REM | TOTP Rewind – the 90s

TOTP 06 JUN 1991

Posted on August 11, 2021 by 80stastic

When I started out reviewing all these TOTP shows beginning with the 1983 repeats, quite often a show would not be re-broadcast due to the consequences of Operation Yewtree. As the old brigade of presenters began to be weeded out, the unacceptable elements we’re also part of the cull and so the shows that were omitted from the BBC4 schedules began to get less and less. As we pushed on into the 90s, every single TOTP was shown again….until now. Yes, we are missing out the 30 May 1991 edition but it’s nothing to do with any forces of darkness. This is the first episode not to be repeated since 23 June 1988 and the reason is…well, it could be a couple of things. Firstly, the quality of the existing video isn’t up to broadcast standards or secondly, and this is the theory that Twitter seems to suggest was the true reason, oh I’ll let @TOTPFacts fill you in:

This will be due to ongoing licensing issues re: using The Doors' catalogue on TV. (The video for "Light My Fire" plays over the end credits, making it hard to edit out) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

The Doors?! You might well wonder why they were on a TOTP in 1991 and it was nothing to do with an advert this time. No, it was all to do with the Oliver Stone Doors biopic that was released that year starring Val Kilmer. As part of the film’s promotion, a soundtrack album was released (featuring the original versions of the songs and not Kilmer’s vocals which were used in the actual film) and “Light My Fire” was re-released as a single to publicise it. OK, so that explains why Jim and co were back in the charts in 1991 but why can’t the BBC broadcast a show that includes their music 30 year later? It’s because The Doors and their estate have withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), no longer wishing to accept the society’s licensing agreements. This means that the BBC would have to negotiate a deal directly with the artist to play their music and as the corporation is sticking with its policy of single blanket collective licensing, that rules out The Doors from any BBC playlists. The Doors aren’t the only artists to have left the MCPS – Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt and Journey have also done so. I’ll leave you to make up your own minds as to whether this is a good or bad thing.

So are we finished with the whole Doors thing now? Not quite. In orders to maximise the revived interest in the band’s music, their record company Warners withdrew all their back catalogue from sale, presumably to force punters to buy the soundtrack album. Then, when the fuss surrounding the film had died down, they made them available again. Great for Warners, not so good for those of us working in record shops trying to explain tis marketing strategy to customers. Off the back of this comes one of my claims to fame. I indeed did have to explain this to none other than the Rochdale Cowboy himself Mike Harding. Yes, the singer, songwriter and comedian who seemed to be on the TV all the time when I was growing up came in to buy some Doors albums but was dismayed by our poor stockholding. Luckily for Mike, we still had a one copy left of the 1985 Doors Best Of (the double CD with the iconic ‘Lizard King’ photo of Jim on the front cover) so I sold him that instead of the soundtrack album as it was more comprehensive (as I recall the latter didn’t have “Hello, I Love You” on it).

As for the film itself, I wasn’t sure about it when iI first saw it at the cinema. It was 2 hours and 21 mins long for a start (which was very long for a film back then). They even had an intermission in the screening I was at cutting the film into two parts. I watched it again a couple of years ago and found it more likeable.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is a non repeated TOTP. Fortunately, the whole show is on YouTube if you really need to see it but I am already behind in may reviews so I’ll be given that one a miss. For the record, these are the artists that were featured:

Technotronic
MC Hammer
Pop Will Eat Itself
Sonia
Kraftwerk
Siouxie and the Banshees
Amy Grant
Kylie Minogue
Cher
The Doors

If you’re annoyed about missing out on seeing any of the names listed above, take solace in the fact that you have also missed out on having to endure Anthea Turner presenting and get this….it was her last ever TOTP appearance! Hurray!

The decision to axe Anthea would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of changes to the show in 1991. The ‘year zero’ revamp was coming but before then even, some changes were afoot. We’ve already had the truncated chart rundown which doesn’t include records going down, the compressed Breakers section with up to five acts concertinaed into under a minute and a half and now another change that would have been heresy back in the programme’s 80s heyday. A record that isn’t even in the Top 40 opening the show! Apparently this was a regular practice in the 70s but since 1980 the criteria for appearing on the show had been inflexible one of which was your record had to be in the Top 40. Suddenly though, in June 1991, that didn’t matter as here were Northside with a very clear graphic announcing that their single “Take 5” was at No 41 in the charts. None of this made any sense. Even host Mark Goodier doesn’t seem to have got the policy change memo as he says in his intro…

“Good evening and welcome to TOTP featuring the world’s most exciting chart – the BBC UK Top 40”

…and then he introduces an act whose single is outside of that ‘most exciting chart’. Just weird. Who knows what negotiations and deals went down behind closed doors to make this happen but it didn’t really do Northside much good as the single would only rise one place in next week’s chart before falling away completely. At least they could say it was a bona fide Top 40 hit I guess. Of course, the band already one of these to their name as “My Rising Star” had made it all the way to the giddy heights of No 32 the previous year.

