Paul Young

TOTP 07 OCT 1993

Posted on October 31, 2022 by 80stastic

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/qbuTTcLyNXk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://youtu.be/9yIM9udd504

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

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

https://youtu.be/YbuyjNv5BEk

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dhj6/top-of-the-pops-07101993

TOTP 30 SEP 1993

Posted on October 27, 2022 by 80stastic

When Robbie Coltrane died recently, like many people, it got me thinking about his acting credits and the roles on which he made his name. Although I’ve seen many of the Harry Potter films due to my son’s influence, it won’t be Hagrid that I remember him for. Not when there’s so many other turns that I could reflect on. There’s his memorable performance as Dr Johnson, creator of A Dictionary of the English Language in Blackadder The Third for starters. Then there’s his starring role in the critically acclaimed National Treasure from 2016.

However for me, he was never better than in Cracker which first aired on ITV three days before this TOTP was broadcast. Based around the immensely complex character of criminal psychiatrist Dr Edward ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, it ran for three series from 1993 to 1995 plus a couple of later specials in 1996 and 2006. Whilst its plots were incredibly engrossing (the Hillsborough story is the one I remember the most), there was another source of interest for me in that it was set and filmed in Manchester where I was living at the time. I think they even filmed in the area I lived called Longsight. I certainly recall walking home up my road one night and stumbling upon a whole film crew filming outside a house with many actors / extras dressed as police. I wasn’t the only person who was given a shock that night. The local drug dealer (‘Mr Dodgy’ we called him) nearly shat himself when confronted with the scene.

Talking of scares, here’s “Big Scary Animal” by Belinda Carlisle to open the show. This is the third time in consecutive weeks that this track has been featured but despite all that exposure, it couldn’t break into the Top 10 peaking just outside at No 12. Belinda’s discography tells me that she has more Greatest Hits albums to her name than studio albums which would suggest that she was all about the singles but that argument doesn’t quite stack up when you crunch her numbers. Discounting her solo debut “Belinda”, the following four albums all went Top 10 in the UK with two of them achieving platinum sales status. And yet…have you ever met somebody who owns a Belinda Carlisle studio album?

How do you follow up one of the biggest selling songs of the year which also happens to be your debut single? This was the dilemma facing Gabrielle who had shot to fame off the back of her No 1 “Dreams”. Talk about setting a high bar for yourself. Sadly and perhaps inevitably, “Going Nowhere” failed to live up to expectations. Not exactly a prophetic song title as it did make the Top 10 but it didn’t have that mercurial bit of magic that “Dreams” had courtesy of that adapted Tracy Chapman sample. It sounds like something Aretha Franklin might have recorded in the 80s. A very clunky, dated sound in a dance obsessed 1993.

Two further singles were released from her debut album “Find Your Way” and they did the opposite of that instruction by getting lost in the lower reaches of the charts, neither even making the Top 20. Was Gabrielle’s pop star career in danger of petering out? Perhaps against the odds, she would turn her fortunes around gradually over the course of the decade before peaking again triumphantly with a definitely prophetically titled song, the No 1 single “Rise” in 2000.

What’s going on here then? The pop phenomenon (and they really were) of 1984 back in the charts in 1993? Well of course it was all about record company plundering of an artist’s back catalogue to squeeze some more revenue out of their reputation. Frankie Goes To Hollywood were unavoidable in 1984. They owned the charts with three No1 records totting up fifteen weeks at the top between them. They became one of a handful of artists to command the No1 and No2 chart positions in the same week and were surrounded by controversy after the BBC banned the first of those No1 singles “Relax” due to its overtly sexual nature (Mike Read and all that). After the success came the downfall and the gap of two years between debut album “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and follow up “Liverpool” proved insurmountable in terms of maintaining their profile and the band split in 1987 after basically imploding.

This though was all ancient history in pop terms and by 1993 record label ZTT calculated that the nine years between Frankie’s annus mirabilis and a revisiting of their story was long enough. To try and entice a new fanbase or indeed reactivate their existing one towards their amazing story once more, they released “Bang!…The Greatest Hits Of Frankie Goes To Hollywood” – it did what it said on the tin. Like Belinda Carlisle earlier, Frankie have far more compilations than studio albums to their name (a ratio of 10:2) but this one was by far the most successful going to No 4 in the charts and achieving gold status sales. To promote the album, a version of “Relax” was re-issued – the “Classic 1993 Version” to be exact – though I’m not entirely sure how different it was from the original which already had a myriad of mixes anyway.

There’s no controversy this time around with videos as the BBC is showing a live performance promo of the song directed by David Mallet. Even nearly ten years on, the notorious and banned S&M video with an obese Roman emperor and drag queens was never going to be shown before the watershed. The 1993 rerelease of “Relax” peaked at No5. Quite remarkable.

This next one is just a brilliant song in my book and a highlight from a great album that doesn’t get the praise it deserves. “Roses In The Hospital” was the third single from “Gold Against The Soul” by Manic Street Preachers and regularly trades positions in my mind with “Life Becoming A Landslide” (the follow up single) as the best track on the album.

Borrowing just ever so slightly from Bowie’s “Sound And Vision” (or is it “Sorrow”?), it’s got an unexpectedly funky backbeat allied with the hookiest (yes, that’s a word!) of choruses. Add in a wonderful coda that combines a refrain of the phrase “forever delayed”* with a knowing nod to The Clash’s “Rudie Can’t Fail” and it couldn’t…well…fail. It didn’t either when becoming the biggest hit from the album by peaking at No 15. This was the highest chart positions of any of their own compositions at the time with 1992’s No 7 “Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless)” obviously a cover version.

I was working in the Our Price in Stockport around this time and there were actually two Our Prices in the town, the big one on Merseyway and a much smaller one just around the corner from it. That store had a reputation for stocking classical music and I believe actually employed a ‘mature’ lady (compared to all us youngsters working for the company anyway) for a few hours a week who had great classical product knowledge. I was covering in the smaller store on the morning “Roses In The Hospital” came out and for some reason Sony sent us one 7” single despite the fact that the store didn’t stock any vinyl. Why do I remember this non-consequential crap? Oh and apparently that isn’t Nicky Wire in the Minnie Mouse mask as he was on honeymoon so his place was taken by a roadie in disguise. He wasn’t making some anti-Disney statement. Didn’t Echo and the Bunnymen do something similar when performing “Seven Seas” on the show in 1984 with a guy in a fish costume standing in for an absent Les Pattinson?

* “Forever Delayed” would be the title of the band’s first Best Of album in 2002 though curiously “Roses In The Hospital” was not included on the track listing. It did appear on the DVD version of the album and 2011 retrospective “National Treasures -The Complete Singles”.

Just the two Breakers this week starting with an act that always confuses me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I always get US3 confused with the similarly named Oui 3 who were having hits around this time. Secondly, like fellow jazz rapper Guru who was also on the show as a Breaker recently, they had an album that I remember selling loads of in Our Price but which Wikipedia tells me was not a massive commercial success. In the case of Guru that was the album “Guru’s Jazzmatazz Vol. 1” which only made No 58 in the charts whilst US3’s was “Hand On The Torch” which topped out at No 40.

“Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” was the biggest hit from the album though it took a re-release to achieve this peak of No 23 after it bombed initially the year before. Sampling Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island”, I quite liked this though it wasn’t really my bag.

After Frankie Goes To Hollywood earlier, here’s another huge star of the 80s. Unlike Frankie though, Paul Young had managed to eke out some chart hits after his imperial phase of 83-85 had petered out and remain a semi regular visitor to the charts. In the 90s up to this point he had scored a total of four Top 40 entries (including No 4 hit “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” with Zucchero). Just like Frankie though, he had also released a big selling Greatest Hits compilation called “From Time To Time – The Singles Collection” which had even topped the charts in 1991*.

However, Paul’s studio albums had suffered from a case of diminishing returns for a while with each one selling less than its predecessor right back to his debut “No Parlez” in 1983. By the time we got to 1993’s “The Crossing”, he was beyond the point of no return when it came to reversing that trend with it peaking at a lowly No 27. The lead single from it was a song that suggested that Paul (or his songwriters) had taken a leaf out of the ABC book of composition but instead of Smokey singing, we had Otis Redding feeling sad. I speak as a person who owns some Paul Young records and I have to say that “Now I Know What Made Otis Blue” is not his finest hour. However, it is deceptively catchy and has some powerful ear worm potential. Maybe that’s why it made an impressive chart high of No 14. Paul would visit the UK Top 40 only twice more and in a very reduced way but he remains a big draw on the live circuit.

*As with Belinda Carlisle before him, Paul has more Best Of compilations to his name than actual studio albums.

The debut now of a group who would enjoy enormous and sustained success throughout the decade despite losing a popular member Robbie Williams / Take That style. The presence in the UK charts of all female American R&B groups like En Vogue, SWV and Jade had highlighted a gap in the market for a UK version. In all honesty, apart from Bananarama, we hadn’t had many girl bands of any musical persuasion at all. Up to 1993, who else was there? Toto Coelo? Belle And The Devotions? The Reynolds Girls? The Beverley Sisters? We were seriously lagging behind. Enter Eternal – sisters Easther and Vernie Bennett and friends Kéllé Bryan and Louise Nurding. Put together by First Avenue Records using the En Vogue template, they exploded out of the gate with debut single “Stay” which made No 4 confirming consumer appetite for such a band.

Underpinning that success was the confidence of their performance here. Easther gives a strong lead vocal while the synchronised dance moves behind her are absolutely on point including some Egyptian style head slides and eye catching arm waving. Talking of eye catching, perhaps predictably, Louise Nurding got a lot of attention as the only non-black person in the group and within two years she would leave the band to pursue her own successful solo career. Had EMI always got her flagged for such a move? There was a rumour that they didn’t think they could break the band in the US as an R&B act if they had someone white in the line-up but I don’t want to pursue that particular line of thought. Suffice to say both Eternal and Louise were able to co-exist and have plenty of chart hits. The former had eight UK Top 10 hits including a No 1 post Louise who herself racked up an impressive twelve Top 20 hits half of which went Top 5. The one album they recorded as a four piece – “Always And Forever” – went four times platinum in the UK and sold four million copies worldwide paving the way for many an all female band in their wake including Spice Girls, All Saints, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays.

https://youtu.be/fvXOqli-yhY

Host Mark Franklin informs us that Chaka Demus And Pliers were meant to be in the TOTP studio to perform “She Don’t Let Nobody” but the former wasn’t very well and they had to cancel. He probably had a sore throat having strained it doing all those ‘Baby Girl’ and ‘Number One in the World’ shout outs. Ho hum.

