Pet Shop Boys

TOTP 29 FEB 1996

1996 must have been a leap year as we’ve got a TOTP on the 29th February. The day after this show aired, Status Quo took Radio 1 to the High Court over its refusal to playlist the band’s latest single, a cover of “Fun Fun Fun” by The Beach Boys who also feature on the record. Status Quo lost their legal action with the BBC successfully claiming that the group did not fit the demographic audience the station was trying to reach. In a musical landscape dominated by Britpop and dance music, they had a point. Or did they? The album the single came from – “Don’t Stop” – went to No 2 and sold 100,000 copies so wasn’t it Radio 1’s obligation to reflect what was popular? For what it’s worth, I think they made the right decision. The album was entirely made up of cover versions including (and I’ve only just discovered this) their takes on “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats and “The Future’s So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)” by Timbuk 3. I know! What on earth?! I’m almost curious enough to investigate what they sound like but not quite.

The following day, Melody Maker praised Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker for his protest at the BRIT awards two weeks earlier against Michael Jackson’s performance of “Earth Song” suggesting he should be knighted. Although Jarvis got arrested for his part in the incident (with Bob Mortimer famously attending the police station to represent him legally), I think we all know who ultimately came off better out of the episode. Pulp were probably as famous as they ever would be at that point with the controversy taking Jarvis to the front pages of the daily newspapers rather than just the music press. It hadn’t always been like that of course with the band having spent the 80s on the peripheries of indiedom before the move to Island Records and becoming bona fide chart stars. And how did they do that? Via “Perseverance” of course which incidentally is the name of the first song on the show tonight.

Yes, Terrorvision have blasted their way into the Top 5 with this, the lead single from third album “Regular Urban Survivors”, and it’s a stonking tune. Breaking the conventions of standard rock with brass parts and a vocal from Tony Wright that’s ragged and raw sounding but by no means without melody and hooks aplenty, it’s a great way to start the show and marks a welcome departure from all those dance acts and their repetitive beats. A regular reader of this blog assures me that Tony has a very nice cafe in Otley and he can often be seen behind the counter serving cups of tea and slices of Victoria sponge to the local residents or perhaps those rock fans who have gone on a pilgrimage to find one of their 90s heroes. Tony has framed pictures of his lyrics on the wall if you want to get a selfie with some rock memorabilia. Maybe he even has one that includes the infamous line in “Perseverance” about the ‘whales and dolphins’?

Ah! Here’s the dance act with repetitive beats. I knew it would only be a matter of time. Gusto were nothing to do with Chelsea right back Malo but was instead New Jersey producer Edward Greene whose hit “Disco’s Revenge” was built around a loop of a sample of a track called “Groovin’ You” by former Herbie Hancock drummer Harvey Mason. The title “Disco’s Revenge” was taken from a quote by legendary ‘Godfather of House Music’ Frankie Knuckles who described the style of music developed in his club in Detroit thus. If you’re familiar with this blog, you’ll know that, by writing the above, I’ve wandered into an area where I’ve no right in being, namely house music. I’m clearly out of my depth when discussing such matters so I’ll extricate myself quickly.

As for “Disco’s Revenge”, I’d rather have “Rocker’s Revenge and their 1982 smash hit “Walking On Sunshine”.

Whether you like her or not, the dominance of the charts by Celine Dion was in full swing by the mid 90s. With one huge No 1 to her name already in the form of “Think Twice”, she would then settle into a pattern of churning out the hits on a regular basis before exploding again with that song from the Titanic movie in 1997. Within the calendar year of 1996, she would rack up four Top 10 UK hits. No artist would have more than that. So popular was she that one Christmas around this time, the police had to be called to an Our Price store in the region (thankfully not the one where I worked) to settle a dispute between two customers who were locked in battle (literally) over the last Celine Dion CD in the shop with both refusing to let go of it! “Falling Into You” was the title track from Celine’s fourteenth studio album and saw some rather restrained vocals for once from the ‘Queen of Power Ballads’. If only those two shoppers had showed the same restraint.

Next the return of Gabrielle whom we haven’t seen on the show or in the charts for a whole two years. The curse of having your debut single go to No 1 (the only way from there is down) had afflicted Gabrielle since “Dreams” had topped the charts in 1993. Her three subsequent single releases had peaked at Nos 9, 26 and 24. However, she would spectacularly lift that hoodoo with “Give Me A Little More Time”. Just a ‘Just’ away from sharing the same title as the old Chairman Of The Board hit from the 70s (and also for Kylie in the 90s) and ‘a little’ too much to be the name of Whitesnake’s 1984 minor hit, Gabrielle’s song was actually a classy slice of soul/pop with a retro 60s feel. Perfect for daytime radio playlists, it reversed her trend of diminishing chart returns and then some by peaking at No 5.

While she’s been away, Gabrielle has had a change of image with a new hairstyle that also acts as a replacement for her trademark eye patch. She has ptosis, a condition which causes the drooping of one eyelid and has always covered it using hats, sunglasses, her hair and, of course, the eye patch. Did she ever wear it again after this point? If this wasn’t a watershed moment for the eye patch, it definitely was for Gabrielle’s career as this hit would usher in a period of sustained success. Two more mid-sized hits followed “Give Me A Little More Time” before a No 2 turned up after she joined forces with East 17 on “If You Ever”. Two more Top Tenners followed in its wake before “Rise” gave her a second No 1 some seven years after her first. She still wasn’t done as “Out Of Reach” went to No 4 on the back of its inclusion on the soundtrack to Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Next a run of three huge music legends on the bounce starting with Sting who’s beaming in to the show from that well used TOTP satellite location under Brooklyn Bridge, New York. How many times was this setting featured?! I get that the backdrop is an arresting image of the Manhattan skyline but it kind of dwarfs the artist and makes them seem incongruous. Sting’s appearance here isn’t helped by the fact that he’s doing a dance version of “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot”. Why?! As it’s a designated dance version, there has to be a troop of backing dancers cavorting behind him but this just adds to the feeling of absurdity. Sadly I can’t find a clip of this performance on YouTube. Maybe that’s for the best.

Meanwhile, back in the studio is Tina Turner with the lead single from her latest album “Wildest Dreams”. Remarkably, this was her first studio album for seven years though it didn’t feel like Tina had been away at all thanks to a Best Of collection in 1991, her biopic film What’s Love Got To Do With It and accompanying soundtrack in 1993 and her recording of the theme tune for the James Bond flick Goldeneye in 1995. Listening to “Whatever You Want”, it sounds like it could also have been recorded for a 007 film with some heavy “Licence To Kill” vibes permeating through. Tina does her usual Tina shtick here but as with Sting before her, the backing dancers seem unnecessary. No doubt Tina and record label Parlophone would have been wanting (and perhaps expecting) a bigger hit with the track than the No 23 high it produced but I fear she may have been ever so slightly out of sync with UK chart tastes at the time.

We’d only just bid farewell to Babylon Zoo’s “Spaceman” at the top of the charts but now we were literally saying “Hallo Spaceboy” to David Bowie and the Pet Shop Boys. It seems to be generally accepted that Bowie was not at his best in the 80s. Despite the success of “Let’s Dance” (both the album and the single), pretty much all of his output that decade did not meet with the approval of the fans. However, and I’m not counting myself as a Bowie superfan but I did see him live once, I struggled with his 90s material. “Black Tie White Noise” passed me by with its lack of obvious singles, “Earthling” was never going to win me over with its exploration into the drum and bass phenomenon and then there was “Outside”. Influenced by Twin Peaks, this was a concept album that followed a narrative of a detective investigating the murder of a 14 year old girl in a fictional New Jersey town. Reviews were mixed with some labelling it as his finest work since “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” whilst others derided it as pretentious shit. I was probably somewhere in the middle of those two extremes of opinion but even I was definite that “Hallo Spaceboy” was a good single. How much of that is down to the involvement of the Pet Shop Boys more than Bowie I’m not sure but their influence couldn’t be denied. An almost hi-NRG backing allied to Bowie’s unique phrasing and Neil Tennant’s deadpan vocals, the decision to reference “Space Oddity” and Major Tom in the lyrics was perhaps cynical but also a clincher.

Despite looking like a vicar with a stiletto fetish, Bowie is still effortlessly cool in this performance with Neil and Chris happy to literally stand to one side to let the people see the master at work. “Hallo Spaceboy” peaked at No 12 making it Bowie’s second highest charting single as a solo artist of the whole of the 90s.

On February 13th 1996, Take That announced that they were splitting up. It’s hard to recall nearly 30 years on how much of a big deal this was especially as ten years later they came back and have stayed back for a further 18 years and counting but a big deal it was. Infamously, telephone helplines were set up by the government to support those teenage fans that were left distraught and with feelings so big that they didn’t know what to do with them. They had been together for six years or so but only three and a half of those were as chart stars. Was that a long time for a teen-oriented pop group to be around or had they called time on themselves too early? I’m pretty sure that they could have carried on for another album and a few hit singles but by that point they would have been pushing 30 which may have been at the older end of the pop star age bracket. By disappearing for 10 years, they probably gave people the chance to miss them before picking up where they left off and giving themselves a second career. Did they feel the pressure of the presence of Boyzone in the charts as a rival to their popularity? I think they possibly could have ridden that out. After the departure of Robbie Williams the year before, maybe the writing had been on the wall although there still seemed to be an appetite for the group.

To draw a line under what would turn out to be the first part of their career, a Greatest Hits album was released with a new single to promote it which was a cover of the Bee Gees 1977 hit “How Deep Is Your Love”. Was it a lazy move to bow out with a cover? Well, there was a certain amount of symmetry to the release as their breakthrough hit in 1992 had been a cover – “It Only Takes A Minute” by Tavares. The That lads give a decent take on the track with Gary Barlow’s lead vocal a passable Gibb brother impression. Whilst he and Jason Orange have sensible, mid 90s haircuts, Howard Donald has what can only be described as dread bunches whilst Mark Owen has a hairstyle I might have had in junior school! After this single, the talk turned to solo careers with Gary Barlow everyone’s favourite to be the most successful. Little did we know. One person who did seem to be in the know was host Nicky Campbell who correctly predicted a “reunion tour in the next century” in his outro.

Oasis are straight in at No 1 with “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. Of course they are. What’s maybe surprising is that despite all the fuss around the band and Britpop, this was only their second chart topper at the time after “Some Might Say” the year before. Of course they’d had some near misses. I was convinced they would be the Christmas No 1 in 1994 with “Whatever” but they lost out to East 17. Then there was the Battle of Britpop when they were beaten into second place by Blur and of course, their last single “Wonderwall” had sold and sold and sold but not at the right time to displace Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”. This time, however, there was no stopping them even though it would only be for one week due to the hysteria surrounding Take That’s swansong.

Is there a more Britpop moment than Noel Gallagher and his Union Jack Epiphone Supernova guitar in this performance? What’s that? The Select magazine cover from April 1993 with Suede’s Brett Anderson set against a Union Jack backdrop? Or Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit on the cover of Vanity Fair in a bed with Union Jack pillow cases and bedspread? Nah, it’s Liam and that guitar for me. Perhaps an even bigger moment associated with this song in my opinion though is its use in the wonderful BBC drama Our Friends In The North. The final episode of the decades spanning show aired eleven days after this TOTP was broadcast. The final scene showed the character Geordie played by Daniel Craig striding across the Tyne Bridge (and out of our lives it felt like) after an emotional reunion with the show’s other three main protagonists. It was quite a moment for the watching millions at home. When “Don’t Look Back In Anger” came on to soundtrack this scene, it felt almost perfect. Timing wise, with the last episode being set in 1995 and the song at the top of the charts, it felt like the zeitgeist hadn’t been followed so much as tracked and hunted down. It really was sublime stuff.

Oasis themselves wouldn’t release anything after “Don’t Look Back In Anger” for nigh on 18 months as they retreated to record the difficult third album “Be Here Now” by which point Britpop was on its way out making this TOTP performance an even more defining moment in time. As Martin Tyler said of Liam and Noel’s beloved Man City winning the Premier League so dramatically in 2012, “I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again so watch it, drink it in…”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Terrorvision	Perseverance	Good tune but no
2	Gusto	Disco’s Revenge	As if
3	Celine Dion	Falling Into You	Never
4	Gabrielle	Give Me A Little More Time	No
5	Sting	Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot	Nah
6	Tina Turner	Whatever You Want	Nope
7	David Bowie featuring Pet Shop Boys	Hallo Spaceboy	No but I did like it
8	Take That	How Deep Is Your Love	No but my wife had that Best Of album
9	Oasis	Don’t Look Back In Anger	YES!

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/m001zqts/top-of-the-pops-29021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 03 AUG 1995

Posted on January 9 by 80stastic

Back in August 1995, our lives were about to change. Well, for those of us who were partial to a pint or two. You see, the Sunday after this TOTP aired, public houses in the UK were permitted to remain open throughout Sunday afternoons for the first time ever. Wa-hey! Get the beers in! I have to say it’s hard to recall the effect that this may have had on the nation given our current all day licensing laws but I assume it was quite the seismic cultural shift. I wonder if I can get some alcohol references into all of the artists on this TOTP? Anyone fancy a pint?

We start with my nemesis Therapy? Now, it’s not that I can’t stand them but rather that they kind of passed me by at the time and I never really know what to say about them when they appear on these TOTP repeats which feels like it’s all the time. It makes sense chart-wise –“Loose” was the band’s ninth UK Top 40 hit in under three years but even given how prolific they were at releasing hit singles, I kind of get the impression executive show producer Ric Blaxill must have been a fan for them to have been invited on the show so regularly. Anyway, here they are but they don’t sound like I was expecting. “Loose” – to my ears at least – seems almost…well, like a Busted tune. OK, I’m exaggerating – call it artistic licence – but it’s certainly more Green Day than Nirvana but then Therapy?, according to my online research, forged a career of longevity out of adapting their sound to challenge their fanbase and indeed themselves so maybe nobody should have been surprised.

Perhaps what did take people by surprise though was lead singer Andy Cairn’s appearance. Quite the change from his previous trip to the TOTP studios – he’s gone full on rocker complete with greased back barnet, facial hair and sideburns. It’s a look that is used as the cover art of their album “Infernal Love” so a change in image that was presumably part of a bigger promotional rebrand. I’m probably reading far too much into it – he probably just got bored of his old look. We’ve all experimented with different styles haven’t we? I tried growing a goatee beard myself around this time. When I tired of it, I booked myself an appointment with a hairdresser to shave it off. When I got to the salon, I was greeted by hoots of derision by the guy who was going to do it. He pointed at my face and exclaimed “That’s not a beard!”. I never felt so emasculated!

Alcohol association: Well’ ‘loose’ can be slang for being inebriated can’t it?

It seems to me that Italian Eurodance project Corona managed to amass more UK chart hits than they had any right to. “The Rhythm Of The Night” was a decent example of the genre but did we really need subsequent watered down facsimiles of it that got weaker with each release? No, no we didn’t and yet the hits kept coming. “Baby Baby” made No 5 whilst this one – “Try Me Out” – would peak at No 6.

“The Rhythm Of The Night”, of course, shared its title (save for a definite article) with a famous hit from the 80s. DeBarge took their song to No 4 in the UK but unlike Corona, had the decency to be one hit wonders (over here at least). As well as a link to the 80s, the group also share a connection with the 00s. Do you remember the ITV show Popstars that gave us Hear’Say? Yes? OK, do you recall the five hopefuls that fell at the final hurdle but decided to form their own group anyway (or more likely at the prompting of a rival record label) called Liberty? Still with me? Good. So Liberty had to change their name to Liberty X as there was already a band called Liberty who objected. So what has any of this to do with Corona? Well, they amended their moniker in 2001 to…yep, Corona X. It’s not a great anecdote I admit but then Corona weren’t a great act so it’s all they deserve in my book.

Alcoholic association: Has to be the Mexican beer called Corona.

