Louise

TOTP 03 APR 1998

On this day in pop music history, we lost Rob Pilatus. If that name doesn’t mean anything to you then how about Milli Vanilli? Yes, Rob was one part of the infamous duo who were completely discredited after it was discovered that they hadn’t sung on any of their hit records and subsequently returned their Grammy Award. Despite a few attempts at a comeback, there was no way back for Milli Vanilli and Rob spent time both in prison and drug rehabilitation centres before he was ultimately found dead in a German hotel room from an alcohol and prescription drug overdose on the eve of yet another attempted comeback. It’s a tragic tale certainly but I wonder if any of the artists on this TOTP were accused of not singing or playing on any of their records?

Our host is Zoe Ball – is it fair to make an accusation of ‘cheating’ against her in that her career had a leg up due to the show business connections of her national treasure status father Johnny and that she is, in fact, a nepo baby? Some people might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment. Anyway, we start with a new act from Australia by the name of Savage Garden. I say new but they weren’t really although I think this is their first time on TOTP. They’d already had a hit in the UK the previous year when “I Want You” debuted at No 11 but it didn’t get picked up for a slot on the show and tumbled down and out of the charts within three weeks. The follow up “To The Moon And Back” missed the Top 50 altogether (though it would make the Top 3 when rereleased) but they’re finally on the show with their third single “Truly Madly Deeply”. However, despite that song entering the charts at No 4 and spending the next five weeks inside the Top 10, this was the first time it had featured on the show. So ‘new’ they weren’t and yet again I put this to the show’s executive producer…“Chris Cowey, explain yourself!”.

Anyway, as well as sharing its title with the rather wonderful 1991 film starring Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson (which is never on TV or streaming platforms by the way), “Truly Madly Deeply” is one of those soppy love songs that ultimately gets under your skin becoming an itch you can’t scratch, a track you desperately don’t want to like but can’t stop humming – well, that’s how it made me feel. Enough people clearly did like it as it would spend another five weeks knocking about the Top 10 making a total residency of just under three months. It was a phenomenally consistent seller evidenced by three consecutive weeks at a No 5 and its No 10 position in the UK year-end chart for 1998. The track would spearhead a period of mega-success for the duo of Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones with two triple platinum selling albums in the UK within three years whilst they were an even bigger deal in America where they achieved two No 1 singles and their debut eponymous album sold seven million copies. However, by 2001 they were gone with vocalist Hayes pursuing a solo career. My abiding memory of the duo though came from the year before. In 2000, I’d left my job working in record shops and relocated from Manchester to York to become a civil servant. One of my new colleagues had tickets to see Savage Garden play but he could no longer go and was looking to get rid of the tickets – he couldn’t give them away. Nobody seemed to even be slightly interested in the band let alone love them truly, madly and deeply.

Did they play/sing on their records? Yes although as a duo, they also employed some session musicians to perform the bass, percussion and drums parts on tracks.

A proper music legend now but the fact that he is only on the show because of a jeans advert belies his legacy somewhat. Zoe Ball’s intro claiming that without this man there’s no ska and no Madness (nor jeans commercial) tries to do justice to his name but I’m not sure it’s entirely convincing. We are talking about Prince Buster who helped shape the history of Jamaican music in its various forms with his influence on reggae, ska and the rocksteady genres. Said influence extended to these shores with the late 70s ska revival movement spearheaded by the 2-Tone label direct beneficiaries. Madness called their first single “The Prince” after him and named themselves after his song “Madness” which was its b-side. Their second single was another cover of one of his songs – “One Step Beyond” – so Zoe was right about that I guess but she could also have mentioned The Specials and The Beat who both recorded versions of Prince Buster songs or borrowed parts of them to shape their own ‘original’ tunes. One of those tunes was “Whine And Grine” which The Beat incorporated into their anti-Thatcher anthem “Stand Down Margaret”. Eighteen years later “Whine And Grine” was back having been used to soundtrack the latest Levi’s ad campaign and it would give Prince Buster only his second ever UK Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 21.

It’s a great track and Prince Buster (real name Cecil Bustamente Campbell) looks effortlessly cool in this performance. Looking at the age of the studio audience, you can only wonder if they knew they were in the presence of a music legend and hope that they didn’t go away saying they’d seen the man who did the song from that Levi’s advert. Prince Buster died from heart problems in 2016.

Did he play/sing on his records? Are you kidding?! A true original.

Zoe Ball’s on the…well…ball again by stating that Janet Jackson has been a regular on the show. In the 90s alone, she racked up 20 UK chart hits – that’s two a year every year. It’s not a bad record. What was a bad record though (to my ears) was “I Get Lonely” which was the third single from “The Velvet Rope” album. On this one, Janet tipped the balance between R&B and pop which had characterised a lot of her hits well in favour of the former and as a pop kid at heart, it was never going to get me longing for its company.

As she couldn’t be in the studio in person, she’s sent a video message introducing her video which seems to be distracting us to the lack of any tune in the song by showcasing Janet’s cleavage. Indeed, it was nominated for the ‘Sexiest Music Video of the Year’ at the VH1 Video Music Awards. It’s all a bit obvious, showy and in your face (literally). By the way, that’s the group Blackstreet up there with Janet who were on the “TNT Remix” produced for the single release and when she rips open her top to reveal a lacy bra and that bosom again, they possibly experienced a Westlife/Mariah Carey moment from the “Against All Odds” video.

Did she sing/play on her records? Yes she did although there were those bizarre rumours that said Janet was really brother Michael in drag in which case she didn’t if you believe them.

If it’s Sash! (and it is) then their single must be at No 2 in the charts no? Erm…no actually. Yes, all their previous three dance hits had all gone to one place off the summit but “La Primavera” (the lead single from their second album) was at No 3 and would get no higher. Shock horror! Fear not though as they would be back at No 2 with their next hit “Mysterious Times” and would collect one more as the new millennium dawned to give them the record of being the act with the most No 2s without ever getting to No 1 in chart history. No sniggering at the back!

So what did “La Primavera” sound like? Well, the apple didn’t stray too far from the tree I think it’s fair to say although was it a bit less frantic than its predecessors? More like the dream trance that Robert Miles was peddling? Oh, I don’t know do I? Nor do I know why the dancers they’ve got in to promote the track look like they’re doing aqua aerobics without the water nor who the Betty Boo lookalike out front was. Life’s too short people.

Did they sing/play on their records? Clearly they didn’t sing on the records as they got a series of guest vocalists in.

As I approach the end of blogging about TOTP (I’m stopping after the 1999 repeats have finished), I’m increasingly encountering the scenario of it being the last time that I have to comment on a particular artist. Such is the case here as I believe this is the final chart hit for Louise in the 90s. The thing about the ex-Eternal member’s solo career it strikes me is that it was consistent without ever being spectacular. She has amassed twelve chart hits (eight between 1995 and 1998) of which six went Top 5 but how many of them were songs that really made a mark on the general public’s consciousness? Obviously her fan base (which is pretty loyal) could name them all but how many could your average punter reel off? I could only come up with “Naked” with certainty and I’ve reviewed most of them. “All That Matters” is a a case in point. A perfectly pleasant, radio friendly pop number if a little derivative of something I can’t quite put my finger on but it doesn’t linger in the memory for long. Still, that loyal fan base of hers sent her latest album “Confessions” into the Top 10 this year and that’s surely all that matters.

Did she sing on her records? Yes, which actually worked against her in her Eternal days when trying to break America where a white woman in the line up was seen as problematic for procuring airplay on R&B radio stations.

At this point in 1998, Ian Brown was awaiting trial for allegedly using threatening behaviour towards an air hostess on a British Airways flight in February. I seem to remember seeing lots of graffiti around Manchester where I was living at the time proclaiming Brown’s innocence. In the end, he went down for four months though actually served just two in jail due to parole.

For the moment though, he was free to perform his latest single “Corpses In Their Mouths” in the TOTP studio. Now that song’s title was pinched from a quote in Belgian situationist Raoul Vaneigem’s 1967 book The Revolution Of Everyday Life. However, that’s not where I know it from. My introduction to it came courtesy of the marvellous Pete Wylie track “The Story Of The Blues Part Two (Talkin’ Blues)”.

As for Brown’s track, it was the follow up to “My Star” which I remembered but this one? Nothing. I’m not surprised as it’s a pretty flat tune with Brown’s deadpan vocals not helping to up the ante. And what was with that miserable harmonica playing? It’s an all round grim performance but then he did have other things on his mind I guess.

Did he sing on his records? Depends what your definition of ‘singing’ is.

A quick word now on the staging of this particular show but not the performances of the artists but the positioning of Zoe Ball. Chris Cowey was obviously in an arty mood this week as he has our Zoe making use of unorthodox parts of the studio. Right from the start, she appears to walk on from off stage to do her intro which is echoey signifying she’s coming from behind the scenes. Then, when introducing Sasha!, she’s contorted herself to fit into the middle of what could be a giant polo but I’m guessing is the letter ‘O’ from the TOTP logo? Finally, she’s sprawled out on top of a piano and shot from above with the camera angle rotating madly as she introduces 911. Was Cowey trying out some new ideas or was he just trying to distract us from the very average quality of the music on the show (Prince Buster excepted)?

So 911. This trio had built themselves quite the career from small beginnings. “All I Want Is You” was their sixth consecutive Top 10 hit but like Louise earlier, could you actually name many of them? I’m going “Bodyshakin’” and didn’t they do a Dr. Hook cover at some point? The rest? I’ve probably written about them but retained any sense of what they were called or how they went I haven’t. Zoe tells us that this is a live performance from the group – is it? Well, lead singer Lee Brennan could be doing a live vocal but the other two up there with him? Well, they’re live in the respect that they’re living and breathing but that’s about their only contribution aside from some “oohing” in the background. The track itself is, again like Louise and her song earlier, a mid-tempo pop song that does a job but is pretty insubstantial. A bit like 911 really.

Did they sing on their records? As noted before, I could believe that Lee did but his two band mates? I’d need to see actual footage from the recording studio and a sworn declaration from the engineer that it was them.

As Zoe Ball says in her intro (before she attempts some embarrassing…well, how would you describe it? Jive talk? Street slang? Urban speak?), “It’s Like That” by Run–D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins is the first single of 1998 to last more than two weeks at No 1. In total it would clock up six weeks on the throne and become the third biggest selling single of the year in the UK. Somehow, despite the fact that I must have sold loads of it whilst working in the Our Price in Stockport, I’d forgotten quite how big a hit this was. Damn getting old and my failing memory. “It’s like that”? It may have been but I can’t quite remember it.

