Neneh Cherry

TOTP 02 AUG 1996

Posted on October 10, 2024 by 80stastic

We’re still in the Summer of 1996 with these TOTP repeats and we have another guest host in the ‘golden mic’ slot. In any other year, Jas Mann of Babylon Zoo would have got nowhere near this gig but this was the year of “Spaceman” and the stardust of that No 1 hit was still just about glittering over him enough to allow this appearance. It wouldn’t last much longer.

We start though with another guy who, by my reckoning, was also still very fortunate to be appearing on the show. Why was Sean Maguire still having hits two years on from his first one?! “Don’t Pull Your Love” was his seventh of eight in total ranging in size from No 27 to No 12. How could this be true? He couldn’t give away either of his albums which both sank without trace but somehow he managed to keep churning out a string of reasonably successful singles. How? Why? Yeah, he’d been in EastEnders so he was a familiar face and he didn’t look like the back end of a bus but I would have thought he’d have one, maybe two hits at most before the novelty wore off. He was quite the anomaly.

It can’t have been that the quality of the songs he was being given were irresistible to the record buying public can it? Surely not. Listening to this one, it sounds like something The Osmonds might have recorded back in the day. It wasn’t was it?

*checks internet*

No but it was a hit in the 70s by an act called Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds who took it to No 4 in the US selling over a million copies. I knew I was in the right ballpark.

I’ve never heard of them until this moment but apparently they also had an American No 1 called “Fallin’ In Love” and get this, it was covered in 1995 by German Eurodance outfit La Bouche. Wait, I didn’t review it in this blog did I?

*checks internet again*

No, it wasn’t a hit over here so it wouldn’t have been on TOTP. However, the song was in the news again in 2009 when it was sampled by the rapper Drake for his track “Best I Ever Had” which led to a lawsuit being brought against him by Playboy Enterprises who owned the rights to “Fallin’ In Love” as Drake hadn’t sought clearance for the sample. What has any of this to do with Sean Maguire? Not much but it’s surely more interesting than his pop career no?

Rivalling Jas Mann in the famous for 15 minutes stakes were the next act OMC. Yes, the difference between being a one hit wonder and a legendary electronic band who are still going 44 years after their first hit is just one letter apparently. However, whereas the name Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark didn’t mean anything and was chosen by Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys to ensure they weren’t mistaken for a punk band, OMC was an acronym for Otara Millionaires Club and was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Otara’s status as one of the poorest suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand. Their hit was “How Bizarre” which lived up to its name by being a strange concoction of mariachi guitars, tejano trumpets, almost spoken word verses (I’m not sure it qualifies as rapping) and harmonised backing vocals.

What was also atypical about the single was the amount of time it took to become a hit and its chart positions when it finally made it. It took five weeks to break into the Top 10 (including two consecutive weeks at No 19) and then spent six weeks there four of which were at No 8. It would eventually sell 400,000 copies in the UK despite never getting higher than No 5. Not surprisingly though, it topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand. Why was it such a sleeper hit? Maybe it didn’t attract enough airplay initially but when radio finally caught on to it, they realised it was perfect for summertime playlists. My wife loved this and indeed bought the CD single which might still be knocking about somewhere. Though the idea in today’s world of searching it out to put in a CD player when you could just say “Alexa play OMC” does indeed seem bizarre.

If 1996 was Jas Mann’s season in the sun, it was an annus mirabilis for Alanis Morissette. Her “Jagged Little Pill” album was No 1 for weeks and she had three hit singles, each of which charted higher than the one before. “Head Over Feet” was the biggest of those peaking at No 7. Given that so many people were buying the album and therefore already had access to those tracks, that was quite a feat. This particular single seemed almost laid back compared to some of its predecessors like “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” which had themes of anger and dissatisfaction. By contrast, “Head Over Feet” contained lyrics that talked about falling in love with your best friend. That didn’t mean it was lacking a punch though – it was still in the heavyweight class.

Curiously, there were two videos for the song – the ‘head’ version does what it says on the tin with a camera permanently fixed on a close up of Alanis’s face as she sings whilst the ‘feet’ promo for the European market that we see here is in black and white and has her sat around a camp fire in what looks like a building site with her band, sat cross legged, all strumming guitars. I think I prefer the ‘head’ one as its more affecting. Could it also have been the inspiration for Radiohead’s “No Surprises” which saw Thom Yorke singing under duress in a see through helmet as it filled with water?

Despite all of Alanis’s success in 1996, she would finish the year with a flop single when “All I Really Want” failed to make the Top 40. It seemed six singles from the same album was going too far even for Morissette’s growing army of fans.

Noel Gallagher once said that there was a time in Oasis’s career when everything the band released sounded like “Get It On” by T-Rex. Well, in 1996, was everything starting to sound a bit like Alanis Morissette? OK, Alisha’s Attic were hardly a carbon copy but could their hit “I Am, I Feel” be described as a poppier version of the Canadian singer? Maybe it’s just because they followed Alanis on this particular show that they somehow fused together in my head or maybe it’s to do with that aforementioned anger that is present in their lyrics? I mean, these are fairly dark:

“Like I wanna bite his head off, yeah, that’d be fun, cause I sure got an appetite“

Writer(s): Karen Poole, Michelle Poole, Terence Martin

If I’m being truthful though, Alisha’s Attic weren’t following where Alanis Morissette had walked but in the footsteps of a long line of female pop duos stretching back to the 80s with Mel & Kim and Pepsie and Shirley and on into the 90s with Shakespears Sister, Shampoo and perhaps the couple most like them Scarlet. That lineage would continue into the new millennium with t.A.t.u. and…erm…Daphne and Celeste? Or perhaps they modelled themselves after a trio. I’m thinking Wilson Phillips who consisted of Carnie and Wendy Wilson who were the daughters of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Chynna Phillips who was the offspring of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas. So what you may ask? Well, sisters Shelly and Karen Poole were themselves from a pop background with their Dad being Brian Poole of *Brian Poole and the Tremeloes fame.

*Their bass player was Len ‘Chip’ Hawkes father of Chesney.

Anyway, I quite liked Alisha’s Attic and their quirky pop tunes of which eight were Top 40 hits. None got higher than No 12 (which was actually the peak position for three of their singles) and “I Am, I Feel” itself would spend three weeks at No 15 plus two at No 18 and for all the No 1 artist’s posturing about ‘girl power’, surely was a better feminist anthem than “Wannabe”.

And talking of feminist anthems, here’s Neneh Cherry with “Woman”. I say ‘feminist anthems’ but I’m not sure that’s the correct terminology anymore. It conjures up images of Viz character Millie Tant and the world is certainly more nuanced than that. Look, just to be clear, I believe in equality of the sexes and hate all the ‘lads, lads, lads’ culture (groups of men can be such pricks) so if I misuse a phrase then please accept my apologies in advance.

Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to Neneh Cherry. She was on The Graham Norton Show last week promoting her memoir A Thousand Threads which was published just a few days ago. It seems to be quite comprehensive and not just a retread of her discography – apparently she doesn’t get to that iconic TOTP appearance when she was seven months pregnant until three quarters of the way through the book. Sounds like an interesting read to be fair. In her interview with Graham we found out that the first record she ever bought was by Donny Osmond and that she’s now a grandmother – quite possibly the coolest grandmother ever but still a grandmother. Yeah, you feel old now don’t you. Me too.

From Neneh Cherry to the Manic Street Preachers via Bernard Butler. In the last post, I talked about how Suede recovered from the departure of their guitarist and song writer to return with their most commercial album ever. Butler, of course, is up there on stage with Neneh for this performance. And the Manics? Well, like Suede, they also lost a founding member from their line up around this time albeit in totally different circumstances with the disappearance of Richey Edwards. As with Suede, they bounced back with their biggest selling album ever in “Everything Must Go” the title track of which was released as the second single from it. I always preferred this to “A Design For Life” though I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was that huge, orchestral swathe in the mix that they managed to produce that many in the music press compared to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Apparently the song was written as an acknowledgment that since Edwards was no longer giving his input to the band, inevitably their identity and music had to change with the lyric “and I just hope that you can forgive us” a direct plea to the fans.

Despite the hopping around on one leg antics of James Dean Bradfield in this performance, I’m more drawn to the static drummer Sean Moore. It might be because he is stood up throughout as opposed to sat at a drum kit or it could very well be that his look here reminds me of the character of Garland Greene from 1997 film Con Air.

With this single, Eternal set a new record as the first all female group to score ten consecutive Top 20 hits in the UK. What a stinker of a song to do it with though. “Someday” was recorded for the Disney film The Hunchback Of Notre Dame though it only features as an instrumental with the full song having been discarded at the storyboarding stage. You can understand why. It’s a dreary, jaded, love-song- by-numbers snoozefest. In fact, I’d have been more entertained if Eternal had stood there on stage and spent three minutes making snoring noises. Apparently, “I Swear” hitmakers All-4-One recorded “Someday” as well and it’s their take that’s on the US version of the soundtrack. So why were Eternal asked to record it for the European soundtrack? I don’t get it. In an unusual disruption to their timeline, the group’s next single release was from their “Power Of A Woman” album but “Someday” would turn up on their 1997 studio album “Before The Rain” making a right mess of the chronology of their discography. Tsk.

The final three songs on the show have all been on before so I might whip through these at speed. We start with “Macarena” by Los Del Rio and can I get away with just signposting you to other versions of the song rather than thinking of something witty to say about it? I can? Marvellous!

OK, here’s the original 1993 version that sounds very different to the hit we all know and loathe that was The Bayside Boys remix:

Then there’s the Los Del Mar take on it which was out at the same time. Despite it being sung without any English lyrics, this lot were actually from Canada and it was their cover that was a big hit over there. That absence of English lyrics is pretty much the only difference to the Bayside Boys remix and yet amazingly, in Australia, they were both in the chart at the same time with Los Del Rio at No 1 and Los Del Mar at No 2. Just how do you explain that? Fortunately for the UK, the Los Del Mar version peaked at a lowly No 43.

There are loads of other versions including a country version by The GrooveGrass Boyz, a rap version by US rapper Tyga, an Italian version by Los Locos and even a take on it by Los Del Chipmunks (!). Finally, for those that really can’t stand the “Macarena”, there’s this…

Without wishing to discredit the aforementioned achievement of Eternal, I fear it was totally undermined, nay blown out of the water, by the chart feats of the Spice Girls. They are in the TOTP studio for the first time this week I think after two appearances from Japan and though the stage and space in which they have to work are much reduced, they give an energetic performance with Mel C even managing to get in her trademark backflip. “Wannabe” is into its second of seven weeks at No 1 and would be the second best selling single in 1996 in the UK after “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees. That was literally just the start though. Of the eleven singles released during their career, nine would top the chart. They would sell 100 million records in total being both the best selling British act of the 90s and the best selling girl group of all time. Take that Eternal.

The play out video is “Freedom” by Robbie Williams. Now, if we’re talking chart records as we were Eternal and the Spice Girls, then we can’t ignore this man (whether you really want to or not). He has notched up seven No 1 singles and sold 77 million records worldwide. By 2008, he’d sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history. And yet somehow, it all started with this fairly straight cover of a George Michael song. Given that Robbie wouldn’t release anything else until “Old Before I Die” nine months later, I think “Freedom” could almost be a forgotten Williams single, like a false start. Indeed, it did not feature on either his 1999 compilation “The Ego Has Landed” that was initially released for the US and Australia markets nor his first official “Greatest Hits” album in 2004. However it was included on No the 2010 collection “In And Out Of Consciousness”.

Apparently, Williams was in a bad way when he filmed the video for “Freedom” struggling with an alcohol addiction and he certainly looks wild eyed in the promo – are his pupils dilated in some shots? He claims to have mimed to the original George Michael track as he hadn’t recorded his version before the video was filmed. Is that likely? Is that how it worked? Anyway, we’ll be seeing lots more of Mr Williams on TOTP in future repeats. As for Jas Mann, I’m not sure we will be seeing him again as he never presented the show after this (he was pretty shit to be fair) and he would only have one more UK hit when “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” made No 32. The odds on either him or Robbie becoming pop music superstars were probably evenly matched and low back then. Funny that.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sean Maguire	Don’t Pull Your Love	Never
2	OMC	How Bizarre	No but my wife did
3	Alanis Morissette	Head Over Feet	No but I had the album
4	Alisha’s Attic	I Am, I Feel	Nope
5	Neneh Cherry	Woman	No but my wife had the album
6	Manic Street Preachers	Everything Must Go	See 3 above
7	Eternal	Someday	Negative
8	Los Del Rio	Macarena	As if
9	Spice Girls	Wannabe	No
10	Robbie Williams	Freedom	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/m0023k99/top-of-the-pops-02081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 19 JUL 1996

Posted on October 3, 2024 by 80stastic

We’ve jumped from the end of June straight into the middle of July ‘96 with these BBC4 repeats having missed two whole shows in the process. Why? Well, general consensus amongst the TOTP community seems to be that there were some issues with the meet and greet competition winners in terms of criminal proceedings being brought against them in later life. Yet another depressing indictment of our society.

With that sombre start to the post, I’m looking for some positive energy now so who’s hosting this week? Well, he’s certainly bringing the energy but whether I’ll have a positive reaction to him is in doubt for our host tonight is Keith Allen or more specifically his alter ego ‘Keithski’. I find Allen the person quite intriguing and his autobiography was a good read but ‘Keithski’ was a bellend. Totally unfunny and intensely annoying. Before we even get to him though, we have the direct to camera message at the top of the show and this one is a little piece of pop music history. Was this our first glimpse of the Spice Girls on our TVs? Probably not as they must have been doing the media rounds to promote “Wanabe” to have got it to debut at No 3 in the charts but it must be their first TOTP appearance and given the show would have been the most obvious choice for pop fans to get their weekly fix of chart music then it might well have been a first for many viewing at home.

Anyway, they’ll be along in due course but we start with …who? Umboza? Yes, Umboza. Surely you remember their first, Lionel Richie sampling hit “Cry India”? Erm, no I don’t actually and I must have reviewed it for this blog. The only thing I recall writing is that their name reminded me of the tropical fruit drink Um Bongo which had that memorable ad campaign featuring the jingle “Um Bongo Um Bongo they drink it in the Congo”. However it seemed that one hit wasn’t enough for these fame guzzlers and so they were back with “Sunshine” using the same formula as before but with a different sample. Instead of “All Night Long (All Night)” we had “Bamboléo” by the Gipsy Kings – it seemed that Lionel Richie wasn’t the one they were looking for this time (I’ll get me coat later). Given the ubiquity of that song (it always seems to soundtrack any piece of film that has a Latin theme to it), I was amazed to discover that it’s never been a hit in the UK in its own right. In fact, the Gipsy Kings have never had a single make the Top 40 which makes you wonder how they became so popular over here. Was it something to do with the late 80s lambada craze?

As for Umboza, this sounded to me like music for bozos. Were committed clubbers seriously out dancing to this on a weekend? Maybe it was popular at some of the more cheesy nightclub establishments? Certainly the guy fronting this nonsense has gone down the cheddar route with his Saturday Night Fever suit and wide winged collars. The whole thing seems very unnecessary on reflection and should be consigned to the pop music waste bin of bad ideas.

As an antidote to the crap that opened the show, here’s some rock music from Terrorvision who were on to their third hit of the year with “Bad Actress”. I say antidote but it was more like a placebo (no, not the band!) as I feel like this particular song gave off the sense that it was better than it actually was. Oh sure, compared to Umboza, it was the best song ever recorded but, in reality, it wasn’t even Terrorvision’s best song. After some great earlier hits like “Oblivion” and “Perseverance”, “Bad Actress” was quite pedestrian or at least was jogging along rather than running at full pelt. Tony Wright has to annunciate the word ‘actress’ as ‘act-tress’ rather than ‘actriss’ so as to enable some rhyming lyrics and the whole thing feels forced as if the band was told to hold up in the studio and not come out until they’d written and recorded a single from scratch. Terrorvision would finish the year with a fourth and final Top 20 hit before disappearing for two years and then returning with the “Shaving Peaches” album and that No 2 hit single.