The band were part of the Factory Records roster of artists and did indeed hail from Manchester (Moston to be precise) and I remember there being some fuss about them when their only album “Chicken Rhythms” was released later in June. It did quite well as I recall (Wikipedia tells me it got to No 19 in the album chart) whilst “Take 5” was a pretty funky tune to be fair. I like that, despite the privilege of being on TOTP without a Top 40 hit, the band had a dress down Thursday approach to being on TOTP in their choice of outfits. On the other end of the spectrum and also on this show were Marillion and that led to this little Twitter spat when the repeat went out on BBC4:

Always the professionals you know…and who are Northside?😄#totp #marillion
— Marillion (@MarillionOnline) July 30, 2021

Come on lads. Play nicely.

Oh, by the way, before we get any further, this TOTP was originally broadcast on my 23rd birthday so Happy Birthday to me! I am now 53. This can’t be right surely? Something else which wasn’t right was the fact that rather than doing all his links in and amongst the studio audience, for some of them (those for promo videos and not studio performances) Mark Goodier seems to have been green screened! In this intro to “Jealousy” by Pet Shop Boys he does it against a backdrop of Neil and Chris before being zapped off screen Star Trek like. Not another new innovation?

This was the fourth and final single to be released from the duo’s album “Behaviour” and for me was the best at the time (I may have been swayed by “Being Boring” in later life though). A huge, sweeping, epic ballad with an orchestral outro which was perfectly at odds with Tennant’s dead pan vocals, it should have been a much bigger hit than its No 12 peak. Maybe if it hadn’t been the last track to be released as a single? Apparently it was the first proper song that Neil and Chris wrote together but they waited for years before recording it for an album as they wanted Ennio Morricone to score the orchestral part but they had to settle for Harold “Axel F” Faltermeyer in the end.

I seem to recall there was a guy working at our shop around this time who was going through some relationship problems with his boyfriend and who would play this track a lot on the store stereo. I’m not sure that helped to be honest.

The aforementioned Marillion next though it was a Fish-less version of the band by now. “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” was the lead single from their sixth studio album “Holidays In Eden” and guess what? It wasn’t in the Top 40 at the time either! Yes, like Northside earlier, the TOTP producers gave the band a slot anyway. What was going on?! Makes their snarky tweet about who were Northside seem a bit lacking in credibility seeing as they were benefitting from an unusual TOTP appearance just like them. And they were even further down the charts at No 42 that week. In fairness, it did make it all the way to No 34 in the end but even so.

So who was it that took over from Fish? Well it was Steve Hogarth of course though I had to do a double take to make sure that wasn’t cockney comedian Micky Flannagan up there at first. As for the song, I don’t remember it at all but that’s hardly surprising as it meanders along going nowhere for its entire length.

Goodier is back with his Star Trek transported trick again next as he introduces Salt ‘N’ Pepa with “Do You Want Me”. His intro is not quite factually correct though:

“Do you remember the 1988 hit “Push It” by Salt ‘N’ Pepa. Well in fact they haven’t really been in the charts for about three years now they’re back though…”

Well actually Mark, since “Push It” they’d had three Top 40 hits the last of which was “Expression” in April 1990 so not really three years then. OK, “Expression” only just sneaked in at No 40 but as we have seen tonight, you could get on TOTP with less of a hit in 1991.

“Do You Want Me” would go all the way to No 5 but I have to say I don’t really remember it. If I think about Salt ‘N’ Pepa and 1991, the only single that comes to mind is “Let’s Talk About Sex” which was a No 2 hit later in the year. Both tracks were from their “Blacks’ Magic” album which despite the success of its singles was largely ignored in the UK. That was largely due to the fact that their record label released a Greatest Hits album in October which was a healthy seller peaking at No 6.

Another Madonna re-release next as, off the back of her whopper of a seller Best Of album “The Immaculate Collection”, “Holiday” was back in the charts. Unbelievably, this was the third time the song had been a hit in the UK! Originally it made No 6 in 1984, then No 2 when re-released in 1985 (kept off the top by her own “Into The Groove” single) and finally in 1991 when it peaked at No 5. So, at the risk of sounding like Craig David, does that make the 1991 entry a re-re-release?

