Sean Maguire

TOTP 02 AUG 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re still in the Summer of 1996 with these TOTP repeats and we have another guest host in the ‘golden mic’ slot. In any other year, Jas Mann of Babylon Zoo would have got nowhere near this gig but this was the year of “Spaceman” and the stardust of that No 1 hit was still just about glittering over him enough to allow this appearance. It wouldn’t last much longer.

We start though with another guy who, by my reckoning, was also still very fortunate to be appearing on the show. Why was Sean Maguire still having hits two years on from his first one?! “Don’t Pull Your Love” was his seventh of eight in total ranging in size from No 27 to No 12. How could this be true? He couldn’t give away either of his albums which both sank without trace but somehow he managed to keep churning out a string of reasonably successful singles. How? Why? Yeah, he’d been in EastEnders so he was a familiar face and he didn’t look like the back end of a bus but I would have thought he’d have one, maybe two hits at most before the novelty wore off. He was quite the anomaly.

It can’t have been that the quality of the songs he was being given were irresistible to the record buying public can it? Surely not. Listening to this one, it sounds like something The Osmonds might have recorded back in the day. It wasn’t was it?

*checks internet*

No but it was a hit in the 70s by an act called Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds who took it to No 4 in the US selling over a million copies. I knew I was in the right ballpark.

I’ve never heard of them until this moment but apparently they also had an American No 1 called “Fallin’ In Love” and get this, it was covered in 1995 by German Eurodance outfit La Bouche. Wait, I didn’t review it in this blog did I?

*checks internet again*

No, it wasn’t a hit over here so it wouldn’t have been on TOTP. However, the song was in the news again in 2009 when it was sampled by the rapper Drake for his track “Best I Ever Had” which led to a lawsuit being brought against him by Playboy Enterprises who owned the rights to “Fallin’ In Love” as Drake hadn’t sought clearance for the sample. What has any of this to do with Sean Maguire? Not much but it’s surely more interesting than his pop career no?

Rivalling Jas Mann in the famous for 15 minutes stakes were the next act OMC. Yes, the difference between being a one hit wonder and a legendary electronic band who are still going 44 years after their first hit is just one letter apparently. However, whereas the name Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark didn’t mean anything and was chosen by Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys to ensure they weren’t mistaken for a punk band, OMC was an acronym for Otara Millionaires Club and was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Otara’s status as one of the poorest suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand. Their hit was “How Bizarre” which lived up to its name by being a strange concoction of mariachi guitars, tejano trumpets, almost spoken word verses (I’m not sure it qualifies as rapping) and harmonised backing vocals.

What was also atypical about the single was the amount of time it took to become a hit and its chart positions when it finally made it. It took five weeks to break into the Top 10 (including two consecutive weeks at No 19) and then spent six weeks there four of which were at No 8. It would eventually sell 400,000 copies in the UK despite never getting higher than No 5. Not surprisingly though, it topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand. Why was it such a sleeper hit? Maybe it didn’t attract enough airplay initially but when radio finally caught on to it, they realised it was perfect for summertime playlists. My wife loved this and indeed bought the CD single which might still be knocking about somewhere. Though the idea in today’s world of searching it out to put in a CD player when you could just say “Alexa play OMC” does indeed seem bizarre.

If 1996 was Jas Mann’s season in the sun, it was an annus mirabilis for Alanis Morissette. Her “Jagged Little Pill” album was No 1 for weeks and she had three hit singles, each of which charted higher than the one before. “Head Over Feet” was the biggest of those peaking at No 7. Given that so many people were buying the album and therefore already had access to those tracks, that was quite a feat. This particular single seemed almost laid back compared to some of its predecessors like “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” which had themes of anger and dissatisfaction. By contrast, “Head Over Feet” contained lyrics that talked about falling in love with your best friend. That didn’t mean it was lacking a punch though – it was still in the heavyweight class.

Curiously, there were two videos for the song – the ‘head’ version does what it says on the tin with a camera permanently fixed on a close up of Alanis’s face as she sings whilst the ‘feet’ promo for the European market that we see here is in black and white and has her sat around a camp fire in what looks like a building site with her band, sat cross legged, all strumming guitars. I think I prefer the ‘head’ one as its more affecting. Could it also have been the inspiration for Radiohead’s “No Surprises” which saw Thom Yorke singing under duress in a see through helmet as it filled with water?

Despite all of Alanis’s success in 1996, she would finish the year with a flop single when “All I Really Want” failed to make the Top 40. It seemed six singles from the same album was going too far even for Morissette’s growing army of fans.

Noel Gallagher once said that there was a time in Oasis’s career when everything the band released sounded like “Get It On” by T-Rex. Well, in 1996, was everything starting to sound a bit like Alanis Morissette? OK, Alisha’s Attic were hardly a carbon copy but could their hit “I Am, I Feel” be described as a poppier version of the Canadian singer? Maybe it’s just because they followed Alanis on this particular show that they somehow fused together in my head or maybe it’s to do with that aforementioned anger that is present in their lyrics? I mean, these are fairly dark:

“Like I wanna bite his head off, yeah, that’d be fun, cause I sure got an appetite“

Writer(s): Karen Poole, Michelle Poole, Terence Martin

If I’m being truthful though, Alisha’s Attic weren’t following where Alanis Morissette had walked but in the footsteps of a long line of female pop duos stretching back to the 80s with Mel & Kim and Pepsie and Shirley and on into the 90s with Shakespears Sister, Shampoo and perhaps the couple most like them Scarlet. That lineage would continue into the new millennium with t.A.t.u. and…erm…Daphne and Celeste? Or perhaps they modelled themselves after a trio. I’m thinking Wilson Phillips who consisted of Carnie and Wendy Wilson who were the daughters of The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Chynna Phillips who was the offspring of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas. So what you may ask? Well, sisters Shelly and Karen Poole were themselves from a pop background with their Dad being Brian Poole of *Brian Poole and the Tremeloes fame.

*Their bass player was Len ‘Chip’ Hawkes father of Chesney.

Anyway, I quite liked Alisha’s Attic and their quirky pop tunes of which eight were Top 40 hits. None got higher than No 12 (which was actually the peak position for three of their singles) and “I Am, I Feel” itself would spend three weeks at No 15 plus two at No 18 and for all the No 1 artist’s posturing about ‘girl power’, surely was a better feminist anthem than “Wannabe”.

