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TOTP 03 JUL 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

This list marks a true milestone for me. This is TOTP Rewind post No 700! Yes, if you combine all the 80s and 90s shows reviews together, the total is 700. How did I get here and more importantly, was it worth it? Well, I’ll leave the second part of that question to anybody who’s taken the time to read any of the previous 699 posts to answer. As for ‘how did I get here?’ (you’ve got “Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads running through your mind now haven’t you?), I’ll tell you. It’s taken me nearly nine years of watching, considering and writing to get me to 700. NINE YEARS! I must be either someone who’s very dedicated to a cause or a complete narcissist.

To mark the occasion, the gods of pop music nostalgia have plotted to provide me with one of the worst running orders in TOTP history but before we get to all that, we have a brand new presenter making their debut on the show in the form of Kate Thornton. A journalist initially (she was the youngest ever editor of Smash Hits magazine aged just 21), she made the transition to TV via ITV current affairs programme Straight Up and is widely credited as the person who placed “Candle In The Wind” centre stage as part of the national grieving process for the death of Princess Diana. Apparently, her bosses wanted some music to soundtrack a photo tribute piece for Diana and Thornton was tasked with sourcing something appropriate. As the news broke on a Sunday, the record library was shut and so Kate was left with whatever she had in her car. A copy of Elton John’s Greatest Hits was on the stereo and the rest is literally history. Big history. The BBC came calling and a place in the TOTP presenter roster was offered. I like that the producers made some attempt at humour by introducing her with a skit as if she’d been pulled out of the studio audience at random to replace a poorly Jayne Middlemiss. Maybe she had, though clearly not in the manner presented. She gives a very confident and assured performance on her debut and would become the host of X Factor in 2004. I never quite understood why she was replaced by Dermot O’Leary. I believe she’s to be found on Greatest Hits Radio these days along with all the other BBC presenters deemed not hip enough anymore like Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo although to be fair, I’m not sure if either of those two were ever hip.

Anyway, we start with a new face with a shiny, new hit from a famous family. Before 1998, the phrase ‘Eagle Eyes’ would have conjured up memories of Action Man toys from my childhood but Eagle-Eye Cherry (his actual real name!) came along to change all that.

The son of American jazz artist Don Cherry and Swedish designer Moki Cherry and the half brother of Neneh Cherry, he had early career intentions to be an actor and enrolled in the High School Of Performing Arts in New York (Fame and all that) being in the same class as Jennifer Aniston. However, he would ultimately choose music as his first passion and returned to his home of Stockholm to write his debut album “Desireless”. His instincts paid off when the album sold four million copies around the world, spearheaded by lead single and opening track “Save Tonight”. Irresistible for daytime radio controllers, it’s actually quite a simple song based around the well established and familiar chord progression of Am-F-C-G that is the backbone of many a huge hit including “Hey Jude”, “Wonderwall” and “Imagine”. It’s slick and smooth though with a vocal from Cherry that has enough interest in it to keep the listener’s attention. Great things were predicted for Eagle-Eye – my wife was enamoured enough to buy “Desireless” and see him live at the Manchester Academy – but the old diminishing returns and changing tastes seem to do for him and the hits had all but dried up come the new millennium. He still recording new material though with his last album released in 2023.

Sticking with the eagle theme come Hanson whose latest hit “Thinking Of You” includes the lyric “Fly with the wings of an eagle” running throughout its length. The fifth and final single taken from their “Middle Of Nowhere” album, listening back to it, you could understand why it hadn’t appeared earlier in the release schedule. The album’s lead single had been the No 1 “MMMBop” and, to paraphrase Kate Thornton in her intro, whether you found it adorable or downright irritating, you couldn’t deny it was insanely catchy. Sadly for “Thinking Of You”, it was no “MMMBop” despite its clear aspirations to be so. However, it was MMBop-lite which sounds like a diet version of a fizzy drink but you get my drift. It seems to have all the component parts but it doesn’t have that killer hook. It’s like an early demo of their most famous song before they’d worked it into shape as the pop mega-hit it became. “Thinking Of You” would be the band’s last hit of the 90s (though they’d have three more into the new decade).

As with Hanson before them, after a couple of years of hits, Space were coming to the end of their time as Top 40 stars. Conversely, this, their penultimate hit, was called “Begin Again”. Another track lifted from their Top 3 album “Tin Planet”, it would peak at No 21, their smallest ever chart hit. Now, I’ve championed Space a bit in previous posts and my wife had their first album “Spiders” but by this point, their quirky flavoured schtick was starting to grate a bit. That eerie sound that they’d cultivated which had initially charmed was becoming predictable. “Begin Again” was another track with swooping strings and a almost mariachi feel to it with singer Tommy Scott banging on about being a man who would kill for love whilst giving his usual wild-eyed stare to the camera. Give it a rest Tommy! After leaving their label Gut Records, the band released their music to the fanbase via their website until they split in 2005. However, they did ‘begin again’ in 2011 and are still a recording and touring entity to this day.

Here’s another link back to Hanson with another boy band. 911 were on to their seventh (of ten) consecutive Top 10 hits with “How Do You Want Me To Love You” which sounds impressive but was it really? Of those ten hits, they all debuted in their peak position in week one and none of them stayed inside the Top 10 for more than two weeks. Clearly their fan base were spending their pocket money to purchase the singles as soon as they were released when they would have been heavily discounted as well to create a high entry point but when the contributing factors of fanbase and discounting were taken away, there was no substance to sustain their chart lives. This one was a prime example. Week one in at No 10, week two dropped to No 35, week three out of the Top 40 altogether. Yes, they did have a No 2 and a No 1 hit but both were cover versions of well known songs so that diminishes those achievements in my book rather. They had three albums that peaked at Nos 13, 10 and 8 selling enough copies for one gold and two silver discs. Is that impressive? Mildly at a push I’d say. Away from the numbers (as Paul Weller once sang), this was a drippy, insipid pop ballad that was forgotten as soon as the last note sounded.

Oh come on! We’ve already had two boy bands and now a third?! And this one, as Kate Thornton tells us in her intro, has toured with 911. So hang on, they were the support act for a group that themselves were almost completely lacking in any discernible merit but who topped the bill ahead of them? Have I got that right? OK so what we’re saying is that Ultra were a poor man’s 911?! Dear Lord. Can you get any worse than that?! After scoring a hit with debut single “Say You Do”, these no marks were back with a follow up called “Say It Once”. Heavens! They couldn’t even come up with two song titles that didn’t crib off each other! This is really poor stuff to mark my 700th post. The bad news is that they had a further two hits after this. Say it ain’t so.

For Pete’s sake! No, for my sake and my 700th post! This is no way to mark the occasion – Hanson, 911, Ultra and now Aaron Carter?! You’ve got to be kidding me?! This guy was the little brother of Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys and he was just ten years old at the time of this broadcast. By comparison, the youngest Hanson brother was 12. Had we seen anything like this since Little Jimmy Osmond tormented us with “Long Hair Lover From Liverpool” in 1972? I can’t think of a similar act. What on earth was this all about and why was it happening? I’m guessing it was the most cynical act by the little blighter’s record company to cash in on the popularity of the Backstreet Boys but was it really that blunt? Well, he did support his big brother’s band on tour so maybe it was.

Apparently he’d already had three UK hit singles by this point so did we mercifully miss them or have I reviewed them and completely obliterated them from my memory banks? For the record, the fourth hit was a scandalous cover of “Surfin’ USA” by The Beach Boys. Watching the performance of it here just feels wrong. Not as bad as when Channel 4 aired the Minipops series in 1983 which was not just a dodgy idea but one of the most heinous concepts ever conceived and executed but still wrong. Oh, and the intro with Jo Whiley was absolute cringe. Why?! As is sadly often the way when fame comes to someone so young, Carter would have a traumatic and tragically short life dying in 2022 aged just 34 by accidental drowning in a bath following the taking of Xanax and difluoroethane.

TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey has finally relented and has allowed a video to feature on the show. Apparently, this was the first promo shown since 1st May 1998 after eight weeks of studio only appearances. I’m not sure why he introduced the policy in the first place nor why he made an exception for the Beastie Boys but in the case of the latter, I’m guessing Cowey couldn’t ignore the return of one of the biggest names in rap especially as their single crashed into the Top 5. I’ve said this before but just about everyone I ever worked with in Our Price over a 10 year period loved the Beastie Boys. Not the “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” version but the more mature and achingly cool era of the band exemplified by “Paul’s Boutique”*, the eccentricity of “Check Your Head” and the eclectic nature of “Ill Communication”. Accordingly, when “Hello Nasty” came out in 1998 after a four year gap, it was a big deal for many of my colleagues.

“Intergalactic” was its lead single and it came out swinging with a big sound and a video that seemed epic at the time but maybe isn’t viewed as that through 2025 eyes. A tribute to the Japanese Kaiju genre of films (Godzilla and the like) and featuring a giant robot battling an octopus-headed creature (?), it won the 1999 Best Hip Hop Video at the MTV Video Music Awards. The battle scenes between the robot and the octopus thing remind me of the Power Rangers franchise which I had to endure watching when my son was a young boy and it was one of the oddest TV series I think I’ve ever seen. How it ran for 30 years is beyond me. Whatever the merits or drawbacks of the video, and certainly after the crime against music that was NYCC’s brutally bad cover version of “Fight For Your Right” earlier in 1998, it was good to have the real thing back.

*Here’s another link back to Hanson. “Thinking Of You” that was on the show earlier was produced by the Dust Brothers (Michael Simpson and John King) whose other credits include “Paul’s Boutique”.

Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds are No 1 for a third week but any chance of the England football team winning the World Cup crown disappeared in dramatic fashion three days before this TOTP aired. They crashed out on penalties to Argentina in the Round of 16 after having had David Beckham sent off for petulantly lashing out at Diego Simeone whilst lay on the floor. For a while, Beckham was public enemy No 1 with even an effigy of him and a noose tied to a lamppost making headlines. With England out, there would be the inevitable drop off in sales of “3 Lions ‘98”. However, it would return to the charts eight times over the years when a football tournament has been played. The nation’s wait for a follow up to 1966 and all that continues however…

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Eagle-Eye CherrySave TonightNo but my wife had his album
2Hanson Thinking Of YouNegative
3SpaceBegin AgainNah
4911How Do You Want Me To Love YouAs if
5UltraSay It OnceNever
6Aaron CarterSurfin’ USA Hell no!
7Beastie BoysIntergalacticNope
8Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds3 Lions ’98No

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/m002jy45/top-of-the-pops-03071998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 MAR 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

We’ve entered March in these 1998 TOTP repeats and on the day this show was broadcast, Liam Gallagher was charged with assault after allegedly breaking a fan’s nose in Brisbane, Australia. He followed this up by getting himself banned from Cathay-Pacific airline for allegedly abusing passengers and staff on the flight home to the UK. Oh dear. He wasn’t the only pop star in this year to get themselves in bother as Mark Morrison, Mark E. Smith and Ian Brown all fell foul of the law. I wonder if any of the acts on this show have some misdemeanours in their pasts…

Our host is Jamie Theakston who certainly does have some proverbial skeletons in his closet, namely his visit to a Mayfair brothel in 2002 which was leaked in the press despite Theakston’s attempt to prevent publication of the story via an injunction. Back in 1998 though he was the squeaky clean host of kids Saturday morning TV show Live & Kicking as well as being part of the roster of presenters for TOTP and his first job on tonight’s show is to do the outro for the opening act who are Cornershop. Wait…what?! But they were the final act we saw in the last TOTP as they were at No 1! Yes, but this meant nothing in the era of the show’s executive producer Chris Cowey where chart positions and downward movement within the Top 40 were insignificant. For example, “Brimful Of Asha” was down from No 1 to No 3 this week but as a hit that was still selling lots of copies, it warranted a slot in the running order. Maybe Cowey was right – in a world of first week of release discounted prices, was this how TOTP countered that practice manipulating the charts? After all, otherwise you had the prospect of a big hit only being featured once on the show* because of it peaking high and then constantly dropping as the full price point kicked in. Even so, this particular segue across two shows and seven days does jar.

*We’ll come back to this at the end of the show

Anyway, as I indicated in my last post, I bought “Brimful Of Asha” and actually enjoyed both versions of the track on the single so much so that I caught them live at Manchester Academy. However, it wasn’t the best gig I ever attended. They didn’t say a word to the audience all night which always irks me. A live gig should be just that – a live experience not just recreating the sound of the records however accurate that might be. Cornershop would have a couple more minor Top 40 hits but are still a together having last released an album in 2020.

Controversial moment: There was that time in 1992 when they burnt posters of Morrissey outside the offices of EMI to protest about his perceived overtly racist behaviour having draped a Union Jack flag around him during a set at the Madstock festival in Finsbury Park.

Finley Quaye was still riding high at this point in his career. His debut album “Maverick A Strike” had gone gold in just three weeks and he’d recently won the Best British Male award at the 1998 BRITS. He was also a regular on TOTP with “Your Love Gets Sweeter” his fourth consecutive Top 40 hit. It’s another reggae-tinged, soulful, melodic number but there’s something in its tune that reminds me of this…

Just me then. Anyway, where did it all go wrong for Finley? From what I have read, there seems to have been a certain element of self-destruction surrounding Quayle’s erratic behaviour and unreliability. He also had a reputation for uncooperativeness and not playing the music industry’s games. You can perhaps see an example of this in his appearance here with a less than energetic performance and his decision to turn up in attire as if it was dress down Friday. I’ve never heard any of his material since “Maverick A Strike” so I can’t comment on its quality but maybe it was just a case of musical tastes moving on? Certainly his private life was problematic involving assault charges, unpaid debts and being declared bankrupt in 2012. Attempts at a comeback were undermined by Quaye not turning up for gigs and, in one desperate case, being physically manhandled off stage by the venue owner for a shambolic performance. All of this led to a lack of trust in him within whatever was left of his dwindling fanbase. Whether he’ll be able to overcome his demons and return to a successful music career, who knows?

Controversial moment: Despite all the issues detailed above, perhaps Finley’s most stand out incident was when Prince Harry (himself no stranger to controversy) admitted in an interview in 2023 with Stephen Colbert (another controversial figure!) that if he could only listen to one song for the rest of his life then he would choose “Your Love Gets Sweeter”.

Like “Brimful Of Asha”, here was another song that had already peaked at No 1 and dropped down from the top spot but which was still an incredibly strong seller and so is featured on the show again. “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion was in its second week at No 2 and it would rise back to the chart summit the following week. It is, however, a chart curiosity that despite being the second best selling single in the UK for 1998, it spent only two weeks at No 1. That shouldn’t diminish its sales reputation though. Look at these chart positions:

1 – 2 – 2 – 1 – 3 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4

Not too shabby and definite evidence that even in the fast moving chart currents of 1998, certain singles could swim against the tide or at least tread water. Of course, “My Heart Will Go On” had an enormous advantage of most of its chart competitors in that it was from a massive, massive film – Titanic was the highest grossing film of all time, a record it held for twelve years – and that can’t be ignored in the final totting up but it remains an iconic song and yes, I hate it.

Controversial moment: Celine? Surely not though there is a comical claim by an American priest that her stereotype-free children’s clothing line was promoting satanism!

WHO?! Hinda Hicks anyone? Success wise she was the solo artist equivalent of N-Tyce who were on last week’s show. Four middling sized Top 40 singles (of which “If You Want Me” was the first) and an album that peaked at No 20. Her music was an R&B infused pop/soul sound (yawn – wasn’t it always?) and in Hinda’s defence she did get three MOBO Award nominations (plus two BRIT Awards ones). So why don’t I remember her given that I had the added advantage of working in a record shop at the time? Maybe the market for that genre was over flooded? Possibly. She did also suffer from record company machinations when Island Records and Universal Records merged causing the promotion for her second album to be non existent and that was that for her career as a chart artist. Her Wikipedia page doesn’t list any further activity by Hinda post 2008. However, her name resurfaced in 2011…

Controversial moment: Not really controversial but her name was appropriated by Lilly Allen in the tweet ‘Toni Braxton Hinda Hicks’ which was a reference to the phrase ‘Braxton Hicks’ which is a nickname for false labour pains during pregnancy.

It strikes me that it would be easy to dismiss this next artist as yet another forgotten hitmaker of the 90s whose hits were synth-heavy but gravitas-lite songs and she was just the pop puppet fronting them. However, having done some background reading on her, there’s more than meets the eye to Robyn. Firstly, she writes her own stuff so that preconceived notion of mine of her being all image and no substance is immediately dispelled. Secondly, the reaction to her songs has created quite the fan base, especially amongst the LGBTQ+ community. In an interview with vice.com, she posited the theory that this is because she is a Swedish woman and that feminist debate is very mainstream there and has been for years so there is an easier connection between the gay community and her because of her upbringing.

Robyn’s career could have gone a very different way. She declined to sign with Jive Records who then turned their attention to another young female artist called Britney Spears who Jive called “An American Robyn” and who, as it panned out, would prove to be much more easier to control than Robyn would have been. Despite not having the same levels of fame as Britney, Robyn’s influence on pop music has been widely acknowledged by the likes of Lorde, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen and Andy McCluskey (the writing force behind Atomic Kitten). Her work is seen as contributing to the ideological school of thought that is ‘poptimism’ which argues that pop music is as worthy of professional critique and interest as rock music. Blimey! Having said all of this, “Show Me Love” didn’t hold my interest for long, pleasant enough a pop tune as it is though. Plus, did she not think when she wrote it that a track called “Show Me Love” by an artist called Robyn might cause confusion with the dance anthem of the same name by Robin S?

Controversial moment: Her 1999 album “My Truth” included songs about abortion. Her US label RCA asked her to re-record or edit out these tracks deeming them too controversial for American markets. Robyn refused and the album was not released in the US.

I’m pretty sure that I dismissed this next song as being almost a novelty hit at the time. Have I changed my tune since? Maybe. We have arrived at the moment in the career of Space when those scouse scamps were never bigger. “The Ballad Of Tom Jones” would be their highest charting single ever when it peaked at No 4. Essentially a duet between Tommy Scott and Cerys Matthews of Catatonia, it tells the story of two warring partners in a chaotic relationship who are saved from inflicting physical damage to each other by stumbling across the songs of Tom Jones on the radio as their row reached boiling point. So why didn’t I think much of it at the time? I think it was that the chorus was underwhelming and the lines about knickers and not coming from Wales grated. Also, the counterpoint repeating of ‘Tom Jones, Tom Jones’ didn’t work for me. And yet…it is creepily endearing. A curiosity sure but with some musicality to it that perhaps I’d previously ignored. Whilst Space were at their pinnacle, Cerys and her band were only just beginning their run of hits having recently pierced the Top 3 with “Mulder And Scully”. They would have a further seven Top 40 hits including two Top 10 entries. Both Space and Cerys would end up contributing to tracks on an album by the actual Tom Jones in 1999 when he released his covers project “Reloaded”.

P.S. Unlike with the aforementioned Dexys performance of 16 years prior, there were no shenanigans with the picture on the backdrop screen here which features Sir Tom himself. How I would have loved it to have been Howard.

Controversial moment: Nothing much for Space but in 2020 Cerys played a song that included a racial slur in its lyrics on her radio show which BBC Radio 6 Music had to apologise for. She also engaged in a relationship with EastEnders actor Marc Bannerman whilst taking part in I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here in 2011 making the front pages of the tabloids as Bannerman had a partner back home.

From Space to Spice next as we reach a line in the sand moment in the Spice Girls story by encountering both their first hit not to go to No 1 and their last single release whilst Geri Halliwell was still officially a member of the group (the first time around anyway). For the record, “Stop” was their seventh single out of eleven in total and one of only two not to top the charts. Is there any reasonable theory that explains this? Yes, parent album “Spiceworld” had been out for four months by this point so maybe punters didn’t feel the need to own the single and the album? Maybe but then how do you explain the fourth single lifted from it – “Viva Forever”- going to No 1 after “Stop”? Perhaps it was just a slow decline in their popularity 21 months into a career that had constantly been in our faces? Or was it the strength of the song that kept it off the top spot which was…

*checks the online chart archives*

…”It’s Like That” by Run-D.M.C. versus Jason Nevins. Possibly. It was the UK’s third best selling single of 1998. Or maybe “Stop” was just a weak track? It’s a jolly enough, upbeat, Motown-aping song but certainly not as strong as something like “Say You’ll Be There” or as explosive and attention demanding as “Wannabe”. I guess we’ll never know the true reason. What we do know is that Geri would be gone within three months of this performance and things would never quite be the same again in Spiceworld.

Controversial moment: Are you kidding? Far too many to list here.

There a new No 1 and it signalled the comeback of Madonna. Hang on, had she actually been away? Not really though she had been busy becoming a mother and filming the Evita film meaning she hadn’t released a studio album of new material since 1994’s “Bedtime Stories”. Although singles wise, she’d maintained a presence in our charts throughout that period, “Frozen” was her first single release in a year since “Another Suitcase In Another Hall” from the aforementioned Evita soundtrack. The lead track from her “Ray Of Light” album, it would debut at No 1 giving Madge a UK chart topper for the first time since “Vogue” in 1990. Despite this feat, this solitary week at the top was the only time it featured on TOTP. Now, as discussed earlier, a song dropping down the charts wasn’t a barrier to repeat appearances under executive producer Chris Cowey (even from No 1 – I give you Cornershop) so what happened here? Something to do with broadcasting restrictions imposed by Madonna herself?

