Sunscreem

TOTP 18 JAN 1996

It’s all change in the charts in these TOTP repeats as all but the No 1 are songs that haven’t featured previously and even that No 1 is in its first (and only) week at the top. There’s also a new host who similarly would only get one go in the hot seat. Comedian Alan Davies had become a well known name both a a live stand up and radio personality by 1996 but he was still a year away from his big mainstream breakthrough role in mystery crime drama Jonathan Creek. Watching this TOTP back, Davies doesn’t seem a particularly good fit for the show. His sardonic humour and aloof manner were perhaps not the ideal skills set for presenting a fast moving, pop music show. He just doesn’t seem very engaged or indeed engaging.

We start tonight with Bucketheads whose last hit was the Top 5 stand out dance tune “The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)” which combined disco funk with house beats to great effect in 1995. The follow up sort of stuck to that formula with a reworking of Brass Construction’s 1976 hit “Movin’” retitled as “Got Myself Together”. Whilst a very competent dance floor filler I’m sure, for me it didn’t have that something extra that made its predecessor that little bit more intriguing. They’ve wheeled out all the usual visual 70s funk tropes for this performance but I can’t help feeling that you’d be better off listening to the original if funk was your thang (sorry!).

Sunscreem were not a band that I paid that much attention to back in the day but that’s possibly my bad as I’ve quite enjoyed some of their songs when they’ve featured on these TOTP repeats. “Blue Skies” is another case in point. Enough of a good melody in the chorus to satisfy my pop sensibilities but also with the correct bpm to stay hip with the dance heads. If I’d only given them more of a chance in the 90s, I might have had a bit more musical credibility with my record shop colleagues.

As with the artist at No 1 this week, the band had issues with their record company Sony Music. They’d released tracks independently for inclusion on some dance compilations and therefore broke the terms of their contract with Sony. In return, Sony didn’t put much effort into promoting Sunscreem with their second album “Change Or Die” not released in major territories outside of the UK. The writing was on the wall and the band negotiated their release from their Sony contract. Sunscreem are still going though with their last album being released in 2018.

How do you follow one of the biggest selling singles in the world in 1995? Well, in the case of Coolio, and this didn’t seem like the most likely strategy, you release a cover version of an old Kool & The Gang track. “Too Hot” was a hit for Robert ‘Kool’ Bell and his mates in early 1980 but was reactivated by the “Gangsta’s Paradise” star sixteen years later as the follow up to that single. Obviously, it’s not a straight cover what with Coolio being a rapper and all but it does kind of hang together quite well. I can’t say that I remember this one from back then though. In fact, if pressed on Coolio’s cannon of work, I really could only name “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “C U When You Get There” (that inevitably the wags amongst us referred to as “C U Next Tuesday”). I’m sure most people would come up with the same tracks. Both the lyrics and video for “Too Hot” warn of the dangers of unsafe sex which set him apart from some of the other West Coast rappers. Maybe Coolio actually lived in a socially conscious world rather than a “Gangsta’s Paradise”.

Lush were another of those bands that I was on acquaintance terms with only by virtue of knowing what the covers of their albums looked like and who they were distributed by for ordering purposes in the record shops I worked in. As for their sound…well, I knew they were part of the ‘shoe gaze’ crowd but I’m not sure I’d ever actually heard any of their songs which is a shame in hindsight as “Single Girl” is quite the tune. The more I write about my time in record shops, the more it makes me feel like it was a whole list of missed listening opportunities. Anyway, back to Lush and supposedly this era of the band saw them leaving behind that ‘shoe gaze’ phase and moving towards the Britpop zeitgeist; not that Lush saw themselves in that bracket. That’s the thing about Britpop – no act associated with the movement seemed to want to admit to being associated with the movement.

Alan Davies’s intro here seems rather inappropriate in retrospect. His story about chatting up lead singer Miki Berenyi at a Pulp gig and asking for her number only to realise she’d given him that of a pizza delivery place might have seemed vaguely humorous at the time but then Miki posted this on Twitter when the BBC4 TOTP repeat went out recently…

I think this is the one where Alan Davies intro'd us with an anecdote about me staving off his chat-up lines with a fake telephone number… (I genuinely thought I gave him the right number, but didn't realise he was chatting me up) https://t.co/OM7dqHmXSO
— Miki Berenyi (@berenyi_miki) May 10, 2024

So it was true?! Why did Davies think telling that story to an audience of millions watching at home was a good idea? Did he ask Miki’s permission beforehand to use the anecdote? Thankfully Miki seems like a good sort and went on to say it was 30 years ago and isn’t a big deal.

“Single Girl” was subsequently parodied by the Shirehorses (aka Mark and Lard) as “Single Bloke”. I used to love listening to their Radio 1 afternoon show when I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham which I’d have on in the background if I happened to be away from the counter. Clearly another reason why I didn’t know how Lush sounded as I could have used that time to acquaint myself with their album. Ah, well.

