Meatloaf | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 11 NOV 1993

Posted on November 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The 14th November 2022 saw the 70th anniversary of the UK’s official singles chart. That inaugural chart was published by the NME with the very first No 1 record being Al Martino’s “Here In My Heart”. Back in 1993 when this TOTP was broadcast, we were just three days away from the 41st birthday of the charts. Were there any celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary the year before? I can’t remember but what I do know is that as part of the 70th festivities, seven charts have been produced detailing the most streamed songs for each year of the charts’ existence. Some results were obvious – the most streamed track that was originally released in 1975 for example is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Others were a little more surprising- 1990’s most streamed song is “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. As we’re up to 1993 in these TOTP repeats, let’s check out which was the most streamed track that was released in that year…oh that’s just plain wrong! “What Is Love” by Haddaway? Ha’way and shite man! That just about sums up the terrible year that was 1993. Still, we’re nearly through it and then Britpop is just around the corner. For now though, ‘turn and face the strange’ as we navigate another thirty minutes of nostalgia…

Hang on. Captain Hollywood? I thought we were in 1993 not 1990! Didn’t this guy have a hit called “I Can’t Stand It” as the decade began?

*checks official.charts.com

Well, sort of. It was officially credited to Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood but I was right about the year – it was a No 7 in 1990. There was a follow up too called “Are You Dreaming” which went Top 20. At that point the good captain (real name Tony Dawson-Harrison) left the project to begin his own new…erm…project called…erm…Captain Hollywood Project. Their first single was “More And More” which, and this is now almost becoming as regular an admission as Rishi Sunak claiming he was unaware of the latest scandal to engulf one of his cabinet before he appointed them, I have no memory of at all. Listening to it now, it sounds f*****g dreadful! Was this really what the pop fans of 1993 wanted? The heated up leftovers of what was rejected from the recording sessions of Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”?

The rapper is, I believe, the aforementioned Tony Dawson-Harrison who sounds like that voice over guy who does all those film trailers that begin with “In a world where…”. Apparently his voice was electronically modified to sound deeper. Why? Unless his true voice sounded like Joe Pasquale I don’t get why you would do that. I also don’t understand why all the guys on stage have a ponytail and are dressed like waiters at a high class restaurant. The whole thing is completely baffling, almost as baffling as how the record managed to get to No 23 in the charts.

As it’s nearly mid-November, the run up Christmas has started and that means, as host Mark Franklin points out, Best Of albums and plenty of ‘em. Artists peddling collections of their biggest hits around this time included Diana Ross, Wet Wet Wet, Soul II Soul, Bette Midler, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Christians and this guy – Bryan Adams. His “So Far So Good” album would end up as the sixth best selling of 1993 in the UK. This was quite astonishing when you consider that until the record breaking run at No 1 in 1991 by “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Bry’s biggest UK hit was “Run To You” which peaked just outside the Top 10 at No 11. Look at the chart standings in this country for every track on “So Far So Good”

Title	Chart peak
Summer of ’69	42
Straight from the Heart	51
It’s Only Love	29
Can’t Stop This Thing We Started	12
Do I Have to Say the Words?	30
This Time	41
Run To You	11
Heaven	38
Cuts Like A Knife	Did not chart
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	1
Somebody	35
Kids Wanna Rock	N/A album track
Heat Of The Night	50
Please Forgive Me	2

Maybe they were big airplay hits and that’s how people knew them? Remember those streaming charts I mentioned earlier? The most streamed song that was released in 1985 was “Summer Of 69”. Or maybe Bryan had always been more of an albums guy until his Robin Hood moment? Even his 1987 album which generated zero UK Top 40 hits went gold and made our Top 10. Perhaps it was just all about that No 1 song but surely enough people had bought the single to not need to buy a Greatest Hits album to own it? Was it the new song “Please Forgive Me” that reeled people in? I don’t know why that should’ve because it was a right dirge. Its promo video was no better – a right snoozefest showing Bryan and his merry band of musos laying down the track in the studio. Even his dog who’s there for no apparent reason looks bored. Somehow the single made it to No 2.

Here’s another track specifically recorded to promote a Best Of album – it’s the aforementioned Soul II Soul with “Wish”. Who was doing the singing for Jazzie B and co by 1993? Caron Wheeler had long since departed by then. Well, my research (by which I mean Wikipedia) tells me that’s the now sadly passed away Melissa Bell on stage who was actually pregnant at the time. One of her four children (not the one from this pregnancy though) would turn out to be pretty famous herself – singer and actress Alexandra Burke who won the 2008 series of The X Factor. As well as bagging herself three No 1 singles, she was also on the charity record by The X Factor Finalists who covered Mariah Carey’s “Hero” that I mentioned the other week.

Presumably Melissa’s pregnancy explains her cover-all outfit in this performance. The feathers on it reminded me of this long forgotten BBC costume drama from 1978 featuring the Welsh Robin Hood Twm Sion Cati and his rather ludicrous outfit.

Five Breakers again this week starting with Paul Weller and a third single from his “Wild Wood” album. “The Weaver EP” actually featured four tracks including Weller’s cover of Neil Young’s “Ohio” but the title track was the only song actually on the album. By this point, the rejuvenation of Paul was well under way with “The Weaver” peaking at No 18 after previous singles “Wild Wood” made No 14 and “”Sunflower” No 16. More than these solid chart performances though, it seemed to me that Weller was being accepted back into the fold of artists that meant something – it wasn’t just about nostalgia for The Jam. He was suddenly relevant again.

After The Style Council disappeared up their own arse as the 80s ended, it seemed like Weller had lost his mojo completely. Without a record contract for the first time since he was 17 he took a sabbatical for the whole of 1990 before restarting his musical career with some low key live gigs playing old Jam standards as well as some new songs before dipping his toe back into recording music with the release of No 36 single “Into Tomorrow” as The Paul Weller Movement. That paved the way for his debut, eponymous solo album in 1992 which in itself was in effect a trailer for “Wild Wood”. As for the song itself, it’s not too dissimilar to “Sunflower” with its ringing guitar licks albeit that it probably has more of a groove to it whereas “Sunflower” is a bit more strident sounding. Even the videos are alike being straightforward performance run throughs in a mixture of black and white and colour film. Both are resounding and engaging tracks however.

