guess what? Imajin would feature on a cover version of that hit in 1999 with then 13 year old rapper Baby DC. And that is all my imagination can muster about Imajin.

After considering the patriotism/nationalism/loyalism (choose whichever term you are most comfortable with) angle to Fat Les earlier and quickly deciding not to go there, we have another contentious artist next. There was so many headlines about the fact that Dana International was transgender that it didn’t seem to matter what her song was like. Even host Jamie Theakston can’t resist making reference to her sex reassignment surgery in his intro whilst the pause in his outro whilst describing her as “quite extraordinary” suggests that he feels he should make another comment though he doesn’t really know what that should be. I guess it was a different time back then…or is it any different now? Gender identity remains an issue that generates enormous debate to the extent that it is used as a source of party political point scoring with exhortations to ‘define a woman’ being traded across the House of Commons. Again, I’m not wading into that subject here. What I will say is that, to my ears, Dana International’s song “Diva” doesn’t seem so out there and other worldly as perhaps it was represented as back in 1998. Its peak of No 11 made it the highest charting Eurovision winning song outside of UK or Irish artists since Germany’s Nicole took “A Little Peace” to No 1 in 1982.

Whatever happened to Karen Ramirez? OK, it’s not a question that’s keeping me up at night but it’s one that’s maybe deserves an answer. Appearing from nowhere and disappearing almost as quickly, she scored a Top 10 hit with “Looking For Love”, a dance version of an Everything But The Girl song (originally titled “I Didn’t Know I Was Looking For Love”) but who was the woman singing it and where did she go? Karen was born in North London but moved to Trinidad and Tobago at the age of six before returning to the UK to go to university. With ambitions to sing, her demo tape was picked up by Manifesto Records leading to a debut single release called “Troubled Girl” which just missed the Top 40. However, the follow up was “Looking For Love” and it remained in the Top 10 for four weeks and the Top 40 for eight, totally eclipsing the 1993 Everything But The Girl original which peaked at No 72. And after that…nothing. Well no, not nothing. A minor follow up hit and an album that didn’t make much of a mark and then nothing. Karen reappeared in 2006 with a iTunes only album and then…nothing again. So, we may never know if Karen found the love she was looking for but she left us one hit that basically took an Everything But The Girl song, gave it the “Missing” remix treatment and made herself famous for 15 minutes. It was almost like an artist covering an artist’s song covering an artist. There must be a name for that but I’m not going to spend any time looking for it.

Now in the past, whilst not defending the Lighthouse Family and their music, I’ve defended the right to like them – an ‘each to their own’ approach. However, this song – “Lost In Space” – is almost unforgivable. Firstly, it is one of the most soporific, dull, boring, lifeless, soulless, banal…I could go on…and I will…leaden, anaemic, dreary, grey, insipid tracks ever recorded. It just drones on..and on…and on with no changes of pace, no attention grabbing hooks, not even a jarring breakdown section. It’s just…there. Secondly, looking at its title, I’d assumed it was something to do with the film of the same name that was in the cinemas at this time – the big screen remake of the Irwin Allen 60s TV series. However, I can’t find a single link between the film and it. Certainly, it’s not on the soundtrack album so was this just some shameless band wagon jumping going on here, some manipulative cashing-in practice? And I thought they were nice, clean living boys at least!

Now if it’s a show in the Chris Cowey era, then there must be a repeated performance with very little in the way of justifying arguments for it. Lo and behold, here are B*Witched with “C’est La Vie” who are back on the show because…? Having been at No 1 for two weeks and dropping down to No 4, they’ve stayed at No 4 this week. And that seems to be good enough reason for Cowey, the King of Recycled Performances. And guess what? He’ll have it opening the show in a couple of weeks because it went up a place to No 3 and stayed there. I’ve tried to make a case for his policy in the past but this was just lazy overkill. In the previous week’s chart, the excellent Embrace was a new entry at No 6 but did we see them? No we didn’t. Right. Who said “C’est La Vie” at the back there? Grr! I oughta…

After two references to 1983 earlier this post comes one from 1984. The Kane Gang’s summer hit of that year “Closest Thing To Heaven” was one of the best of the decade to my ears. Sadly, or maybe happily, this was not Lionel Richie doing a cover version of it in 1998. No, this was a Dianne Warren penned yawn-fest that went absolutely nowhere and then stayed there in a circling motion for the duration. How was it possible in the space of three songs on the same show to find two of the most depressing and depressant tracks ever. This was money for old rope for Lionel and, for recording it, he should have taken a long hard look at himself in the mirror. Actually, maybe that’s not the best idea*

*Sorry Lionel!

Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds have resisted the claims and sales of Fat Les and remain at No 1 for a second week with “3 Lions ‘98”. I like the way that Frank Skinner looks so committed to the performance here like it really matters to him – indeed, maybe it did. Both Frank and David have been guests on Desert Island Discs and interestingly, the former didn’t select “Three Lions” as one of his choices as his modesty prevented him so he went with “Back Home” by the 1970 England World Cup squad instead. Baddiel on the other hand had no such issue picking “Three Lions” without compunction. Although it resurfaces at every major international tournament, has it almost been replaced by Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Fat Les	Vindaloo	No
2	Tina Arena	Whistle Down The Wind	Nick Heyward – Yes Tina Arena – No
3	Imajin	Shorty (You Keep Playing With My Mind)	Never
4	Dana International	Diva	Negative
5	Karen Ramirez	Looking For Love	I did not
6	Lighthouse Family	Lost In Space	I wish they were – no
7	B*Witched	C’est La Vie	Nope
8	Lionel Richie	Closest Thing To Heaven	No way
9	Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds	3 Lions ’98	Nah

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/m002jy43/top-of-the-pops-25061998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 JAN 1998

Posted on June 30 by 80stastic

Constantly writing reviews of these BBC4 repeats of TOTP for the past eight years has been quite a drain on the old creative juices. I mean, nobody would be interested in a list of songs with me denoting whether I liked them or not would they? I try to give each show some context about what else was happening in the world at the time of its broadcast or perhaps something from my own personal life (if I can remember!). On other occasions, I’ll try and hang the whole past around a theme (however tenuous it might be). Sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it can feel like I’m shoehorning stuff in that really has no place being there. And sometimes…well, sometimes everything just sort of dovetails together by delightful happenstance. This post is one of those. This is how it unfolds. The day after this TOTP aired, a brand new BBC sit com aired called Unfinished Business. Now, I never watched this nor have I even any memory of it but having read its Wikipedia entry, it didn’t sound like it was a laugh-fest. Anyway, what’s that got to do with TOTP? Well, apart from both shows being on the BBC and being broadcast within a day of each other, nothing. Except…our host tonight is Jamie Theakston who I was delighted to find out (when I was looking for a theme for this post) has presented a reality show on Netflix called Cheat: Unfinished Business with Amanda Holden. Is that it I hear you ask? No, one of the artists on this TOTP released an album in 1998 which was called “Unfinished Monkey Business”. And there’s more. The band who had the No 1 record this week, I would argue, are a perfect example of having unfinished business but more of that later.

We begin with half man, half washboard Peter Andre who I’m amazed to find was still having hits as late as 1998. “All Night, All Right”, as Jamie Theakston says, was based around a sample of 1978 hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie” which is familiar from my youth but if I’d been pushed to name who it was by, I would have come up with Earth, Wind & Fire rather than the correct answer of A Taste Of Honey. None of this affects the truth that Andre should have given up on his pop star notions long since. He did after one more hit in the 90s for a whole six years but, deciding he had unfinished business with the charts, relaunched himself after appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with the wretched “Insania”.

According to Wikipedia, “All Night, All Right” was a collaboration with Coolio on the album version of the track but with Warren G on the single release. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no sign of either rapper in this performance. What gives?*

*Oh, there’s Warren G! Two places below Andre at No 18 in the charts with “Prince Igor”!

It’s a hat-trick of consecutive appearances for the Lighthouse Family! Yes, the duo (they were a duo despite it all being about singer Tunde Baiyewu) have been on every TOTP of this new year so far with their hit “High”. In an attempt to keep things fresh though, executive producer Chris Cowey has come up with the idea of a stripped back, acoustic performance (witness Robbie Williams doing the same last week on his own third time on the show doing “Angels”). It was a decent shout I guess but maybe the better solution would have been to not have the same songs on every week? Certainly the TOTP community seemed to have had enough of this one judging by their online comments or were said comments triggered by who the artist was rather than how many times they’d been on the show? The usual accusations of being ‘bland’ and ‘vacuous’ were made – an almost obligatory event when discussing the Lighthouse Family it seems. I have to say that I certainly wasn’t a fan but would I have gone as far as to call them the Shitehouse Family? I don’t think so (even though I just did).

We have reached, what is for me, the point of peak Radiohead also known as the moment before they disappeared up their own arses musically speaking. If you are a Radiohead devotee and that offends you then I refer you to my disclaimer at the bottom of this post. Let’s not dwell on the negative though – “No Surprises” is possibly one of the most affecting songs on its first hearing you could ever imagine. Not many* tracks have that inherent emotive power that stirs something within you immediately but that’s how it was for me.

*And certainly not many featuring a glockenspiel!

The third single taken from the “OK Computer” album, it would also be the band’s final commercial release of the 90s and what a way to end their decade. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I couldn’t follow their musical path from this point onwards – I’d already drawn a line under my interest in them subconsciously prompted by the arrival of the new millennium.

Anyway, “No Surprises” was just magnificent – a simple lullaby on the one hand the melody of which was at complete odds with its lyrics that were a caustic indictment of modern life. It had a sense of distress about it, as if it was recorded under duress. Both these extremes of the song were portrayed visually. The lullaby narrative was turned into comedy gold by this scene from The Royle Family…

When “no surprises” by @radiohead plays on @XSManchester it reminds me of this from the royle family 💙 pic.twitter.com/yGpn0hExgp
— RACH / ♡ 🐝 (@rach_griff) December 30, 2019

Meanwhile, that theme of duress was captured by its striking video. Directed by Grant Gee, it depicted Thom Yorke in an astronaut type helmet that slowly filled with water as he sang the song’s lyrics that scrolled upwards, reflected in the helmet. Yorke has to lift his head above the water level to sing until he is fully submerged and then stays motionless for over a minute before the water is released and he completes the song. It was genuinely unnerving and took multiple takes before Yorke could complete it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Apparently, Gee was influenced in his vision for the video by the old Gerry Anderson science-fiction series UFO which featured aliens whose spacesuits had a helmet that was filled with a green liquid that they breathed rather than oxygen. That show scared the crap out of me as a very young kid.

As I write this, it’s Glastonbury weekend of which I’ve watched the following artists:

Shed Seven – not bad but Rick Witter introducing them as a 90s band rather dates them
Alanis Morissette – good vocal but she was clearly very nervous
The 1975 – just insufferable
Pulp – reliably excellent
Noah Kahan – a favourite of my teenage son and fast becoming one of mine too
Olivia Rodrigo – better than expected

However, I don’t think anything I’ve seen this weekend can rival Radiohead’s 1997 Glastonbury set which featured “No Surprises”…

Now, here’s some business that is definitely being finished – the dreadful business of OTT that is, who are on to their final UK chart hit and I’m guessing (please!) their last ever TOTP appearance. Their valedictory song is – surprise, surprise – not another cover version but a serviceable pop ditty aimed squarely at capturing the hearts of teenage girls across the land called “The Story Of Love”. Two of their previous three hits had been with other people’s material but this one could easily have been a Boyzone single. Well, they did seem to be copying their fellow Irish lads at every turn so I guess it makes sense to have a hit that was indiscernible from one of theirs. OTT really were second rate in the boy band stakes though. Apparently Asia went mad for them but over here, they never once even made the Top 10. The story of love? Nah, this was more a tale of tosh. Utter guff. OTT were over and OUT!

And now to that artist whose album featured the words ‘unfinished business’ in its title. Since the messy demise of the Stone Roses in 1996, we’d seen John Squire rise from the ashes with The Seahorses, Mani join Primal Scream and not much else. Suddenly though, frontman Ian Brown was back and throwing his hat into the solo career ring. His debut album was titled “Unfinished Monkey Business” and its lead single was “My Star”. Basically a Brown tirade against the expenditure on and reasoning behind the space race, the Mission Control type voices and sound effects put me in mind not of space exploration though but of CB Radios and trucking and that song “Convoy” from the mid 70s by C.W. McCall. Funny how the mind works isn’t it? I recall quite liking this at the time but on reflection, there doesn’t seem to be much to it other than more than a passing resemblance to this rather good track by The Jam…

Anyway, I guess we’d better address the elephant in the room…what was going on with all those eggs?! There’s a man playing a set of them like they’re a percussion instrument and then Brown himself lobs some at the image of him at the back of the stage. The only explanation I can find is that Brown wanted an organic sound effect for the production on the track and so the sound of an egg being cracked into a frying pan was inserted into the mix. Truth or myth? Who knows? What I do know is that it was quite the comeback given the place Brown found himself in after the Roses imploded after a catastrophic performance at Glastonbury in 1996. It was the very antithesis of the aforementioned appearance by Radiohead at the festival a year later. Having said that, given his ex-band’s fanbase, perhaps a hit was almost guaranteed regardless of its quality but its lo-fi sound had some appeal I guess. It was certainly a far cry from the huge expense of the production on the last Stone Roses album “Second Coming” – apparently Brown financed the recording of “Unfinished Monkey Business” himself and it was partly recorded at his home studio.