This next one is a curious thing. Not the performance itself which is pretty standard but the fact that it was the band’s one and only time in the TOTP studio and it was for a single that only made it to No 40 in our charts. Can’t be that many acts that have such a TOTP history. Of course, the videos for Spin Doctors previous hit singles “Two Princes” and “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” had been on the show before but this run through of “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” was the band’s only live performance.

The third single taken from their “Pocketful Of Kryptonite” album, it was very much in the same vein as its predecessors (no shaking things up with a slushy ballad for these guys) but a much more washed out, half-hearted version. Maybe that explains its lowly chart placing. Jimmy Olsen was of course Superman’s nerdy pal who had his own DC Comic but I’d take Fitz from Cracker to solve a case over Jimmy every time.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince still reign supreme at No 1 with “Boom! Shake The Room”. The pair seemed to have an issues with buildings – their debut album was called “Rock The House”. Yeah, you guessed it. I’ve got nothing left to say about this one. Thankfully this is its last week at No 1 as the Take That juggernaut is coming…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Belinda Carlisle	Big Scary Animal	Nope
2	Gabrielle	Going Nowhere	No
3	Frankie Goes To Hollywood	Relax	Not in 1993 but I did back in 1984 obviously
4	Manic Street Preachers	Roses In The Hospital	Not the single but I bought the album
5	US3	Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)	Didn’t mind it, didn’t buy it
6	Paul Young	Now I Know What Made Otis Blue	Nah
7	Eternal	Stay	I did not
8	Chaka Demus And Pliers	She Don’t Let Nobody	Certainly not
9	Spin Doctors	Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”	Negative
10	DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince	Boom! Shake The Room	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/m001d7qy/top-of-the-pops-30091993

TOTP 17 OCT 1991

Posted on October 27, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid October 1991 and therefore week three of the new TOTP format – had we all got used to it yet? I recall some of these performances so I must have carried on watching it whether I liked the show’s new style or not (pretty sure it was the latter). I would have been 23 by this point – was that too old to have been watching TOTP? In my defence, I was working in a record shop (Our Price) for a living so I could make a case that it was work related. Looking back, I didn’t feel too old to still be a TOTP viewer but as I say, I was working in a mainstream, chart led record shop so it kind of felt the obvious thing to do.

Now if I was too old to be watching the show, tonight’s opening act were surely too old to have been performing on it?! Presenter Tony Dortie correctly advises us that even back in 1991, it was 20 years since Slade had scored their first No 1 single (“Coz I Luv You”) and in 1991 the youngest member of the band was Jim Lea at a sprightly 42 while the rest of the band were all 45. That makes them 8 year younger than I am now and I would like to think I’m not an old man yet but mid 40s for being on a pop music show that had recently gone through a revamp to show it was still ‘hip for the kids’? Clearly new producer Stanley Appel hadn’t learned his lesson from two weeks ago when one of the bands booked for the first show under his tutelage were Status Quo!

So why exactly were these gods of glam rock in the charts and on TOTP in 1991? Well, after their resurrection in the mid 80s due to hits like “My Oh My” and “Run Runaway”, the band’s chart fortunes had once again been on the slide and they’d descended into a world of greatest hits packages for the Xmas market and endless re-releases of that festive single (8 separate occasions in the 80s). However, 1991 racked up a quartet of a century of the band’s existence (in one form or another) and the Slade fan club-organised a 25th anniversary party to celebrate. Wanting to cash in on the renewed interest in the band, their record label Polydor floated the idea of yet another Greatest Hits compilation album but backed with a TV advertising campaign and two new singles to add interest for the fanbase. “Radio Wall of Sound“was the first of those two singles and it’s a right old stomper and no mistake but why is bassist Jim Lea doing most of the singing and not Noddy Holder? Well, it was written by Lea for a solo project and when the band came to record it, they found that it was not in Noddy’s key and so Lea did most of the vocals with the Nodster just joining in on the chorus. Around this time, Noddy had come into the Our Price where I was working and I ended up serving him. I can’t recall what he bought but I was delighted to note that his credit card was emblazoned with the legend N Holder on it. However, my joy was cut short when I realised that his real name is Neville and so the ‘N’ of course referred to that and not ‘Noddy’.

Back to “Radio Wall of Sound” though and despite it definitely sounding like a Slade record, for me it also displayed another influence. The radio DJ voice-over bits were undeniably channelling Starship’s “We Built This City”. Apparently, the DJ in question is Mike Read who had presumably taken time off from writing the theme tune for BBC horse racing drama Trainer and had also had to miss a UKIP fund raiser dinner party to record his lines.

To be fair to Stanley Appel and his production team, they’ve gone in hard straight away to create a buzz with some pyrotechnic explosions behind the band before they even start singing. Happily, they haven’t reverted to that practice during their mid 80s revival of handing out nasty, cheap looking and probably highly flammable Slade scarves to the studio audience to wave around.

“Radio Wall of Sound” achieved a decent chart high of No 21 but was undone by, according to Noddy Holder, a lack of TV slots to promote it. Apparently they’d tried to do Wogan but couldn’t get on the show. I checked the listings for the week that this TOTP was broadcast and the two musical guests on Wogan were Alison Moyet and Texas both of who performed their latest singles – Alison’s track “This House” peaked at No 40 and The Texas single “In My Heart” stalled at No 74. Neither were pulling in huge hits in the early 90s so it seems odd that a space couldn’t be found for Slade (especially Texas who at this point had only scored one hit single in 1989 and were six years away from their commercial peak of the “White On Blonde” album). The second of those new Slade singles was called “Universe” and was released as the follow up to “Radio Wall of Sound” in the December but got lost in the Xmas market and failed to chart. As such, Polydor went cold on the idea of the band recording any new material and they broke up in 1992 with Lea and Holder leaving whilst Dave Hill and Don Powell carried on under the banner of Slade II.

As Tony Dortie walks up the gantry steps at the end of the song to do the link into the Top 10 countdown, you can hear what I assume can only be Noddy Holder making some guttural noises that sound like an alarm going off. Maybe he was making it up to the studio audience for his lack of vocal participation on “Radio Wall of Sound”?

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

Oh crikey, Enya‘s back! Yes, she of the No 1 song “Orinoco Flow” that everyone went overboard about back in 1988 for being so dreamlike and haunting and blissful and all those other epithets that the press and media bestowed up on her. The single propelled her to international stardom and the album it was taken from (‘Watermark”) sold 11 million copies worldwide. Well, it took her three years to record the follow up which was an album called “Shepherd Moons” of which “Caribbean Blue” was the lead single. I remember that the album was expected to shift a huge number of units over Xmas in the Our Price store I was working in and therefore a huge amount of units were ordered in. It didn’t disappoint going to No 1 with 13 million copies purchased world-wide. All this sales were achieved without the massive promotional pull of a No1 single that its predecessor “Watermark” had benefitted from. “Caribbean Blue” went to No 13 in the UK but was not a huge hit globally only making the Top 10 in her native Ireland.

For this studio performance, the stage has a back drop that seems to be some sort of lost temple in an overgrown jungle but which fortunately still has functioning dry ice machines. Enya herself sits statically at the piano but unlike with Julian Lennon’s keyboard performance the other week, new TOTP producer Stanley Appel resisted the urge to beef up the performance with clips of the official promo video (even though it featured future Eastenders star Martine McCutcheon).

The intro to the song by presenter Mark Franklin is a bit sycophantic…

“She’s live in the studio tonight playing the unique sound of Enya…”

What sound did you expect her to play Mark? She is Enya after all so she was hardly likely to come out and do a tribute to Liberace was she?!

Moving on and it’s another studio performance by another returning female solo star in Lisa Stansfield. Like Enya before her, Lisa had also scored a massive No 1 back in the late 80s with “All Around the World” but hadn’t been seen in the charts for a good 18 months by this point. “Change” was the lead single from her second solo album called “Real Love” and that album would help to establish Lisa as one of the UK’s most prominent soul singers by going double platinum over here and reaching No 3 in the charts. It housed four UK Top 40 singles including one of her most well known songs in “All Woman” though the track I would have liked to have seen released was “Soul Deep” that remained an album track.

Lisa’s grown her hair a bit since the days of “All Around the World” and that short cut and kiss curl look. She still looks fabulous. I worked in Our Price Rochdale (Lisa’s hometown) for a whole year between ’92 and ’93 and the only time she came into the shop, I was on my day off. Damn it!

Luckier than me was presenter Mark Franklin who gets to interview Lisa at the end of her performance for one of those embarrassing interviews in which he asks Lisa about her forthcoming tour and we find out that she is going on tour (surprise surprise), that it begins in February and is going pretty much everywhere on the planet. Quality in depth interviewing there. He reminds me of Lady One Question from early noughties Channel 4 comedy gambling game show Banzai…

So after Stevie Wonder and Queen in weeks one and two of the show’s new format, week three brings us another big hitter in the ‘video exclusive’ section as we get U2‘s latest promo for their new single “The Fly”. Their first release of the 90s, this was the lead single from their multi-platinum “Achtung Baby” album. Very much seen as a change of style at the time with its multi layered guitars and distorted effects on Bono’s vocal, it was certainly no “With Or Without You”. Indeed, Bono is on record as describing the song as “The sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree”. For me though it sounded like U2 doing their best INXS impression but that wasn’t a bad thing in my book although I was surprised to find a copy of the 7″ in my singles box as I don’t recall buying it. I would also end up buying the album on which there are much better tracks than “The Fly” for me.

The song would also announce Bono’s ‘The Fly’ character which was meant to send up the stereotype of an egomaniacal rock star. Sadly for Bono, I’m not sure everyone got the joke and his wearing of large wrap-around sunglasses backfired on him in many ways. Attending press conferences in ‘The Fly’ persona was probably not the best idea Bono ever had either and didn’t help his cause.

Whatever any of us thought about the song, it created itself a space in chart history as the single that eventually toppled Bryan Adams’ 16 week run at the top of the charts. Ironically, although it went straight in at No 1, “The Fly” was only made available for three weeks before the band’s record label Island deleted it so that they could clear the release schedules for further singles to be pulled from the album. How many music fans wished that Bryan’s record label A&M had done a similar thing with “(Everything I Do) I Did It For You”?

