Mariah Carey | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 24 FEB 1994

Posted on February 11, 2023 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

Holy grail, holy cow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 – 26 – 24

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

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

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

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

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

*checks their discography*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hqvk/top-of-the-pops-24021994

TOTP 17 FEB 1994

Posted on February 7, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the middle of February 1994 and something odd is happening. Unlike in 2023, my beloved Chelsea are still in the FA Cup. Somehow they managed to get past last season’s runners up Sheffield Wednesday after a replay in the last round and, two days after this TOTP aired, would travel to Oxford United and dump them out as well. To put this in context, this was only the third time in my living memory that they had made the Quarter Finals and I’d been supporting them since 1975. Nowadays of course they are serial finalists and winners of the cup but back in 1994, this felt like a very big deal. They would end up making it all the way to the final that season but let’s not talk about the 4-0 thrashing they were handed by Manchester United eh? I was working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester at the time and the Sony rep assigned to our shop was a guy called John who was also a Chelsea fan. He called in during the week and offered me the chance to go with him to the Oxford game on the Saturday but I had to work. What has all this got to do with TOTP? Nothing at all really but I like to recall what was going on in my life at the point these repeats originally aired. Right, now that’s done, let the music play…

This is the third show of Ric Blaxill’s stewardship and so far he’s only used Mark Goodier and Simon Mayo of his roster of returning Radio 1 DJs to host the show. Mayo gets the gig this week unfortunately but he gives a mercifully short intro at least before we’re into the tunes. Saint Etienne ended last week’s show and they begin this one but this time in the studio with a performance of “Pale Movie”. I said in the last post that it put me in mind of the theme tune to dubbed, black and white 60s TV series White Horses. However, on reflection it’s got the merest whiff of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” about it – must be the Spanish guitars. Apparently the band themselves view the track as a missed opportunity in that it could have been absolutely blinding but they didn’t get it quite right. It sounds pretty good to me though.

Mayo can’t resist going through his various gears of smugness at the end where he makes references to the staging of the performance and the usage of Lambrettas. “That’ll be the first time you’ve seen Lambrettas on Top of the Pops since…ooh…1980 and Poison Ivy” he can’t wait to tell us to show off his pop knowledge. Oh piss off Mayo!

Right, what’s this screeching nonsense?! Well, it’s Cappella, the people who bought you “U Got To Know” and “U Got 2 Let The Music” in 1993. They’ve dispensed with the use of a ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ in their choice of song title this time as they deliver “Move On Baby” though they would return to it for their next hit “U & Me”.

Reading their Wikipedia entry, they were kind of like the Eurodance Tight Fit. How so? Well, Tight Fit were a hastily put together trio of models/ singers who were assembled to be the public image of a recording of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” organised by producer Tim Friese-Greene. However, the year before a different producer called Ken Gold had made a record called “Back To The Sixties”, a medley jumping on the Starsound/Stars On 45 craze. Although it was recorded by session musicians and singers, it was promoted by a group of actor/singer types also under the name of Tight Fit for a TOTP appearance. Sound familiar?

OK but how does this relate to Cappella? Well, Cappella weren’t really a group but more a promotional name for the ideas of Hi-NRG producer Gianfranco Bortolotti. They first had a UK chart hit in 1989 with “Helyom Halib” which was fronted by model Ettore Foresti who didn’t appear on the record at all. Fast forward four years and Bortolotti was having those aforementioned ‘U’ hits but this time the public faces of the act were rapper Rodney Bishop and dancer Kelly Overett. Neither were anywhere near the recording studio at the time the tracks were laid down. Judging by the vocals that Kelly gives on this TOTP appearance, that was probably a wise choice. Anyway, it does seem like the Tight Fit strategy of promoting a single was copied by Cappella. Or was it Tight Fit who copied Boney M and Black Box who copied Tight Fit and Capella who copied Black Box? Considering that question is more likely to give me a headache than listening to “Move On Baby” if that was possible!

For all their success, Crowded House have a patchy record when it comes to hit singles. The did accrue thirteen UK Top 40 entries between 1987 and 1996 (twelve of them consecutively) which in itself is not too shabby but of those only one reached the Top 10 and of the rest only five made the Top 20. I guess they were more of an albums band. This one, “Locked Out”, was their joint second biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. The third single from their fourth album “Together Alone”, it’s a great pop song; urgent yet melodic, well crafted yet felt spontaneous.

