It’s nearly Christmas. Well, yes that’s hardly news I know but I’m talking about Christmas twenty-nine years ago as per the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule which has arrived at the festive period in 1993. I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham at the time and so if I watched this episode then I would have done so in the knowledge that the following day was perhaps the busiest of the whole retail year. Given my experience of Christmas Eve in the Rochdale store the previous year, I wouldn’t have been looking forward to it. You could say there was a distinct lack of festive cheer from the punters or to put it another way, they tore lumps out of us. Rude, aggressive and if we told them that we’d sold out of Gloria Estefan’s Greatest Hits on cassette (we had), they reacted as if we’d told their three year old child that Father Christmas didn’t exist. As such, I wasn’t looking forward much to the 24th December. I wonder which songs were in the charts that I might have been flogging to Christmas stressed customers?
We start with a song that would reach its chart peak the following year which is why I associate “Come Baby Come” by K7 with 1994 rather than 1993. The last time this was on TOTP in the Breakers section, I commented on how its lyrics were full of innuendo so I was expecting a very risqué studio performance full of explicit, sexually charged dance moves. However, whilst Mr K7 (real name Louis Sharpe) and his three backing singers/dancers are next level slick, I didn’t notice too many moves that would have had the TOTP producers panicking. Bizarrely though, at one point the main man pulls out one that appears to be replicating him washing his armpits in the shower with his microphone substituting for a bar of soap! He then follows it up with a Jarvis Cocker Michael Jackson baiting bum waft – not sure if that qualifies as explicit or just plain silly. “Come Baby Come” would peak at No 3 in the UK.
The BeeGees are up to No 4 with “For Whom The Bell Tolls” giving them their highest chart placing since their No 1 “You Win Again” in 1987. The song’s title references the phrase originally written by metaphysical poet John Donne and the novel by Ernest Hemingway but there was another band that beat the Gibb brothers to using it to name a song by nearly a decade. I have to admit to not having a clue that this track even existed before now but exist it does and it comes from one of the biggest rock bands ever. Metallica (for it is they) recorded a track called “For Whom The Bell Tolls” for their second album “Ride The Lightning” in 1984. In the name of musical exploration, I listened to it earlier and guess what? It did absolutely nothing for me! Lots of crunching rock guitar and strangulated vocals does not make yours truly a happy boy. Apparently the song is a huge fan favourite but seeing as I’m not a Metallica fan, that influences me as much as Rishi Sunak telling me that he cares about the working class (ooh, bit of politics there as Ben Elton used to say).
Anyway, the rather surprising success of the Bee Gees song meant that the group now had a UK Top 5 single in four consecutive decades (the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s) – that’s approaching Cliff Richard levels of chart achievement. They would even bag themselves two more before the decade was out. Quite remarkable.
Now here’s a curious but rather charming Christmas tune. This seemed to come out of nowhere just as the big day approached but maybe it was released too late to make any real impression on the Top 40. Certainly its chart peak of No 37 seems to reflect that. Or maybe it was just too out of leftfield for the mainstream Christmas market with its non traditional shoppers for whom the festive season is the only time they would venture into a record shop all year looking for Cliff Richard or that nice Elton John and Kiki Dee song or even the Bee Gees. It was unlikely their shopping list included the record by SaintEtienne and the bloke from The Charlatans.
I’d forgotten that “I Was Born On Christmas Day” was actually just one song from a four track EP called (rather bluntly) “Xmas 93” but it was the only one to feature the now national treasure that is Tim Burgess. The other tracks included a Billy Fury cover and two instrumentals none of which I’ve ever heard as the lead song was presumably the only one played.
As Christmas tunes go, it’s an odd one but pretty groovy. Mostly devoid of the usual festive music baubles (sleigh bells, references to Santa Claus, snow, trees, presents etc), it instead has a driving house beat and an unusual melody. In fact, apart from its title which is sung on repeat in the coda, there’s very little to distinguish it’s a Christmas song. The lyrics seem to be about someone missing their absent partner throughout the course of the year awaiting their return at Christmas and thinking of everything that has happened in the world they left behind whilst away.
Tim Burgess and Sarah Cracknell have definite chemistry up there on stage, holding hands, draping a shared feather boa around each other’s shoulders…is there even a little kiss between them at one point? Well, the lyrics do refer to a Tim and Sarah tying the knot!
As host Mark Franklin says in his intro, 1993 had been a great year for Saint Etienne with a Top 10 album (“So Tough”) and their highest ever charting single (to that point) in “You’re In A Bad Way”. The Charlatans on the other hand failed to release any material but would return in 1994 with their own Top 10 album “Up To Our Hips” and the excellent single “Can’t Get Out Of Bed”. As for “I Was Born In Christmas Day”, you don’t hear it that often on the radio despite its obvious time slot each year. Incidentally, neither Tim nor Sarah were actually born on Christmas Day though Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley was. Other rock/pop stars born on the 25th December include Annie Lennox, Dido and Shane MacGowan whilst Lemmy came into the world on Christmas Eve.
One of the nastiest things about 1993 (amongst many) was the breakthrough success of the revolting Shabba Ranks. After a rereleased “Mr Loverman” took him to No 3, there was a small procession of follow up singles in its wake of which “Family Affair” was the third. Pretty much a remake of the Sly And The Family Stone classic with some rapping and toasting over the top (including inevitably a few shouts of ‘Shabba!’), this was from the soundtrack to the AddamsFamilyValues film. I’d quite enjoyed the silly but likeable “Addams Groove” by Hammer from the original 1991 TheAddamsFamily film but this was just horrible. It featured Patra, TerriandMonica (I’ve no idea) and made No 18 in the charts but I’m glad to say I don’t remember it at all – I’ve never seen any of the Addams Family films either. Shabba Ranks would only have one more UK Top 40 hit after this. Good riddance to his homophobic ass!
Dina Carroll now with “The Perfect Year”, a single that perfectly encapsulates her annus mirabilis. One of the comments most made by people commenting on the Twitter hashtag #TOTP during the 1993 repeats has been “Whatever happened to Dina Carroll?” and it’s a fair question. After this single, we didn’t hear any new material from her for nearly three years. When it did arrive, it was successful but just not anywhere near as much as her earlier stuff. Debut album “So Close” went four times platinum. By comparison, the follow up “Only Human” sold a quarter of that; not insubstantial by any measure but a definite decline. Why did it take so long for that sophomore album to appear? Well, she suffered from burn out after that initial runaway success and took a break from touring and recording and when she returned she walked into a contract mess. The guy who signed her for A&M had left for Mercury Records but his new label weren’t keen on him taking Dina with him initially. By the time it was all resolved and Dina’s first single on Mercury appeared (“Escaping”), it was 1996!
Her new label seemed unsure what to do with her – was she a slick, soul balladeer or a club diva? Or both? She’d successfully straddled both camps with her eclectic debut album but somehow Mercury didn’t seem reassured by that. A third album was never released and a case ofotosclerosis (hereditary bone disease of the ear) was clearly not helpful for a recording artist. As the millennium dawned, Dina just seemed to disappear. A Best Of album fulfilled her contractual obligations to Mercury in 2001 and her only release since then was 2016’s “We Bring The Party” with the Dig Band.
Meanwhile, back in 1993, Dina became the only British female artist to have two simultaneous Top 10 hits during the whole of the decade. In the week 12th to 18th December, “Don’t Be A Stranger” was at No 8 whilst “The Perfect Year” was at No 10. I think I’m right in saying A&M had deleted the former to make way for the latter so we had loads of the No 10 but hardly any of the No 8. Funny the things you remember isn’t it?
Even though this is officially the Christmas chart, there are still room for a couple of Breakers. One though is utterly dreadful and the other is last year’s Christmas No 1! Yes, despite being the best selling single in the UK of 1992, it’s back in the Top 40 twelve months on. I refer, of course, to Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You”. Now remember that the charts were a different beast back then to the one that functions (sort of) these days. You couldn’t just get a song (any song) into the charts via a concerted social media campaign by coercing people into streaming it loads. It had to be officially released which means that “I Will Always Love You”, despite its ubiquity over the last twelve months, must have been rereleased. Why would that have happened? Well, it was all to do with the VHS of The Bodyguard coming out in November of this year.
This was such a big marketing event back then that it presumably made perfect sense to record label Arista to give the soundtrack and the most famous single from it another promotional push. As a result, “I Will Always Love You” managed a peak of No 25 the second time around. Of course, this wasn’t an entirely new phenomenon. In 1985, both “Last Christmas” by Wham! and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid returned to the charts after being the festive No 2 and No 1 respectively the year before. Even so though, it did feel like overkill.
Now to that second and abhorrent Breaker. Probably long forgotten as the other novelty record in the chart of Christmas 1993, overshadowed by the spotted, pink dickhead at No 1 but the combination of Hulk Hogan and Green Jellÿ doing a cover of “I’m The Leader Of The Gang” is potentially even more heinous than the blobby one’s effort, given what we now know about Gary Glitter. Hulk Hogan had been a wrestling star throughout the 80s with his 1988 WWF match with Andre the Giant holding the record for the highest TV audience for wrestling ever. In 1993, Hogan broke away from WWF to sign for rival federation WCW which maybe is the reason for this single release? Bit of promotion for WCW? After all, the WWF Superstars had bagged themselves two UK hit singles in the past twelve months so…
GreenJellÿ had achieved the same chart feat with two hits of their own in 1993 with “Three Little Pigs” and “Anarchy In The UK” and it was they that Hogan was paired with to deliver this execrable record. I mean, it’s literally unlistenable. Who the hell bought enough copies to take it to No 25?
The penultimate tune before we get to the Christmas No 1 comes from EYC. This lot of chancers were put together to take the US by storm but did diddly squat over there. They did, however, gain moderate chart success both here and in Australia. Debut hit “Feelin’ Alright” reached No 16 but listening to it back now, it just sounds like a lot of horrible shouting. Maybe I’m just too middle aged to be able to engage with this sort of stuff now but I probably felt the same about it nearly thirty years ago.
They were the first act to win the Best Roadshow Act award at the SmashHitsPollWinnersParty but that sounds like an award that was designed purely for them to win – a bit like the award I got from my works 5-a-side team for Most Improved Player (a back handed compliment if there ever was one). They also picked up six UK Top 40 singles during their brief career so I fear we may not have seen the last of them by a long chalk.
“So this is Christmas and what have you done?” sang John Lennon and in 1993 this line rang truer than ever for it was indeed Christmas and what the British public had done was to make MrBlobby the festive chart topper. How on earth could we have let this happen?! I’d foolishly believed that the “Mr Blobby” single had peaked too early after being No 1 two weeks ago but the deposed chart topper somehow rallied and regained the crown just in time to be announced as the Christmas No 1. How often did that sort of chart trajectory occur? Apparently “She Loves You” by The Beatles was No 1 for four weeks in 1963 before dropping down for a whole seven weeks and then miraculously returning to the top for a further two weeks. The Fab Four then knocked themselves off the pinnacle with “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. So not without precedent but that was The f*****g Beatles we’re talking about not some tit in a pink latex suit! Aaaarrrgh!!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
K7
Come Baby Come
I did not
2
Bee Gees
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Nah
3
Saint Etienne and Tim Burgess
I Was Born On Christmas Day
Probably should have but no
4
Shabba Ranks with Patra, Terri and Monica
Family Affair
Never happening
5
Dina Carroll
The Perfect Year
Nope
6
Whitney Houston
I Will Always Love You
Not the first nor second time
7
Hulk Hogan and Green Jellÿ
I’m The Leader Of The Gang
As if
8
EYC
Feeling’ Alright
No
9
Mr Blobby
Mr Blobby
Did I bollocks!
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.
And there go the 1993 TOTP repeats – weren’t they awful?! This particular year was the one I was least looking forward to reviewing so far and my trepidation was justified. Some truly terrible music made the charts topped off with the festive chart topper also being possibly the worst No 1 single of all time. What a time to be alive! So what was all this terrible music of which I write? Well, if I think of the charts of 1993, the first word that comes to mind is ‘Eurodance’ – so many acts seemed to appear this year peddling their synth riffs, drum machines, inanely and insanely catchy choruses and their ‘featured’ rappers. The likes of 2 Unlimited, Culture Beat and Haddaway all scored massive hits during the twelve calendar months with the first two even bagging themselves a No 1 record. The second thought that enters my head when considering this year is the spectre of the ‘Three S’s’ – Shaggy, Shabba and Snow. They each racked up a ginormous smash, specifically “Oh Carolina” (No 1), “Mr Loverman” (No 2) and “Informer” (No 2) all within a few weeks of each other. And they were all shite. As I said, what a time to be alive. Singles sales in general were up after the slump of the previous year but the standard of No 1s was as poor as ever. Look at this lot…
It’s grim reading. Seventeen chart toppers by sixteen artists (Mr Blobby was No 1 on two occasions) and I bought none of them. I would break them down as follows:
3 x Eurodance nonsense (2 Unlimited, Culture Beat, Ace Of Base)
3 x teen sensations (Take That)
2 x 80s songs reactivated by (i) TV advert (The Bluebells) and (ii) record company fleecing an artist’s back catalogue posthumously (Freddie Mercury)
1 x EP taken from the tribute concert for said deceased artist (George Michael & Queen with Lisa Stansfield)
1 x execrable novelty hit (Mr Blobby)
1 x last year’s Christmas No 1 hung over into the new year (Whitney Houston)
1 x out of the blue monster hit by hoary old rocker (Meatloaf)
1 x lame reggae flavoured cover for a film soundtrack by a band that owed their biggest hits to lame reggae flavoured covers (UB40)
1 x soul/dance floor filler by a new artist (Gabrielle)
1 x hip-hop shout-a-long anthem from an artist better known as a TV star at the time (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
1 x reggae hit from a new artist jumping on the dancehall/toasting bandwagon of 1993 (Shaggy)
It’s not the most inspiring collection of songs ever. Where was the innovation? Was this really what the kids wanted? It wasn’t any better if you looked at the biggest selling albums of the year. The Top 10 included the usual mainstream names like Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, Diana Ross, UB40, U2 plus the resurrected Meatloaf who easily helped himself to both the year’s best selling single and album. The only real surprises were the performances of the No 2 and No 3 albums. The former came from REM who achieved that position with a record that was released in the October of the previous year. Meanwhile, the latter came from the only ‘new’ artist in the Top 10 in Dina Carroll whose success was no doubt enabled by the presence of six hit singles on her album. It doesn’t get much better if you scroll down the chart where you’ll find the familiar names of Sting, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart and Tina Turner. However, honourable mentions should go to Spin Doctors, Stereo MCs and Björk.
Hits We Missed
Despite there being very few shows in 1993 that weren’t rebroadcast by BBC4 due to presenter issues – I think we may have missed the episode with Rolf Harris performing “Stairway To Heaven” understandably – there were still a few Top 40 hits that didn’t make it onto TOTP. Yes, even though the infernal Breakers section with its five or so songs crammed into a two minute slot was a constant throughout the year, somehow there were still some singles we never got to see. Here are my picks…
Sugar – “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”
I used to work with someone who loved Bob Mould and his post Hüsker Dü project and you can hear why on this, Sugar’s only UK chart hit. Leaving behind his previous band’s punk tendencies for some perfect power pop, this should have been huge. If you need validation of this opinion then check out the comments against it on YouTube where the most used word to describe the song/artist is ‘underrated’.
The parent album “Copper Blue” was well received by the critics both at the time (it was the NME album of the year) and beyond (it features in the 1001AlbumsYouMustHearBeforeYouDie reference book). It wasn’t just the critics who liked it as it did sell well making the Top 10 in the UK so why didn’t this single get a chance on TOTP? Bob Mould broke up Sugar in 1996 though he did tour “Copper Blue” just as himself in 2012.
Released: Jan ‘93
Chartpeak: No 30
Radiohead – “Anyone Can Play Guitar”
Asked to name Radiohead’s first hit, I’m guessing many would answer “Creep” but although it was their first single release, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” was actually their first foray into the Top 40. You could forgive the error though. One week at No 32, one week at No 50 and then gone. No wonder we didn’t get to see this one on TOTP. It was an inauspicious chart start for a band that would become a behemoth of the 90s and beyond.
Listening back to it now, it must have seemed at odds with its chart contemporaries. It’s all feedback and distortion in the opening before that’s zapped and the now familiar Radiohead staccato rhythm kicks in. The chorus actually has a strong, almost joyful (for them) melody which plays directly against the entrenched, downbeat nature of the verses. I must admit that it passed me by at the time before we were all swallowed up by that enormous sound of “Creep”. Fast forward two years and the band upped their game with the epic “The Bends” album and I for one couldn’t resist them any longer. So, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” – if nothing else, a great Pointless answer if the category of Radiohead Top 40 hits ever comes up.
Released:Feb ’93
Chartpeak:No 32
Neil Young – “Harvest Moon”
I have to admit that my knowledge of Neil Young in 1993 could never be described as extensive – in fact it’s as limited as the amount of copies that exist of the A&M pressing of “God Save The Queen”. Obviously I knew his only UK hit single to that point (1971’s “Heart Of Gold”) and that it came from an album called “Harvest” but beyond that? Hardly anything. I was aware of a handful of his songs from cover versions by other artists like “The Needle And The Damage Done” via a cover version by The Icicle Works and Pete Wylie from 1986 and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Saint Etienne in 1991. Oh and The Alarm covered “Rockin’ In The Free World” on their early 90s album “Raw”. Yes, I knew about his involvement in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young but all I really knew of their catalogue was “Our House” (I’ve since discovered a few more of their wonderful harmonies). It’s not much to say that Young has recorded forty-five studio albums over the course of his career. I think the fact that he released an album of feedback (1991’s “Arc”) didn’t help to pique my curiosity.