And talking of feminist anthems, here’s Neneh Cherry with “Woman”. I say ‘feminist anthems’ but I’m not sure that’s the correct terminology anymore. It conjures up images of Viz character Millie Tant and the world is certainly more nuanced than that. Look, just to be clear, I believe in equality of the sexes and hate all the ‘lads, lads, lads’ culture (groups of men can be such pricks) so if I misuse a phrase then please accept my apologies in advance.

Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to Neneh Cherry. She was on The Graham Norton Show last week promoting her memoir A Thousand Threads which was published just a few days ago. It seems to be quite comprehensive and not just a retread of her discography – apparently she doesn’t get to that iconic TOTP appearance when she was seven months pregnant until three quarters of the way through the book. Sounds like an interesting read to be fair. In her interview with Graham we found out that the first record she ever bought was by Donny Osmond and that she’s now a grandmother – quite possibly the coolest grandmother ever but still a grandmother. Yeah, you feel old now don’t you. Me too.

From Neneh Cherry to the Manic Street Preachers via Bernard Butler. In the last post, I talked about how Suede recovered from the departure of their guitarist and song writer to return with their most commercial album ever. Butler, of course, is up there on stage with Neneh for this performance. And the Manics? Well, like Suede, they also lost a founding member from their line up around this time albeit in totally different circumstances with the disappearance of Richey Edwards. As with Suede, they bounced back with their biggest selling album ever in “Everything Must Go” the title track of which was released as the second single from it. I always preferred this to “A Design For Life” though I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was that huge, orchestral swathe in the mix that they managed to produce that many in the music press compared to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Apparently the song was written as an acknowledgment that since Edwards was no longer giving his input to the band, inevitably their identity and music had to change with the lyric “and I just hope that you can forgive us” a direct plea to the fans.

Despite the hopping around on one leg antics of James Dean Bradfield in this performance, I’m more drawn to the static drummer Sean Moore. It might be because he is stood up throughout as opposed to sat at a drum kit or it could very well be that his look here reminds me of the character of Garland Greene from 1997 film Con Air.

With this single, Eternal set a new record as the first all female group to score ten consecutive Top 20 hits in the UK. What a stinker of a song to do it with though. “Someday” was recorded for the Disney film The Hunchback Of Notre Dame though it only features as an instrumental with the full song having been discarded at the storyboarding stage. You can understand why. It’s a dreary, jaded, love-song- by-numbers snoozefest. In fact, I’d have been more entertained if Eternal had stood there on stage and spent three minutes making snoring noises. Apparently, “I Swear” hitmakers All-4-One recorded “Someday” as well and it’s their take that’s on the US version of the soundtrack. So why were Eternal asked to record it for the European soundtrack? I don’t get it. In an unusual disruption to their timeline, the group’s next single release was from their “Power Of A Woman” album but “Someday” would turn up on their 1997 studio album “Before The Rain” making a right mess of the chronology of their discography. Tsk.

The final three songs on the show have all been on before so I might whip through these at speed. We start with “Macarena” by Los Del Rio and can I get away with just signposting you to other versions of the song rather than thinking of something witty to say about it? I can? Marvellous!

OK, here’s the original 1993 version that sounds very different to the hit we all know and loathe that was The Bayside Boys remix:

Then there’s the Los Del Mar take on it which was out at the same time. Despite it being sung without any English lyrics, this lot were actually from Canada and it was their cover that was a big hit over there. That absence of English lyrics is pretty much the only difference to the Bayside Boys remix and yet amazingly, in Australia, they were both in the chart at the same time with Los Del Rio at No 1 and Los Del Mar at No 2. Just how do you explain that? Fortunately for the UK, the Los Del Mar version peaked at a lowly No 43.

There are loads of other versions including a country version by The GrooveGrass Boyz, a rap version by US rapper Tyga, an Italian version by Los Locos and even a take on it by Los Del Chipmunks (!). Finally, for those that really can’t stand the “Macarena”, there’s this…

Without wishing to discredit the aforementioned achievement of Eternal, I fear it was totally undermined, nay blown out of the water, by the chart feats of the Spice Girls. They are in the TOTP studio for the first time this week I think after two appearances from Japan and though the stage and space in which they have to work are much reduced, they give an energetic performance with Mel C even managing to get in her trademark backflip. “Wannabe” is into its second of seven weeks at No 1 and would be the second best selling single in 1996 in the UK after “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees. That was literally just the start though. Of the eleven singles released during their career, nine would top the chart. They would sell 100 million records in total being both the best selling British act of the 90s and the best selling girl group of all time. Take that Eternal.

The play out video is “Freedom” by Robbie Williams. Now, if we’re talking chart records as we were Eternal and the Spice Girls, then we can’t ignore this man (whether you really want to or not). He has notched up seven No 1 singles and sold 77 million records worldwide. By 2008, he’d sold more albums in the UK than any other British solo artist in history. And yet somehow, it all started with this fairly straight cover of a George Michael song. Given that Robbie wouldn’t release anything else until “Old Before I Die” nine months later, I think “Freedom” could almost be a forgotten Williams single, like a false start. Indeed, it did not feature on either his 1999 compilation “The Ego Has Landed” that was initially released for the US and Australia markets nor his first official “Greatest Hits” album in 2004. However it was included on No the 2010 collection “In And Out Of Consciousness”.

Apparently, Williams was in a bad way when he filmed the video for “Freedom” struggling with an alcohol addiction and he certainly looks wild eyed in the promo – are his pupils dilated in some shots? He claims to have mimed to the original George Michael track as he hadn’t recorded his version before the video was filmed. Is that likely? Is that how it worked? Anyway, we’ll be seeing lots more of Mr Williams on TOTP in future repeats. As for Jas Mann, I’m not sure we will be seeing him again as he never presented the show after this (he was pretty shit to be fair) and he would only have one more UK hit when “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” made No 32. The odds on either him or Robbie becoming pop music superstars were probably evenly matched and low back then. Funny that.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Sean MaguireDon’t Pull Your LoveNever
2OMCHow BizarreNo but my wife did
3Alanis MorissetteHead Over FeetNo but I had the album
4Alisha’s AtticI Am, I FeelNope
5Neneh CherryWomanNo but my wife had the album
6Manic Street PreachersEverything Must GoSee 3 above
7EternalSomedayNegative
8Los Del RioMacarenaAs if
9Spice GirlsWannabeNo
10Robbie WilliamsFreedomNah

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/m0023k99/top-of-the-pops-02081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 16 NOV 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s yet another ‘golden mic’ presenter hosting for this episode of TOTP. This innovation from Executive Producer Ric Blaxill was becoming ever more pervasive since being introduced in 1994. Looking ahead to the 1996 shows, there seems to be a celebrity/pop star at the helm nearly every week punctuated occasionally by a Radio 1 DJ like Lisa I’Anson or the duo of Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley. Come 1997 though, new Executive Producer Chris Cowey would phase the ‘golden mic’ slots out and instead return to a more settled, rotating roster of young BBC presenters like Jayne Middlemiss, Jamie Theakston and Zoe Ball. Whether this was a good thing or not is down to your own personal preferences but as long as it kept Simon Mayo out in the cold and away from the show, it worked for me.