Next, the first of two tracks on the show that were originally recorded in the 80s. The life and times of “Blue Monday” by New Order is quite the tale. We all know the track but here’s some facts and stats behind it:

Originally released March 1983 on 12” only peaking at No 12
Returned to the chart in August 1983 surpassing its previous chart high by making No 9
Remixed by Arthur Baker in 1988 and released in UK in 7” format for first time. Peaks at No 3
Remixed by Hardfloor and released in 1995. Peaks at No 17
Spent 89 weeks on Top 100 chart over three releases spanning 12 years selling 1.16 million copies
Best selling 12” record of all time

This 1995 release was, rather unimaginatively, officially titled “Blue Monday–95” and was released as a single to promote “The Rest Of New Order” compilation. The band themselves were on a hiatus following the difficult recording of the 1993 album “Republic” and were showing no signs of wishing to work together again anytime soon. Their new record label London clearly wouldn’t have been too jazzed about the lack of any new material from their artist so turned to the back catalogue that they brought with them. We’d already had “The Best Of New Order” album in 1994 which had been a big seller so London wasted no time in trying to repeat the trick with an album of remixes. Having used “True Faith” and “1963” to promote the first compilation, it made sense that they would look to their best known track to advertise the follow up. What a horrible incarnation of an iconic song this remix was though. Maybe that sound was where it was at in 1995 but for me, this version strips away all the power and intrigue of the original replacing it with fuzzy bleeps and beats and turns Bernard Sumner’s vocal into a disembodied, distant ghost of itself. As I write this, we’ve just had the other ‘Blue Monday’, the third Monday in January which has come to be known as the most miserable day of the year but even that day has nothing on the misery of the 1995 remix of New Order’s classic song.

Alcohol association: In 2016, New Order launched their own brand of beer called Stray Dog after a track on their album “Music Complete”.

Black Grape are back with their second single “In The Name Of The Father”. The follow up to their debut “Reverend Black Grape”, this was very much more of the same which was no bad thing in my book. Some funky grooves and nonsensical lyrics (Neil Armstrong having bigger balls than King Kong indeed!)? Yes please!

Kermit’s crutch (he’d broken his ankle at the T in the Park festival) puts me in mind of the infamous Extreme Noise Terror / The KLF BRIT Awards performance…but without the machine gun fire at the end obviously.

Just as I was writing this whilst listening to Radio 2 (no, you do one! I’m 55!), Shaun Ryder appeared as a guest on the Dermot O’Leary show and they were talking about this incident on TFI Friday from back in the day. God, I miss being young(er).

Alcohol association: Black Grape? Wine? Cabernet Sauvignon? Yeah, that’ll do.

Something out of leftfield now from…well…Leftfield. Despite having a No 3 album in debut “Leftism”, huge single success had eluded the electronic duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley. “Afro–Left” couldn’t change that though it was pretty interesting. Featuring gibberish, African sounding spoken vocals and a trippy, hypnotic backbeat, it wasn’t your average chart entry. The supplier of those vocals was listed on the record as Djum Djum. In my first draft of this review – and I swear this is true – I referred to Djum Djum as the African Stanley Unwin, the comic actor who was famous for creating ‘Unwinese’ (essentially a gobbledygook version of English). I deleted the comparison though thinking it might be too niche but on researching Djum Djum further, I came across a piece which suggested that he was, in fact, the son of Stanley Unwin! Other ‘facts’ about him was that he also went by the name of Neil Cole and that he was the originator of Jum Jum which is the sound you make whilst chewing an elastic band! I’m not sure I’m having any of this though. I mean, come on! Jum Jum? I should Coco!

Alcohol association: I thought I might struggle with this one but it turns out that there is not only a Left Field Beer company but also a Leftfield vineyard and a Left-Field whiskey distillery.

Next, the second of those songs that were recorded in the 80s. Originally released as the B-side to their 1986 hit “Suburbia”, I first became aware of this Pet Shop Boys track around 1987 when my girlfriend (now wife) bought me a cassette of their remix album “Disco”. “Paninaro” was the fourth of just six songs on said album but always stood out even against the remixes of all the singles from their debut long player “Please”. Starting off with a drum sound that is reminiscent of the J. Arthur Rank gong, it then takes off with an excoriating synth sound before the almost unique happens – a Pet Shop Boys vocal by Chris Lowe. OK, he’s speaking rather than singing but it works perfectly as the normally motionless one of the duo recites just eight words on a loop that speak of the very essence of the human experience interspersed with name checks for Italian designers like Armani and Versace. How so? It turns out that the ‘paninari’ were a 1980s Italian youth subculture who were into designer clothing, pop music and hanging out in fast food restaurants (‘panino’ is Italian for sandwich). Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe identified with the movement which inspired the song.

All very interesting but why was it put out again in 1995 you might well ask? Well, “Paninaro ‘95” was a bunch of remixes including one by Tin Tin Out that was used to promote the B-sides compilation album “Alternative” that was released the Monday after this TOTP aired. Very much like New Order before them I guess.

The performance here is obviously memorable for the role reversal which sees Neil behind the keyboards and Chris up front and centre. The latter clearly isn’t used to the spotlight and looks like he doesn’t know where to put himself even turning his back on the studio audience at one point. To make up for Chris’s shortcomings as the focal point, there’s some serious overcompensating going on with the two oiled up male dancers behind him. Was that really necessary? They could have done with some more clothes on them and talking of clothes, that “Alternative” album that I mentioned earlier featured the track “In The Night” which was adopted as the theme tune to the old BBC fashion programme The Clothes Show…

Alcohol association: Tricky one this…the only thing I’ve got is that in the book Literally which documents the duo’s first ever tour in 1989, there’s plenty of references to the consumption of alcohol with champagne being a favourite tipple.

Talking of tricky…in 1995, trip-hop was a big deal spearheaded by the holy trinity of Massive Attack, Portishead and, yep, Tricky. Having been an early member of Massive Attack but not fancying the idea of fame and fortune, Tricky (real name Adrian Thaws) branched out on his own and found…fame and fortune. His seminal debut album “Maxinquaye” went gold and made No 3 in the charts. The music press lavished it with praise and it topped many a publication’s album of the year poll. It received a Mercury Music Prize nomination losing out to, you guessed it, Portishead’s “Dummy”. As a consequence of this success, Tricky’s face adorned the covers of magazines like…erm…The Face and Wire but he was never comfortable with his celebrity though he did rather court publicity by dating Björk. He also had a relationship with the vocalist on “Maxinquaye” Marina Topley-Bird.

This song- “Hell Is Around The Corner” – was taken from “The Hell E.P.” which was a collaboration with US hip-hop group Gravediggaz though they didn’t contribute to this particular track. It would prove to be Tricky’s biggest ever hit peaking at No 12. The man himself stated that he didn’t like the term ‘trip-hop’ and shied away from claims that he invented the genre. His stance was reinforced by him releasing a song that sounded very similar to Portishead’s “Glory Box” that was released six months earlier. The fact was though that both artists had sampled the same track – Isaac Hayes’s “Ike’s Rap II” – though who actually recorded their song first (as opposed to releasing it) is disputed.

Alcohol association: There is a dessert cocktail called The Grave Digger which is a coffee liqueur comprising brandy, Grand Marnier and is topped with crushed Oreo biscuits on whipped cream with a tiny shovel accessory to signify a freshly dug grave. Tricky stuff.

And suddenly it is upon us. When people talk about the pop music story of 1995, one event dominates. Not just the biggest story of the year but possibly the whole decade. We have arrived at a defining moment in time – the ‘Battle of Britpop’ is here! Now I don’t intend to rehash this story in detail – so much has been written about it already that it’s all out there and easily accessible from just a basic search of the internet. However, I was working in a record shop at the time (Our Price in Stockport) and during that week in the middle of August that saw the dual release of “Country House” by Blur and “Roll With It” by Oasis, I stood in for the singles buyer who was on leave which brought a certain amount of pressure – to run out of either release would have been unforgivable. I was checking stocks of both on what seemed like an hourly basis.

It was though an unbelievably exciting time to be working in record retail with news crews dispatched to shops (not ours sadly) to film pieces that would make headlines on the national evening news. Such was the intense media speculation that the story transformed from the tale of two singles to a class war with Oasis cast as working class northerners and Blur as arty, southern softies. The narrative constructed was that you were either on the side of one or the other and your choice of which single to buy was akin to casting a vote with record shops remodelled as polling stations. The truth is, of course, that plenty of people bought both though not necessarily in the same purchase. I worked with someone who bought one in the first week of release and the other in the second – she liked both tunes but had a preference for one to be No 1 over the other. I can’t recall which way round it was but I guess this was the record shop equivalent of tactical voting.

Anyway, it’s Blur we’re concerned with in this show who have the ‘exclusive’ performance slot to promote the lead single from their new album “The Great Escape”. Now the TOTP caption says that “Country House” was to be released on 14th August which was also the date that “Roll With It” was due in the shops. As such, the decision by Blur (mainly Damon from what I can ascertain) to go head to head with their rivals had already been taken. Reportedly wrong footed by Creation pushing forward the Oasis release date by weeks and fearing that they would trail in the wake of a second successive No 1 for the Mancs, the battle was set up by “Country House” having its own release date shifted to 14th August as well. I’m guessing I would have been aware of all this what with working in a record shop and all but it’s hard to recall at a distance of nearly twenty-nine years.

So what of the actual song itself? Received opinion is that “Country House” is not actually very good and certainly is not a good representation of the band’s canon. Whilst there is some credence to that conventional wisdom, I think history has shown that there was more to the tune than it being what Liam Gallagher described as ‘chimney sweep music’. Yes, the band themselves seemed to disown the song, refusing to play it live for many years but accusations of it being a throwaway pop song are wide of the mark I feel. There’s a sense of unruliness to it but it also has layers. The knockabout fun coexists with some standout melancholy moments like the “blow, blow me out, I am so sad I don’t know why” line when the song pauses for breath. Whether it can ever escape the connotations of that time or not I don’t know but it’s probably better than it is remembered as. We’ll get the whole denouement of the ‘Battle of Britpop’ soon enough but then we all know who won don’t we?

Alcohol association: Bassist Alex James developed more than a liking for champagne to supplement his cheese obsession and he did call his autobiography “Bit Of A Blur”.

Take That are No 1 this week with “Never Forget”. I went into all the Robbie Williams leaving the group stuff the last time I wrote about this one so I’m not going to go over all that again. Suffice to say, due to a clause in his Take That contract, he wasn’t allowed to release any solo material until six months after the band was officially dissolved meaning that the first Robbie Williams single – a rather weak cover of George Michael’s “Freedom” – didn’t see the light of day until the end of July 1996. That will either be a relief or totally infuriating to viewers of these BBC4 TOTP repeats depending on your inclination. I will say though that I recall catching Williams appearing on a breakfast TV show (possibly The Big Breakfast) not long after he had left the group where he was his usual bullish self (no sign of any regret or self reflection) where he kept going on about how brilliant his little bit of singing was on “Never Forget”. What a class act!

Alcohol association: Gary Barlow launched his own range of organic wine in 2021.

The play out video is “Waterfalls” by TLC. I don’t think I ever quite realised quite how much of a big deal this trio was until I checked their discography. Four American No 1 records! Wow! Their level of success over here was a bit more tempered but they still racked up four Top 10 hits including this one which made No 4. A groundbreaking track in many respects, its lyrics made reference to drugs related violence and HIV/AIDS which was one of the very first mainstream chart songs to do so. It’s hard not to fall for the sonic charms of “Waterfalls”. It’s the very definition of ‘slinky’ with a smooth beat that oozes class aligned with some gorgeous vocal stylings and a killer rap from Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Those attributes earned it two Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Best Vocal Performance and a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B / Soul single.

If the song itself wasn’t enough to tempt you to dive right into it, then there was the video. A combination of literal retelling of the lyrics visually and special effects, it would win four gongs at the MTV Video Music Awards. If the image of the trio performing whilst seemingly standing on water in an ocean wasn’t striking enough then their liquefied, ‘water sprite’ forms dancing in front of a waterfall couldn’t help but make an impression. This seemed like cutting-edge stuff in 1995.

Lopes would tragically die in a car crash just seven years on from “Waterfalls”. The lyrics of her rap from it were engraved on her casket.

Alcohol association: There is a sobriety support group called The Luckiest Club who use the abbreviation TLC as part of their identity. There’s also a non-alcohol beer company called Tropical Lager Coral’ation.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Loose	No
2	Corona	Try Me Out	As if
3	New Order	Blue Monday – 95	I did not
4	Black Grape	In The Name Of The Father	No but I had the album
5	Leftfield	Afro-Left	It’s a no from me
6	Pet Shop Boys	Paninaro ‘95	Nope
7	Tricky	The Hell E.P.	Nah
8	Blur	Country House	See 4 above
9	Take That	Never Forget	Negative
10	TLC	Waterfalls	Liked it, didn’t buy it

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

TOTP 08 SEP 1994

Posted on May 22, 2023 by 80stastic

Well, this is a curious thing. Tonight’s ‘golden mic’ presenters are from a band that couldn’t be more 90s but a lot of the acts they introduce are from or have associations with the 80s. Yes, following Take That’s Mark and Robbie earlier in the year, East 17 are in the hot seat tonight and as with their arch rivals, the two members of the group chosen for the gig are probably the two most popular. I’m talking about Brian Harvey and Tony Mortimer but then can you imagine the other two geezers in the band doing it?!

Opening the show tonight are Blondie who you could argue went back to the 70s but they did have three consecutive No 1 singles in 1980 so they certainly count as a name from the 80s. Now there’s a few questions to be answered here. For a start, what were they doing in the charts in 1994? I thought Blondie’s 90s resurrection was much later in the decade.

*checks their discography*

Yeah, I was right. “Maria” wasn’t No 1 until 1999. So what gives here then? Well, it was to do with yet another compilation album. Despite there being two Blondie Best Ofs and a remix album in existence already by 1994 with “The Complete Picture” being as recently as 1991, Chrysalis/EMI decided what the world needed was another remix collection. “Beautiful: The Remix Album” was the what we got and it was trailed by a number of remixed, rereleased tracks that all made the UK Top 20 but as I say, I don’t remember any of this. The first one was “Atomic (Remix)” which made it to No 19.

OK, so the second question is “where we’re the rest of the band?” because there’s only Debbie Harry up there on stage all on her lonesome. Well, they were nowhere to be seen because they’d split in 1982 and Debbie had embarked on a subsequent solo career. So it seems that the band weren’t reforming then it was just a marketing stunt to promote the album. I wonder whether Debbie was already contractually obliged or if Chrysalis had to pay her a decent wedge for this promotional work? I hope it was the latter as the performance here does nothing but tarnish her fine legacy. Why is she dressed like it’s a come as Shirley Bassey themed party? Then there’s her vocal (which is the third question that needs answering) as there’s something screwy going on with it. Is she miming or at least singing along with a vocal backing track because it really doesn’t seem like she’s singing live? The whole thing is a mess and an undignified one at that.

Now it would appear that my theme of 80s acts on a 1994 TOTP show has fallen at the second hurdle with Corona, a most typical example of the Eurodance genre that dominated the charts in the early to mid 90s. I’m nothing if not tenuous though and so I make the connection to the 80s via the name of their debut and surely best remembered hit “Rhythm Of The Night”. Anyone else recall DeBarge? They were like an American version of Five Star (who themselves were a Tupperware take on The Jacksons) being a group made up of family members who had one (and just one) hit in the UK in 1985 with a calypso flavoured dance track called…yep…”Rhythm Of The Night”. A sickeningly upbeat number it made it to No 4 over here and No 3 in the US.

With the 80s theme dealt with, what about Corona then. Well, their song “Rhythm Of The Night” was considered by many to be an absolute banger and almost definitive example of Eurodance and it was certainly popular peaking at No 2 in the UK. As was an almost obligatory turn of events with Eurodance artists, the woman we see here fronting the act (one Olga Souza) wasn’t the person who supplied the vocals on the record. That was Giovanna Bersola who suffered from stage fright and so could only sing within the confines of the recording studio. Talking of confined spaces, when the world went into lockdown in 2020 due to the pandemic, the group received an unexpected profile boost on account of sharing their name with the group of viruses that caused COVID-19. Various memes arose from this association leading Olga to comment on it thus:

“I have seen a lot of memes. We are all alarmed right now. This kind of news surely brings us a lot of anxiety, because we don’t know how to deal with [the virus] yet. It would be a lot better if the world was infected by the song instead of that dangerous virus.”
“Cantora Corona desabafa após ser associada ao Coronavírus” [Singer Corona speaks out after being associated with Coronavirus]. RD1 (in Portuguese). 8 February 2020. Archived from the original on 27 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020.