In 1993 came “Harvest Moon” though and I recall there being a lot of fuss in the music press about its release. Seen as a follow up to “Harvest” twenty years on, it would be his biggest selling album since the original. However the title track didn’t achieve the same level of success when issued as a single despite being critically lauded. It seems to me that it borrows the guitar motif from “Walk Right Back” by The Everly Brothers (albeit a slowed down version) but that’s not a criticism. It’s a gorgeous melody and judging by the comments against the video for it on YouTube, it certainly means a lot to people. Entry after entry talks about how it is the song that reminds the author of a departed loved one. The power of music isn’t always measured by chart positions.
Released:Feb ’93
Chartpeak:No 36
Duran Duran – “Too Much Information”
1993 was a year of rejuvenation for a few names from the past. The Bluebells had a TV advert inspired No 1 with a single from 1984, Nick Heyward would return with his first new album for five years (more of that later) whilst Go West somehow managed to bag themselves three Top 40 hits. And then there was Duran Duran. Seemingly destined to be locked away with the other unwanted 80s artefacts in the pop music broom cupboard as the new decade dawned, they completed a remarkable commercial comeback in this year.
After the very poorly received “Liberty” album in 1990, many thought we had seen the last of Duran Duran. However, the doubters hadn’t banked on the band’s seventh eponymously titled studio album (aka ‘The Wedding Album’). Led by the outstanding and enduring single “Ordinary World”, it went Top 5 in the UK and Top 10 in the US becoming their highest charting album in a decade since “Seven And The Ragged Tiger” at the height of their pomp. Another accomplished single followed in “Come Undone” but there was a third, largely forgotten single that appeared in August.
“Too Much Information” was the opening track on the album and it’s a belter. Starting off with an acoustic guitar intro, it suddenly bounds into life with a punchy groove that never quits over the next four minutes or so. Reversing the traditional single release template of two uptempo tunes and then a slow track, this was quite the change of pace after “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”. Often seen as a prediction of the information highway which was in its infancy, the lyrics also show some self knowledge with lines like “Destroyed by MTV, I hate to bite the hand that feeds me” referencing the role that the music channel played in breaking the band in America. There’s also some tongue in cheek admittance of the turbulent past of the band with the lyric “This band is perfect, just don’t scratch the surface”.
The Julian Temple directed video does a great job of depicting sensory overload with multiple cuts coming thick and fast – there’s even a homage to the infamous eye clamps scene from AClockworkOrange. None of this made any difference to the single’s chart fortunes though and it barely scraped into the Top 40. Would a Breaker slot on TOTP have made any difference? Maybe. The success and favourable sway of public opinion the band received in 1993 quickly evaporated when they released their collection of covers “Thank You” two years later which was declared the worst album of all time by QMagazine in 2006.
Released:Sep ’93
Chartpeak:No 35
Squeeze – “Third Rail”
As comebacks go, this next band’s reappearance in the charts wasn’t as successful as Duran Duran’s but was easily as welcome. Squeeze had gone a whole six years without a Top 40 entry before “Third Rail” became their first (just!) since “Hourglass” in 1987. In that time they’d released two albums neither of which had pulled up any trees commercially although a 1992 Greatest Hits had returned then to the Top 10 of the album charts.
However, 1993 saw a renaissance of sorts. “Some Fantastic Place” achieved a No 26 peak and was quite the sleeper hit selling steadily under the radar. The album featured the return (briefly) of Paul Carrack who had been with the band on 1981’s “East Side Story” and also Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas who replaced long term sticks man Gilson Lavis.
The title track was released as the second single from it and is a superlative piece of work. Like “Harvest Moon” earlier, it resonates with people who have lost loved ones – it was written about the death of a long time friend of the band who introduced Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook in the 70s – with both men claiming it to be their favourite Squeeze song. I could have included it in the HitsThatNeverWere section below but I’ve gone with “Third Rail”. Starting with a startling, descending guitar riff, it then goes into a backbeat borrowed from the old Rhythm and Blues stomper “Some Other Guy” before the typically catchy chorus hooks you in. Unbelievably, Squeeze have only ever had three Top 10 hits with the last of those coming in 1981. There really isn’t any justice in the world.
Released: July ‘93
ChartPeak: No39
Hits That Never Were
My favourite part of these yearly overviews is rediscovering those songs that I believed should have been huge chart hits but somehow failed to pierce the Top 40. Here are my selection for 1993…
Freaky Realistic – “Leonard Nimoy”
One of the greatest lost gems of the decade came from Peckham but unlike its most famous fictional resident Del Boy, hardly anyone seemed to promote their claims to superstardom by declaring “you know it makes sense”. By rights, Freaky Realistic should have been saying to themselves “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires!” off the back of their one and only album “Frealism” but as ever, the UK record buying public thought they knew better (they didn’t) and almost totally ignored them. Not my wife though who bought the album and introduced me to its delights. Fusing some gorgeous pop melodies with dance beats, it should have been an iconic title of the genre alongside the likes of The Beloved and even Primal Scream (no, really – it’s that good). Somehow though, not even a super low retail price (promoted as a ‘freaky price’) of £5 could entice enough punters to explore its charms.
Three singles were released from it and I could have plumped for any of them to highlight but in the end I chose the Star Trek referencing “Leonard Nimoy” which was as catchy as hell and yet kooky in a playful way with its choice of subject matter. Unfortunately, it didn’t live long and prosper in the charts spending just one week at No 71 being unable to…ahem…’cling on’ to any higher placing.
Internal feuding broke the band up and a planned second album never materialised despite a batch of new songs being demoed. “Frealism” was unavailable for many years but reissue specialist label Cherry Red rereleased it in 2010. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it.
Released:July ’93
Chart peak: No 71
Ian McNabb – “If Love Was Like Guitars”
Throughout these reviews, especially in the 80s years, one of the artists that I have included most in this section have been The Icicle Works. Great single after great single was routinely ignored by the record buying public until the band could take no more and disbanded in 1990.
By 1993, Ian McNabb had formulated his first solo album “Truth And Beauty” (he’s added another ten in the intervening thirty years) and guess what? Hardly anybody bought that either! I did my best for Ian’s fortunes by purchasing it though and it’s a great little collection of well crafted songs as you would expect from such an accomplished songwriter. “If Love Was Like Guitars” wasn’t, as I incorrectly remembered, the lead single (at least not technically) though my mistake was forgivable. McNabb had released two singles in 1991 which both ended up on the album but given that was two years prior and they did absolutely nothing, no wonder my mind has settled on “If Love Was Like Guitars” as the main promotional track for “Truth And Beauty”. And what a track! A trippy, swirling, psychedelic Beatles-esque verse leads into a huge, chunky guitar chorus with sing-a-long lyrics before the obligatory but perfectly placed key change and wah-wah guitars take us home. Why oh why did this not become a huge hit?
The following year, Ian released the Mercury Music Prize nominated “Head Like A Rock” album with Crazy Horse of the aforementioned Neil Young fame. I saw him live on that tour and he was great. In fact, I’ve seen Ian maybe four or five times live and he can still knock it out of the park. A starry blue eyed wonder indeed.
Released: January ‘93
Chart peak: No 67
The Lemon Trees – “Child Of Love”
You wait all decade (so far) for a lost gem and then two turn up in the same year. After Freaky Realistic earlier, here’s another lost treasure of 1993. The Lemon Trees (not to be confused with The Lemonheads nor indeed the song “Lemon Tree” by the German band Fool’s Garden) were so much more than just the original band of Guy Chambers who would find fame and fortune for his songwriting collaborations with Robbie Williams. This 60s influenced five piece were interested in real instruments and life affirming melodies and they brought all that to the table on their only album “Open Book” which I duly bought. Every track on it is a winner including all five singles taken from it none of which hit higher than No 52 in the charts. They operated a spirit of true egalitarianism with those five singles being sung by three different band members.
“Child Of Love” was the fourth of those and I was convinced it would be the one to be the band’s breakthrough hit. It has a lovely, lilting, Summertime feel to it with a Stevie Wonder sounding harmonica break towards the end (although the singer Alex Lewis plays a melodica in the video). Why did it fail? Not enough promotion? I’m pretty sure it was on ITV’s ChartShow but maybe record company MCA didn’t have enough faith in their charges after three misses on the trot? Whatever the reason, it never quite happened for The Lemon Trees. A fifth single – the excellent “I Can’t Face The World” – came close but that was not enough to prevent a second album remaining unreleased and gathering dust in the MCA vaults. To add to the crime, you can’t even access their first album easily as it’s not on Spotify. Sort it out somebody!
The various members of the band stayed in music mostly. Brothers Paul and Jeremy Stacey have worked with the likes of Sheryl Crow, The Black Crowes and The Finn Brothers. As for the aforementioned Guy Chambers, although mostly known for writing many of Robbie Williams’ biggest hits, his list of other artists he’s worked with is as long as two arms including Melanie C, Beverley Knight, Rufus Wainwright and Miles Kane as well as writing music for the RSC and finally getting round to releasing his own piano album in 2019. As of 2005, Paul Holman was running a record shop in Dorset which is staying in music I guess.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 55
Eskimos And Egypt – “Fall From Grace”
I’ve included this one as I knew the girlfriend of one of the band members and consequently met him a couple of times. Hailing from Manchester (where I was living), Eskimos And Egypt were a hybrid of dance beats and real instruments, kind of like a cross between The Shamen and The Prodigy. They were signed to One Little Indian, the label that was also home to Björk. As she was enjoying a year of mainstream breakthrough success, presumably Eskimos And Egypt held high hopes that they would follow a similar course. Despite TV appearances like this one on TheWord, they weren’t able to crossover into the Top 40.
Like The Lemon Trees earlier, most of the members remained in the music business after the band split moving into production and working with the likes of Sonique, Erasure and t.A.T.u. They even wrote and produced a hit for Rednex of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame called “The Spirit Of The Hawk”. Hmm. As I recall, the guy from the band I met was called Mark and was a big Bolton Wanderers fan who liked to talk about a goal he’d seen cult hero Frank Worthington score for them. Not the famous one against Ipswich where he has his back to goal and flips it over his head before volleying home but one not recorded by the cameras where he supposedly did keepy uppy all the way from the halfway line before scoring. In the snow. Or something.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 51
Betty Boo – “Hangover”
There was so much more to Betty Boo than those catchy, space cadet, start of the 90s hits “Doin’ The Do” and “Where Are You Baby?”. For a start there’s that stuff-of-legend meeting and impromptu performance for Public Enemy in the Shepherd’s Bush MacDonalds as part of She Rockers. Then there’s the pop duo WigWam she formed with Alex James of Blur and her career as a songwriter penning tracks for Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and of course the Ivor Novello winning “Pure And Simple” for Hear’Say. What most people don’t talk about though is her sophomore album “GRRR!It’sBettyBoo”. Madonna was such a fan of the album that she offered Betty to sign with her own Maverick Records label but she turned down the opportunity – the timing wasn’t right as she was committed to caring for her terminally ill mother.
That second album was a commercial failure peaking at No 62 (by comparison her debut “Boomania” went Top 5 achieving platinum sales) but it did have some decent singles on it. The lead one, “Let Me Take You There”, was even a hit making it to No 12 but it would prove to be Betty’s last. The two follow ups couldn’t breach the Top 40 – “I’m On My Way” peaked at No 44 whilst this one, “Hangover” did even worse. And yet it’s a great pop song, a catchy melody cleverly combined with a Country & Western slide guitar twang and Betty’s trademark rap in the middle eight – what’s not to like? Even the video-in-a-video promo is nicely pitched. Bloody record buying public strikes again.
Released:April ’93
Chart peak:No 50
Luke Goss And The Band Of Thieves – “Sweeter Than The Midnight Rain”
A surprising but deserved entry I think. After making the decision in 1992 that he couldn’t continue with Bros, Luke Goss was left with no record deal and no income but a desire to be honest about who he was. To that end, he wrote his autobiography entitled IOweYouNothing which was well received and formed a band to perform the music that he wanted to play. Not wanting to do a pale imitation of his former glories, he changed musical direction completely for “Sweeter Than The Midnight Rain”. In an interview with Philip Schofield on the last ever GoingLive, Goss described his new sound as being a bit Lenny Kravitz-y, his voice as gravelly and that it was basically “slamming”. He was kind of right as well, especially about his voice. The song begins with an almost wah-wah guitar before Luke comes in doing his best John Mellencamp impression. It was pretty much as far removed from “When Will I Be Famous” as it was possible to be and I, for one, admired that. It’s not a bad tune to boot. Luke also went for a new look to go with his new sound though the long hair isn’t convincing and he’s completely bald these days.
There was meant to be an album (six tracks had already been laid down) but the only material that appeared was a second single called “Give Me One More Chance” but the public didn’t and it failed to chart and Luke turned his back on music to chance his arm as an actor which he has made a decent fist of. Bros were back in the spotlight in 2018 after that documentary aired but I don’t remember any mention of Luke’s solo career in amongst his brother Matt’s laughable one liners. Maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all.
Released:June ’93
Chart peak:No 52
Nick Heyward – “Kite”
One of the most exciting musical moments of 1993 for me was the return of this man. Despite being one of the most underrated UK songwriters ever (in my humble opinion), we hadn’t seen nor heard from Nick Heyward in nearly five years. Having realised a remarkable transformation in just a few weeks from pin up lead singer of Haircut 100 into mature solo artist with the beyond accomplished 1983 album “North Of A Miracle”, Nick’s commercial fortunes had declined sharply by the end of the 80s. Second and third solo albums “Postcards From Home” and “I Love You Avenue” had both disappeared without trace and Nick entered the 90s so lacking in confidence that he turned down the offer to become the vocalist of Electronic who turned their attention to Neil Tennant. Suddenly though, he was back with a new record label in Epic and a first album since 1988. “From Monday To Sunday” was not a big seller but it was well received critically and crucially announced Heyward as being back as a functioning recording artist. It also showed that his pop instincts (that had always been spot on) were still ahead of the curve, predating Britpop’s channeling of The Beatles by two years.
Lead single “Kite” is a deceptively wonderful track. On first hearing, I didn’t quite get it but it’s a work of genius which is Heyward’s greatest achievement for many. XTC flavoured with autobiographical lyrics that seem to describe his experience of flying high in his early days of fame before getting a case of vertigo, it’s a real winner. Oh, and is that trumpet sound (“The afternoon came, trumpets played”) pinched off “Fantastic Day”? The single not only led Nick’s revival at home but was a surprise hit on US college radio (otherwise rather bizarrely known as Billboard’s Hot Modern Tracks Chart). This gave him the impetus to tour America with the likes of Therapy?, Evan Dando, Teenage Fanclub and almost unbelievably Tony Bennett. I think he toured with Squeeze in the UK (who were presumably promoting the aforementioned “Some Fantastic Place” album) but I couldn’t get tickets for their show at the Manchester Apollo.
Nick would release a further two albums during the 90s with the second of the two released on that most Britpop of labels Creation. Nick was now one of the Godfathers of the movement! Despite being one of the busiest live performers around, it would be another twenty years before his next proper studio album, the magnificent “Woodland Echoes”.
Released:August ’93
Chart peak:No 44
REM – “Find The River”
This is quite the 90s rarity – an REM single that didn’t make the Top 40. Out of twenty-three that they released during the decade, this was the only one that failed to chart. On the one hand that’s understandable as it was the sixth single released from the “Automatic For The People” album that had been out for fourteen months by this point. On the other, this was absolute nonsense, a travesty and a stinging indictment of the UK record buying public’s poor judgment.
“Find The River” is a beautiful song and easily my favourite track from the album which is quite the accolade given the quality of the rest of the songs on it. It’s wistful, meandering, achingly beautiful and for some reason always reminds me of Christmas, probably because of its very late November release date – it’s certainly on my festive playlist anyway. Maybe that release date was part of the reason it wasn’t a hit in that it got caught up in the Christmas rush? I’m not sure how you can explain away it getting no further than No 54 whilst Mr Blobby was No 1 though.
REM would return just nine months later with “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?”, the lead single from their “Monster” album which would become their third biggest UK hit at the time when it peaked at No 9.
Released: Dec ‘93
Chartpeak: No54
Their Season In The Sun
4 Non Blondes
One of those artists whose hit became bigger than them in the same vein as “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew. Unlike these other two acts though, 4 Non Blondes were genuine one hit wonders. “What’s Up” made No 2 in the UK charts in the Summer of 1993 and then…nothing. Or not quite nothing as parent album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” was also a success (presumably off the back of the single) but who knows anyone who has it…except me. I didn’t buy it. I found a copy down the back of a filing cabinet when shutting down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester. All the stock had been boxed up and shipped out by that point so I kept it. I never played it once.
Dina Carroll
Never mind WhatHappenedToBabyJane (the film not the Rod Stewart song), whatever happened to Dina Carroll. One of the undoubted breakthrough stars of 1993, she promptly disappeared for three years before returning with a sophomore album that sold well but which nobody remembers. That’s because her back catalogue is dominated by her debut album “So Close” and its attendant six hit singles especially the final one “Don’t Be A Stranger”. Reading between the lines, I wonder if Dina just didn’t fancy this whole business of being a star and all its trappings. She took some time off after 1993 due to feeling ‘burnt out’. Maybe that was a big indicator. A shame because she had demonstrated her diversity of sound ably with the “So Close” album. Hopefully, unlike Bette Davis’s character ‘Baby Jane’ Hudson, Dina’s not bitter about it all.
Haddaway
…and shite!
Joey Lawrence
US teen actor who made the leap into pop stardom albeit briefly. He was kind of like a 90s Leif Garrett. With just two middling UK hits to his name, he disappeared pretty quickly. All I really remember about him is that his singles came with a free fold out poster, never a good sign of musical ability. In his defence, he returned to acting and eked out a fairly successful career.
Shabba Ranks
Surely one of the biggest wankers of the decade, the stench of Ranks’ revolting homophobic views still permeates his public image. That and being responsible for one of the stupidest and most ridiculed shout outs ever committed to record. ‘Shabba!’? Tosser more like.
Snow
Canadian rapper who spent seven consecutive weeks on top of the US charts with his single “Informer” (it made No 2 over here). This dreadful track featured the phrase ‘A licky boom-boom down’ repeatedly and told the story of Snow (presumably) being arrested and taken to a police station ‘where they whipped down my pants and looked up my bottom’. The censors didn’t get involved though as Snow’s rapping skills were so poor nobody could understand a word of what he was banging on about. Needless to say, he never had another hit single in this country.