It was also featured in a film that I’ve mentioned before (though I can’t recall why now). Reality Bites starred Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder and Ben Stiller who also directed and whilst it wasn’t a runaway success at the time, has since become a bit of a cult classic. Its soundtrack isn’t talked about in such revered tones but it did furnish a fair few hits. Aside from “Locked Out” it also featured “Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb (a US No 1 and UK No 6) and Big Mountain’s cover of Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way” (UK No 2 and US No 6). Those hits are for much later in the year though.

I confidently predicted the other week that we wouldn’t be seeing Dina Carroll on the show again until 1996 when her next album came out. So what’s she doing here this week performing an album track? It was all to do with the BRITS which last week’s TOTP had bigged up with a whole section dedicated to the nominations. Dina won Best British Female but as she will have got the gong for that at the actual BRITS show, they’ve allowed Simon Mayo to present her with an award to commemorate her album “So Close” selling one million copies. To celebrate that occurrence, she’s singing “Hold On” exclusively for the show despite it never being released as a single. It’s got a bit of a Marvin Gaye vibe about it but it certainly wasn’t as strong as “Don’t Be A Stranger” for example. Was this type of performance going to be a regular thing under new producer Ric Blaxill? The ‘million seller’ slot? Surely not…?

…or definitely maybe because here’s another new section of the show that is based around songs not actually in the Top 40. To be fair to Blaxill, this slot was at least linked to the charts being billed as it was Bubbling under the 40 and highlighting a song just outside them. Was he thinking that if a single was just outside the 40, given prime exposure on TOTP it would definitely be inside it the following week anyway so why not just get it on early doors? That did rather cast him in the role of hitmaker which is maybe not the job of the show’s producer? Wasn’t TOTP always meant to reflect the tastes of the record buying public and not to be forcing songs upon it? Anyway, whatever the reasoning behind the slot, in the case of Sinéad O’Connor, the exposure it gave her song “You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart” didn’t turn it into a hit in the UK. In fact, it never got any higher than where it was at the time of this performance – No 42. Taken from the soundtrack to the film In The Name Of The Father about the 1974 Guildford pub bombings and the four people falsely convicted of perpetrating them, it’s certainly an affecting track. I’ve never seen the film but I can imagine it fitting in well to a movie of such gravity. However, whether you’d want to listen to it over and over outside of the film I’m not sure.

Sinéad gives a typically atypical performance here. With just some spotlights, a smattering of dry ice, the word ‘forgiveness’ marker penned on her chest and a long bob wig (I’m assuming) for company, she goes from standing still defiantly to full on animated dancing via a bit of gentle swaying all in the space of three minutes. Sinéad would get herself a bona fide chart hit later in the year when “Thank You For Hearing Me” made No 13 and a gold selling parent album in “Universal Mother”.

The well established Breakers slot is still with us and we start with a third consecutive hit for Urban Cookie Collective. Yes, you read that right – a third consecutive hit. Remembered by many as a one hit wonder, the Cookies (as nobody ever called them) actually had five UK Top 40 hits though the final one was a a rerelease of their first. “Sail Away” was the third of those and would make No 18. It’s got a frenetic beat but none of the charm of “The Key The Secret”, as if they were trying to do their best 2 Unlimited impression.

Mayo’s at it again with his smug mode enabled going on about how there hasn’t been an act called Sasha on TOTP for decades. I presume he was referring to the French singer/songwriter Sacha Distel? Ooh Simon, you’re so knowledgeable! Nob. Anyway, this Sasha is the Welsh, multi-award winning DJ and producer. He isn’t the guy in the video who I believe is Sam Mollison. You didn’t make that clear in your intro did you Mayo? Maybe you didn’t know? He also isn’t Sash! the German DJ of “Encore Une Fois” fame. Anyway, this track “Higher Ground” made No19 and was a track from Sasha’s “The Qat Collection” which also furnished a No 32 hit called “Magic” also with Mollison on vocals though the album itself only made No 56.

