Michael Bolton

TOTP 07 NOV 1997

With the release schedules geared up for the Christmas rush, 75% of the tunes in this TOTP are hits we are yet to have seen in these BBC4 repeats. Only the opener and the No 1 which top and tail the show have previously featured. Sound good? Yeah well, a third of those new songs are by Peter Andre and Michael Bolton – not so keen now are we? Fear not though as there are some quality tunes as well. Our host is Zoë Ball who begins the show in a bed but it’s not a Big Breakfast / Paula Yates flirting with Michael Hutchence affair. No, this is the BBC after all. No, it’s a lame sketch about Zoë being the new co-host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and how she’s working so many hours she doesn’t know what time of day it is. Very poor.

After that we’re straight to the music and we begin with repeat airing of “As Long As You Love Me” by the Backstreet Boys. What was it about boy bands that you had to have five members? This lot did, so did New Kids On The Block, Take That, Boyzone, Westlife and, of course…erm…Five. Now admittedly, many of the above groups lost members along the way but the basic template seems to be five. There were exceptions obviously like Bros who started out as a trio (before slimming down to a duo) and East 17 only had four but even back in the 80s with the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet (whom I wouldn’t describe as boy bands at all but whom certainly attracted a teenage girl fanbase), the classic line up was five. Was it to broaden their appeal so there was a member to cater for all the tastes of the fans? Said tastes would always include the obligatory small, cute one (Mark Owen, Stephen Gately etc). Who was the cute one in the Backstreet Boys? The blonde one? Must be as the rest of them you wouldn’t look twice at if you passed them in the street if they weren’t famous. I guess they didn’t care though as long as you loved them.

Soap star in decent song shocker! That was essentially the reaction to the news that Natalie Imbruglia had joined the ranks of ex-Neighbours stars to try their hand at this pop star lark. Natalie’s debut offering was no early era, SAW produced Kylie hit though nor indeed anything from Jason Donovan’s career (and don’t get me started on Stefan Dennis’s mercifully short foray into pop music). No, “Torn” was a good, solid, proper song that was perfect for radio playlists and discerning pop music fans alike (myself included). Now, I don’t think I knew this at the time, but the song had a lengthy backstory. Originally co-written by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Phil Thornalley (who had previously worked with the likes of The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, Thompson Twins and Duran Duran and was briefly a member of Johnny Hates Jazz), it laid unreleased for a couple of years until Danish singer Lis Sørensen released it as “Brændt” meaning “Burnt”. Cutler and Preven then formed alt-rock band Ednaswap who released the first English language version of the song which was then superseded by American-Norwegian Trinne Rein’s cover which was a hit in Norway but nowhere else. This low profile gestation period meant that most of us didn’t know the track and accepted it as Natalie’s song – the whole kit and caboodle which possibly helped to give her some extra and unexpected if undeserved credibility.

Of course, not only was the song a winner but Natalie Imbruglia was a great choice to sell it. I’d long since stopped watching Neighbours on a regular basis but I knew who Natalie’s character in the Aussie soap was and she hadn’t looked like the woman on TOTP. She had long hair and played a girl-next-door type but the woman on our TV screens that night had a short, messy-looking haircut that you know was actually very expensive and those amazing, Disney Princess eyes giving her that pop star sheen. “Torn” was such a big hit – Top 5 just about everywhere (No 2 over here) including No 1 in six countries and shifting 2.4 million copies in the UK alone – that it was a double edged sword. It got her career off to a stunning start but everything she released from that point on ran the risk of being overshadowed by that debut. For a while though, the hits did follow – three more singles were released from her “Left Of The Middle” album (itself triple platinum selling) which peaked at Nos 2, 5 and 19. Natalie Imbruglia was a pop sensation even earning herself two BRIT awards. A four year delay before her second album meant momentum was lost though and sales suffered accordingly. However, she continues to record and release music with her last album arriving in 2021. She also won the third season of The Masked Singer as ‘Panda’ in 2022. However, that profile wasn’t enough to save her from this fate when she was a guest judge on The X Factor…

Yes! Yes! YES! Finally, one of my favourite bands makes their TOTP debut. I love Embrace and they are possibly the band I have seen live the most (probably five or six times). There’s something about their particular brand of indie rock that speaks to me – it might be my weakness for the anthemic which they are very good at. Back in 1997 though, I’m not sure that I was on board from the first pick up point. I certainly wasn’t aware of their initial release of “All You Good Good People” on the independent label Fierce Panda but then only 1,300 copies were made so I can be excused for that. The reaction to that limited run release was enough to give the band national recognition and create a buzz around them that would prompt a move to major label Hut Records (a subsidiary of Virgin and an early home for The Verve and The Smashing Pumpkins). Early releases for Hut (the “Fireworks” and “One Big Family” EPs) were respectable but not huge hits but then came this – a rerelease of “All You Good Good People” in EP format – which took them into the Top 10 for the first time. A gigantic song of epic sonic proportions, it slowly builds to a euphoric chorus that just can’t be ignored. And yet…I don’t think it was this song that drew me in. I believe that I only got the boat to Embrace island once “Come Back To What You Know” was released the following year but having arrived, I was more than happy to be marooned there. Their debut album “The Good Will Out” would become one of my favourite albums whilst going to No 1 and going gold on the day of release. Comparisons with Oasis were as inevitable as they were widespread but for me at least, not valid. Sure, on a surface level, you can join the dots but I think there’s more depth to Embrace’s sound whereas their Manc counterparts ploughed a defined seam that they were reluctant to deviate from.

Embrace would experience highs and lows throughout their career from being dropped by Hut after third album “If You’ve Never Been” underperformed commercially followed by a No 1 comeback album in 2004 with “Out Of Nothing”. A poor decision to record the England World Cup song (“World At Your Feet”) in 2006 which rather tarnished their reputation was followed by a seven year hiatus after lead singer Danny McNamara suffered health problems. However, a return to recording in 2013 has led to the release of three further studio albums and a very active touring schedule.

From the sublime to the ridiculous now as Peter Andre fills our screens and he’s in serious mode. Gone is the two-curtains hairstyle and the infamous abs are covered up for Peter is trying to reinvent himself as some sort of 50s teen idol balladeer! Check out his slicked back hairstyle with the exaggerated kiss curl locks at the front and witness how he stares meaningfully down the lens of the camera as if to say “Don’t you get it? I’m a serious artist!”. Then there’s his song – “Lonely” – which starts off sounding a bit like George Benson’s “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” made famous by Glenn Medeiros but turns into a right old dirge. Although it made No 6, its parent album “Time” was a right old duffer when it came to sales and it looked as if the pop star career of Peter Andre was mercifully coming to an end. Somehow though, this berk is still a name in 2025 and has so far released eleven studio albums! Eleven! That’s three more than Embrace! Make it make sense someone. Please!

Now, from a dirge of a ballad to a…dirge of a ballad. Oh Lordy! Toni Braxton made her name on sad love songs (I mean like literally – one of her hits is called “Another Sad Love Song”!) so we shouldn’t have been surprised to see her back on TOTP with another one but “How Could An Angel Break My Heart” was a real stinker. Everything is wrong with this one from its awful title (Toni had a real thing about songs with the word ‘heart’ in the title – “Un-break My Heart”, of course but then “Make My Heart” and “I Heart You” in the 2010s) to its dreadful lyrics (“I wish I didn’t wish so hard, maybe I wished our love apart”) to its lumbering, mournful sound. Oh and don’t get me started on Kenny G’s sax parts. No, seriously please don’t. I can’t do my Kenny “The G Man” G story again*. Then there’s Toni’s performance here. At one point she sings “oooh, mmmm” (according to the subtitles) where she moves her lips into a Shirley Bassey style tremble. Talk about over emoting! Next!

*Actually, it seems I can. Read on.

Oh no! How can this be?! It’s a hat-trick of dirge-like ballads as we follow Peter Andre and Toni Braxton with Michael Bolton and his single “The Best Of Love”. What dreadful running order scheduling! The saving grace here was that it was Boller’s final UK chart hit – the last of 17 (SEVENTEEN!). This one was part of a double A-Side with “Go The Distance”, a track taken from the soundtrack to the Disney film Hercules. What a terrible way for Bolton to bow out on such a poor song. “The Best Of Love” was written by US songwriter and producer Babyface as was the preceding track performed by Toni Braxton. Right that’s him off my Christmas card list then.

In an attempt to distract us from how awful the song he’s peddling is, Michael has had his famous long locks shorn off. I can’t even make a joke along the lines of Samson losing his strength and power after his hair was cut because Bollers was useless when he was overly hirsute. I probably shouldn’t be making any jokes about Michael full stop as he is recovering from surgery for a brain tumour. Instead, I’ll simply say farewell Mr Bolton. We’ll always have Sheffield in 1993…

TOTP 16 JUL 1987

Read the above post for my Michael Bolton / Kenny G story

How do you follow up an era defining album like “Different Class” that housed such classics of its time as “Common People” and “Disco 2000”? Well, Pulp decided to go with a song about thinking more about our old folks. It wasn’t the obvious direction to go in but it was a reflection by Jarvis Cocker on the ageing process and how he himself was not getting any younger. That he was only 34 when this song was released kind of undermines his musings but then age is relative I guess. He probably did feel older than some of his chart contemporaries having started Pulp in 1978. He’ll be 62 this birthday – I wonder how he feels about his song “Help The Aged” these days?

There were definitely some who weren’t keen on the track, namely the charity Help The Aged (now AGE UK) who objected to their name being used on the single and who were only assuaged by having some of the single’s royalties donated to their cause. Was I one of those who weren’t convinced by this new direction? I honestly can’t recall what I thought of it but listening back to it now, I quite like it. It has that idiosyncratic Pulp feel but it also has a quiet intensity. In fact, is it just me or does its backing sound a bit like “Creep” by Radiohead? OK, just me then. Anyway, its No 8 chart peak was a relief to Cocker at least who was pleased to have got a song about growing old and dying so far up the charts. However, the parent album it came from – “This Is Hardcore” – failed to match the sales of its predecessor shifting a tenth of the units that “Different Class” did. What I remember most about the album is they hugely long final track “The Day After The Revolution” which clocked in at a mammoth 14 minutes 56 seconds the majority of which was what felt like a never ending fade out. We nearly got caught out by that a few times when playing the album in the Our Price where I worked in Stockport.

Aqua remains at No 1 with “Barbie Girl” and for this performance singer Lene Nystrøm is channeling her inner Mike Nesmith as she’s donned a woolly hat. Ironically, their bubblegum hit was just the sort of saccharine, sweet pop that Nesmith rallied against when he was in The Monkees as he strove for creative control of the band. Legend has it that the straw that broke the camel’s back was that they were told they had to record “Sugar, Sugar” and Nesmith refused whilst putting his fist through the wall of a hotel in anger at the idea. The song would be a hit for fictional cartoon band The Archies becoming a No 1 hit in both the UK and the US in 1969. In some ways, “Barbie Girl” mirrored “Sugar, Sugar” both in terms of its chart performance and pure pop sound. However, I don’t think there was any deeper meaning going on in lyrics like “Oh sugar, oh honey honey, you are my candy girl and you got me wanting you” unlike “Barbie Girl” which sought to make a subversive social comment on the inherent misogyny of the values attached to the Barbie doll. Apparently. However, “Sugar Sugar” was bestowed with the honour of soundtracking the Apollo 12 space mission when it was one of the songs astronaut Alan Bean chose to play during the journey to the moon. Not to be outdone, a Barbie doll based upon the first female commander of the International Space Station Samantha Cristoforetti spent six months orbiting the Earth with her in 2022.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	As Long As You Love Me	Nope
2	Natalie Imbruglia	Torn	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Embrace	All You Good Good People	No but I had the album
4	Peter Andre	Lonely	Of course not
5	Toni Braxton	How Could An Angel Break My Heart	Negative
6	Michael Bolton	The Best Of Love	Never
7	Pulp	Help The Aged	I did not
8	Aqua	Barbie Girl	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/m0026dt5/top-of-the-pops-review-of-the-year-2024

TOTP 07 SEP 1995

Posted on February 25, 2024 by 80stastic

I’m into my eighth year of doing this TOTP blog and sometimes it’s not always easy to find the time or inclination to write up these BBC4 repeats. Occasionally, I get a bit behind (being in bed with flu for six days straight in 2019 didn’t help the cause) but I’ve always just about managed to keep it all ticking over. However, after all this time, I’ve finally come up against a show the running order of which is seriously making me contemplate jacking it all in. Honestly, I look at the artists on this particular episode and it’s so demoralising and demotivating. With one (possibly two) exception(s), the rest of them are totally uninspiring. It’s a low point and that’s for sure.

Thankfully there is a sliver of redemption in the ‘golden mic’ hosts Jo Brand and Mark Lamarr who provide some comedic distraction from the musical garbage. I always liked Brand – she seemed to offer something different at a time where apart from French and Saunders, I don’t recall there being many female comedians having a high profile. Jo’s was in the ascendancy via her Jo Brand Through the Cakehole series on Channel 4. Lamarr was about to (but not quite yet) become a panel show regular via his stints on Shooting Stars and Never Mind The Buzzcocks both of which would air shortly. At the time of this TOTP appearance though, he was best known as the outside roving reporter on The Big Breakfast and as the presenter who took Shabba Ranks to task for his homophobic comments on The Word. Lamarr has said that his time on that programme and also Shooting Stars was no fun whatsoever. If he didn’t like those two shows, God knows what he’ll make of this TOTP!

We get off to a hideous start with the to camera piece at the top of the show coming from ‘comedian’ Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown who for some reason says he’s Sharon Stone before correcting himself. More of him (unfortunately) later though. Next, we’re into the studio with our guest presenters and it’s Jo Brand who gets the first line and in a show of self depreciation refers to herself as “an old trout” whilst Lamarr remains silent, acting bewildered by looking into the studio lights. His fish out of water act will last the whole show.

The first performer tonight is Nightcrawlers featuring John Reid with “Don’t Let The Feeling Go”. This was the third consecutive hit for this lot in 1995 and it would peak at No 13. God knows how though as it is as dull as my beloved Chelsea’s attack. Add to this that its resemblance to its predecessors is almost indistinguishable (to my ears at least) and I can’t make any case to explain its success. It certainly can’t have been down to John Reid who fronted this nonsense. Look at the state of him. He looks like a third rate magician who believes he can mesmerise his audience with a flick of his locks. He’d probably be called Mysterio or something. Just dreadful.

Aside from their tunes all sounding the same, Nightcrawlers also extended their strategy of duplication to their song titles. Look at this lot:

Don’t Let The Feeling Go
Push The Feeling On
Let’s Push It
Keep Pushing Our Love
Should I Ever (Fall In Love)
Never Knew Love

Mate, there’s more words ‘in the English language than just ‘feeling’, ‘push(ing)’ and ‘love’. They’re not rationed – although that will probably be the next target for austerity for this government (ooh, bit of politics there as Ben Elton said back in the day).

Mark Lamarr gets to speak for the first time in the next link and goes with an impression of an annoying punter harassing the DJ at a club to play thejr request. I love the fact that he chooses to ask for experimental industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle and avant garde multi instrumentalist and visual artist Captain Beefheart as his picks. When Jo Brand replies in the negative to both, he rounds the gag off perfectly by asking for 70s soft rockers Smokie* and gets a ‘yes’ from his co-host thereby highlighting the bonkers make up of the UK Top 40.

*He’ll be sorry he asked though.

