Ruff Driverz

TOTP 23 APR 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

Of the eight songs in this TOTP, four of them have been on the show before, some of them many times previously. The running order has the four ‘new’ hits sandwiched together in the middle, bookended by two repeated performances at either end of it. Was this some sort of shit sandwich in reverse technique being employed by executive producer Chris Cowey? Let’s see…

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that if a song had been on the show before it was necessarily shit in terms of its quality but rather that Cowey was shitting all over our expectations of being fed some new hits rather than those we were very familiar with.

Our host is Gail Porter and we start with…and this is truly ridiculous…Whitney Houston with “It’s Not Right But It’s OK”. Just..why Cowey? WHY?! Look, these are the facts about this one:

  • TOTP appearances: Five
  • No of repeats of original studio performance: Four
  • Date of first appearance: 26 Feb 1999
  • Weeks in Top 40: Twelve
  • In every week but one after debuting at No 3, it moved down the charts.

Why was it on the show so often? Was it part of the contract between Whitney and her people and the BBC that if she did an in person performance that TOTP had to show it a certain amount of times like five maybe?

Right, let’s have a look at Phats & Small and their hit “Turn Around”. Here are their facts:

  • Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
  • No of consecutive appearances: Three (four over a five week period)
  • Weeks in Top 10: Seven
  • Chart run: 3 – 4 – 2 – 8 – 7 – 8 – 7

So three of those four appearances coincided with the single going back up the chart which seems justified but four times in five shows still seems like overkill to me. Maybe though I was/am just a dinosaur, a relic of a past time having been brought up on the Top 40 of the 80s which was much more sluggish and intransient, when songs would take weeks to move up the charts and instant, week one Top 3 hits were rare to non-existent. Record company practices had changed by the end of the 90s and maybe TOTP was just reacting accordingly to a new way of the charts operating. I’m not sure how regular a viewer of the show I was by 1999 so cannot recall being as frustrated as I am now with all these repeat performances but I wasn’t doing a write up of each show back then either. Oh it’s all relative isn’t it?

From two artists with prolific TOTP appearance stats to one whom I would have thought had a much better record but then, I could have sworn that Electronic had actually released more music than their discography tells me they have. From their debut in 1989, they released a total of eight singles and three albums. Is that a decent amount of material over a 10 year period? I’m not sure. Certainly that singles figure seems a tad on the low side and resulted in just six TOTP appearances over the course of their career. Back in 1991, not long after I’d started working at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, the duo of Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr had released their eponymous debut album to critical appreciation and commercial success (it made No 2 in the album charts and sold a million copies worldwide). I recall their being such a buzz about the album which was magnified in Manchester obviously given the background of its two protagonists. There was even a demand for the import version of the album which included the single “Getting Away With It” which the UK version did not.

However, a gap of five years until the next album proved to be too long for that momentum to be maintained and sophomore effort “Raise The Pressure” was nowhere near as well received, neither commercially nor critically. By 1999, were they seen as, if not irrelevant, then as an anachronism? Too harsh? Maybe but the truth was that third album “Twisted Tenderness” spent just two weeks inside the Top 40 chart. Its lead single “Vivid” was…well…OK and that seems a damning description when you consider the quality of the cannon of work of Sumner and Marr. Was their heart not really in it anymore? That didn’t seem to be the case watching this performance and more specifically Sumner’s energetic-pogoing, arms-flailing, air-punching, woo hoo-ing antics. Maybe a decision to dissolve the project had already been made and he wanted to go out with a flourish? If so, we couldn’t have known that at the time but retrospectively we got the message.

Fancy a flamenco guitar themed dance anthem? No, nor do I but I haven’t got any choice as the author of this blog so you’re coming with me! According to Wikipedia, Ruff Driverz had six Top 40 hits. Six! I couldn’t have named one of them without looking at their discography but “La Musica” was the fifth of them and the second highest charting peaking at No 13. It was officially credited to Ruff Driverz presents Arrola but who was Arrola? Well, she was Katherine Ellis who came from a very performing arts background. Look at this from her Wikipedia page:

“…her mother Elizabeth was trained as an actress at the Royal Academy for dramatic art, her grandmother Joy was a violinist and pianist, and her great grandmother Elizabeth Haslam was a opera singer who won a competition at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893.”

Blimey! Katherine continued that lineage by becoming one of the go to vocalists in the UK house scene, working with the likes of Freemasons, Soul Avengerz and Cherrone. As for “La Musica”, I’m sure it was popular in the clubs but its repetitive “Di-O-Lo-Le-La” line didn’t make for a very engaging TOTP performance, even allowing for the distraction of the troupe of backing dancers. As for the ‘Arrola’ moniker, whoever thought it up was only one letter away from making a tit of themselves.

