It’s late February 1998 and Sir Elton John has just become…well…Sir Elton John after he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to music and for raising money for AIDS charities. Apparently, when the Lord Chamberlain announced Elton, he called him “Sir John Elton”. He surely wasn’t having a little joke at Elton’s expense? Not in the presence of Her Majesty? What about etiquette and decorum and all those sort of things? I’m being facetious of course. It would have been brilliant if it had been deliberate but I’m beyond doubt that it was a genuine mistake and not a constructed gag along lines of Dexys performing “Jackie Wilson Said” on TOTP beneath a huge backdrop of the Scottish darts player Jocky Wilson*

*In a recent Dexys at the BBC programme, Kevin Rowland admitted that was a deliberate prank on the band’s behalf and not the mistake of some musically miseducated BBC employee.

Still, what’s in a name anyway? Let’s see if any of this show’s acts have interesting nomenclature related stories…

Opening the show are a trio who are all about their name to the point that their debut single is named after them. Cleopatra had debuted on the charts with “Cleopatra’s Theme” two weeks prior to this appearance at No 3 but had descended to No 13 by the time they were awarded another go on the show prompting the obvious question of ‘why?’ Blame Chris Cowey again for his policy of showcasing songs they were going down the charts, and in this case, opening the show! It just didn’t seem right to me. I guess it must have been getting lots of airplay maybe but even so. After naming their first hit after themselves, conversely, Cleo Higgins would reject it totally in 2012 to take part in The Voice UK via the show’s blind audition process. She would end up getting through to the semi-finals before getting knocked out. Oh and one more thing about names, the opening lines of the first verse of “Cleopatra’s Theme” are:

“Get a pen and paper, write down our name”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: David Paich / Kenny Hayes / Zainham Higgins / Yonah Lynvest / Cleopatra Lynvest / William Scaggs / Timothy Scrafton
Cleopatra’s Theme lyrics © Boz Scaggs Music, Hudmar Publ Co Inc, Hudmar Publishing Co Inc

That might have been good advice for the Lord Chamberlain!

Apparently Ocean Colour Scene struck upon their name by choosing random words they liked the sound of after looking through books in a library. Well, it’s as good a way as any I suppose. For their single “It’s A Beautiful Thing”, they were joined by legendary soul P. P. Arnold (real name Patricia Ann Cole – her stage name was suggested by photographer Gered Mankowitz) just as they had been for their single before last “Travellers Tune” but she was given a proper credit on this one seeing as her vocals are very much to the forefront. The fourth and final single taken from their album “Marchin’ Already”, it’s a mood heavy piece that full of depth and substance but in my final reckoning, it does seem to go on rather and there’s a fair bit of over-emoting from Simon Fowler and P. P. Maybe that’s the problem – the double vocalist model is overkill?

For the record, “It’s A Beautiful Thing” was the first single release in seven not to make the Top 10 for the band. They have not returned there since. Not that that means too much anymore. They’re just the facts (ma’am).

Oh blimey! We haven’t reached this lot already have we? Another Level – an R&B boy band – were never going to appeal to me but they did seem remarkably dull in spite of my in-built prejudices. Put together by Nick Raphael and Christian Tattersfield for their record label Northwestside Records, the groups name was a rather telegraphed reference to the ambition of the label and the desire to elevate the band’s music to new heights (yawn). The idea behind their signing was to plug into the urban music movement that was getting loads of traction in the UK. A label tie-in with Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records meant the emerging rap superstar would guest on Another Level’s debut single “Be Alone No More” presumably giving them the credibility that other urban artist hopefuls would have coveted.

As I said, they were never going to pique my interest and maybe my ears were pre-programmed to not hear any quality in their music but my god their song was boring. One paced and devoid of any attention grabbing hooks, its popularity bemused me. And yet they were really successful. Their next single went to No 1 and their eponymous debut album achieved platinum level sales in the UK. Another level indeed. Somehow though, defeat was grabbed from the jaws of victory as they were gone within two years having haemorrhaged half the band line up amid solo career ambitions.

Dane Bowers would somehow eke out a career that kept him on the fringes of the celebrity world via reality TV shows like The Big Reunion, Totally Boyband, Celebrity Big Brother and Celebrity Come Dine With Me. Well, it’s a living (sort of) I suppose. Music-wise, his biggest accomplishment post-Another Level was being the loser in the chart battle of August 2000 (‘The Battle of the Posh Girls’) when his involvement with True Steppers and Victoria Beckham’s record “Out Of Your Mind” couldn’t prevent Spiller and Sophie Ellis-Bextor claiming the No 1 with “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”. Should have taken it to another level bruv.

