Madonna | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 11 APR 1991

Posted on July 16, 2021 by 80stastic

Right, I’m starting to get behind on writing up these TOTP reviews. I’m averaging over 3,000 words per post so with two shows being shown on BBC4 a week….I could have easily written multiple books over the number of years I’ve been doing this. With that in mind, I’m going to have to whizz though some of these acts with just a cursory nod to detail and research.

Tonight’s host is Anthea Turner (groan) and we start with The Wonder Stuff who have arrived at that crossroads that most indie type bands arrive at eventually. The one where they look at the sign that points to ‘Megastardom and riches but hand your soul in at the door’ one way and ‘stay credible, critically acclaimed and penniless’ the other. A fork in the road encountered by many before and since. Spandau Ballet started out as the pin up band for the New Romantics cult but made the decision to go mainstream and be one of the biggest bands in the world when they recorded the “True” album. One year on from this TOTP broadcast, The Shamen would go from an underground indie / dance hybrid to being all over our TV screens with a No 1 single and a gurning pop star rapper in Mr C. For now though, it was the turn of Miles Hunt and the gang and they chose fame and fortune with the release of “Size Of A Cow”. The lead single from new album “Never Loved Elvis”, this was a catchy, knock about, shout-a-long tune that was much more pop than anything they had ever done before. It’s almost like a prototype for Blur’s “Country House”. It was hard not to like it though. Hunt himself throws himself into the song with a tartan suit borrowed from Andrew Ridgely and his ruffled shirt. It’s almost like an audition to be the next Dr Who (had it still been on air back then ).

The album would be a huge success going Top 3 whilst “Size Of A Cow” peaked at No 5. Around this time they played a gig at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium to 18,000 fans but had they lost any of their original fan base? If they hadn’t, their loyalty may have been tested to the limit when they teamed up with Vic Reeves for a cover of “Dizzy” later in the year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P-vjvP6b1Y

Madonna‘s only single of 1991 was “Rescue Me”. Nothing to do with the 1965 Fontella Bass single of the same name, this was the second of two new tracks from her mega selling “Immaculate Collection” Best Of album. The first had been the controversial “Justify My Love” and initially there had been no plans to release “Rescue Me” as a follow up but after extensive airplay, Sire Records changed tack and gave it an official release. The video shown here was hastily cobbled together using footage from Madonna’s 1987 Who’s That Girl World Tour.

I have to say it’s not one of my favourites of hers by some distance. I wasn’t that keen on all the spoken word verses although I suppose the chorus is catchy enough. Apparently, when it debuted at No 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March 1991, it was the highest new entry for a song since The Beatles’ “Let It Be” went straight in at No 6 in March 1970. That can’t be right can it? Whilst we’re talking about the song’s chart performance, it should also be noted that it peaked at No 3 in the UK (Madonna’s fourth of nine singles to peak at that position ) and was the 27th of her 70 UK hit singles! 70! That’s nearly one for very year she’s been alive isn’t it? Actually how old is Madonna now?

*checks Wikipedia*

She’s 62. Close enough.

A bit of a patronising intro from Anthea next as she says of Alison Limerick‘s “Where Love Lives”:

“Alison Limerick first released her debut single last year. It didn’t do so well but she’s released it again and now it’s a hit….”

It’s the tone in her voice, the small grimace on her face and the downwards motion hand gesture that seem a bit snide to me. If this was a text message it would have a sad face emoji at the end of it. Enough of Anthea though.

Alison is one of those names that have been around for ages like Ruby Turner or Beverley Knight but who surprisingly doesn’t have the number of hits that you would think they do. “Where Love Lives” is one of just six Top 40 UK hits. Actually its two of six as it was a hit again in 1996. As Anthea correctly pointed out, it was first released in 1990 when it peaked at No 87 but after extensive play in the clubs, it warranted a re-release – with the addition of the suffix (Come On In)’91 – and it was a No 27 hit. It reached its highest peak though when remixed in 1996 when it made No 9.

Alison looks damn cool here as she gives a slick performance with her Grace Jones style crew cut and sharp dance moves. She has worked with acts as diverse as The Style Council, This Mortal Coil and The James Taylor Quartet and she continues to record and sing live to this day.

It’s another showing of the Gary Clail On-U Sound System performance of “Human Nature” from the other week next although I think Anthea stuffs up the intro by saying Gary Clail and the New Sound System. I’ve played it back three times now and I’m pretty sure that’s what she says. I know I sound pedantic but her job on TOTP was literally to say the names of artists and their songs. You can’t get that shit wrong, you really can’t.

As for Gary, although “Human Nature” was the only hit he had that enabled a TOTP appearance, he had his eyes on the prize as way back as 1985 when he featured on an On-U Sound System track called “Half Cut For Confidence” The backing musicians on it were industrial hip-hop legends TackHead but they were credited as TOTP an acronym for The Occult Technology of Power but surely it was also a deliberate pun on the BBC music show?

“Human Nature” peaked at No 10.

Not sure I remember this one. Monie Love and Adeva together? Nope it doesn’t (and yes I’m going there) ring any bells. When I saw the title of their single, I assumed it was a cover of the Anita Ward disco classic “Ring My Bell” that went to No 1 in 1979 but no, it isn’t. This was the sixth and final single to be taken from Monie Love’s “Down To Earth” album so we had heard quite a lot from her over the last year or so. The same could not be said of Adeva who had not been near the charts for nearly two years when her debut album provided her with four Top 40 hits including three that peaked at No 17. Would it be mean to suggest it was Adeva whose career needed a shot in the arm off the coat tails of Monie Love? Probably yes but it is true that “Ring My Bell” would be her last ever Top 20 hit.

The video rather predictably goes with a boxing match concept thereby including both the ringing of a bell theme and setting up a confrontation as in Monie Love vs Adeva. There’s no actual punches thrown though as all the action is done from the safety of their respective corners.

This wasn’t really my cup of tea at all and I’d rather it had been a cover of Anita Ward.

Now here’s a line that you would never have expected to hear and which actually doesn’t make any sort of sense but then it is from the mouth of Anthea Turner so….

“We’ve got a real treat for you now. A stage full of expensive suits. In those suits are Mike + The Mechanics…”

A bit to unpack here. What is the big deal about some middle aged men wearing expensive suits? Were we meant to be jealous? If so, how is that a treat for us? Or were we meant to admire how good they looked in them? With the greatest respect to Paul Carrack, Mike Rutherford and Paul Young (not that one) et al, I don’t think the suits made that much difference in the looks department.

“Word of Mouth” would peak at 13 whilst its parent album of the same name went silver certifying 60,000 sales. Its cover art seemed to influence a much cooler band 14 years later. Have a look…

It’s the top selling albums of the month feature next and for March 1991 they were:

1.Eurythmics – “Greatest Hits”

2. Chris Rea – “Auberge”

3. The Farm – “Spartacus”

4. REM – “Out Of Time”

5. Debbie Harry / Blondie – “The Complete Picture”

Well, that seems a bit better than recent months. Yes, two are Best Of compilations but what Best Ofs! The Eurythmics one was their first ever and I for one was certainly looking forward to it coming out. It would go on to be the second best selling album of the year after it was pipped at the post by Simply Red’s “Stars”. Although it wouldn’t stand the test of time, at least “Spartacus” was by a new, up and coming band after months of the Top 5 being populated by the likes of Elton John, Madonna and Pavarotti. Talking of time, REM’s “Out Of Time” was really starting to establish them as a world conquering band. It was only really Chris Rea that was letting the Top 5 down.

Another glimpse of patronising Anthea next as she seeks to make us all dismiss the fact that Dannii Minogue is not just Kylie’s sister by pointing out that Dannii Minogue is actually Kylie’s sister. After highlighting her genealogy, Anthea says “she’s a great little actress, she’s got a charming personality…”. No doubt Anthea thought she was being complimentary but it just doesn’t come across like that. The use of the word little seems unnecessary and the charming personality vibe indicates that there is a silent ‘though’ implied.

“Love And Kisses” was her debut hit but I don’t think time has been kind to it. There’s not much of a tune in there and it seems to hinge on an energetic dance routine rather than any musical virtues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-CdWiqRNo4

Chesney Hawkes is still No 1 and we get the video this week although there seems to be some confusion over this as I have found two different promos for “The One And Only”. The one that TOTP shows is a straight forward performance of the song in a gig setting intercut with some scenes of Chezza arriving at the venue, being mobbed by fans and signing some autographs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mk82Ns6vdk

However, there is also another video that seems to have an A-ha “Take On Me” inspired plot to it. In this one, two female friends go to the cinema to watch Buddy’s Song (the film that launched Chesney and that features “The One And Only”) and Chesney steps out of the film and into the cinema auditorium to beckon one of the girls to come to a storage room with him. It’s not really a winning chat up line. There then follows some intertextuality themed escapades as Chesney gets pulled in and out of the film pursued by his father played by Roger Daltrey in hot pursuit. Eventually Chesney and cinema girl both end up in the film together before a climatic snog. Now apparently, ‘cinema girl’ is played by Saffron from Republica and if this is true, then this is the second time in a matter of weeks that I have been unaware of her presence on the show. We saw her recently as the vocalist for N-Joi on their “Anthem” single. I don’t know, a character from soap opera Families turning up in The Mock Turtles and now someone being in a Chesney Hawkes video whilst also fronting a dance act. These were strange times indeed.

Did someone mention The Shamen before? Well, here are the very fellows with “Hyperreal”. Taken from their “En-Tact” album, it achieved what previous singles “Pro-Gen” and “Make It Mine” hadn’t by becoming the band’s very first Top 40 hit. I have to say that I didn’t think it was as good as either of those but it was still pretty decent tune anyway.

Tragically, this would be the last single release before band member Will Sinnott drowned whilst swimming off the coast of Canary Island La Gomera. Electing to carry on, Colin Angus pressed forward with the release of “Move Any Mountain” (which was basically a remix of “Pro-Gen” under a new title) and it would cement the band’s reputation as chart stars when it peaked at No 4 in the Summer.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgUCeaSM8co

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wonder Stuff	Size Of A Cow	I didn’t
2	Madonna	Rescue Me	No but I did have The Immaculate Collection with it on
3	Alison Limerick	Where Love Lives	Nope
4	Gary Clail / On-U Sound System	Human Nature	Liked it, didn’t buy it
5	Monie Love / Adeva	Ring My Bell	Nah
6	Mike + The Mechanics	Word Of Mouth	And the word was no
7	Dannii Minogue	Love And Kisses	Definitely not
8	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	It’s a no
9	The Shamen	Hyperreal	Negative

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/m000xp0h/top-of-the-pops-11041991

TOTP 28 FEB 1991

Posted on June 25, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s the end of February 1991 and the world breathes a collective sigh of relief as a ceasefire has been declared in the Gulf War. Two days before that though, another news story broke which I don’t recall seeing much coverage of and indeed, even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have understood what it was about anyway. If I had any reaction to the fact that British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had unveiled WorldWideWeb, the world’s first web browser, it would probably have been this…

Little did we know that this announcement would come to change and shape the world as we know it. Is there a case for saying that the digital revolution has been every bit as pivotal as the industrial revolution? I think so. Certainly it would come to have industry shaking ramifications for the music business and record retail though I had neither the vision nor brain capacity to have realised this at the time. No, it was seemingly life back to normal (how little we appreciated that phrase back then) for me as I continued to work in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. I wonder what records I might have been selling at the time?

Well, we start this TOTP with what host Jakki Brambles describes as ….oh no hang on a minute… why is she wearing gloves? Poor Jakki did have some temperature issues whenever she presented the show. She always seemed to be wearing her Winter wardrobe whatever the time of year. Surely it was warm enough under those hot studio lights surrounded by gurning audience members? That whole two tone outfit makes her look ever so slightly clerical in tone. Not sure that was the look she was going for? Still, what did / do I know about fashion? Anyway, what I was going to say is that Jakki describes the opening number as a “groover” but for me it was anything but that. To my ears, this was just noise. Horrible, repetitive, nausea inducing noise at that. N-Joi were a dance outfit from Southend who would feature Samantha Marie Sprackling as a regular vocalist on their tracks. Who you ask? If I said aka Saffron would that help? Saffron would, of course, find fame as the lead singer of Republica later in the decade. Not sure she was on this track called “Adrenalin” though mainly because there aren’t any vocals to speak of. There’s a voice saying “We gonna get this place…” but that’s just a sample from a live Kiss album apparently.

This performance really highlights the problems that TOTP had with how to present dance tunes and acts from the late 80s onwards. They clearly couldn’t have just had the two guys in black on keyboards – that would have looked weird and dull at the same time. The solution? Throw some dancers into the mix. Well, they were more just wigging out than dancing I would say but they were a distraction, I give them that. The male dancer looks like Jim Carrey as Edward Nygma before he transforms into The Riddler in Batman Forever.

Gif image courtesy of Warner Bros

Look, I’m sure if you were a massive clubber in 1991, this tune was really important to you but this really wasn’t my bag at all. Sorry

“Adrenalin” peaked at No 23.

Nothing here for me either as we segue into Stevie B and “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)”. This is just terrible, stinking schmaltz. It features some of the most vapid, insipid and downright uninspired lyrics ever. Just look at this:

I got your letter from postman just the other day
So I decided to write you this song
And just to let you know Exactly the way I feel
To let you know my love for real

Because I love you, and I’ll do anything
I’ll give you my Heart, my everything
Because I love you, I’ll be right by your side
To be your light to be your guide

Just vile. And if that wasn’t enough, he does that thing that’s always guaranteed to set off alarm bells, he refers to himself in the 3rd person:

If you should feel that I don’t really care
And that you’re starting to lose your ground
Just let me reassure you that you can count on me
Stevie B will always be around

Gruesome stuff.

Thankfully “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” was Stevie B’s only UK chart hit peaking at No 6.

The first of two oldies next that are back in the charts on the back of TV adverts. “Alright Now” by Free had been used by Wrigley’s gum to soundtrack a campaign to promote its spearmint flavour which led to its re-release and an inevitable Best Of album (the one that Jakki refers to). A Best Of album? Hmm. How many Free songs can you think of that aren’t “Alright Now”? Without checking, I came up with “My Brother Jake” but their discography shows two others. There were 14 tracks on that Best Of though so the rest were….albums tracks? Singles that weren’t hits? You’d rightly feel unlucky if they came up as a ‘3 in 10’ artist on Popmaster to be fair! Thinking about Free has made me realise that there must be loads of artists that you just take accept as a given once you become aware of them without really knowing too much about them.

Me: Free? Oh yeah, I know them . Alright Now and all that.

Ken Bruce (for the want of a better inquisitor): OK, anything else you know about them?

Me: “My Brother Jake”

Ken: Yes. Anything else?

Me: erm…Paul Rodgers? Or was he in Bad Company?

Ken: Right on both accounts. Is that it?

Me: Does anybody know anything else about them?

*Blogger immediately losers any Free devotees that may have been reading this post*

OK, a stone cold 90s classic incoming….I had never heard the name Massive Attack before and I still hadn’t when their “Unfinished Sympathy” single was released. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why:

Massive Attack's label decided to release "Unfinished Sympathy" under the name Massive, because of the Gulf War. Circa Records' MD Ray Cooper: "With some records not being played on the radio because of their titles, we didn't want to be banned." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 18, 2021

Yes, the curious BBC Gulf War banned list was at it again despite the fact that a ceasefire had been called by the time of this broadcast. Two be fair to their label, the single was released on 11th Feb and had spent the first week of its life outside of the Top 40 so, to eliminate any unwanted obstacles in its way of being a hit, they temporarily renamed the band as Massive.

Routinely named in multiple music polls as one of the greatest records ever, it was also lauded at the time being named the Single of the Year in The Face and Melody Maker. It was hard to argue with that assessment. It just sounded so cool and timeless on its very first hearing. Those clipped trip hop beats with a full orchestra overlaying it allied to Shara Nelson’s ethereal vocals, it was such an accomplished work. They even managed to incorporate a sample from the Mahavishnu Orchestra in it (the ‘hey, hey hey, hey’ bit). Yes, the Mahavishnu Orchestra whom I had once dismissed as ‘weird shit’ to a colleague who was a fan and I still liked it. And yet, it only made No 13 in the charts! There were 12 songs that people wanted to buy more at its commercial peak? And I bet one of them was The pissing Simpsons! Seriously people?! Have a f*****g word with yourselves eh?