Next it’s the official follow up single from Meatloaf to his gigantic, global No 1 hit “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. I say official as Sony rereleased “Bat Out Of Hell” in December 1993 to cash in on the renewed interest in their one time artist. However, the second song from the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” album was this track- “Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through”. Yet another Jim Steinman composition, the track was actually recorded by Steinman 13 years prior for his “Bad For Good” album and was his only US chart hit in his own right.

Written about the uplifting power of rock music and its ability to see people through even the most extreme of circumstances, it’s classic Meatloaf fodder (it was originally written for him) and has the usual play on words title with the use of ‘through’ rather than ‘true’. Any song from the album chosen as the follow up to its chart busting predecessor would struggle in comparison sales wise and that was the case with “Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through” which didn’t even make the Top 10 over here. The video was as over the top as you would expect though with Meatloaf cast as some sort of vigilante fortune teller going around blowing up jukeboxes to rescue runaway teenagers including a young Angelina Jolie. Director Michael Bay would go onto direct movies including Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and Transformers so he obviously had a thing about explosions.

God Mayo really is insufferable. In his next link, he says this:

“Now there comes a point in every good Top of the Pops where your Dad in the corner goes ‘What the Hell is this?!’. Well, just tell him it’s The Wildhearts and they’re great!”.

What’s wrong with that you may ask? Well, at the time of this show, Mayo was a 35 year old father of two so I’m not really buying his ‘I’m down with the kids’ positioning of himself. As for the band he was introducing, I really can’t remember them at all despite their thirteen UK Top 40 hits and four albums they released between 1993 and 1997. So were they great as Simon Mayo told us? Well, if “Caffeine Bomb” was anything to go by, not in my book. All this glam metal stuff had been done to death before and by better bands than this. New York Dolls, Kiss with their full face make up, even Manic Street Preachers had dabbled with make up and guitars in their early days. Then there was the early 90s UK glam blues/rock movement from the likes of The Quireboys and The Dogs D’Amour…oh and guess what The Wildhearts had links to both those bands. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

The Wildhearts singer/guitarist Ginger (real name David Walls) was previously in The Quireboys, while drummer Bam was (and currently once again is) a member of The Dogs D'Amour. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 3, 2023

Oh it all makes sense now. They tried to make themselves controversial with headline baiting song titles like “Greetings From Shitsville”, “Sick Of Drugs” and “Just In Lust” but it all seems a bit desperate to me. Nothing to see here. Next!

Did someone mention 2 Unlimited before? Um, yeah…it was me obviously but here they are still having hits even in 1994, three whole years after their first. “Let The Beat Control Your Body” was the ninth of fourteen in total in the UK and the fifth and final one from their “No Limits” album. To highlight how many hits they’ve had, the TOTP production team have set up a 2 Unlimited ‘art gallery’ full of gold and silver discs to enable a really weak link for Simon Mayo who obviously had a thing about other people’s disc awards following Dina Carroll’s earlier. They could have at least used the Vision On gallery music to soundtrack it:

Once the performance starts it the usual 2 Unlimited shtick with lots of pounding beats and some ropey rapping from Ray and Anita enthusiastically singing some dreadful, trite lyrics like “My beat accepts you just as you are, it drives you away just like a fast car”. Seriously, how did they get away with this for so long?!

Mariah Carey has crashed straight I at No 1 with her cover version of Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” finally bringing D:Ream’s four week reign to an end. Supposedly the release of the single was delayed by three weeks probably to align perfectly with the Valentine’s Day market but possibly so as not to clash with the death of Nilsson himself who passed away on 15th January. A respectful amount of time maybe needed to be seen to have passed or was it to see if his record company might rerelease his most famous song in the aftermath of his demise? The single’s success gave her “Music Box” album a huge sales push despite it having been out for six months by this point. I’d ordered in a load for the Our Price I was working in but we still sold out by Saturday afternoon – a rookie error. “Without You” will be No 1 for another three weeks.