Anyway, the pop star hosting this November ‘95 show was Louise, late of Eternal and now embarking on a solo career. A symbiotic relationship – TOTP got some girl next door charm and a stage school trained presenter whilst Louise had her profile raised at a crucial time of her career, just one single into her time as a solo artist. Actually, had she started seeing Jamie Redknapp by this point? That was another symbiotic relationship in terms of heightening each other’s fame. I’m not casting any aspersions on their devotion to each other by the way; they were married for 19 years and have two children together after all. However, if you look at David and Victoria Beckham as the model for building a brand back then, you can’t help but draw comparisons. Again, I’m not doubting the sincerity of their personal relationship but they certainly didn’t shy away from the Posh and Becks image. I’m not sure that Jamie and Louise pursued that power couple badge as keenly as P & B did but the inevitable press interest in them must have increased their fame surely?

We start with a rerelease of a dance tune. Of course we do – this was 1995 after all, the year of this practice. We really should be familiar with the name of said dance tune as it wasn’t just released twice but five times over an eight year period! Not only that but it shared the same title as this week’s No 1 record. “I Believe” by Happy Clappers was originally released in 1994 but failed to even make the Top 100. A rerelease in June 1995 saw it become a No 1 on the UK Dance chart whilst also securing a not too shabby peak of No 21 on the UK Top 40. However, following the trend of the time, it came out for a third time less than six months later becoming a No 7 hit. Hurray and a big hand for the Happy Clappers! Two years later it was back again making No 28 before a fifth and final outing in 2003 thanks to a Carl Cox remix saw it fail to make any meaningful impression on the charts. As a pop kid, I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to dance music but if pressed for an opinion, I’d say the track doesn’t really warrant all that attention and multiple releases. I’m sure it packed out dance floors in clubs up and down the land but rather than make me want to applaud it, I’m more likely to give it a massive thumbs down.

When it comes to soap stars turned pop stars, Sean Maguire was pretty unusual. A good looking lad who’d made his name on first Grange Hill and then EastEnders, you could understand him wanting to give pop music a go but by the mid-90s, hadn’t we all had enough of this particular subset of pop star? After all, it had been a whole nine years since Anita Dobson and Nick Berry swapped Albert Square for the pop charts and opened the door for a bath full of soap stars to slip through. Most famously there were Kylie and Jason but also Craig McLachlan, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Stefan Dennis, Sophie Lawrence and of course Ant & Dec. Seemingly though we were still willing to accept pretty much anybody as pop stars as long as they’d been in a soap. After Sean Maguire came Sid Owen (EastEnders), Will Mellor (Hollyoaks), Natalie Imbruglia (Neighbours) and Adam Rickitt (Coronation Street).

Maguire though seemed different – like this was a serious career move for him not just a quick, cheap cash-in on his soap fame. To this end, he had eight Top 40 hits all peaking somewhere between No 27 and No 12. It’s not a bad haul I suppose. When it came to albums though, Sean couldn’t convince people that he was a serious artist. His first album peaked at No 75 whilst his second and final one could only make it to No 43. This hit – a cover of The Real Thing’s 1976 chart topper “You To Me Are Everything” – came slap bang in the middle of his run of hits making it to No 16. A cover version normally means an artist being desperate for a career reviving hit and that may be the case here after the lead single from his second album “Spirit” only made it to No 22. In Maguire’s defence, this was the first time he’d released a cover as a single (he would release one further one subsequently) but there is still a case to be answered here as to why he’s plodded through a disco classic so laboriously. A very obvious choice of cover badly executed would be my assessment.

Now, the unusual sight of a former No 1 being back on the show just a week or so after it had been toppled. This wasn’t a case of some creative running order manipulation on behalf of the aforementioned Ric Blaxill though. No, this was a legitimate slot allocation as “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio was going back up the charts from No 3 to No 2! Quite remarkable.

We get the video this time which though inevitably including clips from the Dangerous Minds film (the soundtrack of which the song appears on), also introduced a different element to the whole promo concept. By getting the star of the movie Michelle Pfeiffer to agree to film some scenes with Coolio himself, a whole new dimension to the visuals was created. Though Pfeiffer herself does little other than stare at Coolio whilst he raps in her face, the intensity between them and brooding nature of the interaction (somehow accentuated by Pfeiffer’s cut glass cheekbones) is visually arresting. As a result, the promo won Best Rap Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1996.

Enya was never your typical chart star was she? In a parallel universe, she was the ultimate one hit wonder with her 1988 chart topper “Orinoco Flow” making her famous for a month before the novelty of her Celtic, new age sound was replaced by the next latest craze. Except that, in the real world, she didn’t disappear. Or at least she did but kept coming back every couple of years with a new, commercially successful album. “Watermark”, the parent album for “Orinoco Flow”, went four times platinum in both the UK and America, selling 11 million copies worldwide. Three years later, she returned with “Shepherd Moons” which matched those numbers. Another four years would pass before her next studio album “The Memory Of Trees” appeared. Although there was a dip in sales, it still shifted 3 million units in the US and went double platinum over here. That’s about 30 million sold over the course of seven years and three albums! And yet I would wager that Enya wasn’t seen as a musical heavyweight unless you were maybe a record company executive. Did the punters or the music press consider her as a peer of other mammoth selling artist like, I don’t know, Michael Jackson or Mariah Carey? I’m guessing not but these are just my own thoughts of course. Maybe I’m underestimating and misrepresenting Enya.

Anyway, the lead single from “The Memory Of Trees” was “Anywhere Is”. A more upbeat, dare I say almost jolly track than some of her more ethereal work, it would become her second highest peaking UK hit after “Orinoco Flow” when it got to No 7. Enya seems to almost propel the song along in this performance by pure will power hypnotising the watching audience into enjoying it via the intense stares she constantly gives to the camera. Seriously, it’s a bit Stepford Wives or probably we’d say AI these days.