The next artist up is Whigfield who, after three fluffy, pop-dance hits (including the beyond irritating ear worm that was “Saturday Night”), has released a ballad as her next single. No, really! “Close To You” wasn’t even a cover version of The Carpenters classic (that was actually called “(They Long To Be) Close To You” anyway). This was an original song and it’s actually a decent stab at writing a ballad. Drenched with strings and an endearing melody, the problem with it is the vocals. Sannie Charlotte Carlson (Whigfield was the name of the act not the singer) just didn’t have the pipes to deliver it. I mean, she gives it her best shot and she nearly gets there but she’s never quite nails it – those on point notes are as elusive as a squirming Tory politician who just won’t give a straight answer (ooh, another bit of politics!). Whigfield would turn to another ballad for their Christmas single with a woeful and ill judged cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” giving them their final UK Top 40 hit.

Mark Lamarr is back to giving us the silent treatment in the next segue so he’s brought a sign to do the talking first him. And what does he want to say? “Where are The Butthole Surfers?”. Excellent! The riotous American noise rockers with the weird album titles like “Rembrandt Pussyhorse” and “Locust Abortion Technician” were hardly TOTP material. Indeed, I’m surprised Lamarr got away with his sign – many media outlets refused to call the band by their full name instead referring to them as ‘The BH Surfers’. After his Throbbing Gristle and Captain Beefheart comments earlier, I make that Mark Lamarr 3 BBC 0.

Now, the one truly bright light in this festival of crud. “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer is not only one of the most recognisable songs in musical history but also perhaps one of the most influential. Sounding ahead of its time when first released in 1977 it retained its freshness and doesn’t seem to have dated even decades later. Widely acknowledged as a pioneer of electronic dance music, its legacy can be heard in the many forms of the genre from house to trance to techno. That claim is evidenced by its own longevity – it has been a hit four times in the UK alone.

The 1995 incarnation was to launch a new sub label of Polygram called Manifeste and was remixed by Rollo and Sister Bliss from Faithless. Polygram had already had some success with the disco Queen’s back catalogue with their “Endless Summers: Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits” compilation from 1994 so it probably seemed like a decent commercial strategy. Berri’s concurrent hit “The Sunshine After The Rain” might have had something to do with it as well with its interpolation of “I Feel Love”. The clip shown on this TOTP isn’t that remix though. As the caption says, this was the ‘original promo VT’ from 1977. So why was that? Wasn’t there a video for the ‘95 remix?

*checks YouTube*

Yes, there was but having watched it, I’m guessing that the BBC censors may have felt it was too erotic. Maybe. The ‘95 remix made No 8 returning her to the UK Top 10 for the first time since her Stock, Aitken and Waterman era of the late 80s. Its success would lead to another Donna classic “State Of Independence” getting the remix and rerelease treatment the following year when it peaked at No 13.

Wait? What?! Michael Bolton again?! He was only on last week and yet he’s back again for a second consecutive studio appearance. Why?! Was it that damned practice of the ‘exclusive’ performance followed by another for it entering the charts? I think so but why was Bollers still in the country? Was he on tour here? Not according to the setlist.fm website. Maybe he was just doing promotional work for the single? Could be but his Greatest Hits album wouldn’t be released for another two weeks. Whatever the reason, “Can I Touch You…There?” benefitted from this appearance by sliding up the charts to a peak of No 6 and, having reviewed this awful song once already, that’s all I have to say about it. Obviously though, Lamarr and Brand weren’t going to let an opportunity to take the piss out of the shaggy haired one pass and got in a line about a “dodgy barnet”.

This is all very curious. Or perhaps it isn’t. The presence in the UK Top 40 of a hit sung completely in a foreign language had always been a rarity. There was “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus” by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg which topped the charts in 1969 despite being banned for its sexual lyrical content. The 80s contributed a few examples of the genre. In 1987, Los Lobos went to the top of our charts with the all Spanish track “La Bamba” from the film of the same name and a year later, singer Desireless took “Voyage Voyage” into the UK Top 5 with another French language only track. In 1989, the lambada craze gave Kaoma a hit song in Portuguese. There were also near but not quite all foreign language hits for Falco with “Rock Me Amadeus” and Manhattan Transfer (“Chanson D’Amour”) but both included a spattering of words in English as well as German and French respectively. There have been others since but the percentage of foreign language records making up our charts historically is tiny.

Then in 1995 came Celine Dion. Fresh from the elongated success of her long running No 1 single “Think Twice” and similarly chart topping parent album “The Colour Of My Love”, surely the wisest career move would have been to keep on churning out the power ballads? Instead, Celine’s next project was the French language album “D’eux” and I return to my original thought of “this was all very curious or was it?” because “D’eux” was actually Celine’s tenth album sung entirely in French. She didn’t record her first English language album until “Unison” in 1990 but she’d been releasing French sung albums since 1981. After all, she was born in Canada to parents of French descent and won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988 with a song sung in that language representing Switzerland. Despite all the above, the decision to return to singing in French post “Think Twice” didn’t seem an obvious one although “D’eux” was always going to be huge in certain European territories. It sold well enough in the UK though nothing like the numbers that “The Colour Of My Love” did. The lead single from it was “Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore” and we get Celine performing it by satellite from New York on this TOTP. The French language strategy was ditched after the “D’eux” project with Dion’s next album “Falling Into You” returning to power ballad territory.

Jo Brand’s comment about Celine being thin in the intro hasn’t aged well given all the eating disorder rumours that Celine has been subject to over the years (all of which she has denied). In Jo’s defence though, she was clearly being self deprecating about her own size.

A video exclusive from Janet Jackson next and like Michael Bolton earlier and indeed her brother Michael later in the show, the track it’s for is to promote a Greatest Hits album. “Runaway” was taken from “Design Of A Decade: 1986 – 1996” which would sell 600,000 copies in the UK alone. I guess after ten years of hits, a compilation album was in order especially as Janet seemed intent on releasing nearly every song from her studio albums as singles. Indeed, “Design Of A Decade” had 18 tracks on it.

Again like her brother, the video for “Runaway” looks like it could be a Jacko promo with huge swathes of imagery and backdrops including some major cities from around the world like Paris, Sydney and for the second time in the show following Celine Dion’s turn earlier, the Manhattan skyline. At times, it looks like Disney’s 2019 live action adaptation of Aladdin with shots of deserts and elephants.

The song itself is a jolly if unsubstantial little number but, in a final similarity to brother Michael, the little bridge into the chorus contains a a vocal inflection that sounds just like “Man In The Mirror”. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Oscar Wilde once said.

And so we arrive at the nadir of this particular TOTP. Oh God! How did we get here?! Well, it was all the fault of the Dutch apparently, or more specifically a Dutch club DJ who came up with the jolly wheeze of playing 70s band Smokie’s “Living Next Door To Alice”, stopping the record at the chorus and getting the assembled throng to chant “Alice?! Who the f**k is Alice?!”. This craze took off for some unfathomable reason and a single was released to capitalise on it made by an act called Gompie. It was a hit all round Europe and made a brief appearance in our charts at No 34 in May of this year.

Come the Summer and the British holidaymakers abroad became exposed to Gompie’s song and created further demand for it back in Blighty. Meanwhile, Smokie (who had never stopped touring despite the hits drying up once the 80s dawned) got a whiff of the phenomenon and decided to get in on the act by recording their own ‘blue’ version of the song and roped in their mate, the comedian Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown who had made a career for himself off the back of his outspoken and indeed offensive style of humour. “Living Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice?)” would become a huge sleeper success spending 13 weeks inside the Top 40 including 7 within the Top 10. It was still on the Top 100 as Christmas approached! Given the fact that the record couldn’t be played on the radio unless it was an edited version with the ‘F’ word bleeped, presumably punters had to buy the damned thing to hear it in its full, intended form. And who wanted to do that?! Why was it funny?! I just didn’t get it. The TOTP performance here is just ludicrous with Brown having to actually say “bleep” instead of the ‘F’ word.

Ah yes, Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. I have questions which could probably be condensed to just one word (not that one!) -WHY?! My mate Robin asked himself the same question when he ended up rather unwillingly at a Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown gig. Apparently, it was all the fault of his pal Al whose Christmas work outing involved attending the gig and Robin tagged along as he was given a freebie ticket. I’m not sure if he knew what type of comedian Brown was beforehand but after the first gag, he got with it and thought “Oh no, what have I done?”. He lasted 10 minutes out of politeness to Al for getting him the ticket and then walked out. Brown spotted him leaving and started to have a go at him but Robin (who was the worse for wear) and to his eternal credit turned around, told Brown to “f**k off!” and flicked him the rods! Excellent work sir!

After the Smokie / Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown abomination, Jo Brand remarks upon what a strange combination those two acts were. Mark Lamarr however informs us that Jo herself had been part of an unlikely coupling having made a record with Alvin Stardust. What?! Was this a joke or for real? Sadly, it’s the latter as Brand and Stardust teamed up to do a version of Alvin’s 1973 No 2 hit “My Coo Ca Choo”! You’ll be pleased to know that I can’t find a clip of said record online.

Like Janet Jackson earlier, Erasure had also been around for 10 years by 1995 and seemed to be unaffected by the shifting musical trends by continuing to have hits. “Stay With Me” was their 23rd and the lead single from their eponymous seventh studio album. I’ve said before that despite being a fan throughout the 80s, I lost sight of Andy and Vince after about 1992 so I don’t know this one at all. However, it’s a well constructed, plaintive synth ballad (no jumping on the Britpop bandwagon for these two) with a strong melody which suits Andy’s voice perfectly – it’s one of his best vocals I think. It possibly should have got higher in the charts than No 15.

Lamarr sends up the No 1 which is from Michael Jackson by donning a blouse and lipstick as per Jacko’s look in the video for “You Are Not Alone”. I’m not sure that it’s the winning visual gag that they must have thought it was in rehearsal. This was Jackson’s first UK No 1 single since “Black Or White” in 1991 and he would follow it with a second consecutive chart topper in “Earth Song” which was also the Christmas No 1. 1995 eh? What a time to be alive!

Sometime back in 2022 when I was writing up the 1992 TOTP repeats I said something along the lines of “and that’s the last we’ll see of Simply Red for quite some time. Enjoy the break”. That break is now over as the ginger haired one is back. Back in 1995 that is. After the mega success of their last album “Stars” which sold 9 million copies worldwide, it was always going to be a tall order to replicate those numbers. Hucknall and co gave it a decent go though with follow up album “Life” despite it inevitably falling short of its predecessor’s milestone.

The lead single from it was “Fairground” which would give the band their only UK No 1 single. You’ll notice that the play out video used here isn’t the official promo but rather a bunch of clips of Hucknall performing with the track added over the top. I’m assuming that’s because the single would not be released for another eleven days and presumably the video for it was still being edited? Which leads us to the question “why is the track on TOTP so early?”. Well, in order to create a buzz around the single, it was made available to radio stations a month prior to release so by the time it came out, it was already the most played song on the airwaves. Quite an achievement and huge justification of record company marketing strategy. At the end of this TOTP, Hucknall pops up on screen to say that he’ll be performing “Fairground” on next week’s show. Given that the single went to No 1 and stayed there for a month, that’s another five forthcoming appearances on these BBC4 repeats and so I think I’ll leave Mick hanging for now.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Nightcrawlers	Don’t Let The Feeling Go	No
2	Whigfield	Close Tol You	Negative
3	Donna Summer	I Feel Love	Not the remix but I must have it on something surely?
4	Michael Bolton	Can I Touch You…There?	Never happening
5	Celine Dion	Pour Que Tu M’Aimes Encore	Never
6	Janet Jackson	Runaway	Nope
7	Smokie / Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown	Living Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice?)	Did I f**k!
8	Erasure	Stay With Me	No
9	Michael Jackson	You Are Not Alone	As if
10	Simply Red	Fairground	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/m001wc34/top-of-the-pops-07091995

TOTP 31 AUG 1995

Posted on February 15, 2024 by 80stastic

OK, so given the news about the passing of Steve Wright recently and that this blog is based around a show that he was synonymous with, I think I should spend a bit of time talking about the late DJ. First of all, I should own the fact that I haven’t always had the kindest words to say about Steve in these TOTP reviews. I didn’t always feel this way. Growing up as a rather cautious teenager and unsure of myself, I’d spend hours on my own listening to Radio 1 in the mid 80s. Steve Wright’s afternoon show was definitely a part of that and my still as yet undefined sense of humour latched on to the characters he created such as Dave Doubledecks and Mr Angry from Purley. Wright’s show was the boiling point in the day’s schedule which the previous programming had been steadily creeping towards on the entertainment thermometer. After Steve’s stint, the content would reflect a calmer tone via Peter Powell’s drive time show and then Janice Long in the evenings both of whom were clearly more about the music. I liked them all for different reasons.

Wright was a permanent presence for all of my youth – even after I’d stopped listening to him I knew he was still there if required. I have a distinct memory of being in the Sunderland Polytechnic library one day and overhearing a fellow student saying to his mate that he’d done enough studying for one day and was off home to listen to Steve Wright. Sure this was the pre-digital late 80s and there weren’t the multiple choices of entertainment available as there are in this day and age but I can’t imagine a student in 2024 being susceptible to the pull of appointment radio (if such a thing still exists). Steve Wright in the Afternoon (in its original incarnation) ran until 1993 at which point new station controller Matthew Bannister switched Wright unsuccessfully to the breakfast show slot. He left Radio 1 in 1995.

Steve started to lose his appeal for me during his time at Radio 2. I was coming to the end of my 20s when he joined and I guess I just couldn’t make him relevant to my life anymore. As we moved into the new millennium I found his Sunday Love Songs show repetitive and lazy – I think I even sent an email into the show expressing my views. I know! I clearly had too much time on my hands. Rightly, I didn’t receive a reply. My dissatisfaction carried on though, disproportionately. If I ever caught any of his daily Radio 2 show, it sounded to me like he was phoning it in, relying on and recycling his past glories. When I started writing this blog, I found fault in his appearances in the BBC 4 TOTP repeats (he hosted 56 times between 1980 and 1989) – he seemed all over the place and I outrageously suggested he might have spent too much time in the Green Room pre-recording. More likely he was just not as comfortable with being on TV – his talent and affinity was for the medium of radio. Given his profile and longevity of career, we might have expected him to crossover into television like Terry Wogan but as far as I can tell his only other on screen* excursion was the very short lived Steve Wright’s People Show that lasted four episodes in the mid 90s.

*He was the off screen narrator for TOTP2 for twelve years.

In the days following his death, the accolades from those that knew him told of how he forged the shape of UK radio by bringing the ‘zoo format’ to our shores. More than that though, he seemed like a genuinely lovely fella. BBC4 changed their TOTP repeats schedule to pay tribute to him by showing four** shows in which he featured as presenter. RIP Steve Wright.

** They included one which was originally missed from being repeated (the 13 December 1984 edition). I considered writing a review for that show but decided that it would ruin the chronology of my TOTP 80s blog and in any case, I’m too lazy.

With a twist of tragic coincidence, it so happens that in tonight’s ‘golden mic’ slot is someone who also died far too early. Dale Winton was just 62 when he died in 2018. I liked Dale. His Supermarket Sweep show was marvellously silly, knock about fun and his contempt for Lulu was always going to endear him to me. I also appreciate that despite being on a pop music show aimed at a youth audience, he’s still in his standard suit and tie apparel.