The play out tune is “Rush” by Freak Power which is the second song on the show tonight after Sinéad O’Connor’s “You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart” not to become a Top 40 hit. Freak Power were, of course, one of Norman Cook’s many musical vehicles and followed the dissolution of Beats International in his timeline. They would score a massive hit in 1995 with “Turn On, Tune In Cop Out” following its use in a Levi’s advert. I don’t remember this one at all though hardly surprising seeing as it peaked at No 62.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Saint Etienne	Pale Movie	Liked it, didn’t buy it
2	Cappella	Move On Baby	Never
3	Crowded House	Locked Out	No but I think I have it on a Best Of album
4	Dina Carroll	Hold On	I never bought her album, no
5	Sinéad O’Connor	You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart	No
6	Urban Cookie Collective	Sail Away	Uh-uh
7	Sasha	Higher Ground	Nah
8	Meatloaf	Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through	Nope
9	The Wildhearts	Caffeine Bomb	God no!
10	2 Unlimited	Let The Beat Control Your Body	As if
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	I did not
12	Freak Power	Rush	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/m001hqvf/top-of-the-pops-17021994

TOTP 03 FEB 1994

Posted on January 31, 2023 by 80stastic

We have arrived in February 1994 in our journey through the TOTP archives and it’s a case of “as you were” as Liam Gallagher might say. The ‘year zero’ revamp is dead, gone, finished, no more- it is an ex-revamp. Well, there’s still a few remnants of it hanging around as we’ll see but even those last few traces will be swept away by the new broom of incoming producer Ric Blaxill. The title sequence, logo and theme tune were all still the same but they would be stripped away and replaced in 1995 along with the installation of a new set. The first major change that we see is the return of the Radio 1 DJs to presenting duties who were last seen in September 1991. Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin (the last two standing of the wave of ‘year zero’ new faces) were not retained by Blaxill who wanted to re-establish the link between the show and Radio 1. First back in the host seat is Simon Mayo whose intro refers to the two institutions being back in bed together and going to be fertile which seems a totally unnecessary remark. I could never get on board with Mayo; something about his smugness that put me off. Oh, and his record of campaigning for terrible songs like “Kinky Boots” and “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” to become chart hits.

Anyway, the new era kicks off with a record that must have passed me by at the time. After making her name in 1991 with one of the decade’s biggest dance anthems in “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, Rozalla had rather gone missing in the intervening years. Her previous three single releases had all failed to chart and so when it came to releasing her second album (and first for new record label Epic), a hit was definitely required. And when you need a hit…you know what comes next. Yes, a cover version was sought out. Back in 1976, Philly Soulsters The O’Jays of “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train” fame had a No 13 hit in the UK called “I Love Music” and it was that track that was chosen to reset Rozalla’s career.

On reflection, whilst certainly a safe step, it also seemed like a backward one with Rozalla being repositioned as yet another singer trying to eke out a hit with a 70s cover à la Dannii Minogue or someone. Hadn’t she been seen as the princess of techno rave anthems or something? At least a bit more cutting edge than this anyway? I mean, it gave her a hit (No 18) but in terms of re-establishing her in people’s minds it seemed to be a short term fix. Her sophomore album which included “I Love Music” did absolutely nothing (despite some decent press reviews) peaking at No 138 in the UK. Somebody on her team also thought it was a good idea to restyle her which I don’t think helped. Gone were the space cadet type spangly jackets and hair tied up look and in their place was a vampy image with long, sleek hair and a sheer black dress. It was a misplaced notion. Rozalla would have a few more minor hits during the 90s but tellingly one of them was a remix of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”.

Now here is a proper tune! I’d always struggled a bit with The Charlatans up to this point. Yes, “The Only One I Know” was a decent song but the rest of it hadn’t engaged me as much as I thought it would. For me though, this was the point where they really started to hit their stride. Great hit after great hit would emerge over the mid to late 90s – “Just Lookin’”, “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over”, “How High” and “North Country Boy” spring to mind – but it seemed to start with “Can’t Get Out Of Bed”.

Nothing to do with Matt Bianco’s debut hit of a decade earlier, this was the lead single from their third album “Up To Our Hips”. Although Tim Burgess has acquired National Treasure status for his album Listening Party project which helped to keep us sane during the pandemic, I wonder if his band get the plaudits they deserve sometimes. Just ~~looking~~ lookin’ at their discography alone shows that they had three No 1 albums (plus two No 2s) – I’m not sure that gets talked about enough for a start. “Up To Our Hips” would go Top 10 beginning the process of restoring the band’s status which seemed to take a dip when sophomore effort “Between 10th And 11th” failed to make the Top 20.

