Soul II Soul

TOTP 20 JUL 1995

Posted on December 17, 2023 by 80stastic

One of the interesting things about these TOTP repeats is that they’re a great snapshot of cultural tastes of the time, shining a spotlight on sounds, artists and personalities that were popular and prominent at a specific moment. Obviously, some names transverse any particular juncture; U2 first example who are on this show later can’t be put into a time capsule but then there are people like the presenter of this show. Does the name Gayle Tuesday ring any bells? No? How about Brenda Gilhooly? Nothing? OK. Maybe if you saw a clip…

…anything now? Got her? Yep, Gayle Tuesday was nothing to do with a song by The Rolling Stones (Ruby Tuesday) nor the new Doctor Who’s latest companion (Ruby Sunday) but was a character created by comedian Brenda Gilhooly who briefly rose to fame in the mid 90s. A send up of the traditional image of and persona allocated to Page 3 models, the character appeared on programmes such as !Viva Cabaret! and The Jack Dee Show as well as forming a partnership of sorts with Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage character. A TV show of her own called Gayle’s World arrived in 1996 but both Gilhooly and her creation seemed to disappear after that. A relaunch in 2010 called Gayle Tuesday: The Comeback appeared on the Living channel in 2010 but Brenda makes her living these days as a writer having penned and starred in the 2019 Radio 4 sit com Madam Mayor. In July 1995 though, she was Gayle Tuesday and a ‘golden mic’ slot on TOTP beckoned…

We start with Corona who were infeasibly onto their third hit single with “Try Me Out”. As the UK went dance music crazy in the 90s, the number of different genres and sub genres of that generic term was bewildering. The scariest part of the Our Price store where I was working at the time was always the Dance Collections section. You really had to have someone who knew their stuff when it came to dance music to sort it out and keep it maintained. Anyway, what would Corona’s music be categorised as? I’ve seen it described online as Euro-NRG, Nu-NRG and, of course, the catch-all term Eurodance. Never having been even remotely qualified to have sorted out the Dance Collections section, I couldn’t possibly give any insight into the discussion other than to say it sounded crap to me. This one comes across like it was written to order, or perhaps formulated by AI if it had existed then. All the essentials are there but it just sounds so cynical and calculated. However it gestated, it worked becoming the band’s third consecutive Top 10 hit.

Next a song and artist I don’t believe I’ve thought about since 1995. Dana Dawson was from Queens, New York but she was more popular in Europe than the US. Not an official one hit wonder (she had two minor follow ups) but “3 Is Family” was by far her biggest. A fluffy but enjoyable bit of dance pop, the online reviews of it I’ve found made comparisons with the output of Eternal and Dina Carroll but it reminds me more of “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice. My comparison wasn’t all the two singers shared – they both released their first ever recordings at the age of just 14 – Shanice brought out her debut album “Discovery” in 1987 whilst Dana entered the world of pop with her single “Ready To Follow You” in 1988.

The latter initially found success just in France as her records were only available there so she signed with EMI in 1993 to open up more territories for her including the UK. The plan worked straight off the bat as she struck big with her first EMI single “3 Is Family” peaking at No 9 over here. A tale of the impending arrival of a first born child, its catchy chorus about a couple becoming a family of three employs some basic maths to great effect. A year later, the Spice Girls would bag the Christmas No 1 with a similarly titled song but in reverse with “2 Become 1” reportedly about the act of lovemaking though the line “Be a little wiser baby, put it on, put it on” suggested that, unlike in Dana’s song, the protagonists weren’t planning on starting a family!

Dana Dawson sadly passed away in 2010 aged just 36 from cancer.

There’s time for a quick boobs gag from Gayle before she introduces Paul Weller whom she describes as “gorgeous, funky, fab” before rounding off with a “phwoar!”. The Modfather as a hunk? Really? Look, I know he has a super loyal fanbase who swear by him (my elder brother is one of them) but I always thought it was about his music not his looks, no?

*watches video for “You Do Something To Me”*

Hmm. Well, he certainly looked better than he does these days but who doesn’t? I guess he has a certain beanpole charm to him. In fact, in the shots in the back of the van with those shades on and that loose, shaggy hair, he has a whiff of Liam Gallagher about him. Anyway, we really should talk about the music and this track was the third single to be taken from his “Stanley Road” album and it would peak at No 9. Not his biggest ever hit but perhaps his most well known solo song? To the casual listener at least maybe. It’s a very charismatic, evocative ballad with a lyric about unattainable love though apparently it’s very popular at weddings. Another one of those totally misunderstood songs that gets played inappropriately like stalker anthem “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. As I remember, this was the point where the ‘godfather of Britpop’ tag really started to circulate in conjunction with the rise of the movement that Weller was supposedly the originator of. I’m not sure if he welcomed it or not but he certainly collaborated with some of its purported proponents on “Stanley Road” including Liam’s brother Noel and Steve Craddock of Ocean Colour Scene. It remains easily his best selling solo album.

The next four songs have all been on the show before so I might just whip through them pretty quickly if that’s alright by you. The first is “Love Enuff” by Soul II Soul. I didn’t have much to say about this one when it was on as the play out track recently and my cupboard is still pretty bare now. I guess I could say that some of the backing singer harmonies remind me a bit of En Vogue or that main vocalist Penny Ford did the singing on Snap!’s early hits. Is that enough? Sorry, enuff?

Gayle gets a gag in about the rude name of the next act before we get another airing of the studio performance from the other week by Shaggy (ooerr!) and Rayvon. As with Soul II Soul, I’m at a loss as to what to say about these two. We all know that “In The Summertime” was originally a No 1 hit for Mungo Jerry in 1970 so that won’t do.

*checks Shaggy’s Wikipedia entry*

Oh, his son is a music artist as well. He’s a rapper and goes by the name of Robb Banks (or sometimes styled as Robb Bank$ inevitably). His influences include Biggie Smalls and…is this right?…Sade?! The list also includes some names I’ve never heard of like SpaceGhostPurrp and Slug. Does his Dad get a mention? Oh yeah, he’s in there (just referred to literally as ‘his Dad’). Now I might regret this but I wonder what Robb Banks sounds like?

*listens to his single “You Kno It”*

Oh God. Why did I bother? What did I think was going to happen? It’s dreadful. I didn’t think I would ever say this but I actually prefer Shaggy!

It’s the video for U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” next back for what I believe is a third outing on the show as it is going back up the charts having seemingly peaked at No 2 a month previously. The reason for its reversal of fortunes is pretty obvious – the film it was taken from – Batman Forever – had been released to UK cinemas six days before this TOTP was broadcast. Its eleven week run in the Top 40 (in itself definitely not a regular occurrence in the mid 90s) would yield the following chart positions:

2 – 2 – 3 – 6 – 10 – 6 – 4 – 7 -13 – 17 – 26

The power of a blockbuster film promoting a single on display right there. That’s not to say it wasn’t a good song of course. I always quite liked it and certainly enjoyed it more than the big hits from the other Batman films up to this point. If you’ve forgotten what they were, there was “Batdance” by Prince (where was the song in this track?) and “Face To Face” by Siouxsie and the Banshees (seriously, who does remember that one?).

Another song in the charts enjoying a helping hand from being on a hit film’s soundtrack is “Shy Guy” by Diana King which was featured in Bad Boys. Now, she may really only be known for this one song in the UK but Diana is quite the trailblazer both musically and culturally in her home country of Jamaica. Whilst her blend of reggae, dancehall and R&B pushed back musical boundaries, in her personal life, Diana came out as a lesbian in 2012 making her one of the first and only LGBTQ+ Jamaican artists in the music industry. So it turned out that as well as not wanting no fly guy, she didn’t want a shy guy either really.

And so to the climax of the show and yes, I’m not counting another week at No 1 for The Outhere Brothers – this was a much more seismic event in the world of pop music. It’s not just an exclusive performance of the new Take That single “Never Forget” but our first look at the group in a post Robbie Williams world! Eek! Yes, just three days before this TOTP went out, Williams had officially announced that he was leaving Take That. The fall out, rumours and accusations surrounding this were huge. Did he resign or was he asked to leave by the rest of the band? Would they continue without him or replace him? Would they split up? Double eek! Whatever the truth, there were some very immediate logistical consequences for the band to deal with. Take That were in the middle of a world tour and just about to begin the UK leg of it. How would they accommodate a Robbie-shaped hole? Well, as I recall they offered a refund to anyone who had bought a ticket for one of their concerts if they felt short-changed that they wouldn’t be seeing Williams. As I recall, maybe one person cashed in on the refund for that reason. My wife went to see them with a friend on that tour and said it was a great show and that she didn’t even notice Robbie wasn’t there.

So, tour troubles resolved but what to do about the new single? “Never Forget” didn’t have Gary Barlow on lead vocals for once but Howard Donald. A surprise it may have been but a problem? No, Howard wasn’t going anywhere. However, the song did feature Robbie singing prominently in the middle eight and the bridge part before the final chorus. Well, they didn’t re-record the single that was released to shops because promo copies featuring Robbie had been made available to radio stations weeks before. However, for the purpose of promoting the song on TV shows, they performed a version with the Williams vocals edited out. Watch this TOTP appearance. I’m pretty sure you can’t hear Robbie on it anywhere.

Talking of different versions of the song, the edit that was released as a single is quite different from the album version. It was remixed by Meatloaf producer Jim Steinman who added a boys choir part to the intro and coda and a steal from Verdi’s Requiem right at the very start of the song. These enhancements made for a very crowded stage for this TOTP performance with the lads sharing it with eight choristers and a gospel choir. Who knew it would take so many people to replace Robbie Williams?! Maybe they wanted to make a statement that they weren’t going anywhere and they didn’t need Robbie to put on a show? If so, it certainly worked – the four of them look highly delighted. Nothing forced about their smiling faces; maybe there was an element of (dare I say it) relief in there? Image-wise, Howard has toned down his attempt to turn into the musical version of Chewbacca by tying his hair back and he’s also pre-dated David Beckham by at least a couple of years by his choice to wear a sarong. Mark and Jason look like 70s pin ups with their grown out hair dos that Black Lace would probably describe as ‘girly-curly hair’ whilst Gary just looks like he’s counting the dance steps in his head like he always does. Those dance moves include, of course, that “Radio Ga Ga” style hands aloft move which is actually pretty effective and inclusive (even the two left footed amongst us can pull that off).

Overall, I think they do a pretty good job of displaying a band united despite the potential for derailment caused by the departure of a popular member of the group. The lyrics and theme of the song also help with Robbie’s leaving somehow imbuing them with more significance. There’s also an element of grounded-ness in there as if they’re saying “Look, we’re just a pop group at the end of the day. You’ll move on as we will”. It puts me in mind of John Lennon saying to the fans that they couldn’t stay those lovable moptops forever when The Beatles decided to concentrate on recording and stop touring. He reminded them that those early records were still there and that if they really couldn’t let go of the band’s previous image and style then there was always The Monkees anyway. “Some day soon this will all be someone else’s dream” indeed. “Never Forget” has become possibly Take That’s biggest song – not in sales maybe (though it will go to No 1 for three weeks) but in terms of its profile to the point that the 2023 version of the band chose to sing it at the Coronation Concert for King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

After quite a lengthy dissection of Take That, I’m going to give short shrift to these two berks. The Outhere Brothers are No1 for a third week with “Boom Boom Boom”. There you go. That’s it. That’s the comment.

