Michelle Gayle

TOTP 07 FEB 1997

We’re in the midst of a huge run of ‘golden mic’ hosts in these TOTP repeats. So far in 1997, the only Radio 1 DJ to have presented the show is Nicky Campbell back at the start of January. Since then we’ve had Rhona Cameron, Phil Daniels, Noddy Holder and in the next three shows we’ll see Peter Andre, Ant & Dec and Ian Wright before Jo Whiley waves the flag for Radio 1 again on 7th March. For this week though we have Ardal O’Hanlon aka Father Douglas Maguire from Father Ted. A Christmas special for that show (the one with the lingerie department scene) had recently aired so Ardal’s profile was in the ascendancy at the time. His approach to hosting is to claim propriety for the charts for this week and therefore TOTP as well and he pulls it off successfully I think.

The opening act are The Supernaturals who were a sort of nearly men of Britpop. Hailing from Scotland, they’d done the ‘paying their dues’ route of touring to create a fan base and independently releasing their early material until they were eventually picked up by major label Food in 1995. They then did a load more touring but not as headline act in their own tour but supporting the likes of Dodgy, Ash, Menswear, Sleeper, The Bluetones and in a rather unlikely move Tina Turner (must have been another support artist in after them surely?). Putting in the miles on the road paid off when their second single release “Lazy Lover” pierced the Top 40 peaking at No 34. The follow up was “The Day Before Yesterday’s Man” which was a nice play on words and an incredibly catchy bit of piano led but guitar based rock/pop. Despite this TOTP appearance though, it would only make No 25 in the charts. A re-release of their debut single “Smile” was deemed necessary to try and build on their first hit which it did but, despite being perhaps their best known tune, could only make it two places higher up the charts. Their album “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” did go Top 10 (just) but that would be the band’s commercial peak and it was a case of diminishing returns after that. Why weren’t they bigger than they were? Was it a case of bad timing with their arrival on the scene coming just as Britpop was burning out? Were they ahead of their time? They may not thank me for the comparison but were they a prototype Scouting For Girls? Or were they just always destined to be the bridesmaid and not the bride? For my part, I liked them and even bought their album though it was a few years after the event in a sale in a record shop in Madrid bizarrely whilst on holiday there.

After splitting in 2002, they reformed in 2012 and are still an ongoing entity today. If you think you don’t know or remember them, you might actually know some of their songs by osmosis as a number of them have been used to soundtrack advertising campaigns for the likes of Sky Movies, Arnold Clark Automobiles and Smile bank (guess which song they used for that one!). They’ve also featured in films and TV shows such as Shooting Fish, Hollyoaks, Clarkson’s Car Years, Fast Food and Homes Under The Hammer. With such demand to licence their work, maybe they aren’t the nearly men I thought they were.

When you think of Michelle Gayle, who do you think of? Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders? Or perhaps as half of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly from her time in Grange Hill? Or the rather accomplished singer that she turned out to be during her brief music career? It perhaps should be the latter as she probably doesn’t get the credit she deserves for the decent stab she made of it. Sure, her best known song “Sweetness” was a bit sleight and throwaway but it was bright, bubbly and fun. Some of her other hits weren’t your average soap star turned pop star fare; she was no Stefan Dennis! No, my impression is that she took it seriously and wanted to be taken seriously rather than giving this opportunity her existing fame had afforded her a whirl. And some of her songs were OK. Take this one – “Do You Know” – for example. It’s a smooth as silk, sleekly produced R&B/pop song that was perfect for daytime radio and Michelle co-wrote it.

So why didn’t her time as a pop star last longer? I think it was to do with the perception of her as a singles artists as opposed to one who could shift lots of albums. She clocked up seven chart hit singles (including two inside the Top 10) but her two studio albums failed to sell in copious amounts peaking at Nos 30 and 17. She was also unlucky with record company machinations. After leaving RCA after her second album she joined EMI but a third album she recorded the them was never released. There was then an attempted comeback in 2004 when another album went unreleased after her label folded. She has had better luck and more success after becoming an author and a return to acting but this time treading the boards at the theatre. In 2023, she made a surprise if very fleeting return to her pop star days by appearing on stage with Louise at a Shepherd’s Bush gig singing her hit “Sweetness”.

So how is Ardal doing? Not bad actually. He has resisted doing a turn in character as Father Dougal Maguire whilst sneaking in some Father Ted references (“we’ll be having an exclusive from the British band Bush who are huge in America but very small here”) and channeling the spirit of Dougal by projecting the image of a man who is nominally in charge of the show but who doesn’t really have any control or know what’s going on (“we’ll be having some music, some counting, young people screaming and here’s Michelle Gayle singing a song…”). In his segue for the next video, he doesn’t hold back in his distaste for the duo involved by saying he doesn’t know how they got into his charts and then appearing to have had headphones on for the duration of it when the track is over. To be fair to Ardal, he had a point. “I Finally Found Someone” by Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand was hardly down with the kids was it?

Taken from the soundtrack to Babs’s latest film The Mirror Has Two Faces (which I’ve never even heard of let alone seen), it’s perhaps what you would expect if you put these two together to record a song for a romantic comedy/drama – a big, rather overwrought ballad that ticks all the boxes of cinematic requirements. It wasn’t for me though Bry’s raspy rock voice does blend better than expected with the more refined tones of Babs. However, I’m not sure Adams is at his best when in the vicinity of movie soundtracks – often pilloried for that Robin Hood song, he was also part of the unholy trio that also included Rod Stewart and Sting that sicked up the bilious “All For One” from The Three Musketeers movie. “Have You Ever Really Lived A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco was similarly awful and then there’s this. Barbra and movies, on the other hand, are synonymous with each other. Tell me this though. How have I, in 2025 and at 56 years of age, only just noticed how she spells her name?!

And now for something completely different. I say completely different but, although the year had changed, the make up of the charts hadn’t as they were still home to multiple dance hits of which “Passion” by Amen! UK was just one of many. The correlation between banging tunes filling the dance floors and filling up the Top 40 was still dominant as the decade turned the final corner and headed for the finish. Who was buying these records in the shops? Was it club goers who wanted to recreate that top night they’d had last weekend in their living room? Was it DJs needing a track to complete their next set playlist? Most dance records of this time left me cold but I could appreciate their appeal and power in the setting of a nightclub but not so much being played at home. Maybe punters were practicing their dance moves in the safety of their homes before daring to present them to fellow club goers? Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about at all? Anyway, these are the facts for this one. The guy behind it was Irish DJ Paul Masterson who would go on to have more hits under the pseudonym of Yomanda and it was released on the painfully hip Deconstruction label reaching No 15 in the charts. It made No 40 when rereleased in 2003.

Another dance tune though this one is completely different to Amen!UK. Nuyorican Soul was a side project by American garage house producers ‘Little’ Louis Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez aka Masters at Work. This single – “Runaway” – was a fairly faithful cover of a 70s disco track by the Salsoul Orchestra featuring the vocals of Loleatta Holloway who supposedly is the most sampled female singer in popular music history (remember the whole Black Box/“Ride On Time” debacle?). Vega and Gonzalez didn’t sample Loleatta in their version though choosing instead to have Puerto Rican singer songwriter India do the actual heavy lifting vocally. Some 90s production values made the whole thing sound retro yet current and it was duly a hit going to No 24 in the UK Top 40 and No 1 in our Dance Chart.

After a rather oblique Father Ted reference earlier when he referred to Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand as “Lenny* and Petula Clarke”, Ardal O’Hanlon veers off into random-ville for his next link by name checking Toyah Wilcox, noting that it’s been 427 weeks since she’s been in the charts? That can’t be actually true can it? 427 weeks is what? Just over eight years. Right, I’m checking Toyah’s discography…

…Oh My God! He was nearly right. In fact, Ardal underestimated Toyah’s absence from the charts. Her last visit to the Top 40 was in May 1985 so a gap of nearly 12 years by this point! “Why can’t you be more like En Vogue?” he asks Toyah looking straight into the camera before we get the video for “Don’t Let Go (Love)” which is back up to No 5 this week. However, this would be the final time that the group would visit the UK Top 10. Good song as it is, it’s another of those tracks that has brackets in the title for no discernible reason. They don’t sing the word ‘love’ in the chorus – in fact, that word doesn’t appear in the lyrics at all (though ‘lovers’ does). For balance, Toyah wasn’t adverse to the use of brackets in her song titles. There’s “Be Loud, Be Proud (Be Heard)”, “Don’t Fall In Love (I Said)” and the marvellously ridiculous “Latex Messiah (Viva La Rebel In You)”.

*Recurring character Bishop Brennan’s first name was Leonard or Len as Father Dougal would call him much to his annoyance.