This was always going to happen – another showing of Madonna’s in studio appearance from the other week, her first for 11 years. Fortunately for Ric Blaxill, as with Coolio before, he could claim that a repeat of Madge’s turn was legitimate as “You’ll See” was going up the charts. This was quite the stroke of luck as songs climbing the Top 40 was becoming more and more seldom with the trend for singles careering in and out of charts at high speed was more the norm. Even an artist s big as Madonna couldn’t be guaranteed a hit to climb steadily anymore. This was her first single to go up the charts in successive weeks since “Erotica” went from No 10 to No 4 to No 3 in 1992.

The Beautiful South released 34 singles during their career but I’m guessing that this one is not one of their best remembered. Not because it’s not any good, it’s yet another one of their bittersweet pop confections but because it’s one of those rare things – a non-album single. Plugging the gap between their 1994 six times platinum selling compilation “Carry On Up The Charts” and their 1996 studio album “Blue Is The Colour”, “Pretenders To The Throne” was a medium sized hit peaking at No 18.

As far as I can tell, the band only released one other non-album single but this one wasn’t made available in the UK. Their version of The Mamas & The Papas hit “Dream A Little Dream” was only released in Germany and the way to get hold of it in this country was to buy the soundtrack to the Meg Ryan / Kevin Kline romcom French Kiss for which it was recorded. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport at the time and can only assume that a local radio station had picked up on the track and was playing it as we kept getting asked for it all the time in the shop. This was in an era before digital streaming platforms and so customers used to get quite narky after having made the effort to come into the store to get that song off the radio they liked only to be told it couldn’t be purchased.

Another example was when a station started playing “The Masterplan” by Oasis convincing listeners that it was their new single only to be told by us that actually it was just an extra track on their “Wonderwall” CD single. This wasn’t too much if a problem as we routinely kept all the Oasis singles in stock regardless of whether they were in the charts or not but I could have done without those conversations where the punter was convinced of their own information and that I was in the wrong.

And so we come to the latest in what seems like an endless conveyor belt of Michael Jackson video exclusives that we were served up by TOTP throughout the 90s. By my reckoning, “Earth Song” was the twelfth single released by Jackson by this point in the decade and everyone had been a hit in the UK so I’m assuming that we had to endure the unveiling of each accompanying promo the same amount of times. The whole thing was bloody exhausting!

Perhaps best known on these shores not for *SPOILER ALERT* staying at No 1 for 6 weeks nor indeed being our Christmas No 1 that year but for being the song that Jacko was performing at the BRITS in 1996 when Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker protested at his Christ complex antics by wafting his behind in Jacko’s direction.

As this is a video ‘exclusive’, we get around 5 minutes and 45 seconds of the promo. I’m assuming this won’t always be the case in subsequent weeks. Given, how much we’ll be seeing this in future TOTP repeats, can I get away with leaving this one here for now? I think I can.

It’s a hat-trick of superstars for TOTP. After Madonna and David Bowie on the past two shows, this week it’s Tina Turner in person in the studio. I’m not sure I watched her performance here though as I don’t recall it at all. In fact, I have little memory of the song either. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Tina’s singing a Bond theme – “Goldeneye” – and I’ve never been much of a Bond fan. Consequently, a new film and associated theme song was never going to get me that excited. Secondly, despite this being the first film in the franchise for six years, the song didn’t actually pull up any trees chart wise. In at No 10 and then a slide down the chart week on week that not even the opening of the actual film could halt. Maybe I don’t remember it much because it didn’t hang around for long.

Listening to it now, it sounds like a Bond theme and looks like a Bond theme with all those 007 lookalikes on stage with Tina but somehow it doesn’t seem like one of the great Bond themes to me. Inevitably, at the time, there were comparisons with Shirley Bassey, the artist behind two of the most memorable Bond songs ever but I just don’t find it convincing. Others, however, did. A 2022 Classic FM list ranked all 24 Bond themes based on their musical merit. “Goldeneye” came in at No 3! I was astonished when I read that. For me, the greatest of them all is McCartney’s “Live And Let Die” – I thought that was a universally accepted given. Apparently not as that came a lowly 17th on the list. What about those classic mid to late 80s songs by Gladys Knight, Duran Duran and A-ha? Nos 7, 9 and 23 (!) respectively. Hmm. Maybe there’s a reason I’m not a massive Bond fan. I just don’t get it. I mean, I thought Daniel Craig was good in the ones of his that I’ve caught but there’s loads I’ve never seen that including Goldeneye which was the first of the Pierce Brosnan years.

Watching Tina’s performance here, it struck me what a strange gig it must have been for those six ‘Bonds’ on stage with her. Presumably they were from a modelling agency? What brief were they given? All you have to do is stand there with a gun and look as suave as you can?

It’s a second week of four at No 1 for Robson & Jerome with “I Believe” giving a strange top and tail arrangement to the show after it opened with “I Believe” by Happy Clappers.

The guys have gone for a more casual look this time with their black jackets of last week now removed to reveal plain white shirts (and breaches in the case of Jerome). 29 years on and I still am not sure how to explain the popularity of the duo. They had the best selling album and single of the 1995 in the UK! I think I’ll leave the final word to Alan Partridge..,

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Happy ClappersI BelieveDefo no
2Sean MaguireYou To Me Are EverythingHa! No
3CoolioGangsta’s ParadiseNah
4EnyaAnywhere IsNope
5MadonnaYou’ll SeeNegative
6The Beautiful SouthPretenders To The ThroneNot the single but I think I have it on a subsequent Best Of
7Michael JacksonEarth SongI did not
8Tina TurnerGoldeneyeNever happened
9Robson & JeromeI BelieveAs if

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xqx3/top-of-the-pops-16111995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 23 MAR 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

Ah crap! It’s been a good run but it’s finally come to an end. Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo is back hosting TOTP! He says later in this show that he hasn’t been on presenting duties since the previous October. I haven’t checked to see if that’s true but regardless, I’d have gladly never seen the w****r anchoring the show again. He always seemed to me to treat it as his own personal promotional vehicle, making it all about him with his annoying, cryptic one liners and ridiculous tailoring.

He starts off by saying that there’s no public flogging on tonight’s show. What?! Was this something to do with the sentencing of Eric Cantona for his kung fu style assault of a Crystal Palace fan which took place on the very same day this TOTP went out? Eric got 14 days in prison pending an appeal which he subsequently won and saw his sentence reduced to 120 hours of community service. So, not exactly a public flogging then Simon.