And that’s nearly it. There’s just time for Gayle Tuesday to say goodbye and advise the watching female audience to remember to stick their chests out and giggle a lot before the play out track kicks in. I’ve never heard of Tecknicolor nor their track “Take 5 In The Jungle” though, of course, I was aware of “Take 5” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I’m not sure that this dance version of the jazz standard made the Top 40 and there’s precious little information about it online that I can find. For what it’s worth, my opinion on it would be that with all the dance music around at the time, did we really need to bring jazz into the equation?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Corona	Try Me Out	No
2	Dana Dawson	3 Is Family	I did not
3	Paul Weller	You Do Something To Me	Not but I had the Stanley Road album
4	Soul II Soul	Love Enuff	Nah
5	Shaggy and Rayvon	In The Summertime	As if
6	U2	Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
7	Diana King	Shy Guy	Nope
8	Take That	Never Forget	It’s a no from me
9	The Outhere Brothers	Bom Boom Boom	Ha! Away with you!
10	Tecknicolor	Take 5 In The Jungle	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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001t61l/top-of-the-pops-20071995

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

Posted on December 13, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve reached the middle of July 1995 in these BBC4 TOTP repeats and there was a lot going on in the world of pop music at this time. Four days on from this broadcast, hearts of teenage girls everywhere in the UK were breaking as the news that Robbie Williams had left Take That! Shock! Horror! More of that later though as there’s another musical separation that rocked the industry just a day after this TOTP beamed into our homes when George Michael finally parted ways with Sony Music after being in dispute with them for over a year. As if all of that wasn’t enough, get this…Dale Winton was the guest host on TOTP! I know! It’s hard to be sure with these ‘golden mic’ hosts how big a name they were at the time that might have informed the decision to invite them on the show. Having checked Dale’s Wikipedia entry, it looks like he’d been presenting Supermarket Sweep for a couple of years by 1995 which, if my memory serves, started out as cult viewing for students but which rapidly grew in popularity. I could be wrong about this but, assuming I’m not, Dale may or may not have been instantly recognisable to TOTP viewers depending on which demographic you fell into. Sadly, Dale died in 2018 aged just 62 but I shall always remember him fondly for completely trashing Lulu whilst he was on an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Excellent work Mr. Winton!

We start tonight with yet another song and artist that I have obliterated from my memory. It turns out that Jinny wasn’t a person but a band (just like Toyah and Nena) and this track – “Keep Warm” – was the first and biggest of their two UK chart hits. Now, listening to this it sounds very much like Black Box to me which makes it a bit of an anachronism in 1995. Its back story supports my theory. It was originally released in 1991 and failed to chart presumably as the Italo House phenomenon spearheaded by the likes of the aforementioned Black Box and Starlight had run out of steam. However, it was given a second chance when the UK went mad for Eurodance in the mid 90s – meh, Italo House, Eurodance…what’s the difference?* – and it became a No 11 hit.

* I’m sure the dance heads out there will tell me that there is and what it is but I’m really not that interested

Now I believe that the blonde woman fronting this performance is one Carryl Varley who would go on to have a TV career presenting quiz shows and featured on the children’s Saturday morning show Scratchy & Co. Just like the woman from Black Box, it’s rumoured that she didn’t actually sing on any of the Jinny records and that it was the woman behind the Corona hits that supplied the vocals. Not the woman who did the TOTP appearances and whose face was on the artwork of the singles and albums though as she didn’t do the actual singing either! Confused? You will be…a point to anyone who knows which US sitcom that tagline is from**. We should probably ask queen of the quizzes Carryl Varley. She’ll know.

Oh don’t tell me I’ve got to find something to say about MN8 again! OK, well “Happy” was their third consecutive Top 10 hit and it turns out that it wasn’t actually their single at all. It was originally recorded by British funk band Hi-Tension in 1984 and then by American R&B group Surface in 1987. What do those previous two versions sound like? I don’t know and to be honest, I can’t be arsed to find out either it being such a dreary, lifeless thing.

Oh and Dale? Mate, it’s M-N-8 (as in emanate) not M – and – 8! Got that? Great! Or should that be GR8?

Next, the first of two songs on the show tonight that the artist behind them doesn’t like that much. And it’s another bloody rerelease. “Kiss From A Rose” was originally out in 1994 as the second single from Seal’s sophomore album “Seal II” when it made No 20. That chart placing always seemed quite low for such an accomplished, fulsome and lavish ballad and fate determined that its story wouldn’t end there. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher asked Seal for permission to include it in the film and its soundtrack and once given and the song rereleased – Holy Heidi Klums! – a tsunami of sales engulfed the charts. It went to No 4 in the UK and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in America.

A second promo video was hastily put together for it featuring clips from the film and Seal singing next to the Bat Signal. With “Kiss From A Rose” and U2’s song from the film in the charts at the same time, it made for a nice little display in the Our Price store I was working in at the time when you needed to fill a tower with something. That was if you could get hold of the stock of course. I seem to recall there being some availability issues with the supplier for both singles.

So why doesn’t Seal like possibly his most well known hit? Well, apparently it was written in 1991 but Seal felt embarrassed by it and never even showed it to producer Trevor Horn when it came to recording his debut eponymous album. He still wasn’t very enamoured by it when his sophomore follow up was being laid down but quite liked the fact that Horn turned it into an eight million selling record. You don’t say.

The first of two bands who are associated with the Britpop movement now as Cast make their debut. I seem to have rather a connection with this lot despite hardly being a superfan. Rising from the ashes of The La’s after they imploded, Cast were an outlet for the creativity of their bass player John Power. Switching to rhythm guitar, he went through a number of different line ups before settling on the one in this TOTP appearance. So my connection with Cast was really a connection with Mr. Power. I’d caught The La’s live twice before they self-combusted; once as the support for Fine Young Cannibals when I confidently but ignorantly informed my wife that they were called The LA’s (as in the abbreviation for Los Angeles). The other time was when I saw them as the headline act in Manchester (must have been around 1991) when I’m pretty sure one of the band walked off stage in a huff never to return. Fast forward three years and I’m at the Manchester Opera House awaiting Elvis Costello on stage as my wife is a big fan. Who should be the support band that night? Yep, Cast. I’m not sure I twigged that this was John Power’s new band despite being sat a few rows from them as they watched Costello after their set was done but as I recall they were pretty good.

I’m guessing that they played “Finetime”, their debut single that they perform on this TOTP. Now, I may have refuted the notion of being a superfan earlier but I did buy this single. Some melodic, indie-ish guitar rock? I’m in. Someone I worked with at the time reckoned it sounded like Abba but I couldn’t understand what he was on about. If you were a scouser watching this TOTP then you might not have understood what Dale Winton was on about either when he pronounced their name as ‘Carst’. Oh dear. Incidentally, the drummer looks like he could be a mate of Damon Grant’s from Brookside. Boss!

It’s Dale’s favourite Summer ballad now (according to the man himself) and it’s “Grapevyne” by Brownstone. I really haven’t much to say about the song or group on this one. Sultry R&B was never really my bag and it wasn’t high on the list of priorities to listen to in that aforementioned Our Price store as I don’t remember hearing it played at all. My colleagues were more likely to put on Aphex Twin or Autechre or DJ Shadow – something like that anyway (yes, I was the uncool member of staff). Still, Brownstone’s performance here is very…erm…competent I guess, especially the a cappella bit at the end. Not sure why they spelt ‘grapevine’ with a ‘y’ in it though unless it’s the American spelling? Where’s Carryl Varley when you need her?

Before we move on to the next video, a momentary pause to highlight the fact that, yes, that is a young Iain Lee in the studio audience behind Dale’s left shoulder. Iain would have just turned 22 years old at the time but he was presenting The 11 O’Clock Show by the end of the decade which would give the world Ali G. Iain would enjoy a career as a writer, comedian and broadcaster and is currently working as a counsellor.

Back to the music and it’s time for a video exclusive from Hole. The follow up to their first ever UK hit “Doll Parts”, “Violet” was supposedly written about Courtney Love’s chaotic relationship with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins. It’s a riot of raucous guitars, power chords and Love’s strangulated vocals. As you might guess, this wasn’t for me. Far too…well…loud. The spooky video just served to alienate me from the song even more. Look, I know that some people swear by her but I think I’m with Dale when it comes to Courtney Love; she’s a bit of a worry.

So to that Take That news that both Dale and I promised earlier. Dale plugs the fact that they will be on the show next week to plug their new single (“Never Forget”) but as I said at the top of the post, Robbie Williams would leave the group three days before that TOTP appearance. Did they show up without him? I can’t remember so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, it’s a third (by my calculations) outing for Edwyn Collins and “A Girl Like You” on the show and yet again it’s the same clip of Edwyn’s first TOTP performance from about a month previous. I assume Edwyn was too busy touring or promoting his hit in other territories to come back on the show?

Now, whether you love it or hate it, you have to admire a song that features the words ‘acknowledge’, ‘metaphorically’ and ‘allegorically’ in its lyrics. I think it’s only outdone by “This Kiss” by Faith Hill which includes the phrase “centrifugal motion” in its song words. No, really…listen…

And so to one of the songs that will forever scream “Britpop!” at the top of its voice. Just as Pulp had had a couple of polite knocks at the door of the UK charts before smashing them in with a sledgehammer with their seminal “Common People” single, so Supergrass did the same with “Alright”. Both songs enjoyed almost identical chart trajectories, crashing in at No 2 on the first week of release, staying there for a week and then slipping to No 3 and spending a month inside the Top 10. It’s a great, knockabout song that, like “Wake Up Boo!” before it earlier in the year, had radio stations playing it endlessly it seemed. It became the band’s calling card, their signature tune – call it what you will – but it would become their albatross as well. As with Seal earlier, the band would come to dislike “Alright”. They stopped playing it live before the end of the decade; something I can confirm as I saw them in York in the early 2000s and it certainly didn’t make the set list then.

Unlike Pulp for whom “Common People” was the lead single from their seminal album “Different Class”, “Alright” was actually the fifth and final single from Supergrass’ “I Should Co Co”. Strange that the last release from an album should also be the biggest hit off it. I wonder why they kept it back so late? Given the band’s subsequent misgivings about it, maybe they were never that sure of its hit potential? And yet bassist Mick Quinn is on record as saying that he knew the song would be enormous because its backing track was “bulletproof”. Who knows the truth but release it they did and Supergrass made a super fast leap to superstardom.

“We’re baaaack!” they hollered at the message to camera piece at the top of the show and that’s exactly what I would like to see – the back of them. The Outhere Brothers are still No 1 with “Boom Boom Boom”. What more do you expect me to say about these two berks? OK, how about this? Their real names were Keith ‘Malik’ Mayberry and Lamar ‘Hula’ Mahone. The latter see seems rather apposite in the year that we lost Shane MacGowan as The Pogues took their name from the expression ‘Pogue Mahone’, an anglicisation of the Irish phrase ‘póg mo thóin’ meaning ‘kiss my arse’ – The Outhere Brothers certainly can.

The play out track is “Love Enuff” by Soul II Soul. I lost sight of Jazzie B and co after the “Joy” single in 1992 so I have no recollection of this track which was the lead single from the band’s fifth studio album “Volume V Believe”. It featured ex-Snap! vocalist Penny Ford and its peak of No 12 meant it was Soul II Soul’s biggest hit since the aforementioned “Joy”. And that rather dry, fact based analysis is all I have to say about it.

** Yes, it was of course from Soap

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jinny	Keep Warm	Nah
2	MN8	Happy	No thanks
3	Seal	Kiss From A Rose	I didn’t
4	Cast	Finetime	YES!
5	Brownstone	Grapevyne	Nope
6	Hole	Violet	No
7	Edwyn Collins	A Girl Like You	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Supergrass	Alright	No but I had the I Should Co Co album
9	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	As if
10	Soul II Soul	Love Enuff	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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001t61j/top-of-the-pops-13071995

TOTP 11 NOV 1993

Posted on November 17, 2022 by 80stastic

The 14th November 2022 saw the 70th anniversary of the UK’s official singles chart. That inaugural chart was published by the NME with the very first No 1 record being Al Martino’s “Here In My Heart”. Back in 1993 when this TOTP was broadcast, we were just three days away from the 41st birthday of the charts. Were there any celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary the year before? I can’t remember but what I do know is that as part of the 70th festivities, seven charts have been produced detailing the most streamed songs for each year of the charts’ existence. Some results were obvious – the most streamed track that was originally released in 1975 for example is “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Others were a little more surprising- 1990’s most streamed song is “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. As we’re up to 1993 in these TOTP repeats, let’s check out which was the most streamed track that was released in that year…oh that’s just plain wrong! “What Is Love” by Haddaway? Ha’way and shite man! That just about sums up the terrible year that was 1993. Still, we’re nearly through it and then Britpop is just around the corner. For now though, ‘turn and face the strange’ as we navigate another thirty minutes of nostalgia…

Hang on. Captain Hollywood? I thought we were in 1993 not 1990! Didn’t this guy have a hit called “I Can’t Stand It” as the decade began?