And here it is again. The problem for TOTP producers as to what to do with an almost instrumental dance hit. On this occasion it is The Orb with “Toxygene” and the decision on staging for their performance was to have the duo (Alex Paterson and Andy Hughes I think) each sit on a revolving mini platform tinkering with their keyboards and equipment set up. It looks ill-conceived at best and laughable at worst. What astonishes me is why the band themselves agreed to do it. Did they really think this was the best way to promote their single? Wasn’t there a video to go with it that could have been shown thereby killing two birds with one stone – a better showcase for the track and a solution for the show about how to stage it?

The track itself was supposed to be a remix of Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygène 8” from his “Oxygène 7–13” album though it doesn’t really sound anything like it at all which apparently Jarre wasn’t too happy about. I’ve wondered why there weren’t more uses of Jarre’s work in 90s dance tracks (there could well have been for all I know but this is the first I’ve come across) seeing as he was The Godfather of electronic, ambient and new-age sounds. There were people I knew at school who swore by him though it didn’t do much for me and my youthful pop sensibilities. Maybe Jarre’s reaction to The Orb’s treatment of “Oxygène 8” was a reason why there weren’t more samples of his work in existence.

Next an example of that curious phenomenon of when a UK artist is huge in America but can’t get arrested in their own country. In the 80s we had The Escape Club and Wang Chung. Bush were the 90s equivalent. Their debut album “Sixteen Stone” went Top 5 in the US but could only peak at No 42 over here. However, they finally broke through in the UK with the lead single from their second album “Razorblade Suitcase” which was called “Swallowed”. Listening to it now, it really does sound like a Nirvana tribute act, an accusation that was levelled at them constantly back then. I thought it was OK but I was never going to fall for them hook, line and sinker. I’m guessing though that their record company would hope that some female punters would do exactly that for lead singer Gavin Rossdale. They were out of luck if they did as he was going out with Gwen Stefani of No Doubt at the time and they would later be married for 13 years. No doubt we’ll be seeing…erm… No Doubt on these TOTP repeats very soon.

In the last post, I talked about “Walk On By” being one of the most recorded songs in history. However, “Ain’t Nobody” must be up there as well. Originally recorded by Rufus and Chaka Khan, it has also been recorded by Jaki Graham, Scooter, Richard X versus Liberty X and had been in the charts as recently as 1995 courtesy of Diana King. The there’s this version by LL Cool J. Recorded for the soundtrack of the Beavis And Butt–Head Do America film, it was a somewhat surprising No 1 in my opinion. It wasn’t as big a hit anywhere else in the world (including the US apart from their Rap Chart) and I don’t recall the film being a big hit over here (though Wikipedia tells me it did good business in America) so I’m not quite sure why it proved so popular in the UK. LL Cool J’s next hit also came from a film soundtrack as he was one of the artists on “Hit ‘Em High (The Monstars’ Anthem)” from Space Jam.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Supernaturals	The Day Before Yesterday’s Man	No but I had their album
2	Michelle Gayle	Do You Know	No
3	Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand	I Finally Found Someone	Never
4	Amen! Uk	Passion	Not my bag
5	Nuyorican Soul featuring India	Runaway	Negative
6	En Vogue	Don’t Let Go (Love)	Nope
7	The Orb	Toxygene	I did not
8	Bush	Swallowed	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
9	LL Cool J	Ain’t Nobody	Nah

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/m0026zt7/top-of-the-pops-07021997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 24 AUG 1995

Posted on February 12, 2024 by 80stastic

And the winner is…The Battle of Britpop has been fought and the outcome declared. On the Sunday before this TOTP aired, Mark Goodier announced the Top 40 chart on Radio 1 and that Blur had come out on top of this epic tussle that had captured the attention of the media and the public alike. As I recall, he did the usual rundown one place early so that he could make a big deal of who was No 2 and, by extension, reveal the No 1 at the same time.

Whether by accident or design, the host of the TOTP that reflected this particular chart was Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in a ‘golden mic’ guest slot. Whatever the circumstances behind it, there seemed to be something satisfying and fitting about his presence on the show; his dry sense of humour somehow deflating the media constructed frenzy around the Oasis / Blur rivalry.

Before we‘re given a glimpse of Jarvis though, we get perhaps the most well remembered (by me at least) of the top of the show direct-to-camera pieces – Blur riding a milk float into camera shot and bassist Alex James declaring that they were No 1 and would be camping it up on Top of the Pops later on before doing an exaggerated “ooh matron” gesture. I wonder who’s idea that was? There was a milk float in the video for the single so I guess there was a valid connection there but you couldn’t imagine Oasis pulling such a stunt. Maybe that was the point though – to differentiate themselves from their Northern rivals. “We’re nothing like them you know!”.

To start the show though we have…yep…a dance track. Of course we do. It is 1995 after all. This one comes courtesy of Clock who had hit upon the cheesy but successful formula of recording Eurodance flavoured versions of old hits. They’d already taken versions of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and Tag Team’s “Whoomph! (There It Is)” into the Top 10 and would accelerate their output throughout the decade with covers from the catalogue of artists such as The Four Seasons, The Jacksons, KC and the Sunshine Band and Hot Chocolate. However, this one – “Everybody” – they wrote themselves…sort of. There’s a sample of “Let’s Start The Dance” by disco artist Bohannon in there as well as a vocal sound from Norman Cook’s sample library collection “Skip To My Loops”. However, the lyrics (if you can call them that) were the work of Clock members Stu Allan and Pete Pritchard.

It sounds like a poor man’s 2 Unlimited to me but the one thing that did stand out was that elongated cry of “Everybody!”. Surely that was influenced by this…

Someone noted on social media after this TOTP repeat aired that the winner of The Battle of Britpop should have been neither Blur nor Oasis but The Charlatans. They had a point. “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” is better than either “Country House” or “Roll With It” to my ears. Indeed, it was the NME’s Single of the Week over either of those two more celebrated releases.

I’d not really been into Tim Burgess and co when they first broke through as part of the whole “baggie” scene at the start of the 90s but they were really getting into their stride by this point and I was swayed. From “Can’t Get Out Of Bed” to the end of the decade was their imperial phase in my book. I wasn’t the only person of this opinion. The eponymous album this single came from topped the chart as did their next “Tellin’ Stories”. Just typing that has made me realise how many of the band’s songs and albums have a ‘g’ missing from their titles. Aside from the two above, there’s also “Crashin’ In” and “Just Lookin’”. Not that it’s a big deal. Just sayin’.

Tim Burgess is on record as saying that “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” was the band trying to sound like “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin. Well, I never got the boat going to Led Zepp island (I know, sacrilege and all that) so I couldn’t comment on that but there is another song that I’ve become aware of fairly recently that it has a resemblance to. At the start of 2022, I made a New Year resolution to try and listen to a song that I didn’t know every day for 12 months. It didn’t have to be a ‘new’ song per se, just ‘new to me’. I didn’t quite hit my target but I still managed to amass a playlist with over 10 hours of songs on it. One of them was this 1973 John Lennon track from the album “Mind Games”:

If you go online and search for “Human Nature” by Madonna, you’ll find lots of articles about the meaning behind the song and of course plenty about that video. I myself added a few words on the subject in a previous post the first time the promo was shown on TOTP. There’s lots of opinion about the song being a retort to those who criticised her for being overtly sexual in her Sex book and “Erotica” album and agreeing with Madge for rightly pointing out that she wouldn’t have got such a hard time for exploring sexuality if she were a man. However, I quite like Jarvis Cocker’s succinct summing up of it all in his intro as he whispers:

“Express yourself, don’t repress yourself”

Then in his down to earth Sheffield drawl he says:

“According to Madonna’s new video that involves kind of perving around in a giant ice cube tray. Anyway, have a look for yourselves while we count down numbers 40 to 11 inclusive.”

He pretty much nails it I think. I love the way he adds the word ‘inclusive’ at the end. There’s no need for him to do that and most presenters wouldn’t have but it’s a good example of Jarvis’s idiosyncrasy.

There’s more wonderful celebrity piercing wit from Cocker next as we get the rather obtrusive and unnecessary video piece from Diana Ross. In a flat, monotone and off screen voice we hear Jarvis say simply “There now follows an important message” before we cut to Ross sat on the bonnet of a car who informs us that she’s in Detroit at the Motown Sound Exhibition and will be performing on TOTP tonight. And that’s it. Did we really need that clip shoe horning into the show? “Cheers Di” lampoons Jarvis before his next intro. “Wow. What can I tell you about this next act. Not a lot really as I don’t know anything about them” he advises. Genius comic delivery!

In truth though, Jarvis should have had better knowledge of “Move Your Body” by Xpansions 95 not least because it had already been a substantial hit previously. Yes, it’s time for another reactivated dance hit, a practice that dominated the charts in 1995. Just like hits from JX, Felix and The Original which had all been on the show in recent weeks, this was yet another dance track getting a second chart life. Initially a No 7 hit in 1991 as “Elevation (Move Your Body)”, it would peak at No 14 four years later. Xpansions was a vehicle for producer Phil Drummond whose real name, unbelievably was Phillip Phillips – no wonder he changed it. Together with actress and singer Sally Anne Marsh – wait, didn’t she play Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?!