Bizarrely the same fate awaited parent album “Blue Lines” in that it, like “Unfinished Sympathy”, is consistently named towards the top of the 100 Greatest Albums of all time polls and has an iconic status and yet it only reached No 13 in the album chart. It has gone double platinum sales wise over time though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emnc5YLmI4Y

And so to the second song back in the charts this week in 1991 due to its inclusion on a TV advert. The infiltration of the Top 40 by Levi’s Advertising campaigns had been happening for a good five years or so by this point but there seemed to be a definite change of direction as to the choice of song once we arrived in the 90s. Back in the 80s, Levis adverts had been soundtracked by a flurry of 60s soul standards by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge and Ben E. King with the odd 50s track (Eddie Cochrane, Muddy Waters) also making appearances. As we advanced into a new decade though, so too did the advertising guys at Levis as they turned their back on all that and sought out tunes from the 70s. In 1990, we’d had “Can´t Get Enough Of Your Love” by Bad Company (1974), “20th Century Boy” by T. Rex (1973) and “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band (1973). 1991 saw us move even further forwards with a song from the 80s.

“Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash had of course been a hit back in 1982 as a double A-side with “Straight To Hell” with both songs being taken from their “Combat Rock” album. I was aware of the song from its original release although I think I had preferred the album’s other single “Rock The Casbah”. That album had been a divisive one in a number of ways. Critical opinion splintered into on the one hand it being lauded for its new danceable sound (especially on those two singles) and, on the other, it being a commercial sell out that ushered in the end of the band. Secondly, the fabric of the whole band was starting to disintegrate as well. Drummer Topper Headon was asked to leave the band just before the album’s release because of his heroin addiction whilst Joe Strummer And Mick Jones’s feuding continued to escalate leading to Jones being sacked from the band in September of 1983.

Despite all of its woes though, “Combat Rock” is very much a date stamp of this era of The Clash. The video for “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” includes some iconic images of the band; Strummer’s Mohican haircut, riding around in an open topped Cadillac car but my favourite is the Shea Stadium footage where they opened for The Who and in particular the band’s walk to the stage with Strummer’s jacket draped around his shoulders and Mick Jones’s Che Guevara style beret.

The manager of the Our Price where I was working when “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” was back in the charts (a guy called Rick) was a massive Clash fan but I’m not sure how he felt about them *spoiler alert* being at No 1 off the back of an advert for jeans. I did ask a really dumb question of Justin our singles buyer about how well it was selling to which he replied “Well, it’s No 1 so its selling rather a lot” or words to that effect.

As for Levis, after using The Clash, they reverted back to the 60s for their choice of song for the next two campaigns in “Mad About The Boy” by Dinah Washington (1961) and “Ring Of Fire” by Johnny Cash (1963). By the mid point of the decade they would be using the likes of Freak Power, Stiltskin (yikes!) and Bablyon Zoo (double yikes!) but we’re miles away from the TOTP repeats for all those just yet.

This week’s Breakers start with Quartz featuring Dina Carroll and their danced up version of “It’s Too Late”. Despite this being the first time most of us had been made aware of Dina, she had in fact been recording and releasing material for years before this although none of it made much of an impression on the charts. Her collaboration with dance production duo Quartz was engineered by Dennis Ingoldsby of First Avenue Management company who spotted Dina not long after she singed to record label Jive and paired her with his act who has similarly been putting out singles for a couple of years to mainly deaf ears. And what is one of the written-in- stone commandments of the music industry that I have learned from years of writing this blog? Yes, if you need a hit, release a cover version! Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” was duly chosen. I knew about Carole King as my wife had played me her milestone ‘Tapestry” album (from which “It’s Too Late” came) when we were students together. This version by Quartz though sounded ghastly to me. Dina could certainly sing but I just couldn’t see the point of it. I hated the tapping a milk bottle effect that they used as a riff throughout it and the whole thing just seemed lazy and cynical. What did I know though as it was purchased in enough quantities to send it to the Top 10.

Off the back off its success, Dina was signed as a solo artist to A&M Records and would achieve substantial success through 1992/92 with a string of singles all taken from her debut album “So Close”. For a while she really looked like the real deal and that she would dominate the charts for some time to come. Her album eventually sold 1.5 million copies and was the highest selling debut album by a British female singer in UK chart history, a record it held until 2001 when it was overtaken by Dido’s “No Angel”. A gap of three years between “So Close” and follow up “Only Human” seemed to break the spell though. “Only Human” sold healthily but much less than its predecessor and she has not released a new studio album since.

The next two songs barely rated a flicker in the grey cells of my memory. After two Top 10 hits the previous year with vocalist Wondress Hutchinson, Mantronix were back again with a new single called “Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart”. Apparently this and the album it was from (“The Incredible Sound Machine”) was a move away from their usual sound towards this new fangled New Jack Swing which would become quite a thing in 1991. I wouldn’t have had a clue about any fo this at the time I’m pretty sure but it would soon be popularised by, heaven help us, Color Me Badd. I’m sure there will serious R’n’B fans out there that will be horrified at the thought of Color Me Badd being name checked as the main protagonists of New Jack Swing but that’s how I remember it.

“Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart” would prove to be Mantronix’s last UK chart hit before splitting with main man Kurtis Mantronik leaving the music business entirely for seven years. He got the itch to return in the late 90s producing some house and techno dance tracks.

Similarly under represented in my memory banks are The Almighty. I think I could have told you that they were a heavy rock band but that would have been the limit of my data. Wikipedia tells me that “Free ‘n’ Easy” was their first Top 40 hit (though not their first single release) and they were from Scotland. Seven chart hits followed though none of them got any higher than No 26. Maybe they were more of an album band as their long player “Powertrippin'” went Top 5 in 1993 whilst follow up “Crank” was also a Top 20 album.

“Free ‘n’ Easy” sounds a bit like Alice Cooper to me and this makes some sense as they supported him on a European tour in this year.

Back in the studio now and if it’s 1991, there’s a good chance it’s Jesus Jones. Here they are back again with their new single “Who? Where? Why?” which was the fourth single to be released from their No 1 album “Doubt”. Their record label Food was clearly going for optimum level saturation of their act at this point. Once “Who? Where? Why?” had been and gone they would re-release earlier single “Right Here, Right Now” but, just as with my Maths ‘O’ Level which I took twice and got a C grade both times, it would peak at No 31 just as it has the first time around. Added to this promotion schedule – as Jakki Brambles informs us in her intro – they had just completed a UK tour and were then off to Europe and the States to play some more gigs.

I have to say, I think this was possibly the weakest of the “Doubt” singles. It sounded too repetitive and like it was written in a rush. It just didn’t have that much substance to it for me despite its metaphysical sounding song title. It also includes that band name referencing sample at the start which probably seemed like a good idea at the time – some more self promotion, why not? – but which possibly became something with which the music press could beat them.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3oqNm_l9bQ

I’m not sure the Jakki has done her research properly for the next act who are The Source featuring Candi Staton and who are on the show for the third time I think with their “You Got The Love” single. Her intro says that “Candi Staton’s recently taken time out from her Emmy award winning gospel singing to join forces with The Source..” Recently Jakki? “You Got The Love” was initially recorded and released in 1986! To put that into a modern day time frames, by your reckoning, the EU referendum (which had its 5 year anniversary recently) happened just the other week!

The journalist, broadcaster and author Miranda Sawyer started her career at Smash Hits magazine and did a tongue in cheek piece concerning the “great dance swizz up” about who really did sing on the current crop of dance hits including “You Got The Love”. Her ‘investigation’ included acts such as Xpansions, N-Joi (who opened this show), DJH featuring Stefy and the aforementioned Quartz featuring Dina Carrol. It also shone a light on The Source. Miranda’s conclusion was that, in the case of the latter, that this one was “complicated’ in that, clearly, the people you see on the video (the various singing heads for want of a better expression) are not the the creative force behind the record. However, neither were The Source according to Miranda who claimed that the only parts of that original record that were retained in the release we heard in 1991 were Candi’s vocals. The rest was supplied by a record called “Your Love” by Chicago house producer Jamie Principle. Whomever you choose to believe about “You Got The Love”, one thing is clear – Jakki Brambles was talking out of her arse.

Next up is the latest Madonna re-release to promote her “Immaculate Collection” Best Of compilation. “Crazy For You” was originally a No 2 hit in the Uk back In 1985 and was taken from the soundtrack to the film Vision Quest (I am still, 36 years later, yet to meet anyone who will own up to having seen this film). Now I will have reviewed “Crazy For You” in my 80s music blog so I don’t propose to regurgitate all of that again. However, suffice too say that although tis is supposed to be a Shep Pettibone renames, I can’t hear any difference between the 1991 incarnation and its original.

Jakki Brambles decides to break free from her paymasters for this one and denounces the re-release as ‘money for old rope’….except that she even screws that up as her withering comment at the vital moment comes out as “old money for rope”. Ah, unlucky Jakki. I take your point though.

The 1991 version of “Crazy For You” peaked at No 2 thereby equaling the chart performance of its 1985 original.

Ah shit. The No 1 is still The Simpsons and ‘Do The Bartman”. How do you explain this record? I don’t know but here’s somebody on Twitter who owns up to having played a part in its heinous success…

I had a t-shirt (I think it was the one below) and the Sing the Blues tape when they came out, but didn't watch it until it was on the BBC. I still have the tape. pic.twitter.com/OhL9ZZnbQx
— Frances the Firefly (@JMarriott8) June 18, 2021

Yeah, Nice one fella.

The play out video is that Rocky V nonsense “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” by Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36_GZgoAIc

Although the film’s soundtrack album includes 11 tracks, only 4 of them were actually used in the movie. “Go For It (Heart and Fire)” was one off those 4 and here’s the bit in the movie where it featured…

…not the most convincing piece of celluloid I’ve ever witnessed. The plot theme about how Rocky is neglecting his son to concentrate on the career of his protégée Tommy Gunn is about as subtle and deft as a Harry Maguire clearance. And all that chat from him about volcanoes and exploding all over Tommy’s opponent sounds quasi sexual. Ugh!

“Go For It (Heart and Fire)” peaked at No 20.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Kjq56VeY4

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	N-Joi	Adrenalin	God no
2	Stevie B	Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	And indeed Hell no
3	Free	Alright Now	Nope
4	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I have the Blue Lines album
5	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the single but I’m sure I have it on something
6	Quartz featuring Dina Carroll	It’s Too Late	Definitely not
7	Mantronix	Don’t Go Messin’ With My Heart	Yikes No!
8	The Almighty	Free ‘n’ Easy	No
9	Jesus Jones	Who? Where? Why?	Nah
10	The Source featuring Candi Staton	You Got The Love	Good dance track but no
11	Madonna	Crazy For You	No but I have The Immaculate Collection Best Of with it on
12	The Simpsons	Do The Bartman	Do the barf man more like – no
13	Go For It (Heart and Fire)	Joey B Ellis Aka MC Breeze and Tynetta Hare.	I did not

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000x2h1/top-of-the-pops-28021991

TOTP 06 DEC 1990

Posted on April 23, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally hit December 1990 here at TOTP Rewind and that can only mean one thing, the Xmas rush is on and I don’t just mean that scramble to find presents for family and friends – there is also the race for the Xmas No 1 to consider. This was definitely still a thing back then before it was hijacked and devalued by X Factor winners and latterly some bloke going on about sausage rolls every Yuletide. As such, the Top 40 is awash with new songs frantically looking for those all important sales that could make them a festive chart topper. As host Mark Goodier says at the top of the show “Tonight we may well see the song which is the Xmas No 1 so stay tuned”. Eyes down then (or should that be prick up your ears) as we find out who’s in the running…

…well surely not this lot?! Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood had been Top 10 in our charts with their single “I Can’t Stand It” just a couple of months prior to this but their chances of being the Xmas No 1 with a song that was just some more Eurodance pap were slim to non existent. The performance of their single “Are You Dreaming” here is….excruciating frankly.

The three lads in the group bounce on stage and start jive talking about dreams of cars, money and girls until one of them adopts the moral high ground when he interjects with “Yo wait a minute man, you better think about the world”. WTF?! What’s that supposed to mean? The world is a pretty big subject really don’t you think? Care to narrow it down a bit? Are we talking the environment here? Or politics? World peace maybe? What?! The whole thing reminds me of this image on Twitter that went viral a few years ago…

The rest of the song seems to be a jumble of influences and steals. The ‘oaah oh oh oh’ chant in the chorus is very similar to “Montego Bay” by Bobby Bloom (and later covered by Amazulu) whilst the lyrics seem to have stolen from Kajagoogoo (‘Eye to eye from you to me …eye to eye from me to you”) and there is a zeitgeist moment when an obligatory Vanilla Ice theme emerges (“(yeah) dreams can be very nice (yeah) Sometimes hot sometimes ice cold (yeah)”). Just pants. Get off!

“Are You Dreaming” peaked at No 17 – miles away from the Xmas No 1 title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c212wkz9ixk

Now this next song had a better chance of…ahem…pulling off a Xmas No 1 as it were (Fnarr! Fnarr!) although it would have been a controversial one. In its favour, it was by a genuine pop music heavyweight, a superstar of the genre in Madonna. Against its chances were its sexually provocative sound and lyrics. “Justify My Love” was one of two new songs released from Madge’s first ever Greatest Hits album “The Immaculate Collection” (the other was “Rescue Me” which I mentioned in the post for the previous week’s TOTP). Written with Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, the lyrics didn’t hold back and Madonna’s almost total delivery of them as a spoken word whisper created an almost threatening vibe to the song:

I want to run naked in a rainstorm
Make love in a train cross-country
You put this in me
So now what, so now what?

I don’t want to be your mother
I don’t want to be your sister either
I just want to be your lover
I want to be your baby
Kiss me, that’s right, kiss me

OK, OK steady on. We haven’t even got to the video yet! Ah yes, that video. Clearly the promo film that TOTP uses was not the official video for the single which was deemed far to explicit for pre-watershed broadcast so instead we got a compilation of scenes from her previous hits. To be fair, there did seem to be some attempt to co-ordinate the scenes chosen with the music (Madonna cavorting about in the waves from “Cherish” for example) but it was nothing compared to the banned video. Shot entirely in black and white, it had a European, art house feel to it and included imagery of sadomasochism, voyeurism and bisexuality alongside some actual (albeit brief) nudity, all designed to push back the barriers of what a pop promo could /should be. All very deliberate and yet designed to be defensible as well as controversial – Madonna would argue that all the women characters in her videos are sexually in control.

The film would be released as a stand alone video single (imagine that all you kids brought up on YouTube with instant access to anything ever recorded) and would sell over one million copies world wide. I certainly recall the Our Price I was working in stocking it and it being quite a big deal as it had an 18 certificate.

In a 1991 interview with Q magazine, Lenny Kravitz had this to say about “Justify My Love” and working with Madonna:

“I think it’s a classic of its type, like an old Donna Summer song. And I like Madonna a lot. She’s the best; the queen of what she does. She’s very articulate, elegant, and she has taste up the ass. It’s unbelievable.”

‘Taste up the ass’?! Oh give it a rest Lenny!

“Justify My Love” would peak at No 2 – close but no cigar Madge.

Oh this is just a great song and one that will always remind me of this time of my life. The Farm were already bona fide chart stars by this time courtesy of their previous Top 10 single “Groovy Train” but “All Together Now” completely sealed the deal. But this was more than just a chart hit, more than just a catchy pop song. Written about the unofficial truce in 1914 during WWI when British and German troops came out of the trenches to play football with each other for Christmas, it also combines a piece of classical music in its structure via its use of ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’ by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel. Once I realised this, Pachelbel would be my go to classical artist for those specialist music mornings that Our Price insisted upon during the week when I was first working there.

Going back to the lyrical subject matter, we were all now familiar with the truce story thanks to Paul McCartney’s “Pipes Of Peace” single but The Farm had actually beaten him to it in terms of writing a song about it when they recorded a very different version of the song (called “No Man’s Land”) for a Peel session back in 1983.

Fast forward 7 years and with Suggs of Madness as their producer, they returned to that Peel session track and turned it into “All Together Now”. It even had the brilliant fellow scouser Pete Wylie on backing vocals. What’s not to like?!

The song is very closely associated with football having been co-opted by many a team (including Everton FC) and to promote both the Euro 2004 and 2006 World Cup tournaments. Beyond that though, it has soundtracked charity work like Operation Shoebox which sends gifts in shoeboxes to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When lead singer Peter Hooton returned to his former school in Bootle, Merseyside in later life, the children there sang his song and read out WWI poetry. Like I said, more than just a pop song.

At one point, it looked like “All Together Now” with its unity and anti-war themes might have a genuine tilt at being the Xmas No 1 but would eventually run out of steam peaking at No 4. Perhaps the ultimate Xmas No 1 that never was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6q7RekP-mI

One of the biggest break out stars of the year next. Did MC Hammer have a serious shot at the Xmas No 1 spot? “Pray” was the third single to be lifted from his “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” album and after pinching from Rick James for “U Can’t Touch This” and the Chi-Lites for “Have You Seen Her”, this time Hammer picks the pocket of Prince for a prominent sample of “When Doves Cry”. I say pickpockets but Prince did actually authorise the use of the sample, the first in fact of just a handful that he would allow.