Ah shit! It’s Bollers time! Michael Bolton that is who’s turned up with a song the title of which suggests he’s doing his best Meatloaf impression. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was actually written by Bollers himself alongside Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange who also co-wrote that Bryan Adams stinker that was on earlier. And guess what? This one’s terrible too! Lange seems to be the enemy of music, constructing anti-songs that go nowhere and do nothing. He has worked with some huge names like AC/DC and Britney Spears but his biggest claim to fame is producing Shania Twain (to whom he was also married) and her “Come On Over” album which is the best selling country album of all time and the best selling of the 90s but I always hated that so…ahem…that don’t impress me much. As for Michael Bolton, as usual he had an album out for Christmas called “The One Thing” from which “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was taken. It would peak at No15 in the UK and No 6 in the US, the last time Bolton would visit the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10.

Next a single that I would have sworn came out at least two years later than this*. Leftfield are electronic dance duo Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who back in 1993 were about to break through into the mainstream with the release of “Open Up” which had its own secret weapon in the guest vocalist on the track, one John Lydon. Not seen in the charts for three years when PIL’s “Don’t Ask Me” made No 22 (another one of those Best Of promoting singles), Lydon’s growling vocals intertwined with some progressive house beats was an unlikely but winning combination. Anything he sings on is always installed with an instant sense of peril and brims with dread and it works a treat in this anxiety inducing track. The line ‘Burn Hollywood burn’ led to it being withdrawn from play on ITV’s The Chart Show due to an unfortunate case of timing which saw it in heavy rotation at the time of the Malibu bush fires in Los Angeles. Lydon’s own LA home was in peril at one point.

*Having checked Leftfield’s discography, I think the reason for my own case of wayward timing re: when this single was released is down to the fact that their album “Leftism” on which “Open Up” featured didn’t come out until January 1995.

Remember that awful hit “To Be With You” by a US band called Mr. Big from 1992? Well, here’s the 1993 version. Soul Asylum were the perpetrators of this year’s mournful, acoustic power ballad though they had actually been in existence for over a decade by this point. “Runaway Train” was their song and it would be the biggest hit of their career by far, going Top 5 all around Europe and in their home country of America whilst peaking at No 7 in the UK.

And then you watch the video and the song is transformed into something else altogether and your initial assessment of it is no longer valid. The decision of director Tony Kaye to use the promo as something practical rather than just aesthetic changes not just people’s perception of the song but actually changed people’s lives. Originally written by lead vocalist Dave Pirner about depression, the use of imagery in the video of children witnessing or fleeing from abuse convinced many that the song was about runaway and missing children. The disturbing scenes of domestic abuse, child prostitution and kidnapping weren’t gratuitous though as they were interspersed with stills of actual missing children with their names published alongside how long they had been missing. Pirner appears at the end of the video to advise “If you’ve seen one of these kids or are one of them, please call this number”. The children’s details were changed and tailored to whichever country the video was being shown in (i.e. UK children were featured in the video released in this country). The ultimate impact of the video which received high rotation on MTV was that twenty-six children featured in the video were found. Tragically, there were also horrific denouements to the stories of those children featured the details of which I don’t need to go into in a blog about music. Predictably, even the brief glimpse we get of the video in the Breakers has been heavily edited by the TOTP producers. As for Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train” became an albatross around the band’s neck and Pirner refused to perform it live for a while. They would have one more chart hit in 1995 with “Misery” but are still active to this day.

The final Breaker comes from The Orb and their ambient house classic “Little Fluffy Clouds”. This track seemed to have been around for ages and indeed it had having been originally released in 1990 when it was big in the clubs but not on the charts and it peaked at No 87. However, with the commercial success The Orb had received with a No 1 album in “U.F.Orb” and attendant hit singles like “Blue Room” and “Assassin”, the decision was taken to rerelease “Little Fluffy Clouds”. It proved to be the right choice as the 1993 version made it all the way to No 10.

Borrowing heavily from Ennio Morricone, and a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich performed by Pat Metheny, its most prominent sample though was from an interview with US singer songwriter Rickie Lee Jones. Describing the sky in Arizona from her childhood, her hippy-ish tone fits perfectly with the chill-out vibes of the track. Unfortunately Rickie’s attitude to The Orb’s use of her voice on the track wasn’t so laid back. In a 2019 interview she described them as:

those fuckers
“Joy and Defiance: A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones”. Aquarium Drunkard. 10 May 2019.

As much as I quite enjoyed “Little Fluffy Clouds” (and I did), it’s not my favourite song about the sky in Arizona. This is…

1993 was full of dance hits of all types of flavour – it felt like you couldn’t escape from them. However, if you were a dance act with a big club hit that crossed over into the mainstream charts, did that then change your identity and therefore your aspirations? If you were now a bona fide chart artist, were you then obliged to have a follow up hit and if so, was that possible? It wasn’t always. The Goodmen of “Give It Up” fame never had another hit and neither did Sub Sub after “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Similarly, dancehall rapper Snow bagged a No 2 record in 1993 with “Informer” and then nothing ever again.