“Can’t Get Out Of Bed” seemed to have much more melody to it than their previous work to me and, in keeping with its title, an almost lazy style to it as if Tim was really having to force himself to get the lyrics out. It was also utterly joyous. Yes, his vocals in this performance aren’t strictly the best technically but some of the best singers aren’t but are perfect for the music they make (see also the aforementioned Liam Gallagher). The single probably should have done better than it’s No 24 peak but, nevertheless, the alarm clock was ringing – we were on notice of great things to come.

I’m a bit confused about the timeline surrounding this next act’s release history. I’d ignored Red Hot Chili Peppers throughout the 80s – no, not ignored but barely been aware of them and their first four albums is a more accurate description. The release of their “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album in 1991 brought them into the mainstream though. Produced by Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin, it rowed back on their metal/funk tendencies whilst promoted a more melodic sound. This was none more evident than on “Under The Bridge” which clogged up US radio playlists for months and rose all the way to No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, the album’s lead single was “Give It Away” which showed that the band could still kick ass. The song has an almost face-blistering power, propelled by Flea’s frenetic bass line and John Frusciante’s funk guitar riffs. Add in Anthony Kiedis’ imploring vocals and it’s impossible to ignore. Here’s where my confusion comes in though. “Give It Away” was released in September 1991 so what was it doing in the UK charts in 1994? To add to the confusion, “Under The Bridge” which was the second single taken from the album was originally released in March of 1992 but I’m sure that was also in our Top 40 in 1994 because I bought it (it has a version of “Give It Away” on it called ‘In Progress’). So what gives? Well, I’ve pieced together a theory but I’m no Chili Peppers aficionado so it could easily be bulls**t. Here goes though. As far as I can tell, “Give It Away” was definitely originally released in 1991 but either did absolutely nothing over here or wasn’t actually made available in this country. I can see US and Europe versions of the single listed on the Discogs website but not a specific UK one. “Under The Bridge” definitely got a UK release though as it made No 26 here in March 1992. In the September of that year, just to confuse matters, a Best Of compilation called “What Hits!?” was released consisting of tracks from their first four albums recorded for EMI (“Blood Sugar Sex Majik” was their first for Warners). However, EMI were allowed to choose one track to include on the album recorded for Warners so naturally they chose “Under The Bridge” as their biggest hit. It made for a very lopsided and confusing collection album. John Frusciante left the band after “Blood Sugar Sex Majik” whilst Anthony Kiedis relapsed into drug use. The combination of these two things meant a delay to the recording of next studio album “One Hot Minute”. To fill that gap and to appease the fan base, a compilation box set was released called (rather unimaginatively) “Live Rare Remix Box” which did what it said on the tin. The box set included three different versions of “Give It Away” so I’m guessing that the track was re-released to help promote it. When that became a Top 10 hit in the UK, “Under The Bridge” was also re-released which was the single I bought and this time it made No 13. Phew!

I guess we have to mention the video shown here for “Give It Away”. Credited with helping to break the band commercially, rather ridiculously, Warners were scared it might be too weird, arty and out there for MTV and mainstream audiences. The opposite was true. Shot entirely in black and white in the desert with the band painted silver, wearing reflective outfits and cavorting about in a frenzy, it is a dazzling and exceptional piece of work from French director Stéphane Sednaoui.

“Now I know I’m not employed for my musical taste but this is going to be a No 1 record” Simon Mayo confidently informs us when introducing the next artist. Who is he talking about? Why, Wendy Moten of course. Not quite a one hit wonder (she had a No 35 follow up), she definitely did not have a No 1 record though as her single “Come In Out Of The Rain” peaked at No 8. Simon ‘Nostradamus’ Mayo at it again there.

As far as I can tell, this was originally released in 1992 in the US but only got its chance in the UK in early 1994. For reasons of a lack of time and unlike with Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores about all of that though. Suffice to say, the song is a big slushy ballad that I could imagine Dina Carroll or even Diana Ross singing.

My main memory of Wendy Moten though is that one of my colleagues (Vicky I think) at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester wanted a move to London and so we arranged a transfer for her to one of the soul/dance specialist stores down there. When I spoke to her on the work phone after she had moved and asked her how it was going she told me how different an environment it was. To illustrate that, she said she hadn’t yet heard the “Parklife” album by Blur that was everywhere but she’d heard the Wendy Moten album in full in the shop stereo loads of times. As my Mum says, if we all liked the same thing, the world would be a very boring place.