I think I’ve said this before but what was it with Nightcrawlers (featuring John Reid -for the pedants!) and their song titles? They all seemed to feature the words ‘Push’, ‘Pushing’ or ‘Feeling’. So here we get “Let’s Push It” but they also had hits with “Don’t Let The Feeling Go”, “Keep Pushing Our Love” and “Push The Feeling On” (which was released six times!). Talk about sticking to a formula! Creativity? New ideas? Balls to all that! Just keep selling the masses the same song over and over again and when I say same song, I don’t just mean the titles but also the sound. Seriously, could you really distinguish any of their hits from another?

After starting the decade in spectacular style with the No 1 single “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” and No 1 album “Greatest Hits 1965-1992”, there’d been a bit of a downturn for Cher commercially. After “Love And Understanding” made the UK Top 10 in the early Summer of 1991, of her next seven singles released, none got any higher than No 31 with the nadir being reached with the last of those being a version of “I Got You Babe” with Beavis and Butt-head. That was followed by an almighty reversal of fortunes when she featured on the 1995 Comic Relief single “Love Can Build A Bridge” alongside Neneh Cherry, Chrisse Hynde and Eric Clapton which topped the UK chart. I think these days we’d called it an ‘asterisk’ hit what with it being for charity and all. A No 1 is a No 1 though and it acted as a springboard for Cher who recorded her twenty-first studio album and first since 1991’s “Love Hurts” for new label Warners in 1995’s “It’s A Man’s World”. Featuring a number of cover versions of songs by the likes of James Brown, Marc Cohn and The Walker Brothers, it went gold in the UK which was not insignificant but was nowhere near the numbers of her Greatest Hits collection which sold 10 times that amount.

OK, that’s enough stats and chart positions, what about the actual music? “One By One” was the second single released from the album and it was, rather unbelievably, the debut single for Liverpool band The Real People (then known as JoJo And The Real People) in 1987. Who you ask? Well, they may not have had many hits (one minor Top 40 entry in 1992) but they did help none other than Noel Gallagher to record a demo to send out to record companies in the early days of Oasis featuring many songs that would end up on “Definitely Maybe”. So my question is how did “One By One” come to the attention of Cher/her management/Warners? I’m not sure there’s a straight line between the two. Anyway, here’s the original version of the song…

The Cher version released in the UK was quite different to that made available in America. The former was a trademark, chugging rock guitar number but the latter dropped all those traditional stylings (including backing vocals and sax solo) and turned it into an R&B tune. The Wikipedia entry for the song includes clips of both versions and the difference is quite startling. “One By One” made No 7 in the UK and paved the way for Cher to return in 1998 with the all conquering “Believe” album and single.

Talking of Liverpool bands, here’s one that, unlike The Real People, would have loads of hits. Cast were onto their third with “Sandstorm”. I liked this lot. I’d bought their debut single “Finetime” and also enjoyed its follow up “Alright”. Somehow though, I considered this one to be slightly inferior though listening to it now, I’ve no idea why as it’s a banger in very much the same vein as its predecessors. Supposedly a fave of the aforementioned Noel Gallagher, Cast seemed to have timed their arrival to perfection in terms of riding the Britpop zeitgeist. I’m sure they would deny their membership but they were definitely seen as a part of that movement.

On reflection, you could say that these early singles were quite conventional, rock/pop songs but if you’re a good songwriter (as I believe lead singer John Power to be) then your tunes will always stand up when heard through the lens of retrospect. Image wise, Power seems to be copying the Oasis sartorial look with that jacket (or maybe they copied him?) but the standout performer is always Keith O’Neill with his energetic, powerful drumming. At the time, we hadn’t witnessed anything like it on the show since Talk Talk’s Lee Harris a decade earlier.

I’ve given myself a hard time on this blog lately about not remembering certain songs or artists but I think I can give myself a free pass for not recalling this lot. Who on earth were Solo?! Well, apparently, they were an American a cappella R&B group who had one minor hit in the UK with this song “Heaven” which got to No 35. I don’t wish to be unkind but this sounds so dull. Clearly the guys can sing but I’m not sure why TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill thought their performance here was any sort of ‘exclusive’ (“Heaven” wasn’t even a hit in the US) nor why he gave them the direct to camera message slot at the top of the show. And that band name! Is that solo as in with no instruments? Well, no instruments except a double bass it seems. So obvious was the name Solo that they had to go by the name Solo (US) here to avoid confusion with dance producer Stuart Crichton who had released records under that moniker. That’s before we even mention Han Solo (Star Wars), Napoleon Solo (The Man From U.N.C.L.E) and Skid Solo (Tiger comic).