Making the case the other way though were Culture Beat who followed up on their chart topper “Mr.Vain” with two Top 5 singles in “Got To Get It” and “Anything”. And then there was this lot – Urban Cookie Collective whose “”The Key, The Secret” just missed out on being a No 1 record but, contrary to popular theory, weren’t a one hit wonder and here’s the proof. “Feels Like Heaven” may have sounded almost exactly the same as its predecessor (no really, what’s the difference?) but that didn’t stop punters buying it in enough copies to send it to No 5. They even had a further two Top 40 hits (all four came from debut album “High On A Happy Vibe”) but really, they are only remembered for “The Key, The Secret” I think it’s fair to say. To be honest, if I wanted a song called “Feels Like Heaven” I’d go for these true one hit wonders from 1984…

November and December of 1993 saw a trend for ballads that stuck around the charts for ages. There was “Hero” by Mariah Carey, “Don’t Be A Stranger” by Dina Carroll, “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by The Bee Gees and this one – “Again” by Janet Jackson. The third single to be taken from her “Janet” album, it was actually written for the film Poetic Justice, Janet’s debut into the world of movies. It was the closing song in the film though it didn’t feature on the rap heavy official soundtrack. Was that a deliberate ploy on behalf of Jackson and her writers/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to potentially build sales for her own album by ensuring fans hadn’t got access to it via the soundtrack? I’ve no idea but what I do know is that there were fourteen songs that featured in the film that didn’t appear on its soundtrack which seems like a lot.

“Again” is one of those ballads that Janet throws into the mix every so often (see also “Let’s Wait A While”, “Come Back To Me”) although it holds back on the sugary schmaltz in favour of trying to purvey a sense of real emotion. Whether Janet achieves that by appearing overcome and teary at the song’s finale is open to debate. There’s no doubting the song ebbs and flows though and Janet does a good job of the live vocals in this TOTP performance. The song clearly struck a chord with the public who bought it steadily over a prolonged period providing it with this Top 40 run:

12 – 6 – 8 – 10 – 16 – 15 – 17 – 12 – 33

Like the aforementioned “Hero” by Mariah Carey, it manages to reverse a decline in sales on two occasions to move back up the charts. Impressive stuff. Being a Jackson, Janet would release another four singles from “Janet” after “Again”, the last one coming out over 18 months after the album.

And another one! Yes, it’s another of those ballads of longevity, this time from Elton John and Kiki Dee. After the success of the “Two Rooms” tribute album of 1991, there must have been some discussion in his inner circle as to how to further plunder the Elton John brand whilst he was in between studio albums (there was a three years gap between “The One” and “Made In England”). The plan that was devised was to do a duets project resulting in an album called…erm…”Duets”. The idea was sound. Get a few of Elton’s pals round to record a mixture of standards and his own compositions and shove it out in time for the Christmas market. Bish, bash bosh!

Elton of course was not shy about recording a duet or two. A quick glance of his discography reveals collaborations with the likes of Cliff Richard, Millie Jackson, George Michael, Jennifer Rush, Aretha Franklin…However, surely the most famous and enduring of his duets was with Kiki Dee on “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, their No 1 from 1976. So guess who was first in line to get an invite for the project and who would end up being on the lead single for the album? The song chosen for Elton and Kiki was the Cole Porter standard “True Love” from the film High Society made famous by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. I don’t think I knew the song back in 1993 and their version of it was never going to turn me onto it. Having played both interpretations of it this morning back to back, I definitely detected that Elton and Kiki’s take on it had pissing sleigh bells in the mix! The cynical sods! Clearly trying to stack the odds in their favour of the Christmas No 1 and indeed many bookies had it nailed on as favourite for the top spot. I kept a close eye on Elton’s face during this performance to see if I could spot any signs of smugness thinking he had the coveted crown in the bag but my powers of observation were slain by his jiggling eyebrows! WTF?! Sadly for Elton and Kiki, they underestimated the appeal of an idiot in a pink and yellow spotted costume to sell records and so never did make No 1 though they got mighty close peaking at No 2 and staying in the Top 10 for seven weeks.

It’s a fourth week out of seven at the top for Meatloaf and “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. It’s the video again – I don’t think Meat ever made it into the TOTP studio did he? There was a satellite performance weeks back to premiere it but after that I think it was always the promo.

The lyric ‘I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that’ was first used in a Bonnie Tyler track called “Getting So Excited” from her “Faster Than The Speed Of Night” album that Jim Steinman produced. If you can manage to listen to it in the clip below (it’s utterly dreadful), stay with it until the 1.35 mark when you get the campest utterance of a line since that bloke in The Sweet on “Blockbuster”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Captain Hollywood Project	More And More	As if
2	Bryan Adams	Please Forgive Me	No I don’t Bry
3	Soul II Soul	Wish	No
4	Paul Weller	The Weaver EP	No but I had the Wild Wood album
5	Michael Bolton	Said I Loved You…But I Lied	Never
6	Leftfield / John Lydon	Open Up	No but I had it on one of those Best Album In The World Ever compilations
7	Soul Asylum	Runaway Train	Negative
8	The Orb	Little Fluffy Clouds	I did not
9	Urban Cookie Collective	Feels Like Heaven	Nah
10	Janet Jackson	Again	Nope
11	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Definitely not
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/m001dzyp/top-of-the-pops-11111993

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 28 OCT 1993

Posted on November 9, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s late October 1993 and TOTP seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis. Almost exactly two years ago, the ‘year zero revamp’ took place, culling the Radio 1 DJs as presenters and seeking to reinvent the show as the home of music for the youth population. Noble intentions indeed but just look at the some of the artists on this show:

Bryan Adams
Phil Collins
Meatloaf
David Hasselhoff!

Sure, it was a chart based show and it could be argued that the choice of artists reflected those shifting the most units but in reply I would refer you to that list again and say David Hasselhoff!! What’s that? Wasn’t the Breakers section there to showcase the more left field tunes in the chart? Good point and there are indeed some of them in tonight’s jam packed Breakers feature like The Grid and The Good Men but when there’s five of them like tonight you literally get about twenty seconds worth of those artists. Plus, included in that section tonight are Tina Turner and a song by a character from a sit com! What was going on?! This needs a deeper look so let’s get started…

I’ve banged on about this opening song in many a previous post as its singer was everywhere in 1993 with three Top 40 hits already prior to this one being the biggest of the lot. I’m on about Dina Carroll and her single “Don’t Be A Stranger” and my search for the reason why her record label A&M kept its release back for so long. Anyway, it’s here now and up to No 4 and would spend nine weeks inside the Top 10 as follows:

10 – 4 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 8 – 8

Such was its consistent selling that I think it may still have been in the Top 10 when the follow up single “The Perfect Year” was released in the December. Enough of its chart stats though, was it any good? It’s certainly an accomplished ballad and Dina can deliver on its drama with her vocal range. Apparently it was re-recorded from the album version but the main difference seems to be the addition of a longer intro (almost an overture in classical terms) and turning those spiky strings up a bit in the mix maybe. Why did it resonate so much with the record buying public though? Well, Christmas was approaching and a love song always goes down well at that time of year. Indeed, the chart for the festive period 1993 was littered with them – “Babe” by Take That, “Hero” by Mariah Carey, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by the Bee Gees and “True Love” by Elton John and Kiki Dee leap out after just a cursory glance at the Top 40.

