Suede

TOTP 17 SEP 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

Four days before this TOTP was broadcast was a very significant date if you were a fan of science fiction and of one show in particular. You see, 13 September 1999 is the date that a thermonuclear explosion caused the moon to blast out of Earth’s orbit and into deep space. Well, it did in Gerry Anderson’s Space:1999 anyway. I loved this show when I was a kid though I probably didn’t understand a lot of the heavy, complex plots in Series One that dealt with metaphysical themes. Series (Year) Two was much more action-orientated, awash with monsters with each episode pretty much ending in a bug hunt which was probably more alluring for the eight years old me. 50 years on, I can appreciate that the first series was infinitely superior. I haven’t done a theme post for a while so let’s see if I can make some very tenuous connections between the artists on this TOTP and Space:1999…

Before we get to all that though, who’s this not-seen-before host for this show? Emma Ledden? It’s a new name on me. Well, she’s an Irish author, presenter, model and writer who at the time of this broadcast was about to take over the reins of presenting Saturday morning children’s TV show Live & Kicking after Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston had left so I guess this was a bit of cross promotion by the BBC. That certainly seems to be the case as this was the only TOTP she ever presented. She now runs a communications company and is a published children’s author. Oh and by the way, we’re still in TOTP On Tour mode with this show coming from Club Wow in Sheffield. We start with the only song this week that has featured on a previous show – “Moving” by Supergrass. As such, I’ve already reviewed this one. Here’s what I had to say about it:

TOTP 26 AUG 1999

Can I just leave it at that? No? OK, well checking it out online I found a comment that said that the intro to “Moving” is just like that of the track “Dogs” by Pink Floyd. Now, never having caught the boat going to Floyd island, I’m not in a position to make any comparison without listening first so…

…Wow! It’s just like it! Was that deliberate on the part of Supergrass or subconscious?

Space:1999 connection: The video for “Pumping On Your Stereo” features Supergrass as animatronic puppets with human heads, a visual style that pays homage to the “Supermarionation” technique pioneered by Gerry Anderson, the creator of Space 1999.

After their ubiquitous Summer hit “Kiss Me” had finally dropped out of the charts, Sixpence None The Richer made a bold, unexpected decision for the follow up single. For many, “There She Goes” by The La’s was seen as untouchable when it came to covering it and yet that’s just what the Christian alternative rock band did. Why would it have been seen as musical blasphemy? I think perhaps it’s because of the almost myth-like status that has been built up around The La’s over time. In an alternate universe, they would not have split after just one album and would have given us a wealth of material over a long career and it’s that missed opportunity on which their legend has been built. The story that never got to be told. The paucity of La’s recordings* means that the ones that exist are upheld as almost religious artefacts so to dare to cover their most well known and perhaps treasured song…well, it was…daring. That might all sound a bit over the top and yes, I could be open to accusations of hyperbole but I think I prefer to call it artistic licence.

*They reformed briefly in the mid-1990s, 2005 and 2011 but no new recordings were released.

Anyway, was the Sixpence None The Richer version of “There She Goes” any good? Actually, after all that hyperbole artistic licence above about The La’s original, it’s a pretty respectful take on it. Sort of reminds me of the Cowboy Junkies but poppier. Its peak of No 14, though nowhere near as high as that of “Kiss Me”, suggests that the record buying public didn’t reject it out of hand as sacrilegious. Of course, it’s possible that the pop kids of 1999 weren’t aware of the 1990 incarnation and took it on its own merits and liked it enough and I guess that’s where I’ll leave this one. It was an adequate cover – good enough.

Space:1999 connection: Sixpence None The Richer’s name was inspired by a passage from C.S.Lewis’s book Mere Christianity. Lewis also wrote a Space Trilogy including the title Out of the Silent Planet which explored the idea of Earth as a ‘Silent Planet’ quarantined from the rest of the cosmos whereas Space: 1999 depicts humanity forced out of that quarantine due to a disaster. Put that in your rocket and ignite it!

It’s Hepburn’s nemesis next – the blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em Thunderbugs. Yes, the other big player in the ‘all girl groups playing their own instruments’ mini movement at the end of the 90s make their TOTP bow with their debut single “Friends Forever”. Unlike Hepburn though who all hailed from England, Thunderbugs had an international flavour to them with members from France and Germany in their line up. So, who came first or should that be who copied who? Perhaps neither question holds water as both groups appear to have met organically rather than being recruited for a specific project akin to the Spice Girls. Admittedly, Hepburn got their product to market first but only by a few weeks. Should the question then be were there any differences between the two? On the surface the answer is no as both consisted of four members who all played their own instruments and both were pedalling a rock/pop sound. Digging a little deeper, I would say that Thunderbugs were actually more pure pop in that “Friends Forever” sounds like something from High School Musical but I might be splitting hairs. What is true is that both bands couldn’t sustain. Thunderbugs released a follow up that flopped, failing to make the Top 40 in a packed Christmas market and their album wasn’t even released in the UK (though it is now available on Spotify). So much for Emma Ledden’s comment about this being the first of many TOTP appearances for them – this was their one and only. Hepburn, meanwhile, managed three mid-sized hits (including one called “Bugs” bizarrely) and a Top 30 album before being dropped in the Summer of 2000.

Space:1999 connection: Emma Ledden did my job for me in her intro “Thunderbugs are go” obviously referring to Gerry Anderson’s puppet series masterpiece Thunderbirds.

Well, this is fortunate. A new entry into the charts that is steeped in Sheffield music history whilst the show is being broadcast this week from a club in, yep, Sheffield. I wonder if that was in the thinking behind showcasing a hit at No 28 whilst ignoring a smash at No 7 by Leftfield/Afrika Bambatta. Anyway, it’s The All Seeing I featuring Phil Oakey who we get making a South Yorkshire double whammy for their single “1st Man In Space”. Written by yet another Sheffielder in Jarvis Cocker (supposedly a collaboration sparked by Pulp being on the same TOTP show as The All Seeing I in 1998), its lyrics inevitably drew comparisons with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Rocket Man” by Elton John. However, it sounds more like early B-52s to me, maybe with a lick of New Order in the mix. That’s a good thing by the way with Oakey’s low register vocals a perfect compliment to that sound. It was probably a little too left field (no, not them) to be as big as their previous two hits “Walk Like A Panther” (made with another South Yorkshire man Tony Christie) and “Beat Goes On” and indeed, that aforementioned chart position of No 28 was its peak. Still, in a year of awful music, it provided a nice little pushback against the tide of tat. It was also The All Seeing I’s final UK hit.

Space:1999 connection: Space:1999? “1st Man In Space”? This shizzle writes itself.

And so to another cover version reactivating a hit years after it was originally in the charts but I’m guessing that this one would not have raised the same eyebrows that “There She Goes” did. Perhaps the defining anthem of bubblegum pop, “Mickey” started out life as “Kitty” on “Some Girls” hitmakers Racey’s debut album but was remodelled by Toni Basil with a name and gender change which propelled her to the top of the US charts and to No 2 in the UK in 1982. Basil’s pop career was basically just that one song and she returned to her more successful career as a choreographer working with some of the biggest names in music and showbiz. “Mickey” though would prove to be a remarkably hardy song, regularly topping ‘one hit wonder’ polls and becoming a staple of wedding disco playlists. I guess it was inevitable that somebody would cover it eventually and so it was that Lolly took it back into the charts in 1999. Who you may well ask? Born Anna Shantha Kumble, in Sutton Coldfield (and I’d always assumed she was American), Lolly had already had one hit with her debut single “Viva La Radio” which we missed in these TOTP repeats because of the Gouryella issue but she was back with her version of “Mickey” which would become her biggest hit of five when it peaked at No 4. Given Lolly’s image, it was an almost perfect choice of track and she gives a pretty faithful rendition of it (albeit with some clunky synths to the fore) even down to recreating the cheerleader motif. Her squeaky voice is almost unspeakable though.

Now there was some controversy surrounding these lyrics:

“So come on and give it to me any way you can
Any way you wanna do it, I’ll take it like a man”

Writer/s: Michael Donald Chapman, Nicholas Barry Chinn 
Publisher: Downtown Music Publishing

Why? Well, a music critic called Robert Christgau suggested that the lines referred to anal sex (!) but Toni Basil adamantly denied that and indeed, neither Lolly nor her management felt the need not to include the lyrics in her version despite her teeny bop appeal. After her short lived music career was over (she had a couple more hits with cover versions of Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper tracks), Lolly diversified into TV presenting, stage roles (she’s a veteran of pantomimes) and even returned to music in 2018 with a single called “Stay Young And Beautiful” though I’m not sure anyone really noticed.

Space:1999 connection: Yasuko Nagazumi played Yasko in Space:1999 and her daughter was the lead singer of shoegaze band Lush – Miki Berenyi

WHOOOO?! LFO? They were an electronic dance duo from Leeds (Low Frequency Oscillations for all you pedants) who specialised in the bleep techno sound weren’t they? Well, yes they were but they were also an American pop-rap group who had a handful of hits around the turn of the century. LFO (or Lyte Funky Ones to give them their full title) have quite the tragic element to their story despite my not knowing who they were/are. Although clearly a trio here, their timeline of members consists of four people – three of them are now dead including two of those featured in this performance. That’s quite a death percentage. Their early releases included a cover of “Step By Step” by New Kids On The Block (more of them later) before going into the stratosphere with “Summer Girls” which made No 3 in the US and No 16 over here. Listening to it in 2026, I have to say its success seems inexplicable. It’s truly awful with some random lyrics supposedly inspired by memories of previous summers like these that put me in mind of “The Chicken Song” by Spitting Image:

“New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits
Chinese food makes me sick…When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets…”

Songwriters: Bradley Young / Dow Brain / Rich Cronin; Summer Girls lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Well, there’s the New Kids On The Block reference but even worse is Billy Shakespeare. BIILY SHAKESPEARE?! REALLY?! The whole thing sounds dreadful, like they’d been given just 20 minutes to come up with a rap and this was the best that they could do. Maybe it’s just their name but they’re giving me EYC (Express Yourself Clearly) vibes when they should have been more EMF (Epsom Mad Funkers). Despite now numbering just one, their name is being kept alive by surviving member Brad Fischetti who has toured with reality TV boyband O-Town.

Space:1999 connection: Space:1999 was put into development after Gerry Anderson’s first live action sci-fi series UFO wasn’t commissioned for a second series. LFO…UFO? Ah, it’s close enough.

Ooh! Here’s a nice little link from Lolly whom we saw earlier to the next act courtesy of the ever reliable @TOTPFacts:

Excellent! Now, there was a third single from Suede’s “Head Music”? There was a third and fourth actually but “Everything Will Flow” was the third and it has the band on a very laid back vibe, with an almost cosmic sound. Suede go all hippy? Maybe that’s a stretch but it’s certainly less urgent than some of their back catalogue and I’m afraid to say that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s all a bit meandering and, dare I say it, dreary. Its high of No 24 was their worst chart position since their debut single “The Drowners” failed to make the Top 40. These were difficult times for the band with Brett Anderson’s addiction problems to the fore and their commercial fortunes on the wane. Everything was flowing and the band were drowning.

Space:1999 connection: Suede released a B-sides compilation album in 1997 called “Sci-Fi Lullabies”.

Just when I think that 1999 can’t have any more musical nadirs left to negotiate, up pops another abyss devoid of taste and creativity. How the hell did the UK put “We’re Going To Ibiza” by Vengaboys at No 1? Look, I get that the hordes of Brits holidaying on the Spanish island in the Summer meant that some of the tunes that they heard out there in the clubs would create a demand for them back in the UK but this wasn’t an Ibiza anthem was it? It was almost a novelty song based on the 1975 No 1 “Barbados” by Typically Tropical. It was crud, pure, irredeemable crud and yet the record buying public found it irresistible. Was it the way that they pronounced “Ibiza” as “I-bitz-a” (a common pronunciation in their home country of Holland) that people fell for? Is that all it took?! Never mind going to Ibiza, we were all going to Hell in a handcart.

Space:1999 connection: In 2021, Vengaboys released a single called “1999 (I Wanna Go Back)”.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SupergrassMovingNo but I had the album
2Sixpence None The RichThere She GoesNah
3ThunderbugsFriends ForeverNope
4The All Seeing Eye / Phil Oakey1st Man In SpaceDecent but no
5LollyMickeyNo thanks
6Lyte Funky OnesSummer GirlsOf course not
7SuedeEverything Will FlowNo
8VengaboysWe’re Going To IbizaHell 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/m002v4qp/top-of-the-pops-17091999

TOTP 02 JUL 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re halfway through these BBC4 1999 TOTP repeats which means I’m officially in the home straight with this blog which will end with the 90s and there will be no TOTP Rewind the 2000s. Also coming to an end back in 1999 was my time working for Our Price. Having started with the company in October 1990, I now had less than a year left before I would leave. I recently posted a photo of myself taken outside the store in Altrincham around this time and with me in that photo was my manager Pete whom I’ve not referred to before. Pete came in to replace Scott who had been so important in my rehabilitation back into work after a significant amount of time out when I was struggling with my mental health. I’d not worked with Pete before so I was probably a bit concerned when Scott was moved on to the Piccadilly shop in Manchester. I shouldn’t have worried as Pete was great albeit in very different ways to Scott. He was an absolute dynamo, always busy doing something, probably because he was a sugar junkie – Pete would think nothing of having a packet of Tunnocks Teacakes for his lunch. He was also not the best observer of Health and Safety regulations. I recall doing an induction for a Xmas Temp and had literally just told them about never standing on a swivel chair to reach for anything high up and Pete came into the stockroom and reached for something high up on a swivel chair! I once locked him in the shop by mistake after taking both his and my keys home. This was before we all had mobile phones and so I got all the way home to Manchester where I found my answer machine full of messages from a stranded Pete asking me to come back and let him out. He took it in good humour though and we went to the pub afterwards to watch the footy. Pete would be my 14th and final manager before I left both Our Price and Manchester for a job in the Civil Service at York.

You’re not here for recollections about my work life though so let’s get to the music. There are only seven artists on tonight as opposed to the usual eight but having checked, that appears to be the original figure when first broadcast and not due to any revised editing decision. Gail Porter is in the host hot seat and we start with last week’s No 1. This practice of having the previous week’s chart topper raise the curtain on the following week’s show despite having been toppled from their throne was becoming a regular feature. Previously, we had S Club 7, this time it’s the Vengaboys with “Boom Boom Boom Boom”. I get that it was a method of combatting the extreme fluctuations of the very top of the charts otherwise these big selling hits would only get one TOTP appearance but it made for an odd spectacle for those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s watching the show. We just get a repeat of the performance from seven days prior in this one and as such, I have nothing more to say about this absolute pile of crud.

