Mariah Carey | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

Posted on October 9, 2022 by 80stastic

August and indeed the Summer of 1993 is coming to an end and so is something else – my time at the Our Price store in Rochdale. After an immensely enjoyable twelve months as Assistant Manager there, the powers that be wanted to move me. In theory, I should have been pleased about this. It was a transfer to a much bigger store at Stockport which, though not a promotion, reflected well on how area management viewed me. Plus, Stockport was a much shorter commute than schleping all the way over to Rochdale. I didn’t want to go though. I really liked the team where I was and the size of the shop was manageable with a great profile in the town. The move to Stockport would prove to be a short-lived one but that’s enough about my personal circumstances; what about the music?

Well, we start with some Therapy? who someone in the TOTP production team must have really liked as they seemed to be on the show regularly in 1993. I think this is their third studio appearance already which isn’t bad going for a noisy rock band on prime time TV. This single is “Opal Mantra” which was nothing to do with those 70s sweets Opal Fruits that became Statburst but rather a pun on the name of the German sports car model Opel Manta. I didn’t pay much attention to Therapy? at the time but listening back to them what I’ve noticed is that they always seem to have too many words in their lyrics to fit in with the tune. Probably just me of course but anyway.

As far as I can tell this was a stand alone single prior to the release of their fourth studio album “Troublegum” the following year although bizarrely the two singles released before “Opel Mantra” both made it onto the album.

Now here’s a song that always reminds me of late Summer/ early Autumn 1993 whenever I hear it except if I was to hear the original version of it, I probably wouldn’t recognise it at all. “Right Here” was first released by SWV (Sisters With Voices) back in 1992 but only in America. Despite being a hit on the R&B chart, it made little impression on the Billboard Hot 100.

A US No 1 record later in “Weak” and the track was given another chance but this time with an added sample from another song – “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson. And so it came to pass that the version we would all come to know was rechristened as “Right Here (Human Nature Remix)”. Who’s idea was it to mash up SWV and Jacko? Well, it was credited to Teddy Riley but weren’t there some bootleg copies in existence well before the official release creating a buzz around the track?

“Human Nature” was, of course, from Jackson’s “Thriller” album and was one of the seven singles taken from it in 1983. Curiously though, it was never given a UK release back then so would it have been less well known in the UK? If true, it makes SWV’s hit even more impressive but I think it’s a difficult idea to sell that the biggest album of all time contains tracks that some countries were oblivious to. It went fifteen times platinum in the UK after all.

“Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” would rise to No 3 in the UK – easily their biggest hit over here – and would only be kept off the top spot in the US by another artist also on this TOTP.

From Sisters With Voices to The Sisters Of Mercy (do you think that was deliberate by the show’s producers?) who are in the studio with their latest single “Under The Gun”. Not only was this their latest single but as we stand in October 2022, it is also the band’s last single. Yes, incredibly, despite the band being an going concern to this day, they have not released any new material since this track which was to promote their second Greatest Hits album “A Slight Case Of Overbombing”. I think I’ve discussed this before but this situation arose out of a dispute with their label EastWest who eventually agreed to receive the final two albums owed by the band according to their contract via the Andrew Eldritch vehicle SSV (almost another link with SWV). Allegedly standing for Screw Shareholder Value, the albums were made with industrial sonic pioneers Xmas Deutschland’s Peter Bellendir and were largely unlistenable loops of Eldritch’s verbal musings. Despite being free of EastWest since 1997, no new Sisters Of Mercy product has been forthcoming.

As for “Under The Gun”, apparently that’s Terri Nunn up there with Eldritch. Yeah, the two-tone haired singer from Berlin of “Take My Breath Away” fame. She looked a bit different seven years on from that global hit but you can hear her influence all over this track. In fact it’s pretty good up until the point where Eldritch does his…’thing’ whatever that is (a Goth rap?). I’ve always considered Eldritch a bizarre yet intriguing figure and found myself wondering what he looks like today. So I Googled him. His Wikipedia picture suggests that he has now gone bald but he still retains those sunglasses that project an air of otherworldliness. I once sat on a train from Sunderland to Newcastle around 1987 next to a bald man wearing shades dressed in black who had a tape recorder with him and for the entire journey played a tape out loud that the whole carriage could hear that was of demonic chanting, blood curdling screams and general devil worship. I was too freaked out to say anything to him but he did turn it off when the guard checked his ticket only to turn it back on once he had left.

Anyway, back to Eldritch though who has tried to distance himself and the band from accusations of gothness and is on record as stating:

“I’m constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord.”
“Sisters – VirginNet Interview”. Thesistersofmercy.com. Archived from the original on 20 August 2001

“Under The Gun” peaked at No 19.

Next the point where it looked like Ace Of Base might not be the next big pop sensation that was suggested by their monster No 1 “All That She Wants” earlier in the year. So big was that single that it spent sixteen weeks on the charts and was still selling so well that the follow up “Wheel Of Fortune” had its release delayed. I’m guessing that their label London Records would have been hoping for and indeed maybe expecting a bigger chart hit than the No 20 peak achieved here. The outlook would get worse when the title track to their album “Happy Nation” would barely dint the Top 40 when released in November. Luckily for label and band but decidedly unluckily for music fans, that trend was reversed spectacularly in 1994 when they got to No 2 with “The Sign”.

I have to admit to not knowing how this one went and after watching this TOTP performance, I’m still not sure. The very definition of lightweight, it barely registers at all. And those nasally, whiny vocals are the musical equivalent of fingernails being scraped down a blackboard! As for the prop that was the wheel of fortune in the background…talk about lacklustre! It just has some random numbers around the edge. Why weren’t the coloured segments filled in with what you could win?! It didn’t look like it even had the flicker thing that determines which segment you’ve landed on once the spinning has stopped. Bah!

And so to that much trumpeted (by host Tony Dortie if nobody else) song by Meatloaf. Who would have thought that in a year dominated by Eurodance crud and a trend for ragga/dancehall tunes that the biggest selling single of the year would belong to the Loaf. I mean, it’s not as if he had a brilliant track record for massive hit singles in the UK. His last Top 10 hit had been “Dead Ringer For Love” in 1981 and of the eleven singles released after that until this point, only three had made the Top 40 and none of those had managed a position higher than No 17. Yes, of course “Bat Out Of Hell” was one of the biggest selling albums in history but that was already fifteen years old by 1993. A Meatloaf revival was not on the cards.

Hang on though! “Bat Out Of Hell” you say. What if we did…I don’t know…”Bat Out Of Hell II” to help revive his fortunes? Presumably that’s a close approximation of what long standing songwriting partner Jim Steinman said about Meatloaf in 1993. Yes, a return to the original hit formula (not that much of his other stuff sounded any different) was the order of the day and so it came to pass that “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” would make Marvin Lee Aday a huge star all over again. The first single from the project was “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” continuing a long line of ludicrous song titles that occur regularly in Meatloaf’s back catalogue. There’s something odd here though as despite this preview on TOTP on a show in August, as far as I can tell the single wasn’t released until October and after the album was released in September. That can’t be right can it?

Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there for now as this will be at No 1 soon enough and for seven (!) weeks so I’ll just leave it with RIP Meatloaf for now.

We’re back to multiple Breakers again this week after just two in the last show and we start with Lenny Kravitz and a third single from his “Are You Gonna Go My Way” album called “Heaven Help”. This is yet again another song I don’t recall even though it made the charts to the tune of No 20. Some of the music press described it as showing Kravitz’s soul influences specifically Curtis Mayfield and Isley Brothers and I can hear why. It’s got a nice feel to it and I’m guessing it got decent daytime airplay at the time. I should probably check out the album. After all, I did but his previous one “Mama Said”.

OK so I’m aware there was a rap/hip-hop outfit called Onyx but that was/is the extent of my knowledge. Until now. Hailing from Queens, New York City, they were formed by Fredro Starr (yes I had to double take on that name as well!), Sonny Seeza and Big DS. This single (“Slam”) would make No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 – not just the R&B chart, the mainstream chart – quite remarkable for a rap record. It’s also widely regarded as being responsible for introducing slam dancing or moshing to hip-hop as per the promo video. Wait, didn’t House Of Pain already do that with “Jump Around?”

Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that they were notable for loud screaming, aggression, fighting with each other and then these two characteristics which look slightly odd in the written word…rapping with grimy voices and bald head fashion. What?! Surely grime wasn’t a musical genre back then so what were grimy voices exactly? And bald head fashion…? To be honest, if I wanted to listen to a record called “Slam” then I’d go for this…

Yes, there were two Joey Lawrence singles that charted in the UK unbelievably. After “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” came “I Can’t Help Myself” – his song titles were a little egocentric. This one could easily be the template for every Backstreet Boys song ever which is fine if you like that sort of thing I guess but it obviously did nothing for me.

“I Can’t Help Myself” peaked at No 27.

Almost under the radar, Terence Trent D’arby was having quite a year in 1993 on the sly. Nothing like the impact of 1987/88 when he burst into the pop world fully formed from nowhere to both critical and commercial success but quite a year all the same. After looking like he had wrecked his musical career with the poorly received sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”, to manage to resurrect himself as a chart act again was quite a feat. The “Symphony Or Damn” album went Top 10 and would produce four hit singles of which “She Kissed Me” was the third. Those singles peaked at:

14 – 14 – 16 – 18

Like I said, not the remarkable success of those early years but he was consistent. Given the quality of the 1993 singles, they probably should have been bigger hits, “She Kissed Me” being a case in point. Slick and with a killer chorus, it also showcased his diversity given how different it was to previous single “Delicate”. As with Lenny Kravitz earlier, maybe I should investigate the TTD back catalogue further although I don’t think I’ll start with the aforementioned “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”.

I think this is the first and only cover version on this TOTP after what seemed like an endless conveyor belt of them recently. Just like Kim Wilde’s treatment of “If I Can’t Have You” the other week, this one is also of a song from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Tina Turner’s take on The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” featured in another film also – Tina’s biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It. It certainly suits Tina’s raspy vocal and I think she does a decent job with it. I wonder though if her record company had faith in the track’s chart potential as they made the B-side “I Don’t Wanna Fight” which was her previous hit from just a few weeks before. That was a standard record company practice as I recall to try and insure against a flop record. It worked (kind of) as “Disco Inferno” made No 12.

Bit of a big deal next as we get Mariah Carey in the studio. She was already a superstar in America after a string of No 1 singles and although UK record buyers hadn’t embraced her quite as keenly, this was still a big exclusive. I’m not sure if she had her reputation as a diva at this point but if she was a bit of a nightmare off camera, I wonder how she manifested it? Her tour riders are renowned for some explicit demands like hotel rooms having temperatures of precisely 75 degrees, being festooned with eight (not seven or nine) tall leafy plants and kitted out with Joe Malone candles (and certainly none of those Gwyneth Paltrow mucky scent ones)

To be fair to Mariah, she seems quite low key in this performance of “Dreamlover” with a dress down wardrobe and a discreet trio of backing singers. She holds back on the vocals as well until the very last few notes when she gives her pipes an airing. Somehow this TOTP appearance only managed to nudge the single up one place to a high of No 9 but it went to No 1 in the US keeping the aforementioned SWV off top spot.

Freddie Mercury’s reign at the top of the charts is over and he has been replaced by Culture Beat and their “Mr. Vain” single. Was this the peak of Eurodance or its nadir? More irritating than “No Limits” by 2 Unlimited or even better than Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”? The man behind Culture Beat was German DJ and producer Torsten Fenslau who tragically died in a car crash aged 29 barely two months after this TOTP aired.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Opal Mantra	No
2	SWV	Right Here (Human Nature Remix)	Nope
3	The Sisters Of Mercy	Under The Gun	I did not
4	Ace Of Base	Wheel Of Fortune	As if
5	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	I’d do anything for music but I wouldn’t buy that
6	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	Negative
7	Onyx	Slam	Nah
8	Joey Lawrence	I Can’t Help Myself	I had no such problems with restraint when it came to not buying this record
9	Terence Trent D’arby	She Kissed Me	Good song, didn’t buy it
10	Tina Turner	Disco Inferno	Disco Infer-NO
11	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Sorry Mariah, it’s a no
12	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001crzw/top-of-the-pops-26081993

TOTP 19 AUG 1993

Posted on October 5, 2022 by 80stastic

After weeks of cramming twelve or even thirteen acts into the show’s running order, the TOTP producers have taken pity on my sorry ass and given me just ten to review for this episode and four of those have been on before. This is music to my ears as I’m running behind schedule in banging these posts out.