*checks official.charts.com

Well, sort of. It was officially credited to Twenty 4 Seven featuring Captain Hollywood but I was right about the year – it was a No 7 in 1990. There was a follow up too called “Are You Dreaming” which went Top 20. At that point the good captain (real name Tony Dawson-Harrison) left the project to begin his own new…erm…project called…erm…Captain Hollywood Project. Their first single was “More And More” which, and this is now almost becoming as regular an admission as Rishi Sunak claiming he was unaware of the latest scandal to engulf one of his cabinet before he appointed them, I have no memory of at all. Listening to it now, it sounds f*****g dreadful! Was this really what the pop fans of 1993 wanted? The heated up leftovers of what was rejected from the recording sessions of Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”?

The rapper is, I believe, the aforementioned Tony Dawson-Harrison who sounds like that voice over guy who does all those film trailers that begin with “In a world where…”. Apparently his voice was electronically modified to sound deeper. Why? Unless his true voice sounded like Joe Pasquale I don’t get why you would do that. I also don’t understand why all the guys on stage have a ponytail and are dressed like waiters at a high class restaurant. The whole thing is completely baffling, almost as baffling as how the record managed to get to No 23 in the charts.

As it’s nearly mid-November, the run up Christmas has started and that means, as host Mark Franklin points out, Best Of albums and plenty of ‘em. Artists peddling collections of their biggest hits around this time included Diana Ross, Wet Wet Wet, Soul II Soul, Bette Midler, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Christians and this guy – Bryan Adams. His “So Far So Good” album would end up as the sixth best selling of 1993 in the UK. This was quite astonishing when you consider that until the record breaking run at No 1 in 1991 by “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Bry’s biggest UK hit was “Run To You” which peaked just outside the Top 10 at No 11. Look at the chart standings in this country for every track on “So Far So Good”

Title	Chart peak
Summer of ’69	42
Straight from the Heart	51
It’s Only Love	29
Can’t Stop This Thing We Started	12
Do I Have to Say the Words?	30
This Time	41
Run To You	11
Heaven	38
Cuts Like A Knife	Did not chart
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You	1
Somebody	35
Kids Wanna Rock	N/A album track
Heat Of The Night	50
Please Forgive Me	2

Maybe they were big airplay hits and that’s how people knew them? Remember those streaming charts I mentioned earlier? The most streamed song that was released in 1985 was “Summer Of 69”. Or maybe Bryan had always been more of an albums guy until his Robin Hood moment? Even his 1987 album which generated zero UK Top 40 hits went gold and made our Top 10. Perhaps it was just all about that No 1 song but surely enough people had bought the single to not need to buy a Greatest Hits album to own it? Was it the new song “Please Forgive Me” that reeled people in? I don’t know why that should’ve because it was a right dirge. Its promo video was no better – a right snoozefest showing Bryan and his merry band of musos laying down the track in the studio. Even his dog who’s there for no apparent reason looks bored. Somehow the single made it to No 2.

https://youtu.be/9EHAo6rEuas

Here’s another track specifically recorded to promote a Best Of album – it’s the aforementioned Soul II Soul with “Wish”. Who was doing the singing for Jazzie B and co by 1993? Caron Wheeler had long since departed by then. Well, my research (by which I mean Wikipedia) tells me that’s the now sadly passed away Melissa Bell on stage who was actually pregnant at the time. One of her four children (not the one from this pregnancy though) would turn out to be pretty famous herself – singer and actress Alexandra Burke who won the 2008 series of The X Factor. As well as bagging herself three No 1 singles, she was also on the charity record by The X Factor Finalists who covered Mariah Carey’s “Hero” that I mentioned the other week.

Presumably Melissa’s pregnancy explains her cover-all outfit in this performance. The feathers on it reminded me of this long forgotten BBC costume drama from 1978 featuring the Welsh Robin Hood Twm Sion Cati and his rather ludicrous outfit.

https://youtu.be/chacdwFHC9A

Five Breakers again this week starting with Paul Weller and a third single from his “Wild Wood” album. “The Weaver EP” actually featured four tracks including Weller’s cover of Neil Young’s “Ohio” but the title track was the only song actually on the album. By this point, the rejuvenation of Paul was well under way with “The Weaver” peaking at No 18 after previous singles “Wild Wood” made No 14 and “”Sunflower” No 16. More than these solid chart performances though, it seemed to me that Weller was being accepted back into the fold of artists that meant something – it wasn’t just about nostalgia for The Jam. He was suddenly relevant again.

After The Style Council disappeared up their own arse as the 80s ended, it seemed like Weller had lost his mojo completely. Without a record contract for the first time since he was 17 he took a sabbatical for the whole of 1990 before restarting his musical career with some low key live gigs playing old Jam standards as well as some new songs before dipping his toe back into recording music with the release of No 36 single “Into Tomorrow” as The Paul Weller Movement. That paved the way for his debut, eponymous solo album in 1992 which in itself was in effect a trailer for “Wild Wood”. As for the song itself, it’s not too dissimilar to “Sunflower” with its ringing guitar licks albeit that it probably has more of a groove to it whereas “Sunflower” is a bit more strident sounding. Even the videos are alike being straightforward performance run throughs in a mixture of black and white and colour film. Both are resounding and engaging tracks however.

Ah shit! It’s Bollers time! Michael Bolton that is who’s turned up with a song the title of which suggests he’s doing his best Meatloaf impression. “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was actually written by Bollers himself alongside Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange who also co-wrote that Bryan Adams stinker that was on earlier. And guess what? This one’s terrible too! Lange seems to be the enemy of music, constructing anti-songs that go nowhere and do nothing. He has worked with some huge names like AC/DC and Britney Spears but his biggest claim to fame is producing Shania Twain (to whom he was also married) and her “Come On Over” album which is the best selling country album of all time and the best selling of the 90s but I always hated that so…ahem…that don’t impress me much. As for Michael Bolton, as usual he had an album out for Christmas called “The One Thing” from which “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” was taken. It would peak at No15 in the UK and No 6 in the US, the last time Bolton would visit the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10.

Next a single that I would have sworn came out at least two years later than this*. Leftfield are electronic dance duo Neil Barnes and Paul Daley who back in 1993 were about to break through into the mainstream with the release of “Open Up” which had its own secret weapon in the guest vocalist on the track, one John Lydon. Not seen in the charts for three years when PIL’s “Don’t Ask Me” made No 22 (another one of those Best Of promoting singles), Lydon’s growling vocals intertwined with some progressive house beats was an unlikely but winning combination. Anything he sings on is always installed with an instant sense of peril and brims with dread and it works a treat in this anxiety inducing track. The line ‘Burn Hollywood burn’ led to it being withdrawn from play on ITV’s The Chart Show due to an unfortunate case of timing which saw it in heavy rotation at the time of the Malibu bush fires in Los Angeles. Lydon’s own LA home was in peril at one point.

*Having checked Leftfield’s discography, I think the reason for my own case of wayward timing re: when this single was released is down to the fact that their album “Leftism” on which “Open Up” featured didn’t come out until January 1995.

Remember that awful hit “To Be With You” by a US band called Mr. Big from 1992? Well, here’s the 1993 version. Soul Asylum were the perpetrators of this year’s mournful, acoustic power ballad though they had actually been in existence for over a decade by this point. “Runaway Train” was their song and it would be the biggest hit of their career by far, going Top 5 all around Europe and in their home country of America whilst peaking at No 7 in the UK.

And then you watch the video and the song is transformed into something else altogether and your initial assessment of it is no longer valid. The decision of director Tony Kaye to use the promo as something practical rather than just aesthetic changes not just people’s perception of the song but actually changed people’s lives. Originally written by lead vocalist Dave Pirner about depression, the use of imagery in the video of children witnessing or fleeing from abuse convinced many that the song was about runaway and missing children. The disturbing scenes of domestic abuse, child prostitution and kidnapping weren’t gratuitous though as they were interspersed with stills of actual missing children with their names published alongside how long they had been missing. Pirner appears at the end of the video to advise “If you’ve seen one of these kids or are one of them, please call this number”. The children’s details were changed and tailored to whichever country the video was being shown in (i.e. UK children were featured in the video released in this country). The ultimate impact of the video which received high rotation on MTV was that twenty-six children featured in the video were found. Tragically, there were also horrific denouements to the stories of those children featured the details of which I don’t need to go into in a blog about music. Predictably, even the brief glimpse we get of the video in the Breakers has been heavily edited by the TOTP producers. As for Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train” became an albatross around the band’s neck and Pirner refused to perform it live for a while. They would have one more chart hit in 1995 with “Misery” but are still active to this day.

The final Breaker comes from The Orb and their ambient house classic “Little Fluffy Clouds”. This track seemed to have been around for ages and indeed it had having been originally released in 1990 when it was big in the clubs but not on the charts and it peaked at No 87. However, with the commercial success The Orb had received with a No 1 album in “U.F.Orb” and attendant hit singles like “Blue Room” and “Assassin”, the decision was taken to rerelease “Little Fluffy Clouds”. It proved to be the right choice as the 1993 version made it all the way to No 10.

Borrowing heavily from Ennio Morricone, and a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich performed by Pat Metheny, its most prominent sample though was from an interview with US singer songwriter Rickie Lee Jones. Describing the sky in Arizona from her childhood, her hippy-ish tone fits perfectly with the chill-out vibes of the track. Unfortunately Rickie’s attitude to The Orb’s use of her voice on the track wasn’t so laid back. In a 2019 interview she described them as:

those fuckers
“Joy and Defiance: A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones”. Aquarium Drunkard. 10 May 2019.

As much as I quite enjoyed “Little Fluffy Clouds” (and I did), it’s not my favourite song about the sky in Arizona. This is…

1993 was full of dance hits of all types of flavour – it felt like you couldn’t escape from them. However, if you were a dance act with a big club hit that crossed over into the mainstream charts, did that then change your identity and therefore your aspirations? If you were now a bona fide chart artist, were you then obliged to have a follow up hit and if so, was that possible? It wasn’t always. The Goodmen of “Give It Up” fame never had another hit and neither did Sub Sub after “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”. Similarly, dancehall rapper Snow bagged a No 2 record in 1993 with “Informer” and then nothing ever again.

Making the case the other way though were Culture Beat who followed up on their chart topper “Mr.Vain” with two Top 5 singles in “Got To Get It” and “Anything”. And then there was this lot – Urban Cookie Collective whose “”The Key, The Secret” just missed out on being a No 1 record but, contrary to popular theory, weren’t a one hit wonder and here’s the proof. “Feels Like Heaven” may have sounded almost exactly the same as its predecessor (no really, what’s the difference?) but that didn’t stop punters buying it in enough copies to send it to No 5. They even had a further two Top 40 hits (all four came from debut album “High On A Happy Vibe”) but really, they are only remembered for “The Key, The Secret” I think it’s fair to say. To be honest, if I wanted a song called “Feels Like Heaven” I’d go for these true one hit wonders from 1984…

November and December of 1993 saw a trend for ballads that stuck around the charts for ages. There was “Hero” by Mariah Carey, “Don’t Be A Stranger” by Dina Carroll, “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by The Bee Gees and this one – “Again” by Janet Jackson. The third single to be taken from her “Janet” album, it was actually written for the film Poetic Justice, Janet’s debut into the world of movies. It was the closing song in the film though it didn’t feature on the rap heavy official soundtrack. Was that a deliberate ploy on behalf of Jackson and her writers/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to potentially build sales for her own album by ensuring fans hadn’t got access to it via the soundtrack? I’ve no idea but what I do know is that there were fourteen songs that featured in the film that didn’t appear on its soundtrack which seems like a lot.