*checks internet*

My bad. That was Sally Ann Howes. I thought the person on stage looked remarkably young in 1995 to have starred in a film that came out in 1968! Anyway Phil and Sally Anne Marsh proved a prosperous partnership. The latter had pop music form having been in the early 90s girl group Faith Hope & Charity alongside The Word presenter Dani Behr and she would add her vocals to Deconstruction label dance act Ariel as well as carving out a successful acting and voice over artist. The track itself followed a formula of the title lyric being repeated continuously over a piano house riff and did nothing for me but, as Jarvis said, went down a storm in the clubs. Is it just me or does Sally Anne have a look of “Immaculate Collection” era Madonna about her? Incidentally, Phil Drummond also went under the pseudonym of Marradonna.

With the cat out of the bag four days earlier, there seemed little point in TOTP trying to eek out any morsel of tension surrounding who was No 1 (hence the Blur piece at the top of the show) so we get Oasis slap bang in the middle of the show at No 2 with “Roll With It”. Diplomatically, Jarvis doesn’t take any sides declaring the record buying public the winner having access to so much great music. Obviously the Manc lads weren’t going to drag themselves into the studio for another performance after they’d lost out to Blur who were there in person so we get a replay of their turn from last week.

“Roll With It” would hold at No 2 for a second week and spend a further two within the Top 10. Like all the band’s other singles, it would have a protracted chart life spending 49 weeks within the Top 100. Not bad for a song who the person who wrote it once described as “shit”.

Taking the show in another direction completely now is Björk who is the first of three consecutive female solo artists on the show though that’s about all they have in common with each other. To be fair, is anybody else similar to Björk? Take this single “Isobel” for example. It’s been described by critics as a modern fairy tale, a fable and by Simon Williams in the NME as:

“Where tribal rhythms spiral into enormous swathes of galloping pop fluffiness”
Williams, Simon (10 June 1995) “Long Play” NME .p.46.

Well, quite. I haven’t got the words to rival Mr Williams so I’ll just say that this one was too divorced from the mainstream for me and that I’m surprised that Björk was given a slot on the show two weeks running, especially as it only made No 23 in the UK charts.

Think of the BRITS 1996 and inevitably the Jarvis Cocker / Michael Jackson incident comes to mind. Jarvis protesting at Jackson’s Christ mimicking performance of “Earth Song” by running across the stage and wafting his fully clothed bottom in Jacko’s direction followed by a complete overreaction from his security team and Cocker being questioned by police before being released. What I hadn’t clocked before rewatching this TOTP was the jibe that Jarvis makes about the King of Pop before introducing a satellite exclusive performance by Diana Ross saying that she’d influenced a lot of people including “Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon for one”. Ooh! Is it possible that Jacko was aware of this remark and took revenge via his security detail on Cocker at the BRITS six months later? Nah. Surely not.

Jarvis does accord Ross some respect by referring to her as Miss Diana Ross (the Miss is obligatory). Her song though deserves zero acclaim as it’s a right old stinker. Ross’s back catalogue features some stone cold classics but “Take Me Higher” is certainly not one of them. It sounds like such a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the dance obsessed 90s, as if her management had shown her a video of Lisa Stansfield and told her to do her best impersonation of her. She does her best to sell the song in this performance with her engaging, face wide smile but it doesn’t win me over. She should have stuck to the big ballads that brought her success in the early 90s like “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” and “One Shining Moment”. “Take Me Higher” peaked at No 32.

OK so when I said earlier they there was nothing in common between Björk and the two female solo artists that followed her, I forgot about the acting. The Icelandic singer has featured in a number of movies perhaps most famously Lars Bon Trier’s Dancer In The Dark whilst (Miss) Diana Ross won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues as well as starring in Mahogany and The Wiz. Then there’s Michelle Gayle who’s on the show with her fifth consecutive Top 40 hit “Happy Just To Be With You”. Michelle, of course, was in Grange Hill (as part of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly no less) and as Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders. Her later career included stage roles in Beauty and the Beast, the Dusty Springfield musical Son of a Preacher Man and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Back in 1995 though, music was Michelle’s priority and she was pretty successful at it too. Six of her seven UK chart entries went Top 20 including two Top Tenners.

“Happy Just To Be With You” borrows heavily from the bassline of “Good Times” by Chic but it’s not on its own – the whosampled.com website says that it’s been sampled in 227 songs although Michelle’s single interpolates rather than samples it. It’s a pretty competent R&B / pop song I have to say and Michelle does a good job of promoting it.

In the end it wasn’t even that close. Blur won ‘The Battle of Britpop’ with their “Country House” single with room to spare selling 274,000 copies to the 216,000 units shifted by “Roll With It”. However, it’s generally perceived that Oasis may have lost the battle but won the war. The numbers back up that view. “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” would go 17 x platinum in the UK whilst Blur’s “The Great Escape” would achieve 3 x platinum sales. In February 1996, there was almost a repeat of The Battle of Britpop when the two bands released singles from their albums within a week of each other (presumably both camps were wise enough not to put themselves through it all again). Oasis’s track was the iconic “Don’t Look Back In Anger” whilst Blur released “Stereotypes”. At the Our Price in Stockport where I was working we sold 279 copies of Oasis in week one. And Blur? We sold 13. That’s thirteen. Rumour has it that Damon Albarn fled to Iceland to get away from the onslaught of Oasis’s album which he heard everywhere he went.

But how are their legacies viewed now? Both bands would achieve further No 1 singles and albums (although I believe Oasis had more). For me, and I was more Oasis than Blur, the former went on longer than they should have and possibly made an anachronism of themselves. Despite all predictions to the contrary, if anything Liam’s post Oasis output has been more interesting than Noel’s (I’ve never really been into his High Flying Birds). Indeed, Liam’s recent collaboration with ex-Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is meant to be excellent. As for Blur, Damon’s virtual band project Gorillaz has produced some brilliant material and shows much more imagination than cranking out rock songs for an ageing audience à la Noel. Meanwhile, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s solo career has produced some really interesting albums leading Noel Gallagher no less to describe him as

“One of the most talented guitarists of his generation”
Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop. Bonus interviews

Oh and Alex James wearing an Oasis t-shirt in this performance – was that an olive branch extended towards their rivals or a dig at them?

The play out video is “Warped” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and guess what? I don’t remember this one either! For the record, this was the lead single from the band’s “One Hot Minute” album and made No 31 on the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	Everybody	Never!
2	The Charlatans	Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over	No but I have their Melting Pot Best Of
3	Madonna	Human Nature	Nah
4	Xpansions 95	Move Your Body	Nope
5	Oasis	Roll With It	YES!
6	Björk	Isobel	I did not
7	Diana Ross	Take Me Higher	As if
8	Michelle Gayle	Happy Just To Be With You	No
9	Blur	Country House	No but I had the Great Escape album
10	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Warped	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/m001w2m3/top-of-the-pops-24081995

TOTP 25 MAY 1995

Posted on November 18, 2023 by 80stastic

With one notable exception, the line up for this TOTP is one of the most underwhelming and uninspiring I’ve seen for a while. An horrendous No 1 and a load of dance tunes I don’t remember and probably wouldn’t like if I did. At least it’s a ‘golden mic’ presenter slot with an interesting choice of host(s) this week. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring were a comedy duo who met at Oxford University and were contemporaries of the likes of Emma Kennedy. After writing for Chris Morris’ Radio 4 comedy vehicle On The Hour, they switched to Radio 1 writing and starring in Fist Of Fun which would eventually transfer to TV via BBC2. The first series had only just finished by the time of this TOTP so Lee and Herring’s profile was presumably pretty high and bestowed upon them a shot at presenting the network’s flagship music show. I’m not sure that the pair were on my comedy radar at this time though I have seen Stewart Lee live subsequently and he was very funny. The double act seems to be based on Lee being sarcastic and cutting and Herring being frivolous and silly. He strays into something a bit more uncomfortable though at the top of the show by asking if he might be in heaven as he’s surrounded by sweaty, teenage girls. Such a remark possibly wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow back then but in these post Operation Yewtree times, it doesn’t sit well.