Just as the UK was falling in love with George Michael all over again in 1996, the US seemed to be going a bit cold on him. George had ended Michael Jackson’s six week reign at the top of the charts with “Jesus To A Child” going straight in at No 1. The lead single from his album “Older”, it was followed by a further chart topper in “Fastlove” and three other singles that peaked at either No 2 or No 3. The album went six times platinum here and effortlessly leapt to No 1. However, across the pond, those two singles only made it to Nos 7 and 8 respectively and the album peaked at No 6 and was only the 99th best selling album of the year. By contrast, it was the UK’s 5th best selling of 1996. That’s not to say it didn’t sell at all in the US; one million sales is not to be disregarded lightly but “Faith” sold ten (!) times that amount in the late 80s. Why should this be? Well, maybe the songs weren’t as obviously commercial and radio friendly as those of “Faith” and George had been away for a while – it had been six years since “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” came out. Maybe, his audience had just moved on in his absence? It can’t have been a gay backlash as he didn’t come out until 1998. Sadly for George, his stay at the top will last just one week as he was unable to repel the march of “Spaceman” by Babylon Zoo. He should have maybe stuck with those “Faith” era Levi’s.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Bucketheads	Got Myself Together	Never happening
2	Sunscreem	Blue Skies	No but maybe should have
3	Coolio	Too Hot	Nah
4	Lush	Single Girl	Nope
5	Nightcrawlers	Let’s Push It	I did not
6	Cher	One By One	Negative
7	Cast	Sandstorm	See 2 above
8	Solo	Heaven	Definitely not
9	George Michael	Jesus To A Child	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/m001z1vm/top-of-the-pops-18011996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 APR 1993

Posted on July 24, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re up to April Fool’s Day 1993 in our BBC4 TOTP repeats but in a surprising turn of events, the biggest prank pulled that year actually came two days later when the Grand National that never was happened. This was the year of the false start that the majority of the field hadn’t realised had been called and therefore carried on running. Seven of the field even finished the race. I had that Saturday off work for some reason and as me and my wife walked into Manchester City centre, we popped into a Ladbrokes on the way to watch the race – I’m guessing I must have put a bet on. It was a weird experience with the committed gamblers all going crazy about whether the result would stand or would/could the race be rerun and if so, when. They were all to be disappointed as it was eventually declared void with the Jockey Club deciding that it couldn’t be rerun and the bookies had to refund an estimated £75 million in bets staked. As I said, a surprising turn of events. I wonder if tonight’s TOTP has any surprising turns on it?

We start with a tune that could possibly be the moment when Italian House music morphed into Eurodance. Or something. Look, I’m no expert on dance music despite working in record shops for the whole of the 90s just about. What I do know is that Cappella were Italian and they had first come to prominence during the late 80s when Italian House music was in its pomp, brought to the masses by huge hits like “Ride On Time” by Black Box. They had a UK hit of their own when “Helyom Halib” peaked at No 11. It took three years for them to feature in our charts again when they returned to that Black Box blueprint and sampled Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” on their Top 30 single “Take Me Away”.

This stealing other people’s work to grab a hit of your own idea obviously appealed to the guys behind Cappella (actually just one guy essentially, producer Gianfranco Bortolotti) as it happened again for this hit “U Got 2 Know”. Taking the riff from “Happy House” by Siouxsie and the Banshees and completely butchering it to make it fit into a Eurodance anthem was crime enough but they compounded that by not crediting Siouxsie and Steve Severin and ended up getting sued. Good!

“U Got 2 Know” managed to crash the Top 10 despite its legal issues and they would follow it up with the No 2 hit “U Got 2 Let The Music”. Cappella there creating texting language years before we knew what it was.

Nothing very surprising about the next artist being on the show as Madonna was one of the most famous people on the planet at the time. Does she still hold that status in 2022? I don’t know how you measure these things. Back in 1993 though, she seemed to have a new single out every other week. This latest one “Fever” was the fourth of five tracks taken from her “Erotica” album. A cover of the old Peggy Lee hit, it would continue Madonna’s run of Top 10 hits from the album by peaking at No 6. Despite that consistency of success, I hadn’t liked any of them that much. The one I did have time for hadn’t been released yet – “Rain” wouldn’t be released for nearly four months in direct contrast to the four weeks between “Bad Girl” and “Fever”. What was the reasoning behind that? It feels like it was just an afterthought.

The video shown on TOTP isn’t the official promo for “Fever” but a compilation of clips of previous Madge videos which I originally thought must have been because some scenes in the proper release were deemed too racy for pre-watershed viewing. However, having watched the official version, although Madonna is spray painted silver Goldfinger style, I don’t think there’s anything in there too provocative. I think the reason for it not being shown on TOTP was simply that it hadn’t been made yet. According to Wikipedia, it was filmed on 10-11 April 1993 so ten days or so after this TOTP aired.