Oh not this again. Why was the “Theme From Mission Impossible” by Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr going back up the charts? Well, it’s an easy and obvious answer – the film had been released in the UK and was doing big business. This caused the ripple effect of blowing out the burning fuse about to detonate the chart life of its iconic theme tune and sending it from a low of No 27 to a second peak of No 16 before finally leaving the Top 40 by stealth four weeks later. I don’t know what else to say about this one other than “What’s done is done when I say it’s done”* and my review of this hit is done.

*It’s a line of dialogue from the film if that doesn’t mean anything to you

Here’s another song that’s been similarly knocking around the charts for a few weeks. By my reckoning, this was the sixth week on the chart for “Don’t Stop Movin’” by Livin’ Joy with all of them spent inside the Top 10. It was a most orderly descent of the chart with one place dropped per week from its debut at No 5 for the first five weeks until a rise of one place back up to No 8 afforded this further TOTP appearance. In total, it would spend three months in the Top 40 and nearly re-entered it in November when it missed achieving that feat by just one place. There was one last week at No 62 before it ignored the instruction of its title and did, indeed, finally stop moving…sorry…movin’.

Next, a charity record for a very worthy cause – The Nordoff -Robbins Music Therapy Centre – whose aim is to help children with psychological, physical or developmental disabilities using the tool of music. Back in 1996, the Rock Therapy project was set up to raise funds for the charity via the release of the single “Reaching Out”. Sadly for the charity, and in a cruelly ironic twist, the song failed to raise much money when it peaked at No 126. Yes, No 126. Not a great example of the power of music and its ability to help change lives. This lowly chart peak was despite the presence of such huge names as Queen’s Brian May, ex-Free singer Paul Rodgers, “Stop” hitmaker Sam Brown, the “Wide Eyed And Legless” Andy Fairweather Low and…erm…the drummer from Wet Wet Wet. The sad truth was though that “Reaching Out” was a stinker of a record. Words can’t quite express how awful it was but I’ll try. How about lumbering, insipid, lifeless, soulless or passionless? No? A sleeping pill in the form of a song? Not quite there? Musical melatonin? Yes, that’s the one. Nailed it which incidentally is what should have happened to “Reaching Out” – a nail put through every copy.

And so it begins. The time of the Spice Girls is here. Sporty! Scary! Ginger! Baby! Posh! Girl Power! An undeniable global phenomenon and it started with debut single “Wannabe” and what a curious thing it was. Musically all over the place but with enough cohesion and charisma to make it a worldwide chart topper. Look, I can’t recount the whole Spice Girls story in one post and I’m guessing you wouldn’t want nor need me to but just a few words about their origins seeing as we’re starting at the beginning. Recruited Monkees style by Bob and Chris Herbert of Heart Management via an advert in the trade paper The Stage, their intention was to create a girl group to rival the boy bands that were dominating the charts of the early 90s. After whittling down 400 hopefuls to just five – Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Victoria Adams, Geri Halliwell and, with their very own Pete Best figure, one Michelle Stephenson. The group were originally titled Touch of which Stephenson was seen initially as an important ingredient (she’d received the highest scores at the first audition). However, she was removed from the project by Heart Management amid accusations of laziness and lack of commitment. Stephenson naturally refuted such claims stating that she left of her own accord to care for her mother who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Victoria Adams (later Beckham) wrote in her autobiography that Stephenson “just couldn’t be arsed” to work as hard as the rest of the group. Whatever the truth, she was ultimately replaced by Emma Bunton and the rest is history. Michelle Stephenson would forge herself a career as a television presenter for a while whilst also finding work as a backing singer for the likes of Ricky Martin and Julio Iglesias.

As for this satellite performance from Japan, it’s notable that Posh Spice is the only person in the group not to have any solo lines in the song. Stephenson has her own story behind that as well claiming “Wannabe” was originally written with Stephenson in mind and that after she left, Adams refused to take on her parts. Other accounts suggest that it was due to Adams experiencing scheduling conflicts during the writing of the track (which happened after Stephenson’s departure). Yeah, right. Just one more thing, wasn’t Ginger Spice meant to be called Sexy Spice originally? Stephenson has her own take on that as well claiming she was going to be given that nickname. Ginger does make a lot more sense if we’re talking spices but then I’ve also never seen any spices called Sporty, Scary, Baby and Posh on the racks of my local supermarket either.

As with the Spice Girls, there’s a lot to unpack about the story behind the next song and given the song in question, I’m not sure I can be bothered to go through it all. Damn the completist in me! Right, let’s go through this quicker than a Cole Palmer hat trick. Two Andalusian Spanish blokes who’d had a Latin lounge act called Los Del Rio since 1962 went to a private party whilst touring Venezuela thirty years later and witnessed a dance by a local flamenco teacher. One of the fellas is inspired to write some lyrics in tribute to the dancer’s moves and calls it “Macarena” after his daughter. Initially released in 1993 to mediocre success, the track turned into a true worldwide sensation three years later thanks to a remix by The Bayside Boys who added a dance beat and English language lyrics. Its popularity in nightclubs led to a dance being associated with the song which would become a global craze. Fourteen weeks at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 followed making it the best selling single of 1996 in America. With Europe falling in line with the track’s dance moves, it clocked up No 1s all over the continent. Dear old Blighty initially resisted the charms of these two codgers and their insanely infectious hit when it spent two weeks at Nos 64 and 77 in June but come July, it leapt straight in at No 11 making it one of the then biggest leaps up the chart in history. It would go on to sell eleven million copies worldwide and is a staple of party playlists to this day. I myself have witnessed teachers and children alike performing its moves at end of year discos when my son was in primary school. And that’s all I’m saying (for now) about “Macarena”. Ay!

Neneh Cherry burst onto the music scene in the late 80s with the box fresh, street wise sound of “Buffalo Stance” and her debut, platinum selling album “Raw Like Sushi”. She was one of the big stories of 1989 though she’d actually been around the industry for years before that performing in the likes of The Slits and post-punk outfit Rip Rig + Panic. Indeed, her stepfather was the American jazz musician Don Cherry. That first blast of success though proved hard to sustain with 1992’s sophomore album “Homebrew” a significant commercial downturn. In the intervening four years though, Cherry had actually come up with two of her biggest hits albeit that neither was completely under her own steam. “7 Seconds” with Senegalese artist Youssou N’Dour was a perhaps unexpectedly huge hit almost everywhere whilst her appearance alongside Cher, Christie Hynde and Eric Clapton on 1995 Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” would provide her only career No 1 record.

In 1996 though, she would come up with a last commercial hurrah as a purely solo artist with the album “Man” and hit single “Woman”. Written as a response to James Brown’s 1966 hit “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, it talked of the hardships faced by women in life and very much espoused and sought to empower the female voice. Culturally, in the same week that the Spice Girls were making their debut on the show, the difference in style between “Woman” and ‘Girl Power’ was marked. Still, two techniques to amplify your point however dissimilar they were from each other is surely better than one. Matching its themes was the sound of “Woman” – brooding yet soulful, did it have a hint of Portishead about it? The single would give Neneh one last Top 10 hit whilst the album would achieve silver status for sales of 60,000 copies. She is still releasing music to this day with her last album, 2022’s “Versions” being reworking of songs from her back catalogue. Her two daughters Tyson and Mabel are both singers, with the latter having had both her albums go Top 3.

P.S. Nice to see Bernard Butler up there on stage with Neneh, He has a credit on the song for a ‘Special Guitar Section’ plus a shout out from Keithski.

Ah yes, Keithski. How to evaluate Allen’s alter ego in this TOTP? Irritating? Vexatious? Infuriating? Probably all of the above. He seemed determined to get one over the TOTP producers by slipping in some innuendo into his segues but some of it was so cryptic (“Banging out the round ones”, “Check the pellets in my pistol”, “Bump and grind to the garden tribe”) he just sounded like he was talking crap at high speed. Allen finally drops the act to announce the winner of the latest meet and greet competition before fake yawning as he introduces this week’s new No 1…

Hard as it is to remember, there was a time before the reemergence of Robbie Williams when all signs pointed to another ex-member of Take That being the one with the stellar solo career. Everybody expected Gary Barlow as the chief songwriter of the group to be the one to carry on seamlessly with chart hit after chart hit and sure enough, here he was first out of the traps with his debut solo single “Forever Love” straight in at No 1. The natural order of things was happening just as expected. To nobody’s surprise, his first post Take That hit was a big, slushy ballad with the piano to the forefront demonstrating our Gary’s musicianship as he sought to do a George Michael and transcend from boy band star to mature recording artist. It would sell over 100,000 copies in its first week of release before eventually going gold. There’s a bit in this performance when the screaming audience are at their loudest where Barlow almost smirks to himself. Maybe it was from embarrassment or maybe it was his inner voice saying “You’ve cracked it Gary lad. This solo star stuff is a piece of piss. All your dreams are coming true”. And it looked like they were. Uptempo follow up single “Love Won’t Wait” also topped the chart whilst his debut solo album “Open Road” did the same achieving platinum status sales. Meanwhile, as we shall see in next week’s show, Robbie decided to launch himself with a copycat, pointless version of George Michael’s “Freedom”. Nah, Gary was clearly the true talent. Fast forward two years and the roles were well and truly reversed. Barlow couldn’t buy a hit whilst Williams was unavoidably everywhere, racking up the hits as fast as Keithski could speak. Pop had raised see its fickle finger once more…

After a weak pun from Keithski where he refers to Gary Barlow as Ken Barlow, we’re into the play out song which is “Krupa” by Apollo Four Forty. As you might have guessed, I didn’t take much notice of this electronic dance group from Liverpool who’d made their name as remixers initially before raiding the charts in their own right. After three small Top 40 hits, “Krupa” became their biggest ever (at the time) when it peaked at No 23. Essentially an instrumental track, it was inspired by the jazz drummer Gene Krupa. So here’s the question that needs answering – did I know who Gene Krupa was back then? You know, I think I did. I have a vague recollection of having watched a documentary about the most influential drummers in music history and Krupa was featured. I could be bullshitting myself of course as we all know that the memory shifts and re-edits things to make false recollections but I’m sticking by my stick man story. Apollo Four Forty would go onto rack up a further six UK Top 40 hits including their biggest “Lost In Space” from the soundtrack to the 1998 film of the same name which was a remake of the 60s TV series.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Umboza	Sunshine	As if
2	Terrorvison	Bad Actress	No
3	Theme From Mission Impossible	Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr	Nope
4	Don’t Stop Movin’	Livin’ Joy	Nah
5	Rock Therapy	Reaching Out	Never
6	Spice Girls	Wannabe	I did not
7	Los Del Rio	Macarena	Of course not
8	Neneh Cherry	Woman	No but my wife and the album
9	Gary Barlow	Forever Love	Negative
10	Apollo Four Forty	Krupa	Not my bag

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/m00239nb/top-of-the-pops-19071996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 MAR 1995

Posted on October 17, 2023 by 80stastic

Ah crap! It’s been a good run but it’s finally come to an end. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo is back hosting TOTP! He says later in this show that he hasn’t been on presenting duties since the previous October. I haven’t checked to see if that’s true but regardless, I’d have gladly never seen the w****r anchoring the show again. He always seemed to me to treat it as his own personal promotional vehicle, making it all about him with his annoying, cryptic one liners and ridiculous tailoring.

He starts off by saying that there’s no public flogging on tonight’s show. What?! Was this something to do with the sentencing of Eric Cantona for his kung fu style assault of a Crystal Palace fan which took place on the very same day this TOTP went out? Eric got 14 days in prison pending an appeal which he subsequently won and saw his sentence reduced to 120 hours of community service. So, not exactly a public flogging then Simon.

With the first example of Mayo’s inane drivel dispensed with, it’s time for the opening act who is Sean Maguire. He was the ex-EastEnders and Grange Hill actor who had decided that he was wasting his time with all that TV work and what the world really needed was to bear witness to his singing talents while he ‘testified’* on stage. So far, he’d made a decent stab at the transformation with a couple of middling sized hits the previous year and now he was back with his third single “Suddenly”. Nothing to do with the Billy Ocean hit of the same name, this was just more pop-by-numbers stuff designed to appeal to the teen market with an instrumental break written in to allow for the obligatory dance routine to be included. I mean, it’s a catchy little ditty but it’s hardly a pop music masterpiece. Even so, it had more longevity than Sean’s fashion gimmick which saw him with a top tied around his waist even though he was wearing a jacket over his singlet. Why did he need the jacket if he was too warm to wear the top? This didn’t make any sense at all. Maybe it was de rigueur fashion accessorising in 1995? We’ll certainly see more examples of it later on in the show.

Mayo really is a prick. In his second intro, he makes a reference to Peter Tatchell, the human and gay rights campaigner when announcing Tin Tin Out as the next artist. Why? Well, I think that he was referring to a current news story about Tatchell’s involvement with the direct action group OutRage! who ran a campaign to out 20 MPs who publicly supported anti-gay legislation whilst secretly living gay personal lives. One such MP was Sir James Kilfedder who died of a heart attack three days before this TOTP was broadcast just as the Belfast Telegraph ran a story that he was one of the politicians targeted. A sensitive story you would think. Not to Mayo. That’s source material for a cheap line while he presents a pop music programme. Tin Tin Out? Geddit? Like I said, a prick.

Anyway, back to the music and Tin Tin Out were an electronic music duo who mixed hits for some of the biggest names like Erasure and Pet Shop Boys but they also had a sideline in hits under their own name. “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” was their second such hit peaking at No 14. A version of the Bacharach and David song that Sandie Shaw took to the top of the charts in 1964, it was a cover in the loosest sense of the word. Basically they took the song’s distinctive melody, added a house beat to it and roped in vocalist Vanessa Contenay-Quinones of the duo Espiritu to sing (rather badly here I would add) the song’s title repeatedly. It sounds horrible to my ears. Perhaps to offset this infernal racket, there are four half naked backing dancers (with their tops tied around their waists as per Sean Maguire) making the female members of the audience react as if it were The Chippendales they were watching.

Tin Tin Out would find further success later in the decade with covers of The Sundays (“Here’s Where The Story Ends”) and Edie Brickell (“What I Am”). The latter was with ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton which was released on the same day as Gerri Halliwell’s “Lift Me Up” causing a chart battle to see who would be No 1. In the end, Ginger won out over Baby.

By the way, if I wanted a cover of “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” – which I did apparently in 1983 as I bought this single – then there’s always this…

I may have succumbed to some ropey old synth pop version of a 60s classic in 1983 but there was no way I was falling for this next load of old tosh twelve years later. I know we’ve seen many an act bag themselves a huge hit and basically just repeat the song with a few tweaks for the follow up over the years but this by Rednex really was scandalous. After the horror that was their No 1 single “Cotton Eye Joe”, they almost literally put out the same record again for their next one. As a result, “Old Pop In An Oak” was every bit as dreadful as its predecessor. Despite not making the Top 10, enough poor saps bought it in sufficient quantities to send it to No 12. What the hell happened people?!

In 1993, Duran Duran pulled off the seemingly impossible by escaping the from the box the public had put them in labelled ‘They used to be famous in the 80s’ and coming up with a hit single that put them back into the Top 10 for the first time in four years with “Ordinary World”. Not only that but its parent album was a million seller in the US and went gold in the UK. They were back and had momentum on their side. What they did with that momentum was tantamount to commercial and artistic suicide. Whose idea was it to record an album of cover versions? Or perhaps the question should be ‘whose idea was it to record an album of those cover versions?’.