This was very much in the mould of “U Can’t Touch This” but I found it all a bit dull and repetitive. Repetitive? Yes, check out this piece of trivia I found on Wikipedia:

The word ‘pray’ is mentioned 147 times during the song, setting the record for the number of times a song title is repeated in an American Top 40 hit.

I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Reviewed in Smash Hits by no less a musical authority than Timmy Mallett, the annoying little git described it as ‘awful’ and a ‘messy noise’. Of course he couldn’t resist the open goal that was MC Hammer’s name:

“I think he’s got a great name though. MC Mallett would be even better than MC Hammer but I’m MC Mallett”.

Timmy Mallett there, the dickhead’s dickhead.

“Pray” was never a serious Xmas No 1 contender peaking just inside the Top 10 at No 8 although it was a No 2 record in the US.

And just like that the game was up. After correctly predicting that The Farm would have a Top 5 hit with “All Together Now” earlier, Mark Goodier amazingly managed to be right twice in the space of a few minutes as *spoiler alert* we do get to hear the Xmas No 1 for 1990 on this very show. Of course, it had to be Cliff Richard didn’t it? This was peak Cliff wins Xmas time. After securing the festive chart topper just two years before with “Mistletoe And Wine”, here he was again with another mawkish, horrible effort in “Saviour’s Day”. In some ways it was a hat trick of Xmas No 1s as he’s appeared on the Band Aid II record in 1989. If pressed, I would have to say it was marginally less annoying than “Mistletoe And Wine” but again, it would be a case of splitting arse hairs.

He’s, of course, backed a by a choir of extras including that bloke from Modern Romance (again) and can’t resist doing that weird arm waving thing he always does. The gaelic whistle bit (which sounds like an attempt to mimic Simple Minds take on Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” when they released “Belfast Child”) prompts Cliff to stand next to the whistle player and attempt to ‘play’ his microphone in the same way. Oh God, my eyes hurt. Also, what is he wearing? That silver jacket makes him resemble that Honey G woman who tried to convince us (and herself) that she was a rapper on X Factor a few years ago. This is just all kinds of wrong.

In the run up to the Xmas chart, a TV news crew (Granada?) visited our shop to talk to the people on the front line selling the records about who we thought would be the Xmas No 1. They interviewed the singles buyer who was Andy (another Our Price legend) who loved all the attention. He once just about pushed me out of the way to get to serve actress Barbara Knox who played Rita Fairclough in Coronation Street so he wasn’t going to miss out on this opportunity! Andy correctly predicted that Cliff would be the Xmas No 1 on account of the sales he would generate from appearing on The Des O’Connor Show. I so wish I could find the interview on line but despite extensive searching, I have turned up a blank.

TOTP were still sticking with the Top 5 albums feature that they had started in the Summer and so here are the best selling albums for November 1990:

Elton John – “The Very Best Of Elton John”

2. Phil Collins – “Serious Hits …Live!”

3. The Beautiful South – “Choke”

4. Paul Simon – “The Rhythm Of The Saints”

5. Madonna – “The Immaculate Collection”

A couple of things to note here. Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection” was already starting to show its huge sales potential and sure enough, it would end up being the best selling album of the whole year in the UK despite having only been released on Nov 9th.

Secondly, can anyone make sense of Mark Goodier’s comment here?

“No 1 artist album in November, Elton John The Very Best Of Elton John …a sort of greatest hits collection”

Yes, thanks Mark. An album called ‘The Very Best Of…’ really didn’t require the qualifying statement ‘a sort of greatest hits collection’!!

RIght, where are we up to with the Snap! single release schedule of 1990? One of the most dominant charts acts of the year were onto their fourth hit with the release of “Mary Had A Little Boy”. This was the last single to be lifted from their “World Power” album and was based around the ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ nursery rhyme but now I’m wondering if this track was specifically chosen as Xmas approached with one eye on a “Mary’s Boy Child” Boney M vibe. Maybe not.

This didn’t do anything for me and after a Megamix single early the next year had been and gone, I would have bet money that would have been the last we would have seen of Snap! but I hadn’t reckoned on rhythm being a dancer two years later.

Much like MC Hammer earlier, their run of Top 10 singles was maintained when “Mary Had A Little Boy” made it to No 8 but it was never going to seriously trouble Cliff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9e43sm1xMA

Right, if it’s 1990 then there must be a New Kids On The Block record in the charts and indeed there is. “This One’s For The Children” was their eighth (!) Top 10 hit of the year and was clearly aimed at the Xmas market being a track from their “Merry, Merry Christmas” album and all. It is also possibly the most saccharine, schmaltzy dollop of shite it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It’s as if “We Are The World”(hardly a lyrical masterpiece itself) had been re-written by a six year old. Look at these lyrics:

There are some people living in this world
They have no food to eat, they have no place to go

or these…

Many people are happy and many people are sad
Some people have many things that others can only wish they had

For the love of God! Actually, God does get a name check later:

This one’s for the children
May God keep them in His throne

Just unbearable.

They must have thought they had a genuine chance of being the Xmas No 1 with this but even Cliff would have baulked at this sentimental crap. “This One’s For The Children” peaked at No 9 and would see out not just 1990 but also T’KNOB’s imperial phase. They would never be as popular again. Phew!

After Goodier does a spoonerism in his Top 10 countdown when he says “Kinky Boots” is up 5 at No 9 (it’s the other way round Mark, up 9 at No 5), we get to Vanilla Ice who is not only still at No 1 but also “rapping totally live” in the studio! Would this have been a big deal back in the day? I think it might have been you know. Ice does a good job of performing “Ice Ice Baby” as well alongside his trio of backing dancers plus a DJ. Pretty nifty moves and rhymes. Right, I can’t be seen to be endorsing Vanilla Ice so to even it up, here is his atrocious rhyming message for all the readers of Smash Hits back then :

“Yo, this is Vanilla Ice, Just chillin’ like Bob Dylan, And maxin’ like Michael Jackson on Smash Hits Baby!”

Oof!

Still, Vanilla Ice looked a good bet for staying at No 1 until Xmas and he would prove to be Cliff’s stiffest competition. The race for that coveted spot would go right to the wire.

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

The play out video is “24 Hours” by Betty Boo and is surely the least remembered of her trio of hit singles in 1990. Nowhere near as good as either “Doin’ The Do” or “Where Are You Baby” it would stall at No 25. Betty’s profile didn’t take an immediate nose dive though as she was voted that year’s best British Breakthrough Act at the 1991 BRIT Awards. However, a lip-synching scandal whilst on tour in Australia combined with caring for her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer meant a pause would have to be inserted into her pop career, a pause from which she would never really recover as a recording artist.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Twenty Four Seven featuring Captain Hollywood	Are You Dreaming	Not dreaming, having a nightmare more like – no
2	Madonna	Justify My Love	No but I have that Immaculate Collection CD it’s included on
3	The Farm	All Together Now	I was sure I had but the singles box says no
4	MC Hammer	Pray	Nah
5	Cliff Richard	Saviour’s Day	Hell no!
6	Snap!	Mary Had A Little Boy	Nope
7	New Kids On The Block	This One’s For The Children	See 5 above
8	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
9	Betty Boo	24 Hours	No

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1q/top-of-the-pops-06121990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 02 AUG 1990

Posted on February 10, 2021 by 80stastic

Like a former Brosette dumping the Goss brothers and transferring her affections onto New Kids On The Block, we have left behind July 1990 and moved into August…and it’s sweltering! The day after this TOTP aired, the UK Summer heat wave peaked with a temperature of 37.1 °C! Apparently immune to the heat though is tonight’s presenter Bruno Brookes who felt the need for a shirt and jacket combo – madman. He does, however, promise us some ‘hot hits’ so let’s see what the little fella has got in store for us…

…well, never mind the heatwave, it’s the UK rock wave of 1990 that’s in full flow. After Thunder were on the show the other week, now we get their doppelgängers Little Angels with their new hit “She’s A Little Angel”. As far as I can ascertain, this seemed to be a stand alone single released between their albums “Don’t Prey For Me” and “Young Gods” although I think it has turned up on the latter album in subsequent re-releases. It was definitely the band’s second chart hit after “Radical Your Lover” made it to No 34 back in May.

Lead singer Toby Jepson does seem to be trying out his best Robert Plant impression in this performance. Drummer Michael Lee would go one better though by actually touring and performing with Plant after Little Angels split in 1994. As well as the aforementioned Thunder, we also had Gun on the show recently who seemed to me to also be a part of this early 90s UK rock movement and it was Jepson who would link all three bands by supporting Thunder in 2006 as a solo artist and then becoming Gun’s lead singer from 2008 to 2010. They should have just gone the Busted/McFly route who joined forces in 2013 as McBusted. What would that have made them? ‘Little Gunder’ maybe? Or ‘Gunder Angels’ even?

Little Angels would have their own season in the sun when their 1993 “Jam” album went to No 1 on the charts. I was working in Our Price Rochdale when that album came out and I bagged the promo copy of it that their record company had sent out to all stores to promote. Somehow it got lost in transit over the years whilst moving cities. I also caught the band doing a PA in HMV Manchester at this time; that makes it sound like I apprehended them doing an illegal set – they were meant to be there doing a PA! They were pretty good as I recall.

“She’s A Little Angel” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JzgHpd2dKg

Did somebody mention New Kids On The Block? Here are the pesky little blighters with their single “Tonight”. I’m not sure if the video below is the one that TOTP show which, as Bruno advises, seems to be clips of the group’s recent tour, but it is the official video. I know at least two people who like this song (my wife is one of them!) whilst I completely dismissed it as pop cack at the time. On listening to it 31 years later, I can at least hear what they were trying to do which is come up with a more mature sound than their previous efforts like “Hangin’ Tough” and “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”. They even reference their past chart life in the lyrics hoping to distance themselves from it by admitting its existence. Check these out:

Remember when we said “Girl, please don’t go”
And how I’d be loving you forever
Taught you ’bout hanging tough
As long as you’ve got the right stuff

And then they attempt to break with their past with the line:

Well I guess it’s a brand new day after all

Quite clever really – bit like breaking through a musical fourth wall. Well, sort of.

It wasn’t just the lyrics though, they were obviously trying out a new sound as well. I say ‘new’ sound but they were clearly borrowing heavily from a number of artists. The intro is pure “California Dreamin'” by The Mamas And The Papas, whilst there is more than a whiff of The Beatles circa “Magical Mystery Tour” and The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” era. Too much? How dare I compare The Beatles and The Beach Boys with T’KNOB? OK – it’s pushing it but you see where I’m coming from? No? OK – you win.

“Tonight” peaked at No 3.

A run of three hits we’ve seen previously on the show next beginning with LFO and “LFO”. OK, this is just weird. Not the track (although it is a bit too out there for my tastes) but this bit of trivia that I found online. Despite the existence of LFO who were from Leeds, from 1995 there was also an American band called LFO. They must have got away with the duplicate name as it stands for ‘Lyte Funkie Ones’ whilst their UK counterparts acronym stood for ‘Low Frequency Oscillation’ apparently. That’s not the weird bit though. This is…the US LFO released a version of “Step By Step” by New Kids On The Block! Yes, that lot that were just on! In fact, “Step By Step” was the single before “Tonight” that we’ve just seen. Here it is….

Despite being released seven years apart, the sprites of pop trivia have discharged their unknown powers to create a tenuous but valid link between acts on this 1990 TOTP. Saves me having to come up with something about LFO anyway.

“LFO” by LFO (the UK one) peaked at No 12.

After being a Breaker in last week’s show, Bell Biv Devoe are in the studio tonight to perform “Poison”. Also known as BBD (enough with the acronyms! – grammar editor), I would have said that this was by far the trio’s biggest hit in the UK but I was wrong. Apparently (and I must have missed this completely at the time despite working in record shops by then), they also appeared on the single “The Best Things in Life Are Free” by Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross. And I don’t mean they were in the studio that day and happened to join in on the backing vocals, they get a proper credit. The single cover includes the legend ‘with special guest BBD and Ralph Tresvant’. Hang on…Ralph Tresvant? Wasn’t he in New Edition alongside Mr Bell, Mr Biv and Mr DeVoe? Indeed he was. And I thought Gun, Little Angels and Thunder were a tight little friendship group!

Anyway, “The Best Things in Life Are Free” was a hit twice for Janet/Luther/BBD/Mr Tresvant – a No 2 in 1992 and a No 7 in 1995 when it was remixed thereby easily outperforming “Poison” which peaked at No 19.

More weirdness now as it’s that incongruous best selling albums of the month feature again. For the record, these were the top sellers in July 1990:

1. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

2. Luciano Pavarotti – “The Essential Pavarotti”

3. Rollings Stones – “Hot Rocks 1964–1971”

4. The Beach Boys – “Summer Dreams”

5. Madonna – “I’m Breathless”

Interesting that two of the Top 5 are essentially Best Ofs from legendary acts plus another one from a classical artist and that the other two albums are the latest offerings by established superstars. Where were all the new groups/bands/artists? Also, I note that TOTP finally play “Healing Hands” for the Elton clip after weeks of persisting with ‘Sacrifice”

And it’s one of those ‘established superstars’ that we stick with as we return to the singles chart as “Hanky Panky” by Madonna gets another spin. 1990 was not only the year that she starred in the Dick Tracy flick which this single was written for but she also embarked upon her Blonde Ambition World Tour. Said tour featured a Dick Tracy segment which, according to a Smash Hits review of the show, was the point at which most of the audience chose to nip out to the toilet. I’m kind of not surprised.

Despite its obvious and calculated attempt at outrage, “Hanky Panky” came across as too knowing and cartoon-ish to be truly pushing the barriers of decency for me. However, it did signpost the direction in which she would take her career from this point in. Her next single was “Justify My Love” with its sexually explicit promo video whilst her next studio album was the controversy courting “Erotica” and that coffee table book of adult content.

The first new single release of the decade from Prince next (well in the UK anyway) and it’s “Thieves In The Temple”. After his last project, the below par (it was to me at least) Batman soundtrack, Prince stays within the world of cinema with his next endeavour, the “Graffiti Bridge” project. Essentially a follow up to 1984’s Purple Rain, the film has been widely dissed since its release. I have to admit I’ve never seen it but given that it was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Prince), Worst Director (Prince), Worst Screenplay (Prince), and Worst New Star (Ingrid Chavez), I not in any hurry to seek it out. As for the film’s soundtrack album, it was critically well received but didn’t shift the units that he had in the past. It was often a title that would crop up in the Special Purchase section during my Our Price days – titles that there were massive overstocks of that specialist companies bought up cheap and then flogged back to record stores to sell at a discounted price. Actually, Prince’s last studio album “Lovesexy” was also a perennial Special Purchase title now I come to think of it.

“Thieves In The Temple” though was a pretty decent tune to my ears and was actually the final song recorded for the album and only added to the track listing at the last minute. I thought the metaphor of the title was clever and the chorus was catchy as opposed to “Batdance” which didn’t appear to have any sort of chorus at all. Although I didn’t buy the single, it was on the first Q Magazine album that I did purchase.

“Thieves In The Temple” peaked at No 7.

“It’s so hot” exclaims Bruno Brookes next as he insists on wearing his heavy looking jacket under studio lights. He subsequently describes the next act as “definitely the No 1 novelty record of the Summer so far”. Novelty record? Not sure about that to be honest. Was “Wash Your Face In My Sink” by Dream Warriors a novelty record? My friend Robin told me recently that when this was a hit, somebody he worked with down in that there London thought it was hysterical that there was a record in the charts whose title was innuendo for a specific sexual act! Robin was new in his job so didn’t know his colleague well and understandably didn’t want to explore the conversation any further so I have no idea which sexual act was being referred to. Every time I have since tried to imagine what it could be I have felt dirty and indeed in need of a wash in a sink.

In a Smash Hits article , King Lou of the band explained the song’s meaning as this:

“We took something as primitive as a washroom and we used the toilet being the dirty and the negative and the sink being the cleansed, the positive. Basically just picture the sink as being a rap book and the lyrics being the flow coming from the tap. It’s basically trying to say you can’t wash your negativity in my positivity. It goes really deep. It was originally to be called ‘Tablecloths and Napkins’.

I hope that clears it all up.