Instead, I think I’ll comment on the profuse usage of the word ‘boom’ in pop and rock music because the Vengaboys sure weren’t the first to coin it. Going back to 1962 there was “Boom Boom” by legendary US blues artist John Lee Hooker whilst the 70s brought us The Boomtown Rats. Into the 80s, the word seemed to be attached to bands and songs that didn’t achieve the same level of success. “Iko Iko” hitmaker Natasha released “The Boom Boom Room” as the follow up but it failed to crack the Top 40 whilst the band Boom Boom Room never hit any higher than No 74 with “Here Comes The Man” despite releasing it twice. The 90s was…ahem…boom time for songs featuring “boom” in their titles. There’s “Boom Boom Boom” by The Outhere Brothers and “Boom! Shake The Room” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince both of which were No 1 records. Meanwhile, Apache Indian would score a Top 5 hit with “Boom Shack-A-Lak” in 1993. I’m sure there are more but I think I’ve proved my point. In fact, I think I’ve earned the right to one of these…

Almost two months (TWO MONTHS!) after we first saw Whitney Houston perform “My Love Is Your Love” on the show, we got to see her do it again this week or rather we were just shown a repeat of that initial appearance. Yes, that’s what the once monumentally important TOTP had become by 1999 – a show that would feed us repeats of performances we’d already seen weeks before. OK, that assessment doesn’t really tell the whole story. Presumably when Whitney and her team agreed to record an in person performance for the show, it came with certain conditions. It wasn’t worth her time to do just one song so two tracks were performed – her current single “It’s Not Right But It’s OK” and the follow up “My Love Is Your Love”. I’m pretty sure that was the case anyway. It makes sense. I recently posited a similar theory regarding Cher who I believe did two performances of her hit “All Or Nothing” in the same recording but with two different outfits on! I guess satisfying diva demands was deemed a fair price to pay to get the biggest names in music on the show.

Anyway, the long game strategy played by Whitney’s people paid off for both parties – they had a ready made performance for promotional purposes in the can for the release of “My Love Is Your Love” and TOTP had the exclusive of a studio appearance that they could show. However, why then was said appearance shown on the 14th May show weeks before it was available to buy in the shops? It must have been to plug the album which had been released the previous November surely? Or perhaps the release date of the single got put back? My guess is your guess.

Ah 1999, you really were a pile of shite weren’t you? Pointless, needless, inexplicable hit after hit cluttering up the charts. Hers another example. For some reason, The Three Amigos and their cover version of “Louie Louie” puts me in mind of The Wiseguys* whom we recently saw coming on like a turn of the millennium Blues Brothers with their single “Ooh La La”. Just like those berks, these jerks put the least amount of original thought that they could get away with into their hit. I mean like literally – they chose possibly the world’s most recorded song (2000 different versions at last estimate) and added a rap to it. That’s it pretty much. Such a poor idea was it that some weird visuals were required to sell it so we get the monochrome, 60s style backing dancers (a nod to the popularity of Austin Powers perhaps) and some sort of sci-fi costumes and and a bloke with a beard who I can’t tell if he’s covered in cobwebs or looks like he’s just come out of a cryogenic freezing facility (Austin Powers again). What utter charlatans (just like the characters from the 1986 comedy movie they were presumably named after).

*It turns out that The Wiseguys remixed one of the tracks on the “Louie Louie” single for The Three Amigos. My Spidey senses working well there.

Suede’s commercial peak was starting to decline by the end of the 90s. Although fourth album “Head Music” had followed “Coming Up” (and before that their eponymous debut album) to the top of the charts, it had only sold a third of its predecessor’s copies. Following suit were the singles released from “Head Music”. “She’s In Fashion” would end a run of six releases charting inside the Top 10 when it peaked at No 13. Subsequent singles taken from the album would not even make the Top 20. And yet “She’s In Fashion” is generally regarded as one of the band’s most accessible songs receiving more airplay than any of their previous singles had. It was championed by Radio 1’s Zoe Ball though possibly she saw it as tool for self promotion due to its opening lines:

“She’s the face on the radio, she’s the body on the morning show.”

Writer(s): Brett Lewis Anderson, Neil John Codling

That must be why my immediate association with the song is the broadcaster and presenter. Didn’t she try and make out that it was written about her? I can’t remember now. It’s too long ago. Enough of all that though, was it any good and why did it receive so much airplay? Well, yes it was, certainly compared to the rest of the junk in the charts. I’m guessing its airplay was down to its lighter, breezier sound that almost had a summery feel. Almost. It’s also quite repetitive for a Suede track which probably helped to lodge it in people’s brains and make it possibly one of their best known songs despite not being one of their biggest hits. Apparently the track was written and recorded at a time when Brett Anderson’s drug habit was at its worst but looking at him here, either he’d turned his life around by this point or the make up artist had done an amazing job on him.

Even in the dying light of the 90s, still the disease that blighted the musical landscape of that decade would not yield – yes, we still had time for yet another boyband. This lot were so lightweight that they’d have floated to the surface if chucked in the nearest canal wearing concrete shoes which is possibly a fate they deserved for the bilge they served up. Too harsh? Maybe but having to write about A1 is really trying my patience. A1 – even their name was awful, only beaten in the manky moniker stakes by Blue.

OK, so what was the story behind this shower? It was all down to someone called Tim Byrne who was one of the people involved in setting up Steps apparently. Paul Marrazzi had just missed out on being in that group but Byrne must have seen something in the pop hopeful and so decided to form another band with him in it. Auditions were held and a four piece put together. Presumably Byrne’s track record with Steps helped get A1 a record deal and hey presto!…their debut single “Be The First To Believe” was suddenly in the Top 10 despite sounding like a piss weak version of Steps if such a thing were possible. Surely this lot were destined for just the 15 minutes of fame but no; they would rack up 11 hit singles including (and this is truly mind boggling) two No 1s! One was a cover version of A-ha’s “Take On Me” which I can only describe as depressing.

They would split in 2002 with the obligatory solo careers pursued but would reunite in 2009 for a series of live shows and a persistent dalliance with Norway and the Eurovision Song Contest (member Christian Ingebrigtsen is Norwegian). In 2014 they appeared in that last scraping of the fame barrel known as The Big Reunion alongside the aforementioned Blue, Five, 911, Adam Rickitt etc. When their 20 years anniversary came around in 2019, Marrazzi rejoined for some live shows and the band released some non album singles. They are still together to this day which see seems incredible to me for a band that had so little to offer.

P.S. When I was at secondary school, we had a grading system that was a combination of letters and numbers with the former referring to your level of achievement in a particular subject and the latter the amount of effort you put in. A1 was therefore the highest you could be awarded and you were generally considered a swot if you received that mark. The coolest grade was A5 – you were naturally clever but couldn’t give a toss about applying yourself. In that system, A1 the band should surely have been an E1 – desperate to do well but intrinsically hopeless. And the recipient of the A5 grade in boyband world? I don’t know, East 17 maybe?

Here’s a question – was I already aware of Jennifer Lopez as an actress before she turned her hand to singing or was her debut single “If You Had My Love” my first introduction to her? Let’s have a look. Which films had she been in up to this point?

*checks her filmography*

Nothing I’d seen then nor indeed since I don’t think. Out Of Sight alongside George Clooney seemed to have been her highest box office hit by this point. The truth is that it’s hard to recall our first awarenesses of huge public figures isn’t it? It’s difficult to pinpoint our consciousness in these matters as our memory shifts and re-edits what we knew and when. I think the answer is probably that I knew of her as an actress but hadn’t engaged with her work on any meaningful level until I had to as I was selling her CDs as part of my job at Our Price. Despite this, I’d be hard pushed to name any of her songs (save maybe “Jenny From The Block”) and there’s plenty to choose from – she’s released nine studio albums and 67 singles! I had no idea! As mentioned earlier, “If You Had My Love” was the first of those 67 and it hit immediately going to No 1 in America and No 4 over here. As a Latin-infused, R&B number, it was never going to do much for me but even my ‘pop’ ear (Popeye’s brother) could identify that it was a very serviceable track competently delivered. Parent album “On The 6” would sell 300,000 copies in the UK and 10 times that amount in the US. A superstar was born and she would go by the name of J-Lo. Well, it was snappier than Jenny From The Block I guess.

It’s yet another different No 1 this time from ATB who was German DJ André Tanneberger. Now, if you look at the chart for 6th to the 12th June 1999, you’ll find two separate entries for “9PM (Till I Come)” – one at No 97 and one at No 78. How could this be and how did the track get to No 1 from these lowly positions? Well, it was all down to imports. The release at No 96 was the Australian import and No 78 position was occupied by the German import. Both singles were released on different labels and therefore circumvented chart rules that didn’t allow the same track to occupy separate chart positions. Neither would get higher than No 47 in the charts. Now that might sound like I’m being sniffy but actually a peak of No 47 for an imported single was very respectable and showed a true demand for the track that had initially been released by Ministry of Sound three months earlier when it had peaked at No 68. Confusing isn’t it? Presumably that Ministry of Sound release didn’t have much promotion behind it or it was a limited pressing as the track remained popular in clubland thereby necessitating those import copies being brought into the country to satisfy demand. In the face of this, Ministry of Sound gave it another go, this time aligned with Summer and the Ibiza season and a No 1 was assured. As I wasn’t frequenting the nightclubs of Ibiza in 1999 (nor anywhere actually being in my 30s at this point), this trance track based around a synthesised slide guitar riff, to paraphrase Midge Ure, meant nothing to me.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1VengaboysBom Boom Boom BoomOf course not
2Whitney Houston My Love Is Your LoveNope
3The Three AmigosLouie LouieNever
4SuedeShe’s In FashionDecent tune but no
5A1Be The First To BelieveNo, it was last
6Jennifer LopezIf You Had My LoveNah
7ATB9PM (Till I Come)And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002t695/top-of-the-pops-02071999

TOTP 23 APR 1999

Posted on by 80stastic

Of the eight songs in this TOTP, four of them have been on the show before, some of them many times previously. The running order has the four ‘new’ hits sandwiched together in the middle, bookended by two repeated performances at either end of it. Was this some sort of shit sandwich in reverse technique being employed by executive producer Chris Cowey? Let’s see…

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that if a song had been on the show before it was necessarily shit in terms of its quality but rather that Cowey was shitting all over our expectations of being fed some new hits rather than those we were very familiar with.

Our host is Gail Porter and we start with…and this is truly ridiculous…Whitney Houston with “It’s Not Right But It’s OK”. Just..why Cowey? WHY?! Look, these are the facts about this one:

  • TOTP appearances: Five
  • No of repeats of original studio performance: Four
  • Date of first appearance: 26 Feb 1999
  • Weeks in Top 40: Twelve
  • In every week but one after debuting at No 3, it moved down the charts.

Why was it on the show so often? Was it part of the contract between Whitney and her people and the BBC that if she did an in person performance that TOTP had to show it a certain amount of times like five maybe?

Right, let’s have a look at Phats & Small and their hit “Turn Around”. Here are their facts:

  • Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
  • No of consecutive appearances: Three (four over a five week period)
  • Weeks in Top 10: Seven
  • Chart run: 3 – 4 – 2 – 8 – 7 – 8 – 7

So three of those four appearances coincided with the single going back up the chart which seems justified but four times in five shows still seems like overkill to me. Maybe though I was/am just a dinosaur, a relic of a past time having been brought up on the Top 40 of the 80s which was much more sluggish and intransient, when songs would take weeks to move up the charts and instant, week one Top 3 hits were rare to non-existent. Record company practices had changed by the end of the 90s and maybe TOTP was just reacting accordingly to a new way of the charts operating. I’m not sure how regular a viewer of the show I was by 1999 so cannot recall being as frustrated as I am now with all these repeat performances but I wasn’t doing a write up of each show back then either. Oh it’s all relative isn’t it?

From two artists with prolific TOTP appearance stats to one whom I would have thought had a much better record but then, I could have sworn that Electronic had actually released more music than their discography tells me they have. From their debut in 1989, they released a total of eight singles and three albums. Is that a decent amount of material over a 10 year period? I’m not sure. Certainly that singles figure seems a tad on the low side and resulted in just six TOTP appearances over the course of their career. Back in 1991, not long after I’d started working at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, the duo of Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr had released their eponymous debut album to critical appreciation and commercial success (it made No 2 in the album charts and sold a million copies worldwide). I recall their being such a buzz about the album which was magnified in Manchester obviously given the background of its two protagonists. There was even a demand for the import version of the album which included the single “Getting Away With It” which the UK version did not.

However, a gap of five years until the next album proved to be too long for that momentum to be maintained and sophomore effort “Raise The Pressure” was nowhere near as well received, neither commercially nor critically. By 1999, were they seen as, if not irrelevant, then as an anachronism? Too harsh? Maybe but the truth was that third album “Twisted Tenderness” spent just two weeks inside the Top 40 chart. Its lead single “Vivid” was…well…OK and that seems a damning description when you consider the quality of the cannon of work of Sumner and Marr. Was their heart not really in it anymore? That didn’t seem to be the case watching this performance and more specifically Sumner’s energetic-pogoing, arms-flailing, air-punching, woo hoo-ing antics. Maybe a decision to dissolve the project had already been made and he wanted to go out with a flourish? If so, we couldn’t have known that at the time but retrospectively we got the message.

Fancy a flamenco guitar themed dance anthem? No, nor do I but I haven’t got any choice as the author of this blog so you’re coming with me! According to Wikipedia, Ruff Driverz had six Top 40 hits. Six! I couldn’t have named one of them without looking at their discography but “La Musica” was the fifth of them and the second highest charting peaking at No 13. It was officially credited to Ruff Driverz presents Arrola but who was Arrola? Well, she was Katherine Ellis who came from a very performing arts background. Look at this from her Wikipedia page:

“…her mother Elizabeth was trained as an actress at the Royal Academy for dramatic art, her grandmother Joy was a violinist and pianist, and her great grandmother Elizabeth Haslam was a opera singer who won a competition at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893.”

Blimey! Katherine continued that lineage by becoming one of the go to vocalists in the UK house scene, working with the likes of Freemasons, Soul Avengerz and Cherrone. As for “La Musica”, I’m sure it was popular in the clubs but its repetitive “Di-O-Lo-Le-La” line didn’t make for a very engaging TOTP performance, even allowing for the distraction of the troupe of backing dancers. As for the ‘Arrola’ moniker, whoever thought it up was only one letter away from making a tit of themselves.

Before the Sugababes and their revolving door recruitment policy, there was Honeyz who set the mould for girl groups and continually changing line ups. However, I’ve talked about that story in all its detail before so I don’t propose to go through it all again. Suffice to say that, as Gail Porter comments, this was the first time for most of us seeing new member Mariama Goodman who had recently replaced Heavenli Abdi. The timing of Abdi’s departure was really off though coming as they were preparing to embark on a promotional campaign for the release of their third single “Love Of A Lifetime”. The original trio had already shot the video for the track including scenes with Abdi but her decision to quit after that shoot and before a promotional trip to Australia meant that the promo was now effectively redundant and so would have to be reshot. A temporary, second cut saw Heavenli heavily edited out of the video before a third was produced with shots of Goodman included. I wonder if the Honeyz management billed Abdi for all that re-shooting?

“Love Of A Lifetime” was more of the slick R&B/ pop sound we’d come to expect and duly returned another sizeable hit when it peaked at No 9. As far as I can ascertain, Abdi’s original vocals remained on the track and it wasn’t until follow up “Never Let You Down” that Goodman’s own singing featured. A fifth single from their album “Wonder No 8” appeared in early 2000 at which point Goodman promptly left the group to be replaced by a returning Abdi and the line up shenanigans began in earnest. Honeyz are still a going concern today operating as a trio of Célena Cherry, her sister Candace and Abdi (now known as Heavenli Roberts). In conclusion, I can’t say if they finally found the perfect line up and share a love of a lifetime or if the end of the line might still be in sight.

