Queen

TOTP 21 DEC 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s four days before Christmas in 1995, a time of great excitement and anticipation yet the line up for this TOTP looks as flat as week old cola. The decision making process around this particular running order is as sound as Tory MP Chris Philp’s grasp of geography. For example, who thought that the show should build towards a headline act that most of us had never heard of. Sure there are some gigantic names in there but they’re all represented by a promo video. The actual acts in the studio are (mostly) not what you’d call box office. At least the presenters would have been considered as rising stars – Ronan and Stephen from Boyzone (who seemed to be on the show every week around this time).

We start with Corona who by anybody’s standards couldn’t have been seen as a massive deal well over a year after their biggest hit “Rhythm Of The Night” could they? Well, they had followed it up with two Top 10 singles during 1995 so maybe I’m being unfair to them? Nah, I don’t think so. I worked in a record shop selling those hits and I couldn’t have told you what they were called without looking them up even with a gun to my head. For the record, this one was called “I Don’t Wanna Be A Star” and would be their last UK Top 40 entry (if you discount a megamix single the following year which I do) peaking at No 22. Listening to it now, it has a very retro feel to it. Disco strings and even handclaps are in the mix giving it a sheen of 70s authenticity. It’s actually not too objectionable and no doubt would have gone down a storm at work Christmas parties across the country. Even so, it’s hardly a classic tune by a legendary name is it?

Next up we have *checks notes* Mary Kiani *double checks notes* yes, that’s right Mary Kiani who was *triple checks notes* the vocalist with dance act the Time Frequency (one Top 10 single) before going solo and achieving two Top 20 hits. OK, I’m laying it on thick but really TOTP?! Corona followed by Mary Kiani?! You’d feel shortchanged if you were in the studio audience for this one (unless you were a Boyzone fan I guess). “I Give It All To You” was not one of those two Top 20 hits as it peaked at No 35 (yes, despite this prime time exposure, the single tumbled down the charts the following week giving more clout to the argument of why was Mary on the show in the first place). As opposed to her first hit “When I Call Your Name” which was an M People-lite dance/pop track, this one is a big ballad complete with bagpipes no less. Sadly, if she thought she was coming across as the Scottish Celine Dion*, I’m afraid that this track screams Eurovision Sing Contest. The single was actually a double A-side with a song called “I Imagine” but reviewing two Mary Kiani songs is beyond me I’m afraid.

*Dion did go a bit Celtic on her mega hit “My Heart Will Go On” from the Titanic movie which featured a tin whistle. She couldn’t have been inspired by Mary Kiani could she?

In the back end of 1984, the Top 40 seemed to be overrun with Queen related hits. “Hammer To Fall” and “Thank God It’s Christmas” were split by Freddie Mercury solo single “Love Kills”. Fast forward eleven years and there was another plethora of product from the band. No 1 album “Made In Heaven” came out at the start of November preceded by the single “Heaven For Everyone”. And just as there had been a Christmas single in 1984, so there was in 1995 when “A Winter’s Tale” was released two weeks before the big day. Maybe it was the fast ride that was working in retail over the festive period but this one, like so many, passed me by. It’s very reflective and melancholy in nature as you would expect given that it was one of the last songs recorded by Freddie Mercury before his death but it kind of drifted over me when watching this TOTP repeat. Tellingly, it hasn’t replaced that 1984 single in Christmas compilation albums nor do you hear it played in the radio much every December. Maybe there just wasn’t room for two seasonal hits called “A Winter’s Tale” and given the choice, I’ll take David Essex every time.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I’m not convinced that the audience would have been wowed or in awe by being in the presence of the next artist The Levellers. Not that they’re a terrible band – I don’t mind a bit of their brand of folk/Celtic/anarchy-punk/rock (how do you categorise them?) every now and again. It’s just that they didn’t exactly exude glamour and celebrity did they? In truth, I think those elements would be the last thing that The Levellers wanted to convey? They didn’t court the trappings of a pop star life like Spandau Ballet for instance. Look at the lyrics to this track “Just The One” for evidence of this claim. An observation on hedonism and why we like to go out and get wasted one way or another (though we know it’s not good for us) just because we can. Not really the sort of self knowledge and reflection you’d expect from a band gorging on fame. This was the third and final single taken from the band’s No 1 album “Zeitgeist” and would peak at No 12, the fourth of their last six single releases to do so. Now there’s a band living up to their name which meant ‘making something equal or similar’.

Now to another music legend but who’s not in the TOTP studio – here’s Madonna with “Oh Father”. Just like Queen before her, Madge’s video has a wintery feel to it and also just like Queen, the entry into the charts by this single meant she had two songs in the Top 40 simultaneously*

*Queen had “A Winter’s Tale” as a new entry and previous hit “Heaven For Everyone” in the lower reaches of the charts whilst Madonna had this one and “You’ll See” still in the Top 40.

Released to promote her “Something To Remember” ballads collection, “Oh Father” was actually not a new song but a track from her 1989 album “Like A Prayer”. In America, it had been the fourth single lifted from it and caused a commotion there for two reasons. Firstly, it halted Madonna’s run of Top 5 hits stretching back fifteen singles when it peaked at No 20. Secondly, the video (or more specifically the scene where the protagonist’s mother’s corpse is seen in her funeral casket with her lips sewn together) caused MTV to pull it from its schedules until the scene was removed. Madonna called their bluff and refused to stating she would cancel future deals with the station if they refused to show it. In the UK, “Oh Father” wasn’t released as a single in 1989 due to the controversy and instead the Christmassy “Dear Jessie” got to be the last Madonna single of the 80s over here. In the intervening six years, that standpoint had clearly softened though interestingly, the clip shown here doesn’t include the lips scene. As for the song, it was clearly written about Madonna’s troubled relationship with her father and it swoops and soars with some power though it’s all a little too melodramatic for me. It would peak at No 16 in the UK making it her joint lowest charting single over here during the 80s and 90s combined*.

* “Take A Bow” peaked at No 16 in 1994.

They’re not one of the legendary names on the show tonight but you still couldn’t escape The Beatles in December of 1995. Not only were they at No 3 in the chart with “Free As A Bird”, not only was there a version of “Come Together” in the Top 30 courtesy of The Smokin’ Mojo Filters (Pauls McCartney and Weller plus the Gallagher brothers) via the “Help!” charity album but there was also this – Jimmy Nail with a cover of John Lennon’s “Love”. Now this song is not to be confused with another Lennon composition “Real Love” (even though “Love” begins with the lines “Love is real, real is love”) which would become the second Beatles single from the “Anthology” project following “Free As A Bird”. No, this track dated back to 1970 and Lennon’s debut solo album on which it featured. I didn’t know it from then (only being two years old at the time) but I was aware of it from its 1982 release as a single to promote the “John Lennon Collection” album that went to No 1 selling nearly a million copies. The single itself missed the Top 40 peaking one place below it but I must have heard it on the radio at the time I guess. Thirteen years later and it would be reactivated by Jimmy Nail as the second single from his “Big River” album. The track’s solemn power quite suits Jimmy’s doleful vocals though its No 33 peak suggests that better release scheduling would have benefited its chart chances – I think it got swallowed up in the Christmas rush.

The gimmick about having his son on stage with him for this performance doesn’t really work for me. For a start, I really don’t believe he’s a child guitar prodigy – his hand barely moves along that guitar neck. I wonder if his son followed his Dad into show business?

*checks internet*

Well, that’s not very satisfactory. All I can find out about him is that his name’s Tommy. Maybe he went on to become a pinball wizard?

Despite not getting to No 1, I’m prepared to state that “Wonderwall” is one of Oasis’s most well known and enduring tunes. A go to song for buskers around the world, it can also divide opinion. Judging by some of the online opinions offered after featuring on these TOTP repeats, some people really can’t stand it. I have to say that it’s not one of my favourites of theirs and I was a bit of an Oasis fan. I bought a lot of their singles during this period yet somehow I didn’t feel the need to purchase this one. Maybe it suffered from over exposure even back then. After all, it was another of those hits that was on the chart at this time alongside Everything But The Girl, Boyzone and Björk – it spent 11 weeks yo-yoing around the Top 10. Truth be told, I don’t think it’s even the best song on the CD single – that would be track number four “The Masterplan”. Now if that had been chosen as the single, I probably would have bought it.

Say the words ‘Dog Eat Dog’ to anyone of my age (I’m 56 in a few weeks -56!) and I’m guessing they’ll immediately think of the Adam And The Ants hit. I’m pretty sure though that you could also say those words to anyone of any age and they wouldn’t automatically think of an American punk rap group of that name who had one hit single in this country called “No Fronts”. Who the hell were these guys and why were they on the show?! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Hmm. Sounds a bit to me like a vanity project then. Look at this shiny, new act that I give to you. Anyway, Dog Eat Dog kind of remind me of EMF. For many of us, the first time we saw those cheeky little Epsom Mad Funkers was when they performed at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party so there’s an obvious similarity there plus their sound wasn’t a million miles away from each other though Dog Eat Dog were a little more rap based? Having said that, the sax sample in the chorus of “No Fronts: The Remixes” (to quote its full title) sounds like it was lifted direct from Spandau Ballet. It’s actually very catchy (just as EMF’s “Unbelievable” was) but somehow I just don’t find it very authentic. I think it might be the fact that the band themselves don’t look convincing. The bass player resembles American stand up Emo Philips (famed for his lank hair and idiot savant delivery) whilst the lead singer has the most sensible looking haircut ever seen on someone in a band. In fact, he looks like that guy who plays Bumper, the leader of the Barden Treblemakers a cappella group from the Pitch Perfect films.

Dog Eat Dog managed to get to No 9 in the UK charts with this single, their only Top 40 hit in this country. Apparently, they’re still a going concern with their last album coming as recently as 2023 but the chances of a Dog Eat Dog revival over here are zero and I’m adamant about that.

Four days after this TOTP aired, “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson was named as the UK’s Christmas No 1. My inclination at the time was that it probably wouldn’t be as it had already been at the top of the charts for three weeks by that point so I thought it might run out of legs just before the finishing line allowing The Mike Flowers Pops to steal in at the final moment. I made a mistake. What would prove to be another mistake (if an enjoyable one) would be the decision to hold our Our Price Christmas do (Stockport branch) at a member of staff’s house on the evening of the 23rd December. The whole shop took an oath together that we would all turn up for work the next day (Christmas Eve) no matter what went down – no exceptions – and you know what, we all turned up. The state we turned up in was another matter. I arrived home at 5.00 am and woke up two hours later with my face in a bowl of cereals. Somehow I hauled my arse into work and was actually the first person there. As we all assembled, it was obvious that a few members of staff still smelt of booze so strongly that they had to be kept away from serving the public and so were assigned back room duties or cashing up. Somehow, the day finally came to an end and I wound my way home for the second time. On arriving in our flat, my wife had some friends from work round whom I astonished by eating seven bags of crisps on the spin (crazy nibbles). I have a memory of Michael Jackson being announced as Christmas No1 the next day and my wife saying “I’m not having that”, turning off the TV and playing “The Candy Man” by Sammy Davis Jr instead. Quite right too.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1CoronaI Don’t Wanna Be A StarNo
2Mary KianiI Give It All To YouBut I don’t want it Mary – no
3QueenA Winter’s TaleNope
4The LevellersJust The OneI did not
5MadonnaOh FatherNegative
6Jimmy NailLoveNah
7OasisWonderwallI didn’t somehow
8Dog Eat DogNo Fronts: The RemixesNever happened
9Michael JacksonEarth SongI choose Sammy Davies Jr instead

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/m001y56w/top-of-the-pops-21121995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 NOV 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

Woah! We’re into November in these 1995 TOTP repeats – that year is nearly over already! Not that I would have been thinking like that working in a record shop with the hectic festive trading period looming. I did ten Christmases with Our Price and they seemed to get progressively harder with the passing of every year. Maybe it was just the ageing process (I was 22 when I did my first and in my early 30s at the time of the last one) that meant I found them more and more tiring. Or maybe it was that the company expected us to get through them on less and less staff each year whilst simultaneously beating last year’s sales. I’d felt energised by the hustle and bustle of my very first Christmas but that feeling had dissipated over the years and coming to work had lost its sense of fun.

Presenting this TOTP though was a man who looked like he’d had loads of fun during his career as the lead singer of Madness what with all those wacky videos throughout the early part of the 80s. Whilst the band were on one of their hiatuses, Suggs undertook an initially successful solo career in this year keeping his profile high and affording him this ‘golden mic’ opportunity and what an opportunity! He got to host the show that had Madonna on it in person in the studio for the first time in eleven years! Suggs used this chance to hone his presenting skills and went on to secure the job of host on…oh yeah…Channel 5’s karaoke show Night Fever. Oh dear. Unbelievably, that show didn’t ruin his TV career and he went on to present shows including Salvage Squad, Inside Out and Disappearing London which won three Royal Television Society awards including one for himself as ‘Presenter of the Year’. Wow! Literally a few of days ago, I was listening to Gary Davies’s Sounds of the 80s show on Radio 2 and he announced that he was being joined by Suggs as co-host next week. I then saw him on The Jonathan Ross Show performing with Madness their new single “Round We Go”. All this proves that you can’t keep a good man down.

Right, that’s quite the lengthy intro so let’s get to the music and we start with a great tune. Echobelly were really hitting their stride by this point in their career with new single “King Of The Kerb” the second hit from their Top 5 album “On”. With this, “Great Things” and “Insomniac” (from their debut album “Everyone’s Got One”), the band had come up with a really strong trio of tracks. I wasn’t the only one who thought that – Madonna had shown an interest in signing the band to her Maverick label. Do you think they had a chat about it in the green room after this show? They ultimately didn’t sign due to their existing contractual arrangements and it was a change in said arrangements that would derail the band’s career. Having signed to Rhythm King with their records released on offshoot label Fauve, when the former’s distribution deal with Sony subsidiary Epic came to an end in 1996, a new deal was signed with Arista Records of the BMG group. This had the effect of Rhythm King being essentially shut down and subsumed by Arista. The band had reservations about the change of label and decided to stay with Epic. The contractual wrangling and singer Sonya Madan’s health problems (a potentially fatal thyroid issue) meant a third album “Lustra” wasn’t released for another two years by which point the band’s shine (and indeed that of Britpop) had lost its…well…lustre. The album only made No 47 in the charts. Echobelly have had various lengthy hiatuses since but are still a going concern and indeed are on tour later this year.

Talking of commercial declines, here’s another band who were starting down the other side of their own particular hill of success. MN8 began the year with a bang and a No 2 record in “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” and followed it up with two other Top 10 hits. By the time of fourth single “Baby It’s You” though, their chart positions were more of a knoll than a mountain. And rightly so by my reckoning. Although that first hit was annoying, it was catchy. This though, well it was just bland R&B styled pop wasn’t it? Its peak of No 22 could perhaps be explained away as the natural state for a fourth single from an album that had been out for six months as could the No 25 peak of its fifth “Pathway To The Moon”. However, when the lead single from the second album could only get to No 15 the following year, the alarm bells must have been ringing. That second album – “Freaky” – was a complete sales fail peaking at No 114. There has been no new material released by MN8 since though supposedly there have been talks over the years about a reunion.

Next, another showing of the video for “Heaven For Everyone” by Queen. The promo features footage from the films A Trip To The Moon, The Impossible Voyage and The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon all by French filmmaker Georges Méliès. This wasn’t the first time that the band had used this technique – the video for 1984’s “Radio Ga Ga” incorporated images from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Perhaps not surprising as they were both made by the same director, David Mallett. However, this isn’t the one that’s shown here. A second video directed by Simon Pummell was included on the VHS release of Made In Heaven: The Films featuring performance artist Stelarc operating a robotic hand.

The Monday after this TOTP aired, the album “Made In Heaven” was released. It went straight to the top of the charts and despite only being available for two months was the 7th best selling album in the UK in 1995. The power and pull of Freddie Mercury was still very much alive after four years after his death.

It’s another performance of “Thunder” by East 17 now as they’ve landed in the charts at No 4 following their ‘exclusive’ appearance two weeks ago. Although they were hardly down the dumper at this point, for me at least, this period of the career was less than impressive. I’d liked their early singles – “Deep” was a great song- whilst you couldn’t help but take note of their scoring the previous year’s Christmas No 1. By the time of third album “Up All Night” though, the formula seemed to be failing. Sure they were still having hits and the album sold well but it did half the amount predecessor “Steam” had done. In a sure fire move that the wobbles had set in with record label London Records, their next album release was a Greatest Hits collection. Just fourteen months on from this TOTP, Brian Harvey (who looks a bit like Phil Mitchell in this performance if you squint) would give that radio interview and the band would start to implode. By the way, had they been giving fashion advice to MN8? Those big jackets looked very East 17.