We start with a band not seen on the show since the 80s I’m guessing whose appearance here would be a valedictory one as far as TOTP was concerned. The Pogues had been in a state of flux for most of the decade before 1993 turned up a hit for them out of the blue. After Shane MacGowan was fired in 1991 for finally breaking the patience of the rest of the band after one too many binge drinking sessions, Joe Strummer stepped in to take over on vocals before founding member Spider Stacy took on the job full time. They released a cover of “Honky Tonk Wonen” by the Rolling Stones the following year but it failed to make the Top 40. I recall my huge Pogues fan Our Price manager at the time playing the single as soon as it came out of the delivery box on the morning of release and then being very disappointed approximately three and a half minutes later.

Spider Stacy was still in post as the band reconvened to record the “Waiting For Herb” album from which “Tuesday Morning” was the lead single. It’s a decent tune and knocks spots off most of its chart contemporaries but with the greatest will in the world, it’s no “Sally MacLennane” and Spider is no Shane.

The Pogues split in 1996 before reuniting j 2001 and disbanding for the final time in 2014.

As with one of the shows the other week, TOTP is suddenly taken over by UB40 and associates as first we get the video for their latest single “Higher Ground” which accompanies the 40-11 chart rundown and then we get their mate Bitty McLean in the studio. I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not by the chart statistic that “Higher Ground” is their first Top 10 hit written by themselves since the appropriately entitled “Sing Our Own Song” in 1986. Well, they did do a lot of cover versions you know.

The video is pretty dull stuff with the band performing against some sort of industrial wasteland intercut with clips of amongst other things a trapeze artist (higher ground?). As with most UB40 promos, the whole thing seems to be carried by Ali Campbell’s cheeky grin.

On with the nitty gritty and that little ditty from Bitty. Now I thought that Bitty Mclean‘s “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” was a bit shitty (OK I’ll stop now!) but plenty disagreed with me as he was up to No 3 on his way to a peak of No 2. It was also a massive hit globally going to No 1 in the Netherlands and New Zealand where it topped the charts for seven weeks. Bitty’s dance moves were something to behold. He swayed and staggered about waving his arms as if drunk and looking like he might topple backwards at any moment. Very Shane MacGowan.

Despite his seven UK Top 40 hits, I wonder if anyone really remembers Bitty these days or has his nickname been usurped by this recurring sketch from Little Britain?

What do you get if you combine London Boys’ dance moves and Peter Andre’s sense of style? This confident looking bloke apparently who is fronting an act called Aftershock and their single “Slave To The Vibe”. I have zero recollection of either Mr. Aftershock (whoever he was) or his track but then he’s not helped in his quest for immortality by the work of the TOTP cameraman. He makes a right hash of filming his dance moves that surely would have sealed his place in musical posterity had he actually managed to capture them. Sadly, he manages to focus on everything but the front man and even when he does turn the camera on him, a studio audience member’s head totally obscures the shot! I can’t find a clip of the performance so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Apparently it was on the soundtrack to erotic thriller Sliver alongside the aforementioned UB40’s “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” but I’ve never seen that so there’s another reason I don’t remember it.

Just the two Breakers this week (which explains the reduced amount of acts in the show). I’m guessing there was just a lack of new entries / high climbing records this week? Anyway, the first Breaker is basically a mini- episode of Rock Family Trees. The Breeders began life as an outlet for the writings of Pixies bassist Kim Deal who was unsatisfied with the direction of the band. Whilst touring with Throwing Muses, she got their guitarist Tanya Donnelly on board with the project and they produced a demo which got them a deal with 4AD Records to whom both their current bands were already signed.

Debut album “Pod” was not commercially successful but did receive the kudos of being named by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain as one of his favourite records ever. An EP called “Safari” was then recorded before Donelly departed the project to form Belly who were also signed to 4AD and who would hit with their single “Feed The Tree”. Deal recruited her sister Kelley to replace Donelly even though she couldn’t actually play guitar at that point and they recorded the album “Last Splash” from which “Cannonball” was the lead single.

A staple of every indie nightclub DJ’s record box, I myself even cut some rug to it at Fifth Avenue in Manchester occasionally. Its blistering, staccato rhythms and distorted vocals imbued it with a full-force power that felt like it could peel the skin off your face. A truly breathtaking record in every sense. The best ever record to only achieve a peak of No 40? Quite possibly.

One of the biggest selling singles of the year in America next. Mariah Carey had always been a sales phenomenon in the US with her first five singles all going to No 1 over there. This side of the pond, we were a bit more lukewarm in our reception. The highest position achieved by any of those singles in the UK was No 9. History was to repeat itself with the release of “Dreamlover”, the lead single from her third studio album “Music Box”. Yet another No 1 in America, it would top out at No 9 over here.

It was perfect for daytime radio – light but not lightweight, bouncy but not bumpy, it also saw Mariah ease off on that (in)famous vocal range. It also allowed her to pursue her interest in hip-hop via the employment of producer Dave Hall who had worked on Mary J. Bilge’s “What’s The 411?” album. The fluffy, feel-good video was a perfect visual vehicle for the track and I always picture Mariah in her checked shirt cavorting about in a field of hay when I hear the track but that’s enough of that!

Could this be the final time we see Tasmin Archer on TOTP? Quite possibly. A superstar in the making with her No 1 “Sleeping Satellite” less than a year before, she had already been relegated to an also ran come August 1993. “Arienne” was the fourth hit from her debut album “Great Expectations” but was also the worst performing as each release peaked lower down the charts than its predecessor. I always thought this was a more obvious follow up to “Sleeping Satellite” than actual second single “In Your Care” and had record company EMI gone that route then surely it would have landed higher than its No 30 peak here.

I quite liked it but maybe that was due to its similarities to “Carrie Anne” by the marvellous Hollies – Tasmin totally nicks their phrasing for her song. Taking of that name, have you ever met anyone called Arienne before? You’re doing well if you have. Between 1880 and 2020, only 428 babies were named Arienne in the US making it the 18,714th most popular name of all time. As for Tasmin, she would return to the UK Top 40 one more time when her “Shipbuilding” EP of Elvis Costello covers just sneaked in during 1994.

To Miami Beach now for a satellite link up with the Bee Gees who are in the charts with their “Paying The Price Of Love” single. The more I listen to this one, the more excruciating it sounds. Unlike Mariah Carey who toned down her high pitched vocals for “Dreamlover”, Barry Gibb has turned the falsetto-meter up to a spine tingling, Spinal Tap-esque 11. I’m sure there were bits of it that only our dog could hear. And those outfits they were wearing! The Bee Gees made very little sense sartorially or sonically outside of the disco era.

WHO?! You may well ask. Their/his (?) name was Sinclair and the song was “Ain’t No Casanova” and that’s about all their is to know about this whole minuscule footnote of chart history. There’s very little else out there online. As with Tasmin Archer borrowing heavily from The Hollies for her hit “Arienne”, so Sinclair seemed to have revisited a previous chart hit for inspiration. Remember “Casanova” by Levert from 1987? The very first line of that song is ‘I ain’t much on Casanova’. I mean come on!

Sinclair’s record plugger must have either done a hell of a job or just got lucky to get a slot on TOTP when the record had only entered the chart at No 37. In any other week it surely would have been a Breaker? The appearance helped it to a peak of No 28 and then…nothing. Probably for the best.

Another week at the top for Freddie Mercury and “Living On My Own” and yet another artist on the show that had a remarkable vocal after Mariah Carey and Barry Gibb. Who had the biggest vocal range though? Well, Classic FM published an article this year where they compared the voices of artists from Prince to Pavarotti and Bowie to Bocelli. Freddie Mercury comes in with an impressive 4 octave F2 to E6 range with Barry Gibb just behind him on 3.4 but Mariah Carey topped them all being able to go from F2 to G7, a span of 5 octaves. Ouch! Cease is the word!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Pogues	Tuesday Morning	Nope
2	UB40	Higher Ground	No
3	Bitty McLean	“It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”	Never
4	Aftershock	Slave To The Vibe	Not my vibe at all
5	The Breeders	Cannonball	I must have it on something surely
6	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Nah
7	Tasmin Archer	Arienne	I did not
8	Bee Gees	Paying The Price Of Love	Wasn’t ever happening
9	Sinclair	Ain’t No Casanova	Negative
10	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001cjqx/top-of-the-pops-19081993

TOTP 23 JAN 1992

Posted on January 17, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another show that’s been pricked by the thorn of Adrian’s Rose and so find ourselves deep into January 1992. There’s only 8 acts on tonight presumably because the Breakers section has gone missing but they are all newbies that haven’t been reviewed previously. Tonight’s presenters are Mark Franklin and Steve Anderson and there’s a slight tweak to the format immediately in that the opening camera shot is on those two and not the opening act supplemented by a voice over intro. Not sure why that may be but it’s certainly a return to a more traditional opening. It does give us more time to gaze in wonder at the peak of sartorial design that were Mark Franklin’s shirts. He’s got one of those ones with the wide vertical block down one side of his midriff. He had a similar one recently that was in red and white but this one is in black and cream. Maybe he had a sponsorship deal with whoever made them. Steve Anderson on the other hand has come dressed as…well, I have no idea what or who he has come dressed as but it looks terrible.

Anyways, on with the show and the first act tonight are 2 Unlimited with their second consecutive hit “Twilight Zone”. Their debut hit at the back end of ’91 was of course “Get Ready For This” which was predominantly just a keyboard riff with some added ‘yeahs’ and ‘y’all ready for this’ shout outs courtesy of Ray Slijngaard – I think there may be other mixes out there which featured him rapping also. My point though is that his female band mate Anita Doth was very much in the background when they performed on TOTP (despite her wearing some very revealing outfits). This time though she is front and centre as there are some actual lyrics to be sung – I’m guessing singing wasn’t really Ray’s thing. Mind you, judging by Anita’s live vocal here, I’m not too sure it was her’s either. It’s not the strongest demonstration of the art of singing it has to be said. Ray’s obviously insisted though that the inclusion of some ‘yeahs’ is obligatory so that he has something else to do other than leap around behind a keyboard.

There’s also a hell of a lot less of them than their were for “Get Ready For This” when there were at least 8 people on stage. This time it’s just 4. Who were all these other people. Obviously there’s Ray and Anita but the rest of them? Hired dancers? Their mates on a jolly? If it was the latter, it raises the very topical question of whether TOTP appearances were a party or a work event. Ahem. “Twilight Zone” matched the success of “Get Ready For This” by peaking at No 2. They would reach the chart pinnacle the following year though with “No Limits”.

After a quick rundown of the Top 10 we’re into another studio performance from an act we’ll be seeing a lot of in the weeks to come. For now though, this was the first airing on the show for Shakespears Sister with “Stay”. Not exactly a new band as they’d first come to public attention way back in 1989 with their Top 10 hit “You’re History” but subsequent singles had failed to make the Top 40. We could have all been forgiven for thinking that was that for Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit especially when the first taste of their new material, a single called “Goodbye Cruel World”, peaked at No 59 in the Autumn of 1991. We were all wrong. Monumentally wrong. They had an ace up their sleeve which was the track “Stay” written by Siobhan’s then partner Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. It would top the the UK Singles Chart for 8 consecutive weeks and was the 4th biggest selling single of 1992.

As that stretch at the top will entail me having to dig up something to write about it for weeks to come, I’m going to keep my powder dry for a while but you can’t mention this song without reference to this infamous sketch and I’m not about to break that rule…

No sign of Franklin or Anderson in the next link (maybe the producers had second thoughts about their outfits) as we go straight into a third studio performance on the bounce. This one is definitely a new artist and he goes by the name of Curtis Stigers. I like the way the young girl in the audience rushes to the front of the age but then retreats as she realises she’s wondered into a spotlight. Maybe she was being shouted at by some unseen member of the studio floor staff. Back to Curtis though and this guy seemed to come out of nowhere but he’d been kicking around the jazz clubs of New York with his sax for years before he was plucked from obscurity by Arista Records to become a mainstream pop star. And mainstream he certainly was. No jazz noodling on display in this, his debut hit “I Wonder Why”. This was a prime cut of middle of the road balladry that was as much at home on Radio 2 as it was Radio 1 back in the day. Its lowest common denominator inoffensiveness did the trick though sending him rocketing up the charts to a resting place of No 5.