Well, well well. It’s the return of one of the biggest bands of the 80s next. Duran Duran had a hit in the 90s with a song that wasn’t “Ordinary World”? Yes they did. Their first hit of the new decade was something called “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” whatever that meant and was the lead single from their new album “Liberty”. The band had drawn a line under their first era by releasing Best Of album “Decade” at the end of ’89. If they’d envisioned that as a new start for the 90s, it didn’t begin well. They had a new line up for a start with guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Sterling Campbell having made the transition from session guys to fully blown band members. What would this change of dynamic do to the band? Secondly, did they still have any juice left in the creative tank to rebuild their career and do it all over again? Did they still have a market to appeal to? In short, were they still relevant?

Well, if I was any sort of measure, then the answer was no. Despite owning Duran Duran records in my days of early youth, “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” passed me by completely. A complete non-event. Could this have been because it didn’t actually receive that much airplay at the time? Not a good sign for a band on the comeback trail. Parent album “Liberty” debuted healthily enough inside the Top 10 but dropped out of the charts calamitously within a few short weeks. American magazine Trouser Press gave it this stinging review:

“The album is idiotic with lyrics that set new standards for pretensions gone out of bounds…”

Ouch! When I started at Our Price a few months later in 1990, I worked with a guy called Mark who had been a big Duran fan in his youth (well, he was a fellow Brummie) and he said that he’d bought “Liberty” out of band loyalty but never would do again so bad was it. He was done with them. Double ouch!

Retrospectively, even the band themselves slagged it off. Here’s Nick Rhodes in 2005 (from Steve Malins) Duran biography on “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)”:

“It wasn’t right, I didn’t really like it as a single”

Triple ouch!

In subsequent years, the band have mellowed to the album and there has been talk of them revisiting some of the songs and demos that never made the track listing cut but that period of the band’s career will never be more than a depressing footnote.

Listening to “Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)” today, it sounds very poppy and pretty flimsy. There’s really not much to it at all. Follow up single “Serious” (once described by singer Simon Le Bon as the band’s finest moment) didn’t even make the Top 40. It would be three long years before they would return to the charts again.

Those turtles are still at No 1 this week, or rather Partners In Kryme are with their single “Turtle Power”. Whilst this TOTP repeat aired last Friday evening a debate broke out online about the identity of the first hip hop track to make it to No 1 in the UK. Unbelievably, the following claim was made:

The only UK top 40 hit for Partners In Kryme, “Turtle Power” was also the UK's first hip hop number one. (Thanks to @JonnyWelly for pointing this out!) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 5, 2021

WTF?! That can’t be right can it?! I wasn’t the only one to dispute this statement as various contenders were nominated including Snap!, Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” and even a shout for “Under Pressure”. However, one track rang truer than all these with the watching public and after a quick poll, this was the official result:

Okay, let's sort this out democratically. First UK hip hop number one? VOTE NOW #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 5, 2021

Glad that’s sorted out then!

You wait all year for a dance act with an eponymously titled Top 40 hit to appear and then two turn up in the same show! After “LFO” by LFO earlier, here comes “Tricky Disco” by Tricky Disco. And as with LFO, Tricky Disco were also on the Sheffield record label Warp.

As you might have easily predicted, I wasn’t into this at all. Load of breaks, bass and bleeps nonsense. They added to their charge sheet with this piece of crap in 1995….

“Tricky Disco” by Tricky Disco peaked at No 14.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUnBHDTL79U

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Little Angels	She’s A Little Angel	Nope
2	New Kids On The Block	Tonight	No but I think my friend Rachel did
3	LFO	LFO	LF…NO
4	Bell, Biv Devoe	Poison	Negative
5	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
6	Prince	Thieves In The Temple	No but it was on that Q Magazine compilation I bought
7	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
8	Duran Duran	Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)	Nah – I’d given up on them by this point
9	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This is a crime…against music. No
10	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disco	Tricky Disc-NO

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rxph/top-of-the-pops-02081990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, Italia ’90 may have come to a painful end a couple of weeks prior but the England football team were still in the news as three days before this TOTP aired, Graham Taylor was appointed full time manager of the national team following the pre-planned resignation of Bobby Robson. It wasn’t a universally welcome appointment and within three years and after a dismal Euro ’92 performance and failure to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, Taylor also resigned. The now infamous Channel 4 fly on the wall documentary film surrounding the doomed ’94 qualifying campaign originally broadcast as Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job is now, sadly for Taylor, the best remembered part of his legacy including the immortal line “Do I Not Like That”.

What’s all this got to do with TOTP? Very little although Taylor does, of course, have some legendary ties to music. Firstly, there is his relationship with Elton John (more of whom later) as Watford FC manager to Elton’s club chairman. Secondly, Taylor once admitted that his favourite ever singer was Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, an odd choice for a man who was only a one year old child when the war ended but then he was very much seen as an old fashioned type of gentleman. Funny then that he always seemed to be swearing his head off in that documentary…

Finally, and most bizarrely, I found this musical connection on YouTube. Apologies in advance…

My own personal Graham Taylor moment of 1990 came when I walked past his office door when he was still manager of Aston Villa (prior to his taking the England job). I’d contacted the football club as I was unemployed and desperate for some sort of career direction at the time. I had a chat with their commercial manager about possible career opportunities within football and his office was a couple of doors down from Graham’s.

If you clicked on this post hoping for some 1990 music memories and are wondering why you have been reading about football for the past 450 odd words, stick with me. I’m going there right now. OK, tonight’s host is Mark Goodier who has come dressed as a zebra and the first act on are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. They are up to the No 2 position and are eyeing a possible No 1 – they couldn’t could they? Well, *spoiler alert* no they didn’t but fair play, it was a gallant effort. He even got on the front cover of Smash Hits!

Craig and co are in the actual studio for the first time and he gets to show off his guitar playing credentials (or at least mime them) and they seem pretty convincing. In that Smash Hits article, he showed off his collection of guitars including the one he has with him on stage here. It’s not his most precious axe in his collection though which is an original series Ibanez Iceman made famous by KISS guitarist Paul Stanley who had a signature Iceman.

For all his rock credentials though, Craig was unable to forge a lasting music career despite a Top 10 album and halfway decent follow up single in “Amanda”. And whatever you may say about his cover of “Mona”, you have to admit it’s quite the ear worm.

Next up, the reason that poor old Craig failed to get that No 1 spot as it was stolen from under his nose by Partners In Kryme and their awful single “Turtle Power”. This was of course to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise entry into the world of film. This tale of four turtles turned into crime fighting, pizza eating heroes after being exposed to radioactive sewer ooze had been around for a couple of years via the animated cartoon (retitled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for the more delicately natured UK audience). With turtle related merchandising also coming on line, the step into the big screen was inevitable. The film didn’t hit UK cinemas until late November but as it was already out in the US, the soundtrack was available well in advance. According to Wikipedia:

‘The collection is made up mostly of hip-hop and new jack swing styled tracks with several film score cues at the end.’

The film score bits were courtesy of John Du Prez who was the bald trumpet player in Modern Romance (no really) whilst the hip -hop was supplied by flavour of the month MC Hammer and some acts I’ve never heard of including Riff and the unedifyingly named Spunkadelic. And of course Partners In Kryme. This American duo from New York City seem to have existed solely to make music for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. According to their discography, they have only ever released three singles – “Turtle Power” and “Undercover” in 1990 and a track called “Rock The Halfshell” on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles YouTube channel in 2015. They never released a full length album and the only other recorded material I can find accredited to them is a version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” retitled “Love 2 Love U” which appeared on another soundtrack album, this time for the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool As Ice. This film was so bad that it was nominated for eleven Golden Raspberry awards and was disowned by director David Kellogg. Sadly for us all, the time of Vanilla Ice is nearly upon us.

For the moment though, we only have Partners In Kryme to negotiate. This always seemed like a novelty record to me; I felt much the same about “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jnr. The lyrics do make some very specific references to the film and its characters which suggests a close connection to its source material (unlike say “World In Motion” whose football links are pretty loose). However, if you go down that route, make sure you get it right. Exhibit A m’lud:

“Splinter’s the teacher so they are the students.
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team
with one other fellow, Raphael.
He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop”

Now I’m no turtles expert (pretty sure I’ve never seen any of the films or cartoon) but Wikipedia assures me that it’s Leonardo who is the leader of the group, not Raphael. Sometimes you do have to sweat the small stuff.

A recurring feature of these 1990 TOTP repeats is that they’re throwing up lots of hits that I have no recollection of at all. Here’s another one – the DJ Phil Chill remix of “I’m Still Waiting” by Diana Ross. As to why this was released or indeed why Motown thought we needed a nasty, dull, plodding dance remix of this song, I have zero clue. It really is one of the worst remixes I’ve heard for a long time.

Fast forward three years to 1993 and I am working as Assistant Manager for Our Price in the Altrincham branch in Cheshire. EMI have issued a Diana Ross Best of for the Xmas market called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which is selling pretty well (it went 4 x platinum in the UK). There is a problem though. All the other musical outlets in Altrincham are selling the CD format of the album at £9.99 whilst our price point is holding at £11.99. Myself and the store manager, fearing we would never sell our considerable stocks of the album, therefore hatched a plan that we should price match our competitors which was completely against company policy and an action that was not within our remit at all. The plan worked and the CD was flying off the shelves and into our ringing tills …until the Area Manager descended upon the store for his Xmas ‘mince pie’ visit when he would come and ‘help’ out the staff by serving some customers. We all hated the ‘mince pie’ visits as inevitably the Area Manager would be more of an hinderance than a help as he didn’t know where anything was. Worse than that though, he might discover our unofficial Diana Ross price slash. As he began to serve in the shop, myself and the store manager desperately joined him to try and spot any customers in the queue that had the Diana Ross CD in their hands so as to head them off at the pass as it were before the Area Manager got a chance to serve them and discover our little plot. We must have looked completely hyper and preoccupied as we whittled down the queue of customers, all the while jumping in front of him should anybody approach the counter to purchase Ms Ross. Our efforts were rewarded though and he left without sussing anything untoward was occurring.

For the record, the original and vastly superior version of “I’m Still Waiting” was a No 1 record in 1970 whilst Phil Chill’s unwanted 1990 remix stalled at No 21 and it certainly was not on that Diana Ross Best Of that caused me so much anxiety.

A second appearance now for a song that only made it to No 27! Seems like a lot of exposure for such underwhelming sales. I’m pretty sure that this is just the original performance of “She Comes In The Fall” by Inspiral Carpets that was originally broadcast a couple of weeks previous. My suspicions are confirmed by @TOTPFacts:

This Inspiral Carpets performance (a repeat) was recorded the night England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

There’s more to this story though:

Guitarist Graham Lambert: "We watched the game in the BBC bar. We saw Jimmy Hill after the game, and with him we re-enacted the penalty shoot-out in the Blue Peter garden." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

The Blue Peter garden! A fixture of the show since 1974, it was infamously trashed in 1983 supposedly by a gang that included teenage future footballers Dennis Wise and Les Ferdinand! I’ve never heard any stories about Jimmy and the Carpet boys damaging the garden thereby debunking the rock stars trashing hotel rooms template. I bet the band also tidied their hotel rooms before checking out on time whenever on tour. My friend Robin,who worked for the BBC for many years, told me recently that the Blue Peter garden is actually much smaller than it seems on screen which is very nearly a metaphor for the chart fortunes of “She Comes In The Fall”.

Host Mark Goodier goes into a weird segue next when he bangs on about how ‘trendy’ the show is! Remember when ‘trendy’ was a word we all used? Nowadays it’s all ‘on point’ or ‘cutting edge’ and the only reference to the word trend is when something trends on Twitter. Surely Goodier can’t be referring to himself in that two tone outfit of his? To be fair though, the girl in the James T-shirt would definitely have been ‘on point’ back then.

And he surely can’t mean the next act who is Paul Young. I’d almost forgotten this period of Paul’s career. He’d seemed consigned to history back in 1986 when his third album “Between Two Fires” and its attendant singles didn’t pull up the expected trees commercially. Somehow though, even in the dance obsessed charts of the early 90s, he pulled off a comeback of sorts. His “Other Voices” album spawned two hit singles in “Softly Whispering I Love You” and this one, a cover (well it is Paul Young!) of the old Chi-Lites number “Oh Girl”.

Paul does seem every inch the chart anomaly here, a position emphasised by his lime green shirt and jacket and his white trousers. At least he seems to have sorted his hair out a bit since his last appearance on the show when frankly his barnet was a right mess. As for the song, it’s all very pleasant and that but even Goodier seems to damn him with faint praise at the end when he sums it all up by pronouncing “It’s a good song well sung”

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

Some pop puppets next. No, not New Kids On The Block but F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go!”. What a curious hit this was. I’m not quite sure what demographic it was appealing to but enough punters bought it to send it rocketing all the way to No 5. The framing of the Parker character as a DJ is its selling point I think. Certainly the video would not have been half as effective without the MC Parker bits inserted strategically.

Ever wondered what F.A.B. stands for though? Here’s head of the Thunderbirds operation Geoff Tracy…

…so nothing essentially. Just a clipping of the word ‘fabulous’. Other theories abound of course including ‘For Always Brothers’ as in the Tracy brothers presumably and also ‘Fully Acknowledged Broadcast’. Given that it doesn’t actually stand for anything, it was sure used a lot in the series…

Cripes! It’s that Madonna song! Yes, it’s time for some “Hanky Panky” people! An ode to sadomasochistic tendencies or just a bit of a laugh? Well, what’s for certain is that it was the follow up to her No 1 “Vogue” and it nearly repeated the trick by peaking at No 2 in the UK (though it only made No 10 in the US). This performance of it is from Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and clearly gets in a bit of promotion for the Dick Tracy film in which she starred with the inclusion of a male dancer dressed as Dick towards the end of the routine.

Inevitably, the song attracted its fair share of controversy especially in Ireland where two women’s organisations accused Madonna of glorifying violence against women, specifically on the line “I’ll settle for the back of your hand”. Madonna played down the accusations stating that of course it wasn’t her saying that she liked to be spanked but rather her character in the movie Breathless Mahoney. And if you think that’s enough controversy for one year, think again. The next 1990 Madonna single is “Justify My Love” – hold onto your crotches!

Now here’s an interesting tune. DreamWarriors were a Canadian hip hop duo who briefly found success and fame with a couple of hit singles the first of which was “Wash Your Face In My Sink”. Can it really have been a complaint about someone using their sink and leaving a ring around the basin?! Online commentaries suggest it is about setting boundaries around behaviour in relationships although we must have all have shared houses/ flats with people who don’t seem to share the same standards of hygiene that we pride ourselves as having surely?

As I’ve made clear many times before, I’m not a massive hip-hop fan, but this little eccentricity always appealed to me. “Wash Your Face In My Sink” peaked at No 16.

It’s the final week of five at the top for Elton John and, to quote Captain Sensible, ain’t I glad?! I think I’m right in saying that not once in all that time did TOTP play the other song of the double A-side that was “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” so here it is…

…hmm…well, I prefer it to the gigantic turd that is “Sacrifice” but it’s hardly up there in Elton’s canon of work as anywhere near approaching his best. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get that much airplay (certainly not on the radio stations I was listening to) back then either with “Sacrifice” taking the lion’s share making it altogether quite the forgotten No 1 song – a ghost No 1 if you will, standing there in plain sight but never seen. Not a phenomenon with a large members list I would suspect – I can only think of Billy Bragg’s version of The Beatles ‘She’s Leaving Home’ which was the almost completely ignored other A-side to Wet Wet Wet’s Childline No 1 “With A little Help From My Friends”.

I was aware that Paula Abdul had a song called “Knocked Out” but I could not have told you what on earth it sounded like. I would also have said that it never made the Top 40. I was both right and wrong. It was released three times in the UK before becoming a hit. It was actually Paula’s debut single back in September 1988 but bombed completely at No 98. However, following the success of “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl”, it was reissued and peaked at No 41 in August 1989. It finally made the Top 40 on its third release albeit that it required a Shep Pettibone remix to do the trick. They say trouble comes in threes and this single certainly wasn’t worth all that trouble to be honest.

The Shep Pettibone remix of “Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
2	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This was a crime…against music. No
3	Diana Ross	I’m Still Waiting Phil Chill 1990 remix	And I’m still waiting for an explanation for this dire record’s existence
4	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
5	Paul Young	Oh Girl	Oh no
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
8	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
9	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
10	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	No

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rpmn/top-of-the-pops-19071990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 03 MAY 1990

Posted on December 11, 2020 by 80stastic

Can you remember a time before the word ‘Brexit’ even existed? A time when the UK wasn’t being torn apart by rival factions concerning our relationship with Europe? A time even when we didn’t always completely fall on our arses when it came to the Eurovision Song Contest? For yes, that time did used to exist when we were routinely amongst the favourites to win the competition before every other country hated us and gave us a paltry points score (or in the case of Jemini in 2003 the dreaded ‘nul points’). As we reach May in these BBC4 1990 TOTP repeats, Eurovision rears its head again and the final in this year took place on the Saturday after this show was broadcast. We had come 2nd in the previous two years and had only finished out of the Top 10 once in the previous decade which also included an actual win in 1981 courtesy of Bucks Fizz and those mini skirts. Fast forward nine years and our entry is from a 15 year old Welsh school girl but more of her later.