Anyway, critical reaction to both the single and album were overwhelmingly positive and seen as a real return to form. Me personally? I wasn’t that enamoured – it just didn’t grab me and I wasn’t swayed by the whole Eastern mysticism angle nor the slightly odd video with Madonna as a shape-shifting witch figure prowling across a desert. However, I did quite like the rest of the album which my wife bought especially the title track. A collaboration with legendary producer William Orbit, it incorporated electronica, trip-hop and new age styles. Nearly 30 years in and it has become a touchstone album for creativity with it being credited as a huge influence for the likes of FKA Twigs, Addison Rae and Erika de Casier (I’ve no idea!) making “Ray Of Light” 2025’s hottest album according to some headlines. Ex-Little Mix member Jade Thirwell has even recorded her own version of “Frozen” whilst Madonna herself is revisiting the album with a remix version entitled “Veronica Electronica”.

Controversial moment: I’d be here all day listing them but how about this for a “Frozen” specific one? In 2005, a Belgian judge ruled that the track plagiarised the song “Ma Vie Fout Le Camp” by Fabrice Prevost and for eight years it could not be played nor sold in Belgium.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1CornershopBrimful Of AshaYES!
2Finley QuayeYour Love Gets SweeterNo but my wife had his album
3Celine Dion My Heart Will Go OnNever
4Hinda HicksIf You Want MeNope
5RobynShow Me LoveNah
6Space / Cerys MatthewsThe Ballad Of Tom JonesNo
7Spice GirlsStopI did not
8MadonnaFrozenSee 2 above

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/m002gk6l/top-of-the-pops-06031998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 JAN 1998

Posted on by 80stastic

Here we go then with another year of BBC4’s TOTP repeats. Do I have high hopes for 1998? Not really but I am willing and hopeful to be proved wrong. The first show since the Christmas Day broadcast has a mixture of hits we’ve seen before and some brand new ones plus something of a chart rarity concerning the No 1 record. Our host is regular presenter Jo Whiley and we kick off with the Lighthouse Family and their latest single “High” which is an apt title as the band were at the highest point of their popularity and success. Sensibly held back from the December release schedules to avoid being lost in the rush, it would peak at No 4 becoming their joint biggest single alongside “Lifted”. Taken from their four times platinum, sophomore album “Postcards From Heaven”, it couldn’t have been more easy listening playlist if it had been fiendishly crafted by Dr. Easy Listening in the laboratory for producing Easy Listening songs. And yet…if I had to, at gunpoint, take one Lighthouse Family song with me throughout my life, it would be this one as it’s so life-affirmingly positive.

Having said that, it’s a good job it wasn’t recorded in the 60s. The lyric “one day we’re gonna get so high” wouldn’t have got past the network censors on the Ed Sullivan Show and somehow I can’t imagine singer Tunde Baiyewu pulling a Jim Morrison. That reminds me – I was at a wedding recently and at the sit down meal at the reception found myself talking to a perfectly pleasant young man to my right who was planning a holiday to Paris. When asked by him if I’d ever been, I replied in the affirmative and started listing the attractions he might want to visit including the Père Lachaise cemetery but I gave warning of all the drugs paraphernalia directing people to the grave of Jim Morrison. The young man’s reply? “Who?”! He didn’t know Morrison or The Doors though he thought he might have heard the song “Riders On The Storm”. I’m so old.

“Jiggle your bits to this!” says Jo Whiley. Jiggle your bits? Were you allowed to say that back in the day before the watershed? In the age of lad culture you probably were sadly. Anyway, although this was our first glimpse of Steps on TOTP, their debut hit “5,6,7,8” had actually been around for weeks by this point. Eight of them in fact having ricocheted between the Nos 23 to 17 before finally peaking at No 14 prompting this appearance. It would then spend a further four consecutive weeks inside the Top 20 before finally bowing out of the Top 40 in its 15th week since release. Although one of the group’s lowest charting singles, it’s their third biggest hit thanks to subsequent streams of over nearly 38 million by 2021.

I think it’s fair to say that this track is not typical* of the rest of their back catalogue and I’m guessing that maybe they were only put together on a one single deal written to take advantage of the line dancing phenomenon that was sweeping the nation at the time. Responding to an advertisement in trade publication The Stage, the quintet surely didn’t expect the success and longevity that they have enjoyed.

*Of course, they’re not alone in having their debut hit sound nothing like subsequent releases. Some of the biggest names in pop music history could tell a similar tale. Look at the difference between “Love Me Do” and, say, “Strawberry Fields Forever” or between those early Beach Boys surfing hits and “God Only Knows”. Not that I’m putting Steps in the same bracket as Brian Wilson (RIP) nor Lennon & McCartney obviously.

Look at some of these numbers:

  • 22 million records sold worldwide
  • 5 million album sales in the UK
  • 4.8 million singles sales in the UK
  • 13 consecutive Top 5 singles in the UK including two No 1s

Not bad for an act that was put together to sell a one-off, line dancing hit. Ah yes, that hit. It really is atrocious. As if we hadn’t been tormented enough with “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex a few years before. Nobody should have been surprised to discover that Pete Waterman was involved in this mess with the group signed to his EBUL label in partnership with Jive Records and the man himself acting as co-producer. I think it’s fair to say that he ultimately saw Steps as a second chance to launch the British ABBA after his initial attempt with Bananarama in the early 90s had failed to ignite the charts. Sure, “5,6,7,8” sounded nothing like the Swedish pop superstars but their follow up “Last Thing On My Mind”* certainly did as did their third single “One For Sorrow”. Steps would ultimately transcend that idea (if not ABBA’s sales) to establish themselves in the premier league of late 90s pop groups.

*That track was released as a single by Bananarama in 1992 but failed to chart.

Despite having two separate periods of hiatus that amounted to the group being inactive for a total of 15 years, their story is still not fully told as the jukebox musical Here & Now featuring the hits of Steps opened last year and is set to tour the UK from August this year until May next.

P.S. As I was writing this, I turned on the TV and on BBC1 was Ian ‘H’ Watkins giving an interview about his small music festival in the town of Cowbridge where he lives that had been forced by the US Coachella festival to change its name from Cowchella to Moo-La-La. Rather than be disappointed, H was delighted with the publicity the story had generated for his festival. Boot scootin’ indeed.

It’s a re-showing of a previous Janet Jackson appearance next as we see that dress-down Friday performance of “Together Again”…erm…again. Supposedly, Janet’s inspiration to write the track came from the 1996 Nuyorican Soul hit “Runaway” which had been huge in the US clubs. However, it wasn’t contemporary clubs that had been at the forefront of Janet’s mind in writing the song but perhaps the most famous club of all time – New York’s Studio 54. Apparently, “Runaway” reminded her of being in there as a child. What the hell was she doing in Studio 54 as a child?! The club was notorious for its open drug use and sexual activity by its patrons. There’s a famous photo of Canadian First Lady Margaret Trudeau at Studio 54 without any underwear on! And Janet was in there as a minor! I think I’ll leave that story there.

After becoming bona fide pop stars in 1996 with some quirky hits straight out of left field like “Female Of The Species” and “Neighbourhood”, Space weren’t about to rest on their laurels and released sophomore album “Tin Planet” just 18 months after debut “Spiders”. The lead single from it was “Avenging Angels” which seemed to me to pursue a more mainstream sound than some of its predecessors. I mean, it still wasn’t your standard rock/pop song – it still had that spooky, twangy guitar sound in the mix – but the chorus was more conventionally melodic it seemed to me. They did retain that retro sound though – in fact, listening back to it now it could be the theme tune to a 60s sci-fi show or maybe I’m just fixating on the ‘angels’ part of the song and conjuring up images of the female fighter pilots from Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons. There’s two other parts of the song that needs some discussion. Firstly, I could never get along with the “kick ass angels” lyric of the chorus – it always really jarred with me for some reason. Secondly, that megaphone sung middle eight part. Apparently, Radio 1 said they wouldn’t play the single unless its length was cut in half. It duly was and “Avenging Angels” became a No 6 hit, the band’s biggest ever to that point.

It’s yet another appearance by All Saints again next as their uber-hit “Never Ever” continues its lengthy yet inevitable rise to the top of the chart. After witnessing the dance extravaganza that was Steps earlier in the show, I have to say that despite all the bells and whistles of that Steps performance, I find the All Saints…erm…steps more effective. Yes, all the thumbs down the waistbands, the twirling, the handclaps, the sidestepping, the lassoing and gun toting moves I found less memorable than All Saints stepping around in a circle shrugging their shoulders. Less really is more sometimes.

Now here’s a genuinely intriguing collaboration and yet I have zero recall of it. Absolutely nothing at all so listening to it now was quite illuminating. We’d already seen the worlds of rock and pop and classical collide on hits such as The Farm’s “All Together Now” and rap and a classical come together on Coolio’s “C U When U Get There” both of which were heavily based on Johann Pachelbel’s “Cannon”. However, had we seen rap and opera combined before? The people to thank for this (if ‘thank’ is indeed the right word) were West Coast rapper Warren G and Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebø who together went by the name of The Rapsody (see what they did there?) and gave us the track “Prince Igor”. Inspired by the “Polovtsian Dances” of Alexander Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor”, it topped the charts in Norway and Iceland and was a respectable No 15 hit in the UK. It was the lead single from a whole album of opera/hip hop mash ups entitled “The Rapsody Overture: Hip Hop Meets Classic” and I thought I would unreservedly hate it but it has something to it that engaged me. I think it’s the aria part sung by Sissel rather than Warren G’s rapping to be fair. Oh and remember my Captain Scarlet reference earlier when commenting on Space? What was one of the Angels pilots call signs? Yep, Rhapsody (spelt correctly this time). The others were Symphony, Harmony, Destiny and Melody if you were wondering.

Now if you thought “5,6,7,8” was a novelty hit, get a load of this! What on earth was going on here?! Just like All Saints, there were four members of Vanilla and two of them were sisters but that is undoubtedly where the comparisons end. Quite what this said about the contempt that EMI who released this tripe had for the record buying public can’t be articulated. The whole sorry episode also spoke volumes of those poor gullible fools that bought what is surely one of the worst singles of the decade. LBC Radio presenter James O’Brien has a phrase he uses in respect to the Brexit debate which is ‘Compassion for the conned, contempt for the conmen’ but I would struggle with the first part of it when it came to anyone who spent their money on “No Way, No Way”. Based on “Mah Nà Mah Nà” by Italian composer Piero Umiliani which became internationally recognised for its usage on The Muppets and The Benny Hill Show, it almost registers zero brain activity in its conception and execution. Apparently, when they were offered the chance to record it, the group weren’t sure as they wanted to pursue an R&B style but were convinced by the argument that “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls was as essentially a novelty hit so ‘what the hell’. Yes, it brought them instant yet brief fame of sorts but did they really think they could build a career off the back of it?!