P.S. The Walthamstow outfit’s erstwhile rivals Take That would release a single in 2009 called “Up All Night”. What are the chances eh?

And another band who have been on the show in recent weeks! This time it’s UB40 with their hit “Until My Dying Day” taken from their “Best Of Volume Two” album. Admittedly it’s not just second studio appearance as this time they are live by satellite from Brooklyn in the shadow of its famous bridge. As a location, it’s a step up from the university car park that Diana King performed in the other week but it’s still not great. For one thing, hasn’t this location been used by other artists before (or perhaps from the Manhattan side of the bridge?). Secondly, it’s not quite the shot of a tree we got during that Diana King performance but we do get a couple of views of just the bridge without the band on camera at all. Now some might say less of UB40 filling your TV screen was a good thing but it does seem rather odd in retrospect. These ‘satellite’ performances were really outstaying their welcome by this point.

Here’s yet another song I don’t remember at all but in my defence, there’s a good reason for that – it wasn’t a hit in the UK. Yes, it’s one of those rare occasions when the TOTP producers decided to give an ‘exclusive’ slot to a single that would fail to break into our Top 40. On reflection, giving such a platform to “Rock Steady” by Bryan Adams and Bonnie Raitt seems a strange decision. Sure Bry had become a units shifting behemoth in the 90s due to that Robin Hood song and indeed, had been at No 4 in the UK earlier in the year with “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” from the Don Juan DeMarco soundtrack. But Bonnie? A huge star in the States no doubt but over here, she’d only ever had one minor hit single when “You” made No 31 in 1994. In my head, she was the sort of artist whose albums would be featured in the Recommended Releases section in Our Price – not a hot enough record to guarantee sales but maybe a few could be squeezed out of it if it was discounted for a couple of weeks. The UK just didn’t really get her fusion of country/blues/rock. Look at these contrasting chart positions:

AlbumYearUS Chart PeakUK Chart Peak
Nick Of Time1989151
Luck Of The Draw1991238
Longing In Their Hearts1994126

“Rock Steady” was taken from Bonnie’s first live album “Road Tested” – yep, a live album. For an artist who had failed to set the UK charts alight with her studio albums, the idea that a live album would suddenly reverse that trend seemed an audacious strategy by her record label. Predictably, it did nothing over here.

Having spent a lot of words decrying Bonnie’s appearance on the show, I should say that my wife quite likes her. Well, she likes one of her songs to be more accurate. “Something To Talk About” featured on the soundtrack to the 1995 film of the same name starring Dennis Quaid, Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick. One last thing to note here is that in his intro, Suggs depicts the duet as a ‘battle of the larynxes’ and pits Bonnie versus Bryan with a “ding ding round one” remark. Now isn’t that reminiscent of the aforementioned Night Fever show he would go on to host?

Suggs goes old skool for his next link by donning a bowler hat and sporting an umbrella – all classic props from the ‘nutty boys’ video heyday. It seems though that there may have been some sartorial collusion with the next act who are McAlmont & Butler with vocalist David matching Suggs in the chapeau department. Whatever this duo released after the towering epic that was debut single “Yes” it was destined not to match its magnificence. So it was with “You Do”. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good song – it was, it is but inevitably it felt a bit after the Lord Mayor’s show.

Their album “The Sound Of…McAlmont & Butler” appeared in late November though it was really just the two aforementioned hits and all the extra tracks from their CD singles which may explain its minor chart peak position of No 33. By then, the duo had parted ways anyway. An interview in the NME given by McAlmont about the lack of substance to his relationship with Butler plus some unfounded accusations of his homophobia hastened the split. Both pursued solo projects (Bernard’s debut album “People Move On” is a personal favourite) before a reunion in 2002 ushered in second album “Bring It Back”. Another prolonged sabbatical then occurred before the duo toured together in 2015.

And so to the big, nay HUGE exclusive performance. With her first appearance on the show in person for eleven years it’s….Madonna! I’m pretty sure this would have created some headlines back in the day. Not seen in the TOTP studio since that performance of “Like A Virgin” with that pink wig, Madonna suddenly found the time to be in the country to promote her latest single “You’ll See”. A new track written for her ballads collection “Something To Remember”, it’s a mature, emotionally charged love song who that Madge delivers competently which I think was the point of the whole project – to get people talking about her as a recording artist again , as a singer with an actual voice rather than the controversy courting, media baiting spectacle she had become. To that end, she appears here decidedly grown up in a dressed down yet stylish all black outfit and a classic, soft hairstyle. No gimmicks, no button pushing flashes of flesh – just a woman, her voice and a song to sing. And it works, though I have to say listening back to it now that it almost seems like a rehash of her 1986 ballad “Live To Tell”. It would return Madonna to the UK Top 5 whilst the album sold 10 million copies worldwide.

In 2024, is Madonna still relevant? I’m sure she still has a huge, global fanbase but is she as big a deal these days as a Taylor Swift (announced just yesterday as a billionaire!), a Miley Cyrus or even a countrified Beyoncé? I’m not sure. I think I would wish for her a more demure tail end of her career. All that Madame X stuff seemed a bit desperate. Madonna became one of the most famous people on the planet but even she’ll see that you can’t hold back the march of time.

Coolio and L.V. remain at No 1 with “Gangsta’s Paradise”. This record really was a phenomenon sales wise. Over two million copies sold in the UK alone, it would be our second best selling single of the year (only the bizarre Robson & Jerome craze prevented it from being top of the pile). Despite only being No 1 here for two weeks, it would spend the next five weeks either at No 2 or No 3. There was no quick descent down the charts for this monster. So how come it only got those two weeks at the top here? *SPOILER ALERT* Bloody Robson & Jerome again wasn’t it! Their single “I Believe” knocked it off the top spot and remained there for four weeks. Add that to their version of “Unchained Melody” (the aforementioned best selling single in the UK of 1995) and they had quite a lot to answer for this year.

Back to “Gangsta’s Paradise” though and its presence in the film Dangerous Minds meant that the movie’s soundtrack was also a massive seller topping the American album chart and going triple platinum. Despite it no longer being the UK No 1, we’ll be seeing it on TOTP twice more in the repeats to come. Like I said before, it was an absolute phenomenon.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1EchobellyKing Of The KerbNo but I had a Best of with it on
2MN8Baby It’s YouNever
3QueenHeaven For EveryoneNegative
4East 17ThunderNope
5UB40Until My Dying DayNo
6Bryan Adams and Bonnie RaittRock SteadyNah
7McAlmont & ButlerYou DoNo I didn’t but I had their album
8MadonnaYou’ll SeeI did not
9Coolio / L.V.Gangsta’s ParadiseI was one of the few that didn’t

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/m001xhz8/top-of-the-pops-02111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 19 OCT 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, a seismic event shook the UK. Bet Lynch left Coronation Street! Yes, after a solid run of 25 years on the soap, the character (played by Julie Goodyear) was finally leaving the show. She would return for a couple of guest appearances in 2002 and 2003 but her days as the landlady of the Rover’s Return came to an end on 16th October 1995. An iconic figure, she bestrode the cobbles of Weatherfield in her leopard skin print outfits and bleached blonde beehive hairdo with purpose and identity, one of life’s survivors. Not that I was watching Coronation Street back then. I think I’d long given up on it and so probably missed Bet’s grand departure. I think I must have been about to start watching Hollyoaks though with its first episode airing just four days after this TOTP. Anyway, I wonder if the influence of Bet Lynch can be spotted in any of the acts in this episode.

There’s no evidence of one of Coronation Street’s most memorable characters in this week’s hosts who are comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring again (they’d presented a show back in the May of this year as well). I can’t imagine that either of them even watched the soap at the time – it probably wouldn’t have aligned well with their brand of satirical humour. Lee’s hair here is quite the stand out. I recall those curtains-style haircuts being popular in the mid 90s but he seems to have taken it way beyond that with his hairstyle verging on Hasidic Judaism.

The first act tonight is Wildchild and whilst you may not remember the name, their hit will sound familiar not least because it was a hit three times over. Originally released in April 1995 under the title of “Legends Of The Dark Black Pt 2 (Renegade Master Mix)”, it peaked at No 34. Six months later, as was the way of dance records in this year, this version was released as simply “Renegade Master” when it topped out at No 11. In January 1998, the track was remixed by Fatboy Slim and was rereleased as “Renegade Master ‘98” and it peaked at No 3.

That’s the stats dealt with but what about the actual track? Was it any good? Well, you know me, I’m no dance head so I’m not best qualified to answer that question but watching this performance back, there didn’t seem to be much to it at all. Basically it’s just a couple of samples (“Eye Examination” by Del the Funky Homosapien for the riff and “One For The Trouble” by A.D.O.R. for the vocals)* worked up into a full blown track.

*Yes, obviously I had to look this up!

The person behind Warchild, whom I assume is the guy on stage here, was Roger McKenzie who tragically passed away just weeks after this performance from an undiagnosed heart condition. With such a dance oriented hit, the TOTP producers faced the recurring dilemma of how to showcase it. In this case, it was left to McKenzie to lead a dance troupe of four dressed in military fatigues in a heavily synchronised routine. Sort of reminiscent of Janet Jackson circa her “Rhythm Nation 1814” era.

By my reckoning this is the fourth TOTP appearance from Smokie for their sweary hit “Living Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice?)” which seems extraordinary but then it did stay on the Top 40 for 14 weeks of which 8 were inside the Top 10. Thankfully, the merciful gods of the UK charts have seen fit to spare us mere mortals the horror of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown being on the show so it’s left to the studio audience to insert the ‘bleeps’. Conversely though, this makes the whole putrid nonsense seem even more bizarre with a group of middle aged men still clearly stuck squarely in their 70s heyday singing a song to a crowd of youngsters, who have no idea who they were or are, waiting to shout out “Alice? Who the bleep is Alice?!”. At least Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown’s objectionable presence clearly categorised the whole odious exercise as a novelty record. Without him there it was just downright weird. Deservedly, Smokie never had another UK Top 40 hit.

No sign of Bet in this next song though it is inspired by five fictional female characters or rather the aircraft they piloted. If anybody reading this was /is a fan of the Gerry Anderson show Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons then you will be familiar with the Angels and their Angel Interceptors fighter planes. Code named Destiny, Symphony, Rhapsody, Melody and Harmony, they defended the Spectrum organisation’s airborne HQ Cloudbase from enemy attack. Thinking about it, how did Ash know about Captain Scarlet?! Wasn’t their debut album famously named “1977” after the year they were born in (and the year that the first Star Wars film came out)? So they were 18 in 1995? How did they know about a TV series that first aired in 1967? Remember, this was well before the internet was widely available and YouTube was yet to be invented. Well, Wikipedia tells me that the show was rebroadcast on BBC2 in 1993 following the success of the Thunderbirds repeats the year before so I’m guessing that would be how it came into the band’s cultural reference framework.

Whatever the origins of the song and how they came about, what couldn’t be denied was that “Angel Interceptor” was a worthy follow up to “Girl From Mars”. Cut from (roughly) the same cloth, it belts along at pace but doesn’t sacrifice melody to maintain that speed resulting in a pretty nifty tune. The video on the other hand doesn’t have much going for it. Apparently, the band themselves had major input into the promo but I don’t think I’d be owning up to that as it’s all pretty lacklustre stuff that lacks much in the way of a plot.

Finally we have arrived at the last knockings of the hit machine phenomenon that was 2 Unlimited. Well, almost. “Do What’s Good For Me” wasn’t strictly their last ever hit on these shores (there was one final single that clambered to No 38 in 1998) but it did usher in the end of their TOTP appearances. Hurray! / Boo! (delete as applicable). They’d had a good run though with their first time on the show going way back to 1991 with “Get Ready For This”. The hits flowed after that with a total of 14 UK chart entries of which only two failed to make the Top 20 with eight going Top 10 (including that No 1). I pretty much despised everything they ever did but I guess you have to give credit to a run of success like that.

“Do What’s Good For Me” was taken from the duo’s “Hits Unlimited” collection whose chart peak of No 27 gave more support to the idea that the game was up for Ray and Anita. After the hits dried up the pair left the project which continued with replacements recruited. Ray and Anita reunited in 2012 to perform live gigs but Anita departed for a second time in 2016 when she replaced by someone mysteriously called just Kim.

Another prolific 90s act now. East 17 had been having hits almost as long as 2 Unlimited with their first hit “House Of Love” entering the charts in 1992. Three years later they were on to their twelfth in “Thunder” which was the lead single from their third studio album “Up All Night”. So that’s three albums and twelve singles in three years – like I said, prolific. I’m sure that there was a special edition of the CD version of the album that had that frosted glass look which if you tilted it changed the image…

*Checks the Discogs website*

…Discogs describes it as ‘lenticular’ – sounds like a bone in the body or a particularly crap comedian stage name (Len Tickles Ya?). Anyway, “Thunder” continued the band’s obsession with weather themed singles – earlier in the year they’d released “Let It Rain”. This performance sees the four lads joined on stage with a guitarist, drummer and an unlikely second keyboard player supplementing Tony Mortimer (who has a keyboard of his own). Presumably the group wanted to beef up their sound? Or at least give the impression of beefing up their sound.

As for the song itself, it’s got a strong chorus I guess but the lyrics are dreadful – some nonsense about the thunder calling you from the mountain high and spreading your wings and flying.

And so to another band who once recorded a song about spreading your wings and flying. Surely Bet Lynch and Freddie Mercury were a match made in heaven (ahem) style wise? Well, it’s certainly true that she was the inspiration behind the look of Freddie’s drag persona in the video for Queen’s 1984 single “I Want To Break Free” in which the band all dressed up as Coronation Street characters.

After Freddie’s death in 1991 and his tribute concert the following year, the remaining band members returned to the studio in 1993 to work up the final vocal recordings Mercury had done in his last days into full blown songs. With not enough tracks to fill a whole album, it was decided to seek out non Queen songs that Freddie had either recorded as a solo artist or contributed vocals to. So we had “I Was Born To Love You and “Made In Heaven” from his “Mr. Bad Guy” album and this one, “Heaven For Everyone” which was originally released on Roger Taylor’s side project band The Cross’s 1988 album “Shove It”. When made available as a single, the track featured Taylor on lead vocals but the album incarnation has Freddie doing the honours and it’s that version that was given the Queen treatment for the band’s 1995 album “Made In Heaven”. Released as the lead single from it, “Heaven For Everyone” went to No 2, a clear statement that the public’s appetite for the band had yet to be satiated. If the single was a statement then the album was a full blown press conference broadcast simultaneously to the world with it going to No 1 globally and 4 x platinum in the UK alone.

To me though, the song was a fairly unremarkable ballad that doesn’t really have that famous Queen bravado but I guess as the first official single released from the band since Freddie’s death, it probably needed to be reflective in its sound and intent.

Having listened to The Cross version, it doesn’t deviate that much accept for some incongruous spoken word bits in the intro, middle and end which don’t really add anything to the track at all. Clearly the record buying public weren’t ready for a Roger Taylor offshoot project in 1988 and it duly peaked at No 84.

With their ex-band mate Louise still in the charts, Eternal announced that they had no intention of disappearing with a stand up R&B track called “Power Of A Woman” (Bet Lynch would have been proud). As the single to begin a new era for the band, it was strong and confident and its move away from a more pop sound seemed to play up to those rumours that the band had ditched Louise to guarantee more airplay on US R&B stations. In fact, listening to it now, it resembles what Mariah Carey was doing around this time who herself was trying to harness a more R&B flavour.

The band restructure hadn’t meant a change in roles though as the majority of the vocal heavy lifting is still done by Easther Bennett with her sister Vernie and Kéllé Bryan acting pretty much as backing singers. The album of the same name would also do well going double platinum in the UK though that was half the amount of copies sold by their debut “Always & Forever” meaning that you could say that a loss of 25% of band membership cost them 50% of their popularity.

Finally we get the biggest Bet Lynch influence of the show as Cher channels her inner Rover’s Return landlady to perform with platinum blonde hair. Having already had two No 1s earlier in the decade (albeit one being from a film and the other as part of a quartet on charity single “Love Can Build A Bridge”) and chalking up two No 1 albums in the 90s in “Love Hurts” and “Greatest Hits: 1965-1992”, this era of Cher was going pretty well.