OK, so the first act tonight looks and sounds familiar and no wonder – this was a Top 40 hit just 10 months prior. Except…the artist name has been changed and not to protect the innocent either. Back in November 1994, “The Sunshine After The Rain” was a hit for the mouthful that was New Atlantic/U4EA featuring Berri and they even appeared on TOTP which means…I’ll have reviewed it in this blog. Wonder what I said?

*checks blog archive*

Well, that hasn’t helped much. I just wrote about how I was always confusing it with “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” by Zoë from earlier in the decade and guess what? I’m still suffering from that conflation even though I wrote a post detailing said conflation fairly recently. OK, for the second time, this is not that song but a dance cover of the song Elkie Brooks had a Top 10 hit with in 1977. Seventeen years later, a No 26 hit for the aforementioned New Atlantic/U4EA wasn’t deemed a big enough success and was reissued but just under the slimmed down banner of a solo Berri. Why? I dunno – did Berri sign to a different record label who wanted to repromote their new artist but with a tried and tested hit? I really can’t be bothered to do any more research than that which has revealed Berri’s real name of Rebecca Sleight so if you’re still wanting an answer, do your own Google searches.

Did the two releases sound any different from each other? Well, I’ve watched back both TOTP appearances so you don’t have to and can report back that they are both the bloody same! Berri has changed her image a bit in the intervening months so that she looks even more like a prototype Sophie Ellis Bextor but that’s about it. Both have that interpolation of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” as their backing and both have that annoying scratch effect around the line “I wanna” towards the end. Really, what was the point?! Well, obviously it was to sell some records and make some money and so it did going to No 4 and selling 200,000 copies in the UK. Berri would have one further hit and still performs on the UK festival circuit.

You know me, dance isn’t really my thing which probably explains why in the bpm obsessed mid-90s, lots of tunes that were hits passed me by despite the fact that I was working in a record shop at the time and so had more access to them than many. I thought “Hideaway” by De’Lacy would be another such track but I did actually remember this one once I’d watched this TOTP repeat back. A huge slice of US garage in the same vein as Robin S or Rosie Gaines, it topped the UK dance chart and peaked at No 9 in the Top 40. What I didn’t remember (if indeed I ever knew in the first place) was that De’Lacy wasn’t the singer (who was one Rainie Lassiter) but the name of the band like Toyah or Nena. De’Lacy was though named after one of the people in the band – De’Lacy Davis who was the percussionist.

As with many of these dance hits, there were multiple remixes of the track but the one that spearheaded the commercial release on deConstruction records was the Deep Dish radio edit. Apparently the label was miffed that a slew of imports via an Italian licensee hit specialist dance shops before the deConstruction imprint was available claiming that this impinged on the sales of their release. Rumour has it that they wanted those imports to be withdrawn from sale – that’s right; they wanted them hidden away. I’ll get me coat.

A record breaking track now. “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson was the first ever single to go straight in at No 1 in the US Billboard Hot 100. This seems incredible given that chart had been going since 1958 and also that this phenomenon was hardly a rare event in the UK. The Beatles did it in 1969 with “Get Back” whilst Slade took over the baton in the 70s with “Cum On Feel The Noize”. In 1982, The Jam achieved this feat with “Town Called Malice” and by the mid 90s, going straight in at No 1 was becoming de rigueur with the likes of Take That, Blur and Oasis all having done so. So why did it take so long in America? Not being a US charts expert, I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that the Billboard Hot 100 was a ratio of sales and airplay so maybe that had something to do with it? I’m sure someone out there will have a better explanation.

What I do know is that “You Are Not Alone” was also Jackson’s final US No 1 single and was taken from the “HIStory: Past, Present And Future Book 1” album. Although it was written by the now completely unpalatable R. Kelly who also sings backing vocals on it, the convicted sex offender was deemed far enough removed from the track for it not to need to be omitted from these BBC4 TOTP repeats.

Inevitably, the single was accompanied by a big budget video though the special effects in this one are toned down a bit compared to previous promos for the likes of “Black Or White” and “Scream”. There are however some sick inducing scenes with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley including the pair of them appearing semi nude against a temple backdrop. Their marriage ended the following year with Lisa Marie claiming coercive behaviour from Jackson and that he orchestrated their public appearances, the aforementioned scene in “You Are Not Alone” being just one example. As for the song itself, for me it’s one big, drippy ballad that’s so wet as to be unlistenable – its paucity of passion makes the song beyond redemption. Most of the UK failed to share my opinion once again and would ensure that our American cousins were (ahem) not alone in their love of the track by also sending it to No 1.

With the passing of Matthew Perry last year (what is it with this post and celebrity deaths?), the Friends story was ultimately put to bed. I really can’t imagine that there would be any appetite amongst fans or the cast for a revisiting of the show without Chandler. Back in 1995 though, the US sitcom was in its infancy. It premiered in the US in September 1994 but wasn’t broadcast in the UK until April the following year after Channel 4, who had a good track record for bringing American sitcoms to our shores, bought up the rights. Airing at 9.30 on a Friday evening, my wife was an early adopter and soon had me watching as well. By the end of its first season run on Channel 4 in September 1995, it was a resounding success. Inevitably, there was demand for the catchy theme tune that accompanied the credits. The tale behind “I’ll Be There For You” is a remarkably short one in reality though it wasn’t the original choice of song by the studio Warner Bros. Television. Look at this…

When REM turned down the request to use their song, the studio turned to the only band who were signed to Warner Bros. Records Inc. (the music division of the studio). Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, who had been in bands together since 1981 and had scored a decent sized hit as The Rembrandts in 1990 with “Just The Way It Is, Baby”, had achieved little commercial success thereafter. However, Friends producer Kevin S. Bright hadn’t forgotten the band and called their manager with a view to them recording the theme tune. Within a week of an initial meeting the song was written, laid down in the studio and airing on US television as Friends launched on 22nd September 1994.

Initially unavailable in America as a single (the band only recorded a one minute version of the song specifically for the credits), a Nashville DJ made a loop of that version thereby extending its length to three minutes and played it continuously. The clamour for a full length version caused the band to re-record it and it finally got a full release.

As with Deep Blue Something who would claim a UK No 1 with “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” in 1996, I don’t think the performance here by the band actually aids the record that much. They’re fairly unmemorable (sorry guys). Wasn’t there a video which included the cast members made that could have been shown instead?

*checks YouTube*

Yes, here it is…although…was this made in 1995 or was it put together for the 1997 rerelease. Yes, as Friends became a global phenomenon, the merchandising for the show went into overdrive. Mugs, calendars, T-shirts etc were all licensed and when the first series was released on VHS (remember them), they flew off the shelves. As such, it was a perfect time for the theme tune to be made available once more and it became a hit all over again. For statistics sake, “I’ll Be There For You” peaked at No 3 in 1995 and No 5 two years later disproving the lyric that it wasn’t their day, week, month or even their year.

Next, another of those pesky album chart slots which features a single that will eventually be released as a single anyway further down the line. Filling the spot this week are Boyzone who give us their version of “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens which is not only a track from their No 1 album “Said And Done” but will also become their next single when released in the November. After breaking through with a cover of a 70s ballad in “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds a year previously, the group clearly thought it was worth another go using that same blueprint. And they were right; “Father And Son” would go all the way to No 2 selling 600,000 copies in the process and becoming not just the 13th best selling single of the year in the UK but surely one of Boyzone’s best known hits.

Talking of blueprints, the performance here with the five lads all sat on stools was surely the model for subsequent Irish boyband Westlife who seemed to spend their whole career sat on their arses singing indistinguishable love songs. Back to Boyzone though and this is really all about Ronan Keating who does all the heavy lifting vocals wise while the rest of them bill and coo around him. Stephen Gately* does attempt some harmonising at one point but the rest of them are stuck on “ooh” mode. In the middle of the song, Ronan addresses the studio audience by saying “Boyzone live on Top of the Pops” before exhaling in a ‘who’d have believed it’ kind of gesture. Do you think that was spontaneous on Ronan’s part or a deliberate, prearranged move to try and build the group some credibility?

*Stephen was another who died tragically young at the age of just 33. What is it with this post and death?

I can’t hear the Boyzone version of “Father And Son” without this scene from Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere coming to mind…

Heres some ropey old shit and no mistake! A second hit for Montell Jordan (who knew?). After “This Is How We Do It” was a US No 1, a follow up was required and so he gave us “Somethin’ 4 Da Honeyz”, a little tale he wrote about picking up women. How nice. This is nasty with Jordan informing us that if he sees a female worth his while (!) he knows that he can get ‘it’ and he’ll “hit it if she’s wit it”. He follows this up by saying if a woman is ugly, fat or skinny, it doesn’t matter as long as she likes to shoop (shoop shoop). Bloody hell! What a bellend! At one point he name drops soul singer Aaron Neville but, as someone remarked on Twitter, it sounds like he’s singing “could very well be the next Gary Neville”. Ha!

Jordan is now a born-again Christian and has become a worship leader and ordained minister at the Victory World Church in Atlanta, Georgia so presumably has learned his lesson and has a better attitude towards women.

Oh this is more like it! Echobelly had some excellent songs – in fact, their trio of singles that were “Insomniac”, “King Of The Kerb” and this one “Great Things” stand up alongside anything else that was labelled ‘Britpop’ at this time. Coming on like a more exotic Sleeper, at the height of their fame, they notched up two Top 10 albums and five Top 40 singles, their fast track to success certainly not hindered by lead singer Sonya Madam’s image. With so much attention being paid to Madan, comparisons with Blondie were always likely (something also experienced by No Doubt later in the decade and played up to in their “Don’t Speak” video).

Watching this performance back though, it’s not Debbie Harry I’m put in mind of but rather Britney Spears. A whole three years before the ‘Princess of Pop’ exploded around the world with “…Baby One More Time” and that video with the schoolgirl uniform, here was Sonya beating her to it. Not quite as provocative as Britney’s outfit maybe but still causing a stir, apparently Madan hadn’t anticipated all the fuss and saw her school clothes look as more Grange Hill than St.Trinians. Hmm. Anyway, Echobelly’s popularity dwindled as the decade progressed and by 2004, a protracted hiatus took place. They reconvened in 2009 and last released an album of new material in 2017.

Oh dear lord. What the f**k is going on here?! Michael Bolton hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in this country since 1991 when his version of “When A Man Loves A Woman” made No 8. So what do you do when your career needs reviving? Well, in Michael’s case a TV advertised Best Of was deemed the best plan of action and as was the emerging trend for such a collection back then, a new track was required to promote it. “Can I Touch You…There?” was co written and produced by Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange whose charge sheet of criminal songs includes tracks by Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and Billy Ray Cyrus. This one was right up there with any of those though. I’m guessing Bolton was searching for a new sound because this is a complete hotchpotch of a song. It’s as if Ace Of Base have taken the melody from Carly Simon’s “Why” and then roped in old Bollers to sing some double entendre lyrics over the top. It even goes a bit panpipes at the end! Who thought all of that was a good idea?! Well, plenty of people judging by its chart peak of No 6 meaning Michael got one final Top 10 hit after all. By the way, have you ever seen a woman with a bigger sax than the one on stage here has? Well if Bolton can be risqué…

It’s a second week at the top for Blur with “Country House” which has beaten “Roll With It” by Oasis into second place again. I don’t recall there being anywhere near the media frenzy that existed for the first week though. Blur would achieve another chart topper 18 months later when “Beetlebum” returned them to pole position. As for Oasis, they would go to No 1 a further seven times (making eight in total) with their final one being 2005’s “The Importance Of Being Idle”.

The play out video is “Scatman’s World” by Scatman John. The follow up to his novelty hit “Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)” which combined jazz scatting, rapping and a dance beat, this was, regrettably, more of the same. And this is the question – did we really need any more of the same? I have the answer – NO!

Scatman John (real name John Paul Larkin) died at the age of 57 from lung cancer and he brings to an end one of the most haunted by death posts I’ve ever written.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Berri	The Sunshine After The Rain	I did not
2	De’Lacy	Hideaway	Not for me
3	Michael Jackson	You Are Not Alone	Never happening
4	The Rembrandts	I’ll Be There For You	YES! I bought it for my wife but we ended up passing it onto our Friends obsessed Goddaughter
5	Boyzone	Father And Son	Nope
6	Montell Jordan	Somethin’ 4 Da Honeyz	NO!
7	Echobelly	Great Things	No but I had a Best Of CD with it on
8	Michael Bolton	Can I Touch You…There?	Never!
9	Blur	Country House	Not the single but I had The Great Escape album with it on
10	Scatman John	Scatman’s World	As if

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/m001w2m5/top-of-the-pops-31081995

TOTP 12 MAY 1994

Posted on March 24, 2023 by 80stastic

There was a lot going on in mid May 1994. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president. Labour leader John Smith died of a heart attack. The British romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral opened in UK cinemas. However, the one event that was dominating my thoughts occurred two days after this TOTP aired. The 1994 FA Cup final was not the best of games and it will probably only be remembered for Man Utd completing their first league and cup double and becoming only the fourth team in the 20th century to do so. For me though, it will always be a painful memory.

Growing up as a Chelsea fan in the late 70s and early 80s was horrible. We were mainly useless and spent five consecutive seasons in the old Second Division and we were hopeless in the cups. The closest we got to cup glory were wins in the Full Members Cup in 1986 and the Zenith Data Systems in 1990. Most people reading this will never have heard of them. Suddenly though, in 1994, we were in the FA Cup final. The actual FA Cup final! Our first time since 1970! I couldn’t have been more excited. I was working in the Our Price in Market Street, Manchester at the time so obviously there were a couple of United fans in amongst my colleagues. I’m pretty sure we all managed to get the Saturday off to watch the game though. I got a couple of friends round to watch the game at our little flat and, with beers at the ready, settled in for the kick off. I should have known that the day was set for disaster when the heavens opened and the rain came down. Where was the glorious sunshine that had always made an appearance during those cup final days of my youth?

Despite the portents of doom provided by the weather, we actually started well and were the better team in the first half. Our talismanic midfielder Gavin Peacock hit the bar. 0-0 at half time. We more than had a chance. The second half remains one of the worst of my life. Three goals conceded in nine minutes (one an awful penalty decision by public schoolteacher David Elleray) destroyed Chelsea and indeed me. We couldn’t even get a consolation goal despite numerous chances. At 4-0 down, I was willing Elleray to blow the full time whistle to put me out of my misery.

In an extraordinary act of self inflicted pain, I was in Manchester city centre the next day seeing off my friends at Piccadilly train station just as the United team were arriving back from London with a huge crowd assembled to welcome their heroes home. I should have run a mile in the opposite direction but somehow I loitered and was spotted by a bunch of Ryan Giggs obsessed young girls who decided I didn’t look like I was enjoying myself enough and asked who I supported. Loyalty to my club took over and I replied “Chelsea” at which point they hurled merciless abuse at me. My disastrous weekend was complete. To add insult to injury, that hateful United record “Come On You Reds” was ubiquitous and went to No 1 the following week and with me working in a record shop, my misery continued for quite some time.

Anyway, that’s enough football talk. This is a music blog isn’t it? Here comes the music then but just before that, I need to acknowledge the host who this week is Jack Dee. This use of celebrity hosts was known as the ‘golden mic’ feature where presenting duties were performed by pop stars, comedians and…well…Chris Eubank. We’d already had Robbie and Mark from Take That and Meatloaf step into the breach and now it was the turn of Dee, making him the first non-music related host. Jack had been a name for a couple of years by this point with his own show having first aired in 1992. That, allied to his starring in the ‘No nonsense’ John Smith’s beer adverts, had helped cement his dour personality and sardonic humour in the minds of the public. As such, the TOTP audience had a decent idea of what to expect from Dee who could almost have been a natural successor to John Peel.