Sound wise, I think I would have preferred a straight Peggy Lee style cover rather than the housed-up version we got here. As a rule I think cover versions shouldn’t be replicas of the original but Madge’s take here just sounds antiseptic and sanitised. As so many of us have been wishing in the recent heatwave, bring on “Rain”!

When I saw the running order for this show and that Mica Paris was performing a song called “I Never Felt Like This Before”, I immediately thought that it was yet another cover, this time of that song by Stephanie Mills. I was quite mistaken though as that was called “Never Knew Love Like This Before”. Easy mistake to make in my defence. Mica’s tune was actually written by American singer- songwriter and producer Narada Michael Walden and was the lead single from her third album “Whisper A Prayer”. It sounds very generic 90s R&B the likes of which we’d heard before and would do so again many times over and also the lyrics are rubbish. Look at this:

Ooh baby, used to be a bird inside a cage but now I’m free, I’m flying higher

Baby, my skies are blue since you came into my life

Dear oh dear. How much time did Narada put into coming up with those? 30 seconds? 20? Mica herself seems to be going through an identity crisis as she’s come dressed as Seal but is singing in the style of Michael Jackson with every line seeming to end with an ‘Oww!’. All very disconcerting. A poor effort from all involved.

“I Never Felt Like This Before” peaked at No 15.

Not Sunscreem again! Like the Tory party leadership contest, their run of appearances on TOTP at this time seemed never ending. We’ve got one of those excruciating interviews with the band beforehand explaining why they can’t perform on the show in person due to one of their number being ill. TOTP seemed very keen on this rather niche activity. I’m sure they’ve done it a few times now though I don’t know why. It might make more sense if the reason for their crying off wasn’t the usual sore throat or, as in this case, the common cold. Something a bit more unforeseen and unlikely might have made an interview worth it like dropping a bottle of salad cream on your foot. Actually, a footballer did that once. Goalkeeper Dave Beasant missed eight weeks of a season after severing the tendon to his big toe when he dropped a 2kg glass bottle of salad cream on his foot. Now that might seem like an unexpected turn of events but then Dave Beasant was also capable of these howlers…

“Pressure US” peaked at No 19.

Talking of howlers, there’s a couple in this week’s Breakers starting with Coronation Street actor Bill Tarmey and his version of the Barry Manilow song “One Voice”. We all knew him as Jack Duckworth of course as he’d been on our screens in that role for over a decade by 1993. However, Bill had been a club singer (you don’t say!) in the late 60s before his time on the cobbles of Weatherfield so perhaps it was inevitable that this moment would arrive at some point. After all, soap actors had become interchangeable as pop singers in the 80s with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and…erm…Stefan Dennis from Neighbours all making the transition whilst EastEnders had given us Nick Berry and Anita Dobson. So why not Coronation Street?

Unfortunately for us all, this trend would go into overdrive in the 90s with a list of soap stars as long as Phil Mitchell’s rap sheet clogging up the charts. By the end of the decade we’d have seen huge hits by Adam Rickitts (Coronation Street), Will Mellor (Hollyoaks), Sean Maguire, Sid Owen and Martine McCutcheon (EastEnders) and, if you widen the net to include dramas, John Alford and Steven Houghton (London’s Burning) and of course, the dons of the whole family, Robson and Jerome (Soldier Soldier). Gee, thanks everyone!

Bill Tarmey’s own contribution to this genre was not limited to this one single. He made five (!) albums and also did two duets – one with Ruth Madoc of Hi–de–Hi! fame and, inevitably, one with his Coronation Street partner Liz Dawn (Vera Duckworth). The terror didn’t end there as “One Voice” was produced by Stock & Waterman (who seemed to be taking any old job since the break up of the SAW trio) and was performed with the St. Winifred’s School Choir – yes, the little darlings that brought us “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” and “It’s ‘Orrible Being In Love When You’re Eight And A Half”. A combined canon of quality and distinction there I’m sure you’ll agree. Should have stuck to pigeon fancying Jack.

Some proper music next as we get a third consecutive hit from Arrested Development with the inevitable rerelease of “Tennessee”. We saw a performance of this track on the show almost a year prior as part of the US chart feature but it failed to make the Top 40 over here. After “People Everyday” and “Mr Wendal” were massive hits back to back though, “Tennessee” was shoved back out and managed a peak of No 18 this time.

The track uses a sample – just the word Tennessee – from Prince’s “Alphabet Street” which was uncleared. The band heard nothing from Prince until it had been a huge hit in the US and had started to descend the charts. Once it had peaked, Prince’s legal team swooped in and began proceedings knowing that they could make a claim for royalties against an optimum amount of sales. The cost of that one word sample? $100,000! Think that qualifies as an unexpected turn of events.