Spin Doctors
And a third ‘S’ artist but not the final member of the unholy trinity that was Shabba, Snow and Shaggy. In fairness to Shaggy, he continued to have big hits well beyond this year. Spin Doctors on the other hand will always be remembered for 1993 and “Two Princes”, a fabulously groovy tune no doubt but which, much like 4 Non Blondes, was more memorable than the band themselves.
No Christmas Show Review?
Nope. There’s nothing on it we haven’t seen before and it goes on for ages. I’m not doing that Smashie and Nicey 30 years retrospective either.
Last Words
So, 1993 – the worst year of the decade for chart music? It must be up there though I fear that there may be some equally awful moments lurking in the late 90s. For me personally it was a year of great change. I worked in three separate Our Price stores over the course of the twelve months and with lots of different people. The moves didn’t stop in 1994 either but that’s for future posts. I don’t recall buying that much music from this year despite my staff discount which either means most of it was shite (or at least didn’t tally with my personal tastes) or I was skint most of the time. Or a bit of both. 1994 must be better mustn’t it? Fancy joining me to find out?
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
1993 is not one of my favourite years for music. That’s based on my memory and what I’ve seen on these TOTP repeats from this year so far but I would have to say that the singles chart was pretty eclectic. I’ve moaned and moaned about the proliferation of Eurodance tunes on the show but a glance at the running order for this episode paints a different picture. Yes, there are what you would term dance acts but there’s also some old timers like Rod Stewart and Brian May plus Gloria Gaynor makes her bow in the 1993 disco revival. There’s a boy band (sort of) plus there’s even some actual decent music courtesy of one of Scotland’s finest bands. Oh and Joey Lawrence is on as well. There has to be some utter tripe on or how would we know it’s still 1993?
We start with one of those dance acts but it’s a homegrown one as opposed to being imported from Europe. For me, this was the moment when M People became a proper big deal. Yes, they’d already cracked the Top 10 with a remix of “How Can I Love You More” earlier in the year but that track had topped and tailed debut album “Northern Soul” by being the first and last single released from it. What we had now was new material from a traditionally difficult second album. How would the public receive it? As it happened, they made “One Night In Heaven” the band’s biggest hit to date by sending it to No 6 in the charts giving them a second consecutive major smash and thereby continuing a run of eight singles that would all make the Top 10. It was official – M People would be sticking around for a while.
That second album was of course “Elegant Slumming” that would go triple platinum in the UK and produce another three hit singles after “One Night In Heaven”. It was also, memorably, the winner of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994. Mike Pickering had hit upon a successful formula of dance music which had enough beats to satisfy the bpm addicts and enough melody to appeal to the less hardcore dance heads. As an aside, I had a lecturer when I was a Polytechnic student called Mike Pickering but we all called him Mick Prick. No idea why. He seemed like a decent sort.
Before the next act, we have to address host Mark Franklin’s hair. What’s he done to it? Where’s his usual bouncy quiff gone? He’s plastered it all down to his head! I guess it does look very 1993 or is it jazz club?
Somebody else having hair issues is the next artist, the aforementioned Rod Stewart. I’m sure you’ve all seen this as it’s been doing the rounds but just in case…
Heh. Anyway, Rod was back in the charts with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately”. He’d recorded it for his 1991 “Vagabond Heart” album but this live version was taken from his “Unplugged…And Seated” album recorded as part of the MTVUnplugged series. That format was already well established in music fans’ minds with artists such as Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey and Eric Clapton having released albums under its banner recently. Even so, I was still slightly surprised at the success of Rod’s MTV album which went to No 2 and was platinum selling. As for his performance of “Have I Told You Lately” here, it’s all a bit much with Rod over emoting all over the place and then there’s that weird bit in the middle where a woman in the audience gives him a bunch of flowers and then rushes off past the camera and seemingly out of the venue. What was that all about? Now if she’d have handed him a hairbrush, that might have made some sense.
“Have I Told You Lately” peaked at No 5.
Next to the (sort of) boy band and so far I’d say that East17 had done a good job of becoming the anti- Take That. However, the decision to release a cover of “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys was a complete misstep. What was the thinking around this? Were record label London concerned that last single “Slow It Down” had failed to make the Top 10 and so released a cover to ensure a hit? If so, it was a strategy that was not a complete success as the East End boys version of “West End Girls” peaked at No 11. Somebody suggested on Twitter that it was down to their manager Tom Watkins who was trying to restart a working relationship with former clients Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe after they had separated at the end of the 80s. Whatever the truth, it was a calculated decision as the original pressings of their album “Walthamstow” didn’t include “West End Girls”. It was re-released with it added on in the wake of the single charting and we had to withdraw all the old copies from sale in the Our Price I was working in.
It’s just such a stiff, unconvincing cover not helped by the performance here which is just a lot of twirling around and jumping about on stage. All except for John Hendy. Were the other three trying to tell John something? He always seemed to be the one left to his own devices when the band appeared on TOTP. He was relegated to the back of the stage noodling on a bass guitar when they performed “Deep” and sat on a sofa idling away at a keyboard for “Slow It Down”. He’s back on the bass again here whilst Brian, Terry and Tony are doing their thing out front. I’m surprised that he’s not kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in frustration. Ahem.
Number One in the World! Except it’s not. It’s No 6 in the chart this week on its way to a high of No 3 for Chaka DemusandPliers and “Tease Me”. It’s another of those live by satellite performances (New York this week) which might just be in a room next door to the TOTP studio for all we know. It’s literally an empty setting other than a light pattern projected onto the blank walls. Seriously, what was the point?
I find it hard to discuss Chaka Demus and Pliers without finding them completely ridiculous because of that tool-related name. I’m sure there was a scene in the 90s sitcom 2point4Children where the Belinda Lang character asks her teenage daughter what she’s listening to and when the answer comes back as Chaka Demus and Pliers, it’s the foundation for a whole litany of jokes. So what was the story behind that moniker? Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:
Pliers explains his moniker: "I first got the name… when I was in the studio recording a song for a DJ in Jamaica who was like, ‘You sound like [Jamaican reggae singer] Pinchers, so shouldn’t you be called Pliers?' He was really excited about it…" #TOTP
"I was never really interested in being called Pliers. So when they went on and renamed me Pliers anyway, I wasn’t happy… It wasn’t until the record came out that I realised they’d changed it! But because it had already been done I just went with it." #TOTP
Four Breakers again this week. I wish they would give this up. Really elongates these reviews unnecessarily. Most of them we never see again anyway. Ho hum.
SWV are the first of the four with their single “Weak”. The UK was still resisting the charms of the Sisters With Voices unlike in the US where this song was No 1 for two weeks and sold a million copies. By contrast, it stiffed at No 33 over here. It wasn’t until the “Right Here/Human Nature” mash up single came out a few weeks later that we decided we quite liked them after all.
And so we arrive at the time of Joey Lawrence. Who? Well, he was one of the stars of an American sitcom called Blossom that had been picked up by Channel 4 over here and was based around the title character played by Mayim Bialik. The premise of the show was of a family of three kids and their Dad dealing with their mother/wife leaving them. Lawrence played middle child Joey, a sports jock (to use the American vernacular) who wasn’t blessed with great intelligence but fancied himself as ‘one for the ladies’ and was given a catchphrase of “Woah!”. He was a sort of prototype Joey from Friends I guess. The show actually had far more depth to it than Lawrence’s character suggests. Firstly, it centred around a female lead which was not the norm at the time but it was also the atypical comedy themes that it dealt with such as sexual assault, Blossom’s first period and drug abuse (Blossom’s elder brother Tony was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict).
It was a decent watch and indeed me and my wife did tune in to it regularly when it was broadcast on Fridays I think. Bialik would go on to star in TheBigBangTheory whilst Lawrence starred in Melissa&Joey for four seasons. That’s not what concerns us here though. No. We have to address Lawrence’s music career which began whilst he was just 16 with the single “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. Actors becoming pop stars was nothing new of course – we’d had a plethora of them in recent years mainly from the Aussie soap Neighbours but supposedly music was always Joey’s first love and he co-write this tune. It was a bit Bobby Brown-lite sounding to me (and I wasn’t a fan of the full fat flavour in the first place) and did he get a “Woah oh oh” into the chorus to play up to his character’s catchphrase?
Thankfully Joey Lawrence mania never really took off (although there was one young female customer in the Altrincham Our Price that I ended up working in who was a bit obsessed) and the whole thing was done by the end of the year. For the record though, “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” peaked at No 13.
And now for some ‘proper’ music though I have to admit I wasn’t an early adopter of Teenage Fanclub. Even though they were on to their fourth album (“Thirteen”) by 1993, they seemed to have eluded my radar which must have been on the blink as their brand of jangly power pop was right up my street. “Radio” was the lead single from that album and would become their second Top 40 hit after the previous years “What You You Do To Me” (how had I missed that single?!).
To me, they always seem more recognised for their influence and legacy than their commercial deeds and indeed were described by Kurt Cobain as the best band in the world in 1992 when they toured with Nirvana. I’ve since become a convert and “My Uptight Life” from their “Howdy!” album is one of my favourite ever tunes. Alas, I fear they won’t make their full TOTP appearance until the 1997 repeats come around.
“Radio” peaked at No 31.
Ah shit! More ShabbaRanks? Really?! Yes, if we thought he only had one song in “Mr Loverman” then we were wrong for here he is back again with “What’cha Gonna Do”. This was another collaboration, this time with Queen Latifah following his hit “Housecall” with Maxi Priest. You know what? Sod this for a game of darts. What am I gonna do Shabba? I’m moving straight on. “Laters!” as Tony Dortie might say.
Right what’s next? Oh come on! This wasn’t what the kids wanted in 1993 surely? Some hoary old rock from some hoary old rockers? I speak of Brian May and Cozy Powell who, having been a Breaker last week, are in the studio this time to perform “Resurrection”. This sounds horrible. Can I just get away with skipping this one as well? No? You want some more content? OK – here’s host Mark Franklin no less with some trivia:
Yeah, not a particularly good one for me I agree. Bit of trivia ahead of TX for those who enjoy it. Bryan May’s backing singer on this performance is Shelley Preston who replaced Jay Aston in Bucks Fizz in 1985.
I’m gathering some speed now so look out anybody who gets in my way! Oh, it’s alright as it’s Gloria Gaynor – she’ll survive (ahem). Yes, inevitably given the disco revival of 1993, Gloria Gaynor has entered the fray with a Phil Kelsey remix of her 1979 No 1 and subsequent gay / feminist anthem, “I Will Survive”. This was always going to happen wasn’t it? There is an interesting back story to this track though. Gloria had lost her ‘Queen of Disco’ crown to the emerging Donna Summer and so was looking for a hit to reclaim it. “Substitute” was chosen as the song to relaunch her. It had originally been recorded by The Righteous Brothers but had been a recent massive hit for South African all-girl group Clout (one of the best records of the 70s – fact!). Needing a B-side, songwriters Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren supplied “I Will Survive” which Gloria loved but which her label Polydor didn’t and “Substitute” was released as the A-side.
When it failed to do the business, Gloria persuaded club DJs to flip the record and it eventually became a favourite at New York superclub Studio 54. Meanwhile, Boston disco radio DJ Jack King was also playing “I Will Survive” and this combined promotion would convince Polydor to re-release the single with “I Will Survive” on the A-side. The rest is history.
The 1993 remix though is awful with a horrible Chicago House backing installed for no apparent reason other than bandwagon jumping. It would rise to No 5 and a Very Best Of album was put out on the back of its success. Gloria’s vocal in this performance is effortless though I could have done without the audience sing-a-long that she encourages towards the end.
Oh God! Mark Franklin hasn’t just restyled his hair – he’s added an earring aswell! That camera angle of the back of his head which shows it in full effect was surely planned?! Anyway, Mark is back on screen to introduce Alexander O’Neal who is in the studio to promote his latest single “In The Middle” which was the second track to be lifted from his “Love Makes No Sense” album. A whole studio appearance seems a bit like overkill for a single that only got to No 32 and was a follow up to the album’s title track and lead single which only made No 26. Things didn’t get any better for Alexander who only returned to the UK Top 40 once more in 1996 with the No 38 hit “Let’s Get Together”.
Gabrielle is the new No 1 with “Dreams” though it’s hardly a surprise given its entry last week at No 2. The TOTP producers have decided that Gabrielle is a classy performer and adorned the stage with white drapes for some reason to make that point. As with Gloria Gaynor earlier, I could do without the metronomic clapping from the studio audience. At the end of the song, we get something which I don’t think we’ve seen since the early days of the ‘year zero’ revamp where Mark Franklin joins Gabrielle on stage for a little chat to ask when her album is out. It’s still cringey and still a bad idea. Maybe he just wanted to get more screen time for his earring?
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
M People
One Night In Heaven
No but my wife had the album
2
Rod Stewart
Have I Told You Lately
Nah
3
East 17
West End Girls
See 1 above
4
Chaka Demus and Pliers
Tease Me
Not likely
5
SWV
Weak
No
6
Joey Lawrence
Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix
As if
7
Teenage Fanclub
Radio
No to my shame
8
Shabba Ranks and Queen Latifah
What’cha Gonna Do?
Not buy it obviously
9
Brian May and Cozy Powell
Resurrection
I say again, “Away with you!”
10
Gloria Gaynor
I Will Survive
Nope
11
Alexander O’Neal
In The Middle
Never happening
12
Gabrielle
Dreams
And 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.
These TOTP repeats are bloody relentless! If you get a bit behind with them like I did last week as I was away for a few days, it takes a real effort to get back up to date. It’s the double bills with two shown every Friday on BBC4 that makes it so hard to keep up. Why can’t they just show one a week like they would have done when originally broadcast?
*checks schedule for next week*
That’s what I’m talking about! There’s only one show on this coming Friday for some reason. Why can’t they do that all the time?! For now though, I’m still on catch up so time to get writing…
What can I tell you about this week in May 1993. Well, on this very day Chris Waddle was voted the Football Writers Association’s Player of the Year. Waddle had returned to English football after a spell in France with Marseilles and helped his new club Sheffield Wednesday to both domestic cup finals that season. In fact, the second of those took place two days after this TOTP broadcast. A 1-1 draw with Arsenal meant a replay was required (the last one ever in an FA Cup final) the knock on effect of which was that TOTP was shunted to the Friday the following week to allow for BBC’s coverage of the second match on the Thursday. Waddle even scored in that replay but his team still went down 2-1 to a last minute extra time winner.
Waddle, of course, wasn’t just known for football. No, there was that mullet hairstyle and his own dalliance with being a pop star in the 80s alongside his then team mate Glenn Hoddle. Yes, three years before Gazzamania saw Paul Gascoigne become a chart star, Glenn and Chris beat him to it with “Diamond Lights”, a genuine contender for the title of the worst record of all time.
Waddle stayed at Wednesday until 1996 before the inevitable descent down the leagues which had him seeing out his playing career in non-league football with the likes of Glapwell and Stockbridge Park Steels. To paraphrase that famous milk advert, “who are they?!”. He also entered popular culture as a comedy reference (not for his hairstyle though) but for this…
Excellent stuff! Anyway, on with the ‘proper’ music. Now I would count myself as a fan of OMD but I don’t remember this track at all. In fairness, the band’s career had been a series of boom and bust periods so there were always going to be some singles that slipped under the net. “Architecture And Morality” was a definite boom time whereas “Dazzle Ships” was misunderstood and misfired. “Junk Culture” took them in a more mainstream pop direction resulting in chart success but “Crush” and “The Pacific Age” mustered just one Top 20 hit between them. With the band splintering at the end of the 90s, that could have been that but a remarkable resurrection took place in 1991 with Andy McCluskey masterminding two consecutive Top 10 singles on the bounce and a successful album in “Sugar Tax”.
With their comeback officially confirmed, another album for the new look band was required. “Liberator” was that album with “Stand Above Me” its lead single. Even McCluskey isn’t keen on it describing it as “busy and messy” in a 2019 Record Collector interview. He went on to say “I was aware that Britpop was approaching and I didn’t know what I should do”. In the end, he basically rewrote “Sailing On The Seven Seas” and called it “Stand Above Me”. In fact, quite a few of their songs had started to morph into one at this point. There wasn’t much between say, “Dreaming”, “”Call My Name” and “Pandora’s Box” – all good pop tunes but a million miles away from those more experimental early hits like “Enola Gay”, “Joan Of Arc” and “Genetic Engineering”.
Still, Andy McCluskey gives the impression of being happy with his lot in this performance although his opening shout of ‘Kick it!’ was ill judged. There’s something that doesn’t compute watching three of them on stage swinging guitars around with a banner behind proclaiming them to be OMD. With three guitars on display? No wonder McCluskey said it had all got a bit messy.
“Stand Above Me” peaked at No 21.
What?! ShabbaRanks again?! No, I absolutely refuse to talk about him anymore. I’d rather watch MaxiPriest play football which is handy as here he is…
OK, he’s no Chris Waddle but check out this about him courtesy of @TOTPFacts…
In March 2003, at the age of 43, Maxi Priest played for non-league club Southall FC, after the club struggled to field a squad because of injuries and suspensions. He came on as a second-half sub during a 3-0 loss to Feltham. #TOTP
Ah, I thought we hadn’t seen her for a few shows but she’s back with yet another of a seemingly infinite number of singles from her album “So Close”. Seeing as it’s 1993, it can only be Dina Carroll that I am referring to. “Express” was the fifth single released from the album in just under twelve months and yet surprisingly was the biggest hit of the lot to that point peaking at No 12.