We’ve arrived at the final ‘new’ single of the show and it’s from Suede who we hadn’t seen nor heard of since August 1997 when “Filmstar” was released as the final single from their “Coming Up” album. In the interim time, Brett Anderson had developed a serious drug problem whilst keyboardist Neil Codling’s health was affected by chronic fatigue syndrome. As such, the environment for writing and recording a new album wasn’t ideal. Plus, there was a decision to be made about which direction the band should head musically. After divisive sophomore album “Dog Man Star” had drawn acclaim as a work of genius and criticism as one of the most pretentious albums ever recorded, a more mainstream sound was pursued with the glam-pop of “Coming Up” that furnished the band with five Top 10 singles. That run was continued by “Electricity”, the lead track from fourth album “Head Music”. However, subsequent singles released from it would form a picture of diminishing returns and indeed, Suede have not returned to the Top 10 since.

“Head Music” would top the charts but would spend just two weeks inside the Top 20 suggesting large early sales due to a sizeable fan base but a lack of crossover appeal. In terms of its sonic properties, it had a more electronic sound with producer Steve Osborne, who had worked with the Happy Mondays, imbuing it with a dance music vibe. As for “Electricity”, it sounded a bit more raw/garage-like to me than anything on “Coming Up” though some reviews heard a connection to “Trash”. It didn’t grab me I have to say and, as with Electronic earlier, left me a little underwhelmed but compared to some of the other rubbish in the charts, it was…well…electric but just on a lower wattage than before. Definitely not displaying low wattage was the visual effect of an electric charge coming from Brett’s microphone. Maybe it looked clever back in 1999 but it looks a bit naff in 2026.

Right, that confirms it. The fact that Westlife are clearly seen in the backstage area next to Gail Porter during the next segue and they haven’t even had a hit yet and won’t perform on the show for the very first time for another seven days is definitive proof that some of these performances were definitely not recorded the same week that the show was broadcast. This explains why the host is sometimes not seen in shot when doing the link and we just get a cutaway instead. Finally!

Right, rant over. We’re back to the repeated performances and we get TLC with “No Scrubs” again. Here are the details for this one:

  • Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
  • No of consecutive appearances: Two
  • Weeks in Top 10: Eight
  • Chart run: 7- 13 – 8 – 6 – 9 – 3 – 5 – 5 – 9

OK so, having cross-referenced its chart positions with the group’s TOTP performances, there does seem to be some clear, logical correlation with each appearance synchronised with a corresponding rise up the chart. That’s all fine but why did we have to have this satellite performance video every single time? Couldn’t we have had the promo video one time at least? After all, it did win the MTV Video Music Award For Best Group Video at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

Right, I can’t really complain about this repeat performance seeing as it is actually the No 1 single for the second week running. Yes, this week’s highest new entry from Suede (No 5) proved to be no serious competition in the end for Martine McCutcheon and her hit “Perfect Moment”. With a No 1 straight off the bat, the only way was down for Martine and she would never have that level of success again but that chart topper can never be taken away from her (even if it was a cover version).

One thing that was taken off her though was any potential return to EastEnders. Supposedly, Martine was not happy with her character Tiffany Mitchell being killed off by the writers to allow her to pursue her pop star ambitions as she would have liked the chance to return once her music-orientated spleen had been vented but they used to call that having your cake and eating it didn’t they?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Whitney HoustonIt’s Not Right But It’s OKNo
2Phats & SmallTurn AroundNo thanks
3Electronic VividI did not
4Ruff Driverz presents ArrolaLa MusicaNever
5HoneyzLove Of A LifetimeNah
6SuedeElectricityNegative
7TLCNo ScrubsNope
8Martine McCutcheonPerfect MomentAnd 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.

TOTP 22 AUG 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

After rotating a trio of presenters in Jayne Middlemiss, Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley in the first few weeks of his tenure, TOTP Executive Producer Chris Cowey has branched out with his choice of hosts. Recent shows were piloted by Mary Anne Hobbs, Phil Jupitus and Denise van Outen. And then there’s this week – the curious case of Sarah Cawood. Having started her presenting career on Nickelodeon, she’d most recently appeared in Channel 4’s The Girlie Show. You remember The Girlie Show surely? It was a Channel 4 late night magazine show that was in the slot usually reserved for The Word and was hosted by a team of presenters including Cawood and a very young Sara Cox. It wasn’t well received by viewers or the tabloids though I always quite liked it, especially the ‘Wanker of the Week’ feature. Anyway, despite those post-pub beginnings, she was drafted into host the BBC’s flagship, prime time pop music show in 1997 but here’s the curious thing – Cawood wouldn’t present another TOTP for nearly five years at which point she was a regular until June 2003. So what was that all about? Didn’t Cowey think Cawood was any good in this 1997 show but changed his mind in 2002? I think she does a decent job for what it’s worth.

We start with one of the biggest and most unlikely hits of the year – “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. This really was an astonishing hit from a band that had never troubled the chart compilers in their previous 15 years of existence. I’d certainly not heard of the anarcho -punk outfit before around 1992 when I worked with a colleague called Emma who was a bit of a Riot Grrrl and was into them. I’d somehow managed to miss their response to Jason Donovan taking The Face magazine to court for claiming that he was lying by denying he was gay – the band had ‘Jason Donovan – Queer as Fuck’ T-shirts printed which they gave away free with their single “Behave”. Fast forward to 1997 and the band had controversially signed to EMI having left indie label One Little Indian. The decision was viewed with mistrust at best and open hostility at worst from their fanbase and peers with accusations of hypocrisy levelled at them not least because they had recorded songs criticising the conglomerate in the past including contributing to a compilation album called “Fuck EMI”. Hmm. Chumbawamba’s stance was that the move would allow them to take their political messages to a wider audience. That was achieved and then some with “Tubthumping”. It spent three consecutive weeks at No 2 and a further eight inside the Top 10. How did they do it? By coming up with a track that crossed over massively. With its terrace chant chorus and lyrics about drinking, it appealed to the ‘lad culture’ who couldn’t have cared less about the band’s anarcho-communist political views because you could shout it as you stumbled from one bar to another on a pub crawl at the weekend and that was all mattered. Obviously, this move to the mainstream risked alienating their original fanbase but the I guess the band deemed it worth it. It was an irresistible, once heard never forgotten track which had enough going on in it to ensure it wasn’t just a lowest common denominator, appeal to the masses tune. There’s an excerpt from Brassed Off in the intro and a sample of “Trumpet Voluntary” by Jeremiah Clarke in the trumpet solo for a start.

For this performance, the band had to compromise even further by agreeing not to sing the word “Pissin’” in the lyric “Pissin’ the night away” so were left with an uncomfortable gap instead. Talking of the lyrics, I read that it was such a big hit in the US as well (No 6) because American audiences had misheard the words “I get knocked down” as “I get No Doubt” and thought it was some sort of tribute record to the “Don’t Speak” hitmakers. I would say that can’t be true but then America did vote in Donald Trump as their president. Twice. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t try and use it to soundtrack his campaign. He’s too stupid to understand that the song is actually for and about working class people and their resilience in the face of adversity.

There were some ropey old boy bands in the 90s of which I would include OTT and when I say ‘ropey’, I literally mean ‘money for old rope’. The sheer audacity of their record label Epic to think they could launch this lot to global stardom on the back of some uninspired choices of cover versions. Having had their first hit with a cover of “Let Me In” by The Osmonds (blatantly copying Boyzone’s initial route into the charts), they went there again with a cover of a classic MOR ballad – Air Supply’s “All Out Of Love”. What a lazy, banal and uninventive way to go. In the 2001 film Rock Star, Mark Wahlberg’s character (a singer in a rock tribute band) argues with his brother about their differing musical tastes. Whilst he is into heavy rock, he chastises his brother for liking Air Supply. I think that says it all.

The staging of this performance with the studio audience all sat down on the floor cross-legged, gazing up at the four dullards in front of them reminds me of junior school assemblies. Watching OTT is about as much fun as those assemblies. Only two of the four band members sing solo parts while the other two just do the nerd shuffle on either end of the line up. When there’s the “what are you thinking of?” break down towards the song’s conclusion, one of the ‘singers’ does some weird arm movements like he’s cracking a whip or something. It looks really odd and jarring which is also how I’d describe the decision to call these berks OTT as there is nothing ‘over the top’ about them at all – they couldn’t have been more bland and safe.

Two years on from their No 1 single “Dreamer” and Livin’ Joy were commendably still having Top 20 hits though “Deep In You” would be the last. I’m not sure I would have predicted that continuation of chart success back in 1995 years especially for a dance act when the hits were more about the track than the artist. Tellingly though, despite the presence of five hits on it, Livin’ Joy could not shift significant quantities of their only album “Don’t Stop Movin’” which would peak at No 41 in the charts.

OK, so I have to mention the elephant in the room here which is why is singer Tameko Star wearing what appear to be a pair of marigolds throughout the performance? She looks like she should be cleaning the bathroom rather than singing on TOTP. More ‘Deep In The Loo’ than “Deep In You”.

Here’s a comeback I’m guessing we’d all forgotten about – the return of Dannii Minogue. Or should that be just ‘Dannii’? As part of her relaunch, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to rebrand her with just her first name in the style of Madonna, Cher and…well…her sister Kylie. I’m not sure Dannii would ever be that famous as to only require her first name although, to be fair, how many other people called Dannii do you know or can think of? Looking back through her discography (which took longer than I would have imagined), it appears that this one name promotion of her had actually started all the way back to her first few single releases judging by their artwork. In Australia, it seems her records were always billed as being by just ‘Dannii’ whereas in the UK she was Dannii Minogue at least initially. However, just a handful of singles in and there was parity between the territories. There seemed to be a definite strategy in place for her return in 1997 to reinforce the Dannii only moniker – the TOTP caption doesn’t include her surname and Sarah Cawood refers to her as just ‘Dannii’.

Nomenclatures aside, her last hit had been the very minor “Get Into You” way back in 1994 so where had she been all this time? Well, she’d got married and subsequently divorced in the space of just two years which had taken its emotional toll on her. She modelled nude for Playboy (I’m sure there were also nude calendars as we were selling them in the Our Price store where I worked) and returned to TV co- hosting Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast show. By 1997, she pursued a return to music and if her name wasn’t any different then her comeback single was. Dannii’s biggest hits in the UK to this point had been covers of disco songs like “Jump To The Beat” and “This Is It” and although “All I Wanna Do” was a dance track, it sure wasn’t disco. This was Hi-NRG with a relentless (if repetitive) chorus that aligned itself well with her new adult and deliberately sexualised image. The TOTP performance plays into that with her movements shown in almost slow motion at some points and a couple of knowing winks to the camera. The single would debut and peak at No 4 but it couldn’t stimulate sales of parent album “Girl” which stalled at No 57. However, she would return in 2003 with gold selling album “Neon Nights”.

Next up are a Welsh band who, like their peers Manic Street Preachers, are still going to this day. In fact, there are a few parallels between the Manics and Stereophonics besides their nationalities – they’ve both released double figures amount of albums, they both play a brand of alternative (for want of a better word) rock music and both are referred to incorrectly using a definite article on occasion though, as I have done, Manic Street Preachers are often referred to as The Manics. On that point, I once worked with someone that insisted that Stereophonics was pronounced phonetically as ‘Steree-off-ernics” but he was a bit of a prat.

Anyway, “A Thousand Trees” was the second Top 40 hit for Stereophonics after “More Life In A Tramp’s Vest” earlier in the year and was another great example of the storytelling ability of Kelly Jones. A tale of how rumours in a small town environment can destroy a person’s reputation, I love the metaphor of matches and trees in the lyrics which Jones cleverly inverts to make his point. Parent album “Word Gets Around” was released the Monday after this TOTP aired and I remember putting it straight back on the shop stereo even though we’d just played it as I wanted to hear it again – I wasn’t disappointed. There’s some great songs on there; not just the singles but album tracks as well like my personal favourite “Check My Eyelids For Holes”. I bought the album and the follow up “Performance And Cocktails” but I’d kind of lost sight of them after third album “Just Enough Education To Perform”. I should probably update my knowledge of the rest of their back catalogue though there is a lot of it to go at with a new album due in April 2025 to boot!

As for this performance, I’m left asking the question of whether there was a problem with security in the TOTP studio around this time. After the crowd invasion of the stage when Oasis were on the other week, this time a lone youth seems to spring from out of the audience to jump around (rather uncooly) behind Kelly Jones before disappearing back into the crowd. Was that planned? If not, where were the floor managers/studio security? The show’s reputation was at stake – I’m surprised that Jones didn’t write a song about that!

And just like that, the first era of Mark Owen’s solo career was over. It took less than a year from the release of his debut single post-Take That for it took come off the rails and was emphatically demonstrated by his solo single “I Am What I Am” (not that one) peaking at a lowly No 29. Now, you could argue that this wasn’t the harbinger of doom that I’m making it out to be given that it was the third track taken from his album “Green Man” that had been out for eight months by this point. However, the album hadn’t sold well peaking at No 33 so the suggestion that punters might not have bought the single because they already had the album doesn’t really hold water. Presumably the diminishing sales caused tension between Owen’s label RCA and their artist as “I Am What I Am” has originally been earmarked to be the fourth single released from “Green Man” but a fourth single never appeared and Mark was subsequently dropped. I said earlier the ‘first era’ of his solo career as Owen would return to it six years later with the interesting single “Four Minute Warning” which peaked at No 4. Although album sales continued to be sparse, his fifth album “Land Of Dreams” released in 2022 would go Top 5 and in any case, his solo career was running in parallel with the second coming of Take That from 2006 onwards.

As for “I Am What I Am” specifically, it’s a decent enough little tune but listening to it feels to me like watching my beloved Chelsea play currently – you think they should be better than they are and you’re constantly waiting for them to make something happen and they never do (you win matches by scoring goals lads not by having loads of possession).

I mentioned earlier the connections between Stereophonics and Manic Street Preachers but the former also has one with this band – Suede. Well, sort of. There’s probably a few but the one I’m thinking of is that they both had hits with very similar titles. In 2004, Stereophonics took “Moviestar” to No 5 while back in 1997, Suede went to No 9 with “Filmstar” – ‘movie’ or ‘film’…what’s the difference? This was the fifth and final single from “Coming Up” (who did they think they were? George Michael? Michael Jackson?) and it was another example of that more accessible sound that had run through the album. Built around one of Richard Oakes’s favourite guitar riffs, its chart peak of No 9 meant that all five of the singles from “Coming Up” had gone Top 10 (maybe they were George Michael and Michael Jackson!). In this performance, keyboard player Neil Codling seems to do very little, at some points sitting there with his hands idle looking meaningfully at the camera. Who did he think he was? Brian Jones incarnate?