So, to the music, if you can call it that as tonight’s opening act are American R&B chancers EYC. How this lot ever amounted to anything more than one hit single is beyond me. What’s this one called? “Number One”? Ha! Fat chance! Or should I say flat chance as their vocals here are like the proverbial pancake. They also sound completely breathless (in their defence, I suppose they are jumping around like loons for the entirety of the performance). The track is basically a backbeat with some suggestive lyrics over the top of it. Just awful. Next!

We’ll come to the next act in just a sec but for the moment, I want to talk about Jack Dee again and give him some deserved credit for him calling out the inane displays of the Radio 1 DJs who have hosted the show (yes, I mean you Simon Mayo).

“Yes, I am presenting Top of the Pops because I’m a comedian and if you think that’s a bad idea, then what about all the DJs who keep trying to tell jokes” Dee deadpans. You nailed it Jack.

Back to the music and it’s that Joe Roberts bloke again. Just who was this guy and why was he on TOTP so much? Well, his Wikipedia entry, like the size of his hits, is pretty small. As the TOTP caption says, he’s from Manchester and he had three Top 40 hits, one of which was this song “Back In My Life”. This was a rerelease – it made No 59 first time around – and despite this exposure on the show, couldn’t get any higher than its peak this week of No 39. Not surprising really as it’s the musical equivalent of narcolepsy. Totally soporific. Joe himself is like a combination of Curtis Stigers and Vic Reeves’s club singer. Dear oh dear. Next!

Now, here’s a band about to enjoy arguably the biggest year of their career. In 1994, East 17 would release a double platinum album and three hit singles the last of which would become the Christmas No 1 and become a nice little pension pot for its songwriter Tony Mortimer. The first of those singles though was “All Around The World”, the lead single from second album “Steam” and absolutely nothing to do with the Oasis song of the same name. For me, East 17 had hit the ground running with their debut single, the frenetic “House Of Love” but then stumbled with the lacklustre follow up “Gold” before regaining their balance with the super slick “Deep”. However, the subsequent two singles “Slow It Down” and the misguided cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” were more potholes in the road before they really got into their stride with the sublime “It’s Alright”.

This new single harked backed to the sound of “Deep” though it wasn’t as good and felt like it had been written specifically to be a Top 5 hit. Nothing wrong with that I guess and the plan worked when it got to No 3 but there was something a little bit cynical about it, as if their record label had really taken control of these pop urchins and wanted to push them up a bit. The video for the track also gives the impression that the boys have had their urban wrinkles ironed out. It’s all a bit too…sophisticated? Is that the right word?

Parent album “Steam” was released in the October and the Our Price chain had a preview CD of it to be played instore but it had Radio 1 DJ Mark Goodier talking in between the tracks. Bah! Despite this, I took the freebie promo home when the actual album came out for my wife who’d bought the first album. We had it for ages without ever playing it I think but I’m guessing it got lost/disposed of following a couple of flat and house moves. In short, it didn’t follow us ‘all around the world’. It’s OK, my coat is already in my hand.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find Gloworm with the second (and biggest) of their two chart hits “Carry Me Home”. It had been nearly two years since this lot combined house and gospel music to create a dancefloor banger in “I Lift My Cup (To The Spirit Divine)” but now they were back with a tune that sounded…exactly the same. Well, it does to my ears but then they’re not bpm refined so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

As it’s got a gospel bent to it, obviously the staging for the performance has singer Sedric Johnson in a pulpit and the backing singers all have those full length community choir smocks on. I suppose a Kenny Everett Brother Lee Love big hands get up would have been a bit too over the top? “Carry Me Home” peaked at No 9.

https://youtu.be/iis2rBhKen8

Bollers is back! Yes, Michael Bolton is on the show again for no discernible reason. Well, yes obviously he’s on to plug his latest single, his cover of the Bill Withers tune “Lean On Me” but is his appearance justified? Well, he is a new entry at No 15 having been an exclusive performance two weeks earlier so what do you think? Is that reason enough? You’re right of course. There’s never any justification nor need for Michael Bolton on our TV screens and I say that as someone who saw him in concert by mistake! No, I’m not going into that particular story again! It’s in the archives if you must read about it.

I have a good friend who I met when I first worked for Our Price back in 1990. Steve’s from Bolton and everyone in the shop referred to him as Steve Bolton or just Bolton on account of his accent. When I first started working with him I assumed his surname was actually Bolton as I never heard anyone refer to his actual surname which is Wilson. Well, you know. If there could be a Michael Bolton then why not a Steve Bolton? One day, someone rang the shop asking for Steve Wilson. I answered the phone and confidently replied that there was nobody of that name that worked there but that there was a Steve Bolton. After much talking at cross purposes, confusion and to the hilarity of my colleagues, Steve was eventually put on the phone. Actually, Michael Bolton isn’t even Michael Bolton’s real name which is Michael Bolotin. Probably not enough difference between that and his stage name to cause Steve Wilson levels of perplexity though.

Two people now who also go by monikers that aren’t actually their real names. We all know that Elton John was originally named Reg Dwight but I’m not sure I knew that Marcella Detroit is actually Marcella Levy and that she’s from Detroit. They’ve come together to cover the classic Motown duet originally performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing”. Their take on it was obviously on Elton’s “Duets” album as were his last two single releases with Kiki Dee and RuPaul. It also ended up on Marcella’s “Jewel” album and I have to say I don’t recall it at all. Hardly surprising since it only spent three weeks inside the Top 40 and didn’t get any higher than No 24. It doesn’t seem to add much to the original I have to say.

Elton and Marcella appear to be having an earring-off in the TOTP studio with the former sporting a single cross-shaped one up against the latter’s Bet Lynch style massive ring. I make Marcella the winner in this particular battle. She’s also got a much superior voice to Elton (and this was before he turned into Foghorn Leghorn).

Marcella would return to the Top 40 one more time as a solo artist before going on to appear in ITV’s Pop Star To Opera Star and reforming Shakespear’s Sister in 2019 with Siobhan Fahey. Elton, meanwhile, would score two further hits in 1994 with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” and “Circle Of Life” both from The Lion King soundtrack.

When I started reviewing these TOTP repeats, I began with the year 1983 and back then many a show was not rebroadcast due to problematic presenters in the wake of Operation Yewtree. Others were pulled due to the late Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith not signing the licence extension to allow the BBC to air any shows that he presented. At the time, many in the TOTP fanbase questioned why the BBC didn’t just edit the presenters out rather than just not broadcast the show at all. Well, they’ve done some retrospective editing for this one but it’s nothing to do with the host, the marvellous Jack Dee. In the light of R Kelly’s conviction for racketeering, child pornography and enticing a minor, his performance of “Your Body’s Callin’” has been removed.

This weeks ‘exclusive’ performance comes from a cultural icon whose career just goes to show that not everything can be measured in sales and commercial success. Iggy Pop is surely one of the most recognisable and memorable rock stars of all time and yet, despite having recorded some classic songs during his career of over 50 (!) years, has hardly any chart hits to his name. His only appearance in the UK Top 40 by the time of this TOTP appearance had been seven years prior when his version of “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” had made No 10. I know – it seems unbelievable. What about all those other iconic songs like “Lust For Life” and “The Passenger”? Surely they were hits? Well, yes they were but not when they were originally released. The former was a hit in 1996 after featuring prominently in Trainspotting whilst the latter made the Top 40 after being used in a Toyota car advert in 1998. “China Girl”? Nope, although obviously co-writer David Bowie had a huge hit with it in 1983. His work with The Stooges? Afraid not. Despite all of the above, Iggy’s stature as the ‘Godfather of Punk’ remained undimmed and TOTP producer Ric Blaxill wasn’t going to let the chance of an in person appearance pass him by.

“Beside You” was taken from Iggy’s “American Caesar” album which came with the parental warning sticker ‘This is an Iggy Pop record’. It’s a nice enough slice of melodic rock but according to reviews, the track isn’t really representative of the rest of the album which I have to own up to having never heard. It was co-written by ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones in 1985 for Iggy’s “Blah-Blah-Blah” album but never made the cut. When record label Virgin heard “American Caesar”, they gave Iggy the classic “we can’t hear a single” line and so “Beside You” was retrieved from the demo archive. Iggy is joined onstage here by multi-instrumentalist Lisa Germano who’s worked with everyone from John Mellencamp to David Bowie to Neil Finn. So, did this TOTP exposure propel Iggy to a rare UK hit? No, of course not. It peaked at No 47.

Oh, one final thing. When I first started working at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, the walls in the gents loo were covered in graffiti where employees past and present had come up with toilet humour based around music artists. There was Deacon Poo, Kenny Log-gins, Ruthless Crap Assassins but my favourite by far was Iggy Plop.

https://youtu.be/wr9yqbbKT6w

There’s a new No 1 and it’s from Stiltskin courtesy of that Levi’s ad. And that means…it’s time for my Stiltskin story. Sometime in 1994, we had some some friends to stay at our flat in Manchester. It may have been around October time as we moved flat from No 47 to No 43 on our road around that time and we may have roped in our friends to help with the move (you still have to put everything in boxes and move them you know!).

Anyway, my wife had a works do to go to on that weekend so I was left to entertain our friends with a night out in Manchester. We were all in our mid 20s at this point so we could just about get away with going to a nightclub – so we did. Me, Robin, Susan and the aforementioned Steve ended up at an indie night in Fifth Avenue nightclub. We’d had enough drink to embolden us to strut our stuff on the dancefloor to some banging indie tunes for the whole night. As we got to the wee small hours and the club was winding down, me and Robin were still at it. The place was full of dry ice and obviously dark so we weren’t overly aware of our surroundings. As it happened, Stiltskin’s “Inside” was played as the last song of the night and as the lights came up and the dry ice cleared, Robin and I were faced with the horrifying truth that we were the only people left on the dancefloor…and we were dancing to Stiltskin – a made up band who’s were only briefly famous because of a jeans advert and whose singer would end up in Genesis for a while. We try not to talk about it but we both know it happened.

https://youtu.be/kpfWisNlHnQ

The play out tune is another dance anthem by someone called Maxx. I have zero memory of “Get-A-Way” despite it getting to No 4 in the charts. If only my memory was as discerning when it came to forgetting things like your team getting stuffed 4-0 in the FA Cup final or dancing to Stiltskin.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	EYC	Number One	As if
2	Joe Roberts	Back In My Life	No
3	East 17	All Around The World	No but I had that promo CD of the album
4	Gloworm	Carry Me Home	Nah
5	Michael Bolton	Lean On Me	Never happening
6	Elton John / Marcella Detroit	Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing	I did not
7	Iggy Pop	Beside You	Nope
8	Stiltskin	Inside	Danced to it, never bought it
9	Maxx	Get-A-Way	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/m001k2r1/top-of-the-pops-12051994

TOTP 28 APR 1994

Posted on March 17, 2023 by 80stastic

As ever it seems, this TOTP is a right mixed bag of huge, stellar names and those that perhaps haven’t lingered in the memory anywhere near as long. To illustrate that point, two of the artists on the show are from the furthermost extremes of the spectrum. One is an absolute legend of the world of music and show business and the other…well, let’s just say I’d be surprised if many people could recall them.

We start though with a band who I had forgotten all about but do recall their name now I’m presented with them in front of me. Skin (terrible name)* were part of that early 90s UK rock movement populated by the likes of Little Angels and Thunder (indeed they toured with both of them) and also had affiliations with Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson – Skin’s drummer Dicki Fliszar (not a stage name apparently) had played in Dickinson’s tour band. This led to them signing with Maiden’s management company and record label Parlophone. The link with Dickinson even got them a place on a hit single albeit under the pseudonym of Smear Campaign on the 1992 Comic Relief single “I Wanna Be Elected”. A debut EP (under their own name) called “The Skin Up” failed to crack the Top 40 but this follow up – “The Money EP” – hit pay dirt when it climbed to a peak of No 18. Watching this performance back, they clearly had pretensions to be the next Led Zeppelin with lead singer Neville MacDonald channeling his inner Robert Plant to full effect. Just because the band were called Skin, did we really have to see two of them displaying some here?

* When my mate Robin caught Spinal Tap live around 1992, he was in the front row and managed to touch the hand of one of the group or as he described it “I got skin off the band”. I don’t think Skin, the band, would have got the same reaction from him.

Skin would go on to collect a handful of UK Top 40 hits and a Top 10 eponymous debut album and a support slot at Gateshead Stadium for Bon Jovi. Sadly, what should have been a career high turned into a disaster when a voltage converter was put to US settings by a stage hand which resulted in their guitarist’s amplifier being blown as well as the keyboard player’s Hammond organ. When I was working in the Civil Service in the early 2000s (stick with me, I do have a point), one of my colleagues was a huge Dexys Midnight Runners fan who actually got to know some of the people from the band’s history and those of The Bureau who formed out of the ashes of the first Dexys incarnation. A man who had a foot in both camps was Mick Talbot (later of The Style Council) who told my colleague that shortly before Live Aid started (The Style Council were second on that day), Mick noticed the same issue with the sound equipment (i.e. it was configured to US settings) and so, knowing it would blow, quickly changed them thereby averting a technological disaster and a late start to The Global Jukebox. There you go – the inside track on one of the biggest musical events ever courtesy of TOTP Rewind!

Here’s a band in the process of making a name for themselves – Eternal with a third consecutive hit. “Just A Step From Heaven” would follow “Stay” and “Save Our Love” into the Top 10. I’ve noticed with all their TOTP performances that it always seems to be Easther Bennett on lead vocals with the other three group members acting effectively as backing dancers. Now you could have maybe levelled the same accusation at male peers Take That in their early days with Gary Barlow always out front doing the heavy lifting vocals wise and the rest of the boys popping some moves behind him. However, they did diversify with Robbie Williams, Mark Owen and even Howard Donald all getting a shot at being lead singer (I don’t think poor old Jason Orange ever did). Did Eternal ever swap roles about like that? Was their a vocals rota? I’m not sure.

During this performance though, they did have those ‘circles’ lighting effects gliding around the stage that look like those scenes from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons when the latter used ‘retrometabolism’ to create facsimiles of people and objects that they could control. Easther as a Captain Black figure doing away with her band mates and replacing them with replicants under her power so they remain in her shadow? Nah, you’re right. It could never have happened because Louise left the band of her own accord in 1995.

As for the song, it sounded a bit bland to me lacking the star quality of their debut hit. I much prefer this similarly (but not quite the same) titled song from the criminally overlooked The Adventures…

Next a song that turned the band responsible for it from a hardcore funk metal outfit to mainstream rock stars. That journey for Red Hot Chili Peppers had begun with a stumble in the UK when the sublime “Under The Bridge” could only make No 26 in March of 1992 but in the US they travelled much further going all the way to No 2 becoming a huge airplay hit in the process. You can’t keep a good song down though and we finally caught up with our American counterparts in 1994 when, after an energy booster in the shape of Top 10 hit “Give It Away”, we went full throttle in our appreciation of the Chili Peppers making a re-release of “Under The Bridge” a runaway chart success. OK, runaway might be pushing it for a song that peaked at No 13 but it fits with my ‘journey’ metaphor and it was literally twice the hit it was before. I was one of those that succumbed to its charms second time around.