I’m guessing Olga would rather be remembered as per US American internet news and entertainment company Buzzfeed who ranked “Rhythm Of The Night” as No 2 in their ‘101 Greatest Dance Songs Of The 90s’ list.

Next a band who may have had their most successful period commercially in the 90s but they definitely started in the 80s and that’s a good enough link to my theme for this post for me. By September 1994 though, The Wonderstuff were actually no more having announced a split in June in a fan club newsletter. They’d even performed live for the final time in July so what were they doing in the charts again? Well, their label Polydor had decided to cash in one last time on their recently liquidated asset by releasing a Best Of album – the wonderfully titled “If The Beatles Had Read Hunter…The Singles” – and a single was required to promote it. With a decision that would unintentionally help out this post 29 years later, Polydor chose 1987 track “Unbearable”. Bingo! Another 80s connection! Originally released as their debut single, it failed to chart back then but would make No 16 seven years later and deservedly so as it’s a quality tune with its distinctive, rat-a-tat chorus “Ididn’tlikeyouverymuchwhenImetyou” spewed out by Miles Hunt a real winner.

The Wonderstuff’s story didn’t end in 1994 though as they reformed in 2000 and have played live and released new material since then amidst various line up changes with Hunt the only constant.

N.B. In a curious pop footnote, in their final foray into the Top 40, the Stuffies were joined in the chart this week by fellow Stourbridge grebos Pop Will Eat Itself who were having their own final hit with “Everything’s Cool”. Nice.

You can’t get more 80s than “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper can you? This wasn’t quite the same song though. Re-recorded with a reggae lilt (as was the overriding style of the time) and retitled “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)”, it was released to promote her Best Of “Twelve Deadly Cyns…And Then Some” (another great title like The Wonderstuff before her). The album was a big hit rather surprisingly peaking at No 2 and going double platinum in the UK. I say surprisingly because I wouldn’t have thought that there would have been that much appetite for Cyndi in 1994 but what did/do I know? The single also prospered peaking at No 4 just two places lower than the 1984 original.

Now whatever you think about Cyndi’s voice (and I don’t mind it), you’d have to admit it’s distinctive (some may even say unique). Sometimes it can grate – her vocals on “We Are The World” by USA For Africa are the musical equivalent of tearing polystyrene – but she does a good enough job here. We should probably give her credit for reworking an old hit as well – it would have been easy to have just rereleased the original. I think she has the look of Columbia from The Rocky Horror Picture Show here and talking of Columbia…

Making just their third appearance on TOTP but already celebrating going straight in at No 1 on the chart with debut album “Definitely Maybe” are Oasis. At the time it was the fastest selling debut in UK chart history and, of course, featured a track called “Columbia”. To commemorate this achievement, they’ve been invited on the show to play a song from the album and they’ve gone for its opener “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star”. And what an opener! More of a statement than a song, it bristles with energy and drive. It was never released as a single (except as a radio single to American stations) but it easily could have been and it is so recognisable that maybe some people would be surprised to learn that it wasn’t.

The fact that the album went straight to No 1 and was selling so quickly was irrefutable confirmation that something special was occurring – a phenomenon no less. It all seemed to happen so effortlessly and at such speed that it couldn’t be anything less. After just three singles of which only one made the Top 10 to suddenly this…it was extraordinary. Or was it? I’m sure Noel Gallagher is quoted somewhere as saying that they wanted to be the biggest band in the country and they just went out and did it and it was easy; words to that effect anyway. Oasis we’re here to stay and for the rest of the decade (and beyond).

OK, so I can’t make any viable links from Oasis to the 80s but we’re back on theme with the next band whose imperial phase was definitely in that decade. Not that Pet Shop Boys didn’t continue to have consistent and significant commercial success into the 90s as they certainly did but they didn’t have any No 1 singles throughout the whole decade whereas they achieved four in the 80s including three within five releases. Fast forward to 1994 and Neil and Chris were just coming to the end of the “Very” project with “Yesterday When I Was Mad” being the fifth and final single released from the album. Now I do like Pet Shop Boys and went to see them live almost 12 months ago exactly but this track is not one of my favourites of theirs. It’s almost as if they forgot to put a tune in there. Also, I’d had enough of the Howard Greenhalgh CGI videos by now (he’d directed every one for all five singles released from “Very”) although this one at least has a bit more of a human participation to it even if it is Neil Tennant in a straight jacket (the Chris Lowe lampshades are really too creepy though). We wouldn’t get any new material from the duo for 18 months though another remix album (“Disco 2”) appeared in the interim.

Kylie Minogue has had many incarnations but she started out in the 80s as a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop princess so there’s my post theme ticked off. 1994 though was an important year for her as it saw her release her first material since leaving PWL and enter her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Signed to trendy label Deconstruction, home of M People and responsible for some huge house anthems by K-Klass and Bassheads, “Confide In Me” was chosen as her first post Hit Factory single. It was a good choice. Combining dance beats with a string section hook and a flavour of Eastern culture, it couldn’t have been further removed from what she had done before. When you consider her last single before this had been a cover of Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” to promote her Greatest Hits collection, well…the contrast couldn’t be starker. “Confide In Me” oozed class and proposed Kylie as a serious artist not just a hit-making pop puppet. Credit should be given to the producers and song writers of the track Brothers In Rhythm for their vision of what a fusing of dance and pop could sound like. Critics adored it with gushing reviews whilst the record buying public embraced it by sending it to No 2. For Kylie though, it was proof that she would not just survive life after Stock, Aitken and Waterman but thrive within it.

Here’s another act who achieved huge success in the 80s though the hits certainly didn’t stop once 1989 tipped over into 1990. Bon Jovi began the decade with a huge album in “Keep The Faith” which sold 8 million copies worldwide and generated six hit singles. The promotion of the album via said singles and a world tour stretched from the album’s release in 1992 into 1994 and there would be a new album (“These Days”) in 1995. Despite that hectic schedule, record company Polygram decided that there couldn’t be any let up in the release of Bon Jovi product and so a Best Of album called “Crossroads” was put together. The performance of it would prove that Polygram knew a thing or two about sales – it went six times platinum in the UK and has sold 21 million copies globally. It was the best selling album in the UK in 1994.

To help promote “Crossroads”, the track “Always” was released. A huge, dramatic, swooping rock ballad, it would give the band their biggest ever UK hit when it peaked at No 2. Now it’s not like Bon Jovi had never done a slow song before – I’m thinking “Never Say Goodbye”, “I’ll Be There For You” and “Bed Of Roses” but “Always” seemed different somehow. Grander, more epic but probably most of all (to me anyway) more cynical – a definite move to capture a specific market. I may be wrong of course and they did do it well. Just my own opinion as ever.

We’re finally here. Week 15. The very last week of Wet Wet Wet’s reign at the top of the charts with “Love Is All Around”. The story behind its demise is well known. The band themselves insisted that the single be deleted as they were not enjoying the backlash they were getting from people completely fed up with the song (some radio stations reportedly banned it from their playlists). It was a bold move. Given its slow descent down the charts, it could perhaps have outlasted Bryan Adams who spent 16 weeks at the top with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. A rumour that copies would actually be recalled from record stores proved incorrect but it was no longer being pressed. There must have been significant amounts of it still in the shops though as it would spend weeks travelling down the charts rather than dropping stone like straight away. At the time, the only record to be deleted whilst at No 1 previously was “The Fly” by U2 but they had always been upfront beforehand about the limited time it would be available for. With “Love Is All Around” not being on any Wet Wet Wet album at the time of its deletion, some cynics took the view that it was a calculated attempt to force punters into buying the soundtrack album to Four Weddings And A Funeral which the Wets record company Phonogram also had the licence to but I’m not convinced by that theory.

And so the story of the second long running No 1 in a matter of three years comes to an end. Did it help or hinder Wet Wet Wet’s career ultimately? Did people actually like it or not? Can you bear to hear it on the radio again today, some 29 years after the event or is even that too soon? I guess what I’m asking is this…”Is your mind made up by the way that you feel?”

And so to the record that knocked the Wets off their perch. Incorrectly but understandably remembered as a one hit wonder, Whigfield was quite the sales phenomenon herself. The week after this TOTP aired, her single “Saturday Night” would crash into the UK charts at No 1 making her the first unknown artist to do so with their debut single (Gabrielle’s “Dreams” entered the chart at No 2 before going to No 1 in 1993). She followed that up by selling 220,000 copies in one week giving it the highest selling figures for a single in the UK since Band Aid and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” a decade earlier. It would spend four weeks as our No 1 and end the year as the UK’s second biggest selling single of 1994 behind “Love Is All Around”. The buzz around the song was huge and it was totally expected to top the chart eventually. Tiny and Brian even predict that Wet Wet Wet wouldn’t last another week because of Whigfield. They were right. And that will do for this post. Dee dee na na na…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Blondie	Atomic (Remix)	No
2	Corona	Rhythm Of The Night	I did not
3	The Wonderstuff	Unbearable	Good tune but no
4	Cyndi Lauper	Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)	Negative
5	Oasis	Rock ‘N’ Roll Star	I bought the album
6	Pet Shop Boys	Yesterday When I Was Mad	Nah
7	Kylie Minogue	Confide In Me	No but my wife did
8	Bon Jovi	Always	Nope
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	It’s another no
10	Whigfield	Saturday Night	And finally… 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/m001lst4/top-of-the-pops-08091994

TOTP 09 JUN 1994

Posted on April 9, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, so this ‘golden mic’ feature of TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s that saw celebrities, pop stars and comedians brought in to host the show has stepped up a gear in recent weeks. After the rather obvious choice of Take That’s Mark Owen and Robbie Williams and the ‘it just about worked’ decision to give the over the top Meatloaf a go, Blaxill had gone in the opposite direction by inviting the sardonic wit of Jack Dee into the studio recently. Of the three guest turns, it was Dee’s deadpan delivery that worked best for me. Maybe it did for Blaxill as well as he’s opted for not one but two comedians this week. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were fast becoming household names by 1994. Having broken through with Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990/91, the duo had made the move to BBC2 with their latest show The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer. The first series had aired in the Autumn of 1993 and brought us some brilliant new characters like Uncle Peter (“Donkey!”), The Bra Men – Pat Wright & Dave Arrowsmith (“Are you sayin’ I’ve got nowt”) and the wonderful Slade parody Slade In Residence. Vic had himself become a pop star of course in 1991 with the hits “Born Free” and “Dizzy” (a No 1 record no less) so maybe with feet in both camps, Vic & Bob were a logical choice to host TOTP?

Anyway, if Blaxill was hoping for some zany comedy to add some zoom to the show, what he got was a whole lot of controversy courtesy of opening act Manic Street Preachers. After becoming somewhat disillusioned with the direction that they had taken with the radio friendly, melodic rock of sophomore album “Gold Against The Soul”, the Manics decided a back to basics return to their origins was required. Where they ended up though was a very dark place indeed. With 75% of their third album “The Holy Bible” being written by Richey Edwards whose mental state was fragile to say the least, the songs were bleak. Where previously we’d had “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “Little Baby Nothing” from first album “Generation Terrorists”, now there was “Archives Of Pain” and “The Intense Humming Of Evil”. And yet the songs were valid. This was no death metal nonsense. The tracks spoke of the extremes of the human condition detailing suicide, anorexia, serial killers and the holocaust.

When ABC released “Beauty Stab” in 1983 as the follow up to the iconic “Lexicon Of Love”, it was seen as a the ultimate example of killing your career. Eleven years later it seemed like a case of the Manics saying “hold our beers” but although the sales of “The Holy Bible” were initially disappointing, its legacy has far overtaken its chart achievements. Routinely voted as one of the best albums of the 90s if not of all time, it is also the album held most dearest by the band’s fanbase.

The lead single from it was “Faster” which certainly sounds rawer than any of the singles from “Gold Against The Soul” but it was the choice of James Dean Bradfield to where a balaclava on this TOTP appearance that caught the headlines. The IRA connotations led many a viewer to believe the band were IRA sympathisers which the band, of course, vehemently denied. The BBC received 17,500 complaints and the band’s record company Sony were concerned that they would not be allowed on the show again. They were eventually invited back but not for another two years when they were a trio following the disappearance of Richey Edwards on 1st February 1995. My own opinion of balaclava -gate? I believe their defence detailed by @TOTPFacts below but for such a politically switched on band, it seemed a bit naive to not have foreseen such a reaction.

"Because we were all dressed in army regalia, it felt like we were parodying the use of legitimate power, like the special forces. It didn't enter our heads that people would see it as an Irish paramilitary symbol." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 31, 2023

As for “Faster”, I couldn’t engage with this era of the band. Maybe I was just that bit too old at 26 but I know people who swear by “The Holy Bible” album. Maybe I should explore it further.

As the camera switches back from the Manics to Vic and Bob, we get an unintentional piece of comedy gold when the former asks an unsuspecting member of the studio audience if she had liked the last performance. Having not been listening but suddenly confronted with a microphone in her face, she answered in the only way she could and with a belief that this was what was required of her, she whooped. Marvellous stuff.

The next act is a kind of diva supergroup. Kind of. I suppose a collaboration between disco/Hi-NRG heavyweights Kym Mazelle and Jocelyn Brown was as inevitable as it was obvious but the fact that it was the idea of Simon Cowell kind of discredits it slightly. Why were they doing a cover of the disco classic “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” made famous by Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer? The aforementioned Cowell alongside producers Matt Aitken and Mike Stock (working together for the first time since the split of SAW) had heard the version made by Erasure’s Andy Bell and k.d. lang for the Coneheads movie and thought they could do it better. And better in their eyes meant Kym and Jocelyn.

It made sense though. Jocelyn was the voice behind 80s club classic “Somebody Else’s Guy” and in the 90s had supplied vocals on Top 10 hits for Incognito and Right Said Fred. Meanwhile, Kym had duetted with Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys on Top 10 dance hit “Wait” in 1989. More recently, she’d been in the Top 30 in 1993 with Rapination on “Love Me The Right Way”. Put them together on a legendary disco track and you’ve got a sure fire, gigantic hit on your hands yes? Well, sort of. Despite entering the charts at No 15 and the exposure of this TOTP appearance, the single topped out just two places higher. The only country where it was a bigger hit than that was The Netherlands. By comparison, the Streisand/Summer original was an American No 1 and UK No 3. Why wasn’t it a bigger success second time around? Did the kids not know the original? Was it seen as too retro compared to the contemporary sounds of, say, Eurodance? Who knows but let’s just hope it pissed off Simon Cowell.

It’s that bloody “Absolutely Fabulous” song again! I think this is the third time it’s been on the show. There was no Comic Relief live event in 1994 so maybe the single was being given an extra push by the BBC? The song is of course the work of the Pet Shop Boys and seeing as I have nothing else left to say about what must be their worst ever single, how about I squeeze in a link between it and the aforementioned Barbara Streisand? Neil Tennant is on record as saying that after he and Chris Lowe had shot the video with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, they all went for a meal at a restaurant in Holland Park and got pissed. Right at the end of the evening, into the restaurant walked John Cleese, Joan Collins and Christopher Biggins who had all been to see Barbara Streisand who had been playing at Wembley Arena. Naturally, Tennant had already been to see her the previous week. So that’s Cleese, Collins, Biggins, Saunders, Lumley and the Pet Shop Boys all in the same place at the same time. It sounds like the best Blankety Blank line up ever! Absolutely fabulous darling!

Meanwhile, back in the studio, Vic and Bob are weaving their particular brand of comedy magic via the gift of scotch eggs. “Would anyone like a scotch egg?” they ask the studio audience on the gantry to which one game girl, with an unshakable desire to get herself noticed, shouts in Vic’s face, “I’ll have a scotch egg! Hiya Mum!”. Excellent work!

After that classic example of letting your parent know that you’re on TOTP, we get Blur who are in a much more sombre mood with the second single from their “Parklife” album. I’m guessing that the images and sounds that come to most of our minds when we think of the “Parklfe” era of the band, it’s Damon and Phil Daniels lord marching it up on the title track or the hypnotic, non sequitur chorus of “Girls & Boys”. However, there are also some majestically understated songs on the album too. “End Of A Century” falls into that category for me and then there’s “To The End”. The obvious choice of second single would surely have been the title track but then Blur weren’t always obvious and had depths to them that it could be argued their Battle of Britpop opponents Oasis didn’t. “To The End” was such a change of mood from “Girls & Boys”. A dramatic ballad with a full orchestral accompaniment, did it wrong foot record buyers after the faux hedonism of its predecessor? Certainly, it was nowhere near as big a hit peaking at No 16.