Look, I’ll have covered this song twice before in my 80s blog (https://80spop.wordpress.com) so I don’t propose to spend too long on this one but I have to say I don’t really understand why record buyers would have forked out for this one for a third time especially as so many people had already bough the “The Immaculate Collection” album with it on over Xmas. Was it a rare mix of it? Or were there loads of Madonna completists out there? Or could it have been for this reason courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

This third issue of "Holiday" was released to tie-in with compilation "The Immaculate Collection". As well as the 7" you could also buy CD EP "The Holiday Collection", which included 3 Madonna hits left off the LP: "True Blue". "Who's That Girl" and "Causing A Commotion". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

You’d have to be a real obsessive super fan to buy it just for that though surely?

It’s that nice Kenny Thomas now with his second and biggest ever hit “Thinking About Your Love”. I’ve said in previous posts that back in 1991, I really had a problem with Kenny and it seems irrational to me now. Yes, I thought this music was a bit on the bland side but there have been loads of artists down the years that have fallen on deaf ears with me and I didn’t despise them nearly as much as I did Kenny. From what I can make out he seems a thoroughly decent chap as well but boy did he get up my nose back then. Let me watch this performance again and see if it triggers some of those feelings of loathing…

…nope. Nothing there to cause such an extreme reaction in me. His backing vocalist looks a bit like TV presenter June Sarpong. Can’t be can it?

“Thinking About Your Love” peaked at No 4.

Some Breakers now starting with the first of two bands on tonight with the US spelling of the word ‘colour’ in their name. “Solace Of You” by Living Color is another one I don’t recall but listening to it now, it has a world music feel to it and a different sound altogether to hear previous hit “Love Rears Its Ugly Head”. Sort of like Paul Simon meets Eagle-Eye Cherry? Maybe not. Presumably they had to make do with a Breakers slot on the show rather than a studio performance despite being 1 and 2 places higher in the charts than Northside and Marillion respectively due to their touring commitments that Mark Goodier outlines. They had the last laugh though as “Solace Of You” was a bigger hit than either “Take 5” or “Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)” when it peaked at No 33.

Another Gloria Estefan single! Wasn’t she just on the other week with a song called “Seal Our Fate”? Well, she’s back again with another track from her “Into The Light” album called “Remember Me With Love”. I really couldn’t tell you how this one went and even after watching it on this TOTP I can’t as the clip cuts off before she’s even got to the chorus! This compressed Breakers section really was pointless, talking of which this single would surely be a jackpot winning answer on Pointless if the subject was Gloria Estefan Singles.

“Remember Me with Love” peaked at No 22.

While Michael Bublé was learning to shave, Harry Connick Jr was the guy being talked of as the natural successor to Frank Sinatra in the crooning stakes. He came to global recognition back in 1990 when his album “We Are In Love” tore down the traditional musical genre walls and became a mainstream hit despite essentially being a jazz album. My wife was quite taken with him at the time and had that album. Around the same time he had recorded the music for the Billy Crystal /Meg Ryan film When Harry Met Sally from which this single “It Had To Be You” was taken. The soundtrack album was a also a massive success and earned Connick a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.

There was such a rush of material from Harry at this time that it all got a bit confusing. In September of 1991 he released “Blue Light, Red Light” which was a big band album and was also a sizeable success whilst he also contributed a song to the soundtrack of The Godfather Part III. The albums kept on coming with one released every year throughout the 90s pretty much although that initial buzz about him was never really recovered. Effortlessly cool, Connick Jr ran a career in acting parallel to his music making appearing in more than 20 films but I think I liked him best as tail gunner Clay in Memphis Belle. Eat your heart out Bublé.

Innuendo songs – it’s a niche genre but it does exist. I’m thinking “Love Resurrection”. by Alison Moyet and of course “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours but perhaps the biggest of them all was “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls (as with Eurythmics, there was no ‘The’). Largely unknown outside of their native Australia (where they were a much bigger deal), their only song to make any inroads anywhere else in the world was their homage to masturbation. It was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg who had form when it came to provocative pop songs – they also wrote “Like A Virgin” for Madonna.

I thought this was a great pop song. Immediately catchy but also having an angle with a great vocal delivery from Christina Amphlett. One of the best one hit wonders of the decade. Sadly Christina died in 2013 of breast cancer but her legacy lived on with the founding of the I Touch Myself Project which was created in her honour with a mission to create educational forums to remind women to check their breasts regularly.

“I Touch Myself” peaked at No 10 in the UK and No 4 in the US.

Ah, the very wonderful Kirsty MacColl is back in the charts. Last seen exactly two years prior to this with her version of “Days” by The Kinks, this would turn out to be her last ever Top 40 hit if you discount all of the re-releases of “Fairytale of New York”. Her lack of chart success remains a mystery and travesty. “Walking Down Madison” was the lead single from her “Electric Landlady” album (see what she did there?) and was seen as a change in direction for Kirsty with its hip/hop feel and extensive use of rapping in it. The guitar part in it reminds me of Happy Mondays and that influence would make sense as Kirsty supplied backing vocals for their hit “Hallelujah”. However, it was actually written by Johnny Marr and was one of the first songs that he wrote after the break up of The Smiths. Despite the multitude on stage here with Kirsty, I don’t think Johnny was one of them but is that Roland Rivron on bongos?