Anyway, we start with Incognito who I had forgotten were still having hits as late as 1995. To be fair to myself, my knowledge of them only extends to “Always There” from 1991 and their cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” in 1992. However, there is much more to them than that starting with the fact that they had been in existence since 1979 and have a roster of members past and present (they are still a going concern) they could rival The Fall and The Waterboys. Talking of Incognito members, I had to do a double take but my suspicions were confirmed by @TOTPFacts that the guy on bongos would go on to be pretty famous for something else…

Does Incognito’s white-vest-wearing percussionist look familiar? It should – it’s Max Beesley, future star of TV shows like The History Of Tom Jones, Hotel Babylon and Survivors. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Max Beesley studied percussion and classical piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and toured with/played for the likes of Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Take That and Paul Weller. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

Well there you go. Professor Brian Cox wasn’t the only celebrity to play in a 90s band before becoming famous in a different profession. As for Incognito’s tune, “Everyday” is actually quite pleasant as far as it goes but it does smack of being a rewrite of “Always There” which wasn’t even their song in the first place.

After Lee and Herring have a discussion about Jon Bon Jovi’s unusual pronunciation of Milan as ‘Milarn’ from his to camera piece at the top of the show, we move onto a dance tune I certainly wouldn’t have liked back in 1995 (I don’t actually remember it) and definitely don’t like 28 years later. Nightcrawlers were coming off the back of a huge hit in “Push The Feeling On” – you might know it as the “Just Sold My Car” song for the We Buy Any Car ad – and “Surrender Your Love” was more of the same though a bit watered down and (clearly in my case) not as memorable.

Despite or maybe because of his rather extreme look of long blond hair and shades which ages him terribly – he was 31 at the time of this broadcast – the TOTP cameras seem to deliberately avoid having vocalist John Reid on screen for longer than a couple of seconds at a time preferring to focus on the multitude of dancers on stage. It really is quite noticeable. Maybe the show’s producers were trying to recreate the feel of a nightclub where this track would have no doubt gone down well with mid 90s house music fiends. “Surrender Your Love” peaked at No 7.

Next an exclusive live by satellite performance of “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan but, as with many of these ‘exclusives’, it fails to live up to its title. Coming in direct from Los Angeles, you might have thought the location would be the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, the TCL Chinese Theatre, Venice or Santa Monica beach or at least somewhere with the Hollywood sign in the background wouldn’t you? What we get is an outdoor basketball court that could be anywhere. Montell doesn’t even have a cordless microphone so he can’t move around much and it’s left to his three backing dancers to try and liven things up a bit – they don’t. Honestly not sure what executive producer Ric Blaxill was thinking here.

Some more comments from Lee and Herring that have not aged well next. Describing Scatman John as “an old, stuttering man” (Herring) who “didn’t let age or his inability to speak get in the way of having a No 3 hit” (Lee) before introducing him with a stutter (Herring again) might get you cancelled these days or as Lee might say in his stand up shows, “you can get put in jail these days just for presenting Top Of The Pops”. Or something. “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was indeed up to No 3 but it would go no further. Nonsensical novelty hit or genre bending innovation? You decide.

Lee and Herring indulge in a bit of sexual innuendo now reminding the watching audience that if it hurts, you’re not doing it right before introducing “Hurts So Good” by Jimmy Somerville. As with Incognito earlier, I’d totally forgotten that Jimmy was still having hits as late as this. In my head, his chart bothering days pretty much ended with his very successful singles collection album over Christmas 1990. I wasn’t too far off to be fair but I’d forgotten about “Dare To Love” which became his first album released since then when it appeared in 1995. “Hurts So Good” was the second single from it and was a cover of a song made famous by Susan Cadogan who had a No 4 hit with it in 1975. I don’t know Susan’s version and I don’t remember Jimmy’s but I have to say I don’t feel like I missed out on much. Somerville had form for doing reggae-fied covers. He did one of the Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody” to promote that singles collection and “Hurts So Good” falls into the sane category for me. I just don’t think Jimmy’s high falsetto voice suits reggae. For me, he’s always been better on a barnstorming Hi-NRG type track. This would prove to be his final UK Top 40 entry with his first coming back in 1984 with “Smalltown Boy” as part of Bronski Beat.

It’s time for the second live by satellite exclusive performance on the show tonight as Bon Jovi perform “This Ain’t A Love Song” live from Milan (or is it Milarn?). Lee and Herring cue it up for us by the former declaring that he hates Bon Jovi and I, for one, believe him. A simple search of ‘What music does Stewart Lee like’ on Google gives loads of results including a list of his favourite 13 albums. Some of them, I’ve never even heard of the artist let alone the album but the ones I did know include REM (despite him saying how much they’ve disappointed him and are awful), Miles Davis, Madness and The Byrds. He’s also a lifelong fan of The Fall but can no longer listen to Morrissey despite his attachment to The Smiths. I don’t see any room in there at all for Bon Jovi’s brand of rock.

As for said brand, the band were at a bit of a crossroads as to what direction to take after the mega selling “Keep The Faith” album that they’d toured and promoted for two years. That album had seen them develop a more mature sound and lay off the hair metal histrionics of “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey”. The change hadn’t affected their commercial appeal with sales of 8 million worldwide so which direction should they go in now? Some early demos were trashed by Jon Bon Jovi as not being up to scratch and the gap where a new album should have been was filled by a Best Of called “Crossroads” (oh I get that title now) and a couple of new songs. A rethink was required which led the band to a darker album entitled “These Days”. Yet again, a new sound didn’t result in a downturn in sales with the album selling even more than “Keep The Faith” worldwide. It also achieved critical acclaim being ranked No 2 by Q Magazine in their “Top 50 albums of 1995” list. Lead single “This Ain’t A Love Song” would be the first of four consecutive Top 10 singles in the UK taken from the album when it peaked at No 6. It’s an accomplished rock ballad though its verses remind me of their 1987 forgotten hit “Never Say Goodbye”. A word on this TOTP appearance. What’s so exclusive about performing to an empty venue regardless of it being in Milan/Milarn?

Ah, some more dodgy rhetoric from Lee and Herring about following Michelle Gayle around and restraining orders. It sounds awful now but again, was it deemed acceptable back then? Maybe these TOTP repeats should come with those sensitivity warnings that say ‘this programme is from *insert the year* and features themes and attitudes from the time”.

Anyway, Michelle is back with her fourth chart hit “Freedom” though I don’t recall this one either. Nothing to do with George Michael (though Robbie Williams was just a year or so away from a cover version of that particular song), it’s a pleasant if insubstantial pop ditty which Michelle sells enthusiastically even impressively high kicking her way through it at one point. Her all woman set up of two keyboard players and two backing dancers could almost have been designed to flick the V’s at the hosts and their misogyny. I was rather distracted though by the singalong ‘Okay’ bit towards the end which put me in mind of Lenny Henry’s unfortunate early ‘comedy’ character Algernon Razmatazz and his ‘Ooookaaaay’ catchphrase. My god, reviewing these TOTP repeats is a culturally sensitive minefield.

Yes! The notable exception to tonight’s underwhelming running order is here. After being an ‘exclusive’ last week, McAlmont & Butler have crashed into the charts at No 10 with…ahem…”Yes”. There was some debate online about whether Richard Herring calls his co-host a ‘wanker’ or a ‘wassock’ in the intro to this one after this repeat aired but he clearly says the latter. The man himself took to Twitter/X to confirm:

Important correction. #TOTP https://t.co/Kz80NCr52Z
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 10, 2023

This brilliant song has helped me through some difficult times at work in the past and remains a permanent in my life. I was meant to see Bernard Butler live in Manchester around 1998 when he was touring his fine debut solo album “People Move On” but he cancelled at the last minute. Years later though I did catch David McAlmont live in Hull when he did a show of Prince songs. An engaging storyteller, he did a fab version of “Raspberry Beret” restyled as “Guyanan Beret“ – his mother was from Guyana. Sadly I can’t find any clips of it online.

Aargh! I’d forgotten that Robson & Jerome’s No 1 was a double A-side! Not content with hacking their way through “Unchained Melody” they’ve also taken the musical equivalent of a dull spoon to “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover”. The song recorded by ‘Forces’ Sweetheart’ Dame Vera Lynn in 1942 and one of the songs most associated with WWII has also been covered by the likes of Connie Francis, Bing Crosby, Jim Reeves, Acker Bilk and Steeleye Span. It was also recorded by The Righteous Brothers and was a hit for them in the UK in 1966. Was that the reason why Robson & Jerome laid down a version of it? Because it dovetailed neatly with “Unchained Melody” which Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield also famously recorded? Or is that just me trying to add some synchronicity that isn’t there? It’s just that it seems an odd choice of song – or was it? Was this just more cynical positioning from Simon Cowell. Did he look at the Soldier Soldier audience and work out that an album and single by two of its characters might be most likely to be purchased by an older demographic who maybe wouldn’t normally buy anything that was in the charts and so a version of “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover” would be the perfect track to reel them in?