Starting out as a poem written by Anthony Kiedis about his struggles with heroin addiction, its hit potential was seen by producer Rick Rubin and after being worked up into song form by bassist Flea and guitarist John Frusciante it found its way onto the band’s “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” album. The titular bridge refers to a bridge in LA where Kiedis found himself hanging out with drug dealers trying to score his next hit so desperate had his addiction become. Los Angeles looms large in the song with these opening lines clearly referring to it:

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, the city of angels
Lonely as I am, together we cry
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Anthony Kiedis / Chad Gaylord Smith / John Anthony Frusciante / Michael Peter Balzary
Under the Bridge lyrics © MoeBeToBlame, Peermusic Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Words & Music A Div Of Big Deal Music LL

Now it’s my turn to sneak a reference in but it’s not about LA but Captain Scarlet again. In the episode ‘Place Of Angels’, the good captain foils a Mysteron plot to release a deadly virus into the Los Angeles reservoir. And of course, the female pilots of the Spectrum fighter jets were known as The Angels. What’s that got to do with Red Hot Chili Peppers? Nothing but artistic license and all that. The video by director Gus Van Sant has a “Streets Of Philadelphia” feel to it with Kiedis walking through various LA locations to make the bond between song and city absolutely clear if it wasn’t enough already. Just like Springsteen, the Chili Peppers would also record material for soundtracks in the 90s when they supplied songs for The Coneheads, Pretty Woman and Beavis and Butt-head Do America movies.

Next that name that surely is lost to most in the mists of time. Except…Club House you say? Wasn’t that the name of the people who did that awful Steely Dan /Michael Jackson mash up “Do It Again” in 1983? I think it was but this can’t be the same lot returning in 1994 can it?

*checks Wikipedia*

Bloody hell it is! That’s a more unlikely comeback than Boris Johnson recovering from Partygate (please privileges committee, don’t make a fool of me by finding him innocent!). What had they been doing for a whole decade? Well, according to their bio, they’d done another medley record in 1987 mixing Mory Kanté’s “Yé ké Yé ké” with The Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m A Man” and had a US Dance No 1 with the Deee-Lite sampling “Deep In My Heart” in 1990. In addition to those two tracks, the vocalist here – one Carl Fanini – sang in that Eurodance hit by Eastside Beat “Ride Like The Wind”.

Suddenly though, like the nightmare of a returning Liz Truss, they were back with a track called “Light My Fire” which obtusely was nothing to do with The Doors song of the same name. It had failed to make the UK Top 40 when released in September of 1993 but a Cappella remix released on Pete Waterman’s PWL label sent it to the Top 10 the following year. God knows how though as it’s an abominable record, all pulsing Italian Hi-NRG beats and the phrase “Burn Baby Burn” (surely pinched from “Disco Inferno” by The Trammps) repeated over and over. If you require any more evidence that this was a steaming pool of piss, ask yourself why, if it’s such a great tune, is there the need for a man on stilts juggling, a woman fire eating and four dancers dressed as devil figures in bright red spandex suits up there on stage? Even all of the above can’t distract from the reality that this was just awful.

Of course, for all my previous talk of nobody remembering Club House or their single, the track did carve out its own little piece of pop history by being an infamous part of the origin of one of the biggest boy bands of the 90s. Ladies and gentlemen…Boyzone!

Level 42 on TOTP in 1994? The year widely acknowledged as being the lift off point for Britpop? It seems as wrong as tomato ketchup on a Sunday roast yet here they were with their second hit of that year. “All Over You” came from their “Forever Now” album and was the follow up to the title track and it sounds like it has the potential of being a decent tune akin to something like “Hot Water” from their past but it never really goes anywhere. Yes it’s got a chunky, funky rhythm courtesy of Mark King’s trademark slap bass but it meanders aimlessly with its sole intention seeming to be how many rhyming words it can get into the lyrics which end in ‘-ing’. And then. And then there’s that middle right when keyboardist Mike Lindup breaks into a solo bit that has very strong Spinal Tap “Stonehenge” vibes:

Through the heat-haze and the blue
I will shimmer and distort
And become what you always knew
But were never taught in this sad time
Take on board the things I say
Just be sure that you’ll be mine someday
Justify the things I do
Just believe that it’s all over you
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Mark King / Michael David Lindup / Philip Gould
All Over You lyrics © Peermusic (uk) Ltd.

All that was missing was some dwarves dancing around an 18” model. “All Over You” peaked at No 26 but Level 42’s chart years were nearly over. They would visit the Top 40 just one more time.

Time for that legend of music now as we get an exclusive performance from Miss Barbara Streisand (like ~~Diana Ross~~, Miss Diana Ross, you have to prefix her name with Miss). I’m not about to do a potted history of Barbara’s career here as it would take too long and I’m behind with these reviews but suffice too say, host Nicky Campbell just about sums it up in his intro. I was aware of Miss Barbara Streisand initially from her No 1 single “Woman In Love” from 1980 when I was 12 but I didn’t really regard her as a singer that much as she didn’t really have another major hit throughout the decade when I was consuming pop music avariciously. I regarded her more as a film star, that woman that was in Funny Girl, Hello Dolly!, A Star Is Born and Yentl, none of which were movies that particularly interested me at all growing up. I was aware that she was a huge name though, so much so that by the time she was touring in 1993/94 – the first time since 1966 – tickets were going for astronomical prices. A friend managed to get one for one of her four nights at Wembley Arena (from where this satellite performance came) and I think she might have paid around £200 even in 1994! It looks like a lot of the ticket price revenue went on paying for the very stylish stage set. The tour grossed $50 million playing to 400,000 people.

The song she performs here – “As If We Never Said Goodbye” – is from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard which made it the second chart hit from the show in recent months following Dina Carroll’s version of “The Perfect Year”. It also featured on Miss Barbara Streisand’s most recent album “Back To Broadway” which had been a huge success going double platinum in the US and gold over here. The single made it to No 20 and she would clock up another three chart hits in the UK during the 90s, all of them duets with Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and Vince Gill to add to those from the 80s (Don Johnson) and perhaps her most famous in the late 70s with Donna Summer (“No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”) and Neil Diamond (“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”).

Were Ride a big name? I guess the were amongst the ‘shoegaze’ community and the TOTP caption says their career record sales at that point was 500,000. It seems a bit unfair of the producers though who put up a similar caption for Miss Barbara Streisand detailing her 7 million album sales. Still, as Nicky Campbell says in his intro, she’d never headlined the Reading Festival. I quite liked a couple of their tunes like “Leave Them All Behind” and “Twisterella” from 1992’s Top 5 album “Going Blank Again”. This track, “Birdman” was from their third album “Carnival Of Light” which showcased a departure from the band’s usual songwriting style with Mark Gardner arriving at the studio with fully formed compositions rather than crafting tracks from jamming sessions. It also displayed a different sound with a deliberate move away from ‘shoegaze’ to a more classic rock sound. Another change was obvious in this performance as that’s not Gardner up there on vocals but guitarist Andy Bell (later of Hurricane #1, Oasis and Beady Eye). Bell had written half of the tracks on the album (including this single) so I guess he wanted to make like UB40 and sing his own song? Despite the album replicating the chart peak of its predecessor, it alienated some of their original fanbase and drew unfavourable reviews from the press whilst even the band themselves fell out of love with it referring it it as “Carnival Of Shite”. Hmm. Ride released another album (1996’s “Tarantula”) before disbanding only to reform in 2014.

The final three names tonight are all very much part of the rock/pop music establishment starting with the guy who did the personal message at the top of the show Michael Bolton. Interestingly, he did seem to plug Miss Barbara Streisand’s appearance more than his own. Even Mr Mullet Head had to bow before the ‘Queen of the Divas’. Bollers is on the show to plug his latest offering, a cover of the Bill Withers classic “Lean On Me”. This was literally money for old rope (or hair). Bolton had already done an album of cover verists in 1992 called “Timeless: The Classics” and yet he didn’t see any issue with recording yet another for his next album “The One Thing” and even less compunction about releasing it as a single when he was in need of a hit. After all, he’d done a similar thing in 1991 when, after the first two singles from his “Time. Love And Tenderness” album had failed to pull up any trees sales wise, he released a cover of Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” to restore him to the Top 10. Just shameless really. Bolton gives his usual over emoting performance here which also features Michael J. Mullins on backing vocals. “Who?” you may ask. Well, he’s the guy who sang on all the later hits for Modern Romance and who was the perennial backing singer for Cliff Richard. Now if Bollers had done a cover version of “Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey” I might have had a bit more respect for him. As it was his, version of “Lean On Me” peaked at No 14.

Prince is the next huge name on the show as he is still at No 1 with “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”. As with many other artists, his highest charting single in the UK is certainly not his best – in my humble opinion at least. I could name a load of other tracks I prefer. Off the top of my head there’s “Purple Rain”, “Alphabet Street”, “Take Me with U”, “Raspberry Beret”…I could go on. Prince would only return to the our Top 10 twice more after “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” and one of those was with a rather obvious release of “1999” as 1998 drew to a close.

The play out song is another single that didn’t actually make the Top 40 despite the artist being one of the biggest names in in music. “We Wait And We Wonder” was the third single from Phil Collins‘ “Both Sides” album and was written as a response to the Warrington bombings and the whole situation of the Irish Troubles peaking at No 45. Despite all his success as a solo artist, Phil has had his fair share of non charting releases as well, some of them coming immediately after a huge hit. “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away” only made No 45 despite being the follow up to the chart topping “You Can’t Hurry Love”. Then there’s “Do You Remember?” which failed to make the Top 40 despite coming from his multi platinum album “…But Seriously”. “Wear My Hat” from 1997’s “Dance Into The Light” would suffer a similar fate all of which just goes to show that no matter how big your name or reputation, you cannot take the vagaries of the charts nor the record buying public for granted.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Skin	The Money EP	Nah
2	Eternal	Just A Step From Heaven	No
3	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Under The Bridge	Yes, yes I did
4	Club House	Light My Fire	As if
5	Level 42	All Over You	Never happening
6	Barbara Streisand	As If We Never Said Goodbye	I did not
7	Ride	Birdman	Negative
8	Michael Bolton	Lean On Me	See 4 above
9	Prince	The Most Beautiful Girl in the World	Not for me thanks
10	Phil Collins	We Wait And We Wonder	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/m001jvps/top-of-the-pops-28041994

TOTP 03 MAR 1994

Posted on February 16, 2023 by 80stastic

There’s some veritable veterans of UK music history on the show tonight in amongst all the shiny new pop kids. Sadly, we’ve also got an old timer as host who is Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo returning for his third appearance in five episodes since new producer Ric Blaxill brought back the Radio 1 DJs.

We start with 2 Unlimited who could hardly be classed as a seasoned chart act having first appeared on our charts a mere two and a half years prior but in that time they certainly packed in the hits. “Let The Beat Control Your Body” was their ninth UK hit of which all but two went Top 10. However, by 1994 the formula was starting to flounder and the hold Anita and Ray had on UK record buyers’ habits was starting to wear off. After this single made No 6, they would only return to our Top 10 once more and click up just five more Top 40 entries by the end of the decade.

I’m not sure what this performance is all about though. Are the backing dancers meant to be aliens? If so, why? I think the costumes they’re wearing are meant to be the ones that give the effect of fluorescent stripes moving independently when the person wearing it is obscured in darkness but the studio lights are far too bright and ruin any potential effect. Meanwhile, Anita seems to have styled herself on Betty Boo’s space cadet look from 1990. Interestingly, the single was renamed as “Let The Bass Control Your Body” for release in France as the word ‘beat’ sounded very similar to the French word ‘bite’ (pronounced beet). So? Well, ‘une bite’ is French slang for penis, similar to ‘cock’ or ‘dick’ in English. Sacre bleu!

https://youtu.be/UqDxtiAtCtA

The first of those veterans next. Elvis Costello hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit for five years before this track – “Sulky Girl” – made No 22 in the charts. This was the lead single from his “Brutal Youth” album which saw Costello reunite with members of his band the Attractions for the first time since 1986. Critically well received and seen as a return to form by the fanbase, the album would go all the way to No 2 in the charts, Costello’s highest chart placing since “Get Happy!!” In 1980.

“Sulky Girl” is a good tune in my book but it still wasn’t up there with those early New Wave classics though my wife may disagree as a big Costello fan. Eight months on from this TOTP, we were at the Manchester Opera House to see Elvis on tour. He played a whopping 27 song set (including “Sulky Girl”) and was supported by a then unknown band called Cast, the members of whom were a few rows in front of us to catch the Costello show after they’d finished their slot.

After enduring 2 Unlimited at the top of the show, Costello’s appearance here is both welcome and an outlier. He seems completely at odds with the charts and indeed is on record as saying he felt the success of “Sulky Girl” was more down to record company Warner’s promotion campaign rather than the commercial appeal of the song.

He would end the decade with a collaboration with the sadly recently departed Burt Bacharach and a cover of Charles Aznavour’s “She” from the film Notting Hill. The latter is a perfect vehicle for Costello’s distinctive voice although its rise to the status of one of his most well known hits potentially undermines his back catalogue it seems to me.

https://youtu.be/e6LWWASqT88

Wait. What?! This is still in the charts? Yes, yes it is. “Breathe Again” by Toni Braxton spent a very impressive eight weeks in the Top 10 alone even managing to move back up it from No 5 to No 4 after it had seemingly peaked at No 2. It literally breathed again (ahem) in terms of its chart life. The performance here is a repeat of that live by satellite one from America where Toni performs to a non existent audience in an empty theatre that was originally broadcast a few shows prior.

https://youtu.be/Pp_OMu3top0

Simon Mayo had a special talent for coming up with one liners in his intros that were so unfunny that even if you heard them whilst under the influence of Nitrous Oxide/ laughing gas then you still wouldn’t crack a smile. The latest nugget from the Mayo repertoire saw Smug Simon trying to make a quip about confusing the name of the next artist with the “Ealing Young Conservatives”. It’s not even that they weren’t funny but they were totally stupid to boot. EYC was actually an acronym for ‘Express Yourself Clearly’ but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a bad joke? “The Way You Work It” was the US trio’s second UK hit single after “Feelin’ Alright” the year before and was more of the same, over enthusiastic, anodyne R&B/pop hybrid. It really was astounding that they managed six Top 40 hits between’93 and ‘95 with such a weak appeal.

Back to that name though and although we’ve clarified what it meant, the band themselves didn’t practice what they preached. The cover of their debut album called “Express Yourself Clearly” included its title printed upside down. Hardly communicating clearly that is it? “The Way You Work It” peaked at No 14.

Mention the name Tucker to many people of my age and you’ll likely illicit memories of Grange Hill and Todd Carty as Tucker Jenkins. Or possibly if your references are a little bit more niche, Wolfie’s cowardly mate Tucker from Citizen Smith. Barbara Tucker though? She hadn’t managed to usurp either of those two in my memory banks. It turns out that Barbara is quite the all rounder though. As well as being a singer, she’s also a songwriter and choreographer and has worked with the likes of Deee-Lite, George Clinton, David Guetta and C+C Music Factory. Apparently she clocked up five UK hit singles starting with this one “Beautiful People” which is revered as a bit of a house anthem it seems. So why don’t I remember it? Oh yeah, I don’t really like house music, that’ll be it. Sorry Barbara.

There’s three Breakers this week starting with Mötley Crüe and a track called “Hooligan’s Holiday”. These California rockers were a much bigger deal in their homeland* than they were here where they were very occasional and meek visitors to our charts. They’d had only five UK chart entries to this point, none of which got any higher than No 23. The only songs of theirs I could have named were “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” neither of which I liked. “Hooligan’s Holiday” was never going to convert me.