In this performance, the backing track doing the ‘Don’t Be A Stranger’ part of the chorus rather than Dina singing it herself does jar slightly but otherwise she does a good job of selling the song without the need for any stage gimmicks. I’m guessing we might be seeing this one again in future TOTP repeats.

Here comes Björk to completely undermine my theory that I posited in the intro about the show being full of mainstream, rock royalty artists. Of course she does. After her first two singles as a solo artist failed to tear up the charts peaking at Nos 36 and 29, she made a much better fist of it with third release “Play Dead” though she wasn’t quite on her own for this one. British film composer David Arnold is also officially credited on the record as it was part of the soundtrack to the crime drama movie The Young Americans starring Harvey Keitel (can’t say I’ve ever seen it).

Now I’ve been critical of Björk’s voice in the past but by any measure, this is a spellbinding piece of music, full of dramatic, swooping, swirling orchestration that ally perfectly with her…distinctive voice. It really is quite a thing. Its chart peak of No 12 was well deserved and sensibly her record company included it as an extra track on international pressings of her “Debut” album. I say sensibly but it apparently caused many official complaints from fans who had already bought the initial “Play Dead” lite version of the album.

The Breakers? Already? Yes, just two songs in we get those ‘happening’ tunes causing a stir somewhere in the chart. They usually pop up after about four or five songs but they’re here early this week for whatever reason. They start with a band who, like Björk before them, are most definitely not swimming in the mainstream. The early to mid 90s saw the Levellers at their commercial peak. Their eponymous third album released in August had peaked at No 2 whilst the follow up two years later “Zeitgeist” would top the chart. “This Garden” is as the second single released from the former and would become, quite oddly, the band’s fourth hit in six releases to peak at No 12. It’s quite the tune as well with loads packed into it including jungle rhythms, a didgeridoo, squawking bird sound effects, an (almost) rap and some lyrics that I presumed were about environmental issues but seem to be discussing the state of society and its culture as a whole on closer inspection. Interesting stuff.

Another atypical act now (the more conventional stuff is coming I promise), this time electronic house explorers The Grid who were Dave Ball of Soft Cell and record producer/DJ etc Richard Norris. They’d actually been around releasing material for years but had only discovered chart gold once before earlier in 1993 when “Crystal Clear” rose to No 27. “Texas Cowboys” was the follow up and did even better peaking at No 21. I’m sure it made sense to teenagers listening to it whilst playing Sonic the Hedgehog on their Megadrive but it sounds likely to induce a migraine to me.

The Grid would release their most well known track “Swamp Thing” the following year which, after it went Top 3, caused “Texas Cowboys” to be rereleased and it duly beat its initial chart peak by four places.

OK so this isn’t exactly mainstream but was it really what the kids were buying? How do you explain this. Well, in a year when Mr. Blobby would be the Christmas No1, anything was possible and so it was that a song from a space themed sitcom performed in character (a character by the way which was a humanoid evolved from a pregnant cat over three million years) was a hit in the UK charts. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Red Dwarf I just didn’t see the need for this drippy, insipid Motown pastiche to be in the charts. I mean if you want to do a spin off from a successful comedy TV series, it surely has to be funny doesn’t it or am I missing something? If it had been something like The Young Ones and Cliff Richard doing “Living Doll” for Comic Relief I could have got on board but I just didn’t see the point of “Tongue Tied” by The Cat. Even the video directed by Danny John-Jules who played The Cat wasn’t funny.

It was actually used as part of the story in the last episode of season two called “Parallel Universe” so it wasn’t an entire anomaly construct but that episode aired in 1988 so why release it five years later? Oh, reading up on it, the reason seems to be to help promote the launch of season six which makes more sense. It turns out that Danny John-Jules had some previous in the pop star lark. He’s in the video for Wham!’s “Edge Of Heaven”…

Go to 3:10

And so the tidal wave of mainstream music begins with this little trickle in the Breakers from Tina Turner. Like Dina Carroll earlier, Tina was all over the charts in 1993. “Why Must We Wait Until Tonight” was the third single from the soundtrack album to the biopic of her life called What’s Love Got To Do With It and the third consecutive hit after “I Don’t Wanna Fight” (No 7) and “Disco Inferno” (No 12) peaking at No 16. Compared to those two songs though, this one didn’t seem to have much about it – in fact it’s a bit of a dirge. Oh and if you’re thinking it’s unfair to consider Tina mainstream then know this – “Why Must We Wait Until Tonight” was co-written by Bryan Adams.

And a final, parting shot across the bows of TOTP from those making more alternative forms of music at this time from The Good Men. Now if you’re thinking haven’t we seen this one before fairly recently then you’re right, we have. Back in August, “Give It Up” got as high as No 23 before sliding out of the charts. However, such was its banger status in the clubs it never really went away and resurfaced in the Top 40 in late October before spending four weeks in the Top 10 and settling on a peak of No 5. There have been countless examples of singles that have been rereleased and become bigger hits than they were when first out but one that had already been a middle sized hit just two months earlier? That takes some doing I think. The track’s legacy wasn’t quite as impressive being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 single “Fairground”. Give it up Hucknell.

Right, that’s your lot for anything outside of the mainstream canon. From here on in its pure establishment rock beginning with Bryan Adams who gets a whole five minutes allocated to him to perform “Please Forgive Me”. This was a new track specifically recorded to promote his first Best Of album “So Far So Good” and his first single since “Do I Have To Say The Words” fifteen months previously. Presumably this compilation was to plug the gap between Bryan’s studio albums – there was five years separating “Waking Up The Neighbours” and “18 Till I Die”.