Will Smith remains at No 1 with “Men In Black” and his intro piece from the other week is recycled with Smith superimposed over the start of the video again. It would stay at the top for four weeks becoming the sixth best selling single in the UK that year. The film of the same name was also a smash hit with opening weekend box office receipts of $51 million making it the third highest grossing opening weekend ever at the time. I caught the movie at the cinema and enjoyed it for what it was though I don’t think I’ve ever watched any of its three sequels. There was also two soundtrack albums released – a score by composer Danny Elfman and a collection of songs by R&B and hip hop artists such as De La Soul, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Alicia Keys and Destiny’s Child as well as two tracks by Smith himself. Despite only the title track actually featuring in the film, the album was a huge success in the US going to No 1 and selling over three million copies. It sold more conservatively over here reaching gold status for 100,000 units shifted.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ChumbawambaTupthumpingYES!
2OTTAll Out Of LoveAs if
3Livin’ JoyDeep In YouNope
4Dannii MinogueAll I Wanna DoNegative
5StereophonicsA Thousand TreesNo but I had the album
6Mark OwenI Am What I AmNah
7SuedeFilmstarSee 5 above
8Will SmithMen In BlackNo

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/m00293qb/top-of-the-pops-22081997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 24 JAN 1997

Posted on by 80stastic

Two days before this TOTP aired, Billy Mackenzie committed suicide and the world lost one of its truly unique voices. Like most people I’m guessing, I first became aware of Billy in 1982 when the band he formed with Alan Rankine, The Associates, burst into the charts with “Party Fears Two”. I didn’t realise that they’d been going for three years before that. All I knew was that they made the most beguilingly wonderful sound. They followed it up with the similarly marvellous “Club Country” and “18 Carat Love Affair” but the runaway success train got derailed by Rankine’s decision to leave the band. There would be no more new music from The Associates until 1985 when the album “Perhaps” was released. Although none of the singles release from it made the Top 40, they were still quality tunes especially the stunning “Breakfast”. Billy continued to write and record under The Associates banner until 1990 when he struck out as a solo artist. However, any further chart success would prove elusive. A couple of years after his death, his biography, The Glamour Chase, was published which I read and it was a fascinating book. Billy really was an original – one of my favourite anecdotes was when he was let go by his record label, he hailed a cab in London and travelled back to his home city of Dundee charging the fare back to the label. He is truly missed. The Associates are stated to have influenced the likes of Björk, U2 and Ladytron. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight will have left such a legacy?

Before proceeding, I should acknowledge that the host tonight is Phil Daniels who’d had a few connections with music down the years. From fronting new wave band The Cross to his iconic role as Jimmy Cooper in Quadrophenia to his cameo in Blur’s “Parklife”, Daniels was an almost logical choice of TOTP guest presenter. So first on tonight are…you have to be kidding me?! The Outhere Brothers?!They were still having hits in 1997?! How and more importantly why?! You’ll remember this pointless duo from having consecutive No 1s in 1995 with “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” and “Boom Boom Boom” which were horrible, lowest common denominator, call and response chants. Their success was unexplainable to me but as we move into 1997 with these TOTP repeats, I was fairly sure that particular shameful episode in UK chart history was over. I was wrong, so sadly wrong. This final hit was called “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole ‘Ole” (of course it was) and it was garbage. It just sounds like a load of drunks at a football match. Who the hell bought this?! No, seriously who?!

Legacy rating: Zero. Nothing. Nada.

In January 1997, Suede were in the middle of the most commercial era of their career. Their third album “Coming Up” had been out for about five months and they were promoting it hard with a tour and five singles taken from it. “Saturday Night” was the third of those and its release conformed to that well worn path of two fast ones followed by a slow one. A ballad written to glorify the beauty to be found in the everyday, it continued the band’s run of Top 10 hits by debuting at a very respectable No 6. Not bad for a third single from an album. As it’s a ballad, Brett Anderson is sat down on a chair for this performance – perhaps he took inspiration from this lyric from the song:

Today she’s been sat there, sat there in a black chair

Office furniture

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Richard Oakes
Saturday Night lyrics © BMG Rights Management

I caught Suede on that aforementioned tour a few weeks after this TOTP appearance in Blackburn when they were supported by Mansun. That was a good gig.

Legacy rating: For a band that could have buckled under the weight of expectation of that ‘The most important band in Britain’ headline early in their career, Suede have sustained remarkably well. A solid 7/10

You know me, I’m a pop kid. R&B isn’t my go to choice on Spotify but if I had to choose an artist of that genre then En Vogue would be up there. It might be the harmonies or the genre-bending tunes like “Free Your Mind” but they just seemed to have an edge to them that made them stand out. “Don’t Let Go (Love)” was another such track. The word seductive’ doesn’t really cover this one. It’s a great track that would end up being the lead single from the group’s third album “EV3” although it was originally recorded for the soundtrack of the heist drama Set It Off . It would also usher in a huge change in the group’s line up as lead vocalist on this track Dawn Robinson decided to leave En Vogue to pursue a solo career rather than record “EV3”. That would trigger a host of changes personnel-wise that would make the band’s members timeline more bitty than “It Keeps Rainin’” singer Mr McLean. Despite all the comings and goings, En Vogue are still together to this day although they are now a trio and haven’t released any new material since the “Electric Cafe” album in 2018.

Legacy rating: They’ve had more US R&B No 1s than any other female group other than The Supremes but the revolving door line up policy undermines their reputation rather. 6/10

In music history, there haven’t been many Byrons have there? In fact, there haven’t been many Byrons full stop. The most famous one is surely Romantic poet Lord Byron but there’s also this bloke – Byron Stingily who not only ticks the Byron box but also the music one too. I’d forgotten about this guy but reading up on him revealed that he wasn’t alone in Byron world. Let’s start with the facts though. Stingily (another unusual name to be honest) hails from Chicago and was a prominent figure in the rise of house music that emanated from that city. Working with another house music legend, Marshall Jefferson, as producer they formed Ten City who you may remember from having a hit in 1989 with “That’s The Way Love Is”. And get this – one of the members of the band was called Byron as well! What are the chances! And…Stingily’s son* is called Byron Jnr! Maybe I was wrong about the paucity of people called Byron!

*Byron Jnr would become an American football player for the New York Giants in the position of offensive tackle (make your own jokes up!).

Anyway, branching out solo, Stingily’s first UK hit was “Get Up (Everybody)” which sampled disco legend Sylvester’s “Dance (Disco Heat)”. Incidentally, Byron would do a full blown cover of Sylvester’s finest moment “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” the following year. I’m sure “Get Up (Everybody)” meant something in Chicago House circles but the only thing I could remember about it before watching this TOTP repeat was the generic Manifesto Records cover it came in. Byron’s final UK chart entry was his own cover of that Ten City hit in 1999 and although he is still involved in music he is also a part time principal at a school in…yep…Chicago.

Legacy rating: I’m sure he remains a big name in the history of house music but, if I’m being stingy about Stingily, he doesn’t mean much to me 5/10

And now for something truly stomach churning. I remember the name Ginuwine (I think Phil Daniels mispronounces it in his intro as ‘Genuine’) but thank god I couldn’t recall how any of his music went because it’s god awful. The lyrics to his debut hit “Pony” are clearly just a metaphor for his penis. That’s it. That’s his angle. It’s schoolboy humour tripe. There’s lots of mentions of ‘riding’ his pony and the things he would do to some poor woman, juices flowing down thighs and lurking all over and through her until he reaches her stream. Oh god, I feel dirty just typing those words. It’s just horrific. All of this machismo bullshit was set to an R&B, bump’n’ grind backbeat while Ginuwine smooches about the stage exhorting the studio audience to make some noise. It’s genuinely disturbing. It’s clear though why this berk created an alter ego for himself as his real name is Elgin Baylor Lumpkin which sounds like a character from The Hobbit. And we thought Byron Stingily was unusual! Begone foul, three-legged warg!

Legacy rating: Do me a favour! 0/10

New U2 material was a huge deal back in 1997 so they were always going to get the big build up exclusive treatment on the show. However, despite “Discothèque” going to No 1, history has not been kind to it and, for many, it ultimately disappointed. Since the beginning of the 90s, U2 had been on a mission of reinvention starting with “Achtung Baby” and progressing via “Zooropa” so that by the time they arrived in 1997 and the “Pop” album, was it possible that we’d all had enough of it? Certainly, it was one of the band’s poorest performing albums commercially and Bono himself has voiced his dissatisfaction with it, with the band going so far as to re-record or remix tracks from it for their second Best Of compilation released in 2002.

It all sounds pretty damning but was lead single “Discothèque” really that bad? I think that I overestimated its potential when ordering the single for the Our Price store I was working in and was left with egg on my face and a huge overstock on the shelves. That probably informed my negative view of it. However, listening back to it, I can appreciate the song and what the band were trying to do with it. Sure, it was pushing the boundaries of what we expected from a U2 track but we had been primed for that by all those previous experimentations. Accusations of jumping on the bandwagon of the dominant and ubiquitous dance genre abounded but, on reflection, I think “Discothèque” manages to pull together a track that dared to both innovate and yet be commercially viable. As for the ‘mirrorball’ video, I like to think it showed the band retained the ability to send themselves up – The Village People indeed! The single would go straight in at No 1 but, as was the increasing trend, only for a single week until it was knocked off by the next ‘big’ release.

Legacy rating: Hard to knock a band who will have been in existence for 50 years next year. As for the song, I think it’s due a reappraisal. 8/10 for the band, 6/10 for the song

Asked to name two songs by Reef, this one, “Come Back Brighter”, would be my second pick after “Place Your Hands”. Asked to name three songs by Reef…forget it. Still, this was the point when they were starting to look like serious contenders for the title of heavyweight rockers. This was a second Top 10 hit in a row, both tracks coming from No 1 sophomore album “Glow”. It would be their commercial peak though. By the time third album “Rides” was released in 1999, that flush of success had dissipated rather and sold only a fifth of its predecessor and furnished just one hit single. What happened? I don’t know do I? If I knew the secret of what makes music popular, I’d have spent the 90s writing hit songs rather than selling them in a record shop. For me, “Come Back Brighter” wasn’t as immediate as “Place Your Hands” but it was a grower and did a decent job consolidating the band’s profile.

Legacy rating: Early promise didn’t turn into megastardom 5/10

White Town are No 1! You may not remember their name but their one and only hit was unforgettable. I say ‘their’ but White Town was really just one person – Jyoti Prakash Mishra – a British-Indian singer, musician and producer who came up with the global smash “Your Woman” before disappearing again – a true one hit wonder but what a hit! This was one of those tracks that, the first time you heard it, you couldn’t ignore, that made you say “what’s this?!”. Sampling a 1932 (1932!) song by Lew Stone and his Monseigneur Band featuring a vocal from South African-British crooner Al Bowlly*, it sounded ‘other’, ‘alien’ even, like it had come from a different planet. This was no “Spaceman” though – it didn’t deceive like Babylon Zoo had a year earlier. No, this was all killer all the way through. It wasn’t just about the beats though. The song had a subverted narrative with Mishra’s distorted, low-fi vocal delivering a story of a relationship mismatch from the point of view of the woman. It was clever stuff or at least it felt like it at the time.

*My only other reference point for Al Bowlly came early in my Our Price career when my colleague Justin announced at the end of the day that he was meeting a girl after work and that he’d been getting in the mood for his assignation by listening to Al Bowlly’s “Got A Date With An Angel”

Mishra had started by releasing his material on his own, self financed record label but when “Your Town” started getting airplay courtesy of Radio 1’s Mark Radcliffe, EMI came calling with a record deal and the rest is history. It wasn’t a good history though in terms of Mishra’s relationship with EMI. A committed Marxist, he was very outspoken about music industry practices and it would ultimately lead to White Town being dropped before the end of 1997. Mishra returned to releasing music on his own record label and is still active to this day.

Legacy rating: 8/10 for the song, 4/10 for the band

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1The Outhere BrothersLet Me Hear You Say ‘Ole ‘OleF**k off!
2SuedeSaturday NightNo but I had the album Coming Up
3En VogueDon’t Let Go (Love)Liked it, didn’t buy it
4Byron StingilyGet Up (Everybody)Negative
5GinuwinePonyNever
6U2DiscothèqueNope
7ReefCome Back BrighterNah
8White TownYour WomanNo but maybe I should have

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/m0026qwk/top-of-the-pops-24011997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, I travelled the short distance from Manchester to Bolton to see my beloved Chelsea play. They’d been drawn away to Bolton in the League Cup and my Wanderers supporting mate Steve invited me to go with him and his mates to watch the game. Predictably, we lost 2-1 after taking the lead and my hopes of seeing my team finally win a trophy were dealt a severe blow. This was supposed to be the new, exciting Chelsea of Ruud ‘sexy football’ Gullitt, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo and yet we got turned over by rather less glamorous opponents. In short, to paraphrase a football saying, we couldn’t do it away on a cold Tuesday night at Bolton. I returned home a very disappointed man. But at least I returned home. Chelsea vice-chairman Matthew Harding had also been at the game and would lose his life in a helicopter crash on the way back to London. Harding had contributed huge amounts of money to the club helping to finance those exotic signings and also the redevelopment of the Chelsea ground. He also had a great relationship with the fans socialising with them at the games and in the pub. He was one of them rather than a faceless director. He also contributed £1 million to the Labour Party and the helicopter that went down had often been used by Tony Blair as leader of the party and prior to him becoming Prime Minister. In a parallel universe, the future of the whole country might have been different rather than just Chelsea Football Club’s. My wish to see my blue boys finally win something came true just six months later as they won the FA Cup at Wembley. Matthew Harding never lived to see that moment.

After a very sombre opening to this post, let’s get back to the music and hope for some uplifting tunes. Our hosts are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley and we start with a bang via a cracking song from Suede. The second single from their No 1 album “Coming Up”, “Beautiful Ones”, for me, even surpassed previous hit “Trash” in terms of immediacy and…well…sparkle. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised as supposedly it was written by guitarist Richard Oakes purposely to be a chart success and was originally called “Dead Leg” after bass player Matt Osman threatened to give Oakes a dead leg if he couldn’t come up with a Top 10 hit. Presumably that particular punishment was not dispensed as the single peaked at No 8.

The performance here is a curious one. Keyboard player Neil Codling is out front for some reason, thumbs in his pockets, occasionally leaning into his mike to mouth a few lyrics. Why wasn’t he behind a synth or something as per usual? Weren’t there any keyboard parts in this track? Was he auditioning for Brett Anderson’s position in the band? As it turned out, Codling would actually take on a lot more of the vocals duties along with an increased input into song writing later in his Suede career. He left the band in 2001 due to chronic fatigue syndrome though he would return when they reconvened in 2010.

The lyric in “Beautiful Ones” about ‘your babies going crazy’ always puts me in mind of this scene from Swingers which was released in America a week before this TOTP was broadcast. “How long till you call your babies?”…

Next, we’re straight into one of the biggest dance tunes of the year, nay the decade…how about ever?! Steve Lamacq rather undermines my ardour by just referring to it as a “really cool track” but “Insomnia” by Faithless is surely more than that. A regular in all those ‘top club tunes’ polls by the likes of MTV Dance and Mixmag, it remains a timeless classic. Indeed, I have a friend in her late 70s and she loves Faithless!