However, her album “It’s A Man’s World” would prove to be a slight misstep. Sure, it made the Top 10 over here but it sold a tenth of those two previous albums whilst its lead single – a cover of Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis” – seemed like a blatant attempt to court commercial success. It had only been a hit three years previously so it was still very much in the public consciousness. Not only that but it had been the subject of that controversial dance cover by Shut Up And Dance which brought the threat of legal action from Cohn. Presumably all that litigious behaviour had been resolved before this Cher release as one of the extra tracks on the CD format of the single was a remix by…yep…Shut Up And Dance. I recall thinking the whole Cher version was a cynical exercise in trying to secure a hit to promote the new album and although it certainly was – a No 11 as opposed to the No 22 peak of the original – it was very much seen as a commercial disappointment (including by Cher herself). She would more than make up for said disappointment three years later when her hit “Believe” would become the biggest selling single in the UK of 1998.

It’s the fourth and final week at No 1 for “Fairground” by Simply Red and we finally get that Blackpool Pleasure Beach video. However, the whole thing is cloaked in so much special effects that it seems to lose much of the identity of Blackpool to me. The album “Fairground” was taken from (“Life”) went straight to No 1 so the single did well to retain peak position given that its sales must have been affected by its release. Even so, I for one, am glad its reign at the top was coming to an end.

As for a tie in with Bet Lynch, well who could forget her involvement in this iconic storyline set in Blackpool?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1WildchildRenegade MasterNo
2Smokie / Roy ‘Chubby’ BrownLiving Next Door To Alice (Who The F**k Is Alice?)Of course not
3AshAngel InterceptorNo but I have their Best Of album with it on
42 UnlimitedDo What’s Good For MeNever
5East 17ThunderNope
6QueenHeaven For EveryoneNegative
7Eternal Power Of A WomanNah
8CherWalking In MemphisNot a chance
9Simply RedFairgroundI did not

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/m001x9f9/top-of-the-pops-19101995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 MAY 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

When I decided to carry on doing these TOTP reviews into the 90s repeats, the one year I really wasn’t looking forward to revisiting was 1993. In my mind’s eye, it was all nasty Eurodance anthems, the dreaded three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow and the worst Xmas No 1 of all time. Well, we’re into May now and whilst the horror of Mr Blobby is still a way off, we’ve already had plenty of the of the other flavours of shite. Let’s hope a new month brings new hope of better things to come…

Well, that hope didn’t last long did it! FFS! Straight off the bat we have some more Eurodance nonsense courtesy of one of the genre’s biggest acts. After driving us all insane with the abomination that was “No Limit”, 2 Unlimited have not been able to resist the temptation to do it all over again with a tune that is so similar they should have just called it “No Limit 2.0” and be done with it. In truth, all their tunes pretty much sounded the same though didn’t they? And yes by saying that, I now sound just like my Dad speaking to me about pop music circa 1983. “Tribal Dance” was the latest of their musical oeuvre to annoy the shit out of us and it would rise to No 4 in this, the biggest year of their career. This track supposedly includes more of Ray’s raps than usual but still less than the version that the rest of Europe would get. I have to say that I don’t feel short changed.

There was a lot of talk online about this TOTP performance and it mostly revolved around the words ‘inappropriate’ and “cultural appropriation’ and you can see why? What the hell were those costumes the backing dancers were wearing all about?! Yes, obviously somebody was trying to pursue a theme of ‘tribal’ as per the song’s title but this?! Of course, it’s quite possible that nobody made any sort of dissenting comment back in 1993 but you like to think we live in more enlightened times these days. Or perhaps we don’t. I’m sure I could be accused of being too ‘woke’ about it by someone. In truth though, all you need is Michael Caine a red tunic and you’ve got a re-enactment of the film Zulu.

The official video for “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Janet Jackson soundtracks the Top 40 countdown to No 11. It’s also the second of three new entries inside the Top 5 this week that we will see on the show tonight. Reading some of the online comments about the video, I’m now wondering if I’m missing something. People seem to love this promo and describe it as being “a timeless classic”, “visually stylish” and “one of the most creative videos ever made” with the protagonists “chillin’ and vibin’ out together”. And yet. All I’m seeing is Janet surrounded by some sycophants (including a very young Jennifer Lopez) in a loft apartment imploring her to play a tape of her new single before mooching and smooching about with each other. I’m probably just a grumpy, middle aged man who’s forgotten how to have fun and enjoy anything anymore though.

“That’s The Way Love Goes” peaked at No 2 in the UK and was a No 1 record in the US.

After starting the show with some frenetic Eurodance beats before sliding into some slinky R&B vibes we now arrive at a huge slice of stadium house courtesy of Utah Saints (U-U-U-Utah Saints)*. “Believe In Me” was the third of their trilogy of Top 10 hits and although I thought it was OK, it didn’t quite have the immediacy of “What Can You Do For Me” and “Something Good”. After turning to Eurythmics and Kate Bush for source material for those two tracks, they’ve stuck with the 80s by sampling The Human League for this one. It works but doesn’t seem as clever as its predecessors, a bit too obvious somehow.

*Sorry, contractually obliged to do that

In their wisdom, the TOTP producers have decided to overlay the whole performance here with a green wavelength graphic which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but which feels intrusive in retrospect. And what on earth is that the guy with the tied back dreadlocks playing? It looks like a key-tar but has some sort of built in computer where a keyboard should be. It’s like a prototype for the controller in the Guitar Hero computer game. Oh and the “This is the Utah Saints calling all humanoids” line is entirely lame. Reminded me of this sketch:

I wasn’t wrong about 1993. It really was the year that kept on giving – the problem was that it was serving up huge dollops of horseshit. Here’s another steaming clump – “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. This was one of those songs that came from nowhere and was suddenly huge immediately. That’s how it felt anyway. It must have been picking up plenty of airplay before it went massive as I’m sure we kept getting asked about it in the Our Price I was working in before it was in the charts. We didn’t have a clue what it was the punters were talking about but Head Office soon cottoned on and ordered it in for stores in bulk. How this cod reggae/ lowest common denominator Europop mash up made *SPOILER ALERT* three weeks at No 1 is as mystifying as the rise and rise of Liz Truss. I always hated that little sax parp that introduced the chorus and also the way the vocalist sang the line ‘She’s the hunter, you’re the fox’ with that elongated, descending stress on the last word. Heinous isn’t a strong enough word for it. The performance here didn’t help to endear me to the song either. Who did the two women arm dancing think they were? Susan and Joanne from the aforementioned Human League?

Ace Of Base were, of course, from Sweden and are the third biggest selling band from those shores after ABBA and Roxette but when the competition for that particular bronze medal includes the likes of Rednex (of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame), Dr. Alban and Europe, it rather undermines the achievement of a place on the rostrum.

I really feel the need for something decent in this week’s Breakers to lift the mood, nay standard. We start with something unusual though. I knew Sounds Of Blackness were a gospel group but that’s all that I knew and I certainly couldn’t have named any of their songs.

However, having looked them up on Wikipedia I do remember the cover for their 1993 album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum” from which this single – “I’m Going All The Way” – came. It was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who were nothing if not versatile – they were also the producers behind Janet Jackson who was on the show earlier of course. Look, I can appreciate gospel music but back in 1993 I don’t think it was what I was looking for and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find it in the Top 40.

In my head, there’s a definite line drawn in 1985 that marked the end of Depeche Mode as, for want of a better description, a pop band and their going forwards as, for want of another better description, a rock band. Now I do know that those terms are far too simplistic to do justice to the career of the band. I think it’s just that 1985 saw the release of their first Best Of album “The Singles 81>85” and that felt like a real marker in the sand that said, ‘OK, here’s a a physical reminder of everything we’ve done up to this point but from here on in, we’re going in a new direction”. The following year “Black Celebration” was released and everything did feel different starting with its dark lead single “Stripped”.

By 1993, Depeche Mode had perfected that new, harder sound into something massively commercial. The 1990 ”Violator” album sold seven and a half million copies worldwide and housed four classic singles. Then came “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” starting with strident lead single “I Feel You” which we didn’t get to see on TOTP for some reason. The follow up single was “Walking In My Shoes” and this little snippet on the Breakers was all we got of it. What was going on here? It’s another great track, doomy yet melodic and the video sees Dave Gahan in his full on rock god phase. Tragedy of course struck the band in May this year with the unexpected death of Andy Fletcher. Just today though, photos have been released of Gahan and Martin Gore back in the studio which is good news.

The second hit for Rage Against The Machine now. After “Killing In The Name” had been a No 25 hit earlier in the year (sixteen years before its Xmas No 1 sideshow), “Bullet In The Head” did even better piercing yer actual Top 20.

The band have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on four occasions (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) but failed every time to get voted in. Rage Against The Machine there, the Nigel Farage of funk metal. And yes, I know their political views couldn’t be more diametrically opposed but I need to put this post to bed and a cheap line is all I’ve got for this lot.

Oh do f**k off! Even in 1993 at the height of his infamy, nobody needed any more Shabba Ranks surely?! After the Top 3 success of “Mr. Loverman” (itself a rerelease), record company Sony were always going to give 1991 single “Housecall” another tilt at the charts. It peaked at No 31 on its initial release but a remix saw it leap into the Top 10 second time around. A collaboration with Maxi Priest (whom I have no beef with BTW), it gave rise to the “Shabba!” sample on “Mr. Loverman” that was both ubiquitous and pilloried in 1993.

Finally some genuine relief from all this musical crud! Kingmaker hailed from Hull (my home for these last eighteen years) but in 1993 I was living in Manchester and working in Rochdale so I missed what surely must have been a sense of excitement in the band’s hometown at having the first authentic chart act since The Housemartins in the 80s.

“Ten Years Asleep” was their third Top 40 hit and came from their sophomore album “Sleepwalking”. Unbelievably, its lead single “Armchair Anarchist” which is a fab tune had stalled at No 47 in October of 1992 but its follow up did the trick rising to No 15, the band’s joint highest chart placing. True, it wasn’t a million miles away from the sound of acts like The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but at a time when decent indie pop tunes were at a premium, this was wonderful. Dealing with the vexing and existential subject of the passing of time and the inevitable conforming behaviours that seem to affect all of us, the lyrics showed what a great writer Loz Hardy was even though his hand had been forced by the band’s record label demanding that he essentially write a hit record. In this performance he looks like Ian Hart playing John Lennon in The Beatles biopic Backbeat.

It seems odd to consider it now but Kingmaker had been a bigger deal than the likes of Radiohead and Suede both of whom had supported them on tour in 1992. However, disputes with their record label about approaches to writing, recording and formatting of their music hampered their progress and by the time that third album “In The Best Possible Taste” came out in 1995, they’d been sunk by the good ship Britpop. They split soon after but reformed briefly in 2010 without Hardy as Kingmaker MMX.

Oh dear. In fact, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is just cringe (the kids don’t use the ‘worthy’ suffix do they?). Nobody can deny Elton John his place in musical history (except my mate Robin who once told me that he didn’t like even one of his songs) but this is just…wrong.

“Simple Life” was the fourth and final single from his 1992 album “The One” and it failed to make the Top 40 despite this ‘exclusive’ TOTP performance from Atlanta. Literally, what was the point of this? The song is turgid enough but the sight of Elton all togged up on a stage with just a black backdrop for company and deprived of his piano thereby forcing him into attempting to (gulp) ‘dance’…well, it’s just cruel. He even flicks his wig at one point as if to say ‘look I’ve got hair’ even though we know he didn’t. Please, I know I said spare me from all the Eurodance crap earlier in the post but this really wasn’t the lifebelt I was hoping for.

While Elton was struggling around the edges of the Top 40, his mate George Michael was still at No 1 as part of the “Five Live” EP. Last week we had his version of Queen’s “Somebody To Love” but this time it’s his duet with Lisa Stansfield on their 1991 Xmas No 1 (double A-sided with “Bohemian Rhapsody”) “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”. Recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert of the previous year, I’d never liked the original but in the hands (or rather mouths) of George and Lisa it sounds pretty good. The former wouldn’t release any new music after this until 1996’s “Older” album but the latter would return later in 1993 with her third studio album “So Natural”.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
12 UnlimitedTribal DanceDefinitely not
2Janet JacksonThat’s The Way Love GoesNah
3Utah SaintsBelieve In MeI did not
4Ace Of BaseAll That She WantsAs if
5Sounds Of BlacknessI’m Going All The WayNo
6Depeche ModeWalking In My ShoesGood song but no
7Rage Against The MachineBullet In The HeadNope
8Shabba Ranks and Maxi PriestHousecallAway with you!
9KingmakerTen Years AsleepI seem have been asleep as it’s not in the singles box
10Elton JohnSimple LifeHell no!
11Queen / George Michael / Lisa StansfieldFive Live EPDon’t think I did

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/m0019tp2/top-of-the-pops-06051993

TOTP 29 APR 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

What happens to pop stars when the fame slides away and, as that infamous Bros documentary put it, when the screaming stops? Well, some stay in the world of entertainment but reinvent themselves as actors or DJs. Statistically there must be some I guess who can’t handle it and slide into a world of drink and drugs. There must also be a large number who just get ‘ordinary’ jobs like the rest of us. There can’t be many though that became even more famous as a professor of particle physics and the public face of anything scientific. I talk, of course, of Professor Brian Cox who famously was also, in his youth, the keyboards player in D:Ream. And yes, D:Ream are on the show tonight. And yes, I didn’t mention Brian Cox in the last post when his band were in the Breakers section knowing I could leave that discussion for this week. Seen by many as the natural successor to the likes of David Attenborough (even though their fields aren’t remotely the same), he’s certainly more famous now for making science hip than making hit singles. I wonder if they’ll be any more pop stars on tonight’s show who became famous for something other than pop music?

So we start with Prof Cox and D:Ream who are having a mini career before they go massive next year. It’s a curious chart history. 1993 brought them four hit singles yet none got any higher than No 19. The following year, they also had four hit singles but two of them were included in those hits from 1993. This time those repeated singles went to No 1 and No 4. In total there were nine single releases from their “D:Ream On Vol 1” album but across just six tracks with “Things Can Only Get Better” being released twice (once for the Labour General Election campaign of 1997) and this song “U R The Best Thing” three times! I guess their record label must have had unshakable faith that they really were going to be big.

Cox looks unrecognisable here with a mane of long hair which he keeps swishing from side to side and a sleeveless tartan suit (God in heaven! What was he thinking?!). Mind you, wasn’t lead singer Peter Cunnah partial to a tartan suit as well? Maybe we’ll see that it a future TOTP. I used to work with someone who had a drinking mug with Brian Cox’s face on it as she was a fan. The slogan emblazoned all around the mug? Me Love Cox. When I pointed out the obvious double entendre, it had genuinely never occurred to her!

It’s that REM single next that even if you weren’t a fan of the band or even pop music in general had to admit was a pretty good song. “Everybody Hurts” had that elusive quality to be able to cut through all different strata of society and be affecting. With its themes of dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts and its melancholy sound, it was an obvious choice for it to soundtrack a 1995 awareness campaign by The Samaritans.

Fifteen years on, it was covered to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Multiple artists were involved in the project including Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, Take That, Kylie Minogue and Westlife and, with a nice link to D:Ream, was the idea of then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown who contacted Simon Cowell to put it together. It became the fastest selling charity record of the 21st century in Britain. Somehow I can’t imagine Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak (whichever one ends up in No 10) initiating something similar. Raising money for suffering people that don’t even live in the UK? That wouldn’t go down well with the Tory membership at all. “Ooh bit of politics!” as Ben Elton would have said back in the day.

I don’t think you could make a case that any of the members of REM eclipsed their fame as rock stars after the band dissolved but Michael Stipe has branched out into film production acting as executive producer on movies such as Being John Malkovich and Velvet Goldmine.

SWV were in the charts in 1993 with a song that wasn’t “Right Here”? Really? The Michael Jackson sampling hit is my only memory of the trio from that year but here they are with a different hit called “I’m So Into You” which would make No 17 on our charts. After En Vogue and latterly Jade, here were the Sisters With Voices as the latest US R&B import seeking to replicate their success at home across the pond.

Listening back to this track hasn’t stirred my grey cells into action – zero recall of it – but then I was distracted by their decision to turn up for the show dressed as Shaky in double denim. Quite extraordinary. One of the trio, Tamara ‘Taj’ George, became a model after the band split and then found fame as a reality TV star on Survivor in 2009.

Anyone fancy some panpipe techno? Nah, me neither but there is some on the show courtesy of Dance 2 Trance and their hit “Power Of American Natives”. In later life, the backing dancer on the right found fame as bad boy Darren Osbourne in Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. OK, I’m made that shit up but he does look a bit like him doesn’t he?

I’ve talked long and hard before about the three ‘S’s of shite that blighted the charts in 1993 – Shabba, Shaggy and Snow. There was though another artist that I could have shoehorned in to make this unholy trio a frightful foursome of crud if I’d allowed songs instead of artists beginning with ‘s’ to be included. The song I speak of is “Sweat” or rather “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”. This heinous piece of cod reggae by Inner Circle could rot your brain when exposed to it for just a few minutes with its infuriatingly catchy drone-a-long chorus. The good people of the UK had resisted its dark arts when originally released six months earlier but a rerelease due to it being No 1 all over Europe proved overwhelming and it duly went to No 6 in our charts.