Of course, they couldn’t. After getting to No 14 with “No Way, No Way”, the follow up single “True To Us” only made No 36 despite conducting a number of appearances at schools and being on the Disney Channel UK 1998 tour. In 2011 the inevitable happened when one of the group appeared in the Identity Parade section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks…

Despite the ridicule the group received, they seemed like good sports appearing multiple times on The Big Breakfast in a feature called ‘Vanilla’s Thrillers’.

Thankfully, if I think of The Muppets, the association in my head isn’t Vanilla but this from Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters series…

So to that rare chart event surrounding the No 1 record as “Perfect Day” by Various Artists returns to the top some five weeks after it initially wore the crown. Now it wasn’t a unique occurrence for a single to return to No 1 after being temporarily deposed by another hit but it was the length of the gap between being the best selling song of the week that was surprising. Having been released at the end of November and being at No 1 for two weeks, it the spent a fortnight at No 3 over Christmas. Traditionally, the first No 1s of the New Year around this time could be snatched by a less mainstream hit with careful/cynical release timing when singles sales slumped dramatically after Christmas. Think Iron Maiden in 1991 and Tori Amos in 1997. However, for a single to regain the top spot after it seemed to have peaked was unusual though as I said earlier not unique. The Lightning Seeds achieved a return to No 1 in the Summer of 1996 after a four week gap but that phenomenon was fuelled by the Euros ‘96 football tournament. What was propelling sales of “Perfect Day” all over again? It would hang around the Top 40 for another six weeks before finally going home when it got dark.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it ?
1Lighthouse FamilyHighOnly with a gun held to my head
2Steps5,6,7,8Never
3Janet JacksonTogether AgainNo
4Space Avenging AngelsNah
5All SaintsNever EverNope
6Warren G and Sissel KyrkjebøPrince Igor I did not
7VanillaNo Way, No WayHell No!
8Various ArtistsPerfect DayAnd 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/m002dfcb/top-of-the-pops-09011998?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 21 FEB 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

A day after this TOTP aired, scientists at Roslin Institute, Midlothian announced the birth of a cloned sheep called Dolly seven months after the event. Dolly was named after country legend Dolly Parton apparently. Anyway, it’s kind of apt that this story about cloning was in the news back then because tonight’s show is co-hosted by Ant & Dec who in the early years of their career were subject to the claim that people couldn’t tell them apart! Ba dum tss! Alright, alright. It’s a poor start to the post from me. Things can only get better right? And no, that doesn’t mean D:Ream are on the show.

Things are looking up immediately though as the show is opened by James and one of their best known hits “She’s A Star”. As the caption says, this was the band’s first hit for three years and first new material since the double album project of “Laid” and “Wah Wah” in 1993 and 1994 respectively. In the meantime, there had been some significant events and shifts within the group. Firstly, guitarist Larry Gott had left to become a designer and spend more time with his family (although he still contributed to the writing and recording of 1997 album “Whiplash ”). Lead singer Tim Booth had wandered off to do a side project titled Booth and the Badman with Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti whilst the band’s manager Martine McDonagh resigned. The band also discovered that they owed a £250,000 tax bill. Against that background, they still had to keep delivering the goods and they duly did with the lead single from the aforementioned “Whiplash” album. “She’s A Star” is a monster of a tune – one of those that is familiar from the very first moment you hear it even though you know that can’t be possible. Superbly crafted with that huge, elongated chorus delivered by Booth’s falsetto vocals, for me though, it’s the bridge into that chorus which is the best part. The whole thing just soars – a complete anthem from the first note to the last. Now, some of the observant of you might say “Hang on, the last time you banged on about an elongated chorus it was slagging off Mark Owen for having one in his hit “Clemente” so what’s the difference, hypocrite?”. Well, I guess it’s that, to me (and it’s just my opinion) the chorus was all “Clementine” had whereas “She’s A Star” was a much more complete song hence my comment about the bridge part.

The fright masks and freaky wigs displayed on mannequins on stage with the band were from the cover of the single and were designed by a friend of Tim Booth’s and photographed for the artwork in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York. Is it me or do they look a bit like Sid Vicious and if so, presumably the photoshoot location was intentional given Sid’s history with that place? The video featured a young Keeley Hawes who would find fame in Ashes To Ashes, Tipping The Velvet and Spooks to name just a few TV series. She was also in the promo for Suede’s “Saturday Night” a performance of which we saw on TOTP just the other week. Sadly for Keeley, neither video were played on the show.

Who on earth is/was this?! DJ Kool? Seriously?! That was his stage name? DJ Kool?! I don’t remember him at all. What was his hit called? “Let Me Clear My Throat”?! Is this a wind up? Have I slipped through a time portal entered a parallel universe or something? None of this really happened did it?! Right, let me listen to the track…

…hang on! I do know this or at least I know the sample it’s based around. That’s “Hear The Drummer Get Wicked” by Chad Jackson. Except it isn’t as that track used a sample as well. So what’s the original sample? My research pointed me in the direction of this…

…but even that’s not the original which as far as I can tell is this…

Mystery solved. As for DJ Kool, what a load of old tripe. He displays a distinct lack of creativity in his choice of sample and then just shouts a load of disjointed, cliched phrases over it before descending into call and response, lowest common denominator behaviour. He even nicked the track’s title from a Beastie Boys song called “The New Style”. Thank heavens we never heard from him again because he was as welcome as…cough, cough, splutter, splutter…phlegm.

Next to a case of art imitating life imitating art or something as we have the song from a soundtrack to a film about a fictional mid 60s band who shoot to fame off the back of a hit song that actually becomes a hit in real life. The film is That Thing You Do! and was the writing and directorial debut of Tom Hanks (whose name Ant & Dec manage to turn into a double entendre in their intro). The movie tells the story of The Wonders from Erie, Pennsylvania who win a local talent contest when their newly recruited drummer Guy speeds up the tempo of their self penned song and wins them a shot at the big time when they are picked up by major label Play-Tone Records. The film charts the band’s rise to prominence in parallel with their song rising the charts with each stage showing their fame getting bigger and bigger until they find themselves performing to the whole of America on The Hollywood Television Showcase. Inevitably, it all ends in disappointment with the band imploding though there is a happy ending.

At the time, I thought that Tom Hanks had also written the song “That Thing You Do!” but he didn’t (though he did contribute to two songs on the soundtrack album). That was written by Adam Schlesinger, one time member of Fountains Of Wayne about whom I know very little except the song “Stacy’s Mom” from 2003. Anyway, the title track is an exceptional example of a perfect pop song that would also fit easily into a 60s compilation album without anyone realising that it was written three decades later. It’s just as well that the song works as you get to hear it over and over in the film in various different performances and guises yet it’s a tribute to Schlesinger that you never tire of to – well, I don’t anyway. I think its ubiquity is rendered less dominant by the dedication of the actors who apparently spent weeks in rehearsal learning their instruments so that when it came to miming the song for the shooting of the film, they looked and played liked authentic musicians.

You might have guessed already that I am a fan of this film but then I am a sucker for a music based narrative which shows the progression from early beginnings to fame. Some of my favourite films and books include That’ll Be The Day and its sequel Stardust starring David Essex and the novel Espedair Street by Iain Banks which all fit into this category. Despite not being a massive commercial hit at the time, the film That Thing You Do! has become a bit of a cult hit with fans to the extent that in 2021, a Wonders Night was staged in Erie where the film was partially set with cast members attending and participating in a panel discussion, autograph session and auction. As a result of funds collected from the event, raised $25,500 for Notice Ability, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping students with dyslexia.

As for the song “That Thing You Do!”, it didn’t match the chart high of its fictional counterpart peaking at No 41 in America and No 22 in the UK. As for art imitating life imitating art, Tom Hanks established a film and television production company named Playtone based on the record label in the film and a music arm of the operation is actually called Playtone Records label. Playtone has had an exclusive television development deal with HBO since the company was formed. Playtone’s projects for HBO have won 46 Emmy Awards while garnering 113 Emmy Award nominations.

Unlikely chart heroes Space were really getting the hang of this pop star lark by 1997. “Dark Clouds” was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit all taken from their debut album “Spiders”. Although it’s made of much the same stuff as their previous hits, it’s perhaps a little more mellow than its predecessors. Actually, listening to it now for the first time in years, there’s something about it that is giving me Summer of 1983 vibes. Why would that be? Well, I think that it’s putting me in mind of “Long Hot Summer” by The Style Council. Can you hear it? No? You might have to wait for the dark clouds to drift away to reveal the sunshine.

This trend for rap artists remaking old hits around this time is becoming tedious. There was Coolio who topped the charts with a treatment of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” and just the other week we had LL Cool J at No 1 with his version of the old Rufus and Chaka Khan hit “Ain’t Nobody”. Now here was Warren G who himself had already gone down that route with his take on Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” a few weeks prior. With that going to No 2, he clearly thought another attempt on going one better was justified using the same formula hence we got “I Shot The Sheriff”, the Bob Marley classic that Eric Clapton also had a hit with.

Picking up the protest song theme of the original, Warren G added some lyrics about police brutality and institutional racism. Sadly, despite this being 1997, these issues would continue to raise their ugly heads in the years to come both in America and the UK. The poignancy of the track didn’t make it any more listenable for me though with Warren’s flat vocals on the song’s title phrase especially off putting. Despite my reservations, the single would be a massive hit but it still missed out on a No 1 by a single place just like its predecessor.

And now to one of the most revered dance tracks of all time made by one of the most influential dance artists of all time. Despite the superlatives in that statement, Daft Punk weren’t that well known back in early 1997. Well, not to the non-dance heads in the mainstream like…well…me. That would all change with seminal track “Da Funk”. Having originally been released in a limited run pressing on 12” only via independent label Soma back in 1995, the track was reactivated after endorsement by The Chemical Brothers and Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale. A bidding war ensued between the majors with the French duo (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homer-Christo) signing with Virgin ultimately. Their new label were keen to rerelease “Da Funk” and with their backing and promotional budget, it would go Top 10. Combining house, funk and EDM, it had the music press salivating at its bass and beats. Even I could appreciate this one as being something special.

Its accompanying, Spike Jonze directed video was equally groundbreaking. The plot of Charles the Dog Boy with his leg in a cast and hobbling on a crutch around New York has the feel of an indie, art house short film. All very intriguing though I was left wondering if it was the best way to promote the single with the track low down in the mix to allow the characters in the video to speak their lines and interact. Having said that, it was certainly ahead of its time and must surely have been an influence on the 2024 Robbie Williams biopic Better Man which sees Williams portrayed as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee with no other characters in the movie reacting to his appearance (meant to portray his state of mind) just as in the “Da Funk” promo and its protagonist Charles.