*They even had a biopic made of them in 2019 called The Dirt which was released on Netflix.

As Simon Mayo states in his intro, this was the first Mötley Crüe material after lead singer Vince Neil had been fired from/quit the band (depending on who’s version of events you believe) and was replaced by John Corabi. The eponymously titled album that he recorded with the band was their first not do the business commercially resulting in their record company refusing to fund any further albums unless Corabi was removed and Neil reinstated. There was only ever going to be one outcome – Corabi was gone and Neil returned to the fold. The band are still together (somehow) touring for the first time in seven years in 2022 as co-headliners with Def Leppard.

Now it’s Beck who we saw in the studio the other week but this time, as he’s officially a Breaker now, it’s his video for “Loser”. Shot on a budget of just $300 plus $14,000 to edit and master it, it certainly has a homemade feel to it. There’s a moment in it where Beck is wearing a stormtrooper helmet which is censored by pixelation due to copyright reasons. I guess there wasn’t any capacity in such a small budget for potential litigation costs.

The song’s lyrics may be nonsensical but that hadn’t stoped it being used for educational purposes. I have a friend who’s a teacher that used it as the source material for a school assembly to promote self confidence and a positive attitude in her students. “Loser” peaked at No 15 in the UK and No 10 in America.

I guess Michael Bolton was a music veteran even in 1994. He was 41 when this TOTP aired and had been releasing music for nearly 20 years though most of us in the UK hadn’t heard of him before his 1990 breakthrough song “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. This single – “Soul Of My Soul” – was not just a terrible song title but also his twelfth UK hit. Now twelve sounds quite impressive but his numbers were not great. Since that first hit that went to No 3, Bollers had only managed two further Top 10 hits and one of those was a cover version (Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman”). He would manage one further trip to the hallowed upper echelons with the creepily titled single “Can I Touch You…There?” that made No 6 in 1995. He has not been back there since and quite right too.

Sadly, Michael Bolton’s appearance here gave Simon Mayo the chance to get in another pointless comment. “Michael Bolton One Villa Nil” he toots referring to the result of an FA Cup fifth round tie played nearly two weeks before this TOTP aired. Why did he think this stuff was funny?

Another of those elder statesmen of music now as Mark E Smith joins forces with Inspiral Carpets on a face blistering track called “I Want You”. Now, whilst I can appreciate the legacy of The Fall and their place in musical history, I’ve never been a great fan of the actual music. I think I always found it difficult to get along with Mark E Smith’s voice. And yes, I know that opinion is musical heresy to many people out there. I just struggle with the inflections he puts on everything – the “-ahs” that seemed to follow every line he sings especially. On this relentless track though, his idiosyncrasies are perfect. The sonic power on display here is something to behold as it lays seige to your aural capacities. The difference between it and previous single “Saturn 5” defies the notion that they were all about Clint Boon’s farfisa organ.

Mark E Smith looks like he gives zero f***s that he’s on TOTP as he wanders belligerently around the stage, sometimes referring to a piece of paper that presumably had some lyrics on it though I’m guessing he could have sang anything here and nobody would have challenged him on it. Someone certainly not going to challenge him on anything was Simon Mayo who declines the opportunity to make some barbed witticism in his link by just saying “Right…OK…thank you boys”. Not so smug now eh Mayo?

“I Want You” would peak at No 18 making it the band’s third biggest hit ever and one year on from the single’s release, it was used to soundtrack a Sony In Car Stereo advert to great effect.

And so to another old timer (though he was only 34 at the time of this broadcast). According to Simon Mayo he hadn’t been on TOTP for many years though by my calculation he was on as recently as 1992. Is two years many years? I think not. Morrissey (for it is he) was bang in form in 1994. This single – “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” – was the lead track from his fourth studio album “Vauxhall And I” which would prove to be his first chart topper since his debut “Viva Hate” in 1988. Indeed, TMYIMTCIG would become his first Top 10 single since “Interesting Drug” in 1989. However, no other singles released from the album made the Top 40 so was this a devoted fanbase at work desperate for new material? Fair play though, it’s a good song with a lovely, lilting chorus.

I wonder if new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill was aware of the tension between Morrissey and Mark E Smith when he booked both Manchester legends on the same show? Many people had fallen foul of Smith’s ire over the years including Mozza whom Smith always referred to as “Steven”. Oh to have been a fly on the wall of the Green Room/BBC bar for this show!

https://youtu.be/ucJfUTQWFHQ

There’s no shifting Mariah Carey from the No 1 spot as her version of Nilsson’s “Without You” stands strong at the top. It will go onto sell half a million copies and end up the 7th biggest selling single of 1993 in the UK. It would be Mariah’s only solo* chart topper over here until “All I Want For Christmas Is You” finally made No 1 in 2020 after years of trying.

*She did get to No 1 in 2000 when she joined forces with Westlife to cover “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins.

One of Ric Blaxill’s innovations for the show was to use the No 1 record slot to make predictions about which records would be entering the Top 40 the following week. These were displayed in a scrolling ticker tape along the bottom of the screen. Looking at the artists posited on this show, it hardly made TOTP a musical Nostradamus. All very obvious stuff (M People, Janet Jackson etc). That doesn’t stop Mr Smug himself from praising the show by saying all of last week’s predictions came true in his intro. Mayo really was insufferable.

The play out song this week comes from Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. Somebody on Twitter pointed out that “Glam Rock Cops” sounds an awful lot like “Parklife” by Blur. I think they may have a point although there’s no suggestion of plagiarism on either side as they were presumably written and recorded at roughly the same time? I think another artist beat them both to it by about 10 years anyway. “Steamhammer Sam” by Intaferon sounds like a “Parklife” prototype…

“Glam Rock Cops” peaked at No 24 and came from a collection of B-sides called “Starry Eyed And Bollock Naked”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Let The Beat Control Your Body	Of course not
2	Elvis Costello	Sulky Girl	Yes I did! For my wife though.
3	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
4	EYC	The Way You Work It	Never
5	Barbara Tucker	Beautiful People	Nah
6	Mötley Crüe	Hooligan’s Holiday	No
7	Beck	Loser	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Michael Bolton	Soul Of My Soul	As if
9	Inspiral Carpets / Mark E Smith	I Want You	Not the single but I have it on their Greatest Hits CD
10	Morrissey	The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get	Negative
11	Mariah Carey	Without You	It’s a no
12	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Glam Rock Cops	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/m001hyxl/top-of-the-pops-03031994

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.

https://youtu.be/9EHAo6rEuas

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.

https://youtu.be/chacdwFHC9A

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.

https://youtu.be/KAtL06fUyCc

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 12 NOV 1992

Posted on May 5, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s the 1,500th edition of TOTP and you know what, it feels like I’ve reviewed most of them in this blog! OK, obviously I haven’t but I have done every BBC4 repeat from 1983 to 1992 and counting. That’s a whole 10 years, about 400 shows and over 1 million words written! I must be mad!

Anyway, I’m carrying on for now so its time to clear my head and free my mind…with opening act En Vogue! They’re in the studio after being on video as a Breaker last week and deliver a pumped up, provocative performance in keeping with the importance of the message in their song “Free Your Mind”. Written in response to the Rodney King riots in LA, it borrows lyrically from Funkadelic’s “Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow”. The energy that the group bring to their performance here is matched by their collective spirit that sees each of the four members taking centre stage in turn. That’s how you open a show!

Sadly, that group unity wasn’t to last and in subsequent years the band’s line up went through so many comings and goings they made Sugababes look like U2. Then there were the lawsuits and legal challenges to the use of the name En Vogue that rivalled the ridiculous Bucks Fizz name saga. Seriously, just check out the History section of their Wikipedia entry. It’s exhausting!

“Free Your Mind” peaked at No 16.

So given this is a huge anniversary for TOTP, surely this edition will be a massive celebration of the show. Well, maybe but so far there’s a very forlorn looking balloon with 1500 on it behind presenter Mark Franklin who’s opening gambit to put us in a party mood is to give us some fairly basic TOTP trivia (who needed to know or was wowed by there having been 57 presenters up to this point?!). It reminds me of those The Apprentice candidates during the task where they have to put on a corporate away day event at Silverstone or at a brewery and act as tour guides.

Anyway, Franklin has some music to get us partying in the form of the nostalgia section and for the big day the producers have chosen “Baby Love” by The Supremes. As iconic songs go, this one is right up there with it being a concurrent UK and US No 1 and therefore making The Supremes the first Motown group to achieve a chart topping record in the former territory. It’s surely one of the most well known songs in the Motown catalogue.

The group were on tour in the UK at the time of this TOTP recording therefore allowing them to appear. The black and white film somehow lends it more credence as an historic tune. The towering beehive hairdos on display are quite something. Indeed, Diana Ross’s slight frame looks hardly capable of withstanding the weight of it. Although Ross was the one who would end up as the biggest star out of the group, the lives of other founding members Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard are also major stories in themselves. Indeed, they were paid tribute to in the play and film adaptation Dreamgirls with the characters of Effie White and Lorrell Robinson being based on Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson respectively.

Bringing the party mood down a few notches is Michael Bolton who is performing his version of “To Love Somebody” to promote his “Timeless: The Classics” album. I know it’s an obvious comment but the Bollers hair really was monstrous wasn’t it? If you’re going to have long hair, at least keep it in good condition. His has the texture of straw and looks like it’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Michael is up there on his lonesome with just the dry ice machine for company. There’s some sort of pool structure in the middle of the stage that makes the dry ice look like it’s flooding over. It’s like that scene with the three witches from Macbeth and a cauldron. Maybe Bolton was trying to cook up a spell for some hair conditioner.

“To Love Somebody” peaked at No 16.

The camera swings and we leave Michael Bolton and his bubbling cauldron to focus on Vanessa Paradis who is back in the studio to perform “Be My Baby”. After her lacklustre showing the other week, will she be able to give a more lively turn this time? It is a party after all. Well, Vanessa has clearly tried to jazz up her outfit for the occasion but it looks like Martin Fry caught her raiding his wardrobe halfway through and she’s only managed to snaffle his trousers. She does try to move about a bit more this time but she’s still left looking like she’s only just learned the song lyrics that afternoon and therefore hadn’t had time to work out any dance moves to go with the singing.

Despite continuing to record and release music until as recently as 2019, she never had another UK Top 40 hit. I wonder if her stage presence ever got any better?

Now here’s a band to light up a party! Admittedly not any party I’d want to attend but at least they’re in the right ball park. After converting Gerry Rafferty’s soft rock classic “Baker Street” into a dance anthem for those whose only dance steps were the nerd shuffle, Undercover have turned their attention to another daytime radio staple in Andrew Gold’s “Never Let Her Slip Away”. Now I have to admit to having quite the soft spot for Andrew. “Lonely Boy” is a fab song and “Thank You For Being A Friend” reminds me of watching Golden Girls in our tiny first flat in Manchester. Plus, he was in Wax with 10cc’s Graham Gouldman who had a couple of nifty pop tunes that I liked.

As for “Never Let Her Slip Away”, it had originally been a No 5 hit for Gold in 1978 and had been described by Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters no less as “the most beautiful piece of music ever written”. Wow! As for Undercover’s version, it’s in exactly the same style as their treatment of “Baker Street” which had found a level of popularity back then so I can’t really call them out for sticking to the formula but it was as lifeless as a Vanessa Paradis gig. That didn’t stop it equalling Gold’s chart peak of No 5 though.

Of course, if you are looking for a cover version of “Never Let Her Slip Away” then there’s always this:

Ah come on! A joke’s a joke but nobody’s laughing anymore. Is this the third time on the show for Ambassadors Of Funk and “Supermarioland”? This made Undercover look like Muse. How could the producers have put this on the 1,500th show?! Away with you!

We’ve finally got there. It felt at times like a journey with no end and it’s taken four years worth of TOTP repeats but we’ve reached Jason Donovan’s final UK Top 40 hit. It’s not quite his final appearance on the show as he’s on again in a couple of weeks but “As Time Goes By” was his last chart entry. Yes, it’s that “As Time Goes By” from the classic film Casablanca. A couple of things to say about this one straight off the bat. Firstly, why was Jason Donovan covering this iconic tune? Secondly, how on earth was this a suitable tune for such a milestone show?

Well, it came from Jason’s difficult third album “All Around The World” which was his first since leaving Stock, Aitken and Waterman and came out on Polydor. So little faith did the label have in their new charge that they licensed six of his old hits to add to the track listing to drum up some interest. Donovan was not impressed supposedly but then the public weren’t impressed by the album which was a commercial failure and would be his last studio album for 15 years. OK but why cover “As Time Goes By”? There’s a theory that it could be a shameless case of opportunism as there was a successful TV series of the same name on our screens at the time starring Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer that used the song as its theme tune but that could just be coincidence.

As for it being an odd choice for the 1,500th TOTP, well, as host Mark Franklin says, he was about to tour at the time so maybe there was some negotiation between Polydor and the producers to get him on the show to promote that. Also, he had been a very regular artist on the show over the past four years so maybe he was seen as a deserving choice as one of TOTP’s most prolific guests.

Clearly his new label were trying to restyle him away from his SAW puppet past and mould him into a modern day crooner. Their dastardly plan failed but perhaps watching on was a certain Simon Cowell who may just have thought that their was mileage in this idea. Two years later he would persuade actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn to cash in in their successful roles in ITV drama Soldier Soldier and record a version of “Unchained Melody” on his S Records label via BMG. It would become the biggest selling UK single of 1995. If only Jason Donovan had remained in Neighbours and not left in 1989 he might have pulled the crooner trick off. Oh hang on. Aren’t he and Kylie making an appearance in the forthcoming last ever episode of the Aussie soap? I don’t think I could stomach a second Jason Donovan pop career.

“As Time Goes By” peaked at No 26.

The camera pans once more this time ensuring that there’s a shot of a chandelier suspended from the studio ceiling in view. Has that been there every week or had it been rapidly erected especially for the 1,500th show? Anyway, as we move away from the chandelier the focus falls on the other stage where Charles And Eddie await their cue to perform “Would I Lie To You?”. As part of his introduction, Mark Franklin gives us some rudimentary maths to work out that over the years, TOTP has delivered over 900 hours of music from acts in the studio. Hmm. The script writers not doing Mark any favours there. He’s coming across like one of those office party bores you desperately don’t want to get stuck talking to.

Meanwhile, Charles And Eddie have gone from being a Breaker last week straight to No 2. A chart topping record now seemed inevitable. Although often referred to as one hit wonders, the duo did actually have a further three UK Top 40 chart entries though none got any higher than No 29 so that misconception is understandable. I have to admit that, probably like many other people, I was confused as to which one was which. Whichever one it was with the long hair had a very distinctive look; sort of like Lou Diamond Phillips in Young Guns as Chavez y Chavez the Mexican-American outlaw. Or possibly “I Got You Babe” era Cher.

Are Charles And Eddie still with us?

*checks Wikipedia*

Well, sadly Charles Pettigrew (who was the black guy) died of cancer in 2001 aged just 37. Eddie Chacon is still alive though and after working as a photographer after the duo split, returned to making music in 2020 with the ridiculously titled song “My Mind Is Out Of Its Mind”.

Now if you’re going to have a celebration to mark the 1,500th show and have been building up to the moment for weeks with nostalgia clips from the archive, then nothing screams “PAAARTY!” like Neil Diamond singing “Morning Has Broken” I always say! God almighty what were they thinking?! Look, I don’t mind a bit of Diamond. I own his Best Of that came out in 1992. Hell, I’ve even seen him live at the KC Stadium in Hull a few years back but this?! This is excruciating! It’s brutal. It’s…just vile.