For now, we start with ….Simon Mayo’s shorts and knees! What was he thinking?! In recent weeks we’ve had Jakki Brambles in big Winter coats (twice) clearly freezing, Mark Goodier complaining about being too hot whilst being dressed in full jacket, shirt and tie combo and now this! Most off putting. The first act that the be-shorted Mayo introduces is Sinitta with “Hitchin’ A Ride” who adds some more confusion to this issue about the temperature in the TOTP studio. Without wishing to sound like a perv, I can’t help but notice that Sinitta gives the impression it was not that warm in the studio that day (despite Mayo’s choice of outfit) judging by the…well…’stunt nipples’ that she is sporting. What’s that? What about the music? Oh, well..erm…well, this single was taken from her “Wicked” album which was given the Cherry Pop super deluxe re-issue treatment which was well received judging by some of the Amazon customer reviews of it. Check out this one from a very happy fan:

One of the best pure-pop albums of all time, in my opinion. Not one bad track on it. You won’t be disappointed if you buy this!!

Alternatively, we have this via someone who goes by the username of Too Shy:

Please avoid this, its far too cheesy and friends who examine your record collection while you nip up to the bathroom will be gone by the time you return if they find it.

By the way, I didn’t include that review because of the use of the word ‘nip’ in it just to carry on the subject of Sinitta’s chest! I didn’t! I used it as it reminded me of something that a guy called Pete who I used to work with said to me once. Pete was the original bass player in The Stone Roses and a cool as f**k but he did once say this which I found quite remarkable. The scenario he outlined was that if he was to meet the woman of his dreams who was compatible with him in every single way and he would gladly spend the rest of his life with her, if he found a Phil Collins CD in her collection he’d be out of there in a heartbeat and wouldn’t look back. Not sure what his views on Sinitta were though.

“Hitchin’ A Ride” peaked at No 24.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_tFlv6k_Bk

A new track incoming from Soul II Soul with their latest single “A Dream’s a Dream“. The second single from their sophomore album “Vol. II: 1990 – A New Decade”, I wasn’t sure that I knew how this one went until hearing it again but the “I can see, I can see…right through you” refrain does ring a bell. Why are we getting the video and not a studio performance from the band? Well, in a Smash Hits interview in this year, main man Jazzie B made some cryptic comments about the show and the BBC in general that suggested that he wasn’t completely OK with the corporation. When asked if he ever disagrees with his mother, he replied:

“She’ll say things like ‘Why won’t you go on Top Of The Pops‘? I have to show her that it’s badness to explain what you’re dealing with…”

When asked if he would ever be on Top Of The Pops again, he replied:

“I don’t know. Maybe if it weren’t the BBC. I can’t really say. I can’t be damaging my career. It’s existed for many years and has helped many people but it’s for pop star isn’t it?”

Hmm. Something definitely not quite right there I think.

As for “A Dream’s a Dream”, it did a good job of consolidating the band’s success and profile and paving the way for the release of that second album a couple of weeks later by going to No 6 in the charts.

A highlight of the rock year next, well at least that’s what Simon Mayo says in his intro, as we get the new single by Morrissey. I’m not sure that Mozza enjoys such reverence these days on account of him having turned into a right arse but back in 1990, I guess he was still worthy of discussion. One thing you’d have to say about Morrissey is that he did have intriguing song titles. “November Spawned A Monster” certainly fell into that category for me. What was it about? Here’s Moz himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"It's about a person who's confined to a wheelchair, who can't make much sense of her life, and whose only ambition is to walk down the road in clothes she personally went out and chose and bought herself. And that is as far as her ambitions can stretch." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

Apparently the song sparked some criticism of Morrissey who was accused of ridiculing the disabled (the titular ‘monster’) but I’m not convinced that was his intention at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA_WT4aIaQY

With Eurovision having been imminent when he gave this performance, I can’t not mention Mozza’s own little footnote in the song contest’s history. Back in 2007, heavy rumours circulated that he was in negotiations with the BBC to be that year’s UK entry. Apparently, he had been appalled that the previous year’s UK act who had finished in 19th place. Sadly, it was never meant to be although Morrissey had been serious about taking part supposedly. And for anyone thinking I’m making all this up…. look, it was even reported on the news…

Some “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” next courtesy of Adventures Of Stevie V. I haven’t got much more to say about this one other than Stevie V (real name Stephen Vincent) once described the rave experience as

“…it’s like on the telly when you see the Queen coming out onto the balcony and everyone’s cheerin’ and feeling really brilliant. It’s that sort of crack, except with music.”

And there was me wondering in my middle age if I’d missed out by never having attended a rave. As a firm republican, if that’s what it was all about, blow that for a game of soldiers.

“Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” peaked at No 2.

Three Breakers now and we start with En Vogue. Now, whilst no sort of expert, I thought I had a pop quiz passable knowledge of these ladies in that I can name more than one of their singles but having read up about them, they’re like a singing and dancing eight-legged soap opera that I knew nothing about. Their conveyor belt of line up changes makes The Sugababes look like a model of consistency and longevity. Check this out:

Original members are: Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones
1997: Dawn Robinson leaves
2001: Maxine Jones leaves and Amanda Cole joins
2003: Amanda Cole leaves and Rhona Bennett joins
2005: The original members briefly reform before disbanding again
2009: The original members reform again for their “En Vogue: 20th Anniversary” tour
2011: Dawn Robinson and Maxine Jones leave again while Rhona Bennett rejoins

Confused? You will be…we haven’t even got onto the lawsuits yet! When Maxine Jones and Dawn Robinson left the band for the second time in 2011, they joined forces, added a new singer and hatched plans to record and tour under the name Heirs To The Throne. Then Robinson decided to leave before that got off the ground so Jones got in another singer to replace her and went on the road under the name of En Vogue To The Max (see what she did there?). At which point, the inevitable lawsuit was filed by original members Cindy Herron and Terry Ellis (who were still touring as a duo under the name of En Vogue) against Jones for unauthorized use of the band’s name. The judge ruled in Herron and Ellis’s favour. And we thought that the legal fight for the right to own the name Bucks Fizz was a saga!

Anyway, back in happier times, the original line up are here with their debut single “Hold On” which would got to No 5 in the UK and No 2 in the US. Put together by songwriting duo Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, they were originally conceived as following in the tradition of some of the celebrated 60s girl groups like The Supremes but without any of the members being the designated star. It was to be a democratic unit in which every member would qualify to take the lead vocals on any given number. Yeah, looking at those multiple line up changes, I’m not sure if that ever worked out.

The return of Billy Idol now who was last seen in the UK Top 40 in 1987. “Cradle Of Love” was the lead single from his “Charmed Life” album and was a massive hit in the US only being kept off the No 1 spot by Mariah Carey. We were less interested back in blighty and the single stumbled to a No 34 peak. I’m not surprised – it sounds completely uninspired to my ears; in fact its sounds like a dodgy rewrite of his 1986 hit “To Be A Lover” – lots of rawk ‘n’ roll growling but very little in the way of a tune.

Never mind what it sounded like though, what the hell was going on in that video?! Well, the song was based around the saying ‘robbing the cradle’ meaning sexual relationships between the individuals where there is a large age gap. The video director obviously took the song’s meaning to heart and came up with a Lolita style plot line. It all looks decidedly creepy viewed in 2020 but back in 1990, TOTP seemed fine with showing it. Billy himself appears in the video only in the background as he had suffered a significant injuries back in February of this year following a motorcycle accident. It didn’t stop him touring to promote the album though against his doctor’s wishes. His injuries curtailed his role in the Oliver Stone The Doors biopic so to make up for this, he released a cover of The Doors “L.A. Woman” as his next single. Nobody was interested in that at all though.

Ah man, it’s Michael Bolton again! Look, I have no intention of reliving my Bolton live concert story every time he’s featured in these TOTP repeats so I’m going to just ignore it. It’s there in all its gory glory in a previous post if you want to read all about it.

“How Can We Be Lovers” was the follow up to his No 3 hit “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. Listening back to it now, it sounds like it could be a Rocky theme tune performed by Survivor. Either that or a Belinda Carlisle B-side. At least it had more of a punch to it than its wimpy predecessor but that’s as positive as I can get about it. I was surprised to learn that it had been such a big hit over here (No 10). No doubt Bolton would have performed it when I saw him live three years later and …oh shit! I wasn’t going to go there again was I?!

These songs that I can’t recall at all are coming thick and fast now. BBG (or Big Boss Groove even) anyone? “Snappiness” was their hit but I’ve got nothing about them in the old memory banks at all.

*checks internet*

Not much there either. What I did discover is that “Snappiness” is basically the (featured earlier) Soul II Soul’s track “Happiness” with some added vocals courtesy of singer Dina Taylor. Also I found out that BBG’s main man Tony Newland wasn’t keen on giving any royalties from his hit to Jazzie B although he did admit that Soul II Soul were one of the “best things to happen to British dance music in years”. Oh well, I’m sure some grovelling compliments would have been enough to assuage Jazzie – pay him what you owe him you cheapskate!

“Snappiness” peaked at No 28.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wQ-xoKqwGk

Another airing for “Tattooed Millionaire” by Bruce Dickinson next. Not only is Bruce the lead singer with Iron Maiden, not only is he a qualified commercial pilot, not only is he an international level fencer, he is also a published author! I had no idea until I researched him. He wrote a book called The Adventures Of Lord Iffy Boatrace which was published the same month as this TOTP was broadcast back in 1990. What is it about? Here’s the synopsis from its Amazon listing:

Lord Iffy Boatrace invited some of the Old Boys for a holiday with a difference. But even he, with his penchant for fishnet stockings and stiletto heels, is stunned by the antics of his guests – to say nothing of the Butler who invented the ultimate sex machine.

Ah…erm…well. That sounds erm…f*****g horrible. Judging by its Amazon reviews though, the people that bought it loved it. Dickinson wrote a sequel two years later. Its title? The Missionary Position: the Further Advances of Lord Iffy Boatrace.

Hang on though Bruce. How do you write something like that and then also write a song “Tattooed Millionaire” that supposedly criticises the excesses and bad behaviour of the ‘rock star’ scene? Here’s Bruce himself discussing what the song is about courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Bruce Dickinson: "'Tattooed millionaire' is a whole area that I just see as a big festering, open sore on the arsehole of mankind, in terms of music. Because the whole vibe about that scene is it's nothing to do with music…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

"It's nothing to do with being real. It's to do with some bullshit attitude… 'Yeah, we want to ride around in limos. We want to get chicks, man.' I've seen the archetypal tattooed millionaires screwing some 'chick' outside the tour bus, on the sidewalk." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

"What's this guy trying to prove? That's not even setting a good example to yourself. It's just garbage – I don't respect that." (Somewhere, Motley Crue's ears are burning…) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

Bruce seems quite conflicted in his values I would suggest. Bruce is also a prominent Brexiteer. I’ll just leave that last sentence there without further comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7apiYkLf0w

TOTP presenter in correct prediction shocker! After years of Radio 1 DJs pontificating about which record on on the show would go to No 1 and getting it spectacularly wrong, here’s Simon Mayo actually getting one right! Adamski (and not forgetting Seal) will be top of the charts next week with “Killer”. In every TOTP appearance so far though, the presenter has forgotten about Seal and refers just to Adamski in their intro (as Simon Mayo does here). Was it on the insistence of the record label? It seems grossly unfair on reflection. Seal is certainly the visual focus point of the performance while Admaski…well…jigs about a bit whilst twiddling on his keyboards. Maybe he should have gone the Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys route who made standing still an art form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-j95oroF0

I’m not sure about the woman in the background either. She looks like she’s limbering up for a ballet class. She should have gone the Tales Of The Unexpected route…

As the camera pans back to Mayo at the end of “Killer”, what the f**k is he doing? Is he trying to replicate the ballet dancer woman’s moves? After giving you credit for a correct chart prediction Simon, I now have to rescind it for that embarrassing display.

Right, onwards and upwards to the No 1 which is still Madonna with “Vogue”. It’s the fourth and final week for her at the top which is a pretty good run. In my head, the parent album “I’m Breathless” didn’t perform so well but on examination of its figures, it did OK. It went to No 2 in the album chart, was certified double platinum for achieving 600,000 sales in the UK and has sold 7 million copies worldwide. However, all of that looks pretty pedestrian when compared to how her next release performed when released at the close of 1990. Her first (and possibly still the best I would argue) greatest hits album “The Immaculate Collection” would go on to sell 31 million copies worldwide making it the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist ever!

Right then, back to where we started from – no not with Sinitta (although she was technically the first act on the show tonight and did release a single called “Right Back Where We Started From”!). No, back to the Eurovision Song Contest of course! Our entry this year was from Emma who performed a song called “Give A Little Love Back To The World”. Mayo is back on the prediction game confidently forecasting a victory for Emma and thereby returning to the familiar TOTP presenter pattern of getting such things completely wrong. Emma would trail in sixth which would be more than respectable in current times but probably seemed a bit disappointing back in 1990. This was her performance that night….

The contest was actually won by Italy whose Toto Cutugno was aged 46 years and 302 days at the time of his victory, making him the oldest winner of the contest to date. He held the record until 2001. This was in stark contrast to Emma who, as Terry Wogan advises in the clip above, was the UK’s youngest ever contestant at the age of 15. Want to hear the winning song? OK then….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b5whZydVZc

When he was announced as the winner, Toto Cutugno splashed water on his face and hair which caused his hair dye to run! Thirty years later, this ‘look’ was replicated by Rudy Guiliani….

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdCNyX5enB4

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Sinitta	Hitchin’ A Ride	Shittin’ a turd more like – no
2	Soull II Soul	A Dream’s A Dream	Nope
3	Morrissey	November Spawned A Monster	Sorry Mozza – it’s a no
4	Adventures of Stevie V	Dirty Cash (Money Talks)	Not for me thanks
5	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
6	Billy Idol	Cradle Of Love	No but it’s on his Greatest Hits CD that I own. Gulp!
7	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
8	BBG	Snappiness	Negative
9	Bruce Dickinson	Tattooed Millionaire	And no
10	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my copy of that Immaculate Collection CD
12	Emma	Give A Little Love Back To The World	Of course not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pz18/top-of-the-pops-03051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 26 APR 1990

Posted on December 8, 2020 by 80stastic

Welcome to the UK in late April 1990. We’ve just had the poll tax riots, the Strangeways prison revolt and in politics, Labour now have a 23-point lead over the Conservatives in the latest MORI poll – however, it would count for little when the next General Election rolled around in 1992 with the Tories winning a reduced but overall majority. Musically, we are in the grip of dance music and in particular ‘rave’ culture with massive gatherings taking place in fields and warehouses around the country. The 80s and its pop stars seems like a long time ago with the likes of Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Culture Club all either defunct, missing in action or struggling to remain relevant. Indeed, the day after this TOTPM aired, The Krays film opened in UK cinemas starring Spandau’s Kemp brothers as the notorious East End gangsters – being pop stars was no longer on their agenda it seemed.

So who were the pop stars of the day who had come in to replace those icons of yesteryear? Let’s find out shall we?….

…for f***’s sake! Well, the opening act tonight are not pop stars at all but Capital FM DJs blurring the divisions between presenters and performers by rebranding themselves as a bona fide chart act…it can only be Pat & Mick who are back with their rendition of “Use It Up And Wear It Out”. Look I know it was all for charity but this was just all levels of wrong. Having tormented us with “Let’s All Chant” in 1988 and “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet” in 1989, they didn’t see fit to leave the whole sorry debacle in the 80s but carried on into the new decade with their version of the old Odyssey hit.

I actually watched this repeat back with my wife which doesn’t usually happen and our reactions were to it were quite the contrast. I was appalled and sat there on the sofa picking massive lumps out of it while she freely admitted that she probably danced to this back in the day! While I guffawed at the atrocious dancing on display not only by Pat & Mick but also by the studio audience members, she said she thought some of the moves on display were pretty good! Whaat?! OK there are a few things to unpack here. Firstly, why were the dancers in the background TOTP audience members and not ‘proper’ dancers in the first place? Was it to create a more realistic party atmosphere? Secondly, what instructions were they given about dance moves by the producers? Just do your own thing but keep it clean? Thirdly, what was the girl on the extreme right of screen on?! Check out her mad, arm waving moves! She’s lost in a world of her own. Even Mick gives her a concerned look at one point. Oh yes, Pat & Mick themselves – why was Mick wearing a suit while Pat was sporting some sort of faux Adam Ant military jacket? Why does Pat jump when he mimes the word ‘shake’? Surely he should …erm…shake at that point? Why has Pat still got that ridiculous mullet hair into the 90s? Why….oh just…why? Why? Why ? WHY?

