TOTP 14 MAY 1999
I’ve done a lot of themed posts lately but this one is going to just be a straight run through of the music on the show. That’s how I started out doing this blog nine years ago so maybe it’s time for a back to basics approach. Jayne Middlemiss is our host and we start with a boy band who’d just had their first No 1 with their last single. 911 had finally got to the top with a cover version of Dr Hook’s “A Little Bit More”. That had been preceded by another treatment of someone else’s song – “More Than A Woman” by the Bee Gees. And guess what? This song- “Private Number” – was yet another cover with the 1968 original by Judy Clay and William Bell having been a No 8 hit. There’s a reason for all of this – parent album “There It Is” was made up entirely of cover versions. I know boy bands taking on other people’s songs was an established tactic when it came to securing a hit single but did they really need to do a whole album of them? In fact, which artists did they put their own spin on?
*checks track listing*
Well, mostly it was the soul/R&B/disco genre that they plundered with the likes of Tavares, Heatwave, The Real Thing and Shalamar represented. However, a couple of other tracks stood out – Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “You’re The Best Thing” by The Style Council. I guess the choice of the former kind of makes sense – a genuine pop classic (I’m talking of its stature and profile rather than its musical quality) but the latter?! That’s not right is it?! Dare I listen to the 911 version? I do…
*listens to 911 version*
As expected, completely pointless! Sanitised, soulless, plastic…just horrible. Why do I put myself through these things? Anyway, “Private Number” would do the business for the trio by going Top 3 but 911’s pop star journey was coming to an end. There would be only one more hit (the No 13 “Wonderland”) from a Greatest Hits album and that was it. Lead singer Lee Brennan and Spike Dawbarn made the decision to split the group (third member Jimmy Constable wasn’t in on the decision apparently) and there would be no more until the first of a series of reunions in 2008.
As for the performance here, they show Westlife how to do it by sitting on stools throughout and dressed in white and beige – appropriately the colours of the nondescript. Only the presence of the female singer on the piano breaks up the monotony. Wikipedia tells me she is Natalie Jordan who worked with the likes of Louise and Matthew Marsden. Not much surprising there but the fact that she was one of the co-writers on the track “Superheroes” on Stormzy’s “Heavy Is The Head” album did peak my interest. One more thing. A group named after one of the most well known telephone numbers in the world singing a song called “Private Number” is a bit ironic isn’t it?
We have arrived at the point in the dance obsessed 90s where even Bryan Adams sat at the bpm counter and added a backbeat to his songs. Well, one song. For the moment anyway. Said song was “Cloud #9” or “Cloud Number Nine” as it was originally titled on the album “A Day Like Today”. The third single taken from the album, Adams decided he wanted to shake things up a bit by having it remixed. Step forward Nicholas Bracegirdle aka Chicane who’d had a hit with the track “Offshore” a couple of years before. So how different was the dance remix from the original? Having listened to both, there is a definite distinction between them but we were hardly talking the Armand van Helden remix of Tori Amos’s “Professional Widow” here. The album version is a fairly straightforward soft-rock song the like of which Adams specialised in. The remix adds an echoey, looped intro and a familiar backbeat but the basic tune remained intact. It proved to be a good decision with the single edit making No 6. The album was rereleased with the Chicane remix added as an extra track which has become the recognised and accepted version.
This performance sees Bry with a full on turn of the millennium floppy haircut in stark contrast to the slick, short back and sides he sports today. The all white backdrop and outfits that him and his band are wearing jar a bit (who did they think they were – Westlife? 911?) but I assume it’s to tie in with the idea of ‘clouds’? Adams would see out the decade with a second Best Of album and started the 2000s with an improbable No 1 single when he returned the favour and supplied (electronically altered) vocals for the Chicane single “Don’t Give Up”.
The saga of Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right Buy It’s Okay” and its multiple TOTP appearances has only just ended and we’re immediately embroiled in another such chronicle. Yes, just three weeks on from the final performance of her previous single, here was Whitney back with the follow up “My Love Is Your Love”. Now, I posited the theory the other week that the reason we got all these repeat appearances on the show was that Whitney’s management had insisted that she would only do a studio appearance for the BBC if it was shown a certain amount of times. Could the follow up be a part of the same deal? It would be shown three times in total so if you add that figure to the five times that “It’s Not Right Buy It’s Okay” was shown then that’s quite a package especially if the performances for both songs were recorded together in the studio one after the other which I’m thinking is maybe possible. To be clear, I haven’t gone forensic over this – it just seems likely to me.
As with the promotion for Geri Halliwell’s “Look At Me”, the marketing behind this one was comprehensive. The single wasn’t even released until June 21st and we wouldn’t see it again on the show until July 2nd, six weeks after this debut performance. Record label Arista were playing a long game. It worked though. “My Love Is Your Love” would debut at No 2 and spend seven weeks in the Top 10 whilst the knock on sales of its parent album saw it spend over a month inside the Top 5.
As for the song’s sound, listening back to it now was like hearing Whitney do her best Fugees impression and then, lo and behold, I read that it was produced by Wyclef Jean and it all made sense. There’s also an element of Bob Marley in there (whom the Fugees covered themselves of course) but what’s most revealing is Whitney’s restrained vocals on it which belie her ‘shouty diva’ persona. As we’ll be coming back to this one, I’ll leave it there for now.
Who?! Fierce? I’ve got nothing but clearly they were yet another R&B girl group. Would it be fair to say that they were not in the very elite strata of that genre? By that I mean they were more N-Tyce than TLC. Their discography shows that they had four chart hits including this one “Dayz Like That” and a version of Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love” which went Top 3 in 2000 which suggests I should have a better memory of them.