Dannii Minogue‘s annus mirabilis continues a pace with her fourth hit single of 1991 “Baby Love”. Not a cover of the Diana Ross & The Supremes number but a cover version all the same as this track was originally recorded by one hit wonder Regina and was a US No 10 hit in 1986. Dannii would have been better off going for the Motown track in my opinion as the Regina song doesn’t seem to have much going for it to my ears. Interesting to note that now the acts have to sing live on the show, Dannii’s dance moves are considerably curtailed – in fact she hardly moves at all leaving all the “nifty dance moves” (as promised by Tony Dortie in his intro) to her trio of backing dancers. To be fair to her, you couldn’t have expected anything but an out of breath vocal if she’d also attempted all the dancing we saw for her performance of previous hit “Jump To The Beat”.

The film that she is starring in that will be released the following year that Tony Dortie references, I hadn’t realised I’d seen until I researched it for this post. Success (also known as One Crazy Night) tells the story of four Beatles obsessed fans (plus an Elvis fan who can’t stand them) who find themselves locked in the basement of the hotel that the moptops are staying in whilst in Australia during their touring years period. While waiting to be rescued, they start to share their deepest secrets with each other. Often compared (unfavourably) to The Breakfast Club, it attracted criticism for the use of Beatles songs that didn’t belong in the time period the film was set. The plot takes place in 1964 but some of the songs used are from much later albums like “Abbey Road” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” which does seem unforgivable. However, the fact that I even remembered the film at all suggests it must have done something right to stay in my memory banks although I’d certainly forgotten that Dannii Minogue was in it.

“Baby Love” peaked at No 14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uqo01s83XU

The video for “Wind Of Change” by Scorpions is next. As Tony Dortie says, it was giving Bryan Adams a run for his money by occupying the No 2 spot in the charts this week although I have no idea how many copies it was actually selling and whether it was indeed anywhere near to knocking the Canadian off his throne.

The song was the subject of an eight part podcast in 2020 which raised the possibility that the song was written by or connected to the CIA. What?! The premise goes that the CIA may have wanted to engender anti Soviet Union sentiment by utilising pop culture and the result was the writing of this people unifying, Cold War busting anthem. I haven’t heard the podcast but it’s an interesting theory and all. However, I get the impression it involves lots of internet rabbit holes and reminds me of all those conspiracy theorists out there who believe that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash in 1966 and replaced with a lookalike as the Beatles obsessed nation couldn’t have handled the truth. I’m not buying either story.

This week the album chart feature is fulfilled by Paul Young whose Best Of collection “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” is at No 5 this week. I’m guessing that neither Paul nor his record label Columbia could have foreseen the album going straight in at No 1 and being certified triple platinum but that’s exactly what happened. To be fair to Paul, it was a quality package filled with substantial hits from 1983 to the present (i.e. 1991) plus four newly recorded tracks one of which was this cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over“. I’d bought the original back in 1987 and although Paul’s version is inferior, he does a decent job of it all the same.

The performance here is interesting with Paul sat down for the duration and strumming a guitar! Don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before or indeed knew he could play. And isn’t that Paul Carrack on keyboards once of Ace, Squeeze and Mike + The Mechanics? It is you know. Bizarrely, Carrack had shared lead vocal duties with another Paul Young whilst in Mike Rutherford’s Genesis offshoot project but this one was the ex lead singer of Sad Café who passed away in 2000 rather than the singer of such hits as “Love of the Common People”, “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” and “Everytime You Go Away”.

Paul’s version of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” peaked at No 20.

Mark Franklin goes in for another interview about tour dates when he grills Paul Young about his forthcoming Xmas tour and then we’re into the Breakers starting with Ce Ce Peniston and “Finally”. Hang on – I thought this was in the charts much later than this and after she’d had already had a hit with a track called “We Got a Love Thang”

*checks officialcharts.com*

Yes I was right…and wrong. It was a much bigger hit (No 2) when re-released in March of ’92 after “We Got A Love Thang” had been a Top 10 hit at the start of the year. I had completely forgotten that “Finally” was also a No 26 hit in ’91. The track has routinely featured in various publications and music stations polls usually called something like The Biggest 90’s Dance Anthems of All Time etc and was also a huge smash in the US where it peaked at No 5. There was also a parent album called “Finally” which also performed well in the UK peaking at No 10.

I always quite liked it and much preferred it to “We Got a Love Thang”. It was kept off the top spot in ’92 by another long running No 1 song – Shakespears Sister’s “Stay”.

The second Breaker comes from Moby with “Go”. As with Ce Ce Peniston, I get a little confused over the chart history of this one. Various sources say that it was either released in March ’91 or July of that year – either way, it took a long time then for it to get into the Top 40. Maybe it was a sleeper hit, big in the clubs but not being played on mainstream radio?

The track was originally the B-side to Moby’s debut single from the previous year “Mobility” but was remixed with added samples from the obligatory Jocelyn Brown (the ‘yeah’ bit) and David Lynch’s mystery-horror TV series Twin Peaks and it would eventually (ahem) go Top 10. It wasn’t really my cup of tea although I would end up working with someone at Our Price who adored Moby well before his record-busting “Play” album of 1999 (which I did succumb to buying).

The clip that we see on TOTP of the kaleidoscopic video for the track was pretty standard dance tune fare and gave no idea to the identity of Moby who would turn out to be a little bald headed American bloke (although he does feature if you watch the whole promo).

Oh, it’s one of those TOTP performances that get talked up as memorable but was it actually any good? I refer to Monty Python and “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. I say Monty Python but it’s really just Eric Idle surrounded by what seemed to be a cast of thousands but was in fact a few blokes in Python-esque housewife fancy dress and a fake band. I guess it’s quite well choreographed with various explosions, instruments being broken and parts of the set falling down (hopefully the Health & Safety risk assessment was rigorous) and Idle does a good job of leading us all through it (and the studio audience through the set) but was it that funny?! That walk through the studio reminded me of similar performances by Adam Ant for “Goody Two Shoes” and that time Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood took a stroll to relieve the boredom of miming to “Two Tribes” on the show for the ninth (?) time. In all honesty, I preferred Adam and Holly’s excursions. The taxi at the end to whisk Idle away brought to mind Blur in that milk float at the start of the TOTP in the week of the legendary Blur v Oasis chart battle.

“Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” went all the way to No 3 whilst the re-release of the “Monty Python Sings” album off the back of it peaked at No 62.

And it’s STILL there at No 1 – Bryan Adams records a 15th consecutive week at the top of the charts with “(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”. Bryan must have got a taste for doing songs for film soundtracks as he would record three more before the decade was out – “All for Love” (with Rod Stewart and Sting) reached No 2 in the UK charts in 1994 from the film The Three Musketeers whilst “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” a year later from Don Juan DeMarco peaked at No 4. A final soundtrack song was recorded with Barbara Streisand in 1996 called “I Finally Found Someone” from her The Mirror Has Two Faces movie. Into the new millennium, he recorded “Here I Am” for the DreamWorks animation film Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron. I don’t think I liked any of them.

Just before the closing credits, Eric Idle returns to pie presenters Mark Franklin and Tony Dortie in the face. A watching nation cheered him on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Slade	Radio Wall Of Sound	Nope
2	Enya	Caribbean Blue	No
3	Lisa Stansfield	Change	Yes! Well, it’s in my singles box but I think my wife bought it actually.
4	U2	The Fly	Yes! Two on the trot! When was the last time that happened?
5	Dannii Minogue	Baby Love	This was never going to complete a hat-trick of purchases – no
6	Scorpions	Wind Of Change	Nah
7	Paul Young	Don’t Dream It’s Over	No but I bought his Best Of album with it on
8	Ce Ce Pensiton	Finally	I did not
9	Moby	Go	Go? No.
10	Monty Python	Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life	Never happening
11	Bryan Adams	(Everything I Do ) I Do It For You”	Negative

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/m0010rl4/top-of-the-pops-17101991

TOTP 02 MAY 1991

Posted on July 27, 2021 by 80stastic

We’ve made it to May 1991 here at TOTP Rewind which can only mean two things; the culmination of the football season and the Eurovision Song Contest. Football-wise, the England team was indebted to little Dennis Wise who scored one of the most undignified, scrappy goals ever witnessed at international level with this goal vs Turkey in a European Championships qualifier the day before this TOTP aired…

As I recall, the general consensus was that it went in off his backside. Still, they all count. As for Eurovision, the 1991 contest took place in Rome on the Saturday and…well more about what happened there later.

Tonight’s show is hosted by the interminably smug Simon Mayo and he promises us “The most incredible opening to TOTP ever, ever seen, I mean it…”. Wow! That’s some promise! Who could he have been referring to? Well, if it’s 1991 then it could only be The KLF and indeed it is as they had crashed into the charts at No 3 with their latest single “Last Train To Trancentral”. So, did the performance live up to Mayo’s hype? Not for me sadly. Yes, there was a crowd of people up there on stage so it had more numbers than most acts and yes they were wearing white robes with Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond also sporting a bull horn protruding from their hoods which was presumably all meant to signify something ‘other’ and ‘cultish’. Maybe a better word would be ‘unpalatable’ as the imagery reminds me of The Klu Klux Klan and some sort of satanic ritual. They don’t do much though do they apart from jog around in a circle at the end and shout ‘Woo Woo!’ or is it ‘Mu Mu!’? Apparently the lady in the Native American headdress is Cressida Cauty (Jimmy’s then wife) who now goes by the name of Cressida Bowyer and is currently at the University of Brighton’s School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences where she been doing ground-breaking research into liver cancer. Seems a hell of a lot more productive than playing silly buggers and shouting “Woo Woo!’ on TV to me.

Mayo was wrong about another thing as well. His confident proclamation that “Last Train To Trancentral” would be a No 1 proved to be false as it stalled at No 2. Ha! Take that dullard!

Whilst 1991 was undoubtedly the year of The KLF, it was also an annus mirabilis for Cathy Dennis. We’d last seen Cathy back in 1989 when she was the featured vocalist on D-Mob’s “C’mon And Get My Love” single but here she was, striding out on her own with “Touch Me (All Night Long)“. Now I had no idea until now that this wasn’t a Cathy Dennis original (which was a surprise given her career as a prolific songwriter post being a pop star) but was in fact by somebody called Fonda Rae who had a minor hit with it it 1984 (it also had a Slade style spelling as it was entitled “Tuch Me (All Night Long)”). Wanna hear it? Ok then…

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

I say it’s not a Cathy Dennis original but she did rewrite the verses retaining just the chorus hook. The track proved to be a winner both with pop fans and dance heads as it went to No 5 in the UK Top 40 and No 1 in the US dance chart. Is that what Mayo meant when he did another of his predictions as he says in his introduction that “Touch Me (All Night Long)” was about to be No 1 in the US? If he meant the Billboard Hot 100 chart then he was wrong again as it peaked at No 2.