A year or so later, the band would release an even grander ballad in “The Universal” from their “The Great Escape” album. It put me in mind of Madness from a decade earlier when The Nutty Boys broke from their hits formula to release two wistful, pensive pieces in “One Better Day” and “Yesterday’s Men” in 1984 and 1985 respectively.

The performance here is suitably melancholy. The black and white camera tint, the formal suits the band are wearing and the deliberate lack of movement on stage (Alex James seems almost Ron Mael-esque). Damon just about pulls off the vocals but who was the woman sat on stage with them? Apparently, Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab adds some vocals on the recording but I’m not convinced that’s her next to Damon. Whoever she was, as Vic Reeves noted afterwards, she didn’t do much did she?

Acid jazz was in the air (waves) back in 1994. After Galliano appeared on the show the other week, here were label mates The Brand New Heavies with their sixth consecutive Top 40 hit “Back To Love”. I was never that much of an Acid Jazzer though my wife was quite keen and I think she bought the album that this track came from (“Brother Sister”). However, I quite liked the breezy Summer feel of this one – a real daytime radio winner. The band doubled down on that vibe with their next release, a cover version of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which I would suggest would become their best known hit. Meanwhile, “Back To Love” would peak at No 23.

Here’s a rather nice thing. A 50s doo-wop song given the hard rock treatment. The first era of Guns N’ Roses was coming to an end and it did so with a rather unexpected finish. The band’s decision to record an album of cover versions in 1993’s “Spaghetti Incident” seemed a bit odd to me but I guess it was to plug the gap between albums of new material. Nobody could have known that gap would be 17 years long. It sold well enough but in nowhere near the numbers of the “Use Your Illusion” albums and “Appetite For Destruction”. A collection of mainly punk and hard rock songs by the likes of New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Damned and Nazareth, it also included “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners.

Easily for me the stand out track on the album, it really shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Axl Rose’s angular, throat throttling vocals should decimate the song but actually it’s safe in his hands…erm…mouth (?). Being the hard rockers they are though, the band can’t resist adding their own imprint on the track so in the middle we get the line “Yep, we’re f****d”. I’m guessing that didn’t feature on any radio edit of the song.

Now I would have bet money that this had been released around Christmas in 1993 but clearly not. However, it had been planned to put it out then and subsequently in February but was pulled both times so that might explain my confusion. “Since I Don’t Have You” peaked at No 10. The band’s next single – another cover, this time of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones for the film Interview With The Vampire – would be their last for 14 years.

Another one of those dance records next that hung around the Top 40 for weeks on end like one of those floater turds that won’t flush away without the need to resort to a literal shitty stick to break it up. Apologies for the excrement metaphor but I really have had enough of having to find something to say about these ‘club anthems’ that lingered like a nasty fart (see also Reel 2 Real’s “I Like To Move It”). “Get-A-Way” by Maxx was one such record. It stayed on the Top 40 for 10 weeks of which 5 of them were inside the Top 10 peaking at No 4 for 2 weeks.

The last time this lot were on the show they performed against the backdrop of a police car for no discernible reason and this time their dancers are jigging away behind some wire mesh fences. Why? Were they meant to have been caught by the fuzz and now be in some sort of detention centre? Just ridiculous.

A classic one hit wonder (huge hit then nada) next as Dawn Penn takes to the stage with her song “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. Back in 1994, my reaction would have been the same as Vic Reeves – who? As it happens, Dawn was part of the ‘rocksteady’ movement of the late 60s that was a successor to ska and a precursor to reggae (Wikipedia tells me) and she’d originally recorded the track (then just titled “You Don’t Love Me”) in 1967. Dawn then took a Guns N’ Roses style 17 years off from singing before returning to the track and doing a dancehall version of it. Thanks to her appearance at an anniversary show for her original label Studio One Records, the song was released as a single and with plenty of radio support became a huge hit in the UK peaking at No 3.

The UK had always been susceptible to one hit wonders from out of the leftfield like this one. I’m thinking Althea and Donna, Phyllis Nelson, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley etc and just like those acts, Dawn seemed an unlikely pop star. She was already 42 when she appeared on TOTP which I guess is fairly old to be having your first hit. “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” entered the charts at No 9 and spent the next four weeks inside the Top 10. Despite Dawn’s protestations, the UK did love her.

It’s the second of fifteen (gulp!) weeks at the top for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around”. They’re in the studio pretending to be hippies again but this time scenes from Four Weddings And A Funeral have been interspersed into the performance. I’m guessing the production company or distributors pushed for that though the film didn’t need any more promotion as it was top of the box office charts for weeks. I have to say I do like the film – it’s one of those that I always tend to end up watching if I stumble across it whilst channel flipping. Its appeal may have waned over the years but I still think the acting performances are good (apart from a rather wooden Andie Mac Dowell) and the pacing works really well. I wonder if some of the negativity that it attracts now is related to the Wets single putting people off by being No 1 for so long? I’m bound to refer to the film agin over the next 13 weeks but I think I’ll leave it there for now.

The play out tune is back after being omitted last week and it’s yet another dance tune, this time “Harmonica Man” by Bravado. I can’t tell you much about this as I don’t remember it and I can’t be arsed to research it online but it seems to have been inspired by The Grid’s “Swamp Thing” with its banjo theme but they’ve used an harmonica instead. Apparently it spent one week inside the Top 40 peaking at No 37.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Manic Street Preachers	Faster	I did not
2	Jocelyn Brown and Kym Mazelle	No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)	No
3	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	Not even for charity
4	Blur	To The End	No but I had the Parklife album. Didn’t we all?
5	Brand New Heavies	Back To Love	No but my wife had the album
6	Guns N’ Roses	Since I Don’t Have You	No but I have it on their Greatest Hits album
7	Maxx	Get-A-Way	Hell no
8	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No, no and indeed no
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Nope
10	Bravado	Harmonica Man	Nah

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001kkld/top-of-the-pops-09061994

TOTP 26 MAY 1994

Posted on April 1, 2023 by 80stastic

For the first time in quite some time, I’ve looked at the running order of a TOTP and done this:

With the exception of The Prodigy, the rest of the line up is so uninspiring. Apologies if one of your favourite artists or songs is on this show but I really can’t get excited by it. I might treat myself to a fairly short review for once. It seems fitting that the show is presented by Mark ‘nice but dull’ Goodier.

We start with a ragga/Eurodance mashup from Maxx. A huge hit all around Europe, “Get-A-Way” would peak at No 4 in the UK. As was obligatory with just about every Eurodance outfit of the early to mid 90s (Snap!, Black Box, Technotronic etc) there’s a story behind who the female vocalist was. I think the Lisa Stansfield lookalike up there on stage is someone called Linda Meek but the vocals on the record were made by session singer Samira Besic who left the Maxx project before a video could be filmed so model Eliz Yavuz was drafted in for the visuals and promotional duties. British singer Meek was recruited for live shows and she also laid down the vocals for follow up single releases. What’s the significance of the US cop car picture behind the group on stage? Is it something to do with the single’s title (i.e. a getaway car)? Surely that wouldn’t be a police vehicle though would it? Do the track’s lyrics give us any clues?

*checks lyrics online*

Not really. They just bang on about being a ragga man, feeling irie and drinking champagne mainly. They also plagiarise Apache Indian by pinching his ‘Boom shakalak’ line. Is nothing sacred?!

Carleen Anderson is up next and I’m sure that the TOTP captions person told us she was James Brown’s goddaughter the last time she was on. I wonder if she minded that the show’s production team thought that the most interesting thing about her was a connection to someone else? Still, I suppose it’s better than just saying she was from Bolton or somewhere.

She seemed to be experiencing a case of diminishing returns in reverse as every hit she had from her debut album “True Spirit” managed a chart peak slightly higher than its predecessor. This track – “Mama Said” – made it to No 26, one place higher than her debut hit “Nervous Breakdown”. It was followed by “True Spirit” which peaked at No 24 and the final single from the album (“Let It Last”) stopped climbing the chart at No 16. Unusual chart stats I would suggest. “Mama Said” sounds like “Apparently Nothin’” by Young Disciples but then she did do the vocals on that when she was their singer so no surprise there really. The guy with the long, ginger ringlets on guitar looks like Glen Hansard aka Outspan from The Commitments who was schooled in the ways of James Brown…

OK, in amongst all the ‘meh’ on this show, it’s hard to dismiss The Prodigy with such a phrase. Their journey from purveyors of ‘toy town techno’ with debut hit “Charly” to Glastonbury headlining gods of dance was in its mid stage with the pending release of sophomore album “Music For The Jilted Generation”. Despite this track – “No Good (Start The Dance)” – being released just six weeks before the album, it wasn’t actually its lead single. That honour went to “One Love” that was released a whole eight months earlier. Whatever era of the band though, one thing was a constant – their ability to sell lots of records. The album would go to No 1 and go double platinum whilst the single would reach No 4 becoming their seventh consecutive hit of which four went Top 5.

Interestingly, and I’d never realised this until now, the band never appeared on TOTP in person, declining all offers to appear so that the producers were forced to show their videos instead. Kowtowing to the BBC wasn’t in the band’s manifesto which was all about making commercially successful yet uncompromising hard dance music. The album even starts with this spoken commitment from Liam Howlett:

“So I’ve decided to take my work back underground to stop it falling into the wrong hands”
Hamacher, Adriana (July 1994). “Prodigy: Guitar Hero”. Mix Mag. pp. 63–64.

Of “No Good (Start The Dance)” itself, Howlett said in an interview in Dazed magazine:

“‘No Good… was a response to all that shit Eurodance stuff”
The Prodigy select 10 inspirational Jilted jams – Dazed magazine 4 July 2014

Quite right too. Watching this video back, it’s sobering to remember that the sadly departed Keith Flint didn’t always look like an otherworldly punk character that seemed like he came from the imagination of horror legend Stephen King. That image was still two years away but it was coming. Be afraid etc…

Next up is another artist that meant nothing to me. I was never interested in Iron Maiden nor any of those bands that were part of that early 80s British Heavy Metal movement so the solo career of Bruce Dickinson was not top of my ‘must investigate further’ list. I do have to review his single here though so what do I make of “Tears Of The Dragon”? Well, apart from its pretentious title (something to do with chasing the dragon?), it sounds like Bruce is doing his best Led Zeppelin impression in the verses and is auditioning for a Bon Jovi tribute band in the chorus. Ah, what do I know though? “Tears Of The Dragon” peaked at No 28 whilst parent album “Balls To Picasso” (not such a pretentious title) got to No 21.

I really have nothing more to say about “Carry Me Home” by Gloworm. I can’t just leave it at that though can I? What about the performance here? Well, they’ve toned down on the gospel theme after using a pulpit in their last appearance and have replaced that with what look like three massively oversized replicas of the Jules Rimet Trophy (the original trophy awarded to the winners of the football World Cup from 1930 to 1970). Sadly, the TOTP producers seem to have chosen a motif for the wrong sport – ‘Carry me home’ are lyrics included in “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, a Rugby Union anthem sung by fans of the England international team.

Time for a video exclusive now courtesy of “Absolutely Fabulous” by Pet Shop Boys. This was the Comic Relief record for 1994 and was obviously based around the BBC sit com of the same name. It was probably a good call from the charity as the show had just finished its second series run having moved from BBC2 to BBC1 and its popularity was blooming. I used to watch it and presumably enjoyed it enough but it’s not something I’d rewatch and I haven’t thought about it in years. On reflection, it was a bit shallow with everything revolving around the ludicrous actions of main characters Patsy and Edina. I don’t think it amounts to much more than that.

As for the song, I wasn’t a fan. Yes, it’s the Pet Shop Boys who I’d always liked but it’s very repetitive, essentially a beat based around Neil Tennant singing the song’s title with some catchphrases from Patsy and Edina thrown in randomly. Apparently it was meant to be a deliberate parody of the Eurodance genre as Neil and Chris thought that was the type of record Edina and Patsy would think was ‘trendy’. I don’t think I got the joke in that case. The video doesn’t really help either with the ‘comedy’ being the clash of styles of the antics of Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in character against the static Chris and Neil. Watching it back now, it’s all a bit cringe (as the kids might say). “Absolutely Fabulous” peaked at No 6.

What three things come to my mind when I think of Galliano? Acid Jazz, Mick Talbot and Swampy. Am I right or is my memory playing tricks on me?

*checks Galliano Wikipedia page*

Well, two out of three ain’t bad as Meatloaf might say. They were definitely Acid Jazzers being the first act signed to Eddie Piller and Gilles Peterson’s Acid Jazz label and their debut single was the first release on it. Ex-Style Councillor Mick Talbot was also amongst the band’s ranks occasionally. And Swampy? I was nearly right. In case you’d forgotten, Swampy is an environmental activist who briefly came to fame for spending a week in a tunnel as part of the demonstrations to stop the expansion of the A30 in Fairmile, Devon in 1996. His notoriety even earned him a place in panel show Have I Got News For You. So what has he got to do with Galliano? Nothing but my confusion is explained by the fact that they released a single called “Twyford Down” which was inspired by the protests against the M3 expansion through the chalk downland near Winchester, Hampshire. However, I don’t know for sure if Swampy was involved.

“Long Time Gone” was, as Mark Goodier says, their first ever hit single after four near misses. A cover of a Crosby, Stills & Nash song from the 60s, it’s actually a pretty nifty version. Valerie Etienne’s vocals are good and it’s well produced. I’d forgotten they had a Bez type character in their ranks who went by the name of Uncle Big Man. Not sure why he has a Mick Hucknall style staff with him though. While researching Galliano, I was struck by the unusual names of those involved. There’s a Constantine, a Crispin plus surnames like Vandergucht and Ameedee but my favourite is the guy who replaced Mick Talbot on keyboards, one Ski Oakenfull! “Long Time Gone” peaked at No 15 and was taken from their third album “The Plot Thickens” which went Top 10.

The biggest chart story of 1994 was undoubtedly Wet Wet Wet’s 15 week reign in the No 1 spot but there was a sub plot to the main tale which concerned this next group. All 4 One had an elongated, chart topping stint of their own in 1994 in America when they spent 11 weeks at No 1 with drippy ballad “I Swear”. That isn’t the story I was referring to though. No, it’s the one about them spending seven (!) consecutive weeks at No 2 in the UK charts without managing to dislodge the Wets and the ubiquitous “Love Is All Around”. Remarkably, when Bryan Adams had his 16 weeks at No 1 in 1991, there was also a record that spent a long time in its shadow, unable to knock it off its perch. That was “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred and as awful as that song is/was, “I Swear” might be worse. Horribly cynical (how many couples walked down the aisle to this with lyrics like ‘For better or worse, ‘til death do us part’?) and with its blended, R&B harmonies, it was basically the natural successor to “End Of The Road”. Ironically, Boyz II Men would return themselves in a few weeks with their own copycat version of their biggest hit in “I’ll Make Love To You”. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of All 4 One in these TOTP repeats soon. It’s enough to make you swear.

The Manchester United Football Squad are this week’s No 1 with their revolting single “Come On You Reds”. The only credit I will give it is that Status Quo managed to somehow work the names of all the team into the lyrics. There’s fourteen of them in there so I’m trying to work out if they missed anybody out.

*checks Manchester United 1993/94 squad*

No, they didn’t – nobody who played more than two games anyway. Quite a feat. United would release a further three singles during the 90s all of which were hits – the hilariously titled “We’re Gonna Do It Again” in 1995 (they won zero trophies), “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” in 1996 (they won the double) and “Lift It High (All About Belief)” in 1999 (they won the treble).