Oh no! If I was concerned because we’d reached the time of Another Level, I’m in full blown panic that the era of the next artist is upon us. There’s a lot to talk about here and, sticking with this post’s nomenclature theme, we start with said artist’s name. Presenter Jayne Middlemiss takes a stab at explaining its origins to us in her intro by saying “Her father was a Native Indian hence the funny name – Shania Twain”. OK, so first off, that sounds a fairly un-PC statement Jayne. Interestingly, the show’s subtitles say “Native American” and not “Native Indian”. Secondly, it’s not strictly true. The name she was given at birth was Eilleen Regina Edwards – the Twain surname comes from her stepfather who adopted her and her two sisters. As for the Shania bit, at the request of her record company, she chose a name that supposedly she took from a biracial wardrobe mistress whose mother was Native American whilst her father was white because it had such a hopeful ring to it. It’s been rumoured that Shania is actually an Ojibwa word meaning ‘on my way’ though this has been disputed by one of her biographers.

Anyway, enough of that. Despite having been a recording artist for five years, none of her previously released material has made any impact on us in the UK until “You’re Still The One” took her into the Top 10. A country pop ballad written as an ‘up yours’ to those doubting the authenticity and validity of her marriage* to her producer ‘Mutt’ Lange (who also co-wrote it with her), it was a huge crossover moment not just for Shania but for country music itself. Previous attempts to blend the two worlds of country and pop by the likes of Garth Brooks had never really taken off in the UK (though he’d enjoyed tremendous success in America) but Shania would change all of that with her third album “Come On Over” from which “You’re Still The One” was taken. Bluntly put, it was a monster with teeth. Selling enough copies in the UK to go twelve times platinum, it also topped our album chart for eleven weeks and was our best selling album of 1999. Note the year of that last fact – 1999 not 1998. Yes, the breakout success of “You’re Still The One” looked like being an outlier for a while and I, for one, dismissed Twain’s bankability. The album sold steadily but not spectacularly for the whole of 1998, spending 13 weeks inside the Top 40 between No 36 and No 15. Two more singles were released from it that were both decent sized but not huge hits. Then, some 14 months after its release, came “That Don’t Impress Me Much” with its line about Brad Pitt and the UK record buying public went crazy for it. Ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 reignited sales of its parent album and when “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” followed it into the Top 3, Shania’s superstar status was assured. I hate those songs with their horrible, clunky hooks but that’s for future posts.

*Shania and Lange would divorce in 2010 after he had an affair with her best friend. Six months after their divorce was finalised, Shania married the former husband of said best friend. Make of that what you will.

As for “You’re Still The One”, it’s a passable, inoffensive ballad which gave no glimpse of the musical horrors to come. I even learned its chords as it was one of the songs we had to play as part of a guitar class I joined around 2009. Some 15 years later and I’m working as a theatre usher. One of the shows I worked was a Shania Twain tribute act. Oh..My…God. It was the longest night of my life! Literally – she played well over her allotted time, mainly because she wouldn’t stop talking to the audience and getting them up on stage with her. Ah yes, the audience. I’ve never seen so many cowboy hats in a confined space in my life. Then there were the superfans who’d spent thousands on following their idol. One man had been to Las Vegas for a meet and greet with the real thing and then did it again three moths later. And he spent a small fortune buying one of Shania’s guitars that had her name emblazoned on it. That still wasn’t enough for him though and so he was following the Shania tribute around the country on her tour going to as many gigs as he could. Look, I get the appeal of tribute acts. It’s your chance to see a favourite artist that doesn’t tour anymore or band who have long since split up. Or it might just be that you can’t afford to see the real thing – look at the Oasis reunion ticket prices. Despite all this though, the audience for the Shania tribute was more like a cult. I was begging for the next song to be the last but they kept on coming. She was still on stage 45 minutes after the show was advertised to have finished. Now that, that didn’t impress me much. At all.

Now we have the next chapter in the strange and short story of N–Tyce. Strange and short? Well, yes. Undeniably short in that they were only around for about a year, four singles and one album. And strange ? Yes, in that, despite being around in a time when all female bands were in the ascendancy with the likes of Spice Girls, All Saints and Eternal all being mega successful, N-Tyce never had a bigger hit than No 12 and their one and only album flopped meaning they’ve become almost forgotten. Said No 12 hit was “We Come To Party” and the follow up was this – “Telefunkin” – which peaked at No 16. It seems to be extolling the delights of phoning an x-rated chat line even quoting a number – 0589 – which, according to AI, could be a postal code for Oslo, a specific product code for Anchor Freccia 6 yarn or the Armenian Full Stop Unicode character. Hmm. Guess they just made it up then. As for their band name, they kind of got undermined by Justin Timberlake featuring American boy band NSYNC who were around at the same time.