When Kirsty died in 2001, I was on a Xmas night out from work and recall seeing her face on the news on a TV screen in an electrical shop window as I walked past. I remember thinking why is Kirsty MacColl on the news? It was tragic news.

Oh and by the way TOTP graphics team, you spell her surname MacColl not McColl. Show some respect.

A brand new No 1! Cher has finally gone after what seems like ages (mind you if we thought her time at the top was a long one, watch out for Bryan Adams in a few weeks time!). The ‘Badd’ news is that it’s been replaced by that horrible “I Wanna Sex You Up” song by Color Me Badd.

The other week I commented on the fact that two of the guys in the band looked like George Michael and Kenny G. I wasn’t the only one. Here’s Beavis and Butthead making the same connection (maybe I was just regurgitating their take on it subliminally) and they’ve added another name too…

The play out video is “Shiny Happy People” by REM again. I think it’s the third time it’s been on the show and it’s that level of overkill that quickly turned a lot of people off it. I was one of them. Parent album “Out Of Time” was played to death in the Our Price I worked in and “Shiny Happy People” was never off the radio. It became one of those songs that you couldn’t listen to any more after having already reached saturation point. Other songs that triggered me like this would be “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell (which was also back in the charts in 1991!). Even the band themselves tired of it quickly and avoided playing it live whilst it was not included in the track listing for their 2003 Warner Brothers greatest hits “In Time: The Best Of REM”.

It’s not that REM were always suffering for their art with sombre, melancholic songs though. “Stand” from 1989’s “Green” album is a great pop tune full of hooks whilst 1986’s “Fall On Me” has a wonderful pop structure and melody. And yet somehow, for many of us, “Shiny Happy People” seemed to cross a line. Maybe it’s due a bit of a revisit.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Northside	Take 5	No but a pretty nifty tune all the same
2	Pet Shop Boys	Jealousy	No but it’s on my Pop Art Best Of CD of theirs
3	Marillion	Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)	Cover My Ears (Pain and Hell) more like – no
4	Salt ‘N’ Pepa	Do You Want Me	Nope
5	Madonna	Holiday	No but it’s on my Immaculate Collection CD
6	Kenny Thomas	Thinking About You	No
7	Living Color	Solace Of You	Negative
8	Gloria Estefan	Remember Me With Love	Uh-uh
9	Harry Connick Jr	It Had To Be You	No but my wife had his We Are In Love album
10	Divinyls	I Touch Myself	No but I easily could have done
11	Kirsty MacColl	Walking Down Madison	This one is on the singles box though I think my wife bought it
12	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Away with you!
13	REM	Shiny Happy People	Nah

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000y8wx/top-of-the-pops-06061991

TOTP 23 MAY 1991

Posted on August 6, 2021 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 appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	T’Pau	Whenever You Need Me	Nah
2	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Are you shitting me?!
3	Simple Minds	See The Lights	Nope
4	Beverley Craven	Promise Me	No but why wife’s friend who turned down the tour with Beverley bought the album just to torture herself some more
5	REM	Shiny Happy People	I did not
6	The Wonder Stuff	Caught In My Shadow	No
7	Deacon Blue	Your Swaying Arms	Negative
8	Queen	Headlong	Another no
9	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)	Yes but it was all an honest mistake!
10	Technotronic	Move That Body	Do 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 16 MAY 1991

Posted on August 4, 2021 by 80stastic

It’s mid May 1991 and I have been working in the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester for about 8 months and life is OK. Except there’s one thing wrong. I haven’t yet had a Saturday off. Obviously as a Xmas temp (as I was when I started) I didn’t expect any whilst the Xmas rush was on but having secured permanent employment with the company, I have worked every Saturday since. Saturday 18 May would change all that though. How do I remember this date? Because I’d booked the Saturday off to watch the FA Cup final. Now as I have mentioned just a few times over the course of this blog, I have always been a Chelsea supporter (46 years and counting now) but I had never missed watching the Cup final regardless who was playing and 1991 wasn’t going to be any different. That year the finalists were Spurs and Nottingham Forest and I had invited some mates from out of town around to watch it. It was an eventful game but it would always be remembered as the Gazza final for all the wrong reasons…

Gazza, of course, had been a pop star less than 6 months earlier off the back of his tears at Italia ’90. His performance in the FA Cup final was more wretched even than either of his two hit singles though. Spurs and hit singles wasn’t a new phenomena restricted to just Gazza mind. The football club had released FA Cup final songs for the previous three occasions they had made the final back in the 80s, all of them with cockney rhyming slangers Chas ‘n’ Dave with the most memorable being the 1981 song “Ossie’s Dream” – ‘in the cup for Totting-ham’ and all that. 1991 was no different as “When the Year Ends in One” was released. Unlike its predecessors, it failed to make the Top 40…because it was shit. Anyway, I finally got my Saturday off to watch the game but before that was the small matter of Thursday night and TOTP. I wonder of host Bruno Brookes will mention the footy*?…

*SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t.