Did they rap on their records? You bet!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Savage Garden	Truly Madly Deeply	I did not
2	Prince Buster	Whine And Grine	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Janet Jackson	I Get Lonely	No
4	Sash!	La Primavera	Nope
5	Louise	All That Matters	Negative
6	Ian Brown	Corpses In Their Mouths	Nah
7	911	All I Want Is You	Never happening
8	Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins	It’s Like That	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/m002h46f/top-of-the-pops-03041998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 28 NOV 1997

Posted on May 22 by 80stastic

The end is approaching for these 1997 TOTP repeats as we arrive at the last show of November. It was also the last show for Mark Lamarr who was presenting the final of his four episodes. This left a roster of four regular hosts – Jayne Middlemiss, Zoe Ball, Jamie Theakston and Jo Whiley – a line up that would stay unchanged until July 1998. I can’t say I’m too upset about Lamarr’s departure – I liked him on The Word and Never Mind The Buzzcocks but his comic approach didn’t quite fit with TOTP – something about it I found jarring like he was trying too hard to take the piss out of everything and everyone. He starts this show with an eyepatch and claiming he’s Snake Plissken who is the fictional character from the films Escape From New York and Escape From L.A. as portrayed by Kurt Russell. The reason behind this ‘escapes’ me but then I’ve never watched either film so maybe there’s some weird connection between them and the BBC’s premier pop music programme. If anyone reading this is in the know, please leave a comment.

We begin with Louise who, after leaving Eternal, has fashioned a very respectable pop career for herself. I use the word ‘pop’ deliberately as her previous band mates were pursuing a much more R&B direction. Maybe a parting of the ways would have been inevitable regardless. Anyway, “Let’s Go Round Again” was Louise’s sixth Top 10 hit out of seven single releases – like I said, not too shabby. However, was the fact that she’d got to the cover version stage so early a sign that her time as a solo artist was already going stale?

Originally a No 12 hit for the Average White Band in 1980, on the one hand it was a sensible choice of cover in line with her positioning as a mainstream dance/pop act. It was light and catchy and a shoo-in for Radio 1’s daytime playlists. On the other hand, it was just too safe and a definite step away from her rebranding as a sex symbol and sultry performer of songs like “Naked”. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle of these two views but ultimately it just seemed all a little pointless to me. Mind you, not as pointless as this No 78 hit from 1990 by Yell!…

After the rather surprising collaboration of hard rock heroes Metallica and English singer and actress Marianne Faithfull in the previous show, this week we get another unusual combination – ‘dream house’ pin up boy Robert Miles and one quarter of disco legends Sister Sledge, Kathy Sledge. I’m not sure how this came about and I care less but presumably Miles wanted a female vocalist for his tune “Freedom” much as he had done with Maria Nayler on his previous hit “One And One”. Kathy’s last appearance on the show would have been nearly five years before as part of Sister Sledge to promote yet another rerelease of “Lost In Music” and in the meantime she’s changed her hairstyle to what I can only describe as a Deirdre Barlow perm! She seems to be up there on her own with no sign of Robert Miles. Maybe he was washing his hair that night? Actually, Kathy’s not quite alone. Check out the studio audience member in the grey shirt who’s ‘’avin’ it large’ with his flailing arm movements. Despite most of the rest of the audience not being in the spotlight, he’s managed to keep finding a position where the studio lights keep picking him up. Not sure if that’s deliberate or lucky. As for the song, it’s fairly standard Miles fare – a twinkling piano intro and dream house beats but doesn’t really go anywhere for me. Put it like this – I wasn’t lost in the music.

Now, she may be the ‘Queen of Hip-Hop Soul’ but this single by Mary J. Blige sounds common and ignoble to my, admittedly soul-less, ears. “Missing You” is a right old dirge. Once more, it was written by legendary producer Babyface (it felt like half the Top 40 was down to him around this time) and he seems to have re-written 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love”. Certainly the opening lines have clear parallels with the 1975 chart topper. Witness:

I’m not in love, it’s just some kind of thing I’m goin’ through

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Kenneth Edmonds
Missing You lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

And…

I’m not in love, so don’t forget it, it’s just a silly phase I’m going through

Writer/s: Eric Michael Stewart, Graham Keith Gouldman
Publisher: MUSIC SALES CORPORATION
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Busted! Apparently, Shanice is on backing vocals. Remember her? “I Love Your Smile”? You couldn’t get a song so diametrically opposed to “Missing You” as that sunny, breezy, upbeat track.

Oh brilliant! Another TV actor trying his arm at a career in music. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, that seemed to be the preserve of soap stars but by 1997, one man had opened the door for anyone in a drama series to become a resident of the charts. That man was, of course, Simon Cowell. The charge sheet of this guy’s crimes against music is huge! Not happy with inflicting Robson & Jerome on us he also paved the way for Steven Houghton to play at being a pop star but this time, for Soldier Soldier read London’s Burning. The show about the lives of Blue Watch of the London Fire Brigade had already spawned one wannabe pop singer in John Alford who had three hit singles in 1996 (all cover versions* obviously) all of which were so bad he was given the nickname Jon Awful in the Our Price where I was working.

*Including “If” that had been a No 1 in the UK for yet another actor in 1975 – Telly Savalas. Talk about the phenomenon eating itself!

I’m not sure if Cowell had anything to do with that abomination (I wouldn’t be surprised if he did though) but he definitely had his mucky fingers over Steven Houghton’s cover of “Wind Beneath My Wings” as he knew the actor’s agent and encouraged him to secure a commercial release of the song. Why did the public keep falling for this practice? The set up for the single was a carbon copy of that of the aforementioned Robson & Jerome. Houghton’s character performs the song as part of the plot of one episode and…well, that was all that was required for the general public to hot foot it down to their local record store to ask for that record by the TV fireman. Look, I get that it’s a heady cocktail of promotion – a song on your favourite TV show beamed directly into your living room would be worth more than a thousand adverts in the music press and yes, I know it wasn’t an original concept. EastEnders had given us Nick Berry in 1986 singing a song that had initially been featured on the soap but this was all getting a bit much. Thankfully both Alford and Houghton’s pop careers were mercifully short lived but we aren’t out of the woods yet. We’ve still got Adam Rickitt, Martine McCutcheon and Will Mellor to come before these 90s TOTP repeats are done with us. At least we didn’t have to suffer the Bill Tarmey version of “Wind Beneath My Wings” as mentioned by Mark Lamarr. Small mercies and all that.

You know Simon Cowell’s charge sheet of crimes against music I mentioned before? Add this nonsense to it! Yes, Mr High-Waisted-Trousers also brought us this massive hutch full of rabbit shit that was “Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’ “ by the Teletubbies. Good Lord! Was there no end to this sadist’s desire to fling musical excrement at the general public. Ah, the general public. Perhaps they/we should be taking a lot of the blame for this? After all, Cowell didn’t buy all 1.3 million copies it sold himself did he? I wouldn’t put it past him to have engaged in some chart manipulation though.

Teletubbies was a TV phenomenon. A BBC children’s show aimed at a pre-school audience that first aired in March of this year, its characters Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po would become household names. The secret of the show’s success was that the Teletubbies were designed to resemble toddlers and that the way they communicated was via a language that was pure gibberish. Of course, when I was a child, our supply of gibberish came courtesy of The Flowerpot Men but they weren’t half as cute as the Teletubbies.

Cuteness wasn’t the only thing that The Flowerpot Men didn’t have – there was also the marketing strategies that existed in the 90s. Given the success of the show, the Teletubbies were always going to generate commercial spin offs and consequently Teletubbies dolls were the biggest selling toy of Christmas 1997. There was also a game released for Microsoft Windows and then there was the dreaded single. Basically just the theme tune to the show with some added bits, it would storm to the top of the charts and be the bookies favourite for the Christmas No 1. Well, if Mr. Blobby could bag the festive top seller why couldn’t the Teletubbies? In all fairness, if Simon Cowell hadn’t released the single, someone else would have. Indeed, when he got news that another label wanted to sign the Teletubbies, he got the BBC in his office and offered them £500,000 in advance to do a deal so sure was he of the single’s ability to sell. But who was buying it? I can only assume parents for their toddlers. Surely it wasn’t pop music fans?! In the end, it would be another act with young child appeal that would grab the Christmas No 1 at the last to deny the Teletubbies but that’s for a future post. In the meantime, we will be seeing Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po again in these TOTP repeats I’m afraid. At least they were a one hit wonder and were spared a follow up single.

After two stinkers comes a sweet smelling quality tune in “Never Ever” by All Saints. It certainly provides some fragrant relief from the nasty stench of Steven Houghton and the Teletubbies. However, I’ve a feeling even its bouquet might start to go stale as – get this – it’s on TOTP nine times over a thirteen week period! NINE! This was the second of those nine appearances and already the group’s shoulder shrugging dance move is becoming firmly established. A couple of things leapt to my attention. Firstly, that the only person not to get a solo part in the song is Natalie Appleton. Is this significant? She was originally going to be the group’s manager but became a performing member once she’d sorted child care arrangements for her daughter. Secondly, in the lyrics, the phrase ‘A to Z’ is used twice but the first time ‘Z’ is sung using the American pronunciation of ‘zee’ but the second time it’s the English version of ‘zed’. Make your minds up girls!

In the last post, I noted upon the identity crisis surrounding the rerelease of “You Sexy Thing” in the wake of the success of the film The Full Monty. All of the online evidence I could find points to it being under the name of Hot Chocolate which is how it should be given that the group had already had a hit with it twice. However, TOTP billed it as being by the singer Errol Brown and they’ve done so again this week. What was going on here? Errol did have a brief solo career in the late 80s but it only gave him one UK Top 40 hit in 1987 called “Personal Touch”. Or was it two as the officialcharts.com archive says that the follow up to the 1997 rerelease of “You Sexy Thing” was “It Started With A Kiss” which was under the name of Hot Chocolate featuring Errol Brown. It was all very confusing. Even Errol himself needed clarification when he sang in that follow up “you don’t remember me do you?”…

And so to the new No 1. Although this was a charity record for this year’s Children In Need appeal, it didn’t start out with that intention. 1997 was the 75th anniversary of the BBC which prompted the Beeb to undertake a corporate redesign and a series of promotional campaigns to highlight the services it offered the public. One such campaign was a trailer put together over an 18 month period to promote the wide range of music offered by the BBC. It took the form of various music artists from all genres singing a line of “Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”. I’m not going to list all the participants but some of the names appearing included heavyweights like Bono, David Bowie and Elton John but also some left field people like Sky from Morcheeba, Laurie Anderson and Robert Cray. Country music was represented by Emmylou Harris and Tammy Wynette whilst opera was championed by Lesley Garrett and Thomas Allen. Indie had Brett Anderson and Evan Dando but perhaps the one person who everyone remembers but whose name many didn’t know was Dr. John for his pronunciation of ‘perfect’ as “poi-fect”.