Let’s get this out there straight away – “Please Forgive Me” is not a good song. Actually, it’s dreadful. I say this as someone who isn’t anti-Bryan Adams. I even saw him live back in 1987 and he was a great performer but this? No. No thank you. And I thought that song he wrote for Tina Turner was bad. Everyone else seemed to love it though. Crashing in to the chart at No 3, it would finally settle at No 2. What this whole saga does show us is the transformative power of a huge No 1 single. After sixteen weeks at the top with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Bry was a proper chart star with his subsequent releases of new material being a big deal. The idea of him entering the UK charts with a single at No 3 in week one back in 1987 would have been laughable. He couldn’t buy a hit back then.

The album was a huge success going to No 1 and three times platinum here and sell 13 million copies worldwide. Adams would return in 1994 as part of a trio with Sting and Rod Stewart with the equally awful “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers film.

Is there anyone more mainstream than Phil Collins? An easy target for the music press who consistently dissed him as the omni-creator of the worst type of sterile, bland music, he was also accused of turning prog-rockers Genesis into lamentable peddlers of lame pop-rock. Just as a solo artist, he dominated the 80s with four albums and fifteen hit singles – come 1993, had the public’s Collins saturation point been reached? It appeared not. His album “Both Sides” went double platinum and was a No 1. Lead single “Both Sides Of The Story” went Top 10.

Phil’s in New York to perform it on TOTP via satellite and curiously he doesn’t get a spoken intro. The show seemed to have developed this convention during the ‘year zero’ era. I’m not sure what the reasoning was behind it. The artist was so big and well known that they needed no introduction? Anyway, it’s the usual Collins turn with Phil gurning and over emoting his way through the song with a backing band that did nothing to promote TOTP’s desire to be at the heart of youth programming. The keyboards player looks like ex-Dragons Den overlord Theo Paphitis for Chrissakes!

Who do you go to after Adams and Collins? For the TOTP producers there was only one answer – ‘The Hoff’ himself, the one and only David Hasselhoff! For the love of God! What were they thinking? Yes, he had quite the singing career in mainland Europe in places like Austria and Germany but he was surely considered a joke in the UK no? Everything about this is wrong, so depth plumbingly wrong. There’s the song for starters. Were “If I Could Only Say Goodbye” a facial expression it would be a grimace at best. Look at some of these lyrics:

I remember the day you came into my life
I remember how time stood still
You were my lover, my friend, my joy
You were my life
I loved you then and I always will
How time has its way with things
And all the changes it brings, baby
If I could only say goodbye
There will always be a part of me for you
If I could find the reason why
If I could only say goodbye
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: James Barry / Michael Fallon / Peter Fallon
If I Could Only Say Goodbye lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Somebody wrote those down, read them, considered them and decided “yeah, they’re fine”! WTF?! Then there’s Hasselhoff himself in his ridiculous, sleeveless denim shirt and his barely passable crooner voice. Just no. As with Phil Collins, there were people on his backing band that caught my eye. He had two (two!) keyboard players one of which seemed to be a younger version of himself and the other was a dead ringer for host Mark Franklin. As if this whole farce wasn’t bizarre enough!

This turn has a way to go though to top Hasselhoff’s most famous performance in the bizarre stakes…

So impactful was this broadcast that ‘The Hoff’ is now synonymous in some minds with being responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union! Not quite but kudos to him for being part of one of the biggest events of 20th century world history. Despite this TOTP appearance, “If I Could Only Say Goodbye” struggled to a peak of No 35. Thirteen years later, an online campaign saw his song “Jump In My Car” go to No 3. There are no words.

There’s only one way to end this. How? With a monstrously epic soft rock ballad courtesy of Meatloaf of course. “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” remains in top spot and still has weeks to go before its reign is toppled by Mr.Blobby (1993 really was batshit).

Right, let’s address that song title. What exactly is the ‘that’ Meatloaf won’t do? Well, here’s the man himself to explain it with a blackboard and pointer…

Got it? Good. And it’s definitely not what this guy John Thundergun says it’s about OK?

I would do anything for love but I won’t do that is about up the arse isn’t it?
— John Thundergun (@Bongoharris72) November 4, 2022

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Dina Carroll	Don’t Be A Stranger	Banged on about it, never bought it
2	Björk and David Arnold	Play Dead	It’s a no
3	Levellers	This Garden	Nah
4	The Grid	Texas Cowboys	Nope
5	The Cat	Tongue Tied	Never
6	Tina Turner	Why Must We Wait Until Tonight	I did not
7	The Good Men	Give It Up	No
8	Bryan Adams	Please Forgive Me	I don’t Bryan, I really don’t
9	Phil Collins	Both Sides Of The Story	Of course not
10	David Hasselhoff	If I Could Only Say Goodbye	Hell no!
11	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	I’d do anything for music (but I didn’t buy that)

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/m001drbn/top-of-the-pops-28101993

TOTP 21 OCT 1993

Posted on November 5, 2022 by 80stastic

What’s up with the TOTP running order? The other week we just had eight acts on and now this show only has a paltry seven! It’s all to do with whether there’s any Breakers section of course where the producers could slam up to five artists into a two minute time period. However, they’ve really cleared the decks this week because of the running time of the new No 1 but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We open with Cappella who seemed to be a cut price 2 Unlimited with a penchant for song titles that replace the word ‘you’ with ‘U’ and ‘to’ with the number 2. So much did they like to do it that they rivalled the master of the art Prince. However, if that match up was a game of football, the result would be as follows:

PRINCE 4 – 3 CAPPELLA

I Would Die 4 U

Take Me With U

U Got The Look

I Wish U Heaven

U Got 2 Know

U Got To Know (Revisited)

U Got 2 Let The Music

This latest single would be Cappella’s biggest hit, trumping the chart achievement of its predecessors by going all the way to No 2. Listening back to it though, it was just more nasty Eurodance excrement stinking out the charts. They would linger for another four Top 20 hits over the next couple of years. They are still an active entity but seem to have a list of previous band members to rival The Fall. Sadly one of them was Marcus Birks who died of Covid 19 after previously being an anti-vaxxer and Covid denier.