“Again” is one of those ballads that Janet throws into the mix every so often (see also “Let’s Wait A While”, “Come Back To Me”) although it holds back on the sugary schmaltz in favour of trying to purvey a sense of real emotion. Whether Janet achieves that by appearing overcome and teary at the song’s finale is open to debate. There’s no doubting the song ebbs and flows though and Janet does a good job of the live vocals in this TOTP performance. The song clearly struck a chord with the public who bought it steadily over a prolonged period providing it with this Top 40 run:

12 – 6 – 8 – 10 – 16 – 15 – 17 – 12 – 33

Like the aforementioned “Hero” by Mariah Carey, it manages to reverse a decline in sales on two occasions to move back up the charts. Impressive stuff. Being a Jackson, Janet would release another four singles from “Janet” after “Again”, the last one coming out over 18 months after the album.

And another one! Yes, it’s another of those ballads of longevity, this time from Elton John and Kiki Dee. After the success of the “Two Rooms” tribute album of 1991, there must have been some discussion in his inner circle as to how to further plunder the Elton John brand whilst he was in between studio albums (there was a three years gap between “The One” and “Made In England”). The plan that was devised was to do a duets project resulting in an album called…erm…”Duets”. The idea was sound. Get a few of Elton’s pals round to record a mixture of standards and his own compositions and shove it out in time for the Christmas market. Bish, bash bosh!

Elton of course was not shy about recording a duet or two. A quick glance of his discography reveals collaborations with the likes of Cliff Richard, Millie Jackson, George Michael, Jennifer Rush, Aretha Franklin…However, surely the most famous and enduring of his duets was with Kiki Dee on “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, their No 1 from 1976. So guess who was first in line to get an invite for the project and who would end up being on the lead single for the album? The song chosen for Elton and Kiki was the Cole Porter standard “True Love” from the film High Society made famous by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. I don’t think I knew the song back in 1993 and their version of it was never going to turn me onto it. Having played both interpretations of it this morning back to back, I definitely detected that Elton and Kiki’s take on it had pissing sleigh bells in the mix! The cynical sods! Clearly trying to stack the odds in their favour of the Christmas No 1 and indeed many bookies had it nailed on as favourite for the top spot. I kept a close eye on Elton’s face during this performance to see if I could spot any signs of smugness thinking he had the coveted crown in the bag but my powers of observation were slain by his jiggling eyebrows! WTF?! Sadly for Elton and Kiki, they underestimated the appeal of an idiot in a pink and yellow spotted costume to sell records and so never did make No 1 though they got mighty close peaking at No 2 and staying in the Top 10 for seven weeks.

https://youtu.be/KAtL06fUyCc

It’s a fourth week out of seven at the top for Meatloaf and “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. It’s the video again – I don’t think Meat ever made it into the TOTP studio did he? There was a satellite performance weeks back to premiere it but after that I think it was always the promo.

The lyric ‘I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that’ was first used in a Bonnie Tyler track called “Getting So Excited” from her “Faster Than The Speed Of Night” album that Jim Steinman produced. If you can manage to listen to it in the clip below (it’s utterly dreadful), stay with it until the 1.35 mark when you get the campest utterance of a line since that bloke in The Sweet on “Blockbuster”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Captain Hollywood Project	More And More	As if
2	Bryan Adams	Please Forgive Me	No I don’t Bry
3	Soul II Soul	Wish	No
4	Paul Weller	The Weaver EP	No but I had the Wild Wood album
5	Michael Bolton	Said I Loved You…But I Lied	Never
6	Leftfield / John Lydon	Open Up	No but I had it on one of those Best Album In The World Ever compilations
7	Soul Asylum	Runaway Train	Negative
8	The Orb	Little Fluffy Clouds	I did not
9	Urban Cookie Collective	Feels Like Heaven	Nah
10	Janet Jackson	Again	Nope
11	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Definitely not
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dzyp/top-of-the-pops-11111993

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

https://youtu.be/2LFM8cZWvCQ

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

https://youtu.be/Xfoxz6aBNsI

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 02 APR 1992

Posted on February 10, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re approaching Grand National weekend in 1992 and like many up and down the land, I’m on the look out for a horse to back. I’d discovered the art of having a flutter in my student days but that was betting on something I had an interest in; football. Horse racing I knew nothing about. My father in law knew about the gee gees but he didn’t go in for the Grand National as he perceived it to be a lottery and not worthy of his time so I was in my own. True, I had won £50 quid on Aldaniti back in 1981 but that was through a raffle ticket via my local non league football club and not therefore from taking money from the bookies. However, the General Election was taking place the following week and so, like many punters, I took my inspiration from that and went for a horse called Party Politics. He came in first by two and a half lengths at 14-1. I was delighted as money was fairly tight at the time so my win was timely.

If you thought that the impending Grand National might be a theme for this week’s TOTP then you’d be wrong. No mention of any nags but there were two guest presenters whose comedy characters sent up those out of touch Radio 1 DJs who should have been sent to the knackers yard years before. I can only be talking about Smashie and Nicey as played by Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield respectively. I initially thought this must be a tie in with Comic Relief but my research tells me that there was no such event in 1992 as it was a fallow year falling in the two year gap between official events. There was however a mini Comic Relief TV show on BBC1 on 17th April looking at some of the work done with the money raised the previous year and there was a Comic Relief single but more of that later.

No, as far as I can tell, Smashie and Nicey were there purely to plug the second series of Harry Enfield’s Television Programme that started on BBC2 later that evening. Were Smashie and Nicey funny? I don’t find them humorous today but I can’t recall how I felt about them back then though I much preferred Enfield’s earlier character Loadsamoney and his impoverished counterpart Buggerallmoney. Their sketches always seemed to feature them playing “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive and shouting “Let’s Rock!” and they try this schtick to introduce the opening act but it’s wide of the mark for me. Nicey says that the opening act are “quite literally, probably the Queen Mum’s favourite heavy metal band” and this royal theme peppers nearly all of their links throughout the show. Not sure why that was. Were the Royal Family especially in the news at that time or we’re they always referred to as part of Smashie and Nicey’s sketches?

Anyway, the whole thing falls flat as the opening act are LA heavy metal merchants W.A.S.P. who don’t seem a good foil for all this knockabout fun. Far too earnest about their art. I say art but their ‘music’ is quite literally, probably the worst thing I have heard since…well Def Leppard last week. Just a horrible noise. This track, “Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)”, was the lead single from their album “The Crimson Idol” which the band described as a concept album. Said concept revolved around a kid called Jonathan who is rejected by his parents who are in mourning for their favourite son Michael who has been killed by a drunk driver. Jonathan goes off the rails, buys a crimson coloured guitar and becomes a rock star after being signed by a record label president called…yep, Chainsaw Charlie. Jonathan becomes a huge star but his parents still hate him so he commits suicide on stage by hanging himself using his own guitar strings. FFS! What a load of bollocks! Who was taken in by this crap?! Well, the punters that sent this single to No 17 in the UK Top 40 at a guess. Just unfathomable.

Next we have another one of those live satellite link ups, this time with Roxette in Sweden. As Smashie and Nicey launch into a decidedly unfunny preamble routine it appears that Per and Marie can’t hear the pair’s ramblings at all. Either there were some technical difficulties or maybe it wasn’t live at all and just a pre-recorded performance? They launch into this acoustic version of their latest single “Church Of Your Heart” before Smashie and Nicey have finished their intro which adds to the sense that this wasn’t live at all.

This was the fifth and final single from their “Joyride” album and it’s not much more than an inoffensive little ditty really whose title seems to be a mash up of two Culture Club singles – “Church Of The Poison Mind” and “Time (Clock Of The Heart)”. Per taking lead vocal over Marie is the only thing to stop it from hardly being there at all. He goes all Bob Dylan before the song’s coda when he brings out his harmonica which he then chucks over his shoulder when he’s finished playing it. That’s no way to treat a musical instrument! He’s the Kurt Zouma of harmonicas!

“Church Of Your Heart” peaked at No 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-01WdHVLns

Onto that aforementioned Comic Relief single now. I have to say that I never really got the appeal of Mr. Bean. I’d loved Rowan Atkinson in all his Blackadder guises but this character? Not for me. Maybe I’m just not much of a fan of physical comedy – I’d never liked those Charlie Chaplin shows that seemed to be on every morning during the Summer holidays when I was a young kid. However, I was in the minority as the New Year’s Day episode of the Mr Bean series had attracted an audience of 28.7 million so it seemed a smart move to get the character to front the 1992 Comic Relief record. To tie in with the forthcoming General Election, the song chosen was Alice Cooper’s “Elected” though it was retitled “(I Want To Be) Elected”. Joining Atkinson on the record were Smear Campaign aka Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson and rock band Skin (then known as Taste).

I thought this was awful. Bean’s lines in it in the form of manifesto pledges were as funny as Liz Truss being the Foreign Secretary and anyway, I thought the USP of Mr Bean was that he didn’t speak. Even the army of Bean fans didn’t get on board with this and its chart placing of No 9 was one of the lowest of all the Comic Relief singles. The previous year, the odious “The Stonk” by Hale & Pace had been a No 1. Surely the obvious move for the charity would have been to ask Right Said Fred to do it. That invitation duly came 12 months later as the Freds did “Stick It Out” but by then their success was on the wane and the single peaked at No 4 (albeit five places higher than Mr Bean). By 2017, both “Stick It Out” and “(I Want To Be) Elected” ranked as only the 19th and 21st best performing Comic Relief singles respectively. The phrase missed opportunities comes to mind.

I had totally forgotten that Kym Sims had another hit other than the one she is remembered for. Just to make it easier to recall the rest of her back catalogue she made her next single “Take My Advice” sound exactly the same as “Too Blind To See It”. I mean she wasn’t the first artist to stick to a formula when it came to consolidating on initial success but mix it up a bit eh?

Unlike Kim, the TOTP producers did decide to mix it up by interspersing the rather dull video that accompanied the single with shots of Smashie and Nicey throwing some shapes back in the studio. Oh God. Guys, it’s so deeply unfunny. Who thought this was a good idea? Well, those TOTP producers I guess. Both they and Kym Sims should have taken my advice on all of these issues but they were too blind to see it.

Hang on! Soul II Soul were in the studio performing their single “Joy” literally last week! Why are they back on seven days later? Yes, they were a chart climber but it wasn’t like they were a 30 seconds cameo in the Breakers section. No, they were given a full studio slot. What happened to the rule saying the only act allowed on the show in consecutive weeks was the No 1 artist?

I have other questions. Why is Jazzie B using a conductor’s baton to lead the proceedings behind singer Richie Stephens and has he nicked Vince Clarke’s synth from Erasure’s appearance last week?

“Joy” peaked at No 4.

There’s another four Breakers this week and as is the emerging trend with this feature, we would not see 75% of them on the show again. First up is Prince & The New Power Generation with “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night”. This was the fourth single from his “Diamonds And Pearls” album and was identified by many a critic as the stand out track from it. The video shown here isn’t the one that was originally shot which didn’t feature Prince at all and only showed images of a poverty stricken African-American family. It was considered too political for MTV and so a second film was made to include footage of Prince and his band performing the song.

“Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” peaked at No 19.