He managed another Top 10 hit in the follow up “You’re All That Matters to Me” whilst his debut eponymous album also achieved that feat. It couldn’t last though and he would only have two more minor chart hits over here before returning to his roots and embarking upon a career of recording jazz albums for the Concorde Jazz label. He did manage to get a song on the all conquering The Bodyguard soundtrack album the royalties of which should have set him up for life but he did a cover instead of one of his own songs (Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”). Doh!

I seem to recall at the time that a lot was made of the length of his locks in a point and stare type of way but like the poodle haired Michael Bolton before him, he has since shorn them all off and looks much the better for it. He’s quite a prominent figure on social media these days and comes across as a pretty decent sort of chap which is… erm..all that matters to me.

Oh Lord! It’s that Genesis video now. You know the one I mean. When the “We Can’t Dance” album was released in late ’91, it seemed like there was an inevitability that the fourth track on it, “I Can’t Dance”, would end up being released as a single. Maybe it was just that it was (almost) the title track but I seem to recall that it stood out when we had to play the album in the Our Price store I was working in (‘had’ to being the operative word). I guess it was the most radio friendly song on there? It was catchy with a goofy hook and mercifully shorter than the previous single, the 6:41 in length “No Son Of Mine” (the album version was that long anyway and didn’t TOTP allow them to perform it in full?).

Supposedly it was written as a joke in a lighthearted moment in the studio (did Genesis have light hearted studio moments?) to satirise guys who look good but can’t string two sentences together using the motif of jeans advert models. Really though, it’s all about the video. I mean hats off to the the band for sending themselves up but once you’ve seen the ‘I Can’t Dance dance’ with those stiff moves and a walking motion leading with the same arm and leg, no amount of brain bleach is going to remove it. If The Monkees TV show hadn’t been cancelled in 1968 and they’d carried on making it into the 90s, it would have looked like this. And we haven’t even mentioned the send up of Michael Jackson’s “Black And White” video by Phil Collins at the end yet! What the hell was that?! I really don’t think that the overly long set up of the joke that was Phil doing a tap dance routine was worth it. “I Can’t Dance” peaked at No 7 in both the UK and US charts.

Now as Mark Franklin confirms in his intro, Kylie Minogue had been having hits for 4 years by this point since bursting onto the UK charts with “I Should Be So Lucky” off the back of her Neighbours profile and of those 15 hits since, 5 of them had peaked at No 2. How…erm…unlucky was that? Well, her luck wasn’t to change with “Give Me Just A Little More Time” as that would miss the top spot by one place as well. This single was the third to be released from her now almost forgotten “Let’s Get To It” album and was a cover version of the old Chairmen Of The Board 1970 hit and was, as far as I can tell, only the third cover version she had released up to that point after “The Loco-Motion” and “Tears On My Pillow”.

Now there didn’t seem to be much love on Twitter for Kylie’s vocals here after this TOTP was reshown on BBC4 the other week but I have to say that I thought 2 Unlimited’s Anita’s were worse and in any case, you could forgive her a few duff notes just for that rolling ‘R’ sound she does halfway through (if indeed that was her).

“Give Me Just A Little More Time” should not be confused (as if it could be) with the 1984 Whitesnake single which has the same words in its chorus but which has a slightly different title in “Give Me More Time”. I recall listening to Mike Read on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show play this and make a comment afterwards that the song title sounded like it could be something shouted by an under fire company chairman facing demands for payment by creditors and screaming in his defence ‘Give Me More Time’. Was that Read trying to make an uncharacteristically clever pun on Chairmen Of The Board? Clever? Mike Read? Surely not.

From Kylie to Public Enemy?! That’s some leap but here are Flavor Flav, Chuck D and co in the TOTP studio with“Shut ‘Em Down”. Now there’s something rather unsettling about this performance and it’s nothing to do with it being Public Enemy who thrived on unsettling people. No, it’s the staging of it as it’s recorded as one long, continual single camera shot with no cuts whatsoever. Whose idea was that do you suppose? The band’s? A TOTP producer trying to be creative? Judging by the way that Chuck D looks at the camera, it seems like it was suspended and sliding around the front of the stage, a bit like the spidercams that they use to cover the football on Sky Sports that are suspended from four wires – one in each corner of the ground – and which can pan 360 degrees while remaining level. Well, those Sky cameras are a bit more state-of-the-art I’m sure but you get my drift.

Anyway, “Shut ‘Em Down” was a track from the band’s fourth album “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” and, according to Chuck D, was “about major corporations like Nike taking profits from the black community, but not giving anything back, never opening businesses in black areas. And it’s saying that the best way to boycott a business is to start your own.” Almost 6 months to the day after this performance, Flavor Flav walked into he Our Price shop in Manchester that I was working in as Public Enemy were in town playing a Stop Sellafield concert alongside Kraftwerk and U2 for Greenpeace to protest the nuclear factory. He looked exactly the same as he does on this TOTP and didn’t have a clue where he was or what he was doing. “Shut ‘Em Down” peaked at No 21.

Ooh a bit of TOTP history next! As Mark Franklin says it was the first time that the show had linked up live by satellite with an artist in America for a real time performance. OK, so a few things to say about this. Firstly, the artist. Was Mariah Carey a massive deal in early 1992? She was in the US I grant you where every single she’d ever released to that point had topped the charts over there. That was five and counting as it stood. Over here though, she’d just had the one Top 10 hit. Couldn’t they have got someone who was a bigger name over here for this?

Secondly, I know this was her current single but “Can’t Let Go” hasn’t really stood the test of time as one of her best known songs has it? It sounds like an Eternal B-side. It holds the ignominy of being the song that halted her run of US No 1s when it peaked at No 2. I mean a No 2 is not to be sniffed at (erm…if you know what I mean) but it’s not what it’s remembered for (see also “Welcome To ThePleasuredome” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood”). Thirdly, it’s a pretty dull performance. Where are all the bells and whistles? It’s just Mariah and some uniformly dressed backing singers, some drapes, some candles and a backdrop of a bank of TVs (all switched off). Was it worth all the time and effort? Fourthly, presumably then this TOTP was broadcast live otherwise what was all the fuss about? Mark Franklin must have been bricking it in case the technology failed and he had to fill (his pants). Finally, has Mariah’s fame come full circle in this country now. Sure, she went one to sells bucket loads of records over here eventually but did the scenario below play out across the nation with parents watching this TOTP repeat on BBC4 the other week?

Across the nation, parents are telling their kids 'she sings All I Want For Christmas Is You'. The kids say 'oh i know her'
— Sharon Hanley (@sharonlhanley) January 7, 2022

“Can’t Let Go” peaked at No 20. See? Not a big deal in the UK in January ’92!

We have a new No 1! Queen have been dethroned after 5 weeks of looking down on their chart subjects and there is a new monarch at the head of the Top 40. Who predicted that Wet Wet Wet would have a chart topper around this time in their career? You’re a liar if you answered that question with “I did” as the Wets hadn’t been anywhere near pop’s summit for ages by the time 1992 rolled around. Having burst into the scene in 1987 with their debut album “Popped In Souled Out” and its attendant 4 hit singles, the Clydebank boys had consolidated that success with their first No 1 single in 1988, a cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends” for the ChildLine charity. And then, the dreaded second album syndrome (I’m not counting “Memphis Sessions” as a proper album). 1989’s “Holding Back The River” was not a commercial disaster by any means but it didn’t sell nearly as well as its predecessor either. The singles from it peaked at 6, 19, 31 and 30. By any metric, they weren’t ripping up the trees that they had been.

The band regrouped and we got some new material in September of 1991 but the single “Make It Tonight” only just scraped into the Top 40 at No 37. Oh. Another new track “Put The Light On” was rush released the next month but it only compounded the issue when it peaked at No 56! Oh oh. A third single was shoved out 2 days before Xmas presumably timed to miss the festive rush but hopes can’t have been high for a return to former glories. Somehow though, “Goodnight Girl” exceeded all expectations and became the first and only No 1 of the band’s career that they actually wrote themselves. As a feat of redemption it’s almost unparalleled. *The only other example that comes to mind is when Robbie Williams, his solo career hanging in the balance after his single “South Of The Border” stalled at No 14 and with record label Chrysalis wobbling, released “Angels”. The rest is history. So it was with the Wets. A No 1 single led to a No 1 album (“High On The Happy Side”) and two more Top 20 hits from it.

My wife really liked this one and asked me to get her the album using my work discount. Not the standard version though, oh no. There was a limited edition that included a whole second album of cover versions called “Cloak And Dagger” that the band had recorded under the pseudonym Maggie Pie And The Imposters. It featured their take on songs by artists like Elvis Costello, Carole King and Tom Waits, all of whom my wife loves. Unusually, the Monday the album was released was my day off that week so I had to ring work to get them to put a copy aside for me (thanks Julie!). I don’t think my wife has played it for years.

Wet Wet Wet may have not been on the show for a while but their performance here made it look like they’d only been away for a couple of weeks. A live vocal policy was no problem for Marti Pellow who also finds the camera every single time to do that smile into. They were clearly in a long hair phase though. It’s like the early 70s up there in stage. Two years on from this, they would pull a Bryan Adams with their version of “Love Is All Around” but let’s not get into that business right now.

*Oh yeah, and Shakespear Sister that were on just a few minutes earlier. That’s another good comeback example isn’t it? Doh!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Twilight Zone	Definitely not
2	Shakespears Sister	Stay	I didn’t
3	Curtis Stigers	I Wonder Why	Nah
4	Genesis	I Can’t Dance	Nope
5	Kylie Minogue	Give Me Just A Little More Time	No but I think my wife has it on a Best Of album
6	Public Enemy	Shut ‘Em Down	No
7	Mariah Carey	Can’t Let Go	Negative
8	Wet Wet Wet	Goodnight Girl	No but my wife had the album

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001349p/top-of-the-pops-23011992

TOTP 24 OCT 1991

Posted on October 31, 2021 by 80stastic

So the week has finally arrived. One month into the revamped TOTP and its time has come, its race is run, it’s over. No, not Man Utd’s 13 match unbeaten run to the start of the 1991/92 football season (that would arrive two days later as they lost 3-2 to Sheffield Wednesday). No, it’s the 16th and last week of Bryan Adams being at No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. 16 weeks! That’s four whole months, a third of a year, people who had got pregnant in the first of those 16 weeks were now nearly half way through their pregnancy. My own personal milestone was that our first wedding anniversary had just been and gone and we were just about to clock up one whole year of living and working in Manchester. Despite being skint a lot of the time, the year had gone pretty well and we felt settled there. I was working in the Our Price store in Market Street Manchester and gearing up for my second Xmas there. I think I may have graduated from ‘best seller’ CD orderer to being in charge of chart cassettes by this point. Chart cassettes! I’d only been trusted with TDK blank cassettes and accessories at the start of the year. It felt like a big deal. The store was probably starting to recruit for Xmas temps by now – most of their names and faces have long been unretrievable from my memory banks though one or two I can recall. I felt established amongst the permanent members of staff though my best mate there Steve had left at the start of the year. Fortunately, I have kept our friendship going these past 30 years.

We start this week with 2 Unlimited and “Get Ready For This” who are up to No 2 in the charts somehow. Why didn’t they call the track “Y’all Ready For This?” which is pretty much the only lyric in the whole sorry fair. Well, that or “Yeah!” I guess. Tony Dortie promises us “the busiest dancers around” in his intro. He can’t mean those people hanging around at the back of the stage surely? And by the way, exactly who were they? Clearly they’re not part of 2 Unlimited – are they really just some people out of the studio audience? If so, how did they get the gig? Did they have to audition their dance moves in front of the producers because all they seem to be doing to me is jumping up and down a bit?!

As this is a dance track though, the TOTP graphics team have added that green haze effect at certain points in the performance as they did the other week with Carl Cox. It reminds me of that old Dr Who story with the maggots…

After the godawful mess that is the Top 10 countdown, we’re straight into the album chart feature which this week is Kenny Thomas who was only just on the other week with his latest single “Best Of You”. The song he sings tonight though is an album track (well it is the album feature) called “Something Special” which starts off sounding a bit like Labi Siffre’s “(Something Inside) So Strong” but soon turns into a weedy soul ballad about telling his love that they are…erm…well…special.