We end with one of the weirdest song titles of the year, no any year. “The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman” was the latest of EP by The Future Sound Of London. As a pop kid, none of their stuff ever made any sense to me. This one is no different. It sounds like the incidental music to Blakes 7 put through a high spin washing cycle. Thankfully we only get a few seconds of this as the credits kick in.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Incognito	Everyday	I did not
2	Nightcrawlers	Surrender Your Love	No
3	Montell Jordan	This Is How We Do It	Nope
4	Scatman John	Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)	Never happening
5	Jimmy Somerville	Hurts So Good	Nah
6	Bon Jovi	This Ain’t A Love Song	Negative
7	Michelle Gayle	Freedom	It’s another no
8	McAlmont & Butler	Yes	YES!
9	Robson & Jerome	Unchained Melody / (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover	What do you think?!
10	The Future Sound Of London	The Far-Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman	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/m001s8tj/top-of-the-pops-25051995

TOTP 20 OCT 1994

Posted on June 9, 2023 by 80stastic

Ah, now this one should write itself. The ‘golden mic’ host this week is the idiosyncratic Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. He’ll give me plenty of material to comment on surely? Thinking back now though, just how big a name was Jarvis in the Autumn of 1994 and therefore how big a coup was it for TOTP to have lured him on to present the show? Well, I would suggest this was before Jarvis and his band went into the stratosphere off the back of the “Different Class” album and the “Common People” single which both appeared the following year and indeed it was 14 months before his bum wafting protest in the direction of Michael Jackson at the 1996 BRIT Awards but Pulp were certainly more famous than they had ever been in their career which was already into its 16th year by then. They’d finally gotten themselves two Top 40 hits and their 1994 album “His ‘n’ Hers” had gone Top 10 and been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. So maybe not a household name but certainly well known enough to music fans and seeing as TOTP was the BBC’s flagship music show then it was an understandable if a bit of a leftfield choice.

P.S. After all of my musings above about how Jarvis came to be tonight’s host, here’s the ever reliable @TOTPFacts with the true story that I’ve just found. Why do I bother?!

This was the first of two #TOTP editions presented by Jarvis Cocker – his other being the "big Britpop battle" showdown between Blur and Oasis on 24 Aug 1995. Producer Ric Blaxill had been impressed by Jarvis' performance on Pop Quiz, broadcast on 2 July. https://t.co/41IsqnCBL4
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 2, 2023

Jarvis does seem ever so slightly nervous as he introduces himself (for the uninitiated) describing himself as lead singer of The Pulp. The Pulp Jarvis? You may have finally proved yourself to be the real deal but you didn’t need a definite article to do so. He also seems to be a little scared of timings and leaving any dead air lingering as he introduces the first act tonight Michelle Gayle and slips in an unnecessary “Here we go” at the last second. Nerves I guess. Anyway, Michelle’s record “Sweetness” is inside the Top 10 on its way to a peak of No 4 and she’s selling it well in this energetic performance. Michelle was married to footballer Mark Bright for 12 years making her one of a long line of pop stars who had relationships with players of the beautiful game. Going back as far as the 1950s you had England captain Billy Wright who was married to Joy Beverley of The Beverley Sisters pop group. Fast forward to the 90s and we saw Louise marry Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp though their love proved not to be eternal with the couple divorcing in 2017. Perhaps though there is no bigger pop/football fusion than the ultimate 90s power couple David and Victoria Beckham. A Manchester United pin up and a Spice Girl? The papers and the magazines couldn’t get enough of them and despite rumours of an affair by Becks, they are still together four children and over 20 years later. Into the new millennium there was Shakira and Gerard Piqué, Ashley and Cheryl Cole and Perrie Edwards and Alex Oxlade- Chamberlain. Sadly only one of those couples are still together. Less sweetness, more sweet…well…less then.

https://youtu.be/IioFA08hUek

Jarvis gets himself into a bit of a muddle with his next intro for Let Loose and their single “Seventeen”. The follow up to the surprisingly enduring “Crazy For You”, it didn’t have the same pop credentials of its predecessor and, on reflection, is quite an unremarkable pop song despite being written by Nik Kershaw who knew his way around a decent tune. Never mind all that though, what was Jarvis banging on about? Firstly, he introduces the watching audience to the show – wouldn’t he have been better doing that at the very top of the show rather than one song in? Then he tries to illicit some humour from the fact that Let Loose have gone straight into the charts at No 15 despite their song being called “Seventeen” before feigning confusion and then saying “Who’s Let Loose? Them!”. Sorry, where was the punchline in all that or have I missed something? For the record, “Seventeen” peaked at No 11 and was a rerelease having originally peaked at No 44 when first out earlier in the year.

Reacting to the title of the next song in the show, Jarvis starts on a “Don’t do drugs kids” warning with his tongue firmly inserted in his cheek. Within a year Pulp would release the single “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” which would cause all sorts of undeserved outrage in the tabloids. For now though, it was all about the booze and fags. “Cigarettes And Alcohol” was the fourth hit of 1994 for Oasis and their biggest so far peaking at No 7.

I once watched this interview below with Liam and Noel where the latter talked about how he’d not been sure initially about releasing a fourth single from debut album “Definitely Maybe” but when it placed higher in the charts than any of the others, he knew that the band were on to something big. It’s worth a watch. Noel talks about the accusations thrown at him about pinching the song’s guitar riff from “Get It On” by T-Rex (he didn’t give a shit unsurprisingly) and there’s also a nice insight into the way the band interacted with each other behind the scenes with Noel’s ‘Bonehead was a tutter’ tale. There was a time when I could have listened to Noel talk for ages but he seems to have turned into a reactionary, right-wing leaning arse of late. Who’d have thought it would be Liam that would turn out to be the more likeable one? By the way, Liam’s “Where’s the monkey?” comment was a reference to Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles. The talk of a fourth single off the album sounded too much to them like Jacko territory and his nine singles off “Thriller” or whatever it was and if they were going down that route then maybe they deserved a chimpanzee as a pet.

As for my opinion of “Cigarettes And Alcohol” as a song, yeah of course there’s the T-Rex similarity but I couldn’t ignore its power and I was in deep by then anyway. This seemed to be the point when the famous Liam Gallagher pronunciation of lyrics really kicked in with emphasis on words like ‘shine’ as ‘she-iiine’ and ‘aggravation’ as “aggra-vay -sheon’ which would lead to many a parody and impression

By the way, it strikes me that Noel wasn’t the first to borrow that guitar riff anyway (although he did recycle it again for the “Some Might Say” single). Nevertheless, Marc Bolan himself seemed to have been listening to “Little Queenie” by Chuck Berry when he wrote “Get It On”. Then there’s the likes of Thunder with “Dirty Love”, Robbie Williams with “Old Before I Die” and this by ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor:

We had a support band on TOTP the other week who found fame (albeit it fleetingly) under their own steam in the shape of 2wo Third3 who had toured with East 17. Well, there’s another one tonight as it’s a case of anything East 17 can do, Take That can do better. Ultimate KAOS (as with 2wo Third3, another awful, awful name) had toured with the Manc boyband superstars and lo and behold found themselves in the charts themselves with their single “Some Girls” riding to No 9. This lot germinated in the mind of the ultimate arbiter on shit music Simon Cowell or rather he saw the seed of an idea that could be grown. You see, Ultimate KAOS started life as Chaos and they released a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Farewell My Summer Love” in 1992. When it flopped they were dropped by their record label but came to the attention of Cowell who picked them up, dusted them down, gave them a horrible new name and shoved them on tour with Take That.

Their debut single as Ultimate KAOS was “Some Girls” and it would prove to be their biggest of six UK Top 40 hits. It was clearly meant to sound like a 90s version of The Jackson 5 but it’s really not very good. Their song isn’t the biggest problem I have with them though. It’s the fact that their average age at the time of this TOTP performance was 14 with lead singer Haydon Eshun being just 9 and seeing them being screamed at by the studio audience which made for uncomfortable viewing. It wasn’t helped by Jarvis’s comment about them playing doctors and nurses in his intro. Eeeuuwww. Eshun would go onto appear on the West End in the Michael Jackson musical Thriller–Live and was also in Reborn In The USA as I mentioned in a recent post when discussing the aforementioned Michelle Gayle.

Now apparently the next act’s lead singer was greatly offended by Jarvis Cocker and his intro to his band, so much so that the latter had to reshoot it. In his first take he referred to INXS as ‘Inks’ – cheeky boy – but the version that went out still included him talking to a young lady in the studio audience and saying “Oh, so you prefer older men do you? Well, you might like the singer of this next group we’ve got coming on then…”. Ouch! At the time of the broadcast, Michael Hutchence was 34 whilst Jarvis himself was 31 so the latter’s comment about older men seem a bit barbed and uncalled for. He then compounds it by listing his most recent relationships in public – “he’s snogged Kylie and he’s now going out with the woman from the Brut advert” (Helena Christensen). All a bit intrusive no?