Salt ‘N’ Pepa had enjoyed a pretty good 1991. Two singles that went Top 5 plus a Top 20 hit to boot and a top selling Greatest Hits album. 1992 looked to be going the same way with “Expression” released to promote a remix album called “Rapped In Remixes: The Greatest Hits”. Yet the single failed to break the Top 20 and the remix album did nothing. This was the second time the track had been in the UK Top 40 as it originally made No 40 when released as the lead single from their third album “Blacks’ Magic”.

1993 would be a better year with another Top 10 hit courtesy of their collaboration with En Vogue on “Whatta Man” and Top 20 entries “Shoop” and “None Of Your Business” all from their five times platinum in the US album “Very Necessary”. Somehow the album failed to take off in the UK struggling to a peak of No 36.

In a recent post while reviewing a TOTP that featured The Pasadenas performing “I’m Doing Fine Now“, I suggested that the end of the road for the band was coming up fast. Well surely this brief appearance for their cover of Bread’s “Make It With You” was their final destination. Taken from their covers album “Yours Sincerely” it did nowhere near the business that its predecessor did peaking at No 20.

This one passed me by at the time but listening to it now, it sounds like quite a nasty take on the original. Something very plastic sounding about it. Might be the parping brass section or the ever so 90s backing track. At least they tried to make it sound different I guess. If this is to be the last time we see The Pasadenas, I can’t say I’ll miss them.

The final Breaker sees Curtis Stigers doing a Kym Sims as he follows up his huge breakthrough hit single “I Wonder Why” with a song that sounds very, very similar. I don’t know his eponymous debut album apart from the singles so I’ve no idea if there was a better option for the follow up but I can imagine his label saying “We’re just going to play it safe Curtis man. We don’t want anything coming from out of leftfield so which song sounds the closest to your first one? Fine. “You’re All That Matters To Me” it is.”

So similar were the tracks they they nearly even replicated each other’s chart positions with “You’re All That Matters To Me” peaking just one place below its predecessor at No 6.

This week’s ‘exclusive’ performance comes from Chris De Burgh. In what universe was this man worthy of the term ‘exclusive’?! In a parallel 1992 where all dance music is banned and radio stations are only allowed to play soporific cruddy balladry?! I mean, how could the TOTP producers consider Chris De Burgh to be still relevant to the pop charts at this time?! I’m sure some negotiations took place between De Burgh’s record label A&M and the BBC over this slot which presumably was to help sell his new album “Power Of Ten” from which this track “Separate Tables” was taken because how else do you explain it?!

De Burgh’s musical reputation had never recovered since the huge turd that was “Lady In Red” in 1986. Some of his early stuff is actually OK (no it is, really) but everything since that heinous crime against music had been dreadful. This single was never going to improve his standing. If his musical reputation was in tatters, his personal reputation would take a similar nosedive a couple of years after this when the press revealed details of his affair with his family’s 19 year old nanny whilst his wife recovered from a broken neck injury. That’s real shitty behaviour right there.

The curious thing about this performance is that the staging is completely off. Where are the table props? Look at the song title guys! Instead there’s some sort of elaborate chaise longue littering the back of the stage and four Doric columns. Talk about missing an open goal!

“Separate Tables” peaked at No 30. Let’s never talk of this again. Agreed?

It’s a seventh week of eight fur Shakespear’s Sister and “Stay”. It’s probably about time that the issue of that band name was addressed. Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Shakespear’s Sister were named after the Smiths song of (nearly) the same name.
The misspelling was accidental initially, but Fahey decided to keep it because, "It makes it my thing as opposed to the song by The Smiths". #TOTP https://t.co/rV4CxMQJfN
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 4, 2022

… That or Tennessee WIlliams's 1944 play The Glass Menagerie, in which the central character is nicknamed "Shakespeare" by his co-workers, and reference is made to his sister – a fragile loner. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 4, 2022

Right at the very end of the show we get a weird personal message from Cher letting us know she’ll be in next week’s TOTP. Weird it may have been but that five seconds to camera piece was more of an ‘exclusive’ than the whole of Chris De Burgh’s performance.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	W.A.S.P.	Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)	A huge no
2	Roxette	Church Of Your Heart	Nah
3	Mr. Bean and Smear Campaign	(I Want To Be) Elected	Not even for charity
4	Kym Sims	Take My Advice	Nope
5	Soul II Soul	Joy	No but I snaffled a promo cassette single of it for my wife
6	Prince & The New Power Generation	Money Don’t Matter 2 Night	No
7	Salt ‘N’ Pepa	Expression	Negative
8	The Pasadenas	Make It With You	Never happening
9	Curtis Stigers	You’re All That Matters To Me	I did not
10	Chris De Burgh	Separate Tables	I’d have rather eaten my own arm
11	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	It’s another no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00142cl/top-of-the-pops-02041992

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

Posted on February 6, 2022 by 80stastic

We’ve missed another TOTP repeat broadcast due to the Adrian Rose issue and so find ourselves at the fag end of March 1992. So who is this guy enraging the community of TOTP repeat completists and why won’t he let the shows he presented in be re-shown? I have touched on this subject before when it first became apparent it was an issue at the end of the 1991 programmes. This is the seventh of fifteen that we will miss because of it so a recap feels in order.

It seems Adrian Rose now goes by the name of Adrian Woolfe and is the founder and co-CEO of Studio 1, an international production, distribution and licensing company. His bio on their website shows that he was part of the creative team at Celador that developed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and was responsible for implementing a brand and marketing roll out strategy for it and managed the show’s intellectual property rights into 107 countries. All this wanky business jargon are the words in his bio not mine by the way! OK, so he’s now a big shot in the entertainment business. Still doesn’t explain his reluctance to have his TOTP past repeated. Apparently ‘he has his reasons’ which is the only rather cryptic explanation emanating from his camp. Whatever they are, it all happened 30 years ago and he’s clearly made a success of his post show career so what’s up with this? Of course, it is Adrian’s prerogative and his ‘crime’ of upsetting some music nostalgia enthusiasts is hardly one to trouble the Met (mind you nothing seems to be worthy of the Met’s due diligence these days) but still. It all seems rather unnecessary.

OK. Enough of Mr Rose/ Woolfe. Onto the shows we do have access to and we start this one with TOTP stalwarts Erasure who are now into their seventh year of appearances on the show. “Breath Of Life” was the fourth and final single from their “Chorus” album and I have to say it’s not the single that immediately comes to my mind when I think of Erasure in 1992. No, that honour would go to their “Abba-esque” EP that would provide them with their first and so far only UK No 1 single. Still, “Breath Of Life” was a bona fide Top 10 hit peaking at No 8 so maybe it doesn’t deserve to be so overlooked. Having said all that, it’s not one of their stronger efforts for me. It seems to have pinched the title of that Squeeze single “Take Me I’m Yours” for its chorus and has a keyboard riff that sounds like it could have been from an early Depeche Mode single; not surprising I guess given Vince Clarke’s musical origins.

As for the performance, usually Erasure seemed to put a lot of thought into the staging of their TOTP appearances but here they seem to just have a mock up of the surface of the moon behind them and some backing singers in very glittery dresses. Also, what was the deal with Vince’s massive synth?! It looks like Cape Canaveral back there.

After their mention in my last post surrounding the hirsute Fred being in the audience of a play I saw whilst visiting my mate Robin in London, Right Said Fred are on the show in performance mode. Not in the studio though as we get the “great” (as presenter Claudia Simon describes it) video for latest single “Deeply Dippy”. The release of this track saw the band at the peak of their popularity when it went to No 1 in the UK.

I have to admit that the first time that I heard this, I found it vastly underwhelming though it’s actually infinitely better than “I’m Too Sexy” which is ultimately a novelty song. Some perspective is needed here obviously. This is Right Said Fred we’re talking about but “Deeply Dippy” does sound quite accomplished in comparison. It actually builds nicely to an uplifting (fair)brass section emboldened climax courtesy of the Average White Band. There’s even some shades of subtlety in there with some shifts of tempo and some gentle guitar noodling. To be fair(brass), the Freds were professional musicians with the brothers having played with the likes of David Bowie and Bob Dylan. They weren’t just some stooges brought in to front the act.

The video is the usual montage of Right Said Fred japes with the band generally just arseing about in various locations surrounded by various leggy models (“see those legs man”). According to an interview with Richard and Fred Fairbrass on the Songfacts website, the promo was deemed too ‘gay’ for US audiences and their American label made them shoot another one. They might as well not have bothered as it sank without trace and the band are still known as a one hit wonder (for “I’m Too Sexy”) over there. Apparently the woman in the green dress is the wife of the Fred who was in the audience of that play I saw down in London a couple of weeks before. I wonder if she was with him.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, we find Annie Lennox who looks like she nipped in on her way to a red carpet event such as the Oscars so sparkly and glamorous is her dress. Never afraid of messing around with gender roles and appearances, Annie’s hair and make up are designed to challenge with their nod to the gothic. After her ‘exclusive’ performance two weeks ago of her debut solo single “Why”, she’s back on the show after crashing into the Top 10 with it. By the way, I’m not counting her 1988 hit single “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” with Al Green from the film Scrooged on account of the fact that…well…she wasn’t solo was she?

Annie doesn’t need any backing musicians nor singers (not even Al Green) up there with her and does the whole thing on her own with just some studio lighting and a smoke machine for company. The audience come in with their applause a tad too early though (presumably on instruction from a floor manager) so that they drown out Annie’s final “You don’t know how I feel” line. Boo!

As with most celebrities, there is a Half Man Half Biscuit song that name checks Annie called “Paintball’s Coming Home” but it took me many a listen to hear the reference. If you don’t know the song, maybe you’ll get it first time…

Next, one of the most ridiculous songs of the whole decade in my book. Def Leppard had not been in the 90s at all up to this point. Presumably they had spent the first two years of it trying to write a follow up album to their monster hit “Hysteria” from which they released just about every track as a single. What they came up with was “Adrenalize” the lead single of which was “Let’s Get Rocked”.

This song was just an appalling waste of everyone’s time. The band’s for recording it, the radio stations for having to play it and the public for having to listen to it. What’s so wrong with it? Well, it’s just dumb ass, bombastic, cliched rock for one but it’s most heinous crime are the lyrics. Yes, I know that lead singer Joe Elliott is assuming a role within it and isn’t singing in the first person per se but it’s still ludicrous to hear a then 31 year old Sheffield man singing about being asked by his Dad to take out the trash and tidy his room and also refer to himself as a ‘dude’. I just couldn’t take it seriously. He then goes on about trying to get his ‘baby in the mood’ before coming out with a double entendre Finbar Saunders would have baulked at “ I suppose a rock’s out of the question”. Good grief!

Just like a Tory minister defending Boris Johnson’s latest gaff, the band had a go at justifying it. Here’s Joe Elliott courtesy of @TOTPFacts.

"We ended up writing this song, lyrically, which summed up the character of Bart Simpson – but [also] the character of any 16-year-old kid that's going through one of those phases with his father." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) January 28, 2022

Nice try but I wasn’t buying it (metaphorically and literally). As if the song wasn’t bad enough, the video looks like a nasty knock off of the promo for “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits. Back in 1985 that video had blown our minds but by 1992 we’d all seen Michael Jackson’s “Black And White” which made “Let’s Get Rocked” look like caveman scribblings.

The follow up single was the equally risible and bad taste “Make Love Like A Man”. Oh come on now! None of this seemed to bother their fans though who sent “Let’s Get Rocked” to No 2 in the UK and the album “Adrenalize” to the top of the charts both sides of the pond. Well if people can accept and believe Boris Johnson’s lies then buying this shit is hardly a great leap.