The band themselves had been around in various incarnations since 1968 (!) but had only grazed the UK Top 40 once in 1979 with something called “Everything Is Great”. Talk about a misnomer. They came up with a song with a much more apt name in “Bad Boys” (where bad means crap and not good as per Michael Jackson) which became a big hit when it was used as the theme song to US TV series Cops and later to soundtrack the Will Smith / Martin Lawrence Bad Boys film franchise.

It’s three Breakers this week starting with Big Country. No if we thought D:Ream were into recycling with their multiple rereleases of tracks as singles, then what do we make of the bagpipe guitar rockers? Where D:Ream simply got the in demand remix team of Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne aka Perfecto to come up with a new version of “U R The Best Thing”, Big Country did the spade work themselves and totally re-recorded a song that had already been on a previous album.

“Ships (Where Were You)” was originally a track on poorly received and underselling 1991 album “No Place Like Home” but Stuart Adamson and co weren’t happy with the piano led, string quartet enhanced version that they had laid down and so went back into the studio to add those guitars. Now sounding more like a recognisable Big Country track, it became the band’s second consecutive Top 40 hit when released as the second single from “Buffalo Skinners”, the first time they had achieved that feat since 1986.

The video is a pretty pedestrian affair with the fans looking like they’ve caught the MTV Unplugged bug with all of them sat down for the entire performance. Surely that would have worked better with the string quartet 1991 version?

Next a band at a careers crossroads. It seems strange to recall now but in 1993 Blur we’re not in a good place. The glory of their 1991 breakthrough single “There’s No Other Way” had long since dimmed to be replaced by a press backlash. The band themselves were miserable after an unhappy experience touring the US to apathetic audiences. The possibility of being dropped by record label Food was real. A decision was taken to take a new direction that channeled the spirit of English 60s bands like the Small Faces and The Kinks as a reaction to the grunge era that they’d witnessed on their American tour. The result was the album “Modern Life Is Rubbish”, a collection of songs that didn’t generate massive sales but which have retrospectively been bestowed with love and respect and a sense of importance in configuring the rise of Britpop.

“For Tomorrow” was the lead track and was written with the intention of being a hit single as it was felt by Food that the album didn’t have any. Written about Primrose Hill the top of which affords a view of the whole of central London, it peaked at No 28, the band’s third lowest charting single until 2012. However, it is a fan favourite being voted the fifth best Blur song ever in a fanbase vote.

Whilst the album underperformed commercially, it was an essential and necessary step on the way to their most celebrated album “Parklife”. Oh and Inner Circle? That’s how you write a song with a ‘La La La La’ chorus!

Now here’s an artist I never really got…at all. However, she was very much seen as the darling of the indie world around this time and her career has been littered with accolades. Her trophy cabinet (presuming she has one) houses three Rolling Stone Magazine awards, two Mercury Music Prizes – she remains the only artist to have won it twice – an NME Outstanding Contribution to Music award and an MBE for services to music. Who am I taking about? PJ Harvey of course.

Back in 1993, she’d already made a name for herself with her debut album “Dry” which had made No 11 in the charts and would end up selling 60,000 copies. It was also extremely well received in the ‘serious’ music press. Maybe that’s what put me off her. I never really felt a part of that scene. While I was coming to the conclusion that she wasn’t really for me, PJ (Polly Jean) was already onto her next album. Sophomore release “Rid Of Me” came out the week after this TOTP aired and was trailed by the single “50ft Queenie”. This sounded like a racket to me back then and the intervening thirty years have done nothing to change my mind. I wasn’t the only person who wasn’t a fan. My mate Robin who worked at the BBC had got himself into the audience for a Later…with Jools Holland when one of the guests was PJ Harvey. So unimpressed was he by what he saw that as the camera panned round the studio audience during her performance, he gave his verdict with a double middle finger gesture (or ‘the rods’ as Robin described it). I’ve looked through a number of Later…shows featuring ol’ PJ but have not been able to spot Robin’s rods. He has a particularly bad track record of being at BBC music shows. He once found himself stranded at a recording of TOTP – he’d thought that Morrissey was on but it turned out to be Kenny Thomas instead.

“50ft Queenie” peaked at No 27.

A genuine rock god next. Robert Plant needs no introduction from me mainly because I’m not qualified as I never really got the boat to Led Zeppelin island but just to give this some factual context, this was Robert’s third solo Top 40 single over a ten year period. His first had come in 1983 with the paean to toilet humour “Big Log” whilst his second was 1988’s “Heaven Knows” which I don’t remember at all. “29 Palms” though I do recall as the album it was taken from – “Fate Of Nations” – we had a CD promo copy of at the Our Price store where I was working at the time. I wouldn’t normally have been interested in a Robert Plant album but I took this one as me and my wife had just purchased our very first stereo that had a CD drive! Yes, just a mere eight years (!) after Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms” was single-handedly driving the adoption of the CD as the format of choice for music buyers, we finally joined the digital recording revolution. The problem was we didn’t have any actual CDs to play on our newly acquired stereo. All our music was either on vinyl and then latterly cassette. Given this, I figured I’d claim the Plant promo CD to test out the CD player. To be fair, I don’t think anybody else I worked with was likely to want it.

And so it came to pass that one of the first CDs I ever had was a Robert Plant solo album. I had it for years and maybe played one track on it once (the single obviously) and in the end I gave it away to a friend who liked, yep, that one song. So about “29 Palms” – did I like it? I wouldn’t have changed station if it came on the radio but I certainly wouldn’t have bought it either (remember, the CD I had was a free promo – no monetary transaction was necessary). I think I preferred “Big Log” though from my school days. There’s a bit in it that’s been bugging me because it reminded me of another song but I couldn’t place it but I’ve got it now – it’s “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. That’s probably heresy to Led Zep fans but that’s what I’m hearing. It’s rumoured to be about Canadian singer Alannah Myles of “Black Velvet” fame whom Plant toured with. Alternatively, it’s about the town of Twentynine Palms in the Mojave desert or more specifically its radio station. Either way, at least Robert ensured there was no room for any “Big Log” style faeces innuendo with this one…unless you can think of any.

“29 Palms” peaked at No 21.

The 1993 Eurovision Song Contest is only two weeks away so it’s about time we got another glimpse of our entry for this year who is of course Sonia. The UK was in a run of runner up finishes with three of the previous five contests seeing us finish in second place. Sonia would make it four out of six with “Better The Devil You Know” but we would come nowhere near winning again until 1997 when Katrina And The Waves brought the crown back to the UK despite Katrina herself being American.

Back in 1993 though, Sonia found herself unlucky enough to be competing in an era where the contest was dominated by Ireland who were in the middle of a trio of wins between 1992 and 1994. A bit like Andy Murray playing elite tennis when Nadal and Federer were in their pomp. Well, sort of if you can get on board with the idea of music being competitive. Then again, what was the Top 40 singles chart if not a competition?

Not only did Sonia miss out on Eurovision glory but “Better The Devil You Know” was also her final ever Top 40 hit. She had eleven in all but I’m betting most of us would struggle if she was the ‘Three In Ten’ artist on Ken Bruce’s Popmaster. After the hits stopped, Sonia starred as Sandy in the West End revival of Grease and also as Lily Savage’s wayward daughter Bunty in The Lily Savage Show. I don’t think any of those projects outdid her fame as Sonia the pop star though. Certainly appearing in Channel 5’s Celebrity 5 Go Caravanning was unlikely to be people’s abiding memory of her.

P.S. Did Sonia and SWV plan their Shaky style outfits beforehand?

There’s a new No 1 as The Bluebells are no more and are replaced by George Michael and Queen with the “Five Live” EP. A charity record in support of The Mercury Phoenix Trust that fights HIV/AIDS around the world, the five tracks were:

  1. “Somebody To Love” – George Michael and Queen
  2. “Killer” – George Michael
  3. “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” – Queen, George Michael and Lisa Stansfield
  4. “Calling You” – George Michael
  5. “Dear Friends” – Queen

Tracks 1 and 3 were recordings of the live performances from the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with the first being the one that received all the airplay. The EP went straight in at No 1 making it the eighth charity record to do so at the time since Band Aid in 1984. It was also George Michael’s third No 1 single as a duet after “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” with Aretha Franklin in 1987 and “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” with Elton John in 1991. It would become the 11th best selling single of 1993. It also was top of the charts for three weeks so I’ll leave it there for now. Oh, one more thing. We’re all agreed that George’s fame post Wham! outstripped his pre Wham! fame yeah?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1D:ReamU R The Best ThingNo
2REMEverybody HurtsNo but I had the Automatic For The People album
3SWVI’m So Into YouNah
4Dance 2 TrancePower Of American NativesAs if
5Inner CircleSweat (A La La La La Long)God no!
6Big CountryShips (Where Were You)I did not
7BlurFor TomorrowNo but I had the Modern Life Is Rubbish album
8PJ Harvey50ft QueenieNever happening
9Robert Plant29 PalmsNo but I had that promo copy of the album
10SoniaBetter The Devil You KnowNope
11George Michael and QueenFive Live EPDon’t think I did

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/m0019tp0/top-of-the-pops-29041993

TOTP 09 JAN 1992

Posted on by 80stastic

Well, we’ve finally made it into 1992 and the first thing to say is that we’re not starting at the very beginning. No, we’ve missed a week because of the Adrian Rose issue so we start a week later on the 9th of January. In my prologue post for 1992 I was very negative about the prospects for the year but having checked the running order for this show, there’s some artists on that are distinctly removed from the mainstream’s usual suspects. None more so than the opening act tonight who are Iceland’s finest The Sugarcubes.

Now I have to be straight up about this with my cards firmly on the table and admit that I’m no fan of Björk – in fact I pretty much can’t stand her ‘singing’. All that straining and shrieking which I’m meant to find spellbinding but which actually just grates on me? No thanks. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate her record as an artist though. Her longevity alone deserves respect – 9 albums, 2 soundtrack albums, 39 singles just as a solo performer plus another 3 albums and 14 singles with The Sugarcubes. Then there’s her acting career, she’s written books of poetry and been involved in charitable endeavours such as the “Army Of Me: Remixes And Covers” project to raise funds for those affected by the Asian tsunami of 2004.

Plus you couldn’t accuse her of standing still creatively. Starting with the punk of early band Spit And Snot, she moved through the avant garde indie rock of The Sugarcubes onto her solo career beginning with the dance beats of “Debut” then the experimental eclecticism of follow up “Post” through to the voice only recording of 2004 ‘s “Medúlla” and finally the folktronica of her most recent album “Utopia”. She’s a female version of David Bowie in terms of reinvention. I still can’t stand her voice though.

The only thing I really knew about The Sugarcubes in 1992 was their 1987 single “Birthday” which had been Melody Maker‘s single of the year. It had been far too out there for me though and I certainly hadn’t been tempted to find out more of their work via their first two albums “Life’s Too Good” and “Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!”.

The single “Hit” though found them at their most accessible (to me at least). The track has an almost funky back beat and the bridge into the chorus is actually quite melodic. Even Björk has toned down on her vocal stylings although I’m not sure about the Icelandic version of Bez in the cap in this performance nor his dodgy rapping skills.

The album the single was taken from called “Stick Around For Joy” did reasonable business peaking at No 16 in the UK charts but the band broke up at the end of the year despite massive exposure from supporting U2 during the US leg of their Zoo TV Tour in October and November playing to a total of 700,000 people.

By the way, tonights hosts are Mark Franklin and Claudia Simon and its the latter who describes the next song as a “seriously hard dance tune that makes you want to get up and dance”. Ooh! Who could it possibly be?! Well, it’s an ensemble that went by the name of Isotonik. Now back in the early 90s, the only use of the word ‘isotonic’ had come from the lips of John Barnes in his infamous Lucozade advert – “it gets to your thirst…fast” and all that….

…until this lot turned up. Who were they? According to Mark Franklin, they were formed by one Chris Paul who was an ex copper turned DJ / producer who also dabbled in nightclub promotion – he was behind the Orange Raves brand operating out of London. Using his entrepreneurial nous, he used this TOTP appearance for a bit of free advertising (the BBC didn’t notice/care apparently) by having his mate dress up as an orange and jig along on stage with the rest of the dancers in front of an Orange Rave logo backdrop. I have to say that:

a) The costume comes across more like a tomato than an orange under the studio lights

b) It looks absolutely shit.

As for their track “Different Strokes”, it seemed too be a mash up of a load of samples (I know not which ones and I care even less) and there’s a definite flavour of 808 State and “Charly” era The Prodigy that’s been half inched and added into the mixer. Just horrible.

“Different Strokes” peaked at No 12.

We’re onto our first video of the night and it’s “Too Blind To See It” by Kym Sims. Claudia Simon gives her album a plug in the intro to it by saying “if it’s anything like her single, it’s gonna be BIG!”. So was it? Big I mean. I remember the cover to it and we certainly stocked it in the Our Price I was working in but how well did it actually sell? Hmm. Well, according to he officialcharts.com database, it spent just two weeks in the UK charts peaking at No 39 before dropping to No 50 and then slipping out altogether. I think you could find a number of words to describe its commercial track record then but ‘BIG’ would not be one of them.

Kim did have a further two hits released from her eponymous and only album but that didn’t inspire a rejuvenation of its sales and she would not trouble the chart compilers ever again despite continuing to work within the music industry, writing for both herself and other artists. Having said all that, there does seem to be a lot of love out there online for the track “Too Blind To See It” being variously described as ‘a tune’ and ‘an absolute banger’. Indeed.

Blimey! First The Sugarcubes and now Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! TOTP was really starting the new year with an indie bang! To paraphrase Chris Tarrant from his Tiswas days, this is what the kids wanted! Having broken through the chart barrier that prohibited Grebo rock from infecting the youth of the day in 1991 with not one but two hit singles in “Sheriff Fatman” and “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)”, Jim Bob and Fruitbat strode confidently into 1992 with some right old “Rubbish”. Or was it “R.U.B.B.I.S.H” as I’ve seen it alternatively spelt online. Either way, it was more of the same from the duo but although it undoubtedly kicked the rest of the charts squarely in the Schofields, it did sound a bit “Sheriff Fatman”-lite to me. Fair play though to them for getting Mother’s Pride bread into the lyrics a good decade before dreadful boy band Blue managed the same feat in their hit “One Love”.

The performance here seems to channel a Mad Max post apocalyptic industrial world setting with Jim Bob spending most of his time on the roof of a battered old car. Oh and that bandage on his arm? Here’s the man himself with the story behind it:

As you do. 1992 was the peak of Carter’s commercial powers and saw them score a No 1 album (no really) with “1992 – The Love Album”. “Rubbish” itself though was a stand alone single although it did get added as a bonus track to a 2011 re-release of “101 Damnations”.

Incidentally, they recorded a version of tonight’s opening song, “Hit” by The Sugarcubes, as the B-side to their 1993 single “Lean on Me I Won’t Fall Over”. I love it when a post comes together all by itself.

I think they’ve moved the Breakers section to its more traditional spot of being in the middle of the show. It seemed to be positioned just before the No 1 in recent weeks which seemed odd. Mark Franklin does the intro for it and during it, a weird thing occurs. He name checks all the acts featured in the Breakers except for one which he refers to instead as just “another great song”. Did he just forget who was on or was it some sort of indirect slur?

Anyway, the first Breaker (Franklin did name them) is The Stone Roses who despite it now being 1992 are still releasing singles from their debut album that came out in May 1989! What was going on?!

Well, the band was still in a state of transition. Having removed themselves from their restrictive Silvertone recording contract and signed with US big hitters Geffen, they’d also just sacked their manager, the colourful character that was Gareth Evans. Their was precious little new music being laid down though. They mostly seemed to be following Manchester United around the country or hanging out in the bars of Chorlton shooting the breeze.

With no new material forthcoming, I’m guessing Silvertone saw a window of opportunity to make the most of the tracks they had licenced to them and put out just about every song from the first album as a single. The latest track to receive this treatment was “Waterfall”, no doubt a great song (I especially liked the line ‘so good to have equalised’) but surely we all knew it by then. Even so the band still had a loyal enough fan base to send it to No 27.

Next the one act that Franklin didn’t mention in his intro and it’s Kiss. Why the omission? Did he have beef with the US rockers? It seems unlikely.