Next an exercise in cold, hard, cynical musical exploitation. I’ve no idea who Rest Assured were and I have no desire to find out but their only hit – “Treat Infamy” – was all about that string part in The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” which is recycled here to create a very different type of track. Starting off with some rapid bpm it reaches a crescendo before there’s a breakdown halfway through and those familiar strings emerge into the mix. Jayne Middlemiss attempted to explain the history behind the strings part in her intro but to clarify, The Verve recreated (not sampled) the strings from an orchestral version of “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones performed by their producer Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestra on a 1965 LP. As the song’s publisher’s proved source of origin for The Verve track, a writing credit had to given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and it also meant that the band didn’t own that part of their best known song meaning that it could be sampled by any old Tom, Dick or Harry like Rest Assured.

Now that’s out of the way, back to “Treat Infamy” and after the jolt of the mid-track breakdown came the shock and horror of one of the people on stage bursting into song. Well, speaking is a more accurate description. Speaking in time maybe? I certainly wouldn’t call it rapping. And what does he say? Nothing of any consequence. Something about his life being incomplete, a knowing reference to the Rolling Stones and then a weak play on words that he possibly stole from Carry On Cleo…patra comin’ atcha!

By the late 90s, the idea of soap opera actors becoming pop stars was nothing new. Indeed, it was almost expected. In 1998 though, we at least had someone try it from a soap that had yet to dip its toe in the warm waters of the charts. Chester-based show Hollyoaks was still relatively new by soap standards having only been around for two and a half years and I have to admit to having watched it on and off in that time. One of its original characters was Jambo played by Will Mellor. A mixture of Jack-the-lad and unconventional romantic, he’s gone down well with the show’s fledgling audience and, bolstered by that reaction, Mellor made the decision to quit Hollyoaks and make a bid for pop stardom. Inevitably, he (or his label) chose a cover version with which to launch him settling on Leo Sayer’s 1977 No 1 “When I Need You”. It was both a sensible and uninspiring choice.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mellor crashed into the charts at No 5 earning himself this TOTP appearance in the process. He gives it the whole pained, tortured artist turn with a vocal that’s maybe just the wrong side of nasally but he didn’t look totally out of place on the BBC’s flagship pop music show. Now, Will seems like a decent sort from what I’ve seen of him but back in 1998 he was definitely on my personal black list. Why? Because the weekend following the release of his single, he decided that, as a Stockport lad, he’d have a stroll into the town’s shopping centre Merseyway…where I worked at the Our Price store. And yes, he decided to pop in for a browse of the racks. Dressed every inch like the pop star he thought himself to be including shades on indoors, he proceeded to cause quite the stir as Stockport’s teenage female population realised who he was. I’m pretty damned sure this was all deliberate on Will’s part and frankly, I could have done without it on a busy Saturday afternoon. Didn’t he have proper promotional duties to perform? On reflection though, Will was only 21 at the time and who wouldn’t have been tempted to stroll out in your local town as a newly anointed pop star if you had the chance. His music career lasted just one more minor hit single before he returned to acting in hit series Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and more recently as sub-postmaster Lee Castleton in Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

Celine Dion has been toppled after just one week at the head of the charts and her vanquisher was one of the most unlikely of all the decade’s No 1 artists. Cornershop were formed in Leicester in 1991 by Tjinder Singh and drew inspiration for their sound from Singh’s experience as a British-born Sikh, fusing Punjabi music with British indie rock. After two albums and a clutch of singles and EPs were released to critical acclaim but lame sales, third album “When I Was Born For The 7th Time” appeared headed by lead single “Brimful Of Asha”. Despite achieving their highest chart position yet of No 60 and topping John Peel’s Festive 50 chart when initially released in 1997, this was hardly the limousine life of global pop stars stuff. Enter Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim whose Big Beat remix of the track made it an instant dance floor classic with its increased bpm and mix of samples (including one from The Monkees I’ve learned subsequently).

So what was “Brimful Of Asha” all about? We all know the answer to this one by now don’t we? OK, for those arriving late and cramming in at the back, the title refers to Asha Bhosle, the legendary playback singer of Indian film culture who would pre-record the vocals for song and dance numbers for the actors to lip sync to. She has recorded over 12,000 songs making her the most recorded artist in music history as acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records. Her title of ‘Sadi Rani’ (Punjabi for ‘Our Queen’) is also referenced in the lyrics alongside other playback singers, some record labels and the name of a T-Rex compilation album which presumably all had some significance for Tjinder Singh.

So, the other question that looms large is why were the band not performing the Norman Cook remix version of the track on this TOTP? After all, that’s the version that was being played in the clubs and on the radio that made it a hit second time around? Was it that they didn’t know what to do with themselves in the studio with a speeded up bpm? Whatever the reason, it seems odd to pass up the opportunity to promote the song on what was still a sizeable platform despite all the show’s then difficulties. Oh, and the band’s name? That came from the perceived stereotype of South Asians owning corner shops which puts me in mind of the classic Goodness Gracious Me sketch where they brilliantly subverted the ‘going for a curry’ stereotype…

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.