I didn’t think the producers could have made a worse choice to celebrate their anniversary than Jason Donovan but somehow they managed it. The whole thing is just wrong in every possible way. Why “Morning Has Broken”? It was taken from his “The Christmas Album” so let’s just look at that a moment. That was the best title he could come up with for a Christmas album? “The Christmas Album”?! Come on! And is “Morning Has Broken” even a Christmas song?! It’s a Christian hymn that is often sung at funeral services! What else was on this Christmas album? “Angels” by Robbie Williams? OK, having checked the rest of the tracks were Christmas songs but I stand by my point.

Then there’s Neil himself. He’s wearing an orange open neck shirt with brown slacks! For the love of God! When the camera pans over the studio audience it alights on some faces that don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Some look genuinely distressed at what is unfolding in front of their eyes.

The track was eventually released as a single and somehow made the charts peaking at No 36. It was Neil’s only UK Top 40 hit of the whole decade. It should never, ever have been allowed to happen. Ever.

In a completely underwhelming 1,500th edition of the show, it’s somehow befitting that it ends with “End Of The Road” by Boyz II Men. Where were all the party tunes?

This was the last week at No 1 for the group but by the time the record finally disappeared it would have spent 26 weeks (exactly half a year) on the charts. I had to check that figure three times to be sure. It ended 1992 as the 6th best selling single in the UK.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	En Vogue	Free Your Mind	No, liked it though
2	The Supremes	Baby Love	Sure I have it on a Motown collection somewhere
3	Michael Bolton	To Love Somebody	Not you though Bollers – no
4	Vanessa Paradis	Be My Baby	Yes this is in the singles box though I think my wife actually bought it
5	Undercover	Never Let Her Slip Away	Nah
6	Ambassadors Of Funk	Supermarioland	Hell no!
7	Jason Donovan	As Time Goes By	And pigs might fly – Never!
8	Charles And Eddie	Would I Lie To You?	Nope
9	Neil Diamond	Morning Has Broken	Of course not
10	Boyz II Men	End Of The Road	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/m0016spn/top-of-the-pops-12111992

TOTP 29 OCT 1992

Posted on April 23, 2022 by 80stastic

Which event do you think of when you hear the word ‘comeback’? Is it a sporting occasion like Liverpool defeating AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final after being 3-0 down at half time? Or perhaps a celebrity comeback like TV and radio presenter Richard Bacon who resurrected his career after being the first *Blue Peter presenter to have their contract terminated mid season after a cocaine use scandal? Or could it be a music themed comeback like Take That’s return in 2006 ten years after they initially called it a day?

*They even made him hand in his Blue Peter badge!

What characterises all of these comebacks? Hard work? Undeniable talent? Plain old dumb luck? Who knows but happen they did and there’s a comeback theme of sorts to this TOTP show. Let’s have a look see as to who was doing the resurrection shuffle…

We start with surely one of the most unlikely of 90s music comebacks from Go West. Actually, I say unlikely but they’d already made one comeback this decade when they popped up out of nowhere in 1990 with the “King Of Wishful Thinking” single from the Pretty Woman soundtrack. Over two years on from that though, surely lightning wouldn’t strike twice for the duo?

Back in 1985, Go West had been one of the pop stories of the year as they clocked up four Top 40 hits including the No 5 hit “We Close Our Eyes”. Following up on that breakthrough success was a harder trick to pull off though and all their subsequent 80s releases failed to make the charts. I for one didn’t think they had another hit in them at that point let alone two but here was another bona fide chart entry in the form of “Faithful”. This sounded like “King Of Wishful Thinking” all over again to me but as if it had been through the wash by accident. All the fun had been removed by pop detergent leaving a starchy replica in its place. More than that though, it sounded so out of kilter with its chart peers. Never mind comeback, this was a real throwback.

“Faithful” was taken from Go West’s third studio album, the suitability named for a comeback theme “Indian Summer” which itself was a surprise No 13 hit. They really were making like Johnny Hates Jazz and turning back the clock. Peter Cox and Richard Drummie look like they’re enjoying themselves in this performance and talking of looking like, doesn’t Drummie resemble actor Stephen Mangan a bit? Just me then.

We’re sticking with this new fangled nostalgia section (can nostalgia be new fangled?!) to celebrate the forthcoming 1,500th TOTP show. This week’s clip from the archives is “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” by Leo Sayer. Leo was one of those artists who I was aware of from an early age though I didn’t really think of as a pop star as such but more of a light entertainment performer. I think it was him appearing on things like The Muppet Show maybe but he was a bona fide pop star with proper hit songs and everything. He had two consecutive No 1 singles in the US for a start. In a ten year period starting in 1973, he had fourteen chart hits including ten inside the Top 10 of which four went to No 2 and one topped the chart. These were serious numbers. After 1983’s “Orchard Road” peaked at No 16 though, the hits dried up and Leo was deemed irrelevant to the 80s and beyond. Marital and financial problems followed and Sayer’s public profile plummeted.

And then, in 2006, resurrection. A dance version of his song “Thunder In My Heart” by UK DJ Meck entitled “Thunder In My Heart Again” returned the curly haired one to the top of the charts, twenty-nine years after his previous one. That’s how you do a comeback! The single’s success restored Leo to the public eye and he was famous enough once more to bag a slot on Celebrity Big Brother in 2007. Here’s his VT before he entered the house:

Hmm. Not the most modest chap ever but that was nothing. Check his chat out below with fellow housemate Dirk Benedict:

https://youtu.be/5bMb8m5_H34

Oh. My. God. He was talking about himself in the third person! And the levels of self delusion! I love that he doesn’t seem to pick up on the fact that Benedict isn’t really listening to him at all. Just insane! Leo lost the plot on Day 10 and walked but luckily for him this was the series of the racist bullying scandal involving Jade Goody vs Shilpa Shetty which overshadowed his egotistical nonsense.

Sayer is still at it though and this year sees him taking his The Show Must Go On tour on the road.

No chances of the next act being on the comeback trail as this is only their second ever single! However they do provide a nice little link back to Leo Sayer’s aforementioned revival. I talk of Felix and their hit “It Will Make Me Crazy” with the link being DJ Meck who sampled their first single “Don’t You Want Me” for his 2007 hit “Feels Like Home”.

The performance here looks a bit minimalist compared to the usual dance act turn mainly because there’s no ponytailed dudes behind a bank of keyboards. Instead there’s a guy on a keytar. Nice.

“It Will Make Me Crazy” peaked at No 11.

I don’t think I can make any case for either of these two guys being comeback kings as both had been successful artists for many years before this single hit the charts. Anything that Zucchero released in the past decade had gone to No 1 in his native Italy however his only UK hit was his 1991 duet with Paul Young “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)”. As for Luciano Pavarotti, he’d been a renowned operatic tenor for years but had crossed over into the world of popular music via the BBC’s use of his rendition of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” for their coverage of the 1990 World Cup. The two came together for “Miserere” soon after which went to No 15 in our Top 40. Why was it a hit? Maybe the UK was in the last vestiges of the new found popularity that opera had imprinted on its consciousness following 1990? It did very little for me though.

Checking Zucchero’s Wikipedia entry, the list of artists he has collaborated with is extraordinary. I was scrolling for ages. It includes someone who also appears on this TOTP though I would not have guessed who from the running order for the show.

A definite comeback next from someone we last saw in the UK charts in 1988. Vanessa Paradis had caused quite the controversy when “Joe Le Taxi” made No 3 over here in 1988 mainly because she was just 15 at the time. Rewatching the video for the track, it does seem like it was a lot of fuss about nothing. She was hardly provocatively dressed wearing plain old jeans and a baggy jumper. It seems to be centred around the fact that she gyrated her hips when dancing. Anyway, after that hit there was zip from Vanessa though she continued to have hits in her native France. She also diversified by beginning an acting career and was also doing some modelling famously portraying a bird in a swinging cage in an advert for the fragrance Coco by Chanel.

By 1992, she was in a relationship with Lenny Kravitz who produced her third studio and first English language album. Simply entitled “Vanessa Paradis”, its lead single was “Be My Baby”. Nothing to do with The Ronettes, this was however an uptempo 60s revival with dashing strings and that pastiche sound that was so familiar that you were sure you knew the song already on first hearing.

As for the performance here, the staging seems to have been designed to look classy with the sweeping drapes backdrop but Vanessa herself would have definitely benefited from watching the aforementioned Ronettes in action. She’s ever so stiff and should have copied some of Ronnie Spector’s shimmy moves. As it was, she concentrated on the singing whilst the coordinated moves were left to her backing singers. “Be My Baby” was a sizeable hit all around Europe (No 6 in the UK) but subsequent singles released from the album failed to chart and she has not returned to our Top 40 in the intervening 30 years.

Some Breakers now starting with…oh no…not Michael Bolton again! Look, how many more times is he going to be on the show because that’s how many times my Mikey B secret has a chance of coming out! Either I have to go through it every time he’s on or you’ll have to go back into the blog archives for the full horror of it. And I’m not doing the former so…

He’s back in the charts with a cover version of the Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody” which was the lead single from his album of soul covers called “Timeless: The Classics”. In some territories (more specifically my head) it went by the title of “Money For Old Rope”.

Do you think he just pinched the idea to cover this track off Jimmy Somerville who recorded it to help promote his Best Of album of 1990? I’m just checking the track listing for the album and it includes his treatment of “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by The Four Tops, “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke and, in a startling lack of inspiration and creativity, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, only the most covered song of all time. This guy was just stealing a living wasn’t he?

The Bollers version of “To Love Somebody” peaked at No 16.

And so to that surprising artist that Zucchero collaborated with. Who had money on John Lee Hooker? Well, it was the legendary American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist who performed on the track “Ali d’oro” from the Italian’s 2001 album “Shake”. It was Hooker’s last ever recording before he died in the June of that year.

None of this explains why Hooker was in the UK Top 40 at this time. For the reason, you need look no further than jeans, specifically Lee Jeans as “Boom Boom” was being used to soundtrack their latest ad campaign. Does it count as a comeback? Well, maybe for the song rather than the artist as it was originally recorded in 1961, whilst Hooker also performed it in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, the only film he ever appeared in.

I knew a tiny bit about John Lee Hooker at this time, mainly due to the specialist music mornings we used to have at Our Price when rock/pop music was not allowed to be played on the shop stereo, only albums from genres like Folk, Country and of course Blues. Hooker’s critically lauded 1989 album “The Healer” would get a spin now and again and then there was his 1991 album “Mr. Lucky” which was a Recommended Release I think. I was hardly an expert but I could hear that “Boom Boom” was a tune Don’t take my word for it though. In 1995 it was included in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame’s list of ‘The Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll’.

No comeback going on with this one, this was pure, cynical bandwagon jumping with the particular flavour of the month being flogged to death being the craze for singles released off the back of video games. After “Tetris” by Doctor Spin came “Supermarioland” by Ambassadors Of Funk. Based obviously on the Nintendo game featuring that Italian plumber, this one at least had a credible name behind it. Whereas Doctor Spin was an Andrew Lloyd Webber project, Ambassadors Of Funk was the brainchild of DJ, producer and remixer Simon Harris of “Bass (How Low Can You Go)” fame. It was still a pile of shite mind.

The video (if you can call it that) is just dreadful. Filmed at Chessington World Of Adventures, it’s two dancers arseing about with someone in a Super Mario costume. Cheap doesn’t come into it. Ah, I’m done with this already. Game over!

Another comeback! Well, sort of. It’s a song that is resurrected rather than the artist. When Undercover had a massive hit with a danced up version of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” just weeks before, the blueprint for creating dance remixes of decidedly rock/pop songs was set. In its wake came this, a cover of “Run To You” by Bryan Adams. After 16 weeks at the top of the charts for “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” the year before, you would have thought we might all have had enough of Bry for a while but Rage proved otherwise. I say Rage but they were known as En-Rage in some European countries due to the pre-existence of a German heavy metal band with that name but it was the shorter moniker that was on the single in the UK.

Now I hated this probably because in my youth I’d bought the original Adams single (No, you f**k off!) but there seems to be a fair amount of online love for it and especially for singer Tony Jackson. Tony’s vocals were in demand as he’d previously performed as back up to the likes of Billy Ocean, Amii Stewart and Paul Young before his moment in the spotlight. Clearly the guy could sing based on this performance but why throw away your talents on such a shite song?! As ever, I was in the minority as sales of the single took it all the way to No 3.

Rage never managed another hit – they tried to repeat the trick with a dance version of “House Of The Rising Sun” by The Animals but it missed the Top 40 completely – whilst Tony Jackson sadly passed away in 2001.

Madonna was hardly in need of a comeback in 1992. Although it had been three years since her last studio album “Like A Prayer”, she’d certainly not been quiet in the intervening years. Her 1990 Best Of album “The Immaculate Collection” achieved mammoth sales in the UK whilst singles like “Justify My Love”, “Rescue Me” and “This Used To Be My Playground” were also big hits. And then came “Erotica”. The album came wrapped in controversy though much of that was generated by the simultaneous release of coffee table book Sex and its provocative images contained within. It would provide Madonna with five UK hit singles and although selling six million copies worldwide, that was half the amount of its predecessor.

My abiding memory of the album is that on the day of its release, I was working in the Our Price in Rochdale and the shop’s central heating had broken down. It was bloody freezing. I could see my breath despite being inside the shop. Consequently, no customers were coming in and the takings were awful. I think we took less than £400 all day which was pitiful in terms of what was expected. I recall putting up a display of “Erotica” in store but it made zero difference to sales. Obviously we played the album in store and I remember thinking that the track “Rain” would make a good choice of single. It was eventually released as the fifth and final single the following year. I knew I should have pursued a career in A&R (OK OK, I’m joking!)

Less of a comeback now and more of a second chance at an opportunity missed. When Erasure’s debut single “Who Needs Love Like That” failed to make the Top 40 in 1985, I for one couldn’t understand why. They were a synth pop duo in an age when people loved synth pop duos, they had a damned catchy tune and it was a guaranteed club floor filler. At least it was at my choice of nightclub back in 1985, The Barn in Worcester. I think that would have been where I first heard the track probably.

It was rereleased in 1992, seven years and eighteen chart hits later to promote Andy and Vince’s first Best Of album “Pop! The First 20 Hits”. The title is a bit confusing. I’ve just said they’d had eighteen Top 40 hits to this point not twenty. The explanation is that the album includes the duo’s first three singles that were not hits but not the “Breath Of Life” remix which had its own chart entry in addition to the standard version. Just to add to the confusion, it actually had twenty-one tracks on it as the final one is the “Hamburg Remix” of “Who Needs Love Like That” which is the version that was rereleased in ‘92. Got all that? Good.

This is one of those live by satellite performances, this time from Broadway, New York. It doesn’t really work for me as it’s in an empty theatre and despite all the over the top costumes that Andy and Vince – who finally enters the fray two thirds through in full drag queen get up – are wearing, it all seems rather flat.

“Who Needs Love Like That (The Hamburg Remix)” peaked at No 10. Oh and I’m not sure what host Mark Franklin is on about when he says it got to No 82 on first release in ‘85. It was definitely No 55.