With the first example of Mayo’s inane drivel dispensed with, it’s time for the opening act who is Sean Maguire. He was the ex-EastEnders and Grange Hill actor who had decided that he was wasting his time with all that TV work and what the world really needed was to bear witness to his singing talents while he ‘testified’* on stage. So far, he’d made a decent stab at the transformation with a couple of middling sized hits the previous year and now he was back with his third single “Suddenly”. Nothing to do with the Billy Ocean hit of the same name, this was just more pop-by-numbers stuff designed to appeal to the teen market with an instrumental break written in to allow for the obligatory dance routine to be included. I mean, it’s a catchy little ditty but it’s hardly a pop music masterpiece. Even so, it had more longevity than Sean’s fashion gimmick which saw him with a top tied around his waist even though he was wearing a jacket over his singlet. Why did he need the jacket if he was too warm to wear the top? This didn’t make any sense at all. Maybe it was de rigueur fashion accessorising in 1995? We’ll certainly see more examples of it later on in the show.

* © Smash Hits circa 1985

Mayo really is a prick. In his second intro, he makes a reference to Peter Tatchell, the human and gay rights campaigner when announcing Tin Tin Out as the next artist. Why? Well, I think that he was referring to a current news story about Tatchell’s involvement with the direct action group OutRage! who ran a campaign to out 20 MPs who publicly supported anti-gay legislation whilst secretly living gay personal lives. One such MP was Sir James Kilfedder who died of a heart attack three days before this TOTP was broadcast just as the Belfast Telegraph ran a story that he was one of the politicians targeted. A sensitive story you would think. Not to Mayo. That’s source material for a cheap line while he presents a pop music programme. Tin Tin Out? Geddit? Like I said, a prick.

Anyway, back to the music and Tin Tin Out were an electronic music duo who mixed hits for some of the biggest names like Erasure and Pet Shop Boys but they also had a sideline in hits under their own name. “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” was their second such hit peaking at No 14. A version of the Bacharach and David song that Sandie Shaw took to the top of the charts in 1964, it was a cover in the loosest sense of the word. Basically they took the song’s distinctive melody, added a house beat to it and roped in vocalist Vanessa Contenay-Quinones of the duo Espiritu to sing (rather badly here I would add) the song’s title repeatedly. It sounds horrible to my ears. Perhaps to offset this infernal racket, there are four half naked backing dancers (with their tops tied around their waists as per Sean Maguire) making the female members of the audience react as if it were The Chippendales they were watching.

Tin Tin Out would find further success later in the decade with covers of The Sundays (“Here’s Where The Story Ends”) and Edie Brickell (“What I Am”). The latter was with ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton which was released on the same day as Gerri Halliwell’s “Lift Me Up” causing a chart battle to see who would be No 1. In the end, Ginger won out over Baby.

By the way, if I wanted a cover of “Always (Something There To Remind Me)” – which I did apparently in 1983 as I bought this single – then there’s always this…

I may have succumbed to some ropey old synth pop version of a 60s classic in 1983 but there was no way I was falling for this next load of old tosh twelve years later. I know we’ve seen many an act bag themselves a huge hit and basically just repeat the song with a few tweaks for the follow up over the years but this by Rednex really was scandalous. After the horror that was their No 1 single “Cotton Eye Joe”, they almost literally put out the same record again for their next one. As a result, “Old Pop In An Oak” was every bit as dreadful as its predecessor. Despite not making the Top 10, enough poor saps bought it in sufficient quantities to send it to No 12. What the hell happened people?!

In 1993, Duran Duran pulled off the seemingly impossible by escaping the from the box the public had put them in labelled ‘They used to be famous in the 80s’ and coming up with a hit single that put them back into the Top 10 for the first time in four years with “Ordinary World”. Not only that but its parent album was a million seller in the US and went gold in the UK. They were back and had momentum on their side. What they did with that momentum was tantamount to commercial and artistic suicide. Whose idea was it to record an album of cover versions? Or perhaps the question should be ‘whose idea was it to record an album of those cover versions?’.

Take the lead single from the “Thank You” album for example. Wasn’t Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” seen as sacrosanct at the time? What were they boys thinking? However, the phrase ‘at the time’ really should have been in italics for it has been covered by many an artist since and I don’t remember the same amount of cries of heresy as were reserved for the Duran boys? Indeed, just three months after this, Kirsty MacColl released her own version with Evan Dando of The Lemonheads to promote her Best Of album “Galore” and I’m pretty sure there weren’t any cries of “Heresy!” from anyone. By 1997, just about every big name in the music business had covered it (sort of). A BBC promotional video to showcase their musical diversity featuring the likes of David Bowie, Elton John, Bono, Heather Small, Brett Anderson of Suede, Tom Jones, Gabrielle, Evan Dando (again!) and perhaps most memorably Dr John (“such a poyfick day”) was absolutely fêted by the public; so much so that it was released as a single and went to No 1 for three weeks. All of this leads me to believe that it was more about who was doing the cover version and it was a case of everybody else = good, Duran Duran = bad.

Or maybe it wasn’t even about this track? After all, Lou Reed is on record as saying the Duran version was the best recording of any of his songs. Was it the other covers on “Thank You” that offended so? Taking on songs by Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Iggy Pop was ill judged but to navigate “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel and Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke” was clinically insane. The readers of Q magazine were so incensed that in a 2006 poll, they voted “Thank You” the worst album of all time. So was it that bad? Well, I’ve often found myself on the wrong side of popular opinion and I did buy a couple of Duran Duran albums in the 80s but on the whole, even I would say it was a not a clever career move. As so it proved. After the critical backlash “Thank You” received, the band floundered. Follow up album “Medazzaland” didn’t even get released in Europe with the record buying public seemingly only interested in their past glories – a Best Of collection called “Greatest” made No 4 when released in 1998. It would take a reunion of the classic line up in 2004 to return them towards the top of the charts when the “Astronaut” album made No 3.

Talking of the classic line up, that’s Roger Taylor on drums in this TOTP performance which took me by surprise as he hadn’t had anything to do with the band since leaving in 1986. Apparently he played on three tracks for the “Thank You” album and appeared in the video for “Perfect Day”. Meanwhile, bassist John Taylor seems to have taken leave of his fashion senses – a checked shirt matched with stripey trousers?!