Comprising of Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto, Sister Bliss and Rollo (yes, Dido’s brother), they’d had two minor hit singles in 1995 with “Salva Ames (Save Me)” and the initial release of “Faithless” which had only made No 27 in the December as it got lost in the Christmas rush. March of 1996 saw another attempt on the charts but “Don’t Leave” could only make one week inside the Top 40 at No 34. Come the Autumn though, “Faithless” was rereleased and this time, it crashed into the charts at No 3 and easily topped the Dance Chart. Its subject matter struck a chord with clubbers who had trouble nodding off after a substance filled night of raving (or whatever it is clubbers did back then). The original album version is nine minutes long but it was edited down to three and a half for radio with the memorable keyboard riff being intended to sound like Underworld. Perhaps unusually for an album by a dance act, their album “Reverence” would go on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK and achieve platinum status and yet weirdly would get no higher in the charts than No 26. Where’s the justice in that? And I thought God was a DJ.

“You’re Gorgeous” by Babybird is up to No 6 on its way to a peak of No 3 which means a reshowing of their studio performance from the other week is required. I recall that when this came on the shop stereo in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working one busy Saturday afternoon, it happens to coincide with a group of ‘lads’ entering the shop and deciding to sing along at the top of their voices very badly. Saturdays were stressful enough in a record shop as it was and I could have done without this as well. I approached the group and asked them to pack it in but this only served to make them sing louder whilst eating their Greggs pasties and dripping flakes of pastry all over the floor (which was another bugbear of mine). Tossers.

Given the song’s much misunderstood subject matter, another thing that springs to mind when I hear “You’re Gorgeous” is another even more unpleasant memory, that of a particularly harrowing episode of the crime drama Prime Suspect the plot of which revolved around a pornographer who murdered a young girl after convincing her that he was a fashion photographer. Bloody hell! Death, murder…this post is bloody miserable so far! Please let there be some joyful tunes coming up to lighten the mood…

Hmm. Future Sound Of London wasn’t really what I had in mind. Experimental, ambient soundscapes are all very well but I need something to cheer me up and “My Kingdom” just isn’t doing it for me. I mean, it’s an interesting sound I guess and the accompanying video was probably cutting edge at the time with its morphing graphics but it’s kind of leaving me cold when I need something to give me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling that tells me everything is going to be OK – there must be a huge demand for such music whatever form it might take given the current state of the world.

You have to hand it to those Future Sound Of London boys though – they were ahead of their time. The album this track was taken from (“Dead Cities”) was promoted by a tour called ‘the f**k rock ‘n’ roll tour’ that allowed them to play live events via ISDN without leaving a studio. This was in 1996, well before the dawn of the digital age we all live in now. Hell, the vast majority of us didn’t even have a very basic mobile phone back then. In 2024, the idea of being separated from our mobiles for even an hour can cause a meltdown amongst many of us – ‘a phone, a phone…my kingdom for a phone’. Ahem.

Hands up who knew that Gina G had more hits than just “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. OK. Keep your hands up if you can name any of them. I thought as much. You’d have to be a superfan to still have your hands in the air at this point. “I Belong To You” was the first of four further hits and it was almost identical to her Eurovision song. And why not? ‘If it’s not broken…’, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’ and so on and so on…It would have made sense for her to go with an almost identical sound – anything other than that would have been folly. Gina surely wouldn’t have been expected to reinvent herself as a serious artist within months of only being known as a Eurovision entrant? If she’d returned with a big ballad would people have accepted it? I’m not sure. Repeating the formula certainly worked for Gina giving her a none too shabby chart peak of No 6. And there’s more…she would have a further three hits after and none of them were a remix of “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” meaning that she never had to plead “Ooh aah…just a little hit…please”. Yeah, sorry about that.

This week’s ’Flashback’ slot features “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” by Enya. I’m far too behind with this post to comment on this so here’s what I had to say about this one in a post from my 80s blog.

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

If it’s good enough for Enya, it’s certainly good enough for E–Motion. Look, I haven’t got the time nor inclination to review something that I commented on as recently as six months ago especially when it’s as big a heap of shit as “The Naughty North And The Sexy South”. Here’s my thoughts on this one from when it was originally a hit in the February of this year and peaked at No 20 (it was rereleased in the October peaking at No 17).

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

By 1996, Madonna’s career had reached the point it was always meant to reach – i.e. that she would play the part of Eva Perón in a film version of Evita. Rumours had been circulating for years that she was destined for this role and it finally came to be. A cinema version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber 1978 musical, its soundtrack was always likely to sell in bucketloads even before you added in the superstar factor that Madonna brought to the project. However, the song we all know from the musical – “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – wasn’t the first one to be released from the project. No, the first track that we heard Madonna singing from Evita wasn’t from the original musical at all – it was a brand new composition written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to promote the film and to secure an Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song). “You Must Love Me” was that song but despite its recognition, it wasn’t the massive hit that many may have expected. It made No 10 in the UK, No 18 in America and didn’t top the chart anywhere in the world. It certainly sounded like a huge hit or rather it sounded like a Lloyd Webber/Rice song with trademark haunting melody and a huge string backing – in fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been part of the original musical soundtrack so seamlessly did it sit alongside those other songs from the 1978 West End production.

The video shown here is just a plug for the film really with clips from the movie interspersed with a heavily pregnant Madonna singing in a room with her bump hidden behind a piano. The film made $141 million at the box office against a budget of $55 million and received mixed reviews from the press with the main criticism being that it was a case of style over substance though the soundtrack was a redeeming factor. It received a total of 23 film award nominations winning 12 including one Oscar and three Golden Globes. I’ve still yet to watch it though my wife took her Mum to see it at the cinema and her review was that it was one of the loudest films she’d ever sat through.

Cast are back next with their biggest ever hit “Flying”. I was a bit sniffy about this song the last time I reviewed it which on reflection was possibly a tad unfair seeing as it crapped all over most of its chart contemporaries (yes, I’m looking at you E-Motion). Originally a non-album single, it was later included in the band’s 2004 compilation “The Collection” which must be one of the least comprehensive retrospectives ever given that it does not feature the hits “Alright”, “Sandstorm”, “Walkaway”, “Guiding Star” or “Beat Mama”. Presumably a licensing issue, I guess you get what you pay for – it was a budget range album that was ineligible for a UK Album Chart ranking. A definitive collection called “Cast: The Singles 1995-2017” was released on white vinyl in 2018 however.

The Spice Girls are straight in at No 1 with their second single “Say You’ll Be There”. It’s interesting that although it is the desert based, high-tech ninja warriors video that I immediately think of when I hear this song, TOTP did not once show that promo instead having the group in the studio every time (although I think one may have been a just a repeat of a previous appearance). Which raises the question how had I seen the promo at all? On The Chart Show? Maybe but that was on TV on Saturday mornings when I would have been at work most weeks. I can’t think of any other music shows from around that time? They weren’t such a big deal already that they’d made it onto national news programmes surely? However I had seen it, I wasn’t alone. One David Beckham, legend has it, was so taken with Posh Spice in her black PVC catsuit that he vowed there and that they would become a couple. And lo and behold, two became one…or something.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SuedeBeautiful OnesNo but I had the album
2FaithlessInsomniaI did not
3BabybirdYou’re GorgeousNope
4Future Sound Of LondonMy KingdomNever happening
5Gina GI Belong To YouYou didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6EnyaOrinoco Flow (Sail Away)Nah
7E-MotionThe Naughty North And The Sexy SouthDefinitely not
8MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo
9CastFlyingNegative
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/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 09 AUG 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

I’m looking at the running order for this episode of TOTP from 1996 in the hope that I’ll spot a trend that will give me a foothold for a theme for this post but as usual it’s all over the place. In the latest edition of Classic Pop magazine, feature writer Ian Peel wrote:

But there’s one thing Classic Pop has never talked about or will ever talk about. And that’s ‘80s music’. Because there’s no such thing. There’s music from the 80s but it’s an era not a genre.

Anthem Publishing, 2024

Could the same not be said of the 90s? Sure, there were definite movements and trends like Britpop, Eurodance and the whole ‘Madchester’ thing just as the 80s had New Romantics, acid house music and Stock, Aitken and Waterman. However, these were transient and didn’t account for the whole of the decade’s tastes. They were a component part not the whole entity. Sometimes they would morph into something else or in the case of the dance music explosion, splinter into multiple sub genres. As for myself, I have, on occasion, been labelled as an “80s music fan” but that term is spurious – there’s plenty of music from the 80s I can’t stand and would never listen to. I like some but not all music that happened to be made in the 80s would be a more accurate description but I guess that’s a bit of a mouthful to be fair. Anyway, back to my original point which was that there are all sorts of music types represented in this show so I’ll just have to proceed with an open mind and call it as I see/hear it and see some sort of narrative emerges to glue it all together. One constant throughout the entirety of every show is, of course, the host and tonight’s is…oh god, it’s Peter Andre! He’d only been a thing for five minutes by this point – how did he get this gig so early on? Well, got it he has done let’s see how he did…

His first job is to introduce a reactivated New Edition who he claims are one of his all time favourite R&B groups before referring to them as ‘The Dream Team’. Hmm. Seems a bit over the top for a band whose best known song in this country is the bubblegum pop of “Candy Girl”. But then maybe Andre wasn’t aware of his R&B faves’ past? What was he doing in 1983 when “Candy Girl” was at No 1 in the UK.

*checks Wikipedia*

He was 10 years old and living in Australia having emigrated there with his family in 1979. Was “Candy Girl” even a hit down under?

*checks Wikipedia again*

Yes, it made No 10 in the Aussie chart so it’s certainly possible that Andre was aware of the song. In his defence, by the time he was a teenager and presumably his musical tastes more established and embedded, New Edition were recording an album with legendary R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis so that may well have informed his opinion of them. Having said that, “Hit Me Off” was their first new material released since 1988 and the album before that had been a collection of doo-wop covers so that does rather undermine Andre’s claims. Why am I analysing the authenticity of Peter Andre’s music tastes? Sad as it is, I’d rather do that than write about New Edition’s 1996 comeback. “Hit Me Off”? Turn me off more like.

Another boy band next but one from our own shores. Unlike the squeaky clean New Kids On The Block who were created by ex-New Edition manager Maurice Starr to be “the white New Edition”, East 17 could never be described as beyond reproach or without vice. Whether it be interviews advocating drug use or their urban, grubby image, they were not your standard 90s boy band. It didn’t stop them selling records though, 10 million albums since their first hit back in 1992 according to Peter Andre in his intro. Is that true? 10 million?! Seems like a lot but who are we to doubt the word of a man who renewed his vows to then wife Katie Price in 2008 and ended up divorcing her 12 months later.

Anyway, “Someone To Love” was the fourteenth consecutive hit single for East 17 though by peaking at No 16, became their smallest since their second “Gold” stalled at No 28. Was the writing on the wall for the band’s future? I think it was. 1996 would turn out to be a bit of a swansong with a double platinum selling greatest hits compilation and a No 2 hit with Gabrielle. However, by 1997, first singer Brian Harvey was sacked and then songwriter Tony Mortimer left the band. There was a brief flurry of success in 1998 with Harvey reinstated and a hit single in “Each Time” but it was only delaying the inevitable. Had the band themselves realised that continued success couldn’t be taken for granted as early as 1995 and the recording of third album “Up All Night” and tried to push a new direction for themselves? “Someone To Love” is a passable gentle ballad with an acoustic guitar rhythm augmented by a sympathetic string section and Harvey’s plaintive vocals supported by some considered backing singing by his band mates. It’s actually quite a nice song and not typical of their normal output. Yes, their most famous song “Stay Another Day” was a ballad as well but that was a huge number with everything including sleigh bells thrown at it. “Someone To Love” had much more of a lilting nature. Rather sadly, in both meanings of the word, as of 2024, Terry Coldwell is the only original band member still with the group.

Next up, a song that set a new record at the time for the most plays on radio in one week. “Good Enough” by Dodgy racked up approximately 3,700 plays on national radio in seven days helping it rise to a peak of No 4 on the UK Top 40. By far the band’s biggest hit it is also, thanks to all that airplay, surely their best known as well. As far as I can tell though, it wasn’t the most played track on radio for the entire of 1996. That honour went to Mark Morrison’s “Return Of The Mack” though “Good Enough” did come in at No 8. Of those seven songs above it, only Pulp’s “Disco 2000” and “Give Me A Little More Time” by Gabrielle peaked lower in the charts than Dodgy with three of those above it being No 1 records. Not bad then for a band who had never had a Top 10 hit prior to this.

“Good Enough” wasn’t typical Dodgy fare though. An out and out pop song as opposed to an indie rock track, it felt like a deliberate attempt to write a huge hit but having read an interview with its composer Nigel Clark on its creation, it does sound like it came about organically. Messing around with an Akai S900, a very early sampler, Clark put a Lee Dorsey drumbeat on a loop and grew the track from there. Inspired by listening to Bob Marley’s “Kaya” album, he wanted it to be an upbeat track though he worried about demoing it to the rest of the band. However, their reaction was positive and after laying it down in the studio, Clark recalled thinking that “Good Enough” would last longer than Dodgy would. He was right. Thankfully though, I think their legacy is more than just that one track though – they were/are a band not a song, a fate which has befallen other artists like 4 Non Blondes who found it hard to escape the trappings of their mega hit “What’s Up?”.

The timing of its release to coincide with the Summer was perfect and surely deliberate; the single’s artwork was just a shot of a sunflower – they knew what they were doing. I think at Our Price where I was working, we had a pin badge with said sunflower on it to give away free with the single. The success of “Good Enough” would propel parent album “Free Peace Sweet” to platinum sales of 300,000 units. Pretty good going for a band derided by some as a Britpop also ran.

I’ve used the phrase “musical curiosity” or “curious musical footnote” many times whilst writing this blog – perhaps I’ve overused it but I really should have reserved it for this next hit. Anybody remember “Hanging Around” by Me Me Me? It must have passed me by despite the involvement of one of my favourite pop people ever that is Stephen Duffy. I’m not sure if his presence alongside Blur’s Alex James and Justin Welch from Elastica really qualifies as a ‘supergroup’ – probably more of a collective but it was very short lived either way. This single was their only release with the whole project only generating three tracks in total. The concept wasn’t even conceived to secure a hit single but rather as the soundtrack to a film made by artist Damien Hirst which was made for the Spellbound exhibition at the Hayward Gallery within the Southbank Centre. The film was only screened at the exhibition and once on national television at 11.50 at night.

Given that niche exposure, its peak of No 19 seems rather like a case of overachievement. Or perhaps its chart performance was down to it actually being good? Heh. Don’t be so naive I hear you shout and you’re right. When has quality been anything to do with popularity? In all fairness, there wasn’t much quality to “Hanging Around”. There wasn’t much of anything to it. A few random phrases picked because they rhymed set against a jaunty, Madness-lite tune that would have been discarded at the demo stage when it came to making the cut for a Blur album. What a waste! Stephen Duffy has a back catalogue of some incredibly affecting and crafted pop music but this…this was pure hokum. I can only assume some record label marketing and dubious ‘selling in’ practices got it into the charts at all. “Hanging around”? Nah, it was just angin’.