Before the Sugababes and their revolving door recruitment policy, there was Honeyz who set the mould for girl groups and continually changing line ups. However, I’ve talked about that story in all its detail before so I don’t propose to go through it all again. Suffice to say that, as Gail Porter comments, this was the first time for most of us seeing new member Mariama Goodman who had recently replaced Heavenli Abdi. The timing of Abdi’s departure was really off though coming as they were preparing to embark on a promotional campaign for the release of their third single “Love Of A Lifetime”. The original trio had already shot the video for the track including scenes with Abdi but her decision to quit after that shoot and before a promotional trip to Australia meant that the promo was now effectively redundant and so would have to be reshot. A temporary, second cut saw Heavenli heavily edited out of the video before a third was produced with shots of Goodman included. I wonder if the Honeyz management billed Abdi for all that re-shooting?

“Love Of A Lifetime” was more of the slick R&B/ pop sound we’d come to expect and duly returned another sizeable hit when it peaked at No 9. As far as I can ascertain, Abdi’s original vocals remained on the track and it wasn’t until follow up “Never Let You Down” that Goodman’s own singing featured. A fifth single from their album “Wonder No 8” appeared in early 2000 at which point Goodman promptly left the group to be replaced by a returning Abdi and the line up shenanigans began in earnest. Honeyz are still a going concern today operating as a trio of Célena Cherry, her sister Candace and Abdi (now known as Heavenli Roberts). In conclusion, I can’t say if they finally found the perfect line up and share a love of a lifetime or if the end of the line might still be in sight.

We’ve arrived at the final ‘new’ single of the show and it’s from Suede who we hadn’t seen nor heard of since August 1997 when “Filmstar” was released as the final single from their “Coming Up” album. In the interim time, Brett Anderson had developed a serious drug problem whilst keyboardist Neil Codling’s health was affected by chronic fatigue syndrome. As such, the environment for writing and recording a new album wasn’t ideal. Plus, there was a decision to be made about which direction the band should head musically. After divisive sophomore album “Dog Man Star” had drawn acclaim as a work of genius and criticism as one of the most pretentious albums ever recorded, a more mainstream sound was pursued with the glam-pop of “Coming Up” that furnished the band with five Top 10 singles. That run was continued by “Electricity”, the lead track from fourth album “Head Music”. However, subsequent singles released from it would form a picture of diminishing returns and indeed, Suede have not returned to the Top 10 since.

“Head Music” would top the charts but would spend just two weeks inside the Top 20 suggesting large early sales due to a sizeable fan base but a lack of crossover appeal. In terms of its sonic properties, it had a more electronic sound with producer Steve Osborne, who had worked with the Happy Mondays, imbuing it with a dance music vibe. As for “Electricity”, it sounded a bit more raw/garage-like to me than anything on “Coming Up” though some reviews heard a connection to “Trash”. It didn’t grab me I have to say and, as with Electronic earlier, left me a little underwhelmed but compared to some of the other rubbish in the charts, it was…well…electric but just on a lower wattage than before. Definitely not displaying low wattage was the visual effect of an electric charge coming from Brett’s microphone. Maybe it looked clever back in 1999 but it looks a bit naff in 2026.

Right, that confirms it. The fact that Westlife are clearly seen in the backstage area next to Gail Porter during the next segue and they haven’t even had a hit yet and won’t perform on the show for the very first time for another seven days is definitive proof that some of these performances were definitely not recorded the same week that the show was broadcast. This explains why the host is sometimes not seen in shot when doing the link and we just get a cutaway instead. Finally!

Right, rant over. We’re back to the repeated performances and we get TLC with “No Scrubs” again. Here are the details for this one:

  • Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
  • No of consecutive appearances: Two
  • Weeks in Top 10: Eight
  • Chart run: 7- 13 – 8 – 6 – 9 – 3 – 5 – 5 – 9

OK so, having cross-referenced its chart positions with the group’s TOTP performances, there does seem to be some clear, logical correlation with each appearance synchronised with a corresponding rise up the chart. That’s all fine but why did we have to have this satellite performance video every single time? Couldn’t we have had the promo video one time at least? After all, it did win the MTV Video Music Award For Best Group Video at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

Right, I can’t really complain about this repeat performance seeing as it is actually the No 1 single for the second week running. Yes, this week’s highest new entry from Suede (No 5) proved to be no serious competition in the end for Martine McCutcheon and her hit “Perfect Moment”. With a No 1 straight off the bat, the only way was down for Martine and she would never have that level of success again but that chart topper can never be taken away from her (even if it was a cover version).