Hang on though. A post on X by @TOTPFacts has rung a bell….
I do remember this! I have a weakness for Deal Or No Deal and the late working hours of my job mean I’m quite often around in the daytime when it’s on. Stephen Mulhearn asked Chantel about being in a girl group but I don’t think I realised it was one that had achieved actual chart success. Well, at least it’s a spin on being on the ‘Identity Parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks!
The staggered and ultimately truncated chart career of Kula Shaker was nearly at its end with the release of “Shower Your Love”. For a band that once appeared to have the world at their feet, it was quite the implosion. After their first album “K” had become the fastest selling debut album by a UK artist eventually going double platinum and a BRIT Award for ‘British Breakthrough Act’, the road to further success was blocked by a series of rucks with the press. The long established tabloid tactic of building someone up only to knock them down came into play with the show business family tree of Crispian Mills a target. The singer’s ill advised comments about the cultural references and mystical properties of the Swastika symbol certainly didn’t help either. Then there was the loss of momentum caused by delays to release schedules causing a gap of two and a half years between albums punctuated by the appearances of just two singles. The second of those – “Sound Of Drums” – was meant to be the lead single from sophomore album “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts” but the parent collection wasn’t in the shops for another year. By the time it came out, it sold just a sixth of its predecessor “K”.
It was all a bit of a shame as I’d always liked them. “Shower Your Love”, for example, is a great tune if a little psychedelic heavy. It would prove to be the band’s last Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 14. After splitting in 1999, they reconvened in 2004 and have been a going concern ever since releasing six studio albums in that time with the most recent arriving in January this year and securing their highest chart position (No 13) since “Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts”. Like those other 90s bands Jesus Jones and The Bluetones, they continue to play live gigs to audiences who, like them, aren’t ready for the story to end just yet.
There’s a big dance tune in the charts at No 12 which TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey can’t ignore so yet again he’s had to come up with an ever more desperate way to showcase it on prime time TV. There have been some epic failures on this score throughout the 90s era of the show and this one is no exception. There may be a reason why, for Pete Heller’s hit “Big Love”, they chose to go with two men wearing (paper mache?) elephant heads (do they feature in the promo video?) and a third with a cardboard box on his noggin (a parody of stacking boxes dance moves?) but I really can’t be arsed to look into it. To add to the surreal nature of the performance, a stop-frame effect has been added. Was this meant to somehow imitate a club atmosphere with strobe lighting or something? It just seems to elongate time and make the whole thing last twice as long as it should.
So who was/is Pete Heller? Well, he’s a house music producer from Brighton…wait, what? Another prominent dance music figure from the East Sussex seaside resort? If dance music was a football club, it would be my beloved Chelsea – both are obsessed with Brighton. Whilst we’ve plundered The Seagulls for the players Marc Cucurella, Robert Sanchez and Moises Caicedo for a combined price of £200 million (and disastrously pinched their manager Graham Potter), Brighton has given dance music Fatboy Slim, Phats & Small and now Pete Heller as well? No doubt “Big Love” was a bangin’ anthem but I don’t have to tell you that this did/does nothing for me do I?
The best song on the show? I think so (with an honourable mention to Kula Shaker) and it was certainly the track that made me think I should own a copy of “Performance And Cocktails” by the Stereophonics. The third hit from the album, “Pick A Part That’s New” had all those components I normally look for in a song – great hooks, edgy guitar riffs and strong vocals. After “The Bartender And The Thief” and “Just Looking” both went Top 5, the fact that the album’s next single could also pull off that same chart achievement shows the quality and strength of its material. Their promotion from just another post-Britpop band to major rock stars was under way.
Written about feeling underwhelmed by the band’s first trip to America, Kelly Jones explained that he felt he’d seen it all before through the medium of TV and films and that perception didn’t match up to the reality. I have to say that isn’t what I experienced the first time I visited New York in 1994. In fact, it did feel like being in a film walking down Fifth Avenue.
Oh God. How did it come to this? For the first time ever the Top 3 is a complete boy band zone being occupied by 911, Westlife and the Backstreet Boys who have their first and (mercifully) only No 1 single with “I Want It That Way”. And guess what? Next week’s No 1 is *SPOILER ALERT* bloody Boyzone! It’s not like we weren’t warned about Backstreet Boys though. Their last five singles peaked at:
2 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 2
A chart topper was always likely with those sorts of numbers. The song that eventually did it for them was awful though. Cynically designed in the fiendish Dr Bad Pop Music’s laboratory, it brainwashed the country’s female teenage population into thinking these chancers were a big thing, nay the real deal even. They were neither. Well, they were a big deal in terms of selling records but since when was that an indication of anything resembling talent. Even Mr Blobby had a No 1. For the first few times I heard “I Want It That Way”, I could have sworn that, in the second line of the chorus, they were singing “ain’t nothing but a piss-take” as opposed to “ain’t nothing but a mistake”. Maybe it was my bias influencing my ears as piss-takers was definitely what this lot were. They out-Westlife Westlife, 911 and even Bryan Adams in this performance with their stools, all white outfits and fake earnest nonsense. This was just deplorable stuff. 1999 – you have a lot to answer for.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | 911 | Private Number | Never |
| 2 | Bryan Adams | Cloud #9 | Nope |
| 3 | Whitney Houston | My Love Is Your Love | Nah |
| 4 | Fierce | Dayz Like That | No |
| 5 | Kula Shaker | Shower Your Love | Good song but no |
| 6 | Pete Heller | Big Love | Not my bag at all |
| 7 | Stereophonics | Pick A Part That’s New | Not the single but I had the album |
| 8 | Backstreet Boys | I Want It That Way | 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/m002s7dj/top-of-the-pops-14051999
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 