Anyway, it’s a second appearance by the Aussie rockers to perform “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)”, a track to promote their first Best Of album. So what was the deal with the two people on four stilts that looked like human flies? Very odd especially the tongue action. A strange party indeed.

https://youtu.be/Tbpi0yP7EAY

There’s only eight acts on tonight’s repeat as the BBC have edited out R. Kelly with his “She’s Got That Vibe” single (which would have followed INXS) after his conviction in 2022 for child pornography charges and three counts of enticing a minor. Needless to say, I won’t be discussing him any further than that.

If there was a female equivalent of the Oasis / Blur battle of Britpop, would it have been between Elastica and Sleeper? That’s probably a completely unfair, uninformed and oversimplified comparison (and there was probably no beef between them anyway) that I’ve drawn just because both bands had a high profile female lead singer but it’s out there now so I’m going with it. In my made up battle, I would have been in Sleeper’s corner I think. They appealed more to my pop sensibilities (I even saw them live) and, if I’m completely honest, I fancied Louise Werner more than Justine Frischmann. I know, I know; that doesn’t sound great but there it is. Not that I didn’t like Elastica at all – this song “Connection” (surely their best known is a tune alright) – but they always seemed a bit too…what? Intellectual? Intimidating? Something else beginning with ‘I’? Maybe it was as arbitrary a thing as me not happening to hear their album that much (despite me working in a record shop I should say so that’s a poor excuse really). Who knows? Clearly not me. Maybe I should revise my loyalties as they give a pretty good performance here and aren’t even put off by the fact that you can clearly see the stage set up for tonight’s headline act in one shot – a big blue neon sign spelling out his name seems slightly disrespectful to everyone else.

https://youtu.be/Fv7er7SKhqE

And so to that headline act. After all the success and fame in the 60s and early 70s, the hits dried up for Tom Jones. Not that he wasn’t busy. He played Las Vegas, had his own TV show This Is Tom Jones and toured extensively but maybe all that diversifying meant he took his eye off the ball when it came to chart success. He tried his luck with country music but the truth is that from 1972 to 1987, he only had three UK Top 40 hits which peaked at Nos 31, 36 and 40. And then from out of nowhere came…ahem…”The Boy From Nowhere”. Recorded for a concept album called “Matador” that would become a musical, it placed at No 2 on the charts and led to a revival of interest in Jones which culminated in a rerelease of “It’s Not Unusual” and a collaboration with the Art Of Noise on a version of Prince’s “Kiss”. Tom was suddenly hip. The spike in his commercial fortunes petered out though as the 80s ended. The first few years of the new decade saw just a couple of charity single cover versions as his only visits to the Top 40. By the end of the 90s though, another resurgence in popularity saw him top the album charts with his “Reload” project, a collection of cover versions recorded in collaboration with contemporary artists including Robbie Williams, The Cardigans and Stereophonics.

But before all that came a rather overlooked period in his career I feel which was “The Lead And How To Swing It” album and its hit single “If I Only Knew”. Although the former failed to shift huge units, the single was quite the banger but I never knew until now that it’s yet another cover. Originally recorded by experimental US rap group Rise Robots Rise, Sir Tom’s version was produced by the legend that is Trevor Horn and includes a melody that Jones came up with himself.

My wife loved Tom’s version and duly bought it and helped send it rather unexpectedly to No 11 though you rarely hear it on the radio these days. Clearly it was a precursor to the aforementioned “Reload” album and a definite indication that Tom wanted to try and remain current and valid rather than be known just for all those 60s hits. For that alone, he should be admired. Jones retains a huge presence and profile to this day. A coach on TV show The Voice UK, he released his last album “Surrounded By Time” in 2021 which topped the charts.

As for Jarvis’s input to Tom’s appearance here, I could have done without the staged handing back of a pair of knickers to a female member of the studio audience if I’m honest.

https://youtu.be/t55fuBHqJLY

So who got the loudest screams? Tom Jones or Take That? What a show to have been in the audience for! The latter are there to perform their chart topper “Sure” and they do what is expected of them, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy by prancing and hopping around the stage. For some reason, Jason and Howard seem to be wearing their jackets inside out with the lining exposed whilst Gary is marked out as the leader of the gang with a leather jacket. This was the second of two weeks at No 1 so I’m guessing this will be the last we’ll see of them in these 1994 repeats. Not quite the stellar year for the band that 1993 was. They only released three singles and one of them somehow didn’t get to No 1. Still though, nice work if you could get it.

So how did Jarvis Cocker do on his debut as a presenter? I think I was a little disappointed on balance although I probably thought he was brilliant back in 1994. Yes, I’d rather him than Goodier or Mayo but I was expecting a little bit more. I’m probably very unfairly bringing 30 years perspective to my opinion that didn’t exist back then but if I had to grade him it would be could do better – C+.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	Nope
2	Let Loose	Seventeen	I did not
3	Oasis	Cigarettes And Alcohol	Not the single but I had the album. Didn’t we all?
4	Ultimate KAOS	Some Girls	Never happening
5	INXS	The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)	No
6	Elastica	Connection	Nah
7	Tom Jones	If I Only Knew	No but my wife did
8	Take That	Sure	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/m001mffj/top-of-the-pops-20101994

TOTP 06 OCT 1994

Posted on June 3, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve got another ‘golden mic’ show as we enter October 1994 with guest presenters Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. Having been ‘the other two’ in The Mary Whitehouse Experience alongside the first rock stars of comedy David Baddiel and Rob Newman, Punt and Dennis did go on to hugely successful careers in their own rights. Hugh Dennis is a regular on comedy panel shows and starred in long running BBC sitcom Outnumbered. Punt, who as I recall had to fend off multiple questions in interviews as to whether he was actually the son of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame due to their facial similarities, would pursue a career off camera as a script editor and screenwriter. In 1994, the first series of their own sketch show – The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis Show – had just finished being broadcast so their public profile was possibly at its highest point, certainly as a double act anyway. As such, they were probably a good choice as guest hosts and TOTP head producer Ric Blaxill couldn’t have booked Baddiel and Newman instead as they weren’t speaking to each other by then (they wouldn’t be in each other’s company for another 24 years).

Anyway, that’s enough about the presenters, what about the music? Well, I’d talk about it if we had some but I’m not sure that the opening act meets the criteria to be defined as music. By Autumn 1994, the trend for reggaefied versions of old pop hits was so popular that just about every week the chart seemed to have a representative of the genre. In this Top 40 for example there’s Pato Banton and this guy, C.J. Lewis who’d already carved out two hits for himself with ragga covers of songs by The Searchers and Stevie Wonder. However, C.J. was after a third and turned to the 70s smash “Best Of My Love” by The Emotions to complete the hat-trick. Sticking to the formula, this was again a case of C.J. toasting his way through the verses with the chorus performed faithfully by vocalist Samantha Depasois. It really was a load of old tosh but C.J. got his wish and “Best Of My Love” became his third consecutive hit peaking at No 13.

When it came to original material though, the hits reduced in size dramatically before disappearing altogether. Subsequent singles “Dollars” and “R To The A” both peaked at No 34 and C.J. never returned to the Top 40 again. To paraphrase his namesake from the wonderful BBC comedy The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, C.J. didn’t get where he is today without pinching other people’s songs and then bastardising them.

Is this a third studio appearance for Cyndi Lauper to perform her track “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)”? I think it is. As such, the TOTP producers have tried to shake things up a bit by having Cyndi arrive on stage by cadging a lift from one of the moveable studio cameras – you know, those huge ones that glide around on tracks to get smooth panoramic vistas? Yeah, those. It’s not a bad bit of staging actually. Cyndi then indulges in some hand shaking with the studio audience though I’m sure I detect some slight panic in her a couple of times as she struggles to free herself from an over enthusiastic audience member. They’re an appreciative crowd though who generate some large cheers for both Cyndi’s guitarist’s slide guitar work and for the star herself when she belts out a protracted long note. Talking of long, Cyndi’s career certainly has some length. She’s been at it for over 40 years now and just this year was announced as a nominee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame though she didn’t make the cut, losing out to Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott.

By 1994, Madonna had been having hits for 10 years. So many of them in fact that this one – “Secret” – was her 35th consecutive Top 10 hit. As they’ve all come in the years that I’ve been blogging about TOTP repeats, that means I’ve probably had to write something about all of them. That’s a lot of words about Madonna. Do I have anything else left to say about her? Yeah, probably.

After the outrage and backlash she suffered from her “Erotica” album and Sex book project in 1992, it was time for Madonna to soften her image a bit and that meant a change of image. The Mistress Dita persona of “Erotica” gave way to a more classic ‘blonde bombshell’ look inspired by Hollywood actress Jean Harlow (whom had been one of those name checked on Madge’s “Vogue” single). Then there was her new album of which “Secret” was the lead single. Lyrically, “Bedtime Stories” explored themes of love as opposed to sex and musically it ventured into R&B and hip-hop to generally positive reviews. I must admit though to getting a bit lost (and dare I say it even bored) by Madonna at this point. I get that she wanted to keep evolving creatively as an artist but it all seemed a bit too knowing and contrived. “Secret” is very accomplished and well crafted but it just didn’t cut through with me.