From one Spike (Jonze) to another Spike (Dawbarn) as the latter is name checked by Ant & Dec alongside his band mates in their intro to 911. It’s not Spike that I’m focussing on here though but lead singer Lee Brennan as we return to the theme of Dolly the sheep and cloning. Look at Lee and then look at Dec. If they’re not a case of cloning then they were surely separated at birth! Anyway, Lee, Spike and Jimmy are here to perform their latest hit “The Day We Find Love” and what a wimpy, feeble track it was. However, the strategy of releasing a ballad around Valentine’s Day certainly paid off when it debuted at No 4, the band’s biggest chart hit to date at that point. Watching them perform it though, their stage choreography (especially from Spike and Jimmy!) seem incongruous to the song. All jerky arm movements and shrugging shoulders like someone shoved ice cubes down their back. “The Day We Find Love”? Nah, Give me “The Day We Caught The Train” any day.

It’s a seventh different No 1 in seven weeks as No Doubt debut at the top of the charts with “Don’t Speak”. Now, as I recall, there was a huge buzz about this one due to its massive airplay – it was the most played song on American radio up to this point in 1997. I’m sure that a communication came from Our Price Head Office informing stores that due to unprecedented demand for the single, an unusually large order of initial stock of it had been placed for the chain. I don’t think we’d ever had anything like that from the company before. It would happen again the following year though when Britney Spears appeared from nowhere with her “…Baby One More Time” single. Anyway, back to No Doubt and I can’t say that they’d been on my radar despite working in a record shop and despite the fact that they’d already appeared in the UK Top 40 (albeit briefly) when their single “Just A Girl” spent one week at No 38 in October of 1996. However, we all knew about them a few months later when this monster track was unleashed. It would break the sequence of consecutive different UK No 1s by staying at the top for three weeks and would go on to be our seventh best selling single of the year. Actually, I would have thought it would have been higher. What was above it?

*checks list*

Ah, well. It was never going to top “Candle In The Wind ‘97” but “Barbie Girl” and The Teletubbies?! What was going on?! Anyway, “Don’t Speak” is a very accomplished rock/pop power ballad but not in the vein of something from Cher or Celine Dion. It had more credibility than anything by those two. Maybe it was the band’s ska punk beginnings or Gwen Stefani’s unconventional vocals that lent them that. However, the song’s success undoubtedly brought the band into the mainstream with parent album “Tragic Kingdom” selling 16 million copies worldwide. The success of “Don’t Speak” would usher in a rerelease for “Just A Girl” which would go Top 3 the second time around. For a while, No Doubt was the bomb. And then…well…as noted many a time before, a band with a female lead singer and an otherwise all male line up was always going to have its publicity centred around the vocalist and Stefani certainly was who the press were interested in. With her looks compared to Madonna’s and much attention paid to her midriff, tensions within the band were high but that’s a discussion for a future post.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1JamesShe’s A StarNo but I had the album
2DJ KoolLet Me Clear My ThroatNo
3The WondersThat Thing You Do!Great track but its a no
4SpaceDark CloudsNah
5Warren GI Shot The SheriffNope
6Daft PunkDa FunkSee 3 above
7911The Day We Find LoveNever
8No DoubtDon’t SpeakSee 3 above

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/m0027791/top-of-the-pops-21021997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 NOV 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Right, for this post there’ll be no mentions of football or my past drunken escapades like in recent weeks – it’ll just be all about the music and TOTP which is what this blog is meant to be all about after all. So let’s examine what was happening with the grand old show at this point in time. Well, it had been through a number of changes in 1996. An initially temporary but ultimately permanent move from Thursday to Friday was seismic enough but that was added to by the allocation of a new time slot to boot. The there was the whole relaunch of archive show TOTP2 which seems to hijack the parent programme to help with its promotion. We had the ‘flashback’ slot which featured a hit from (mainly) the corresponding week from years back plus the play out video was taken over directly by TOTP2 to preview an old clip that would be on that week’s show. It definitely felt as if the BBC’s iconic music show was being put out to pasture. Whether executive producer Ric Blaxill felt this as well or just thought it was time for a new career, he would bring about another huge change by leaving the show at the start of 1997. Yes, the Blaxill era was coming to an end. On the whole, I think he did a decent job of resurrecting TOTP after the ‘year zero’ revamp experiment ultimately failed. The ‘golden mic’ presenter idea worked for the most part and if nothing else, he consigned the dreadful Simon Mayo to history as a host. Inevitably, I think the ‘golden mic’ feature got used to promote other BBC programmes and projects. Falling into this category were the likes of Dennis Pennis (Paul Kaye), The Fast Show cast and in this week’s episode Julian Clary who had recovered from the fall out of his infamous appearance at the British Comedy Awards in 1993 where he made that joke about Norman Lamont to have his own BBC series All Rise For Julian Clary that was on air at this time.

Anyway, whatever the reason for his filling the slot (he’d make a joke out of that wouldn’t he?), Clary’s first job is to introduce a song called “Place Your Hands” which prompts the first wry smile of the night from Julian. Now the first line of Reef’s biggest ever hit is “place your hands on my hope” but if you have subtitles turned on in your settings whilst watching it on iPlayer (like I did), then they will tell you that the first line is “place your hands on my hole”! Just as well that isn’t the actual lyric – Julian would have had a field day. My crack about ‘filling the slot’ is tame in comparison. What? ‘My crack’? Oh that’s enough now! Just stop it! Let’s get back to the music please! Right – well, “Place Your Hands” was quite the rousing tune, combining a funk feel with some rock riffs, coming on like the UK’s answer to Red Hot Chili Peppers – singer Gary Stringer even had Anthony Kiedis style long hair. However, the bass player looked very un-rock ‘n’ roll with his glasses, sensible haircut and roll up sweater – at one point he seems to do a choreographed stroll on the spot akin to the famous walk like The Shadows used to do. I have to say though that I liked the song even the weird bit in the middle where Stringer takes an age to get out the line “ooh it’s a celebration”. Someone who hated it though was my work colleague Mike who really objected to Stringer’s vocal interjection of “Alright now” which he repeats through the song. I’m not sure why it irked him so much but irk him it did and made the whole ding unlistenable for him.

However, what I’ll always associate “Place Your Hands” with is the parody of it that they recorded as a jingle for a section in the show TFI Friday called ‘It’s Your Letters’…

Is there a better example of a dance act being a great singles artist but lousy at selling albums than Livin’ Joy? Between 1995 and 1997 they had five UK hit singles including a No 1, two that made the Top 10 and two that peaked inside the Top 20 with all of them featuring on their album “Don’t Stop Movin’” and yet said album would only spend two weeks on the charts peaking at No 41. Such statistics would take some explaining for a rock/pop artist and yet for a dance combo it seemed to be industry standard. Was it a case of punters identifying with the song not the singer? Possibly. Would a track that went down a storm in the clubs be all about the bpm rather than any attachment to the actual person singing it? Were dance artists not promoted in the same way as a pop group with less focus on their visual image and more on their sound? I don’t know – maybe I’m just talking b******s. For the record, “Follow The Rules” peaked at No 9 and spent and three weeks inside the Top 40.

Now like me, you may only be able to name one song by Alisha’s Attic without looking at their Wikipedia page but they actually had eight in total. I know – eight! “I Am, I Feel” was the first (which is the one I know) which peaked at No 14 and started a peculiar run of chart positions up until their last Top 40 entry in 2001. Look at these numbers:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12 – 13 – 29 – 34 – 24

Adding to that, their first two albums peaked at Nos 14 and 15. These girls weee nothing if not consistent. “Alisha Rules The World” was the first of that run of three consecutive No 12 hits and on first hearing seemed quite insubstantial and yet it stuck in my mind for hours afterwards. How did they do that? Maybe it was in their genes – they are the daughters of Brian Poole as in Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame after all so perhaps they were always destined to be able to craft catchy tunes. Both sisters have gone onto have successful careers as songwriters – Shelley has worked with the likes of Janet Jackson, Boyzone and Westlife whilst Karen has written songs for all sorts of people including Sugababes, Kylie Minogue and Will Young. In 2021, she was honoured with the Best Music Creative Award at the Music Week Women In Music Awards. Together as Alisha’s Attic they received an Ivor Novello nomination for best lyrical and melodic composition. Meanwhile, Shelley extended the rock family tree by marrying Texas guitarist Ally McErlaine in 2001.

The careers of Madonna and Jimmy Nail had the rather unlikely habit of running into each other since the mid 80s when they both recorded a cover of the Rose Royce classic “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Nail took his version to No 3 in the UK off the back of his success in the role of Oz in ITV comedy/drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Madonna’s cover was in included on her 1984 album “Like A Virgin” and also made its way onto her 1995 ballads collection “Something To Remember”. They then crossed paths again on the film version of Evita with Madonna in the title role and Nail playing Argentine singer Agustín Magaldi. Finally, would you believe it, they’re on the same edition of TOTP though Madonna isn’t in the studio in person as Jimmy is. Madge’s appearance comes courtesy of the video for “You Must Love Me” from the Evita soundtrack whilst Nail is here to promote the soundtrack from his latest TV series Crocodile Shoes II but more of that later.

Nail’s role in Evita wasn’t the first time he’d played a character who had a connection to Argentina. The aforementioned Oz was shown working in the Falkland Islands at the start of the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet whilst episode eight of said series is based around Oz’s marriage to his wife Marjorie and is called Marjorie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – I love a bit of intertextuality me.

Julian Clary almost crosses the line into Lamont territory in his next intro by saying that he’d been searching for the hero inside himself for ages but couldn’t find him. However, he did find a couple of lorry drivers. Ooh err and, indeed, missus. Ric Blaxill must have known what he was getting when he booked Julian for the gig so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Anyway, back to the music and after two consecutive chart hits, Space (or their label) decided that a rerelease of an earlier single that failed to make the grade was in order. “Neighbourhood” originally made No 56 on the UK charts in March of 1996, just a couple of months before their Top 40 breakthrough with “Female Of The Species”. The revisit to “Neighbourhood” would peak at No 11. It’s possibly my favourite tune of theirs just because it’s entrancing in a beguiling sort of way – I can’t help but be drawn to it even though I know it shouldn’t really work. It’s basically one of those ‘list’ songs which in this case is a roll call of residents of a fictional neighbourhood which was based upon the real life area of the Cantril Farm Estate that singer Tommy Scott grew up in. There’s just something very intriguing about the song’s sound, be it the twangy guitar punctuations or Mariachi style vibe that runs throughout it which gives it the feel of a spaghetti western soundtrack.