By my reckoning, this is the sixth time that Thomas has been on TOTP in 1991 and as such, I’m all out of Kenny info and trivia. I can say that his album “Voices” went to No 3 in the charts which would be its peak and I recall selling plenty of it over the Xmas period meaning I had to place many an order of the cassette version with EMI to keep up with demand. He’s turned up at the TOTP studio for this one wearing something that resembles a 50’s drape jacket and with his hair slicked back like that, he could almost pass for a Teddy Boy. Well, not really but I’m filling furiously here so give me a break! Actually, this bloke Tom on Twitter has probably got the whole thing bang to rights…

Leg it Kenny Thomas, Mike Baldwin wants his coat back #totp
— Tom (@Tommy_1972) October 23, 2021

After the Monty Python performance of “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” last week, we get another memorable turn this week as Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff get together to do “Dizzy”. This version of Tommy Roe’s 1969 No 1 was the follow up to Vic’s first hit (also a cover version) “Born Free” from earlier in the year and would go onto replicate Roe’s chart peak by making it to No 1.

The performance here is full on Vic Reeves Big Night Out which is allowed in my book given that the series had only just finished screening in the April. The Whirlpool washing machine and microwave props were a carry over from the promo video and which were a nice play on the lyrics but for me, Bob Mortimer just about steals the show with his cavorting in the background with Miles Hunt which climaxes with his back slide through Vic’s legs halfway through. As it’s a live vocal, Vic’s voice is pretty exposed but he just about gets away with it although he is just shouting on occasion and also seems to forget the words at one point. Was something meant to happen when Vic goes to look inside one of the washing machines? The fact that nothing does seems to put him off a bit. Maybe it was a piece of staging that went wrong or maybe they were all just too drunk to remember what they were doing? There seems to be damning evidence that everybody concerned had spent far too oolong in the Green Room beforehand.

At the end of the performance Tony Dortie emerges from the studio audience throng to say “Absolutely unbelievable, I can’t keep a straight face”…whilst keeping a straight face.

It’s the Queen video for “The Show Must Go On” next whose screening the other week was billed as an ‘exclusive’ to TOTP. This week it’s in the chart at No 19 and whilst the official line for the promo consisting entirely of a montage of clips of previous Queen videos and live shows was that it was to promote the band’s imminent “Greatest Hits II” album, the lack of any new footage of Freddie Mercury stoked even more rumours already circulating around his health.

After his death on 24 November, there was the inevitable rush of Queen’s music made available in the marketplace. As well as that “Greatest Hits II” album, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released (twinned as a double A-side with “These Are the Days Of Our Lives” from the “Innuendo” album) which would become the ’91 Xmas No 1. In between those releases came Brian May’s solo single “Driven By You” which would go Top 10 and indeed, “The Show Must Go On” itself would resurface in the charts despite having already peaked once at No 16. It all felt very reminiscent of John Lennon’s death 11 years earlier when his music flooded the charts although he was denied the Xmas No 1 by (unbelievably) “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” by St Winifred’s School Choir.

As for Queen, they would patch together one last studio album from the remaining recordings Freddie had managed to lay down before his passing that weren’t included on “Innuendo” which comprised the “Made In Heaven” album of 1995. One month after its release, that symmetry with John Lennon was evident again when “Free As A Bird” was released being a demo that John had recorded in 1977 that the remaining Beatles added to in the studio and which went to No 2 in the charts.

It’s ‘the rugby song’ as Tony Dortie called it the other week next as Kiri Te Kanawa is in the studio to perform “Word In Union”. She looks for all the world like she’s just arrived off the set of Dynasty with her big 80s style hair, shoulder padded jacket and…is that a diamond encrusted brooch in the shape of a lizard on one of them?! It could be a Tuatara which are reptiles endemic to New Zealand and are regarded as a ‘taonga’ or a special treasure in Māori culture (Te Kanawa’s birth father was Māori). Whatever the reason for the brooch, it’s quite a thing and maybe the studio audience crowding around Dame Kiri in a circle are all transfixed by that rather than her performance.

“World In Union” would have a life beyond the 1991 Rugby World Cup and has been recorded by multiple artists for subsequent competitions. In 1999, a version was recorded as a duet by Shirley Bassey and Bryn Terfel whilst the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand was launched by soprano Hayley Westenra’s version of the song. Paloma Faith did it for the 2015 competition although her rendition didn’t go down well – one twitter user described it thus:

Paloma Faith absolutely murdered World in Union. My non-existent cat could of sung it better.

Meow! In 2019, ITV used a version recorded by Emeli Sandé for their 2019 World Cup coverage. In tandem with all those releases came various versions of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” which is associated specifically with the England team and was taken into the charts by Union featuring the England World Cup Squad (1991), China Black (1995), Russel Watson (1999) and UB40 (2003).

Talk about from one extreme to another! As the camera pans away from Dame Kiri at the end of her performance you can see the next act awaiting their cue on the other stage who are Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! After their chart breakthrough earlier in the year with the re-release of “Sheriff Fatman” came “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” which was a non album single presumably to plug the gap until their next album “1992 – The Love Album” would be released in …erm…1992.

The contrast between Jim Bob / Fruitbat and Kiri Te Kananwa couldn’t be more pronounced with their raucous, in your face track and their non conformist, counterculture look (Boris Johnson would no doubt describe them as ‘crusties’). With it being the early 90s, nobody in team Carter USM thought to gain copyright clearance for the use of the “Ruby Tuesday” lyrics and they were subsequently sued by The Rolling Stones’ publisher. The resulting legal battle forced the song off the airwaves and was only resolved by the track being officially credited to Morrison, Carter, Richards and Jagger.

This wasn’t the only infamy that the single generated though. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this was the song that Carter USM played at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party of 1991 when Fruitbat rugby tackled host Philip Schofield to the ground on live TV when he had attempted a pathetic put down of the band after they started smashing up their instruments after the performance. His exact words were:

“Blimey! That was original. “After the Watershed” from Jim Bob and a Fruitbat pushing back the frontiers of music otherwise known as Carter and I think they’re still smashing it up out the back somewhere. Now not only…OOOOMMMMFFFF!”

Good work lads! I can’t be doing with Schofield and I find it baffling that he was deemed worthy of a Smash Hits front cover in 1991. Unsurprisingly, given Schofield’s connection with them, the publication backed Phil in a review of the Poll Winners Party referring to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as Bobbins and Dingbat. How original.

“After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” peaked at No 11.

Is this the first time we’ve seen this feature? The US Album chart? Tony Dortie’s intro doesn’t make any sense though as he says that Mariah Carey is No 1 in the American Hot 100 singles chart with “Emotions” and No 10 in the UK album chart. He definitely said UK and not US despite the on screen graphic saying ‘US chart’. I don’t get it. Anyway, Mariah is in the studio which means she must be doing a live vocal doesn’t it? We’ll see if she can do that famous four octave vocal range for real then won’t we?

*watches Mariah’s performance*

Well, yes she can but I still don’t like to listen to it. As she sings that last hight note, co-host Mark Franklin appears from within the studio audience to do the next link and has to wade through a gaggle of young men who somehow seem to have made sure that they were at the front of the stage to get a bird’s eye view of Mariah from up close. Funny that.

“Emotions” peaked at No 17 in the UK.

So to the Breakers and we start with Simple Minds and “Real Life”. This really was a case of a release too far. The title track from their latest album, it was the fourth single to be lifted from it and was subsequently the worst performing in the chart peaking at No 34. The album had already been out for six months by this point but I guess the record company wanted to give it another push for the Xmas market. Its chart performance wasn’t helped by it being promoted by yet another boring live performance video just as previous single “Stand By Love” had been. The band really weren’t putting much effort into their videos in 1991 as lead single “Let There Be Love” had just been a straight run through performance of the song as well (although it wasn’t taken from a gig) but had some added dry ice for effect. Poor, very poor as Vic Reeves might have said.

Possibly one of the most famous songs ever next as we get an old clip of Don McLean performing “American Pie”. So much has been written about this song – just google ‘Don Mclean American Pie and you’ll immediately get a flurry of results offering the ‘story behind the song’ or the ‘hidden meaning of…’ etc – so I’m not going to forensically dissect the song line by line partly because it’s too long and I can’t be arsed but more significantly because McLean himself fessed up to its true meaning in 2015. Why then? Well, the original manuscript for the song was put up for auction (it sold at $1.2 million) and McLean agreed to tell all about those lyrics. He basically said it was an allegorical tale describing how the world was heading in the wrong direction whilst also clearing up some of those hidden references. Clearly the famous “the day the music died” line referred to the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash in 1959 but he also confirmed that “the jester” was Bob Dylan and that the song built to a climax that referenced the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert headlined by The Rolling Stones in 1969.

None of the above answers the question why this 1972 US No 1 and UK No 2 hit was back in the charts in 1991 of course but it’s a simple explanation – to plug a Don McLean Best Of album released for the Xmas rush. The re-release of “American Pie” reached No 12 in the UK but of much more acclaim is that in March 2017, it was designated an ‘aural treasure’ by the American Library of Congress and ‘worthy of preservation’ in the National Recording Registry ‘as part of America’s patrimony’. Yeah, that’s as maybe but he was wrong about ‘the day the music died’ – that was in 1987 when Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley went to No 1 with “Jack Your Body”.

The final Breaker sees Pet Shop Boys finally relent to the inevitable and release their very first Best Of album – “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection”. After 5 years of solid hits, a collection album was certainly warranted but, as was seeming to be the done thing back then, it was a new track that was released to promote the album. “Now I’m not suggesting that “DJ Culture” should be enshrined in any Halls of Fame for its cultural significance like “American Pie, but its message was prescient. According to Neil Tennant via Wikipedia it was about:

The insincerity of how President George H. W. Bush’s speeches at the time of the First Gulf War utilised Winston Churchill’s wartime rhetoric, in a manner similar to how artists sample music from other artists.

Fast forward 30 odd years and replace Bush with Boris Johnson and…where’s the difference? Johnson’s obsession with Churchill and his enablement by the right wing press and its obsession with the war and the ‘Blitz spirit’ and it’s not hard to see why we live in a country that has created a hostile environment for ‘outsiders’. We are a much poorer country for it. The parallels with Brexit also echo in the lyrics:

Imagine a war which everyone won
Permanent holiday in endless sun
Peace without wisdom, one steals to achieve
Relentlessly, pretending to believe

Let’s pretend we won a war
Like a football match, ten-nil the score
Anything’s possible, we’re on the same side
Or otherwise on trial for our lives

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine these words as a criticism of the leave campaign narrative of ‘sunlit uplands’ and ‘Brexit is good, you just have to believe in it enough’ – there’s even a reference later on about empty shelves! Tellingly there’s also the line “Wondering who’s your friend” which could speak of the divisions between families and friends that Brexit has caused. Actually, there’s a couple more Pet Shop Boys song titles that sum up the shitshow that is Brexit and this corrupt Tory government in a much more succinct way- I’m thinking “Was It Worth It?” and “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”. Bit of politics there as Ben Elton might have said back in the day.

For all that, I didn’t actually rate “DJ Culture” that much. It was a bit too repetitive and lacking in melody for me. It peaked at No 13 in the UK Top 40 whilst the “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection” album went to No 3 and achieved platinum status sales.

This week’s ‘TOTP Exclusive’ performance is from David Bowie….HURRAY! Hang on. Let me finish. I was going to say David Bowie’s side project rock group Tin Machine….BOOOOO!!!. Hang on didn’t they do an exclusive performance for TOTP the other week? Yes they did when they appeared on the show to promote previous single “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”! You can’t claim this to be an exclusive if its the second time in a few weeks can you?

Enter new show producer Stanley Appel, stage left: “Ah, but that first exclusive was in the pre- year zero revamp era. This is a whole new show so yes, of course we can claim it as an exclusive.

Me (not having it): So definitely not flogging a dead horse then?

Stanley Appel: How dare you?!

Is dead horse unfair? I think when it comes to Tin Machine it’s justified. Of the five singles they released only one made the Top 40 (the aforementioned “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”) whilst all the others were flops including this track “Baby Universal”…or “Baby Unusual” as Tony Dortie announces it. Clearly Tony had got the jitters being in the presence of the legend that was Bowie as he seems to fluff his entire intro. He mispronounces the word ‘exclusive’ and then nearly forgets the name of their album which couldn’t have been much easier to remember being “Tin Machine II” and all.

As for the song itself, it’s all very urgent sounding filled with moments for Bowie to deliver his unique vocal stylings but it’s just not quite there for me. Actually, listening to it back, it reminds me of “The Cabaret” by Time UK who were the group that drummer Rick Buckler formed after The Jam broke up. Don’t know it? Have a listen…

Time UK there, only the band that Tin Machine could have been (ahem)….oh and that tattoo on the drummer’s knuckles that we get a shot of at the end of the song? it definitely says HUNT and not anything else as his name is Hunt Sales!