And now… back to the bollocks and just like with Bill Tarmey, it was all a devilish plot by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman who were joined by a third witch at the cauldron of shit in Simon Cowell. The phenomenon of American wrestling that had already spawned one UK hit single in “Slam Jam” was back for another bout with a track called “WrestleMania”. Bizarrely, that first single had been credited to The WWF Superstars but this follow up was officially by The World Wrestling Federation Superstars. I’m guessing it was a legal thing. Thankfully, this No 14 hit was the final time the US wrestling fraternity troubled our chart compilers and the whole craze petered out.

I’m not sure what I was doing whilst working in a record shop at this time but it doesn’t appear that I was taking note of the singles I was selling to punters as here’s another one I don’t remember. “Go Away” by Gloria Estefan anyone? Apparently this was taken from her “Greatest Hits” album that was a big seller over Xmas ‘92 and was the follow up to the “Miami Hit Mix /Megamix” single that promoted it.

It’s an uptempo mamba infused number and was also used in a film I have never come across in my life before entitled Made In America starring Ted Adamson, Whoopi Goldberg and a fledgling Will Smith in a very early big screen role. There’s some clips of it in the video for “Go Away” and it looks dreadful. The plot description for it in on Wikipedia only confirms its awfulness. One to avoid I think.

“Go Away” made it to No 13 on the UK charts and Gloria’s next release in the Summer of this year was a Spanish language album called “Mi Tierra”.

We arrive at the show’s exclusive element which is, as host Mark Franklin advised at the top of the show, gatecrashing a Bruce Springsteen concert. Was this a live link up? Wikipedia tells me that the Glasgow date of Bruce’s world tour where this performance comes from was on March 31st, the day before this TOTP aired so it wasn’t live as we watched it. However, the show was recorded on a Wednesday before transmission so presumably it was all just edited together after the event to make it look seamless. Surely the recording wasn’t scheduled to coincide with the Springsteen gig? Wouldn’t the BBC just have got permission to record that one track for broadcast and put it all together in the editing suite? I know Bruce introduces the performance with a shout out to TOTP joining the gig but that could have all been prearranged surely? Oh I don’t know.

What I do know is that the song being promoted by all this was “Lucky Town” which was the title track of one of his two albums released simultaneously in March 1992 (the other being “Human Touch”). Only one single from that album had been a hit – “Better Days” had struggled to a peak of No 34 – but this live version of “Lucky Town” was actually to promote not that album but his “In Concert / MTV Plugged” set which was released eleven days after this TOTP aired. No, that’s not a typo; the album was called “MTV Plugged” not Unplugged as was the usual format as The Boss wasn’t happy with the acoustic arrangements of the songs in rehearsal and so only agreed to the recording if it was with amplified instruments. So, if I understand it correctly, you couldn’t buy this live, in concert version of the track that we saw on TOTP but the MTV Plugged version? It all seemed an overly complicated bit of promotion which didn’t really work as the single failed to make the UK Top 40, bottoming out at No 48. I guess his label Columbia would argue that the album was a success by peaking at No 4. However, Wikipedia tells me that it only made No 189 in the US. That can’t be right can it?!

As for the song itself, I like Springsteen but this isn’t a particular favourite. I know some people who are huge Bruce fans though who are very excited about his UK tour next year. I’ve seen some reports of extortionate ticket prices though – an average of over £200 each with some even going for £4,000! I say again, that can’t be right can it?!

Now this really is an exclusive! Barry Manilow on TOTP! The target of many a music snob’s put downs over the years, Bazza still retains an iconic status especially amongst his devoted fan base. Despite his success in the US where he notched up three No 1 singles, his hits over here were rather more sporadic and…well…unlike his nose (sorry – had to!) rather small. He managed just one UK Top Tenner (the innuendo laden “I Wanna Do It With You” in 1982) and yet his songs are just as well known in this country. Why, in this very show his song “One Voice” was covered (albeit by Jack Duckworth) and just a few weeks prior to this Take That had a huge hit with their version of “Could It Be Magic”.

Why was Barry having a hit in his own right at this time though? Well, it was to promote a Best Of collection of course. If it was good enough for 70s contemporaries like Boney M and Sister Sledge than why not Manilow? “Greatest Hits: The Platinum Collection” included this single – “Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix” – which is just brilliant and ridiculous at the same time. A remix of the 1978 story song telling the tale of Lola the showgirl and Tony the bartender, it’s gloriously camp but fun with it even if the song’s denouement ends in tragedy. The song inspired a 1985 made for TV film in which Bazza himself plays the part of Tony but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It also became a musical which ran in London’s West End for two years.

The staging in this TOTP performance is not quite convincing mainly because Barry sits down for the whole song – I wonder if he had a bad back or something? There’s a lot of fast cuts of stock footage padding it out as well which adds credence to my theory that Manilow maybe couldn’t move that freely plus the secretarial image for the two backing singers looks a bit dated now.

I once worked with a colleague called Justin at Our Price and this song always reminds me of him. Juzza used to call me Rico sometimes (what with me being a Richard and all) and so occasionally he would sing me the line ‘his name was Rico’. Ah, good times.