Then there’s the characters in the lyrics which reference transvestites, “big butch queens” and the “local vicar” who’s a “serial killer “. That last one puts me in mind of another song with a narrative about a vicar who isn’t all he seems to be…

As I write this, this week sees the 40th anniversary of the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and so it seems rather apt that the ‘flashback’ slot features one of its protagonists in all his mid 80s, big hair glory. Here’s what I had to say about “Freedom” by Wham! in my 80s blog…

TOTP 11 OCT 1984

In an era when singles could be in and out of the chart within a fortnight, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton was one of those hits that bucked the trend. It would spend 11 consecutive weeks inside the UK Top 5 peaking at No 2 on two separate occasions matching the high of her other big hit “Breathe Again”. I say ‘other’ big hit but she did have more than those two. Indeed, “You’re Makin’ Me High” had been as high as No 7 back in July but I don’t remember that one at all. There are a few other hits but “Un-Break My Heart” and “Breathe Again” are surely what Toni Braxton will be remembered for. Indeed, the former is also the title of a TV film biography made about the singer that premiered in 2016. I was genuinely shocked that she was considered a big enough name to receive that level of attention. Maybe I shouldn’t have been as “Un-Break My Heart” would spend 11 weeks at No 1 in America and has sold over two million copies over there whilst also going double platinum in the UK. Did I like it? Well, R&B ballads aren’t really my thing so I was fairly immune to its appeal but I can appreciate that Toni has a fine set of pipes and gives Whitney Houston a run for her money with her vocal performance with this type of track. If I recall correctly, there was also a dance version of the song which may have helped to extend its chart life, covering all bases as it were. Given its longevity in our Top 5, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing this one on a TOTP repeat coming soon so I’ll leave it there for now.

And so back to the aforementioned Jimmy Nail who is this week’s ’exclusive performance’ with the lead single from the soundtrack to Crocodile Shoes II called “Country Boy”. My mate Robin tipped me off that this was all kinds of wrong and that the last two syllables of the title of his song were redundant. Ouch! Is Robin right? Well, certainly the choice of stage costumes is a bit dodgy. What was with the schoolboy outfits and the fake black eye? Was it some sort of homage to AC/DC’s Angus Young? Was it something to do with the TV show? I’ve never watched either series but I’m guessing not seeing as it was about a Country & Western club singer who makes it big in Nashville. However, I don’t actually mind the song. It kind of reminds me of this by The Big Dish which is a great track…

The line about the “devil’s daughter” though always reminds me of another example of alliteration featuring El Diablo…

I’m on record in this blog as saying that there are worst things you could do with some free time on your hands than listen to Jimmy’s Best Of album called “The Nail File” (see what he did there?). There’s some decent tunes on there including three written by the wonderful Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout fame and you can’t go wrong with a bit of Paddy. Robin though will be relieved to know that this was Jimmy’s final ever UK Top 40 hit though he will be back on a TOTP repeat one last time soon for another performance of “Country Boy”. Leave those last two syllables alone Robin!

Now to a collaboration between two acts that came about by a circumstance of scheduling but which would give both artists one of their biggest ever hits (though not the biggest in either case). Booked to appear on the same French pop music show, East 17 and Gabrielle were asked to do a song together to fulfil a regular feature of said show and picked a track that had been massive in America but which had hardly registered over here. “If You Ever” had been a No 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for R&B quartet Shai in 1992 but audience reaction to the boys from Walthamstow and the girl from Hackney’s version was so positive that it was decided that they should record their own version together. The resulting track would make No 2 in the UK charts just falling short of matching the feat of both Gabrielle’s “Dreams” and East 17’s “Stay Another Day”. In the case of the latter, it was used to spearhead their Greatest Hits album that was released three days after this TOTP aired. Its release prompted stories that the bad were about to split which were vehemently denied but Brian Harvey would be sacked within months after a late night radio interview in which he admitted to taking the drug ecstasy. As for Gabrielle, “If You Ever” would become her fourth and biggest hit of 1996.

As with Toni Braxton earlier, the song was an R&B ballad that featured a flourish of Spanish guitar in the middle eight – it must have been a thing back then – and is actually better than I remember (though that’s not saying much). It’s billed as East 17 featuring Gabrielle though in truth it might as well have been promoted as Brian Harvey and Gabrielle as it’s basically a duet between the two. Tony Mortimer plays some keyboards in this performance whilst ‘the other two’ are relegated not only to doing some swaying and backing vocals but physically as well as they are positioned some distance behind Brian and Gabrielle on stage though you could probably make a case that this happened on pretty much every East 17 release. Also like “Un-Break My Heart”, “If You Ever” was also remarkably durable charts wise staying in the Top 10 for five consecutive weeks including three inside the Top 3. We’ll surely be seeing this one again as well.

It’s a second and final week at the top for “Say You’ll Be There” by the Spice Girls. Interestingly, the A&R people at Virgin had wanted this to be the debut single for the group instead of “Wannabe”. Their manager Simon Fuller agreed with the label with both of the opinion that it was a much cooler song but the group got their way and the rest is history. Would it have made any difference to the Spice Girls story if Virgin/Fuller had won out instead? I’m not sure and I guess we’ll never know but I’m thinking that the juggernaut of their success would have been “Too Much” to “Stop” (ahem).

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ReefPlace Your HandsIt’s in the singles box – it’s a yes!
2Livin’ JoyFollow The RulesNegative
3Alisha’s AtticAlisha Rules The WorldI did not
4MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo I mustn’t
5SpaceNeighbourhoodNo but my wife had the album
6Wham!FreedomNo but we all had a Wham! Best Of didn’t we?
7Toni BraxtonUn-Break My HeartNah
8Jimmy NailCountry BoyNope
9East 17 / GabrielleIf You EverDidn’t happen
10Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereAnd 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/m0024zk8/top-of-the-pops-01111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 SEP 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s early September of 1996 and I’m on holiday in Barcelona. I loved it though I did get a case of Montezuma’s revenge the day before we were due to go back which made for a very uncomfortable flight home I can tell you. Sticking with that theme, although I really enjoyed Barcelona, a friend who visited there after me hated it saying that he’d rather go on holiday in his own toilet bowl. What has any of this to do with TOTP? Nothing really though I wonder how many shit songs we might get in this particular show?

Our host for tonight is Julia Carling (remember her?) and we start with a group that my mate Robin once described as a ‘joke band’ so I presume he thought they were a big pile of poo though I think that’s a harsh description. Space were certainly idiosyncratic and they may not have been to your taste but I don’t think they can be dismissed out of hand as complete shite. After securing themselves a bona fide hit in “Female Of The Species”, the scouse band were back with a follow up in “Me And You Versus The World”. As with its predecessor, it wasn’t your conventional pop song with Tommy Scott’s grainy vocals telling a Bonnie and Clyde type story in which the protagonist admits he’s “just a joke” (maybe Robin was right after all!) before a rather grizzly end is revealed. Scott channels his inner Victoria Wood when he gets the line “a tin of baked beans and a Woman’s Weekly” into the lyrics. The single would debut at No 9 providing the band with their first Top 10 hit. Space were in full launch mode. Who was laughing now?

Hit or Shit? I’m going hit with this one

Now this, this is a complete scandal. How on earth were Clock allowed to do this?! Well, presumably they got copyright clearance from the original artist but it’s still a disgrace. Having decided the only way to score major hits with their yucky brand of Eurodance was to cover previous hit records and polish them into turds, they’d already sprinkled flecks of shit onto “Axel F” and “Whoomph! (There It Is)”. Harold Faltermeyer and Tag Team were one thing but Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were sacrosanct! How dare they take their 1976 UK and US No 1 “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)” and give it the shitty stick treatment! They even had the temerity to rename their version as “Oh What A Night” (unless that was a stipulation of being granted permission to cover it – maybe they couldn’t use the song’s original title?). I mean, you just can’t improve upon the original, you can only make it worse so why try? Were they hoping to appeal to young record buyers who may not know The Four Seasons original? It’s just wrong on every level and yet somehow it was a hit spending four non consecutive weeks at No 13 unluckily for us.

I have to admit to being a bit biased in my denigration of Clock here as I do love Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I’ve seen Jersey Boys and, in my current job working in a theatre, have seen a couple of tribute acts all of which I’ve enjoyed. As such, this Clock nonsense really offends. They weren’t finished here though going on to cover the likes of Hot Chocolate, KC and the Sunshine Band and The Jacksons.

Hit or Shit? A massive, steaming turd

Next up are Kula Shaker with their No 2 hit “Hey Dude”. I discussed this one in quite some depth in a previous post so I don’t propose to say an awful lot more this time around. However, what I did discover in my research for it is that the band’s keyboard player Jay Darlington was a touring member of Oasis from 2002 until their 2009 break up. So, will he have had the call from Noel and Liam for the 2025 reunion tour and if he has, will he be allowed to go as he is currently back with Kula Shaker? When he was with Oasis, due to his long hair and beard, he was often introduced by Noel as “The Shroud”, “Gandalf” or even “Jesus Christ” leaving to the crowd chanting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”. Never mind Noel and Liam giving him a call, maybe Donald Trump* might reach out to Darlington. What an endorsement that would be!

*For any avoidance of doubt, I despise Trump.

Hit or Shit? Definite tune this one!

What on God’s green earth…? If I thought we’d reached a nadir with Clock, I hadn’t bargained on the sodding Smurfs making a comeback. People of a certain age (i.e. me) will have strong childhood memories of The Smurfs not least because of the ridiculous single “The Smurf Song” spending six consecutive weeks at No 2 in the UK charts during the long, hot Summer of 1978. That bloke with the long flowing beard? No, not Jay Darlington! Yep – Father Abraham (no, not the biblical patriarch but Dutch singer-songwriter Pierre Kartner). He had a bowler hat as well I seem to remember. Anyway, we finally came to our senses as a nation about The Smurfs (though there were two minor follow up hits as well) and left it all behind us after 1978 but across the rest of Europe they never went away and so, in 1996, EMI deemed it was time for their return to our shores (and ears) courtesy of “The Smurfs Go Pop” album which spent 12 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 of our charts over the Summer and Autumn of that year. Similar to the Clock concept earlier, The Smurfs (or whoever had the licensing rights to them) took modern day hit tracks and smurfed them up with high octane vocals that were enough to give you a migraine. And we thought Pinky and Perky* were bad enough!

*In fairness, I recall there being a Pinky and Perky record in our house when I was a tiny child and presumably the infant version of me loved it.

Brilliantly, they tried to get permission to do covers of some Oasis songs but Noel Gallagher wasn’t having any of it. In the end, the songs covered were fairly awful including “Mr Blobby”, “Cotton Eye Joe”, “Saturday Night” and “No Limit”. However, the single chosen for release was their take on Technohead’s recent gabber hit “I Wanna Be A Hippy”. Clearly, a brand aimed at young children couldn’t feature any references to drugs as the original did so they were all stripped out and replaced with the tale of a small dog and retitled as “I’ve Got A Little Puppy”. A happy hardcore version of The Smurfs sounds appalling and yet the single, as with the album, was a huge hit peaking at No 4. Who the f**k was buying it?! Working in Our Price, I must have sold it to punters many times over but I can’t actually recall doing it. Perfectly for the theme of this post, the lyrics included the refrain “pooper, pooper scooper!”.