Next a band who in many ways replaced Duran Duran in the affections of the teen market as the boys from Birmingham’s popularity dwindled in the late 80s. Wet Wet Wet were on a commercial high come the mid 90s. They’d had that single in 1994 at No 1 for fifteen weeks and now were back with a new hit in the Top 10. Of course, also like Duran Duran, they’d suffered their own decline in approval around 1989-1991 but that was all behind them now.

Following the biggest selling single of the year though was no easy task and “Julia Says” predictably couldn’t get anywhere near the sales of “Love Is All Around”. A high of No 3 was nothing to be sniffed at though even if the track itself wasn’t their strongest by a mile and it did help propel parent album “Picture This” to No 1 and a million sales. The hits kept coming until the end of the decade when Marti Pellow left the band to deal with his addiction issues. Wet Wet Wet are still a going concern but only just. Graeme Clark is the only remaining member of the original four piece line up though they have just announced a co-headlining tour with perennials of the nostalgia circuit Go West.

A case next of an appearance on TOTP not helping the sales of a single. “Original” by Leftfield featuring Tony Halliday was a new entry on the chart this week at No 18 but it would fall to No 35 seven days later despite the exposure of this performance. To be fair, the sound of the track didn’t exactly lend itself to a turn on TV. Its dark, dubby rhythms allied to Halliday’s almost deadpan vocals weren’t a perfect match for the medium of TV. Not that it isn’t a good track – it is but it acts almost as a visual downer in amongst the scream-inducing likes of Sean Maguire and Wet Wet Wet. Yes, there are some shrieks from the studio audience at times during “Original” but I get the impression they were falsely manufactured by the prompting of a floor manager.

Leftfield were, of course, influential production team Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who’d already had a hit under their own steam when they collaborated with John Lydon on the hypnotic “Open Up” in 1994. Toni Halliday was the lead singer with shoe gazing / dance beat hybrid Curve who’d had a handful of minor hit singles and two moderately successful albums to this point but whose legacy was to open the doors for the likes of Garbage to stride through. The album “Original” came from was the Mercury Prize nominated “Leftism” which is widely regarded as a milestone moment in dance music. Listening to this track now, it sounds very like Portishead to me whose album “Dummy” beat “Leftism” to the aforementioned Mercury Prize in 1995.

Next another band who like Wet Wet Wet are trying to follow up the biggest hit of their career. East 17 may not have had the best selling single of the year like the Wets but they did have the Christmas No 1 with all the sales that brings with it. Surely they couldn’t bag another chart topper with their next release? The short answer is no they couldn’t but they did keep their record of consecutive Top 10 hits going with “Let It Rain” taking the tally to five.

After the balladry of “Stay Another Day”, it was back to the sound on which they made their name – a hard-hitting, quick house beats dance floor-filler with a shouty yet catchy chorus. Its intro has Tony Mortimer going all Prince-like in “Let’s Go Crazy” mode, preaching from the pulpit before the beats hit about corridors of creation and colliding comets. Actually, he sounds a bit like Gary Clail of On-U Sound fame.

I’d have to say that apart from that intro, it’s not one of their most memorable tunes, not quite the banger it wants to be. Talking of which, Terry Coldwell (the bloke in the singlet on the left in this performance and only remaining original member still with the group) was in the news recently when he participated in a Counties Radio competition where presenter Justin Dealey would ask people in the street to sing a song and if he judged it good enough, he would buy them a hot dog as a reward. Snappily entitled ‘Sing a banger for a banger’, Coldwell rocked up and sang “Stay Another Day” but was denied his prize on account of sounding too authentic!

Mayo’s back with his crappy jokes now as he name checks the boxer Chris Eubank. As far as I understand it, by saying that Chris’s favourite song was “Hypnotised” by Simple Minds, he was referring to the fact that Eubank had recently lost his WBO super middleweight title to Steve Collins who had employed a guru to help him prepare mentally for the fight leading the press to believe that Collins was hypnotised for the bout. As Eubanks entered the ring before the fight, Collins sat in his corner motionless with headphones on, giving more credence to the rumour. None of this backstory makes Mayo’s quip funny though. Look mate, you’re just there to introduce the acts not perform a stand up routine. Just do your job.

Anyway, this was the second and last single from the “Good News From The Next World” album and it wasn’t very good. Not only was it completely soporific but I’m sure they’d used that bridge part before in a previous hit. In short, poor on quality and lethargic of effort. Must do better.

By the way, what was going on with guitarist Charlie Burchill?! Back in 1984, I’d desperately coveted his look but he just looks weird here. Horrible hair and a jacket that looks like he’d borrowed it from a pearly king. And I thought John Taylor’s wardrobe was suss.

The Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric Clapton has, rather predictably, brought an end to Celine Dion’s run at No 1 and to quote Captain Sensible’s 1982 hit “Wot”, ain’t I glad. Beware though. This respite will only last a week before a new menace takes residence in the top spot…

Just before the credits roll, there’s a plug for the BBC’s A Song for Europe show to pick this year’s UK Eurovision entry. It seemed quite an elongated process. There was a Top of the Pops Song for Europe Special show that Mayo mentions where each of the competing songs was showcased but that wasn’t the point where the winner was chosen. No, there was another programme a week later where that decision was made by a public vote. Each artist also had a celebrity champion advocating for them. Some of the entrants were well known – Londonbeat for example (who sounded dreadful in the clip at the end of this TOTP) plus recent chart stars Deuce and Samantha Fox fronting Sox. The rest of them I have no idea about except the actual winner of course who were Love City Groove who trounced everybody with over 140,000 votes. The artist placed second got 81,000 by comparison. Things didn’t work out for Love City Groove on the big day but that’s a story for another post.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Sean MaguireSuddenlyAs if
2Tin Tin Out featuring EspirituAlways (Something There To Remind Me)No
3RednexOld Pop In An OakHell no!
4Duran DuranPerfect DayNope
5Wet Wet WetJulia SaysNah
6Leftfield featuring Tony HallidayOriginalNo but my wife might have had the album I think
7East 17Let It RainNegative
8Simple MindsHypnotisedI did not
9Cher, Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Eric ClaptonLove Can Build A BridgeNot even for charity

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/m001rb00/top-of-the-pops-23031995

TOTP 01 SEP 1994

Posted on by 80stastic

OK, before we get into the music, there’s a bit of housekeeping to take care of. Firstly, we’ve missed a whole episode which hasn’t happened for quite some time. Nothing to do with Operation Yewtree nor presenters who hadn’t signed the waiver for BBC4 to broadcast the repeats they featured in – no this was a matter of a technical nature. The tapes for the TOTP shown on 25 August 1994 held in the BBC archive were deemed to be not of broadcast quality and so we miss out on what was surely one of the more interesting guest presenters in Malcolm MacLaren. Despite being a bit of an arse I’m sure, I’ve always had a soft spot for Malcolm and could listen to his drivel for hours. At least he led an interesting life. I’ve checked the running order for that show and I don’t think we missed much. Many acts we’d already seen before including Red Dragon, Shampoo and unbelievably Let Loose again! We did however miss Dinosaur Jnr which might have been distracting at least plus the return of Kylie Minogue with her first new material since leaving PWL as she entered her ‘Dance Kylie’ phase. Oh well.