Although this next track topped the American charts for eight weeks, I can’t recall it being in our charts. However, most unfortunately, I do remember only too well a cover of it going to No 1 in the UK six years later. “Tha’ Crossroads” by Bone Thugs–n–Harmony was written as a tribute to a number of people close to the hip-hop group who had died recently including the rapper and their mentor Eazy-E.

The members of the group were:

  • Bizzy Bone
  • Flesh-n-Bone
  • Krayzie Bone
  • Layzie Bone
  • Wish Bone

That list reminds me of a reality tv series called Tool Academy the premise of which was to take twelve unsuspecting ‘bad boyfriends’ and send them to a ‘relationship boot camp’ to teach them how to be better partners. The boyfriends were given nicknames such as ‘Massive Tool’, ‘Temper Tool’, ‘Stoner Tool’, ‘Jealous Tool’ and ‘Neander Tool’. Anyway, want to know the real names of the ‘Bones’? Here you go:

  • Bryon
  • Stanley
  • Anthony
  • Steven
  • Charles

Heh. As hip-hop tracks go, “Tha’ Crossroads” was a little unusual with an almost gospel feel to the chorus and it was all the better for that. However, the version by Blazin’ Squad in 2002 which was retitled “Crossroads”…what on earth was going on there? I’m guessing that this lot weren’t taken seriously at the time? Certainly watching them back over 20 years later they look staggeringly ludicrous. The fact that there’s so many of them for a start undermines any credibility for me and the there’s their horribly hackneyed hip-hop posturing, all that throwing their arms about and the Ali G hand gestures. Someone from their management really should have had a word with them. One of their number appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and another ended up on Love Island. Says it all really.

Suede are back in the TOTP studio after doing an exclusive performance the other week having crashed into the charts at No 3 with “Trash”. I said in a previous post that I’d caught them live in Blackburn in early 1997 so I looked that gig on the Setlist FM website and can report it was a 14 song strong set of which, rather predictably, 10 came from latest album “Coming Up” – basically the whole album. The only tracks not taken from it were “The 2 Of Us” and “The Wild Ones” from “Dog Man Star” and “So Young” and “Animal Nitrate” from their eponymous debut album. I think I might have been ever so slightly disappointed that they didn’t do “The Drowners” and “Metal Mickey” as well.

Peter Andre says of them in his intro “here’s Suede at their most Suede”. Was that meant to be a play on words? If so, it didn’t match up to my mate Robin who once wrote me a letter (remember those!) informing me he’d been to see Suede at a very early gig when the music press were going crazy for them. His three word review? “Suede. I wasn’t”.

The UK really had a weakness for Michael Jackson in the 90s. By this point in the decade he’d accumulated thirteen hit singles over here including three No 1s and two No 2s. In addition, all three albums he released topped the charts. But it wasn’t just him that was the object of the nation’s affections – anybody related to him was also on our radar. The recently passed away Tito Jackson’s offspring benefited from the UK’s devotion to all things and people Jacko to the tune of five hit singles as 3T including this one “Why?”. There was no chance of us giving this one a miss what the King of Pop himself appearing on it alongside his nephews.

I’m surprised he deigned to be officially credited on it and didn’t just give it to them free of charge as it were given what a dreary, lamentable track it is. And don’t get me started on its lyrics. It’s very first two lines are;

Why does Monday come before Tuesday? Why do Summers start in June?

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Annie Lennox
Why? lyrics © La Lennoxa Music Co. Ltd., Boobie And Dj Songs, Inc.

Give me a break! The song sticks with this theme as a few lines later we get:

Why does Wednesday come after Tuesday? Why do flowers come in May?

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Annie Lennox
Why? lyrics © La Lennoxa Music Co. Ltd., Boobie And Dj Songs, Inc.

What?! The point Jackson was trying to make in a very laboured way was ‘why do we let ourselves fall in love if that love doesn’t last?’. Not sure what that has to do with days of the week or the seasons to be honest. Look, if you want to listen to a song called “Why” then try this one:

For the third week running, we have Robbie Williams on the show with “Freedom”. Wow! TOTP was really getting behind the launch of his solo career weren’t they? Perhaps executive producer Ric Blaxill could see something the rest of us were struggling to, namely that this guy was going to have the kind of longevity that most artists can only dream of. Robbie looks a bit disheveled in this performance though, as if he’s just wandered onto the stage direct from an all night bender. Maybe he did get a couple of hours sleep judging by the ‘ski slope’ bit of hair on the back of his head that you get if you slept in an awkward position that’s a bugger to get to behave. He’ll have eight months to sort it out though as we won’t be seeing him on the show again until his next single “Old Before I Die” is released the following April.

It’s a third week at No 1 for the Spice Girls. In 2014, a study by the University of Amsterdam and Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry found that “Wannabe” was the catchiest song of all time in that it is the most easily recognisable. In an experiment of 12,000 participants who were asked if they knew songs from a random sample of 1,000 of the most popular songs since the 1940s, the quickest to be recognised was “Wannabe” in 2.29 seconds. Second was “Mambo No 5” and third was “Eye Of The Tiger”. Hmm. Well, the Survivor hit has that very distinctive guitar riff intro with the chord changes designed to match the punches in the boxing scenes from Rocky III so that’s understandable. “Wannabe” starts with Mel B’s laugh and then is straight into the “Well, I’ll tell you what I want” hook so I get that but Lou Bega? He literally just says “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo No 5”! Of course people were quick to identify it!

So how did Peter Andre do as host? I have to grudgingly admit he was alright actually. Nothing too embarrassing, didn’t get his six pack out and didn’t stumble over his lines. His last job is to introduce the play out video which is “Love Sensation” by 911. Of all the 90s bands, this lot were one of the most unlikely. Lead singer Lee Brennan was your typical pretty boy but the other two? They looked like nightclub bouncers. Apparently, they met as dancers on late night, cult viewing music show The Hitman And Her and decided to form a band. Weren’t Take That’s Jason Orange and Howard Donald also dancers on the show? Anyway, despite the odds, having joined forces with Brennan, they somehow managed to score 13 UK hit singles including a No 1. Many of them were cover versions of the likes of Shalamar, Dr. Hook and the Bee Gees. This No 21 hit was all their own work though but is so lightweight as to hardly exist at all.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1New EditionHit Me OffI did not
2East 17Someone To LoveNegative
3DodgyGood EnoughNo but my wife had their Free Peace Sweet album
4Me Me MeHanging AroundNo No No
5Bone Thugs-n-HarmonyTha’ CrossroadsNope
6SuedeTrashNo but I had their Coming Up album
73T / Michael JacksonWhy?What? Of course not
8Robbie WilliamsFreedomNah
9Spice GirlsWannabeNo
10911Love SensationNever

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/p00fsvcz/top-of-the-pops-09081996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 JUL 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s the Summer of 1996 and the Olympic Games are being held in Atlanta, Georgia. For Team GB though, it was a games to forget as we endured our worst performance since 1952 with just one gold and only 15 in total. Lack of sufficient funding was identified as a major issue – cyclist Chris Boardman had to resort to practicing in his bathroom with the shower turned on in an attempt to create the humidity conditions of Atlanta for acclimatisation training. In a rare moment of celebration, the day after this TOTP aired, that single gold medal was won by rowers Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave in the Men’s Coxless Pair. Meanwhile, in this week’s show, there seemed to be no shortage of cocks but sadly, like Team GB, hardly any gold standard performers. Where were Shed Seven and Gene when you needed them?*

*See what I did there? “Going For Gold”? “Olympian”? No? Oh well, it’s the taking part that’s important not winning so they say.

Bit of admin before we get going. Tonight’s host is Lisa I’Anson and we start with another to camera piece featuring the latest winner of the meet and greet competition who is in Hollywood with New Edition. The first act in the studio though is Pato Banton & The Reggae Revolution. What the guy who had a No 1 with his version of “Baby Come Back” in 1994? That guy was still having hits two years later using the same formula of reggae-fying old pop hits?! That guy?! The very same but his take on the 1967 hit “Groovin’” would be his last UK chart entry. He never got close to repeating his chart topping feat with this one peaking at No 14. He did like a collab as the kids say though – two with Sting (who seems to have a weakness for this type of artist seeing as he’s also teamed up with Shaggy), one with Ranking Roger and now this one with The Reggae Revolution. Who were they? I can’t find out much about them though I did note one of their members is called David Forskins. Stop sniggering at the back – he’s a drummer. Skins? Drum skins? Geddit? What? It was me that mentioned members? Oh, you young rascals!

Next up is Mark Morrison and for once he’s not singing “Return Of The Mack”. No, he’s finally got round to releasing a follow up single or should I say rereleasing as “Crazy” had been out before, making No 19 in 1995. Morrison doesn’t tamper with the formula much with it basically being “Return Of The Mack II”. I did notice though that the lyrics have Morrison claiming “I went to Number One (like a bomb)” presumably referring to his recent chart topper so my question is, were those the lyrics when “Crazy” was originally released before ROTM went to No 1 or did Morrison rewrite them after the event? If it’s the former, he was either very lucky or very arrogant. Either way, he then bangs on about girls “trippin’” on him since he got famous which apparently means acting crazy and is a word he seems very keen on as it was also the title of his next single. The two after that were called “Horny” and “Moan & Groan” – he was a classy fella our Mark.

He’s got a rapper in to help with the flow on this one and his name is Daddy Wattsie. When I was at polytechnic back in the 80s, I knew someone with the surname Watts who insisted on people calling him ‘Wattsie’. He was a bit of a knob and I’m not sure about Daddy Wattsie either. Had I not had the subtitles on iPlayer, I wouldn’t have had a clue what he was going on about (which is some nonsense about hip-hop ragamuffin DJs or something). Meanwhile, Morrison is singing about “doggin’” (that got past the censor) and then blatantly pinches Bobby Brown’s shtick by harping on about his prerogative. It’s all rather unpleasant and Morrison tops it off when he whips out his trademark handcuffs. Well, he had to keep up his ‘king of the cuffs’ moniker that Lisa I’Anson gave him in her intro I suppose. It’s hardly the same as being known as an Olympic champion though is it?

This next track should come with a health warning – it used to come close to giving me panic attacks. There was something about “Higher State Of Consciousness” by Josh Wink that would scratch at my nerve ends. It made me feel claustrophobic and like I just needed to escape from its sonic reach every time I heard it. Was it something to do with its frequency, its bpm, all its little bleeps, breaks and bass (to quote the title of an old dance compilation series)? Or was it that it sounded to me like a car alarm going off? Whatever it was about it that disturbed me so, what was even worse was that I foolishly let my record shop colleagues know about its effect upon me and they would mercilessly play it when I was on the shop floor.

Not content with giving me the jitters for five weeks in Autumn 1995 (the length it spent inside the Top 40), Josh Wink – a DJ, producer and remixer from Philadelphia (real name Joshua Winkelman) – decided to double down on my uneasiness by rereleasing it less than a year later under the shortened name of Wink. I mean, why? It had already been massive in the clubs of Europe and a No 8 hit in the UK on first release so why put it out again? Ah, well – it was all about the remixes wasn’t it? “Higher State Of Consciousness 96 Remixes” included a version by Dex and Jonesey (whoever they were) which deemed it worthy of another push at the charts. It succeeded as well peaking one place higher than its 1995 predecessor. Pass the paracetamol!

The first of two songs on this show that I will always associate with each other. Not for any musical reasons but purely because they formed an end panel display in the Our Price store where I was working at the time. In fairness, they were also both comeback singles of a sort. The first one is from Suede who released their first new material for nearly two years with “Trash” , the lead single from their third studio album “Coming Up”. It was also the first new material written without Bernard Butler who had left the band after the “Dog Man Star” album so there was a lot riding on this song. Would the absence of Butler prove to be insurmountable for the band? Or would his replacement Richard Oakes prove to be a just as gifted songwriter? History shows us that it was the latter scenario that played out. “Coming Up” would become Suede’s biggest selling album going platinum in the process. It generated five Top 10 singles with “Trash” itself the biggest of those and Suede’s joint highest charting hit ever when it peaked at No 3. You could hear why. It was a great tune displaying a much bigger pop sensibility than anything on “Dog Man Star”. Apparently, it was a deliberate choice by Brett Anderson to go down that route after the downturn in sales experienced by their 1994 album. Although, defiantly more ebullient, “Trash” also retained the band’s edge. This was angular pop with Brett singing about being “litter on the breeze”. It worked and it worked well.

Obviously the band toured the album and I caught them in Blackburn with my mate Steve in February of 1997. They were supported by Mansun who would release their excellent debut album “Attack Of The Grey Lantern” two days later but that’s all for a future post. For now, Suede were back and how. They’d survived the fallout from Bernard Butler’s departure and added to their ranks in the aforementioned Richard Oakes and keyboard player Neil Codling (who Lisa I’Anson rather fawned over in her intro). Britpop may have seemed to have washed them away but they had surfaced from the depths and were riding their own wave and not the zeitgeist.

Although mostly overshadowed by her 60s career and subsequent rise from the ashes in the 80s, Tina Turner was remarkably consistent in the 90s. I’m not talking gold medal standard here (most of it wouldn’t even make the medal podium) but she was certainly a qualifier for the final. She achieved 18 Top 40 hits in the UK during the decade albeit that most of them were distinctly medium sized with only four making the Top 10. The fifteenth of those hits was her cover of the soft rock classic “Missing You”. The third single to be lifted from her “Wildest Dreams” album, this was a stinker from start to finish. The 1984 John Waite original had always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine but Tina’s rendition is simply the worst. It just doesn’t suit her growly vocal and overblown delivery. Whoever made the decision for Tina to record should have been disqualified. I was surprised to learn that Trevor Horn produced it because the backing sounds all tinny and hollow. There’s even a sound in there that is reminiscent of that ‘boing’ effect you get from a mouth harp. Just horrible. Let’s move on quickly…

I’m still not convinced by this meet and greet competition. I mean, the locations are great – so far we’ve had the likes of Madrid and now Hollywood – but the pop stars involved don’t strike me as stellar. After Shampoo the other week, this time we’ve got New Edition. That’s New Edition of “Candy Girl” fame from 1983. That’s 1983! Since then, despite continued success in the US, they’d scored just one more hit single in the UK with “Mr. Telephone Man” from 1985. Sure, after the group split in 1988, all the members went on to solo success (or trio success in the case of Bell Biv DeVoe) especially Bobby Brown but when they reformed in 1996, would they have been seen as a huge name? I guess what I’m saying is would the competition winner have been blown away by meeting them? I’m not so sure. Had TOTP been an American TV show, maybe the chance to hangout with New Edition would have been a huge deal – after all the 1996 version of the group scored a huge hit in comeback album “Home Again” which sold two million copies in the US and went to No 1. It wasn’t the same level of success over here though. The album stalled at No 22 whilst it’s lead single “Hit Me Off” peaked at No 20 (it was an R&B chart topper and No 3 hit on the Billboard chart over the pond). I suppose we just weren’t as invested in the group here – we didn’t have that level of connection with them.