What on earth is he wearing?! That clobber he’s got on makes him look like a member of a Formula 1 track side race team, ready to speed change a tyre when the driver pulls in for a pit stop. Just ludicrous! Stood next to him is a kid with floppy ‘Madchester’ hair wearing a Revenge T-shirt , Revenge being New Order’s Peter Hook’s side project band in the early 90s. The contrast is startling. Not sure that the kid’s enthusiastic clapping for acts on tonights’s show that include Danni Minogue, Jason Donovan and Cher is that sincere given his choice of T-shirt. I suspect opening act New Kids On The Block wouldn’t have been one of his faves either. Now don’t be fooled by any the studio audience whoops and hollering, by this point in their career, the band’s popularity was not at the heights it had scaled previously. In short, the wheels were coming off and they were heading down the dumper. To arrest this slide, Donnie Wahlberg convinced them to pursue a new musical direction that was more urban. “Call It What You Want” was the first offering of their new style and came from something called “No More Games: The Remix Album” which did what it said on the tin and featured hip-hop-upped versions of their previous hits. In the history of very bad ideas, this was surely in the Top 10. I get they were trying to grow and change with their pre-teen audience as they themselves grew older but surely those kids wanted grunge not dirge. The album sold moderately but didn’t really halt the band’s decline.

Apparently this was their one and only TOTP studio appearance. As such, they’ve decided to try and make it a bit special by performing the vocals live. Big mistake. Wahlberg raps adequately but Jordan Knight’s vocals, never that convincing, sound exposed and flat. Give them their due though, they could dance in sync very well.

“Call It What You Want” peaked at No 12.

One of the best known songs of the 80s making a comeback in the 90s now as we see “Tainted Love ’91” by Soft Cell re-released and back in the charts. Why? Well, there was a Best Of album released by record label Mercury called “Memorabilia – The Singles” and “Tainted Love” was back out to promote it. It was actually a re-recorded version of the song as were all but two of the eleven tracks on the album. There had already been a Soft Cell Best Of album released in 1986 simply entitled “The Singles” but it had got swallowed up in the Xmas rush and scraped to a lowly No 58 in the charts. Fast forward five years and it was deemed the right time for another compilation to boldly go where its predecessor hadn’t. Advertised as a Soft Cell / Marc Almond album, it only actually included two Almond solo originals plus his 1989 No 1 with Gene Pitney “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” and his collaboration with Bronski Beat on 1985’s “I Feel Love (Medley)”. You can imagine a conversation at Mercury about the crucial need to include “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart” in the track listing but that would mean marketing it as a Soft Cell/ Marc Almond combined project. It worked though as the album went Top 10 and the single Top 5.

For many years, I couldn’t listen to “Tainted Love” due to the amount of times I had already heard it played on radio. It got hammered at the time and is regularly given a spin whenever anything vaguely to do with the 80s is broadcast. I had reached saturation point (see also “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen). I think I might just be coming out of that phase now though. I can’t hear that much difference between the original recording and this 1991 version – maybe a slight difference in the emphasis Marc puts on some of his phrasing and a slightly less lush production? Right until this very minute I had always believed that “Tainted Love” was the best selling single of 1981 but Wikipedia tells me that the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 giving the title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. What?! Why did they feel the need to do that 40 years on? One of the great chart swizzes ever surely?

The other week Simon Mayo was telling us how Cathy Dennis was going to be No 1 in the US with “Touch Me (All Night Long)” and now here’s Bruno Brookes saying that she is No1 in the US. Slightly disingenuous as she was actually No 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart (their equivalent of our Top 40) but she was No 1 in the US Dance Club Songs chart. I’m being pedantic of course. Suffice to say she was doing very well commercially.

Now, is that a catsuit she’s wearing in this performance? I do believe it is. I’ve told my woman in a catsuit story before haven’t I? OK, here it is again. In my early days at Our Price, there was a woman in our shop called Natalie who also did some modelling on the side I think. Anyway, one day she turned up for work in a catsuit and asked me if I thought it was a bit too much. Suffice to say I didn’t know where to look. One day Mick Hucknall rang the shop asking to speak to Natalie (I think she met him on a night out and he was quite enamoured). I answered the phone and when I asked who it was asking for Natalie he replied ‘Mick’. I knew it was Hucknall as Natalie had told us all that he was interested in her but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. As a claim to fame, it’s pretty poor I admit.