Interesting to note though as a timepiece of the era, Madonna discussed the song on the internet (I had no idea what that even was in 1994) leaving an audio message for her fans and a snippet of the track online. It’s hard to comprehend in these times of 24hr online access to music platforms how exciting this must have been. To hear a song back then, you either had to catch it on the radio or a TV music show or actually go and buy your own copy. I guess you could tape it off the radio but that involved a certain amount of planning and commitment that you kids today wouldn’t understand. My god I’m an old fart.

OK, enough of my old man rants s here comes Michelle Gayle who’s just entered the Top 10 at No 9 on her way to a high of No 4 with “Sweetness”. In total, Michelle would rack up seven UK chart hits of which all bar one would make the Top 20.

https://youtu.be/jSSMCocyA2A

However, it seems that Michelle wasn’t bothered about chart positions. During my research for this post (yeah, I do some!) I came across this clip of her during her stint on the 2003 ITV show Reborn In The USA. This was basically a travelling version of the X Factor but for fading pop stars who would compete with each other for audience votes in a different US city each week with the act getting the least being booted off. This video is of the four finalists Peter Cox (Go West), Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet), Hayden Eshun (Ultimate Kaos) and Michelle discussing whether musical artists have a competitive streak. Tony was a definite ‘yes’ whilst Michelle just didn’t see it that way at all…

Go to 5:40

In direct contrast to Michelle’s view, in the early weeks of the show the competition between two of the participants became so acute that it spilled over into something else all together. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the great TV spats. Give it up for Dollar Vs Sonia!

The live by satellite slot where artists performed against the backdrop of a well known landmark had given us perhaps its most memorable moment just the other week when Bon Jovi played “Always” with the stunning visual of the Niagara Falls behind them. Head producer Ric Blaxill wasn’t going to waste that bit of footage and so it gets another airing on this show.

Now I’ve had a (well documented) weakness for a bit of the Jovi in the past but I have to say that John’s lyrics are sometimes a bit obvious and cliched. In this one he sings about loving his baby forever and a day until the heavens burst but there are a couple of lines that made me think of something else completely. First there’s this…

It’s nothing but some feelings that this old dog kicked up
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Always lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing

And then this…

I’ve made mistakes, I’m just a man
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jon Bon Jovi
Always lyrics © Bon Jovi Publishing

Dogs? Just a man? You know where I’m going don’t you?

Sometimes when writing this blog my synapses are firing and the words come easily. Sometimes they really don’t. This is one of those latter moments. I haven’t really got anything else to say about “Circle Of Life” by Elton John. Think man! Anything will do! Nobody’ll read it anyway let alone care. I’m writing this sat in a Costa Coffee shop listening to Arab Strap and inspiration is not striking.

*Looks at Elton’s discography in forlorn hope of sparking a kernel of an idea*

OK. Got something. How many soundtrack albums do you think Elton has written? Well, according to his discography it’s ten. TEN! How many could you name though? Yes, The Lion King obviously and it’s 2019 remake. How about Rocketman Elton’s biographical musical drama? Wikipedia counted it so that’s good enough for me. Billy Elliot: The Musical is on there of course. How about Gnomeo & Juliet though? Or Sherlock Gnomes? I’m afraid that they’re his as well (Why Elton? Why?). There’s also the musical based on Verdi’s Aida known rather pompously as “Elton John And Tim Rice’s Aida”, The Muse which was a late 90s comedy which I don’t recall at all and a DreamWorks Animation called The Road To El Dorado. Perhaps the most intriguing was his first which came out in 1971 for a film called Friends (nothing to do with the US sit com TV series). I have never heard of this film until now but apparently it received a Golden Globe nomination for Best English Language Foreign Film. Not knowing the film, I obviously wasn’t aware of Elton’s soundtrack album either but then it has never been released as a standalone CD since its initial vinyl release although its tracks are on the “Rare Masters” compilation album that was released in 1992. I’ve gone from nothing to say to far too much Elton John information haven’t I?

https://youtu.be/wbeQ5lJ2Q-s

However, I’ve not said too much about tonight’s hosts Punt & Dennis since the top of the post so how are they doing? Well, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed but maybe it’s like looking back at the technology of the time; it seems underwhelming by today’s standards but was actually cutting edge at the time. Anyway, they’ve bought out the big guns for this next link as Hugh Dennis gets his own backstage set up to showcase perhaps the duo’s best known comedy character Mr Strange and his catchphrase “Milky milky”. Known for his love of milk (that had usually gone off) and with the manner of a Peeping Tom, he was a weird but memorable creation. Dennis had actually brought him out for the Elton John intro but I wanted to save commenting on that until he got his own little slot when introducing the next act who are Take That. Before he does that though, we get the revelation that Mr Strange doesn’t wash his pants. Of course he doesn’t. Anyway, onto the biggest teen sensation since the last one and Gary Barlow gives us his own little intro telling us how the band are on a 31 date tour before joining the rest of them for a run through of new single “Sure” whilst presumably on a break from rehearsals.

After previous single “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” had broken the group’s run of four consecutive No 1s by peaking at No 3, I’m guessing there was just a tiny bit of pressure on follow up “Sure” to ensure normal service had been resumed, especially as it was a brand new track. As it turned out, this super slick slice of pop-R&B would return the band to the top of the charts (a position they maintained for two weeks) but it seems to me that “Sure” is an almost forgotten No 1. The first taster of their third album “Nobody Else” which was released the following year, it got completely overshadowed by the other two singles released from it – “Back For Good” was so perfect a pop song that many refused to believe Barlow had written it and was actually the work of Bee Gee Barry Gibb whilst “Never Forget” got elevated to another level when it was released just as the news of the departure of Robbie Williams from the band broke.

https://youtu.be/D4d88BK8NgU

I’m sure I read at the time that Gary Barlow believed that “Sure” was the best thing that the band had ever released and was disappointed that it only lasted for two weeks at the top of the charts. I think the gist of his gripe was that he thought that the song was good enough to have transcended the teen fan base and cut through to more adult record buyers. The irony is that those two subsequent singles probably did do that on some level. In a 2021 article in The Guardian, writer Alex Petridis ranked the best 20 Take That tracks. “Sure” came in at No 12 whilst “Never Forget” and “Back For Good” were put at No 3 and No 1 respectively. I think that’s probably about right.

As for the performance here, there’s been a couple of image changes since the last time the group were on TOTP. Robbie Williams has had all his hair shaved off and Howard Donald has started his metamorphosis into pop music’s equivalent of Chewbacca. Meanwhile their outfits seem to have been inspired by the Gerry Anderson show UFO and specifically the uniforms worn by the crew of the Skydiver craft. Blimey!

For all their massive profile and popularity, when it came to huge hit singles, INXS were no Take That. They only ever had one UK Top 10 hit despite having 18 Top 40 entries. I guess they were more of an albums band? Despite the lack of mega-selling singles, as was often the case with such bands, if you put all their medium sized hits together on one Best Of album it would sell like hotcakes. I’m thinking the likes of The Beautiful South and Crowded House who both had Greatest Hits albums that sold and sold despite not having a stack of high charting tracks to put on them. So it was with INXS as well whose first compilation album went platinum in the UK.

To help promote it came this new track “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)” which was actually an old song left over from the “Full Moon, Dirty Hearts” sessions that didn’t make the cut for that album. It’s pretty standard INXS fare which is no bad thing but it’s certainly not one of their best. Whatever the calibre of the song though, any performance that features Michael Hutchence was always going to be billed as an ‘exclusive’ by the TOTP producers such was his star quality. “The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)” peaked at No 15 continuing that run of Top 10 avoiding hits.

Hugh Dennis brings out another character to introduce Whigfield who is in her fourth and final week at No 1. This time it’s Embarrassing Dad who threatens to do the “Saturday Night” dance. As I said before, I was a little underwhelmed by their whole shtick. As for Whiggy, as Dennis referred to her, “Saturday Night” would be the 2nd best selling single in the UK in 1994 only behind Wet Wet Wet. It was replaced at the top by *SPOILER ALERT* Take That’s “Sure” which for purposes of context was the 37th biggest seller of the year. Make of that what you will.

https://youtu.be/lRfTrOtdHwc

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	C.J. Lewis	Best Of My Love	As if
2	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Not this nor the 1984 original
3	Madonna	Secret	Nah
4	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	Nope
5	Bon Jovi	Always	Negative
6	Elton John	Circle Of Life	No
7	Take That	Sure	Sure didn’t
8	INXS	The Strangest Party (These Are The Times)	I did not
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m6qn/top-of-the-pops-06101994

TOTP 22 SEP 1994

Posted on May 28, 2023 by 80stastic

There’s only three ‘new’ songs in this episode of TOTP so I’m going to have to try hard not to repeat myself in this post. Definitely not repeating himself is Gary Lineker who announced his retirement from playing football the day before this show aired. You never hear much about him these days do you? Ahem. Right, let’s get to it…

…and we start with what looks like a dance aerobics class. It’s actually a performance of “Rhythm Of The Night” by Corona but it involves an awful lot of kicks, knee lifts and lunges. I’m guessing the neon lights backdrop was to create a sense of night time/nightlife though I’m intrigued by the choice of the ‘Jazz Club’ one. Hardly seems in keeping with this Eurodance anthem does it? Louis Balfour would no doubt approve though.