The play out song is really odd. Tim McGraw is a US country artist who was only just beginning to be noticed in America in 1994 so I’m pretty sure the UK was totally oblivious to who he was. This song – “Indian Outlaw” – was his first big hit on the US country chart but it did nothing over here. If that wasn’t enough to make it an odd choice to appear on TOTP, it was actually banned by some American radio stations for its patronising depiction of Native Americans. What was Ric Blaxill thinking?!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Maxx	Get-A-Way	Never
2	Carleen Anderson	Mama Said	No
3	The Prodigy	No Good (Start The Dance)	I did not
4	Bruce Dickinson	Tears Of The Dragon	Nah
5	Gloworm	Carry Me Home	Negative
6	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	Not even for charity
7	Galliano	Long Time Gone	Nope
8	All 4 One	I Swear	I didn’t – I swear!
9	The Manchester United Football Squad	Come On You Reds	NO!
10	Tim McGraw	Indian Outlaw	As if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001k9s9/top-of-the-pops-26051994

TOTP 19 MAY 1994

Posted on March 28, 2023 by 80stastic

Right, after banging on about football in what’s supposed to be a retro music blog last time out, I promise there’s nothing about the beautiful game in this post. It’s straight to the music and the direct to camera message at the top of the show this week comes from a snake. No really. An actual snake but it’s no ordinary snake. Not only does it talk but it’s owner is ‘The Godfather of Shock Rock’ himself Alice Cooper who is on the show as both performer and host tonight. Blimey! Iggy Pop last week and Alice Cooper the next. There’s two ways of looking at this. Either new producer Ric Blaxill was trying to restore some credibility to TOTP by demonstrating that the show was still a pull for some of the most iconic names in music or he was totally misreading the room and not giving the kids what they wanted at all. Alice Cooper was 46 at the time this show aired and his biggest hit “School’s Out” had been No 1 22 years prior. Or was their a third view? Was he trying to reel back in those disaffected viewers who thought that they had outgrown the show? All I know is that was two ‘Godfathers’ on the show in consecutive weeks after ‘The Godfather of Punk’ Iggy Pop seven days before. It surely wasn’t just coincidence was it?

To completely blow my theorising above out of the water, we start with an act that surely couldn’t have existed and been successful at any other time other than the early to mid 90s. 2 Unlimited must have been one of the most prolific artists to appear on the show in this period. “The Real Thing” was their 10th consecutive UK chart hit of which only two didn’t make the Top 10. Unlike most of their previous offerings, Ray actually gets to do some prolonged rapping in this one rather than having to settle for shouting out “Techno, techno techno techno” every now and then.

The track reminds me of another song that I can’t quite put my finger on…

If you're thinking that "The Real Thing" reminds you of something (apart from every other 2 Unlimited track), it's probably Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: https://t.co/2eUw8dCmjV #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 17, 2023

No, @TOTPFacts, not that (although clearly, that as well). Got it! It’s this…

Just me then. Oh well. By my reckoning there’s at least a couple more occasions when Ray and Anita will be on TOTP so we’re not quite done yet but the end is coming.

While the end of 2 Unlimited is nigh, we’re just at the start of something very lengthy and for some interminable and intolerable. Yes, Wet Wet Wet are here for the first time with (gulp) “Love Is All Around”. Yes, just three years since Bryan Adams spent 16 weeks at the top of the charts, the UK was about to embark on another splurge of record buying that would create another long term resident at No 1, Chart Street. How could we have let this happen again so quickly?! Well, like “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Wet Wet Wet’s single was also from a popular, mainstream film but for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves read Four Weddings and a Funeral. Richard Curtis’s rom-com was a runaway success topping the box office’s chart for 9 weeks and making it the second highest grossing film ever in the UK at the time. Although the song only features over the end credits (a version is sung by the hippy looking couple at the first wedding in the main body of the film), such exposure and promotion was always going to make it a big hit. Did any of us envision 15 weeks at No 1 though? I’ll need to keep something back for that lengthy a run on the show so for the moment, here’s some stats:

It was the best selling single in the UK for 1994 (obviously)
It went double platinum in the UK
It was No 1 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Holland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden
It has the joint third longest reign at the top of the UK chart only behind Bryan Adams and Frankie Laine
It spent 26 weeks in the UK Top 40 of which 20 were in the Top 10

In short, it was a monster with teeth. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Right, who’s this? Bad Boys Inc? They were still a thing in mid 1994? If that seems unbelievable, guess how many hits these stinkers had? Two? Three at a push? Uh-uh. Six. SIX! How? Why? What the hell was going on? “More To This World” was the fourth and biggest of them giving the group their only Top 10 hit. Filling the gap as an alternative to Take That for the teen market until Boyzone turned up a few months later, this lot were the template of how to be a second rate boy band. A frontman with a passable voice at best backed by some grinning no marks whose only contribution to the project was cheekbones, styled hair and dancing. Dreadful stuff from every body involved. We shall detain ourselves no longer with this shallow nonsense.

Proving just how bonkers the charts of 1994 were, we move from a lower league boy and to ambient world music in the blink of an eye. Well, not quite a blink but it’s a pretty short segue featuring occasional host Bruno Brookes and tonight’s superstar Alice Cooper. Oh, and that snake as well. It actually works quite well. Brookes keeps a straight face and Alice delivers his line effectively. And not a gold disc presentation on sight. Please take note Simon Mayo.

Back to that ambient world music though. Its two main protagonists, in the charts at least, were Enigma and Deep Forest and by happy chance they are next to each other in the Top 40 this week. The former is at No 21 with “The Eyes Of Truth” whilst the latter is in the No 20 position with their eponymous track “Deep Forest”. It doesn’t quite have the charm of its predecessor “Sweet Lullaby” but was still an exponent of the growth of World Music that had come to mainstream attention via Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and experiments in the genre via Brian Eno and David Byrne. Deep Forest (and Enigma) seemed to me to create their own strand of it though by adding electronica sounds to the most unlikely of samples – Gregorian chants in the case of Enigma and field recordings of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia by Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest. Nearly 30 years on, maybe the depth of the impression their material made upon the mainstream public has diminished but it really felt quite out there at the time. And mainstream it certainly was. Deep Forest’s debut album sold nearly four million copies worldwide and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Global Music in 1994 but lost out to Ry Cooder. It might not have been to everyone’s taste but when you consider that the UK No 1 in this particular chart was by a football team and was based on a horrible Status Quo track, maybe everyone’s taste wasn’t always the best barometer.

It’s the return of Seal next with his first new material since his massive selling debut album stormed the charts in 1991. His second album (also just called “Seal” or sometimes referred to as “Seal II”) is the album that “Kiss From A Rose” is from right?

*checks Seal’s discography

Thought so. That track was huge after featuring in the Batman Forever film but it wasn’t the album’s lead single. That honour went to “Prayer For The Dying” which has become a bit of a lost Seal track. Ask most people to name one of his songs and I’m betting the titles offered up would be either the aforementioned “Kiss From A Rose” or “Crazy” or “Killer”. “Prayer For The Dying” though? Not so much. I couldn’t have dragged it out of my memory banks unaided. It’s actually a very smooth and accomplished track though and did make No 14 in the charts but it lacks the edginess of something like “Killer” or “Crazy”. Trevor Horn was still at the mixing desk so of course it was well produced but it sounds like it’s been crafted to appeal to multiple US genre radio stations and spreads itself bit too thin. I mean, compared to 2 Unlimited or Bad Boys Inc, it’s a towering colossus of musical quality but somehow it’s not one of his best or indeed best remembered tunes.

The album sold well though, topping the chart as its predecessor had done and it went four times platinum in the US thanks to “Kiss From A Rose” being a No 1 record over there. I recall the initial scale out of it for the Our Price store I was working in not being that big (a poor decision by the buying dept it would seem) and the Area Manager telling us to hunt stem the advanced promo copy we had to add to stock. Funny the things you remember.

An occasional feature now with something from the album chart. Presumably these sections weren’t weekly because of the changing nature of artist availability? If the show could be populated by artists promoting a single did they take priority? The album chart slot started with Stanley Appel’s ‘year zero’ revamp but it seems subsequent show producer Ric Blaxill hasn’t ditched it yet. Maybe he does down the line – I can’t remember off the top off my head.

Anyway, the occupant of the slot this week is Julia Fordham who seems a rather obscure choice given that her album “Falling Forward” never hit any higher than No 21. In fact, as much as I quite like Julia Fordham, she’s never pulled many trees up chart wise. Two hit singles (Nos 19 and 27) and her best placing in the album chart was No 13 for sophomore collection “Porcelain”. She really should have had more hits given her talent. She remains a live draw and has toured with Beverley Craven and Judie Tzuke as part of the “Woman To Woman” project. This track, “I Can’t Help Myself”, was released as a single in the July making No 62.

Bruno Brookes is back to present the next act but he looks like he’s been smeared with shit since he’s been gone. The explanation for his appearance is that he’s been in an off screen fight with Alice Cooper’s snake. OK, the joke is wearing thin now and I think they’ve overcooked it. There’s no snakes anywhere near the next act who are East 17 though they did seem to shed band members as regularly as a snake sheds it skin after the hits dried up. Look at this timeline:

1997 Brian Harvey sacked (drugs comments)
1997 Tony Mortimer leaves (creative differences)
1998 Brian Harvey reinstated and group renamed as E17
1999 Band splits
2006 Original line up reforms for reunion gig
2006 Tony Mortimer leaves (after altercation with Brian Harvey)
2010 Tony Mortimer returns for a second time
2010 Brian Harvey leaves for second time (commitment to band questioned)
2011 Blair Dreelan joins band
2011 Blair Dreelan leaves band (contractual obligation)
2013 Tony Mortimer leaves band for third time
2014 Robbie Craig joins band
2018 Original member John Hendy leaves (personal reasons)
2018 Terry John joins band
2019 Terry John leaves band
2019 Jake Livermore joins band

Blimey! There’s so much coming and going in that lot that they should have been called E20 (the fictional postcode for EastEnders location Walford). “All Around The World” peaked at No 3.

It’s finally time for Alice Cooper to be onstage as a performer rather than to the side of it as a presenter. He’s here, of course, to promote his latest single which is “Lost In America” from his concept album “The Last Temptation” album. I’m not much of an Alice aficionado I have to say. I know his real name is Vince Furnier without looking it up and that he’s a golf fanatic. Musically, I’m familiar with “School’s Out” and “Elected” from his 70s era and “Poison” and “Hey Stoopid” from his late 80s early 90s revival but not a lot else and that includes this track.

Ah crap! I promised there’d be nothing about football in this post after last week’s was hijacked by my talking about the 1994 FA Cup final but the No 1 is “Come On You Reds” by The Manchester United Football Squad so what can I do? Five days on from their demolition of my beloved Chelsea in said final, they have moved to being the best selling single of the week in the UK. It would stay there for two weeks. This achievement was quite remarkable given the fact that it’s a football record. Sure, this niche genre has had big hits before – Liverpool FC got to No3 with “Anfield Rap” in 1988 and the England World Cup squad (in conjunction with New Order) also got to No 1 in 1990. Hell, my beloved Chelsea got to No 5 in 1972 with “Blue Is The Colour” – but No 1 for two weeks?! With that song?! As cup finalists, Chelsea also released their own single – “No One Can Stop Us Now” (oh the irony!) – which made No 23. I believe it was quite unusual for both teams to have cup final songs in the Top 40 simultaneously. Obviously it was dreadful as well but I bought it as a souvenir of the day thinking we might never get to the final again (how wrong I was).

The play out song is “Absolutely Fabulous” by Pet Shop Boys. Or is it? I think officially it’s credited to just Absolutely Fabulous and is produced by Pet Shop Boys but we all know it’s them really. This was the 1994 Comic Relief single and as much as I didn’t like the track, it was an upgrade on the likes of “The Stonk” by Hale & Pace and “Stick It Out” by Right Said Fred. There is, of course, a link to Alice Cooper here with the 1992 Comic Relief single being a cover of their (Alice Cooper was the band’s name at this point) 1972 hit, the aforementioned “Elected” by Mr Bean and Smear Campaign. “Absolutely Fabulous” made No 6 and was the second time that Jennifer Saunders had featured on a Comic Relief single after 1989’s “Help” as part of Lananeeneenoonoo alongside Bananarama.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I but it?
1	2 Unlimited	The Real Thing	No
2	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	I did not
3	Bad Boys Inc	More To This World	As if
4	Deep Forest	Deep Forest	Nah
5	Seal	Prayer For The Dying	Nope
6	Julia Fordham	I Can’t Help Myself	It’s a no
7	East 17	All Around The World	Another No
8	Alice Cooper	Lost In America	Sorry Alice – no
9	The Manchester United Football Squad	Come On You Reds	Are you kidding?!
10	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	And a final 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

TOTP 14 APR 1994

Posted on March 10, 2023 by 80stastic

Well, it’s finally happened and it’s only taken just over six years. Yes, this post is my 500th if you combine both my 80s and 90s TOTP blogs. 500! I stopped looking at the word count after I passed the 1 million mark some time ago but it’s big. I started writing when the TOTP repeats got to 1983 which was the year my interest in pop music went into overdrive and the BBC’s flagship music show became unmissable viewing for me. After reviewing that year I really thought I might leave it at that as it was taking up a lot of my time but I persevered and somehow made it to the end of the decade. At that point I had another decision to make. Should I bother with the 90s repeats or leave it there? In the end I carried on mainly based upon the premise that as I’d spent most of that decade working in record shops, I’d surely be familiar with many of the tracks featured on the shows and they might trigger some memories for me. That theory hasn’t always worked out I have to say. Anyway, I seem to be stuck with this what…? Labour of love? Yeah, I guess so. I do love to write but sometimes the relentless schedule of the BBC4 repeats means I get behind and if I get too far behind, I fear I might give up. So I write and I write. Usually between five and six thousand words a week. The number of people reading my posts have grown to a amount I could never have imagined and I thank everyone of you who has ever taken the time to read any of my ramblings. Back in the early days I was getting as few as 17 views a month. I’m now averaging 1,500. From tiny acorns and all that.

Anyway, the TOTP gods have, by happy coincidence, got a rock star guest presenter in for the show that marks my milestone post. Meatloaf was enjoying a massive career rejuvenation following his mega hit album “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” and its single “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” so it made sense I guess for him to be asked to host the show. Plus, of course, he dominated the screen with his dramatic persona and physicality and knew how to deliver a line. His first job is to introduce opening act Terrorvision with their single “Oblivion”. Was this their debut TOTP appearance? I think it may have been. They were on as a Breaker for their previous hit “My House” earlier in the year I think. “Oblivion” was the lead single from their album “How To Make Friends And Influence People” which was a Top 20 hit and helped raise the band’s status from also rans to (perhaps unlikely) bona fide chart stars. They were always a curious beast though. What sort of band were they exactly? How would you describe the music they made? Yes, clearly they fall under the umbrella of rock music but that’s a broad church. Take “Oblivion” for example. It’s got an almost doo-wop chorus in it! It didn’t stop them winning the Kerrang! Award for Best Newcomer in 1994 though and you can’t get more rock than Kerrang! Then there’s the way they’re set up on stage with the drummer up front and vocalist Tony Wright on a raised platform at the rear. Sure Genesis had the same arrangement but it was hardly the classic band set up. Despite being at the back here, Wright would very much be the public face of the band even making appearances on the panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks. With a twinkle in his eye and a cheeky grin, he was sort of like the rock version of Take That’s Mark Owen.

“How To Make Friends And Influence People” would generate five hit singles for the band, all peaking in the charts between Nos 25 and 21. I’m guessing we’ll be seeing more of Terrorvision in these TOTP repeats.

Next a record whose run on the charts feels comparable to the length of time I’ve been writing about these TOTP repeats for. Reel 2 Real (featuring The Mad Stuntman of course) spent a total of 17 weeks inside the UK Top 40 with “I Like To Move It”. Of those, 11 were inside The Top 10! Its presence in the charts started in Feb and carried on until June! Even in 1994, such longevity was becoming a rare event. By the end of the decade it was almost unheard of. You have to admire such durability even if you didn’t like the song (and I certainly didn’t). However, lots of people did and such was its popularity and accessibility that it was licensed for use in multiple adverts. Look at some of those brands that have made use of it:

Chewits – “I like to chew it, chew it”
McDonalds
Durex – “I like to do it, do it”
Toyota
United States Postal Service

Then there’s its presence in the cinematic world most obviously in the Madagascar franchise and of course it has also featured in many a dance themed video game plus it was adopted as a dance emote* in Fortnite in 2022.