The 1993 remix of “Copacabana (At The Copa)” peaked at No 22.

The Bluebells have knocked Shaggy off his perch to claim the No 1 crown with “Young At Heart”.

For what is quite a slight song for me, this track has had a hell of a long life. Originally recorded by Bananarama (with whom Bobby Bluebell wrote it as Siobahn Fahey’s then boyfriend) for their debut album “Deep Sea Skiving”, it became a Top 10 hit in 1984 before its use in a car advert sent it to the top of the charts in 1993.

It didn’t stop there though. Here it is again in the wonderful Scottish sitcom Still Game in 2019:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Capella	U Got 2 Know	I did not
2	Madonna	Fever	Nah
3	Mica Paris	I Never Felt Like This Before	No
4	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
5	Bill Tarmey	One Voice	As if
6	Arrested Development	Tennessee	No but my wife had the album
7	The World Wrestling Federation Superstars	WrestleMania	Never happening
8	Gloria Estefan	Go Away	I wish she would – no
9	Bruce Springsteen	Lucky Town (Live)	Negative
10	Barry Manilow	Copacabana (At The Copa) The 1993 Remix	No but I think my wife had that Best Of album
11	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	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/m0019dvm/top-of-the-pops-01041993

TOTP 25 MAR 1993

Posted on July 16, 2022 by 80stastic

I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about the unholy trinity of the three S’s of Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and Snow dominating the charts. Well, guess what? I’m still doing it in this post as two of them are on the show again this week. It’s come to my attention though that they weren’t the only members of the ‘S’ brigade. This week’s show is jam packed with them and no I didn’t like a single one!

We start with an ‘S’ and it’s ‘S’ for Sybil, she of the hit “When I’m Good And Ready”. Sybil was never as popular again as she was at this moment in terms of sales. Her run of two consecutive big hits comprising this single and previous No 3 smash “The Love I Lost” with West End was brought to an abrupt halt when the next single “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” peaked outside of the Top 40 at that most unfortunate of places No 41. It wasn’t for the want of trying though. She even did two different versions of the song- a pop ballad version for the UK market…

And a hip-hop remix with a rap in the middle for the US territories…

It made no difference as neither version was a hit. Off the top of my head I can only think of Climie Fisher also doing a similar thing where there was a straight ballad version of their single “Rise To The Occasion” and a hip-hop remix complete with the ubiquitous and annoying ‘aaah yeaaah’ sample.

The track had also previously been recorded by Lonnie Gordon and released as a follow up to her “Happenin’ All Over Again” hit but had also missed the chart peaking at No 48. All of this despite the claim by writers Stock, Aitken and Waterman that it is one of the best songs they ever penned. And if you thought the chart performance of “Beyond Your Wildest Dreams” was unlucky, Sybil followed up taking it to No 41 in the charts by releasing another single from her “Good ‘N’ Ready” album called “Stronger Together” and that peaked at…yep…No 41.

No S’s in sight next as we once again witness the power of an advert to make us buy a song that had already been a hit once all over again. This time the product being soundtracked by an old hit was the Volkswagen Golf and the song that benefited from it “Young At Heart” by The Bluebells. Normally I don’t go back and see what I’ve already written about a chart hit that I’ve reviewed in a previous blog post for fear of just regurgitating the same words but I did in this case. I think it’s because I view their chart histories separated by nine years as almost completely different entities, relating to two disparate records.

Originally a hit in the Summer of 1984 when I had not long turned 16, “Young At Heart” was never off the airwaves. Radio 1 seemed to play it four or five times a day at least which was not good for me as I couldn’t stand it. In my post on the track in my 80s TOTP blog, I made a point of saying I liked the band but hated this song and I stand by that. I still have a soft spot for The Bluebells but their most well known song is also their worst to my ears. Back in 1984, they followed up “Young At Heart” with the wonderful “Cath” but it only just scraped into the charts at No 38. A final single called “All I Am (Is Loving You)” was released which missed the charts completely and the band fizzled out.

The song’s second coming seemed nothing to do with the band and indeed it wasn’t. They weren’t actually even together in 1993 and hadn’t been for some years. I think I’m right in saying that the story behind its 1993 reactivation was that the person working for the ad agency that was looking after the Volkswagen account had come up with a song for the advert but that there were some issues with copyright and it couldn’t be used and so she had to come up with another song fast. Thinking back to her childhood, she remembered that jolly song that she used to hear on the radio. The rights owners were sought out and contacted and the rest is history.

For many record buyers though, they may not have known anything of the record’s past or the career of the band who made it. They just knew it as the song from that car advert with the twist at the end when instead of getting married, it turns out that the ‘bride’ is actually celebrating getting divorced. The single’s cover was just a still of said actress from the advert reinforcing this new identity for the song as something separate and somehow itself divorced as it were from the band. It even has the Volkswagen logo in the corner. It was corporate and false and in some way, it devalued the original even though I hadn’t liked it.