And finally Cyril….

…and finally Esther. FINALLY. After 16 (SIXTEEN!) long weeks, we get to the final time that Bryan Adams is No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. Obviously no record should have been at the top of the charts for that long – it was a nonsense. Was it Bryan’s fault though? I can’t see how. He just wrote a song for a film and it got released as a single. I think he only did one TOTP studio performance and the rest of the time the show just broadcast the video with the the film clips montage. He wasn’t busting a gut to be in the studio every week to promote it. The way people moaned about how long it was No 1 for, you would have though that this sort of run could never happen again but just three years later Wet Wet Wet almost eclipsed it with their “Love Is All Around” single also taken from a film (Four Weddings And A Funeral). They probably would have done had the band not taken the decision to delete the single and so it fell just short at 15 weeks. Their chart buster was of course a cover version of The Troggs – at least Adams had the good grace (and financial sense) to write this own tune!

No artist got near that sort of feat until Drake in 2016 whose “One Dance” single was No 1 for 15 weeks in the UK. It occurs to me that I don’t even know how that one goes. I’m not inclined to find out.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Get Ready For This	Get ready for what? No.
2	Kenny Thomas	Something Special	I did not nor have I ever bought any Kenny Thomas records
3	Vic Reeves and The Wonderstuff	Dizzy	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Queen	The Show Must Go On	It must but it did so without me
5	Kiri Te Kanawa	World In Union	No thanks
6	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)	See 3 above
7	Mariah Carey	Emotions	Nope
8	Simple Minds	Real Life	No
9	Don McLean	American Pie	Nah
10	Pet Shop Boys	DJ Culture	Not the single but have it on their Pop Art Collection CD
11	Tin Machine	Baby Universal	Negative
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It For You	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/m0010rl6/top-of-the-pops-24101991

TOTP 10 OCT 1991

Posted on October 22, 2021 by 80stastic

Welcome to the brave new world of the ‘year zero’ TOTP revamp where we are into the second show of this new era. My take on the first show was that it was a right shambles and that the new features didn’t really work at all. The presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin were enthusiastic but yet to find their feet and cement their personalities on the show whilst the chart rundown was an abomination. As D-Ream would say two years on from here (and indeed Howard Jones six years before), things can only get better.

An acid test of the new format arrives in the very first act on tonight as we see if the changes introduced by new producer Stanley Appel allow dance tunes to be showcased any more effectively. The person in the test drive seat is DJ Carl Cox with “I Want You (Forever)”. Once again we open the show without seeing a host at all as we get the disembodied voice of Dortie who really is shaping a reputation for himself as a mumbler. What’s he saying? “Everyone is live and firing interaction from Brighton”? What?! Take a breath man – you’re running your sentences together! As for the staging of the performance, I have to say I don’t see anything much different from how dance acts were presented previously. The main man is once again in the background on the decks whilst the singer is up front with some dancers. So far, so same as before. Yes, the vocal is live this time as per keeping with the new edict about artists appearing on the show and there’s a bit of graphic trickery when some trippy colourisation effects are laid over the top for the non-singing parts of the track but apart from that? OK, there’s maybe some more camera angles than usual in an attempt to dazzle us into thinking that there’s more going on here than our brains can take in but I’m not sure it works. They even resort to that old strategy of slipping in some bits of the promo video to try and liven up proceedings. Nah, not for me.

Oh, hang on. That’s new! As DJ Carl Cox finishes, the camera tracks to a bank of six TV screens and Mark Franklin appears stretched out over all of them to form one big collage of his face. Ooh! Swanky! I take it all back – the whole revamp was worth it just for that moment! Franklin introduces the Top 10 countdown and – oh no – disregard my previous comment as this new countdown is just atrocious. Unforgivable.

Talking of unforgivable, here’s Morrissey! OK, a touch unfair on the 1991 version of Morrissey maybe but some of his more recent comments are truly unpalatable. Here he is a with a fairly downbeat (if not downright miserable) tune called “My Love Life” which was the fourth and final hit single that he had in the calendar year of 1991 none of which got any higher than No 25. It was also the second of two consecutive non-album singles (following “Pregnant For The Last Time”) before he would return the following year with a proper album in “Your Arsenal”.

Mozza’s backing band are now full on rockabilly rebels with quiff-tastic hair which is not a surprise as this was around the time that Boz Boorer, founder of new wave rockabilly group The Polecats, would enter into a permanent working relationship with Morrissey as his co-writer and guitarist. “My Love Life” though wasn’t a Boorer / Morrissey composition but was written with Mark Nevin who used to be in “Perfect” hitmakers Fairground Attraction.

Coincidentally, I recently read the autobiography* of another Nevin, one of my all time football heroes Pat Nevin who himself was a big Smiths fan and indeed, he devoted an entire chapter of his book (entitled This Charming Man) to the time he went round to Morrissey’s house. Pat went to Morrissey’s gaff with his friend Vini Reilly from The Durutti Column and found his host to be overly guarded on first meeting (or “defensive preciousness” as Pat called it). To try and warm him up a bit, Nevin asked Morrissey if he had ever been interested in football to which he replied:

“I can’t say I have ever really thought about it. My mind and my thoughts have never ventured towards that area, my soul was otherwise engaged“.

A typical lah-di-dah Morrissey answer you could be forgiven for thinking. However, there was a sting in the tail. Pat was playing for Everton by this point and one of his fellow players, ex-Man Utd legend Norman Whiteside, lived on the same road as Morrissey it turned out. Nevin followed up by saying:

“I only ask because another player from our team was going to pop round with me tonight, his name is Norman and he lives not far from here.”

Quick as a flash Mozza replied:

“You mean Norman Whiteside who used to play for United and moved to Everton last year?”

You little tinker Morrissey!

Nevin replied:

“Not bad knowledge for a guy whose soul is engaged elsewhere”

The ice was broken and they got along famously for the rest of the evening. They never met again but Morrissey sent Pat a postcard inscribed with ‘From one dribbler to another’ which as Pat says, could have been a perfect Smiths song title.

*All quotes in italics are from Pat Nevin, the accidental footballer published by Monoray, 2021.

Next one of those songs that got so much airplay that you end up convinced that it was a bigger hit than hit actually was. “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn had already been released once in 1991 when it peaked at No 66 in June. I’m guessing it was still being played on the radio enough to warrant a re-release just a few months later and this time it would become a UK Top 40 hit. Where do you reckon it go to though? Top 10? Top 5? Nope, it didn’t even go Top 20 peaking just outside at No 22.

I think it’s the lyrics that made the song memorable with those references to Elvis, The King and Graceland but it’s not really a tribute to Presley but rather concerns Cohn’s “spiritual awakening” as he puts it himself. Cohn had come to a realisation at the age of 28 that he didn’t actually like the songs he had so far written so he took a trip to Memphis to try and clear his writer’s block. The lyrics are almost entirely autobiographical, outlining his experiences whilst there like attending the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church on a Sunday morning to hear the Reverend Al Green preach (‘They’ve got gospel in the air, and Reverend Green be glad to see you, when you haven’t got a prayer’). The words also reference visiting the Hollywood Café in Robinsonville, Mississippi to see Muriel Davis Wilkins, a retired schoolteacher who performed at the cafe (‘Now Muriel plays piano, every Friday at the Hollywood’). Cohn also references blues legend W.C. Handy, Carl Perkins who originally recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” whilst that line about the ‘ghost of Elvis’ that security didn’t see is supposedly about a story that Bruce Springsteen once successfully scaled the wall at Graceland, trying to deliver a song he wrote to Elvis but The King wasn’t at home.

Inevitably Cohn drew comparisons with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John but unlike those two, Cohn’s career was defined by that one song which won him a Grammy in 1992 for Best New Artist. As with so many albums in 1991, the surprise success of the single created a demand for his debut eponymous album which had been released in February but which was now withdrawn by Warners (it always seemed to be Warners) before being re-released meaning that those of us working in record stores had to explain what an album being withdrawn meant to confused customers wanting the album by ‘that bloke who sings the song about Elvis’.

Interesting to note that just like Carl Cox earlier, the TOTP production team felt the need to beef up the studio performance with some clips of the video. So that was dance acts and blokes sat at pianos that the show struggled to accommodate.

For the sake of completists everywhere I should mention the following:

Cher recorded a version of this in 1995 for her “It’s A Man’s World” album and it outperformed Cohn’s version when it peaked at No 11 despite being f*****g horrible.
In 1992, jungle pioneers Shut Up And Dance released a bastardised version of “Walking In Memphis” with the lyrics and song title changed to “Raving I’m Raving”. However, as they hadn’t obtained song clearance from Cohn, he took out an injunction to stop them from making any more copies of the record. The original version had sent the song to No 2 in the UK charts but it dropped like a stone when the shops couldn’t get any more stock. A re-recorded version was then released which sounded nothing like Cohn’s song and which nobody wanted and it fell out of the charts within two weeks.
German happy hardcore ravers Scooter released a version of it entitled “I’m Raving”in 1996 but seriously, let’s not go there.

After last week’s Exclusive feature showed a song that wasn’t even a hit in the UK (“Fun Day” by Steve Wonder), this time it’s a better choice as the video for Queen‘s latest single is showcased. Possibly one fo the most poignant song titles ever, “The Show Must Go On” was the last Queen single to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime. Despite no official statement from the band, rumours were now rife that Freddie was very ill by the end of November, he had gone.

Despite being the last track on the band’s final album with Freddie “Innuendo”, it was released as a single to promote their “Greatest Hits II” album that was released at the end of October. It sounds strange to say it now as the album went to No 1 and 12 x platinum in the UK but I recall that we hadn’t sold as many as expected in the Our Price I was working in (we’d got shed loads of it in). I clearly remember the store manager saying to me that we could do with Freddie dying to shift some more units. It wasn’t his finest hour to be honest.

The video is basically just an advert for “Greatest Hits II” being a montage of clips from some of their singles included in the retrospective including “I Want to Break Free”, “Radio Ga Ga” and “Breakthru” as well as some shots of the band’s legendary The Magic tour dates at Wembley Stadium.

Last week, I referenced a poll that stated that by 2014, Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” was the most requested funeral song by us Brits. However, in 2005, a poll by digital TV channel Music Choice asked 45,000 adults across Europe which song they would like played at their funeral – “The Show Must Go On” came out on top.

The single peaked at No 16 initially but after Freddie’s death, it re-entered the Top 75 spending as many weeks there as it had done on its original chart run.

Tony Dortie’s at it again next with his urban jargon when he introduces the next act Cathy Dennis as “whipping up a storm and creating a flavour all over the world?” Creating a flavour? Actually, I bet he spelt it ‘flava’. Was that really a phrase back in ’91? Anyway, our Cathy is adopting that well worn record company strategy of following two fast hits with a slow one with the release of her ballad “Too Many Walls”. Previous singles “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and “Just Another Dream” had made a star of Cathy (although she was formally introduced to us on D Mob’s 1989 hit “C’mon and Get My Love”) so now was the time to consolidate on her success by demonstrating her diversity and that there was more to her than some sprightly dance/pop tunes. You can tell there has been some restyling of her image to support this new direction as Cathy is wearing a classy looking (albeit day- glo coloured) jacket and roll neck sweater outfit as opposed to the slinky catsuit of her “Touch Me (All Night Long)” appearance on the show and the Betty Boo style space cadet outfit for “Just Another Dream”.

“Too Many Walls” was a decent attempt at a ballad even if the final result is a little underwhelming. I was surprised to discover that it was co-written by Cathy with Anne Dudley of pioneering sound explorers Art of Noise as the song resides squarely in the safer parts of the pop world.

Despite her UK success, Cathy was still a bigger star in the US than over here at this point with this single peaking inside the Billboard Top 10 at No 8 whilst it got no further than No 17 here.

After the disastrous decision in last weeks’ TOTP of getting Status Quo to launch the new album chart feature, this week we get Simply Red. Whether this is a better choice or not is open to debate. On the plus side, they were probably seen as more contemporary and they were undeniably popular as “Stars” would become the biggest selling album of the year in the UK. On the downside, it means having to stomach Mick Hucknall. The track they perform here is “For Your Babies” which you would have been forgiven for thinking must be the second single released from the album but that wasn’t the case. The title track would take that slot when it was released a month on for this performance. Maybe new TOTP producer Stanley Appel was fastidious in the details of the show and insisted that an artist must perform a non-single album track if featured in the album chart section rather than just the latest single? As it was, “For Your Babies” was released as the third single in early 1992 and would make No 9 in the charts.