Who’s this fella? Joe Roberts? Sounds like somebody your Dad would know? I’m not sure I know him though. What’s his song called? “Lover”? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Hang on; did he do one called “Jessie”?

*checks internet*

Nah, that was a guy called Joshua Kadison apparently. Well, I’ve got nothing then. My research tells me his partner is Melanie Williams who was the singer with Sub Sub of “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)” fame. They even made a record together – a cover of The Stylistics’ “ You Are Everything” – in 1995. After that the trail goes cold. Maybe he could have tried to make himself more intriguing by just going by the name Joe (like Madonna or Adele). Ah shit, somebody already beat him to it didn’t they? That bloke who did “I’m In Luv” who was on the show the other week. Hard luck Mr Roberts.

They’ve retained the Breakers under the new regime and they kick off with “Perpetual Dawn” by The Orb. This was yet another re-release following Red Hot Chili Peppers earlier and indeed following The Orb themselves as their previous hit at the end of 1993 “Little Fluffy Clouds” had itself been a reissue. “Perpetual Dawn” was originally released in 1991 from their debut album “The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld” and had peaked at No 61. Presumably, also like the Chili Peppers, the strategy here was to retain profile in between albums (there were three years between “U.F.Orb” and “Orbus Terrarum”) and as the “Little Fluffy Clouds” rerelease had worked so well, another old track was shoved out. The track has a dub reggae feel to it and sounds a bit like The Prodigy to my uncultured ears. It peaked the second time at No 18.

New-age was all the rage in early 1994. After the return of Enigma last week, here was a French act called Deep Forest with their track “Sweet Lullaby”. A major hit all round Europe over the previous year, it was time for the UK to experience its ethnic ambient rhythms – could the re-emergence of Enigma have played a part in their record company’s scheduling decision?

As with Enigma’s concurrent hit which was based around an Amis chant recorded by a Taiwan folk duo, “Sweet Lullaby” was similarly structured around an indigenous lullaby from the Solomon Islands. Also like Enigma, it made for a haunting, affecting piece of music. The single went to No 10 whilst their eponymous debut album also sold steadily and was nominated for a Grammy for Best World Music album in 1994. According to founding member Éric Mouquet, the name Deep Forest came from combining Deep Purple with rain forest. I guess ‘Purple Rain’ had already gone.

The final Breaker comes from a German Eurodance act called Bass Bumpers. I know, WHO? Well, their track was called “The Music’s Got Me!” which peaked at No 25 and which I don’t recall at all but that’s not really their claim to fame anyway. In 2005, they were responsible for the heinous musical crime that was the Crazy Frog version of “Axel F”. I KNOW!

A taste of things to come perhaps now. I’ve criticised the ‘live by satellite’ section many times before in this blog as being completely pointless with the majority of acts set in empty concert halls and completely undermining the whole concept of an ‘exclusive’ performance. New producer Ric Blaxill kept the slot but wanted to make it an event again by having artists perform against the backdrop of a famous/interesting landmark, building or structure. So, show No1 of the new regime have Gin Blossoms at the original London Bridge in Arizona. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the history lesson…

That bridge in the background is London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It features exterior granite blocks from the bridge across the Thames which was built in 1831 ("New London Bridge"). #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

By the '60s, surveys showed that London Bridge was sinking about an inch every eight years, so it was decided to replace it. In 1968 it was bought from the City of London by entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch for $2,460,000. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

10,000 tons of granite blocks were shipped via the Panama Canal to California, then trucked to Arizona, where they were used to face a new, steel-reinforced concrete structure up to the task of supporting modern-day traffic. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 27, 2023

Interesting stuff but what about the band? Well, Gin Blossoms we’re actually from Arizona and had done the usual band stuff of constant gigging in a clapped out van and released their debut album “Dusted” on a small independent label. They were then picked up by a major in A&M and they re-recorded half of the songs on “Dusted” to form the basis of their second album “New Miserable Experience”. It sold unremarkably until the album’s third single “Hey Jealously” picked up airplay and became a No 25 hit in the US. Off the back of it, the album would eventually go four times platinum over there. It couldn’t replicate those sales in the UK but we bought into “Hey Jealousy” enough to make it a No 24 hit. The song has a tragic backstory. Guitarist Doug Hopkins who wrote it about wanting to get back with his girlfriend was kicked out of the band by A&M due to his alcoholism and unreliability before the song was a hit. Unable to deal with its subsequent success, he committed suicide in December 1993. There were rumours of a potential biopic of Hopkins’ life being made starring Ethan Hawke but it turned out that they were, in fact, just rumours.