* Clearly I only know about this because of my game playing son

Despite the song’s extensive run on the chart, I think this was Reel 2 Real’s first time in the TOTP studio. It’s a bit of a mess, all backing dancer arses and a ludicrous cane being wielded by I presume The Mad Stuntman. Apparently his stage name was inspired by the TV series The Fall Guy, the theme tune of which was a song called “The Unknown Stuntman” sung by its star Lee Majors. Wanna hear it again? Sure you do!

It’s time for another look at that groundbreaking video by Pet Shop Boys next. We saw a bit of the promo for “Liberation” last week when Neil and Chris performed in the TOTP studio with the video running in the background. It takes centre stage this time though and watching it through 2023 eyes it is rather underwhelming. I’m sure 29 years ago though it was quite the event but now it’s like the director was showing off with a new bit of software. That’s not his nor the available technology’s fault of course but inevitably we’ve grown accustomed to ever more mind blowing visuals both on the big screen and in the comfort of our own homes.

The director in question is Howard Greenhalgh who was responsible for loads of pop videos back in the 90s working with Spice Girls, Placebo, Ash, OMD, Elton John etc on multiple occasions. He especially seemed to love working with Pet Shop Boys having directed a dozen or so of their videos over the years. He would also end up directing the promos for the first two singles from Meatloaf’s 1995 album “Welcome To The Neighbourhood”. I wonder if our host tonight clocked the “Liberation” video and liked the idea of working with its director in the future?

It’s just over two weeks to the Eurovision Song Contest 1994 so there’s room in the TOTP schedule for another viewing of the UK’s entry “Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)” from Frances Ruffelle. She’s toned down the patriotism this time after she wore Union Jack underwear for her debut performance on the show. Maybe there’d been a lot of stern letters of complaint written to Anne Robinson at Points Of View? They’d probably be letters of congratulations in these current post-Brexit, flag shagging days.

Frances would come a lowly tenth in the contest (though that would have been seen as very respectable in recent years until our 2022 resurrection via Sam Ryder). The winners for a record third consecutive year were Ireland with an entry called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids” by Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan. However, they quickly became the lost Eurovision winners as the memory that stayed with the watching millions was the interval act. Ladies and gentlemen…Riverdance!

Yes, 1994 was the first time the world witnessed what would become a stage phenomenon that has been performed in 450 venues across the world to 25 million people and made a superstar of principal dancer Michael Flatley. It also, of course, got widely parodied by the likes of Michael Myers and Stavros Flatley but I think this one is my personal favourite:

One of those tracks that I have zero recall of now. “Let The Music (Lift You Up)” by Loveland vs Darlene Lewis anyone? Or is it Loveland featuring Rachel MacFarlane as the single’s cover proclaims? Certainly Meatloaf gives Rachel a name check in his intro. I was never a fan of all these acts that included a ‘vs’ in their title. All very confusing. There seemed to be a glut of them around the Millennium.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, Rachel released records as part of The Family Foundation, Loveland, as a solo artist and most famously LMC who took their Whitney Houston sampling hit “Take Me To The Clouds Above” to No 1 in 2004. As for Darlene Lewis, she was an American soul singer who performed the original version of “Let The Music (Lift You Up)”. Loveland (who were affiliated to the achingly trendy Manchester record shop/ label Eastern Bloc) released their own version of the track without copyright clearance and so, to avoid expensive litigation, both parties agreed to release a version together. Oh, so that’s where the ‘vs’ thing comes from! You live and learn. Despite all that back story though, the track does nothing for me now that I’ve listened to it. Oh well.

It’s not quite the aforementioned Riverdance but there’s quite a crowd up there on stage with the next artist and there is definitely some fiddle playing at one point. The ‘Garth Brooks into the UK’ marketing campaign was in full swing in 1994. After securing a first Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Red Strokes”, here he was actually in the country for a TOTP appearance promoting follow up single “Standing Outside The Fire”.

As with Terrorvision earlier, Brooks’s music was quite hard to pin down. Sure he was a country artist but he was no Din Williams. So what was he? Country rock? Country pop? New country? This song has an almost calypso style breakdown in the middle eight for chrissakes! Whatever he was, it was working slowly but surely in the UK. With “Standing Outside The Fire” securing a chart peak of No 28, this was two consecutive Top 40 hits for him. However, this would be the extent of his penetration of the UK Top 40 and he would never again return. His albums continued to sell throughout the 90s but they all suffered from a case of diminishing returns after the pinnacle of the gold selling “In Pieces”. The misjudged Chris Gaines alter ego project was the final nail in his commercial coffin over here. Still, he looked like he was enjoying himself up there on stage in his hideous half blue, half red shirt back in 1994. Maybe he should have stuck with that Chris Gaines moody rock star look after all.

It’s time for the live by satellite performance now and it comes this week from Toni Braxton who also did the direct to camera message at the top of the show this time around. In a continuing theme, there’s yet another gold disc presentation to an artist, this time for Toni’s eponymous debut album. We then get a performance of her new single “Another Sad Love Song”. I say new but it’s actually a rerelease of her first single which got no further than No 51 in 1993 in the UK but which has been shoved out again following the success of “Breathe Again”. It’s all very accomplished and sultry but it doesn’t have the ebb and flow appeal of its predecessor and only made No 15 second time around.

Yet again there seems little point to this satellite performance from LA given it’s just a stage in an empty theatre. Yes, there’s a bit that’s made up to look like a backstage dressing room but so what? I wondered if all the lights in the auditorium were an audience holding up lighters initially but I think they’re just strategically placed lights. The disembodied arms of a drummer in silhouette is mildly distracting (or do I mean disturbing?) but the whole thing is as dull as Toni’s song. Her choice of title for the track was unfortunate given that it left it open to ridicule if you interpreted ‘sad’ as meaning pathetically inadequate rather than unhappy or feeling sorrow. I know my rather indiscreet manager at the Our Price store I was working at favoured the former definition as he told me gleefully “this is truly sad” whilst serving a customer with the single. Oh dear.

Ooh! There’s some new Top 10 countdown graphics! There seem to be in the style of those old fashioned movie countdown images which makes sense but seems a little unimaginative. Anyway, the No 1 this week is “Everything Changes” by Take That which means we get to see the actual Mark Owen as opposed to the rock version supplied by Terrorvision’s Tony Wright at the top of the show. Is it me or does Robbie Williams have a look of Jim Carrey in this performance? Maybe, it’s just the camera angle or his pencil thin sideburns?

“Everything Changes” was the band’s fourth No 1 single on the bounce though that run would be ended by “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” which peaked at No 3. It restarted with “Sure” which beckoned in another succession of six chart toppers which stretched into their second era as a band with 2006’s “Patience” and 2007’s “Shine”.

There’s no play out music this week as inevitably our host gets to perform his latest single. Now, according to your musical reasoning, this is either one of the greatest power ballads of all time and Meatloaf clearly endorses that view with his intro in which he states that Jim Steinman believes it to be the best song he ever wrote; or…it’s an overblown, over long, ridiculously titled Bruce Springsteen wannabe song that should never be spoken of nor listened to again. Or maybe somewhere in the middle. For me, it’s certainly not one of Meatloaf’s best and it does go on rather clocking in at 10:16 on the album and 5:55 in the single edit. And, of course, there is that title. As of 2007, “Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are” is the chart hit with the longest un-bracketed song title at 52 characters.

This sprawling epic supposedly outlines a middle aged man reminiscing about his lost youth via a three pronged narrative using the metaphors of the seasons of Spring, Summer and Winter. Not sure what happened to Autumn. Surely ‘the Autumn of My Life’ is an established phrase? It’s certainly a song by Bobby Goldsboro. Meatloaf would return in 1995 with the similarly ludicrously entitled song “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)”.

And that’s it! Post No 500 done and dusted. For the record Post No 1 from January 1983 included some panpipe music from Incantation, some utter drivel from Keith Harris and Orville, the theme tune from ET and Phil Collins. Maybe 1994 wasn’t so bad.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Terrorvision	Oblivion	No
2	Reel 2 Real featuring The Mad Stuntman	I Like To Move It	I didn’t
3	Pet Shop Boys	Liberation	No but I think I have it on their Pop Art Best Of
4	Frances Ruffelle	Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)	Nah
5	Loveland vs Darlene Lewis	Let The Music (Lift You Up)	Nope
6	Garth Brooks	Standing Outside The Fire	Negative
7	Toni Braxton	Another Sad Love Song	Another no
8	Take That	Everything Changes	Never happening
9	Meatloaf	Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are	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/m001jn46/top-of-the-pops-14041994

TOTP 07 APR 1994

Posted on March 7, 2023 by 80stastic

We’re a week into April 1994 here at TOTP Rewind and the world of music is about to be rocked to its core by a tragic event. The day after this TOTP aired, the body of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was found at his Seattle home after he had committed suicide. The coroner estimated the time of death to have been around three days earlier. He was 27 years old when he died, joining the bizarre list of musicians, artists actors and other celebrities who passed away at that age. The rock world’s ‘27 Club’ members included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson and Pete de Freitas before Cobain became its latest member. Amy Winehouse would add to its number in 2011 whilst Manic Street Preacher Richey Edwards was also 27 when he disappeared in February 1995 though legal process meant that he wasn’t declared dead for another seven years. I recall the tabloid front pages carrying that image of his corpse with just his protruding legs visible which seemed very invasive even back then. I’d never been a huge Nirvana fan but this was shocking news.

As the story didn’t break until the following day, TOTP makes no mention of it which is probably just as well as I’m not sure that chirpy host Andi Peters would have provided the right tone for any reference. Peters was a regular face on our TVs at the time. He’d graduated from Children’s BBC’s The Broom Cupboard to co-presenting the corporation’s Saturday morning kids show Live & Kicking. He was a face. However Andi, in the same way that Gary Lineker knew that he had to diversify to maintain a career after kicking a football for a living had to end, saw possibilities behind the camera rather than in front of it. He went on to be TV producer for shows such as The Noise, The O–Zone and Shipwrecked. He reached the pinnacle of that part of his career in 2003 when he returned from whence he came to be executive producer of a relaunched version of TOTP (rebranded as All New Top of the Pops). Failing to build the show’s falling audience, Peters resigned his position after two years following the show being moved to BBC2. Nowadays, you can catch him on Good Morning Britain promoting the show’s latest competitions. He’s still annoying, though in his defence, he doesn’t look a day older than he does here in 1994. My mate Robin knew him when he worked at the BBC. He got Robin to moonlight on the aforementioned The Noise show where he ended up being coerced into doing the conga with the Spice Girls. No, really.

No sign of the Spice Girls on this TOTP though (they wouldn’t arrive until 1996) but there are some big names on the show and some…well…not so big ones. We start with one of the latter. Black Machine anyone? This is quite unfair of course on your blogger as I struggled to say anything about this lot the last time they were on the show which was only last week and seeing as they were the play out song then, I’m having to comment on them twice in a row! Well, I’m nothing if not a trier so here goes. “How Gee” sounds very 1990 to me. What was that song by Chad Jackson? “Hear The Drummer Get Wicked”? Yeah, it sounds like that to me. Performance wise, they’ve clearly taken inspiration from The Blues Brothers with a robust back four of Jake and Elwood lookalikes while the front two rappers bust some moves. Sticking with the movie theme, “How Gee” was featured in the 2021 movie House Of Gucci starring such stellar names as Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Adam Driver and Jared Leto. Sadly for Black Machine, they would not become a huge name in the world of music despite, as the TOTP caption says, “How Gee” selling a million copies worldwide.

It’s the ‘Battle of the Exclusives’ on tonight’s show according to Andi Peters starting with Erasure who are back after a year away with a track called “Always” from their sixth studio album “I Say I Say I Say”. I’d always liked Andy and Vince going right back to their debut single “Who Needs Love Like That” back in 1985 which used to get played at 17 years old me’s nightclub of choice The Barn in Worcester.

However, by 1994 I was starting to lose sight of them. Although “Always” is classic Erasure in many ways with its usual hooks and bitter sweet vocals from Andy Bell, I don’t recall it at all despite it being another huge hit for them (it was Top 10 all around Europe and No 4 in the UK). Why would I have suddenly become disinterested in a band that had soundtracked the whole of my student days? Had I decided that they weren’t 90s enough? I’m not sure but I do know that I never really rediscovered my enthusiasm for them after this point. Looking at their discography, I couldn’t tell you what any of their subsequent singles sounded like and the only album of theirs I own post the 80s is their 2013 Christmas one called “Snow Globe” that a friend bought me for…erm…Christmas.

A huge tune by a huge name incoming! I say name but I think Prince was actually, officially going by that squiggly symbol in 1994. Or was it The Artist Formerly Known As Prince? Or TAFKAP? Or just The Artist?Or even Love Symbol? Whatever it was, he was doing it to display his displeasure about the working relationship between him and his record company Warner Bros. Records. Annoyed that they wouldn’t release his new material at the speed at which he was delivering it to them, he started to appear in public with ‘slave’ written on his face (he was infamously lampooned by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree who appeared on TOTP with ‘Dave’ writ large on his cheek).

Prince felt that the poor sales of his 1992 “Love Symbol” album was down to Warners not marketing it sufficiently and so he asked to release his single “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” on his own NPG label. In doing so, he demonstrated that there was nothing that he couldn’t do when he came up with a devilishly clever marketing campaign for the single. He essentially placed a lonely hearts ad in various magazines asking women to send in photos to his Paisley Park complex and from the fifty thousand who did, he selected seven finalists to be in the single’s video and thirty semi finalists to be on the artwork for its cover. The single was a huge global hit including No 3 in the US and No 1 over here, famously his first and only in the UK (not counting Chaka Khan and Sinéad O’Connor who took covers of his songs to the top of the charts).

I always viewed “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World” as a bit of an anomaly. Firstly, there was it being released on his own label which as I recall meant it be distributed by Pinnacle in the UK rather than Warners which was odd. Then it didn’t appear on an album until 18 months later when “The Gold Experience” finally came out. Lastly, it seemed overly commercial for a Prince song. Was he writing a big, radio friendly hit to order as Warners had asked him to or was it some kind of “F**k you” from him to them with him showing that he could do all of that but he was planning on leaving Warners and therefore this was a “Here’s what you could have had” moment? I’m tending towards the latter. The fact that a lawsuit for plagiarism was successfully brought against Prince makes me think even more that he was giving Warners the finger. The song the courts found that he stole from was by one Raynard J and was called “Takin’ Me To Paradise” and was published by Warners’ own publishing company. That Prince made his point using a song that was already part of their catalogue just adds more spite to their dispute. To be fair to Prince, I can’t hear too many similarities between the tracks.

I should have mentioned earlier that there was another artist message this week before the titles began. This time it was from Pet Shop Boys who are on the show later. This was becoming a regular feature! And then, after the Prince video, we get another one from Take That who are in Germany but are on the show later as *SPOILER ALERT* the chart toppers. It all seems a bit pointless but I guess it was producer Ric Blaxill demonstrating that TOTP was still the show that the stars wanted to be on.

A new artist now as we get a first look at Tony Di Bart. This guy was almost the classic case of a perfect One Hit Wonder. Almost. The perfect template is to come from literally out of nowhere, have a No 1 record and promptly disappear never to be heard of again. This would have been the fate of ex-bathroom salesman Tony if not for the fact that he had one other minor hit as the follow up to said No 1. Curses! The Di Bart chart topper was “The Real Thing” (that dastardly second hit was “Do It” which made No 21) and was what was presumably described at the time as a ‘dance floor filler’.

I have to admit to not getting any of this little footnote in pop history at all. I thought the record was awful – I couldn’t stand his nasal voice – and didn’t understand at all why it would be a No 1. OK, maybe it was big in the clubs but it didn’t seem to have the crossover appeal that something like Haddaway’s “What Is Love” had. Also, with the best will in the world, Tony was hardly the most charismatic performer when it came to delivering the song. I mean, whether you liked “The One And Only” or not, you could see that Chesney Hawkes was a good vehicle for it but Tony? So how did it happen? I don’t know is my honest answer. Right place, right time? We’ll be seeing Tony again so maybe I’ll become more informed as to how this all came about on repeated viewings.