Anyway, back to Cathy and the single lit the touch paper for her career as she racked up a further three Top 40 hits this calendar year, all coming from her debut solo album “Move To This” which itself was a UK No 3, gold seller. For a while she looked like she had everything – the songs, the appeal, the looks and the moves. She certainly looked a better bet for longevity than some of her peers like Dannii Minogue. Unfortunately the two years between this and her next album saw grunge happen and she lost a lot of ground and her place in the scheme of things from which she never really recovered. Her final album as a recording artist, 1997’s “Am I The Kinda Girl?”, rode the Britpop zeitgeist and was critically well received but floundered commercially peaking at No 78.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbs1nxEKTuQ

OMD are next or that should really be OMD Pt II as this is the version of the band without founding member Paul Humphreys. I like the fact that remaining original Andy McCluskey didn’t see any need to change his renowned and wonderfully awful dancing style despite the band’s new era. He explained the back story of his dancing in an interview in The Scotsman, saying that it stemmed “from the perception that we were making boring robotic intellectual music that you couldn’t dance to. I was trying to say, ‘No, no, you can dance to it, look, I’m dancing to it…”. Hmm. It was famously dubbed the ‘Trainee Teacher Dance’ by DJ, presenter and writer Stuart Maconie. At least Andy went for a leather jacket look and not a comfy cardigan with patches on the elbows.

“Sailing On The Seven Seas” peaked at No 3 whilst parent album “Sugar Tax” went platinum. Fast forward 30 years and that quip by Mayo that the album’s title was “as good a name for a tax as any” looks pretty silly doesn’t it given that just last week we heard of government plans to raise a sugar and salt tax to help to break Britain’s addiction to junk food.

OK, we arrive at the Eurovision part of the show. The UK entry for 1991 was Samantha Janus with a little ditty called “A Message To Your Heart”. The contest took place in Rome on 4th May and by this point in our history, the UK had only finished outside of the Top 10 once since 1978. Indeed, we’d finished 2nd twice on the spin at the end of the 80s and had been a respectable 6th the previous year. Twelve months on and our competing song was once again written by Paul Curtis who had penned the previous year’s entry, “Give A Little Love Back To The World” by Emma. Whereas that song had an environmental theme, “A Message To Your Heart” was all about those in the world suffering from poverty and starvation with the lyrics offering up a contrast of the have and have nots with lines referring to those who “are hungry just from being born” and those of whom “their only hunger being greed”. That was all very laudable but the sound of the song was completely at odds with its lyrics in that it was defiantly up tempo. In this TOTP performance, Janus ploughs on through it like a soft rock anthem with plenty of air grabs, fist clenches and tossing of her hair. She also does a lot of grinning, smiling and there’s that little prayer hand gesture which reminds me of Aneka of “Japanese Boy” fame. It’s not really her fault I guess – it just doesn’t make any sense in the context of the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FxO3WAbn4w

Come the day of the contest itself, Janus was given the 20th singing slot out of 22 performers. I’m not sure that helped her and neither did her pink mini-dress outfit when singing about poverty and starvation…that and her dreadful out of tune singing obviously. Samantha finished 10th overall which was seen as quite the disaster back then but which would be seen as a right result these days. Janus was devastated though and thought it would spell the end of her. Fortunately for her, she recovered and went onto have a very successful acting career both on stage and on TV with her most memorable role being that of Ronnie Mitchell in Eastenders I would imagine though my personal favourite of her shows was Game On.

As for the UK ‘s relationship with Eurovision, we recovered some ground during the rest of the 90s with three 2nd place finishes building to our last win with Katrina and the Waves in 1997. Since the turn of the century though, it’s all pretty much turned to shit.

“A Message To Your Heart” peaked at No 30 in the UK charts.

I never knew Nomad had a second hit! Well, if I did I’d forgotten all about it but here is the follow up to “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion” called “Just A Groove”. Right, let’s have a listen to it then…

…my God that was awful! There’s no tune in there at all. It’s just a backing track with some bullshit lyrics about Nomad having the music. Vocalist Sharon D. Clarke went on to have a Laurence Olivier Award winning acting career and has appeared in many West End productions and also had a wide TV career appearing in shows such as Soldier Soldier, Eastenders and most recently in the eleventh series of Doctor Who. Now I don’t know if it’s that bit of info which is causing me to hear this but it when she’s singing ‘Nomad’s got the groove’ it sounds a bit like ‘Nomad’s Dr Who’.

If that wasn’t weird enough, check this lot of trivia out. Having already discussed in length the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest earlier in the blog, it turns out that, in 2000, Sharon took part in the Eurovision qualifier A Song for Europe as part of Six Chix who came second to Nikki French. Now if you know your 90s chart history, that name will ring a bell as Nikki scored a No 5 hit in 1995 with a dance version of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. However, 9 years prior to that in 1986, she recored a song called “Dirty Den” released under the name Whiskey and Sofa. Dirty Den? Eastenders? The soap that Sharon appeared in? Weird no? Oh suit yourselves!

Meanwhile band member Steve McCutcheon, known professionally as Steve Mac, would go on to a hugely successful record producer and songwriter career having had a hand in 30 No 1 singles in the UK chart including four for Irish boyband Westlife. However, he was still clearly honing his skill backing 1991 as “Just a Groove” peaked at a lowly No 16 and was Nomad’s last ever UK chart hit.

Simon Mayo’s smugness gets an outing again next as he informs us all that “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” by Paul Young and Zucchero was an old Record of the Week on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show and that it is now shooting up the charts. Yeah, whatever Simon. Presumably this wasn’t anything to do with your own musical choice but was the result of a deal brokered between the record company and the Radio 1 playlist team made up of producers, music editors etc.

Back to Zucchero and Paul though and last week, the hashtag Keith Lemon was trending on account of the Italian singer’s resemblance to Leigh Francis’ comedy character. However, somebody this week posited the theory that he looked more like Coronation Street‘s Jim MacDonald. Let’s have look then…

Nah, definitely Keith Lemon for me.

“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was taken from Paul’s very first Best Of collection called “From Time To Time – The Singles Collection” which was a huge seller in the UK. Since then, his record label Columbia have released a further eleven Paul Young Best Ofs under various different titles. That’s more than double the amount of studio albums he recorded for them! Talk about getting the most out of your money!

“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” peaked at No 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEJ9W2Rdmpw

After being a Breaker last week, Frances Nero has leapt up the charts nine places which warrants a studio performance of “Footsteps Following Me”. The title of the song sounds pretty sinister when you think about it. Having examined the lyrics, it seems to be about the need for trust between lovers with phrases like ‘I am allergic to jealousy’ and ‘love without freedom will die’. There’s also a line which is utterly banal and lazy and that line is ‘free as a bird high in the sky’. Oh come on! Primary school kids could write better than that!

“Footsteps Following Me” peaked at No 17 whilst Frances Nero sadly passed away in 2014.

Chesney is gone – toppled by the might of Cher and an old 60s song that was included on the soundtrack to her latest film Mermaids. It’s not quite how I imagined him going out really. Surely someone more ‘happening’ (as the TOTP hosts were likely to say) in 1991 like The KLF or Seal would have been expected to dethrone *Chezza? Cher though? I for one didn’t see it coming.

Within a few short weeks of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” being at No 1, Cher released an album called “Love Hurts”. Nothing very exceptional about this of course but there are couple of little anecdotes about the album’s release that I recall. Firstly, “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” wasn’t on it. Except that it was. What am I banging on about? Well, it wasn’t included on the US release of the album as the single had not been anywhere near as popular over there where it peaked at No 33. Across Europe however, it was huge and was a No 1 in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and the UK of course. Consequently, the European version of the album did include it as a bonus track. Presumably that decision helped to send the album to No 1 in the UK where it was a three times platinum seller.

Secondly, there was the issue of its cover. When it was originally released it had some weird mirror reflection artwork going on with a banner across it proclaiming the album’s title. This was the version released in North America and also the initial worldwide copies. Once we started re-ordering it at the Our Price I worked in, the albums that arrived had an entirely different image of a red haired (and very air brushed) Cher against a plain white background. What was that all about?

*Does the nickname Chezza work for both Chesney and Cher? Just wondering.

The play out video is “Get Ready!” by Roachford. Despite having released a dozen or so albums and more than 30 singles over the course of his career, Andrew Roachford says that somebody mentions his biggest hit “Cuddly Toy” to him at least once every day which reminded me of this…

“Get Ready!” peaked at No 22.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ffbfKN-tg

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The KLF	Last Train To Trancentral	No
2	Cathy Dennis	Touch Me (All Night Long)	Negative
3	OMD	Sailing On The Seven Seas	Not the single but I’m sure it’s on a Best Of CD of their that I have
4	Samantha Janus	A Message To Your Heart	Of course not
5	Nomad	Just A Groove	Nah
6	Paul Young / Zucchero	Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)	No but I bought that Best Of album with it on
7	Frances Nero	Footsteps Following Me	Nope
8	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)	Yes but it was all a big mistake honest!
9	Roachford	Get Ready!	Yes albeit from the Bargain Bin

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/m000xw3v/top-of-the-pops-02051991

TOTP 18 APR 1991

Posted on July 22, 2021 by 80stastic

Those generous TOTP producers have seen fit to cram 14 (FOURTEEN!) songs into this particular show which means lots of typing and putting my grey cells through their paces for old muggins here. They’ve shoe horned 5 Breakers in this week which is the reason for the high song count and having timed it, they are squeezed into just 1 minute and 21 seconds of screen time. That’s 16 seconds per song. What was the point of that?! OK, there weren’t too many places that you could watch a music video back in 1991 so was it a case of something was better than nothing? I’m not sure. There was The Chart Show which was a staple of Saturday morning TV by this point having moved from Channel 4 to ITV in 1989 so maybe they were trying to compete with that? There was also MTV Europe though how may of us had access to that back in the day? Whatever the reason, I hope for my sake that this was a one off and the TOTP producers showed some self control in the future.

Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and for some weird reason concerning how the brain stores totally irrelevant and throw away bits of info for years, there are some parts of this show that I can really remember mainly surrounding Jakki’s to camera bits. More of that later though as we start the show with James and “Sit Down”. The boys are at No 2 by now and still have designs on that No 1 spot. *SPOILER ALERT* However, the fact that they spent three weeks there and were unable to dislodge Chesney Hawkes must have rankled with not only the band but also their army of fans. Possibly music lovers in general saw it as a monstrous injustice. Possibly.