On hearing of the success of the rerelease (it outstripped the original’s chart peak easily in the first week) the members of The Bluebells reconvened and agreed to reform to promote the single with appearances like this one on TOTP. They look like they’re treating it as a laugh which is probably the correct attitude to have taken. They weren’t under any record company pressure to maximise sales presumably. Whatever it did commercially was a bonus. Subsequent performances would be taken even less seriously as the band struggled to come to terms with this unexpected turn of events. “Young At Heart” would go to No 1 for four weeks and be the twelfth best selling single of the year in the UK in 1993.

We’re back with the S’s now and it’s the most hateful of the lot – Shabba Ranks with “Mr Loverman”. I could never understand the appeal of this record. I mean, I didn’t like Shaggy nor Snow’s songs either but I could just about appreciate why they were successful. “Mr Loverman” though? Nah, that was just nasty. Aside from Ranks’s own despicable views which were enough to put any sane thinking person off anyway, I just couldn’t take the song seriously with all those ridiculous ‘Shabba!’ shout outs. Now I learn it’s not even Ranks name checking himself but Maxi Priest sampled from their “Housecall” single.

The whole stupid business was parodied in a sketch by the team behind the US comedy TV series In Living Color to whom I shall leave the last word…

All female US R&B groups seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. At the start of the decade we had En Vogue and then as the years passed we saw the likes of SWV, TLC and Brownstone right up to the titans of the genre Destiny’s Child. And those were only the ones that crossed over to the UK. Back in America there were groups who never managed to translate acclaim at home into huge overseas success. I’m thinking of Xscape, 702 and Total. Here’s one for you that did manage to straddle the pond as it were but who rarely get talked about anymore.

Jade were Joi Marshall, Tonya Kelly and Di Reed from Chicago who are best remembered for their hit “Don’t Walk Away” though they did have a few others. In 1993 they were always going to be compared to En Vogue who were having transatlantic hits at the time and I guess their sound wasn’t too dissimilar. “Don’t Walk Away” was a radio friendly piece of sassy R&B that enabled the trio to pull out some slinky dance moves when performing it. It rose to a lofty No 7 position in the UK charts and an even higher peak of No 4 in the US selling 2.5 million copies worldwide. Their album “Jade To The Max” racked up substantial numbers and a lengthy tour had them looking fair set for superstardom. They appeared in both film (The Inkwell) and TV (Beverly Hills 90210) and contributed tracks to a couple of soundtracks as well. A second album followed in 1994 and then…nothing. Everything just seemed to stop. Were they dropped from their label? Did they just decide themselves to jack it all in?

I think they all stayed in music one way or another and two of them reunited in 2021 with the improbably named Myracle Holloway (a finalist on The Voice). The curious tale of Jade – a gemstone amongst the Brownstones.

We’re back amongst the S’s now and it’s another stone related artist – Robin Stone better known as Robin S. This New York singer songwriter’s legacy would be formed upon and based around this one track, the house anthem “Show Me Love”. We sold loads and loads of this in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working. And then we went home, had a sleep, came back to work and sold some more of it the next day. I’m surprised that it wasn’t a bigger hit than its final chart placing of No 6 though it did return to the Top 40 a further two times as remixes. In fact, it seems to have been released eight times in total. See what I mean about Robin’s legacy being totally built around this one track? I’m sure there are some Robin S super fans out there who would dispute that claim but it’s true. And there’s many would say that being known for “Show Me Love” would be recognition enough. It regularly appears in lists of the best dance tunes of all time and its influence is still felt today in the music of the likes of Clean Bandit and is sampled in Beyoncé’s latest single “Break My Soul”.

Interesting to note the difference here between Sybil’s performance at the top of the show with her three backing singers and Robin’s with nothing but some dry ice for company while she belts her tune out. I recall the cover of the single was just a very basic generic design in green with a cream header with the label’s name (Champion) repeated in lines all over it. Very poor. Maybe they didn’t expect it to be a big hit outside of the clubs and so didn’t bother designing a cover to be shipped in huge quantities to retailers?

Oh Hell! Cliff’s back again. Yes, despite the charts being jam packed with dance tunes of every hue and genre, a little corner of them was still reserved for Cliff Richard and whatever piece of garbage song he was peddling in 1993. “Peace In Our Time” was the offending article this time and it was at its peak of No 8. This is just a horrible tune with its backing that sounds like a speeded up version of “The Living Years” by Mike And The Mechanics and its insipid lyrics but it’s Cliff’s performance which really grabs the attention.