This week’s ‘Exclusive’ performance comes from the current US No 1 act Vanessa Williams. Just like Shanice a few weeks before her, Vanessa seemed to appear from nowhere with the song that she will always be known for even though technically she isn’t a one hit wonder. “Save The Best For Last” was No 1 in the US at the time of this TOTP performance even though it had only just sneaked into our Top 40 which I guess was the justification for its ‘exclusive’ billing. A tale of two people having made eyes at each other over the years without acting on it and then finally getting it together, it was a decent ballad but oh so boring. The twee lyrics didn’t help. Whenever I hear it now I’m still convinced that she’s going to sing “sometimes the cow jumps over the moon”.

Vanessa is also an actress and has appeared in loads and loads of film and TV projects like Eraser, Perry Mason, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, Ally McBeal and possibly most famously as The Queen Of Trash in The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland. Alright alright. That last one should be as Wilhelmina Slater in comedy drama Ugly Betty. Oh and that comment about Vanessa technically not being a one hit wonder? She also had a UK No 21 hit in 1995 with the song “Colors Of The Wind” from the soundtrack to the Disney animation Pocahontas. “Save The Best For Last” would miss the top spot over here when it peaked at No 3.

A happy face, a thumpin’ bass for a loving’ race! Soul II Soul are this week’s “mega exclusive” as co-host Mark Franklin describes it and they are back with new material which to my ears was a lighter, more uplifting sound than their previous work. “Joy” was the lead single from their third album “Volume III Just Right” and their trademark thumpin’ bass was replaced by a ‘new vibration rocking the nation’. Other changes included new vocalist Richie Stephens and the addition of a gospel backing choir and a prominent brass section. Jazzie B was still there of course but there was no sign of Caron Wheeler who had embarked on a solo career as the new decade began although she did contribute vocals on one track on “Volume III Just Right”.

It seemed like a solid return for the band when “Joy” peaked at No 4 but subsequent singles from the album failed to even pierce the Top 30. Whilst the album sold steadily, its gold status compared very unfavourably to the triple platinum high of debut “Club Classics Vol. One” from just three years before. The Our Price I was working in had a promo cassette single of “Joy” which I snaffled away for my wife who liked the song. No idea where it is now though.

Now then, to the Breakers of which there are four this week and also of which none of them will feature on the show again. I’m seriously starting to doubt the wisdom of this feature. First up are, like Soul II Soul, another band who are returning with new material after a significant break. The Cure’s last studio album had been 1989’s “Disintegration” with the gap between that and its follow up being plugged by the remix album “Mixed Up”. Come 1992 and they returned with their very first and so far only chart topper “Wish”. Prefacing the album was the single “High”.

It sounded like very traditional Cure fare to me. Good but hardly anything we hadn’t heard before. We played the album in store and my memory of it was that it was pretty gloomy. And then came track 7. “Friday I’m In Love” was joyous and would become one of the best loved and most played songs of their whole back catalogue. However, that’s all for another post. The video for “High” was probably better than the song for me with its cloud imagery giving me very strong Monkey vibes. Not sure what I’m talking about? Watch this…

As he did the other week, Mark Franklin fails to name check all of the artists in this week’s Breakers section. He only refers to three of the four that appear. This suggests to me there wasn’t an autocue so was it scripted like this? If not, was Mark just incapable of holding four names in his head at once? Anyway, the act he doesn’t mention is this one. “Do Not Pass Me By” would be the very last of eight UK Top 40 singles that Hammer would have. I never knew this but it’s actually a reworking of a 19th century hymn called “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”. Interesting. I maybe shouldn’t be surprised given the career that Hammer (real name Stanley Burrell) went on to have as an ordained preacher. In all, if we’re just looking at the UK, Hammer’s reign as the forefather of ‘pop rap’ lasted just 18 months or so. The largest part of his legacy remains his pants. “Do Not Pass Me By” peaked at No 14.

How do you follow up an unexpected No 1 hit? Well, if you’re Wet Wet Wet, you release a better song than your chart topper which they duly did in “More Than Love”. Previous single “Goodnight Girl” had gloriously returned the band back into mainstream success and so they weren’t about to waste their shot at being pop stars all over again. Instead of re-releasing one of the two singles preceding “Goodnight Girl” from the album “High On The Happy Side” that hadn’t been massive hits, they went with another album track that was a solid, mid tempo, singalong pop song. If Gary Barlow had written this, it would have been regarded as an instant pop classic. As it is, it’s one of the Wets least remembered hits not helped by its unspectacular No 19 chart peak.

The rather basic video seems to have been storyboarded purely to allow Marti Pellow to show off his luxurious locks. In fact the whole band have gone in for the very long hair look except drummer Tommy who seems to be almost bullied by his hirsute band mates given his thin head of hair. Tommy always strikes me as being very much in the same mould as Blur’s Dave Rowntree. The member of the band that garners the least attention but is the most dependable. Drummers. They aren’t all Keith Moons or John Bonhams.

Manic Street Preachers? Again? Weren’t they on just the other week performing “You Love Us”? Yes they were but with momentum building and their reputation preceding them, here’s another single called “Slash ‘N’ Burn”. Released exactly two months after its predecessor, this was another track from their “Generation Terrorists” album, the fourth of six in total. Its strident guitar riffs were inspired by Guns ‘N Roses apparently who also seemed to inspire the song’s title given the inclusion of that ‘n’ instead of ‘and’. It got me thinking how many other times ‘n’ has been used in music history. Obviously there’s Salt ‘n’ Pepa but any others? Erm…Jack ‘n’ Chill?

It’s a sixth week at the top for Shakespear’s Sister. As it’s parent album “Hormonally Yours” is coming up to its 30 years anniversary and is getting a deluxe 2 CD re-release, there was a Guardian article about “Stay” over the weekend. In it, Siobhan Fahey says that the look she was going for in the video was “an unhinged Victorian heroine meets Suzi Quattro meets Labelle!”. Well, obviously. She also admits that she’d been on the vodka in the shoot and was half cut by the time her scenes were being shot. That might explain her maniacal grin as she descended the stairway.

I recall that when their album was released it was heavily discounted in Our Price so that the CD was just £9.99 which was pretty cheap for a chart CD back in the day. Why do I remember this stuff when I can’t remember where I’ve just put my glasses? F**k knows.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Erasure	Breath Of Life	I did not
2	Right Said Fred	Deeply Dippy	Didn’t mind it, certainly didn’t buy it
3	Annie Lennox	Why	No but buy wife had the album
4	Def Leppard	Let’s Get Rocked	C’mon get real!
5	Vanessa Williams	Save The Best For Last	There was more chance of the cow jumping over the moon
6	Soul II Soul	Joy	No but I had that promo cassette single
7	The Cure	High	Nope
8	Hammer	Do Not Pass Me By	Nah
9	Wet Wet Wet	More Than Love	See 3 above
10	Manic Street Preachers	Slash ‘N’ Burn	‘N’-egative
11	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	No

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013vgg/top-of-the-pops-26031992

TOTP 29 NOV 1990

Posted on April 22, 2021 by 80stastic

We’re back! After an unexpected but welcome week off from reviewing these TOTP repeats due to the BBC’s frankly bizarre decision to suspend BBC4 broadcasts due to the death of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, the schedule has been rejigged so we haven’t missed any episodes as a result. Back in late November 1990, there was also a major news event (quite literally) as John Major became the new leader of the Conservative party and therefore the new UK Prime Minister following the demise of Thatcher.

Despite an apparent blanket ban on TOTP presenters going anywhere near the political shenanigans of the leadership contest the previous week, maverick host Nicky Campbell almost falls over himself trying to shoe horn in a John Major reference at every turn. “John Major or no John Major – as music shows go this is the nation’s premier – TOTP! Remember if you make it to No 10 here it’s good but it could be better….” he trills before introducing the show’s opening act Dream Warriors with “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style”.

I always quite liked this as I had their first single “Wash Your Face in My Sink”. They certainly had some intriguing song titles this Canadian duo – you had to give them that at least. Heavily sampling Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” (and therefore bringing it to the attention of UK audiences some 7 years before Mike Myers did via his Austin Powers* series of films), this had a similar vibe (did I really just write that?!) to its predecessor and worked pretty well I thought and crucially sounded nothing like the titular jazz (or at least my definition of it). But what was their definition? Well, they mention ‘jazz’, ‘funk’ and ‘a new blend’ in the lyrics but ultimately inform us at the end of the second verse that ‘there is no definition’. Huh.

And what was with the staffs the pair have in their hands throughout this performance? They put me in mind of Morgan fromThe Walking Dead especially with those coats on that Nicky Campbell makes a big deal of at the end of the song. Dream Warriors released an album with both hits on called “And Now The Legacy Begins” but after the use of the term ‘legacy fans’ in relation to the wanky European Super League concept this week, let’s not go there.

“My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” peaked at No 13.

* I never got the whole Austin Powers phenomenon – I just found the whole wretched thing totally unfunny.

I have zero recall of the next song – “Missing You” by Soul II Soul anyone? Apparently it was the third single to be lifted from their second album “Vol. II: 1990 – A New Decade” and would peak at No 22. That whole album was recorded without Caron Wheeler involved and so some guest vocalists were employed – this single featured ‘The First Lady of House Music’ Kym Mazelle, probably best known at this point for her duet with Dr Robert from the Blow Monkeys on “Wait” in 1989. Well, either that or for being name checked in The Beloved’s “Hello” hit from earlier in the year.

Listening to it now, it does sound remarkably similar in tempo and style to their “Keep on Movin'” hit which was a deduction that the music press of the time also came to. Seeing the lyrics written down, the opening lines sound absolutely filthy…

Ooh, yeah
You’re the sweetest
Yeah, baby
Oh, yes, you are
You’re the sweetest
Yes, baby, ooh…

…but despite a Marvin Gaye “Sexual Healing” sample thrown into the mix, they don’t sound quite as obscene on the record. We would not see Soul II Soul in the charts for the whole of 1991 but they would return the following year with their album “Volume III Just Right”.

Right what’s this nonsense? That Megabass shite again? This was just shameless marketing on behalf of record label Telstar for one of their dance compilation albums. Supposedly, somebody wrote into Smash Hits enquiring about them:

“Who are Megabass? They’ve had a record in the charts for a couple of weeks now but I haven’t seen any pictures of them and I don’t know anything about them. Could you enlighten me?”

That letter was written by one M.Sharpe from Kent. Yeah right. Totally made up! Probably Telstar bought some space in the magazine for extra exposure. Why would anybody have wanted to see photos of two remixers who were from the same stable as those Jive Bunny arses? Unbelievably, Smash Hits did include a picture of them in their reply – two young fellas one of whom looked a bit like Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp from the side. Probably some Shutterstock image of random male models. What a total sham!

“Time To Make The Floor Burn” peaked at No 16.

Oh come on! After that Megabass rubbish we move onto a novelty song! Who’s doing was this?! Simon Mayo?! I should have known. That guy had previous for generating Top 40 hits out of nothing other than his massive ego and his Breakfast Show platform to convince dullard listeners that what they really needed in their lives was to own a copy of “Kinky Boots” by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. Yes, not content with having foisted “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” on us the previous Xmas, he was at it again with a song that the public had clearly rejected twice already. It failed to be a hit when originally released in 1964 and a re-release in 1983 did nothing either. That wasn’t going to stop Mayo though who clearly believed he was radio’s version of King Midas who could turn anything to gold (or at least a Top 10 hit). Quite why Avengers stars Macnee and Blackman recorded this originally I’m not sure (to promote their TV show I guess). On top of everything else , it completely creepy. The bit when Macnee says ‘sexy little schoolgirls’ with almost breathless excitement?! Just horrible. Mercifully, the song is quite short – just one minute and thirty seven seconds long. Phew!

Meathead Mayo was at it again in 1991 when he got Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” to No 3 in the charts whilst “Kinky Boots” made it to No 5.