Whatever you say about Hucknall, I would imagine that this new policy of making artists sing live on the show wouldn’t have fazed him in the slightest and he gives a controlled, quality vocal here on what for me, was one of the tracks on the album that I could actually stand. Mind you, by the time the album had been played to death in the Our Price I was working in all over Xmas, I could quite happily never had heard it or Mick Hucknall ever again. We get another of those ill advised interviews at the end of the song as Dortie climbs onto the stage to have a rather obsequious word with the ginger one for no apparent reason other than to plug his forthcoming tour and namecheck the new members of the band. Clearly no lessons were learned from the sphincter clenching embarrassment of an interview with Belinda Carlisle last week.

The Breakers are back to pre-‘year zero’ revamp levels with four of them crammed into 1 minute and 35 seconds. Dortie makes a bit of a mess of introducing them as he refers to “The rugby song” by Kiri Te Kanawa (you couldn’t remember “World In Motion” Tony?) and mispronouncing Public Enemy as Public Enery reviving memories of Sir Henry ‘Enery’ Cooper and this advert:

Anyway, the Breakers start with Oleta Adams doing a version of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. This was taken from the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin” which included covers of their songs by some huge names such as Kate Bush, Tina Turner, Hall & Oates, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton and Sting. Despite scoring a huge global breakthrough hit with “Get Here” earlier in the year, maybe one of those aforementioned artists would have been expected to be picked as the single to promote the album but Oleta it was who got the nod and I personally think she does a decent job of one of my favourite Elton tunes. I think her take on it got patchy reviews as did the album as a whole despite its platinum sales in this country.

Also on the album was George Michael doing a song called “Tonight” from Elton’s 1976 “Blue Moves” album and yet it is George’s cover of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” that is far better known than Oleta’s. Elton and George first performed it together at Live Aid in 1985 with Michael including it in his set list for his Cover to Cover tour of 1991 with Elton being introduced on stage at Wembley Arena for the final show to reprise it. That performance was recorded and released as a single in November and would go to No 1 raising money for ten different charities all of which makes you wonder why George’s version wasn’t used for the “Two Rooms” album.

Oleta’s cover reached No 33 in the UK charts.

Back in 1991, the UK pretty much only knew Mariah Carey for her big ballad “Vision Of Love” from the previous year which went Top 10. Subsequent singles were only very minor hits and we could have been forgiven for thinking that Mariah might have had her day over here already. So when “Emotions” came out, those of us who had been of that opinion had to eat some humble pie. Not only was the single a Top 20 hit but the album of the same name went platinum in the UK alone. Furthermore, the single was a completely different sound and tempo to “Vision Of Love”, being an R’n’B disco stomper. Ah yes, that disco influence. Did it sound ever so slightly like the 1977 No 1 disco hit “Best Of My Love” by (ahem) The Emotions? Yes, yes it did and it didn’t go unnoticed by one of its songwriters, none other than Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire who took legal action and received a settlement. “Emotions” was co-written and produced by producers du jour Robert Clivillés, and David Cole of C+C Music Factory and according to one of their touring party, Carl Sturken, this is the story behind the song as he told it in an interview with songfacts.com:

“I am absolutely one thousand percent certain that when they wrote that groove, they labeled it ‘Emotions’ because it’s The Emotions’ groove. Then when Mariah Carey comes in to write over it, she sees ‘Emotions’ written as the name of the groove, so she writes a song called ‘You’ve Got Me Feeling Emotions.'”

Yeah, a likely story.

Was “Emotions’ the song where we really became aware of Mariah’s infeasibly wide vocal range? When she performed it at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, she reportedly sounded a G-sharp three and a half octaves above middle C. This was one of the highest notes produced by a human voice in the history of recorded music! I know we’re supposed to be impressed and all but listen to this compilation of her highest notes and tell me if it sounds nice!

~~Public Enery~~ Public Enemy now with their tribute to the newly appointed Foreign Secretary of Boris Johnson’s government Liz Truss. “Can’t Truss It”was the lead single from their “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” album and was the follow up to seminal long player “Fear Of A Black Planet”. I say follow up but how did you follow up such a seismic album when it included such tracks as “911 Is A Joke” and “Fight The Power” the latter of which has come to be regarded as one of the most influential songs in hip hop history and which regularly appears in polls that try to quantify the best /most important songs of all time. “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” certainly attempted the impossible performing well commercially but some reviews of it described it as good rather than classic.

As well as the much sampled James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone, “Can’t Truss It” features the more left field sample of “Im Nin’Alu” by Ofra Haza and peaked at No 22 on the UK Top 40.

And so we get to “The Rugby Song”. The1991 Rugby World Cup was only the second time the tournament had been held and this time host countries were England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France with the final taking place at Twickenham Stadium, London. To celebrate this event, an official Rugby World Cup song was recorded and released by New Zealand opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. “World In Union” was its title and it was based on “Thaxted” from the middle section of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”, a movement from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” though most of us knew the melody as being from the hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country”. It was hardly “World In Motion” by New Order but it proved to be surprisingly (at least to me) popular earning itself a chart high of No 4.

As for the tournament itself, it kind of passed me by. I had to look up that England actually made the final (losing to Australia 12-6) though when I checked the names of the team that day, I certainly recognised the likes of Will Carling, Rory Underwood, Rob Andrew and Jeremy Guscott. Maybe I even watched the final on TV but I can’t recall. There seemed to be a much bigger fuss about the 2003 final probably because we won it (Johnny Wilkinson and all that) and I definitely remember watching that match.

Just as the era of “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” is coming to an end, we enter another that defies explanation – the time of 2 Unlimited is upon us. This lot were formed by Belgian producers Jean-Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde but those aren’t the people that we associate with 2 Unlimited. No, they would be Dutch rapper Ray Slijngaard and vocalist Anita Doth who fronted the act. “Get Ready for This” for this was their debut hit and it was just dreadful. Totally annoying and basically just a keyboard riff played over and over again. Apparently the UK release was different to the version the the rest of Europe got served up which featured a rap from Ray but all we got was the line ‘Ya’ll ready for this?’ repeated four times plus the occasional ‘yeah!’ thrown in for good measure. Oh and an 808 State-lite middle eight. This was just an awful nonsense.

Foolishly I consoled myself with the thought that this would just be another one off Eurodance hit and we would never hear from 2 Unlimited again. How wrong I was as they would clocked up 14 UK Top 40 hits over the course of the decade including their only No 1 “No Limits:” in 1993. My God! What were people doing in the 90s?!

“Get Ready For This” closes with Dortie dancing on stage with 2 Unlimited (Gary Davies would never have done such a thing!) and we get the aforementioned “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams now into its 14th of 16 weeks at the top to close the show. By this point, I think the papers were seriously talking it up as the Xmas No 1! I’ve really got nothing left to say about this other than the parent album “Waking Up The Neighbours” had been released about three weeks before and had gone to No 1 as well. If it’s any consolation to those all Bryan’d out, he would not record another studio album for five years and once he had stopped releasing singles from “Waking Up The Neighbours” in early 1992, he would only release three singles in that time two of which were from film soundtracks and one was a stand alone to promote 1993’s Best Of album “So Far, So Good”. The end is in sight…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	DJ Carl Cox	I Want You (Forever)	Nah
2	Morrissey	My Love Life	No thanks
3	Marc Cohn	Walking In Memphis	I wasn’t tempted
4	Queen	The Show Must Go On	But I didn’t buy a ticket for it – no
5	Cathy Dennis	Too Many Walls	Nope
6	Simply Red	For Your Babies	NO!
7	Oleta Adams	Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me	I did not
8	Mariah Carey	Emotions	Negative
9	Public Enemy	Can’t Truss It	And I didn’t – no
10	Kiri Te Kanawa	World In Union	Nothing here for me
11	2 Unlimited	Get Ready For This	Away with you!
12	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	It’s a final no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010k2r/top-of-the-pops-10101991

TOTP 06 SEP 1990

Posted on March 3, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve finally left the long, hot Summer of 1990 behind (well almost) as we move into September of that year here at TOTP Rewind. However, the BBC were probably not fully focussed on their flagship popular music show this particular week as the day after this TOTP aired, we saw the return to our screens of one of Auntie Beeb’s jewel-in-the-crown shows from back in the day. The Generation Game had been off TV for nearly the whole of the 80s before it was revitalised in the new decade for a run of series between 1990 and 1994. Our family had been avid watchers back in the 70s when I was growing up and Saturdays would be a regular diet of the football scores on Grandstand followed by hiding behind the sofa with Dr Who and then Brucie Forsyth in that once hallowed early evening light entertainment slot with Anthea Redfearn giving us a twirl before a cuddly toy on the conveyor belt at the show’s climax. Even when Brucie left, the show continued to flourish under the stewardship of new host Larry Grayson who pulled in an audience of 25 million on one occasion. By the early 80s though, ITV had upped its game and The Generation Game was being whopped by Game For A Laugh (which I never really got on board with) and was axed after Grayson decided to leave the show.

What has all this got to do with the charts of September 1990? I would love to be able to say that “Cuddly Toy” by Roachford was in the charts but that occurrence had already happened back in early ’89. How about there being a Bruce in the Top 40 courtesy of Mr Springsteen? Sadly no. However, as with the comeback of The Generation Game, this TOTP also sees the return of two acts that were mostly synonymous with a different era of music – OK it was only the recently departed 80s but that was still in the past yeah?

And talking of the return of a golden oldie, we start with Adamski and his latest hit “The Space jungle”. What? Adamski? He was one of the hottest stars of dance music on the planet back in 1990 wasn’t he? He’d just had a massive No 1 in “Killer” and his latest single has a groovy, futuristic title? How on earth does he qualify as a golden oldie? Alright, calm down. It wasn’t Admaski I was referring to per se but his new single. Despite its title, it was actually just a cover version of the old Elvis hit “All Shook Up”. Admittedly, it was a bit out there with the added house piano motifs and rapping courtesy of Ricardo da Force but a cover version of an old 50s rock ‘n’ roll number none the less. As I said, a golden oldie.

So the obvious question about this release was why? When quizzed about it in a Smash Hits interview, Adamski (real name Adam Tinley) said that the track had started life as an instrumental but when performing it at Glastonbury he just started singing “All Shook Up”. ‘I think it must have been a message from Elvis from the grave’ he quipped.

I wasn’t taken by this track at all I’m afraid. The juxtaposition of Elvis and house music was too much for me to process but plenty of punters bought the single sending it to No 7. However, it would be Adamski’s final ever Top 40 hit. Of course, this wasn’t to be the last we saw of an Elvis song receiving the dance-it-up treatment. In 2002, Dutch musician Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL or JXL took a version of “A Little Less Conversation” all the way to No 1. And that, Adamski, is how you do a remix of Elvis.

“Now Mariah Carey is a 20 year old singer songwriter from New York City” states tonight’s host Jakki Brambles and it’s interesting to note that she has to advise the watching millions at home who she is – Mariah that is not herself. Yes, there was a time when we didn’t know all about Ms.Carey and that time was 1990. To be fair, “Vision Of Love” was her debut single so we didn’t have much to go on. She would of course become one of the biggest singers on the planet in due course. What is also interesting about that intro is the description of Mariah as a songwriter which I think probably gets overlooked – I’m pretty sure I haven’t given it much thought before now. As far as I can tell though, she writes all her own lyrics and contributes to the music on every track of her albums and yet I’m betting that songwriter isn’t the first thing we think about when we hear the name Mariah Carey. There’s her voice and vocal range to start with, then there’s the diva reputation, her sex symbol status, her gay icon standing….does songwriter come behind all of these things? Seems a bit unfair. I’m sure if you’re a huge Mariah fan (do they have a collective noun?) then you would maybe have her ability to craft songs higher up the list.

“Vision Of Love” peaked at No 9 in the UK but was the first of four consecutive No 1 records all taken from her debut album in the US.

Not sure if a hit from four years previous counts as being an ‘oldie’ but this next tune was certainly golden. Talk Talk were back in the Top 40 for a second time in 1990 due to the commercial success of their “Natural History: The Very Best of Talk Talk” album. After “It’s My Life” earlier in the year, it was the turn of “Life’s What You Make It” to get the re-issue treatment this time. The difference between the two was that the former had never been a Top 40 hit in its initial release but the latter had already made No 16 when first in the charts back in 1986. Whilst not quite scaling those heights a second time around, its No 23 placing wasn’t bad going. The Best Of album itself was a huge success rising to No 3 in the charts which for a band that never even had a solitary Top 10 single was remarkable. EMI would try and repeat their “It’s My Life” trick of making a hit out of an initial flop record when they re-released yet another single to promote the album in “Such a Shame” which is a great song but it was a release too far and it stalled at No 78, a whopping 29 places further down the charts than its 1984 initial outing.