Anyway, Kiss hadn’t featured in the UK Top 40 since 1987 brought us “Reason To Live” and more memorably “Crazy Crazy Nights” but they were back via the trusted method of having a song featured in a hit film. That film was of course Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey for which Kiss had recorded a version of Argent’s 1973 hit “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You”. It wasn’t a straight cover though as they rewrote the lyrics in the verses to pay tribute to their drummer since 1982 Eric Carr who appears on the track but who died of cancer in 1991 aged 42. The rewrite also caused them to retitle the song “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II”. Carr was too ill to play drums on the track but he sings on the a capella break before the song’s finale. He also appears in the video wearing a wig as his chemotherapy treatment had caused him to lose his hair.

I don’t think I knew that it wasn’t a Kiss original at the time but I did always have a soft spot for it. I wasn’t the only one as my work colleague Justin also did specifically that a capella bit. The song’s appeal stretched beyond Justin and I though – enough people bought it to send it all the way to No 4. I liked the film as well. Stupid as mud but good fun all the same and the song works well positioned over the ending.

Yay! Another nice bit of serendipity! After the Carter USM / The Sugarcubes connection comes another link in between two artists on the same show. We saw Kym Sims earlier and I noted that after her brief fame as a chart star she ended up writing for other artists. Well, one of those was Ce Ce Peniston who is the next Breaker with “We Got A Love Thang”. No that isn’t a mistake. Ce Ce really did gave hits that weren’t “Finally”. It’s just that it felt like that was her only song. To be fair to those of us who felt like this, we could be forgiven when you consider that the release before “We Got A Love Thang” was “Finally” and the one after it was… yep…”Finally” albeit the 1992 remix. The original release in October ‘91 peaked at No 26 whilst the remix went all the way to No 2.

In between came “We Got A Love Thang” and it also did the business chart wise peaking at No 6. For me though, it didn’t have any of the hooks and charm of its predecessor (and successor) and I always found it quite bland.

The final Breaker comes from The Prodigy. After being the main protagonists in initiating a brief musical sub genre of rave tunes which sampled children’s programming with their debut hit “Charly”, the pressure was on to come up with a more credible follow up. They did it and then some with “Everybody In The Place”. An instant rave classic, it would go all the way to No 2. It would be included on their debut album “Experience” which we sold loads of in Manchester (I guess due to the massive club scene there) but which I am surprised to learn didn’t even make the Top 10, peaking outside of it at No 12. It did eventually go platinum for sales of 300,000 though.

Even though “Everybody In The Place” consolidated the band’s initial success, I don’t think many of us could have foreseen the impact The Prodigy would have over the whole of the 90s nor their legacy beyond that.

Next a track that is so wicked that it will melt your boots according to presenter Claudia Simon. Who could she possibly be talking about? It turns out she’s waxing lyrical about Blue Pearl. Yes, that Blue Pearl who scored a huge hit back in 1990 with “Naked in The Rain”. So, hands up all those who thought that this lot were a one hit wonder?

*blogger raises his hand*

Well, we were all wrong for they actually had four Top 40 singles (although two of them were both “Naked in The Rain”). This one, “(Can You) Feel the Passion” – no brackets, no points – peaked at No 14 but wasn’t include on there only album called “Naked”. If it sounds familiar, that’s probably because it features samples from Bizarre Inc’s “Playing with Knives.” The spoken word delivery from singer Durga McBroom (not a character from the The Worst Witch but her actual name) does make it out stand out rather but clearly not enough to commit it to my memory first time around.

As with Carter USM before them, the staging of the performance has a Mad Max feel to it with those industrial looking drums being struck by some rather sinister looking guys with intimidating black stripes across their eyes making them look like Adam Ant’s evil twin brothers. Durga would go onto tour with Pink Floyd providing backing vocals for “The Great Gig In The Sky” thereby proving that she could also sing as well as speak.

Senseless Things (no ‘The’ for you pedants out there) were probably a band I should have got more into. Pedalling an energetic brand of punk pop and with a name pinched from a Shakespearean phrase, I could have gone big for this lot. Somehow I didn’t and now my main memory of them is that they were signed to Epic, a subsidiary of Sony – damn all those boxes of albums that I opened during my Our Price years and their delivery notes that I perused!

“Easy To Smile” was the first of two Top 20 hits that they achieved in 1992. Listening back to them now, what strikes about them is that they sound very American, like a US Green Day even. Though they never amounted to that much hit wise (they never troubled the Top 40 after 1992), they would demonstrate their musical chops in their careers after the band broke up in 1995. Lead singer Mark Keds (sadly now deceased) became a member of The Wildhearts and also has a co-writer credit on The Libertines’ 2004 hit “Can’t Stand Me Now”, which took a line from the 1998 single “Hey! Kitten” of one of his post Senseless Things bands called Jolt. Rhythm guitarist Ben Harding went on to join charting band 3 Colours Red whilst Morgan Nicholls performed with Muse, Gorillaz, The Streets and Lily Allen.

Talking of Gorillaz, one other thing I recall about Senseless Things was the amazing artwork on their album covers and which is seen in the backdrop to their TOTP performance. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the lowdown on it:

“Easy To Smile” peaked at No 18.

Due to the Adrian Rose effect, missed episodes and me not bothering to review the 1991 Xmas TOTP, I think this is the first of my posts that includes Queen at No 1 with “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Re-released off the back of Freddie Mercury’s death on 24 November, its ascent to the top of the charts and 5 week stay there not only secured it the Xmas No 1 spot but also meant that it became the only song to hold that accolade twice by the same artist.

Unlike its initial release in 1975 though, the 1991 version was a double A side which saw “Bohemian Rhapsody” paired with “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, the fifth and final track to be taken from the “Innuendo” album. I guess I can understand that the fans wanted something to mark the passing of their idol, something to hang on to and what better choice than their best known and most successful song ever? Or was it pure, cynical greed by EMI to cash in on a tragic event and while they were at it, they added a song from the latest (and now last) album to try and flog that as well? A bit of both maybe.

I think at this time, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was one of those songs that I’d heard so many times that it had become unlistenable. I may still be at that stage now. As for “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, it sounded like very untypical Queen fare to me, a lilting ballad whose title sat perfectly as a goodbye to Freddie. I suppose similar claims of appropriateness could have been made for “Who Wants To Live Forever” and “The Show Must Go On” but I think the chosen track was the most respectful. Interesting that the TOTP producers chose to show the full 6 minute video of “Bohemian Rhapsody” – was that really necessary?

Order of appearanceArtist TitleDid I buy it?
1The SugarcubesHitNo – that voice…
2IsotonikDifferent StrokesHell no
3Kym SimsToo Blind To See ItNah
4Carter The Unstoppable Sex MachineRubbishI did not
5The Stone RosesWaterfallNo but I have the album though don’t we all?
6KissGod Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You IIGuilty pleasure but didn’t buy it
7Ce Ce Peniston We Got A Love ThangNo we don’t
8The ProdigyEverybody In The PlaceNope
9Blue Pearl(Can You) Feel the PassionNo
10Senseless ThingsEasy To SmileShould have but didn’t
11Queen Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are The Days Of Our LivesNah

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/m001349m/top-of-the-pops-09011992

TOTP 24 OCT 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

So the week has finally arrived. One month into the revamped TOTP and its time has come, its race is run, it’s over. No, not Man Utd’s 13 match unbeaten run to the start of the 1991/92 football season (that would arrive two days later as they lost 3-2 to Sheffield Wednesday). No, it’s the 16th and last week of Bryan Adams being at No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. 16 weeks! That’s four whole months, a third of a year, people who had got pregnant in the first of those 16 weeks were now nearly half way through their pregnancy. My own personal milestone was that our first wedding anniversary had just been and gone and we were just about to clock up one whole year of living and working in Manchester. Despite being skint a lot of the time, the year had gone pretty well and we felt settled there. I was working in the Our Price store in Market Street Manchester and gearing up for my second Xmas there. I think I may have graduated from ‘best seller’ CD orderer to being in charge of chart cassettes by this point. Chart cassettes! I’d only been trusted with TDK blank cassettes and accessories at the start of the year. It felt like a big deal. The store was probably starting to recruit for Xmas temps by now – most of their names and faces have long been unretrievable from my memory banks though one or two I can recall. I felt established amongst the permanent members of staff though my best mate there Steve had left at the start of the year. Fortunately, I have kept our friendship going these past 30 years.

We start this week with 2 Unlimited and “Get Ready For This” who are up to No 2 in the charts somehow. Why didn’t they call the track “Y’all Ready For This?” which is pretty much the only lyric in the whole sorry fair. Well, that or “Yeah!” I guess. Tony Dortie promises us “the busiest dancers around” in his intro. He can’t mean those people hanging around at the back of the stage surely? And by the way, exactly who were they? Clearly they’re not part of 2 Unlimited – are they really just some people out of the studio audience? If so, how did they get the gig? Did they have to audition their dance moves in front of the producers because all they seem to be doing to me is jumping up and down a bit?!

As this is a dance track though, the TOTP graphics team have added that green haze effect at certain points in the performance as they did the other week with Carl Cox. It reminds me of that old Dr Who story with the maggots…

After the godawful mess that is the Top 10 countdown, we’re straight into the album chart feature which this week is Kenny Thomas who was only just on the other week with his latest single “Best Of You”. The song he sings tonight though is an album track (well it is the album feature) called “Something Special” which starts off sounding a bit like Labi Siffre’s “(Something Inside) So Strong” but soon turns into a weedy soul ballad about telling his love that they are…erm…well…special.

By my reckoning, this is the sixth time that Thomas has been on TOTP in 1991 and as such, I’m all out of Kenny info and trivia. I can say that his album “Voices” went to No 3 in the charts which would be its peak and I recall selling plenty of it over the Xmas period meaning I had to place many an order of the cassette version with EMI to keep up with demand. He’s turned up at the TOTP studio for this one wearing something that resembles a 50’s drape jacket and with his hair slicked back like that, he could almost pass for a Teddy Boy. Well, not really but I’m filling furiously here so give me a break! Actually, this bloke Tom on Twitter has probably got the whole thing bang to rights…

After the Monty Python performance of “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” last week, we get another memorable turn this week as Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff get together to do “Dizzy”. This version of Tommy Roe’s 1969 No 1 was the follow up to Vic’s first hit (also a cover version) “Born Free” from earlier in the year and would go onto replicate Roe’s chart peak by making it to No 1.

The performance here is full on Vic Reeves Big Night Out which is allowed in my book given that the series had only just finished screening in the April. The Whirlpool washing machine and microwave props were a carry over from the promo video and which were a nice play on the lyrics but for me, Bob Mortimer just about steals the show with his cavorting in the background with Miles Hunt which climaxes with his back slide through Vic’s legs halfway through. As it’s a live vocal, Vic’s voice is pretty exposed but he just about gets away with it although he is just shouting on occasion and also seems to forget the words at one point. Was something meant to happen when Vic goes to look inside one of the washing machines? The fact that nothing does seems to put him off a bit. Maybe it was a piece of staging that went wrong or maybe they were all just too drunk to remember what they were doing? There seems to be damning evidence that everybody concerned had spent far too oolong in the Green Room beforehand.

At the end of the performance Tony Dortie emerges from the studio audience throng to say “Absolutely unbelievable, I can’t keep a straight face”…whilst keeping a straight face.

It’s the Queen video for “The Show Must Go On” next whose screening the other week was billed as an ‘exclusive’ to TOTP. This week it’s in the chart at No 19 and whilst the official line for the promo consisting entirely of a montage of clips of previous Queen videos and live shows was that it was to promote the band’s imminent “Greatest Hits II” album, the lack of any new footage of Freddie Mercury stoked even more rumours already circulating around his health.

After his death on 24 November, there was the inevitable rush of Queen’s music made available in the marketplace. As well as that “Greatest Hits II” album, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released (twinned as a double A-side with “These Are the Days Of Our Lives” from the “Innuendo” album) which would become the ’91 Xmas No 1. In between those releases came Brian May’s solo single “Driven By You” which would go Top 10 and indeed, “The Show Must Go On” itself would resurface in the charts despite having already peaked once at No 16. It all felt very reminiscent of John Lennon’s death 11 years earlier when his music flooded the charts although he was denied the Xmas No 1 by (unbelievably) “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” by St Winifred’s School Choir.

As for Queen, they would patch together one last studio album from the remaining recordings Freddie had managed to lay down before his passing that weren’t included on “Innuendo” which comprised the “Made In Heaven” album of 1995. One month after its release, that symmetry with John Lennon was evident again when “Free As A Bird” was released being a demo that John had recorded in 1977 that the remaining Beatles added to in the studio and which went to No 2 in the charts.

It’s ‘the rugby song’ as Tony Dortie called it the other week next as Kiri Te Kanawa is in the studio to perform “Word In Union”. She looks for all the world like she’s just arrived off the set of Dynasty with her big 80s style hair, shoulder padded jacket and…is that a diamond encrusted brooch in the shape of a lizard on one of them?! It could be a Tuatara which are reptiles endemic to New Zealand and are regarded as a ‘taonga’ or a special treasure in Māori culture (Te Kanawa’s birth father was Māori). Whatever the reason for the brooch, it’s quite a thing and maybe the studio audience crowding around Dame Kiri in a circle are all transfixed by that rather than her performance.

“World In Union” would have a life beyond the 1991 Rugby World Cup and has been recorded by multiple artists for subsequent competitions. In 1999, a version was recorded as a duet by Shirley Bassey and Bryn Terfel whilst the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand was launched by soprano Hayley Westenra’s version of the song. Paloma Faith did it for the 2015 competition although her rendition didn’t go down well – one twitter user described it thus:

Paloma Faith absolutely murdered World in Union. My non-existent cat could of sung it better.

Meow! In 2019, ITV used a version recorded by Emeli Sandé for their 2019 World Cup coverage. In tandem with all those releases came various versions of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” which is associated specifically with the England team and was taken into the charts by Union featuring the England World Cup Squad (1991), China Black (1995), Russel Watson (1999) and UB40 (2003).

Talk about from one extreme to another! As the camera pans away from Dame Kiri at the end of her performance you can see the next act awaiting their cue on the other stage who are Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine! After their chart breakthrough earlier in the year with the re-release of “Sheriff Fatman” came “After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” which was a non album single presumably to plug the gap until their next album “1992 – The Love Album” would be released in …erm…1992.

The contrast between Jim Bob / Fruitbat and Kiri Te Kananwa couldn’t be more pronounced with their raucous, in your face track and their non conformist, counterculture look (Boris Johnson would no doubt describe them as ‘crusties’). With it being the early 90s, nobody in team Carter USM thought to gain copyright clearance for the use of the “Ruby Tuesday” lyrics and they were subsequently sued by The Rolling Stones’ publisher. The resulting legal battle forced the song off the airwaves and was only resolved by the track being officially credited to Morrison, Carter, Richards and Jagger.

This wasn’t the only infamy that the single generated though. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this was the song that Carter USM played at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party of 1991 when Fruitbat rugby tackled host Philip Schofield to the ground on live TV when he had attempted a pathetic put down of the band after they started smashing up their instruments after the performance. His exact words were:

“Blimey! That was original. “After the Watershed” from Jim Bob and a Fruitbat pushing back the frontiers of music otherwise known as Carter and I think they’re still smashing it up out the back somewhere. Now not only…OOOOMMMMFFFF!”

Good work lads! I can’t be doing with Schofield and I find it baffling that he was deemed worthy of a Smash Hits front cover in 1991. Unsurprisingly, given Schofield’s connection with them, the publication backed Phil in a review of the Poll Winners Party referring to Jim Bob and Fruitbat as Bobbins and Dingbat. How original.

“After the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)” peaked at No 11.

Is this the first time we’ve seen this feature? The US Album chart? Tony Dortie’s intro doesn’t make any sense though as he says that Mariah Carey is No 1 in the American Hot 100 singles chart with “Emotions” and No 10 in the UK album chart. He definitely said UK and not US despite the on screen graphic saying ‘US chart’. I don’t get it. Anyway, Mariah is in the studio which means she must be doing a live vocal doesn’t it? We’ll see if she can do that famous four octave vocal range for real then won’t we?

*watches Mariah’s performance*

Well, yes she can but I still don’t like to listen to it. As she sings that last hight note, co-host Mark Franklin appears from within the studio audience to do the next link and has to wade through a gaggle of young men who somehow seem to have made sure that they were at the front of the stage to get a bird’s eye view of Mariah from up close. Funny that.

“Emotions” peaked at No 17 in the UK.

So to the Breakers and we start with Simple Minds and “Real Life”. This really was a case of a release too far. The title track from their latest album, it was the fourth single to be lifted from it and was subsequently the worst performing in the chart peaking at No 34. The album had already been out for six months by this point but I guess the record company wanted to give it another push for the Xmas market. Its chart performance wasn’t helped by it being promoted by yet another boring live performance video just as previous single “Stand By Love” had been. The band really weren’t putting much effort into their videos in 1991 as lead single “Let There Be Love” had just been a straight run through performance of the song as well (although it wasn’t taken from a gig) but had some added dry ice for effect. Poor, very poor as Vic Reeves might have said.