“Touch Me (All Night Long)” peaked at No 5 in the UK.

When I saw in the running order that Dannii Minogue was on this show, I assumed it was to perform her “Love And Kisses” single but it seems I’ve written so many of these reviews that I’ve lost tracks of the weeks. “Love And Kisses” has been and gone and we are now on to Dannii’s follow up single called “Success”. Wikipedia tells me it was also known as “$ucce$$” which was a really naff idea if true.

Like its predecessor, this was lifted from her debut album and was about the trappings of celebrity (probably). It’s got a bit more of a heavier beat to it than the much lighter “Love And Kisses” but it’s still pretty anonymous. Dannii clearly tries to deliver the song’s harder edge with a sassier performance as she takes off her jacket early doors to reveal a tattoo on her right arm which appears to be an elephant (?) and a dress with the straps dangling so perilously low as to run the risk of dropping altogether potentially causing a Janet Jackson style wardrobe malfunction. Even Bruno declared that he had been concerned (well it was pre-watershed I suppose). Also, whoever styled Dannii’s hair, what was the deal with the long straggly bit covering the left side of her face? It didn’t look practical at all. The whole thing looks like she’d just dashed out fo the back of a taxi at the last second before taking to the stage.

Talking of taxis, apparently when recording her album in Brooklyn, there has been some shootings near the studio meaning taxicab drivers were reluctant to take Dannii’s fare for the journey there. She supposedly found the recording experience in New York City both “awesome” and “terrifying”. Also potentially terrifying was the prospect of Dannii repeating that TOTP performance, droopy shoulder straps and all, before the Queen at the The Royal Variety Show that year. Thankfully, I can report that although there was a fair amount of flesh on display (especially from her backing dancers), Dannii kept her modesty intact at all times (unlike when she did those nude calendars back in the mid 90s).

“Success” did a good job of consolidating the success of “Love And Kisses” by peaking at No 11 where it stayed for three weeks.

More breakneck speed Breakers again this week as we get four songs crammed into in 1 min and 20 seconds. I’m sure the TOTP producers were beginning to worry about the competition from ITV’s The Chart Show with its video only show format and were trying to redress the balance. We start with “Shiny Happy People” by REM who Bruno reckons have got a ‘massive cult following’ in the UK. I think they may have surpassed that particular status by this point with the release of the “Out Of Time” album but the arrival of this single certainly left any remnants of being a cult way behind them. Very much the band’s marmite moment, it surely can’t be denied that “Shiny Happy People” brought them to the attention of people that had never heard of them before. We sold copy after copy after copy of the album in the Our Price store I worked in off the back of this song.

Apparently written ironically with the title and chorus being based on a Chinese propaganda poster, Michael Stipe however disputes this theory. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

"Shiny Happy People" is "not meant to be ironic at all", Michael Stipe says. "We wrote it because we were challenging ourselves. I grew up a child of the '60s listening to The Monkees and the Archies and The Banana Splits…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

"… The guys threw me the stupidest song that sounded so buoyant and weird and I was like, 'Okay, I accept the challenge.' So it was bubblegum music made for kids." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) July 30, 2021

Of course, you can’t mention “Shiny Happy People” without referring to Kate Pierson from the B-52s whose vocals on this really did add something to it. Kate’s band were enjoying a commercial renaissance themselves after the success of 1990’s “Cosmic Thing” album so that, allied with the fact that both band’s were from Athens, Georgia made the fit between them kind of inevitable.

Not convinced that this was the song that made mainstream superstars of REM? How about this evidence then. “Shiny Happy People” was used as the theme song to the unaired pilot for the sitcom Friends, known at that time as Friends Like Us.

Still not having it? Well how about this then? REM singing a version of it called “Happy Furry Monsters” on Sesame Street. Come on. Is there a safer TV show in the history of television?

“Shiny Happy People” peaked at No 6 in the UK, easily their biggest hit at the time and still their joint third highest charting UK single to this day.

“A new name to us all” next (according to Bruno Brookes) as Flowered Up breach the Top 40 for the first time. So were they a new name? Well, they had formed two years earlier and had released two singles in 1990 which made Nos 54 and 75 so not totally unknown I would wager Bruno. In fairness to Brookes, had I heard of them before “Take It” was a hit? I really can’t remember but I do recall talk of them being ‘the next Happy Mondays’ at the time. That may have been less due to their sound and more to do with them having a Bez like dancer figure in their ranks, the brilliantly named Barry Mooncult who actually looked more like Peter Gabriel (in his Genesis days) on stage with his flower petal costume.