Within two years and after one final very experimental album, Talk Talk would disband. Lead singer Mark Hollis would pretty much retire from the music business, releasing just one solo album in 1998. Sadly, he died just over two years ago at the age of 64. Talk Talk, however, remain one of the most influential groups of their era.

Ooh now, in contrast to all this golden oldie stuff, here comes a brand new group! Except that…. they weren’t brand new as The Farm had been around since 1983, releasing numerous independent singles before hooking up with Suggs from Madness who produced their next single, a cover of “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”, the old hit by The Monkees. This brought them national attention when it peaked at No 58 in the charts. Wearing their Liverpudlian credentials on their sleeves, the band were very much associated with a ‘lads’ culture of music and football and were often referred to as a ‘scally’ band, a term they rejected in favour of something they called ‘urchin rock’ (I don’t think that ever took off as a genre did it?).

The release of “Groovy Train” saw them go mainstream with the single gatecrashing the Top 10 before peaking at No 6. Its musical style was very much in line with the sound of the year – that baggy/indie dance movement – and would pave the way for their next and biggest single “All Together Now” which would go Top 3 later in the year. The buzz around their debut album on a major label (“Spartacus”) was enormous by this point. I can clearly recall that the two pre-release albums we got asked most about when I joined Our Price in late 1990 were “Doubt” by Jesus Jones and “Spartacus” both of which would top the charts when released in 1991.

Liverpool set soap Brookside played a part in the band’s fortunes. The guy who played grumpy old git Harry Cross in the show starred in the promo video for “Groovy Train” but I’m sure that the character of Sammy Rogers wore a “Groovy Train” t-shirt in one episode as well.

As it’s the first show of the new month, we get that weird Top 5 albums feature again. For the record, the best selling albums of August 1990 were:

1. Elton John – “Sleeping With The Past”

2. New Kids On The Block – “Step By Step”

3. Phil Collins – “…But Seriously”

4. Luciano Pavarotti – “The Essential Luciano Pavarotti”

5. Madonna – “I’m Breathless”

None of this is very interesting except for the footnote maybe of TOTP actually playing a single that didn’t ever make it into the Top 40. Yes, the video used to promote Elton John’s “Sleeping With The Past” album was for his current single “Club At The End Of The Street” which peaked at No 47. Had that ever happened before or since?

Right who’s next? Well it’s Caron Wheeler with “Livin’ in the Light“. Caron, of course, was the voice and very much the public face on two of Soul II Soul’s biggest hits in “Keep on Movin'” and “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)”. So why the solo career move? Here’s Caron herself in a Smash Hits interview on that subject:

“Soul II Soul was always really a collective but I was always a featured artist. A lot of people misconceived it as being my group. Within themselves, it’s like a family with certain key members who were always there but I was never really part of that family.”

Oh OK, so a bit like Beats International then. In fact, you could say Caron was the Lindy Layton of Soul II Soul…or should that be Lindy Layton was the Caron Wheeler of Beats International? Anyway, as Jakki Brambles rightly says, “Livin’ in the Light” was Caron’s debut hit single and taken from her album “UK Blak”. To my uncultured ears it didn’t sound that different to that Soul II Soul sound she had left behind or was that just because she was the singer on those songs so it was always going to be a little bit reminiscent of her past? Great things were predicted for Caron and although the album sold well enough, she only returned to the Top 40 singles chart once more (literally at No 40) with the album’s title track. She seemed to spend the next 30 odd years rejoining and then subsequently leaving the Soul II Soul family at various intervals. I’m sure she’s done lots of other things but if you check her Wikipedia entry, that’s the impression you get.

“Livin’ in the Light” peaked at No 14.

“Just deee-lovely and delicious”…yes it’s Deee-Lite (three ‘e’s in the spelling or no points) with their dance floor banger “Groove Is In The Heart”. Is it fair that they are still very much seen (in this country at least) as one hit wonders? Let’s examine the evidence:

Exhibit A (m’lud): They actually had another Top 40 hit in this country in “Power of Love” / “Build The Bridge” which was the follow up to “Groove Is In The Heart” and peaked at No 25.

Judge: Erm..I see. Well, case closed then.

Except that doesn’t really tell the whole story of what happened to Deee-Lite. Why didn’t they go on to dominate the dance music landscape for years with their brand of innovative yet supremely infectious sound? Was it internal strife within the band? Or the emergence of grunge perhaps? Something else altogether or both of these things? Well, their album “World Clique” sold steadily, eventually securing gold sales of 100,000 units but the two subsequent albums released over the next four years shifted vastly reduced quantities. Apparently group member Towa Tei wasn’t into the touring aspect of the band at all causing divisions within the trio whilst his musical interests moved away from the Deee-Lite manifesto. Meanwhile, Lady Miss Kier and DJ Dmitry’s relationship finished around 1994 which maybe had something to do with the group’s demise. Whatever the reasons behind their story, a little bit of 1990 (nay the whole decade) will always belong to Deee-Lite and their calling card “Groove Is In The Heart”.

Definitely back on the golden oldie theme now as we welcome back an act who we haven’t heard from for five years according to Jakki Brambles. Except that isn’t strictly true. What Jakki should have said is that Loose Ends hadn’t been on TOTP in the last five years. They had actually been making and releasing music in the interim period, it was just that their commercial fortunes had dipped a bit. Back in 1985, Loose Ends were the darlings of the UK R&B scene with hits like “Hangin’ on a String (Contemplating)” and “Magic Touch”. However, of the seven singles released after these hits, only one breached the UK Top 40 (and presumably wasn’t chose by the TOTP producers to appear on the show). Their 1988 album “The Real Chuckeeboo” only made it to No 52 in the charts. It was a different story across the pond though where they continued to chalk up hits on the US R’n’B charts. Over here though it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Good old musical differences took hold and members Steve Nichol and Jane Eugene left leaving Carl McIntosh as the only original member (Jakki was on the money with that info). Undeterred, he returned with a new line up and new album called “Look How Long” of which “Don’t Be A Fool” was its lead single supposedly about his previous band mates (see also “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel). The single restored their chart fortunes but it proved to also be a final hurrah with “Look How Long” being the last studio album released under the Loose Ends name. Mackintosh would go onto produce many an artist including …yes…Caron Wheeler. I love it when a post comes together like that! Talk about tying up loose ends!

It’s a third week at No 1 for Bombalurina and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“. When will this nightmare be over? Please let this be the last week of this nonsense. This time we get the hitherto unseen promo video on the show. Ok, let’s see what that was like then. I’m not expecting much….

…well, unsurprisingly it’s basically a young woman in a skimpy yellow polka dot bikini. She’s joined on the fake beach scene by those ever present two blonde dancers throwing some shapes whilst Timmy Mallett lounges around on a hammock. It’s shockingly bad, redeemed only slightly by Mallett falling off said hammock in the final freeze frame.

The awfulness of the video should have been the fart pebble on the top of this particular shitcake but there’s a side story that even steals that crap-olade. So bad were Mallett’s vocals that they had to get someone else in to record them. Look at this:

In 2008, teacher Everton Barnes (a budding R&B singer back in 1990) claimed that he sang on "Itsy Bitsy…", not Timmy Mallett. "When they got him into the studio, his voice was as flat as a pancake. I sang the whole vocal track and Timmy's was shunted into the background." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 26, 2021

1990 – hang your head in shame.

The play out video is “Black Cat” by Janet Jackson. This was the sixth of an incredible seven singles lifted from her “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814” album and for my money, this was the best one. Very much in an all out rock vein as opposed to her more urban dance pop numbers, it was also the highest charting of those seven singles in the UK. It was Janet’s third No 1 hit from the album in the US making her the first solo artist to achieve two No 1 hits over there in the 1990s. Further accolades came in the shape of a Grammy Award nomination in the category of Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Although losing out to Alannah Myles for “Black Velvet”, Janet became the first artist to earn nominations across all five categories of Pop, Dance, Rock, Rap,and R&B for the same song.

However, the first thing that I think of every time I hear “Black Cat” is nothing to do with awards and laurels but relates to my early days at Our Price. There was a guy working in the Manchester store that I started in called Mark who put this on the shop stereo and spent a good few minutes just playing the panther growl sound effect at the very start of the track and skipping back to it constantly so that all anyone in the shop could hear was this repeated loop of a panther snarling. Pretty much cleared the shop which was the whole point as it was nearly closing time and we all wanted to go home.

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

If you really want to watch the whole show over, somebody has helpfully added it in its entirety to YouTube. Fill your boots!

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Adamski	The Space Jungle	Nah
2	Mariah Carey	Vision Of Love	Nope
3	Talk Talk	Life’s What You Make It	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of of theirs somewhere I think
4	The Farm	Groovy Train	No but I easily could have
5	Caron Wheeler	Livin’ In The Light	Not my bag at all
6	Deee-Lite	Groove Is In The Heart	Where’s my copy of this?! I must have bought this surely?!
7	Loose Ends	Don’t Be A Fool	See 5 above
8	Bombalurina	Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini	How does f**k off sound as an answer?
9	Janet Jackson	Black Cat	Don’t think I did

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 23 AUG 1990

Posted on February 25, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s late August in 1990 and the new football season is to kick off two days after this TOTP was broadcast. After a rousing performance by the England team at Italia ’90, the country seems to have fallen back in the love with the national game which is experiencing a surge in popularity as it rises phoenix like from the ashes of its nadir in the mid 80s. The same description could be applied to tonight’s opening act who are The Human League. After massive commercial success at the start of the previous decade with the “Dare” album, Phil, Suzanne, Jo and co struggled to replicate that commercial peak and 1984 follow up “Hysteria” was a big disappointment. Licking their wounds, they decamped to the US and hooked up with legendary R’n’B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for the 1986 “Human” single which was an American No 1 and retuned the band to the Top 10 in the UK. However, their resurrection proved to be a false dawn and by the end of the 80s, they were in massive decline. The dawn of the 90s saw the band regroup with a new line up and intentions to re-establish themselves in the pop hierarchy. “Heart Like A Wheel” was the lead single from new album “Romantic?” and whilst it did gain them entry back into the Top 40, it was hardly a glorious return to form. The single peaked at No 29 whilst the album struggled to a high of No 24. Its perceived failure led to their long time record label Virgin unceremoniously cancelling their recording contract and the band were out in the wilderness for five years before being picked up by EastWest Records and launching the most unlikely of comebacks just as Britpop was taking hold with the hit single “Tell Me When” and parent album “Octopus”.

Watching this performance back, the band do seem to be in the midst of an identity crisis. Apart from the fact that there were two new band members on view, the core trio of Oakey, Catherall and Sulley appear to be on very different pages image wise. Phil, in the days when he still had hair, has resorted to his early 80s shoulder length cut albeit without the lopsided bit on one side whilst Susan Ann has gone all rock chic with her golden, cascading tresses. Joanne has her hair up but part from that looks pretty much like she always did. Not a lot of cohesion going on there I would argue.

What? Oh the song? Well, to me it doesn’t sound that different to “Tell Me When” which would return them to the Top 10 in 1995. Clearly the 1990 record buying public wasn’t quite ready to embrace The Human League back into their lives at that point in history but give it five years guys. Nowadays of course, the group are stalwarts of the live circuit and indeed, I caught them in concert back in 2019 at an open air gig in Hull where they performed “Heart Like A Wheel” plus just about every other song you could have wished for from their back catalogue. The band were on good form but the crowd were seemingly more interested in getting annihilated on booze and other substances which kind of made for a bad atmosphere. It did strike me though that Joanne and Susan Ann had made a career from basically ‘arm-dancing’ for nearly 40 years – you know, all that rhythmic arm waving they do. It’s a living I suppose.

Move over Whitney Houston – you’ve got competition! Yes, there was a new kid on the block (not not them!) in the huge, pop/soul ballad stakes come 1990 when Mariah Carey appeared seemingly from nowhere with her debut single “Vision Of Love”. Little did we know then that this 20 year old would become one of the biggest selling artists of the whole decade. Not only did this track become her breakthrough commercial moment but it also provided Mariah with her first husband in Tommy Mottola, the then head of Columbia Records who signed her after he had heard the demo of “Vision Of Love” at a record company bash. Has anybody ever punched above their weight in the relationship/looks stakes more than Tommy Mottola?