Corona would have five more UK Top 40 hits including two inside the Top 10 but can anybody remember how any of them went? I’m willing to bet they sounded a lot like “Rhythm Of The Night” though.

https://youtu.be/ChzKpE6R1Hg

With ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire having only just departed the charts after his recent hit single “Someone To Love” had turned him into a bona fide pop star, Michelle Gayle wasn’t waiting for a respectful amount of time to have passed before gatecrashing the charts herself faster than you can hum “doof, doof, de doof, doof, doof, doof”. Like Maguire, Michelle had left the soap from her role as Hattie Tavernier the previous Christmas but unlike Maguire, she’d already had a Top 40 hit a year earlier with debut single “Looking Up”. I’m not sure why her follow up “Sweetness” took so long to come out (EastEnders recording commitments maybe?) but it would prove worth the wait when it became her biggest hit peaking at No 4.

You could understand why. A breezy piece of R&B pop with a chorus that screamed ear worm, this was the peak of her music career. That’s not to say that she didn’t continue to have chart hits because she had another five though only one made the Top 10. “Sweetness” is surely her most well known track though. And let’s be fair, for an ex-EastEnder, its quality was maybe more than was expected – this was no “Anyone Can Fall In Love” or “Something Outa Nothing”. And yet Michelle, it seemed to me, never quite managed to shed her soap star past to the extent that people forgot about it and thought of her as a pop star first. Maybe the three years gap between albums didn’t help establish her credentials in the public consciousness? For whatever reason though, I have a soft spot for “Sweetness”, maybe because my wife liked it and that’s good enough for me.

https://youtu.be/4lfJFp0RCtU

Another ‘new’ song next though it has taken on a life of its own due to its origins. As with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” before it, “Circle Of Life” was an Elton John composition for The Lion King film project and for me, was actually the better song. Maybe I’m biased as I’ve seen my son perform it as part of his musical theatre group live on stage but I think I’ve always had that opinion. So has Elton supposedly as he rarely plays “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in concert but “Circle Of Life” has become a staple of his live set. The Oscars committee didn’t agree with me and Elton though and awarded the gong for Best Original Song to “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in 1994 over “Circle Of Life”. I think the striking opening sung in Zulu helps to set it apart from its predecessor. If we’re talking about repeating ourselves though, surely there’s no more effective way of doing that than life within a circle?

So we’re back to the songs that have been on the show before with “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. However, somebody who hadn’t been on the show before was the band’s new guitarist Richard Oakes. With Bernard Butler having jumped ship a few weeks before, Oakes was drafted in as his replacement despite being only 17 at the time (he wasn’t 18 until 9 days after this TOTP aired) and that he’d been up against approximately 500 candidates for the job.

Now I think I might have a little personal insight into this story. I knew someone who was seeing Suede’s manager around this time and apparently Richard Oakes’ Mum was wanting quite a lot of input into her son’s career and this was becoming quite wearisome for said manager. To be fair to her, she was looking at the prospect of her 17 year old son plunging into the lifestyle of a famous indie rock band and all that entails so she was entitled to have some misgivings but apparently she was very forceful in getting her voice heard. Just to make us all feel ancient, I can reveal that Richard Oakes is now 46.

Incidentally, you don’t hear the word ‘swine’ used as an insult anymore do you? It was commonplace when my Dad was younger then I am now back in the 60s and 70s. Look at this for example:

It’s the last of the ‘new’ songs now and it’s by…Naomi Campbell?! The supermodel Naomi Campbell? I don’t remember this! When did this happen?! Well, September 1994 obviously but seriously, who remembers “Love And Tears”? You’re forgiven if you don’t as it only reached No 40 in the UK singles chart and the album it was taken from – “Baby Woman” – completely bombed over here. However, it was a huge success in Japan selling over one million copies there. The album was mocked and derided by our music press with its only legacy being the inspiration for the Naomi Awards, a parody of The Brit Awards; a musical equivalent of the Rotten Tomatoes employed by the film industry I guess. Run by music TV channel Music Choice, it named its award ceremony after Campbell whose contribution to the world of music were judged to be the gold standard for wretchedness. Seems a bit harsh. How bad was “Love And Tears” then?

*Watches TOTP performance*

Hmm. Well, my judgement would be that it’s as if AI had been around then and was asked to construct a soul/pop song and also to create one of the world’s most beautiful women to front it. There’s a bit of Kylie’s “Confide In Me” Eastern influences in the mix and is the melody reminiscent of “Proud” by Heather Small? It also kind of reminds me of the sound that would make All Saints famous a few years later but ultimately it’s a bit bland and without emotion. Coincidentally, the winner of the 2006 Worst British Solo Male Artist Naom Award was Lee Ryan of Blue who I’m pretty sure once recorded a track created by some song writing software as opposed to crafted by a person.

Campbell herself would cut a controversial figure in subsequent years with drug addiction problems, four convictions for assault and alleged contacts with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s all repeated songs from here on in starting with “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)” by Cyndi Lauper.

Obviously a reworking of her debut hit from 1984, that original recording was actually inspired by another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Initially, Lauper struggled to find the right style in which to record the song. Then, after she and her team talked about "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners, she suggested emulating that. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 19, 2023

Bassist Eric Bazilian: "I turned down the tempo knob on the drum machine, programmed in the same kick drum pattern as 'Come On Eileen', clicked on my guitar, and played that guitar riff. She started singing, and that was it." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 19, 2023

Interesting. Not as interesting as this though. The sound that “Come On Eileen” was based around (and indeed the whole style of the “Too-Rye-Aye” era of Dexys) was pinched from the group that Kevin Rowland’s former band mate Kevin ‘Al’ Archer founded called Blue Ox Babes and this track “What Does Anybody Ever Think About” in particular:

It’s that Niagara Falls performance next by Bon Jovi. This was the definitive take on head producer Ric Blaxill’s vision for the live by satellite slot of taking artists out of empty concert halls and have them perform against landmark backdrops. As dramatic panoramas go, the crashing waters of Niagara Falls was hard to top. The darkness of the night time setting only added to the event. Big tick for Ric. “Always” was the single promoting the band’s first Best Of album “Cross Road” which would prove to be the biggest selling album of the year in the UK.

It’s not just a repeat but a three-peat for Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories and their hit “Stay (I Missed You)”. After being in a satellite segue the first time and then the official promo video second time around, Lisa has finally made it into the studio in person to complete a TOTP hat-trick. She always seemed to be in the same attire when on screen, that being black top, skirt and woolly tights. It put me in mind of Tanita Tikaram who wore similar outfits when making TV appearances early in her career. Maybe it was a thing with female singers with alliteration in their names – you might even say it was a “Good Tradition”. Ahem.

Whigfield remains at No 1 with “Saturday Night”. There was, of course, no chance of Wet Wet Wet mounting a fight back to reclaim the top spot as they had deleted “Love Is All Around” meaning no more copies were being pressed so there was no product to meet demand (even if it still existed). Unlike some dance tunes of the era, the person we saw performing the song did actually sing on the recording although Sannie Carlson admitted to not being that much of a singer and that they had to do over 20 takes at getting her vocals right and in the end had to splice the best bits together. Now that really is repeating yourself.

https://youtu.be/cZ3l4rr96H0

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Corona	Rhythm Of The Night	No
2	Michelle Gayle	Sweetness	I did not
3	Elton John	Circle Of Life	Nah
4	Suede	We Are The Pigs	Negative
5	Naomi Campbell	Love And Tears	Never
6	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Nope
7	Bon Jovi	Always	Didn’t happen
8	Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	It’s a no from me
9	Whigfield	Saturday Night	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/m001m15w/top-of-the-pops-22091994

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

https://youtu.be/e1e9mDIar0I

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

https://youtu.be/s3YGonwsQuI

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

dsfghjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	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/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 07 FEB 1997

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TOTP 24 AUG 1995

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TOTP 25 MAY 1995

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TOTP 20 OCT 1994

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TOTP 06 OCT 1994

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TOTP 22 SEP 1994

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