Take the lead single from the “Thank You” album for example. Wasn’t Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” seen as sacrosanct at the time? What were they boys thinking? However, the phrase ‘at the time’ really should have been in italics for it has been covered by many an artist since and I don’t remember the same amount of cries of heresy as were reserved for the Duran boys? Indeed, just three months after this, Kirsty MacColl released her own version with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads to promote her Best Of album “Galore” and I’m pretty sure there weren’t any cries of “Heresy!” from anyone. By 1997, just about every big name in the music business had covered it (sort of). A BBC promotional video to showcase their musical diversity featuring the likes of David Bowie, Elton John, Bono, Heather Small, Brett Anderson of Suede, Tom Jones, Gabrielle, Evan Dando (again!) and perhaps most memorably Dr John (“such a poyfick day”) was absolutely fêted by the public; so much so that it was released as a single and went to No 1 for three weeks. All of this leads me to believe that it was more about who was doing the cover version and it was a case of everybody else = good, Duran Duran = bad.

Or maybe it wasn’t even about this track? After all, Lou Reed is on record as saying the Duran version was the best recording of any of his songs. Was it the other covers on “Thank You” that offended so? Taking on songs by Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Iggy Pop was ill judged but to navigate “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel and Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke” was clinically insane. The readers of Q magazine were so incensed that in a 2006 poll, they voted “Thank You” the worst album of all time. So was it that bad? Well, I’ve often found myself on the wrong side of popular opinion and I did buy a couple of Duran Duran albums in the 80s but on the whole, even I would say it was a not a clever career move. As so it proved. After the critical backlash “Thank You” received, the band floundered. Follow up album “Medazzaland” didn’t even get released in Europe with the record buying public seemingly only interested in their past glories – a Best Of collection called “Greatest” made No 4 when released in 1998. It would take a reunion of the classic line up in 2004 to return them towards the top of the charts when the “Astronaut” album made No 3.

Talking of the classic line up, that’s Roger Taylor on drums in this TOTP performance which took me by surprise as he hadn’t had anything to do with the band since leaving in 1986. Apparently he played on three tracks for the “Thank You” album and appeared in the video for “Perfect Day”. Meanwhile, bassist John Taylor seems to have taken leave of his fashion senses – a checked shirt matched with stripey trousers?!

Next a band who in many ways replaced Duran Duran in the affections of the teen market as the boys from Birmingham’s popularity dwindled in the late 80s. Wet Wet Wet were on a commercial high come the mid 90s. They’d had that single in 1994 at No 1 for fifteen weeks and now were back with a new hit in the Top 10. Of course, also like Duran Duran, they’d suffered their own decline in approval around 1989-1991 but that was all behind them now.

Following the biggest selling single of the year though was no easy task and “Julia Says” predictably couldn’t get anywhere near the sales of “Love Is All Around”. A high of No 3 was nothing to be sniffed at though even if the track itself wasn’t their strongest by a mile and it did help propel parent album “Picture This” to No 1 and a million sales. The hits kept coming until the end of the decade when Marti Pellow left the band to deal with his addiction issues. Wet Wet Wet are still a going concern but only just. Graeme Clark is the only remaining member of the original four piece line up though they have just announced a co-headlining tour with perennials of the nostalgia circuit Go West.

A case next of an appearance on TOTP not helping the sales of a single. “Original” by Leftfield featuring Tony Halliday was a new entry on the chart this week at No 18 but it would fall to No 35 seven days later despite the exposure of this performance. To be fair, the sound of the track didn’t exactly lend itself to a turn on TV. Its dark, dubby rhythms allied to Halliday’s almost deadpan vocals weren’t a perfect match for the medium of TV. Not that it isn’t a good track – it is but it acts almost as a visual downer in amongst the scream-inducing likes of Sean Maguire and Wet Wet Wet. Yes, there are some shrieks from the studio audience at times during “Original” but I get the impression they were falsely manufactured by the prompting of a floor manager.

Leftfield were, of course, influential production team Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who’d already had a hit under their own steam when they collaborated with John Lydon on the hypnotic “Open Up” in 1994. Toni Halliday was the lead singer with shoe gazing / dance beat hybrid Curve who’d had a handful of minor hit singles and two moderately successful albums to this point but whose legacy was to open the doors for the likes of Garbage to stride through. The album “Original” came from was the Mercury Prize nominated “Leftism” which is widely regarded as a milestone moment in dance music. Listening to this track now, it sounds very like Portishead to me whose album “Dummy” beat “Leftism” to the aforementioned Mercury Prize in 1995.

Next another band who like Wet Wet Wet are trying to follow up the biggest hit of their career. East 17 may not have had the best selling single of the year like the Wets but they did have the Christmas No 1 with all the sales that brings with it. Surely they couldn’t bag another chart topper with their next release? The short answer is no they couldn’t but they did keep their record of consecutive Top 10 hits going with “Let It Rain” taking the tally to five.

After the balladry of “Stay Another Day”, it was back to the sound on which they made their name – a hard-hitting, quick house beats dance floor-filler with a shouty yet catchy chorus. Its intro has Tony Mortimer going all Prince-like in “Let’s Go Crazy” mode, preaching from the pulpit before the beats hit about corridors of creation and colliding comets. Actually, he sounds a bit like Gary Clail of On-U Sound fame.

I’d have to say that apart from that intro, it’s not one of their most memorable tunes, not quite the banger it wants to be. Talking of which, Terry Coldwell (the bloke in the singlet on the left in this performance and only remaining original member still with the group) was in the news recently when he participated in a Counties Radio competition where presenter Justin Dealey would ask people in the street to sing a song and if he judged it good enough, he would buy them a hot dog as a reward. Snappily entitled ‘Sing a banger for a banger’, Coldwell rocked up and sang “Stay Another Day” but was denied his prize on account of sounding too authentic!

Mayo’s back with his crappy jokes now as he name checks the boxer Chris Eubank. As far as I understand it, by saying that Chris’s favourite song was “Hypnotised” by Simple Minds, he was referring to the fact that Eubank had recently lost his WBO super middleweight title to Steve Collins who had employed a guru to help him prepare mentally for the fight leading the press to believe that Collins was hypnotised for the bout. As Eubanks entered the ring before the fight, Collins sat in his corner motionless with headphones on, giving more credence to the rumour. None of this backstory makes Mayo’s quip funny though. Look mate, you’re just there to introduce the acts not perform a stand up routine. Just do your job.

Anyway, this was the second and last single from the “Good News From The Next World” album and it wasn’t very good. Not only was it completely soporific but I’m sure they’d used that bridge part before in a previous hit. In short, poor on quality and lethargic of effort. Must do better.

By the way, what was going on with guitarist Charlie Burchill?! Back in 1984, I’d desperately coveted his look but he just looks weird here. Horrible hair and a jacket that looks like he’d borrowed it from a pearly king. And I thought John Taylor’s wardrobe was suss.

The Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton has, rather predictably, brought an end to Celine Dion’s run at No 1 and to quote Captain Sensible’s 1982 hit “Wot”, ain’t I glad. Beware though. This respite will only last a week before a new menace takes residence in the top spot…

Just before the credits roll, there’s a plug for the BBC’s A Song for Europe show to pick this year’s UK Eurovision entry. It seemed quite an elongated process. There was a Top of the Pops Song for Europe Special show that Mayo mentions where each of the competing songs was showcased but that wasn’t the point where the winner was chosen. No, there was another programme a week later where that decision was made by a public vote. Each artist also had a celebrity champion advocating for them. Some of the entrants were well known – Londonbeat for example (who sounded dreadful in the clip at the end of this TOTP) plus recent chart stars Deuce and Samantha Fox fronting Sox. The rest of them I have no idea about except the actual winner of course who were Love City Groove who trounced everybody with over 140,000 votes. The artist placed second got 81,000 by comparison. Things didn’t work out for Love City Groove on the big day but that’s a story for another post.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sean Maguire	Suddenly	As if
2	Tin Tin Out featuring Espiritu	Always (Something There To Remind Me)	No
3	Rednex	Old Pop In An Oak	Hell no!
4	Duran Duran	Perfect Day	Nope
5	Wet Wet Wet	Julia Says	Nah
6	Leftfield featuring Tony Halliday	Original	No but my wife might have had the album I think
7	East 17	Let It Rain	Negative
8	Simple Minds	Hypnotised	I did not
9	Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton	Love Can Build A Bridge	Not even for charity

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/m001rb00/top-of-the-pops-23031995

TOTP 16 MAR 1995

Posted on October 14, 2023 by 80stastic

I can’t remember if I watched this particular TOTP but if I did then I’m pretty sure that I would have had my mind on something else. Immediately after it finished, my beloved Chelsea were playing a European Cup Winners Cup quarter-final. Trailing 1-0 from the first leg, they were attempting to reach a European semi-final for the first time in 24 years. It may not seem it to the club’s younger fanbase who have been used to continuous success but this was a big deal. So big that I recall turning the TV off with minutes still to play and Chelsea winning 2-0 for fear of a late away goal that would knock us out. My nerves couldn’t take it. I turned the TV back on to the sight of a celebrating Chelsea crowd and realised we were through. It would all end in failure (as it always did back then) when we lost the semi-final to eventual winners Real Zaragoza.

I’m not sure that there’s a musical equivalent of that sort of experience. Having said that, just eleven days after this TOTP broadcast, a single was released that used to almost give me palpitations. Josh Wink’s “Higher State Of Consciousness” would set my nerves right on edge when it played on the shop stereo of the Our Price store I was working in. It literally could almost send me into a panic attack. Here’s hoping the tunes on tonight’s show aren’t as triggering.

By the way, tonight’s host is Lenny Henry as it’s Comic Relief the following day and so TOTP has been hijacked to help with the promotion. Lenny’s links are not especially funny but it’s hard not to warm to him.

Well, there’s nothing to make me nervous about the first artist on tonight. Alex Party are on to their third TOTP appearance I think with “Don’t Give Me Your Life”. If anything, I’m completely bored of this track. However, there is one thing that’s peaked my interest in this performance and that’s the presence of a drummer in amongst all the backing dancers leaping about. A drummer? On a Eurodance hit?! Obviously, they’ve got the obligatory two nerdy guys on keyboards in there but a drummer wasn’t usually in the mix surely? Has he always been there?

*quickly checks previous shows to feature Alex Party*

Well, he wasn’t there in the first appearance but then neither were the keyboard players but they were all on stage in the second appearance; I just can’t have noticed them. I wonder why there was the change of line up? Surely they weren’t looking for musicianship credibility?!

Next up is a group which was never going to raise my anxiety levels but this particular performance was a jolt to the system. A single by The Human League where Phil Oakey doesn’t do the lead vocals? This was out of the ordinary to sat the least. In fact it was more than out of the ordinary, it was the first time Susanne Sulley had been lead vocalist on one of the band’s singles. “One Man In My Heart” was the follow up to comeback hit “Tell Me When” which had rather surprisingly gone Top 10 at the start of the year. It also did pretty well chart wise achieving a respectable No 13 peak.

On first hearing, it sounds like a very one dimensional synth ballad but its simplicity is also its strength. An unfussy vocal from Susanne allied to a winning melody elevates it to something above the ordinary. Even the hackneyed ‘Ooh La La La’ backing from Phil and Joanne can’t bring it down. Sadly though, the only subsequent occasions that a Human League single would make the Top 20 would be rereleases of “Don’t You Want Me”. Having said that, the band don’t seem weighed down by their illustrious early 80s history but rather embrace it. They are almost constantly on tour it seems churning out the hits and have only released two albums of new material in the 28 years since “Octopus” (parent album of “One Man In My Heart”) came out. One last thing, what is that contraption that Phil is ‘playing’?

And so to the song that is the whole point of Sir Lenny Henry being on the show tonight – the Comic Relief single. This year it was no novelty song à la “The Stonk” or “Stick It Out” but a proper composition – “Love Can Build A Bridge”, a big country ballad by mother and daughter duo The Judds. It seems rather unfair but I’m guessing that Comic Relief were canny enough to know that The Judds weren’t a big enough name to promote the single (even though it’s their own song) and so roped in four mega star names to do the job. Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry and Eric Clapton met the brief and indeed would carry it all the way to No 1.

In his intro, Lenny implores the watching TV audience that whatever we do on Comic Relief day, not to do nothing and that we could at least by the single. Well, I didn’t I have to admit but I would hope that I made a donation. They would have involved picking up the (landline) phone, ringing in to the dedicated number and actually speaking to someone. Cast your mind back even further to Live Aid and Bob Geldof was telling us to go to the post office to get a postal order mailed out. It’s so much easier these days. Just text a message on your mobile to a number and you’re done. Try explaining that to the kids today. Though I’m glad to have lived through the eras I did, there’s no denying technology does have some benefits.

Apart from the fear that I may not have made a donation to Comic Relief, there was nothing about the last song to make me anxious. However, my calmness is under threat immediately from the next act. Be afraid. Be very afraid. The time of The Outhere Brothers is upon us. For reasons unclear, these two berks racked up four UK Top 10 hits this year including two (TWO!) No 1s. Quite why the British record buying public had a vulnerability for unequivocally crap records remains inexplicable to me. There must be a thesis or at least a dissertation in it for somebody.

The first of those two chart toppers was “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” which gained notoriety for its sexually explicit lyrics (I looked them up, they are very explicit). Now of course, the version performed on TOTP was the radio edit (or clean version) with the offending lyrics removed which pretty much just left a moronic chant of the single’s title. However, the CD single included the explicit version as part of the extra tracks meaning many a young record buyer ended up with access to innocence corrupting material. Such was the outrage that it even promoted a question in Parliament (raised by the MP from my hometown of Worcester as it happens). Perhaps nobody should have been surprised given the titles of the duo’s first two singles – “Pass The Toilet Paper” and the delightfully named “Fuk U In The Ass”. Its notoriety probably helped propel it to the chart summit. I know from working in record shops for years that we never sold those clean versions of records by the likes of Eminem. The youth all wanted to hear the cussing.

The performance here is deeply unimpressive. Malik and Hula (they weren’t really brothers I don’t think) are wearing basketball outfits for no discernible reason and there are the obligatory scantily clad women dancing behind them. I can feel my anxiety levels rising. Not because of any potentially explicit lyrics but because with this crap going to No 1, we’re going to have to endure it at least once more.

Next a band whose name sounds like it should strike a note of trepidation and indeed they were named after a 1986 horror film but, in truth, Terrorvision weren’t that scary. However, they did have a rather spooky chart statistic which was that their last five singles had peaked between No 29 and 21. This next release – “Some People Say” – would make that six when it got to a high of No 22. The fifth and last single taken from their “How To Make Friends And Influence People” album, I can’t say I remember it at all. Maybe it was unfortunate to have been around at the same time as a similarly entitled single – “Some Might Say” by Oasis was released the following month and would become their first No 1. Terrorvision never had their own chart topper though they came close with “Tequila” in 1999 which peaked at No 2.

Clearly taking a leaf out of her brother’s book of ‘How many singles is too many to release from one album?’*, Janet Jackson is back with the seventh from her 1993 “Janet” album. Yes, you read that right; 1993. Janet was still releasing singles from an album that came out eighteen months previously.

*Answer: There is no limit if your surname is Jackson

“Whoops Now” was a double A-side with “What’ll I Do” and was a hidden track on the album but was deemed commercial enough for a single release. It’s a fairly unremarkable Motown pastiche to my ears; a bit too cute for its own good. The performance here is an ‘exclusive’ live performance from Oslo and to be honest, Janet’s exhortations to the audience to want to hear them make some noise (or words to that effect) whilst singing a song so slight is almost comical.