Anyway, they’re in the studio this week and look happy enough with life especially guitarist Larry Gott who laughs and smiles his way through the performance. After leaving the band in 1995, Gott took up studying Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, specifically furniture design. Somebody I worked with at Our Price in Stockport was also on the course with him and said he didn’t talk much about James at all preferring to just be a student with the rest of the cohort. He graduated in 2000 and won awards for his ‘reaction recliner’ design including the Allemuir Award for Industry and the Blueprint Award for Creativity. Not to be outdone, my colleague at Our Price became a successful freelance graphic designer and photographer. “Outstanding” – as Kenny Thomas might have said.

So if it wasn’t James who would dethrone Chesney, who did do the deed? In an unlikely turn of events, the honour fell to Cher who, despite her last album “Heart Of Stone” being a Top 10 success in 1989, hadn’t had a UK No1 single for 26 years when she topped the charts with “I Got You Babe” as part of Sonny & Cher. The song that rectified this for her was a cover of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” which had originally been a minor hit for Betty Everett in 1968. Cher’s version was taken from the soundtrack to her latest film project called Mermaids. This family comedy-drama which also stars Bob Hoskins, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci is rarely shown on TV these days but, and I haven’t seen it since going to the cinema to catch it in 1991, is actually OK as I recall. A little too heavy on the quirkiness and I found Winona’s character a tad annoying but not bad.

The film’s soundtrack featuring original 60s tracks by the likes of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles sold reasonably well off the back fo the success of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” but I never realised until now that there was a second Cher track on the album called “Baby I’m Yours” (another cover) which had been released as its lead single but which did bugger all in the charts.

So why did the UK go mad for the second single? I really don’t know. Was the film a massive commercial success? According to IMDB, it was ranked the 20th top film in the UK for 1991 – not too shabby but hardly a phenomenon. “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” on the other hand was the third best selling single of the year in 1991 behind only 16 weeks at No 1 “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams and Xmas No 1 “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”These Are the Days of Our Lives” by Queen. Sadly, my purchase of it added to its popularity. Now just hold on before you all pile on. The whole thing was a mistake. Firstly, I bought it for my wife and not me. Secondly, she didn’t even want it either as I had purchased the wrong thing entirely in Cher. She had wanted a completely different single that features in next week’s TOTP. Quite how I managed to make such a mistake, I have no idea. The fact that back in 1989 I had bought another Cher single (“If I Could Turn Back Time”) had nothing to do with the whole sorry escapade at all and that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God!

Whoah! OMD? In the charts in 1991? Yes, it was true. One of the most surprising comebacks of the year (maybe even the decade) was the return of OMD but they weren’t the same beast we had last seen in the Top 40 way back in 1986 with “(Forever) Live And Die”. No, for one, founding member Paul Humphreys had done a runner and left the band! How so? Well, after reaching a commercial peak around the middle of the 80s with the huge US hit “If You Leave” from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, things had started to unravel. Their next album “The Pacific Age” had been recorded under duress and the results were patchy. The aforementioned “(Forever) Live And Die” had been a sizeable hit but it was the only one from the album which received mixed critical reviews.

Suffering from a creative drought, a Best Of album was released in 1988 which was a huge success going three time platinum but the band were clearly trading on former glories. By 1989, Humphreys (along with two other band members ) had had enough and left to form footnote-in-electronic-music-history band The Listening Pool whilst Andy McCluskey committed to carry on under the OMD name.

“Sailing on the Seven Seas” was the first post Humphreys single and a curious thing it was too. Listening to it now, it seems quite pedestrian though I don’t recall thinking that at the time. That almost shuffling glam rock back beat allied with McCluskey’s plaintive vocals and a decidedly weird Jean Michel Jarre style keyboard solo in the middle and yet the UK record buying public lapped it up. The single would rise all the way to No 3, OMD’s highest charting hit since “Souvenir” some 10 years earlier. I don’t think either McCluskey or record label Virgin really expected that sort of success if they were being honest.

Things would get even better though as “Sailing on the Seven Seas” paved the way for the successful launch of parent album “Sugar Tax” which would go platinum in the UK and spawn a further Top 10 single in “Pandora’s Box”. Remarkable stuff really. OMD were back and how!

Seriously?! Still with Black Box?! That ship hasn’t sailed, struck an iceberg and sunk yet?! This must surely be their last TOTP appearance (please!)? Anyway, they’re here once more with “Strike It Up” and…hang on…did Jakki Brambles say “Will you welcome Black Box featuring Steps”?! Steps?! As in Steps that did “Tragedy”? As in ‘H’ from Steps? Relax, it will be a few years before that lot appear in these TOTP repeats. No, this was Stepz (with a ‘z’ see?) who was the rapper dude on the track. And who was he? Well, as far as I can ascertain, he also went by the names Stepsi and Stepski but his real name was Lee Bennett Thompson and he also worked with Quartz who did that Carole King cover with Dina Carroll. Yeah, I don’t care either. Next!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVK8h1BUcOs

After the Levis-inspired success of “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, it was inevitable that a follow up single was released by The Clash and what more obvious candidate could there be than “Rock the Casbah“. Similarly pulled from their “Combat Rock” album, it made complete sense even though it had already been a No 30 hit in the UK 9 years previously. I certainly remember it being in the charts back in 1982 but curiously have little memory of it being an even bigger it (No 14) in the charts in 1991.

The video prompted some controversy featuring as it does a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jew befriending each other on the road on the way to a Clash gig which, according to director Don Letts, was all “about breaking taboos”. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant whilst later on the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer. Although the track was initiated by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, that isn’t him in the video as he had been sacked for continuous drug abuse by then. That’s actually original drummer Terry Chimes on the drums that we see on screen.

Despite the recent Gulf War BBC black list, the track was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm and to Joe Strummer’s horror, the phrase “Rock the Casbah” was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the the conflict. Commercially, it was the biggest US hit that the band ever had and, alongside “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, is predominantly what The Clash are known for ever the pond in some quarters and let’s be fair, it is a f*****g tune!

It’s The Mock Turtles again with “Can You Dig It?”! Excellent! The last time they featured in this blog I rambled on and on about how they had done an instore PA at the Our Price where I was working in Manchester and that I had got on the guest list for their gig that night at The Manchester Academy and about their connection to Jude Law. This week I have dredged up my signed copy of their “Two Sides” album from that PA. I didn’t queue up to have it signed I should add. Rather it was a left over copy after they had finished and I recall having a long discussion with the Assistant Manger about how it should be treated as a promo as it was part of a promotion event. I seemed to put a lot of stock in the fact that it was signed I think rather than if it had cost the shop any money to get it in which surely was the deciding factor when it came to its promo status. For the life of me I can’t recall if it was supplied by the record company FOC or if the shop was charged fo it but the AM won and I had to cough up the readies to buy it. It’s a pretty good album with some lovely pop tunes on it but it does have an awful cover, signatures or no.

“Can You Dig It?” was a hit all over again in 2003 when it was used in that Vodafone advert featuring David Beckham who was still in his Hoxton Fin hairstyle period back then…

…but for me, they will always be a part of my 1991.

“Can You Dig It?” peaked at No 18 on its initial release and at No 19 in 2003.

It’s those pesky, high speed Breakers next, four of which were never shown on the show in full. Five write ups for me then all for the sake of 1 min and 21 seconds worth of videos. Cheers TOTP producers! We start with “My Head’s In Mississippi” by ZZ Top which I have zero recollection of. It only got to No 37 in the charts so I could be forgiven I guess. It sounds a bit like the band doing their best Johnny Cash impression from the 16 seconds we got to hear of it on TOTP – I couldn’t be bothered to root out the track in full to be honest. It was taken from an album called “Recycler” which I don’t remember either though it did have the track “Doubleback” included on it from Back to the Future Part III apparently.

ZZ Top would return the following year with a cover of the Elvis track “Viva Las Vegas” to promote a Greatest Hits album which was much more fun.

Nope, don’t remember this either. “Seal Our Fate” by Gloria Estefan was the second of four singles taken from her “Into The Light” album all of which made the UK Top 40 but none of which made the Top 20. Make of that what you will. If we saw ZZ top channelling their inner Johnny Cash before, this was like Gloria being Britney Spears some 7 years before Britney was Britney. Apparently the video was well received by her fans as if Gloria could do its choreography routine then this was proof that she had made a full recovery from her injuries sustained in a coach crash in March of 1990.

Next on the Generation Game style conveyor belt of Breakers is Silver Bullet with “Undercover Anarchist” which was the follow up to “20 Seconds To Comply”. Again I don’t remember this one at all but then that’s hardly surprising as the TOTP graphics team seemed to have forgotten what the single was called whilst it was still in the charts as their caption reads “Under Anarchist”.

It doesn’t really matter as if I’d wanted to listen to a track with the word ‘anarchist’ in the title then I would have gone for this by one Hull’s finest…

There was a definite hint of 80s chart acts making a comeback in this particular TOTP. After OMD earlier in the show here were Transvision Vamp who had been AWOL for the whole of 1990 after their last chart appearance with “Born To Be Sold ” at the end of 1989. They hadn’t been idle though as they had been recording their third album, the ludicrously entitled “Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble” and inevitably they wanted to move away from the bubble gum glam pop that had brought them fame and fortune with tunes like “I Want Your Love” and “Baby I Don’t Care”. However, record label MCA weren’t that keen on the idea of the band maturing and refused to release the album in the UK. Instead, it was given a limited world wide release with copies only available in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The idea was to see how it did in those territories before a UK released was sanctioned. This lead to many an import copy of the album finding its way into UK record stores. We certainly had one in the Our Price I was working in and we had a Wendy James devotee who would come in week after week to see if the UK release was out yet. I can’t recall if he was tempted by the £20 import CD that we had in stock but if he didn’t buy it then nobody would have.

The lead single from the album was “(I Just Wanna) B with U” and it was the first track that Wendy received an official co-writing credit for. Was it any good though? Well, I was underwhelmed and I’d liked a lot of the band’s previous singles. I wasn’t the only one unimpressed as it struggled to a high of No 30, the band’s last ever UK chart hit. Follow up single “If Looks Could Kill” missed the Top 40 by one place and that was that. By the time that MCA had authorised an UK release for the album, the band had split anyway. Even now, the album is not available on Spotify although its singles are on a Best Of album which can be streamed. Was it the new material that let them down or were the band just an anachronism in the new decade? Who knows but they did burn brightly during their time in the sun.