1993 saw the return of INXS though in truth they hadn’t been away long. There was never much of a gap between their albums up to this point. Their latest – “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts” – was already the ninth studio album of their career in thirteen years and the third of the 90s. Previous album “Welcome To Wherever You Are” (which I’d liked and bought) had only been released fifteen months prior but the band had decided not to tour it and go straight into recording the next one instead hence the small time period between them. That recording process though was a fraught one. Michael Hutchence had suffered a fractured skull after being attacked in an alley in Copenhagen and hitting his head on the kerb. He spent two weeks in hospital and the after effects of the attack caused him to behave erratically and aggressively. There were multiple studio bust ups whilst laying down tracks for “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts”. In amongst the upheaval though, the band managed two collaborations with other artists with Chrissie Hynde and Ray Charles contributing to a track each. Despite the album making it to No 3 in the UK, its sales were well down on the likes of “Kick” and “X”. I recall there being lots of unsold copies of it in the Our Price store I was working in.

The album’s lead single “The Gift” though seemed determined to create a bit of sales history of its own. Its debut in the Top 40 of No 11 was the biggest chart entry of the band’s career and when it also peaked at that position instantly became their joint second biggest hit ever after “Need You Tonight”. Listening back to it now it does seem rather one dimensional based around a looped and relentless riff but it was also a great ear worm. Talking of ears, check out host Tony Dortie’s memory of this show:

#totp I remember being informed by BBC complaints after this Episode the word #Eargasm' was not deemed popular suitable family language
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) November 4, 2022

Lisa Stansfield was very busy in 1993 having scored two Top 10 singles from movie soundtracks in “Someday (I’m Coming Back)” from The Bodyguard and “In All The Right Places” from Indecent Proposal. She’d also featured on the “Five Live EP” from The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert which had gone to No 1. However, it had been two years since her last solo studio album and so she duly delivered her third one called “So Natural” in the November. Trailed by the title track as the lead single (though technically that was “In All The Right Places” I guess as it was added onto the album’s track listing) it was yet another soulful ballad which generated the usual clichés beginning with ‘s’ from the music press like ‘sensual’, ‘sophisticated’ and ‘seductive’. I think I would use a different ‘s’ word though. Sorry Lisa.

The album would go platinum but that figure only added to a sales decline that saw debut “Affection” go triple platinum and follow up “Real Love” double platinum. By the time of her fourth album in 1997, she was down to gold status. She’s still recording and releasing music though with her last album being as recent as 2018.

Now if Prince and Cappella had a thing for song titles featuring ‘U’ instead of ‘you’ and ‘2’ instead of ‘to’ then Chris Rea seemed to be developing a habit for songs featuring girls names beginning with ‘J’. After “Josephine” in 1985 came “Julia” in 1993. In answer to Tony Dortie’s question “Who’s Julia”, she was, of course, Rea’s then four years old daughter.

Whatever you say about Chris, you can’t deny his productivity. He’s prolific. In a career spanning 44 years, he’s released 25 studio albums (more than one every two years), 14 Best Ofs, a live album, a soundtrack and 72 singles! Of those 72 singles though, only 13 have made the UK Top 40 and only two the Top 10 (including that Christmas song). “Julia” was one of the lucky13 peaking at No 18. The lead single from his “Espresso Logic” album (his third in three years – told you he was prolific!), it sounds a bit like his 1987 hit “Let’s Dance” to me but a little less jaunty maybe.

Chris always looked such an unlikely and possibly reluctant pop star when he appeared on TOTP with a look on his face as if to say “yeah, I’m not sure about all this but I’m going with the flow”. Nice bit of slide guitar from him in this one by the way though not as good as his work on this track…

OK here’s another reason perhaps why there’s only seven acts on the show tonight. Nowhere near the time given to the No 1 record but still clocking in at just under 4:30 comes Jean-Michel Jarre. Somehow I never really got the boat to Jarre island. Obviously I knew he had these songs and albums like “Équinoxe” and “Oxygène” (did they have various numbers after them?) and that he was renowned for huge light shows when performing his instrumental pieces live. I also knew guys at school who swore by him but but it mostly left me cold. There was a Best Of album in 1991 called “Images” which I possibly sold copies of in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester but he really didn’t register much on my musical radar.

Come 1993 and showing Chris Rea style prolificacy, Jarre had just released his eleventh studio album called “Chronologie”. According to his discography, the single released from it was called “Chronologie 4” (there’s those numbers again) though whether this is that track shown here I don’t know – the TOTP graphic just calls it “Chronologie”. Here we get an intro from Jarre himself before he bounds on stage to give us a live performance. Again like Chris Rea, Jean-Michel cuts an unorthodox pop star figure, grinning away with his keytar. Here’s a question, can you rock a gig whilst wielding a keytar? Whether you can or not, there wasn’t any appetite for this track as a single in the UK where it missed the Top 40 altogether. The album was moderately successful peaking at No 11.

WHOOO?! Well, according to Tony Dortie she was someone “destined for a big future” though he was proven to be wrong in that claim. For a while though, there was a big buzz about Lena Fiagbe. Her debut single “You Come From Earth” had even been included on the track listing for “Now That’s What I Call Music 25” and received massive radio airplay but somehow fell short of the Top 40. Undeterred, the follow up single “Gotta Get It Right” was released and its upbeat, soul-pop rhythms made it a No 20 hit. It kind of sounds like Macy Gray doing a Des’ree impersonation – not an unpleasant sound but maybe not one to build a career of longevity on. And so it proved as a clutch of subsequent singles all failed to breach the Top 40 and Lena’s album bombed. She recorded a cover of Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” for the Four Weddings And A Funeral soundtrack and provided vocals for Wasis Diop’s “African Dream” single in 1996 but then the trail went cold.