Possibly one of the most famous songs ever next as we get an old clip of Don McLean performing “American Pie”. So much has been written about this song – just google ‘Don Mclean American Pie and you’ll immediately get a flurry of results offering the ‘story behind the song’ or the ‘hidden meaning of…’ etc – so I’m not going to forensically dissect the song line by line partly because it’s too long and I can’t be arsed but more significantly because McLean himself fessed up to its true meaning in 2015. Why then? Well, the original manuscript for the song was put up for auction (it sold at $1.2 million) and McLean agreed to tell all about those lyrics. He basically said it was an allegorical tale describing how the world was heading in the wrong direction whilst also clearing up some of those hidden references. Clearly the famous “the day the music died” line referred to the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash in 1959 but he also confirmed that “the jester” was Bob Dylan and that the song built to a climax that referenced the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert headlined by The Rolling Stones in 1969.

None of the above answers the question why this 1972 US No 1 and UK No 2 hit was back in the charts in 1991 of course but it’s a simple explanation – to plug a Don McLean Best Of album released for the Xmas rush. The re-release of “American Pie” reached No 12 in the UK but of much more acclaim is that in March 2017, it was designated an ‘aural treasure’ by the American Library of Congress and ‘worthy of preservation’ in the National Recording Registry ‘as part of America’s patrimony’. Yeah, that’s as maybe but he was wrong about ‘the day the music died’ – that was in 1987 when Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley went to No 1 with “Jack Your Body”.

The final Breaker sees Pet Shop Boys finally relent to the inevitable and release their very first Best Of album – “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection”. After 5 years of solid hits, a collection album was certainly warranted but, as was seeming to be the done thing back then, it was a new track that was released to promote the album. “Now I’m not suggesting that “DJ Culture” should be enshrined in any Halls of Fame for its cultural significance like “American Pie, but its message was prescient. According to Neil Tennant via Wikipedia it was about:

The insincerity of how President George H. W. Bush’s speeches at the time of the First Gulf War utilised Winston Churchill’s wartime rhetoric, in a manner similar to how artists sample music from other artists.

Fast forward 30 odd years and replace Bush with Boris Johnson and…where’s the difference? Johnson’s obsession with Churchill and his enablement by the right wing press and its obsession with the war and the ‘Blitz spirit’ and it’s not hard to see why we live in a country that has created a hostile environment for ‘outsiders’. We are a much poorer country for it. The parallels with Brexit also echo in the lyrics:

Imagine a war which everyone won
Permanent holiday in endless sun
Peace without wisdom, one steals to achieve
Relentlessly, pretending to believe

Let’s pretend we won a war
Like a football match, ten-nil the score
Anything’s possible, we’re on the same side
Or otherwise on trial for our lives

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine these words as a criticism of the leave campaign narrative of ‘sunlit uplands’ and ‘Brexit is good, you just have to believe in it enough’ – there’s even a reference later on about empty shelves! Tellingly there’s also the line “Wondering who’s your friend” which could speak of the divisions between families and friends that Brexit has caused. Actually, there’s a couple more Pet Shop Boys song titles that sum up the shitshow that is Brexit and this corrupt Tory government in a much more succinct way- I’m thinking “Was It Worth It?” and “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”. Bit of politics there as Ben Elton might have said back in the day.

For all that, I didn’t actually rate “DJ Culture” that much. It was a bit too repetitive and lacking in melody for me. It peaked at No 13 in the UK Top 40 whilst the “Discography: The Complete Singles Collection” album went to No 3 and achieved platinum status sales.

This week’s ‘TOTP Exclusive’ performance is from David Bowie….HURRAY! Hang on. Let me finish. I was going to say David Bowie’s side project rock group Tin Machine….BOOOOO!!!. Hang on didn’t they do an exclusive performance for TOTP the other week? Yes they did when they appeared on the show to promote previous single “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”! You can’t claim this to be an exclusive if its the second time in a few weeks can you?

Enter new show producer Stanley Appel, stage left: “Ah, but that first exclusive was in the pre- year zero revamp era. This is a whole new show so yes, of course we can claim it as an exclusive.

Me (not having it): So definitely not flogging a dead horse then?

Stanley Appel: How dare you?!

Is dead horse unfair? I think when it comes to Tin Machine it’s justified. Of the five singles they released only one made the Top 40 (the aforementioned “You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll”) whilst all the others were flops including this track “Baby Universal”…or “Baby Unusual” as Tony Dortie announces it. Clearly Tony had got the jitters being in the presence of the legend that was Bowie as he seems to fluff his entire intro. He mispronounces the word ‘exclusive’ and then nearly forgets the name of their album which couldn’t have been much easier to remember being “Tin Machine II” and all.

As for the song itself, it’s all very urgent sounding filled with moments for Bowie to deliver his unique vocal stylings but it’s just not quite there for me. Actually, listening to it back, it reminds me of “The Cabaret” by Time UK who were the group that drummer Rick Buckler formed after The Jam broke up. Don’t know it? Have a listen…

Time UK there, only the band that Tin Machine could have been (ahem)….oh and that tattoo on the drummer’s knuckles that we get a shot of at the end of the song? it definitely says HUNT and not anything else as his name is Hunt Sales!

And finally Cyril….

…and finally Esther. FINALLY. After 16 (SIXTEEN!) long weeks, we get to the final time that Bryan Adams is No 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. Obviously no record should have been at the top of the charts for that long – it was a nonsense. Was it Bryan’s fault though? I can’t see how. He just wrote a song for a film and it got released as a single. I think he only did one TOTP studio performance and the rest of the time the show just broadcast the video with the the film clips montage. He wasn’t busting a gut to be in the studio every week to promote it. The way people moaned about how long it was No 1 for, you would have though that this sort of run could never happen again but just three years later Wet Wet Wet almost eclipsed it with their “Love Is All Around” single also taken from a film (Four Weddings And A Funeral). They probably would have done had the band not taken the decision to delete the single and so it fell just short at 15 weeks. Their chart buster was of course a cover version of The Troggs – at least Adams had the good grace (and financial sense) to write this own tune!

No artist got near that sort of feat until Drake in 2016 whose “One Dance” single was No 1 for 15 weeks in the UK. It occurs to me that I don’t even know how that one goes. I’m not inclined to find out.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
12 UnlimitedGet Ready For ThisGet ready for what? No.
2Kenny ThomasSomething SpecialI did not nor have I ever bought any Kenny Thomas records
3Vic Reeves and The WonderstuffDizzyLiked it, didn’t buy it
4QueenThe Show Must Go OnIt must but it did so without me
5Kiri Te KanawaWorld In UnionNo thanks
6Carter The Unstoppable Sex MachineAfter the Watershed (Early Learning the Hard Way)See 3 above
7Mariah CareyEmotionsNope
8Simple MindsReal LifeNo
9Don McLeanAmerican PieNah
10Pet Shop BoysDJ CultureNot the single but have it on their Pop Art Collection CD
11Tin MachineBaby UniversalNegative
12Bryan Adams (Everything I Do) I Do It For YouI did not

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/m0010rl6/top-of-the-pops-24101991

TOTP 10 OCT 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

Welcome to the brave new world of the ‘year zero’ TOTP revamp where we are into the second show of this new era. My take on the first show was that it was a right shambles and that the new features didn’t really work at all. The presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin were enthusiastic but yet to find their feet and cement their personalities on the show whilst the chart rundown was an abomination. As D-Ream would say two years on from here (and indeed Howard Jones six years before), things can only get better.

An acid test of the new format arrives in the very first act on tonight as we see if the changes introduced by new producer Stanley Appel allow dance tunes to be showcased any more effectively. The person in the test drive seat is DJ Carl Cox with “I Want You (Forever)”. Once again we open the show without seeing a host at all as we get the disembodied voice of Dortie who really is shaping a reputation for himself as a mumbler. What’s he saying? “Everyone is live and firing interaction from Brighton”? What?! Take a breath man – you’re running your sentences together! As for the staging of the performance, I have to say I don’t see anything much different from how dance acts were presented previously. The main man is once again in the background on the decks whilst the singer is up front with some dancers. So far, so same as before. Yes, the vocal is live this time as per keeping with the new edict about artists appearing on the show and there’s a bit of graphic trickery when some trippy colourisation effects are laid over the top for the non-singing parts of the track but apart from that? OK, there’s maybe some more camera angles than usual in an attempt to dazzle us into thinking that there’s more going on here than our brains can take in but I’m not sure it works. They even resort to that old strategy of slipping in some bits of the promo video to try and liven up proceedings. Nah, not for me.

Oh, hang on. That’s new! As DJ Carl Cox finishes, the camera tracks to a bank of six TV screens and Mark Franklin appears stretched out over all of them to form one big collage of his face. Ooh! Swanky! I take it all back – the whole revamp was worth it just for that moment! Franklin introduces the Top 10 countdown and – oh no – disregard my previous comment as this new countdown is just atrocious. Unforgivable.

Talking of unforgivable, here’s Morrissey! OK, a touch unfair on the 1991 version of Morrissey maybe but some of his more recent comments are truly unpalatable. Here he is a with a fairly downbeat (if not downright miserable) tune called “My Love Life” which was the fourth and final hit single that he had in the calendar year of 1991 none of which got any higher than No 25. It was also the second of two consecutive non-album singles (following “Pregnant For The Last Time”) before he would return the following year with a proper album in “Your Arsenal”.

Mozza’s backing band are now full on rockabilly rebels with quiff-tastic hair which is not a surprise as this was around the time that Boz Boorer, founder of new wave rockabilly group The Polecats, would enter into a permanent working relationship with Morrissey as his co-writer and guitarist. “My Love Life” though wasn’t a Boorer / Morrissey composition but was written with Mark Nevin who used to be in “Perfect” hitmakers Fairground Attraction.

Coincidentally, I recently read the autobiography* of another Nevin, one of my all time football heroes Pat Nevin who himself was a big Smiths fan and indeed, he devoted an entire chapter of his book (entitled This Charming Man) to the time he went round to Morrissey’s house. Pat went to Morrissey’s gaff with his friend Vini Reilly from The Durutti Column and found his host to be overly guarded on first meeting (or “defensive preciousness” as Pat called it). To try and warm him up a bit, Nevin asked Morrissey if he had ever been interested in football to which he replied:

“I can’t say I have ever really thought about it. My mind and my thoughts have never ventured towards that area, my soul was otherwise engaged“.

A typical lah-di-dah Morrissey answer you could be forgiven for thinking. However, there was a sting in the tail. Pat was playing for Everton by this point and one of his fellow players, ex-Man Utd legend Norman Whiteside, lived on the same road as Morrissey it turned out. Nevin followed up by saying:

“I only ask because another player from our team was going to pop round with me tonight, his name is Norman and he lives not far from here.”

Quick as a flash Mozza replied:

“You mean Norman Whiteside who used to play for United and moved to Everton last year?”

You little tinker Morrissey!

Nevin replied:

“Not bad knowledge for a guy whose soul is engaged elsewhere”

The ice was broken and they got along famously for the rest of the evening. They never met again but Morrissey sent Pat a postcard inscribed with ‘From one dribbler to another’ which as Pat says, could have been a perfect Smiths song title.

*All quotes in italics are from Pat Nevin, the accidental footballer published by Monoray, 2021.

Next one of those songs that got so much airplay that you end up convinced that it was a bigger hit than hit actually was. “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn had already been released once in 1991 when it peaked at No 66 in June. I’m guessing it was still being played on the radio enough to warrant a re-release just a few months later and this time it would become a UK Top 40 hit. Where do you reckon it go to though? Top 10? Top 5? Nope, it didn’t even go Top 20 peaking just outside at No 22.

I think it’s the lyrics that made the song memorable with those references to Elvis, The King and Graceland but it’s not really a tribute to Presley but rather concerns Cohn’s “spiritual awakening” as he puts it himself. Cohn had come to a realisation at the age of 28 that he didn’t actually like the songs he had so far written so he took a trip to Memphis to try and clear his writer’s block. The lyrics are almost entirely autobiographical, outlining his experiences whilst there like attending the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church on a Sunday morning to hear the Reverend Al Green preach (‘They’ve got gospel in the air, and Reverend Green be glad to see you, when you haven’t got a prayer’). The words also reference visiting the Hollywood Café in Robinsonville, Mississippi to see Muriel Davis Wilkins, a retired schoolteacher who performed at the cafe (‘Now Muriel plays piano, every Friday at the Hollywood’). Cohn also references blues legend W.C. Handy, Carl Perkins who originally recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” whilst that line about the ‘ghost of Elvis’ that security didn’t see is supposedly about a story that Bruce Springsteen once successfully scaled the wall at Graceland, trying to deliver a song he wrote to Elvis but The King wasn’t at home.

Inevitably Cohn drew comparisons with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John but unlike those two, Cohn’s career was defined by that one song which won him a Grammy in 1992 for Best New Artist. As with so many albums in 1991, the surprise success of the single created a demand for his debut eponymous album which had been released in February but which was now withdrawn by Warners (it always seemed to be Warners) before being re-released meaning that those of us working in record stores had to explain what an album being withdrawn meant to confused customers wanting the album by ‘that bloke who sings the song about Elvis’.

Interesting to note that just like Carl Cox earlier, the TOTP production team felt the need to beef up the studio performance with some clips of the video. So that was dance acts and blokes sat at pianos that the show struggled to accommodate.

For the sake of completists everywhere I should mention the following:

  • Cher recorded a version of this in 1995 for her “It’s A Man’s World” album and it outperformed Cohn’s version when it peaked at No 11 despite being f*****g horrible.
  • In 1992, jungle pioneers Shut Up And Dance released a bastardised version of “Walking In Memphis” with the lyrics and song title changed to “Raving I’m Raving”. However, as they hadn’t obtained song clearance from Cohn, he took out an injunction to stop them from making any more copies of the record. The original version had sent the song to No 2 in the UK charts but it dropped like a stone when the shops couldn’t get any more stock. A re-recorded version was then released which sounded nothing like Cohn’s song and which nobody wanted and it fell out of the charts within two weeks.
  • German happy hardcore ravers Scooter released a version of it entitled “I’m Raving”in 1996 but seriously, let’s not go there.

After last week’s Exclusive feature showed a song that wasn’t even a hit in the UK (“Fun Day” by Steve Wonder), this time it’s a better choice as the video for Queen‘s latest single is showcased. Possibly one fo the most poignant song titles ever, “The Show Must Go On” was the last Queen single to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime. Despite no official statement from the band, rumours were now rife that Freddie was very ill by the end of November, he had gone.

Despite being the last track on the band’s final album with Freddie “Innuendo”, it was released as a single to promote their “Greatest Hits II” album that was released at the end of October. It sounds strange to say it now as the album went to No 1 and 12 x platinum in the UK but I recall that we hadn’t sold as many as expected in the Our Price I was working in (we’d got shed loads of it in). I clearly remember the store manager saying to me that we could do with Freddie dying to shift some more units. It wasn’t his finest hour to be honest.

The video is basically just an advert for “Greatest Hits II” being a montage of clips from some of their singles included in the retrospective including “I Want to Break Free”, “Radio Ga Ga” and “Breakthru” as well as some shots of the band’s legendary The Magic tour dates at Wembley Stadium.

Last week, I referenced a poll that stated that by 2014, Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” was the most requested funeral song by us Brits. However, in 2005, a poll by digital TV channel Music Choice asked 45,000 adults across Europe which song they would like played at their funeral – “The Show Must Go On” came out on top.

The single peaked at No 16 initially but after Freddie’s death, it re-entered the Top 75 spending as many weeks there as it had done on its original chart run.

Tony Dortie’s at it again next with his urban jargon when he introduces the next act Cathy Dennis as “whipping up a storm and creating a flavour all over the world?” Creating a flavour? Actually, I bet he spelt it ‘flava’. Was that really a phrase back in ’91? Anyway, our Cathy is adopting that well worn record company strategy of following two fast hits with a slow one with the release of her ballad “Too Many Walls”. Previous singles “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and “Just Another Dream” had made a star of Cathy (although she was formally introduced to us on D Mob’s 1989 hit “C’mon and Get My Love”) so now was the time to consolidate on her success by demonstrating her diversity and that there was more to her than some sprightly dance/pop tunes. You can tell there has been some restyling of her image to support this new direction as Cathy is wearing a classy looking (albeit day- glo coloured) jacket and roll neck sweater outfit as opposed to the slinky catsuit of her “Touch Me (All Night Long)” appearance on the show and the Betty Boo style space cadet outfit for “Just Another Dream”.