Their chart breakthrough coincided with a move from indie label Heavenly Records to major London Records so that may explain why it happened (major label promotion budget etc). Debut (and only) album “A Life With Brian” was released later in the year and the band had already appeared on the front covers of both Melody Maker and NME before then. I think they were quite well known in the end then Bruno. Flowered Up will perhaps forever be mostly associated with their biggest hit “Weekender”, the massively epic 12 minute long single that made the Top 20 in 1992 and which the band steadfastly refused to edit for airplay reasons. Hopefully we’ll get to see that in future TOTP repeats. In the meantime, “Take It” peaked at No 34.

Giving Dannii Minogue a run for her money in the strappy top stakes is Carol Decker of T’Pau who are back in the charts with “Whenever You Need Me“. No, really. Going against all known logic, 80s popsters T’Pau were somehow still having hits into the 90s. It really did rally against the status quo as when they returned two years after their last Top 40 hit, they sounded exactly the same. Now I’d had a soft spot for this lot back in their 80s heyday but even I couldn’t have cared less about them come 1991.

“Whenever You Need Me” was the lead single from their third album “The Promise”. I remember we had lots of it in stock in our store and hardly sold a copy. Somehow it made No 10 in the charts whilst the single made No 16 (although it was their last ever trip to the Top 40). Thinking back now, I wonder if there was some chart manipulation going on from the record label with lots of FOC stock being given to chart return stores in return for a few beeps of the album barcode on the Gallup scanner. That might well be a scandalous claim, it’s just that we really didn’t sell many at all. Whatever was going on, it didn’t really work as the band called it a day after “The Promise” (two further singles released from it did nothing at all chart-wise) although there have been reunions and sporadic gigging since then. I saw Carol Decker on the bottom of the bill on one of hose Here And Now tours about 20 tears ago and she still turns up on the music TV channels every now and again presenting things like Carol Deckers 40 Ultimate Rock Chicks or something.

After getting a little too overexcited about Dannii Minogue’s dress straps, Bruno Brookes now starts getting himself in bother over a “threesome of girls”. A threesome Bruno?! You couldn’t have just said ‘trio’?! Anyway, It’s Wilson Phillips that he’s referring to and the rest of his intro makes little sense either as he says they have had No 1 success in America and are now making it big in the UK. Whilst all of that is true – “You’re in Love” was their third single taken from their debut album to top the US charts – Bruno makes it sound as if they are only just starting to make waves in the UK. Actually, they had a Top 10 hit over here the previous year with “Hold On”. Had he forgotten that already? The UK had kind of lost interest in Wilson Phillips already though. “You’re in Love” peaked at No 29 this side of the pond and they would score just a further two hit singles on our shores, neither of which was especially big.

The highest new entry next and it’s a big one. A single going straight in at No 3 wasn’t something that happened every week back in the early 90s (especially by a new, unknown act) so there must have been a big buzz around Crystal Waters and her song “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”. So unusual was it that, at the time, it meant that she was the highest debuting female artist ever*.

*She was subsequently relieved of that title by Gabrielle in 1993 when “Dreams” debuted at No 2 who was in turn usurped by Whigfield a year later when “Saturday Night” went straight in at No 1. Crystal Waters didn’t quite top the charts as Bruno suggested she might, peaking instead at No 2.

The song is actually about homelessness (it was released as “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” in some territories) but for me, it almost bordered on novelty status with that incessant and extremely annoying ‘La-da-dee/la-dee-da’ hook. Apparently though, it was very much seen as a house music classic and, more than that, it was a trailblazer of the genre in that it combined social conscience with beats. It routinely appears in music polls as one of the greatest dance tunes of the 90s! I had no idea! Maybe I should have guessed at its house music reputation judging by the dance moves Crystal gives in this performance – she performs the song as if she’s busting some moves in a club rather than in front of an audience of millions on the UK’s premier pop music show. The track is of course nothing to do with the country singer Don Williams’ song “I Recall a Gypsy Woman” which my Dad does a pretty good version of.

Talking of novelties, here was something you didn’t see that often – a contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist breaking through to have a monster hit in the mainstream charts. Amy Grant is known as ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ but here she was back in 1991 with yet another song that had been a US No 1. How many has that been just on this TOTP? Three? If you include Cathy Dennis’s dance chart topper? “Baby Baby” was one of those radio friendly, feel-good pop songs that you found yourself humming along to even though you didn’t particularly like it. Now my wife really did like this one to be fair and even today she can sometimes be heard humming it absent-mindedly.