The trailer proved hugely popular with the public and demand to be able to buy this version led to a single release that was tied in with the Children In Need appeal. A couple of points of interest to note here. Firstly, there can’t have been too many UK chart hits under the name of Various Artists. Off the top of my head, there was a dance medley single released to tie in with the BRIT Awards in 1990 which made No 2 I think but surely this was the first ‘Various Artists’ chart topper. Secondly, “Perfect Day” had an unusual chart journey. Having debuted at No 1 and staying there for a further week, it then spent two weeks at No 2 and two weeks at No 3 before leaping back to the top of the charts a whole month after its initial spell there. You just keep me hangin’ on indeed.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Louise	Let’s Go Round Again	Nope
2	Robert Miles featuring Kathy Sledge	Freedom	Nah
3	Mary J. Blige	Missing You	No
4	Steven Houghton	Wind Beneath My Wings	Never
5	Teletubbies	Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’	What do you think?!
6	All Saints	Never Ever	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	Hot Chocolate	You Sexy Thing	I did not
8	Various Artists	Perfect Day	No but I had Lou Reed’s Transformer 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/m002c5fm/top-of-the-pops-28111997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 03 OCT 1997

Posted on April 17 by 80stastic

I said in the last post that we hadn’t yet reached the Kate Thornton/Gail Porter/Jamie Theakston era of TOTP presenters and yet here was the last of those three names on our screens just the following week. Was I mistaken in my claim then? Not really. It turns out that Theakston’s appearance here was as a ‘guest presenter’ and he wouldn’t become a part of the regular roster of hosts until 1998. So kind of like an audition then, similar to what happened with Sarah Cawood the other week? Probably not as he was already an established BBC presenter being onto his second series of co-hosting Saturday morning kids TV show Live & Kicking alongside TOTP regular Zoe Ball so I’m guessing he was just filling in as no-one else was available? These days, Theakston hosts the Heart radio breakfast show with Amanda Holden though my first thought when his name is mentioned is that, like Angus Deayton, he was exposed by a tabloid newspaper for visiting a brothel and snorting cocaine in 2002. Two BBC presenters making the same misdemeanour in the same year. The Beeb was having a public relations nightmare!

Anyway, let’s see how Theakston did on his TOTP debut. We start with Oasis who are in the studio to promote their single “Stand By Me”. The second track taken from their “Be Here Now” album, it would peak at No 2 thus becoming another of those songs denied being a chart topper by the Elton John phenomenon. At the time, the album received mostly positive (and even gushing) reviews in the music press but, in retrospect, has come to be seen as the point where it all started to go wrong for the band. Criticisms of it being overproduced and bloated were given credence by the length of some of its songs. Ignoring the “All Around The World (Reprise)” outro, only two of the eleven tracks clocked in at under the five minutes mark. “Stand By Me” itself has a running time of five seconds off six minutes and we get nearly all of that 5:55 length in this performance. Was that a mark of the power and influence that Oasis held at that time? That they could command such an exposure on the BBC’s prime time music show? After all, “Be Here Now” was the best selling British album of 1997 and the fastest selling of all time in the UK.

Anyway, with some temporal distance and the revisiting of the album, although history hasn’t been too kind to it, people have generally… well…stood by “Stand By Me” which has been regarded as one of its standout tracks. I can hear why. It’s a bloody good song though it hardly broke any new ground and indeed, always reminded me of Mott The Hoople’s “All The Young Dudes” – that ascending scale at the end of the chorus? I’m not the only one who thinks that. Noel Gallagher was asked in a Q Magazine interview if he’d pinched the riff from the Bowie penned song and he admitted that he had! Not only that but that he’d used it for “Don’t Look Back In Anger” as well (though the chords for that are almost identical to “Streets Of London” by Ralph McTell). It’ll be interesting to see how many songs from “Be Here Now” that Oasis play in their 2025 reunion tour. I’m guessing not many but if there’s to be just one, my money would be on “Stand By Me”.

Theakston goes a bit un-PC in his intro for the next artist who is Louise giving it the whole Sid James steam-coming-out-of-his-ears look. Well, it was the era of ‘lads mags’ I guess so it was probably more acceptable back then. Now, continuing with the theme of pinching song ideas which we started with Oasis, Louise seems to have done a bit of appropriating herself as new single “Arms Around The World” sounds an awful lot like Janet Jackson’s “Runaway”. No, I mean like really an awful lot…

See? Anyway, “Arms Around The World” was the lead single from Louise’s second album “Women In Me” and would become her then biggest hit when it peaked at No 4 meaning five of her first six solo outings into the charts had gone Top 10. Not quite reaching the recent No 1 heights of her old band Eternal but pretty impressive all the same. There’s another (albeit more tenuous) link with the aforementioned Oasis whose next single would be “All Around The World”. “Arms Around The World”? “All Around The World”. As Sid James might have said “Cor, blimey! You lot are hard work!”.

We stay in the studio – there was a definite preference for studio performances under executive producer Chris Cowey – with No Doubt whose name allows Theakston to deliver the most woeful, lame and obvious line imaginable his intro. Like most people I’m guessing, my first encounter with Gwen Stefani and co was via super-hit “Don’t Speak”. What stands out to me about their subsequent releases is how they sounded so very little like that global No 1. “Just A Girl” and this one – “Spiderwebs” – were much more of that ska punk/pop fusion sound that characterised their origins. Of course, I’m not familiar with those origins – it’s just what I’ve read – as, despite working in a record shop, I’d barely heard the band’s “Tragic Kingdom” album from which the hits came. I did know said hits though and “Don’t Speak” seemed to me to bear little resemblance to what followed. Was it a deliberate attempt to go more mainstream or just a song that came about organically and ended up with a more wide reaching sound?

As for “Spiderwebs”, it’s a pretty cool track although it’s subject matter about Gwen Stefani receiving unwanted attention from a smitten suitor isn’t the most obviously appealing source material. Still, similar to No Doubt, there was another band who based their career on a post-punk/ reggae fusion sound and who scored the biggest hit of their career with a song about stalking so who am I to be the songwriting…ahem…police?

Now here’s a curious thing and I’m not just talking about the artist for whom the adjective ‘curious’ could always be applied. No, I’m referring to the fact that Chis Cowey found a place in the running order for Björk whose release “Jóga” was never going to make the Top 40. Why? Because it broke the chart regulation of being released in more than three formats. The lead track for third album “Homogenic”, it was only made available in the shops as a three CD and VHS Box Set, hence in four formats. It seems a curious (there’s that word again) marketing strategy to launch your artist’s next collection of new material – releasing the very first example of it in a format that broke chart rules. Did her record label One Little Indian not understand these rules and so it was a massive error on their part? Maybe so as Wikipedia says that they tried to argue that the VHS was bundled for free and so the release didn’t contravene the Official Chart Company’s three format restriction but the OCC weren’t having any of it. Host Jamie Theakston says in his segue that “Jóga” wouldn’t chart as only 3,000 copies of it had been made. Was that true? Or was that One Little Indian retrospectively trying to cover their backs? As I say, the whole thing is very curious.

As for what “Jóga” sounded like, well, I’ve had to revise my opinion about Björk in this blog many times from my initially derogative stance as I’ve leaned to appreciate her craft more but I’m going old school on this one – what a racket! Supposedly a love letter both to her best friend called Jóga and her native country Iceland, the story goes that Björk gave the concept of the track to her engineer Markus Dravs who then came up with a rhythm track that she felt was too abstract. Then producer Mark Bell took said track and added “some noises” which just about sums the whole thing up – a noise. No amount of strings can polish it up for me and Björk wailing away about being in a “state of emergency” wasn’t going to convince me otherwise.

Although M People hadn’t released anything since their cover of the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park” in 1995, their absence hadn’t been as pronounced as it might have been due to the use of their “Search For A Hero” song to soundtrack a series of TV adverts for Peugeot during 1996. Despite its exposure causing a clamour for the song all over again (it had already been a No 9 hit), the band resisted all calls to rerelease it. Working in a record shop in pre-digital times, it really used to annoy me when this sort of thing happened. An artificial demand for a track caused by an advert or a radio station deciding to add it to their playlists which wasn’t actually available as a single to buy. Another example was when a Manchester radio station started playing “Acquiesce” by Oasis* despite it not being officially released as a single. We had loads of people ask for that convinced it was their new single. Fortunately, in that case, we could flog them the “Some Might Say” CD single as it was an extra track on that and we always kept all the Oasis singles in stock at all times what with us being in Stockport. Another example where there was no simple solution though was when the film Mannequin was first shown on TV in the early 90s and the next day, we had a procession of people come in asking for “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship which had been a hit in 1987! None of this will mean anything to people that have grown up in the era of streaming platforms and digital music but those who were there will recognise my pain!

*”Stand By Me” itself would be used for a series of adverts for the Halifax bank between 2021 and 2023.

Anyway, back to M People and they finally did release a single (of new material no less) in “Just For You” from their fourth and final album “Fresco” in 1997 and although not one of their most instantly recognisable tracks, it’s a very pleasant sound all the same. Gone was that rather clunky production that characterised their early hits and in its place was a much more smooth soul sound. It was perfect for daytime radio scheduling but perhaps they missed a trick by not releasing it a couple of months earlier as it had a great Summer vibe to it. However, its chart peak at No 8 would be their penultimate Top 10 hit. The time of M People was coming to an end.

The aforementioned Janet Jackson now with, for the third artist in a row, a lead single from a new album. Having signed the then biggest record deal in history with Virgin Records, our first taste of the fruits of that deal was “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” from “The Velvet Rope” album. As indicated by its title, the track took inspiration the Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi” with the copyright cleared sample running throughout it so majorly that it a credit was given to Joni on the song. Also featuring was Q-Tip (no, not Paul Young’s old band) from A Tribe Called Quest. I can’t say that it did much for me and I much preferred the original (excruciating laugh and all). I also didn’t think much to the over the top staging of this performance with Ms Jackson not being revealed from her backwards facing throne until nearly a minute in. Get over yourself Janet!

Now, just as Louise seemed to have stolen from Jackson’s “Runaway”, so Janet seems guilty of some musical thievery as she was on the end of litigation from UK soul singer Des’ree who claimed that “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” was very (meaning too) similar to her hit “Feel So High”. In 1998, she was awarded an out of court settlement of 25% of the publishing royalties equating to about £2 million. You can hear why she won…

Clearly it was felt that they’d been enough wailing and wringing of hands caused by the death of Princess Diana by this point and so we don’t get “Candle In The Wind ‘97” this week but the other song on the Elton John single. Yes, it was a double A-side single though that fact has been mostly forgotten now. The ‘other song’ was “Something About The Way You Look Tonight” and was essentially the lead single from his album “The Big Picture”. Wikipedia tells me that the track was released on its own without “Candle In The Wind ‘97” five days before the double A-side but I don’t remember that at all. Indeed, the official charts website makes no reference to this. Is it possible that it was just a case of bad timing and the single was all ready to go before the tragic car crash in Paris on 31 August and its release was just overtaken by events?

Whatever the truth, the song itself was a typical 90s Elton ballad which sounded like it could have been on the Lion King soundtrack to me. It wasn’t though and another song that wasn’t on an album was “Candle In The Wind ‘97” which did not feature on “The Big Picture”. I wonder how many people bought it thinking it was?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Oasis	Stand By Me	No, I’d given up on buying their singles by this point
2	Louise	Arms Around The World	Nope
3	No Doubt	Spiderwebs	Nah
4	Björk	Jóga	Definite no
5	M People	Just For You	Negative
6	Janet Jackson	Got ‘Til It’s Gone	I did not
7	Elton John	Something About The Way You Look Tonight / Candle In The Wind ’97	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/m0029vby/top-of-the-pops-03101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 29 NOV 1996

Posted on December 20, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re getting close to Christmas both in present day 2024 and 28 years ago in 1996 here at TOTP Rewind where the BBC4 repeats are knocking on the advent calendar doors of December. Back then, I was about to work my seventh consecutive Christmas at Our Price and my second on the spin at the Stockport store. I can’t remember all the specifics of what went down that year – over time the details such as who my work colleagues were have become jumbled up as my memory has shifted and re-edited – but one thing I do recall is that Oasis were selling their fans empty boxes for Christmas. Yes, with no new album available until the following year and no single having been released by the band since “Don’t Look Back In Anger” in the February, their record label Creation needed something to flog to the legion of Oasis followers – it was Christmas after all. What they came up with was unbelievable and yet somehow they sold. To house all those CD singles the band had released, you could purchase two boxes designed to look like a packet of cigarettes – one for the tracks from “Definitely Maybe” and one for the songs from “”(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?”. The latter was gold and the former silver and both carried the warning ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Can Seriously Damage Your Health. I can’t remember exactly how much they cost but I’m guessing a fiver each. What a racket!

Anyway, tonight’s hosts are Ronan and Stephen from Boyzone – nice lads who would never attempt to fleece their fans by selling them some old tat I’m sure. Ahem. After an ill advised impression of The Prodigy’s Keith Flint from Ronan at the top of the show, we’re off with the first artist of the night who is Belinda Carlisle who was experiencing her penultimate UK Top 40 hit with “Love In The Key Of C”. Now, I’m no musician but I did take a few guitar classes over the years which did cover elements of music structure so I know the chord progression in the key of C major is C – G – A – F for example. What I don’t know though is what love in the key of C is. A quick google of the phrase ‘Key of C’ tells me that it’s one of the most common keys in music as it’s also one of the simplest with no sharps nor flats making it easier to play as its key signature is a blank staff. It’s also a neutral key that doesn’t evoke strong emotions making it versatile for various genres and moods. Hmm. A blank staff and doesn’t evoke strong emotions – why that’s a perfect way to describe “Love In The Key Of C” as it’s as dull as Tess Daly’s presenting skills. What’s worse is that one of the lyrics says:

Love in the key of C, you’re my life’s sweet harmony,

It’s the key of Amazing Grace

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Rick Nowels
Love in the Key of C lyrics © Spirit Music Group

Well, I’m sorry Belinda but that’s just not true. “Amazing Grace” was written in the key of F Major. Not since Alanis Morissette came up with “Ironic” had a lyric been so wrong.

Next, it’s another artist whose poster would have adorned the wall of many a teenage lad’s bedroom back then. Following Belinda Carlisle comes Louise with her fifth hit single in a just over a year, all taken from her debut album “Naked”. This one was called “One Kiss From Heaven” and was…hang on a minute…didn’t her ex-band Eternal have a hit called that?!

*checks Eternal discography*

My bad. Their third single was called “Just A Step From Heaven” so I was close – just round the corner you might say. I thought Louise had been recycling a tune for a minute. Anyway, her song was all sultry and sensual but it sounds to me as if it was trying a little too hard to be those things. It was co-written by Simon Climie of Climie Fisher fame who knows his way around a decent pop tune but I’m not sure slinky seduction is his thing really. I guess it was the logical next step in the master plan to change our perception of Louise from wholesome, girl next door to sex goddess but it doesn’t quite convince for me although I’m sure it would have for all those aforementioned teenage boys.

It turns out that Louise did record her own version of that Eternal song for her 2023 Greatest Hits album and called it “Just A Step From Heaven (Reimagined)” and guess what? It sounds just like the Eternal version. Never has the word ‘reimagined’ been so misused since Tim Burton reimagined Planet Of The Apes.

Nice to see Roman Keating get in a name check for my beloved Chelsea in his intro to Robert Miles and Maria Nayler. How so? Well, they feature in his list of things you associate with Italy (Miles was Italian) as, at the time, their team included Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. Club legends every one of them. Sorry? What about the music? Oh, well “One And One” was holding for a third week at No 6 and so was deemed due another TOTP appearance. The showing of the video would move it up the charts in increments one place at a time until it peaked at No 3 before undertaking a descent down them that would take nearly two months. You’d think given the amount of time it spent inside the Top 40 that I would have strongly associated it with Christmas ‘96 but I don’t, I really don’t. To be fair, there aren’t many singles that do spring to mind when I think of that particular festive period. There’s the Spice Girls obviously and Madonna’s version of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” but after that, nothing much. The Christmas chart had Toni Braxton at No 4 but it had already been in the Top 10 for nine weeks by that point so maybe it was inevitable with long running hits like that and Robert Miles’ that it would be hard to connect them to Christmas when they’d been with us for months. Or maybe, yet again, my memory has just failed me. Always a possibility.

1996 saw a number of artists put together consistent runs of multiple UK Top 40 hits. I’m thinking Shed Seven, Manic Street Preachers and indeed, from this very show, Louise. All of them had at least four singles make the charts and to that list can be added Skunk Anansie for whom “Twisted (Everyday Hurts)” was their fourth hit of the year. Unlike those other acts though, it also started a run of three consecutive songs that would not only chart but which had brackets in their titles. Following this, they had hits with “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” and “Brazen (Weep)” and it got me to thinking why people put brackets in their song titles. Well, let’s start with what brackets are used for grammatically which is to provide clarity or add extra information. Do we need either of those in a title of a song? Maybe but I would say not. Surely the art form of the musical composition should be about the emotional response that it illicits rather than its syntax? So why do any song titles feature brackets? To add an element of mystery or intellectual rigour to them? I’m not convinced that any song title should have brackets to be honest. And in any case, some of the songs that have employed brackets that I can think of haven’t made any sense at all. Take George Michael and Aretha Franklin’s 1987 duet “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” for example. What was the need for the brackets here? Or what about the near hit single by The Icicle Works called “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)” that was retitled “Whisper To A Scream (Birds Fly)” for the American market? What was that all about?

As for Skunk Anansie’s foray into bracket world, were they trying to distinguish themselves from the Sad Cafe 1979 hit “Every Day Hurts”? Surely not including those words in the title would have done that? Enough of the linguistics though, what about their song? Well, as with previous single “All I Want”, I actually quite enjoyed it though I couldn’t have told you how it went before watching this TOTP repeat. And there was I thinking that all there was to them was “Weak”.

So what sort of banter or should I say craic did Ronan and Stephen have together as a presenting duo? Well, it was a little bit stilted but their winning Irish accents saw them through even the most cringey of exchanges such as the Bob Marley/ Bob Geldof one that happened in the segue to the Fugees. There’s one bit in it where Ronan sounds as if he’s saying a line from Father Ted. Anyway, “No Woman, No Cry” is straight in at No 2 but I like previous single “Ready Or Not” that also debuted in the same chart position, it wasn’t able to make that leap to the top of the charts the following week.

Was it sacrilege to cover a Bob Marley song? I think they probably just about pulled it off but did Bob himself ever indulge in the art of the cover version? Well, I did find this which is quite extraordinary in its unlikeliness…

Now, I like to think of this blog as irreverent in nature (though many who have read it might use the word ‘irrelevant’ instead) but that tone isn’t really going to cut it for this next song so I’m going to stick to the facts rather than pass any judgement on it.

On 13th March 1996, 43 year old Thomas Hamilton entered the gymnasium of Dunblane Primary School, Stirling and shot dead one teacher and 16 pupils aged between five and six and injured a further 15 people before turning the gun on himself. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history and led to the introduction of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) Act No 2 1997 that banned all cartridge ammunition handguns in England, Scotland and Wales. This legislation was the result of the official enquiry into the incident (Cullen Report) and a public campaign (Snowdrop Petition) to ban private ownership of all handguns.

On 9th December 1996, a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” was released accredited to Dunblane which was Scottish musician Ted Christopher with the help of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and featuring singing by children from the town of Dunblane itself (including the siblings of some of the children who were murdered). I can’t find anything online which connects the single explicitly to the Snowdrop Petition campaign but no doubt the two would have been linked in the minds of some parts of the public. The song was rewritten (with Dylan’s consent) to refer specifically to the events of Dunblane with the proceeds from its sales going to children’s charities. The release schedules were cleared by the record labels of all other major artists (including the Spice Girls) at the time so as to give the single a clear path to becoming No 1. Bookmakers agreed to not take bets on it being the Christmas No 1, not wanting to appear to be making profit out of such a tragedy, with a promise that bets on any other artist being honoured if they were at No 2 and Dunblane topped the charts in Christmas week. Although the single did indeed go to No 1, it would only stay there for only one week.

There appears to have been some thought given to the running order by TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill as the Dunblane single is followed by the aptly named “Child” by Mark Owen. Not only that but there is no intro from the Boyzone lads just a respectful segue from performance to performance. And not only that but the first line Owen sings is “Sleep peacefully now, my child”. Definitely some consideration there of how to schedule the Dunblane song into the show. As for Mark, he gives a curious delivery of his single, hardly moving and when he does it’s in faint, jilted movements as if he’s the worlds worst escapologist, half-heartedly trying to work out how to get out of the straight jacket he’s in. It does make him look quite vulnerable which was maybe the image he was looking for to match the tone of his single but it’s slightly at odds with the four lads backing him who look like they want to be in a Britpop band – one of them even breaks rank to turn and give a little smile to the camera. Cheeky!

The last artist in the studio is Sheryl Crow who was really getting into her stride by this point. After “All I Wanna Do” had been her massive breakthrough hit two years earlier, her next four singles had underwhelmed in the UK but she bounced back with eponymous, sophomore album the lead single from which “If It Makes You Happy” had restored her to our Top 10. She followed that up with “Everyday Is A Winding Road” which sounded even better than its predecessor to me. Inspired by Crowded House drummer Paul Hester whose character and joie de vivre had a lasting impact on her when she toured with the band as support act, it fair stomps along with a slide guitar and tom tom drums to the forefront. Some critics lambasted it for stealing from “Sympathy For The Devil” by the Rolling Stones but I can’t hear it.

If the line “He’s got a daughter he calls Easter” is about Hester, then there’s a bit of creative licence going on as his daughters are called Olive and Sunday but to be fair if she’d used the latter name, it wouldn’t have scanned at all and might have prompted images of Olive Oyl or Olive from On The Buses (for me at least). Tragically, Hester struggled with depression and lost his battle with it in 2005 committing suicide at the age of 46.

I was in good company with those who liked the song – Prince was such a fan that he recorded a version of it for his “Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic” album and has even performed it live with Sheryl herself.

The Prodigy remain at No 1 with “Breathe” for a second week – a fine achievement for a dance act but there was no way that they would ever cling on to be the Christmas chart topper. Indeed, three other artists would occupy top spot before the actual festive No 1 was announced. That probably said much of how record company release scheduling and promotional campaigns had changed. I can’t imagine such activity could have happened just 10 years prior. To The Prodigy’s credit, “Breathe” would still be in the Top 10 in the Christmas week chart.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	Love In The Key Of C	Nope
2	Louise	One Kiss From Heaven	Nah
3	Robert Miles and Maria Nayler	One And One	I did not
4	Skunk Anansie	Twisted (Everyday Hurts)	No but its not bad
5	Fugees	No Woman, No Cry	No but my wife had the album
6	Dunblane	Knocking On Heaven’s Door	No but please don’t judge
7	Mark Owen	Child	See 4 above
8	Sheryl Crow	Everyday Is A Winding Road	No but I had her Best Of with it on
9	The Prodigy	Breathe	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations

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/m0025gmv/top-of-the-pops-29111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 30 AUG 1996

Posted on October 25, 2024 by 80stastic

Oh dear God! I thought we were past this point! This is a real kick in the nuts! A real ball ache! Simon Mayo is back as host for this TOTP. If you’ve taken even a mild interest in this blog previously then you’ll be aware of my complete aversion to the smug git. I have even been advised to seek medical help over my hatred of him. Given this, the idea of having to review an episode that will feature him heavily is anathema to me. So what do I do here? Just blank this episode out and stop the post right here? The completist in me won’t allow that. Review the show without making any further references to Mayo? Nah, if I’m doing this then he’s getting both barrels! Let’s do this!

The first thing to note is that in the time he’s been away from our screens, Mayo has grown his hair into what I’m guessing would have been a popular style of the time. It’s all long and slicked back – all that’s missing is an Alice band. It looks ridiculous and, if I’m honest, a bit dirty. His first ‘gag’ comes immediately when he makes some fatuous remark about the show lasting as long as a royal marriage referencing Charles and Diana who had completed their divorce proceedings two days before this TOTP aired. They were married for 15 years Mayo. Where’s the similarity with a 30 minute pop music programme? Idiot.

The first act on tonight is Shed Seven whose Rick Witter is also having a bad hair day. Quite what look he was trying to achieve I’m not sure – it’s a kind of cross between Edmund from Blackadder I and US stand up comedian Emo Philips. Anyway, Rick and his band mates were on a roll in 1996 clocking up five chart hits including their first and only Top 10 hit. In fact, I would go as far as to say the York indie rockers were never bigger than they were this year. They were good value for their success as well with those hits being some of the strongest of their career by my reckoning. “On Standby” was the fourth of those peaking at No 12 and was the last to be taken from second album “A Maximum High”. In the November, they would release “Chasing Rainbows” as the lead single from third album “Let It Ride” and yet said album would not appear for over 18 months. A similar thing happened with Paul Weller who released “Peacock Suit” as the lead single from his “Heavy Soul” album ten months before said album came out. What was all that about?

For his next lame attempt at humour, Mayo tries to compare the outfits worn by MN8 in this performance to those in children’s TV show Fireman Sam. In truth, I don’t think there’s any sort of valid comparison to be seen here. They’re more like angling waders than firemen’s overalls but Mayo couldn’t make a joke about Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing as that was over 20 years away from coming to our TV screens. As with all of his links, I always find myself asking the question “Why?”. He was there to do a fairly basic job of introducing acts on a pop music show. We weren’t tuning in to watch him. Why couldn’t he understand that. He treated these appearances as if they were an extension of his Radio 1 show which I guess people were choosing to tune into partly due to him at least. TOTP though was a completely different story.

As for MN8, they were finding out that having an enormous debut hit was one thing but following it up, well that was another different story. After “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” made No 2 in early ‘95, subsequent singles never quite measured up to that standard. Sure, they’d had a couple of further Top 10 hits but could you name them without checking? I couldn’t and I must have reviewed them in this blog. In an act of self knowledge, their latest attempt to scale the chart heights again was called “Tuff Act To Follow” (note obligatory urban spelling of the word ‘tough’) and was basically a rip off of Bobby Brown. Seriously, close your eyes and listen and it could almost be him. The single reached No 15 but it was only prolonging the inevitable. They would have one more minor hit before second album “Freaky” vanished without trace along with MN8. By the way, I’m not sure that the guy who can’t keep his shirt on under his oversized waders is quite achieving the sexy image he thinks he is.

For his next LOL moment, Mayo returns to his go to subject matter of football. Smug Simon was always been keen on flashing his ‘beautiful game’ credentials, banging on about his love for Spurs etc (well this was the time of ‘lads’ culture when following football was suddenly not only allowed but embraced). With this in mind, he gets a reference in to the recent world record transfer of Alan Shearer from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United for £15 million comparing it to the £52 million record deal just signed by REM with Warner. I’m not sure what his point was (if indeed he had one) by equating it to three and a half Shearers but he obviously thought he was on the money with that line. Prat.

Anyway, it’s time for another showing of the video for “E-Bow The Letter” as, after last week’s exclusive screening, it’s debuted at No 4 in the UK Top 40. That chart position was the band’s then highest ever as despite their huge international success (especially since the turn of the decade), they weren’t big on huge charting singles. Prior to this, their highest peak had been No 6 with “Shiny Happy People” in 1991, one of only four Top 10 hits up till then. Was it that once they’d crossed over into mainstream success that punters tended to buy their albums and only invested in singles when they were a brand new/lead track from a new one? Maybe. All I know for sure is that of the nine studio albums released since (and including) “Out Of Time”, seven of them went to No 1 in the UK.

Oh Mayo’s very pleased with himself for the next link as he introduces dance act De’Lacy as having split up from De’Cagney. See what he did there? De’Cagney and De’Lacey? Cagney and Lacey? Yes, Simon we all get it- it’s just that it’s not very funny. Nor topical. Cop show Cagney & Lacey stopped being made in 1988. Sure, it may have been repeated during daytime schedules around the early 90s but it wasn’t a current hit show. Would the pop kids of 1996 have even got the reference? If you’re going to persist with these pathetic lines, at least know your audience Mayo!

So who were this De’Lacy anyway? Well, they were the act that had a hit with “Hideaway” in the Autumn of ‘95. Curiously, it took them a year to release a follow up and when it came in the shape of “That Look”, it sounded like a weaker version of its predecessor (to my uncultured ears at least). Lots of beats and lots of screeching vocals is all I can hear but then it’s all about the remixes or so I’m told and “That Look” came with some from Hani and Deep Dish which was a big deal apparently. To prove the point, De’Lacy’s only other hit was a remix of “Hideaway” in 1998. Remixes, it’s all about the remixes.

Mayo is running out of material already and we’re not even halfway through the show yet. In his intro to “Undivided Love” by Louise, he goes on about the royal divorce again insinuating that Charles and Diana clearly couldn’t appreciate the concept of a love that couldn’t be divided. To back up his line, he name checks the Gallagher brothers as another couple that fall into that category. How hilarious Simon! Stand well back, my sides may split! There really was no beginning to this guy’s talents!

As for Louise, this was a fairly unremarkable piece of pop fluff that was a bit of a disappointment after the change of direction both sound and image wise instigated by previous release “Naked” especially for teenage schoolboys I would imagine. Still, I’m sure “Undivided Love” came with a fold out poster of Louise. Did they have laminators back then? Sorry, sorry, SORRY!

So Mayo has found himself some new material which was topical at the time but which makes no sense that I can ascertain. Introducing “Spinning The Wheel”, he says that it was released so early that George Michael is thinking of changing his name to George Michael Howard. After some research on the internet, I finally found the news story that Mayo was referring to. In this year, then Home Secretary Michael Howard ordered the release of two career criminals from prison with royal pardons after just ten months of their eighteen years prison sentences for heroin smuggling after they provided information leading to the seizure of firearms. So what has that got to do with George Michael? It can’t just be that there’s a ‘Michael’ in both their names can it? Does the title of the single have any relevance? “Spinning The Wheel”? Gambling? I can’t really see a connection. So what about it being released early? Well, it was the third single taken from the album “Older” which had already been available in the shops for over three months by this point. Nothing there then. It really does seem like he squeezed that line into his segue just because of the name ‘Michael’! I hate the way he then leaves his ‘joke’ lingering while he deadpans the camera before the song starts as if he’s giving the watching audience at home the chance to catch up with his amazing wit. Prick. Offering some karma here is the fact that those two career criminals were re-arrested in 2008 and subsequently convicted of having set up the weapons finds themselves to earn their early release thus proving that Michael Howard’s decision making was as flawed as Mayo’s ‘humour’. As for “Spinning The Wheel”, this is the third time it’s been on the show and I still can’t remember how it goes.

Mayo has a job to do in his next link which is to inform us that TOTP will be on at 7.25 rather than 7.00 from next week. This messing around (it had already been shifted from its traditional Thursday night slot to Friday) would contribute to the beginning of the end for the show as it lost its identity struggling to remain relevant in an ever changing musical landscape. Mayo even messes this up though instructing us to write the new start time on our fridges. Quite how do you write on a fridge Simon? Surely you meant put a post-it note on the fridge no?

Anyway, it’s time now for another one of those straight out of left field appearances next that TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill was fond of just to shake things up a bit. After Bis before them come another band without a hit to their name at the time in Fluffy. Remember this lot? No, nor me. Hardly surprising as they featured more in the pages of the music press than the Top 40. A punk rock band from London, they were signed to Virgin and supported many big names on tour including Marilyn Manson, Foo Fighters and punk legends the Sex Pistols before releasing their only album “Black Eye” in mid September. Despite some decent reviews and a promotional campaign that included the release of an EP of songs recorded live at New York’s legendary CBGB club, it didn’t sell.

The album’s opening track was “Nothing”, performed here to promote its release as a single. A TOTP appearance didn’t help as it peaked at No 52. Why didn’t Fluffy convince the record buying public? Was it that they were not offering anything new? Was their sound too raw compared to the slicker production of Britpop? Who knows? What I do know is that the band’s bassist Bridgette Jones went on to become the inspiration for Helen Fielding’s novel and subsequent film Bridget Jones’s Diary. OK, I made that last bit up. Well, if Mayo can do his lame lines…

Mayo shows his age (he was already just a few weeks off 38 years old at this point – 38 and pretending he was still down with the kids!) by referencing former Radio 1 DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman in his next link. Fluff? Fluffy? Get it pop pickers? Oh do piss off mate. The penultimate act before the No 1 is Jamiroquai who were about to release their third studio album “Travelling Without Moving” and it would be this collection of songs that really propelled the band (or more specifically Jay Kay) into global superstardom. The previous two albums “Emergency On Planet Earth” and “Return Of The Space Cowboy” had both sold well each shifting over a million units worldwide but the traditionally ‘difficult third album’ was nothing of the sort selling four times the amount of both its predecessors combined.

Although not strictly the lead single due to his collaboration earlier in ‘96 with M-Beat that was tacked onto the end of the album as an extra track, “Virtual Insanity” certainly felt like it. Not really a change in direction – some might say it was the same as all their other hits – but it was silky smooth and very radio friendly with an infectious groove (man!). It would become one of the band’s best known tracks debuting at No 3 backed by its memorable, award winning sleight of hand video. The album would spawn five hits in total including three Top Tenners thereby making Jamiroquai not only a successful albums artist but singles act as well. Clearly the title “Virtual Insanity” was a play on the phrase ‘virtual reality’ which must have been a thing even 28 years ago. Although it could be viewed as a slightly lazy construct, it’s still infinitely better than Peter Andre’s similar wordplay when he combined the words ‘insane’ and ‘mania’ to come up with “Insania”.*

*Apparently the word actually has its origins in Ancient Greek but I’m not about to let that get in the way of a convenient way to finish a paragraph!

Mayo is struggling now we’re deep into the show and segues into the No 1 by asking us to remember the new time for TOTP (labouring on the word ‘new’) before introducing the “Old Spice Girls”. Old Spice? Geddit? Yeah, it’s shit isn’t it? It was a sixth week of seven at the top for Spice Girls with “Wannabe” though and through the prism of its success, it’s hard to recall now that it was actually a very odd song. A mash up of sugary pop, rap, and at just 2:40 in length, was it almost a novelty record? The super smooth follow up “Say You’ll Be There” made it even more of an outlier. There’s just one more week of it to come at the top of the charts and that’s probably for the best.

The play out track is another single that wasn’t a Top 40 hit in the UK – that’s two on the same show after Fluffy earlier. I’m no Nostradamus myself but it would seem that Ric Blaxill wasn’t that great at spotting hit potential. Apparently Big Soul were a funk-rock band from California whose single “Hippy Hippy Shake” was nothing to do with the hit that The Swinging Blue Jeans had in 1964 but it had been reasonably successful in France. In the UK however, they quickly found that one funk-rock band from California* was all we needed and promptly disappeared never to be heard of again,

*Waves at Red Hot Chili Peppers

Mayo can’t resist one last lame attempt at humour when saying that next week’s presenter Julia Carling was the only Carling recently not to be dropped – presumably something to do with Will Carling and rugby? He signs off by saying “See you soon” but guess what? We won’t be! This was the last of 56 TOTP shows that he presented! Hallelujah! The gods of pop music blogging smile on me at last! Bye bye Mayo – you won’t be missed!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shed Seven	On Standby	Not this one
2	MN8	Tuff Act To Follow	Never
3	REM	E-Bow The Letter	It’s a no from me
4	De’Lacy	That Look	Negative
5	Louise	Undivided Love	Not even for a fold out poster
6	George Michael	Spinning The Wheel	Nope
7	Fluffy	Nothing	No – very few did
8	Jamiroquai	Virtual Insanity	Nah
9	Spice Girls	Wannabe	I did not
10	Big Soul	Hippy Hippy Shake	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/m00241br/top-of-the-pops-30081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 JUN 1996

Posted on September 13, 2024 by 80stastic

Ah, it’s time for that infrequent event of a TOTP being aired on my birthday. This particular show coincided with my 28th birthday (I’m now 56) and usually I wouldn’t have remembered what I got up to on my special day but, as I revealed just the other week, I recently rediscovered an old diary that helpfully covers the year 1996 in its entirety so lets see what occurred that day.

*checks diary*

Well, sensibly I’d booked the day off work and so had lunch in town with my wife before another meal in the evening at a favourite restaurant. Perfect. I did fit in going to my first aid course in between eating and I hope I was listening carefully as I spent the next couple of days with a gippy stomach. Maybe that favourite restaurant shouldn’t have been such a favourite! Anyway, presumably I didn’t see this TOTP episode due to being out so let’s see what I missed.

Tonight’s host is Nicky Campbell and the first act he introduces is Louise who is back in the charts with her third, and possibly most well known, solo single “Naked”. This was the point in the ex-Eternal member’s career when her management/label made a clear and definite decision to change her image from angelic, girl-next-door to pvc-clad, sex goddess. It worked as well. FHM Magazine readers voted Louise second in their list of the ‘100 Sexiest Women’ of 1996 (X–Files star Gillian Anderson came first). I’m guessing one of those that voted for Louise may have been this fellow (@jjtotheb) who commented on the YouTube video of this performance:

“I remember having my first tug to this”

Well, you can’t argue with that I guess. Or maybe you can. Providing the view from the other side is this chap on Twitter/X:

I remember this performance vividly. My reaction is still one of, "why is someone with no sex appeal trying so very hard to convince us all she has it?" I mean, you might just as well be putting that tight PVC on Sister Wendy Beckett. #TotP
— Tony T-Rox Cowdrill 🦁⭐️ (@TonysaurusRox) August 31, 2024

Hmm. Well, whatever your feelings about Louise, we should probably do her the courtesy of discussing her song rather than just her looks and clearly “Naked” was written as a integral component of her rebrand. With lyrics that include the words ‘sexual’, ‘sensual’ and, of course, its title, there was no doubt that this was a much sassier type of track than she had been given previously. To my ears it was a catchy, competent soul/pop hit that was a bit Madonna-lite* and no more but it’s No 5 peak helped to establish Louise as a genuine solo artist with a chart career. She would clock up a further nine UK hits all but two of which would go Top 10.

*Actually, the synthesised riff in the chorus of “Naked” is very reminiscent of the intro and outro motif of “Father Figure” also now I come to think of it.

After “Children” gave Robert Miles a continent-straddling mega-hit earlier in the year, it must have seemed to the poster boy for ‘dream house’ music that the obvious way to follow it up was to release another track that was almost identical to its predecessor. Genius! And lo, it came to pass, that the single “Fable” did just that. The record buying public did what they always do and fell for the trick by buying enough copies to send it to No 7. So, the moral of the story of fable is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ otherwise known as ‘don’t f**k with the formula’.

Now, before carrying on, I feel I should pull Nicky Campbell up on something he says in his intro for the next artist who is Tina Turner. Our host describes her as “the great soul survivor” and notes that the performance we are about to see of her new single “On Silent Wings” is from a live concert in Rotterdam before announcing “and let’s face it, if you can survive Rotterdam, you can survive anything”. What?! Why the need to slag off Holland’s second biggest city? Has he even been there? I can’t vouch for what it was like in 1996 but I visited it in 2018 and it was delightful. The Markthal (Market Place complex) is a marvel, its skyline stunning and parks wonderful to spend time in. A few months after this TOTP aired, The Beautiful South would have a big hit with “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” though I’m not sure that was a love letter to the city either. Around the same time that song was in the charts, I found myself on holiday in Barcelona where Tina’s Wildest Dreams tour was in town at the Palau Sant Jordi sports arena. I didn’t feel the need to shell out a small fortune that I didn’t have for tickets, I must admit.

Anyway, back to “On Silent Wings” which was the third single pulled from her “Wildest Dreams” album which was, rather surprisingly, her first collection of new studio material since 1989’s “Foreign Affair”. Those intervening years had been filled with a Best Of and the soundtrack to the biopic of her life. I’m guessing I wasn’t really paying much attention to this era of Tina as I couldn’t tell you how any of the songs from this album went but I was surprised to read that it was produced by Trevor Horn. The country-tinged slumber fest that is “On Silent Wings” is a world away from his iconic work with the likes of ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Art Of Noise. Apparently, the studio recording of the song also features vocals by Sting which obviously we don’t get to hear in this ‘live’ clip. Money for nothing or money for old rope? You decide.

Really?! In 1996, did we really have to have this in the charts?! A pretty much identikit version of one of Cliff Richard’s most naff, sickly and insipid tunes by a bloke who would be given the middle name of ‘love rat’ by the tabloids?! I refer, of course, to Darren Day, a former Butlin’s redcoat who made a small name for himself in 1988 via talent show Opportunity Knocks (then hosted by Bob Monkhouse) before carving out a bigger career on London’s West End theatre circuit. His appearance on TOTP though arose from his turn as the star of the touring stage version of the 1963 film Summer Holiday. I’m guessing there was a soundtrack album to go with the show and so the titular track was released as a single. I can’t quite work out who would have wanted to shell out hard cash to purchase this though. Someone who had been to the show and wanted a souvenir of it? Wouldn’t a tour programme have sufficed?

Day does a passable impression of Cliff in his performance of “Summer Holiday” but I don’t think the presence of the songwriters (Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett of The Shadows) on stage with him is as a big a scoop as Nicky Campbell tries to make out in his intro. Day looks like someone who you would be happy to take home to meet your parents here, in total contrast to the image he would go on to cultivate. In the 90s alone, he was engaged to Ana Friel, Tracy Shaw and Isla Fisher. Into the 2000s, he was in a relationship with Hear’say singer Suzanne Shaw (he seemed to have a thing for women with that surname) with whom he had a child and they would also work together in a relaunch of the Summer Holiday show. The last entry in his filmography on Wikipedia came back in 2018 with a minor role in The Krays: Dead Man Walking.

Next up we have the first sighting of a group that my friend Robin once dismissed (he’s good at dismissing things) as being a “joke band”. In Robin’s defence, he wasn’t alone in his opinion. Scousers Space gave the music press a dilemma in that they were hard to categorise. ‘Wacky’, ‘Novelty’, ‘Quirky’ and, in a spectacularly failed attempt by some hack to appear pithy, ‘Queasy Listening’ were just some of the descriptors used to label the band’s sound. Lead singer Tommy Scott was especially combatant in his refusal to accept such tags:

“It is because I just do not want to stick to one genre of music. I am into everything so why can’t it all just go into one song? Why would you want to do just country or rock? Why can’t you just do what you want?”

Skillen, Paul (29 January 2021). “‘Scouse Pop: Essay On Creativity”. University of Chester.

Have that Robin! For my part, I quite liked their stuff. Yeah, it was a bit out there yet catchy enough to make daytime radio playlists. My wife liked them enough to buy their debut album “Spiders” which would furnish the band with four hit singles no less. The first of those (though actually their fourth single release) was “Female Of The Species”, its title no doubt inspired by both the Rudyard Kiping poem and the title track to 1950s James Bond rip off film Deadlier Than The Male by The Walker Brothers.:

In this performance, Scott looks just the right side of being a wide eyed, crazy person but then such an image never did Keith Moon any harm did it? Well…yeah it did I suppose seeing as his self destructive behaviour led to him dying at the age of 32 but you get my point. The really lazy option was to lump them in with all those Britpop bands (I’m sure we did in the Our Price store I was working in when it came to setting up a Britpop display) but that was…well…really lazy. They were distinctly different from the usual Britpop candidates like fellow scousers Cast* who were ploughing a much more ‘authentic’, 60s influenced guitar sound.

*I should point out that I did also like Cast to be fair

The “Spiders” album peaked at No 5 whilst 1998’s follow up “Tin Planet” went Top 3 but it seemed as if, once the 90s were over, so were Space’s commercial fortunes. A third album’s release was constantly delayed leading to the band leaving their record label whilst line up changes meant that they pulled their own legs off in 2005 by breaking up the band. A reunion in 2011 has seen them release a further four albums (including that ever delayed third one “Love You More Than Football”) and they still tour to this day proving that there is still space for Space even three decades later.

Due to its success and ubiquity, we would all be forgiven for thinking that “Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)” by Baddiel & Skinner / Lightning Seeds was the official song of the Euro 96 football championships. It wasn’t however – that particular ‘honour’ fell to Simply Red who gave the world this woeful own goal of a song “We’re In This Together”. Apparently this was the last track on their 1995 album “Life” and ‘last’ is how previous act Space might have described it in their Scouse vernacular because it was and remains a terrible track. Awful. Just no good. It hasn’t even got any thing to do with football as far as I can tell judging by the lyrics in which Hucknall wails about “the train of universal feeling” and his eyes being “open just like the ocean”. Utter drivel.

The track was performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the tournament but I’m guessing hardly anyone remembers it despite that exposure. Of all the plethora of football songs that littered the charts around this time (and there were a lot most of which were indescribably terrible), I think this is the worst. I listened the other day to an interview with the comedian Joe Pasquale (stay with me) and he recounted the tale of an early gig in Wales when he was on the end of what he described as the worst heckle in the world. A member of the audience who was on crutches threw them at Joe and then slumped to the floor shouting something in Welsh at him as he fell. Pasquale picked up the crutches and left the stage at which point a guy met him round the side and said could he have his mate’s crutches back. When Joe asked him what his mate had shouted at him, he replied “You don’t want to know”. Pasquale insisted and was told that he’d shouted “I’d rather fall over than listen to this shit!” and he was true to his word. This is exactly how I feel about Simply Red’s “We’re In This Together”.

From a dodgy tune to a tune by Dodgy now as the “Staying Out For The Summer” hitmakers return with “In A Room”, lead single from their third studio album “Free Peace Sweet” (see what they did there?). I think this track gets overshadowed rather by subsequent single “Good Enough” which is surely their best known hit (apparently one of the most played tracks on British radio in the last 25 years) but it’s actually a pretty decent song in its own right. Angular guitars allied with some breezy drumming courtesy of Matthew Priest and a strident if not completely obvious hook would give them their then biggest hit when it debuted at No 12. Just a few short weeks later though would come that ever present hit making Dodgy good enough for daytime radio playlists everywhere and consigning “In A Room” to also-ran status. Shame.

By 1996, it was four years since Shakespeares Sister had topped the charts for eight weeks with their mammoth hit “Stay” but it felt more like forty. The pop world had not so much moved on as relocated to the other side of the planet and Siobhan Fahey was struggling to find her way back to it. I say Siobhan Fahey as Marcella Detroit had long since been jettisoned from the band rather publicly via an acceptance speech by the former’s publisher at the 1993 Ivor Novello Awards ceremony. After dealing with some personal issues (not least her divorce from Eurythmics Dave Stewart), the Shakespeares Sister project was relaunched with the single “I Can Drive”. Much less ‘pop’ than their previous stuff, it has a definite glam rock bent to it with Siobhan’s much maligned vocals and delivery making her look and sound like she’s auditioning for a part in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The song itself has shades of “All The Young Dudes” to it but the verses sound just like those of this hit for OMD that was released just a couple of months after this TOTP aired. Who copied who I wonder?

“I Can Drive” didn’t provide the jump leads to restart Shakespeare Sister’s career that Siobhan must have been hoping for when it stalled at No 30. Relations between her label London Records deteriorated to the point that they refused to release third album “#3” and a parting of the ways became inevitable. The album was finally released in 2004 on Fahey’s own website and a reunion with Marcella Detroit in 2019 saw the duo release a new single and embark upon a tour together.

And so we arrive at the record that would become the biggest selling single of 1996 in the UK. Although the Fugees had already had a Top 40 hit earlier in the year with “Fu-Gee-La”, I don’t think I’d even noticed it as it debuted and exited our charts in just three weeks back in April. Fast forward a couple of months and they went supernova with their cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” which they retitled as “Killing Me Softly”. If I remember correctly, this was around the time that record companies started to allow new singles to be made available in the shops to buy on the Sunday of the week of release as opposed to the traditional Monday. I guess they realised that with stores now routinely opening on both weekend days after the Sunday Trading Act of 1994, there was some logic in stimulating more sales of their products by having them on the shelves for an extra day. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport on the Sunday that “Killing Me Softly” came out and all I remember doing is selling copy after copy of it from opening to closing time. I couldn’t refill the shelves quick enough (Stockport was a two floor store and I think there was only two of us in that day; I was downstairs where the singles were). It was absolutely relentless.

Why did it capture the nation’s hearts so? Well, it was a bloody good cover version with the hip-hop slant the band put on it coming up trumps alongside some unusual hooks such as the synth sitar sound that kickstarts the track and Wyclef Jean’s “One time, two times” interjected chants. Even so, did that explain its stratospheric sales? It was No 1 just about everywhere and the best selling single of the year not just here but in Germany, Holland, Iceland and Belgium as well. In the UK, it spent nine consecutive weeks at either No 1 or No 2 and 15 weeks inside the Top 40. Its sales were still going strong when the band released follow up “Ready Or Not” causing their record label Columbia to withdraw it from sale to clear the path for its successor. Maybe it was something to do with the amount that radio got behind the track. It broke the record at the time for the most radio plays in a week in the UK. Whatever the reasons, it made the Fugees superstars for a while and led to successful solo careers for all three members Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel.

After blowing smoke up their collective arses for most of this review, I have to say that the performance here is actually quite annoying mainly due to Wyclef Jean who insists on shouting about being on Top of the Pops and bellowing “Yo!” and “Pow!” over and over. Makes you wish he was “Gone till November”.

The play out video is “The Changing Man” by Paul Weller. Why were we seeing the video for a hit from 12 months previous? It was to trail the fact that Weller would be doing two tracks live on the show next week that Nicky Campbell referred to. It was a feature designed to promote the new Friday night slot that the show was shifting to over the Summer due to the Euro 96 football tournament. It would prove to be a short lived phenomenon with only the reactivated Sex Pistols going on to perform two songs on the show later in the month. As I’ll have already reviewed “The Changing Man” in the 1995 TOTP repeats, I won’t delay myself here any further.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Louise	Naked	Nope
2	Robert Miles	Fable	Negative
3	Tina Turner	On Silent Wings	Nah
4	Darren Day	Summer Holiday	As if
5	Space	Female Of The Species	No but my wife had their Spiders album
6	Simply Red	We’re In This Together	God no!
7	Dodgy	In A Room	No but my wife had the Free Peace Sweet album
8	Shakespeares Sister	I Can Drive	No
9	Fugees	Killing Me Softly	No but my wife had The Score album it came from
10	Paul Weller	The Changing Man	No but I had the Stanley Road album with it on

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/m0022v3t/top-of-the-pops-06061996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 05 OCT 1995

Posted on March 13, 2024 by 80stastic

We’ve entered October with these TOTP repeats and three days before this show aired, an album hit the shops that would prove to be a landmark release in UK music history. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis would shift 345,000 copies in its first week and spend 10 weeks at No 1 on the album chart in total. It would eventually go 17 x platinum in the UK alone and win a Brit award for Best British Album. It even broke through in America going to No 4 over there selling 4 million copies in the process. It spawned two chart topping singles and two No 2s. In short, it was a monster, a phenomenon even. After the Battle of Britpop in the Summer that had put record shops at the heart of the national news, this album was a slam dunk off the back of it for the takings of stores across the country. It sold and sold and sold and then it sold some more. It sold more than any other album in the entire decade that was the 90s. Whether you liked it or not, you couldn’t ignore it.

Something else that you couldn’t ignore but it would be hard to like are the comedy characters dished up for our entertainment by tonight’s ‘golden mic’ hosts Hale & Pace. So, I have questions. To start with, why were these two on the show in the first place? Well, the eighth* series of their TV comedy series was just about to air but that was on ITV so it can’t have been seen as an opportunity to plug one of the Beeb’s shows.

*I know! Eight! They even did a couple more before it came to an end in 1998.

Was it just that they had these characters Jed & Dave who were like the stoned rocker versions of Smashie & Nicey and so executive producer Ric Blaxill took a lazy decision to get them in as guest presenters? It certainly wasn’t anything to do with Comic Relief as we’d already had that in March. Whatever the reason, they were in the TOTP studio and were ready to annoy!

There may not be any of the aforementioned Oasis on tonight’s show but there is certainly some Britpop. We start with Sleeper who are just getting into their stride with their third and biggest hit of 1995 with “What Do I Do Now?”. The lead single from their second album “The It Girl” which would be released the following May, it built on the success and sound of previous chart entries “Inbetweener” and “Vegas” but if anything was even more radio friendly. With that sophomore album not making an appearance until well into the following year, its subsequent success would mean that Sleeper were never as big as they were in 1996. “The It Girl” would go Top 5 and sell 300,000 copies in the UK spawning four Top 20 hits including two No 10s.

The performance here seems to me to cement Louise Wener’s position as one of the faces of Britpop and what a face! Wide eyed innocence, wrapped up in knowing coyness and a smile that you knew meant she’d be the best person to have a laugh with down the pub. I caught Sleeper live at the Manchester Academy in 1996 and they were pretty good as I remember. I went with my mate Steve and I have a clear memory of him grooving away to “What Do I Do Now?” which was way more entertaining than anything Hale & Pace served up on this TOTP.

Oh come on! How many times is this now that Smokie and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown have been on the show? I think this is the third already. The success of “Who The F**k Is Alice?” was absolutely baffling to me. Were there really people up and down the country whom, having bought the single, took it home, put it on their stereo system, pressed play and then listened to it waiting for the chance to shout out “Alice? Who the f**k is Alice?!” at the top of the voices and then chuckling to themselves?! I guess there were mobile DJs who bought it and would play it at a birthday do they’d been booked for. That might account for some sales but this single stank out the charts for a total of 14 weeks on the Top 40 including 8 within the Top 10. It spent 9 consecutive weeks without once going down the charts. Surely wedding DJs can’t have accounted for all those sales?! And where was the outcry from the press about this record ?! Sure, it couldn’t be played on the radio unless it was a bleeped version but I don’t recall the papers in a meltdown about this youth corrupting filth. No, they were too busy getting their knickers in a twist about another chart hit but more of that later.

By the way, Hale & Pace’s intro with one of them (I never did know which one was which) getting lifted in the air on a wire really wasn’t worth setting up as the punchline for a limp play on words. Give me Cheryl Baker instead any day…

Some West Coast hip-hop next from Cypress Hill. As a pop kid, this lot were never really going to be my bag though I did quite like their previous hits “Insane In The Brain” and “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. This one – “Throw Your Set In The Air” – was the lead single from their third album “III: Temples Of Boom” but I have to say I don’t remember it. Cypress Hill were one of those ‘parental advisory explicit lyrics’ sticker artists which meant we weren’t supposed to play them on the shop stereo in the Our Price store I was working in at the time. Consequently, I was never that familiar with their work. I knew the album covers of such artists better than their songs due to the fact that the CD and cassette inlays were so nickable that we would keep them behind the counter and put a temporary, generic inlay out on the shop racks. This was in the days before the stock was security tagged and out on the shop floor live as it were. Rather pathetically, the hip-hop/rap artists would most likely be pinched by middle class white kids pretending they were from the hood (or something).

Another contrived yet duff intro from Hale & Pace about going metric and rhyming ‘a litre’ with Oleta ushers in the return of Oleta Adams. Yes, I was surprised to see her on the show again too. In my head, she had one massive hit single in the early 90s with her version of Brenda Russell’s “Get Here” (the success of which also catapulted her album “Circle Of One” to the top of the charts) and then nothing. This was plainly not the case though. Exhibit A, m’lud – “Never Knew Love”. The lead single from her “Moving On” album, its sound was nothing like the balladeering of “Get Here” but rather a competent if unremarkable R&B track – Oleta had indeed ‘moved on’.

Of course, I should have remembered earlier that in addition to “Get Here”, Oleta had added her considerable voice to the Tears For Fears hit “Woman In Chains” back in late 1989. By a pleasing quirk of fate, TFF were back in the UK Top 40 nine places below Oleta this week with their single “Raoul And The Kings Of Spain”. However, by this point, Curt Smith had left the band and it was essentially a Roland Orzabal solo track. By the way, I’m pretty sure that’s Shirley Lewis on backing vocals in this performance who was married to Luke Goss of Bros fame for 23 years before splitting in 2017. She clearly did “Drop The Boy” though I have no idea if there is any truth that Luke said of the divorce settlement “I Owe You Nothing”. I know – I’m looking for my coat as I type.

After their first appearance in the TOTP studio since 1980 the other week, Iron Maiden are back on the show again though clearly the experience scarred them as they have put a distance of approximately 3,000 miles between them and London for this second performance of “Falling Down”. Obviously, that’s not the reason – they’d played a gig in Jerusalem and then travelled to the ancient fortification of Masada to record this footage. It’s a stunning backdrop and is another example of the show’s executive producer Ric Blaxill’s vision of taking the satellite performances away from empty concert halls and giving them landmark locations instead.

However, I’m not sure that the helicopter views aid the song. It just makes the band seem small, inconsequential and rather silly against such a massive vista. I’ll leave the final word on this though to a Twitter user who posted this rather sage observation:

All that vibration can’t have been good for the ruins
— Conal (@Fazbo97) March 8, 2024

Robbie Williams wasn’t the only high profile departure from a successful five piece group in 1995. Louise Nurding left Eternal amid unsubstantiated rumours that a prominent US radio station dedicated to music made by black artists wouldn’t promote an interracial group. Rather obviously, a solo career beckoned and after a small rebrand (Nurding possibly wasn’t the best name for a pop star), Louise emerged with her debut single “Light Of My Life”. Now, I remember this as being a huge ballad but hearing it back, it’s quite a slight thing really. Written by Simon Climie of Climie Fisher fame, it never really gets going despite all those strings in the mix trying to beef it up. More 40 watt bulb than incandescent theatre spotlight. Watching this performance, Louise’s miming doesn’t seem very convincing somehow. Not that she’s out of sync or forgets the words or anything like that but just it all seems a little artificial – most strange.

Louise would go onto have a procession of hits including nine Top Tenners and two platinum selling albums. I know, I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t read it for myself. She would shed the girl next door image and then some by the time of her hit “Naked” but that’s for a future post. Let’s not get to that point too quickly (ahem).

And so to the hit that the British press couldn’t turn a blind eye to as they seemed to be able to with “Who The F**k Is Alice?”. Pulp’s double A-side single “Mis-Shapes / Sorted For E’s And Whizz” had careered into the UK charts at No 2 – we’d seen the band perform “Mis-shapes” on TOTP two weeks earlier as an exclusive preview. However, it was the second song that had caused controversy. Now, clearly its title contained some rather in your face drug’s references but that didn’t seem to bother the BBC as Jarvis Cocker is allowed to sing the lyrics without any censure* in this show.

*I think they may have shortened the title to just “Sorted” for the caption on that performance of “Mis-Shapes” though it is restored to its full, corrupting glory here.

And why would he have? If you listen to the lyrics, Jarvis isn’t pro recreational drugs but rather he’s pointing out what a hollow experience it ultimately is; that it’s just an artificially induced high and that the comedown can be brutal. He was writing from personal experience of attending raves and taking Ecstasy but at no point does he condone drug taking. The actual song title had come from something a girl he knew had said about going to see the Stone Roses at Spike Island in 1990. All she could recall of it was loads of dodgy looking geezers going around asking people if they were sorted for E’s and Whizz. Talking of the Roses, Pulp stood in for them at that year’s Glastonbury at the last minute whilst I myself was working in the Our Price store in Stockport alongside the late and very great Pete Garner who was their original bass player. I distinctly recall Pete saying that he couldn’t believe that Pulp had got away with releasing a single called “Sorted For E’s And Whizz”.

However, one newspaper in particular was determined to publish a story of outrage about the song and so turned their attention to the CD single’s cover which included an illustration of how to fold a speed wrap (though it doesn’t mention anything about it being used for that purpose in the text). The Daily Mirror went all in on this “sick stunt” as they called it with the article being written by one Kate Thornton later of X Factor fame. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Thanks to its cover (which featured a magazine page folded into a speed wrap) and a diagram in the CD booklet which showed you how to fold one, "Sorted For E's And Wizz" prompted a Daily Mirror front page headlined “BAN THIS SICK STUNT”. #TOTP pic.twitter.com/f7RvNre5Ms
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 8, 2024

DJ Neil Fox jumped on the bandwagon and refused to play it on his show and in the end, the band pulled the artwork and replaced it with something non controversial. With echoes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”, all the press attention just increased sales of the single. Jarvis used both these TOTP appearances to make wry observations on all the fuss. In the “Mis-Shapes” performance, he channels his inner Bob Geldof and reads a copy of the Daily Mirror with that front cover during the middle eight and in this one, he finishes the song by producing an origami bird sculpture. Nicely done Jarvis.

One of the most interesting hits of the year now as we get Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave with “Where The Wild Roses Grow”. Everybody at the time was talking about how had this duet come about, so unlikely was the pairing – Cave, the gothic Prince of doomy art rock with the intimidatingly deep voice and Kylie, the Princess of Pop. Really though, there was no great story behind it. They were both Aussies and Nick really liked Kylie and so he wrote a song for her. Well, I say ‘liked’ but in his own words Cave described himself as having:

“…a quiet obsession with her for about six years.”
Jenkins, Jeff; Meldrum, Ian (2007). Molly Meldrum presents 50 Years of Rock in Australia. Melbourne, Vic: Wilkinson Publishing. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-921332-11-1.

Hmm. Doesn’t sound like the best starting point for a friendship but still. The song he came up with after a few ‘inappropriate” (his words again not mine) attempts was a murder ballad, that dark sub genre of the ballad form that told the narrative of a crime and (usually) gruesome death. I suppose that wasn’t your typical subject matter for a chart hit in 1995. However, it was quite brilliant – haunting, disturbing and yet beautifully melodic with both singers telling their version of the story superbly in tandem. It wasn’t just their differing musical backgrounds that made the duet so curious (though Kylie was well into her first career transformation from perceived SAW puppet to dance diva by this point) but their physical appearance. Cave has naturally…erm…striking (?) looks whilst Kylie has those fine, beautiful features but then there’s also the height difference – it really shouldn’t have worked but it absolutely did.

Around fifteen years after this TOTP performance, I did my own version of “Where The Wild Roses Grow” in a guitar class I was attending at the time, as a duet with a fellow student called Lisa. It even got recorded by the teacher. If only I could work out how to get it embedded into this post…

Simply Red are No 1 again with “Fairground” and this is already the third time in four weeks that it’s featured on the show. Mick Hucknall is, by all accounts, a massive…wait for it…Man United fan (you thought I was going to say something different then didn’t you?!) so no doubt he would have been delighted that his beloved team beat Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter final on Sunday just gone. Somebody who wasn’t impressed was my Hucknall despising mate Robin who texted me at the final whistle to say that United’s victory was the “footballing equivalent of a new Simply Red album”. I was just glad the result stopped Liverpool’s pursuit of a quadruple and thereby putting a spoke in the wheel of the media’s Jürgen Klopp love in. Jürgen Klopp…now he really is a “bleep” to quote Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sleeper	What Do I Do Now	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Smokie and Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown	Who The F**k Is Alice?	Away with you!
3	Cypress Hill	Throw Your Set In The Air	I did not
4	Oleta Adams	Never Knew Love	Nah
5	Iron Maiden	Falling Down	Nope
6	Louise	Light Of My Life	No
7	Pulp	Mis-Shapes / Sorted For E’s And Whizz	No but I had the album Different Class with them on
8	Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue	Where The Wild Roses Grow	No but I sang it!
9	Simply Red	Fairground	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/m001wsmh/top-of-the-pops-05101995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 03 APR 1998

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TOTP 28 NOV 1997

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TOTP 03 OCT 1997

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TOTP 29 NOV 1996

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TOTP 30 AUG 1996

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TOTP 06 JUN 1996

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TOTP 05 OCT 1995

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