I’ve said it before in just about every post that’s featured Dina but her chart history is really intriguing. The fact that she could get her biggest hit of five with the fifth release is odd enough on its own but when you throw in the massive curveball that is “Don’t Be A Stranger”…there’s so much to be explained. Why did A&M wait five months after “Express” before releasing it? They’d released three singles in the same time period up to that point. Why was it left to being the sixth and final single to be released when they knew they had it up their sleeves all along? I read somewhere recently that so many singles were taken from the album as it wasn’t crossing over from the limited UK soul market and A&M were trying to promote it to the mainstream market. That theory doesn’t really add up though as it spent fourteen weeks in the Top 10 between January and September before slipping down the charts. True, when “Don’t Be A Stranger” was a huge hit, the album rocketed up the charts again spending three consecutive weeks at No 2 but the idea that the album wasn’t a success before that doesn’t really hold water for me. God, I sound a bit obsessed by all this don’t I? I don’t even have any of Dina’s records so I don’t know why I should be.
As for “Express”, it stood out from some of her other mid tempo soul singles as it was a definite attempt to incorporate some funk into proceedings including a parping sax noise that just about avoided being annoying. I think the kids today would call the song ‘sassy’.
A second studio appearance for Robert Plant now whose “29 Palms” single is this week’s highest climber (he’ll go no further than this peak of No 21 though). Not a lot of thought seems to have gone into the staging of this performance by the TOTP production team. There’s a couple of palm trees at either end of the stage (palms – geddit?) and some neon signage that’s meant to give the impression of an American diner (do you get diners on beaches?). To add to the imagery, one of Robert’s band has come dressed as a surfer dude/beach bum.
Another of the band (the guitarist in the green shirt) is Kevin Scott Macmichael whom, seven years prior to this appearance, I interviewed when he was in the band Cutting Crew. They were riding high in the charts with “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” and I’d just become a student at Sunderland Polytechnic and interviewed them for the student newspaper before a gig that they were playing at the Poly. As I recall Kevin was quietly spoken and generous with his time to an 18 years old me who didn’t really know what I was doing. Kevin sadly died of lung cancer in 2002.
By 1993, it had been ten years since Tina Turner’s music career comeback began with “Let’s Stay Together” and the “Private Dancer” album. More huge hits followed – 1989’s “Foreign Affair” album sold six million copies worldwide whilst her “Simply The Best” Best Of collection two years later went eight times platinum in the UK alone. Despite all this success and profile (or maybe because of it), the world still needed to see and hear more of Tina and so a biopic was the next logical step. What’sLoveGotToDoWithIt was that film starring Angela Bassett as Tina. I watched it on TV once – it wasn’t bad. Obviously given its subject matter, the film would have a soundtrack album and promoting it was this single “I Don’t Wanna Fight”. Written by Lulu (no, really) it’s actually a pretty accomplished soul pop ballad which would go Top 10 both here and in the US, the last time she ever achieved that feat in the latter territory.
The normally reliable Mark Franklin gets the song’s title wrong in his intro referring to it (I think)) as ‘I Don’t Want To Go Fighting’ making it sound like her reply to Elton John’s rallying cry of “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”. Tina seemed as keen on song titles beginning ‘I Don’t Wanna…’ as Sting did for those starting with the word ‘Every’. “I Don’t Wanna Lose You” was a No 8 hit for her in 1989. She should have done one called “I Don’t Wanna Perform This Song In A Virtually Empty Theatre Venue In Monte Carlo” as this ‘exclusive’ was yet another example of TOTP thinking they were bringing us something special when it really wasn’t. An empty venue devoid of atmosphere in an exotic location like Monte Carlo is still an empty venue devoid of atmosphere.
There’s a good mix of Breakers this week according to Mark Franklin so let’s put that claim to the test. We start with TheWaterboys who were last in the charts two years earlier when a rerelease of “The Whole Of The Moon” finally got the chart placing it deserved when it peaked at No 3. The single promoted a Best Of album that was released by EMI as one final attempt to milk the cash cow before their artist jumped ship to Geffen. The first new material of that move was the album “Dream Harder” which was preceded by the lead single “The Return Of Pan”. This was the second time that Mike Scott had written a song about the Greek deity after “The Pan Within” from 1985 album “This Is The Sea”.
I remember the album coming out but I’m not sure it ever got a spin on the shop stereo in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. I probably should have found a quiet Tuesday afternoon to give it a proper play. After all, my association with The Waterboys stretched back to 1983 when I heard their very first single “A Girl Called Johnny” which I had on a compilation album called “Chart Stars”. If that makes me sound like I was a very cutting edge 14 year old, I really wasn’t. That album also included Galaxy, Bonnie Tyler and (gulp) The Kids From Fame! Quite how the first single by The Waterboys made it in to the running order I’m not sure but a flop single by The Teardrop Explodes was also on there so it was an odd thing. Presumably the compilers filled it with whatever they could get licences for.
Anyway, supposedly “Dream Harder” had a much more of a rock guitar vein to it than their previous work but then I’ve always struggled to describe their musical style. When I went for my initial interview at Our Price for a Xmas temp position in 1990, there was a music quiz and one of the sections was to identify the musical genre of an artist. One of those artists was The Waterboys. My answer? ‘Folky/bluesy type thing’. The correct answer was, of course, Rock/Pop.
“The Return Of Pan” peaked at No 24.
Well, in terms of ‘a mix’ of music, Mark Franklin was right but ‘a good mix’? That’s surely not the right word if one of those records in the mix is this. “The Jungle Book Groove” by TheDisneyCast was presumably released to cash in on the fact that TheJungle Book had been made available on VHS this year. As I remember, Disney employed a very strategic release strategy around this time. They’d deleted all their classic film titles and then rereleased them one at a time so as to focus full attention on that one product as opposed to just making them all available on mass. This created a discounting price war with retailers looking closely at what everyone else was doing to guide their pricing policy. Whilst we all nipped into each other’s shops to see what they were selling the video for, one of the supermarkets stole everyone’s thunder (was it Asda?) by selling it at the cheapest price but with the added gimmick of qualifying for a free banana in the process! Genius!
There’d already been a Disney medley single by The UK Mixmasters called “Bare Necessities Megamix” which had been a hit over the Xmas of 1991 but that didn’t put off the Disney money men from selling it to us all over again by releasing “The Jungle Book Groove” on the Disney affiliated label Hollywood Records. Now look, I don’t mind a Disney film nor the songs in them but I do mind them being cynically packaged and turning up in the Top 40. No Disney, I don’t wanna be like you.
The final Breaker comes from Bon Jovi who have released a third (of six in total) single from their “Keep The Faith” album. This one was “In Your Arms” and was pretty standard Jovi fare that sounds like they could have knocked it out in a couple of hours with their thumbs up their bums, minds in neutral as my old History teacher was prone to saying. Perfect daytime radio fodder though.
My main memory of this song is hearing a news feature on Radio 1 whilst travelling in a car with my work colleague Andy on the way to a concert in Sheffield.* “In Your Arms” had just been released and the feature covered the story that, presumably in a coordinated promotional move by the record company, The London Trocadero had just installed a waxwork of Jon Bon Jovi and a crowd of fans had gathered for the unveiling. I think Jon was there in person at the event as the crowd were chanting “We want the flesh, we want the flesh…”.
A couple of years later, I found myself alone and at a loose end in London on a visit to my friend Robin who lived down there. I decided a trip to The Trocadero was in order and found myself having my photo taken with the waxwork Jon. For some reason, I thought this would be a good souvenir of my visit and purchased said photo! So proud was I of it that I put it on display on the staff room wall in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working. What was I thinking?! My work colleagues didn’t half take the piss and, to be fair, I absolutely deserved it. No idea where it is now – the photo not the waxwork which must have surely been melted down by now.
“In Your Arms” peaked at No 9.
*Yes, it was that concert, the Michael Bolton one and no, I’m not about to go into how that came about all over again.
After the Breakers come the Abominations or Inner Circle as I like to call them. “Sweat (A La La La La Long)” is up to No 5 on its way to a peak of No 3 and so another studio performance is in order. The thrifty TOTP producers have recycled the stage that Robert Plant used with its palm trees to made it look like a beach party.
If you search for Inner Circle on the internet today, one of the results is for an online dating app. It’s a good job that online dating wasn’t around when Inner Circle the band were in the charts. I don’t think having these lines on your profile would win over potential partners:
Girl I’m want to make you sweat, sweat ‘till you can’t sweat no more
And if you cry out, I’m gonna push it some more
Just nasty.
Another week at the top for the “Five Live” EP and another different track from it on the show. This time it’s George Michael’s take on “Killer”by Adamski which is mashed up with “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” made famous by The Temptations. This wasn’t from the 1992 Freddie Mercury tribute concert but was recorded at Wembley Arena the year before.
By my reckoning, this is the third time “Killer” had been a hit. The Adamski original was No 1 in 1990 and then Seal took his own version into the Top 10 in late 1991. As for “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”, aside from The Temptations’ 1973 US No 1, it was a Top 20 hit for Was (Not Was) in 1990.
There’s a little bonus clip before the credits roll as the BBC promote the EurovisionSongContest that took place two days after this TOTP aired. As such, we get the video for the UK entry who in 1993 was Sonia with “Better The Devil You Know”. Sonia came second taking the result to the final set of points allocated before losing out to Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh. Her performance meant that the single got a small boost sales wise and reversed its descent down the charts meaning its seven week run looked like this:
22 – 18 – 25 – 17 – 15 – 40 – 57
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
OMD
Stand Above Me
I did not
2
Shabba Ranks / Maxi Priest
Housecall
Do one will ya!
3
Dina Carroll
Express
Nope
4
Robert Plant
29 Palms
No but I had that promo CD of the album
5
Tina Turner
I Don’t Wanna Fight
No
6
The Waterboys
The Return Of Pan
Nah
7
Disney Cast
The Jungle Book Groove
Never happening
8
Bon Jovi
In These Arms
See 4 above
9
Inner Circle
Sweat (A La La La La Long)
As if
10
George Michael
Five Live EP
Don’t think I did
11
Sonia
Better The Devil You Know
And 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.
When I decided to carry on doing these TOTP reviews into the 90s repeats, the one year I really wasn’t looking forward to revisiting was 1993. In my mind’s eye, it was all nasty Eurodance anthems, the dreaded three ‘S’s of Shaggy, Shabba and Snow and the worst Xmas No 1 of all time. Well, we’re into May now and whilst the horror of Mr Blobby is still a way off, we’ve already had plenty of the of the other flavours of shite. Let’s hope a new month brings new hope of better things to come…
Well, that hope didn’t last long did it! FFS! Straight off the bat we have some more Eurodance nonsense courtesy of one of the genre’s biggest acts. After driving us all insane with the abomination that was “No Limit”, 2Unlimited have not been able to resist the temptation to do it all over again with a tune that is so similar they should have just called it “No Limit 2.0” and be done with it. In truth, all their tunes pretty much sounded the same though didn’t they? And yes by saying that, I now sound just like my Dad speaking to me about pop music circa 1983. “Tribal Dance” was the latest of their musical oeuvre to annoy the shit out of us and it would rise to No 4 in this, the biggest year of their career. This track supposedly includes more of Ray’s raps than usual but still less than the version that the rest of Europe would get. I have to say that I don’t feel short changed.
There was a lot of talk online about this TOTP performance and it mostly revolved around the words ‘inappropriate’ and “cultural appropriation’ and you can see why? What the hell were those costumes the backing dancers were wearing all about?! Yes, obviously somebody was trying to pursue a theme of ‘tribal’ as per the song’s title but this?! Of course, it’s quite possible that nobody made any sort of dissenting comment back in 1993 but you like to think we live in more enlightened times these days. Or perhaps we don’t. I’m sure I could be accused of being too ‘woke’ about it by someone. In truth though, all you need is Michael Caine a red tunic and you’ve got a re-enactment of the film Zulu.
The official video for “That’s The Way Love Goes” by Janet Jackson soundtracks the Top 40 countdown to No 11. It’s also the second of three new entries inside the Top 5 this week that we will see on the show tonight. Reading some of the online comments about the video, I’m now wondering if I’m missing something. People seem to love this promo and describe it as being “a timeless classic”, “visually stylish” and “one of the most creative videos ever made” with the protagonists “chillin’ and vibin’ out together”. And yet. All I’m seeing is Janet surrounded by some sycophants (including a very young Jennifer Lopez) in a loft apartment imploring her to play a tape of her new single before mooching and smooching about with each other. I’m probably just a grumpy, middle aged man who’s forgotten how to have fun and enjoy anything anymore though.
“That’s The Way Love Goes” peaked at No 2 in the UK and was a No 1 record in the US.
After starting the show with some frenetic Eurodance beats before sliding into some slinky R&B vibes we now arrive at a huge slice of stadium house courtesy of UtahSaints (U-U-U-Utah Saints)*. “Believe In Me” was the third of their trilogy of Top 10 hits and although I thought it was OK, it didn’t quite have the immediacy of “What Can You Do For Me” and “Something Good”. After turning to Eurythmics and Kate Bush for source material for those two tracks, they’ve stuck with the 80s by sampling The Human League for this one. It works but doesn’t seem as clever as its predecessors, a bit too obvious somehow.
*Sorry, contractually obliged to do that
In their wisdom, the TOTP producers have decided to overlay the whole performance here with a green wavelength graphic which probably seemed like a good idea at the time but which feels intrusive in retrospect. And what on earth is that the guy with the tied back dreadlocks playing? It looks like a key-tar but has some sort of built in computer where a keyboard should be. It’s like a prototype for the controller in the Guitar Hero computer game. Oh and the “This is the Utah Saints calling all humanoids” line is entirely lame. Reminded me of this sketch:
I wasn’t wrong about 1993. It really was the year that kept on giving – the problem was that it was serving up huge dollops of horseshit. Here’s another steaming clump – “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. This was one of those songs that came from nowhere and was suddenly huge immediately. That’s how it felt anyway. It must have been picking up plenty of airplay before it went massive as I’m sure we kept getting asked about it in the Our Price I was working in before it was in the charts. We didn’t have a clue what it was the punters were talking about but Head Office soon cottoned on and ordered it in for stores in bulk. How this cod reggae/ lowest common denominator Europop mash up made *SPOILER ALERT* three weeks at No 1 is as mystifying as the rise and rise of Liz Truss. I always hated that little sax parp that introduced the chorus and also the way the vocalist sang the line ‘She’s the hunter, you’re the fox’ with that elongated, descending stress on the last word. Heinous isn’t a strong enough word for it. The performance here didn’t help to endear me to the song either. Who did the two women arm dancing think they were? Susan and Joanne from the aforementioned Human League?
Ace Of Base were, of course, from Sweden and are the third biggest selling band from those shores after ABBA and Roxette but when the competition for that particular bronze medal includes the likes of Rednex (of “Cotton Eye Joe” fame), Dr. Alban and Europe, it rather undermines the achievement of a place on the rostrum.
I really feel the need for something decent in this week’s Breakers to lift the mood, nay standard. We start with something unusual though. I knew Sounds Of Blackness were a gospel group but that’s all that I knew and I certainly couldn’t have named any of their songs.
However, having looked them up on Wikipedia I do remember the cover for their 1993 album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum” from which this single – “I’m Going All The Way” – came. It was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who were nothing if not versatile – they were also the producers behind Janet Jackson who was on the show earlier of course. Look, I can appreciate gospel music but back in 1993 I don’t think it was what I was looking for and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find it in the Top 40.
In my head, there’s a definite line drawn in 1985 that marked the end of DepecheMode as, for want of a better description, a pop band and their going forwards as, for want of another better description, a rock band. Now I do know that those terms are far too simplistic to do justice to the career of the band. I think it’s just that 1985 saw the release of their first Best Of album “The Singles 81>85” and that felt like a real marker in the sand that said, ‘OK, here’s a a physical reminder of everything we’ve done up to this point but from here on in, we’re going in a new direction”. The following year “Black Celebration” was released and everything did feel different starting with its dark lead single “Stripped”.
By 1993, Depeche Mode had perfected that new, harder sound into something massively commercial. The 1990 ”Violator” album sold seven and a half million copies worldwide and housed four classic singles. Then came “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” starting with strident lead single “I Feel You” which we didn’t get to see on TOTP for some reason. The follow up single was “Walking In My Shoes” and this little snippet on the Breakers was all we got of it. What was going on here? It’s another great track, doomy yet melodic and the video sees Dave Gahan in his full on rock god phase. Tragedy of course struck the band in May this year with the unexpected death of Andy Fletcher. Just today though, photos have been released of Gahan and Martin Gore back in the studio which is good news.
The second hit for RageAgainstTheMachine now. After “Killing In The Name” had been a No 25 hit earlier in the year (sixteen years before its Xmas No 1 sideshow), “Bullet In The Head” did even better piercing yer actual Top 20.
The band have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame on four occasions (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) but failed every time to get voted in. Rage Against The Machine there, the Nigel Farage of funk metal. And yes, I know their political views couldn’t be more diametrically opposed but I need to put this post to bed and a cheap line is all I’ve got for this lot.
Oh do f**k off! Even in 1993 at the height of his infamy, nobody needed any more Shabba Ranks surely?! After the Top 3 success of “Mr. Loverman” (itself a rerelease), record company Sony were always going to give 1991 single “Housecall” another tilt at the charts. It peaked at No 31 on its initial release but a remix saw it leap into the Top 10 second time around. A collaboration with Maxi Priest (whom I have no beef with BTW), it gave rise to the “Shabba!” sample on “Mr. Loverman” that was both ubiquitous and pilloried in 1993.
Finally some genuine relief from all this musical crud! Kingmaker hailed from Hull (my home for these last eighteen years) but in 1993 I was living in Manchester and working in Rochdale so I missed what surely must have been a sense of excitement in the band’s hometown at having the first authentic chart act since The Housemartins in the 80s.
“Ten Years Asleep” was their third Top 40 hit and came from their sophomore album “Sleepwalking”. Unbelievably, its lead single “Armchair Anarchist” which is a fab tune had stalled at No 47 in October of 1992 but its follow up did the trick rising to No 15, the band’s joint highest chart placing. True, it wasn’t a million miles away from the sound of acts like The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin but at a time when decent indie pop tunes were at a premium, this was wonderful. Dealing with the vexing and existential subject of the passing of time and the inevitable conforming behaviours that seem to affect all of us, the lyrics showed what a great writer Loz Hardy was even though his hand had been forced by the band’s record label demanding that he essentially write a hit record. In this performance he looks like Ian Hart playing John Lennon in The Beatles biopic Backbeat.