The heart-warmingly sweet / nausea inducing (delete as appropriate) video received a nomination for Best Female Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. Totally lacking in special effects but just portraying Amy and her on screen love interest doing luv’d up things seemed to appeal to a simpler sense of what life should all be about. Love, friendship, fun…and rolling oranges back and forth to each other apparently. I’m trying to think of any other Christian Music artists that I know of. Stryper? Were they a CCM artist?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yes! They are Christian Rock band! Two things here. How did I dredge that up from my memory banks and what the Hell is Christian Rock?!

“Baby Baby” peaked at No 2 in the UK.

When I think of Jason Donovan and 1991, only one thing comes immediately to mind – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and his No 1 record “Any Dream Will Do”. Despite Bruno advising us that the show starring Donovan is opening in June, Jase isn’t here with that song. No, it’s a little ditty called “RSVP”, a single that’s so forgettable, nobody ever did reply to him. Apparently it was a ‘not released before’ track from his forthcoming Greatest Hits album but top points to anyone who remembered this bilge. In line with his recent chart track record, it wasn’t a major hit peaking at No 17. Not even Jason’s guitar playing and some leather trousers could save this one.

Cher is still at the top of the pile with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”. Now as its the third week of its reign at the top and I have nothing else to say about it, I dug about for some tenuous links between Cher and other artists on this TOTP and I found one! “Baby Baby” wasn’t Amy Grant’s first US No 1. That came in 1986 when her duet with Peter Cetera “The Next Time I Fall” hit the top. And who has had a massive hit duetting with the ex-Chicago man? Yes, Cher of course whose “After All” went Top 10 in the US in 1989. Small world and all that.

To finish off, we have a forthcoming No 1 record by perhaps one of the most useless bands in the whole of the decade (in my humble opinion). Color Me Badd were an R’n’B four piece who briefly threatened global dominance after their “I Wanna Sex You Up” single became a hit all around the world. The group described their style as ‘hip-hop doo-wop’ although I seem to recall a lot of talk of them being part of this new jack swing movement but maybe that was purely because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack to the film New Jack City. For the record, I described Color Me Badd as atrocious shit and yet the UK seemed unable to resist their …erm…charms and sent it to No 1. Was it just that it had the word sex in the title and chorus? I can just imagine loads of beered up young men sidling up to women on the dance floor in clubs up and down the country crooning “I Wanna Sex You Up” to them. Ugh!

As for Color Me Badd themselves, I have to say that the word sex wasn’t what came to mind when looking at them. If you were trying to put a hip hop boy band together, I don’t think I’d have included a Kenny G lookalike and someone trying (and failing) to look like “Faith” era George Michael but with a long bob haircut in their ranks.

Order of Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	New Kids On The Block	Call It What You Want	Ok, I will. It was shit
2	Soft Cell / Marc Almond	Tainted Love ’91	Nope
3	Cathy Dennis	Touch Me (All Night Long)	Nah
4	Danny Minogue	Success	Failure – no
5	REM	Shiny Happy People	I didn’t
6	Flowered Up	Take It	No
7	T’Pau	Whenever You Need Me	Negative
8	Wilson Phillips	You’re In Love	But not with this song – no
9	Crystal Waters	Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)	I’d have rather listened to Crystal Tips and Alistair sing
10	Amy Grant	Baby Baby	I didn’t. Not sure if my wife did or not
11	Jason Donovan	RSVP	Dear Jason, this is a shit song – no
12	Cher	The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)	Yes but it was all a genuine mistake
13	Color Me Badd	I Wanna Sex You Up	Hell no!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000y2fl/top-of-the-pops-16051991

TOTP 14 MAR 1991

Posted on July 1, 2021 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:

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?
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”.
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:

The title's a pun on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. 3D: "[It] came up as a joke, but it fitted the song & the arrangements so perfectly, we had to use it." Shara Nelson: "My working title was something like 'Really Hurt You Baby', but they wanted something more abstract" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

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:

“It’s about your approach to life, how you approach everything: from your work, or whatever you do to make money, to relationships. For me, particularly back then, it had to be a loose fit.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 25, 2021

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 Appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Chesney Hawkes	The One And Only	I did not
2	REM	Losing My Religion	Not the single but I must have it on something
3	Ride	Today Forever EP	Nah
4	The Bee Gees	Secret Love	Definitely not
5	Queen	I’m Going Slightly Mad	Negative
6	Massive Attack	Unfinished Sympathy	No but I had the album Blue Lines
7	Rod Stewart	Rhythm Of My Heart	And no
8	Happy Mondays	Loose Fit	No but I had the Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches album
9	The Clash	Should I Stay Or Should I Go	Not the re-release but I have it on something surely?
10	Jesus Jones	Who? 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