Anyway, the performance here is from the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios, Hollywood which explains why there is a huge crash of water behind them every now and again as the log flume ride splashes down. By the way, if you’re thinking that there seem to be more members of New Edition than you remember, don’t worry. You’re not losing it. There were five in the original line up but there are six here as both Bobby Brown and the guy who replaced him – Johnny Gill – are both featured. As for their song, it sounds like every other R&B song from this era with them singing about spending “an hour in the shower when it’s nice and wet”. If only they had misjudged the staging of this performance even slightly then maybe that log flume ride would have made their desire to be soaking come true.

Who remembers Joyrider? Not me for one. As Lisa I’Anson tells us in her intro, they were from Portadown, Northern Ireland and this was their big moment. One solitary week in the UK Top 40 and a TOTP appearance. They can’t gave thought this would be it for them surely but it pretty much was. Their single fell out of the charts despite this exposure and the follow up peaked at No 54. They did release an album but initial pressings didn’t include their only hit – a rock cover of Jane Wiedlin’s “Rush Hour” – which seems like a massive oversight though I believe it was reissued with it as included at a later date.

Listening back to this frenetic, high speed run through of one of the finest pop records of the 80s, the first question that comes to mind is ‘Why?’. Maybe their label desperately needed them to have a hit and we all know which position to assume in that scenario and, after all, such a tactic had worked for Gun a couple of years earlier when they gave Cameo’s “Word Up” the rock guitar treatment. Then there’s California rockers Redd Kross who did a brilliant job on “Yesterday Once More” for a Carpenters tribute album offering more proof that songs from one music genre could work in that of another given the right choice and treatments but something about Joyrider’s example of this just didn’t click for me. I think it’s that the pop brilliance of the original just can’t be beaten so any attempt at doing something different with it was doomed to failure if indeed you can call a No 22 peaking single a failure. What I can say with some certainty is that we won’t be seeing Joyrider on TOTP ever again.

And so to that other single that was on the end panel in Our Price alongside Suede that week. Just as Gary Barlow was toppled by the Spice Girls, here came another chart adversary but this one was much closer to home and with a much deadlier rivalry. Since leaving Take That in 1995, – labelling Barlow a “clueless wanker” as his parting shot across the bows as he went – the only time we’d seen anything of Robbie Williams was in the tabloids being out of it on another bender. His much hinted at solo career seemed to be taking an age to appear*

*I assume there were some record company legalities to be sorted before he could officially extricate himself from Take That’s label RCA and therefore release anything? His choice of song to cover for his debut single certainly suggested so and indeed, he signed to Chrysalis Records ultimately.

Finally, there was something with his name on it that you could buy in the shops when “Freedom” came out. His version of George Michael’s “Freedom 90” though seemed fairly redundant to me. It was a pure copy of the original with only Robbie’s trademark gurning vocals any sort of differential. What I found really revealing though was that the extra tracks on the CD singles were just remixes of “Freedom” and an interview with Williams in two parts. I recall saying to an Our Price colleague how pathetic this seemed and asking where his songs were. I was convinced at this point that he was doomed to fail as a solo artist. Within a year, Williams would meet Guy Chambers (ex of the wonderful Lemon Trees) who would answer my question about where his songs were and after a couple of false starts, Robbie would become a superstar. I watched a documentary about him on Netflix recently and although I had anticipated it portraying him as all self indulgent and woe is me, he was actually brutally honest about what a f**k up he was/is. In July ‘96 though, I for one thought I had him all figured out and had proclaimed sentence on him. I was wrong. Very wrong.

The Spice Girls have gone to No 1 with “Wannabe” and in so doing, become the first all female group to top the UK charts since The Bangles in 1989 with “Eternal Flame”. Perhaps more significantly, they were the first UK all female group to do so ever. This really did feel like a changing of the guard moment with the deposed former No 1 artist having been a member of the recently defunct biggest boy band in the UK. The Spice Girls were here to wash all them and all the pretty boys that followed in their wake away – it was time for ‘girl power’.

Like last week, the group are still in Japan but this time we get to see them at night in an oriental garden. Interestingly, they subvert the usual model of performance by running across bridges whilst miming before eventually lining up together to knock out some loosely choreographed dance moves. Obviously, we also get Sporty Spice doing her back flips. In another life she was surely an Olympic gymnast*.

*She has completed the London Triathlon twice.

The play out video is “Mysterious Girl” by Peter Andre which is still in and around the top end of the charts. Thankfully we only get a few seconds of the repugnant Andre and his cartoonish six pack. Apparently, his 16 years old son Junior wants to follow in his Dad’s footsteps and become a pop star – he is already signed to Columbia Records. As if there aren’t enough problems in the world along comes a dynasty of Andres making music. There really should be a law against it.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Pato Banton & The Reggae RevolutionGroovin’Nah
2Mark MorrisonCrazyNo
3WinkHigher State Of Consciousness 96 RemixesHell no!
4SuedeTrashNo but I had their Coming Up album
5Tina TurnerMissing YouNever
6New EditionHit Me OffNope
7JoyriderRush HourI did not
8Robbie WilliamsFreedomNegative
9Spice GirlsWannabeNot likely
10Peter AndreMysterious GirlAre you crazy?!

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/p00fsvcm/top-of-the-pops-26071996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 17 NOV 1994

Posted on by 80stastic

Woah! Hold on a minute! What happened to November?! Yes, we’ve time jumped and missed the shows broadcast on the 3rd and 10th of that month. Why? Well, they feature R.Kelly and Gary Glitter who, given the charges brought against them and subsequent convictions in later years, have been removed from the schedules on the grounds of sensitivity. I’ve checked online archives to see what we missed and can report that they were presented by Kylie Minogue (dammit!) and Bruno Brookes (meh) and featured a fair few hits that we’d already seen so no loss there but also performances by the likes of Terrorvision (“Alice, What’s The Matter”), Eternal (“Oh Baby I”) and The Beautiful South (“One Last Love Song”). I guess we’ll all have our opinions on whether missing these is a shame or a relief.

There was certainly relief in my work life at this time. After spending five months working at the Our Price store in Piccadilly, Manchester where I’d pretty much hated every minute, I’d got a return move back down the road to the Market Street store from where I’d come. I think I’d made it clear to area management that I wasn’t happy a few times and they finally took pity on me and arranged a transfer for me. I can’t remember the exact details of the move in terms of who went where on the managerial merry-go-round but what I do recall is that the Sunday before I started back at Market Street on the Monday morning, me and my wife went to see an Elvis Costello gig at the Manchester Opera House which was a great distraction from my nerves of starting over again at Market Street. Yes, I’d pushed for a move and yes I knew the store as this would be my third time working there but I was moving right up against Christmas and I hadn’t done one there since I was a sales assistant in 1991. I needn’t have worried – it would turn out to be one of the smoothest Christmases I ever worked. However, I would be on my travels again in the new year as the store closed down and was sold.

In more nationwide news, on the Saturday after this TOTP aired, the UK’s first National Lottery draw took place. Years behind other countries who’d had such a scheme in place for years, it seems strange now to imagine that there was a time when the UK didn’t. These days, of course, there all sorts of different draws and games for us to pursue the dream of phenomenal wealth but in 1994, this was a huge deal. As I recall there was a deluge of advertising and promotion for the lottery and it seemed like everyone you knew was going to buy a ticket. It became a national obsession. I remember a work colleague being absolutely convinced that the number 1 would come up and so was definitely going to choose it as one of his six numbers (it didn’t come up). I’m pretty sure my wife and I bought a ticket and like everyone else – except the seven lucky winners who shared a jackpot of just under £6 million – won bugger all.

The fact that most of us are never going to win a substantial amount didn’t stop the notion of the lottery from becoming completely embedded in our culture. Workplace syndicates became commonplace. Certainly at one of the Our Prices that I worked in, someone was always allotted the task of doing the lottery for the whole shop. It was a horrible responsibility; there would always be a somebody who didn’t have the money to chip in their pound so then you were into the issue of whether another person would put in for them and keeping a tally of who had paid and who still owed. The real dilemma though was the idealogical one of what would happen if the syndicate won; should the person who hadn’t put in that week and technically hadn’t bought a ticket share in the spoils? One of my managers used to refer to putting into the lottery syndicate as ‘sanity money’ – what if you were the only member of staff who hadn’t bothered and then the syndicate won big and all gave up working at the shop and you were the only person there on Monday morning? It was a persuasive argument.

That’s quite a lengthy intro and I haven’t even started on the music yet! Tonight’s ‘golden mic’ host is Michelle Gayle who just the other week was performing her hit “Sweetness” on the show. That’s some clever diversifying right there. Opening tonight are M People who are still in their imperial phase with new single “Sight For Sore Eyes” being the sixth of eight consecutive Top 10 hits for the group. It was also the lead single from their third album “Bizarre Fruit” which had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired. In fact, so confident were they in their success continuing that they would re-issue the album with a slight re-jigging of the tracks (their version of “Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces was added) and doubled it up with an extra CD of live versions and remixes, called it “Bizarre Fruit II” and sold it all over again! “Sight For Sore Eyes” was the opening track on both albums though and you can hear why. It’s a strong song even if it sticks to the successful M People template a tad too much – parts of it sound like they’d just rewritten “Moving On Up” – with Heather Small’s powerhouse vocals to the fore. Has there ever been a singer with such a misnomer as Heather who possesses one of the biggest voices around.

Now I wasn’t the only one moving on around this time and like my transfer to Market Street, Suede’s was also born out of a period of unhappiness. After the breakdown of the working relationship between Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler had resulted in the latter’s departure earlier in the year, the band had moved quickly to recruit 17 year old Richard Oakes to help take the band forward. Their sophomore album “Dog Man Star” was released in the October and it’s perhaps no surprise that, given its difficult gestation (aside from the issues within the Anderson/Butler axis, Brett was also deep into a drug habit) that it was a heavy, dark record with themes of tragedy and self loathing. And yet, in amongst the gloom was the song that Brett regards as Suede’s best ever. “The Wild Ones” was the second single taken from the album and really should have been a bigger hit than its No 18 peak. Maybe it just got caught up in the busy pre-Christmas release schedules? An epic ballad recounting the tale of a withering romance, it was at turns dramatic yet not histrionic and full of passion and melody. Brett says he’d been listening to artists like Scott Walker and Jacques Brel at the time of writing it and was named after the Marlon Brando film The Wild One. Yet for all those stated influences, the very first line of the lyrics is straight out of the Roxy Music songbook:

There’s a song playing
On the radio

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Change just one word and you’ve got the chorus of “Oh Yeah”. Later on, there seems a line that is almost pinched verbatim from the Pet Shop Boys:

Running with the dogs today

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler
The Wild Ones lyrics © Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms

Again, change one word and it’s the hook from “Suburbia”. I’m not criticising – surely there’s an element of soaking up influences (either consciously or subconsciously) attached to every songwriter but those two lines did leap out at me.

Suede would release just one single in 1995 (a third from “Dog Man Star” called “New Generation”) and then they would retreat and regroup for 18 months before returning in 1996 with the massive selling and much more mainstream album “Trash”.

Ah, it’s another of those dance floor bangers (or something). We started 1994 with a rerelease of a dance track that would shoot to No 1 and we end the year (just about) with another one. “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” by Baby D was originally released in 1992 when it peaked at a lowly No 76. It remained popular in the clubs though and a rerelease saw it catapulted to the top of the charts for two weeks in November 1994. Now, I certainly had no idea about this at the time but my reaction had I known this bit of music trivia would have been the same as it is now that I do know and that is “No f*****g way!”. What am I talking about? The fact that Baby D was formed by Production House Records which itself was set up by one Phil Fearon who, if you know your 80s music, you will remember as fronting Galaxy who had hits with “Dancing Tight”, “What Do I Do”, “Everybody’s Laughing” and “I Can Prove It”. Yeah, that Phil Fearon! I know! Who would have thought the man behind those fairly lame pop hits would be responsible for what is widely regarded as one of biggest dance anthems ever. Indeed, one of the reasons “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” was even rereleased was because a poll of listeners to Kiss FM ranked it as their favourite tune of all time. Baby D herself (as in the vocalist) was Phil Fearon’s wife Dee Galdes-Fearon who had been one of the two women in Galaxy with him. Talk about keeping it in the family!

The track was presumably recorded with one eye on crossing over into the mainstream – that would explain the huge shout-a-long chorus that made it stand out from every other break beat house tune. I can imagine many a clubber hollering it at the top of their voices on the dance floor at the time (though not myself of course). One person who did give a rousing rendition of said chorus was a guy called Al who was the housemate of my friend Robin. They lived together for a while in Ruislip Manor in the London Borough of Hillingdon, West London. It’s towards the end of the Metropolitan line, zone 6 – miles from central London and a bugger to get back to from basically anywhere. One night, Al had been out on the lash and had managed to find his way home in the early hours of the morning. He crashed in through the front door waking Robin up in the process who came to the top of the stairs to see what was going on. The sight that met his eyes was Al, off his tits, shouting “Let Me Be Your Fantasy” before passing out and collapsing onto the hall floor. I think Robin’s comment was “Good work, sir” and indeed, it was a fine effort by Al, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Baby D will be at No 1 soon enough and for two weeks but, even with just a short amount of time to go until Christmas, it was never going to hold on to claim the position of festive chart topper.

Just as “The Wild Ones” is Brett Anderson’s favourite Suede song then “End Of A Century” has a shot at being one of my favourite tracks by Blur. I think they were really getting into their stride with this one. More melodic and subtle than the brashness of the in-yer-face “Parklife”, it was the fourth and final single from that album. Damon Albarn is on record as saying it was the wrong choice of track for a single and they should have opted for “This Is A Low” instead. However, as much as I like that song (and it is superior in nearly every way), in terms of radio play, I think “End Of A Century” is much more suited as a single. Just my opinion.

I think I was won over with this one from the opening two lines:

She says, “There’s ants in the carpet”
The dirty little monsters, eating all the morsels, just pickin’ up the rubbish

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Damon Albarn / Graham Leslie Coxon / Alexander Rowntree David / Alexander James Steven
End of a Century lyrics © Warner/chappell Music Ltd, Kobalt Music Services Ltd Kms, Sony Music Publishing (uk) Ltd

Excellent stuff. As far as I can work out, the rest of the song seems to be about how a relationship can fall into a malaise when routine and the mundane are allowed to dominate and that even an event like the then forthcoming new millennium won’t make any difference just because said relationship is now in a new century. I think.

I’m guessing the brass player dressed as a pearly king was a tongue in cheek addition by the band, playing up to their Britishness which the album (and its success) was perceived to be based upon. I think The Jam may have beaten them to it by a few years though:

Never mind that Four Weddings And A Funeral was the top grossing film in the UK in 1994, surely one of the most significant of the year (Schindler’s List aside) was Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino’s highly stylised crime story set new standards for the use of the phrase ‘cultural phenomenon’. Its lines of dialogue have passed into common vernacular and its disruption of the convention of narrative showed that storytelling doesn’t have to be linear (it surely influenced the Christopher Nolan directed Memento from 2000).