Hit or Shit? A huge pile of dog poo

Here’s a curious thing – when an artist’s biggest hit is also one of their least known. I speak of Dina Carroll and her comeback single “Escaping”. I use the word ‘comeback’ as we hadn’t seen her for nigh on three years since her annus mirabilis in 1993 saw her become one of the breakout stars of that year. Four hit singles and a four times platinum selling debut album in “So Close” saw her named Best Female Artist at the following year’s BRIT awards. She was set for superstardom and then just seemed to vanish. Health issues and record label contractual problems caused a lengthy delay to her releasing any new material and so it was not until 1996 that she returned to the charts with “Escaping”. Despite this debuting at No 3 making it her joint highest charting single alongside “Don’t Be A Stranger”, I had real trouble recalling how this one went. That may be a common experience – when was the last time you heard it on the radio? Once I’d re- listened to it, it did sound faintly familiar but I do recall being surprised at how high it had gone into the charts back in 1996 given her low profile for the previous three years. The album it was taken from “Human Nature” also did well going to No 2 and achieving platinum sales status though its predecessor sold four times as many copies.

A mixture of an hereditary bone condition that affected her ears, bad luck (a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man” was aborted due to Dusty’s untimely death) and more record label and management wrangling meant that Dina never did release a third album and drifted away from the music industry come the new millennium. She seems an almost forgotten figure somehow which strikes me as unfair I have to say.

Hit or Shit? Hmm. Difficult one this. “Escaping” is pleasant but not exactly memorable but then it was her joint biggest hit. Is this an “all fart, no shit” scenario?

What the heck?! What’s going on here? Why is “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, a No 1 record in 1981, on TOTP in 1996? Well, this show was the first of ten that had a start time of 7.25pm. So? Here’s @TOTPFacts to take up the story…

Hmm. I think Blaxill was hoping against hope with that idea. In reality, it was probably just to further plug the return of TOTP2 that Julia Carling mentions at the song’s end. As my TOTP blog only dates back to the 1983 repeats, I’ve never properly discussed “Tainted Love” before but do I really need to go into the backstory on this one? Actually, there is a little bit of its origin that ties in nicely with this post. After becoming aware of the song due to its Northern Soul profile, Soft Cell decided to insert it into their live set. The song it replaced? “The Night” by the aforementioned Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. For years it was known as the biggest selling single of 1981 in the UK until the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 and gave that title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. “And I’ve lost my light” indeed.

Hit or Shit? For years it was one of those unlistenable tracks for me that you can’t hear anymore because it’s been so overplayed. However, it has recently become more acceptable to my ears again and is definitely a hit!

This next one comes charged with emotion for the band performing it. Less than two months before this appearance, Rob Collins, keyboard player for The Charlatans, died in a car crash aged just 33 on his way back to the studios where the band were recording their fifth album “Tellin’ Stories”. Despite the devastating loss, the band decided to carry on and completed the album with Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy drafted in to cover the keyboard parts. “One To Another” was its lead single coming out a good eight months before the album. I remarked in a recent post about how there seemed to be a trend around this time for huge time gaps between lead singles and its parent album being released quoting the examples of Paul Weller and Shed Seven. In the case of The Charlatans though, the loss of Collins more than explains the delay. The band had supported Oasis at their giant Knebworth gigs in the August and just weeks after Collins had died so maybe “One To Another” was released when it was as a tribute to their departed band mate? Perhaps there was also one eye on capitalising on the huge media profile those Oasis dates had generated?

Either way, the single was a banger, a huge, barrelling sound with groovy riffs aplenty. As Julia Carling said in her intro, it was their highest charting single ever when it crashed in at No 3. Interesting to note that there’s not much camera time given to Martin Duffy* on keyboards here. Could that have been at the request of the band who would have wanted to be respectful to Collins’s memory and not make it look like he’d just been effortlessly replaced?

*Tragically Duffy would also die young aged just 55 in 2022.

Hit or Shit? Huge tune this. Definite hit.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – it’s time for Los Del Rio again. Is it time to talk about the dance that went with the “Macarena”? I guess we have to at some point. I don’t propose to give a breakdown of the various moves – go online and find them yourselves if you want a refresher. However, what’s more interesting is the psychology behind why people would want to do it. In 2015, Oxford University published research into collective, synchronised dancing and found that the practice raised tolerance levels, fostered connectedness and friendship and broke down barriers promoting a feeling of togetherness. So there was some benefit to this ludicrous song. It’s still musical excrement though.

Hit or Shit? Definitely shit

And so to Rockets From The Crypt – a one hit wonder but one which I do actually remember. American punk rockers hailing from San Diego, their singular chart entry was “On A Rope” which would peak at No 12 in the UK charts. What stands out most in my memory about this one was that it was released as three different CD singles in cardboard slip covers. As I was working for Our Price, and, as we were not yet displaying stock live on the shop floor, you had to be really careful to get the correct disc from the filing behind the counter. Some of my more rock leaning colleagues were quite into this one but it didn’t do much for me I have to say. It was all a bit repetitive and certainly these days, aged 56, I would say it was too loud. It’s crap getting old isn’t it?

Hit or Shit? Is there a category for the non committed as I really couldn’t give a shit

It’s the last week at the top for the Spice Girls and “Wannabe”. Its success must have exceeded everything that record label Virgin could possibly have imagined for the debut release from a brand new act. It’s interesting to note that although the UK remained enamoured by them for the duration of their career (the first part of it at least) with nine of their first ten singles topping our charts, “Wannabe” was the only one to go to No 1 across the board in every territory globally.

The early copies of the single had a cover which doesn’t actually say Spice Girls on it but rather just ‘Spice’ with images of the individual members depicted within the lettering of the word. I think some of my colleagues were confused by this and actually just wrote ‘Spice’ as the artist name on the master bag for the filing system we used. It’s hard now to imagine a world where we didn’t know the name Spice Girls.

Hit or Shit? Sales phenomenon not withstanding, it was still a bit shit

The play out video is “How Bizarre” by OMC. By my reckoning, this is its fourth appearance on the show and therefore I have nothing left to say about it. Literally nothing. OK, OK…I’ll think of something. How about this? In 2002, “How Bizarre” was ranked at No 71 on the 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders show hosted by William Shatner. That’s William Shatner. Shatner. Shat-ner. The theme of this post? Oh forget it.

Hit or Shit? My wife bought this so I fell duty bound to say ‘hit’

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SpaceMe And You Versus The WorldNo but my wife had their album
2ClockOh What A NightNO!
3Kula ShakerHey DudeNo but I had a promo copy of their album
4The SmurfsI’ve Got A Little PuppyAre you mad?
5Dina CarrollEscapingNah
6Soft CellTainted LoveI did not
7The CharlatansOne To AnotherNo but I had it on their Best Of album Melting Pot
8Los Del RioMacarenaNever
9Rockets From The CryptOn A RopeNope
10Spice GirlsWannabeNegative
11OMCHow BizarreNo but my wife did

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00241bt/top-of-the-pops-06091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 JUN 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Ah, it’s time for that infrequent event of a TOTP being aired on my birthday. This particular show coincided with my 28th birthday (I’m now 56) and usually I wouldn’t have remembered what I got up to on my special day but, as I revealed just the other week, I recently rediscovered an old diary that helpfully covers the year 1996 in its entirety so lets see what occurred that day.

*checks diary*

Well, sensibly I’d booked the day off work and so had lunch in town with my wife before another meal in the evening at a favourite restaurant. Perfect. I did fit in going to my first aid course in between eating and I hope I was listening carefully as I spent the next couple of days with a gippy stomach. Maybe that favourite restaurant shouldn’t have been such a favourite! Anyway, presumably I didn’t see this TOTP episode due to being out so let’s see what I missed.

Tonight’s host is Nicky Campbell and the first act he introduces is Louise who is back in the charts with her third, and possibly most well known, solo single “Naked”. This was the point in the ex-Eternal member’s career when her management/label made a clear and definite decision to change her image from angelic, girl-next-door to pvc-clad, sex goddess. It worked as well. FHM Magazine readers voted Louise second in their list of the ‘100 Sexiest Women’ of 1996 (X–Files star Gillian Anderson came first). I’m guessing one of those that voted for Louise may have been this fellow (@jjtotheb) who commented on the YouTube video of this performance:

“I remember having my first tug to this”

Well, you can’t argue with that I guess. Or maybe you can. Providing the view from the other side is this chap on Twitter/X:

Hmm. Well, whatever your feelings about Louise, we should probably do her the courtesy of discussing her song rather than just her looks and clearly “Naked” was written as a integral component of her rebrand. With lyrics that include the words ‘sexual’, ‘sensual’ and, of course, its title, there was no doubt that this was a much sassier type of track than she had been given previously. To my ears it was a catchy, competent soul/pop hit that was a bit Madonna-lite* and no more but it’s No 5 peak helped to establish Louise as a genuine solo artist with a chart career. She would clock up a further nine UK hits all but two of which would go Top 10.

*Actually, the synthesised riff in the chorus of “Naked” is very reminiscent of the intro and outro motif of “Father Figure” also now I come to think of it.

After “Children” gave Robert Miles a continent-straddling mega-hit earlier in the year, it must have seemed to the poster boy for ‘dream house’ music that the obvious way to follow it up was to release another track that was almost identical to its predecessor. Genius! And lo, it came to pass, that the single “Fable” did just that. The record buying public did what they always do and fell for the trick by buying enough copies to send it to No 7. So, the moral of the story of fable is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ otherwise known as ‘don’t f**k with the formula’.

Now, before carrying on, I feel I should pull Nicky Campbell up on something he says in his intro for the next artist who is Tina Turner. Our host describes her as “the great soul survivor” and notes that the performance we are about to see of her new single “On Silent Wings” is from a live concert in Rotterdam before announcing “and let’s face it, if you can survive Rotterdam, you can survive anything”. What?! Why the need to slag off Holland’s second biggest city? Has he even been there? I can’t vouch for what it was like in 1996 but I visited it in 2018 and it was delightful. The Markthal (Market Place complex) is a marvel, its skyline stunning and parks wonderful to spend time in. A few months after this TOTP aired, The Beautiful South would have a big hit with “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” though I’m not sure that was a love letter to the city either. Around the same time that song was in the charts, I found myself on holiday in Barcelona where Tina’s Wildest Dreams tour was in town at the Palau Sant Jordi sports arena. I didn’t feel the need to shell out a small fortune that I didn’t have for tickets, I must admit.