It seems odd to consider it now but Kingmaker had been a bigger deal than the likes of Radiohead and Suede both of whom had supported them on tour in 1992. However, disputes with their record label about approaches to writing, recording and formatting of their music hampered their progress and by the time that third album “In The Best Possible Taste” came out in 1995, they’d been sunk by the good ship Britpop. They split soon after but reformed briefly in 2010 without Hardy as Kingmaker MMX.
Oh dear. In fact, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is just cringe (the kids don’t use the ‘worthy’ suffix do they?). Nobody can deny Elton John his place in musical history (except my mate Robin who once told me that he didn’t like even one of his songs) but this is just…wrong.
“Simple Life” was the fourth and final single from his 1992 album “The One” and it failed to make the Top 40 despite this ‘exclusive’ TOTP performance from Atlanta. Literally, what was the point of this? The song is turgid enough but the sight of Elton all togged up on a stage with just a black backdrop for company and deprived of his piano thereby forcing him into attempting to (gulp) ‘dance’…well, it’s just cruel. He even flicks his wig at one point as if to say ‘look I’ve got hair’ even though we know he didn’t. Please, I know I said spare me from all the Eurodance crap earlier in the post but this really wasn’t the lifebelt I was hoping for.
While Elton was struggling around the edges of the Top 40, his mate George Michael was still at No 1 as part of the “Five Live” EP. Last week we had his version of Queen’s “Somebody To Love” but this time it’s his duet with Lisa Stansfield on their 1991 Xmas No 1 (double A-sided with “Bohemian Rhapsody”) “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”. Recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert of the previous year, I’d never liked the original but in the hands (or rather mouths) of George and Lisa it sounds pretty good. The former wouldn’t release any new music after this until 1996’s “Older” album but the latter would return later in 1993 with her third studio album “So Natural”.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
2 Unlimited
Tribal Dance
Definitely not
2
Janet Jackson
That’s The Way Love Goes
Nah
3
Utah Saints
Believe In Me
I did not
4
Ace Of Base
All That She Wants
As if
5
Sounds Of Blackness
I’m Going All The Way
No
6
Depeche Mode
Walking In My Shoes
Good song but no
7
Rage Against The Machine
Bullet In The Head
Nope
8
Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest
Housecall
Away with you!
9
Kingmaker
Ten Years Asleep
I seem have been asleep as it’s not in the singles box
10
Elton John
Simple Life
Hell no!
11
Queen / George Michael / Lisa Stansfield
Five Live EP
Don’t think I did
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about the unholy trinity of the three S’s of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow dominating the charts. Well, guess what? I’m still doing it in this post as two of them are on the show again this week. It’s come to my attention though that they weren’t the only members of the ‘S’ brigade. This week’s show is jam packed with them and no I didn’t like a single one!
We start with an ‘S’ and it’s ‘S’ for Sybil, she of the hit “When I’m Good And Ready”. Sybil was never as popular again as she was at this moment in terms of sales. Her run of two consecutive big hits comprising this single and previous No 3 smash “The Love I Lost” with West End was brought to an abrupt halt when the next single “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” peaked outside of the Top 40 at that most unfortunate of places No 41. It wasn’t for the want of trying though. She even did two different versions of the song- a pop ballad version for the UK market…
And a hip-hop remix with a rap in the middle for the US territories…
It made no difference as neither version was a hit. Off the top of my head I can only think of Climie Fisher also doing a similar thing where there was a straight ballad version of their single “Rise To The Occasion” and a hip-hop remix complete with the ubiquitous and annoying ‘aaah yeaaah’ sample.
The track had also previously been recorded by Lonnie Gordon and released as a follow up to her “Happenin’ All Over Again” hit but had also missed the chart peaking at No 48. All of this despite the claim by writers Stock, Aitken and Waterman that it is one of the best songs they ever penned. And if you thought the chart performance of “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” was unlucky, Sybil followed up taking it to No 41 in the charts by releasing another single from her “Good ‘N’ Ready” album called “Stronger Together” and that peaked at…yep…No 41.
No S’s in sight next as we once again witness the power of an advert to make us buy a song that had already been a hit once all over again. This time the product being soundtracked by an old hit was the Volkswagen Golf and the song that benefited from it “Young At Heart” by TheBluebells. Normally I don’t go back and see what I’ve already written about a chart hit that I’ve reviewed in a previous blog post for fear of just regurgitating the same words but I did in this case. I think it’s because I view their chart histories separated by nine years as almost completely different entities, relating to two disparate records.
Originally a hit in the Summer of 1984 when I had not long turned 16, “Young At Heart” was never off the airwaves. Radio 1 seemed to play it four or five times a day at least which was not good for me as I couldn’t stand it. In my post on the track in my 80s TOTP blog, I made a point of saying I liked the band but hated this song and I stand by that. I still have a soft spot for The Bluebells but their most well known song is also their worst to my ears. Back in 1984, they followed up “Young At Heart” with the wonderful “Cath” but it only just scraped into the charts at No 38. A final single called “All I Am (Is Loving You)” was released which missed the charts completely and the band fizzled out.
The song’s second coming seemed nothing to do with the band and indeed it wasn’t. They weren’t actually even together in 1993 and hadn’t been for some years. I think I’m right in saying that the story behind its 1993 reactivation was that the person working for the ad agency that was looking after the Volkswagen account had come up with a song for the advert but that there were some issues with copyright and it couldn’t be used and so she had to come up with another song fast. Thinking back to her childhood, she remembered that jolly song that she used to hear on the radio. The rights owners were sought out and contacted and the rest is history.
For many record buyers though, they may not have known anything of the record’s past or the career of the band who made it. They just knew it as the song from that car advert with the twist at the end when instead of getting married, it turns out that the ‘bride’ is actually celebrating getting divorced. The single’s cover was just a still of said actress from the advert reinforcing this new identity for the song as something separate and somehow itself divorced as it were from the band. It even has the Volkswagen logo in the corner. It was corporate and false and in some way, it devalued the original even though I hadn’t liked it.
On hearing of the success of the rerelease (it outstripped the original’s chart peak easily in the first week) the members of The Bluebells reconvened and agreed to reform to promote the single with appearances like this one on TOTP. They look like they’re treating it as a laugh which is probably the correct attitude to have taken. They weren’t under any record company pressure to maximise sales presumably. Whatever it did commercially was a bonus. Subsequent performances would be taken even less seriously as the band struggled to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events. “Young At Heart” would go to No 1 for four weeks and be the twelfth best selling single of the year in the UK in 1993.
We’re back with the S’s now and it’s the most hateful of the lot – Shabba Ranks with “Mr Loverman”. I could never understand the appeal of this record. I mean, I didn’t like Shaggy nor Snow’s songs either but I could just about appreciate why they were successful. “Mr Loverman” though? Nah, that was just nasty. Aside from Ranks’s own despicable views which were enough to put any sane thinking person off anyway, I just couldn’t take the song seriously with all those ridiculous ‘Shabba!’ shout outs. Now I learn it’s not even Ranks name checking himself but Maxi Priest sampled from their “Housecall” single.
The whole stupid business was parodied in a sketch by the team behind the US comedy TV series InLivingColor to whom I shall leave the last word…
All female US R&B groups seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. At the start of the decade we had En Vogue and then as the years passed we saw the likes of SWV, TLC and Brownstone right up to the titans of the genre Destiny’s Child. And those were only the ones that crossed over to the UK. Back in America there were groups who never managed to translate acclaim at home into huge overseas success. I’m thinking of Xscape, 702 and Total. Here’s one for you that did manage to straddle the pond as it were but who rarely get talked about anymore.
Jade were Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed from Chicago who are best remembered for their hit “Don’t Walk Away” though they did have a few others. In 1993 they were always going to be compared to En Vogue who were having transatlantic hits at the time and I guess their sound wasn’t too dissimilar. “Don’t Walk Away” was a radio friendly piece of sassy R&B that enabled the trio to pull out some slinky dance moves when performing it. It rose to a lofty No 7 position in the UK charts and an even higher peak of No 4 in the US selling 2.5 million copies worldwide. Their album “Jade To The Max” racked up substantial numbers and a lengthy tour had them looking fair set for superstardom. They appeared in both film (TheInkwell) and TV (BeverlyHills90210) and contributed tracks to a couple of soundtracks as well. A second album followed in 1994 and then…nothing. Everything just seemed to stop. Were they dropped from their label? Did they just decide themselves to jack it all in?
I think they all stayed in music one way or another and two of them reunited in 2021 with the improbably named Myracle Holloway (a finalist on TheVoice). The curious tale of Jade – a gemstone amongst the Brownstones.
We’re back amongst the S’s now and it’s another stone related artist – Robin Stone better known as RobinS. This New York singer songwriter’s legacy would be formed upon and based around this one track, the house anthem “Show Me Love”. We sold loads and loads of this in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. And then we went home, had a sleep, came back to work and sold some more of it the next day. I’m surprised that it wasn’t a bigger hit than its final chart placing of No 6 though it did return to the Top 40 a further two times as remixes. In fact, it seems to have been released eight times in total. See what I mean about Robin’s legacy being totally built around this one track? I’m sure there are some Robin S super fans out there who would dispute that claim but it’s true. And there’s many would say that being known for “Show Me Love” would be recognition enough. It regularly appears in lists of the best dance tunes of all time and its influence is still felt today in the music of the likes of Clean Bandit and is sampled in Beyoncé’s latest single “Break My Soul”.
Interesting to note the difference here between Sybil’s performance at the top of the show with her three backing singers and Robin’s with nothing but some dry ice for company while she belts her tune out. I recall the cover of the single was just a very basic generic design in green with a cream header with the label’s name (Champion) repeated in lines all over it. Very poor. Maybe they didn’t expect it to be a big hit outside of the clubs and so didn’t bother designing a cover to be shipped in huge quantities to retailers?
Oh Hell! Cliff’s back again. Yes, despite the charts being jam packed with dance tunes of every hue and genre, a little corner of them was still reserved for Cliff Richard and whatever piece of garbage song he was peddling in 1993. “Peace In Our Time” was the offending article this time and it was at its peak of No 8. This is just a horrible tune with its backing that sounds like a speeded up version of “The Living Years” by Mike And The Mechanics and its insipid lyrics but it’s Cliff’s performance which really grabs the attention.
As with his last time on the show the other week, I can’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Unlike then, Cliff has ditched all his entourage of backing singers and has done a Robin S and gone solo albeit that he still has the remnants of the Sting set from the other month with him for company. It’s Cliff’s movements that are so spellbinding though – spellbindingly awful that is. They’re just so weird and unnatural. Plus he’s turned up in the bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket and trainers combo. It looks…completely unconvincing and actually very safe. In the 50s he would have been seen as a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth in that get up but in 1993, he just looked lame. The 90s weren’t kind to Cliff. Yes, he had two Xmas No 1s at the start and end of the decade but they were both gut wrenchingly awful and the intervening years were populated by instantly forgettable singles like this one. Those great airplay hits of the late 70s and early 80s like “We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Carrie” and “Wired For Sound” seemed like a life time ago even then.
And onto the Breakers and I’ve realised that we have arrived at a rather poignant moment as this blink and you miss it moment is the last we’ll see of Bananarama on TOTP for twelve years! Regulars on the BBC show since their first hits in 1982, this was, by my calculations (I make host Tony Dortie wrong with his figure of thirty-one) their twenty-third Top 40 hit, ten of them being Top 10 hits. None of those Top Tenners had been in the 90s though and their commercial appeal was definitely on the wane. The decision to leave the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable to make records with hip producer Youth had not resulted in healthy sales of the “Pop Life” album and so a revamp was required for next album “Please Yourself”.
That revamp took the form of jettisoning ‘new girl’ Jacquie O’Sullivan (who had actually been in the group since 1988) and re branding themselves as a duo. To quote one of their previous album titles, wow! Would it work, could it work and indeed should it work? To give themselves some extra insurance on this bold move, Sara and Keren returned to their previous producers who were now a duo themselves, Stock and Waterman. It was the latter who came up with the theme that the album should promote a new hybrid sound of ‘ABBA -Banana’. It would turn out to be a good idea but not for Bananarama.
The album was poorly received and limped to a chart peak of No 46. It produced just two hits, a pair of No 24s, in “Movin’ On” and this one, a cover of the Andrea True Connection song “More More More”. I’m guessing this was released as previous single “Last Thing On My Mind” had missed the charts completely and as we all know, if you find yourself in need of a hit, what do you do? Altogether now… you release a cover version! It’s a pretty faithful take on the disco classic and probably made sense as a choice of single given the resurgence of disco songs in the charts at that time from the likes of Boney M and Sister Sledge. In fact, the Bananas would maybe have done better with a whole disco themed album than an ABBA one. Maybe the ABBA revival had been sooo 1992? Either way, it gave them a chart hit, the last they would have for twelve years by which time TOTP itself was on its last legs.
As Bananarama seemed to be slipping into pop oblivion, Pete Waterman looked for another vehicle for his ‘ABBA-Banana’ concept – thankfully though the era of Steps was still four years off. As for the Nanas, they would continue to perform live as a duo before pulling off the event that their fans had almost never dared to hope could happen- a reunion tour with Siobahn Fahey in 2017. The tour was a huge success and led to Keren and Sara being revitalised to write and record new material. “In Stereo” was well received on its release in 2019 and they have a new album called “Masquerade” due out literally in a few days time.
Another ‘S’ now as the band called Sunscreem are on the show with yet another hit. Sunscreem are becoming quite the curiosity for me. I was always aware that there was a band called Sunscreem because they were a chart act and I worked in a mainstreamrecord shop and we stocked their music. I could even tell you that they were a Sony artist. What they sounded like though was a different matter. I haven’t recognised any of their tunes that have featured in these TOTP repeats so far and “Pressure US” is no different. Apparently this was a remix of the band’s debut single which had been a No 1 hit on the US Dance chart. Given its success across the pond, it was rereleased in the UK with the ‘US’ suffix added to make it clear it was a remix.
In the nicest possible way, Sunscreem were my ghost poo*. You know when you know you’ve had a poo but there is absolutely no evidence on the toilet paper or in the toilet bowl that anything actually took place. So it was for me with Sunscreem. I knew they existed but my memory banks have zero evidence about what they sounded like.
“Pressure US” would peak at No 19, a whole forty-one places higher than the original version from 1991.
*There is no nicest possible way is there?
Now I might have been pushing it earlier to suggest the existence of Robin S super fans but I know for a fact the next artist has a multitude of them so I need to tread carefully here. David Bowie spent much of the very early 90s dicking around with (no, think of the fanbase – definitely not dicking around, think of something else) ‘experimenting’ with his side project rock band Tin Machine the results of which had failed to convince many of their merits. However, 1993 saw the first proper Bowie album for six years with the last being the poorly received “Never Let Me Down”. Expectations were high for a return to form though with “Black Tie White Noise” and it duly went to No 1 though it got a mixed reception in the press.
Lead single “Jump They Say” though was pretty good I thought and it would provide Bowie, rather unbelievably, with his first Top 10 hit since “Absolute Beginners” in 1986. Inspired by the tragic story of his half brother Terry who committed suicide in 1985 by walking out in front of a train, it also had a powerful video that has been described by some critics as Bowie’s finest hour as an actor in a music promo. Bowie’s acting credentials though are a mixed bag. Brilliant in TheMan WhoFellToEarth but hammy in Labyrinth and downright awful in Jazzin’ ForBlueJean (Shush! Remember the fan base!). “Jump They Say” was easily the biggest hit of the three singles released from the album but my favourite of his in 1993 was none of those but the theme song he wrote for the TV adaption of Hanif Kureishi’s BuddhaOfSuburbia novel.
In a post a few weeks back, I admitted to my complete dislike of Lulu. Imagine my delight then when I read the running order for tonight’s show and saw that she’s on again. I remembered her single “Independence” that she performed then but I really thought we were shot of her until much later in the year when she would pop up on Take That’s “Relight My Fire” single. I was wrong as she literally sings “I’m Back For More” on her duet with Bobby Womack. I have zero memory of this song probably because it is so unmemorable. A complete drag. Don’t get me wrong, Bobby’s vocals are as great as you’d expect them to be but Lulu’s scratchy, annoying voice really grates.
Of much more interest are the dance moves of the studio audience members positioned behind the pair. I’m especially drawn to the guy extreme right of the screen who’s turned up in clobber as if he’s expecting a call up to be the sixth member of the aforementioned Take That. That ‘curtains’ haircut and waistcoat combination is oh so early 90s.
“I’m Back For More” peaked at No 27. The parent album “Independence” stalled at No 67. It was Lulu’s only studio album of the decade and yet bizarrely her record label saw fit to release a collection album in 1999 called “I’m Back For More: The Very Best Of Her Nineties Recordings”. Eh? Isn’t that just the “Independence” album then? Well (or rather ‘wellllllllll’) I checked and yes, it pretty much is. If she could sell that then maybe she was the woman who sold the world.
It’s a final week of two at the top for the final ‘S’ of the night – Shaggy and his “Oh Carolina” single. I’d forgotten that the track appeared on the soundtrack to the film Sliver, a erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone (wait, add another three S’s to the tally!). That soundtrack would also feature another No 1 song which would become the second biggest seller in the UK of 1993 – UB40’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.
As it’s the final week for Shaggy, I’m going to shoehorn in another and much more tenuous link between “Oh Carolina” and Sliver. Shaggy of course was also the name of a character in the legendary cartoon Scooby Doo the theme tune of which includes these lyrics:
Come on Scooby Doo, I see you pretending you got a sliver
But you’re not fooling me ‘cause I can see the way you shake and shiver
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Sybil
When I’m Good And Ready
Nah
2
The Bluebells
Young At Heart
Not in 1984 and not in 1993 either
3
Shabba Ranks
Mr Loverman
Mr Dickhead more like – NO!