Then there was its soundtrack which would go three times platinum in the UK. Breaking with tradition, the film didn’t have a conventional score but instead featured songs from genres such as rock ‘n’ roll, surf music, pop and soul. One of those tracks was a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” by American alternative rockers Urge Overkill. Formed in Chicago in 1986, their contribution to Tarantino’s soundtrack was surely their defining moment. Did I know this was originally by Neil Diamond at the time? No but it sounded so familiar even after just the first listen that I was pretty sure it wasn’t an original composition. To appreciate Urge Overkill’s version though, I think you need to listen to Neil Diamond’s. Now, they’re not a million miles apart but there’s something eerie and haunting about Urge Overkill’s interpretation that’s actually quite affecting. However, despite this TOTP appearance, they never got any higher than this week’s peak of No 37.

Looking at their Wikipedia entry, their roll call of band members is quite astonishing; not just because of how many names there are on it but also the nature of said names. Admittedly, some look like nicknames but check out some of these nomenclatures:

  • Nash Kato
  • Nils St. Cyr
  • Chris Frantisak
  • Grumpy “Crabnar”
  • Carnitas
  • Watt
  • Jack ‘The Jaguar’
  • Kriss Bataille
  • Onassis Rowan
  • Chuck Treece
  • Burf ‘Sandbag’ Agnew (my favourite)

However, watching this performance, if the lead singer had shown his hippy hair to be a wig and revealed himself as Christopher Walken, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

As we near Christmas (in 1994), there’s the inevitable glut of Best Of / Greatest Hits albums being released. Look at this list of artists that had such a product out around this time:

  • INXS
  • Bon Jovi
  • Chris Rea
  • Sade
  • Aerosmith
  • Sting
  • The Beautiful South

You can add to that New Order whose Best Of album was perhaps the most obvious of the year. Why? Well, they’d only recorded one album for new label London Records (1993’s “Republic”) and yet there were already stories emanating from within the band’s camp that relations were faltering and that there was no sign of them recording together again any time soon. Given that, it’s understandable that London wanted to do something with their new charges back catalogue and so a compilation album was always likely. However, there already was such an album in existence. 1987 had seen the band release their retrospective “Substance”, spearheaded by a new track called “True Faith”. Both the album and single were big successes with the former going platinum and the latter becoming their then highest charting single at No 4. I don’t suppose that was going to dissuade London from maximising profit on their act though and so a second Best Of was released four days after this TOTP aired.

Curiously titled “(the best of)” – no brackets, no points- and with the band’s name styled as NewOrder (all one word), its chart peak of No 4 showed there was still lots of appetite for the band out there. Like “Substance”, it was promoted by “True Faith” (albeit a remix officially titled “True Faith -94”). Unlike “Substance”, its track listing had some omissions. Where was “Temptation” and “Confusion” and why had they gone with the 1988 remix of “Blue Monday” instead of the original? I’m guessing it was the band’s decision rather than the label’s as, owing to never having signed a formal contract with Factory Records, they owned the rights to their songs and not Factory so when the latter went bankrupt nothing really changed copyright wise? Oh, I don’t know I’m not a music industry lawyer. What I do know is that the ‘94 version of “True Faith” peaked at No 9, that I can’t really tell the difference between that and its 1987 counterpart and that the accompanying video still looked great seven years on. The following year, a collection of remixes was released called “The Rest Of New Order” that did include versions of “Temptation” and “Confusion” and that was pretty much it from the band until the new millennium dawned.

Here’s a first view of an artist that I must admit a fondness for and although she has sold 50 million albums worldwide, won nine Grammys and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame just this year, I’m never quite sure that she gets the credit she deserves. I suppose she must be respected by the industry given the final accolade on that list.

I’m talking about Sheryl Crow who is really the musical equivalent of Jamie Vardy in that success came to her at a relatively late age in the same way that Vardy’s elite football career did (he didn’t play in the Premier League until he was 27). Crow was even older at 32 when this single – “All I Wanna Do” was a hit. She’d been at it for years before this breakthrough though. She’d sang on commercial jingles for McDonalds and then toured as a backing vocalist for Michael Jackson no less on his Bad tour as well as recording backing vocals for Stevie Wonder, Barbara Carlisle and Don Henley. An aborted attempt at laying down her debut album meant that she returned to the drawing board before joining a songwriting collective who would help write songs for her actual debut LP “Tuesday Night Music Club”.

“All I Wanna Do” was the fourth single released from the album but the first to break through on any meaningful level in both the UK and US. In the former it would peak at No 4 which in the pre-Xmas rush was quite the achievement for a new artist whilst it stayed at No 2 for six weeks in the latter. You can hear why I think. A rambling yet joyous tune with a hopeful message and a killer hook in the chorus well delivered by Sheryl. It was, rather lazily, compared to “Stuck In The Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel but that does make a rather nice link with an earlier act on tonight’s show as that 1973 hit featured heavily in the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs.

As I recall, “All I Wanna Do” attracted masses of airplay but despite its success, subsequent singles failed to scale its heights and it wasn’t until “If It Makes You Happy” and “Everyday Is A Winding Road” from her eponymous sophomore album that she would become a chart regular on these shores. As for this performance, Sheryl sells the song well and I like the fact that a fake bar has been set up to reflect some of its lyrics. A good effort all round.

From one solo female artist in the first flush of success to one who had been a household name since 1978. However, Kate Bush’s run of chart hits was coming to an end and it would take an American sci-fi drama series to reverse that trend in spectacular style 28 years on. Back in 1994 though, “And So Is Love” was, rather surprisingly, released as the fourth single from an album that had already been out for a year. Rather unsurprisingly then, it would peak at a lowly No 26 and would be Kate’s last single release for 11 years.

Apparently the guitar parts on “And So Is Love” were played by Eric Clapton (who dated Sheryl Crow for a while in the 90s) but it puts me in mind more of “Brothers In Arms” by Dire Straits. In truth though, the song is hardly there at all – it’s all trademark Bush breathy vocals and has an ethereal feel to it but it just sort of exists without really doing anything or going anywhere. I’m kind of surprised that it warranted an appearance on the show but I guess head producer Ric Blaxill was trying to restore the reputation of TOTP with huge, grandstanding gestures of having massive names appear and Kate Bush certainly fell into that category. As Michelle Gayle pointed out in her intro, it was Kate’s first time in the TOTP studio for nine years and would turn out to be her last. She would release two albums of new material since the turn of the Millennium and also a “Director’s Cut” album of remixes of tracks from “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes” projects before that rejuvenation of “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God)”. Who saw that coming? I suppose Stranger Things have happened.

Despite the two missed shows, Pato Banton is still No 1 with “Baby Come Back” though this would be its final week at the top. It’s the video again – did Pato ever get to perform his hit in the TOTP studio? I know he was there one week but he only got briefly interviewed by the presenter and gave the rather weak excuse that Ali and Robin Campbell of UB40 weren’t available and so he couldn’t do the song without them. Ah well.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1M PeopleSight For Sore EyesNo
2SuedeThe Wild OnesLiked it, didn’t buy it
3Baby DLet Me Be Your FantasyNope
4BlurEnd Of A CenturyNot the single but I had the album
5Urge OverkillGirl, You’ll Be A Woman SoonNo but I had the Pulp Fiction soundtrack
6New OrderTrue Faith – 94No, nor the Best Of album but I had the Substance compilation
7Sheryl CrowAll I Wanna DoNo but my wife did
8Kate BushAnd So Is LoveNo but my wife had The Red Shoes album it came from
9Pato BantonBaby Come BackNah

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/m001mnyk/top-of-the-pops-17111994

TOTP 22 SEP 1994

Posted on by 80stastic

There’s only three ‘new’ songs in this episode of TOTP so I’m going to have to try hard not to repeat myself in this post. Definitely not repeating himself is Gary Lineker who announced his retirement from playing football the day before this show aired. You never hear much about him these days do you? Ahem. Right, let’s get to it…

…and we start with what looks like a dance aerobics class. It’s actually a performance of “Rhythm Of The Night” by Corona but it involves an awful lot of kicks, knee lifts and lunges. I’m guessing the neon lights backdrop was to create a sense of night time/nightlife though I’m intrigued by the choice of the ‘Jazz Club’ one. Hardly seems in keeping with this Eurodance anthem does it? Louis Balfour would no doubt approve though.

Corona would have five more UK Top 40 hits including two inside the Top 10 but can anybody remember how any of them went? I’m willing to bet they sounded a lot like “Rhythm Of The Night” though.

With ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire having only just departed the charts after his recent hit single “Someone To Love” had turned him into a bona fide pop star, Michelle Gayle wasn’t waiting for a respectful amount of time to have passed before gatecrashing the charts herself faster than you can hum “doof, doof, de doof, doof, doof, doof”. Like Maguire, Michelle had left the soap from her role as Hattie Tavernier the previous Christmas but unlike Maguire, she’d already had a Top 40 hit a year earlier with debut single “Looking Up”. I’m not sure why her follow up “Sweetness” took so long to come out (EastEnders recording commitments maybe?) but it would prove worth the wait when it became her biggest hit peaking at No 4.

You could understand why. A breezy piece of R&B pop with a chorus that screamed ear worm, this was the peak of her music career. That’s not to say that she didn’t continue to have chart hits because she had another five though only one made the Top 10. “Sweetness” is surely her most well known track though. And let’s be fair, for an ex-EastEnder, its quality was maybe more than was expected – this was no “Anyone Can Fall In Love” or “Something Outa Nothing”. And yet Michelle, it seemed to me, never quite managed to shed her soap star past to the extent that people forgot about it and thought of her as a pop star first. Maybe the three years gap between albums didn’t help establish her credentials in the public consciousness? For whatever reason though, I have a soft spot for “Sweetness”, maybe because my wife liked it and that’s good enough for me.

Another ‘new’ song next though it has taken on a life of its own due to its origins. As with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” before it, “Circle Of Life” was an Elton John composition for The Lion King film project and for me, was actually the better song. Maybe I’m biased as I’ve seen my son perform it as part of his musical theatre group live on stage but I think I’ve always had that opinion. So has Elton supposedly as he rarely plays “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in concert but “Circle Of Life” has become a staple of his live set. The Oscars committee didn’t agree with me and Elton though and awarded the gong for Best Original Song to “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in 1994 over “Circle Of Life”. I think the striking opening sung in Zulu helps to set it apart from its predecessor. If we’re talking about repeating ourselves though, surely there’s no more effective way of doing that than life within a circle?

So we’re back to the songs that have been on the show before with “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. However, somebody who hadn’t been on the show before was the band’s new guitarist Richard Oakes. With Bernard Butler having jumped ship a few weeks before, Oakes was drafted in as his replacement despite being only 17 at the time (he wasn’t 18 until 9 days after this TOTP aired) and that he’d been up against approximately 500 candidates for the job.

Now I think I might have a little personal insight into this story. I knew someone who was seeing Suede’s manager around this time and apparently Richard Oakes’ Mum was wanting quite a lot of input into her son’s career and this was becoming quite wearisome for said manager. To be fair to her, she was looking at the prospect of her 17 year old son plunging into the lifestyle of a famous indie rock band and all that entails so she was entitled to have some misgivings but apparently she was very forceful in getting her voice heard. Just to make us all feel ancient, I can reveal that Richard Oakes is now 46.

Incidentally, you don’t hear the word ‘swine’ used as an insult anymore do you? It was commonplace when my Dad was younger then I am now back in the 60s and 70s. Look at this for example:

It’s the last of the ‘new’ songs now and it’s by…Naomi Campbell?! The supermodel Naomi Campbell? I don’t remember this! When did this happen?! Well, September 1994 obviously but seriously, who remembers “Love And Tears”? You’re forgiven if you don’t as it only reached No 40 in the UK singles chart and the album it was taken from – “Baby Woman” – completely bombed over here. However, it was a huge success in Japan selling over one million copies there. The album was mocked and derided by our music press with its only legacy being the inspiration for the Naomi Awards, a parody of The Brit Awards; a musical equivalent of the Rotten Tomatoes employed by the film industry I guess. Run by music TV channel Music Choice, it named its award ceremony after Campbell whose contribution to the world of music were judged to be the gold standard for wretchedness. Seems a bit harsh. How bad was “Love And Tears” then?

*Watches TOTP performance*

Hmm. Well, my judgement would be that it’s as if AI had been around then and was asked to construct a soul/pop song and also to create one of the world’s most beautiful women to front it. There’s a bit of Kylie’s “Confide In Me” Eastern influences in the mix and is the melody reminiscent of “Proud” by Heather Small? It also kind of reminds me of the sound that would make All Saints famous a few years later but ultimately it’s a bit bland and without emotion. Coincidentally, the winner of the 2006 Worst British Solo Male Artist Naom Award was Lee Ryan of Blue who I’m pretty sure once recorded a track created by some song writing software as opposed to crafted by a person.

Campbell herself would cut a controversial figure in subsequent years with drug addiction problems, four convictions for assault and alleged contacts with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s all repeated songs from here on in starting with “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)” by Cyndi Lauper.

Obviously a reworking of her debut hit from 1984, that original recording was actually inspired by another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

Interesting. Not as interesting as this though. The sound that “Come On Eileen” was based around (and indeed the whole style of the “Too-Rye-Aye” era of Dexys) was pinched from the group that Kevin Rowland’s former band mate Kevin ‘Al’ Archer founded called Blue Ox Babes and this track “What Does Anybody Ever Think About” in particular:

It’s that Niagara Falls performance next by Bon Jovi. This was the definitive take on head producer Ric Blaxill’s vision for the live by satellite slot of taking artists out of empty concert halls and have them perform against landmark backdrops. As dramatic panoramas go, the crashing waters of Niagara Falls was hard to top. The darkness of the night time setting only added to the event. Big tick for Ric. “Always” was the single promoting the band’s first Best Of album “Cross Road” which would prove to be the biggest selling album of the year in the UK.

It’s not just a repeat but a three-peat for Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories and their hit “Stay (I Missed You)”. After being in a satellite segue the first time and then the official promo video second time around, Lisa has finally made it into the studio in person to complete a TOTP hat-trick. She always seemed to be in the same attire when on screen, that being black top, skirt and woolly tights. It put me in mind of Tanita Tikaram who wore similar outfits when making TV appearances early in her career. Maybe it was a thing with female singers with alliteration in their names – you might even say it was a “Good Tradition”. Ahem.

Whigfield remains at No 1 with “Saturday Night”. There was, of course, no chance of Wet Wet Wet mounting a fight back to reclaim the top spot as they had deleted “Love Is All Around” meaning no more copies were being pressed so there was no product to meet demand (even if it still existed). Unlike some dance tunes of the era, the person we saw performing the song did actually sing on the recording although Sannie Carlson admitted to not being that much of a singer and that they had to do over 20 takes at getting her vocals right and in the end had to splice the best bits together. Now that really is repeating yourself.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1CoronaRhythm Of The NightNo
2Michelle GayleSweetnessI did not
3Elton JohnCircle Of LifeNah
4SuedeWe Are The PigsNegative
5Naomi CampbellLove And TearsNever
6Cyndi LauperHey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)Nope
7Bon JoviAlwaysDidn’t happen
8Lisa Loeb And Nine StoriesStay (I Missed You)It’s a no from me
9Whigfield Saturday NightAnd 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/m001m15w/top-of-the-pops-22091994