As with Haddaway last week, the next act on is somebody that I associate with 1993 entirely yet here he is in 1994 still having major hits. Bitty McLean shot to fame with a Fats Domino cover in “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” and I thoroughly expected him to have his 15 minutes and then disappear but he actually managed to keep himself in the charts to the tune of seven hit singles of which “Dedicated To The One I Love” was his fourth. A cover of a song made famous by The Mamas And The Papas, it gave him his third Top 10 hit. I did find all these reggae-fied cover versions of pop standards a bit tedious I have to say but then it worked wonders for his mates UB40 who had huge hits like “Red Red Wine”, “Breakfast In Bed”, “I Got You Babe” and “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” so why wouldn’t he have gone down the same route? Fair play to him but it just did nothing for me. Bitty would go on to work and tour with dub reggae legends Sly and Robbie and in 2017 he delivered lectures on Jamaican music production techniques to the Westphalia School of Music in Philadelphia which is consistently ranked as one of the top music programs in the US. Maybe Bitty had better reggae credentials than first met the eye.

Next to a band that were on the verge of calling it a day. Little Angels had been consistent hitmakers since the start of the 90s with nine chart entries though only one of them had managed to make it into the Top 20. They had, however, achieved a No 1 album with “Jam” in 1992. So why had they decided to break up the band just two years later? Had they fallen out with their record company Polydor? Had they fallen out with each other? I don’t have the answers but they did go out with their second biggest hit ever when “Ten Miles High” peaked at No 18. Looking at the lyrics to the song, it certainly seems like it’s a valedictory track with lines like “Ten miles high and the end is in sight” and there’s also a reference to their humble beginnings and their journey to fame with “Down by Scarborough beach to the Madison Square”. Talking of Scarborough, the TOTP captions, which disappeared halfway through on a recent show, are back with a bang but couldn’t they have found something more complimentary to say about the band other than that they were from the seaside town given that this would have been their final TOTP appearance?

Little Angels released a Best Of later in the year entitled “A Little Of The Past” and played a sold out six date tour culminating in a final gig at the Royal Albert Hall. Inevitably, they reformed in 2012 for some festival dates but have not done anything together since 2013.

It’s a second time on the show now for Roachford and “Only To Be With You” and I still can’t find a clip of either TOTP performance on YouTube. The last time they were on, the single was languishing outside the Top 40 at that unluckiest of chart positions No 41 but good fortune was on Roachford’s side as new producer Ric Blaxill gave them a prime slot anyway and the exposure propelled it up the charts. This time around they are twenty places higher at No 21 which perhaps shows that the show still had the power to make hits. Or maybe not. Despite this performance, the single went down the charts by one place the following week. It’s all very confusing.

Time for the second contender in ‘The Battle of the Exclusives’ now as Pet Shop Boys enter the ring to duke it out with Erasure. It seems somehow fitting that it’s these two artists as they always seem to go together in my mind. There’s some obvious reasons for this. Both are duos, both made synthesizer heavy pop music, both came to prominence around the same time (‘85-‘86) and both had a gay vocalist (Neil Tennant actually came out as gay in this year via an interview with Attitude magazine to the surprise of nobody). There’s one more thing though. As with Erasure, Pet Shop Boys had soundtracked my youth but by 1994 I was losing sight of them as well. Again, I’m not sure why but I didn’t seem to be interested in any of the albums they released during the rest of the decade. Maybe it was that dreadful Comic Relief song (“Absolutely Fabulous”) that finally put me off. Neil and Chris got along very well without me of course still making some fine tunes and indeed, all was not lost for me. 2002’s…ahem…”I Get Along” single was a great pop tune and just last year I finally got to see them live (the date had been postponed for two years due to the pandemic) and they were great. Back in 1994 though, I was struggling to care. This single – “Liberation” – is classic Pet Shop Boys ballad territory akin to “Being Boring” or “Jealousy” but it just seemed to pass me by.

There was a lot of fuss about the song’s video which was almost completely CGI and also had a 3D element to it which made it perfect for Cyberworld, an early 3D cinema demonstration which was shown on IMAX screens and touring roadshows throughout the UK. Given all that expense and hype, there was no way that Neil and Chris weren’t going to incorporate it into their performance here which, as Andi Peters points out, you can’t miss.

So who won ‘The Battle of the Exclusives’? Per Shop Boys edge it performance wise for me thanks to that video but Erasure got the biggest chart peak of No 4 whilst “Liberation” trailed in at No 14. However , it was the fourth of five singles taken from their “Very” album so maybe that was a factor.

The aforementioned Take That are No 1 (of course they are) with “Everything Changes”. Their fourth single to go straight in at No 1, not even Slade, The Jam, Queen nor Elvis could match that.

I said the other week that though I didn’t think much of this song, if it had been one of Wham!’s poppier moments, would we have been lauding yet another George Michael classic? I’ve worked out why I drew that comparison now; “Everything Changes” has a distinct flavour of this track from Wham!’s “Make It Big” album:

Now I find out though that this wasn’t a George Michael original after all but a cover of an Isley Brothers song! I hate it when a plan falls apart!

The play out track is yet another cover. I have to say that I have zero recall of A.M. City’s take on “Pull Up To The Bumper” by Grace Jones. The reason for that is probably because it only made No 83 in the charts and the reason for that was that it was dreadful. To say that Ric Blaxill made a big deal of predicting new entries in the Top 40 for the following week by means of a rolling script across the screen during the No 1 record, he was bloody awful at picking them for the play out music. How many duds is this now? Two? Three? Get your game together Ric!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Black Machine	How Gee	No
2	Erasure	Always	I think we’ve established that I was losing interest by this point
3	Prince	The Most Beautiful Girl In The World	I did not
4	Tony Di Bart	The Real Thing	No – I didn’t get it at all
5	Bitty McLean	Dedicated To The One I Love	Nope
6	Little Angels	Ten Miles High	Nah
7	Roachford	Only To Be With You	Negative
8	Pet Shop Boys	Liberation	See 2 above
9	Take That	Everything Changes	Never
10	A.M. City	Pull Up To The Bumper	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/m001jf1y/top-of-the-pops-07041994

TOTP 09 DEC 1993

Posted on December 7, 2022 by 80stastic

In the last post I made a claim that the No 1 was a bit of an anticlimax on the grounds that it followed the biggest boy band around who performed in the studio against a backdrop of 3D images (ooh!). By comparison, the No 1 was in its seventh week at the top and we were surely all getting a bit fed up of its video. It doesn’t seem right though does it? TOTP was always a chart based show highlighting which songs were the most popular in a chronological way via the chart countdown. Despite the use of such a linear tool, the implication is that the excitement heightens as we get to the nation’s favourite song. But what if said record doesn’t deserve such a reception? I realise this leaves me open to accusations of musical snobbery but if the No 1 is so heinous, what’s the plan? The question is especially relevant to this particular TOTP as, like a Tory minister doubling down on a failed economic policy, the ending of this show has two terrible songs.

Having said all of the above, the start of the show is pretty ropey as well. Bad Boys Inc were one of the many awful boy bands that appeared in the wake of Take That during the 90s. The whole thing reeked of cynicism with no more of a bigger example than this slushy ballad aimed at the Christmas market. After, two uptempo pop singles had made them bona fide chart stars (albeit in quite a minor way), they took that well worn path of releasing a slowie as their third single to, you know, showcase their diversity. The fact that it was shoved out into the marketplace as Christmas approached was surely just coincidence no? “Walking On Air” (note the similarity of title to established festive tune “Walking In The Air” from The Snowman) was ghastly whilst the performance here (I can’t find it in YouTube as nobody seems interested in recording it for posterity) is just as dire. The lead singer out front forever putting his hand to his heart to show his sincerity backed by three twirling, sliding goons all performing on a bed of dry ice. What a shower!

Disregarding the Bee Gees, I haven’t heard such high pitched vocals since Modern Romance did their ballad “Walking In The Rain” a decade earlier. What is it with ballads and the word ‘walking’? “Walking In Air”, “Walking In The Rain”, “Walking In Memphis” and of course who could forget George Michael’s ‘guilty feet’ in “Careless Whisper”. The record buying public showed their lack of affection for Bad Boys Inc with their own feet by walking past their local record shop and therefore not buying their single. It peaked at No 24.

Now here’s a very old track (even in 1993) which was suddenly and maybe surprisingly a very big hit. Sudden because it’s gone straight into the chart at No 5 and surprising because when it was first released in 1981 it did nothing at all sales wise. There is a reason for its explosion of popularity though and as usual it’s to do with record company promotional activities. “Controversy” was the title track from Prince’s fourth studio album and by 1993 he’d added another ten to that number so why was it plucked for single release at this point in his career? To advertise a Best Of album of course. “The Hits 1”, “The Hits 2” and “The Hits / The B sides” was a triple headed beast of a release documenting The Purple One’s best/most well known/biggest (delete as applicable) songs so far. Previous single “Peach” was released in the October to promote the set but that was a brand new composition I think. To give the Best Ofs an extra push for Christmas, another single was required and “Controversy” was selected for the job. Did I know this track? Don’t think I did. I only cottoned onto Prince from about 1983 when conversely “1999” was in the charts the first time around. Did I like it? Not that much. Was I surprised that it was such a big hit? Yes I was. As with “Peach” though, the two CD singles contained hits that weren’t included on the Hits albums plus there was a William Orbit remix of “The Future” so maybe that was it?

We’re back to this trend of the TOTP hosts telling us that an artist should have been on the show but can’t be because they’re ill/indisposed etc. I asked the other week why they bothered with this practice as they could have just shown the video without saying anything and we wouldn’t have known any better. This week, they’ve doubled down like…ah I’ve been here before haven’t I? They have made a complete spectacle of this issue though with Gabrielle. According to presenter Mark Franklin she can’t perform in the studio tonight and the reason is…Well, let’s ask Gabrielle herself because she’s in the actual studio! What?! Mark asks her if she’s OK and Gabrielle days “Not at the moment because I’ve got flu”. Got flu?! Got flu?! Why aren’t you in bed Gabrielle?! This is madness! Look, when I’ve had flu I’ve had to crawl to the bathroom if I needed the loo on my hands and knees. The idea that I could have got myself into a TV studio and been interviewed in front of a TV audience of millions is just unconscionable. I don’t wish to doubt her but really?!

Anyway, enough of the health issues, what about the music? Well, I’m guessing that Gabrielle’s record label were ever so slightly uncomfortable at this point. After the euphoria of a No 1 single with her debut single “Dreams”, might they have been expecting a bigger follow up hit than the No 9 that the unfortunately entitled “Going Nowhere” supplied? If so, then a lot must have been riding on “I Wish”. Sadly, it wasn’t really up to the task being a fairly average piece of soul/pop and it peaked at No 26. Maybe it just got lost in the Christmas rush. Gabrielle would recover to bag a further eight Top 10 hits including No 1 “Rise” in 2000. Seems like Gabrielle’s wish came true.

The Bee Gees are up to No 6 in an unexpected tilt at the Christmas No 1 spot with “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. To mark the event we get a live by satellite performance from New York. As with the vast majority of these satellite specials, it’s a total let down. Maybe I’m viewing them through 2022 eyes and in 1993 it may have been a major event but I can’t help but think it’s totally lame. A completely uneventful run through of the song performed underneath Brooklyn Bridge is interlaced with some totally non related shots of ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. And that’s it. Yes, it’s a cinematic backdrop I guess with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background and a helicopter comes into view at one point but I was more fascinated by who the fourth Bee Gee was up there with Barry, Maurice and Robin.

There’s an easy line to be written here about the next artist and the title of her latest single but I’m not that obvious. All I’ll say is that 1993 is surely a year that Dina Carroll would never forget. Five hit singles and an album that was the highest selling debut by a British female artist in UK chart history at the time? It was the stuff of dreams. The last of those five hits was “The Perfect Year” which was from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard. It seemed a bit of an anomaly to me at the time. Firstly, it wasn’t on the aforementioned album (“So Close”) which confused and upset a few punters in the Our Price store I was working in and wouldn’t appear on an album until Dina’s sophomore effort “Only Human” appeared a whole three years later.

Secondly, the schedule for its release had clearly been set to cash in on the Christmas holidays market with the lyrics even referencing New Year’s Eve but it was hampered by the extended success of previous single “Don’t Be A Stranger”. So well received had it been that it was still in the Top 10 and outsold “The Perfect Year” on the latter’s first week of release. Clearly, record label A&M would not have wanted her previous hit to be splitting sales of her new one but because of the latter’s Christmas theme, they couldn’t keep it back any later. Dina having two simultaneous hits added to the customer confusion in store:

Customer: Do you have the Dina Carroll single?

Me: Which one? There’s two

Customer: The one that’s in the charts

Me: They both are

Customer: The one that’s a big ballad

Me: They both are

Customer: Well, I’ll get her album then I’m covered

Me: Her album doesn’t have both singles on it

Customer: Are you having a laugh?

Me: Not really, no

Dina’s performance here is very professional but then she’d had plenty of practice at being on TOTP that year. It felt like she was on the show every other week. Her black and white outfit is very effective against the Wintery backdrop though those impractical, oversized sleeves must have been a nightmare at the dinner table. Also, why did they feel the need to insert some clips (presumably) from the video while Dina was singing? They looked so incongruous. Children running across a field and then staring at the camera motionless – why? Then there’s the old fella. The expression he had on his face reminded me of something and it’s this. My sadly departed mother-in-law used to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery and would sometimes bring home freebies from the pharmaceutical companies like mugs. She had one that was just an old man grinning on it. The first time I saw it I couldn’t understand why anyone would have that image on a mug and then I turned it around and saw the drug it was advertising – it was a brand of laxative. Aaah…

“The Perfect Year” had to settle for a chart peak of No 5, two places lower than “Don’t Be A Stranger”.

Four Breakers now starting with UB40 whose single “Bring Me Your Cup” I don’t recall at all. It was the third track lifted from their “Promises And Lies” album and listening to it now, it’s actually a lot better than I was expecting. It starts out very understated but forms an unexpected ear worm very quickly with its lilting rhythm allied to Ali Campbell’s soothing vocals. Should probably have been a bigger hit than No 24 but then the album had been out for over four months by then so maybe it was to be expected. Not a bad effort though.

In amongst the endless diet of Eurodance bollocks that 1993 served up there were the occasional morsels of unexpected taste. Songs that would appear for no apparent reason and then the artist would pretty much disappear again. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Spin Doctors, The Frank and Walters and this lot – Blind Melon. These US psychedelic rockers reminded me of fellow countrymen Jellyfish who similarly are known in this country for one hit and not much else despite there being so much more to them. Blind Melon’s contribution to the story of 1993 was “No Rain”, a hippy, trippy, winsome tune with some Beatles influences thrown in for good measure. It sounded like an antidote to some of the god awfulness populating the charts and yet again a complete outlier.

Helping to promote the song was the video featuring the ‘bee girl’, a tap dancer in a bee costume and large glasses who gets laughed off stage and then spends the rest of the film trying to dance for anyone who will let her. She eventually finds an unlikely outlet for her routine – a field of similarly dressed people all dancing together. The girl playing the character would become a bit of a star, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna at the MTV awards before having a career as an actress appearing in two episodes of US medical drama ER. Blind Melon themselves would have two further very minor UK chart hits before disbanding in 1999. They have reformed a couple of times since despite the drugs overdose death of vocalist Shannon Hoon.

Name a Pet Shop Boys single released in 1993? “Go West” right? Has to be. No? “Can You Forgive Her” then? Still not the one you’re thinking of? “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing” – well, no I don’t habitually spend hours trying to remember the titles of Pet Shop Boys singles but…oh, of course! That was the third track released from their “Very” album and in many ways is the quintessential PSB song. Eccentric title? Check! Swirly synth back beat? Check! Gloriously catchy, camp melody? Check! Typically deadpan vocals from Neil Tennant? Check! This was what they did best. Sadly, I think it got caught up in the Christmas rush and didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking at No 13.

The kaleidoscopic video features Chris and Neil in daft wigs that make the former look like Mike Flowers of Mike Flowers Pops (two years before anybody knew who he was) and the latter like Louis Balfour, host of The Fast Show’s Jazz Club. Nice!

The final Breaker comes from “the most successful rap group of 1993” according to host Mark Franklin. Were Cypress Hill that big?

*checks their bio*

Seems they were. The band have sold 20 million albums worldwide and in 1993 their second album “Black Sunday” went straight into the US charts at No 1 selling 261,000 copies in its first week. Their eponymous debut album was also still on the charts at the same time and they became the first hip hop artist to have two albums in the Top 10 simultaneously.