To the main event now. Weighing in at a colossal 7 minutes and 15 seconds it’s the full fat video for Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. OK so firstly, just to clarify the timings, the album version of the song clocks in at a whopping 12:01 but the radio edit was more than halved to 5:13. The absolute full video version is actually 7:52 but I’m guessing they shaved a few seconds off here to allow Tony Dortie to do an outro. The video was directed by Michael Bay who would later direct Transformers and Pearl Harbour (not a great CV I would suggest) and cost $750,000. It’s based on the Beauty and the Beast story which is clearly obvious but there’s also a definite hint of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula which had been out less than a year. The scene where ‘beauty’ is being ravished by two lesbian vampire types is an almost shot for shot steal of a scene from it.

The single itself was the biggest selling of 1993 in the UK selling 761,000 copies and spent a total of sixteen weeks in the Top 40 of which fourteen were in the Top 10 and seven were at No 1. As we’ve got another six weeks of this, I’ll leave it there for the moment.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Cappella	U Got 2 Let The Music	Never
2	INXS	The Gift	Nah
3	Lisa Stansfield	So Natural	No
4	Chris Rea	Julia	Nope
5	Jean-Michel Jarre	Chronologie 4	Hell no!
6	Lena Fiagbe	Gotta Get It Right	I did not
7	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/m001drbj/top-of-the-pops-21101993

TOTP 07 OCT 1993

Posted on October 31, 2022 by 80stastic

This is all a bit odd. Suddenly there are no Breakers this week meaning there’s only eight acts in total on this particular TOTP. Added to that, the show is totally male dominated with no female artists on it at all and lastly the running order has been split right down the middle with the first four performances all by solo artists and the last four by bands.

The first of those solo artists is Haddaway with his hit single “Life”. What can you say about this guy? No, seriously. What else is there to say about him that I haven’t already said in previous posts? The ‘hadaway and shite’ reference? Done. That I couldn’t stand “What Is Love”? Tick. My opinion that “Life” was just a retread of its predecessor? Case stated. That in 2008 he teamed up with Dr. Alban to record a single called “I Love The 90s”? Yep…no wait…what?! No! Hell that sounds horrendous and guess what? It is horrendous! Look at this…

Dear God! That such a thing could be allowed to exist! Host Tony Dortie said of Haddaway after his performance “that man is out to lunch”. Not sure what his reasoning was for that assessment but having listened to “I Love The 90s” I conclude that he must have been a sandwich short of a picnic to record that nonsense. “Life” peaked at No 6.

Talking of Dortie, he then goes onto to tell some inane anecdote about how he once asked Meatloaf how he got his name. Tony…mate…just stick to the basics eh? So, after being previewed on the show what feels like an age ago (it was actually six weeks which does seem an extraordinarily long lead time), the single that would sell more than any other in the UK in 1993 is finally here. Surely nobody could have seen this coming?! Before “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, the last time Meatloaf had been in the UK Top 40 was in 1986 when he teamed up with John “St.Elmo’s Fire” Parr for the No 31 hit “Rock ‘n’ Roll Mercenaries”. His last completely solo hit had been 1984’s “Modern Girl”. How did he stage this incredible comeback? Well, he went back to his roots and when you understand that strategy then maybe his resurgence wasn’t quite the shock that I’ve made it out to be.

The 1977 “Bat Out Of Hell” album has sold 42 million copies worldwide so it was pretty much a no-brainer that an album called “Bat Out Of Hell II” would stack up some serious sales if ever released. Reunited with song writing partner Jim Steinman (the two had fallen out so badly that they ended up suing each other in the 80s), an official follow up to Meatloaf’s best known work was recorded with the official title “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell”. Whilst Steinman protested it was all about the art and wanting to revisit the world of “Bat Out Of Hell” and explore it deeper, Meatloaf let the truth out about what they were really doing with this quote:

“We called it Bat Out Of Hell II ‘cos that would help it sell shitloads”
Wall, Mick (2017). Like a Bat Out of Hell: The Larger than Life Story of Meat Loaf. Hachette UK. p. 167.

And so it did. The album went to No 1 in every territory on the planet and would rack up 14 million sales. The lead single did just as well going to No 1 in 28 different countries and was certified platinum in the US. It will be at No 1 in the UK soon enough in these TOTP repeats and for seven weeks so I’ll keep my powder dry for fear of a flood of commentary early on. Hmm…”I’ll Keep My Powder Dry (For Fear Of A Flood)”…if only Meatloaf or Jim Steinman were still alive…

Next a man making his last ever appearance on TOTP. Paul Young was first on the show back in 1978 (!) as part of Streetband performing novelty hit “Toast” but he became a regular from 1983 onwards as a star in his own right with massive hits like “Wherever I Lay My Hat”, “Come Back And Stay” and “Love Of The Common People”. The hits and therefore trips to the TOTP studios continued for a couple of more years before the orbit of his time as a pop idol began to wane but he caught his falling star in time to collect a handful of hits (and some more TOTP turns) and a No 1 Best Of album in the early 90s.

However, as Paul himself once sang, “Everything Must Change” and so it came to pass that the fame game was up come October 1993 as Paul served up one final TOTP outing for us. What a shame then that it was such a lacklustre performance. To start with, the set was awful. Some dry ice and some long curtains behind him were all Paul had to work with and with a total lack of detail on the behalf of the TOTP producers, they were red! He’s literally singing a song called “Now I Know What Made Otis Blue”! Sure that’s ‘blue’ as in mood not colour but even so! Secondly, there’s the sad spectacle of Paul’s vocals. Now either he had a bit of a sore throat on this particular day or it was a resumption of the vocal chords problems that he suffered from throughout his career but this isn’t the best singing he’s ever done in his life. What a shame to bow out on a bum note. Thanks for the good times Paul.

What are the chances? From one male solo artist making his final TOTP appearance to another immediately afterwards. As far as I can tell, this is the last time we’ll be seeing Billy Joel on the BBC’s flagship music show as his only UK Top 40 hit after “All About Soul” came in 2010 when “She’s Always A Woman” re-entered the charts but TOTP had been axed four years prior to that.