One thing that was taken off her though was any potential return to EastEnders. Supposedly, Martine was not happy with her character Tiffany Mitchell being killed off by the writers to allow her to pursue her pop star ambitions as she would have liked the chance to return once her music-orientated spleen had been vented but they used to call that having your cake and eating it didn’t they?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Whitney HoustonIt’s Not Right But It’s OKNo
2Phats & SmallTurn AroundNo thanks
3Electronic VividI did not
4Ruff Driverz presents ArrolaLa MusicaNever
5HoneyzLove Of A LifetimeNah
6SuedeElectricityNegative
7TLCNo ScrubsNope
8Martine McCutcheonPerfect MomentAnd 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 agre

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rlpg/top-of-the-pops-23041999

TOTP 27 NOV 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

After featuring nine songs in the last TOTP, we’re down to seven this time though six of them are new to charts (sort of). Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with that ‘start of’ hit which is from Steps. The reason for it’s unclear categorisation is that whilst “Heartbeat” hasn’t been on the show previously, it wasn’t actually a new chart hit being the other track to their double A-side single alongside their cover of “Tragedy” which we saw on the previous programme. Now, I said in the last post that I didn’t think that I’d ever heard “Heartbeat” before such was the ubiquity of “Tragedy” and I stand by that statement having listened to it today. There’s no bells ringing (even though it’s Christmas time) and I’m rather glad there aren’t as it’s a sickly, saccharine pop ballad that cloys but leaves no cultural nor sonic sustenance whatsoever. It’s literally like a musical form of candy floss. Surely punters weren’t buying the single for this track but purely for “Tragedy”?

“Cor! It’s the Corrs!” or so Jayne Middlemiss in her intro would have us believe that’s what the male population would be saying at this point. Bit sexist that isn’t it Jayne? Well, it was the time of lad culture and Jayne herself had spent time as a glamour model early in her career so maybe all that informed her comments. Or maybe she was just reading the lines written in a script (presumably by a man). Let’s not tie ourselves up in knots about all that. On with the music and “So Young” was the third hit on the trot for The Corrs this year. Written by violinist Sharon about her parents and the notion that no matter how old they got, they seemed to her to be forever young in spirit and outlook. All this talk of ageing and youth got me thinking about who are the eldest and youngest Corrs and the order of the ages in the middle. So how about a festive game of ‘Guess the age of the Corrs’? I’ll start. I’m going:

  • Jim – eldest
  • Sharon
  • Andrea
  • Caroline – youngest

How did I do?

*checks Wikipedia*

Ooh! Almost! These are their actual ages:

  • Jim – 61
  • Sharon – 55
  • Caroline – 52
  • Andrea – 51

This, of course, means that even “the beautiful Corrs” (© Ant and Dec) are all now in their 50s.* Time waits for no man…or woman.

*Before you all accuse me of ageism and misogyny, I’m sure they are all still beautiful and absolutely agree that age should have no bearing on perceptions of attractiveness. I was trying to make a point about the passing of youth and how time marches on but I’m regretting saying any of it now. Let’s move on quickly…

…to the Vengaboys! NOOO!!! We can’t have reached that time already. 1998 you really have been a pile of steaming shite and this is the little twist on the turd after it’s been curled out. Too graphic? I care not a jot when it comes to this lot. Which despicable people were responsible for this utter crapola? I’ll tell you who – a couple of Dutch producers who went by the aliases Danski (real name Dennis van den Driesschen) and Delmundo (Wessel Dietrich van Diepen) who threw (according to the official Vengaboys website) impromptu and illegal beach parties from their worn out school bus in the early 90s. Deciding to grow their operation, they recruited some singers and dancers to spice up their DJ sets and then took it a massive step further by deciding to form a record label and produce records. With that concept established, the task of fronting said records would fall to those dancers and singers they had already recruited. After a couple of minor hits in their own country, they went truly international with the release of “Up & Down” which was a Top 10 hit all around Europe and topped the US Dance Club Play chart.

This whole thing has given me some strong 2 Unlimited vibes. The Dutch duo began their run of hits with the track “Get Ready For This”, the single edit of which was essentially an instrumental with the occasional shout out thrown in which many (me included) thought would make them one hit wonders. They made mugs of us though by proceeding to have a run of 14 Top 40 singles including that No 1. Similarly, the Vengaboys, for all the world, looked like being a one-off, almost novelty act with “Up & Down” the lyrics of which consisted of the words ‘up’, ‘and’, ‘down’, and ‘woo!’. Just like 2 Unlimited though, they would follow it with a string of hit singles (including two No 1s) between 1998 and 2001. All of which means we’ve only just scratched the surface of the crust of the Vengaboys planet of which we will all become inhabitants (willing or not) until the end of the 90s.

Ah that explains it! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why there’s only seven songs on this repeat:

Moving on very quickly we find Sash! with yet another hit in “Move Mania”. This was the trio’s* sixth consecutive UK hit but the first not to debut at either No 2 or No 3 when it made its chart entry at No 8.