When I googled Pat & Mick, one of the suggested other questions that people ask was ‘What is the meaning of Pat and Mick?’ Well, I couldn’t agree more – what is the meaning of them? However, when I clicked on the link I discovered that ‘Pat & Mick’ is also Cockney rhyming slang meaning ‘sick’ or ‘out of commission due to being unwell’. Excellent! Couldn’t be more appropriate as having to watch those two berks again has made me feel proper poorly!

“Use It Up And Wear It Out” peaked at No 22 and thankfully was the last of their chart hits.

Having mentioned The Krays film above, we now find a song from another film that was out this year . “Wild Women Do” by Natalie Cole was, of course, on the soundtrack to Pretty Woman which the third highest-grossing film worldwide in 1990. This Disney re-telling of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts proved irresistible to cinema goers as did its soundtrack which went double platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. As well as Natalie’s track, it included the career-rejuvenating hit “King of Wishful Thinking” by Go West, the career-making single “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette and the career-retrospective remix hit “Fame 90” by David Bowie that featured on a recent TOTP repeat.

Up against those mega-selling hits, “Wild Women Do” kind of got lost in the mix a little. Indeed, it was only a No 34 hit in the US (whilst a slightly more respectable No 16 over here). It’s actually used in the film itself in the scenes where Vivian goes window shopping in Beverly Hills….

It didn’t really register on my radar as something I should be concerned with I have to say although I did catch the film at the cinema. I recall Gere also had another film out simultaneously called Internal Affairs where he played a very different character indeed to his Pretty Woman counterpart. Worth searching out that film in my humble opinion while we’re all stuck in our houses over Xmas.

I have no memory at all of this next act although my wife reckons she remembers them. Unique 3 anyone? Oh hold on, did they also do that “Cantaloop” hit? No, no they didn’t – that was Us3 it seems. Unique 3 were from Bradford and, despite my lack of memory of them, are actually regarded as ground breaking in the field of UK hip-hop by those in the know (not me then obviously). Cited by the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Coldcut and Goldie, “Musical Melody” was their only Top 40 hit but hey were massive on the club scene (it says here) paving the way for the Jungle, Drum & Bass and Nu-Skool Breaks scene (I have no idea what that last one is). It sounds a bit like Dream Warriors of “Wash Your Face In My Sink” and “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” to my uncultured ears both of which I quite liked. Maybe I’m more dope than I realised!

“Musical Melody” peaked at No 29.

Bruno followed Pat Sharp’s lead with a military style look for tonight’s show

Time for some moronic behaviour from tonight’s host Bruno Brookes next as he tries to sound hip by saying “Yo! Unique 3 y’all” whilst perfecting an impression of Napoleon Bonaparte by having one arm inserted inside his jacket. WTF?!

When he finally does get on with introducing the next act, it’s Paula Abdul with her hit “Opposites Attract”. I couldn’t really be doing with this to be honest – the song was pretty unremarkable and then there was the pratting about with that cartoon cat in the video. I can imagine a conversation in the record label boardroom going something like this:

Label exec: “Look, we need to squeeze every last drop of sales out of the album so we’re going for one final, sixth (!) single but how do we market it?”. What’s popular right now?”

Marketing guy: “How about we get Paula to sing and dance with a cartoon rabbit like in that Who Framed Roger Rabbit film?”

Label exec: “Brilliant! Except let’s make it a different animal to ensure we don’y look like we’ve completely ripped off the idea.”

Marketing guy: “How about a ….cat?”

Label exec: “That’ll do”

It all just seemed very cynical to me. Apparently Izzy Stradlin from Guns N’ Roses once wrote a song for Paula. Not sure if she ever recorded it but a video of the wholesome Ms Abdul and rock ‘n roll casualty Izzy would have certainly been worth a watch.

Some Breakers now and we start with All About Eve and “Scarlet”. I’d sort of lost track of this lot by the start of the 90s and must admit this doesn’t sound familiar. It was the third and final single to be taken from sophomore album “Scarlet And Other Stories” and although pleasant enough, doesn’t really stand out from the rest of their folk goth rock twiddlings. The band notched up nine Top 40 hits during their career but curiously, seven of them all peaked somewhere between the Nos 38 and 30. Consistent I suppose though.

Surely nobody remembers this next one – Kid Creole And The Coconuts with “The Sex of It”? What that Kid Creole? The one who had that run of Top 10 hits back in ’82 with songs like “I’m a Wonderful Thing, Baby”, “Stool Pigeon” and “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy”? It can’t be him? In the Top 40 in 1990? It surely is – let’s be realistic, there can’t have been two acts called Kid Creole And The Coconuts – and this song was written by Prince no less. Apart from the lead vocals being contributed by the Kid himself (August Darnell), everything else recorded on the track was courtesy of Prince and his band. It sounds like it as well. Amazingly, despite their European success, Kid Creole And The Coconuts only appeared in the Billboard Hot 100 chart on one occasion when “Hey Mambo” (with Barry Manilow bizarrely) peaked at No 90.

Someone else still having unlikely hits in to the 90s was Sinitta who was enjoying her penultimate Top 40 appearance with “Hitchin’ A Ride”. Having declined to work with Stock, Aitken and Waterman any further after her 1988 hit “I Don’t Believe In Miracles”, Sinitta embarked upon a run of three consecutive chart hits that were cover versions of songs that had previously been hits in the 70s – “Hitchin’ A Ride” had been a hit for Vanity Fare in 1970 whilst the other two were “Right Back Where We Started From” (Maxine Nightingale in 1975) and “Love On A Mountain Top” (Robert Knight in 1974). Though not exactly edifying stuff (let’s be fair, they were all hideous), she undoubtedly extended her chart life well beyond her natural talents with this strategy.

“Hitchin’ A Ride” peaked at No 24.

Right, what’s Brookes babbling on about now? “Next a real band with a fabulous cult following if it makes sense” he blathers whilst introducing Jesus Jones. Make sense? Not really Bruno but then that was never your strong point was it? He finishes the segue by pronouncing the last ‘real’ of “Real Real Real” with a growl. It looks and sounds odd at best and disturbing at worst.

I’m pretty sure that this is just a reshowing of their initial TOTP appearance from the other week rather than a brand new performance. The band are still together to this day 30 years later and with the original line up which takes some doing. How many other bands have the same line up and that kind of longevity? U2? The Rolling Stones (sort of)? Erm…A-ha?

The curious case of Jesus Jones and their rise and fall is quite the story. Look at these chart placings and then consider what a short space of time this commercial collapse happened within:

Album	Year of release	Chart peak
Liquidiser	1989	31
Doubt	1991	1
Peverse	1993	6
Already	1997	161

What happened? Was it the rise of ‘grunge’? The advent of ‘Britpop’? Or was it just that the music press, who had hailed them as the future of rock ‘n’ roll, turned on them and the whole ‘indie dance’ movement that the band were poster boys for. Check out this quote from the NME in 1993:

“There is something fundamentally wrong with Jesus Jones: they have no sense of the ridiculous. They are loathed by every man, woman and child in Christendom, because they are a plasticine pop group who refuse to accept the fact that they are the stuff of three-minute-flavoured pop sweets. They are The Monkees who want to be Emerson, Lake And Palmer; five Mike Nesmiths.”

Ouch! And anyway, what’s wrong with The Monkees? I love The Monkees!

“Real Real Real” peaked at No 19.

After Jesus Jones have finished, Brookes advises the watching millions that the band are a “wild bunch of fellas with a really dry sense of humour”. Yeah, thanks for that Bruno. As a piece of info worthy of broadcast, it’s about as useful as one of Viz character Roger Irrelevant’s musings and he once eloped with an armchair declaring it pregnant with his children.

Right, who’s next? Well it must be Jason Donovan or New Kids On The Block or someone similar as the TOTP audience are screaming and those yelps of excitement are for…Phil Collins?! Phil f***ing Collins?! Are you kidding me?! That’s a very low bar to instigate such a reaction. “Something Happened On The Way To Heaven” was the third single from Phil’s “…But Seriously” album and was a return to that uptempo faux Motown sound that he was prone to after the heavier sound of the previous two singles “Another Day In Paradise” and ‘I Wish It Would Rain Down”. It does skip and bounce along, I’ll give it that. It’s almost “Sussudio” Part II.

Apparently it was written for inclusion on the soundtrack to the film War Of The Roses but Danny de Vito, who directed and co-starred in the movie, didn’t like it and rejected it. Some excellent taste on display there from Danny. Someone else with good taste is the dog in the video who wanders around the set as Phil and his band rehearse the song and shits on stage near a backing singer and then pisses on the leg of the bassist who looks like cross between Yoffy from Fingerbobs and Gandalf. Someone give that dog a Scooby Snack – he’s earned it!

I once got into a Twitter row with the Absolute 80s radio station about this song when I pulled them up for it actually being released in 1990 rather than the previous decade so why were they playing it. Their retort was that it came from an album recorded and released in the 80s so it was legitimate. Well, all I can say is that it’s a good job they don’t have VAR for decade radio playlists as that is a clear and obvious error!

Yet another song and act I have no recall of next. Tongue ‘N’ Cheek arose from the ashes of Total Contrast (who I also can’t remember) who had a No 17 hit in 1985 with “Takes A Little Time” (Wikipedia tells me). “Tomorrow” was their biggest UK chart record peaking at No 20. They give an energetic performance with that jumping up and down dance move but I’m afraid the song doesn’t really do anything for me.

Apparently they had another hit a year later with a cover of Patrice Rushen’s “Forget Me Nots” but surely if we’re going to reference that song when it comes to 90s chart hits, we’re talking about it being sampled in George Michael’s “Fastlove” or Will Smith’s “Men In Black”. Unfortunately for Tongue ‘N’ Cheek, I’m being absolutely serious about that comment and not…erm…tongue in cheek.

It’s a third week at the top for Madonna and “Vogue”. It turns out that all 16 Hollywood stars name-checked in the song are now sadly dead after the last person still alive, Lauren Bacall, died in 2014. Meanwhile, the video for the song has now recorded 100 million views on YouTube thereby giving Madonna the title of the first female artist in history to have four songs from four different decades reach that milestone. What were the others? Well, they were “La Isla Bonita” from the 80s, “Hung Up” from the 2000s and “Bitch I’m Madonna” from the 2010s.

You can tell I’m struggling to think of anything else to say about this one can’t you?

Hands up who wants to see what a Bruce Dickinson solo career away from Iron Maiden looked like? Right, I can see one hand …from Bruce himself…anyone else? OK, that’s a bit harsh. I hadn’t realised quite what an extensive solo career the Dickster (ooh, went a bit Boris Johnson there) has had. I just thought it was limited to the “Tattooed Millionaire” album project but no. He’s released six studio albums and ten singles as a solo artist! Who knew? Put your hand down again Bruce!

I do remember this one and for my money it was just ever so slightly more melodic than your average Iron Maiden track but as with Phil Collins previously, that’s a pretty low bar. The album includes tracks with some very Iron Maiden sounding names though like “Hell On Wheels”, “Zulu Lulu” and the obligatory Spinal Tap -esque title “Lickin’ the Gun”. It also featured a pretty straight cover of David Bowie’s “All The Young Dudes’ which was of course made famous by Mott The Hoople who had a No 3 hit with it in 1972. Bruce’s version only reached No 23 – well, no point in trying to re-invent the wheel is there?

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Pat & Mick	Use It Up And Wear It Up	What do you think?
2	Natalie Cole	Wild Women Do	Nah
3	Unique 3	Musical Melody	Not for me
4	Paula Abdul	Opposites Attract	I was repelled by this though – no
5	All About Eve	Scarlet	No
6	Kid Creole And The Coconuts	The Sex Of It	Nope
7	Sinitta	Hitchin’ A Ride	Shittin’ a turd more like – no
8	Jesus Jones	Real Real Real	Don’t think I did actually
9	Phil Collins	Something Happened On The Way To Heaven	It’s another no
10	Tongue ‘N’ Cheek	Tomorrow	Negative
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
12	Bruce Dickinson	Tattooed Millionaire	And no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pz16/top-of-the-pops-26041990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 19 APR 1990

Posted on December 4, 2020 by 80stastic

I tell you what, having to write about two BBC4 TOTP repeats week in week out is proving to be a relentless schedule to stick to. Fortunately, this particular show only has nine acts as there are no Breakers again this week and six of them have been on before so I might be able to get away with saying not very much about them. Fingers crossed!

It’s Jakki Brambles in the presenters hot seat this week and talking of hot, she does seem to have a constant need to wrap up warm when she’s on. She’s got a black overcoat on this time which she seems to be hugging into herself giving the impression that she’s freezing in the TOTP studio. She did this the last time she was on as well I think. Mark Goodier on the other hand complained about how hot it was when he was the host last time but then he didn’t help himself with a jacket, shirt and tie outfit. Whatever – let’s hope for some ‘hot’ acts on the show tonight….

…not quite what I was hoping for as we start with Sonia and her latest single “Counting Every Minute”. This was just the musical equivalent of watching paint dry. I tried staring at the walls once to try and slow down time when I really didn’t want to go back to work – it didn’t help. I should have just listened to Sonia as this garbage seems to go on forever, endlessly filling the silence with its own pop vacuum – counting every minute indeed. When asked in Smash Hits for her take on the state of the charts at this time, she replied that as well as liking all her SAW stablemates like Kylie, Jason and Big Fun, she’d also just bought the Phil Collins album. What was I saying about watching paint dry?!

Another song that we saw just last week now as “I Don’t Love You Anymore” by The Quireboys gets another airing. Apparently, such was the band’s riotous reputation that before their first TOTP appearance (they were actually the very first act on the show in the the 90s), the producers contacted their management to see if the rumours that they would vomit over the cameramen and set fire to Bruno Brookes were true. Of course they weren’t and the only reason their video is being shown instead of the band in person is because they were touring Japan. At least that’s the story Jakki Brambles has been told to tell and she’s sticking to it.

“I Don’t Love You Anymore” peaked at No 24.

For all the terrible, terrible records that 1990 has given us so far in these repeats, it has also given us some of the decade’s most seminal and creative works as well. After Sinéad O’Connor and Happy Mondays comes Adamski and Seal with “Killer”. I say ‘and Seal’ but he wasn’t actually credited officially on the record despite his obvious input. It’s seems strange to acknowledge in 2020 given the career that Seal has had in the intervening years but there was a time when the world didn’t have a clue who he was and that time was now. We knew who Adamski was – that odd little DJ bloke who’d had a hit with the dance track “N-R-G” earlier in the year but “Killer” didn’t sound anything like “N-R-G”to my ears. It was almost devastating the first time you heard it. The hypnotic bassline that builds until that voice enters the fray. Given his latter canon of work is very much more of a soulful bent, it was an unusual route into the world of music for Seal – supplying the vocals for an out and out dance tune.

As well as his obvious singing talents, he also supplied the visual focus for the record which I don’t think can be underestimated. With his striking looks – aided by his scars which are the result of an autoimmune skin condition – and his mid length dreads, he cut an imposing figure. Having said all of that, you can’t ignore the power of the actual music. Did I expect it to be a No 1 record? I’m not sure but it was always destined to be a big hit. In the end it was one of two massive records to soundtrack the Summer of 1990 with the other one being “World In Motion” by New Order – I’m disqualifying another No1 record (“Sacrifice” by Elton John) on the grounds that it was crap.

By the end of the year, Seal was a major star in his own right notching up a massive hit in “Crazy” which peaked at No 2. By the time that his debut album came out in June of 1991, he was huge and it topped the album charts. Said record included a re-recorded version of “Killer” which meant he did get his overdue star billing and credit for the song in the end. His version peaked at No 8 and its M. C. Escher themed video won British Video of the Year at the 1992 Brit Awards.

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

George Michael performed a version of “Killer” at the The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992 which was included on the “Five Live” EP and took the song back to No 1 in 1993.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2-YIGZas_8

It’s The Blues Brothers up again next with “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”. I really should make the time to watch the film from start to finish one day. Actually, there’s probably a whole load of ‘must see’ films that I’ve yet to get around to watching. Let me see….there’s Das Boot, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cinema Paradiso and perhaps the biggest crime of all (and very timely) It’s A Wonderful Life! Alright, alright – I know! I’m a film philistine and a terrible person to (das) boot. Still, that’s added a bit to the word count for this post. Is that enough for The Blues Brothers? No? OK, well in 1998, an ill advised sequel came out called Blues Brothers 2000 without, obviously, the sadly departed John Belushi. It received mixed reviews. I’ve never seen that either.