“Too Many Walls” was a decent attempt at a ballad even if the final result is a little underwhelming. I was surprised to discover that it was co-written by Cathy with Anne Dudley of pioneering sound explorers Art of Noise as the song resides squarely in the safer parts of the pop world.

Despite her UK success, Cathy was still a bigger star in the US than over here at this point with this single peaking inside the Billboard Top 10 at No 8 whilst it got no further than No 17 here.

After the disastrous decision in last weeks’ TOTP of getting Status Quo to launch the new album chart feature, this week we get Simply Red. Whether this is a better choice or not is open to debate. On the plus side, they were probably seen as more contemporary and they were undeniably popular as “Stars” would become the biggest selling album of the year in the UK. On the downside, it means having to stomach Mick Hucknall. The track they perform here is “For Your Babies” which you would have been forgiven for thinking must be the second single released from the album but that wasn’t the case. The title track would take that slot when it was released a month on for this performance. Maybe new TOTP producer Stanley Appel was fastidious in the details of the show and insisted that an artist must perform a non-single album track if featured in the album chart section rather than just the latest single? As it was, “For Your Babies” was released as the third single in early 1992 and would make No 9 in the charts.

Whatever you say about Hucknall, I would imagine that this new policy of making artists sing live on the show wouldn’t have fazed him in the slightest and he gives a controlled, quality vocal here on what for me, was one of the tracks on the album that I could actually stand. Mind you, by the time the album had been played to death in the Our Price I was working in all over Xmas, I could quite happily never had heard it or Mick Hucknall ever again. We get another of those ill advised interviews at the end of the song as Dortie climbs onto the stage to have a rather obsequious word with the ginger one for no apparent reason other than to plug his forthcoming tour and namecheck the new members of the band. Clearly no lessons were learned from the sphincter clenching embarrassment of an interview with Belinda Carlisle last week.

The Breakers are back to pre-‘year zero’ revamp levels with four of them crammed into 1 minute and 35 seconds. Dortie makes a bit of a mess of introducing them as he refers to “The rugby song” by Kiri Te Kanawa (you couldn’t remember “World In Motion” Tony?) and mispronouncing Public Enemy as Public Enery reviving memories of Sir Henry ‘Enery’ Cooper and this advert:

Anyway, the Breakers start with Oleta Adams doing a version of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. This was taken from the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin” which included covers of their songs by some huge names such as Kate Bush, Tina Turner, Hall & Oates, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton and Sting. Despite scoring a huge global breakthrough hit with “Get Here” earlier in the year, maybe one of those aforementioned artists would have been expected to be picked as the single to promote the album but Oleta it was who got the nod and I personally think she does a decent job of one of my favourite Elton tunes. I think her take on it got patchy reviews as did the album as a whole despite its platinum sales in this country.

Also on the album was George Michael doing a song called “Tonight” from Elton’s 1976 “Blue Moves” album and yet it is George’s cover of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” that is far better known than Oleta’s. Elton and George first performed it together at Live Aid in 1985 with Michael including it in his set list for his Cover to Cover tour of 1991 with Elton being introduced on stage at Wembley Arena for the final show to reprise it. That performance was recorded and released as a single in November and would go to No 1 raising money for ten different charities all of which makes you wonder why George’s version wasn’t used for the “Two Rooms” album.

Oleta’s cover reached No 33 in the UK charts.

Back in 1991, the UK pretty much only knew Mariah Carey for her big ballad “Vision Of Love” from the previous year which went Top 10. Subsequent singles were only very minor hits and we could have been forgiven for thinking that Mariah might have had her day over here already. So when “Emotions” came out, those of us who had been of that opinion had to eat some humble pie. Not only was the single a Top 20 hit but the album of the same name went platinum in the UK alone. Furthermore, the single was a completely different sound and tempo to “Vision Of Love”, being an R’n’B disco stomper. Ah yes, that disco influence. Did it sound ever so slightly like the 1977 No 1 disco hit “Best Of My Love” by (ahem) The Emotions? Yes, yes it did and it didn’t go unnoticed by one of its songwriters, none other than Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire who took legal action and received a settlement. “Emotions” was co-written and produced by producers du jour Robert Clivillés, and David Cole of C+C Music Factory and according to one of their touring party, Carl Sturken, this is the story behind the song as he told it in an interview with songfacts.com:

“I am absolutely one thousand percent certain that when they wrote that groove, they labeled it ‘Emotions’ because it’s The Emotions’ groove. Then when Mariah Carey comes in to write over it, she sees ‘Emotions’ written as the name of the groove, so she writes a song called ‘You’ve Got Me Feeling Emotions.'”

Yeah, a likely story.

Was “Emotions’ the song where we really became aware of Mariah’s infeasibly wide vocal range? When she performed it at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, she reportedly sounded a G-sharp three and a half octaves above middle C. This was one of the highest notes produced by a human voice in the history of recorded music! I know we’re supposed to be impressed and all but listen to this compilation of her highest notes and tell me if it sounds nice!

Public Enery Public Enemy now with their tribute to the newly appointed Foreign Secretary of Boris Johnson’s government Liz Truss. “Can’t Truss It”was the lead single from their “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” album and was the follow up to seminal long player “Fear Of A Black Planet”. I say follow up but how did you follow up such a seismic album when it included such tracks as “911 Is A Joke” and “Fight The Power” the latter of which has come to be regarded as one of the most influential songs in hip hop history and which regularly appears in polls that try to quantify the best /most important songs of all time. “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black” certainly attempted the impossible performing well commercially but some reviews of it described it as good rather than classic.

As well as the much sampled James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone, “Can’t Truss It” features the more left field sample of “Im Nin’Alu” by Ofra Haza and peaked at No 22 on the UK Top 40.

And so we get to “The Rugby Song”. The1991 Rugby World Cup was only the second time the tournament had been held and this time host countries were England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France with the final taking place at Twickenham Stadium, London. To celebrate this event, an official Rugby World Cup song was recorded and released by New Zealand opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. “World In Union” was its title and it was based on “Thaxted” from the middle section of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”, a movement from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” though most of us knew the melody as being from the hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country”. It was hardly “World In Motion” by New Order but it proved to be surprisingly (at least to me) popular earning itself a chart high of No 4.

As for the tournament itself, it kind of passed me by. I had to look up that England actually made the final (losing to Australia 12-6) though when I checked the names of the team that day, I certainly recognised the likes of Will Carling, Rory Underwood, Rob Andrew and Jeremy Guscott. Maybe I even watched the final on TV but I can’t recall. There seemed to be a much bigger fuss about the 2003 final probably because we won it (Johnny Wilkinson and all that) and I definitely remember watching that match.

Just as the era of “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” is coming to an end, we enter another that defies explanation – the time of 2 Unlimited is upon us. This lot were formed by Belgian producers Jean-Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde but those aren’t the people that we associate with 2 Unlimited. No, they would be Dutch rapper Ray Slijngaard and vocalist Anita Doth who fronted the act. “Get Ready for This” for this was their debut hit and it was just dreadful. Totally annoying and basically just a keyboard riff played over and over again. Apparently the UK release was different to the version the the rest of Europe got served up which featured a rap from Ray but all we got was the line ‘Ya’ll ready for this?’ repeated four times plus the occasional ‘yeah!’ thrown in for good measure. Oh and an 808 State-lite middle eight. This was just an awful nonsense.

Foolishly I consoled myself with the thought that this would just be another one off Eurodance hit and we would never hear from 2 Unlimited again. How wrong I was as they would clocked up 14 UK Top 40 hits over the course of the decade including their only No 1 “No Limits:” in 1993. My God! What were people doing in the 90s?!

“Get Ready For This” closes with Dortie dancing on stage with 2 Unlimited (Gary Davies would never have done such a thing!) and we get the aforementioned “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams now into its 14th of 16 weeks at the top to close the show. By this point, I think the papers were seriously talking it up as the Xmas No 1! I’ve really got nothing left to say about this other than the parent album “Waking Up The Neighbours” had been released about three weeks before and had gone to No 1 as well. If it’s any consolation to those all Bryan’d out, he would not record another studio album for five years and once he had stopped releasing singles from “Waking Up The Neighbours” in early 1992, he would only release three singles in that time two of which were from film soundtracks and one was a stand alone to promote 1993’s Best Of album “So Far, So Good”. The end is in sight…

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1DJ Carl CoxI Want You (Forever)Nah
2MorrisseyMy Love LifeNo thanks
3Marc CohnWalking In MemphisI wasn’t tempted
4QueenThe Show Must Go OnBut I didn’t buy a ticket for it – no
5Cathy DennisToo Many WallsNope
6Simply RedFor Your BabiesNO!
7Oleta AdamsDon’t Let The Sun Go Down On MeI did not
8Mariah CareyEmotions Negative
9Public EnemyCan’t Truss ItAnd I didn’t – no
10Kiri Te KanawaWorld In UnionNothing here for me
112 UnlimitedGet Ready For ThisAway with you!
12Bryan Adams(Everything I Do) I Do It for YouIt’s 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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010k2r/top-of-the-pops-10101991

TOTP 23 MAY 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

To say we were still in the grip of dance music in mid 1991, this particular TOTP seems to be pretty conventional indeed featuring some very established acts, a couple of previously indie bands plotting a course for the mainstream with a more commercial sound and a new name but very much in the traditional singer-songwriter mould. There’s only two acts that would have qualified as dance music and one of them was Color Me Badd so I’m not sure they count.

Gary ‘Safe Pair of Hands’ Davies is the host and we start with a band desperately trying to convince us that they were still relevant in the new decade despite having made their fame and fortune very much as an 80s group. T’Pau hadn’t released an album for nearly three years by this point. Could they really roll back the clock and reclaim their former glories with a new one called “The Promise”? It seemed like a big ask at the time and so it would prove to be. The first taster of the songs they had been working on was lead single “Whenever You Need Me” and it offered very little in terms of a new musical direction. In short, they hadn’t developed their sound at all. Sure, it chugged along like a good ‘un in a power ballad by numbers fashion but it felt like the band had just decided to play it safe. They call it a ‘lay up’ shot in golf.

Reaction to the band’s return was mixed at best and awful at worst. Adam Sweeting of The Guardian had this to say about the album:

This melodramatic and syrupy concoction would comfortably have earned the band the Barbara Dickson slot on The Two Ronnies. Consider the first single, “Whenever You Need Me”, a Eurovision fourth-placer if ever there was one. Here, as elsewhere, Carol Decker’s masonry-toppling vocals are piled up in layers like a particularly indigestible aural lasagne

Ouch! Carol Decker still looked great and delivered the song as best she could but the rest of the band seemed to have decided that they were, in fact, serious rockers and not faded pop stars after all as they have all sprouted long hair. One of them really looks like ex- Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor. It isn’t but Andy’s shaggy locks look had clearly influenced him. I hope he had a good time up there on stage because I’m pretty sure this was T’Pau’s final ever TOTP appearance.

“Whenever You Need Me” peaked at No 16.

OK, we might as well get this one out of the way early. As indicated earlier, Color Me Badd are on the show.

*sighs*

Quite how this lot got to become a record selling phenomenon in 1991 is beyond me. They had a shitty song and as poster boys for the new jack swing genre, they were totally unconvincing. They weren’t even that good looking. At least New Kids On The Block had that on their side (well some of them anyway).

Regardless, “I Wanna Sex You Up” is headed for the top and is up to No 7 already. Apparently, it had already been offered to and turned down by the likes of Bell Biv DeVoe and Keith Sweat. Not quite up there with Decca turning down The Beatles but still a big mistake on there behalves. The track went double platinum in the US and was the 10th best selling single of the year in the UK.

The band are still going to this day (sort of) although the line up has changed a few times. Original members Bryan Abrams and Mark Calderon were still giving it there all on stage as recently as 2018 but unfortunately Abrams gave it a bit too much at this performance in New York….

…I like the Wikipedia description of the incident:

Abrams allegedly screamed, “I’m motherfucking Color Me Badd!” as he pushed Calderon to the floor. Officers stated that alcohol may have been a factor.

‘Alcohol may have been a factor‘ – d’ya think?! Abrams tried to make it up to Calderon at a subsequent gig by apologising via the medium of a T-shirt….

Dearie me. These are the actual guys from the band by the way and not a tribute act called Fuller Me Badd.

One of those established acts next as Simple Minds are back in the TOTP studio with latest single “See The Lights” which was the second single from their No 2 platinum selling album ‘Real Life”. Like T’Pau earlier, the band were hardly breaking new ground here. It felt like they were treading water to me. There had been a big line up change around this time as the album was made without keyboardist and original band member Mick MacNeil so maybe the band were trying to show their fans that the show would be going on as usual. More changes were a foot as drummer Mel Gaynor would also depart after this album when the band went on hiatus to reassess their options. The only album they released over the next four years was their first Best Of called “Glittering Prize 81/92”. These were uncertain times.

As with the Cher album “Love Hurts” that I talked about in a recent post, “Real Life” also swapped the cover art during its sales life. The album initially sported the minimalist and arty image on the left below before re-orders came with the shot of the band on the right which was actually the original rear cover – all very confusing. Maybe the band’s management wanted to reinforce the idea that tight were essentially a trio of permanent members now.

“See The Lights” peaked at No 20.

That singer-songwriter is up next and it can only be Beverley Craven of course with her rather affecting ballad “Promise Me”. I’m assuming her off white trouser suit and white piano in this performance are an homage to John Lennon and “Imagine”. I don’t know enough about pianos to be sure whether it is a Steinway like Lennon’s. Somebody who does know about musical instruments though is one of my wife’s best friends who is a classical musician and who, like us, was also living in Manchester in 1991 and around this time she got offered a place as part of the band for Beverley’s tour which I think included European dates. However, she turned the chance down as she had already booked a holiday with her then boyfriend and the dates overlapped. They finished not long after. I think she asked Beverley to “promise me you’ll wait for me” but she didn’t. Ahem. I’ll get my coat.

It’s that REM song next. “Shiny Happy People” may sound like a gloriously uplifting breath of fresh air pop breeze but supposedly the story behind it is a lot darker. Written about the Chinese propaganda machine spreading lies about what was really going on in the country post the Tiananmen Square uprising, Michael Stipe became concerned that rather than highlighting the propaganda, the song was actually modelling it with music fans accepting wholesale that it was just a happy, piece of bubble gum pop with no other levels to it. He may have been right.

Off the top of my head, other examples of songs where their sound is at odds with their subject matter would be “Luka” by Suzanne Vega and “Born In The USA” by Bruce Springsteen. I’m sure there are more.

“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6.

Impromptu gigs – they have quite the history don’t they. All the way back in the early 60s when those Cliff Richard films like Summer Holiday and The Young Ones always seemed to have a “let’s do the show right here” scene in them through to The Beatles unannounced concert from the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters at Savile Row in 1969 and into the 80s with U2 performing on the roof of a liquor store at the corner of 7th St and S. Main St, LA as part of the video shoot for “Where the Streets Have No Name”. Even in 1991, the practice was still alive and well as James played an impromptu gig on the roof of Manchester’s Piccadilly Hotel on 30 January. Add to that list The Wonder Stuff whose video for “Caught In My Shadow” was filmed in the grounds of St Philip’s Cathedral (otherwise known as Pigeon Park), Birmingham. Not quite a pure impromptu event though as the band had to get permission from the local council and the police had to be consulted so news of its happening had been leaked meaning that 200 indie pop kids turned up on 20 April to watch the band perform an acoustic gig.

It looked like it was great fun and that everybody had a good time (except maybe the guy in the orange top whose hands seemed surgically sewn into his pockets). The closest I ever got to an event like that was when I was on holiday in New York in 1998 and me and my mate Robin happened to stumble upon a live outside broadcast for the 1000th Ricki Lake show. I presume there’s some footage out there somewhere of me and Robin peering at the back of a crowd trying to see who everyone there was crowding round. My wife and another friend had gone off in another direction that day and saw Donald Trump coming out of Trump Tower. When we met up with them, they excitedly told us of their day and about Trump but Robin and I felt that we eclipsed then with our Ricki Lake story. I’m not sure we did given everything that has happened since.

“Caught In My Shadow” peaked at No 18.

Like T’Pau earlier, here are another band who made their name in the 80s returning with new material for the new decade. The only release that Deacon Blue had made in the 90s up to this point had been their “Four Bacharach & David Songs” EP and an album of B-sides and unreleased tracks called “Ooh Las Vegas” the previous year. “Your Swaying Arms” was their first new material since their album “When The World Knows Your Name” had, indeed, made their name and brought them huge commercial success.