Who?! Dimples D?! Nope, I’ve got nothing. I’m not having a good week recall wise. I think it might be linked to the fact that though I was working in a record shop at this point, which you would have thought would have only improved my memory of the charts at this time, the store (Our Price in Market Street, Manchester) had two trading floors and I worked mainly on the ground floor where the albums were. Down in the basement (where all the cool members of staff hung out) was where the singles were at so I didn’t actually get to sell many of them. That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to that.

It turns out that Dimples (real name Crystal Smith) had recorded this track back in 1983 as “Sucker DJ’s (I Will Survive)” but it hadn’t achieved amy meaningful success. Fast forward 7 years and ubiquitous remixer Ben Liebrand got his mits on it, added a sample of the theme tune to I Dream of Jeannie* to it, called it “Sucker DJ (A Witch for Love)”and boom! A hit all over Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It’s actually not that dissimilar to the show’s opening song “My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style” in that it’s a rap over a very familiar sample.

*I was always more of a Bewitched fan than I Dream of Jeannie – I’m talking US fantasy sitcom series and not Irish all girl groups obviously.

Now I do remember this! Chris Isaak had been around for years making his twangy, moody guitar music with the added ingredient of his falsetto vocals and yet he was totally unknown over here (well, I’d never heard of him at least). “Wicked Game” appeared as a fully formed, instant classic as Xmas 1990 approached and Chris himself was causing many a heart to flutter. Almost the entire female staff of the Our Price store I was working in seemed to have fallen under his spell as had my wife.

When I think of Chris Isaak, David Lynch comes to mind immediately but I had forgotten the details of why. It is, of course, because he had featured two of Isaak’s songs in his disturbing Blue Velvet film whilst an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” had been included in his Wild At Heart flick. Lynch was already making waves at this time with Twin Peaks and indeed he would ultimately cast Isaak with a major role in that series’ film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. So quite the connection between the two really. Chris has had sporadic acting roles including a small role in The Silence Of The Lambs. However, my favourite role of his film wise is as Uncle Bob in That Thing You Do! where he pretty much just does some hand clapping.

Back to “Wicked Game” and I have a memory of being asked constantly for his album which, as Nicky Campbell advises in his intro, was called “Heart Shaped World” which of course we didn’t stock as it had done nothing in the UK at that point. After a David Lynch obsessed Atlanta radio station music director played “Wicked Game” and created an irresistible demand for the track and made it a chart hit, record label Reprise did what any right thinking record label would do and shoved out some more material into the market place. A compilation album also called “Wicked Game” containing 11 songs from Isaak’s three albums was released and the track listing was compiled by Phil Knox-Roberts of WEA UK. Why do I mention him? Well, I worked with his brother Paul around this time. ‘Knoxy’ was an Our Price legend and the supplier of many a great tale. One of my favourites was when I played in a football game with him as part of an Our Price team versus a record company reps team at Preston North End’s ground. Knoxy was very proud of his quiff that he had cultivated at this time and when he went down following a collision with an opposition player clutching his head and shouting in pain, we all feared a dreadful injury. As we gathered around him concerned, he stood up, shook his head and said “Does my hair look alright?”. Again, that’s my version of the story and I’m sticking to that.

“Wicked Game” (the single) peaked at No 10.

Now I don’t often agree with much that Nicky Campbell had to say in these TOTP appearances of his but I think he was on the money with his intro to the next act. “The new album “Behaviour” has songs that will be remembered for a long time…here’s one of them “Being Boring”, the Pet Shop Boys“. Widely acknowledged amongst the duo’s fan base as their best ever song, it was seen at the time as very much a downturn in commercial fortunes. It stalled at No 20, their first single since 1986’s “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” not to make the Top 10 and, at the time, their lowest peaking hit ever. Proving however that wise, old theory that popularity does not great art make, “Being Boring” could well be said to be the perfect pop song. If I’m honest, I wasn’t saying that at the time. It kind of passed me by a bit and I’d preferred lead single from the album “So Hard”. I wasn’t alone in this view. Writing in Smash Hits, Miranda Sawyer dismissed it as an album track. We were both wrong.

“Being Boring” is a template for great songwriting. From the lyrics to the minor chord sequence to the understated yet perennial melody, all bang on the money. Those aforementioned lyrics don’t refer specifically to themselves (as I thought at the time) but they do tell an autobiographical tale of Neil Tennant’s teenage parties through to going to seek fame and fortune in London and the self-realisation of what that meant once achieved. Intertwined in it all is the story of how his childhood friend who had moved to London with him would ultimately die of AIDS. I’m not sure if I’m making too much of this but in their “Pop Art” compilation album of 2003, “Being Boring” is included on the ‘Art’ CD whereas some of their biggest hits such as “It’s A Sin”, “Heart” and “Suburbia” are all on the ‘Pop’ disc. For what it worth, I very much agree with the track listing here. It does seem to be more than just pop.

If all that sounds too heavy, then I’ll lighten the mood. Why did Neil turn up for this performance dressed as Inspector Gadget?

The phrase ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’ has never been so appropriate as to describe the segue from Pet Shop Boys to the next act who are Bombalu-f*****g-rina! Yes, the hideous concoction that was Timmy Mallett and Andrew Lloyd Webber didn’t even have the good grace to be a one hit wonder. Wankers!

“Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Backseat” (originally a hit for The Avons in 1959) followed the exact same formula as “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” even down to the insertion of the same ‘Ah Yeah’ sample and ‘Wooh! Yeah!’ loop. The only difference that I can see is that the act seems to have grown an extra peroxide blonde backing singer (presumably to make up the numbers as one of the titular seven little girls).

Bombalurina‘s version peaked at No 18 and that, praise be, was the last we would see of this whole, sorry undertaking.

It’s a new No 1 as Vanilla Ice storms to the top of the charts with “Ice Ice Baby”. Watching this back it inevitably looks very dated (as so it should at over 30 years old) and yet at least one thing about Vanilla Ice lasted longer than his music career. Was this the first time that we saw the shaved eyebrow look? Wasn’t that a big thing throughout the 90s and beyond? Is it still a thing now? Look, I’m a 52 year old middle aged man so I have no idea about what is fashionable now – I don’t even know the current phrase that young people use to mean something is fashionable (‘on trend’ maybe?) – but I know shaved eyebrows were a definite thing…erm..at sometime.

I’m pretty sure the aforementioned Knoxy liked this one if only for the “Rollin’ in my 5.0” lyric speaking of which, the “Yo VIP, let’s kick it” opening line? The VIP part stood for the Vanilla Ice Posse (of course it did). A bit like Elvis and his entourage having TCB rings that were an acronym for Taking Care of Business then? Except much, much lamer obviously.

Hands up who can name a Deee-Lite song that isn’t “Groove Is In The Heart”? Yup, pretty much none of us then. They do have other songs of course – here’s one now. “Power Of Love” (surely one of the most used title in pop music history) was the follow up to that mighty dance anthem and I have to admit to not remembering at all how this one went. And then I listened to it again and thought ‘that sounds familiar’ and it was for good reason – the chorus hook bears an uncanny resemblance to Madonna’s “Rescue Me”.

So did Deee-Lite influence Madonna or was it the other way round? They were both released (and presumably recorded) around the same time so it’s hard to say. Or is it just one of those massive coincidences that life throws up occasionally? Whatever the true story, what we do know is that “Power Of Love” was Deee-Lite’s last ever trip to the UK Top 40, peaking at No 25.

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

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Dream Warriors	My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style	I think I have this on something but I didn’t buy the single at the time
2	Soul II Soul	Missing You	I was quite happy to miss out on this one – no
3	Megabass	Time To Make The Floor Burn	Putting this record on the bonfire was too good for it
4	Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman	Kinky Boots	Stinky boots more like! This reeked! No
5	Dimples D	Sucker DJ	No
6	Chris Isaak	Wicked Game	I think my wife had the tape of the “Wicked Game” compilation album once upon a time but no idea where it would be now
7	Being Boring	Pet Shop Boys	Not the single but it’s on that Pop Art Best Of CD I have
8	Bombalurina	Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat	They might as well have been shitting in the back seat because this was a turd of a record – NO!
9	Vanilla Ice	Ice Ice baby	No No baby
10	Deee-Lite	Power Of Love	Nope

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ty1n/top-of-the-pops-29111990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 03 MAY 1990

Posted on December 11, 2020 by 80stastic

Can you remember a time before the word ‘Brexit’ even existed? A time when the UK wasn’t being torn apart by rival factions concerning our relationship with Europe? A time even when we didn’t always completely fall on our arses when it came to the Eurovision Song Contest? For yes, that time did used to exist when we were routinely amongst the favourites to win the competition before every other country hated us and gave us a paltry points score (or in the case of Jemini in 2003 the dreaded ‘nul points’). As we reach May in these BBC4 1990 TOTP repeats, Eurovision rears its head again and the final in this year took place on the Saturday after this show was broadcast. We had come 2nd in the previous two years and had only finished out of the Top 10 once in the previous decade which also included an actual win in 1981 courtesy of Bucks Fizz and those mini skirts. Fast forward nine years and our entry is from a 15 year old Welsh school girl but more of her later.

For now, we start with ….Simon Mayo’s shorts and knees! What was he thinking?! In recent weeks we’ve had Jakki Brambles in big Winter coats (twice) clearly freezing, Mark Goodier complaining about being too hot whilst being dressed in full jacket, shirt and tie combo and now this! Most off putting. The first act that the be-shorted Mayo introduces is Sinitta with “Hitchin’ A Ride” who adds some more confusion to this issue about the temperature in the TOTP studio. Without wishing to sound like a perv, I can’t help but notice that Sinitta gives the impression it was not that warm in the studio that day (despite Mayo’s choice of outfit) judging by the…well…’stunt nipples’ that she is sporting. What’s that? What about the music? Oh, well..erm…well, this single was taken from her “Wicked” album which was given the Cherry Pop super deluxe re-issue treatment which was well received judging by some of the Amazon customer reviews of it. Check out this one from a very happy fan:

One of the best pure-pop albums of all time, in my opinion. Not one bad track on it. You won’t be disappointed if you buy this!!

Alternatively, we have this via someone who goes by the username of Too Shy:

Please avoid this, its far too cheesy and friends who examine your record collection while you nip up to the bathroom will be gone by the time you return if they find it.

By the way, I didn’t include that review because of the use of the word ‘nip’ in it just to carry on the subject of Sinitta’s chest! I didn’t! I used it as it reminded me of something that a guy called Pete who I used to work with said to me once. Pete was the original bass player in The Stone Roses and a cool as f**k but he did once say this which I found quite remarkable. The scenario he outlined was that if he was to meet the woman of his dreams who was compatible with him in every single way and he would gladly spend the rest of his life with her, if he found a Phil Collins CD in her collection he’d be out of there in a heartbeat and wouldn’t look back. Not sure what his views on Sinitta were though.

“Hitchin’ A Ride” peaked at No 24.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_tFlv6k_Bk

A new track incoming from Soul II Soul with their latest single “A Dream’s a Dream“. The second single from their sophomore album “Vol. II: 1990 – A New Decade”, I wasn’t sure that I knew how this one went until hearing it again but the “I can see, I can see…right through you” refrain does ring a bell. Why are we getting the video and not a studio performance from the band? Well, in a Smash Hits interview in this year, main man Jazzie B made some cryptic comments about the show and the BBC in general that suggested that he wasn’t completely OK with the corporation. When asked if he ever disagrees with his mother, he replied:

“She’ll say things like ‘Why won’t you go on Top Of The Pops‘? I have to show her that it’s badness to explain what you’re dealing with…”

When asked if he would ever be on Top Of The Pops again, he replied:

“I don’t know. Maybe if it weren’t the BBC. I can’t really say. I can’t be damaging my career. It’s existed for many years and has helped many people but it’s for pop star isn’t it?”

Hmm. Something definitely not quite right there I think.

As for “A Dream’s a Dream”, it did a good job of consolidating the band’s success and profile and paving the way for the release of that second album a couple of weeks later by going to No 6 in the charts.