This was the follow up to his surprisingly successful “River Of Dreams” single which had made the Top 3 over the Summer. It’s pretty standard Billy fodder although there’s a nice sentiment behind the lyrics:

Billy Joel explains "All About Soul": "Sometimes love gets pretty thinly stretched. What sustains that? It's soul… How do you write a deeply felt love song celebrating a woman without it being trite, or hackneyed?…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 28, 2022

"It's so difficult. But it's something we feel, something that matures in a relationship. That subject hasn't really been dealt with: married love, people who've been together a long time. There's always infatuation songs and lust songs, but who writes about abiding love?" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 28, 2022

"What really counts is who's standing in the long run, and that's one of the essential elements of that song — who's standing, and why is that? Why do people continue to survive? If someone believes in me, then I guess that I should believe in myself." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 28, 2022

Aah. There’s lovely. Belief and faith in each other. Billy even sings these lyrics in the song – “She gives me all the live I need to keep my faith alive” about his wife Christie Brinkley who painted the picture on the “River Of Dreams” album’s cover. Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley got divorced less than 12 months later. Ah.

We’re onto the groups now starting with a band enjoying a comeback almost as unlikely as Meatloaf’s. Go West were shiny, new pop stars back in 1985 with some catchy tunes and a nice line in singlet vests. Then ‘85 turned into ‘86 and they were yesterday’s news before the clocks had struck twelve. As the 80s came to an end, Go West seemed like a small footnote in the decade’s pop music story but then came what seemed like one final swan song with a spot on the Pretty Woman soundtrack that gave the duo a hit with “King Of Wishful Thinking”. That was surely them done but no. Two years later came a gold selling album in “Indian Summer” and two Top 20 singles. OK but then nothing yeah? Full stop! The end. Erm…no. Buoyed by that success, a Greatest Hits album was put together (“Aces And Kings – The Best Of Go West”) and to promote it came this, a cover version of “Tracks Of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson And The Miracles. Sacrilege? Maybe. Was it terrible? It could have been worse but anybody would lose up against the original.

By the way, ever wondered whether the TOTP hosts were really that enthusiastic about all the acts on the show they were introducing or did they keep their true opinions to themselves back then? Here’s Tony Dortie with the answer:

#TOTP this Go West Garbage just what I imagine somebody in need of sleep puts on..pure toilet cover..no lights needed
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) October 28, 2022

Ouch! Well, Tony would game been pleased to know that Go West would only have one more chart entry, a remix of their very first hit “We Close Our Eyes” which made No 40 but, like Paul Young earlier, remain very active on the live nostalgia circuit. Oh, one final thing; is that Jaki Graham on backing vocals duties?

Right, a good, solid, proper band now as Crowded House return with “Distant Sun”, the lead single from their fourth studio album “Together Alone”. After achieving some long overdue mainstream success in this country with previous album “Woodface” and its attendant singles, expectations must have been high for more of the same from the band’s record label Capitol. Sales of “Together Alone” didn’t quite live up to said expectations (selling roughly half of what its predecessor did) but still went platinum in the UK and made No 4 on the album chart. Like “Woodface”, five singles were released from it but none better I think than “Distant Sun” which is well crafted with some gorgeous melodies but also a change of pace and streak of defiance in the coda with the lyric “Like a Christian fearing vengeance from above” to the fore.

By this point Tim Finn had left the band and was replaced by Mark Hart and it got me thinking about the band’s various line up changes, their Split Enz origins, the tragedy of a drummer Paul Hester’s death, their split and reformation – some film director should really make a biopic to tell their story. Maybe one day. “Distant Sun” peaked at No 19.

OK. Calling this next lot a band might be stretching the definition a little but here they are anyway – it’s Right Said Fred with “Bumped”. Strange as it may seem to recall, the Freds had experienced phenomenal commercial success in the previous two years. A chart topping album and hit singles that went to positions 1, 2 and 3 in their first year plus a No 4 Comic Relief single from earlier in 1993. Only the single “Those Simple Things/Daydream” had let the side down when it peaked at No 29.

As such, the difficult second album syndrome approached. Could the lads push on through and establish themselves as more than just a comedy act? The answer was a resounding no. Sophomore album “Sex And Travel” flopped and of the singles taken from it, only one made the Top 40 and even then peaked at a lowly No 32. That was this track “Bumped” and it really is as weak as Matt Hancock’s claim that he’s doing I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here to promote his dyslexia campaign. We see you Hancock. Anyway, the band were clearly under orders to promote themselves as more than a gimmick with Richard Fairbrass stating to the TOTP studio audience that “Bumped” was “more groovy than Stick It Out”. Now granted the track had a bit more musicality to it than something like “I’m Too Sexy” but it was hardly “Off The Wall” era Michael Jackson now was it?

Having commented on Paul Young’s wavering vocals earlier, I must now say something about Fairbrass’s singing. And I say this – the guy can’t really sing can he? Sure he can deliver a song but sing? Not so much. Right Said Fred would bag one final UK Top 40 hit in 2001 with the jokey “You’re My Mate” before embarking on a career as Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers.

Get ready to scream! Take That are straight in at No 1 with their collaboration with Lulu on “Relight My Fire”. The band broke all sorts of records and had No 1 singles coming out of their ears but the truth is that in their first incarnation up to 1996, they released more videos (seven) than they did studio albums (three) so it seems to me that they were definitely being promoted visually to a young audience over their actual music. It made sense to I guess. Just an observation.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	Life	No
2	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	Nope
3	Paul Young	Now I Know What Made Otis Blue	I did not
4	Billy Joel	All About Soul	Negative
5	Go West	Tracks Of My Tears	Nah
6	Crowded House	Distant Sun	It’s been a while but yes! I have the CD single of this one!
7	Right Said Fred	Bumped	As if
8	Take That / Lulu	Relight My Fire	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/m001dhj6/top-of-the-pops-07101993

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