The other bit of housekeeping is regarding tonight’s host who we haven’t seen before. So who was / is Claire Sturgess? Well, she’s a voice over artist and DJ currently working on Absolute Radio where she’s been since 2015. Back in 1994 though, she was a Radio 1 DJ presenting the rock show on Sunday evenings. She would stay at the BBC until 1997 but only hosted TOTP one more time before being replaced by Lisa I’Anson.

Right, on with the tunes and we start with one that perhaps more than any other (with the possible exception of “Common People” by Pulp) has come to be associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Britpop movement. Think of “Parklife” (the song) by Blur and what comes to mind? Phil Daniels? Of course. The “vorsprung durch technik’ line? Yep. The iconic video with Damon in that tracksuit top camping it up whilst an ice cream van drives by. Without doubt. They’re all woven into the fabric of the time but sometimes I think we forget what a strange song “Parklife” really is. A track where all the verses are spoken in a cockney accent, a chorus that you could imagine Dick Van Dyke singing in one of those musicals he starred in and lyrics about brewer’s droop, dirty pigeons and habitual voyeurs. And yet it all hangs together perfectly to the point that we didn’t bat an eyelid when it was released but instead accepted it as another example of Blur’s pursuit to celebrate ‘Englishness’. Except it wasn’t. Here’s Graham Coxon courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

In this performance, Daniels is word perfect and Damon, relieved of the stress of doing all the heavy lifting vocals wise, seems to be enjoying his freedom to ham it up on stage more than usual. My personal memory of this song though would come three months later at Christmas. I was asked to co-coordinate the works Christmas do for all the Our Price shops in the area. I found a venue and we got one of the staff at the Piccadilly, Manchester store to do the DJ-ing (if you worked in a record shop there was always someone who was either in a band or a DJ on the staff). The manager I organised the shindig with (Rick) was a bit nervous on the actual night about whether people were having a good time or not and especially about the music being played. Our DJ put on “Girls & Boys” which seemed a safe choice but which only served to agitate Rick into shouting at him “Give ‘em Parklife Will, give ‘em Parklife!”. Such was the influence of Blur and that song in particular in 1994.

P.S. I think Will did indeed give ‘em “Parklife” at some point in the evening.

Oh great! Another soap star turned pop star. This time the actor is from EastEnders reviving bad memories of Nick ‘Wicksy’ Berry and Anita ‘Angie’ Dobson. Sean Maguire’s stay in the soap had been short (January to December 1993) but he had been a big hit with the audience (especially the teenage female section of it). It was almost inevitable then that he’d give the old pop star lark a go and here he was, eight months after leaving EastEnders, back on our screens on the BBC’s premier music show. Unbelievably, despite not being able to shift any meaningful amount of units of either of his two albums, he would rack up eight Top 40 singles over a three year period. The first of those was “Someone To Love” and it’s a decent slice of late summer pop which seems to have pinched a bit from Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration”. Maguire sells it well enough and there’s been less likely pop stars (Stefan Dennis anyone?) but I’m guessing that his record label couldn’t have envisaged another six hits after this one. They were all pretty consistent as well. Look at these chart positions:

14 – 27 – 18 – 22 – 16 – 12 – 14 – 27

They’re not too shabby for a soap actor turned pop star. Maguire played Irish wannabe footballer Aidan Brosnan in EastEnders. Hmm. A footballer called Maguire who went onto have a career as a singer. Man Utd’s Harry Maguire as a pop star anyone?

I referenced this record the other week but it wasn’t really pre-planned – it just sort of played out that way. I’m talking about “Endless Love” by Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross. I mentioned their version as the record that knocked Boyz II Men off the No 1 spot in New Zealand but I’d already referred to the Lionel Richie / Diana Ross 1981 original when stating that I hadn’t heard a song basically regurgitated as a different track as I believed Boyz II Men had done with “End Of The Road” and “I’ll Make Love To You” since Lionel Richie rewrote “Endless Love” as “Truly”. I’d actually forgotten that this duet existed until these TOTP repeats aired but exist it does so I’ll have to discuss it. It came from a whole album of covers recorded by Luther called, rather blandly, “Songs” which already had a Lionel Richie song on the track listing in “Hello” but Sony president Tommy Mottola and his then wife Mariah decided that they could boost the album’s chances of success by having her appear on it and so the cover of “Endless Love” came to be. It was a sound business strategy – Mariah was perhaps at the very peak of her popularity with her latest album “Music Box” achieving huge global sales and indeed her contribution helped “Songs” to platinum sales and a No 1 chart position in the UK alone. The single also performed well going to No 2 in America and No 3 here. For me though, it’s a very faithful reproduction and rather pointless and anodyne. I suppose there was a gap of 13 years between the release of the original and the cover so maybe it’s possible there were people out there who didn’t know the Richie / Ross version and so came to it as a brand new song? Or perhaps people did know it and were reminded how much they’d liked the original but in those days before streaming and Spotify, they couldn’t just get access to the song and so bought what was available, the Vandross / Carey remake? I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to work out how some of these songs managed to be hits – and I wrote a dissertation about it whilst a student at Poly.

Next we find Terrorvision having a very steady year of consolidating their success and building their fanbase as they are back on TOTP performing their fourth Top 40 hit of the year “Pretend Best Friend”. And when I say steady, I mean incredibly consistent. Look at these chart peaks for those four singles:

29 – 21 – 25 – 25

A fifth single was released before 1994 was out and it made it to No 24. Their first single of the following year peaked at No 22. Like I say, incredibly consistent. As for the song itself, I don’t recall it but it kind of sounds how I expected it to with Tony Wright launching into a high speed rap that is vaguely reminiscent of “Ant Rap” before the almost shouted chorus. There’s also a bit where it all slows down and Tony wields a megaphone which is all rather incongruous. Good song title though.