Anyway, back to “On Silent Wings” which was the third single pulled from her “Wildest Dreams” album which was, rather surprisingly, her first collection of new studio material since 1989’s “Foreign Affair”. Those intervening years had been filled with a Best Of and the soundtrack to the biopic of her life. I’m guessing I wasn’t really paying much attention to this era of Tina as I couldn’t tell you how any of the songs from this album went but I was surprised to read that it was produced by Trevor Horn. The country-tinged slumber fest that is “On Silent Wings” is a world away from his iconic work with the likes of ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Art Of Noise. Apparently, the studio recording of the song also features vocals by Sting which obviously we don’t get to hear in this ‘live’ clip. Money for nothing or money for old rope? You decide.

Really?! In 1996, did we really have to have this in the charts?! A pretty much identikit version of one of Cliff Richard’s most naff, sickly and insipid tunes by a bloke who would be given the middle name of ‘love rat’ by the tabloids?! I refer, of course, to Darren Day, a former Butlin’s redcoat who made a small name for himself in 1988 via talent show Opportunity Knocks (then hosted by Bob Monkhouse) before carving out a bigger career on London’s West End theatre circuit. His appearance on TOTP though arose from his turn as the star of the touring stage version of the 1963 film Summer Holiday. I’m guessing there was a soundtrack album to go with the show and so the titular track was released as a single. I can’t quite work out who would have wanted to shell out hard cash to purchase this though. Someone who had been to the show and wanted a souvenir of it? Wouldn’t a tour programme have sufficed?

Day does a passable impression of Cliff in his performance of “Summer Holiday” but I don’t think the presence of the songwriters (Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett of The Shadows) on stage with him is as a big a scoop as Nicky Campbell tries to make out in his intro. Day looks like someone who you would be happy to take home to meet your parents here, in total contrast to the image he would go on to cultivate. In the 90s alone, he was engaged to Ana Friel, Tracy Shaw and Isla Fisher. Into the 2000s, he was in a relationship with Hear’say singer Suzanne Shaw (he seemed to have a thing for women with that surname) with whom he had a child and they would also work together in a relaunch of the Summer Holiday show. The last entry in his filmography on Wikipedia came back in 2018 with a minor role in The Krays: Dead Man Walking.

Next up we have the first sighting of a group that my friend Robin once dismissed (he’s good at dismissing things) as being a “joke band”. In Robin’s defence, he wasn’t alone in his opinion. Scousers Space gave the music press a dilemma in that they were hard to categorise. ‘Wacky’, ‘Novelty’, ‘Quirky’ and, in a spectacularly failed attempt by some hack to appear pithy, ‘Queasy Listening’ were just some of the descriptors used to label the band’s sound. Lead singer Tommy Scott was especially combatant in his refusal to accept such tags:

“It is because I just do not want to stick to one genre of music. I am into everything so why can’t it all just go into one song? Why would you want to do just country or rock? Why can’t you just do what you want?”

Skillen, Paul (29 January 2021). “‘Scouse Pop: Essay On Creativity”. University of Chester.

Have that Robin! For my part, I quite liked their stuff. Yeah, it was a bit out there yet catchy enough to make daytime radio playlists. My wife liked them enough to buy their debut album “Spiders” which would furnish the band with four hit singles no less. The first of those (though actually their fourth single release) was “Female Of The Species”, its title no doubt inspired by both the Rudyard Kiping poem and the title track to 1950s James Bond rip off film Deadlier Than The Male by The Walker Brothers.:

In this performance, Scott looks just the right side of being a wide eyed, crazy person but then such an image never did Keith Moon any harm did it? Well…yeah it did I suppose seeing as his self destructive behaviour led to him dying at the age of 32 but you get my point. The really lazy option was to lump them in with all those Britpop bands (I’m sure we did in the Our Price store I was working in when it came to setting up a Britpop display) but that was…well…really lazy. They were distinctly different from the usual Britpop candidates like fellow scousers Cast* who were ploughing a much more ‘authentic’, 60s influenced guitar sound.

*I should point out that I did also like Cast to be fair

The “Spiders” album peaked at No 5 whilst 1998’s follow up “Tin Planet” went Top 3 but it seemed as if, once the 90s were over, so were Space’s commercial fortunes. A third album’s release was constantly delayed leading to the band leaving their record label whilst line up changes meant that they pulled their own legs off in 2005 by breaking up the band. A reunion in 2011 has seen them release a further four albums (including that ever delayed third one “Love You More Than Football”) and they still tour to this day proving that there is still space for Space even three decades later.

Due to its success and ubiquity, we would all be forgiven for thinking that “Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)” by Baddiel & Skinner / Lightning Seeds was the official song of the Euro 96 football championships. It wasn’t however – that particular ‘honour’ fell to Simply Red who gave the world this woeful own goal of a song “We’re In This Together”. Apparently this was the last track on their 1995 album “Life” and ‘last’ is how previous act Space might have described it in their Scouse vernacular because it was and remains a terrible track. Awful. Just no good. It hasn’t even got any thing to do with football as far as I can tell judging by the lyrics in which Hucknall wails about “the train of universal feeling” and his eyes being “open just like the ocean”. Utter drivel.

The track was performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the tournament but I’m guessing hardly anyone remembers it despite that exposure. Of all the plethora of football songs that littered the charts around this time (and there were a lot most of which were indescribably terrible), I think this is the worst. I listened the other day to an interview with the comedian Joe Pasquale (stay with me) and he recounted the tale of an early gig in Wales when he was on the end of what he described as the worst heckle in the world. A member of the audience who was on crutches threw them at Joe and then slumped to the floor shouting something in Welsh at him as he fell. Pasquale picked up the crutches and left the stage at which point a guy met him round the side and said could he have his mate’s crutches back. When Joe asked him what his mate had shouted at him, he replied “You don’t want to know”. Pasquale insisted and was told that he’d shouted “I’d rather fall over than listen to this shit!” and he was true to his word. This is exactly how I feel about Simply Red’s “We’re In This Together”.

From a dodgy tune to a tune by Dodgy now as the “Staying Out For The Summer” hitmakers return with “In A Room”, lead single from their third studio album “Free Peace Sweet” (see what they did there?). I think this track gets overshadowed rather by subsequent single “Good Enough” which is surely their best known hit (apparently one of the most played tracks on British radio in the last 25 years) but it’s actually a pretty decent song in its own right. Angular guitars allied with some breezy drumming courtesy of Matthew Priest and a strident if not completely obvious hook would give them their then biggest hit when it debuted at No 12. Just a few short weeks later though would come that ever present hit making Dodgy good enough for daytime radio playlists everywhere and consigning “In A Room” to also-ran status. Shame.

By 1996, it was four years since Shakespeares Sister had topped the charts for eight weeks with their mammoth hit “Stay” but it felt more like forty. The pop world had not so much moved on as relocated to the other side of the planet and Siobhan Fahey was struggling to find her way back to it. I say Siobhan Fahey as Marcella Detroit had long since been jettisoned from the band rather publicly via an acceptance speech by the former’s publisher at the 1993 Ivor Novello Awards ceremony. After dealing with some personal issues (not least her divorce from Eurythmics Dave Stewart), the Shakespeares Sister project was relaunched with the single “I Can Drive”. Much less ‘pop’ than their previous stuff, it has a definite glam rock bent to it with Siobhan’s much maligned vocals and delivery making her look and sound like she’s auditioning for a part in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The song itself has shades of “All The Young Dudes” to it but the verses sound just like those of this hit for OMD that was released just a couple of months after this TOTP aired. Who copied who I wonder?

“I Can Drive” didn’t provide the jump leads to restart Shakespeare Sister’s career that Siobhan must have been hoping for when it stalled at No 30. Relations between her label London Records deteriorated to the point that they refused to release third album “#3” and a parting of the ways became inevitable. The album was finally released in 2004 on Fahey’s own website and a reunion with Marcella Detroit in 2019 saw the duo release a new single and embark upon a tour together.

And so we arrive at the record that would become the biggest selling single of 1996 in the UK. Although the Fugees had already had a Top 40 hit earlier in the year with “Fu-Gee-La”, I don’t think I’d even noticed it as it debuted and exited our charts in just three weeks back in April. Fast forward a couple of months and they went supernova with their cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” which they retitled as “Killing Me Softly”. If I remember correctly, this was around the time that record companies started to allow new singles to be made available in the shops to buy on the Sunday of the week of release as opposed to the traditional Monday. I guess they realised that with stores now routinely opening on both weekend days after the Sunday Trading Act of 1994, there was some logic in stimulating more sales of their products by having them on the shelves for an extra day. I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport on the Sunday that “Killing Me Softly” came out and all I remember doing is selling copy after copy of it from opening to closing time. I couldn’t refill the shelves quick enough (Stockport was a two floor store and I think there was only two of us in that day; I was downstairs where the singles were). It was absolutely relentless.

Why did it capture the nation’s hearts so? Well, it was a bloody good cover version with the hip-hop slant the band put on it coming up trumps alongside some unusual hooks such as the synth sitar sound that kickstarts the track and Wyclef Jean’s “One time, two times” interjected chants. Even so, did that explain its stratospheric sales? It was No 1 just about everywhere and the best selling single of the year not just here but in Germany, Holland, Iceland and Belgium as well. In the UK, it spent nine consecutive weeks at either No 1 or No 2 and 15 weeks inside the Top 40. Its sales were still going strong when the band released follow up “Ready Or Not” causing their record label Columbia to withdraw it from sale to clear the path for its successor. Maybe it was something to do with the amount that radio got behind the track. It broke the record at the time for the most radio plays in a week in the UK. Whatever the reasons, it made the Fugees superstars for a while and led to successful solo careers for all three members Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel.

After blowing smoke up their collective arses for most of this review, I have to say that the performance here is actually quite annoying mainly due to Wyclef Jean who insists on shouting about being on Top of the Pops and bellowing “Yo!” and “Pow!” over and over. Makes you wish he was “Gone till November”.

The play out video is “The Changing Man” by Paul Weller. Why were we seeing the video for a hit from 12 months previous? It was to trail the fact that Weller would be doing two tracks live on the show next week that Nicky Campbell referred to. It was a feature designed to promote the new Friday night slot that the show was shifting to over the Summer due to the Euro 96 football tournament. It would prove to be a short lived phenomenon with only the reactivated Sex Pistols going on to perform two songs on the show later in the month. As I’ll have already reviewed “The Changing Man” in the 1995 TOTP repeats, I won’t delay myself here any further.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1LouiseNakedNope
2Robert MilesFableNegative
3Tina TurnerOn Silent WingsNah
4Darren DaySummer HolidayAs if
5SpaceFemale Of The SpeciesNo but my wife had their Spiders album
6Simply RedWe’re In This TogetherGod no!
7DodgyIn A RoomNo but my wife had the Free Peace Sweet album
8Shakespeares SisterI Can DriveNo
9FugeesKilling Me SoftlyNo but my wife had The Score album it came from
10Paul WellerThe Changing ManNo but I had the Stanley Road album with it on

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/m0022v3t/top-of-the-pops-06061996?seriesId=unsliced