Talking of 80s pop stars making a 90s comeback, here’s Pete Wylie and he’s joined forces with fellow scousers The Farm to do a re-working of “Sinful”. Yes, despite being completely wonderful, this was the first time Pete had been in the Top 40 since “Sinful” had been a No 13 hit back in 1986. His lack of chart success really is a crime against music.

I’m not totally secure in my knowledge of the circumstances around this release. The Farm were at their commercial peak having secured two Top 10 singles in 1990 with “Groovy Train” and “Altogether Now” from their No 1 album “Spartacus” which was released in the spring of 1991. However, their commercial fall was imminent. They released a third single from the album the Monday after this TOTP aired but “Don’t Let Me Down” peaked at a disappointing No 36. This re-working of Sinful retitled “Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” was a non-album single but presumably it was a live favourite as showcased by the video here.

Later in the year, Wylie would release the criminally ignored album “Infamy! Or How I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today” whilst The Farm would release an album called “Love See No Colour” in 1992 which would fail to chart making them, along with the aforementioned Transvision Vamp and purveyors of blue eyed soul Johnny Hates Jazz as acts that followed up a No 1 album with an LP that failed to chart.

A terrible accident would befall Pete later in the year when he suffered a near fatal fall when a railing gave way in Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool causing him to fracture his spine and his sternum. The legend goes that when the ambulance crew turned up and did their usual checks including to ask what the injured party’s name was, Pete replied ‘You should f*****g know who I am!”. I love Pete Wylie!

“Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)” peaked at No 28.

Next a song that was… well…just bizarre and yet it just worked. Despite no longer being the chart topper he was in the 80s, Paul Young was doing a decent job of keeping his career going into the new decade with a couple of Top 40 hits in 1990 from his “Other Voices”. By the time 1991 came around though, he had also had a couple of flops. So what do you do when your career needs a lift? Release a Best Of album of course! “From Time to Time – The Singles Collection” was a huge success going to No 1 and three time platinum in the UK off the back of an extensive TV ad campaign.

The album included three new tracks that were in fact cover versions that all ended up being released as singles. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was the first of those and was actually a duet with some geezer called Zucchero. I’d never heard of him before at the time but, as Jakki Brambles says in her intro, he was a very big deal indeed in his native Italy. “Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)” was actually his song and he had released it himself back in 1987. When Paul Young heard it whilst on holiday there, he approached the Z man about covering it but the reply came back ‘why don’t we do it as a duet?’. And so it came to pass that Paul Young would have his biggest hit since “Every Time You Go Away” back in 1985 stood next to a bloke who, according to the reaction on Twitter when this TOTP was re-shown the other week, looked very much like Keith Lemon. They have a point.

I think it’s the lyrics which make this record so curiously memorable. Certainly some of the lines have stayed with myself and my wife all these years. For example, ‘Look at me, I’m a flower’ and ‘You got to dig a little deeper lady’ stand out – maybe they didn’t translate too well from Italian to English. It’s the ‘even doing my own cooking’ line though that steals it. At the time, I wasn’t the most handy in the kitchen and so anything that I did produce would be met with a retort of ‘even doing my own cooking’ by my wife. I have got a lot better now! Zucchero’s inspiration for the line came from his own culinary trials…

Zucchero on "Sensa Una Donna": "At the time, I was almost divorced by my ex-wife and I was living in a small house by myself, trying to save my marriage. I was very sad and upset. I was in the kitchen and I had to cook by myself for the first time!" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

"So I started to cook some really terrible spaghetti, and I said, ‘I can’t live without you, because I can’t cook by myself!’ That’s why I say in the song: ‘I’m here cooking by myself.’ The song came out very quickly – music and lyrics in about half an hour." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 9, 2021

OK, just to clarify, I wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t have cooked some pasta nor was I in the process fo getting divorced!

It’s the first of Jakki’s lines that have stuck with me now as she says at the song’s end “Senza Una Donna which means Without A Woman – bare faced liars the pair of them”. Well, I’d have to say that Paul looks pretty cool with a sharp haircut but Zucchero? I can’t unsee Keith Lemon now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4SXr0p5aDI

Another Jakki Brambles line that for some reason has stuck in my brain these last 30 years next as she introduces Chesney Hawkes who is at No 1 for the 4th week with “The One And Only”. After starting off her intro with “What else can we say about our next man…” and listing all his ‘achievements’ which include having “a bit of a famous Dad” – Whoah! Stop right there! A bit of a famous Dad?! Len “Chip” Hawkes was the bassist in The Tremeloes it’s true but was he really that famous? It’s also true that Decca famously chose The Tremeloes over The Beatles for a recording contract back in 1962 so the band do have a place in pop music history but Hawkes wasn’t anything to do with it as he didn’t join the band until 4 years later. And yes, he did co-write some of their Top 10 hits but would anyone have really recognised him walking down the street back in 1991? Was he doing lots of TV appearances as some sort of talking head aficionado on pop music Paul Gambaccini style? I don’t think so. I suppose Jakki did say “a bit of a famous Dad” as opposed to “celebrity royalty” but even so.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway, finally Brambles gets to her killer line as she says “All that remains for me to say is Chesney Hawkes…GET YOUR HAIRCUT!” She had a point. Chesney’s Barnet was a disgrace. He’d clearly grown it out since appearing in Buddy’s Song and it now resembled a bob. Thankfully, he no longer has said style now that he is nearly 50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mk82Ns6vdk

The play out video and the final of 14 songs on the show tonight is “Deep, Deep Trouble” by The Simpsons. When I was a small child, my Dad had the “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” single by Benny Hill. I thought it was funny at the time as I had an undeveloped sense of humour. My Dad thought it was funny because…I’m not sure why…I think it must have been the ridiculousness of the tale that Hill’s distinctive voice imparted. As I grew older (and so did my Dad), that record never got played again in our house because it was a novelty record and novelty records don’t age at all well. Suffice to say, “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was a timeless classic compared to “Deep, Deep Trouble” which has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of popular culture.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjPA2NGxaqs

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I Buy It?
1	James	Sit Down	No but I have it on their Best Of album
2	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was an honest mistake!
3	OMD	Sailing On The Seven Seas	No but I have it on their Best Of album
4	Black Box	Strike It Up	Nope
5	The Clash	Rock The Casbah	No but I must have it on something
6	The Mock Turtles	Can You Dig It?	Not the single but I bought the album (signed!)
7	ZZ Top	My Head’s In Mississippi	No
8	Gloria Estefan	Seal Our Fate	Negative
9	Silver Bullet	Undercover Anarchist	I did not
10	Tranvision Vamp	“(I Just Wanna) B with U”	No but I have it on their Best Of album
11	Pete Wylie / The Farm	Sinful! (Scary Jiggin’ with Doctor Love)	I bought the original in 1986 but not this version
12	Paul Young / Zucchero	“Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)”	No but I have it on Paul’s Best Of album
13	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	Nah
14	The Simpsons	Deep, Deep Trouble	Hell 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/m000xp0k/top-of-the-pops-18041991

TOTP 19 JUL 1990

Posted on February 3, 2021 by 80stastic

Well, Italia ’90 may have come to a painful end a couple of weeks prior but the England football team were still in the news as three days before this TOTP aired, Graham Taylor was appointed full time manager of the national team following the pre-planned resignation of Bobby Robson. It wasn’t a universally welcome appointment and within three years and after a dismal Euro ’92 performance and failure to qualify for the ’94 World Cup, Taylor also resigned. The now infamous Channel 4 fly on the wall documentary film surrounding the doomed ’94 qualifying campaign originally broadcast as Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job is now, sadly for Taylor, the best remembered part of his legacy including the immortal line “Do I Not Like That”.

What’s all this got to do with TOTP? Very little although Taylor does, of course, have some legendary ties to music. Firstly, there is his relationship with Elton John (more of whom later) as Watford FC manager to Elton’s club chairman. Secondly, Taylor once admitted that his favourite ever singer was Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, an odd choice for a man who was only a one year old child when the war ended but then he was very much seen as an old fashioned type of gentleman. Funny then that he always seemed to be swearing his head off in that documentary…

Finally, and most bizarrely, I found this musical connection on YouTube. Apologies in advance…

My own personal Graham Taylor moment of 1990 came when I walked past his office door when he was still manager of Aston Villa (prior to his taking the England job). I’d contacted the football club as I was unemployed and desperate for some sort of career direction at the time. I had a chat with their commercial manager about possible career opportunities within football and his office was a couple of doors down from Graham’s.

If you clicked on this post hoping for some 1990 music memories and are wondering why you have been reading about football for the past 450 odd words, stick with me. I’m going there right now. OK, tonight’s host is Mark Goodier who has come dressed as a zebra and the first act on are Craig McLachlan And Check 1-2 with “Mona”. They are up to the No 2 position and are eyeing a possible No 1 – they couldn’t could they? Well, *spoiler alert* no they didn’t but fair play, it was a gallant effort. He even got on the front cover of Smash Hits!

Craig and co are in the actual studio for the first time and he gets to show off his guitar playing credentials (or at least mime them) and they seem pretty convincing. In that Smash Hits article, he showed off his collection of guitars including the one he has with him on stage here. It’s not his most precious axe in his collection though which is an original series Ibanez Iceman made famous by KISS guitarist Paul Stanley who had a signature Iceman.

For all his rock credentials though, Craig was unable to forge a lasting music career despite a Top 10 album and halfway decent follow up single in “Amanda”. And whatever you may say about his cover of “Mona”, you have to admit it’s quite the ear worm.

Next up, the reason that poor old Craig failed to get that No 1 spot as it was stolen from under his nose by Partners In Kryme and their awful single “Turtle Power”. This was of course to promote the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise entry into the world of film. This tale of four turtles turned into crime fighting, pizza eating heroes after being exposed to radioactive sewer ooze had been around for a couple of years via the animated cartoon (retitled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles for the more delicately natured UK audience). With turtle related merchandising also coming on line, the step into the big screen was inevitable. The film didn’t hit UK cinemas until late November but as it was already out in the US, the soundtrack was available well in advance. According to Wikipedia:

‘The collection is made up mostly of hip-hop and new jack swing styled tracks with several film score cues at the end.’

The film score bits were courtesy of John Du Prez who was the bald trumpet player in Modern Romance (no really) whilst the hip -hop was supplied by flavour of the month MC Hammer and some acts I’ve never heard of including Riff and the unedifyingly named Spunkadelic. And of course Partners In Kryme. This American duo from New York City seem to have existed solely to make music for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. According to their discography, they have only ever released three singles – “Turtle Power” and “Undercover” in 1990 and a track called “Rock The Halfshell” on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles YouTube channel in 2015. They never released a full length album and the only other recorded material I can find accredited to them is a version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” retitled “Love 2 Love U” which appeared on another soundtrack album, this time for the Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool As Ice. This film was so bad that it was nominated for eleven Golden Raspberry awards and was disowned by director David Kellogg. Sadly for us all, the time of Vanilla Ice is nearly upon us.