From “Black Sunday” came this third single “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That”. I’d liked the House Of Pain sounding “Insane In The Brain” (who couldn’t?) but by this one I’d probably lost interest. Maybe I had a beef with them as the album was one of those that always needed a temporary inlay card to display it otherwise the real CD cover would get nicked especially as the booklet contained 19 facts about the history of hemp and the positive attributes of cannabis. The middle class, white kids in Altrincham where I was working loved all of that stuff and especially those T-shirts and posters with the image of an alien on them with a massive reefer blazing up bearing the legend ‘Take me to your dealer’. Laughed their arses off at that every time.

“I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” peaked at No 15.

We have arrived at the first of those two terrible songs that end the show. By 1993, Cliff Richard was absolutely synonymous with Christmas. Not only had he claimed the festive No 1 twice since 1988 (thrice if you count his contribution to Band Aid II) but he seemed to have a tilt at it every year. “We Should Be Together” was his offering in 1991 peaking at No 10 and “I Still Believe In You” was strategically released in late November the following year to try and capture those Christmas sales making it to No 7. Come 1993 and Cliff was chancing his arm once more with “Healing Love”. Not a specifically Christmas themed song for once, it was actually the last of five singles released from his “The Album”…erm…album. It was co-written by Nik Kershaw who knows his way around a decent pop tune but this definitely wasn’t one of them. It’s not just that it’s a sluggish, turgid, completely unexceptional tune but the lyrics are dreadful. Really hackneyed stuff about losing the battle but winning the war and how about this for a line a seven year old could have written…

“Now I can see that you’re feeling sad…”

Come on! For this performance, Cliff has turned up in a jacket and tie and looks like he’s got his schedule wrong and was expecting to be on Wogan and not TOTP. As ever, he’s brought with him that guy from the aforementioned Modern Romance as one of his backing singers who’s been with him since “Mistletoe And Wine”.

“Healing Love” never hit a sniff at topping the charts peaking at No 19 but Cliff never really gave up on his quest for another Christmas No 1. The following year, he teamed up with his old pal Phil Everly for a double A-side of “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and a remix of his old hit “Miss You Nights” but it topped out at No 14. He couldn’t have come any closer in 1999 with the divisive “The Millennium Prayer” which actually went to No 1 and was still top of the pile with just one week to go before being toppled by Westlife. Undeterred, he went again in 2003 (“Santa’s List” – No 5) and 2006 (“21st Century Christmas” – No 2) and this year he has released a Christmas album. Cliff was 82 in October. You have to admire his longevity if not his music.

Just…just…f*****g WHY?! What were people thinking?! Oh, yeah. Of course. There was no thinking happening at all. A complete lack of brain activity. How else can you explain this total failure of any sense of taste on such a widespread scale? This monumental aberration. Nothing about “Mr Blobby” by Mr Blobby deserved anything but our complete contempt. So why was it f*****g No 1? Were 5 year olds (or their parents) buying it? When The Teletubbies became a phenomenon a few years later with the pre school population and released a record, I could just about understand parents doing just that but Mr Blobby wasn’t quite the same type of character. His beginnings weren’t on children’s TV but an early evening light entertainment show presumably not being watched by toddlers so who was his single appealing to? It certainly wasn’t funny and neither was its accompanying video which featured a number of celebrity cameos. Obviously, Edmonds was there being responsible for the whole debacle but there’s also a very young looking Jeremy Clarkson as Mr Blobby’s limo driver, Carole Vorderman, Wayne Sleep and bizarrely ex-footballer and pundit Garth Crooks. Mr Blobby is seen in various scenes where he inevitably falls over destroying everything in his path which includes parodies of four well known recent pop promos – “Addicted To Love” by Robert Palmer, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” by Snap!, “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis and “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister. The last one particularly grinds my gears for the pure reason that it uses actual footage of the original in the parody – why? We all knew which video it was lampooning when the camera switched to the lookalike Marcella Detroit so why try and install some credibility by using images of the real one? I don’t know why this especially offends me but it does. Anyway, this madness will all be over soon as Take That will be top of the charts next week and surely also the Christmas No 1 won’t it? Won’t it?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bad Boys Inc	Walking On Air	Of course not
2	Prince	Controversy	No
3	Gabrielle	I Wish	Nope
4	Bee Gees	For Whom The Bell Tolls	I did not
5	Dina Carroll	The Perfect Year	Nah
6	UB40	Bring Me Your Cup	Negative
7	Blind Melon	No Rain	No but maybe should have
8	Pet Shop Boys	I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing	No but I assume it’s on their Pop Art Best Of which I have
9	Cypress Hill	I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That	It’s another no
10	Cliff Richard	Healing Love	Never happening
11	Mr Blobby	Mr Blobby	What do you think?

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/m001frnn/top-of-the-pops-09121993

TOTP 16 SEP 1993

Posted on October 21, 2022 by 80stastic

There’s some massive tunes and stellar names on this particular TOTP starting with one of the biggest rock songs of all time. Who doesn’t know “Ace Of Spades” by Motörhead? Seriously though, who doesn’t?

Enter Motörhead fan, stage left…

MF: Alright pal. What other Motörhead songs do you know?

Me: Erm…well…there’s that one about…you know…um…ahh…Oh God! I don’t know any others!

Yes, turns out I’m not really an aficionado on Motörhead at all though I do like “Ace Of Spades” but then who doesn’t (don’t start all that again!). What I do know however is that during their early 1980s heyday I read a series of articles about the band in the Daily Mirror (our family’s choice of paper) where I learned of the classic line up of Lemmy, Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke. I also read of their tales of debauchery involving what they called ‘dodgy boilers’ who even the wet behind the ears 12 year old me knew referred to groupies who were prepared to get horizontal to meet their idols.

Sadly, all three of the classic line up have now shuffled off this mortal coil with the band officially disbanding following Lemmy’s death in 2015. Still, all us 80s kids will always have this…

The iconic tunes continue with the Pet Shop Boys treatment of The Village People classic “Go West”. This cover version had been first performed by the duo at an AIDS charity gig at the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester organised by Derek Jarman. Originally scheduled for a non-album release in 1992, it was eventually included in the set list for their fifth studio album “Very”.

I recall there being a real buzz about this single – I have a distinct memory of Simon Bates (who must have been coming to the end of his time at Radio 1) asking on air when it was going to be released. Certainly it provided a spike in sales of “Very” when it entered the chart at No 2. Somehow it never made it to that coveted top spot though.

Watching the video back now, it seems madly prophetic with Neil and Chris striding across Red Square in blue and yellow costumes which offer up images of the war in Ukraine perpetrated by Russia. This is hammered home by the intro which seems strangely redolent of the State Anthem of the Soviet Union. Obviously, nobody would have been considering any of that back in 1993 when we would probably have been marvelling at the CGI of the promo by Howard Greenhalgh which was nominated for a Grammy.

I saw the Pet Shop Boys live about six months ago with a friend and this track was a stand out inducing much hugging, swaying and singing along. Chris and Neil would never have as big a hit single again.

Another huge song now as we see the TOTP debut of Radiohead. So much has been written about “Creep” let alone the band themselves so I don’t think I can add anything much to that particular canon of work. However, these are my personal thoughts and memories for what they are worth.

I’d heard of Radiohead due to their minor hit single “Anyone Can Play Guitar” from earlier in the year but hadn’t actually heard Radiohead if you see what I mean. The initial release of “Creep” from 1992 when it failed to chart hadn’t registered on my musical radar. I’d kept meaning to give their debut album “Pablo Honey” a play on the shop stereo but never got round to it. Suddenly though, there was a huge buzz around “Creep” again. Why? It had been a big hit in Israel and gained a lot of airplay on alternative rock radio stations in the US which, in a Spinal Tap “Sex Farm” has gone Top 10 in Japan style, convinced EMI to rerelease it against the band’s wishes. Their decision was rewarded with a No 7 smash hit single.

Knowing what we do now about what the band went onto do, watching this performance back seems a little surreal. Compared to even their next album “The Bends”, “Creep” has a rather unsophisticated albeit massive sound to it. Or maybe it’s just being confronted by the shock of Thom Yorke’s peroxide blonde hair that grates. That’s not to say “Creep” isn’t a good (or even great) song just that its legacy wouldn’t be being chief representative of their catalogue. Indeed, for a while it became one of those songs that becomes an albatross around an artist’s neck. The band nearly imploded from the record company expectations of writing a similar follow up and refused to play it live for years.

For all that though, you can’t underestimate the impact of the performance here on TOTP – it blew most other songs in the chart away. That ‘ch-chunk’ guitar sound from Jonny Greenwood’s guitar was off the scale whilst Yorke’s tortured vocals could not be ignored. This was the performance Nirvana should have given on the show for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” instead of that comedy turn they served up. Certainly only Motörhead could compete on this particular show. “Creep” then – by no means Radiohead’s best song but it was still much more than just a slacker anthem.

That run of three choice tracks on the spin comes to an end then (in my humble opinion) with yet someone more slick but soulless US R’n’B courtesy of Jade. A third consecutive hit for the Chicago trio, “One Woman” was a big ballad unlike their previous two, hip-hop influenced singles “Don’t Walk Away” and “I Wanna Love You” but although it’s a very accomplished sound I’m sure, it did little for me. And hadn’t we seen the choreography with a chair routine before from Janet Jackson? Or was it Madonna? Or Liza Minnelli in Cabaret?

“One Woman” peaked at No 22 both here and in the US.

Another live by satellite performance now. This time it’s from Minneapolis and is by Lenny Kravitz. Is this the third time he’s been on the show doing “Heaven Help”? It feels like it and means I have very little left to say about this one…

…other than check out the hair on his backing band. The guitarist’s Afro is immense but then you see his drummer’s. Wow! If Roy Wood and the drummer from Wizzard had a love child…

Just the three Breakers this week starting with ex–Massive Attack singer Shara Nelson and “One Goodbye In Ten”. The follow up to Top 20 hit “Down That Road”, quite what we were meant to make of it after hearing just sixteen seconds of it here (I timed it) I have no idea. Sixteen seconds! What was the point?! Seriously though Stanley Appel, sixteen seconds?!

Having listened to the full song on YouTube, it seems to me to be a pleasant enough ditty with a Motown-esque feel to it and some nicely inserted strings but just on the wrong side of lightweight. It would peak at No 21, two places lower than her debut hit.

What the Roxette is going on here? Marie and Per were back in the charts with “It Must Have Been Love” again? Host Mark Franklin tells us it’s because of the film it was taken from Pretty Woman having its terrestrial TV premiere recently and therefore record company EMI had rereleased it to cash in on its second wave of popularity. Yes kids, back in the day before Spotify and streaming platforms had been invented allowing continuous access to just about everything song wise, events like this would happen regularly. Off the top of my head, Berlin went back into the charts with “Take My Breath Away” four years after it was a hit initially thanks to the TV showing of Top Gun and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes experienced a similar thing with “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” when Dirty Dancing made it to our TV screens four years after the cinema release of the film.

I wonder what Marie and Per felt about the rerelease? It’s not as if they hadn’t recorded any other material since “It Must Have Been Love” was originally a hit in 1990. In fact, they were very consistent visitors to our charts so would they have been pleased to see that by making No 10 in 1993, it became their third biggest hit over here of the eight singles they had released in the intervening years? Maybe they just thought about the royalties cheques.

1993 saw the first new material from Kate Bush of the decade. Her last studio album had been 1989’s “The Sensual World” and apart from her version of “Rocket Man” for the Elton John /Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”, we hadn’t heard from her since. “Rubberband Girl” was the lead single from her album “The Red Shoes” and like three of her last five singles released, would improbably peak at No 12 in the charts. Was that a good return for such a big name? I dunno. Maybe Kate was always more of an album artist and her fan base would be waiting for “The Red Shoes” itself to come out? I know my wife did.

As for the song, Kate herself dismisses it rather as:

Well, it’s a fun track […] It’s just a silly pop song really […]
Mojo magazine (UK) 2011

Other online reviews I have read say the song’s production values date it and that it feels like an outlier on the rest of the album. I don’t know about any of that but I found it engaging enough. I assume the lyrics reflect somebody bouncing back from a setback? Kate Bush does Chumbawumba? Or is it more literal than that and Kate is talking about a dancer who just wants to be supple? The album cover does depict a drawing of red ballet shoes and Kate did release a short film in conjunction with the album called The Line, The Cross And The Curve in which she played a dancer who puts on a pair of magical ballet shoes. Whatever. I thought it was OK but nowhere near the standard of some of her early career classics.

No! No! No! Not Chaka Demus And Pliers again! “Tease Me” has only just gone out of the charts and they’re immediately back in with the follow up “She Don’t Let Nobody”. I have to say I don’t recall this one despite its No 4 chart peak. “Tease Me” yeah of course and their chart topper cover of “Twist And Shout” obviously but this one? It escaped the memory bank somehow.

I wasn’t expecting much based on “Tease Me” which seemed to be full of either Chaka Demus or Pliers (I’ve no idea which) shouting “Baby Girl” or “Number One In The World” repeatedly. Having listened to it though, it could have been worse. It’s almost a proper song which I guess is not surprising seeing as it was written by soul legend Curtis Mayfield. Obviously, it’s completely ruined by the inclusion of all the rapping/toasting but you know, the template was there.

If a week is a long time in politics (and that has been proven beyond any doubt by recent events in Westminster), it is also true that a year can be an eternity in pop music. Multiply that by five and it feels like time has bent and warped and no longer exists by any temporal measures. Five years though was the real time gap between Belinda Carlisle hitting No 1 with “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” and her 1993 incarnation. By this point in her career, the hits were much smaller in the UK and non-existent in America. Her last album “Live Your Life Be Free” hadn’t yielded any Top 10 singles and neither would this, her next album, “Real” though lead single “Big Scary Animal” came close when it peaked at No 12.

I was working at the Our Price store in Stockport by now having transferred from Rochdale and the staff there were quite unforgiving of artists deemed to not be credible. Belinda came into that category and there was much mocking of the title of her latest single which I didn’t quite understand. What I did understand was that this wasn’t much of a departure from her usual fare. Pleasant song with a big hooky chorus? You betcha. Still, if it ain’t broke and all that…

The album sneaked into the Top 10 at No 9 but just a year earlier, her first Greatest Hits collection had gone to No 1 suggesting that there was an appetite for her earlier work but maybe not her new stuff. I think maybe Madonna went through a similar thing with “The Immaculate Collection” release. In 1996 though, she bucked that trend when her album “A Woman & A Man” provided her with two Top 10 UK singles.

Oh, yes. I had to watch this performance very closely to realise that the blonde haired guitarist on the left wasn’t Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo who toured with Belinda around this time and worked with her on the aforementioned “A Woman & A Man” record.

Still at No 1 are Culture Beat with “Mr.Vain” although this will be the last of four weeks at the top. The single would end up being the 10th biggest seller of 1993 in the UK. The rest of that Top 10? Oh god it was awful. Haddaway, Shaggy, 2 Unlimited, Ace Of Base…and horror upon horror another single with the prefix ‘Mr.’…”Mr.Blobby”. “Mr…f*****g…Blobby”. I give up.

Hjjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Motörhead	Ace Of Spades	I must have it on something surely?!
2	Pet Shop Boys	Go West	No but I have it on there Pop Art collection
3	Radiohead	Creep	No but I had it on one off those Best Album Ever…indie compilations
4	Jade	Oner Woman	Nah
5	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	I did not
6	Shara Nelson	One Goodbye In Ten	Nope
7	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	No
8	Kate Bush	Rubberband Girl	No but my wife had the Red Shoes album
9	Chaka Demus And Pliers	She Don’t Let Nobody	Of course not
10	Belinda Carlisle	Big Scary Animal	Negative
11	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	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/m001d09z/top-of-the-pops-16091993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 29 FEB 1996

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TOTP 03 AUG 1995

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TOTP 08 SEP 1994

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TOTP 09 JUN 1994

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TOTP 26 MAY 1994

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TOTP 19 MAY 1994

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TOTP 14 APR 1994

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TOTP 07 APR 1994

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TOTP 09 DEC 1993

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TOTP 16 SEP 1993

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