4
Jade
Don’t Walk Away
Nope
5
Robin S
Show Me Love
Not my thing
6
Cliff Richard
Peace In Our Time
As if
7
Bananarama
More More More
No No No
8
Sunscreem
Pressure US
Nope
9
David Bowie
Jump They Say
I didn’t…jump or buy it
10
Lulu and Bobby Womack
I’m Back For More
No
11
Shaggy
Oh Carolina
And 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.
1993 was not a year I was looking forward to reviewing and one of the main reasons for that has now arrived in this TOTP – the unholy trinity of the three S’s. I speak of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow. The first two are both on tonight’s show whilst the latter makes his debut entry into the Top 40 this week. Somehow these three crystallised for me everything they was wrong with the charts around this time. The fact that they all arrived together at the same time probably had something to do with it. Could I have been wrong in my initial assessment? Let’s see if a gap of twenty-nine years has changed my perspective.
Opening the show though are another act who were all about the S’s so much so they had two of them in their name – it can only be SisterSledge. Well, it could also have been Sam Smith or Sandie Shaw or Shakespear’s Sister or (God forbid) Shakin’ Stevens but let’s not go there. Seriously.
After they’d scored a hit for the third time in fourteen years with yet another remix of “We Are Family” earlier in 1993, perhaps the most obvious rerelease of all time was unleashed upon us – yes it was time once more for “Lost In Music”. Why obvious? Well, every time one song was released as a single, the other came out shortly after. Look at this lot:
26 May 1979 – “We Are Family”
21 Aug 1979 – “Lost In Music
07 Sep 1984 – “Lost In Music”
17 Nov 1984 – “We Are Family”
24 Jan 1993 – “We Are Family”
13 Mar 1993 – “Lost In Music”
I mean they’re both disco standards but is that just a teeny bit of overkill? Couldn’t they have mixed it up a bit? How about a rerelease of “Thinking Of You” instead? What? They did do that as well! It was their third hit single of 1993 when it came out again in the June. Oh come on! Wait…
*blogger is gripped by sudden panic*
They didn’t rerelease “Frankie” as well did they?! Please God no!
*checks Sister Sledge discography*
Oh thank f**k for that. They didn’t. I couldn’t have hoped with a second helping if that on the show. I’d have barfed for sure.
The 1993 version of “Lost In Music” peaked at No 14.
What’s that you say Tony Dortie (in your daft hat)? Bruce Dickinson is leaving IronMaiden? Did he? I have to say that this piece of blockbusting news must have passed me by at the time. Having read up on the story, it seems that Bruce had announced he was leaving the band before they headed out on a forty-six date world tour. It doesn’t sound like a good idea and indeed it wasn’t. Both his band mates and their fanbase were pissed off with Dickinson for putting the group’s future in doubt. Maybe keeping schtum about leaving to pursue your solo career until after the tour is done may have been the way to go Bruce?
Anyway, this live single “Fear Of The Dark” wasn’t from Dickinson’s final tour as it hadn’t yet happened. Instead it was, rather obviously, from the previous year’s FearOfTheDark tour which was enshrined forever in the resultant album “A Real Live One”. Now, I wouldn’t need every finger of one hand to list the number of Iron Maiden songs that I like but this one starts off in a rather un-Maiden-esque style with Dickinson laying off on the over the top throaty vocals and with a low key intro but then they resort to type and it loses my interest immediately. It peaked at No 8 thanks to that newly pissed off but still sizeable fanbase.
And so we return to those pesky S’s now as we find Shaggy on his way to the top of the charts with “Oh Carolina”. Up to No 2 this week and with 2 Unlimited now in their fifth week at the pinnacle, Tony Dortie’s prediction of it being No 1 the following week was hardly the stuff of Nostradamus. Yet it was, at the same time, an unlikely chart topper. Apparently “Oh Carolina” would be the first ‘reggae’ No 1 since Aswad’s “Don’t Turn Around” in 1988 if you can classify that as a reggae track and if you ignore the dub reggae of “Dub Be Good To Me” by Beats International in 1990. The following week, Snow’s “Informer” would storm to No 8 meaning there would be three reggae influenced singles in the Top 10 simultaneously for the first time ever. It was a strange time in the UK charts but why and how had this shake up of the charts come to be? Maybe it was just the law of averages and probability – it had to happen some time.
I worked for Our Price throughout the 90s and we used to source the majority of our reggae stock from the supplier Jetstar. In my memory, they are who we ordered the Shaggy single from though I could be wrong about that. Whenever you used to ring their telesales team with an order, you were guaranteed to talk to someone effortlessly cool on the other end of the line. It always sounded like the atmosphere in the Jetstar office was just one long, chilled out sesh with the occasional bit of work done now and then if they felt like it. I’m sure they are all really hard working but that was the vibe that was projected. I was jealous. Also having a good time is Shaggy who is clearly enjoying himself in this performance probably riding on the confidence of knowing he’ll have a No 1 record soon enough.
And so we come to easily the most objectionable of the three S’s of 1993 – “Mr Loverman”, Shabba Ranks. I hated everything about this; the song, its success and of course Ranks himself not least of all because of this interview on TheWord:
Let’s have it right, what a f*****g arsehole! Thankfully Mark Lamarr was on hand to call him out unlike Dani Behr who wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and move on. That took place in 1992 and by March 1993, Ranks had put out a public apology for his grotesque words. Funnily enough it coincided with the rerelease of the “Mr Loverman” single. Do you think his record company Sony put some pressure on him to retract what he had said so that their product wasn’t dead in the water before it started? Yes, I did say rerelease as the single had already been a hit once the previous August when it got to No 23. Presumably the rising profile of dancehall and the success of Shaggy convinced Sony to roll the dice again and so it became a No 3 hit second time around.
The track became infamous for the use of the ‘Shabba!’ shout out which became a catch all catchphrase for just about any situation. My favourite use of it though was by Ray Von from PhoenixNights…
It’s a third time on the show for Bryan Ferry and his treatment of “I Put A Spell On You”. Now originally I had thought that this might be just a rebroadcast of the first time Ferry did a studio performance as the staging is almost exactly the same but it isn’t as the cut away to the next act reveals. This raises the question of quite why Ferry just gave an identikit performance again? I mean I think there’s less dancers this week but everything else including the performers outfits are the same. I guess I expected a bit more creativity from Bryan than that.
“I Put A Spell On You” peaked at No 18.
I find it hard to remember but there was a time when Jamiroquai’s sound was regarded as fresh and new and exciting. That sensation didn’t last long as petty soon everything they released sounded exactly the same as..well…everything else they’d ever released. Back in 1993 though Jay Kay was a hip, young groover bringing his brand of acid jazz, soul/funk vibes to the nation. I guess he’s always been a divisive figure though. Early on he suffered from accusations of plagiarising Stevie Wonder and of being a hypocrite for espousing environmental themes in his lyrics whilst having an obsession with the collection of fast, expensive cars. Subsequent misdemeanours like being charged with assaulting a photographer and waxing lyrical in concert about how great his then partner Denise Van Outen’s breasts were didn’t do his image any favours.
I always thought “Too Young To Die” was Jamiroquai’s first single but there’d been one before it called “When You Gonna Learn” in 1992 which had made No 28 on the charts but which had escaped my attention completely. It was their first single for Sony though which may account for my confusion. As for the performance here, you have to admit that Jay Kay (it’s all about him really in much the same way that Simply Red is all about Hucknall) makes quite the impression. His vocals are good (though the ‘de de de de do’ chorus is unmistakably Wonder-esque) but it’s his look which grabs the attention. Watching him now, the first thing that springs to mind is how hot he must have been under the studio lights in his oversized clobber. Ah yes, the clothes or more specifically that hat! It would become Kay’s signature look and inform the ‘buffalo man’ logo that would be the face of the band’s brand featuring on the art work for the covers of their first four albums. Some thought had clearly gone into this from a marketing point of view.
Did I like their sound? Yeah, initially. My wife liked it so much she bought that first album “Emergency On Planet Earth”. I think I got bored with it quite quickly though. “Too Young To Die” made it all the way to the Top 10 and the album was a platinum selling No 1. The time of Jamiroquai had begun.
Next a band who, like many before them, suffer from the misguided belief by many that they were a one hit wonder. PMDawn really weren’t though their biggest and most memorable success did rather overshadow the rest of their back catalogue which is a shame. The Spandau Ballet sampling “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” was that huge hit of course from the Summer of 1991 and we hadn’t heard that much from the duo since. The follow up single “Paper Doll” had been scrunched up and binned when it failed to make the Top 40 whilst two further singles had at least charted though neither got further than No 29. “Looking Through Patient Eyes” would correct that though when it peaked at No 11.
Turning from Spandau Ballet to George Michael for inspiration on this one – the track heavily samples “Father Figure” – it was another great example of their wordy rapping (hood) allied to a mellow yet catchy sound. It was taken from their second album the title of which confirmed their verbose credentials – “The Bliss Album…? (Vibrations Of Love And Anger And The Ponderance Of Life And Existence)”. They really did have a thing about word heavy album titles. Their debut was called “Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience” whilst their fourth carried the title of “Dearest Christian, I’m So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here. Love Dad”. Like the Ferry album “Taxi”, Our Price got a promo copy of the album which ended up in my possession. My wife even made a cover for it.
Sadly, Prince Be died in 2016 after suffering for years from diabetes related conditions including having one of his legs amputated at the knee due to gangrene.
If it’s…we’ll any year since 1958 actually…then there must be a Cliff Richard single out. 1993’s first offering of that particular year was a song called “Peace In Our Time”. This is yet another song I don’t recall at all. I wonder what it sounds like?
*watches Cliff’s performance back*
Oh this is just a glorious tune. So full of life and positivity and…nah, you got me. It’s just the same old Cliff shite that he’d been peddling for years. Apparently a hit for Eddie Money in the US in the late 80s, it’s just sanctimonious crap about having faith, putting songs in our hearts and building a heaven on earth. It even goes on about turning water into wine! Just horrible. If I want a song called “Peace In Our Time”, there’s always this…
Cliff’s got all his usual mates with him here backing him up – Janey Lee Grace, that bloke from Modern Romance – whilst the main man himself does his usual weird arm movements. At one point he’s only a flick of the wrist away from doing a Bruce Forsyth pose. Cliff, of course, was at Wimbledon last week doing his usual cringe fest crowd singalong. For the love of God Cliff, give it a rest and grant us some peace in our time! By the way, I can’t find the TOTP performance so here’s a clip from some German pop show:
It’s the final week at the top for 2Unlimited with “No Limit”. Afterpositing the theory the other week that dance acts couldn’t sell albums, Ray and Anita completely debunk this by having a No 1 with parent album “No Limits” (note the plural). Released on the PWL label in the UK, Pete Waterman made the decision to remove Ray’s raps from the tracks which only increased the ‘there’s no lyrics’ jibes in the press. The ribbing was continued in later weeks by some unlikely critics – the Scottish popsters The Bluebells who had some fun at 2 Unlimited’s expense by shouting out ‘Techno, techno, techno, techno’ during a TOTP performance of their rejuvenated hit “Young At Heart”. Those cheeky scamps!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I Buy It?
1
Sister Sledge
Lost In Music ’93
Nope
2
Iron Maiden
Fear Of The Dark (Live)
Never
3
Shaggy
Oh Carolina
Nah
4
Shabba Ranks
Mr Loverman
Hell no!
5
Bryan Ferry
I Put A Spell On You
No but I had a promo of the album
6
Jamiroquai
Too Young To Die
No but my wife had the album
7
PM Dawn
Looking Through Patient Eyes
See 5 above
8
Cliff Richard
Peace In Our Time
What do you think?!
9
2 Unlimited
No Limit
Negative
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.
Late November in 1992 was a sad time. I’m not talking about the Queen who two days before this TOTP broadcast had described the year as her annus horribilis as the Royal Family was involved in various scandals plus there was a fire at Windsor castle. Compared to the brouhaha they find themselves enveloped in today, photos of Fergie topless don’t seem such a big deal it seems to me but maybe life was a tad more innocent 30 years ago? Viewed against the daily shitshow of the 2020s, so far it does seem so. Anyway, it wasn’t the Windsors I was referring to but the fact that a major presence of British cultural life would come to an end in four days time. I speak, of course, of The Sooty Show! Yes, the original long running programme bid farewell on 30 November 1992 after 37 years on our screens. It wasn’t away for long returning just a year later as the rebranded Sooty & Co and then Sooty Heights and even today exists courtesy of Richard Cadell who bought the rights to the Sooty brand in 2008. The ending of a 37 year old TV show seems like quite a big deal though. Neighbours is ending soon after an almost identical length of run and there seems to be quite a fuss in the media about that so if it’s good enough for Scott and Charlene there it’s good enough for Sooty and Sweep. So much did Sooty permeate society that he’s responsible for this memorable spoof from my childhood:
What has this to do with TOTP? Nothing really but you find different ways to introduce a review of early 90s chart music on a twice weekly basis without resorting to such tactics!
OK, so like Sooty, EMF we’re also having problems staying as popular as they once were. Having arrived on the charts in 1990 like a bowling ball, skittling their contemporaries down and out with their irresistible “Unbelievable” single and Top 3 album “Schubert Dip”, it had been a case of diminishing returns for the Epsom Mad Funkers since. Two years on and sophomore album “Stigmata” would peak at No 19 and worse still, spend just two weeks on the charts. Its singles also underperformed. Lead track “They’re Here” barely made the Top 30 whilst follow up “It’s You” fared little better peaking at No 23 despite this TOTP appearance.
I didn’t remember how this one went at all but having listened to it back, it’s pretty good. They’ve toned down the frenetic pace of their earlier catalogue for a more (dare I say it) mature sound. This new found maturity is undermined rather by the band’s ‘slacker’ wardrobe which they are still persisting with two years on from their debut on the scene. That and the way in which the song’s chorus sounds like singer James Atkin is sneezing but I still quite like it.
Talking of maturity, the band have recently released a new album called “Go Go Sapiens” and are featured in the latest issue of Classic Pop magazine. Man, the look like any old geezers now but then, don’t we all?
It’s the video for “Yesterdays” by GunsN’Roses next which provides the musical backdrop for the chart rundown for Nos 40 to 11. The band were in total turmoil by this point, engulfed in a trail of controversy as they straddled the planet on their UseYourIllusion tour. They’d haemorrhaged two band members in Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler during the course of it, caused riots in St Louis and Montreal and in September guitarist Slash actually died for eight minutes after a drug overdose before being revived by paramedics.
At the time of this particular TOTP they were in Caracas, Venezuela and got caught up in a military coup which found them stranded there as airbases were seized. They eventually made it out and flew into Bogota, Columbia as the tour of carnage continued. Remember when rock star transgressions were just about fast cars and women? Talking of which…
From (literally) death defying rock to a comfy as a pair of slippers cover version. Undercover are back with their tribute to Andrew Gold’s “Never Let Her Slip Away”. For some reason the producers have dressed the stage up as if it were the deck of a Titanic style ship complete with a SS Undercover lifeboat and lifebuoy. I have no idea why. Undercover would never be as successful again as they were at this moment. Two consecutive Top 5 hits, multiple TOTP appearances – not bad for what was quite a ropey old concept really. However, the iceberg of chart failure was lurking unseen in their path and when they hit it, the journey was over almost immediately. There was time for one final Top 40 hit when their version of Gallagher and Lyle’s “I Wanna Stay With You” made No 28 but really they were just rearranging the deckchairs while the good ship Undercover sank.
To be fair, they weren’t the first to dance up some old rock pop staples for a more youthful audience nor the last. East Side Beat scored a big hit the previous year with their Eurodance version of “Ride Like The Wind” by Christopher Cross and then in 1995 Nikki French took her Hi-NRG take on Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” into the Top 5. It just all seemed like lowest common denominator music to me. What’s the least we could get away with and still bag some chart success.
I think singer John Matthews still performs using the Undercover name on the nostalgia circuit. I really hope he does those slots on cruise liners that seem to be popular for retro artists now. He’s also a massive Arsenal fan whose Champions League qualification hopes sank recently as easily as the Titanic.
Whilst Sooty, Sweep and Sue were about to experience cancel culture nearly 30 years before it was invented, Carter TheUnstoppableSexMachine were riding the zeitgeist in 1992. “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” was their fourth Top 40 hit of the year whilst their “1992 – The Love Album” went to the top of the charts! It could be argued that all this success had gone to Fruitbat and Jim Bob’s heads as apparently they genuinely believed that they had a shot at the Xmas No 1 with this release. They even tried to start a fake war with the King of Xmas Cliff Richard via a poster campaign that said ‘Don’t Buy Cliff, Buy Carter’. In the end, they massively misjudged their chances and the single peaked at No 21.
The song itself has quite the history. Taken from the 1965 Broadway musical ManOfLa Mancha, it has been recorded by some legendary names. Look at this list:
Frank Sinatra
Elvis Presley
Jack Jones
Jacques Brel
Shirley Bassey
Matt Monro
Andy Williams
Scott Walker
and erm…Susan Boyle
CUSM were an unlikely addition to that list for sureand I’m not entirely sure they did the song justice. Still, the staging of this performance with the windmill image in the background at least made sense unlike the SS Undercover.
If you really want a song based on a fictional character who picked fights with windmills then you could do worse than listen to this:
Just the two Breakers this week starting with…oh joy…Shabba Ranks and a little ditty he’s recorded with Johnny Gill called “Slow And Sexy”. Lovely stuff. Shabba (!) had already released a track this year called “Love Punanny Bad” which presumably influenced the comedy creation Ali G. You’d never get any of this smut with Sooty!
*checks YouTube to ensure there isn’t a blue, Rainbow style version of Sooty*
Phew! Anyway, this was just a precursor to the biggest era of Shabba’s popularity when “Mr Loverman” was rereleased in 1993 (it had been a No 23 hit earlier this year) and he became a part of that unholy ‘S’ trinity alongside Snow and Shaggy. Dear God!