“Whoops Now” made No 9 on the UK Top 40 but it wouldn’t be long before Janet was back. Just two months later, her duet with brother Michael entitled “Scream” would go all the way to No 2.

Right, if you’re confused as I was about Lenny Henry’s intro for this next track, it’s because we had forgotten about this Levi’s 501 advert. Maybe watch this before proceeding further and it should clear that mystery up…

…all done? Up to speed now? Great! Yes, after a Levi’s advert turned an unknown song by a fabricated band the previous year (“Inside” by Stiltskin) into a No 1 record, the marketing machine rolled on into 1995 and yet again made a huge hit out of a relatively obscure track. The lucky recipients of the Levi’s magic dust this time though were the latest project of a man who was no stranger to chart hits.

It had been seven years since the The Housemartins had called it a day and in that time, whilst Paul Heaton found mass appeal with the wry pop melodies of The Beautiful South, Norman Cook had turned his attention to the world of dance music. Success came early and in some style with Cook’s group Beats International securing a 1990 No 1 with “Dub Be Good To Me”. There was only one way to to go after that though and that particular project withered away. The ever inventive Cook was soon back in the saddle with his next vehicle Freak Power whose 1993 debut single “Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out” was a minor chart hit when it made No 29. Somebody at Levi’s (or the advertising agency working for them) must have noticed the track as just under eighteen months later it was chosen to soundtrack the next 501 campaign. You can hear why. A super slick soul groove with a touch of funk that saw the bass guitar supplying the hooky riff, it sounded familiar the first time you heard it with Gill Scott-Heron springing to mind. It turns out though that the bass line was appropriated from a tune called “Flo” by Red Holt from the 70s. Though that name means nothing to me, I’m sure Norman would have had a copy of said track in his extensive vinyl collection.

The reach of the advert ensured that “Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out” would become a major hit second time around peaking at No 3 though, if pressed, I would have guessed that it made it to the top of the charts like Stiltskin did a year before. I like the fact that lead singer Ashley Slater pulls out a trombone during this performance but then he had been a member of jazz big band/orchestra Loose Tubes in the 80s. In terms of my nerves with regards to this hit, the only thing concerning me was the potential for an unfortunate typo when it came to the name of Loose Tubes.

Lenny Henry might be experiencing some nerves of his own as he introduces the next artist on the show but they’re the good type rather than the anxiety inducing variety. It’s only his all time hero Prince. Sadly for Lenny, the Purple One was in the middle of his dispute with Warners and so what we get here is Prince pretending he’s not really there. As a way of releasing material outside of his existing contract, Prince used his backing band since 1990 New Power Generation to vent his creative spleen. “Get Wild” was the lead single from the band’s second album “Exodus” and, in line with their earlier output, it’s a supercool funk work out in the style of Parliament. For this performance, Prince has assumed one of his multiple alter egos, in this case, Tora Tora and appears on stage in a gauze scarf totally obscuring his face. If you peer closely, I think you can determine that it is Prince but I can’t help thinking it kind of diluted the experience of him appearing on the show.

In the Top 40 at the same time as “Get Wild” was something called “Purple Medley” which, as it says in the title, was a mashup of Prince hits and well known tracks either re-recorded or sampled. Released by Warners, it might appear as if this was the record company trying to squeeze every last drop of revenue from their artist’s back catalogue but it was actually Prince who was behind the single in an attempt to fulfil his contractual obligations with Warners. No doubt he would have raised a wry smile when “Get Wild” peaked at No 19 and “Purple Medley” spluttered to a high of No 33.

Finally! It’s the last of seven weeks at the top of the charts for Celine Dion with “Think Twice”. There was no rapid descent of the charts for the single though as it would spend another two weeks inside the Top 5 and a further four after that within the Top 40. In total it would spend thirty-one weeks on the UK Top 100. My nerves were officially frazzled.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Alex Party	Don’t Give Me Your Life	No
2	The Human League	One Man In My Heart	Don’t think I did
3	Cher / Chrissie Hynde / Neneh Cherry / Eric Clapton	Love Can Build A Bridge	I did not
4	The Outhere Brothers	Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)	Hell no
5	Terrorvision	Some People Say	Nope
6	Janet Jackson	Whoops Now	Negative
7	Freak Power	Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out	Nah
8	New Power Generation	Get Wild	It’s a no from me
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	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/m001r3g8/top-of-the-pops-16031995

TOTP 02 MAR 1995

Posted on October 6, 2023 by 80stastic

Five of the nine songs on tonight’s show have already been featured in recent weeks but then the whole of this week’s Top 40 was in chaos so no wonder the running order was a bit off. So what was going on then? Well, for the second time in as many months, there was a bit of a cock up with the compilation of the sales data that informed the charts and every position apart from the Top 8 was affected. Even worse was the fact that the error wasn’t noticed until after the charts were announced and broadcast on the Sunday chart show. A recalibrated Top 40 was rapidly published on the Monday but in a curious move, TOTP head producer Ric Blaxill chose to base the Thursday night show around the incorrect chart. Maybe it was a case of supporting the more public version that the BBC had broadcast as to not have would have undermined the corporation’s authority as the custodians of the chart? Or maybe Blaxill just thought people wouldn’t have noticed the rectified chart and so just wanted to not draw attention to the error?

Whatever the reason, the decision seems a little odd in retrospect but surely the bigger mystery is why Keith Allen was asked to host the show. OK, maybe not why Keith Allen per se but why was he allowed to do it as the character of ‘Keithski Allenski’. The online reaction to his…erm…performance was overwhelmingly negative with most reactions being along the lines of “what the Hell was that?!” and “Why is he shouting all the time?!”. It’s clear he was trying to send up ‘yoof’ presenter and one time beau of Janet Street-Porter Normski but was Normski still a big name by 1995? Wikipedia tells me that the programming strand DEF II which was produced by Street-Porter and which housed Normski’s rhyming/rapping presenting style was off the air permanently by May 1994. Obviously Allen’s creation had some longevity as I know instinctively 28 years later who he is parodying but back in 1995 would it have all seemed a bit old hat? Talking of hats, apparently the one Allen was wearing wasn’t actually his but one he fished out of the BBC prop store that was used by EastEnders character Ethel! Anyway, whilst we’re discussing whether Normski was still a big name at this time, how well known was Keith Allen himself? Well, if you’d been a fan of The Comic Strip Presents…in the late 80s you’d have seen him in the episodes The Bullshitters and The Yob. He’d also been in Danny Boyle’s excellent Shallow Grave but I’m guessing an awful lot of people knew him as that bloke who got round the back in the video for New Order’s “World In Motion” during Italia ‘90. I read his autobiography Grow Up a few years back and it was an entertaining read though I’m not sure if I warmed to him that much by the end of it. I did have sympathy for him though when he revealed that his Dad wouldn’t let him watch the 1966 World Cup final for a childhood misdemeanour on the morning of the game.

He starts the show in high octane mode extorting the audience at home to “rip up the shag pile” – it doesn’t really get any better and you could say the same for first act MN8 who were never higher in the charts than they were right now – “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” is up to No 2 which means a third TOTP studio appearance for the band. As such, I haven’t got much else to say about them. Right, I’ll try one last google search for inspiration…

*sound of keyboard tiles clicking*

Right then. Let’s have a look…

*scans results*

Usual Wikipedia entry…official fan page on Facebook…hang on, what’s this? There’s a device designed to alleviate period pain called MN8?! Apparently, it’s a small device that is attached discreetly to underwear. Sadly there’s nothing discreet about MN8 the band and their personalised underwear which they are all to keen to whip out during this performance.

https://youtu.be/wHFbmDEpgqk?si=DSoeMQsa0Eeu20am

Next a song that was actually at No 20 rather than No 21 as the TOTP graphic advised but it’s splitting hairs I guess. It would go onto be the band’s second biggest hit ever though when it finally came to a halt at No 12. If you were asked to name 3 in 10 on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster quiz for Mike + The Mechanics could you do it? There’s “The Living Years” their US chart topper, UK No 2 and funeral standard obviously and then there’s…erm…well, actually there are some more. Their debut single “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” in 1986 made No 21, “Word Of Mouth” got to No 13 in 1991 and “All I Need Is A Miracle” was a massive radio airplay and Top 5 US hit though it didn’t make the UK charts until it was rereleased in 1996 to promote a Best Of album.

Then there’s this, the lead single from the “Beggar On A Beach Of Gold” album. If you asked AI to create the optimum AOR airplay hit, it might well come up with “Over My Shoulder”. A pleasant melody allied with Paul Carrack’s golden soul voice, how could it fail? Well, the whistling in the middle eight was considered an impediment by some it has to be said. Did it really add anything to the track by going all Roger Whittaker on it?

It certainly didn’t put daytime DJs off playing it. My wife and I went to Prague around this time and we seemed to hear it everywhere. However, my biggest memory of hearing it in the radio was in 1996 when it was played on the coach taking us to the airport in Madrid. We’d had a great holiday there but I got a case of Montezuma’s Revenge on the last day from an ice cream and spent the night on the hotel room bathroom floor. Somehow I had to get myself together to make the flight home the following morning. I hauled myself onto the coach and kept everything crossed or rather clenched. First tune on the radio that morning? “Over My Shoulder”. It wasn’t anything over my shoulder I was was worried about though. Any movement under my seat on the other hand…Miraculously, I managed the entire journey home without incident. Unfortunately though, the whole episode has left me with some rather unpleasant associations with “Over My Shoulder” none of which is the fault of Mike + The Mechanics to be fair.

I recently listened to an interview with Paul Carrack who discussed his time in the band and why he left. He told the story of how he’d put together an album in 2000 showcasing his career to that point but was still required to pay the licensing fee to include “The Living Years” on the track listing despite being the vocalist on the song. At that point, he realised he needed to be in control of his own catalogue of music and his time in the band came to an end. Asked by the interviewer if he’d heard any material by the rejuvenated Mike + The Mechanics (they reformed in 2010 with a new line up), Carrack quickly replied “Not really”. Oof!

Keithski is back banging on about tearing up carpets again before introducing “Push The Feeling On” by Nightcrawlers. Like many a 90s dance tune, it had an elongated gestation period before a massive hit was finally birthed. Originally released in 1992, it only made No 86 but its B-side was a remix of the track by DJ and producer Marc Kinchen which picked up a lot of play in the clubs and eventually was given an official release as a single in 1994 which made No 22 in the UK charts. Encouraged by that success, Kinchen returned to the track to tweak it a little more and it was released for a third time under the title “New MK Mixes for ‘95” which would become the definitive version of the track.

Now I couldn’t have picked this one out of the myriad dance tunes that dominated the 90s without re listening to it but now that I have, let’s address the elephant in room. This is the same tune as that intensely annoying We Buy Any Car jingle! Well, sort of. It’s actually based on the 2021 track “Friday” by Riton X Nightcrawlers featuring Mufasa and Hypeman which itself was obviously based on “Push The Feeling On”. Those fiendish marketing guys even got YouTube sensation Musafa to be in the ad campaign.

Anyway, back in 1995, none of us could have predicted there would be this thing called YouTube (except perhaps David Bowie) but we did have the video which was basically a procession of people posing in a Photo Booth. The director obviously went for fast clips with bold colours (check out those hairstyles) but the image that dominates for me is that of main Nightcrawler John Reid with his incredibly long, lank hair and weary expression. Maybe he hadn’t managed to sell his vehicle to We Buy Any Car.

Another dance tune next but we shouldn’t really be surprised. By my reckoning, every other hit in the Top 20 this week is a dance tune. Honestly, they were everywhere. Look at this lot:

N-Trance
Perfecto Allstarz
MC Sar and The Real McCoy
Bucketheads
Clock
Nicki French
Ini Kamoze

That’s not even including MN8 and Nightcrawlers that we’ve already seen tonight and now here’s Alex Party! Their hit “Don’t Give Me Your Life” is up to No 3. It would eventually peak one place higher. I don’t really have anything else to say about this one so instead I’m going to talk about Keith Allen’s intro for it and specifically his use of the phrase “Acieed!”. This was obviously a reference to the infamous “We Call It Acieed” single by D Mob from 1988 which got banned by the BBC amidst a tabloid backlash against the acid house movement and rave culture. Whilst it’s certainly true that the track did lead to the phenomenon of the younger generation going around randomly shouting the phrase aloud, would the kids of 1995 have known about? Clearly, he was sending up the whole ‘wicked DJ” persona for laughs but would the kids have got his cultural reference and joined in with the joke?

Future No 1 incoming and it’s this year’s Comic Relief song. After the dance track “Absolutely Fabulous” by Pet Shop Boys the previous year and the awful novelty record of “Stick It Out” by Right Said Fred in 1993, the charity went for a big ballad this time round. “Love Can Build A Bridge” was a country & western song by mother and daughter duo The Judds which had already been used for a charity record as recently as six months prior when Children for Rwanda covered it in aid of Save The Children. However, despite a TOTP appearance, it failed to make the Top 40. Comic Relief clearly saw legs in the song though and drafted in not one but four artists to record it. The combination of Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry and not forgetting Eric Clapton would add the necessary star power to propel it to the chart summit.

However, it only ranks at No 15 in the best selling Comic Relief songs of all time. The next time a single was released in aid of the charity, they played the percentages much better and instead of taking a punt on a track relatively unknown to the UK public, they co-opted the appeal of a band rather than a song. The Spice Girls were at the height of their fame in 1997 and the decision for their latest single release (“Mama /Who Do You Think You Are”) to be used as the official Comic Relief song was always going to guarantee sales. It stands as the fourth best selling Comic Relief single of all time.

Curiously, both Cher and *Chrissie Hynde’s last singles released prior to “Love Can Build A Bridge” were the same song. Cher had a minor hit with “I Got You Babe” in 1993 alongside cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head whilst Chrissie bagged a No 1 with UB40 on the same track in 1985. Both were terrible in my humble opinion.

*Credited as Chrissie Hynde and not as part of The Pretenders obviously

Keith Allen’s had a change of outfit for the next intro and put on the football shirt of his beloved Fulham FC. Now why’s he done that? Do you think it could be to wind up famous Watford supporting Elton John who is the next act on? I wouldn’t put it past him. Elton’s in the studio to perform his latest single “Believe” and as it’s one of his trademark plodding ballads, they’ve positioned the audience in a circle creating an in the round effect. Clearly the studio director has instructed them to sway as per tradition for such a song. It’s all as unconvincing as the single earring Elton’s sporting.

When Elton finished his Glastonbury set this year, he had his getaway planned so meticulously that he was back for his kids bedtime in minutes. Or as my Elton hating mate Robin put it, you could still hear the crowd booing as he tucked them in.

Back to that Top 40 foul up now and the curious case of Scarlet. Their hit “Independent Love Song” had peaked at No 12 a fortnight ago and then slipped down to No 14 the following week. In the incorrect chart announced seven days later on Radio 1 it was listed as a non mover and so TOTP Executive Producer Ric Blaxill took the decision to book them for the show again. However, when the rectified chart was published, Scarlet had fallen to No 16. In keeping with the show’s protocol of not featuring acts that were going down the charts, Blaxill really should have cancelled Scarlet’s booking but instead he honoured it making them part of a very elite club to have appeared on TOTP while their record descended the Top 40. Well I never.

P.S. As with his “Acieed!” reference, I’m not entirely convinced that ‘ver yoof’ would have got Keith Allen’s Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons name check in his intro.

The exclusive performance this week comes from Faith No More whose single “Digging The Grave” was released the week following this broadcast. I was never really that into these guys. I quite liked “We Care A Lot” and “Epic” is an…well…epic song but after that? Not so much for me thanks. What? Their cover of “Easy”? What about it? I could never figure out the point of it nor who was buying it. This track, however, was a return to their grunge rock tendencies and must have completely passed me by as I don’t recall it at all. Thankfully. What I do like though is the band standing behind Keith Allen as he does his intro for the No 1 record with a look on their faces that says “What the f**k is this guy going on about?!”.

Said No 1 is Celine Dion again with “Think Twice” which is exactly what I’m having to do to come up with something to say about this one again. Right think…that’s once…and that’s twice. I’ve got nothing. I could have done with that Top 40 cock up working in my favour and moving Celine down the chart.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	MN8	I’ve Got A Little Something For You	No
2	Mike + The Mechanics	Over My Shoulder	Negative
3	Nightcrawlers	Push The Feeling On	Uh uh
4	Alex Party	Don’t Give Me Your Life	Nope
5	Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry and Eric Clapton	Love Can Build A Bridge	Not even for charity
6	Elton John	Believe	Nah
7	Scarlet	Independent Love Song	Really should have but no
8	Faith No More	Digging The Grave	I did not
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	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/m001qwr3/top-of-the-pops-02031995

TOTP 01 SEP 1994

Posted on May 18, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, before we get into the music, there’s a bit of housekeeping to take care of. Firstly, we’ve missed a whole episode which hasn’t happened for quite some time. Nothing to do with Operation Yewtree nor presenters who hadn’t signed the waiver for BBC4 to broadcast the repeats they featured in – no this was a matter of a technical nature. The tapes for the TOTP shown on 25 August 1994 held in the BBC archive were deemed to be not of broadcast quality and so we miss out on what was surely one of the more interesting guest presenters in Malcolm MacLaren. Despite being a bit of an arse I’m sure, I’ve always had a soft spot for Malcolm and could listen to his drivel for hours. At least he led an interesting life. I’ve checked the running order for that show and I don’t think we missed much. Many acts we’d already seen before including Red Dragon, Shampoo and unbelievably Let Loose again! We did however miss Dinosaur Jnr which might have been distracting at least plus the return of Kylie Minogue with her first new material since leaving PWL as she entered her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Oh well.

The other bit of housekeeping is regarding tonight’s host who we haven’t seen before. So who was / is Claire Sturgess? Well, she’s a voice over artist and DJ currently working on Absolute Radio where she’s been since 2015. Back in 1994 though, she was a Radio 1 DJ presenting the rock show on Sunday evenings. She would stay at the BBC until 1997 but only hosted TOTP one more time before being replaced by Lisa I’Anson.

Right, on with the tunes and we start with one that perhaps more than any other (with the possible exception of “Common People” by Pulp) has come to be associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Britpop movement. Think of “Parklife” (the song) by Blur and what comes to mind? Phil Daniels? Of course. The “vorsprung durch technik’ line? Yep. The iconic video with Damon in that tracksuit top camping it up whilst an ice cream van drives by. Without doubt. They’re all woven into the fabric of the time but sometimes I think we forget what a strange song “Parklife” really is. A track where all the verses are spoken in a cockney accent, a chorus that you could imagine Dick Van Dyke singing in one of those musicals he starred in and lyrics about brewer’s droop, dirty pigeons and habitual voyeurs. And yet it all hangs together perfectly to the point that we didn’t bat an eyelid when it was released but instead accepted it as another example of Blur’s pursuit to celebrate ‘Englishness’. Except it wasn’t. Here’s Graham Coxon courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Graham Coxon on "Parklife": "A lot of people thought it was a celebration of Englishness, but it was actually very sarcastic. [It] wasn't about the working class, it was about the park class: dustbin men, pigeons, joggers – things we saw every day on the way to the studio." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) May 5, 2023

In this performance, Daniels is word perfect and Damon, relieved of the stress of doing all the heavy lifting vocals wise, seems to be enjoying his freedom to ham it up on stage more than usual. My personal memory of this song though would come three months later at Christmas. I was asked to co-coordinate the works Christmas do for all the Our Price shops in the area. I found a venue and we got one of the staff at the Piccadilly, Manchester store to do the DJ-ing (if you worked in a record shop there was always someone who was either in a band or a DJ on the staff). The manager I organised the shindig with (Rick) was a bit nervous on the actual night about whether people were having a good time or not and especially about the music being played. Our DJ put on “Girls & Boys” which seemed a safe choice but which only served to agitate Rick into shouting at him “Give ‘em Parklife Will, give ‘em Parklife!”. Such was the influence of Blur and that song in particular in 1994.

P.S. I think Will did indeed give ‘em “Parklife” at some point in the evening.

Oh great! Another soap star turned pop star. This time the actor is from EastEnders reviving bad memories of Nick ‘Wicksy’ Berry and Anita ‘Angie’ Dobson. Sean Maguire’s stay in the soap had been short (January to December 1993) but he had been a big hit with the audience (especially the teenage female section of it). It was almost inevitable then that he’d give the old pop star lark a go and here he was, eight months after leaving EastEnders, back on our screens on the BBC’s premier music show. Unbelievably, despite not being able to shift any meaningful amount of units of either of his two albums, he would rack up eight Top 40 singles over a three year period. The first of those was “Someone To Love” and it’s a decent slice of late summer pop which seems to have pinched a bit from Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”. Maguire sells it well enough and there’s been less likely pop stars (Stefan Dennis anyone?) but I’m guessing that his record label couldn’t have envisaged another six hits after this one. They were all pretty consistent as well. Look at these chart positions:

14 – 27 – 18 – 22 – 16 – 12 – 14 – 27

They’re not too shabby for a soap actor turned pop star. Maguire played Irish wannabe footballer Aidan Brosnan in EastEnders. Hmm. A footballer called Maguire who went onto have a career as a singer. Man Utd’s Harry Maguire as a pop star anyone?

I referenced this record the other week but it wasn’t really pre-planned – it just sort of played out that way. I’m talking about “Endless Love” by Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross. I mentioned their version as the record that knocked Boyz II Men off the No 1 spot in New Zealand but I’d already referred to the Lionel Richie / Diana Ross 1981 original when stating that I hadn’t heard a song basically regurgitated as a different track as I believed Boyz II Men had done with “End Of The Road” and “I’ll Make Love To You” since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. I’d actually forgotten that this duet existed until these TOTP repeats aired but exist it does so I’ll have to discuss it. It came from a whole album of covers recorded by Luther called, rather blandly, “Songs” which already had a Lionel Richie song on the track listing in “Hello” but Sony president Tommy Mottola and his then wife Mariah decided that they could boost the album’s chances of success by having her appear on it and so the cover of “Endless Love” came to be. It was a sound business strategy – Mariah was perhaps at the very peak of her popularity with her latest album “Music Box” achieving huge global sales and indeed her contribution helped “Songs” to platinum sales and a No 1 chart position in the UK alone. The single also performed well going to No 2 in America and No 3 here. For me though, it’s a very faithful reproduction and rather pointless and anodyne. I suppose there was a gap of 13 years between the release of the original and the cover so maybe it’s possible there were people out there who didn’t know the Richie / Ross version and so came to it as a brand new song? Or perhaps people did know it and were reminded how much they’d liked the original but in those days before streaming and Spotify, they couldn’t just get access to the song and so bought what was available, the Vandross / Carey remake? I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to work out how some of these songs managed to be hits – and I wrote a dissertation about it whilst a student at Poly.

Next we find Terrorvision having a very steady year of consolidating their success and building their fanbase as they are back on TOTP performing their fourth Top 40 hit of the year “Pretend Best Friend”. And when I say steady, I mean incredibly consistent. Look at these chart peaks for those four singles:

29 – 21 – 25 – 25

A fifth single was released before 1994 was out and it made it to No 24. Their first single of the following year peaked at No 22. Like I say, incredibly consistent. As for the song itself, I don’t recall it but it kind of sounds how I expected it to with Tony Wright launching into a high speed rap that is vaguely reminiscent of “Ant Rap” before the almost shouted chorus. There’s also a bit where it all slows down and Tony wields a megaphone which is all rather incongruous. Good song title though.

After the exclusive of a double live by satellite section in the show last week, head producer Ric Blaxill has gone in hard on the idea by repeating the ‘satellite segue’ (as they’ve named it) for this week. We start off in Philadelphia with a curiously dull performance by the aforementioned Boyz II Men of “I’ll Make Love To You”. Now, my knowledge of the geography of Philadelphia is mostly limited to the scene in Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the 72 steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the iconic training scene. Luckily for me, I think that’s near to where this performance takes place with the mini stage erected in the Benjamin Franklin Parkway right in front of the Washington Monument. The whole set up seems to be adhering to Blaxill’s stated desire to get the live by satellite slots to feature well known landmarks that have nothing to do with the music per se but which are a step up from the performances in empty theatre halls we have seen previously. It’s all a bit odd though. The parkway has people wandering through it minding their own business or joggers doing their own version of the Rocky training regimen whilst four guys are singing “I’ll Make Love To You” whilst they pass by. Shouldn’t be allowed really.

The second part of the satellite segue stays in America but transports us to New York and specifically to The Bottom Line club in Greenwich Village where we find Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories. Now it might not be recognisable as a landmark like the Washington Monument before it but this venue was legendary in its own right. Owners Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky put on a huge amount of musical talent in the 30 years the club was open including the likes of Prince, The Police, Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton….and in the fall of 1994 Lisa Loeb. But who was she?

Well, for someone who is a one hit wonder in the UK (she managed a few more hits in the US), Lisa has quite the biography and discography – her Wikipedia entry is sizeable to say the least. She had been recording music and performing live since the late 80s but it was a friendship with neighbour and actor Ethan Hawke that gave Lisa her lucky break. Having met through the NYC theatre community, Hawke gave Loeb’s song “Stay (I Missed You)” to Ben Stiller who was directing the film Reality Bites that Hawke was starring in and he made the decision to use it over the end credits. The rest really is history. The track’s pretty, folk-infused pop melody proved irresistible to the American public who sent it to No 1 making Lisa and her band the first ever artist to top the chart there without being signed to a label.

Lisa looked a bit like Nana Mouskouri’s hipper younger sister but there was more to her than her trademark glasses. As well as being a musician, she also runs a number of businesses including one for fair trade coffee and, making use of that glasses association, the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection with each frame being named after one of her song titles. She’s also written children’s books and done some acting though one of her credits is for one of the worst films of all time – Hot Tub Time Machine 2. If you haven’t seen it and stumble across it whilst channel flipping then heed my advice – Don’t stay (you’ll be glad you missed it).

One of last week’s satellite segue acts are in the TOTP studio this week as Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry move up to No 3 with “7 Seconds”. The staging of this one starts out simple yet effective with a single spotlight centred on first Youssou and then Neneh as each takes the vocal lead in turn. However, the production team can’t have been totally won over by the idea as by the time the first chorus comes around, they’re both floodlit and there’s a multi screen video installation behind them showing the official promo film that accompanied the single. Shame. I thought a more paired back, minimalist setting would work best for this particular track but the show disagreed and went for Youssou N’More.

https://youtu.be/GUua-NUYlsg

It would take a braver man than me to start a political rant about this government’s despicable deportation to Rwanda scheme in a pop music blog but I am inevitably put in mind of it by the next song which is “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Children For Rwanda which was a charity single to raise money for Save The Children. If this all sounds familiar but not quite how you remember it then it’s quite possible you’re thinking of the version by Cher, Chrissie Hynde and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry that was released for Comic Relief just 6 months on from this and which went to No 1 for a week. Sadly for the Children For Rwanda single, it failed to sell nearly as well and peaked outside the Top 40.

We’ve reached week 14 of 15 (we missed week 13 due to the broadcast quality issue discussed earlier) for Wet Wet Wet’s reign at No 1 with “Love Is All Around” and whilst I’m really struggling to say anything of interest about it after so many appearances on the show, it seems like Ric Blaxill might be finding it difficult to keep us all interested as well. To shake things up a bit, he’s doubled down on the live by satellite feature and has the band beaming in from LA. This definitely falls into the category of performing in front of a world famous landmark with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. The end is coming though. There’s only one more week and the story behind it’s demise will be discussed in the next post.

The play out song is “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. 1994 was a year of massive upheaval for the band most notably due to the departure of guitarist Bernard Butler who formally left their ranks on 8th July following tensions whilst recording sophomore album “Dog Man Star”. As if that wasn’t enough, difficult second album syndrome raised its ugly head. Not that the band didn’t make the album they wanted to; they did, but the direction they took confused critics and some of the fans after their electrifying eponymous debut. Many saw its grandiose soundscapes as pretentious and although it sold well enough, it was seen as a bit of a step backwards commercially in comparison to its predecessor. History has been kind to the album though and revisionism has it hailed as an under appreciated and misunderstood at the time classic. When the band played five nights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2003 with each night dedicated to one of their studio albums, it was the tickets for the Dog Man Star show that sold the quickest.

As for its lead single, “We Are The Pigs” is certainly dark in nature and tone but it’s still a huge tune. There’s even a bit in it which sounds like that reverb sound in “Peter Gunn” by Diane Eddy and subsequently The Art Of Noise. Do you think that’s totally innocent or knowingly inserted?

The almost post apocalyptic video with burning crosses, cars afire and masked gangs roaming the streets puts me in mind of the climax of The Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, the ending of which had to be reshot as audience reaction at test screenings deemed it to violent and pessimistic. Similarly, the promo for Suede’s single got little airplay due to it being banned for being too violent. This may have contributed to the track only making it to No 18 in the UK Top 40.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blur	Parklife	Not the single but I had the album obviously
2	Sean Maguire	Someone To Love	No
3	Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross	Endless Love	Never happening
4	Terrorvision	Pretend Best Friend	Nope
5	Boyz II Men	I’ll Make Love To You	Nah
6	Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories	Stay (I Missed You)	Nice song but no
7	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
8	Children For Rwanda	Love Can Build A Bridge	Negative
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Another no
10	Suede	We Are The Pigs	Could have done but 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/m001ln6m/top-of-the-pops-01091994

TOTP 18 AUG 1994

Posted on May 16, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re still in the long, hot Summer of 1994 and despite the singles chart feeling like it’s been stagnating for a while with a number of records hanging around for weeks on end, this particular TOTP only features three songs that have been on previously. It also has not one but two live by satellite performances. Well, there’s only so many times you can have Let Loose in the studio before you have to shake things up a bit! Having said all of that, we start with a tune that has definitely been on the show a couple of times before. China Black were at their chart peak this week with the rerelease of “Searching” finding its natural high of No 4.

Seeing as this was their biggest ever hit, I guess you could say that they were at the apex of their career arc. Or were they? Maybe a bigger achievement was being nominated for a Brit Award for Best British Single in 1995? Or being invited by Princess Diana to perform at one of her Aids Trust concerts at Wembley Stadium? It surely wasn’t losing to Hue and Cry in their heat of the ITV entertainment show Hit Me Baby One More Time in 2005? You remember that show which brought back former pop stars from the 70s, 80s and 90s to compete in essentially a talent contest? Sure you do. China Black performed “Searching” (obviously) and their cover version (each act had to do a cover version in addition to their own track) was “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” by The Darkness. They were up against the aforementioned Kane brothers, Sinitta, The Real Thing and Hazel O’Connor with Hue and Cry progressing to the final which was won by Shakin’ Stevens. I’m not selling it to you am I?

And this was the point when I relented and gave in to the inevitable. When it came to Oasis, I was officially ‘avin’ it. I’d dillied, dallied and wavered over their first two singles, unsure about whether to get on board or not but the first time I heard “Live Forever”, I knew any further resistance was futile. History would show that not everything they did was of the same standard and that their best by date had probably expired long before they did but in 1994 and in every year since, “Live Forever” was a tune. There was just something joyous and joyful about its melody whilst the lyrics, though minimal and basically just repeated throughout, sounded so positive. Maybe (perhaps even definitely) it was just what I needed to hear as I was having a difficult time at work, still struggling to adapt to the culture and clientele of the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester. On reflection, it was the sound of a band showing what they were really capable of, what their one time nemesis and later pal Robbie Williams would sing as letting their wings unfold. Famously written by Noel as a f**k that retort to Nirvana’s song “I Hate Myself And Want To Die”, the line ‘we see things they’ll never see’ has almost become a part of the national lexicon though it was actually intended as a very personal lyric about laughing at an in joke with a friend.

I only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher based the song’s structure around the chord progression in “Shine A Light” by The Rolling Stones whilst listening to their “Exile On Main Street” album and yeah, I guess I can hear the similarities though the two tunes are hardly identical.

As for the performance here, some things have changed and some things have remained the same since the last time they were on the show. The presenter scheduling gods have allowed for them to be introduced by Bruno Brookes again (hopefully they got on better than the last time when he insisted on calling them an indie band) but this time drummer Tony McCarroll has been shifted to the much more traditional position at the back of the stage with Liam Gallagher replacing him up front and centre. Talking of McCarroll, the symbolic removing of him from the front of the stage wasn’t the only clue to his future fate associated with “Live Forever”. The UK promo video includes a scene where the rest of the band are burying him alive. Within eight months of this TOTP appearance he would be sacked from the band and replaced by Alan White. He was still in the band though when next single “Cigarettes And Alcohol” was released in the October. The fourth single from the “Definitely Maybe” album, it would be their biggest hit to date when it made No 7 eclipsing “Live Forever” which peaked at No 10. And it was at that point that there was no looking back for the band nor the rest of us. Strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Next a song that I don’t remember at all but which is very familiar on listening to it now. How is that possible? Well, the basis of this No 9 hit dance track “Eighteen Strings” is clearly the riff from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana (a second song on the show inspired by the Seattle rockers following Oasis directly before them). However, it’s not an actual sample but more a very close approximation presumably because the artist – Tinman – didn’t have copyright clearance. This was the second dance track in a matter of weeks to be based on the grunge classic following Abigail’s take on it. I think I prefer the Tinman interpretation though I’m not a fan of either really. It turns out that the guy behind the project – one Paul Dakeyne – is from Hull where I have been living these last 20 years. As with his hit single from nearly 30 ago though, I’m not familiar with him.

Eternal are next who are still churning out the hits one year into their pop career. “So Good” was their fourth chart single on the spin but unlike its three predecessors, it failed to make the Top 10 peaking at No 13. There’s a reason for that I believe which is that, despite its title, it’s actually not that good. A distinctly average R&B pop song, it’s got an annoying sound effect squeak like air being pushed out of a small space that runs throughout it which tips it into the bracket of annoying for me. I’ve got a pair of shoes that make a similar noise every time I wear them. Curiously, Boyzone also released a single called “So Good” at a similar stage of their career and it was also a low point. Fortunately for both camps, both songs are largely forgotten with the perspective of nearly 30 years distance.

Louise Nurding would famously leave the group in 1995 bringing back memories of when Siobhan Fahey left Bananarama in 1988. In previous posts on my 80s TOTP blog, I’ve posited a theory that you could see signs of a split between Siobhan and Sarah/Keren in terms of the outfits she wore and her willingness to deviate from the group’s dance routines (loose as they were). However, I can’t see any such clues from Louise. They’re all on message with identical outfits and the dance steps are synchronised to the hilt. I’ll keep a watching brief on future performances though.

Time for that live by satellite segue now starting in the University of New Orleans where we find Soundgarden performing the only song of theirs that I could have named before, “Black Hole Sun”. Taken from their multi platinum album “Superunknown”, this would prove to be the band’s biggest ever UK hit when it peaked at No 13. I’m struck watching this in concert performance by the crowd surfing going on in the audience. I’ve never quite understood the appeal of this practice – it looks likely to cause personal injury and the thought of being upside down in a big crowd seems as scary as hell. Reading up on it though, it seems it can be used as the fastest way to transport gig goers in need of medical attention through the throng. My only experience of the phenomenon came in 1996 when I went to one of the Oasis concerts at Maine Road. Not that there were people crowd surfing but passing plastic glasses backwards over people’s heads was the best way of getting the crowd’s dinks to them from the bar.

Clearly wanting to make the most of having two satellite link up performances on the same show, Bruno Brookes does a voiceover segue in the style of an astronaut communicating with Mission Control. I’m not sure it works that well to be honest. Anyway, it leads us to New York where we join Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry for a performance of their single “7 Seconds”. The single is finally into the Top 10 after being on the charts for 9 weeks on its way to a high of No 3. In total, it would spend a whopping 27 weeks inside the Top 75.

Youssou and Neneh perform against a set backdrop which has been made up to look like a New York street and it is giving me a mix of vibes including Singin’ In The Rain, the Skid Row neighbourhood from Little Shop of Horrors and Hoagy’s Alley from the Top Cat cartoon. As the caption says, the song is sung in three different languages – English, French and Wolof which is a language of Senegal, Mauritania and the Gambia though, to maintain the Hanna-Barbera cartoon link, sounds like how Penelope Pitstop used to pronounce “wolf”.

https://youtu.be/VXcRmIdUnVU

Just to hammer home the space satellite link up theme, Bruno Brookes appears in a spaceman outfit before introducing the next artist. Overkill much? Anyway, I (along with many others I would expect) had Sophie B. Hawkins down at the time as a one hit wonder. A damned catchy pop single in “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” in 1992 and then nothing Top 40 wise. Two years on and she was one of the last people I expected to see back in our charts but here she was with “Right Beside You”, the lead single from her second album “Whaler”. Neither that album nor her previous one “Tongues And Tails” pulled up any trees sales wise over here (both peaked at No 46) but her singles were a bit more durable. DIWIWYL looks like a mid table football team’s form guide when written like that but it stayed on our charts for 9 weeks peaking at No 14 whilst RBY did even better staying for 12 weeks and peaking at No 13.

Many a critic drew parallels with Madonna on hearing “Right Beside You” and whilst I can see similarities with the beach set black and white promo and Madge’s “Cherish” video, it sounds more like Belinda Carlisle to me – maybe a combination of “Mad About You” and “Circle In The Sand”? Sophie would only have two more minor hit singles though she is still a live draw and released her most recent album this year.

What are the chances? One R&B harmony group is in the charts all Summer and just as they appear to be running out of steam, the group that many compared them to in the first place return with a song that not only sounds similar to their chart peers but also the own massive No 1 from two years prior. I refer to Boyz II Men whose “End Of The Road” single spent 13 weeks at the top of the US charts in 1992 (and was also a No 1 here) and All 4 One whose “I Swear” also topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for 11 weeks (and spent 7 weeks at No 2 in the UK). With that single just starting to drop down our charts, Boyz II Men decide to reintroduce themselves with “I’ll Make Love To You”. I’d not heard an artist just decide to make the same record all over again quite so obviously since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. Not only did it sound the same as “End Of The Road” but it replicated its chart success by going to No 1 in America for 14 weeks* (it topped out at No 5 over here).

*They would break their own record when their collaboration with Mariah Carey “One Sweet Day” was atop the US charts for 16 weeks! Talking of Mariah, it was another of her collaborations (this time with Luther Vandross) that knocked “I’ll Make Love To You” off the No 1 position in the New Zealand charts with their cover of…yep…the aforementioned “Endless Love”. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

This concept of a new artist making a genre of music that was popularised by another act shortly before them before the original protagonist returned to the charts puts me in mind if that time that sophisti-pop was represented in the Top 40 by Curiosity Killed The Cat with “Down To Earth” before The Blow Monkeys – who had hit 12 months before with “Digging Your Scene” – returned to the charts alongside Curiosity with “It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way”. And there endeth the lesson on recurring musical genres.

And talking of records being at the top of the charts for months, here’s our very own version Wet Wet Wet who have now been at No 1 for 12 weeks. I mean, what else can I say about “Love Is All Around”? It’s too early in its run to talk about how its demise came about so where does that leave me? How about what the band themselves made of the record’s success? Here’s Marti Pellow from an interview in The Guardian in 2021:

“I was in a cinema and the trailer came up for Four Weddings and a Funeral, and they played a bit of the song and a guy behind me went: ‘Ah, not that song again,’ and I turned round to him and said: ‘Imagine how I feel!’”

Simon Hattenstone: The G2 Interview Music, The Guardian, 29 March 2021

After not being one for a couple of weeks, we have the return of the play out song in the form of “Warriors” by Aswad. The follow up to Top 5 hit “Shine”, it would be their penultimate Top 40 entry when it peaked at No 33. Sadly, founding member Drummie Zeb died aged 62 in September 2022. Also in the obituaries is Stanley Appel who died this week and who was the producer responsible for the ‘Year Zero’ revamp of TOTP in 1991. RIP.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	China Black	Searching	No
2	Oasis	Live Forever	Not the single but I bought Definitely Maybe – didn’t we all?
3	Tinman	Eighteen Strings	Nah
4	Eternal	So Good	Nope
5	Soundgarden	Black Hole Sun	Negative
6	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
7	Sophie B. Hawkins	Right Beside You	Not for me
8	Boyz II Men	I’ll Make Love To You	Ooh no!
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Another no
10	Aswad	Warriors	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/m001ln6k/top-of-the-pops-18081994

TOTP 04 AUG 1994

Posted on May 8, 2023 by 80stastic

Due to BBC4’s relentless schedule of broadcasting two TOTP repeats a week (which is killing me by the way), we’ve already reached August of 1994. And we know what August means…the start of a new football season. On the very day this show aired, Spurs bought Jürgen Klinsmann from Monaco and despite playing for them for just one season, would become a fan favourite, rebuilding his reputation in England as being a ‘diver’ thanks to this celebration on his debut…

Thank God tonight’s presenter isn’t Spurs fan Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo or we’d have to suffer a whole show of him making endless ‘hilarious’ football references. Instead it’s Mark Goodier who I don’t think has ever even attempted to make a funny quip in his life. Looking at the running order for this show, it’s pretty underwhelming I have to say. So underwhelming that to try and big it up, Goodier announces as a future ‘highlight’ that Status Quo will be making their 100th appearance on the show. TOTP seemed to have a weakness for and reliance on The Quo when it came to creating a buzz about the show. In the first show of the ‘year zero’ revamp, they had them on to perform “Let’s Work Together” as a track from their latest album which seemed counter productive to an attempt to relaunch the show for a younger audience. That tie between the BBC and the band was severed though in 1996 when Radio 1 blacklisted their single “Fun Fun Fun” (a collaboration with The Beach Boys) on the grounds that they were repositioning themselves as a youth station and Status Quo were…well, no longer the status quo. The band took it badly and launched an unsuccessful legal action for a judicial review of the ban on their records. In 1994 though, they were still seen as a draw by the Beeb and they’ll be along soon enough.

If Messrs Rossi, Parfitt et al would find themselves in a metaphorical boxing ring with Radio 1, we start the show in an actual boxing ring as Maxx have decided to perform their new single in one. The follow up to No 4 hit “Get-A-Way”, “No More (I Can’t Stand It)” was more of the same, in other words a huge steaming pile of Eurodance dung. Has there ever been a more apt song title? So why the boxing ring? I’ve no idea but the track certainly doesn’t deliver a knockout punch. As it’s nearly 30 years ago, there’s still some sexual stereotyping going on with the boxers being men and the women on stage (apart from singer Linda Meek) are styled as ring girls announcing what round it is. Actually, is that still how it works in 2023? I know that the profile of women boxing is much higher these days but are ring girls still a thing? I’m not a big fight fan. Definitely still a thing are Maxx who reactivated in 2016 after initially folding in 1995, although Linda Meek now goes by the name of Elyse G Rogers and rapper Gary Bokoe has been replaced by someone called Twitch.

Right, I’m calling it. This must be the very last appearance on TOTP by Level 42. Not only is “Love In A Peaceful World” their very last UK Top 40 hit (it made No 31) but the band broke up in the October of this year and didn’t reform until the new millennium and didn’t release any new material until September 2006, two months after the last ever TOTP aired. I think that’s a cast-iron defence of my opening statement. Despite metamorphosing from Britfunk pioneers into a mega-hit making machine, the band have often been pigeonholed as vapid and bland. I have to admit to liking a handful of their songs – “Hot Water” is a great track – but I’ve never been tempted to actually buy any of their stuff.

Looking at their career in terms of a story arc though, a decent documentary could be made of it. A group of friends from the Isle of Wight relocate to the big smoke where one of them learns the bass and becomes one of the world’s most renowned bass guitarists. They start playing a brand of jazz funk fusion attracting record company interest before a change of musical direction towards pop brings huge mainstream success. Alas, the march of time catches up with them and they find themselves marginalised in the musical landscape. Add to that relationship breakdowns within the band causing line up changes (over 20 people have been band members at some point over the years) and finally tragedy with a founding member committing suicide and it’s quite a tale.

As a valedictory single, “Love In A Peaceful World” isn’t the worst way to bow out. A pleasant tune with an admirable message, I could imagine it being used in a rom com film to great effect. Sadly, and as an indication of where the band were, it only got to No 31. They remain, however, active within and a big draw of the live circuit.

https://youtu.be/vk2v6F7i_Gw

Right who’s next? Ce Ce Peniston with a song that isn’t “Finally”? Eh? Yes, well she did have more than the one hit – in fact, she had seven of which “Hit By Love” was the sixth. I think most of us would struggle to name more than “Finally” though wouldn’t we? What? “We Got A Love Thang”? Oh yeah. It made the Top 10. Surely no more than that though? Sorry? “Somebody Else’s Guy”? That’s Jocelyn Brown’s big hit! Say again? Ce Ce Peniston had equally as big a hit with it in 1997 to promote her Best Of album? Oh come on! Nobody associates that song with her! “Hit By Love” sounds like a rewrite of “Finally” to me, trying to recreate that winning formula but not quite getting there. A bit like in Breaking Bad when Todd takes over the production of the blue crystal meth and can’t get the content as pure as Walter White. Erm…anyway, Ce Ce doesn’t need a methamphetamine hit as she is high on love according to her song but the biggest chart high she could achieve with it was No 33. Unlike Roxy Music, love was not the drug for her.

And so to Status Quo who are in the studio for the 100th time with a little ditty called “I Didn’t Mean It”. I don’t remember this one at all and have to admit that my expectations for it were low. It was the lead single from their 21st studio album “Thirsty Work” and was written by one John David, a Welsh producer, songwriter and musician who had performed with some big names like Springsteen, Clapton and Sting and written for the likes of Cliff Richard, Shakin’ Stevens, Alvin Stardust and Samantha Fox. Hmm. I’m noticing a slight disparity between the calibre of artists he performed with and those he wrote for but never mind. He also worked with Dave Edmunds which is not surprising as “I Didn’t Mean It” has a flavour of Edmunds about it or maybe Nick Lowe with some honky tonk piano to the fore. Now I like both Edmunds and Lowe so I’m probably doing them a disservice by associating them with this track which isn’t really worthy of their name. It’s all very predictable and what I would have expected Status Quo to have been churning out at this time. It seems very anachronistic compared to their chart peers at the time. Maybe they should have seen the BBC bust up writing on the wall.

The cover of the single is more interesting than the song with images of famous people that maybe had regrets about what they had done (I didn’t mean it -geddit?) so there’s Ken Dodd (tax evasion court case – acquitted) Diego Maradona (‘Hand of God’ goal – cheated ) Lester Piggott (tax fraud case – guilty), Richard Nixon (Watergate scandal – resigned) Robert Maxwell (Mirror Group Pension Fund scandal – fraudulent misappropriation), Mike Tyson (rape conviction – guilty) Graham Taylor (failed to get England to World Cup in USA) and Ben Johnson (disqualified for doping in 1988 Olympics and stripped of gold medal). The inclusion of some of those names seems a little ill judged, especially Mike Tyson and Robert Maxwell given the damage they did to people’s lives. Sadly for Status Quo, Radio 1 did mean it when it came to not playing their records any more when 1996 rolled around.

Another diminutive dance diva who’s probably best known for just one song next. After Ce Ce Peniston earlier comes Rozalla who is surely best known for her “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hit from 1991 but who was still knocking about the charts three years later with this track “This Time I Found Love”, the second single from her “Look No Further” album. I haven’t got that much to say about this one – not really my bag but I will comment on the solo male dancer up there with Rozalla. I’m not sure that he really adds anything to the performance with his Marcel Marceau routine. In short, he looks like a prat. While we’re at it, did the two keyboard players need to be there either? Couldn’t Rozalla have just done her turn on her own? Maybe some rules about musician unions were at play. “This Time I Found Love” peaked at No 33.

What the hell are Whitesnake doing on TOTP in 1994 with a song from 1987?! It’s no great mystery really. “Is This Love” was rereleased to promote a Greatest Hits album that was presumably to plug a gap in the band’s career – they hadn’t had a studio album out since 1989. The Greatest Hits package was a reasonable success peaking at No 4 and going gold in the UK. It essentially covered their final three albums of the 80s but curiously didn’t include the two singles from 1984’s “Slide It In” that were actual UK Top 40 hits – “Guilty Of Love” and “Give Me More Time” though the former did feature in a 2022 reissue of the album.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – the intro to “Is This Love” always catches me out as it sounds like the start of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”. That slowly rising synth fade in is almost exactly the same in both. The 1994 rerelease of “Is This Love” made No 25 (it peaked at No 9 in 1987) and was Whitesnake’s final UK Top 40 entry. Oh, one final thing, why isn’t there a question mark at the end of the song title? Bugs the hell out of me!

It’s PJ & Duncan next with “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”. Although this is probably their most well known tune, the duo clocked up an impressive thirteen Top 40 hits in the UK before the end of the 90s with eleven of them peaking between Nos 16 and 10. The last four were released under the names Ant & Dec. They would return to the charts twice more, once in 2002 with the official England World Cup song “We’re On The Ball” (No 3) and again in 2013 when “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” was rereleased and went to No 1 with sales being donated to the charity ChildLine.

Of course, these two weren’t the only pop band to come out of the children’s TV series Byker Grove. There was also Byker Groove (clever) featuring Donna Air, Jayni Hoy and Vicky Taylor who got to No 48 with “Love Your Sexy…!!”. Two years later, they returned without Taylor and rebranded as Crush with the single “Jellyhead” which should have been a huge hit but which stalled at No 50. With its name checks for Bros and The Prodigy in its lyrics, it’s what The Reynolds Girls should have sounded like and perhaps what Girls Aloud would go on to sound like. It did well in America where it was promoted without any reference to their acting past. Donna Air would go on to have a career as an actor and TV presenter but you’d have to say that she didn’t quite scale the same heights of fame as her two Byker Grove chums.

Finally a record of interest. Even if you didn’t appreciate it sonically, you could hardly ignore this single, probably because you couldn’t avoid it – “7 Seconds” by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry was the second most played song on UK radio in 1994. The very definition of a sleeper hit, it took nine weeks to break into the Top 10 before rising to a peak of No 3. Such a chart trajectory was unusual around this time and would become almost unheard of as the 90s progressed and record companies discovered heavy discounting of singles in their first week of release to create high chart entry positions. Yet there was something about the summer of 1994 which saw a swathe of records that had incredibly long stays within the Top 40. I’m thinking “Crazy For You” by Let Loose, “I Swear” by All 4 One and of course Wet Wet Wet’s 15 weeks chart topper “Love Is All Around”.

Whilst all of the above though were propelled by a traditional momentum (a classic piece of airplay friendly pop, a big swoonsome ballad and a cover version of a well known song given huge exposure by a runaway box office hit film), “7 Seconds” was different. For a start, the artists involved were not chart guarantors by any stretch of the imagination. Youssou N’Dour was a huge name in World music but had never had a hit single before (his collaboration with Peter Gabriel on “Shakin’ The Tree” was the closest he had ever come). Meanwhile, Neneh Cherry was a long way from the huge breakthrough star she had been in 1989 when the likes of “Buffalo Stance” and “Manchild” were huge Top 5 hits. Her second album “Homebrew” had not done anywhere near the numbers of her debut “Raw Like Sushi” and had provided just two minor hit singles. The combination of the two of them on a track seemed an unlikely proposition for huge chart success. And yet…there was something about this haunting, rich synth heavy ballad that was sung in three different languages that gave it global appeal. A huge hit around Europe (it was No 1 in France for 16 weeks – have that Marti Pellow!), it was a monster both on the airwaves and the cash registers. Youssou would never have another UK hit single whilst Neneh would score a No 1 with “Love Can Build A Bridge” in 1995 as part of the charity collective for Comic Relief and a Top 10 single in “Woman” the following year.

It’s week 10 for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around” which means we are two thirds through their reign at the top. I struggled to say anything else about this record in the last post and things haven’t improved since. I’ve got some things to say about its demise but I need to keep those back for use in a few posts time. OK, how about addressing one of the record’s most distinctive bits, the guttural sound that Marti Pellow makes as the song heads into its climax. I think he growls “yeah!” and it sounds like that on the version that was released but I’m sure in some of the performances we’ve seen on the show over the weeks it sounds more like a “hey!”.

Whatever. It did get me thinking about songs with grunts, growls, screams or generally unusual vocal noises in them. First to come to mind was the “Ohhh!” by John Travolta in “Summer Nights” quickly followed by the “Ooo!” by Lionel Richie in “Easy” by The Commodores. Then there’s Paul McCartney’s strangled yelp in “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” and who could ignore Robert Plant at the start of “Immigrant Song”? think my favourite though comes at 1:43 in this clip…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Maxx	“No More (I Can’t Stand It)”	I couldn’t have said it better myself
2	Level 42	Love In A Peaceful World	Nope
3	Ce Ce Peniston	Hit By Love	No
4	Status Quo	I Didn’t Mean It	As if
5	Rozalla	This Time I Found Love	Negative
6	Whitesnake	Is This Love	Not in 1987 nor 1994
7	PJ & Duncan	Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble	Nah
8	Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry	7 Seconds	I did not
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	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/m001ldnz/top-of-the-pops-04081994

TOTP 01 OCT 1992

Posted on April 6, 2022 by 80stastic

The new ‘year zero’ TOTP format isn’t so new anymore as this show marked its one year anniversary. Host Mark Franklin makes reference to this in his off screen intro and also mentions the shift of location from Television Centre to BBC’s Elstree base in Hertfordshire. All of the changes involved in the new format were meant to reconnect the then nearly 28 years old TOTP with its traditional youthful audience who were embracing a dance revolution that the show was struggling to showcase. In a case of perfect symmetrical timing, the first act on tonight is performing a song called “Connected”. I refer, of course, to Stereo MCs.

Along with Suede from last week’s show, for a short while this lot were the epitome of hip. Not the same sort of hip that Brett and the boys exuded though. No, this was a more grubby, deep down and dirty type of hip. Not that I’m suggesting that Suede were a bunch of Mummies Boys. No, it’s just that the face of Stereo MCS, Rob Birch, had the look of someone who’d seen some things that you definitely wish you hadn’t. Well, that and Catweazle (Google him if you’re too young to know who that was). I wrongly assumed that they were a Manchester band due to their image and sound and although they had toured with Happy Mondays, they were in fact from Nottingham. They’d also been around since the end of the last decade and had already released two albums before they came up with “Connected”. The lead single and title of their third album, it hit a chord with both the dance heads and the indie crowd with its skanking beat and ‘aa-aa-ye-ah’ chant. It was perfect for lumbering around the dance floor Ian Brown / King Monkey style.

Just like Sade before them on last week’s show, the band were prolific at releasing material early in their career (three albums in three years) but then took nine years to record a follow up to “Connected”. The world felt like a very different place by then (9/11 was only a few months away from happening) and it didn’t sell nearly as well as its predecessor which went platinum, won a BRIT award and peaked at No 2 in the charts. They have released another three albums since with the last coming in 2011.

Some Antipodean rock/pop now as Crowded House continue to mine the wealth of tunes from their “Woodface” album with the release of fifth single “It’s Only Natural”. The LP had come out 15 months earlier but sales of it only really took off after “Weather With You” was a Top 10 hit in February /March of ‘92. I loved this album and got a signed copy when the band did a PA at the HMV megastore in Manchester. I think they did a small set before playing a gig at Manchester Academy on the evening (which I also went to). It was a fine show, probably one of the best I have ever witnessed.

As for this TOTP performance, clearly the producers didn’t know what to do with the band and so they’ve ended up playing against a completely white backdrop with the only concession to props being the dry ice machine being put into top gear. Or maybe it was a deliberate statement that said these guys are all about the music and don’t need any cheap gimmicks getting in the way?

As for the song itself, you have to admire any song they gets ‘this mortal coil’ and ‘circumstantial’ into its lyrics but what was it actually about? Could it be that Neil Finn was singing about his hair? Neil’s barnet must be one of the most odd in music. Not flashy odd (Billy Idol) or designed to shock odd (Sigue Sigue Sputnik) but naturally odd. It’s got a life of its own, stubbornly growing at odd angles and generally behaving in an unruly way. Neil of course has previous in the hair stakes. He was in art rockers Split Enz (get it?) and his hair was even more mental then. “It’s Only Natural” peaked at No 24.

There have been a few changes to the ‘year zero’ format over the past 12 months one of which has been a return to a chart countdown (sort of). They started off just listing the Top 10 but over the last few weeks they’ve expanded that to include the rest of the chart. Here we get Nos 20 to 11 over a video by Chaos for their cover of “Farewell My Summer Love”. Who were these guys? Well, they were Sinitta’s backing dancers who were put together into a pop group by her then boyfriend Simon Cowell and included a 9 year old in their ranks, Don’t remember them? You can forgive yourself as firstly, just like with Omar’s “Music” single that soundtracked this feature last week, their song never actually made the Top 40 peaking at No 55. Secondly, their name. Does Ultimate Kaos ring any bells? That’s what they changed it to two years on from this and it worked as they clocked up six Top 40 hits. The power of the word ‘ultimate’ and some misspelling in evidence there.

If the staging for Crowded House was minimalist, then the producers have gone all Laurence Llewelyn- Bowen for the next act. Hear that noise? That’s the sound of the bottom of the music barrel being scraped. Or possibly it’s the annoying sound of one of the most iconic computer games of the decade. Tetris was that descending blocks puzzle game that was Nintendo’s top selling title and that came as the default game with their Game Boy console bundle. OK, so who’s idea was it to release a song based on the game? Nintendo themselves? Oh no. If you thought about it for long enough I reckon you would come up with the scoundrel’s name. The aforementioned Simon Cowell? Good guess but no. Need a clue? OK – Bombalurina. No, not Timmy Mallett but Andrew Lloyd Webber. The good lord (!) released a Eurodance version of the “Tetris” theme under the name of Doctor Spin and the idiotic British public bought it in enough quantities to take it to No 6.

Obviously the ex-Mr Brightman wasn’t going to perform this atrocity himself so for the sake of TOTP some dancers have been drafted in and dressed in costumes resembling blocks from the game. The absolute state of this. Unbelievably, this wasn’t the only record that was a hit based on this ludicrous idea as simultaneously in the charts came “Supermarioland” by Ambassadors Of Funk. What a time to be alive!

Some Breakers now starting with The Sundays. This is a band I really should have massively been into but yet again somehow they slipped under my radar and through my grasp. I eventually cottoned on when they released their (so far) final album “Static & Silence” five years on from this point but I really should dive deeper into their back catalogue. “Goodbye” was taken from their second album “Blind” and marked their first release on the Parlophone label after Rough Trade had entered receivership leading to the band relocating labels. Their debut album “Reading, Writing And Arithmetic” had been released with the indie legends and had been a huge success going Top 5 despite the lack of a hit single. That statistic was amended in 1998 when “Here’s Where The Story Ends” was covered by London dance act Tin Tin Out and taken into the Top 10. Somehow I always get that confused with Electribe 101’s “Tell Me When The Fever Ended”. Damn my fading memory.

I can name the first three singles from Neneh Cherry with no prompting whatsoever but ask me for anything after that and I’m struggling. There was “7 Seconds“ with Youssou N’Dour and…something on the “Red Hot+Blue” album? I remember the front cover to her second album “Homebrew” but nothing else about it and certainly not this lead single from it called “Money Love”.

Back in 1989 she’d been a huge breakout star with her “Raw Like Sushi” album achieving platinum status for sales of 300,000 units. Three years in pop music is a long time though and by the time “Homebrew” came out though, her era of glory felt like a long time ago. Did she still have the ear of pop fans? Sales of the album suggested no. It crawled to a high of No 27 despite the inclusion of a track featuring REM’s Michael Stipe. The single “Money Love” fared little better not even making the Top 20. Not that it wasn’t any good but how could Neneh expect to compete with a single based around the music used in a hand held computer game? Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber – you truly are an arse sir.

We had an ‘exclusive” performance of “Sentinel” by Mike Oldfield just last week but that hasn’t stopped the TOTP producers including it in the Breakers seven days later. I’m really not sure the video which seems to be a montage of various different takes on the “Tubular Bells” graphic warranted another outing. If you Google Mike Oldfield some of the entries in the People Also Ask section include ‘How long is Mike Oldfield on Tubular Bells?’, ‘How much is Mike Oldfield?’ and ‘What did Mike Oldfield?’. Eh?

By the end of the fourth of tonight’s Breakers we will have achieved optimum capacity for shoehorning the most songs into the smallest amount of time. Eight songs in less than 12 minutes! I really think this was TOTP trying to compete with ITV’s entirely video based music vehicle The Chart Show. This last track really deserved more airtime. REM had gone truly global with the previous year’s “Out Of Time” album. Not resting on their laurels, they released their third album in four years “Automatic For The People” with the lead single being “Drive”. For me this is one of those songs that leaves an impression on you after just that first listen so heavy is its sound. A dark, brooding, menacing track, it’s marked out further by its odd structure- it doesn’t really have a chorus.

There’s various online theories about what the lyrics mean especially around who Ollie is but according to Michael Stipe, one of its influences comes from an unexpected source. The line “Hey kids, rock ‘n’ roll” was inspired by David Essex’s “Rock On”. Actually, I’m sure there’s a scene in his film Stardust when his character Jim MacLaine is doing a gig with his band The Stray Cats and he shouts out “Hey, rock ‘n’ roll!” during it now I come to think of it. As good as “Drive” is, for me it’s not best track on the album with at least three or four other songs ahead of it. It peaked at No 11, the band’s second biggest UK hit at that point in their career yet, unusually for an album’s lead single, it doesn’t feature on subsequent Best Of albums.

Right who’s next? Oh great, it’s Dr Alban who’s up to No 2. Look man, if I need a song called “It’s My Life” in my…erm…life then I’ve got that wonderful song by Talk Talk. Hell, at a stretch I’ve even got the cover version by No Doubt. I have zero need for this Eurodance-ified house track with some terrible rapping tacked onto it. Apparently the track was re-recorded in 2014 by the good doctor and some bloke called Chawki and retitled “It’s My Life (Don’t Worry)” but I really can’t be arsed to check it out not even for the purposes of this blog. Look, it’s my life OK?

Another song now that totally transports me back to this era when I had just started working at the Our Price store in Rochdale. “Iron Lion Zion” was the third posthumously released single by Bob Marley following his death in 1981. We’d already had “Buffalo Soldier” in 1983 to promote the “Confrontation” album of unreleased recordings which went to No 4. A year later came “One Love/People Get Ready” to promote the “Legend” compilation album. Fast forward to 1992 and “Iron Lion Zion” was put out to advertise the “Songs Of Freedom” box set. Like its two predecessors it went Top 5.

Espousing Rastafarian beliefs of Zion as the Promised Land of Ethiopia and the Lion Of Judah representing Haile Selassie, it also featured legendary jazzer Courtney Pine. Appealing to both daytime radio and the clubs via its 12” mix, it was a timely reminder of Marley’s talent and legacy. Apparently his final words to his son Ziggy on his death bed were “Money can’t buy life”. A wise man indeed.

If it’s the early 90s then there’s always room for one more dance tune and here it is – “I’m Gonna Get You” by Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown. This was the third hit on the spin for these Staffordshire techno ravers following “Such A Feeling” and “Playing With Knives” and it would prove to be the biggest of the lot when it peaked at No 3. This time they had roped in a female soul singer with the surname of Brown to help but it wasn’t Jocelyn. Nope, but Angie Brown had been recruited to sing like her namesake. “I’m Gonna Get You” featured lyrics from Jocelyn’s song “Love’s Gonna Get You” and rather than pay to sample the original, Angie filled in and re-recorded that part of the track.

So who is Angie Brown? Well, she’s worked mainly as a backing singer with some huge names like The Rolling Stones, Happy Mondays, Kate Bush, Chaka Khan and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry. She’s also on Mark Morrison’s 1996 No 1 “Return Of The Mack” but her first taste of chart success in her own right came in 1992 with Bizarre Inc. Despite having Angie to front the record, there are five blokes up there with her on stage (two dancers and three keyboard players) at least half of which have the regulation ponytail for these times. For all that, I didn’t mind this one.

As it’s an anniversary show, it’s a perfect opportunity to squeeze in a mention that Radio 1 celebrated their own 25th birthday the day before this broadcast. Fair enough so how to mark this event on TOTP? Bit of a video montage of clips featuring past and present DJs perhaps. Maybe back in the day when Radio 1 and TOTP were so inextricably linked you couldn’t see the joins that would have been what happened. This was a new era though where Radio 1 ties had been severed so just a three second clip of all the DJs together on the steps of Broadcasting House (?) saying “Happy Birthday Radio 1 FM!” was deemed more than adequate.

Also celebrating 25 years of existence (just about) were the next act Status Quo. Hang on! Weren’t they on the first show of the ‘year zero’ era? Yes, they were playing a horrible version of “Let’s Work Together” from their “Rock ‘til You Drop” album. One year on almost to the day and they’re still seen by TOTP producer Stanley Appel as the go to party band when you’re having a knees up. Had he learned nothing from the past year?! So what are they playing this time? A medley of course! Just about everything they released around this time was a medley wasn’t it? This one was called “Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)” and featured tracks including “The Wanderer”, “Marguerita Time” and “Living On An Island”. Bigging up the performance by it being live from Amsterdam was neither here nor there as the band were just in a room that could gave been anywhere. What a horrible, pointless waste of everyone’s time!

The Shamen still rule the roost with “Ebeneezer Goode”. Remember when Wet Wet Wet deleted “Love Is All Around” after 15 weeks at No 1 because they were bored of the whole thing by then? Well The Shamen did the same thing two years before them with this single but you don’t hear much about it. There were rumours it was because of the constant press attention about the supposed drug references in the track but the band themselves said it was that its prolonged run at the top was mucking up their schedule for subsequent single releases. Naughty naughty!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Stereo MCs	Connected	Don’t think I did
2	Crowded House	It’s Only Natural	No but I had the Woodface album it was from
3	Chaos	Farewell My Summer Love	Hell no!
4	Doctor Spin	Tetris	I’d rather have eaten my own arm
5	The Sundays	Goodbye	No
6	Neneh Cherry	Money Love	Nope
7	Mike Oldfield	Sentinel	Nah
8	REM	Drive	Not the single but I bought the Automatic For The People album
9	Dr. Alban	It’s My Life	Definitely not!
10	Bob Marley	Iron Lion Zion	I did not
11	Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown	I’m Gonna Get You	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
12	Status Quo	Roadhouse Medley (Anniversary Waltz Part 25)	Are you joking?!
13	The Shamen	Ebeneezer Goode	It’s a 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/m0015x90/top-of-the-pops-01101992

TOTP 11 OCT 1990

Posted on March 19, 2021 by 80stastic

Hello and welcome back to 1990, the year when the charts were infested by cruddy Eurodance pop, the Bleep ‘n’ Bass phenomenon, old pop standards of yesteryear revitalised by their use in adverts and mega hits propelled to massive sales off the back of their inclusion on box office breaking film soundtracks. Oh, and ruddy New Kids On The Block and those pesky ninja turtle creatures. However, giving a massive pale (and possibly black nail varnished) middle finger to all of this are Goth gods The Sisters Of Mercy who stride back into the TOTP studio this week with their latest hit “More”. Yes, proving that Goth was still relevant, Andrew Eldritch and co released their first single since 1988’s ‘Lucretia My Reflection”. It’s actually the lead single off their album “Vision Thing” talking of which – get this. How many albums do you reckon The Sisters Of Mercy have released during their 40 odd years career? I mean proper, studio albums, not Best Ofs nor EPs. It’s three.THREE! And this one, “Vision Thing released in November 1990, is the most recent one! Not keen on hard work our Andrew is he? in November 2016 when interviewed by the TeamRock website, he said of his release slumber:

“I can tell you one thing – if Donald Trump actually does become President, that will be reason enough for me to release another album. I don’t think I could keep quiet if that happened.”

Well, Andrew, ‘The Donald’ has been and gone (thank God!) and still no new album from you laddie. They seem to have committed themselves to being a perennial touring band from what I can work out but if they never have any new material to play, have they made themselves a nostalgia circuit band by default?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NafWJoWk0MA

“More” must have passed me by at the time as I have no recollection of it at all but it has all their usual Sisters trademarks. Eldritch’s unearthly vocals, the dark, chugging guitar sound and the cauldron of shrieking vocals emanating from the almost Macbethian trio of backing singers. Apparently the track was co-written by Jim Steinman, he of Meatloaf fame. Want to hear The Loaf’s version of it? If you must…

Enough of all that! What we need now is something completely wholesome to counteract the creepy, gothic stuff and what could be more wholesome than Cliff Richard?! Cliff was still plundering tracks from his “From A Distance: The Event” live album and after “Silhouettes ” just the other week, came the title track. It was originally recorded by Nanci Griffith of course (though not actually written by her) on her “Lone Star State Of Mind” album. Listen to her restrained and pure rendition of it here on the Letterman show….

and then contrast it with the pig’s ear that Cliff makes of it below…

He’s ruined it with all that grandstanding and those lumbering drum fills and synth refrains – very similar to the desecration he inflicted on traditional Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” when he did his own arrangement of it called “Little Town”. Nasty. And who are all those people up there on stage with him? It looks like the worst episode of Glee you’ve ever seen!

Cliff’s treatment of “From A Distance” made No 11 but it was topped by Bette Midler’s version a year later which peaked at No 6.

Ah. I wasn’t expecting The Chimes to be back on the show with “Heaven” after it was a Breaker last week. Consequently, I’ve very little left to say about it (and I didn’t have much in the first place). Singer Pauline Henry of course went on to have a string of hits in the mid 90s on her own, the biggest of which was a cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love”. If you search for The Chimes on Amazon, as well as the original and Cherry Red deluxe edition of their album, you also get a result for something called “Heaven – Very Best Of Pauline Henry And The Chimes” which seems like a very cynical marketing trick to me. Surely both artists stood independently of each other without needing to mash them together. I recall A&M doing a similar thing with a Sting / The Police Best Of album. I’m trying to think of other examples now. Oh yes, there’s one for David Grant & Jaki Graham as well but I guess they did record two actual duets together at least. A tenner says that there must be a Best Of Kajagoogoo and Limahl in existence as well.

“Heaven ” peaked at No 24.

The year of New Kids On The Block still has some legs in it yet I’m afraid. This was their seventh hit of the year and after the 70s soul sound of The Chi-Lites returned to the UK Top 40 in 1990 courtesy of Paul Young and MC Hammer covers, now we had some Philly Soul with T’KNOB’s take on “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” by The Delfonics.

This was actually a double A-side single with the other track being “Let’s Try It Again” which was taken from their “Step By Step” album. Presumably, the two songs were twinned together to help stimulate sales of two of the band’s albums as “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” was from their 1986 self titled debut album. Those dastardly record companies at it again! Apparently, “Let’s Try It Again” (which I don’t think I’ve ever heard as all the airplay went to “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)”) was the beginning of the end for the band’s phenomenal appeal. It was their first single since 1986’s “Stop It Girl” that failed to peak within the US Top 40. Many put their decent down to over saturation – did the world really need the New Kids animated cartoon series that tonight’s host Bruno Brookes mentions? Talking of Bruno, he gets into a right muddle with his intro for them when he forgets to mention the song title and when he corrects this in his outro, he name checks the wrong A-side. Piss poor as ever Bruno.

“Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” / “Let’s Try It Again” peaked at No 8 in the UK.

The final six songs on this week’s broadcast have all been featured on the show before starting with The Beautiful South and “A Little Time”. They’re in the studio this week but where is Paul Heaton? Oh there he is! On the keyboards right at the back. We don’t really get to see him until at least a minute in. I like the fact that he steps into the shadows for this song and gives the spotlight rightfully to Brianna Corrigan and Dave Hemmingway. Both had underrated voices I think. Dave had a very pure, ballad vocal whilst Brianna had a most unusual tone that completely suited those bittersweet Heaton tunes. It was a great shame in many ways that she felt that she couldn’t stay in the band but then, without her departure, we wouldn’t have had Jacqui Abbott which in turn of course led to all those marvellous Heaton and Abbott songs.

I saw The Beautiful South live in 1997 (I think) at the Manchester Arena and have also seen Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott back in 2017 at the Hull KR stadium gig. I’ve even seen The South who were what the band morphed into when the original incarnation split in 2007. I think Hemmingway was still in the line up at that point (although he has since retired) alongside the final female vocalist Alison Wheeler who replaced Abbott in 2000. It seems I’m a bit of a fan. Maybe it’s the Hull connection.

“A Little time” will be at No 1 within a couple of weeks.

Another of last week’s Breakers now as Neneh Cherry returns to the TOTP studio for her version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. The AIDS charity record “Red Hot + Blue” that this track was taken from would go on to sell over 1 million copies worldwide. Its success would lead to a number of releases by parent organisation the Red Hot Organization throughout the 90s including “Red Hot + Dance” (which would include the one-off George Michael single “Too Funky”) and “Red Hot + Country” which featured such heavyweights as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and the aforementioned Nanci Griffith. As for that original album “Red Hot + Blue”, my favourite track from it was definitely this one by David Byrne…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJV_MOwas7s

Neneh Cherry was still a massive name in 1990 off the back of the success of her platinum selling debut album ‘Raw Like Sushi”. However, it would take her three years to release the follow up (1992’s “Homebrew”) by which point grunge had happened and the musical landscape had shifted. The album performed poorly sales wise (peaking at No 27) whilst none of the singles from it made the Top 20. However, she would return in 1996 with the more popular “Man” album which included the huge worldwide hit “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’Dour.

Monie Love again? I think this is the third time that “It’s A Shame (My Sister)” has been on the show. Not bad for a single that didn’t even make the Top 10. In a Smash Hits article, Monie (real name Simone Johnson) described the art of writing raps thus:

“Er..well you just write it down. You just put what is exactly in your head down on paper. All it takes is being able to pronounce your words and if you’re a good English student then you could write a good rap.”

That’s it?! OK, well I’ve got an English ‘O’ level and I write a lot of words doing this blog so let’s give it a go…

*spends half an hour trying to write a good rap*

Nah, that’s bollocks Monie. I’m crap at writing rap lyrics it turns out. I followed your advice about putting exactly what is in my head down on paper and it came out like this…

My name is Dickie B, I’m looking at a tree

My cat wanted to pee, so he did it up against the tree

“It’s A Shame (My Sister)” peaked at No 12.

Talking of crap, here’s Status Quo with the “Anniversary Waltz Part 1”. Oh come on, even the most committed of Quo fans must have known this was a pile of shite and cringed in embarrassment when it was released. It’s horrible. Bruno Brookes introducing it by saying that the band celebrated their 25th anniversary with a massive party at Butlins in Minehead just about sums it up! Of all the venues in the country to book for such a celebration, that was the optimum one?! What? Minehead was where Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt met all those years ago? Oh. Well, I don’t care. The “Anniversary Waltz Part 1” was a terrible idea and remains the last time that the band were in the Top 10. Even a re-release of their ‘party tune’ that was “Marguerita Time” would surely have been a better idea?

Maria McKee is still at No 1 with “Show Me Heaven”. Although she never came anywhere near to repeating the commercial triumph of this single, Maria has continued to write and record material. She wrote two songs for the aforementioned Bette Midler on her 1995 “Bette Of Roses” album whilst The Chicks (previously known as Dixie Chicks) recorded her song “Am I the Only One (Who’s Ever Felt This Way)” for their “Wide Open Spaces” album. Of course, we all know that Feargal Sharkey took her song “A Good Heart” to No 1 in 1985 but he also recorded the McKee penned “To Miss Someone” on his “Songs from the Mardi Gras” album. She has also contributed to numerous tribute albums for the likes of Blind Willie Johnson and T-Rex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5G6_z7Ze8

“Show Me Heaven” wasn’t her only soundtrack album hit. After that song was recorded for Days Of Thunder, she also contributed “If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

The play out video is “World In My Eyes” by Depeche Mode. This is supposedly Andy Fletcher of the band’s favourite song that they have ever recorded. Fletcher’s career is an unusual one in that opinion is divided as to what he actually does in the band. In the 1989 “101” documentary about the band, Fletcher himself had this to say on the subject:

“Martin’s the songwriter, Alan’s the good musician, Dave’s the vocalist, and I bum around.”

Whilst that may be tongue in cheek, it remains the case that Fletcher is the only member of the band (past and present) who has never received a songwriting credit. He is also the only member of Depeche Mode who does not sing although he does do something with synthesizers on stage during live gigs. Apparently he is very active in Depeche’s business affairs and has assumed the role of band spokesperson.

Are there any other examples of band members who don’t contribute much musically? Bez of course in Happy Mondays is an obvious one and isn’t there somebody in Coldpay who doesn’t do much (or is that all of them apart from *Chris Martin?). How about journalist Fiona Russell Powell (aka Eden) and photographer David Yarritu who joined the ranks of ABC for their “How To Be A Zillionaire” album?

“World In My Eyes” peaked at No 17.

*Sorry Coldplay fans!

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFioePLwD_k

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The Sisters Of Mercy	More	Less actually – no
2	Cliff Richard	From A Distance	…is where I wish to remain from Cliff – no
3	The Chimes	Heaven	Negative
4	New Kids On The Block	Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)	This was not a mind blowing cover – no
5	The Beautiful South	A Little Time	Not the single but I have it on their Best Of album
6	Neneh Cherry	I’ve Got You Under My Skin	It’s a no
7	Monie Love	It’s A Shame (My Sister)	Nope
8	Status Quo	The Anniversary Waltz (Part One)	Sod off
9	Maria McKee	Show Me Heaven	Nah
10	Depeche Mode	World In My Eyes	I did not

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t134/top-of-the-pops-11101990

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

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

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 02 AUG 1996

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TOTP 19 JUL 1996

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TOTP 23 MAR 1995

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TOTP 16 MAR 1995

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TOTP 02 MAR 1995

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TOTP 01 SEP 1994

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TOTP 18 AUG 1994

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TOTP 04 AUG 1994

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TOTP 01 OCT 1992

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TOTP 11 OCT 1990

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Some bedtime reading?