There’s a new No 1 as Boyz II Men ascend to the top spot with “End Of The Road”. I think this may be the third time this has been on the show and they’ve got another two weeks at No 1 after this so I’m struggling for anything else to say about it. OK well, clearly the dry ice machine has got stuck in top gear and the lads are still having issues with their wardrobes. More than that though, what’s going on with the ‘stand up sit down’ routine? All four members of the group start off sat down on stools but one by one get up for their individual turn in the spotlight. I get that the song was structured to include solo spots for the guys but what were the stools for? Why didn’t they just perform standing up? It reminds me of that old TV show Blind Date where the prospective daters are asked a question by the picker and each one gets up to perform their answer.

At the end of the performance, host Mark Franklin appears and is also wearing a baseball cap Boyz II Men style. When I first visited New York in 1994, I came back with a baseball cap as a souvenir. Soon afterwards, my mate Robin came to stay at our flat in Manchester. We were heading out for a drink and I donned my baseball cap at which point Robin refused to go any further with me until I took it off. “Sir, you’re an Englishman!” were his words of admonishment. He was probably right to be fair.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Go West	Faithful	No
2	Leo Sayer	You Make Me Feel Like Dancing	No but I think my father-in-law had a soft spot for Leo and had a Best Of CD with it on
3	Felix	It Will Make Me Crazy	Nope
4	Zucchero and Luciano Pavarotti	Miserere	Nah
5	Vanessa Paradis	Be My baby	Yes! This is in the singles box though I think my wife bought it
6	Michael Bolton	To Love Somebody	Hell no
7	John Lee Hooker	Boom Boom	It’s a no
8	Ambassadors Of Funk	Supermarioland	Are you kidding me?!
9	Rage	Run To You	Another no
10	Madonna	Erotica	I did not
11	Erasure	Who Needs Love Like That	No but I have that Pop! The First 20 Hits album
12	Boyz II Men	End Of The Road	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/m0016cdj/top-of-the-pops-29101992

TOTP 20 FEB 1992

Posted on January 26, 2022 by 80stastic

One of the more pleasing by products of reviewing all of these TOTP repeats is that I get to reminisce about what I was doing back then. OK most of it is pretty dull and of no significance nor entertainment to anyone but myself but there are some that can be a shared experience. TV shows that I was watching at the time for example. Four days prior to the broadcast of this particular TOTP, a new US TV series premiered (that’s what we say now isn’t it? I’d have said started back in 1992) that was a brilliantly quirky comedy drama that pulled myself and my wife in hook, line and sinker. Anyone else remember Northern Exposure on Channel 4?

It was a fish out of water tale of newly qualified NY doctor Joel Fleischman being assigned as GP to the tiny town of Cicely to repay the state of Alaska for underwriting his medical education. There he struggles to adapt to his new surroundings as he encounters some marvellously eccentric characters like his receptionist Marilyn Whirlwind, aspiring movie director Ed Chigliak and millionaire business man Maurice Minnifield. It seemed ground breaking at the time and yet you hardly hear it mentioned these days and I have not seen it repeated since its original run from 1992 to 1995.

It also had an interesting soundtrack which I bought my wife for her birthday including tracks by Etta James, Booker T And The MGs and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Well that’s enough TV nostalgia. Back to the music and proving that grunge wasn’t the only musical movement going on in the 90s, here are one of the major players in the acid jazz genre. Now I thought that The Brand New Heavies were indeed ‘brand new’ bursting into the charts with their “Dream Come True” single. However, it turned out that they’d actually been in existence since the mid 80s and released the track “Got To Give” on the Cooltempo label. As the clock clicked over into the new decade, they signed to the Acid Jazz label and released “Dream Come True” but not the version we saw on this TOTP. No, the original release featured a completely different singer called Jaye Ella-Ruth. It failed to chart and Jaye was destined to become the Pete Best of the acid jazz scene, being replaced by N’dea Davenport. A re-recorded version of the track featuring N’dea was put back out and bingo! A No 24 chart hit and a slot on TOTP. This would be the first of twenty-five Top 40 hits and two Top 5 albums during the 90s.

I wasn’t a convert to acid jazz I have to say though my wife was quite into it buying two consecutive Brand New Heavies album releases. What exactly was acid jazz though? According to Wikipedia it combined funk, soul, hip hop, jazz and disco and was characterised by danceable grooves and long, repetitive compositions. What?! What sort of description is that?! Maybe a list of its exponents might help. Well, there were BNH label mates Corduroy, Mother Earth and James Taylor Quartet whilst over on Talkin’ Loud the roster of acts included Galliano, Incognito and Young Disciples. Does that make things clearer? I’m not sure. It must have been a broad church because acts like Jamiroquai, Stereo MCS and Us3 are also mentioned under the same umbrella. I think I’ll just use Brand New Heavies as my default definition of acid jazz. Seems easier.

https://youtu.be/lrdqkifAVPM

The ‘year zero’ revamp had gone against the show’s history and ditched a Top 40 rundown in favour of a brief run through of just the Top 10 but there’s a change to that this week in the form of scrolling graphics across the bottom of the screen detailing that week’s new chart entries. What was the point of that? Was it some lip service response to negative viewer feedback? Never mind not hearing the tracks, we don’t don’t even get the title of the hit, just the name of the artist and a chart number. Utterly pointless. It’s like travelling all the way to the Grand Canyon and not being able to see the view because of fog. Actually, I know people that happened to. Can you imagine the disappointment?

Now I thought the pronunciation of the next artist’s name was not up for debate. Everybody said Rozalla as Ro-zar-la but Tony Dortie goes for a different approach with Ro-za-la. It reminded me of my late father-in-law who insisted on referring to Paul Gascogne as Gar-za rather than Gaz-za. Anyway, however you pronounced it, the “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hitmaker was back with her latest single “Are You Ready To Fly”. Now she’s certainly not the first artist to stick to a winning formula but this really was just a rehash of her biggest hit just as her second single “Faith (In The Power Of Love)” had been. Talk about playing it safe. A hat trick of hits that were all basically the same song! Bah!

“Are You Ready To Fly” peaked at No 14.

https://youtu.be/SBSTQeYO9gM

It’s time for the weekly TOTP Macaulay Culkin spot! Well, at least it feels like he’s in permanent residence on the show at least. He’s on our screens again due to his featuring in the video for “My Girl” by The Temptations which has been re-released due to the film of the same name he’s starring in.

I never caught that flick and indeed, don’t think I’d ever seen any of the Home Alone films all the way through until the Xmas just gone when my son wanted to watch them. Consequently, I never understood what all the fuss was about Culkin. He just seemed really, really annoying. His brother Kieran on the other hand is currently flooring everyone with his character Roman Roy in HBO sensation Succession. Oh oh! I’ve strayed back in the world of TV drama but to be fair, I have nothing else left to say about The Temptations anyway. Job done.

I wrote quite a lot about Julia Fordham when she was a Breaker the other week as I wasn’t expecting her to actually make it into the TOTP studio but here she is meaning I’ve gone too early – damn it! OK, well you can’t fault her live vocal here as she sings “Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)”. Faultless. However, I have to say that it’s a bit of a dirge ain’t it? I mean, the backing singers can’t even be arsed to get off their stools at the back of the stage and do all their vocals while remaining seated. Julia could have taught them a thing or two about the art of the backing singer on TOTP from her days as a Wilsation supporting the beehived one herself Mari Wilson. Much more fun.

To be fair to Julia, she didn’t write the song so I don’t think I’m really dissing her by lamenting its soporific sound. It did manage to rise to No 19 in the charts. Not bad but it was a far cry from presenter Mark Franklin’s prediction that it would go Top 10.

https://youtu.be/uDOAH0bSLf0

Oh come on! This was a video ‘exclusive’ just last week wasn’t it and it’s on again already?! I talk of course of Bryan Adams and his single “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven”. This was the fourth of six singles released from his “Waking up The Neighbours” album and the only one (apart from “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously) to make the UK Top 10. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, did his record label A&M really think that amount of Adams material being foisted upon the public was justified? Had they never heard of the expression ‘less is more’?! Apparently not as the next release from Bry was 1993’s 14 track Greatest Hits package “So Far So Good”. Curiously, “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” wasn’t included on it but then, like Julia Fordham’s before him, the song was a bit of a duffer.

Talking of curious things, what a curiosity this next song was! Now I’m not being wise after the event but I genuinely did know the original 1983 single that this track was based around. “It’s A Fine Day” by Jane was an otherworldly sounding indie chart hit (it didn’t make the mainstream Top 40) and was basically an a capella delivery of a poem written by eccentric Manchester poet and musician Edward Barton. How did I know it? I’m not sure. I got my new music solely from Radio 1 back in 1983 so I must have heard it on there but who would have been playing it? Surely not the likes of Steve Wright? Peter Powell maybe? Or possibly the much missed Janice Long? Well, I heard it via someone and whilst I was never so avant garde at that age to buy it, its hypnotic weirdness was intriguing.

Fast forward nine years and probably not having given it a thought once in the intervening years, suddenly everyone was talking about it, or rather Opus III’s danceified version of it. Yes, inevitably, as it was the early 90s after all, somebody got hold of that 1983 leftfield outlier track, added a dance beat to it and shoved it out to the rave masses for consumption. Was nothing sacred? On reflection it puts me in mind of the film Reality Bites and the scene where Winona Ryder’s character has her documentary about her friends that she has spent so long crafting to portray them with integrity turned into some nasty, commercialised media soundbite by opportunistic new boyfriend Ben Stiller for his MTV-like cable channel. All of her original film’s soul is ripped out and replaced with flavour of the month bullshit designed to appeal to those riding the current zeitgeist.

https://youtu.be/R-U1cbX-y1E

So it was with Opus III though hats off to vocalist Kirsty Hawkshaw for her memorable delivery of the track. She struck a startling sight with her Mohawk hair topped off with…well whatever that was adorning her forehead. The touch of genius though was to get her to perform whilst rotating those…were they stress balls?… in her right hand giving the whole thing a mystical look which I guess was some sort of homage to the original track’s ethereal nature. I wasn’t a fan but at least it stood out against the rest of the dance anthems of the time peaking at No 5.

https://youtu.be/Xy-gkytR4Og

Oh do one Hucknall won’t you?! Simply Red again?! It was impossible to avoid the ginger one in 1991/92. His “Stars” album topped the best seller chart for both those years and daytime radio was all over him. “For Your Babies” was the third of five singles released from the album. That means just two more singles to go (and associated TOTP appearances) and we’ll be free of Mick for years as Simply Red won’t have any new material out until 1995. Come on! We can do this!

One of the more memorable songs of 1992 next and certainly the most relentlessly cheery. As Mark Franklin advises us, “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice came out the year before but nobody noticed (I didn’t). However, a remix by producer de jour Drizabone initiated another shot at the charts and this time it hit gold going all the way to No 2 in the UK Top 40. I’m not sure how different the versions were. Hang on. I’ll check…

*checks out Spotify*

Well, unless I haven’t actually been listening to the ‘91 original then I can’t hear too much difference. The album version does have a rap in it which the single version doesn’t but the song’s whole charm is that almost scat like ‘de de de de, do do do’ hook which dominates both the original and the remix.

“I Love Your Smile“ was manna from heaven for mainstream daytime radio, perfect for trying to put a lift in the listener’s day and a spring in their step. There was an album it came from called “Inner Child” but none of the other singles taken from it came anywhere near the Top 40. Was “I Love Your Smile” just too hard to follow up? Was it so perfectly radio shaped that any attempt to repeat the trick was doomed to fail?

As Tony Dortie says at the song’s end, Shanice was a Motown artist but he uses that reference to name check another Motown act that he tips for the top – Boyz II Men. He was certainly better at chart predictions than his mate Mark Franklin.

https://youtu.be/TMmKKp9dcBg

It’s those pesky Breakers next which make loads of work for me out of minimal screen time. I’m really starting to hate this feature. I wouldn’t mind but the TOTP producers’ choices for inclusion in it don’t stack up. Many of them are never seen/heard on the show again presumably because their subsequent chart placings didn’t justify further appearances. By logical extension they can’t have been much of a ‘happening tune’ (their words not mine) in the first place.

Exhibit 1 m’lud. “Steel Bars” by Michael Bolton. This was the fifth and final single from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and was co-written by Bob Dylan. This unlikely collaboration stinks of cynicism to me. Was this purely about the money for Dylan? Was his own stuff not selling too well at this point so he teamed up with an artist who was shifting millions of units? I mean, the song is pretty cruddy and surely not one that Bob would be that proud of. Look at this lyric for example:

Steel bars wrapped all around me, I’ve been your prisoner since the day you found me

What a stinker! So much of a stinker in fact that this was one of those Breakers that never made it back onto the show. And rightly so.

So what were Madness doing back in the charts? Their cover of Labbi Siffre’s “It Must Be Love” had been a No 4 hit in 1981 so why it’s reappearance in 1992? Well, it was to promote a Greatest Hits album of course. “Divine Madness” was that album and a very successful one, going to the very top of the charts. The huge public reaction to the album convinced the band to reform for a live gig promoted as Madstock. The decibels and vibrations at that gig were so loud that they caused nearby tower blocks to shake.

Of the 42 Madness singles, this one has stood the test of time better than most I would suggest. Not because it’s their best track (to my ears there are loads more worthy of that accolade) but something about it still resonates to the point that it must be one of their most played on the radio. Back in 1992, it was a welcome distraction to all those dance anthems. Talking of which…

…it’s another one of those ubiquitous dance anthems (and also one of those Breakers we never saw again). N-Joi had already had one major hit with ‘91’s reissue of…erm…”Anthem” but they were back for more in ‘92 with “Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)”. Yeah, sorry but this is all bells and whistles rave nonsense and did nothing for me then or now. Horrid. Wikipedia tells me that one of N-Joi’s members was called Mark Franklin. Hang on a minute. Surely not?

No it can’t be that Mark Franklin as he says of the Breakers that his money is in Michael Bolton and not N-Joi. Mark Franklin showing off his chart prediction skills there again. Here’s the chart peaks of those Breakers:

Madness: No 6
N-Joi: No 12
Bollers : No 17

And so to the new No 1 and it was a song that would be one of the biggest sellers off the year. “Stay” was of course written for Shakespear’s Sister by Siobahn Fahey’s then husband Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. Want to hear his version. No? Tough. Here it is…

Quite different really. More of a gospel track than the haunting and haunted goth spectacle that was Shakespear’s Sister’s version. It’s worth checking out “The Dave Stewart Songbook” album. Some interesting stuff on there. I especially liked his original of “Ordinary Miracle”. Vastly superior to the version by Sarah McLachlan (there’s that surname again) that was used in the film Charlotte’s Web.

We’ve got weeks of “Stay” at No 1 so that’ll do (as the farmer said in that other famous pig flick Babe) for now apart from adding that it’s still hard to watch this performance and not be bowled over by the difference in vocal quality between Marcella Detroit and Siobahn Fahey.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Brand New Heavies	Dream Come True	No but my wife had the album
2	Rozalla	Are You Ready To Fly	I wasn’t, no
3	The Temptations	My Girl	Nah
4	Julia Fordham	Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)	Nope
5	Bryan Adams	Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven	I did not
6	Opus III	It’s A Fine Day	No – give the original any day
7	Simply Red	For Your Babies	Never!
8	Shanice	I Love Your Smile	Just too perky for me
9	Michael Bolton	Steel Bars	See 7 above
10	Madness	It Must Be Love	No but I have that Divine Madness Best Of
11	N-Joi	Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)	On yer bike!
12	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	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/m0013mbs/top-of-the-pops-20021992

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My memories of 90s chart music

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