After the exclusive of a double live by satellite section in the show last week, head producer Ric Blaxill has gone in hard on the idea by repeating the ‘satellite segue’ (as they’ve named it) for this week. We start off in Philadelphia with a curiously dull performance by the aforementioned Boyz II Men of “I’ll Make Love To You”. Now, my knowledge of the geography of Philadelphia is mostly limited to the scene in Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the 72 steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the iconic training scene. Luckily for me, I think that’s near to where this performance takes place with the mini stage erected in the Benjamin Franklin Parkway right in front of the Washington Monument. The whole set up seems to be adhering to Blaxill’s stated desire to get the live by satellite slots to feature well known landmarks that have nothing to do with the music per se but which are a step up from the performances in empty theatre halls we have seen previously. It’s all a bit odd though. The parkway has people wandering through it minding their own business or joggers doing their own version of the Rocky training regimen whilst four guys are singing “I’ll Make Love To You” whilst they pass by. Shouldn’t be allowed really.

The second part of the satellite segue stays in America but transports us to New York and specifically to The Bottom Line club in Greenwich Village where we find Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories. Now it might not be recognisable as a landmark like the Washington Monument before it but this venue was legendary in its own right. Owners Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky put on a huge amount of musical talent in the 30 years the club was open including the likes of Prince, The Police, Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Dolly Parton….and in the fall of 1994 Lisa Loeb. But who was she?

Well, for someone who is a one hit wonder in the UK (she managed a few more hits in the US), Lisa has quite the biography and discography – her Wikipedia entry is sizeable to say the least. She had been recording music and performing live since the late 80s but it was a friendship with neighbour and actor Ethan Hawke that gave Lisa her lucky break. Having met through the NYC theatre community, Hawke gave Loeb’s song “Stay (I Missed You)” to Ben Stiller who was directing the film Reality Bites that Hawke was starring in and he made the decision to use it over the end credits. The rest really is history. The track’s pretty, folk-infused pop melody proved irresistible to the American public who sent it to No 1 making Lisa and her band the first ever artist to top the chart there without being signed to a label.

Lisa looked a bit like Nana Mouskouri’s hipper younger sister but there was more to her than her trademark glasses. As well as being a musician, she also runs a number of businesses including one for fair trade coffee and, making use of that glasses association, the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection with each frame being named after one of her song titles. She’s also written children’s books and done some acting though one of her credits is for one of the worst films of all time – Hot Tub Time Machine 2. If you haven’t seen it and stumble across it whilst channel flipping then heed my advice – Don’t stay (you’ll be glad you missed it).

One of last week’s satellite segue acts are in the TOTP studio this week as Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry move up to No 3 with “7 Seconds”. The staging of this one starts out simple yet effective with a single spotlight centred on first Youssou and then Neneh as each takes the vocal lead in turn. However, the production team can’t have been totally won over by the idea as by the time the first chorus comes around, they’re both floodlit and there’s a multi screen video installation behind them showing the official promo film that accompanied the single. Shame. I thought a more paired back, minimalist setting would work best for this particular track but the show disagreed and went for Youssou N’More.

https://youtu.be/GUua-NUYlsg

It would take a braver man than me to start a political rant about this government’s despicable deportation to Rwanda scheme in a pop music blog but I am inevitably put in mind of it by the next song which is “Love Can Build A Bridge” by Children For Rwanda which was a charity single to raise money for Save The Children. If this all sounds familiar but not quite how you remember it then it’s quite possible you’re thinking of the version by Cher, Chrissie Hynde and the aforementioned Neneh Cherry that was released for Comic Relief just 6 months on from this and which went to No 1 for a week. Sadly for the Children For Rwanda single, it failed to sell nearly as well and peaked outside the Top 40.

We’ve reached week 14 of 15 (we missed week 13 due to the broadcast quality issue discussed earlier) for Wet Wet Wet’s reign at No 1 with “Love Is All Around” and whilst I’m really struggling to say anything of interest about it after so many appearances on the show, it seems like Ric Blaxill might be finding it difficult to keep us all interested as well. To shake things up a bit, he’s doubled down on the live by satellite feature and has the band beaming in from LA. This definitely falls into the category of performing in front of a world famous landmark with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. The end is coming though. There’s only one more week and the story behind it’s demise will be discussed in the next post.

The play out song is “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. 1994 was a year of massive upheaval for the band most notably due to the departure of guitarist Bernard Butler who formally left their ranks on 8th July following tensions whilst recording sophomore album “Dog Man Star”. As if that wasn’t enough, difficult second album syndrome raised its ugly head. Not that the band didn’t make the album they wanted to; they did, but the direction they took confused critics and some of the fans after their electrifying eponymous debut. Many saw its grandiose soundscapes as pretentious and although it sold well enough, it was seen as a bit of a step backwards commercially in comparison to its predecessor. History has been kind to the album though and revisionism has it hailed as an under appreciated and misunderstood at the time classic. When the band played five nights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2003 with each night dedicated to one of their studio albums, it was the tickets for the Dog Man Star show that sold the quickest.

As for its lead single, “We Are The Pigs” is certainly dark in nature and tone but it’s still a huge tune. There’s even a bit in it which sounds like that reverb sound in “Peter Gunn” by Diane Eddy and subsequently The Art Of Noise. Do you think that’s totally innocent or knowingly inserted?

The almost post apocalyptic video with burning crosses, cars afire and masked gangs roaming the streets puts me in mind of the climax of The Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, the ending of which had to be reshot as audience reaction at test screenings deemed it to violent and pessimistic. Similarly, the promo for Suede’s single got little airplay due to it being banned for being too violent. This may have contributed to the track only making it to No 18 in the UK Top 40.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1BlurParklifeNot the single but I had the album obviously
2Sean MaguireSomeone To LoveNo
3Mariah Carey and Luther VandrossEndless LoveNever happening
4TerrorvisionPretend Best FriendNope
5Boyz II MenI’ll Make Love To YouNah
6Lisa Loeb & Nine StoriesStay (I Missed You)Nice song but no
7Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry7 SecondsI did not
8Children For RwandaLove Can Build A BridgeNegative
9Wet Wet WetLove Is All AroundAnother no
10SuedeWe Are The PigsCould have done but 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/m001ln6m/top-of-the-pops-01091994