For the moment though, we only have Partners In Kryme to negotiate. This always seemed like a novelty record to me; I felt much the same about “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jnr. The lyrics do make some very specific references to the film and its characters which suggests a close connection to its source material (unlike say “World In Motion” whose football links are pretty loose). However, if you go down that route, make sure you get it right. Exhibit A m’lud:

“Splinter’s the teacher so they are the students.
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello make up the team
with one other fellow, Raphael.
He’s the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop”

Now I’m no turtles expert (pretty sure I’ve never seen any of the films or cartoon) but Wikipedia assures me that it’s Leonardo who is the leader of the group, not Raphael. Sometimes you do have to sweat the small stuff.

A recurring feature of these 1990 TOTP repeats is that they’re throwing up lots of hits that I have no recollection of at all. Here’s another one – the DJ Phil Chill remix of “I’m Still Waiting” by Diana Ross. As to why this was released or indeed why Motown thought we needed a nasty, dull, plodding dance remix of this song, I have zero clue. It really is one of the worst remixes I’ve heard for a long time.

Fast forward three years to 1993 and I am working as Assistant Manager for Our Price in the Altrincham branch in Cheshire. EMI have issued a Diana Ross Best of for the Xmas market called “One Woman: The Ultimate Collection” which is selling pretty well (it went 4 x platinum in the UK). There is a problem though. All the other musical outlets in Altrincham are selling the CD format of the album at £9.99 whilst our price point is holding at £11.99. Myself and the store manager, fearing we would never sell our considerable stocks of the album, therefore hatched a plan that we should price match our competitors which was completely against company policy and an action that was not within our remit at all. The plan worked and the CD was flying off the shelves and into our ringing tills …until the Area Manager descended upon the store for his Xmas ‘mince pie’ visit when he would come and ‘help’ out the staff by serving some customers. We all hated the ‘mince pie’ visits as inevitably the Area Manager would be more of an hinderance than a help as he didn’t know where anything was. Worse than that though, he might discover our unofficial Diana Ross price slash. As he began to serve in the shop, myself and the store manager desperately joined him to try and spot any customers in the queue that had the Diana Ross CD in their hands so as to head them off at the pass as it were before the Area Manager got a chance to serve them and discover our little plot. We must have looked completely hyper and preoccupied as we whittled down the queue of customers, all the while jumping in front of him should anybody approach the counter to purchase Ms Ross. Our efforts were rewarded though and he left without sussing anything untoward was occurring.

For the record, the original and vastly superior version of “I’m Still Waiting” was a No 1 record in 1970 whilst Phil Chill’s unwanted 1990 remix stalled at No 21 and it certainly was not on that Diana Ross Best Of that caused me so much anxiety.

A second appearance now for a song that only made it to No 27! Seems like a lot of exposure for such underwhelming sales. I’m pretty sure that this is just the original performance of “She Comes In The Fall” by Inspiral Carpets that was originally broadcast a couple of weeks previous. My suspicions are confirmed by @TOTPFacts:

This Inspiral Carpets performance (a repeat) was recorded the night England played West Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

There’s more to this story though:

Guitarist Graham Lambert: "We watched the game in the BBC bar. We saw Jimmy Hill after the game, and with him we re-enacted the penalty shoot-out in the Blue Peter garden." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 29, 2021

The Blue Peter garden! A fixture of the show since 1974, it was infamously trashed in 1983 supposedly by a gang that included teenage future footballers Dennis Wise and Les Ferdinand! I’ve never heard any stories about Jimmy and the Carpet boys damaging the garden thereby debunking the rock stars trashing hotel rooms template. I bet the band also tidied their hotel rooms before checking out on time whenever on tour. My friend Robin,who worked for the BBC for many years, told me recently that the Blue Peter garden is actually much smaller than it seems on screen which is very nearly a metaphor for the chart fortunes of “She Comes In The Fall”.

Host Mark Goodier goes into a weird segue next when he bangs on about how ‘trendy’ the show is! Remember when ‘trendy’ was a word we all used? Nowadays it’s all ‘on point’ or ‘cutting edge’ and the only reference to the word trend is when something trends on Twitter. Surely Goodier can’t be referring to himself in that two tone outfit of his? To be fair though, the girl in the James T-shirt would definitely have been ‘on point’ back then.

And he surely can’t mean the next act who is Paul Young. I’d almost forgotten this period of Paul’s career. He’d seemed consigned to history back in 1986 when his third album “Between Two Fires” and its attendant singles didn’t pull up the expected trees commercially. Somehow though, even in the dance obsessed charts of the early 90s, he pulled off a comeback of sorts. His “Other Voices” album spawned two hit singles in “Softly Whispering I Love You” and this one, a cover (well it is Paul Young!) of the old Chi-Lites number “Oh Girl”.

Paul does seem every inch the chart anomaly here, a position emphasised by his lime green shirt and jacket and his white trousers. At least he seems to have sorted his hair out a bit since his last appearance on the show when frankly his barnet was a right mess. As for the song, it’s all very pleasant and that but even Goodier seems to damn him with faint praise at the end when he sums it all up by pronouncing “It’s a good song well sung”

“Oh Girl” peaked at No 25.

Some pop puppets next. No, not New Kids On The Block but F.A.B. featuring MC Parker and “Thunderbirds Are Go!”. What a curious hit this was. I’m not quite sure what demographic it was appealing to but enough punters bought it to send it rocketing all the way to No 5. The framing of the Parker character as a DJ is its selling point I think. Certainly the video would not have been half as effective without the MC Parker bits inserted strategically.

Ever wondered what F.A.B. stands for though? Here’s head of the Thunderbirds operation Geoff Tracy…

…so nothing essentially. Just a clipping of the word ‘fabulous’. Other theories abound of course including ‘For Always Brothers’ as in the Tracy brothers presumably and also ‘Fully Acknowledged Broadcast’. Given that it doesn’t actually stand for anything, it was sure used a lot in the series…

Cripes! It’s that Madonna song! Yes, it’s time for some “Hanky Panky” people! An ode to sadomasochistic tendencies or just a bit of a laugh? Well, what’s for certain is that it was the follow up to her No 1 “Vogue” and it nearly repeated the trick by peaking at No 2 in the UK (though it only made No 10 in the US). This performance of it is from Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and clearly gets in a bit of promotion for the Dick Tracy film in which she starred with the inclusion of a male dancer dressed as Dick towards the end of the routine.

Inevitably, the song attracted its fair share of controversy especially in Ireland where two women’s organisations accused Madonna of glorifying violence against women, specifically on the line “I’ll settle for the back of your hand”. Madonna played down the accusations stating that of course it wasn’t her saying that she liked to be spanked but rather her character in the movie Breathless Mahoney. And if you think that’s enough controversy for one year, think again. The next 1990 Madonna single is “Justify My Love” – hold onto your crotches!

Now here’s an interesting tune. DreamWarriors were a Canadian hip hop duo who briefly found success and fame with a couple of hit singles the first of which was “Wash Your Face In My Sink”. Can it really have been a complaint about someone using their sink and leaving a ring around the basin?! Online commentaries suggest it is about setting boundaries around behaviour in relationships although we must have all have shared houses/ flats with people who don’t seem to share the same standards of hygiene that we pride ourselves as having surely?

As I’ve made clear many times before, I’m not a massive hip-hop fan, but this little eccentricity always appealed to me. “Wash Your Face In My Sink” peaked at No 16.

It’s the final week of five at the top for Elton John and, to quote Captain Sensible, ain’t I glad?! I think I’m right in saying that not once in all that time did TOTP play the other song of the double A-side that was “Sacrifice / Healing Hands” so here it is…

…hmm…well, I prefer it to the gigantic turd that is “Sacrifice” but it’s hardly up there in Elton’s canon of work as anywhere near approaching his best. I’m pretty sure it didn’t get that much airplay (certainly not on the radio stations I was listening to) back then either with “Sacrifice” taking the lion’s share making it altogether quite the forgotten No 1 song – a ghost No 1 if you will, standing there in plain sight but never seen. Not a phenomenon with a large members list I would suspect – I can only think of Billy Bragg’s version of The Beatles ‘She’s Leaving Home’ which was the almost completely ignored other A-side to Wet Wet Wet’s Childline No 1 “With A little Help From My Friends”.

I was aware that Paula Abdul had a song called “Knocked Out” but I could not have told you what on earth it sounded like. I would also have said that it never made the Top 40. I was both right and wrong. It was released three times in the UK before becoming a hit. It was actually Paula’s debut single back in September 1988 but bombed completely at No 98. However, following the success of “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl”, it was reissued and peaked at No 41 in August 1989. It finally made the Top 40 on its third release albeit that it required a Shep Pettibone remix to do the trick. They say trouble comes in threes and this single certainly wasn’t worth all that trouble to be honest.

The Shep Pettibone remix of “Knocked Out” peaked at No 21.

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

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Craig McLachlan Check 1-2	Mona	I did not
2	Partners In Kryme	Turtle Power	This was a crime…against music. No
3	Diana Ross	I’m Still Waiting Phil Chill 1990 remix	And I’m still waiting for an explanation for this dire record’s existence
4	Inspiral Carpets	She Comes In The Fall	Nope
5	Paul Young	Oh Girl	Oh no
6	F.A.B featuring MC Parker	Thunderbirds Are Go	Loved Thunderbirds, didn’t love this – no
7	Madonna	Hanky Panky	Nah
8	Dream Warriors	Wash Your Face In My Sink	Liked it but not enough to buy it
9	Elton John	Sacrifice /Healing Hands	Not knowingly but I’ve since discovered that Healing Hands is on a Q Magazine compilation LP that I bought. That doesn’t count does it?!
10	Paula Abdul	Knocked Out	No

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/m000rpmn/top-of-the-pops-19071990

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?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP 18 MAY 1990

Posted on December 17, 2020 by 80stastic

Hang on? TOTP on a Friday? What gives? Yes, this particular episode of the show aired on a Friday due to having been bumped off its regular and time enshrined Thursday night slot because of the FA Cup final replay being shown on that day. Having not been a final replay in the competition for seven years, 1990 saw it return after a draw on the Saturday before between Man Utd and Crystal Palace. The whole of that year’s FA Cup had been one to cherish – not for my beloved Chelsea who had gone out in the 4th round to Third Division Bristol City (bah!) – but Semi Final day had seen both games televised live on the BBC one after the other on a glorious Sunday afternoon for football fans who gorged on 13 goals between the the two games. The Final saw the goal fest continue in a thrilling 3-3 contest…

…the thrills couldn’t last though and the replay was a dour affair with Man Utd triumphing 1-0 in a game which saw Crystal Palace in one of the worst kits to ever feature in an FA Cup final.