Now I’ve heard of the concept of the difficult second album. It’s a well known idea that sees a band put their creative juices into writing their debut with all their life experiences so far contributing to the songs. Said debut garners huge commercial success which instigates pressure from the record company to immediately come up with a second hit album just 12 months later. I’m also familiar with ‘third album syndrome’ where a band struggles to define their musical identity after the whirlwind of recording, promoting and touring the first two albums. But ‘fourth album complex’? Not so much.
That was what appeared to be afflicting DeaconBlue in late ‘92 though. With their fourth album “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” due for release early the following year, lead single “Your Town” was sent out into the busy Xmas market to plug it. Maybe not the best time to trail your new sound on reflection. For it was a new sound. I recall quite some coverage in the media about how this wasn’t the Deacon Blue that we had all come to know and love – well some of us anyway.
After the well crafted pop gems of the first three albums, the band seemed to decide that they needed to add a bit of a dance edge to their work to remain credible in the light of the continuing take over of the charts by that genre. Deacon Blue go dance?! Well, sort of. I mean they didn’t turn into 2 Unlimited overnight or anything like that but “Your Town” definitely sounded different. Beginning with a drawn out, repeated wail from Lorraine McKintosh, it built steadily via some shimmering blips and bleeeps until the driving backing track kicked in. Then came Ricky Ross’s vocals that sounded like they were being sung through a megaphone (or possibly a vocoder?). It was disarming but I presume deliberate. There was a song structure to it of sorts but they’d certainly played around with it. The coda for example was one, long play out with no vocals other than the return of Lorraine’s wail at the end. To be fair, it lent it a soundtrack style epic feel.
For all that, I dismissed it at the time as being experimental bollocks. The fact that the single came with various dance mixes including a Perfecto one didn’t impress me – in fact it depressed me. It was no “Dignity” that’s for sure. Listening to it now, I think that was a hasty judgement that could do with some heavy revision . The album made No 4 and achieved gold status sales. Nothing to be sniffed at but also way below the sales of their first three albums. It would prove to be their final one of the decade and their last for eight whole years.
A milestone next as after nearly five years, we have arrived at Kylie Minogue’s last ever single with PWL/ Stock, Aitken and Waterman. “Celebration” was the single in question, a cover of the Kool And The Gang hit from 1980 and the second single to be pulled from her very first Greatest Hits album. It was also her 19th UK chart hit. 19th! In five years. Just under four a year every year. Like her or loath her, she was prolific. Sadly, I don’t think her voice is really up to interpreting this disco classic. The staging for this studio performance is convincing enough though, giving off a real 70s disco vibe…despite erm…the song being sung dating from 1980. It all just makes the Undercover performance even more perplexing.
“Celebration” peaked at No 20.
From Kylie to Jason (nearly an early KLF song title there). This surely must have been a deliberate decision on the running order by the TOTP producers? It’s hard to tell if Kylie and Jason Donovan were in the studio together at the same time as there’s a weird, swirling, pixelated effect on the camera shot from the former to the latter but I don’t think it’s a retransmission of his performance from the other week as he’s wearing different clothes.
“As Time Goes By” was the single he was plugging and it stank of desperation for a big hit. The fact that it peaked at No 26 and was his last ever UK chart entry tells you everything you need to know about Jason’s decline in popularity by this point. It’s quite a moment in time. Kylie severs her ties with SAW and embarks on a career that is still going to this day and has brought her both sales and credibility. Jason meanwhile had also recently left SAW and can’t get arrested. Bye Jason. Thanks for…everything?!
Another week and another ‘exclusive’ performance which this time is live from Los Angeles and is Rod Stewart sporting a beard and continuing in his quest to convince the world that he is Tom Waits. Not content with murdering “Downtown Train”, he’s now having a hack at “Tom Traubert’s Blues”. The opening track of Tom’s 1976 album “Small Change”, it’s based on Australian folk tune and unofficial national anthem “Waltzing Matilda”. Just to make sure all us Neanderthals realised this, Rod has helpfully renamed his version “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)”. Cheers for that Rod.
It’s an OK version I guess in that he doesn’t completely ruin it but you’d have to worry about someone who thought Rod’s was the definitive take on the song. It was clearly released with an eye on the Xmas No 1 and to be fair it gave a decent account of itself by rising to No 6. One final thing, that’s not Huey Lewis on the piano in this performance surely?
Charles And Eddie are still No 1 with “Would I Lie To You” but not for much longer. They bow out with the second live by satellite performance of the show, this time from Toronto, Canada. When these were first introduced at the start of the ‘year zero’ era, I guess they seemed different and were an attempt to shake up the old format but a year on I can’t really see the point of them. They tend to be in empty venues (possibly due to the time differences) and they generate very little in the way of excitement. There’s not even any interaction with the presenters anymore (as excruciating as that was!). I get that the artists featured are either on tour or doing promotional work and couldn’t be in the TOTP studio but just show the video instead. Really.
As for Charles And Eddie, unlike Sooty and friends, their appeal would not endure and despite winning three Ivor Novello awards for “Would I Lie To You”, they would achieve only three more minor UK hit singles before disbanding in 1995.
And finally some bonus content…
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did Ibuy it?
1
EMF
It’s You
Nope
2
Guns N’ Roses
Yesterdays
Not the single but I have it on a Greatest Hits CD
3
Undercover
Never Let Her Slip Away
Never happening
4
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
The Impossible Dream (The Quest)
I did not
5
Shabba Ranks and Johnny Gill
Slow And Sexy
As if
6
Deacon Blue
Your Town
Nah
7
Kylie Minogue
Celebration
No but my wife had that Greatest Hits album of hers
8
Jason Donovan
As Time Goes By
No
9
Rod Stewart
Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda)
No but I think my wife has the Tom Waits album it’s from
10
Charles And Eddie
Would I Lie To You?
And 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.
After last week’s massive rave up of a show, surely the TOTP studio wouldn’t be taken over by mad ravers ‘avin’ it large again this week? Well, yes and no. Dance music is definitely represented by the artists in the actual building again but when you add in the videos chosen by the producers to be shown this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were back in the 70s or at The Royal Variety Performance. No seriously, two of the artists on this TOTP had either already been on Her Majesty’s favourite night out of the year or would appear on it in the near future, those acts being Cliff Richard (13 times!) and Right Said Fred (once in 1992). The mainstream acts didn’t stop with just those two though. No, also on TOTP tonight were Bryan Adams (twice!), Roxette and Julian Lennon who’s Dad John had also appeared at The Royal Variety Performance as part of The Beatles with his infamous “just rattle your jewellery” remark in 1963. Oh, and despite having only released one new song in the 90s so far, The Stone Roses are suddenly back on the show with a re-release of a track from their 1989 debut album for some reason. This has all the makings of a curate’s egg of a programme.
Before all that though, what’s the rather cryptic announcement from host Simon Mayo at the top of the show all about? “If you got your tickets for tonight’s show through Keith Prowse, you can watch through to 7.30 but cheer and applaud louder because you are watching for free. Seems fair enough to me.” Eh? What was the story there then? Some dispute between the BBC and the legendary ticket agency and music publisher Keith Prowse? Was Mayo legally obliged to say that? It just seems so utterly incongruous and bizarre.
Talking of bizarre, the opening act tonight are Bizarre Inc with “Such A Feeling” and these guys were definitely ‘avin’ it. In an attempt to stand out from the rest of the rave crowd, they have employed a couple of podium dancers to give a visual form to their track. Watching it back, it remains me of the time that I was working in the Our Price in Rochdale and on a night out found myself in the town’s Xanadu nightclub having become detached from my colleagues. My God! The sights I saw – including podium dancers! I loved working at that store but the delights of a night out in Rochdale I was not prepared for.
Bizarre Inc were from Stafford and at one point included a band member who would find their way into Altern-8 who were also having mainstream chart hits at this time. It all sounds a bit incestuous to me.
“Such A Feeling” peaked at No 13 but Bizarre Inc would return before the end of the year with a Top 5 hit in the re-released “Playing with Knives”.
“20th Century Boy” by Marc Bolan & T. Rex is next having been re-released off the back of a Levi’s advert. The marketing guys at Levi’s had struck a rich vein of 70s tunes to help promote their jeans at this time, having worked through a load of 60s songs at the back end of the 80s. They’d already turned to The Steve Miller Band and Bad Company in their pursuit of soundtracks to their iconic advertising campaign but suddenly they had struck on the idea that some glam rock was now what was required. I guess you can’t knock their choice; T.Rex had lit up the charts with some huge tunes that had turned Marc Bolan into a superstar. Between 1970 and 1973 the chart peaks of their singles read:
2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4
with the No 3 in the list being the original release of “20th Century Boy”. Come 1974 though, the spell appeared to be broken. The release of the “Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow” album met with a downturn of sales and a critical backlash. The return to all those complex song titles from the band’s psychedelic folk era when they were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex maybe wasn’t the best idea – as well as the album’s title, the tracks on it included “Painless Persuasion v. The Meathawk Immaculate” and “The Leopards Featuring Gardenia & the Mighty Slug”. The album wasn’t even released in the US and the band were dropped from their label. Bolan split from producer Tony Visconti and the group splintered.
Subsequent albums releases fared even worse but the explosion of the punk movement in ’76 seemed to re-energise Bolan and he even toured with The Damned as well as reinstating his public profile with his own TV show Marc. I was too young to experience those early hits in real time being aged just 2 when “Ride A White Swan” bestrode the charts in ’70 but I have faint memories of that TV show and I think my elder brother had a pin badge with Bolan’s image on it.
Of course, tragedy was just around the corner (or more specifically a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride Barnes, southwest London) when Marc was killed in a car accident when his girlfriend Gloria Jones lost control of the mini they were travelling in. His legacy lives on though with names like Johnny Marr and Siouxsie and the Banshees crediting him as being a major influence with the latter recording their own version of “20th Century Boy” as the B-side to the single “The Staircase (Mystery)” single in 1979.
Simon Mayo’s having a nightmare here. After the weirdness of the Keith Prowse comment he’s started going on about Paddy Ashdown now. Was Ashdown in the news back then? Was this when all the ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ stuff was happening?
*checks internet*
No that scandal blew up in the run up to the ’92 election. I can’t find a Paddy Ashdown story for Sep ’91 so I’m not sure what Mayo is going on about. Surely he wasn’t using the show as a platform for his own political views?
Anyway, the act he is introducing via this political lay-by is Roxette with “The Big L.” The circus themed video for this one includes a scene where there’s five greased up body builder types huddled together on a small circular platform all playing mouth organ. What was that all about?! Maybe the video director had been influenced by the recent bare-chested antics of Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch or maybe even the “Do What U Like” video by Take That (the one with the bare arse cheeks and a ton of jelly) which had been creating waves of controversy around this time? With it being a Roxette video though, it just comes across as a bit safe and lame rather than daring.
“The Big L.” peaked at No 21.
Is it me or is there a bit of an echo in the studio tonight? I thought I’d noticed one in a couple of Simon Mayo’s links before but it seems to have spread to the performers now. There’s a distinct trace of reverb on Sabrina Johnston‘s live vocals on “Peace”. Or was that a deliberate sound effect? Sound quality issues aside, this was up there with Oceanic’s Insanity” in the bangin’ tunes stakes. Sadly for Sabrina, she also followed the same career path as Oceanic in that she could never really follow up on the success of “Peace’ . An album was released and two further singles from it but none of them managed to indent the charts. Indeed, Sabrina’s only other chart entry was when a remix of “Peace” made No 35 as part of a double A-side with Crystal Waters to promote the HIV/AIDS charity album “Red Hot + Dance” (the one with George Michael’s “Too Funky” on it). In later years though, she did go onto appear as a backing vocalist on Lauryn Hill’s album “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill”.
More Paddy Ashdown quips from Simon Mayo next. Give it up mate! “I Wanna Be Adored” by The StoneRoses is the the prompt for him to get in another Paddy joke (as it were). Had Ashdown done a particular poorly received press conference or something back then?
“I Wanna Be Adored” was the opening track on the band’s iconic eponymous debut album from ’89. So why was it being released as a single two and a half years later? Well, I think it was to do with the legal battle with their then-record label Silvertone. The band wished to terminate their five-year contract with Silvertone whose owners Zomba Records took out an injunction against the Roses in September 1990 to prevent them from recording with any other label. The courts ruled in favour of the band in May 1991 but Silvertone appealed the decision thereby delaying the release of any new material from the band further. I guess Silvertone wanted to make as much dough out of the band as they could before they were their act no longer and so released a number of tracks from that debut album that had never previously been released (or indeed intended for release) as stand alone singles. “I Wanna Be Adored” was followed by “Waterfall”, ‘I Am The Resurrection” and a re-release of “Fool’s Gold” in ’92. Bit naughty that.
“I Wanna Be Adored” was also one of the tracks that my one time Our Price manager Pete played on as the band’s original bass player. The Martin Hannett produced album that Pete featured on never saw the light of day as the band weren’t happy with it until it was released as “Garage Flower” in 1996 against the wishes of everyone involved in the original recordings.
I said in the last post that I didn’t think we’d be seeing this act until her next hit in about three years time. I was wrong. Following her appearance in the BreakersCrystal Waters has moved up the charts sufficiently to qualify for another appearance this week with her “Makin’ Happy” single. The single edit of this was remixed by Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley who I very much see as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing death to music with his “Jack Your Body” No 1 single in 1987.
The video is a typical dance track promo with Crystal’s face superimposed over a background of abstract, dancing figure images and some very literal interpretations of the song’s lyrics – some Rocky Horror Picture Show style lips for ‘She screams Ah ooh’ and a camera for ‘Now picture you with me’. To be fair, most of the lyrics seem to be comprised of ‘ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh ooh-wee ooh-wee ooh-wee’. It’s hardly Proust is it?
“Makin’ Happy” peaked at No 18.
Having gone after Paddy Ashdown for a cheap laugh, Mayo now sets his sights on pop royalty in Cliff Richard. Asking the audience the question who has appeared on TOTP most across its then 27 year history, he mimes us a clue of who it is. For some reason he thinks giving a double thumbs up and waving his arms about as if protecting himself from some falling debris is a dead ringer of an impression of Cliff! Surely the thumbs up gesture would be more likely to be Paul ‘Whacky Thumbs Aloft’ McCartney and although Cliff has been known to do some very odd arm movements whilst performing, Mayo’s interpretation seems very wide of the mark.
As for the song Cliff is singing, I have no memory whatsoever of “More To Life” but then I didn’t watch the TV show Trainer which it was the theme tune for. Apparently Trainer was a follow up (of sorts) to mid 80s yachting drama Howard’s Way but was set in the word of horse racing. As with Howard’s Way, Simon May (not Mayo) wrote the instrumental theme tune for the opening credits but lyrics were added for the version over the closing credits which were supplied by Mike Read (yes, the Radio 1 DJ). In later years of course, Read would pen “UKIP Calypso” for a UKIP dinner that he was attending and, with the endorsement of Nigel Farage, it was released as a single. It was widely panned as being racist for Reads’s mock Caribbean accent and the lyrics ‘The leaders committed a cardinal sin / Open the borders let them all come in / Illegal immigrants in every town / Stand up and be counted Blair and Brown’. That’s Mike Read there, friend of Nigel Farage and writer of racist songs. Arsehole. Read of course was very matey with Cliff as I recall and often did impressions of him. There really was no end to his talents was there?
“More To Life” the song is just bland, Cliff-by-numbers pop and the whole story saga should be condemned to the rubbish tip of terrible cultural ideas.
Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch are up next with “Good Vibrations”. Now I’ve always quite liked Mark Wahlberg as an actor. I know some of the films he’s been in have had bad reviews like Planet Of The Apes and The Happening and he’s certainly no De Niro or Pacino but even so, like I said, I quite like him.
However, I didn’t know until now when I’ve read up on him that he did some terrible things as a teenager like racially aggravated assault for which he was sentenced to two years in jail but served only forty-five days of his sentence. Eighteen years later he apologised to his victim in person who stated publicly that he had forgiven Wahlberg. Now knowing this information and reading an interview back with him in Smash Hits magazine as Marky Mark, he clearly was a prick back then. In said interview he refers to women as ‘bitches’ and the Smash Hits writer describes his conversation as “…the blokiest tirade you ever did hear this side of an Eddie Murphy Live video…” – like I said, a prick.
He followed this up a year later in December ’92, while performing on the cult late night Channel 4 show The Word, by praising fellow guest Shabba Ranks who had stated gay people should be crucified for which both he and Ranks were widely condemned and criticised (not least by The Word presenter Mark Lamarr on the show). Supposedly Wahlberg doesn’t like to be reminded or asked about his music career these days. It’s not hard to see why.
The huge dance anthems just keep on coming as Rozalla enters the game with “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Having been massively popular on the dance floors of the clubs in Ibiza in the Summer, it was no surprise that it became a huge hit in the UK charts when the returning hordes went searching for a memento of their holidays in the nation’s record shops. Well, at least we’d moved on from those foreign holiday hits like Ryan Paris from back in the day.
Rozalla was born in Zambia though moved to Zimbabwe aged 18 where she scored five No 1 singles. She relocated again in 1988, this time to London where she worked with production duo Nigel Swanston and Tim Cox and the collaboration bore fruit in the form of “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”. Looking at her performance here, you wouldn’t have imagined that such a huge sound could have come from such a diminutive and slight looking person. She absolutely bosses it though and has the crowd in the palm of her hand when she takes her very sparkly jacket. She would go on to have a eight UK Top 40 hits in total including a re-release of this track re-titled as “Everybody’s Free (Ca$ino Mix)” in 1996.