A highlight of the rock year next, well at least that’s what Simon Mayo says in his intro, as we get the new single by Morrissey. I’m not sure that Mozza enjoys such reverence these days on account of him having turned into a right arse but back in 1990, I guess he was still worthy of discussion. One thing you’d have to say about Morrissey is that he did have intriguing song titles. “November Spawned A Monster” certainly fell into that category for me. What was it about? Here’s Moz himself courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

"It's about a person who's confined to a wheelchair, who can't make much sense of her life, and whose only ambition is to walk down the road in clothes she personally went out and chose and bought herself. And that is as far as her ambitions can stretch." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

Apparently the song sparked some criticism of Morrissey who was accused of ridiculing the disabled (the titular ‘monster’) but I’m not convinced that was his intention at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA_WT4aIaQY

With Eurovision having been imminent when he gave this performance, I can’t not mention Mozza’s own little footnote in the song contest’s history. Back in 2007, heavy rumours circulated that he was in negotiations with the BBC to be that year’s UK entry. Apparently, he had been appalled that the previous year’s UK act who had finished in 19th place. Sadly, it was never meant to be although Morrissey had been serious about taking part supposedly. And for anyone thinking I’m making all this up…. look, it was even reported on the news…

Some “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” next courtesy of Adventures Of Stevie V. I haven’t got much more to say about this one other than Stevie V (real name Stephen Vincent) once described the rave experience as

“…it’s like on the telly when you see the Queen coming out onto the balcony and everyone’s cheerin’ and feeling really brilliant. It’s that sort of crack, except with music.”

And there was me wondering in my middle age if I’d missed out by never having attended a rave. As a firm republican, if that’s what it was all about, blow that for a game of soldiers.

“Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” peaked at No 2.

Three Breakers now and we start with En Vogue. Now, whilst no sort of expert, I thought I had a pop quiz passable knowledge of these ladies in that I can name more than one of their singles but having read up about them, they’re like a singing and dancing eight-legged soap opera that I knew nothing about. Their conveyor belt of line up changes makes The Sugababes look like a model of consistency and longevity. Check this out:

Original members are: Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones
1997: Dawn Robinson leaves
2001: Maxine Jones leaves and Amanda Cole joins
2003: Amanda Cole leaves and Rhona Bennett joins
2005: The original members briefly reform before disbanding again
2009: The original members reform again for their “En Vogue: 20th Anniversary” tour
2011: Dawn Robinson and Maxine Jones leave again while Rhona Bennett rejoins

Confused? You will be…we haven’t even got onto the lawsuits yet! When Maxine Jones and Dawn Robinson left the band for the second time in 2011, they joined forces, added a new singer and hatched plans to record and tour under the name Heirs To The Throne. Then Robinson decided to leave before that got off the ground so Jones got in another singer to replace her and went on the road under the name of En Vogue To The Max (see what she did there?). At which point, the inevitable lawsuit was filed by original members Cindy Herron and Terry Ellis (who were still touring as a duo under the name of En Vogue) against Jones for unauthorized use of the band’s name. The judge ruled in Herron and Ellis’s favour. And we thought that the legal fight for the right to own the name Bucks Fizz was a saga!

Anyway, back in happier times, the original line up are here with their debut single “Hold On” which would got to No 5 in the UK and No 2 in the US. Put together by songwriting duo Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, they were originally conceived as following in the tradition of some of the celebrated 60s girl groups like The Supremes but without any of the members being the designated star. It was to be a democratic unit in which every member would qualify to take the lead vocals on any given number. Yeah, looking at those multiple line up changes, I’m not sure if that ever worked out.

The return of Billy Idol now who was last seen in the UK Top 40 in 1987. “Cradle Of Love” was the lead single from his “Charmed Life” album and was a massive hit in the US only being kept off the No 1 spot by Mariah Carey. We were less interested back in blighty and the single stumbled to a No 34 peak. I’m not surprised – it sounds completely uninspired to my ears; in fact its sounds like a dodgy rewrite of his 1986 hit “To Be A Lover” – lots of rawk ‘n’ roll growling but very little in the way of a tune.

Never mind what it sounded like though, what the hell was going on in that video?! Well, the song was based around the saying ‘robbing the cradle’ meaning sexual relationships between the individuals where there is a large age gap. The video director obviously took the song’s meaning to heart and came up with a Lolita style plot line. It all looks decidedly creepy viewed in 2020 but back in 1990, TOTP seemed fine with showing it. Billy himself appears in the video only in the background as he had suffered a significant injuries back in February of this year following a motorcycle accident. It didn’t stop him touring to promote the album though against his doctor’s wishes. His injuries curtailed his role in the Oliver Stone The Doors biopic so to make up for this, he released a cover of The Doors “L.A. Woman” as his next single. Nobody was interested in that at all though.

Ah man, it’s Michael Bolton again! Look, I have no intention of reliving my Bolton live concert story every time he’s featured in these TOTP repeats so I’m going to just ignore it. It’s there in all its gory glory in a previous post if you want to read all about it.

“How Can We Be Lovers” was the follow up to his No 3 hit “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You”. Listening back to it now, it sounds like it could be a Rocky theme tune performed by Survivor. Either that or a Belinda Carlisle B-side. At least it had more of a punch to it than its wimpy predecessor but that’s as positive as I can get about it. I was surprised to learn that it had been such a big hit over here (No 10). No doubt Bolton would have performed it when I saw him live three years later and …oh shit! I wasn’t going to go there again was I?!

These songs that I can’t recall at all are coming thick and fast now. BBG (or Big Boss Groove even) anyone? “Snappiness” was their hit but I’ve got nothing about them in the old memory banks at all.

*checks internet*

Not much there either. What I did discover is that “Snappiness” is basically the (featured earlier) Soul II Soul’s track “Happiness” with some added vocals courtesy of singer Dina Taylor. Also I found out that BBG’s main man Tony Newland wasn’t keen on giving any royalties from his hit to Jazzie B although he did admit that Soul II Soul were one of the “best things to happen to British dance music in years”. Oh well, I’m sure some grovelling compliments would have been enough to assuage Jazzie – pay him what you owe him you cheapskate!

“Snappiness” peaked at No 28.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wQ-xoKqwGk

Another airing for “Tattooed Millionaire” by Bruce Dickinson next. Not only is Bruce the lead singer with Iron Maiden, not only is he a qualified commercial pilot, not only is he an international level fencer, he is also a published author! I had no idea until I researched him. He wrote a book called The Adventures Of Lord Iffy Boatrace which was published the same month as this TOTP was broadcast back in 1990. What is it about? Here’s the synopsis from its Amazon listing:

Lord Iffy Boatrace invited some of the Old Boys for a holiday with a difference. But even he, with his penchant for fishnet stockings and stiletto heels, is stunned by the antics of his guests – to say nothing of the Butler who invented the ultimate sex machine.

Ah…erm…well. That sounds erm…f*****g horrible. Judging by its Amazon reviews though, the people that bought it loved it. Dickinson wrote a sequel two years later. Its title? The Missionary Position: the Further Advances of Lord Iffy Boatrace.

Hang on though Bruce. How do you write something like that and then also write a song “Tattooed Millionaire” that supposedly criticises the excesses and bad behaviour of the ‘rock star’ scene? Here’s Bruce himself discussing what the song is about courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

Bruce Dickinson: "'Tattooed millionaire' is a whole area that I just see as a big festering, open sore on the arsehole of mankind, in terms of music. Because the whole vibe about that scene is it's nothing to do with music…" #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

"It's nothing to do with being real. It's to do with some bullshit attitude… 'Yeah, we want to ride around in limos. We want to get chicks, man.' I've seen the archetypal tattooed millionaires screwing some 'chick' outside the tour bus, on the sidewalk." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

"What's this guy trying to prove? That's not even setting a good example to yourself. It's just garbage – I don't respect that." (Somewhere, Motley Crue's ears are burning…) #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) December 4, 2020

Bruce seems quite conflicted in his values I would suggest. Bruce is also a prominent Brexiteer. I’ll just leave that last sentence there without further comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7apiYkLf0w

TOTP presenter in correct prediction shocker! After years of Radio 1 DJs pontificating about which record on on the show would go to No 1 and getting it spectacularly wrong, here’s Simon Mayo actually getting one right! Adamski (and not forgetting Seal) will be top of the charts next week with “Killer”. In every TOTP appearance so far though, the presenter has forgotten about Seal and refers just to Adamski in their intro (as Simon Mayo does here). Was it on the insistence of the record label? It seems grossly unfair on reflection. Seal is certainly the visual focus point of the performance while Admaski…well…jigs about a bit whilst twiddling on his keyboards. Maybe he should have gone the Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys route who made standing still an art form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-j95oroF0

I’m not sure about the woman in the background either. She looks like she’s limbering up for a ballet class. She should have gone the Tales Of The Unexpected route…

As the camera pans back to Mayo at the end of “Killer”, what the f**k is he doing? Is he trying to replicate the ballet dancer woman’s moves? After giving you credit for a correct chart prediction Simon, I now have to rescind it for that embarrassing display.

Right, onwards and upwards to the No 1 which is still Madonna with “Vogue”. It’s the fourth and final week for her at the top which is a pretty good run. In my head, the parent album “I’m Breathless” didn’t perform so well but on examination of its figures, it did OK. It went to No 2 in the album chart, was certified double platinum for achieving 600,000 sales in the UK and has sold 7 million copies worldwide. However, all of that looks pretty pedestrian when compared to how her next release performed when released at the close of 1990. Her first (and possibly still the best I would argue) greatest hits album “The Immaculate Collection” would go on to sell 31 million copies worldwide making it the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist ever!

Right then, back to where we started from – no not with Sinitta (although she was technically the first act on the show tonight and did release a single called “Right Back Where We Started From”!). No, back to the Eurovision Song Contest of course! Our entry this year was from Emma who performed a song called “Give A Little Love Back To The World”. Mayo is back on the prediction game confidently forecasting a victory for Emma and thereby returning to the familiar TOTP presenter pattern of getting such things completely wrong. Emma would trail in sixth which would be more than respectable in current times but probably seemed a bit disappointing back in 1990. This was her performance that night….

The contest was actually won by Italy whose Toto Cutugno was aged 46 years and 302 days at the time of his victory, making him the oldest winner of the contest to date. He held the record until 2001. This was in stark contrast to Emma who, as Terry Wogan advises in the clip above, was the UK’s youngest ever contestant at the age of 15. Want to hear the winning song? OK then….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b5whZydVZc

When he was announced as the winner, Toto Cutugno splashed water on his face and hair which caused his hair dye to run! Thirty years later, this ‘look’ was replicated by Rudy Guiliani….

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdCNyX5enB4

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	Sinitta	Hitchin’ A Ride	Shittin’ a turd more like – no
2	Soull II Soul	A Dream’s A Dream	Nope
3	Morrissey	November Spawned A Monster	Sorry Mozza – it’s a no
4	Adventures of Stevie V	Dirty Cash (Money Talks)	Not for me thanks
5	En Vogue	Hold On	Nah
6	Billy Idol	Cradle Of Love	No but it’s on his Greatest Hits CD that I own. Gulp!
7	Michael Bolton	How Can We Be Lovers	NO!
8	BBG	Snappiness	Negative
9	Bruce Dickinson	Tattooed Millionaire	And no
10	Adamski	Killer	No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on
11	Madonna	Vogue	Not the single but it’s on my copy of that Immaculate Collection CD
12	Emma	Give A Little Love Back To The World	Of course not

Disclaimer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000pz18/top-of-the-pops-03051990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 20 JUL 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

Disclaimer

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 02 APR 1992

Disclaimer

TOTP 26 MAR 1992

Disclaimer

TOTP 29 NOV 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?

TOTP 03 MAY 1990

Disclaimer

Some bedtime reading?