I watched all of these games in the sitting room of my parents’ house as I was unemployed (still), depressed and skint. My brother on the other hand, an ardent Man Utd fan, had attended all the games (including both at Wembley) as this was his peak period for going to see the red scum (sorry bruv!). Fortunately, it wouldn’t be long before my luck would change and I would find employment in Hull where my girlfriend lived and would spend the Summer there before getting married and I was never to live in the family home again.

So what were the tunes that would see me into this happier period of my life? Well, they seemed to be supplied by acts that had made their name in the previous decade who were letting us know they were still around by returning to the Top 40 in 1990. Let’s see who we’re talking about…

...Hothouse Flowers had not been visitors to the UK Top 40 since their only previous trip in 1988 with their No 11 hit “Don’t Go”. I’d really liked that song and my wife had even gone as far as to buy their album “People” which was also packed full of good songs. However, I must admit that I wasn’t sure there was still a market for their brand of soul infused rock when the new decade rolled around. I was wrong though as they made it back into the charts with “Give It Up”, the lead single from their second album “Home”. The new track didn’t really show much musical progression but it was still a decent tune I thought even if the piano riff in the chorus seems to have been nicked off “Love Is In The Air” by John Paul Young. Furthermore, lead singer Liam Ó Maonlaí displayed that he still had the ability to sing songs that sounded like they had too many lyrics in them to work properly but somehow did. In the two years since I’d seen them live at Sunderland Poly, the band’s guitarist Fiachna Ó Braonáin had grown sprouted some dreadlocks by the look of him which was a bold move that I’m not completely sure worked.

“Give It Up” peaked at No 30 and they followed it up with a cover of Johnny Nash’s ” I Can See Clearly Now’ which did better by going to No 23 but a third single from the album “Movies” didn’t chart at all despite it being the best of the three in my opinion. Hothouse Flowers spilt in 1994 only to reunite in 1998 and sporadically release material and do gigs to this day.

Another 80s band resurfacing at the start of the 90s were The Pasadenas. I have no recall of this single – “Love Thing” – at all. I knew they’d had a big hit in 1992 with a cover of “I’m Doin’ Fine Now” by New York City but I was clueless to the fact that there was also an intervening hit between that and their 1988 heyday when they raced up the charts with the likes of “Tribute (Right On)” and “Riding on a Train”.

I think the reason I can’t recall this song is that the band forgot to include a tune in the damn thing! This is just a backing track to their admittedly very co-ordinated dance moves which seem to take more prominence than the actual music. There’s a definite James Brown sample at the beginning which, given my detest of The Godfather Of Soul, lost me within the first 10 seconds. Not my bag at all.

One final thing, why were this lot obsessed with letter writing when it came to naming their albums? Their debut was called “To Whom It May Concern” whilst their second was called “Yours Sincerely”. What would their next one have been called? “Dear Sir or Madam”?

Ah – a brand new act now albeit one performing a song straight out of the 80s. The Chimes were actually from Edinburgh although I’d assumed at the time that they were American and they found fleeting fame with their cover of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. I seem to recall their version received a lot of plaudits from the music press but in my mind it was more a rejection of Bono and U2 than applause for them – almost as if they were saying this is how the song should really sound now that it’s been done properly. My memory may be playing tricks on me though.

It was certainly a very classy sounding treatment of the song that had originally been a No 6 hit back in 1987 for Bono and the lads. I hadn’t realised until now that the singer was Pauline Henry who went on to have a number of solo hits later in the decade including another cover version – this time of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love”. The bass player went and ruined any critical praise and credibility that his former band ever achieved though by going on to produce the first two albums by The Lighthouse Family.

The Chimes’ version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” matched the chart fortunes of U2’s original by also peaking at No 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ7VNA_B4Tg

Back with the 80s bands now as Eurythmics remind us that they had more than one song with the word ‘angel’ in the title. Yes, no doubt often overshadowed by their only No 1 “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)”, the duo also recorded this track called simply “Angel”. As host Nicky Campbell advises, this was the forth single to be lifted from their “We Too Are One” album and, although none of us knew at the time, it would be Annie and Dave’s last release of ‘new’ material for nine years. I thought this was exceptional at the time and even went as far as to buy it on cassette single. The chorus was just so uplifting even if the subject matter of death (inspired by the death of Annie’s aunt) was hardly joyful.

I also found the video very affecting though the version shown here on TOTP is the one edited for US audiences as MTV refused to play the original promo with its scenes of a seance proving to be a step too near to the dark side for American audiences. To be fair though, I once had a mate who went out with a girl who went to a seance and came out of it believing she was Marie Antoinette reincarnated. Don’t mess with the spirits was the message I took from that incident.

Back to Annie and Dave though and after releasing eight studio albums in eight years and endless touring, it was time for a hiatus. Apparently there were tensions between the two by this point but despite all of that, they still had the abilty to create their magic. In his autobiography Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, Dave Stewart recalls one such moment even as they were about to go their separate ways…

“When The Day Goes Down”, another of the album’s tracks, slowly became one of my favourites to play with just me on acoustic guitar and Annie singing. We played it on Wogan…while being interviewed by writer / comedian Ben Elton. It was nearing the end of the show when Annie and I just started performing it, right there on the sofa. Ben was visibly moved to tears and the whole audience was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In the control room the producers knew we were out of time and were getting calls to go to end credits – this was live TV- but the director and cameramen were so into the performance that after they pulled all the way out for the ending, the cameras started to move back in. We continued to play and sing two or three more songs just for the studio audience and the whole place went crazy afterward. There’s something very magical when the two of us play together...”

This is the clip Stewart was referring to:

Eurythmics would not release any new material for nigh on the rest of the decade before returning in late 1999 with the album “Peace”. There was a Greatest Hits package released in 1991 which looked likely to be the biggest selling album of the year for ages until Simply Red beat it at the last moment with “Stars”. Yet another reason to despise Mick Hucknall.

And yet another 80s act back in the 1990 Top 40. To be fair to Sam Brown, she’d only just achieved pop stardom some 12 months before so she was hardly an established 80s act although technically my opening statement is true. Having found fame with the smash hit single and album “Stop!”, Sam moved into the new decade with the task of having to follow up that success. It’s probably not well remembered that she did manage to do that albeit with much smaller commercial returns. “Kissing Gate” was the second single from that follow up album (“April Moon”) and was certainly melodic even if it didn’t have the drama of “Stop!”. It sounded like quite an old -fashioned type of song (for want of a better phrase) to me, especially set against a backdrop of a Top 40 bursting with dance anthems.

I’d actually preferred the first single from the “April Moon” album though which was called “With A Little Love” and which I’m sure I’d had in my hand as a potential purchase at one point but which never made it to the till.

“Kissing Gate” peaked at No 23 and was Sam’s last ever Top 40 single.

Now this next guy definitely qualifies as an established 80s act making a return to the charts in the 90s. Having referred to John Paul Young earlier in the post, we now come to Paul Young who had last been seen in the vicinity of the Top 40 back in 1986 when his single “Wonderland” made it to No 24. Subsequent singles had failed to chart and he hadn’t released a note of music for three years by the time he popped up again with “Softly Whispering I Love You”. This was a cover version (of course it was, this is Paul Young we’re talking about!) but I didn’t know the original which was by The Congregation in 1971. Despite having purchased his previous two albums, this one didn’t appeal to me that much. It sounded a bit lame and insubstantial if I’m honest. Its lack of appeal wasn’t aided by this performance. What the hell had Paul done to his hair?! It’s the 90s Paul, not the mid 70s! Also, the affectation of the guitar prop didn’t work for me at all. Totally unconvincing. I don’t think I’d ever seen him perform with one before so why now? There’s no way that what he’s miming is how you play the middle eight guitar solo.

Still, as a means of getting him back into the charts, “Softly Whispering I Love You” did the trick. He even managed another Top 40 hit later in the year with yet another cover – this time of “Oh Girl” by The Chi-Lites. Both were taken from his “Other Voices” album which despite selling steadily, was nowhere near the units shifted in his 80s heyday.

As with Eurythmics, Paul would release a Greatest Hits compilation in 1991 (“From Time to Time – The Singles Collection”) which would return him to the very top of the album charts and he would also bag an unlikely Top 5 single with Italian singer-songwriter Zucchero but that’s for another year and another post.

“Killer” by Adamski (featuring Seal lest we forget) is still No 1. In the last post, all I talked about was Seal so to redress the balance, let’s have some Adamski chat. Erm…well… his real name is Adam Tinley (supposedly his stage name was inspired by controversial ufologist George Adamski) although he now records under the alter ego of Sonny Eriksson which I’m guessing is a play on the Sony Ericsson Walkman brand name. He’s also released records under the pseudonym of Fleas On Skis and has producer credits for Adam Sky. Blimey! This guy gives Norman Cook a run for his money when it comes to aliases!

The play out video is “Policy Of Truth” by Depeche Mode. This was the third of four singles to be released from their “Violator” album and is the one I least remember. Not sure why that should be as it’s a perfectly good track. Maybe it didn’t get that much airplay? Or maybe I wasn’t listening to the right radio stations back then? It is unique though in the band’s singles discography as it is the only Depeche Mode single to chart higher on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (No 15) than on the UK Singles Chart (No16).

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVt1y2rLUrs

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Hothouse Flowers	Give It Up	I did not
2	The Pasadenas	Love Thing	A definite no
3	The Chimes	I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For	Whatever it was, it wasn’t this though. No
4	Eurythmics	Angel	YES! Finally a single I bought!
5	Sam Brown	Kissing Gate	That euphoria didn’t last long. It’s back to a no
6	Paul Young	Softly Whispering I Love You	Not the single but I did buy that Greatest Hits album with it on
7	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
8	Depeche Mode	Policy Of Truth	To be honest, no

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000q5l9/top-of-the-pops-18051990

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?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 07 OCT 1993

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TOTP 30 SEP 1993

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TOTP 17 OCT 1991

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TOTP 02 MAY 1991

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TOTP 18 APR 1991

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TOTP 19 JUL 1990

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Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 18 MAY 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?