*Yes, Jayne Middlemiss, Sash was a three man production team not a single person and certainly not an “international man of mystery” as you describe them in your intro.

In their continual conveyer belt of guest vocalists, for this release they have teamed up with Shannon who had a couple of hits in the mid 80s notably with “Let The Music Play” though she also featured on Todd Terry’s 1997 Top 20 hit “It’s Over Love”. Maybe it’s the Shannon effect but “Move Mania” sounds very retro to me by which I mean retro even in 1998. It’s all very frantic, frenetic and furious – dare I say like an 80s Hi-NRG track? Maybe I’m reaching a bit there but it didn’t have the same feel as some of the other Sash! hits to this point. Although the hits certainly didn’t dry up after this slight downturn in chart fortunes for “Move Mania”, they didn’t sustain at that previous high level either with only one of their subsequent six UK entries making it to No 2, the mention of which allows me to trot out this well worn fact about Sash! – they remain the act with the most No 2 hits (five) without ever having a No 1. In the dark times that we currently live in, this bit of pop trivia somehow gives me the slightest slither of hope for the world.

And that slither of hope is extinguished immediately by this next hit. Not another Latin flavoured dance track! How many times have we seen this sort of thing during these late 90s TOTP repeats? Here’s just a few I can think of:

  • Dario G – “Carnaval De Paris”
  • Echobeatz – “Mas Que Nada”
  • Ricky Martin – “(Un Dos Tres) Maria”
  • Bellini – “Samba De Janeiro”

That’s was surely more than enough of that kind of thing no? No, it wasn’t apparently as here were Ruff Driverz and their flamenco inspired track “Dreaming”. Officially, this was credited as being ‘Ruff Driverz Presents Arrola’ who was the vocalist who has worked with loads of dance acts (sometimes under her real name of Katherine Ellis) including 4-2 The Floor, Eruption and Utah Saints amongst many others. Similar to Sash! and the Vengaboys earlier, the people behind the hit were a DJ/Production team who in this case consisted of Brad Carter and Chris Brown whom for some reason thought that it what the charts needed, as Christmas approached mind, was a flamenco themed hit that surely would have been more suited to a Summer release. As ever though, what did I know as it debuted at No 10 becoming, in the process, the seventh new hit to chart inside the Top 10 that week. What a time to be alive!

After coming up with a true banger with their last single “Everybody Get Up”, Five have resorted to the usual marketing trick of releasing a slushy ballad just in time for Christmas. “Until The Time Is Through” is almost mechanical in its construction, adhering to the accepted boy band blueprint at every turn. Perhaps in an attempt to mix things up a bit, they’ve settled on a rather odd performance for this TOTP appearance. As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, the vocals on this one are handled by Richie and Scott presumably because it was their turn with Abz and J having taken the lead on rapping duties on “Everybody Get Up” – poor old Sean never seems to get a go in the spotlight.

Anyway, with those two situated at the front of the stage, the other three are sat right at the back on chairs. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea on paper but the optics of it look a bit odd. They never move once from their seated position which created the impression that they’re rather disinterested in what was happening in front of them. There’s something a bit ‘three wise monkeys’ about them with Abz sat with his chair back to front, J with it the right way around and Sean with his angled to one side. Was that deliberate? You know what would have livened things up? If they’d played a game of musical chairs whilst performing. That would have been a first and created a talking point! As it is, the only talking that happens is right at the very end when J turns to Sean and appears to say something to him. I wonder what he said? “Thank God that’s over”? “I could have sung that better than those two”? “Last one to the BBC bar gets the drinks in”?

It’s a fifth week at the top for Cher and “Believe”. What else is there to say about this one? I’ve covered its chart and sales data, the auto tuned vocals, its awards…what else is there? OK, how about who wrote it? Originally it was a demo worked up by Brian Higgins in 1990 who would gain fame via his Xenomania production team who wrote hits for Sugababes, S Club 7, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays. Higgins couldn’t get any interest in the track (apparently Saint Etienne were one of the artists offered it who turned it down) but he submitted it to Warners chairman Rob Dickins after a chance meeting. Dickins thought it was terrible but had a great chorus and so he employed two more songwriters (Steve Torch and Paul Barry) to work on it. Cher herself added some lyrics but did not get a writing credit though three other names did alongside Higgins, Torch and Barry. Cher admitted in 2023 that she regretted not asking for a songwriter’s credit. With worldwide sales of 11 million, I’m not surprised.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1StepsHeartbeat / TragedyNo
2The CorrsSo YoungNope
3VengaboysUp & DownNOOOO!
4Sash! / ShannonMove ManiaI did not
5Ruff DriverzDreamingNah
6Five Until The Time Is ThroughNever
7Cher BelieveNegative

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/m002nd35/top-of-the-pops-27111998