Unfortunately for the band, the follow up album “Fellow Hoodlums” didn’t do anywhere near the same business as its predecessor (which had knocked Madonna off the top of the charts) and was generally seen as a mis-step. Yes, it did reach No 2 in the charts thanks to a sizeable loyal fanbase but I would wager that only second single “Twist And Shout” is remembered and indeed memorable from this era of the band. “Your Swaying Arms” was a case in point. A nice enough track that lilts along but it didn’t really go anywhere.

Ricky Ross had got himself an edgy, short haircut for this performance and the young man that I was at the time would have been always pleased to see Lorraine McIntosh strutting her stuff. Lorraine and Carol Decker on the same show! I was spoilt that week!

“Your Swaying Arms” peaked at No 23.

After the “Innuendo” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” singles, “Headlong” was much more of a traditional sounding Queen song. Very much in the style of something like “Hammer To Fall” or “One Vision” but not as accomplished. I don’t think lyrics like ‘Hoop-diddy-diddy, hoop-diddy-do’ did it any favours to be honest. The video was shot in November and December of 1990. Within 12 months Freddie Mercury would be dead having succumbed to AIDS.

His yellow top in the video here conjures up images of him in a similarly coloured jacket whipping up the crowd into a frenzy at Wembley stadium. Meanwhile, we can assume that Brian May, unlike most of the rest of us, did have access to The Simpsons TV show judging by his T-shirt.

“Headlong” peaked at No 14.

Acting as the cheerleader of the established acts on tonight’s show comes Cher who is still at No 1 with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)”, now in its fourth week at the top. I guess it was one of those songs that maybe appealed to people who traditionally didn’t buy much music and maybe only found themselves in a record shop once or twice a year? In today’s political vocabulary, ‘it cut through’.

According to Wikipedia, her follow up single “Love And Understanding” was released this week back in 1991 even as she was still top of the pile with her previous one. Talk about striking while the iron’s hot!

Probably the only true dance act on this TOTP is the play out video. Technotronic had been having hits for a couple of year by this point but the game was nearly up come 1991. “Move That Body” was a Top 20 hit but it would be their final one and the album it was from “Body To Body” peaked at No 27 whilst debut album “Pump Up The Jam” had been a No 2 hit. Quite the contrast. I shan’t mourn their passing I have to say.

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

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1T’PauWhenever You Need MeNah
2Color Me BaddI Wanna Sex You UpAre you shitting me?!
3Simple MindsSee The LightsNope
4Beverley CravenPromise MeNo but why wife’s friend who turned down the tour with Beverley bought the album just to torture herself some more
5REMShiny Happy PeopleI did not
6The Wonder StuffCaught In My ShadowNo
7Deacon BlueYour Swaying ArmsNegative
8QueenHeadlongAnother no
9Cher The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)Yes but it was all an honest mistake!
10TechnotronicMove That BodyDo you have to ask?

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/m000y8wv/top-of-the-pops-23051991

TOTP 14 MAR 1991

Posted on by 80stastic

Right, we’re about 10 weeks into reviewing the year that was 1991 here at TOTP Rewind so how’s it going do we think? Personally, I think it’s been a bit all over the place. We’ve had a No 1 from Iron Maiden, some years old hits back in the charts from the likes of The Clash, Madonna and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, some truly vile Grease and Bee Gees themed mega-mixes, some TV show cartoon characters topping the charts in the form of The Simpsons, some non mainstream acts sneaking into the charts like Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Railway Children, established rock and pop royalty still surviving into the 90s like Queen and Sting, some monks chanting their way to No 1, some classy dance tunes from the likes of Massive Attack and The Source and most unbelievably of all, a second hit for Gazza. Phew! Totally bonkers! The Top 40 was off its head!

And now a young man entered the fray who would add yet another unexpected element to the musical meting pot. Who saw Chesney Hawkes coming?! Well, if you had watched the film Buddy’s Song then maybe you did predict Ches-mania. This comedy-drama flick told the story of one Buddy Clark and his struggles to make it as a pop star whilst dealing with the issues of entering adulthood, separated parents and a burgeoning romance. Hawkes was, of course, the titular Buddy whilst The Who frontman Roger Daltrey played his Dad. I’m sure I’ve seen this but I don’t think it was at the cinema. Maybe it was shown on TV subsequently. It was pretty insubstantial as I recall but it was a perfect vehicle to launch Chesney’s real life pop star career. It was kind of like The Monkees all over again when the fictitious pop band from a TV show become actual pop stars or as Micky Dolenz famously said ‘like Leonard Nimoy becoming a real life Vulcan’. Cleverly, the film featured 11 songs performed by Chesney which were then released on a soundtrack album which could then be marketed basically as a Chesney Hawkes solo album. Added to all of this promotion, Hawkes even had a pop music back story as his Dad was Chip Hawkes from 60s hitmakers The Tremeloes.

Despite all this and Hawkes’ clean cut, pretty boy pop star looks, his rise to stardom still didn’t seem a given. Firstly, teenage girls already had a clutch of pop pin ups to scream at in the shape of New Kids On The Block. Secondly, there was his song. “The One And Only” had been written for him by faded 80s pop star Nik Kershaw whose last chart hit had been back in 1985 and was surely now unknown to 90s pop fans but it was, nevertheless, plucked from the album to be Hawkes’ debut single. Now here’s the thing for me about “The One And Only”; yes it sounded a bit dated (being written by a pop star from an earlier decade and all) and it had some cheesy, 6th form style lyrics but…but…it was and remains a bloody good pop song! No f**k you, it is! Whatever you may think about Kershaw, that’s what his strength was – writing decent pop genre songs. He knew how to do that. What he wasn’t so comfortable with was actually being the pop star which he always struggled with. This was an almost perfect arrangement for him. He gets all the royalties and kudos from a chart hit but he doesn’t have to front or promote it. Once more there was a tie in with The Monkees story as when music publisher Don Kirshner was asked to provide hit songs for the group and he presented them with the song “Sugar, Sugar”, they hated it and rejected it out of hand at a tense meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kirshner took his song and got some session musicians to record it and put it out under the name of The Archies who were a fictional band that featured in the animated TV series The Archie Show knowing that a bunch of cartoon characters couldn’t give him any grief. For Nik Kershaw see Don Kirshner (sort of). OK, the analogy doesn’t quite hold as a parallel to the Kershaw/Chesney story but you get my drift.

This TOTP performance helped propel Chesney to the top of the charts within a matter of weeks and for a while he was everywhere. I have my own (not especially interesting) Chesney Hawkes story but I’ll keep that back for another post as he will be at No 1 for FIVE weeks!

Next the sound of a band transitioning from being critically acclaimed and with a sizeable devoted fanbase to probably the biggest band in the world at the time; all courtesy of one unusual song. REM were certainly not a secret by the time 1991 rolled around. Their last album “Green” had sold a few million copies world wide and they had undertaken their biggest ever tour to support it. I was certainly aware of them having been introduced to their work by a pal at Polytechnic and had loved their “Stand” single. Yet, I wouldn’t have said they were up there with the ridiculously famous bands like, I don’t know, U2 or Queen or The Police.

“Losing My Religion” changed all that and brought them into the world of mainstream, global success. The lead single from their seventh studio album “Out Of Time” (yes seventh, they were hardly an overnight success), it wasn’t your typical rock/pop song featuring as it did a mandolin as the principal instrument and no recognisable chorus. Record company Warner Bros had some reservations about the band choosing it to promote the album but it would prove to be the biggest hit of their career. I say that but UK audiences didn’t quite embrace it in the same way as the rest of the world. A No 4 in the US and Top 10 just about everywhere else, it only made it to No 19 in the UK charts. However, sales of “Out Of Time” in this country were off the scale. It went to No 1, was the sixth best selling album of the year and would go five times platinum here. We sold that album in the Our Price store I worked in again and again and again. And they we sold it some more. By comparison, it sold five times more than previous album “Green”.

There’s loads of stuff online about the video for “Losing My Religion” in terms of the director, the concept behind it etc so you can look all that stuff up yourself if you like but here are the things that I have noticed about it:

  1. Is the actor with the bald head and white beard who takes the wig off the angel character the same bloke who played Socrates (So-Crates) in Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure?
  2. Supposedly Michael Stipe’s chaotic dancing style is based on a mash up of Sinead O’Connor’s moves in her “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and David Byrne’s “Once In A Lifetime” freaky cavorting. However, to me, it looks more like Roland Orzabal wigging out in the Tears For Fears video for “Mad World”.
  3. Michael Stipe has hair!

Seeing as REM were making a bid for global domination, it fell to Oxford’s Ride to be this week’s non-mainstream artist on the show. Apparently this was their TOTP debut but I think we had seen some of their videos on before (probably in the Breakers section). “Unfamiliar” was actually just one of four songs on an EP called “Today Forever” Indeed all of their previous chart entries had actually been tracks from an over arching EP – I don’t know, those indie bands and their EPs!

Ride seemed to gain a lot of critical appreciation and indeed commercial success very quickly after their formation as the poster boys for the ‘shoe gazing’ movement. The following year would see them at the pinnacle of their powers as they would score a Top 10 single in “Leave Them All Behind” and a Top 5 album in “Going Blank Again”. My particular fave of theirs from that time was “Twisterella” so I hope we get to see that on a future TOTP repeat.

As brightly as they burned, their flame was also quickly extinguished and by 1995 they were in crisis following the recording of the “Tarantula” album and broke up quickly afterwards. However, they reformed in 2014 and have released two successful albums since then.

The “Today Forever EP” peaked at No 14.

After seeing their 70s canon bastardised into an horrific megamix by The UK Mixmasters a couple of weeks earlier, The Bee Gees themselves were back for real with some new material. Despite their incredible run of success in the 70s, the 80s had been a much quieter time for The Bee Gees apart from one notable exception. Their surprise No 1 single “You Win Again” in 1987 was their only Top 40 entry of the entire decade. In an attempt to reverse this trend, they pulled off a trick most commonly known as money for old rope. Yes, they just took one of their old songs, made a few tweaks and shoved that out into the marketplace. So not really new material at all then. The song that they refashioned was “Chain Reaction” which had been a No 1 for Diana Ross back in 1986 and it re-emerged in 1991 as “Secret Love”. It proved a simple act to deceive the UK record buying public as they sent it all the way to No 5. However, the album it was taken from called “High Civilization” severely underperformed.

They appeared to expend as little effort on the video as they had done on the song. This was stultifyingly dull following very much in the footsteps of the promo for “You Win Again”. They could have at least pulled out some Travolta -esque Saturday Night Fever moves.

What can only be described as a poignant video next. Due to his worsening condition caused by advanced AIDS, Freddie Mercury was in very poor health come 1991. He had wanted to keep working as long as possible which allowed for one final Queen album to be released before his death in “Innuendo”. “I’m Going Slightly Mad” was the second single to be released from it following the title track and was also the last promo in which he contributed significantly to the creative process. By this point, stories of his ill health were rife in the press and so as not to fuel the rumours, he wore heavy make up to his the blotches on his face and a big coat to disguise the heavy weight loss his condition had induced. An over the top wig was also in play to cover up his receding hairline. The fact that it was almost entirely shot in black and white may also have been designed to throw people off the scent. That and the penguins. Definitely designed to throw people off the scent was the gorilla suit which allegedly housed one Elton Hercules John.

After the full on bonkers “Innuendo”, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” did little to return the band to the Queen sound that had served them so well for the previous two decades. Very understated with some truly daft lyrics (“I think I’m a banana tree”), it never seemed to get going to me. Maybe that wasn’t the point though. Many an online theory suggests that the lyrics reflect the mental decline Mercury was experiencing as one of the effects of AIDS. It didn’t seem to strike an emphatic chord with the fans as after the album’s title track had gone straight in at No 1, “I’m Going Slightly Mad” peaked at No 22.

By late November, Freddie would be dead but his end would usher in a posthumous No 1 when a re-release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” backed with another “Innuendo” track “These Are the Days of Our Lives” claimed the Xmas No 1 spot.

After a brief cameo from Lenny Henry to plug Red Nose Day which was happening the following evening, we have another showing of the Massive Attack studio performance for “Unfinished Sympathy”. So what was the story behind that pithy song title? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Shara Nelson would go onto have a clutch of hit singles in the mid 90s as a solo artist and she gives a heart felt performance here but the TOTP cameraman seems more interested in the guy in the backing orchestra with the pronounced comb over giving 70s footballer Ralph Coates a run for his money. Who was Ralph Coates? This was Ralph Coates…

A hat trick of rock and pop legends on the same show is completed. Following Queen and The Bee Gees earlier is Rod Stewart whose “Rhythm Of My Heart” single was the first from his “Vagabond Heart” album. That album would perform very solidly commercially(exceeding expectations even) and gave Rod the Mod his highest charting long player since 1976’s “A Night On The Town”. The single also did well for him peaking at No 3 at a stroke becoming his biggest hit since 1986’s “Every Beat of My Heart”.

If “Rhythm Of My Heart” sounded just a teeny bit Scottish in flavour, then there was a good reason for that. The melody is an adaptation of centuries old Scottish folk song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Yes you do know it; it’s the one that goes:

O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye

Yes, that one. Rod’s pride in his Scottish ancestry is well known of course (although he was born in England and his Mother was English, his Dad was Scottish) so I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised about him mining it for a hit record.

On June the 7th of this year, as part of his world tour in support of the “Vagabond Heart” album, Stewart played Old Trafford football stadium and, as core stock CD buyer at the time (oh the responsibility), I had my eyes on the ball for this happening. Predicting a spike in interest, I ordered in a load of his 1989 Best Of album which sold like billy-o’ the day after the gig which happened to be a Saturday. Or was it my manager (a big Rod fan) who told me to order them in? In the face-off a lack of definitive evidence, I’m going to take the credit for this one.

Host Simon Mayo blows his own trumpet (he did that quite a bit I’ve noticed) when introducing Happy Mondays and their latest single by saying it was a chart beater on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show and that he was playing it everyday. “Ooh check me out with my hip tastes; I’m no brainless DJ like Steve Wright, I’m into the music” you can imagine is what he really means.

“Loose Fit” was the third and final single to be lifted from the “Pills ‘n’ Thrills And Bellyaches” album and I recall our store having loads of it in stock but although it sold steadily peaking at No 17, it didn’t reach the heights of the first two singles “Step On” and “Kinky Afro” which both made it to No 5. Like many I think, I always thought it was something to do with Madchester fashion and all those baggy flare jeans but it wasn’t. Here’s Shaun Ryder courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Oh OK but the lyrics did include this rhyming couplet…

Don’t need no skin tights in my wardrobe today
Fold them all up and put them all away

…so, as with the Rod Stewart Best Of story, I’m going to give myself the benefit fo the doubt on this one.

Watching this performance back, it’s hard to remember that Shaun used to look like this. Still, I guess we all look a bit different to how we did 30 years ago… apart from Sinitta of course who doesn’t look much different from her “So Macho” days.

It’s a second and final week at the top for The Clash and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. Given the renewed interest in the band, record label Epic went to work on raiding their back catalogue to try and spin to out some more hits. They released a Best Of album called simply “The Singles” despite their already being a superior collection called “The Story Of The Clash” from just three years earlier. The public weren’t taken in by that and it struggled to a high of No 68. They had better luck with a re-release of ‘Rock The Casbah” (like “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”, also from the “Combat Rock” LP) which went to No 15 in the singles chart. However, a second re-release of “London Calling” (it had already been re-released once in 1988) missed the Top 40 altogether and brought the whole early 90s revisiting The Clash project to a close.

The play out song is “Who? Where? Why?” by Jesus Jones. It’s not the official promo video though but rather a re-showing of their studio performance from the other week. If you google Jesus Jones, the first result that comes up is a link to their official website (good work from their website creator) and the link says ‘Jesus Jones. No, we didn’t split up’. Yes, in spite of everything, the music press backlash, the decline in their popularity, being dropped by EMI, the band remained together and are still touring and releasing new material to this day. Apart from a spell when original drummer Gen was replaced by Tony Arthy before rejoining the fold in 2014, thew original line up has remained intact. Quite the achievement.

“Who? Where? Why?” peaked at No 21.

For the sake of posterity, I include the chart rundown below:

Order of AppearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Chesney HawkesThe One And OnlyI did not
2REMLosing My ReligionNot the single but I must have it on something
3RideToday Forever EPNah
4The Bee GeesSecret LoveDefinitely not
5QueenI’m Going Slightly MadNegative
6Massive AttackUnfinished SympathyNo but I had the album Blue Lines
7Rod StewartRhythm Of My HeartAnd no
8Happy MondaysLoose FitNo but I had the Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches album
9The ClashShould I Stay Or Should I GoNot the re-release but I have it on something surely?
10Jesus JonesWho? Where? Why?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/m000x8p7/top-of-the-pops-14031991