Alannah Myles is on the rise with her single “Black Velvet”. It’s up top No 2 this week which requires not just a re-showing of the promo video but an actual in-the-studio appearance by Alannah herself! Presumably her record company thought that this would give the record that extra push to get it over the line and score her a UK No 1 to add to her Canadian and US chart toppers. Sadly for Alannah the marketing ploy didn’t work and she would remain tantalisingly one place short.

There are a few theories as to what the song is about. It seems pretty obvious to me that it’s about Elvis given the lyrics include lines like

“Love Me Tender leaves ’em cryin’ in the aisle”
“Up in Memphis the music’s like a heat wave”
“The boy could sing, knew how to move ev’rything”

However, according to some of the comments posted on the Songfacts.com website it could also be about any of the following:

Led Zep’s Robert Plant (unlikely)
Cheap Canadian whiskey (possibly)
A woman’s crotch (WTF?!)

However, my favourite post is from one Ashley Jade from Cleveland who just says:

“This song scares me“

Blimey! I hope Ashley never gets to hear any of experimental industrial noise makers Throbbing Gristle’s work – she’ll never sleep again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z3rv62alU8

Finally a dance record that I remember…though sadly not one that I liked. “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” by The Adventures of Stevie V was a huge crossover hit being massive in both the clubs and the pop charts where it would peak at No 2. The intriguing sounding act were put together by producer Steve Vincent (the titular Stevie V) and also included Mick Walsh and singer Melody Washington. I seem to recall the press getting very worked up about this record and declaring it ‘hiphouse’ and that the music world would soon be falling at the feet of The Adventures of Stevie V. It didn’t quite work out like that despite Vincent himself stating that he wanted to be “bigger than Salman Rushdie. As big as The Pope”. They had just one more Top 40 hit and Vincent teaches music technology at Bedford College these days.

As for the single itself, it reminded me of “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent” by Gwen Guthrie which I hadn’t liked either. The backing dancers in this performance look like they might have been getting some tips from The Blues Brothers when it came to their moves whilst their baggy pants look was clearly inspired by MC Hammer.

Ooh some US rock now but not the AOR stuff that the likes of Heart were peddling but what some critics were calling ‘alternative metal’ at the time – a fusion of alternative rock and heavy metal. Given that genre description, then we can only be talking about Faith No More right? Look, I have to come clean and admit that I don’t really know what I’m talking about here. If I had to describe Faith No More’s sound I’d have maybe gone for ‘funk metal’ but I’m sure that will sound like heresy to their loyal fan base.

I knew of the band via their major label debut single “We Care A Lot” a couple of years before this but that was the extent of my knowledge. This single, “From Out Of Nowhere” was taken from their third album “The Real Thing” and was actually a re-release after it had completely bombed on its first outing in October 1989. However, after the band breached the Top 40 (albeit in a minor way) with No 37 hit “Epic”, it was re-issued and consolidated their chart success by peaking at No 23. “Epic” itself would be re-released before the year was out and made it a worthwhile exercise by peaking at No 25, twelve places higher than its original chart placing and becoming possibly their best known song.

Actually, scratch that, a lot of UK pop fans will know the band for their pretty straight cover of ‘Easy” by The Commodores which made No 3 early in 1993. Quite why they chose to release a cover of that song I really don’t know nor do I know why music fans felt they needed the Faith No More version in their lives rather than the existing Commodores original but that’s the great British public for you. I recall that the original release of parent album “Angel Dust” didn’t have “Easy” on it but it was re-issued with it added to the track listing hoping to trick some mainstream pop fans into buying a rock record. Too cynical? Unlike Faith No More, I don’t care a lot.

Madonna is still at the top of the charts this week with “Vogue”. The black and white video caused some controversy due to ‘nipple-gate’ when MTV initially refused to air the promo because of the sheer lace blouse Madonna wears at one point through which viewers got a big flash of the Ciccone chest and specifically, if you peered close enough, her nipples. Crikey!

We also got a first view of the iconic ‘cone bra’ in the video which would come to be the lasting image of her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. That tour was chronicled in the documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (known as In Bed with Madonna outside of North America) which spawned the infamous scene below or, in the spirit of ‘nipple-gate’, neat-gate’ if you will…

The play out video is “Ghetto Heaven” by The Family Stand. Apparently Jeffrey in the band could play any musical instrument and at school was so far ahead of the rest of the class that his music teacher would let him go into another room and do his own thing. All of this reminded me of a similar situation in our music lessons at grammar school.

There was a guy called Nick who could play piano whilst the rest of us were complete doughnuts musical ability wise so Nick was allowed to go and practice piano in a side room. What did the rest of us get up to? Well, memorably Paul Dukes managed to convince our frankly wet behind the ears music teacher Mr Wilderspin to play “Friggin’ In The Riggin” by The Sex Pistols as part of musical appreciation! I think we maybe got to the end of the first verse before Wilderspin raced over to the turntable to yank the needle of the record. To be fair to him, even just the first verse was maybe slightly pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable for a bunch of school kids to be listening to in class…

It was on the good ship Venus
By Christ, ya should’ve seen us
The figurehead was a whore in bed
And the mast, a mammoth penis

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-QV9r3JXVY

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Sonia	Counting Every Minute	Huge no
2	The Quireboys	I Don’t Love You Anymore	…don’t think I ever did
3	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
4	The Blues Brothers	Everbody Needs Somebody To Love	No
5	Alannah Myles	Black Velvet	Nope
6	Adventures of Stevie V	Dirty Cash (Money Talks)	Not for me thanks
7	Faith No More	From Out Of nowhere	I did not
8	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
9	The Family Stand	Ghetto Heaven	Nah

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pr1z/top-of-the-pops-19041990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 12 APR 1990

Posted on December 1, 2020 by 80stastic

It’s nearly Easter already in 1990 where TOTP Rewind currently resides – the day after this TOTP was broadcast was the Good Friday – but the 21 year old me doesn’t have chocolate eggs or bunnies on my mind. No, I’m more concerned with finding a job as I am in my fourth month of unemployment. What’s more, this very day (12th April) is my girlfriend (now wife)’s birthday so I would have needed to get her a present. I seem to recall that I decided for some reason that a brass ornament of a vintage style camera (one of those ones where the photographer ducked underneath a black cloth covering to take the picture) would be just the sort of thing she would like. I saw it in a shop that specialised in that sort of knick-knacker but in truth, she would rather have had my original idea which was a VHS tape of The Beatles Help! film. She really wasn’t taken by the brass camera and I’d even haggled about the price with the shop owner to get it for her! Oh well, let’s see what tunes that the charts had to offer that week – there’d better be some good stuff in stock!

Not a bad start at all! In my head, Jesus Jones didn’t appear on the charts until much later in the year but I’m clearly getting my facts skewed as here they are in mid April with “Real Real Real” which was their first Top 40 hit peaking at No 19. Very much seen as being part of that indie /dance crossover movement, they were one of the first (alongside Happy Mondays simultaneously) to make the big commercial breakthrough and opened a gate to chartdom that acts such as EMF, The Shamen and Pop Will Eat Itself would also stride through.

I think I may have heard of Jesus Jones previous to this via their nearly hit “Info Freako” from the year before but I didn’t know much about them. By the start of 1991 however, they would be genuine chart stars and the future of rock ‘n’ roll according to some. When I did my first Xmas working at Our Price in 1990 there were two albums that we were asked for all the time that hadn’t even been released yet. One was The Farm’s “Spartacus” and the other was “Doubt” by Jesus Jones. I think they were delayed possibly to heighten the clamour for them to fever pitch and when they were finally released within a month of each other in 1991, they both reached no 1 in the album chart.

I always get a bit confused about Jesus Jones’s timeline in terms of their hits, possibly because they racked up a few in quick succession over the course of a year or so. After “Real Real Real”, they scored another four Top 40 hits including “Right Here, Right Now” being released twice and peaking at No 31 on both occasions. I hadn’t realised until now that the band had also briefly been a very big deal in the US with “Real Real Real” going to No 4 over there whilst “Right Here, Right Now” peaked at No 2. I had always assumed they were a peculiarly British phenomenon.

The band are still together having gigged throughout the years when they were being referred to as residing in the “Where are They Now” files. Indeed, I recall them receiving some very derogatory press about resorting to playing corporate gigs as the entertainment for big conglomerate firm events although I’m guessing such gigs probably pay pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUT8IAz0_U

Like Gloria Estefan, Janet Jackson has always seemed to me to be capable of only two types of song. The big, lush soul ballad like “Let’s Wait A While” and “Come Back To Me” and the uptempo R’n’B dance tune like “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Miss You Much”. Completely unfair I’m sure but it’s my blog and that’s my opinion when I think of her (see what I did there? No? Oh forget it!).

“Escapade” was very much in the latter category and was one of seven (!) singles taken from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album. As with all the other videos for her uptempo songs, it’s all about the choreographed dance routines. Whilst undoubtedly impressive as a spectacle, it always seems to me as if the tracks are written with a routine in mind rather than for any musical reasons. Yet again, this was a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production and they came up with the name “Escapade” as it was one of many potential song title ideas that they kept in a little notebook which sounds overly cynical and not very organic at all to me. Aside from Jam and Lewis, the track also features ‘finger snaps’ contributed by former New Edition member Johnny Gill. Finger snaps?! If you’re going to get an official credit for that, I should maybe have bigged up my triangle playing in my Junior school concert back in the day!

“Escapade” peaked at No 17 in the UK but was a No 1 song in the US.

“It’s hot in here” informs this week’s host Mark Goodier referring to the temperature in the studio – so why are you wearing a jacket, shirt and tie then Mark? I’m sure you’ve done enough shows by this point to be able to make informed wardrobe decisions surely?!

OK, the next act is Technotronic. When I was putting this post together, my wife (she of the unwanted birthday present!) remarked, “God, you haven’t got to review this have you?” referring to “This Beat Is Technotronic”. Yes, I’m afraid so. This was the third single from their “Pump Up the Jam: The Album” erm…album and saw someone called MC Eric take the mike while previously used vocalist Ya Kid K took a rest. It still sounded the same as all the rest to me though apart from perhaps even more annoying and repetitive if that were possible.

Apparently the two dancers up there on stage with him are his old school mates called Gary and julian who he plucked from being on the dole in Cardiff to come and be in Technotronic with him. If any of my old school pals are reading this, fancy joining me for another go at perfecting the triangle?

“This Beat Is Technotronic” peaked at No 14.

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

“It’s the way they move that makes you want to groove” remarks Goodier at the end of Technotronic’s turn in one of the cringiest segue ways ever which leads us into “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” by Heart. Again. Really? I think this is the third time this has been on the show in recent weeks. Look, I’ve talked about the ridiculous lyrics, I’ve commented on the nasty video…what else is there left for me to say about it?

Well, it was taken from an album called “Brigade” that managed to rise all the way to No 3 in our charts but the band would only achieve chart action one more time in this country when their 1993 single “Will You Be There (In the Morning)” made No 19 from the album “Desire Walks On’ which was also their last long player to make any impression on the Top 40. There. Now please go away.

The Breakers are back after being missing in action for the last two shows and we start with David Bowie and “Fame 90”. So why was a 15 year old Bowie track being released again? It was all part of the promotion for his “Changesbowie” retrospective album that was released in March of this year which included all his biggest hits from 1969’s “Space Oddity” to 1984’s “Blue Jean”. I remember the album being a staple of the ‘Core Stock’ / ‘Best Seller’ section when I first worked for Our Price which were titles that you should never sell out of (although I’m sure we did of course).

Bowie was also embarking on a career spanning greatest hits world tour called the Sound+Vision Tour in support of the album. In what was seen at the time as quite ground breaking, fans were asked to vote for which songs should be included in the set list by phoning a number to log their votes with proceeds from the calls going to charity. In a world where telephone voting for everything from The Eurovision Song Contest to Strictly COme Dancing is second nature to us all today, this seemed like a revolutionary idea back in 1990. I’m sure there was some sort of counter campaign to rig the vote by encouraging people to vote for “The Laughing Gnome” thereby forcing Bowie to have to perform it live but I think he twigged what was going on before committing to the idea.

The video for “Fame 90” featured clips of previous Bowie promos alongside the man himself throwing some shapes with a blonde female dancer which supports the idea of the Changesbowie retrospective but seems a little short of inspiration to me.

“Fame 90” peaked at No 28, 11 places lower than its original 1975 release.

The scouse Kylie next as Sonia is back with “Counting Every Minute”. This was the fourth of five tracks released as singles from her debut album “Everybody Knows” with each one making the Top 20, a feat that made Sonia the first ever British solo female artist to achieve this. Quite how she managed to do this remains a mystery though. “Counting Every Minute” in particular is especially weak. I’ve had dumps with more substance to them.

The video is as half-hearted as the song. Just Sonia and some backing dancers going through the motions in front of a clock face back drop. How long did the video director take to come up with that concept?! You can almost hear him saying “Right then Sonia. Just smile and do that rolling shoulders move you do and we’ll fill in the rest afterwards in post production. No, don’t worry – it’ll look great. Promise. ACTION!”

Right, so quite why was “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love’ by The Blues Brothers in the charts? It seems to be because the film of the same name was re-released on VHS for its 10th anniversary by MCA/Universal Home Video. The movie has garnered cult status over the years – the movie poster was a mainstay of student room walls when I was one of at Sunderland Poly back in the 80s. However, I was surprised to discover that it was also a sizeable commercial success. It was the 10th biggest film in the US in the year of its cinema release (1980) and is the ninth-highest-grossing musical of all time.

Where The Monkees had gone before and The Commitments would follow, the film spawned a real life band who toured in support of the movie. Its celluloid stars John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd retained their roles as front men / brothers Jake and Elwood with a supporting band of established musicians from the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears and Booker T and the M. G.’s. The whole thing had started out as a sketch on legendary US TV entertainment show Saturday Night Live and spiralled once a film based on the characters was proposed. Here’s a 1978 clip from SNL showcasing the Blues Brothers:

Despite its legendary status and the stars it made of Belusihi and Ackroyd (thanks in part to those amazing dance steps of theirs), The Blues Brothers isn’t what I will forever associate the latter with – in fact I don’t think I’ve even seem the film from start to finish. No, I will always think of my time at Sunderland Poly where I spent three years being called Dan due to my resemblance to Ackroyd at the time.

Some more bpm nonsense now as we see Bizz Nizz and their hit “Don’t Miss The Party Line”. The phrase ‘party line’ is not associated with some crappy dance tune for many people who grew up in Hull in the 70s and 80s (of whom my wife was one). No, it referred to the type of telephone service you had and in the case of a ‘party line’, it was a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. Yes kids, this meant that there was no privacy on a party line! If you were chatting with a friend, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in! Unbelievable! Think you’ve go a problem because you want to upgrade your phone and you’re still under contract for your existing phone? Try dealing with someone listening in while you’re exchanging tales of drunken exploits with your bestie! Or, heaven forbid, on a booty call!

What? The Bizz Nizz record? Oh, that was shit as well.

Despite all the fuss over Paula Abdul in the US (four No 1 singles and a No 1 album). reaction to her in the UK had been more muted. Yes, “Straight Up” had been a Top 3 single for her over here but that was 12 months back and her only chart entry since then had been the No 24 hit “Forever Your Girl”. What was needed was a gimmick to reinstate our attention – how about her duetting with an animated cat? Purrfect! (sorry). “Opposites Attract” would become her biggest ever UK hit charging all the way to No 2 and is probably her best known song.

So this cat business? What the f**k was that all about?! Well, there had been a big reaction to the Who Framed Roger Rabbit film at the end of the 80s with its live action / animation mash up so maybe that was an influence. The cartoon cat in question was MC Skat Cat who was voiced by a duo called The Wild Pair who get the official credit on the record as the collaborators. The guy who wrote the song, Oliver Leiber (son of legendary songwriter Jerry Leiber), came up with the title after browsing a second-hand bookstore after his car broke down and he had four hours to kill. He wrote down titles of a number of pulp fiction novels like A Bloody Moon or Midnight Mistress but the one he plumped for was Opposites Attract. Hang on, didn’t we see this method of songwriting earlier with Janet Jackson’s “Escapade”? Is that all it took to come up with a song title? What have i got on my book shelves I could use to inspire me as a song writer? Hmm. Chelsea: 100 Memorable Matches is probably a little niche in all honesty.

Back to Paula though and the song is basically a play on the Gershwin tune “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” made popular by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It all seemed very calculated and lacking in any authenticity to me and I couldn’t really be doing with it at all.