One film that the band did have ties to was Empire Records for which they contributed a song to its soundtrack. Set in a US record store, I should have loved this as I spent pretty much the whole of the 90s working for Our Price. However, I found it to be completely dull and self indulgent with unlikeable characters. It bombed at the box office but has since become a cult hit. Maybe I should give it another go…

…maybe not. Anyway, I quite liked “Hey Jealousy” with its jangling guitars and catchy melody. However, I do always confuse Gin Blossoms with Gigolo Aunts who had a similar sounding band name and a similar sounding hit record at a similar time…

One of the year’s biggest hits next as Mariah Carey takes on “Without You”. I guess if anyone had the vocal range to tackle this monster of a pop song it was her. Her version would crash straight in at No 1 and be there for four weeks.

Whilst mostly known as a Harry Nilsson song before Mariah got hold of it, it was actually written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the band Badfinger who recorded it for their 1970 album “No Dice”. Badfinger, of course, had a strong connection with The Beatles. They recorded five albums for Apple and one of their biggest hits – “Come And Get It” – was written and produced by Paul McCartney. I quite like what I’ve heard of the band -“No Matter What” is a great power pop song – but they are one of the most tragic bands in musical history. In an unbelievably grim coincidence, like Gin Blossoms, their story was also touched by the awful shadow of suicide. After Apple folded, the band spiralled into a tumult of litigation, unpaid royalties and bankruptcy. It took its toll in an awful way. Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975 after his relationship with business manager Stan Polley went bad and Ham faced financial ruin. Then in 1983, Tom Evans also took his own life after falling out with band member Joey Molland over royalties for “Without You” the previous evening.

D:Ream remain rooted to the top spot with “Things Can Only Get Better”. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo can’t resist making a political comment referring to it as John Major’s favourite song currently. At the time, as in 2023, the Conservatives were miles behind Labour in the polls and Major was embroiled in a row with opposition leader John Smith over the sale of the Rover Group. Things would actually get worse not better for Major four days after this TOTP aired when Tory MP Stephen Milligan was found dead at his home having died of asphyxiation presumed to be the result of an auto-erotic sex practice.

God this show has been remarkably bleak and miserable in terms of back stories. Is there anything that can raise the spirits before it closes? Well, there’s one final tune to come as it seems Blaxill made another immediate change by restoring the play out song that had been missing since the ‘year zero’ revamp. So what’s the first artist to fill this slot? The Flavour? Never heard of them! It’s hardly surprising as they never actually had a hit record. This single – “No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)” only made it to No 81. It was rereleased a year later and got to No 79. It wasn’t helped in its chart endeavours by Blaxill only seeing fit for it to be played for about twenty seconds and not showing their video (presuming they had one). Instead we get clips of all the artists that had been in the show we’d just seen. Not especially effective use of a slot. In fairness, it was a crap song (like a cheap version of the aforementioned Sub Sub) and unlike the Badfinger track called “No Matter What”, I didn’t like The Flavour’s…erm…flavour at all.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Rozalla	I Love Music	I do too but not this!
2	The Charlatans	Can’t Get Out Of Bed	Not the single but I have it on their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Give It Away	No but I had a version of it on that re-release of Under The Bridge that I did buy
4	Wendy Moten	Come In Out Of The Rain	Nah
5	Joe Roberts	Lover	I did not
6	The Orb	Perpetual Dawn	Nope
7	Deep Forest	Sweet Lullaby	No
8	Bass Bumpers	The Music’s Got Me	Negative
9	Gin Blossoms	Hey Jealousy	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Mariah Carey	Without You	It’s a no
11	D:Ream	Things Can Only Get Better	And another no
12	The Flavour	No Matter What You Do (I’m Gonna Get With You)	What do you think?

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.

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?