Anyway, “Vision Of Love” was a huge hit (No 1 in the US and No 9 over here) and introduced us to Mariah’s legendary five-octave vocal range. Ah yes, that voice. The technical terms for her vocal stylings are ‘whistle register’ and ‘melisma’ otherwise known to some of us as screeching. Too harsh?! Ok, how about ‘warbling’? Look you know what I’m referring to – the Mariah Carey effect that influenced a generation of would be singing stars to over emphasise notes and prolong them just that bit too long. I’m not saying she can’t sing – clearly she can – but I always found that element to her vocals to be the wrong side of grating.

Despite the success of “Vision Of Love”, it took Mariah a while to establish herself in the UK. Follow up singles “Love Takes Time” and “Someday” barely made the Top 40 here whilst they were No 1 records in the US. Yes, the album sold well in the UK (300,000 units) but nowhere near what it did in the US where 9 million copies were sold. It wasn’t really until her 1993 album “Music Box” did she really start shifting massive numbers over here when the album went to No 1, went five times platinum and included the No 1 single “Without You”. Incidentally, if there was any fierce rivalry between Mariah and Whitney, there was a show of unity in 1998 when the pair duetted on the single “When You Believe” from the animated feature The Prince of Egypt.

OK, I’ve got nothing in the memory banks for this one. “Look Me In The Heart” by Tina Turner anyone? Apparently this was the fourth single to be released from her “Foreign Affair” album which was pushing it a bit considering the album was initially released just under 12 months previously. Unsurprisingly it didn’t do anywhere near as well as its predecessor singles peaking at No 31. Incredibly, record label Capitol didn’t think even that was enough fleecing of the public for one album and released a fifth single (“Be Tender with Me Baby”) in October.

As for “Look Me In The Heart” itself, apart from being completely banal it also has an embarrassingly awful title. Can you imagine two people being in the midst of an emotional discussion about the state of their relationship and one of them saying ‘Look me in the heart and say that’? I can’t – nobody would come out with that would they? They’d say ‘Look me in the eye…’ surely? Oh well, artistic licence and all that – maybe I’m missing the point. Sadly, Tina was not finished in the cringe stakes for 1990. By the end of the year she was back in the Top 5 duetting with Rod Stewart (!) on a version of “It Takes Two”. Come on Tina. You’re better than that. Look me in the heart* and tell me that wasn’t just money for old rope?

*Oh

My God! I’ve just realised that this particular TOTP includes two of the most heinous crimes against popular music on the same show! Not only do we have a complete git at No 1 (Timmy Mallett /Bombalurina) but incredibly, some 12 months after their first musical misdemeanour, it seemed that the UK record buying public still hadn’t had enough of Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers! You could possibly excuse one novelty record becoming a hit by blaming it on some sort fever that induced a national loss of taste but this was their fifth hit on the trot! What was happening to us? I can only assume that the success of “Can Can You Party” was the result of some illegal chart tactics that involved a massive buying in operation by unscrupulous record company reps.

The monsters behind Jive Bunny didn’t even see the need to tinker with the formula at all. It’s still just a load of hits of yesteryear cut and pasted together and then supported by a video featuring nonsensical and unrelated black and white footage with that f*****g horribly animated rabbit superimposed over the top. And talking of “It Takes Two” as we were before re: Tina Turner and Rod Stewart, if I thought that was bad, Jive Bunny declared ‘hold my beer’ and were involved in a version that featured Radio 1 DJs Liz Kershaw and Bruno Brookes! Thankfully that one didn’t make the charts unlike “Can Can You Party” which peaked at No 8.

Some Breakers now and we start with the Steve Miller Band. The only thing I knew about Mr Miller (and indeed his band) at the time was that song “Abracadabra” from 1982 which I hadn’t even liked that much. So what was this “The Joker” song and why was it in our charts? Well, it had been a No 1 record for the band in the US in 1974 but had never been a hit over here. Cue its strategically well placed use in a Levis advert and…I don’t ned to write anything else do I?

Much was made of the song’s lyrics and in particular the phrase ‘the pompatus of love’. What was that when it was home? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer…

What the hell is "the pompatus of love"? Miller heard this nonsense word in "The Letter" by doo-wop band The Medallions, which includes the lyric, "Let me whisper sweet words of dismortality and discuss the pompatus of love". https://t.co/FfdpU92eoX #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 19, 2021

Oh, OK – thanks. Anyway, some of the other lyrics, referenced songs including Miller’s own “Space Cowboy” (nothing to do with Jamiroquai then) and The Clovers’ 1954 song “Lovey Dovey” whilst I’m guessing we all knew what he meant by being a ‘midnight toker’.

“The Joker” would go onto become involved in one of the most controversial chart battles ever when it went up against Deee-Lite (more of whom later) and their “Groove Is In The Heart” single for the No 1 spot. Supposedly sales for each single were so tight that a dead heat was called and using a rule that had never been instigated previously, “The Joker” was instilled a the No 1 song that week on account of its sales having increased most from the previous week. This ruling was disputed by Deee-Lite’s record company WEA and it was subsequently scrapped. Chart compilers Gallup later released data that showed that the Steve Miller Band had sold a mere 8 (EIGHT) copies more than Deee-Lite and so were the rightfully crowned chart toppers. All seemed a bit of a rum do to me. Jive Bunny probably had something to do with it as well!

Right, after all that controversy, we need something relaxing to calm us down and here’s a track that fits that particular bill well. “Release Me” by Wilson Phillips was their follow up to smash hit “Hold On” and it sounded like it. It was almost exactly the same song! OK, its got a slightly slower bpm to it and they all seem to sing the whole song in harmony unlike its predecessor which I think had separate vocal parts but its pretty damn similar. For once the record buying public were too aware than to fall for the ‘buying the same song twice’ trick again and it only made No 36 on the UK Top 40. Our American counterparts however had no such discernment and sent it to No 1 for the second consecutive chart topper after “Hold On”.

Look out! It’s “The End of the World”! Not literally of course but this version of the old Skeeter Davis song by Sonia did signify the end of something – this was her last ever single with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. It was also the last single released from her “Everybody Knows” album and after four high tempo, poppy hits before this point, a slowie was well overdue. Sonia had dipped her toe in the ballad market recently with her collaboration with Big Fun on the Childline charity single “You’ve Got a Friend” but this was her first time in that territory on her own. It’s a decent choice of song but Sonia’s version is hardly dripping with the emotion of the original and sounds more mechanical than melancholic in comparison.

I could have sworn that Cilla Black did a version of this (which would have made even more sense of the decision to get scouser Sonia to record it) but she didn’t. I think I was getting confused with “You’re My World”. My abiding memory of Sonia’s version is hearing it piped over the instore sound system in Debenhams in Hull some weeks later. I was back working there as a Xmas temp (after my legendary stint as stand in Father Christmas the year before!) but I knew I had a job at Our Price waiting for me to start in October so I wasn’t there long this time. And no I didn’t let on to Debenhams that I would be leaving as I needed a few weeks work before I could start at my record shop ‘career’ and deliberately misled them. If, by any remote chance, any management from Debenhams in Hull from circa 1990 are reading this, I am so sorry but let’s face it, it wasn’t the end of the world.

That time worn pop tradition of a singer leaving a band to court solo fame was still in evidence as the 90s began. After Nick Heyward leaving Haircut 100, Limahl departing Kajagoogoo and George Michael leaving Wham! behind in the 80s, here comes Lindy Layton ditching Beats International to pursue independence. To be fair, she wasn’t kicked out of the band like Heyward and Limahl were – it was much more amicable by all accounts (Norman Cook even helped produce her debut solo album “Pressure”) but jump ship she did after Cook et al had given her an initial pop platform. It seemed to be the right move when she scored an immediate hit with a cover of Janet Kay’s “Silly Games” teaming up with …erm…Janet Kay to do so. However, subsequent single releases from “Pressure” all failed to dent the Top 40 and by 1993 she did what many others previously had done to revive a career – came calling at Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s door (well, they did have a Sonia sized vacancy on their artists’ roster to fill). Two SAW singles failed to do much business chart-wise and Lindy had all but disappeared from the pop world by the mid 90s.

You can tell from this TOTP performance that this was meant to be a new start for Lindy – she’s got a new short hairstyle and changed her wardrobe dramatically from her Beats International appearance. Her version of “Silly Games” was pretty slick as well. She looked a good bet for a prolonged solo career at this point. Ah, the fickle nature of pop – silly old game innit?

In 1990, Cliff Richard was celebrating the 30th anniversary of his recording career and to commemorate this milestone, he released a live album called “From A Distance: The Event” which was recorded in June 1989 at his The Event concert, held at Wembley Stadium over two nights. Cliff’s version of “Silhouettes“, a No 3 hit for Herman’s Hermits in 1965, was plucked from said album to promote it. It reached No 10 in the UK Top 40. It is also, undeniably, horrible. Not content with inflicting this upon us, the album also contained his next Xmas No 1 in “Saviour’s Day”. Have you ever seen such cruelty?!

I’m guessing that the next tune was intended by the band’s record company as a stop gap release between albums to maintain their profile. It ended up becoming their biggest ever hit. Deacon Blue‘s only release this calendar year so far had been their New Year anthem “Queen Of The New Year” back in …erm…January as the fifth and final single from their “When The World Knows Your Name” album. With the rich seams of tunes having been exhausted from that album and the new one not to be released until June 1991, something was needed to ensure fickle pop fans didn’t forget about them in the meantime. The answer of course was a cover version (the answer is always a cover version) but Deacon Blue took things further by releasing an EP of four Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs called… well….the “Four Bacharach & David Songs” EP.

The track that got all the airplay though was “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”. There was something about the crystal clean production and the vocals of Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh that bewitched UK pop fans to purchase it in enough quantities to send it all the way to No 2. I was one of them. This EP of cover versions idea obviously resonated with Everything But The Girl who released their own EP in 1992 featuring “Love Is Strange”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than The Rest”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Elvis Costello’s “Alison”. I bought that as well.

As for Deacon Blue, although it would be harsh to say this was the pinnacle of their popularity, they would only have one more Top 10 single in their career although they continue to tour and record new material to this very day with their last album “Riding On The Tide Of Love” being released *performs some basic maths calculation* 20 days ago!

If Jive Bunny was the bread in this show’s shit sandwich, here comes the filling and it really reeks! Timmy Mallett / Bombalurina have leapt to No 1 with “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” and consequently he’s been invited back on the show for another studio performance. What makes it all the worse is that Mallett seems to take it seriously in that he mimes the lines correctly and has learnt his little dance moves. If he’s done it all a bit more free form and tongue-in-cheek ,would it have been less odious? Nah, you’re right. Nothing could save this turd from stinking the place out.

The play out video is a huge tune. Sorry, that should be HUUUUGE TUUUUNE! Appearing fully formed from out of nowhere came Deee-Lite with the barnstorming dance floor legend that was and remains “Groove Is In The Heart”. I know this will make me sound like a knacker but the groove on this tune is immense! These self proclaimed ‘groovniks’ hailed from New York City and were composed of Lady Miss Kier, Supa DJ Dmitry and Jungle DJ Towa Tei and had an image as wild as their hit song. Dayglo colours, psychedelic patterns and huge 70s style platform shoes somehow seemed totally appropriate despite being at least two decades out of fashion.

That track though! Listed in in Gary Mulholland’s marvellous book This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk And Disco as one of the tracks of the year, I think I’ll let Gary do the talking for me:

“If I was ever asked to play some crazy DJ version of Russian roulette, where you had one chance and one chance only to make a roomful of disparate people dance or you die – I would play ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ and book my cab home”.

Well said Gary.

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Human League	Heart Like A Wheel	Nah
2	Mariah Carey	Vision Of Love	Nope
3	Tina Turner	Look Me In The Heart	As if
4	Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers	Can Can You Party	Can can you piss off please?
5	Steve Miller Band	The Joker	It’s a no
6	Wilson Phillips	Release Me	After “Hold On” you now want releasing? Make your mind up! No
7	Sonia	End Of The World	No
8	Lindy Layton and Janet Kay	Silly Games	Negative
9	Cliff Richard	Silhouettes	Silhouettes? It was enough to give me Tourettes! No
10	Deacon Blue	Four Bacharach And David Songs	Yes, yes I did
11	Bombalurina	Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini	How does f**k off sound as an answer?
12	Deee-Lite	Groove Is In The Heart	Where’s my copy of this?! I must have bought this surely?!

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.

Some bedtime reading?

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