Looking at Brown’s discography, I’m slightly taken aback at how many hits he’s had under his own steam although he was part of the reformed classic Stone Roses line up in 2011 proving that the four members had some unfinished business with each other. Said business seems to have finally been dealt with as in September 2019, John Squire confirmed in an interview with The Guardian that the Stone Roses had disbanded.

It’s the world’s favourite boy band according to host Jamie Theakston next – Backstreet Boys. Oh dear Lord. I’m not sure I have anything nor want to say anything about this lot at this juncture. They were just so dull and grim. Look, here are the facts…”All I Have To Give” was their eighth consecutive UK hit of which six went Top 5. It was another wimpy ballad that was written and produced by Full Force who collaborated with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam back in 1985 on “I Wonder If I Take You Home” (I’m sure they’re famous for much more but that’s all I know of them). Apparently the track allowed Backstreet Boy Howie D to do some lead vocals as his voice wasn’t suited to the more pop orientated hits they’d had up to this point. I wonder if Howie had threatened to take his ball home if he wasn’t given his chance? OK, enough of this! My puns are almost as bad as their song!

Oasis are No 1 with “All Around The World” and just like Radiohead before them, this would be their last release of the 90s. Also like Radiohead, it could be seen as a watershed moment. Not only was it the final release on Creation before the label folded but was the last to feature original members Bonehead and Guigsy. This week there’s another intro courtesy of Noel explaining that the band are still in America touring so we get the video rather than a studio appearance. If anyone was in any doubt as to the influence of The Beatles on Oasis and Noel in particular then one watch of this promo surely resolved that. The Yellow Submarine vibe is not so much prevalent as a direct steal.

Now, as fortune would have it, I write this as we enter the week of the first Oasis reunion gigs – yes, the much heralded concerts are nearly here and it will be interesting to see/hear what shape the band are in after sixteen years away. After all the hype, anticipation and negative publicity surrounding dynamic ticket pricing, it’s surely the music that matters right? Well, there is no new music of course – the much speculated and indeed leaked set list won’t have anything we haven’t heard before in it but is that what the hordes would have wanted anyway? I’m not part of the horde by the way. I didn’t feel the need to spend hours virtually queuing for tickets – I saw them in 1996 when they played Maine Road, Manchester when they were at the height of their powers and popularity and felt no pull to revisit the band nearly 30 years later. The band (or more pertinently Noel) clearly don’t feel the same and so we get to the ‘unfinished business’ bit. The reasons behind the Oasis reunion tour have been widely speculated. Did Noel and Liam genuinely want to rebuild their tattered relationship? Was it all about nostalgia and reliving that feeling of when the band could do no wrong? Or is it purely about the money? I think I’m plumping for the last option.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre	All Night, All Right	As if
2	Lighthouse Family	High	No
3	Radiohead	No Surprises	No but I had OK Computer
4	OTT	The Story Of Love	Nah
5	Ian Brown	My Star	Nope
6	Backstreet Boys	All I Have To Give	Never
7	Oasis	All Around The World	No but I had a promo of the Be Here Now album

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/m002dt1y/top-of-the-pops-23011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 16 JAN 1998

Posted on June 20 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of January 1998 and two days before this TOTP aired on the BBC, Channel 4 broadcast the 2000th edition of their soap opera Brookside. I don’t think I was still watching it by this point but, in a cards on the table moment, I can reveal that I have been watching the repeats being shown on STV. From the very start in 1982. We’re up to 1988 now (that’s nearly 650 episodes) and yes, like you, I am asking myself “What am I doing with my life?”. Still, there’s worse things you could do than watch some episodes of a now defunct soap. Or indeed, spend years watching repeats of old pop music shows and then even longer writing up reviews of each one. Oh God – what am I doing with my life?! Oh well, it is what it is and what this TOTP is (or was) we need to find out…

Jayne ‘The Smirk’ Middlemiss is our host and we start with a band who were meant to lead us out of the Britpop years and into…well, a post-Britpop era I guess. Rialto were formed from the ashes of indie rockers Kinky Machine. Retaining their record label (EastWest Records) but not their name and adding some new members, the new look band courted the favour and patronage of the music press and were predicted a hugely successful future by Melody Maker for their epic, soundscape songs that were dripping with atmosphere. Somehow it didn’t quite turn out like that though. Being dropped by their record label shortly before their much anticipated debut album was about to be released can’t have been good for confidence in the band either internally or externally. According to vocalist Louis Eliot, it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the time. EastWest had a change of personnel and sacked their A&R man which led to the band being let go. Their album was released by China Records (home of Art Of Noise, Morcheeba and The Levellers) but in an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, China were bought out by EastWest and Rialto were dropped again.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Reactions to the album were generally positive but in that ‘build ‘em up, knock ‘em down’ attitude so prevalent in the UK press, some reviewers decided to bury the hatchet right between the band’s collective shoulder blades. It made a reasonable stab at the charts though peaking at No 21 no doubt helped by the respectable performance of this single “Untouchable” (No 20). A sweeping, cinematic track that had echoes of a John Barry TV or movie theme (The Persuaders comes to mind), this was a favourite of mine and my wife’s and a purchase was duly made. We were so taken with the band that we had tickets to see them at The Manchester Academy but I was ill on the night of the gig and we missed them. Their success in the UK was dwarfed by that in South Korea where they even outsold Celine Dion and their album went to No 1 but a trip to South East Asia to catch them live seemed a bit over the top (and I’d been to China for just seven days the year before!). A second album arrived in 2001 but by then the writing was in the wall and Rialto split. Eliot pursued a brief solo career but is currently a permanent member of Grace Jones’s touring band. And then, out of the blue, Rialto were back in 2023 playing festivals and with a new album released on the legendary indie label Fierce Panda in April this year. Maybe I’ll get to see them play live after all.

Next is Robbie Williams whose song “Angels” is continuing its undulating chart journey and is back up to No 6 this week. It would alternate between rising and falling for ten of the twelve weeks it remained inside the Top 10. Quite extraordinary. Perhaps in order to build Robbie some credibility and for him to be seen as a serious artist, this time he’s doing the song live and acoustic (or ‘unplugged’ as we said in the 90s). Whether this gave him that credibility is not for me to surmise but it certainly imbued him with some confidence – you can see it all over his face. It could be his famous bravado of course.

P.S. Why was Louis Theroux playing guitar in this performance?

In many ways, KC And The Sunshine Band’s UK legacy is in complete contrast to its US counterpart. In America, they racked up five No 1s and two No 2s whereas over here, their only chart topper was the sickeningly upbeat “Give It Up” which curiously only made No 18 over the water. Of those American No 1s, only two translated into massive hits over here. “Please Don’t Go” was a No 3 in the UK whilst “That’s The Way (I Like It)” made it to No 4. Of those other massive US hits, none got higher than No 21 over here. There must have been something about those two transatlantic hits as both would become huge all over again in the 80s and 90s. KWS took “Please Don’t Go” all the way to No 1 in 1992 whilst Dead Or Alive’s first hit wasn’t “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” but their Hi-NRG version of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” from 1984. And then there’s this cover of it by Clock. Just…just…WHY?! Well, for the money obviously as it can’t have been for reasons of artistic integrity can it?! I think this lot were possibly the most shameful and shameless of all those 90s dance acts, stealing a living by pinching other people’s songs and putting a nasty dance backing track to them. The Four Seasons, Hot Chocolate, Tag Team and even Harold Faltermeyer had received the Clock treatment and now even KC And The Sunshine Band weren’t safe from Clock’s hands. This one though didn’t even seem to have that nasty 90s sheen to it as it was a fairly straight run through of the original.

The only good news is that time was ticking on Clock. They would only have two more UK chart hits before their spring was sprung one of which was yet another cover – this time of The Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie” which itself had already been covered by heinous boy band Big Fun in 1989. None of this nonsense was the way I liked it.

It’s the Lighthouse Family up next with another performance of their hit “High”. I can’t think of a single thing to say about this one having only just commented on it in the previous post. However…having watched their appearance back, there’s something odd going on with the studio audience or more specifically one member of it. If you go to 3:20 in on the clip YouTube clip below, look at the young girl in a patterned top in the forefront of the screen. She seems to be distracted by something or someone out of shot and the look on her face is one of bewilderment with perhaps a hint of disgust. What was going on there? It wasn’t a reaction I’d have expected whilst watching the blandly inoffensive Lighthouse Family!

Early 1998 saw an Oasis milestone occur that was actually more like a line drawn in the sand in terms of the band’s history. “All Around The World” wasn’t just the third single released from the “Be Here Now” album nor the fourth of eight No 1s that they clocked up. No, it was their last release on Creation Records and the last to feature founding members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan. It was the end of an era and some might say that things were never the same again. Bonehead and Guigsy would both leave the band within two weeks of each other in the Summer of 1999 after completing preliminary recording sessions for fourth album “Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants”. Said album would appear in 2000 on the band’s own label Big Brother after the dissolution of Creation by Alan McGee in December of 1999.

As for “All Around The World”, this was a track written by Noel Gallagher in the band’s very early pre-record deal days which he infamously said he would leave recording until the third Oasis album. He was true to his word and it was the tenth track on “Be Here Now” clocking in at a mighty 9:20 in length making it the longest track the band had ever recorded. I was always bemused that given its size and stature, it wasn’t the last track in the album with it being trailed by “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)” but there is a two minute instrumental reprise of “All Around The World” to close the album in fairness. It also marks the point at which the band were most open about vaunting their Beatles influences. Not content to try and rewrite “Hey Jude”, the video that went with it was an obvious steal from the Fab Four’s Yellow Submarine film. We don’t get to see that here though and nor do we get a studio performance but, as the personal VT message from the band says, a clip of them playing it live at the old GMEX venue in Manchester as part of the Be Here Now tour which had taken the band to America for its next leg hence their absence tonight. The live version sounds more powerful than the single release and, of course, there’s Liam’s obligatory over pronunciation of the word ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiiiine’. It got me wondering how many of their song has lyrics which feature that word. A quick search of the internet found this lot:

Rock N Roll Star – “I live my life for the stars that shine”

Cigarettes’ and Alcohol – “You could wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine”

Slide Away – “Let me be the one who shines with you”

Up in the Sky – “I heard that the shine’s gone out of your life.”

Some Might Say – “Some might say that sunshine follows thunder” / “Go and tell it to the man who cannot shine”

Hello – “Cos the sun don’t shine”

All Around the World – “These are crazy days but they make me shine”

Acquiesce – “I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes”

Magic Pie – “My star will shine”

Who Feels Love – “Thank you for the sun, the one that shines on every one who feels love”

The Hindu Times – “You’re my sunshine you’re my rain” / “There’s a light that shines on, shines on me”

Stop Crying Your Heart Out – “May your smile shine on”

She is Love – “When the sunshine beckons to ya”

Born on a Different Cloud – “You’re my sun and you’re gonna shine”

The Importance of Being Idle – “As long as there’s a bed beneath the stars that shine”

A Bell Will Ring – “The sun will shine on you again”

Bag It Up – “Gold and silver and sunshine is rising up”

Soldier On – “Shine a light for me tonight”

Boy with the Blues – “Remember to shine”

Cloudburst – “Downtown the moon is shining”

One Way Road – “And are we gonna see the heavens shine”

Round Are Way – “Round are way the sun shines bright”

Flashbax – “There shines a light, like dynamite”

Idler’s Dream – “The light that’s shining through your eyes of gold”

Shout It Out Loud – “I hope the light shines on we as one”

“Shiiiiiine on”!

They’ve finally done it! It’s taken nine weeks of which two saw them going down the charts and three as a non-mover but All Saints are at No 1 with “Never Ever”. They’re in the studio to celebrate their achievement which includes a fairly inane chat with Jayne Middlemiss before they deliver what seems to be a live vocal performance judging by the a cappella bit at the end.

Listening to those spoken word lyrics, some of them don’t seem to make any sense. For example:

“A few questions that I need to know”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

Surely that should be answers not ‘questions’? Then there’s this:

“I need to know what I’ve done wrong and how long it’s been going on”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Shaznay Lewis / Robert Jazayeri / Sean Prescott Mather
Never Ever lyrics © Mca Music Ltd., Stl Songs Limited, Rickidy Raw Prod., Inc.

That doesn’t quite ring true. Shouldn’t it be “I need to know what you’ve done wrong”?

Then there’s the whole confusion over how to pronounce the letter ‘Z’ – is it ‘zee’ or ‘zed’ as both are used here. All very bewildering. Also bewildering is how many times the band have been on the show to perform “Never Ever”. If you think this must be the last as this was the song’s only week at No 1, you’re wrong. They’re on again in a couple of repeats!

After weeks of finishing the show with the No 1 record, suddenly we’ve reverted to having a play out hit. Was this a temporary thing or will it be here to stay? Anyway, there was clearly a KC And The Sunshine Band mini revival going on in January 1998 as after Clock earlier, here’s another hit based on one of their tunes. For “That’s The Way (I Like It)” read “Get Down Tonight” but with a 90s house beat applied to it and a new title – “Bamboogie”. Who was responsible for this crud? A producer called Andrew Livingstone who created the vehicle Bamboo to peddle this crap. I’m guessing it’s high chart entry at No 2 was taking advantage of the post Christmas sales slump. Thank God for those people who bought the 557 extra copies of “Never Ever” to keep “Bamboogie” from being No 1! A slender but important victory. You just knew this was going to be awful by its vintage cartoon video which stank of “this’ll do”. See also Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers and the Outhere Brothers.

I’m guessing that KC And The Sunshine Band’s record label will have taken advantage of this renewed interest in their artist and released a Best Of album?

*checks KC’s discography*

Yes they did and it sold enough copies to be granted silver status. I should think so too. In any case, if I wanted a song with “Bamboogie” in the title then I would certainly choose this one over that Bamboo shite.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rialto	Untouchable	YES!!!
2	Robbie Williams	Angels	No but I had a promo copy of the album
3	Clock	That’s The Way ( I Like It)”	Of course not
4	Lighthouse Family	High	Nah
5	Oasis	All AroundThe World	No, I’d stopped buying their singles by this point
6	All Saints	Never Ever	I didn’t
7	Bamboo	Bamboogie	Never

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/m002dfcd/top-of-the-pops-16011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 JAN 1998

Posted on June 18 by 80stastic

Here we go then with another year of BBC4’s TOTP repeats. Do I have high hopes for 1998? Not really but I am willing and hopeful to be proved wrong. The first show since the Christmas Day broadcast has a mixture of hits we’ve seen before and some brand new ones plus something of a chart rarity concerning the No 1 record. Our host is regular presenter Jo Whiley and we kick off with the Lighthouse Family and their latest single “High” which is an apt title as the band were at the highest point of their popularity and success. Sensibly held back from the December release schedules to avoid being lost in the rush, it would peak at No 4 becoming their joint biggest single alongside “Lifted”. Taken from their four times platinum, sophomore album “Postcards From Heaven”, it couldn’t have been more easy listening playlist if it had been fiendishly crafted by Dr. Easy Listening in the laboratory for producing Easy Listening songs. And yet…if I had to, at gunpoint, take one Lighthouse Family song with me throughout my life, it would be this one as it’s so life-affirmingly positive.

Having said that, it’s a good job it wasn’t recorded in the 60s. The lyric “one day we’re gonna get so high” wouldn’t have got past the network censors on the Ed Sullivan Show and somehow I can’t imagine singer Tunde Baiyewu pulling a Jim Morrison. That reminds me – I was at a wedding recently and at the sit down meal at the reception found myself talking to a perfectly pleasant young man to my right who was planning a holiday to Paris. When asked by him if I’d ever been, I replied in the affirmative and started listing the attractions he might want to visit including the Père Lachaise cemetery but I gave warning of all the drugs paraphernalia directing people to the grave of Jim Morrison. The young man’s reply? “Who?”! He didn’t know Morrison or The Doors though he thought he might have heard the song “Riders On The Storm”. I’m so old.

“Jiggle your bits to this!” says Jo Whiley. Jiggle your bits? Were you allowed to say that back in the day before the watershed? In the age of lad culture you probably were sadly. Anyway, although this was our first glimpse of Steps on TOTP, their debut hit “5,6,7,8” had actually been around for weeks by this point. Eight of them in fact having ricocheted between the Nos 23 to 17 before finally peaking at No 14 prompting this appearance. It would then spend a further four consecutive weeks inside the Top 20 before finally bowing out of the Top 40 in its 15th week since release. Although one of the group’s lowest charting singles, it’s their third biggest hit thanks to subsequent streams of over nearly 38 million by 2021.

I think it’s fair to say that this track is not typical* of the rest of their back catalogue and I’m guessing that maybe they were only put together on a one single deal written to take advantage of the line dancing phenomenon that was sweeping the nation at the time. Responding to an advertisement in trade publication The Stage, the quintet surely didn’t expect the success and longevity that they have enjoyed.

*Of course, they’re not alone in having their debut hit sound nothing like subsequent releases. Some of the biggest names in pop music history could tell a similar tale. Look at the difference between “Love Me Do” and, say, “Strawberry Fields Forever” or between those early Beach Boys surfing hits and “God Only Knows”. Not that I’m putting Steps in the same bracket as Brian Wilson (RIP) nor Lennon & McCartney obviously.

Look at some of these numbers:

22 million records sold worldwide
5 million album sales in the UK
4.8 million singles sales in the UK
13 consecutive Top 5 singles in the UK including two No 1s

Not bad for an act that was put together to sell a one-off, line dancing hit. Ah yes, that hit. It really is atrocious. As if we hadn’t been tormented enough with “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex a few years before. Nobody should have been surprised to discover that Pete Waterman was involved in this mess with the group signed to his EBUL label in partnership with Jive Records and the man himself acting as co-producer. I think it’s fair to say that he ultimately saw Steps as a second chance to launch the British ABBA after his initial attempt with Bananarama in the early 90s had failed to ignite the charts. Sure, “5,6,7,8” sounded nothing like the Swedish pop superstars but their follow up “Last Thing On My Mind”* certainly did as did their third single “One For Sorrow”. Steps would ultimately transcend that idea (if not ABBA’s sales) to establish themselves in the premier league of late 90s pop groups.

*That track was released as a single by Bananarama in 1992 but failed to chart.

Despite having two separate periods of hiatus that amounted to the group being inactive for a total of 15 years, their story is still not fully told as the jukebox musical Here & Now featuring the hits of Steps opened last year and is set to tour the UK from August this year until May next.

P.S. As I was writing this, I turned on the TV and on BBC1 was Ian ‘H’ Watkins giving an interview about his small music festival in the town of Cowbridge where he lives that had been forced by the US Coachella festival to change its name from Cowchella to Moo-La-La. Rather than be disappointed, H was delighted with the publicity the story had generated for his festival. Boot scootin’ indeed.

It’s a re-showing of a previous Janet Jackson appearance next as we see that dress-down Friday performance of “Together Again”…erm…again. Supposedly, Janet’s inspiration to write the track came from the 1996 Nuyorican Soul hit “Runaway” which had been huge in the US clubs. However, it wasn’t contemporary clubs that had been at the forefront of Janet’s mind in writing the song but perhaps the most famous club of all time – New York’s Studio 54. Apparently, “Runaway” reminded her of being in there as a child. What the hell was she doing in Studio 54 as a child?! The club was notorious for its open drug use and sexual activity by its patrons. There’s a famous photo of Canadian First Lady Margaret Trudeau at Studio 54 without any underwear on! And Janet was in there as a minor! I think I’ll leave that story there.

After becoming bona fide pop stars in 1996 with some quirky hits straight out of left field like “Female Of The Species” and “Neighbourhood”, Space weren’t about to rest on their laurels and released sophomore album “Tin Planet” just 18 months after debut “Spiders”. The lead single from it was “Avenging Angels” which seemed to me to pursue a more mainstream sound than some of its predecessors. I mean, it still wasn’t your standard rock/pop song – it still had that spooky, twangy guitar sound in the mix – but the chorus was more conventionally melodic it seemed to me. They did retain that retro sound though – in fact, listening back to it now it could be the theme tune to a 60s sci-fi show or maybe I’m just fixating on the ‘angels’ part of the song and conjuring up images of the female fighter pilots from Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons. There’s two other parts of the song that needs some discussion. Firstly, I could never get along with the “kick ass angels” lyric of the chorus – it always really jarred with me for some reason. Secondly, that megaphone sung middle eight part. Apparently, Radio 1 said they wouldn’t play the single unless its length was cut in half. It duly was and “Avenging Angels” became a No 6 hit, the band’s biggest ever to that point.

It’s yet another appearance by All Saints again next as their uber-hit “Never Ever” continues its lengthy yet inevitable rise to the top of the chart. After witnessing the dance extravaganza that was Steps earlier in the show, I have to say that despite all the bells and whistles of that Steps performance, I find the All Saints…erm…steps more effective. Yes, all the thumbs down the waistbands, the twirling, the handclaps, the sidestepping, the lassoing and gun toting moves I found less memorable than All Saints stepping around in a circle shrugging their shoulders. Less really is more sometimes.

Now here’s a genuinely intriguing collaboration and yet I have zero recall of it. Absolutely nothing at all so listening to it now was quite illuminating. We’d already seen the worlds of rock and pop and classical collide on hits such as The Farm’s “All Together Now” and rap and a classical come together on Coolio’s “C U When U Get There” both of which were heavily based on Johann Pachelbel’s “Cannon”. However, had we seen rap and opera combined before? The people to thank for this (if ‘thank’ is indeed the right word) were West Coast rapper Warren G and Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebø who together went by the name of The Rapsody (see what they did there?) and gave us the track “Prince Igor”. Inspired by the “Polovtsian Dances” of Alexander Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor”, it topped the charts in Norway and Iceland and was a respectable No 15 hit in the UK. It was the lead single from a whole album of opera/hip hop mash ups entitled “The Rapsody Overture: Hip Hop Meets Classic” and I thought I would unreservedly hate it but it has something to it that engaged me. I think it’s the aria part sung by Sissel rather than Warren G’s rapping to be fair. Oh and remember my Captain Scarlet reference earlier when commenting on Space? What was one of the Angels pilots call signs? Yep, Rhapsody (spelt correctly this time). The others were Symphony, Harmony, Destiny and Melody if you were wondering.

Now if you thought “5,6,7,8” was a novelty hit, get a load of this! What on earth was going on here?! Just like All Saints, there were four members of Vanilla and two of them were sisters but that is undoubtedly where the comparisons end. Quite what this said about the contempt that EMI who released this tripe had for the record buying public can’t be articulated. The whole sorry episode also spoke volumes of those poor gullible fools that bought what is surely one of the worst singles of the decade. LBC Radio presenter James O’Brien has a phrase he uses in respect to the Brexit debate which is ‘Compassion for the conned, contempt for the conmen’ but I would struggle with the first part of it when it came to anyone who spent their money on “No Way, No Way”. Based on “Mah Nà Mah Nà” by Italian composer Piero Umiliani which became internationally recognised for its usage on The Muppets and The Benny Hill Show, it almost registers zero brain activity in its conception and execution. Apparently, when they were offered the chance to record it, the group weren’t sure as they wanted to pursue an R&B style but were convinced by the argument that “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls was as essentially a novelty hit so ‘what the hell’. Yes, it brought them instant yet brief fame of sorts but did they really think they could build a career off the back of it?!

Of course, they couldn’t. After getting to No 14 with “No Way, No Way”, the follow up single “True To Us” only made No 36 despite conducting a number of appearances at schools and being on the Disney Channel UK 1998 tour. In 2011 the inevitable happened when one of the group appeared in the Identity Parade section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks…

Despite the ridicule the group received, they seemed like good sports appearing multiple times on The Big Breakfast in a feature called ‘Vanilla’s Thrillers’.

Thankfully, if I think of The Muppets, the association in my head isn’t Vanilla but this from Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters series…

So to that rare chart event surrounding the No 1 record as “Perfect Day” by Various Artists returns to the top some five weeks after it initially wore the crown. Now it wasn’t a unique occurrence for a single to return to No 1 after being temporarily deposed by another hit but it was the length of the gap between being the best selling song of the week that was surprising. Having been released at the end of November and being at No 1 for two weeks, it the spent a fortnight at No 3 over Christmas. Traditionally, the first No 1s of the New Year around this time could be snatched by a less mainstream hit with careful/cynical release timing when singles sales slumped dramatically after Christmas. Think Iron Maiden in 1991 and Tori Amos in 1997. However, for a single to regain the top spot after it seemed to have peaked was unusual though as I said earlier not unique. The Lightning Seeds achieved a return to No 1 in the Summer of 1996 after a four week gap but that phenomenon was fuelled by the Euros ‘96 football tournament. What was propelling sales of “Perfect Day” all over again? It would hang around the Top 40 for another six weeks before finally going home when it got dark.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it ?
1	Lighthouse Family	High	Only with a gun held to my head
2	Steps	5,6,7,8	Never
3	Janet Jackson	Together Again	No
4	Space	Avenging Angels	Nah
5	All Saints	Never Ever	Nope
6	Warren G and Sissel Kyrkjebø	Prince Igor	I did not
7	Vanilla	No Way, No Way	Hell No!
8	Various Artists	Perfect Day	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/m002dfcb/top-of-the-pops-09011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 10 OCT 1997

Posted on April 23 by 80stastic

Three days after this TOTP broadcast, Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening hosted their first Radio 1 breakfast show having replaced Mark and Lard who were shifted to an afternoon slot. On the same day, Chris Evans, who Mark and Lard replaced, started his own breakfast show on Virgin Radio. I was never quite sure why it didn’t work out for Radcliffe and Riley in that morning slot because I used to love their afternoon show which I always used to have on in the back room of the record shop I worked in if I was in there on my own. Maybe their brand of humour didn’t sit well with people on the move in a morning? That their show wasn’t pitched at the right pace? I never used to listen to Ball and Greening so I have no opinion on whether they were any better and I can’t be bothered to look up RAJAR listener figures to compare but I’m guessing that they weren’t as big a draw as Chris Evans?

Anyway, the presenter for this TOTP also had a history of replacing Mark Radcliffe but only on a temporary basis. Mark Lamarr had sat in for Radcliffe’s late night Radio 1 show as guest presenter occasionally. Ah, so maybe that’s why he was being considered as part of the TOTP host roster at this time – he had some BBC radio credentials as well as his roles as team captain on Shooting Stars and host of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I was wondering about that in a previous post. This was the third of fourth time that he’d hosted the show and he gets this one off to a very odd start. Having done away with any theme tune, new executive producer Chris Cowey brings it back for this one show after Lamarr seemingly takes too long learning his opening intro. A reader of this blog did alert me recently that this was coming but I wasn’t prepared for the bizarre optics we actually got – Lamarr’s face on a big bank of screens checking with someone off camera what the top of the show intro is before he then gets cut off abruptly and we get the titles and the old theme tune and then straight into the opening act. It just looks odd though I’m guessing it was meant to be an attempt at humour.

Anyway, said opening act are…a bunch of 12 year olds by the look of them. Who on earth were Catch? I know I say this all the time and it’s made worse by the fact that I was working in a record shop back then but I can’t remember this lot at all. The band’s backstory is that they emerged from a previous incarnation of a group headed by singer Toby Slater called Brattish who never actually gigged nor released anything. Slater was involved in the short lived ‘Romo’ movement…hang on. The what? I have no memory of that either which apparently was based around two club nights (Club Skinny in Camden and the West End’s Arcadia). Its sound was characterised by being either art glam, Hi-NRG/Handbag House or a cross between Adam Ant, Roxy Music, Pulp and Blur depending on who you talked to. There were specific bands allied to the movement of whom I’ve never heard of any (Plastic Fantastic or DexDex Ter anyone?) but it generally seemed to be a rejection of the back-to-basics approach of Britpop. It sounds to me like it was just a re-invention of the New Romantics. According to those in the know though, Catch were more indie-pop than Romo and I guess you could describe their only UK Top 40 hit “Bingo” as that. However, it’s not your standard indie fare. It has an intriguing quality to it. The verses have a tinny sounding rhythm track that reminds me almost of something that Frank Sidebottom would have warbled along to. Slater’s vocal gives a nod to Jilted John of “Gordon is a moron” fame (aka John Shuttleworth aka Graham Fellows) before the chorus explodes into life. I can’t deny that I quite like it in a juvenile kind of way. The lyrics describe a rites-of-passage, journey of discovery by the song’s protagonist who admits he’s 17 (Slater was actually 18 at the time of this TOTP performance) and knows nothing of the world with his carnal knowledge especially weak so he goes to a red light district to…erm…enlighten himself. Slater’s youthful appearance helps to deliver the message.

“Bingo” would peak at No 23 but a follow up single just missed the Top 40. An album remained unreleased in this country and was only made available in Indonesia. In a bizarre and unwanted pop history footnote, “Bingo” was the song being played on a repeat of The Chart Show in the early hours of 31 August 1997 when the programme was interrupted by ITV to announce the death of Princess Diana. They never stood a chance did they? After splitting in 1999, Slater formed a couple more bands without commercial success and would tragically die aged just 42 in 2021.

From edgy teenagers to what many would call the definition of musical blandness. Is that discrediting of the Lighthouse Family fair? Or is it just an inevitable consequence of gaining popularity by playing a fusion of easy listening and soul music that appealed to the masses? I’m sure that back then, I would have balked at the idea of admitting even the slightest liking of them to my way cooler record shop work colleagues but was I actually at the other extreme of the spectrum holding onto a hatred of them? No, I don’t think so. I saw somebody online describe them as “offensively inoffensive” which I guess equates to someone being described as ‘nice’ (though I wouldn’t knock that description given the character of the people currently running the world).

“Raincloud” was the lead single from their second album “Postcards From Heaven” but they didn’t suffer from ‘difficult second album syndrome’ like some have in the annals of pop history (Stone Roses, ABC, The Jam) – it sailed to No 2 in the charts and went four times platinum in the UK. It seemed that there were more believers in than dissenters of their mainstream sound. Listening back to “Raincloud” though, those accusations of the band’s style lacking substance and being lightweight may not have been that wide of the mark – it’s fairly unremarkable fare. The next single was “High” which is widely regarded as their best tune (maybe). I guess we’ll be seeing that one in a BBC4 repeat soon enough. For now, I’ll leave the final word to Peep Show’s Super Hans…

The next performance is just weird. Ironically, the song being performed is completely mundane and ordinary. It’s the staging that I’m taken aback by. So, some details first. The artist is The Seahorses who are in the studio to perform their third hit single “Love Me And Leave Me”. The track was co-written by John Squire and one Liam Gallagher, a fact which Mark Lamarr has taken to run with for a cheap gag in setting up his intro as he suggests Liam’s only contribution to the song was coming up with the word “and” in its title. It’s not a very funny line and I’ve heard it done better in a self deprecating way by Andrew Ridgeley of Wham! When interviewed by Simon Bates on Radio 1 which words did he contribute to the writing of “Careless Whisper” he replied “the…and…”. Anyway, Lamarr proceeds to stroke Squire’s knee for some unfathomable reason and then hangs around on stage while the band performs for about half of the song. What was all that about? Was he channeling the spirit of that 1971 TOTP performance by the Faces when they invited John Peel on stage with them to mime playing the mandolin? If that wasn’t weird enough, why are there nearly a dozen random people dotted about the stage looking bored? Why are the band (except singer Chris Helme) all seated? Why…well, just why?

As for the song, it’s no “Love Is The Law”. In fact, it’s pretty dull which, on reflection, was a disappointing state of affairs just three singles into the band’s career. It starts off like a companion piece to John Lennon’s “God” with its lyrics about not believing in Jesus nor Jah but then just sort of drifts off into a cosmic trance with Helme singing about ‘astral bars’ and ‘heaven here on earth’. It’s all very unsatisfying which pretty much sums up The Seahorses. They would only release one more single before splitting up. John Squire would return to that writing partnership with Liam Gallagher 27 years later when they recorded an album together that would top the UK charts.

Did someone mention the Faces earlier? Yes me, obviously. Well, I’m going to mention them again because the next hit shares the same name as one of their songs (and albums). The 1997 “Ooh La La” by Coolio wasn’t anything to do with the English rockers though but rather it owed a lot to Grace Jones and her classic track “Pull Up To The Bumper” which it samples. So much of a debt did it owe to the esteemed Ms Jones that she was repaid with a writing credit on Coolio’s hit for a hit indeed it was peaking at No 14 though it would be his last in the UK. Just as well if this was an example of the direction he was going in. The lyrics to this one are just a load of sexual innuendo. “Deep in the pink”, “Stalk through the bush” and “keep it all wet all weekend” are just some of his double entendres that Viz’s Finbarr Saunders character would have found juvenile. At some points, he can’t even be bothered to disguise his filth and so we get lyrics like:

“Pull up your skirt and we can do it on the pool table…Your nipples look so tender, can I twirl ‘em in my mouth like a blender”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Sly Dunbar / Robbie Shakespeare / Dana Manno / Artis L. Jr. Ivey
Ooh La La lyrics © Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Boo Daddy Publishing, Oji Music, Chenana Music, Songs Of Polygram Int., Inc., Polygram Int. Publishing, Inc., Ixat Music, Inc.

Gulp! That last line can’t have got through the BBC censors surely? Let me watch the performance back with subtitles on…

Well, I can’t hear exactly what Coolio is rapping as it’s muffled (presumably on purpose) but the subtitles have replaced ‘nipples’ with ‘knees’ because that makes sense! I know “Pull Up To The Bumper” was also accused of having sexual innuendo hidden in its lyrics but it was surely more subtle than this twaddle?! Aside from all the nastiness, I think there’s a case for another writer credit in addition to Grace Jones as the chorus is filled with the phrase “doo-wa-diddy” as in “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” as made famous by Manfred Mann but actually written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Well, Coolio’s first album was called “It Takes A Thief”.

Andrew Roachford has had a lengthy and remarkable career in music – he’s been at it for nigh on 40 years, released twelve studio albums with his band, been in Mike + The Mechanics and, in 2019, was awarded an MBE for services to music. However, if success was judged purely on the number and size of his hit singles, it wouldn’t look so impressive. I make it eight Top 40 entries over a 36 year period and look at the peak positions for those eight:

4 – 25 – 22 – 21 – 36 – 38 – 20 – 34

The obvious ‘biggie’ is that first one which was “Cuddly Toy” from 1989. Do you think when an artist has one big hit early in their career that it becomes a millstone around their necks or are they just glad and proud to have had at least one? Anyway, the seventh of those hits was this one – “The Way I Feel” – which was the lead single from Roachford’s fourth studio album “Feel” and, against the odds, it would become his second biggest hit ever eight years after his first. It’s a pretty good tune but one I missed completely at the time. I’m pretty sure I saw him live at the Manchester Academy around 1994 but that was because the Sony rep who used to sell into the Our Price store I was working in put me on the guest list as we were both Chelsea fans!

As with Garbage and Skunk Anansie, Roachford is another artist whose back catalogue I should be better acquainted with. This scene from Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa shouldn’t be his only legacy…

After four years of constant hits including a No 1 no less with their last single release, bizarrely, the time of Eternal was almost at an end (not so eternal after all then). Maybe they (or their label or management) knew their sell by date was fast approaching as, in a not necessarily obvious move, instead of mining their “Before The Rain” album (which had only been out for six months) for more hits, they went straight to a Greatest Hits project. Now you’d usually expect that type of release if a group had formally announced that they were splitting up (as per Take That) not at the point of a commercial high. And yet, the Greatest Hits album was a success – No 2 in the charts, three times platinum selling, the highest selling hits package of the year and in 2013 was confirmed as the biggest selling best-of album by an all girl group in the UK.

To promote the Greatest Hits, a new song “Angel Of Mine” was released as a single. To my ears, it’s a serviceable R&B ballad but not much more and yet in America, where it was released by Monica, it went to No 1 and was the third best selling single of the year over there. Eternal’s version peaked at No 4 and would be their final Top 10 hit – of their fourteen singles released up to that point, only two had not made the Top 10. It was also the group’s last single as a trio as Kéllé Bryan left the group after being sacked by fax by Vernie and Easther Bennett’s solicitor with the sisters citing “a breakdown in professional relations”. The UK record buying public had little desire for an Eternal duo though and they would achieve just one more Top 20 single before bowing out of the music business. Numerous reunions have taken place over the years though never with all four original members. That holy grail line up for the fans was nearly green lit in 2023 but was nipped in the bud after Louise and Kéllé withdrew following the Bennett sisters apparent refusal to play LGBTQ Pride events.

I’ve said it before but I’m saying it again – I don’t/didn’t get the Backstreet Boys. I know I wasn’t their target audience (I was 29 at this point) but I just couldn’t see their appeal. Yes, they had some very slickly produced pop songs but they were just a poor man’s New Kids On The Block weren’t they? They weren’t even that good looking! “As Long As You Love Me” was a textbook example of their output. A mid-tempo ballad that was perfect for daytime radio playlists (I still hear it played on stations like Magic to this day) but oh so dull. No, not dull…cynical. A song concocted by an evil, mad pop scientist in the laboratory of dark and terrible music.

As with Mark Lamarr at the opening of the show, there’s something disconcerting about the set up of these performances with the artist having a backdrop of giant TV screens behind with their huge fizzogs plastered all over them whilst they run through the song on stage. It’s all a bit overbearing and, in the case of Eternal who had the same arrangement for their appearance immediately before the Backstreet Boys, disorientating as the order of the group on the screens wasn’t the same as where the girls were standing on stage (even though Kéllé and Vernie swapped positions halfway through).

Elton John remains at No 1 with “Candle In The Wind ‘97” / “Something About The Way You Look Tonight”. Despite it being the best selling single in UK chart history, it didn’t guarantee Elton’s next release being a huge hit. “Recover Your Soul”, taken from “The Big Picture” album would only manage a chart high of No 16 which, proportionally, must be one of the biggest drops in popularity between releases ever. Off the top of my head, I can think of the Bee Gees following up their chart topper “You Win Again” with the single “E.S.P.” which stalled at No 51 but the Elton scenario is next level I think.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Catch	Bingo	Nope
2	Lighthouse Family	Raincloud	I did not
3	The Seahorses	Love Me And Leave Me	Negative
4	Coolio	Ooh La La	Never
5	Roachford	The Way I Feel	It’s another no
6	Eternal	Angel Of Mine	Nah
7	Backstreet Boys	As Long As You Love Me	As if
8	Elton John	Candle In The Wind ‘97 / Something About The Way You Look Tonight	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/m0029vc0/top-of-the-pops-10101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 20 SEP 1996

Posted on November 6, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re nearly three quarters of the way through these BBC4 TOTP repeats from 1996 and I have to say this is one of the most mainstream episodes yet. When I say ‘mainstream’, I am of course, referring to the music. Despite its pre-watershed time slot, the show hadn’t shied away from showcasing some of the more niche hits of the day even when the staging of said hits (take your pick from the many dance sub-genres of the day) was problematic. Hell, they’d even had the Sex Pistols on the other week, the very scourge of the mainstream back in the day. However, whether by fault or design, this week saw a more conventional roster of acts on the show. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this week’s host – Tony Mortimer of East 17 – was mainstream or not.

We kick off with Belinda Carlisle – a mainstream stalwart if ever there was. The success of “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” that catapulted her to solo stardom was already eight years in the past by this point and the hits had long since dried up for her in the US. Over here though, she retained a loyal following and had continued to maintain a chart presence throughout those years even if her numbers weren’t always as high as in those early days. Indeed, before 1996, she hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in this country since 1990 when “(We Want) The Same Thing” made No 6. Since then, it had generally been a case of diminishing returns for both her singles and albums. Only 1992’s Best Of collection had really produced massive sales.

However, the release of the “A Woman & A Man” album had generated two consecutive Top 10 hits for her. Following “In Too Deep” in July of this year came “Always Breaking My Heart” which peaked at No 8. The album didn’t sell significantly more copies than any of her other 90s studio albums so maybe the success of its singles was just down to a change in the way singles were being released and promoted by record companies by this point in the decade. I’m pretty sure first week of release discounting was a standard practice by now which would account for why singles were debuting in the charts at their peak position before sliding away. This was true of many a hit, not just Belinda’s. The fact that “Always Breaking My Heart” was a bit of a duffer only adds substance to this theory. Despite being written by Per Gessle of Roxette (was there a more mainstream band ever?) who certainly knew his way around a catchy pop hit, it’s a pretty weak effort. Is it just me or does Belinda’s outfit here make her look like a high powered business person rather than a pop/rock star?

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Definitely the former

Next is surely one of the most mainstream songs of this or any year and as is the way with many a mainstream hit, loads of people bought it at the time but its legacy is one of disownment. “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something will be at No 1 soon enough but try finding someone who admits to having bought it. Talking of disowning, there seems to be a concerted belief by some people online that the song was originally recorded by US indie rockers Gin Blossoms and that the Deep Blue Something version is, in fact, a cover. Quite where or why this rumour started I don’t know but there doesn’t seem to be any truth in it whatsoever. So widespread is its reach though that the band put on their Myspace page back in the day for readers not to request “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” as it’s not their song.

The film of the same title was, of course, based on a book by Truman Capote who once featured on the cover of a single by The Smiths – “The Boy With A Thorn In His Side” – which, incidentally, could be how Deep Blue Something feel about their hit. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might be allowing myself to believe that they were behind the rumour trying to rid themselves of the albatross around their necks such is the bad rap their hit gets.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Despite the Gin Blossoms fake connection, it’s undeniably mainstream

If I thought the first two artists on this show were mainstream, I might need to create a whole new category for the Lighthouse Family – ‘super mainstream’ or ‘mainstream extreme’ maybe? “Goodbye Heartbreak” was the duo’s third consecutive hit after the reactivated tracks “Lifted” and “Ocean Drive” finally did the business for them and it was very much in the same mould as its predecessors. Some might even say “exactly the same as…”. I’ve not given this lot much grief in previous posts for fear of accusations of musical snobbery but was their whole album like this? I’ve never heard it in its entirety – I might as well have asked my Our Price colleagues of the day to play the audiobook of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as the Lighthouse Family on the shop stereo – so I’m not really qualified to judge. However, if it is, I’m not sure I would have made it through to the end. Change the record! No, literally change the record.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Mainstream extreme

Unlike Belinda Carlisle earlier, the next artist looks every inch the pop/rock star in this satellite performance. Sheryl Crow’s future career as such though was by no means guaranteed at this point. Sure, she’d had a massive hit in 1994 on both sides of the ocean with “All I Wanna Do” and her debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” had won three Grammys in 1995 but it had been written with a collective of other musicians (the titular Tuesday Music Club) prompting accusations that Crow was just the attractive face of the group, the image but not the talent. As such, she was desperate to prove her musical credentials with her follow up, eponymous album. Lead single “If It Makes You Happy” was a huge step in that direction straight off the bat. I’ve said before that the mark of a good song is if it can be performed in a variety of different styles and still sound convincing in each of them. Well, apparently Sheryl tried a number of different genres for this track including country, punk, funk and even as a David Lynch style soundtrack piece. However, it worked best as the growling, prowling, rasping rock track it turned out to be. It would go Top 10 in both the US and the UK but interestingly, the only country it topped the charts was Canada which may explain why this performance came from Vancouver. Perhaps, Sheryl was on promotional duties over there at the time? Its chart success was Crow’s biggest since the aforementioned “All I Wanna Do” and would provide the platform for her career to carry on its upward trajectory, paving the way for her sophomore album to go three times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Hmm. Difficult one this. If huge sales make you mainstream then Sheryl Crow undoubtedly was. However, she always seemed a little more gritty than that to me

A quick word on Tony Mortimer before we proceed – he seems more lacking in energy and charm than I would have imagined. Quite dull actually. Liven up a bit Tony! Maybe the only straight up dance tune on the show tonight will get him going? Ah, not this one though. Apparently, “Oh What A Night” by Clock attracted a fair amount of derision even back in 1996 presumably for being an atrocious take on The Four Seasons mid 70s classic. Singer Lorna Saunders is now a legal secretary and was once on Never Mind The Buzzcocks as part of the identity parade feature. I don’t know if either team managed to spot her but she was once mistaken by Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay for 2 Unlimited’s Anita Doth! Doh!

Mainstream or Indie Theme? The most horrible and tacky form of mainstream

The ‘flashback’ feature is still with us and this week we are treated to “Prince Charming” by Adam And The Ants. I’m not sure that Adam is given the credit and respect that he deserves sometimes. He managed to combine originality (yes, I know there was a definite Malcolm McLaren influence at some point but still) with massive sales and a memorable image – that’s quite some plate spinning going on there. I think even his most commercial numbers like this one still stand up. The second and final No 1 for Adam And The Ants before the main man went solo, it retains the power to take me right back to the early 80s over 40 years hence every time I hear it. The natural successor to the dandy highwayman of “Stand And Deliver”, it’s actually quite basic in its nature with a few lyrics repeated over and over but the style and panache of the visuals of the video make it into something quite outlandishly striking. Ah yes, that video with the cameo of Diana Dors as the fairy godmother is a once seen never forgotten experience.

In the last blog post, I asked the question of whether you could actually dance to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. In the case of “Prince Charming”, Adam’s right hand man Marco Pirroni actually admits that it was a track that was difficult to dance to and so the arm-crossing choreography featured in the video was devised in order that it would be able to be played in clubs and discos. The whole package remains quite stunning. Adam And The Ants were almost untouchable for two years at the start of the decade but it couldn’t last and despite a No 1 straight out of the traps as a solo artist with “Goody Two Shoes”, by the end of 1982, Adam was already starting to show signs of decline when his third solo single “Desperate But Not Serious” stalled at No 33. “Puss ‘n Boots” saw a brief rally the following year but his time as the country’s No 1 pop star was almost at an end. Despite turning 70 literally the other day, Adam is still touring though he had to cancel his Autumn 2024 dates due to ill health.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Huge popularity aside, Adam was always outside of the mainstream for me from his punk roots to his unique and enduring style

After a very subdued intro from Tony Mortimer we get The Bluetones and “Marblehead Johnson”. This was their third hit of 1996 and was a standalone single that presumably was intended to keep the band’s momentum going following the success of their No 1 album “Expecting To Fly” and No 2 single “Slight Return”. I’ve got to be honest, it’s not as good as I remembered it. In fact, it’s a bit dull. It sounds like it’s always on the cusp of kicking into life and then just meanders off somewhere for a bit of noodling.

Its title reminds me of the Warren Zevon song “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” which I once played by mistake in the Our Price I was working in as it came on after “Werewolves Of London” which was the track I’d originally chosen. It was quickly taken off by the manager as its subject matter of a Norwegian mercenary fighting in the Nigerian Civil War and having his head blown off was deemed inappropriate. Mine’s not a great story I admit but then listening to “Marblehead Johnson” is hardly a scintillating experience.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? My initial reaction is the latter but then in 1996, had Britpop become the mainstream?

And so we arrive at the ultimate in mainstream music, the arch purveyor of prosaic pop, patron saint of the unremarkable, Mr Middle of the Road himself…it’s Phil Collins.

Poor old Phil. We really have had it in for him for quite some time. Does he deserve it? Depends which side of the fence you stand I guess. Some people must like his music given the amount of records he’s sold and yet he’s become a byword for naff. It’s not just his music that can offend though, it’s also…well…him. Accusations of smugness, ubiquity, tax avoidance and of ending his marriage by fax (the last one has always been strenuously denied by Collins and it is generally accepted to not be true) abounded. Maybe it all affected him as his 90s output was nowhere near as commercially successful as that of his 80s heyday. That’s not to say they didn’t sell at all – 1993’s “Both Sides” went double platinum but that didn’t match any of his 80s albums sales and indeed was nowhere near the twelve times platinum status of 1989’s “…But Seriously”. By 1996, the malaise seemed to have set in permanently. “Dance Into The Light” the album would only sell 100,000 copies (gold status) in the UK with its title track lead single peaking at No 9. Let’s be honest, even if you were a mega Phil fan, this comeback track must have been a disappointment. Some cod-reggae groove, Caribbean horn section and some truly shonky lyrics about South Africa coming out of apartheid (?). It’s a bit of a stinker and surely one of his least remembered hits.

Phil embarked on a phase of writing for Disney soundtracks after the “Dance Into The Light” project before returning in 2002 with seventh studio album “Testify” which only reached No 15 in the charts. The last album to do anywhere near the numbers of his glory years was, of course, a Best Of collection in 1998, – the first official one of his career – called “…Hits” which topped the charts and went six times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Do you really have to ask?

The Fugees are the UK No 1 with “Ready Or Not”, their second song to top our charts in 1996 following “Killing Me Softly”. I don’t think you could really label the trio as mainstream despite those huge sales figures evidencing their commercial crossover, not when you consider their legacy which lasted much longer than their career. Sure, there are many accolades that talk about them bringing hip-hop into the mainstream but that didn’t make them mainstream artists – I don’t think that’s what they wanted to be either. They were innovators whose creativity struck a commercial seam of gold. Sometimes the right people get lucky I guess.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Indie definitely

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	Always Breaking My Heart	Nah
2	Deep Blue Something	Breakfast At Tiffany’s	Nope
3	Lighthouse Family	Goodbye Heartbreak	Negative
4	Sheryl Crow	If It Make You Happy	No but I had her Best Of with it on
5	Clock	Oh What A Night	Never
6	Adam And The Ants	Prince Charming	No but I think my younger sister had the album
7	The Bluetones	Marblehead Johnson	I did not
8	Phil Collins	Dance Into The Light	What do you think?
9	Fugees	Ready Or Not	Not

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/m002497z/top-of-the-pops-20091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 MAY 1996

Posted on September 4, 2024 by 80stastic

Those sneaky BBC4 schedulers have done me dirty by suddenly announcing with a day’s notice that the 1996 TOTP repeats are back. I thought I had at least another week to knock out this last remaining episode for review before they’d start again! Serves me right for dragging my feet I guess. Sadly, as well as being my favourite word, procrastination is also my middle name.

Before I crack on with this particular show, I should address the fact that we’ve missed one. The 23rd May episode was not repeated with the general consensus being that it was for reasons of sensitivity. One of the artists featured was the actor John Alford who is best known for his roles in Grange Hill and London’s Burning. Alford was giving this soap star turned pop star malarkey a go – well, it had worked for loads of others before him including another ex Grange Hill pupil in Sean Maguire who, by massive coincidence, was also on the same show. Alford managed three UK chart hits in 1996 (all cover versions obviously) but subsequently disappeared after his only album tanked when peaking at No 171. In later years he has had several run ins with the law and is currently awaiting trial for alleged sex offences involving a girl aged under 16 hence the decision not to air the show he featured on presumably. I’ve had a look at the rest of the running order for that particular episode and there is little chance of FOMO raising its head in my personal opinion. In addition to the aforementioned Alford and Maguire, most of the other hits on that week we’d already seen before including those by Robert Miles, Black Grape, Tony Rich Project, Gina G and, unbelievably, Mark Morrison (again!). We did miss out on SWV and Dodgy but I can live with that.

Tonight’s hosts are funny men Jack Dee and the late Jeremy Hardy who do the whole show as if they were BBC presenters from the 50s which is fairly amusing for most of the time. We open with, I read to my astonishment when researching them, the best-selling boy band of all time!! What?! The Backstreet Boys?! That’s what Wikipedia tells me, yes. It also says that they are the first group since Led Zeppelin to have their first ten albums reach the Top 10 on the US charts. OK, so there are a couple of things to unpack here before we go any further. Firstly, the Backstreet Boys have made ten albums?! Surely not! I’m checking their discography. Wait there…

…they have! Although, one of them is a Christmas album and didn’t make the Top 10 in America. Maybe that claim included Greatest Hits compilations? Secondly, the biggest selling boy band of all time? What about New Kids On The Block or Take That or One Direction? Or even one of those K-pop groups? And what criteria are we using to define boy band? Were The Beatles* a boy band or The Jackson 5? If they qualify the. Surely they outsold Backstreet Boys?

*Obviously they weren’t but I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here

Whatever the truth behind the claim, their sales certainly didn’t start out like that. Not in the UK anyway. Their first two singles releases failed to make the Top 40 over here (though both were subsequently rereleased and became hits). Somehow the UK were initially impervious to the five piece’s charms but we finally caved when third single “Get Down (You’re The One For Me)” made it to No 14. Quite why though remains a mystery to me as it’s awful, useless, just no good. Based around that annoying swing beat riff that was prevalent about a year before and used on hits by the likes of MN8 and Montell Jordan with hackneyed, pseudo sexual lyrics, it truly stank the place out. They weren’t even that good looking were they? Maybe the pretty boy one with blonde hair but the rest? What did I know though. Their next thirteen singles went Top 10 in the UK including a No 1, two No 2s and four No 3s. It seemed that we really were getting down with the Backstreet Boys and they were indeed the ones for us.

From a boy band to a collaboration that was rather more out of left field albeit that one of the collaborators was about to become so successful that a crossover into the mainstream would be inevitable. Jamiroquai were an established chart act by this point with two hit albums and a readily identifiable sound to their name. They also had Jay Kay as their frontman who was providing the gossip columns with material as he embraced the pop star lifestyle. In 1996, their third album “Travelling Without Moving” was released and would go on to sell eight million copies worldwide, four times more than the sales of their first two combined. It also generated their three highest charting singles to date in “Virtual Insanity” (No 3), “Cosmic Girl” (No 6) and “Alright” (No 6). Before all of those though came “Do U Know Where You’re Coming From”. This was a joint project with jungle pioneer M–Beat and you might be forgiven for thinking that this was a revamp of the similarly titled Diana Ross hit “Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)” given that M-Beat’s last hit had been a cover of another female soul singer – Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love”. It wasn’t (thank God!). What it was though, to my ears, was a track that was trying to tick too many musical boxes but ended up being a confused, mess of a song. I think there might be a decent tune in there somewhere but all those shuffling, jungle breakbeats just kept fracturing any cohesiveness it might have had.

The single did get to No 12 and was included as an extra track on “Travelling Without Moving” (albeit with a very slight title change). M-Beat (aka Marlon Hart) would not have any further UK chart hits though he did produce remixes for Soul II Soul and Roy Davis Jr. who would have minor hits with them in the late 90s. Hart himself would become homeless not long after this TOTP appearance before taking IT consultancy positions for McLaren F1 and Lloyds Bank and finally returning to music in 2022. So he did know where he was coming from after all!

Well, this is shaping up to be a show of extremes. We move from a jungle/acid jazz-funk mash up to some hard rock courtesy of Metallica. A Top 10 hit pretty much everywhere, “Until It Sleeps” was the lead single from new album “Load”. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s taken even a passing interest in my blog previously that I‘m not the biggest Metallica fan. I can acknowledge the power of “Enter Sandman” but that’s the extent of my appreciation. Consequently, this track didn’t and doesn’t make my musical radar bleep.

Its video is more interesting to me though. It looks like the set of a horror movie or perhaps the darker moments of Stranger Things most of the time but its imagery is apparently inspired by the work of 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, specifically The Garden Of Earthly Delights, Haywain and Ecce Homo. I can’t say that I’m that familiar with Bosch’s work but here’s @TOTPFacts with the visual evidence:

The video for “Until It Sleeps” was inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. This bit has a basic similarity to “Ecce Homo”, for example. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/ySF60N1qPw
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 9, 2024

And this human-eating monster is a nod to “The Garden of Earthly Delights” #TOTP pic.twitter.com/gW5BapAz4t
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) August 9, 2024

From high art to a rancid fart of a song. That dreadful moment of the 90s is upon us – it’s time for Peter Andre and “Mysterious Girl”. Brace yourselves everyone, we’re going in! It seems an odd concept to grasp now but there was a time when Peter Andre wasn’t a part of our lives, always there in the cultural milieu, grifting away at his latest cash grab and attempting to give himself a sheen of relevance and currency. So embedded is he in our society that in the 2007 British comedy film Grow Your Own starring Eddie Marsan, at one point in its story about locals on an allotment reacting angrily when some refugees are given plots on it, one character announces “You know who I blame? Peter Andre!”.

Back in 1996 though, he was only known for one minor hit single in the UK called…erm… “Only One”. A concerted media campaign targeting teen magazines though raised his profile enough to put out a follow up. “Mysterious Girl” was actually a rerelease having peaked at No 53 in September 1995. We all dodged a bullet then but when the gun was reloaded for a second time we were hit right between the eyes with both barrels. This horrible, cod reggae, Inner Circle rip off would spend eleven consecutive weeks in the UK Top 10 mainly skittering between Nos 2 and 3. Thankfully it never made it to the top of the charts though even that silver lining would become a black cloud burst in 2004 when it got to No 1 after a concerted campaign by DJ Chris Moyles. Gee, thanks Chris. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport in 1996 and we sold this single over and over and over again. When we’d finished doing that, we sold it some more and every time I did, the questions running around my head were “What am I doing with my life? How did it come to this?”. I’d had similar thoughts when I’d been the stand in Father Christmas in Debenhams seven years earlier whilst sat in Santa’s Grotto surrounded by soft toy reindeers and nodding penguins. Peter Andre – so much to blame him for.

It’s an Antipodean double whammy as we go from an Australian dope in Peter Andre to a song called “Australia” that’s pretty dope – I believe that can also mean ‘good’ in the modern vernacular*.

*God, I sound like the two stuffy characters Jeremy Hardy and Jack Dee are using to present the show!

Occupants of the revived ‘album’ slot are Manic Street Preachers and a track from their “Everything Must Go” album that would also turn out to be the fourth and final single released from it when it made No 7 in the charts in the December of 1996. The album had only been out for ten days at this point and with it going straight in at No 2, a place on the BBC’s flagship music show was not only deemed appropriate but also assured and deserved. Interestingly, the band shunned the chance to preview their next single, the album’s title track, that would hit the shops in July and instead opted for this song that was written as a metaphor for getting as far away from the UK and its tabloid press as possible in the wake of band member Richey Edwards’ disappearance the previous year. Also of note in this performance is the nerdy look of James Dean Bradfield including spectacles and a neat and tidy haircut. Quite the change from those early “Generation Terrorists” era TOTP appearances.

I’d seen the Manics support Oasis* at their Maine Road gigs a month before this show aired and would see them headline their own show about a year afterwards. I also had the album – I was becoming quite the fan though what I was not a fan of was the cardboard sleeves they insisted releasing their singles in at this time. Working in a record shop as I was, they were a pain to display.

*No, I didn’t get involved in the frankly shameful Oasis reunion gigs tickets fiasco. I saw them when they were at the top of their game and relevant – I have no desire to revisit the money grabbing so and so’s they seem to have become nearly thirty years later.

If it’s time for Celine Dion then it must also be time for a big, heart string pulling ballad and we do indeed get both these outcomes with “Because You Loved Me”. Released as the second single from her “Falling Into You” album, it was also included on the soundtrack to the film Up Close And Personal starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. I’ve never seen this film before but reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, I don’t think I’ll be seeking it out for a viewing anytime soon. A rather stodgy sounding news drama/romance that bore no resemblance to the book on which it was based? No, I’m alright thanks. Pfeiffer was making a habit though of starring in films that had a huge big hit single featured in them. Just a few months before, Coolio had conquered the globe with his Stevie Wonder channeling “Gangsta Paradise” from Dangerous Minds.

As for “Because You Loved Me”, it’s all pretty laboured and predictable to my ears but was clearly aural nectar for lots of other people’s lugholes as it went to No 1 in America and won a Grammy and was nominated for an Academy Award. And to think we’re still 18 months away from her even bigger film ballad “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. Gulp!

Having finally scored themselves a massive hit by rereleasing their debut single “Lifted”, the Lighthouse Family have shone their spotlight onto another earlier release to secure themselves a follow up. As well, as being the title track of their debut album, “Ocean Drive” was also their second ever single and their first ever Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 34 in October ‘95. Could the old rerelease strategy work for a second time? Of course it could and not even the fact that “Ocean Drive” was almost identical to “Lifted” would stop people buying it for a second time. Harsh? Possibly but almost certainly accurate. Yes, this was more of that radio friendly, lilting groove, smooth vocal, easy listening soul/pop that they made their name on. And why not? You didn’t have to buy or listen to it if it didn’t float your boat did you eh?

So where is Ocean Drive? Well, there’s a mile long road in the South Beach neighbourhood of Miami Beach, Florida which bears that name and is famous for its Art Deco hotels, restaurants and bars. So, that must be what inspired the song then? Well, according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t as it’s about a road in the UK. A quick search of the internet reveals that there is indeed an Ocean Drive and it’s not that far from me in Hull being located in a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire called Newport. There might not be any Art Deco buildings there but google maps shows me that there is a pub called the Crown & Anchor, one called The Jolly Sailor Inn and a fish and chip shop called Johnny Haddocks so Ocean Drive kind of fits the nautical theme. Mr and Mrs Lighthouse (as name checked by Dee and Hardy in their intro) would fit right in.

After being on the show as an ‘exclusive’ two weeks prior, Bryan Adams is back again as his single “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” has blasted into the charts at No 6. There’s something different about this second performance though that I can’t quite put my finger on…oh yeah, that’s it…Bry’s missing a member from his band. Where’s the guitarist that was standing on his left from the last time? In an attempt to fill the space, they’ve moved the keyboard player to the front of the stage but he’s no substitute for standing back to back with Bryan and rocking out like his guitarist did. Also, the drummer looks very different. On the first appearance the guy behind the kit had huge Afro hair but that’s all gone this time around. Is it the same guy? Was he just wearing a wig the first time? If it was the latter, he clearly decided to ignore the advice of the title of the track he was drumming on and ditched it.

Listening back to this, is it me or is there a slight whiff of U2 about some of the guitar work as it comes out of the chorus? No? Nothing like The Edge? How about Bry’s bass player then? If you squint your eyes does he look a bit like Adam Clayton? OK, you got me. All this talk of drummers, Adam Clayton and U2 is me trying to tee up the show’s play out tune but more of that later. First, we have a new No 1 to deal with…

And so after weeks of anticipation and a flurry of football songs in the charts that weren’t that football song, it’s finally here and it’s gone straight in at No 1. As with Peter Andre, it’s hard to recall now that there was a time when “Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)” wasn’t a part of the national psyche, wasn’t trotted out every time England played in a football tournament and wasn’t sung on the terraces. A time when the subject of a song about the England football team would instantly bring to mind New Order’s “World In Motion” or possibly “Back Home” from 1970. All of this was trampled into the turf by Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds in 1996. Now bearing in mind that Euro 96 hadn’t even started by this point, the promotion surrounding the release of the single must have been pretty extensive to have propelled it straight to the top of the charts on week one. Despite working in a record shop at the time, I can’t recall if there was a massive buzz around the song before a ball had been kicked in anger but we must have sold loads of it in that first week. After debuting at the very top of the charts, the following month saw it mostly at No 2 with a solitary week at No 4 before returning to No 1, with sales no doubt fuelled by the England team progressing to the semi-finals. We all know what fate befell them there sadly. That month gap between the two occasions that “Three Lions” was the UK’s best selling single saw “Killing Me Softly” by Fugees at No 1. It dropped a place as Euro 96 came to its climax and then leapfrogged back to the top for another week after it had finished. This meant that these two singles spent seven weeks swapping the No 1 position between them. There’s another less talked about twist of trivia that bonded the two together acts together and it really is quite bizarre – the single that the Lightning Seeds released before “Three Lions” was a song called “Ready Or Not” whilst the single that the Fugees released after “Killing Me Softly” was a song called…yep…”Ready Or Not”. What are the chances eh?

Quite why the FA approached Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds to write a song for the tournament I’m not sure but Broudie’s decision to get Frank Skinner and David Baddiel involved made perfect sense (ooh, see what I did there? ‘Perfect’ and ‘Sense’? Oh never mind!) what with the duo having recently finished the third and final series of Fantasy Football League for the BBC. Both comedians were by now also synonymous with the beautiful game with Skinner professing his love of WBA and Baddiel a fellow fan of my beloved Chelsea.

Like everybody in the country it seemed, I got caught up with the feel good factor that the football was bringing and “Three Lions” seemed a perfectly good soundtrack to that period. However, its repeated appearance at every football tournament since has made it almost unlistenable now. They really did flog it to death. An updated version with changed lyrics went to No 1 two years later for the 1998 World Cup and it topped the charts again as England reached the semi final in 2018 in the same competition. As far as I can tell, the only tournaments that England qualified for since the song was originally released when “Three Lions” hasn’t featured in the charts were the 2000 and 2004 Euros. My research tells me that Fat Les’s “Jerusalem” and a version of “All Together Now” were the predominant England songs for those years respectively.

The play out track is “Theme From Mission: Impossible” by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr. Yes, here’s the reason for my cack handed referencing of the two members of the aforementioned U2 earlier in the post. The very first movie of the Mission: Impossible franchise was released this year and nearly 30 years later it is still going, still with Tom Cruise as the star and with the most recent outing Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (the seventh film so far) having been released in 2023. I caught the first film at the cinema in Stockport as the Our Price store there where I was working had an arrangement with the local cinema to supply them with CDs to play in the foyer. It might even have been a special preview screening that I attended as I seem to remember coming out with a press pack of still photos etc. I think I enjoyed it but I’m not sure that I’ve watched any of the sequels in their entirety. I recall watching the original 60s TV series as a small child and being confused by Leonard Nimoy being in it but not being dressed as Mr Spock!

I’m guessing that Adam and Larry were approached to record the movie’s theme tune off the back of U2’s wildly successful contribution to the previous year’s Batman Forever film. They don’t muck about with it too much though they’ve clearly danced it up a bit and explore that further with a number of remixes on the 12” and extra tracks on the CD single. At the end of the day though, it all pales in comparison to the iconic original which kind of negates the whole thing. Competing with its composer Lalo Schifrin really did prove to be an impossible mission.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	Get Down (You’re The One For Me)	As if
2	Jamiroquai / M-Beat	Do U Know Where You’re Coming From	No
3	Metallica	Until It Sleeps	I did not
4	Peter Andre	Mysterious Girl	Sir! You insult me with your impertinence!
5	Manic Street Preachers	Australia	No but I had the album
6	Celine Dion	Because You Loved Me	Never
7	Lighthouse Family	Ocean Drive	Nope
8	Bryan Adams	The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You	Negative
9	Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds	Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)	Nah
10	Theme From Mission: Impossible”	Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr	Another 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/m0021s8z/top-of-the-pops-30051996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 22 FEB 1996

Posted on June 7, 2024 by 80stastic

Welcome to another instalment of TOTP Rewind, the blog where I, a man who turned 56 yesterday, reviews past episodes of the legendary pop music show and who, despite having lived through this era and worked in record shops for nigh on the whole of the 90s, often has zero recall of some of the acts and songs featured. Don’t let that put you off though! I remember some of it – honest! To help stimulate my brain into activity, and I haven’t done this in a while, I’m going to check in on what I was up to in early 1996 in my personal life (I will get to the music eventually I promise!). Well, I was working at the Our Price store in Stockport and had been there for about a year following the closure of the Market Street, Manchester shop. Retail was hard work but the product was exciting and the staff all pretty much got on with each other (usually) so there were regular after work drinks in the town’s hostelries.

My life was ticking along nicely then until it was rudely interrupted by me being called up for jury service. If you’ve never done it, I can say that it was both fascinating and terrifying. I don’t know if it’s still the same as I’ve not done it since but you were expected to serve for a minimum of two weeks with the courts meeting the costs of your wages. Two weeks off work might have sounded great and indeed day one was spent just sitting around waiting to be called onto a jury which I wasn’t. I remember I was reading Trainspotting by Irvine Walsh and pretty much finished the whole book that day. First thing on day two though I was selected for a jury. Watching the defence and prosecution making their cases in court was fascinating. It wasn’t until they’d finished and you had to go and discuss the case as a jury that it became real and that was the scary bit. That 17th century saying describing the make up of a jury as “twelve good men and true” was a load of bollocks I was to discover and I don’t mean the obvious flaw that women have been serving on juries since the 1920s. I vowed there and then never to get in trouble with the law because if my misdemeanour went to court, the calibre of people deciding your fate could not be guaranteed. I won’t go into any details of the case but one bloke came to his personal verdict straight away based on what the accused looked like, refused to consider any counter arguments and sat there reading his copy of The Sun for the rest of the day. As we couldn’t come to a verdict we were all agreed on by the end of play, we started to wonder what would happen. Would we have to stay overnight in a hotel like in the movies? Fearing this might be the case, The Sun reading bloke started to panic saying he was meant to be going out with the lads that night and so offered to change his mind if it would help! I was appalled! In the end, we were just told to go home and not talk about the case.

When we reconvened the following day, The Sun reader assumed his original stance and we were subsequently dismissed as a jury as we were taking to too long to come to a verdict for this type of case (an historical one brought years after the event with no physical evidence). The experience has stayed with me ever since. Back to the TOTP though and I wonder if there are any acts on tonight who should be tried for crimes against popular music?

Well, “I Wanna Be A Hippy” by Technohead must surely have some charges to face. As established in a previous post, this was an example of gabber dance music, a subgenre of hardcore techno and definitely not happy hardcore as I initially surmised. What it undoubtedly was, of course, was hideously irritating crap that, horror of horrors, also refused to shift from your brain for hours once heard.

I can think of no more of a condemnation of it than to point out that its chart peak of No 6 was actually bettered by a parody of it by The Smurfs later in the year retitled as “I’ve Got A Little Puppy” which got to No 4 despite featuring the lyric “I take it for a walk, pooper pooper scooper”. Talk about dog shit!

I seem to be getting very bogged down in definitions of dance music currently and here’s another one. After the gabber strand of Technohead comes the Dream house of Robert Miles. At least host Lisa I’Anson had the good grace to name check the sub genre in her intro meaning I didn’t have to do too much research into working out which category it belonged to. “Children” was another of those mid-90s hits like “Missing” by Everything But The Girl that stayed on the UK charts for months. Ten weeks inside the Top 10 (of which the first seven were spent at either No 2 or No 3) and sixteen in the Top 40 in total. Quite remarkable for a tune that initially was not included on Radio 1 daytime playlists. No matter though as the UK, just like the rest of Europe where it went to No 1 in twelve different countries, was unable to resist its charms. Characterised by a floating, ethereal piano riff, was it just Jean Michel Jarre for the 90s? I don’t know enough about the “Oxygène” and “Équinoxe” hitmaker to make an informed judgment but it was certainly worlds away from the headache inducing relentless beats of the likes of the aforementioned Technohead and thank god for that!

Apparently, Miles created “Children” to help combat a tragic consequence of rave culture, namely that of clubbers falling asleep at the wheel of their vehicles after a night of strenuous dancing combined with alcohol and drug use. Dubbed ‘strage del sabato sera’ (Saturday night slaughter) in Italy, Miles wanted to compose a a calming track to end a DJ set to help the crowd acclimatise before heading home. I had no idea about any of that until now. It was just that instrumental dance track that I sold over and over the counter in Our Price.

Here’s a question. How do you follow up the biggest hit of your career which knocked down barriers that had previously excluded you from a wider audience and brought you into the mainstream consciousness? Well, if you’re Björk, you turn your back on that breakthrough hit and return to your original style and principles and resume your rather experimental music career. Reading that back, it sounds rather glib and possibly inaccurate. Or is it actually correct? Let’s examine the evidence. The case for the prosecution is that surely anyone not previously familiar with Björk’s oeuvre but who loved and bought “It’s Oh So Quiet” were not going to be tempted to continue that purchasing trend by the next single “Hyperballad” were they? A skittering, jerky, bleeping track about throwing objects off a cliff in the early morning before your partner awakes to symbolise the parts of yourself you must sacrifice in order to make a relationship work, this was a return to the Björk of old wasn’t it?

The case for the defence is that the track was critically acclaimed by the music press. Look at these reviews:

“…excellent example of music meeting art”

Diver, Mike (2009). “Review of Björk – Post”. BBC. Retrieved 25 November 2020.

“…a delightful track that all fans of quality music will enjoy.”

Baltin, Steve (9 March 1996). “Pop Singles”. Cash Box. p. 7. Retrieved 14 November 2022.

“All fans of quality music” eh? Well, that’s me told. Added to that is the fact that “Hyperballad” was a UK Top 10 hit and that Björk had just won a BRIT award for International Female Solo Artist would suggest she was hardly a cult figure any longer and that she had already crossed over into the mainstream quite successfully thank you very much. The verdict? The blogger is guilty of anti-Björk bias m’lud.

Next a duo who were continually accused of committing the crime of making bland and unworthy pop music – will the Lighthouse Family please rise! In their defence, their hit “Lifted” was co-written by Martin Brammer who was the vocalist in the rather excellent 80s band The Kane Gang who knew his way around a tune and indeed is an Ivor Novello Award nominee. The prosecution would level the charges that he’s also written songs for Olly Murs and Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys. My verdict would be that though not a fan, there are much more heinous musical misdemeanours to be offended by although the claim on Smooth Radio’s website that Lighthouse Family are “one of the most popular duos of all time” may result in litigation from Simon & Garfunkel, Soft Cell, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys…

From a duo to a trio now as it’s yet another appearance on the show for 3T and their hit “Anything”. I’m so bored of this lot and their drippy ballad that the only thing that will keep me watching is to see if the one in the hat has brought his backpack with him and whether he’ll dramatically throw it down on the floor again…

*keeps watching…*

He’s definitely got it with him…

*still watching…*

Pow! He’s slam dunked it again! Now cart them all off to jail. It is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty of assault and battery of my ears.

It’s time for the Battle of Britpop Version 2.0 that nobody ever talks about (apart from me) probably because it wasn’t really a proper thing. We all know that Blur won said battle in the summer of 1995 but there was nearly a repeat the following year. Perhaps deliberately, Oasis and Blur missed clashing release dates of their first singles of 1996 by a week meaning there was not officially a rematch of the two bands duking it out for the No 1 spot. This was probably just as well in the case of Damon and co as they would have been stopped in the first round by their northern counterparts. “Stereotypes” was the third single released from “The Great Escape” album and its chart high of No 7 was pretty respectable. However, when “Don’t Look Back In Anger” came out seven days later, its sales dwarfed those of “Stereotypes”. Well, they did in Our Price Stockport anyway. I’m pretty sure I have these figures correct – by my memory we sold 429 CDs of the Oasis single in week one but just 13 of Blur’s. Ooof! No wonder Noel Gallagher felt cocky enough to give this message to camera at the top of the show:

“Good evening Top of the Pops. Best band in the world, live and exclusive…and it’s not Blur”

To rub salt in the wound, the TOTP producers have got both bands in the studio together tonight and are letting Oasis perform two tracks after they’d already walked off with three BRIT awards (to Blur’s zero) three days earlier but to Blur’s credit, they seem to have taken it all in good grace with Damon acting all playful around Lisa I’Anson as she introduces them. As for “Stereotypes” as a song, it’s not the band’s best work by any measure. A functional, Blur-by-numbers track to my mind but supposedly it had originally been earmarked as the lead single from the album. Now if that Battle of Britpop had been “Stereotypes” v “Don’t Look Back In Anger” instead of “Country House” v “Roll With It”, we might have had a different winner.

And so to those naughty Manc lads who, as previously mentioned, have been allotted two songs on the show which was not a regular occurrence then or at any point in TOTP history. As far as I’m aware, only The Beatles and The Jam were given that honour previously. The Fab Four’s double appearance was way before my time but I distinctly remember The Jam performing double A-side “Town Called Malice” and “Precious” in 1982 as my Weller obsessed elder brother sat watching transfixed. Fast forward 14 years and it’s self confessed Jam fan Noel Gallagher taking up the baton from his hero. “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was the second of eight No 1s for Oasis and in truth, its success was no surprise. With the album “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” having already been out four months and gone multiple times platinum, you might have thought that a fourth single being lifted from it was destined to not pull up any trees sales wise as so many people already had it. However, such was the buzz around this huge anthem and so long had we known that it would be coming out as a single (it was initially due out in early January but was delayed by five weeks) that there was huge anticipation for its release.

I understand the criticisms that are levelled at it (and many other Oasis tracks) that it’s so derivative and steals from other songs. There’s the “Imagine”-esque piano opening, the lyric pinch from the legendary John Lennon memoirs cassette that was stolen from the Dakota Hotel, the similarity to “All The Young Dudes” and my own personal discovery that the chords are almost the same as those of “Ralph McTell’s “Streets Of London” and yet…I still think it’s a great song, possibly their best. I think there’s a valid claim here that this song and 1996 in general was the high point of the band’s career. Sure they wouldn’t release any new material for another 18 months but this was the year of the Maine Road gigs (more of them later) plus the two nights at Knebworth House where they performed to 250,000 people but could have sold 10 times the amount of tickets. I don’t think they were ever bigger than at this point. 1997 would bring the difficult third album “Be Here Now” and the whole cringey ‘Cool Britannia’ nonsense and subsequent years would see the band change the line up though remain popular but not be the phenomenon that they once were.

I certainly recall thinking this double TOTP performance was a big deal. The way Liam goes “yeah, yeah, yeah” to the studio audience as he crosses over with Noel as if to say “settle down, of course we’re playing another and we’re the only band who can do this because we’re the best”. That second song was their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” which was one of the three extra tracks featured on the CD single. For some this was a lazy, hammy choice of song to cover but I loved it especially the piss taking Black Country accents the band put in at the beginning and end of the track. Well, I was 28 years younger then and I guess my sense of humour wasn’t as mature (?) as it is (?) now. The other tracks on that CD single were “Underneath The Sky” which didn’t have that much going for it in retrospect but which I thought was perfectly fine back then and “Step Out” which was a gloriously effervescent song that unfortunately gave more credence to the claims of those who were not Oasis fans that Noel just kept stealing other people’s work when it was found to be so similar to Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” that the soul legend had to be credited on the track.

So returning to those aforementioned Maine Road gigs, I did get to the Saturday one but I nearly missed out altogether. I knew that they were going on sale from the Manchester Apollo box office and the Apollo wasn’t that far from where we were living. As it happened, the day they went on sale was one of those when I was on jury service. This was great news as it meant I didn’t have to worry about getting to work and also gave me a bit of extra time as the courts didn’t open until about 10ish. Nothing could stop me getting those Oasis tickets now…except the monstrously huge queue that I found when I arrived at the Apollo. I thought I was getting there in time for the box office to open but hadn’t banked on the number of people who had camped out overnight to be at the head of the queue. I joined the back of it and looked at my watch. The queue wasn’t moving quickly and all that time that I thought I had was now not looking like nearly enough. So couldn’t I have just stuck it out and tuned up late at court? Not an option. On a previous day I’d witnessed a fellow jury member return late from lunch by a few minutes delaying the start of the afternoon session. The judge asked him how much his lunch had cost. “Five pounds” came the reply. “Add a zero to that and that’s how much your fine is for being late back” pronounced the judge. As I got closer to the box office window, the minutes were slipping away. I got to within six or seven people from the front of the queue before time ran out and I lost my nerve. I just walked away from the queue and headed into town to do my public duty. Fortunately for me, my mate Paul (the chef from last week’s post who liked to play rap music loudly while washing his whites in our flat) was on the case and got tickets for us all so I did go to the Oasis ball after all.

The “Spaceman”’s orbit has started to decay and he’s crashing back down to earth. Yes, it’s the fifth and final week at No 1 for Babylon Zoo and what a strange ride it was. The nation lost its head over the music on a 30 seconds jeans advert causing the full track to be released. Only then did the truth come out that it wasn’t what the advert had promised but we gave a collective shrug of our shoulders and went out and bought it in our droves anyway. Jas Mann got to be the pop star who he always believed it was his destiny to be for a little while before suffering a backlash that this country always reserves for people deemed to have been too successful. We might see Babylon Zoo on TOTP again in these repeats as there were a couple of minor hit singles in the wake of their No 1 but their time in the spotlight was waning faster than a shooting star across the sky. Unlike “Starman”, “Spaceman” didn’t blow our minds, at least not for long anyway.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Technohead	I Wanna Be A Hippy	Never
2	Robert Miles	Children	No
3	Björk	Hyperballad	I did not
4	Lighthouse Family	Lifted	Nah
5	3T	Anything	Nope
6	Blur	Stereotypes	No but I had The Great Escape album with it on
7	Oasis	Don’t Look Back In Anger / Cum On Feel The Noize	Yes sir!
8	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001zj0c/top-of-the-pops-22021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 08 FEB 1996

Posted on May 29, 2024 by 80stastic

OK so the ‘golden mic’ host thing, I get it. An attempt by TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill to inject an element of glamour to the proceedings, to shake up the traditional format, to maybe spring a surprise on the millions watching at home. So we had various members of Take That and Boyzone for the swoon factor, PJ and Duncan honing their presenting skills for their future careers, a number of comedians including Jack Dee, Phill Jupitus, Jo Brand and Mark Lamarr to add some humour to the links and some names that defied explanation based on performance (Craig McLachlan was truly awful). However, one of the oddest incumbents of the ‘golden mic’ slot was surely the host of this particular show – Julian Cope. Quite why the head shaman of rock ‘n’ roll, the too cool for school arch-drude, a guy so out there that he lives not just in the left field but on the extreme peripheries of it, would be seen as a good fit for a mainstream pop music show is strange indeed.

Now, let me be clear – I like Julian and some of his music is mighty fine (not that I claim to know all his canon of work). I’ve read his double autobiography Head–On / Repossessed and I’ve even attended one of his megalithic exhibitions though sadly it wasn’t the one in the British Museum where he arrived in five inch platform boots and doused in so much hairspray that he set the fire alarms off causing the building to be evacuated. That’s how you walk into a room! He’s also one of the world’s first bloggers dating back to 1997 and has written an ‘Album of the Month’ review since May 2000 and hasn’t ever missed a month. As a blogger who has been reviewing TOTP repeats these past eight years, I utterly respect his commitment to the cause. And yet…was he really a sensible choice for hosting the grand old show? For a start, would the watching youth even know who he was? Yes, he’d performed on the programme some six months previously promoting his “Try, Try, Try” single but he was hardly a chart regular. Then there was his propensity for protest. Hadn’t Ric Blaxill figured out that Julian would use this prime time exposure to further causes that were close to his heart and wouldn’t that cause a problem in compromising the BBC’s impartiality? Predictably, Cope does exploit his half hour in the spotlight to promote his objection to the building of the Newbury bypass in a series of sloganed T-shirts. OK, well let’s see how this turns out…

The opening act, like it so often was, is a dance act and also as was often the case, their single had already been a hit. “Loving You More” by BT had got to No 28 in September 1995 but made No 14 when rereleased the following year. Obviously, I don’t remember this one as I wouldn’t have been interested in it back then. What do I think of it now? Well, it’s still not my bag but I’ve heard much, much worse in the course of these 90s TOTP repeats. It’s actually quite a smooth sound and vocalist Vincent Covello has a decent set of pipes as well as looking like a swarthy version of Marti Pellow. As for the guys at the front of the stage, they look like they’ve just wondered in from a Fast Show sketch. Most odd.

Talking of odd, let’s check in on host Julian Cope and see how he’s holding up. Well, he’s brought his mascot Sqwubbsy with him for moral support. You may recognise Sqwubbsy as he’s been on the show before dancing in the studio audience as Julian performed the aforementioned “Try Try Try” and he also made an appearance at the Poll Tax riots of 1990 (hence his pin badge here). Again, I’m surprised he got away with flouting such political credentials on TOTP. Anyway, Cope manages not to fluff his intro for second act Joan Osborne and her single “One Of Us”. Nothing to do with the ABBA song of the same name, this was an example of a curious trend in the 90s of American female solo artists having one big hit over here and then disappearing almost as soon as they had arrived. Starting as the decade began with Alannah Myles and “Black Velvet”, there followed the likes of Lisa Loeb and her only hit “Stay (I Missed You)”, Paula Cole with “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”, Meredith Brooks (“Bitch”) and Jennifer Paige (“Crush”).

Joan wasn’t quite the one hit wonder as she had one other solitary UK Top 40 entry but “One Of Us” is undoubtedly her best known song. Imagining God arriving on Earth being a regular person dealing with the trials and tribulations of everyday life like riding on the bus, it was written by founding member of The Hooters (of “Satellite” fame) Eric Bazilian. Its memorable lyrics helped propel it to success but also landed Joan in hot water in some territories who objected to the lines:

What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Eric M. Bazilian
One of Us lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Now when I was listening back to this, another song immediately sprang to mind, a connection that I hadn’t thought of at the time. Anybody else getting a hint of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies? Well, that connection it seems was deliberate as Bazilian admits that as he sat down to record the song’s demo, he had a voice in his head, that of Brad Roberts of the Canadian folk rockers and that the verses of “One Of Us” share a similar melody to that of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”. Hmm (hmm hmm hmm).

The first video of the night comes from The Smashing Pumpkins who are onto their fourth UK hit single in “1979”. Another one of those bands that I probably should know much more about than I do, the bits that I do know, I quite like including this track. The video for it won the MTV Music Video Award for Best Alternative Video in 1996. What’s the significance of the year 1979? Well, songwriter and lead singer Billy Corgan says the song is about the transition from youth to adulthood and that feeling like you are on the cusp of things in your life changing and a new chapter about to happen. That’s all fine but Corgan was born in 1967 so he would have been just 12 years old in 1979, not even a teenager let alone nearly an adult so that doesn’t really work does it? By that logic, the song should have been called “1984” but then that title had already been taken by George Orwell I suppose and Eurythmics who wrote “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)” for the soundtrack of the film of said novel.

Writing all of this got me thinking about other songs whose titles are just years. Off the top of my head there’s “1999” by Prince, “1963” by New Order but the one I’m plumping for is this whose lyrics include the marvellous lines:

She rocked out to Wham, not a big Limo Bizkit fan

Thought she’d get her hand on a member of Duran Duran

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jaret Ray Reddick / John Lowe Kenneth Allen / Mitchell Allan Scherr
1985 lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

“We’re sailing high over the Mother Earth tonight. We’re clearly out of our trees” trills our host before introducing a band that would receive more flack and accusations of blandness than anyone since Level 42 were in their heyday. Lighthouse Family were Tunde Baiyewu and Paul Tucker who met at Newcastle University and began writing songs together one of which, “Ocean Drive”, brought them to the attention of record label Polydor. However, not impressed by the calibre of the rest of their material, the duo needed to come up with a surefire hit or risk being dropped. Enter “Lifted”, a feel good soul song that almost drifted into easy listening territory. Backed by a bundle of airplay, much was expected of the single but it stiffed at No 61 on initial release in 1995. Fortunately for the band, they still had the aforementioned “Ocean Drive” track which breached the Top 40 a few months after the failure of “Lifted” making them a bona fide chart act. With that foothold secured, a rerelease of “Lifted” seemed a sensible career move and it duly went straight into the chart at No 4 before spending a further three weeks inside the Top 10. “Ocean Drive” also received the rerelease treatment going to No 11 before the album of the same name became a huge success going on to sell 1.8 million copies in the UK.

So where did all the cries of them being bland come from and did they deserve the criticism? Well, they didn’t do much for me but there has always been a space for lowest common denominator music that appeals across the board but which offends those who consider themselves as ‘serious’ or ‘true’ music fans. I’m thinking Simply Red, Dido, Savage Garden, James Blunt etc. Certainly Lighthouse Family were never going to get high praise from the ‘inkies’ music press who were in thrall to Britpop. Even today, a quick search of the internet unearths online forum comments such as ‘Shitehouse Family’ and ‘offensively inoffensive’. Is that fair? Look, I refer you to my mate Robin who, in response to me saying to him that he couldn’t just state that he hates every single song Elton John has ever recorded, replied “Yes I can. I thought you knew that music taste is subjective”. It’s a fair point. If you like Lighthouse Family then good luck to you.

East 17 were a hit making factory to rival Stock Aitken & Waterman in the mid 90s. “Do U Still?” was their 13th consecutive UK chart hit of which nine went Top 10. They had a formula and it worked for quite some time. ‘If it wasn’t broken, why fix it?’ was their motto to the point that by 1996, they were just rewriting previous hits. This one was almost a replica of their 1993 hit “Deep” which was a great record but three years in, shouldn’t the band have been doing more than just retreading the same water? Well, the record buying public disagreed with me as they often did and sent it to No 7. They still had another four UK chart hits in them of which three went Top 3 so clearly the band weren’t quite done yet but was there more gravitas than we realised at the time to their lyrics to this one of “Do you still love me…do you still need me…do you still want me?”.

With the then current No 1 being propelled by a TV advert, was there room for another such generated hit? Well, yes there was as the Levi’s campaign wasn’t the only one to employ a song that would capture the public’s imagination. The Coca Cola TV advertisements had been hugely successful in not just promoting their brand but making hit records of the music that soundtracked them stretching back to 1971 when the New Seekers took “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”* to No 1.

* A Britpop obsessed UK would make a hit out of this song when covered by Oasis cover band No Way Sis in 1996.

Seventeen years later, the unknown Robin Beck also hit the top spot with “First Time” after providing the music for a Coca Cola campaign. Come 1996 and it was a revitalised song from the 60s that slinked its way up the charts in the form of “I Just Want To Make Love To You” by soul singer Etta James. I, for one, didn’t know anything about Etta but I’d certainly seen the advert her song soundtracked. The construction worker who takes his shirt off while having a diet coke break under the gaze of the swooning female office staff? Sure you know it. This one…

Anyway, the success of the song meant an appearance on the UK’s premier music show was required so we get a satellite link from San Diego where Etta and her band are ready to go with an idyllic setting of the ocean behind them. Unfortunately, the wind that day was pretty strong and it makes for an uncomfortable experience for the performers and watching TV audience. You can actually hear the wind swirling about them and see the fringes on their leather jackets tossing around. Just when you’re thinking that this is all a bit odd, the cringe factor is turned up to ten when two guys in sailor outfits stroll onto the set in a blatant attempt to recreate the vibe of the Cola advert. Gulp!

Doubling down on the awful satellite performances, 3T (as opposed to BT earlier) are up next from Malibu Beach to mime their hit “Anything”. Presumably they’d closed down a part of the beach to film this as it appears deserted which gives the whole thing an eerie feel. It’s not helped by the weird camera angles focussing on the driftwood. In fact, it puts me in mind of the iconic finale of the original Planet Of The Apes film when astronaut Taylor sees the Statue of Liberty and realises he’s been on Earth the whole time. All that’s missing is for one of 3T to drop to his knees and scream “You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to Hell!”. The closest they get is when the one with the backpack (maybe he’s got their packed lunches in there) flings it to the ground at the song’s climax. I hope he didn’t have any cans of coke in there; they’ll make a right mess when he opens them.

After what seems like a lifetime spent away from the studio after those back to back satellite performances, we’re within its confines again with, for me, easily the best song on the show tonight. After a run of six consecutive chart hits that all peaked tantalising just outside the Top 20, Terrorvision would break their huge hit duck and how when “Perseverance” careered into the Top 5 in week one. I think it’s fair to say that these West Yorkshire guys weren’t your standard rock outfit with brass parts and almost doo wop vocals incorporated into their songs. After trialling their style in their early work, “Perseverance” was when it properly all came together for me (a bit like with Shed Seven the other week). Some great hooks allied with that memorable lyric about the ‘whales and dolphins’ made this their best tune yet and would also be their biggest hit until “Tequila” made it to No 2 three years later. The fact that it was in and out of the Top 40 inside three weeks just reflected the changing chart life of new release singles and how big the band’s fan base had become. Indeed, the album the “Perseverance” trailed – “Regular Urban Survivors” – would become their highest charting collection when it peaked at No 8 and it would provide the band with a further three hit singles during the calendar year. We might well be seeing more of Terrorvision in these 1996 TOTP repeats.

It kind of seems appropriate that Julian Cope finishes his hosting stint by introducing a song called “Spaceman” at No 1. As the man himself says “It is cosmically correct that this is No 1 so I get to introduce it”. Yep, it’s another week at the top for Babylon Zoo. Despite being seen very much as a one hit wonder (which they’re not), it’s overlooked that their album “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” actually sold pretty well placing at No 6 in the charts and shifting 100,000 copies in the UK alone. Some (though not all) of its reviews in the music press were even favourable but history has not been kind with it routinely turning up in lists of the worst albums ever made. If punters were disappointed when they heard “Spaceman” in full for the first time, what were the reactions like of people that bought the album on the strength of the single? The only albums that fall into a similar category that I can think of are “Laughing At The Pieces” by Doctor And The Medics which promised much with the success of “Spirit In The Sky” but delivered very little and Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Flaunt It” which arrived in a blaze of publicity following the “Love Missile F1-11” single and was meant to be the future of rock ‘n’ roll but very much wasn’t. Unlike the Sputniks, at least Babylon Zoo had some self knowledge by calling their 1999 comeback single “All The Money’s Gone”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	BT	Loving You More	Of course not
2	Joan Osborne	One Of Us	Negative
3	The Smashing Pumpkins	1979	I did not
4	Lighthouse Family	Lifted	No
5	East 17	Do U Still?	Nope
6	Etta James	I Just Want To Make Love To You	Nah
7	3T	Anything	Never
8	Terrorvison	Perseverance	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001z96z/top-of-the-pops-08021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 25 JUN 1998

Disclaimer

TOTP 23 JAN 1998

Disclaimer

TOTP 16 JAN 1998

Disclaimer

TOTP 09 JAN 1998

Disclaimer

TOTP 10 OCT 1997

Disclaimer

TOTP 20 SEP 1996

Disclaimer

TOTP 30 MAY 1996

Disclaimer

TOTP 22 FEB 1996

Disclaimer

TOTP 08 FEB 1996

Disclaimer