Ah, good to see that The Cure were still ploughing their own particular furrow into the new decade. “Pictures Of You” wasn’t a new song as such though as it was the fourth single to be released from their “Disintegration” album and was very much immediately recognisable as a Cure song. Doomy? Sure. Dark? Yep. Quality tune? Undoubtedly. I’ve always admired the way Robert Smith has never given a shit about following trends or chasing the zeitgeist, an attitude perfectly summed up by this clip of him at the ceremony where the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019…

“Pictures of You” peaked at No 24 and was voted No 278 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list in 2011.

So it took just two weeks for Madonna to hit the top spot once again with “Vogue”. I saw some online opinion criticising the lyrics of the song last week, specifically the name call section in the song’s bridge where Madonna references sixteen Hollywood stars from the 1920s to the 1950s. It seemed to be all about the ‘Harlow Jean’ line in that her name was reversed to shoe horn it into the lyrics to make a rhyming space for the following line ‘picture of a beauty queen’. I’m not sure that I agree with the negative opinions to be honest. After all, there is a precedent for this type of wordsmithery. Here’s the opening lines of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”:

“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There’s an old man sitting next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin”

His tonic and gin?! Have you ever gone into a bar and asked for a tonic and gin as opposed to a gin and tonic? Well, if it’s good enough for Billy…Madonna could have avoided all of this if she used Norma Jeane as in Marilyn Monroe instead of Harlow Jean but she’d already used Monroe in a previous line to rhyme with DiMaggio. Oh I give up!

After two fast hits in “Seven o’Clock” and “Hey You” came the inevitable ballad from The Quireboys in “I Don’t Love You Anymore”. I’m not sure that I remember this one. Let me have a listen…

Hmm. Pretty nondescript stuff really. Reminds me a bit of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison. I can imagine it got lighters waving in the audience when they performed it live but it’s got as much longevity as lighter fuel.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDogcM_d7s

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	Real Real Real	Don’t think I did actually
2	Janet Jackson	Escapade	Nah
3	Technotronic	This Beat Is Technotronic	No, this beat is metronomic and dull
4	Heart	All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You	It’s a no from me
5	David Bowie	Fame 90	Not the 90 remix single but I’m sure my wife must have the original somewhere
6	Sonia	Counting Every Minute	Huge no
7	The Blues Brothers	Everbody Needs Somebody To Love	Nope
8	Bizz Nizz	Don’t Miss The Party Line	Miss it? I gave it a massive wide berth!
9	Paula Abdul	Opposites Attract	I was repelled by this though – no
10	The Cure	Pictures Of You	No
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
12	The Quireboys	I Don’t Love You Anymore	…don’t think I ever did

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pr1x/top-of-the-pops-12041990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is imgres-2-3.jpg

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 05 APR 1990

Posted on November 26, 2020 by 80stastic

In the world of TOTP Rewind, it’s 1990 and the month of March is now behind us as we enter into April and unlike in the case of poor Julius Caesar, nobody had murder committed against them on the Ides of March…unless you count Jive Bunny committing musical murder of the charts by scoring yet another massive hit single in that month.

After weeks of such shite, this particular show starts off almost unbelievably with two of the biggest songs of the year and possibly the decade. Having seen the ‘Madchester’ movement emerge at the end of 1989, its annus mirabilis is now in full swing. After Inspiral Carpets the other week, here comes another of the baggy triumvirate with their biggest and most widely known hit – it can only be Happy Mondays and “Step On”. So much has already been written about and indeed so much is already known about this track that I don’t know where to begin really.

OK, so the basics. We now all know that “Step On” is a cover version (sort of) – the original version of the song was called “He’s Gonna Step On You Again” by South African singer and songwriter John Kongos and was retitled “Step On” by the Mondays who turned it into a baggy dance anthem. Did I know this at the time? No, of course not. What I also didn’t know until now is that the band only recorded it to keep their US label Elektra happy. They wanted their roster of artists to contribute a cover version for a compilation album called “Rubáiyát” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the label*. The idea of the album was to have present-day Elektra artists cover songs from the label’s historical catalogue of recordings. Factory boss Tony Wilson had to convince the Mondays to do it as their initial reaction to the idea was ‘nah – fuck that!’ (probably) and so they bashed out “Step On”.

However, once they’d finished recording it, they liked the results so much they decided to keep “Step On’ for a UK single release and gave Elektra their version of another John Kongos song “Tokoloshe Man”. And the results of their efforts on “Step On” were remarkable. From the rush of that initial Italo House keyboard flourish to that relentless irresistible groove allied with Shaun Ryder’s idiosyncratic delivery of the lyrics, it was mesmerising. Ah yes, those lyrics. The Mondays version actually sticks pretty closely to the originals with two obvious exceptions / insertions. The phrase “You’re twistin’ my melon man, you know you talk so hip man, you’re twistin’ my melon man” was lifted by Shaun from a documentary called Steve McQueen: Man On The Edge that he had seen. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the inspiring clip:

The phrase "You're twisting my melon, man” came from Steve McQueen: Man On The Edge, a 1990 documentary that Shaun Ryder had seen: https://t.co/ShyjuITT8s #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 20, 2020

I had no idea about any of this until I caught the documentary when it was screened on TV years later and had a light bulb moment. I distinctly remember thinking “Hang on, did he just say ‘Your’e twisting my melon man’…but…but…that’s the lyric from ‘Step On’…Ohhhhhh”.

Then of course there is the now legendary “Call The Cops” line that Shaun added to the song’s opening. I’m not sure of the origin of this line but if we were in any doubt as to the longevity of it and indeed ‘Twistin’ My Melon’ in 2020, then check this out….

HAPPY MONDAYS FACE MASKS!!! 😷😷😷

‘Call the Cops’ & ‘You’re Twisting my Melon Man’ designs available now!!

Order yours from the online store: https://t.co/qGfdtJZzn6 #HappyMondays #FaceMask #Mask #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/MzDKGzD9ek
— Happy Mondays (@Happy_Mondays) July 28, 2020

Nothing says 2020 more than face mask. Back in 1990 though and this song seemed to be everywhere. I even recall it infiltrating into the world of Coronation Street when Steve and Andy MacDonald set up an illegal pirate radio station and play it as the first song on their show.

“Step On” peaked at No 5 and would be the forerunner of their iconic “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches” album.

* Ever wondered what else was on that Elektra 40th anniversary album? How about The Cure doing “Hello I Love You” by The Doors? No? OK, Tracy Chapman covering “House Of The Rising Sun” by The Animals? Still no? Right, here’s one you can’t resist surely? “Hotel California” by The Eagles as performed by The Gipsy Kings…come on!

After taking a sabbatical in 1988, Madonna retuned the following year to conquer the pop charts all over again with her mega successful “Like A Prayer” album. In 1990, she diversified with one foot in the pop world and the other in the movies. After the relative success of her role in Desperately Seeking Susan came the howling flops that were Shanghai Surprise and Who’s That Girl but that didn’t stop Madge securing the role of Breathless Mahoney in the Dick Tracy project starring Warren Beattie in the title role. I recall there was a similar buzz for this flick as there had been for Tim Burton’s Batman the year before and so dutifully trotted off to the cinema to see it when it hit these shores in July. I cannot recall one thing about it and have never seen it since. Indeed, has it ever being shown on terrestrial TV? I guess it must have been at some point? Anyway, Madonna and Beattie famously got it on off camera as well and were a Hollywood super couple for a while.

Meanwhile, Madonna was also plate spinning with her musical career and managed to, rather tenuously and in a ham-fisted manner I would suggest, merge Dick Tracy together with her latest album. “I’m Breathless: Music From And Inspired By The Film Dick Tracy” – see even the title of it reeks of shoe horning the two worlds into each other – included three songs written by Stephen Sondheim and sung by Madonna which were used in the film with the rest being made up of Madge originals that were ‘inspired by’ but not included in the film. Just to add to the confusion there were two other soundtrack albums released in conjunction with the film – one which included diverse artists from K.D.Lang and Erasure to Brenda Lee and Jerry Lee Lewis (but not Madonna) performing songs in the style of the music of the 1930s, the era in which the film is set. There was also Danny Elfman’s orchestral score.

The first single to be released from “I’m Breathless” was “Vogue” which had nothing whatsoever to do with the film. Nowt. Nada. Nothing. That said, it was also a brilliant pop/dance crossover track that had the added (and crucial) gimmick of the ‘vogue’ dance craze. With the promotion of Madonna behind it, suddenly the whole world was ‘vogue’ crazy it seemed. How had we all managed before we knew to throw our hands around our faces before framing them in a snapshot pose? Supposedly Madonna had first come across the craze at The Sound Factory nightclub in New York where it was popular amongst its gay clientele. A quick phone call to her producer Shep Pettibone later and plans were afoot for “Vogue” to be unleashed on the world.

The song would become the world’s best-selling single of 1990, selling over six million copies and will be at No 1 in the UK soon enough.

From all conquering pop to quirky, indie goofiness as we catch up with They Might Be Giants and their surprise hit single “Birdhouse In Your Soul”. The amount of online discussion about the meaning of this song is staggering. Reams of comments and posts from would be interpreters of the band’s intentions in writing it, spewing forth theories about Greek mythology (the Jason and the Argonauts reference), religious metaphors (it’s all about God really) and teenage geeks trying to establish their own identities. The band have refuted these theories saying it’s just a song about a night light – nothing else. My theory is that if so many people have been intrigued about the song and continue to be 30 years on then they must have been doing something right. Oh, and that it’s a great tune.

And guess what? By curious happenstance, They Might Be Giants were also on the aforementioned Elektra label and therefore also appeared on the “Rubáiyát” 40th anniversary compilation album. This track by US protest singer Phil Ochs is the cover they submitted for it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLEe-XwkoMs

By my reckoning this is the third TOTP appearance for “Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children” by Queen Latifah and De La Soul – not bad going for a single that peaked at No 14. And it’s third time lucky for Queen Latifah’s name not being fluffed by the TOTP presenter. After both Gary Davies and Nicky Campbell proved themselves not up to the job, it fell to Anthea Turner to prove that, whatever else you said about her, at least she could pronounce a three syllable name correctly. Well done Anthea!

As with Madonna earlier, Queen Latifah has successfully juggled a career in both music and film for three decades now and at one point was so famous that she even had her own chat show. I found this almost unbelievable clip from it….

Dolly may be the queen of country, have her own theme park, inspired countless children to read with her literacy programme and now, it transpires, has donated huge amounts of money to help fund the research that produced the Moderna’s vaccine to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is one thing she cannot do and that is rap.

Eurovision Song Contest time again next and the 1990 UK entry came from Emma with a little ditty called “Give A Little Love Back To The World”. After consecutive second place finishes in the previous two contests, hopes must have been high that the UK could go one step further (ooh nice Bardo reference!) this time around and the responsibility for this fell onto the shoulders of Emma Booth who, at an Adrian Mole style 15 and a two thirds, was the youngest ever singer to have represented the UK in the contest. Emma was from Wales and sang a song written by one Paul Curtis. Well, Mr Curtis, hang your head in shame because it is an abomination. Look at these hackneyed, junior school lyrics with an environmental theme…

We’ve come so far on this great planet
We should be proud of all the great things we’ve achieved
But in our search for life’s great knowledge
We go on takin’ out and never plant new seeds

We’ve got to stop, think of tomorrow
One day our children may have nothing left to share
Let’s do it now, then in the future
They will look back at us with pride and know we cared

Holy ozone layer! Poor Emma didn’t stand a chance having to sing such limp words. Almost set up to fail. And fail she did trailing in 6th. Too harsh? OK, she did the best with what she had and managed a creditable 6th place finish. Quite why the UK entry organisers felt she needed a single name performer identity Madonna style though, I’m not sure.

I remember this year’s contest as my girlfriend was visiting me at my parents home and being skint we stayed in on the Saturday night and watched it with my Mum and sister. As the votes came in and it became obvious Emma wasn’t going to win, they became increasingly more patriotic (dare I say jingoistic even?) and it all made for a very uncomfortable night’s viewing.

As for Emma, at least she had the satisfaction that her single was the first UK Eurovision entry to make the Top 40 (peaking at No 33) since Belle and the Devotions with “Love Games” back in 1984. “Love Games” was also written by Paul Curtis who tried his luck again the following year when he wrote “A Message To Your Heart” for our entry, a pre-Eastenders Samantha Janus. It came in 10th. Welsh female singers continued to fly the UK Eurovision flag a couple of times more with Jessica Garlick (ex-Pop Idol) in 2002 and the gravelly voiced Bonnie Tyler in 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJpnlRJ7UI

UB40 are back in the charts and its with another cover version (of course it is). “Kingston Town” was originally by Trinidad and Tobago reggae star Lord Creator but the Brummie lads recorded their own version for their “Labour Of Love II” album. Despite the album going three times platinum in the UK, the singles released from it didn’t perform that well with the exception of lead single “Homely Girl” and this one, both of which went Top 10. The other four singles taken from the album did hardly anything at all.

“Kingston Town” did very little for me I’m afraid. It all sounded a bit twee to my reggae-layperson ears. My abiding memory of this song though is that of my future mother-in-law who remarked upon hearing it played on local radio, when I was visiting my girlfriend (now wife) in Hull, whether the man on the radio was singing about Hull. That would be Kingston-Upon-Hull to give the city its full title.

“Kingston Town” peaked at No 4.

Next, a solid gold Pointless answer if you find yourself on the quiz show and are asked to name any Jason Donovan Top 40 single. “Hang On to Your Love” anyone? No, me neither. This was the second single from his “Between The Lines” album and although it was another sizeable Top 10 hit peaking at No 8, it was clear that Jason’s sheen of invincibility was starting to wane. How so? The evidence m’lud:

His previous five singles had peaked at the following chart positions:

1 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2

No 8 just wasn’t cutting it. Worse was to follow when his next four single releases peaked at:

18 – 9 – 22 – 17

There was one final hurrah when his version of “Any Dream Will Do” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in which he was starring hit No 1 but it was pretty much gave over after that. So badly had his popularity dipped that his third album release was a Greatest Hits compilation. His third album! What happened to our Jase then? It may have been self inflicted. Apparently he felt that he was too over exposed and that his face was everywhere and that he wanted to dip out of the limelight for a while. Bit like that other SAW poster boy Rick Astley then? Yeah, maybe except that in a Smash Hits interview around the time of “Hang On to Your Love” he was asked:

“Do you fear failure? You were on 37 TV programmes over Christmas…”

His answer was:

“It’s called promoting your record!”

Hmm, can’t have it both ways Jase.

“Hang On to Your Love” was diabolically awful by the way, just so you know where I stand.

Snap! are still No 1 with “The Power”. The genesis of the track involved a New Jersey hip hop artist called Chill Rob G and a fair amount of skullduggery. In 1989, Mr G (or Chill if you prefer) released a track called “Let the Words Flow” an a cappella version of which was illegally sampled by Snap!’s producers for inclusion on “The Power”. Snap’s rapper Turbo B added a few lines of his own including “I will attack” and in an epic show of shithousery the “copywritten lyrics so they can’t be stolen” line. Not to be outdone, Chill Rob G released his own version of “The Power” in America but it got completely outperformed by Snap!’s version due to the much bigger promotional resources of their record company Arista compared to Mr G’s small label Wild Pitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42wEfMhb6mE

Supposedly Chill Rob G never got paid for the use of his source material in Snap!’s huge worldwide hit although some online commentators suggest he got a handsome out of court settlement. Whatever the truth of the matter, here’s Chill Rob G’s version which I think I actually prefer…

The play out video is “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles. This slinky country rock song would go to No 1 in the US where it has racked up over four million radio plays and No 2 in the UK. It sold over a million copies in Myles’ home country of Canada and her LP was the fastest ever selling debut album in Canadian history. Given all of that, you would think that Alannah was set up for life. You’d be wrong as, echoing Chill Rob G’s experience above, she got shafted by her record company who got her to sign a crappy contract which meant that she had to pay $7 million in expenditures for her first three albums and she didn’t get her first ever royalty check for “Black Velvet” until 2008!

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsZ549LT9qc

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Happy Mondays	Step On	Not the single but I have the album Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches it comes from
2	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
3	They Might Be Giants	Birdhouse In Your Soul	Not the single but it’s on a Q – The Album compilation LP that I bought
4	Queen Latifah and De La Soul	Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children	No
5	Emma	Give A Little Love Back To The World	Of course not
6	UB40	Kingston Town	Nah
7	Jason Donovan	Hang On To Your Love	I’d rather hang on to my dignity – big no
8	Snap!	The Power	Not for me thanks
9	Alannah Myles	Black Velvet	Nope

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pjdq/top-of-the-pops-05041990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues