A truncated edition of the show this week  – the BBC seemed to have lopped 5 minutes off it which means no play out video after the No 1 single and no Breakers. I’m guessing this is to do with additional news coverage of the continuing Gulf War. It is, however, back in its usual Thursday time slot. The host tonight is Simon Mayo who I am beginning to find increasingly smug and annoying – whether I felt like this at the time or not, I don’t know. 

There’s a definite theme of recycling in this TOTP as we start with a song that was originally a Top 10 hit for Patrice Rushen back in 1982. “Forget Me Nots” was given the UK electro dance treatment 9 years later by Tongue ‘N’ Cheek to very little effect and with very little just cause to my ears. This seemed to be a desperate attempt to grind out another Top 40 hit after their last single “Nobody” had failed to consolidate on their breakthrough hit “Tomorrow”. It doesn’t seem to add that much to the original but would be part of a brief movement of old songs given the dance treatment around this time (see also Quartz doing Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”). Although it secured them a No 26 hit, it would be the last time Tongue ‘N’ Cheek appeared in the Top 40 and they would split soon after. However, “Forget Me Nots” would go onto have a life way beyond its dalliance with Tongue ‘N’ Cheek. It was sampled by George Michael for his 1996 No 1 single “Fastlove” and also by Will Smith the following year for his chart topper “Men In Black”.

After the recycling of “Forget Me Nots” a few times over comes Robert Palmer doubling down on his green credentials by regenerating not one but two Marvin Gaye numbers into a whole new song of its own. “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You” would be Palmer’s last ever Top 10 hit in the UK and whilst his back catalogue includes some wonderful songs , I’m not sure if that ever translated into the chart success they deserved. Looking at his discography, he had 12 Top 40 Uk hits (if you include his work with The Power Station) of which 5 were Top 10. It’s not a bad haul but when you consider his music career spanned nearly 40 years and took in 14 studio albums until his death in 2003, it maybe doesn’t seem that much either. Throw in the possibility that, for many people, he’s just the “Addicted To Love” guy and it seems an outright injustice.

There always seemed to be more attention on his sartorial style than his music it seemed to me. For example, in 1989 he received two Brit Awards nominations but won neither yet he did top a Rolling Stone magazine poll for the best-dressed rock star of 1990. This is reinforced by Simon Mayo’s description of him in his intro as ‘Mr Suit’ and ‘Mr Smooth’ and even ‘a singing version of Robert Kilroy -Silk'(remember him?!). “Mercy Mercy Me / “I Want You” peaked at No 9 and I’m guessing this Robert’s final TOTP appearance. Thanks for the memories Bob.

Next a song that must have been the bane of many a young woman’s life back in 1991. How many of the nation’s female population had to endure having ‘wiggle it, just a little bit’ shouted at them as they went about their business by lairy neanderthal men around this time? I know of at least one who had this happen to them. 2 In A Room were the architects of this nonsense and “Wiggle It” would become a No 3 hit in the UK. Only in Australia did it chart so high on the national chart. Hmm.

Inevitably, the video features lots of bikini clad ladies…erm…wiggling it on the beach whilst a male counterpart (who looks very much like Jerry Seinfeld) gets the exact opposite treatment of being fully covered up by being buried in the sand. Once again, hmm. I genuinely thought until this moment that the lyrics were ‘wiggle it just a little bit, I wanna see you wiggle it just a little bit ACID GROOVE!’ but it turns out that they’re singing ‘as it grooves’ and not ‘acid groove’. I’m not sure which makes more sense to be honest but then how do you make any sense of this piece of garbage?

It may be a new decade but we haven’t left novelty records back in the 80s. After the ghastly Bombalurina last year comes The Simpsons with “Do The Bartman”. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know much about The Simpsons back in 1991. For a start it had only been on UK television for less than 6 months by this point and even then it was only on Sky which hardly any of us had. We certainly didn’t in our little rented flat. It would take another 6 years before the show became available on terrestrial TV. It seems unimaginable now, so much a part of our cultural lives have Homer, Bart, Maggie and the rest become but this was genuinely the case back then.

My first introduction to them being this record didn’t bode well. It didn’t even seem that funny to me but then I had never seen the show nor know its characters. And why were they all yellow? A bigger question was how on earth did it get to No1 in the UK? It wasn’t just a matter of taste – genuinely, how did a novelty record from an American TV show that most of the population almost certainly didn’t have access to top the charts? There was no internet or streaming services back then either remember. Most novelty records that have been successful have not been imports – “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)”, Orville The Duck, Grange Hill (a UK TV show of course)….I’m sure there must be loads of others. “Do The Bartman” seemed to be a different beast. It was taken from an album called “The Simpsons Sing The Blues” which would spawn another Top 10 hit in “Deep Deep Trouble” later in the year. Oh deep, deep joy.

I’ve still got very little to say about Off-Shore and “I Can’t Take The Power” not least because I hardly remember it. I did post the theory last time it was on about whether it was meant to be some sort of repost to Snap!’s ‘The Power” and that’s given a bit more credence by this tweet from @TOTPfacts:

And then this one aswell:

Listening to this back, it really is very repetitive. It’s just that cut and paste sample over and over again to an Italian House piano riff backing. It’s like they hardly put any effort into it at all and it doesn’t lend to self to a studio performance. No wonder TOTP had to intercut it with bits of the official promo video to make it even slightly watchable. Off-Shore – they couldn’t take the power but they did take the piss.

Simon Mayo seems to slip in an unofficial plug for a non BBC product at the song’s end when he says you can find the lyrics to the Off-Shore song in No 1 magazine. That wasn’t in the rules surely? He then follows it up with some cryptic clue about a vocal performance from a Radio 1 DJ on the next song which is “Can I Kick It?” by A Tribe Called Quest. According to Mayo, it’s Pete Tong who says A Tribe Called Quest towards the end of the song. Is that right?

*checks internet*

Huh – seems it is according to Wikipedia anyway:

In the official Boilerhouse mix of the song, the name of the band “A Tribe Called Quest”, is spoken by the British radio DJ Pete Tong

If you want a story about spoken word samples on “Can I Kick It?” though, this takes some beating:

Apparently it’s from the kids cartoon SuperTed in which Jon Pertwee voiced a character called Spotty although the twitteratti can’t agree for sure. Also, the comment about not believing Wikipedia puts some doubt on the Pete Tong claim for me. Anyway, all of this shouldn’t distract from how good the track is. Another example of recycling with its heavy use of Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” it also, inevitably due to its title, led to it being used in many a footballing montage and indeed advertising campaign beginning with this one from Nike in 1992:

The success of “Can I Kick It?” led to a previous single from their album being re-released in “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” which was pretty cool too but it failed to get anywhere near the Top 40 peaking at No 86. A Tribe Called Quest would not have another UK Top 40 single for five long years.

I’m not sure what was more shocking about Rick Astley‘s 1991 comeback – his new sound exemplified by the gospel tinged ballad “Cry For Help” or his long hair! I mean, just look at it! Where had that boy next door, preppy look gone?! Apparently he hadn’t had a haircut for over a year by this point – always ahead of the game Rick, modelling lockdown hair 30 years before it was a thing.

What about his song though? Sure it was different but was it any good? Well, I thought so and so did my wife who bought it. It was also a wise move in my book – if you’re the biggest pop star in the country and you just walk away from it for a whole two years without so much as a by your leave, then when you come back, you better have come up with something new in the intervening time. For my money, he would have looked ridiculous making a comeback with “Never Gonna Give You Up Part II”. “Cry For Help” was written by Astley with Rob Fisher (one half of both Naked Eyes and Climie Fisher) whilst all but three of the parent album album’s tracks were either written or co-written by him. That album was called “Free” and seeing as he had totally ditched his association with Stock, Aitken and Waterman for the project, you don’t need many guesses to work out what the title was referring to. The single and album would go Top 10 but it was a short lived revival. Subsequent singles failed to chart and although the album reached gold status, it was a far cry (for help) from his multi platinum SAW heydays.

I think I’ve worked out what has been annoying me retrospectively about Simon Mayo – it’s his continuous banging on about how any breaking chart hit had been the Breakfast Show ‘Record of the Week’. He makes that claim for Rick Astley in this show but has also done it loads of times previously. ‘Ooh look at me – I’m in it for the music really and not the fame and profile’ seems to be his message. Yeah, whatever mate.

Right, as its a shortened show, the final song of the evening is the No 1 and it’s not only new to the top spot but it’s gone straight in on its first week of sales. This had happened just a handful of times in the 80s and it still was hardly a regular occurrence by the early 90s. By the end of the decade however it would be a weekly occurrence due to heavy record company discounting. “Innuendo” was the title track of Queen‘s final album to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime and it was pretty much…bonkers. I mean seriously, it sounded all over the place to me. Can you imagine the conversations in the jam session which led to its creation?

“I’ve got a great idea for a Boléro themed opening”

“Oh well, if we’re going down that route, I vote for a flamenco guitar breakdown but it has to be performed by Steve Howe from Yes”

“Look, you can have what you want in it but it must be 6 and a half minutes long”

Just your typical song composition really! Did I like it? Not much. Its complex structure brought inevitable comparisons with “Bohemian Rhapsody” but I’ve never been a fan of that either. Before the end of the year, Freddie would be gone and “Bohemian Rhapsody” would be at No 1 all over again. Oh and if I thought “Innuendo” was bonkers, then the point was really hammered home with the title of their next single -“I’m Going Slightly Mad”.

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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.