Moving the Breakers to just before the No 1 is really starting to piss me off now. It’s lulling me into a false sense of security before hitting me with the realisation that there are at least three more songs to review even though the show is nearly over. We start with a man not seen in the Top 40 for seven years but who topped all the Best Newcomer and Most Promising New Act polls at the time of that success. Julian Lennon had already released three albums by ’91 but they had spiralled into a pattern of diminishing returns since the success of debut “Valotte”. Subsequently, his return to the Top 40 with “Saltwater” was quite the surprise. Tackling the issues of environmental conservation and world poverty in a pop song wasn’t unique but neither was it a regular occurrence back then. Obviously there was the whole Bad Aid project to address famine in Ethiopia and wasn’t “Crazy Horses” by The Osmonds about pollution? Then of course there was “Save The Whale” by …erm…Nik Kershaw. I’m sure there are plenty more examples but my point is that unlike sewers and non disposable wipes, the charts weren’t clogged up with them.
Enter Julian with a rather drippy yet heartfelt take on it all with his 6th form poetry-esque lyrics bemoaning man’s capability to land on the moon but not be able to stop children starving back on earth. Musically, it inevitably drew comparisons with his Dad especially the “Strawberry Fields Forever” beginning whilst the Beatles connection was continued by the guitar part that was written but not performed by George Harrison. I quite liked it and its themes seem more relevant today than ever. Like his debut single “Too Late For Goodbyes”, it peaked at No 6 whilst his only other Top 40 entry was his cover of Dave Clark Five’s “Because” for the 1986 musical Time soundtrack winch literally crept in at No 40.
What?! Shabba Ranks was in the charts?! The Shabba Ranks that was discussed earlier for his vile homophobic comments on The Word? Yep, the very same but this was a year before that controversial moment broke so presumably, in ’91, he wasn’t courting the condemnation that followed. Here he’s teamed up with Maxi Priest for a single called “Housecall” which sounds horrific to my ears and which thankfully passed me by at the time. Fortunately we only get 18 seconds of it in the Breakers, a feature which now seems to be a totally pointless exercise in boosting the amount of songs featured in the show (we’ve gone up from 13 to 14 in recent weeks). Julian Lennon only got 24 seconds and the final Breaker Bryan Adams gets 17 seconds! This was ridiculous and presumably just a ploy to be able to say it was keeping up with ITV competition The Chart Show. Utter nonsense (as was Shabba and Maix’s collaboration).
Hang on! Did I just say Bryan Adams was in the Breakers? But *spoiler* he’s still at No 1 isn’t he? Yes, but both statements are true because he’d been at No 1 so long now that his next single was due for release. “Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started” chart life would would come and go within a mere five weeks peaking at No 12 whilst “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was still riding high in the Top 40. This was the time when it really started to get nuts I think. His new (and infinitely better in my opinion) song had been rejected in favour of a record buying public continuing to purchase his previous single that had been No 1 for over three months. This was just bonkers!
In the US, it would peak at No 2 but you know what they put on the B-side of the US release? Yes, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”! It had been No 1 in America for seven weeks! Why make it at the B-side?! In the UK the flip was a live version of his duet with Tina Tuner “It’s Only Love”. I quite liked the speeded up stop animation in the video which enlivened an otherwise straight performance promo.
So it’s a 10th week for good ol’ Bry with that Robin Hood song. The video for “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” was directed by Julien Temple which I don’t think I knew before. Bit of a contrast to his punk origins of the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. Apparently it was shot in Sheffield. You’d have thought that he would have chosen Nottingham as his location wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s only about 30 odd miles from Sheffield anyway. And, the day it was being shot, Nottingham Forest were playing in the FA Cup final against Spurs. All the omens and references surely pointed to Nottingham not Sheffield? I wonder which football team Bryan Adams supports? Oh he must have a team. Look at Sylvester Stallone (Everton), Tom Hanks (Aston Villa) and Kevin Costner (Arsenal). Then you’ve got Robert Plant being a Wolves fan and Dave Grohl supports West Ham.
*checks internet*
I knew it! Bryan is a fan of….my beloved Chelsea! Who said he had/was bad taste?
It’s Right Said Fred and “I’m Too Sexy” to play us out but before that, Simon Mayo ends his last show before the ‘year zero’ revamp by signing off with “I’ll see you sometime”. He definitely knew didn’t he?
Back to the Freds and there’s a link between them and the aforementioned Julien Temple as the latter directed the Jazzin’ For Blue Jean short film for David Bowie to promote his 1984 “Blue Jean” single which starred none other than Richard Fairbrass as one of the band for fictional pop star Screaming Lord Byron. As toe curlingly awful as Jazzin’ For Blue Jean is (and I’ve watched it) it still knocks the promo for “I’m Too Sexy” into a cocked hat. What do you think about that Fairbrass?
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Bizarre Inc
Such A Feeling
Bizarre Inc? Godawful stink more like! No
2
Marc Bolan & T. Rex
20th Century Boy
No but I have a Best Of CD with it on
3
Roxette
The Big L.
No
4
Sabrina Johnston
Peace
Liked it, didn’t buy it
5
The Stone Roses
I Wanna Be Adored
No but I’ve got the album
6
Crystal Waters
Makin’ Happy
It didn’t make me happy – no
7
Cliff Richard
More To Life
God no!
8
Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch
Good Vibrations
Nah
9
Rozalla
“Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”
I did not
10
Julian Lennon
Saltwater
No but I didn’t mind it actually
11
Shabba Ranks/ Maxi Priest
Housecall
NO!
12
Bryan Adams
Can’t Stop This Thing We’ve Started
Negative
13
Bryan Adams
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
Double negative
14
Right Said Fred
I’m Too Sexy
It’s a final no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.
Sibling rivalry. Healthy competition or the bringer of long lasting family fractures? I have siblings and, as a football obsessed youngster, grew up knowing that my elder brother was so much better at the game than me. I could barely get into my school team whilst he had scouts from professional clubs sniffing around. It was….character building. There are of course many examples of sporting siblings but how many of them attain an equitable level of success and fame. My theory would be that one is always more successful / well known than the other. Off the top of my head…
Serena Williams vs Venus Williams? Definitely Serena
Andy vs Jamie Murray? Andy surely
Anton vs Rio Ferdinand? Easily Rio
Gary vs Phil Neville? Hmm, I’d have to go Gary
OK, I’m sure you could all come up with anomalies to debunk my theory but I’m sticking with it. More than that, I’m going to try and extend it to musical siblings. Who have we got? Ray and Dave Davies from The Kinks, The Gibb brothers of the Bee Gees, Noel and Liam Gallagher, the three Wilson brothers in The Beach Boys, Hanson(!)… I’m beginning to see a problem with this in that these siblings were in bands together so it’s harder to make a definitive judgement. OK, some of them pursued their own solo careers so you could assess those I suppose but I’m not sure that’s a fair yardstick and yes, you could make a case for Brian Wilson over Dennis and Carl but then what about the twins Charlie and Craig Reid of The Proclaimers? They were tied to each other biologically and musically. So we’re am I going with all of this? In a very clunky and laborious way to the the first act on tonight’s TOTP who is Dannii Minogue – Kylie’s sister. And those last two words go straight back to my original point. Was Dannii always destined to be in the shadow of Kylie? Or as author Kathy Lette put it that there was always a perception that Dannii was the B-side to Kylie’s A?
It wasn’t how it started though. Dannii, despite being 4 years younger than her sister, was the most well known of the two in the beginnings of their careers as she appeared on Australian TV variety show Young Talent Time and indeed it was Dannii that got Kylie invited on the show to perform with her. After that, their careers seemed to run in tandem. Kylie became known to us in the UK as Charlene from Neighbours whilst Dannii took the role of Emma Jackson in Home And Away. Crucially though, Kylie had met Stock, Aitken and Waterman and beat her sister to chart stardom with her No 1 single “I Should Be So Lucky”. Was that the moment that their paths separated and Kylie was fused onto the nation’s consciousness ahead of Dannii?
By the time that Ms Minogue junior was releasing her “Love And Kisses” single, Kylie had already racked up 3 hit albums and 12 Top 10 singles including 4 No 1s in the UK. Dannii had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t helped by the fact that “Love And Kisses” wasn’t released in the UK until a whole year after its Australian release. When it finally did arrive, it performed pretty well rising to No 8 over here despite it being a fairly insubstantial, Janet Jackson style bit of pop fluff. Its parent album of the same name (it had been changed from its original “Dannii” title in Australia) also clocked up enough sales to achieve gold status and provided Dannii with a further four Top 40 singles.
1991 was Danni’s highpoint of the 90s though. The rest of the decade saw mainly dwindling sales (with the odd exception) and by around 1995/6, she was peddling her calendar that included naked shots of her. We definitely sold a few of those in the Our Price store I was working in (ahem). However, 2003’s “Neon Nights” dance album was well received and went Top 10 and she followed that up by appearing as an X Factor judge on our TVs every Saturday night from 2007 to 2010.
Did someone mention The Bee Gees before? Here are the Brothers Gibb with their “Secret Love” video. I’ve been sat here at my computer for a good five minutes now and I can’t think of anything else to say about this record other than it really wasn’t one of their finest moments. How about I just pad it out with some sales stats? Yeah? OK, well even their US record label had lost faith in them by this point and subsequently didn’t do that much promotion for the parent album ‘High Civilisation” in the States. Consequently, it didn’t chart at all over there though it did struggle to a high of No 24 in the UK. It was more popular in the rest of Europe specifically in Germany (No 2) and Switzerland (No 6). No further singles from the album were big hits anywhere on the planet.
We wouldn’t see The Bee Gees in the charts for another two years.
Right, who’s this fella? He looks like a scaffolder or something rather than a pop star. What’s that Bruno Brookes? He used to be a scaffolder actually? Oh right. Presumably that’s why you’re dong this link from the studio gantry and with the camera pointing up at you to give the impression of height – not something you were ever very good at eh?
This fella was, of course, Gary Clail (and his On-U Sound System) with “Human Nature”. I was never quite sure what the On-U Sound System bit was all about but it was a nod to the On-U Sound Records label which specialised in dub music. Clail himself had been releasing record since 1985 (presumably when he wasn’t atop a scaffold somewhere) and also worked with legendary hip hop artists Tackhead but I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him before 1991.
“Human Nature” though was a great track and deservedly went Top 10. Despite his dub roots, the sound on this seemed like The Shamen meets The KLF to me but then I knew very little about dub music so I was probably way off. It was the lyrics though that I noticed most – their themes of intolerance and social divisions and the inability of mankind to empathise sound as relevant today as back then which doesn’t say much for the progress of society in the last 30 years. I say it was the lyrics I noticed most but you couldn’t fail to catch an eyeful of Lana Pellay (aka Lanah P aka Alan Pillay). Wow! Now Ru Paul’s Drag Race might well be seen as mainstream these days but back then, drag queens weren’t on your TV that often. I don’t think even Lily Savage had cut through to the masses by this point so Lana’s performance seemed to imbue the whole act with an element of outrageousness it seemed to me. It may have even outraged some viewers I guess.
However, Bruno Brookes seemed more taken with Clail himself as he referred to him as ‘Mr Cheeky Face’ at the end of the track. Well, I suppose he did have a glint in his eye that reminds me a bit of Robbie Williams . No? Maybe? Gary would have one further Top 40 hit in 1991 but has continued to release material as recently as 2014.
Oh please. Not again. Not another Eurodance mega mix single! After Technotronic and Black Box pulled off the same cheap stunt of releasing a single made up of all their other previous hits mixed together because…well just because they could, here were Snap! getting in on the act. Theirs was called “Mega Mix” – as opposed to Black Box’s “The Total Mix” and Technotronic’s “Megamix” – they were so imaginative with their titles weren’t they?
“Mega Mix” peaked No 10 which seems remarkable given all the tracks on it had all been Top 10 hits themselves in the last 12 months (including a No 1). How did people keep falling for this shit? Was it a club DJ thing? Thankfully, we won’t see Snap! for another 12 months or so but when they do return it will be as serious as cancer.
Finally, finally James are in the TOTP studio. After having three (albeit smallish)Top 40 hits in 1990 without being invited onto the show, the producers could ignore them no longer when the re-release of “Sit Down” went straight in at No 7. Originally released on Rough Trade in 1989 when it peaked at No 77, the band were convinced by new label Fontana to re-record it with Pixies producer Gil Norton and, propelled by a major marketing campaign (which even included appearing on Wogan before the single was released), it became a huge hit spending three weeks at No 2 behind Chesney Hawkes (sorry Chesney lad but there’s no defending that).
In a way, the song is the total antithesis of Gary Clail’s “Human Nature”, reassuring us that we are not all alone in the world with our worries and anxieties and to reach out (sorry, hate that phrase) to our fellow human beings and sit down next to each other to succour some comfort. When played live in Paris before it was released, the Mancunian element of the audience spontaneously sat down on the floor eventually triggering the whole 1000 strong crowd to do the same. This communal sitting down was repeated at a show at the G-Mex, Manchester in December 1990 thereby setting a trend tho be repeated at every show for the last 30 odd years. And yes, I’ve seen James live and sat down with them.
“Sit Down” success would pave the way for the band to become a huge mainstream success. The time of James had arrived.
It’s Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks up next with their horrendous treatment of The Beatles song “She’s A Woman”. Having watched it back, quite what is it that Shabba Ranks adds to the record? There’s a mini rap breakdown towards the middle of it when he blathers on about ‘crazy music lovers’ or something but it only lasts a few seconds. Other than that he seems to be making some indecipherable noises in the background throughout -presumably he was extorting us to ‘wind it up’ or some other such nonsense.
I’ve always sided with Mark Lamarr when it comes to Shabba Ranks. Apart from his repulsive views, I’ve always viewed him as ridiculous for his tendency to shout out ‘Shabba’ in what felt like all his records which was beautifully lampooned in Phoenix Nights…
…Ray Von there who, like James before him, was also asking for people to “Sit Down”.
“She’s A Woman” peaked at No 20.
Now then, Bruno Brookes in a half way decent segue shock now as he finds a way to bridge the gap between Shabba Ranks and the next act Definition Of Sound. “Shabba Ranks who once said of himself I’m not a star I’m a galaxy. There you are that’s the definition of self confidence…” I don’t need to join the dots for what comes next do I?
Definition Of Sound were Kevin Clark and Don Weekes although they went by the monikers of Kevwon and The Don. That’s Kevwon not Rayvon. As well as the single “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, they also had an album out called “Love And Life: A Journey With The Chameleons” which was a bit confusing as there was also the Manchester band called The Chameleons. Anyway, I looked up the album on Amazon and saw some customer reviews of it. One was positively brimming with enthusiasm for it:
There is not one bad track on this excellent album. It sounds as fresh today as it did back in the early nineties and is a real feel good collection of songs.
There was also this courtesy of marinegirl who simply said:
Dreadful
Well, you can’t please everyone.
I’m guessing that the lucky number seven the chorus is linked in with the title of the track given its significance and the regular occurrence of it in the New Testament. There’s also some nicely squeezed in reference to drug taking in the lyrics:
Oi, I change my angle and my point (Oooh) In fact it’s time to roll up a joint.. venture
There also seems to be a lot of talk about women and the pursuit of them and yet Kevwon told Smash Hits magazine that he was “as sexy as a wet stamp”. Well, if you’re a philatelist …wet stamps…just saying.
The start of the 90s had seen The Rolling Stones on the road with their Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour but recordings wise, they would not release an album of new material until 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge”. To fill the gap between that and 1989’s “Steel Wheels”, a live album of the tour was released. Entitled “Flashpoint”, it featured 15 live tracks and two new studio recordings one of which was the single “Highwire”. Supposedly written about the international arms trade and the events that led to the first US war with Iraq, I have no recollection of this at all but I don’t mind it actually but then I’m hardly a Stones aficionado. The song’s first line (“We sell them missiles, we sell them tanks, we give them credit, you can call up the bank”) was considered far too politically sensitive by the BBC and duly the video shown on TOTP begins with the second verse. However, it wasn’t on their list of banned songs presumably because it was released after the conflict had ended.
“Highwire” peaked at No 29.
He’s done it! Chesney Hawkes is No 1! Yes, Chesney mania is in full swing as people can’t seem to get enough of his “The One And Only” single. He’s back in the studio tonight with his band although, they’re not quite the same people that adorned all the covers of the pop press. By the end of its five week run at the top, the band line up had changed to include that guy who looked a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips on bass and the black guy on keyboards who gets very over excited during this performance had been replaced by a white dude. Also, the drummer has been changed so that it’s Chesney’s brother Jodie up there on the sticks.
Ah yes, Chesney’s drummer. I promised you a boring Chesney story last time and here it is. I was once in the same room as Chesney’s drummer! It was for an album playback event at a bar in Manchester (I think it was for Ricky Ross) and the record company rep had got a load of us from the Our Price store I was working in on the guest list. It was a free bar and a very messy do. I didn’t speak to Chesney’s brother though I did manage to grab a few words with Ricky. That’s it. Thats’ my Chesney story…
…ooh, and I’ve found another example to support my musical sibling rivalry theory that I posited at the start of the post. Whatever you might think about Chesney (and James fans clearly hate him) he was, is and will always remain more famous than his brother.
See, this post should really be over now what with that final bit of sibling theme tying it altogether nicely but sadly, there is still one ‘song’ left. The play out video is “Over To You John” by Jive Bunny. FOR F***’S SAKE! The end of March 1991 and these pillocks are still in the charts. Thankfully it is the last time we shall ever see them. Yes, it is finally all over.
“Over To You John” reminds me of the 1983 single by Pink Floyd called “Not Now John”. Thankfully, there isn’t a Jive Bunny style Pink Floyd mega mix. Or is there…..yikes!
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Dannii Minogue
Love And Kisses
Not likely
2
The Bee Gees
Secret Love
If I’d wanted Chain Reaction (which I didn’t), I’d have bought back in 1986
3
Gary Clail and O-Nu Sound System
Human Nature
No but I easily could have
4
Snap!
Mega Mix
Hell no
5
James
Sit Down
Not the single but I have their first Best Of album with it on
6
Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks
She’s A Woman
Horrendous stuff – no
7
Definition Of Sound
Wear Your Love Like Heaven
No but I think I downloaded it off iTunes years later
8
The Rolling Stones
Highwire
Nah
9
Chesney Hawkes
The One And Only
Nope
10
Jive Bunny
Over To You John
Now please f**k off John and never come back
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.
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 