As with his last time on the show the other week, I can’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Unlike then, Cliff has ditched all his entourage of backing singers and has done a Robin S and gone solo albeit that he still has the remnants of the Sting set from the other month with him for company. It’s Cliff’s movements that are so spellbinding though – spellbindingly awful that is. They’re just so weird and unnatural. Plus he’s turned up in the bloke from Runrig’s leather jacket and trainers combo. It looks…completely unconvincing and actually very safe. In the 50s he would have been seen as a danger to the moral well being of the nation’s youth in that get up but in 1993, he just looked lame. The 90s weren’t kind to Cliff. Yes, he had two Xmas No 1s at the start and end of the decade but they were both gut wrenchingly awful and the intervening years were populated by instantly forgettable singles like this one. Those great airplay hits of the late 70s and early 80s like “We Don’t Talk Anymore”, “Carrie” and “Wired For Sound” seemed like a life time ago even then.

And onto the Breakers and I’ve realised that we have arrived at a rather poignant moment as this blink and you miss it moment is the last we’ll see of Bananarama on TOTP for twelve years! Regulars on the BBC show since their first hits in 1982, this was, by my calculations (I make host Tony Dortie wrong with his figure of thirty-one) their twenty-third Top 40 hit, ten of them being Top 10 hits. None of those Top Tenners had been in the 90s though and their commercial appeal was definitely on the wane. The decision to leave the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable to make records with hip producer Youth had not resulted in healthy sales of the “Pop Life” album and so a revamp was required for next album “Please Yourself”.

That revamp took the form of jettisoning ‘new girl’ Jacquie O’Sullivan (who had actually been in the group since 1988) and re branding themselves as a duo. To quote one of their previous album titles, wow! Would it work, could it work and indeed should it work? To give themselves some extra insurance on this bold move, Sara and Keren returned to their previous producers who were now a duo themselves, Stock and Waterman. It was the latter who came up with the theme that the album should promote a new hybrid sound of ‘ABBA -Banana’. It would turn out to be a good idea but not for Bananarama.

The album was poorly received and limped to a chart peak of No 46. It produced just two hits, a pair of No 24s, in “Movin’ On” and this one, a cover of the Andrea True Connection song “More More More”. I’m guessing this was released as previous single “Last Thing On My Mind” had missed the charts completely and as we all know, if you find yourself in need of a hit, what do you do? Altogether now… you release a cover version! It’s a pretty faithful take on the disco classic and probably made sense as a choice of single given the resurgence of disco songs in the charts at that time from the likes of Boney M and Sister Sledge. In fact, the Bananas would maybe have done better with a whole disco themed album than an ABBA one. Maybe the ABBA revival had been sooo 1992? Either way, it gave them a chart hit, the last they would have for twelve years by which time TOTP itself was on its last legs.

As Bananarama seemed to be slipping into pop oblivion, Pete Waterman looked for another vehicle for his ‘ABBA-Banana’ concept – thankfully though the era of Steps was still four years off. As for the Nanas, they would continue to perform live as a duo before pulling off the event that their fans had almost never dared to hope could happen- a reunion tour with Siobahn Fahey in 2017. The tour was a huge success and led to Keren and Sara being revitalised to write and record new material. “In Stereo” was well received on its release in 2019 and they have a new album called “Masquerade” due out literally in a few days time.

Another ‘S’ now as the band called Sunscreem are on the show with yet another hit. Sunscreem are becoming quite the curiosity for me. I was always aware that there was a band called Sunscreem because they were a chart act and I worked in a mainstream record shop and we stocked their music. I could even tell you that they were a Sony artist. What they sounded like though was a different matter. I haven’t recognised any of their tunes that have featured in these TOTP repeats so far and “Pressure US” is no different. Apparently this was a remix of the band’s debut single which had been a No 1 hit on the US Dance chart. Given its success across the pond, it was rereleased in the UK with the ‘US’ suffix added to make it clear it was a remix.

In the nicest possible way, Sunscreem were my ghost poo*. You know when you know you’ve had a poo but there is absolutely no evidence on the toilet paper or in the toilet bowl that anything actually took place. So it was for me with Sunscreem. I knew they existed but my memory banks have zero evidence about what they sounded like.

“Pressure US” would peak at No 19, a whole forty-one places higher than the original version from 1991.

*There is no nicest possible way is there?

Now I might have been pushing it earlier to suggest the existence of Robin S super fans but I know for a fact the next artist has a multitude of them so I need to tread carefully here. David Bowie spent much of the very early 90s dicking around with (no, think of the fanbase – definitely not dicking around, think of something else) ‘experimenting’ with his side project rock band Tin Machine the results of which had failed to convince many of their merits. However, 1993 saw the first proper Bowie album for six years with the last being the poorly received “Never Let Me Down”. Expectations were high for a return to form though with “Black Tie White Noise” and it duly went to No 1 though it got a mixed reception in the press.

Lead single “Jump They Say” though was pretty good I thought and it would provide Bowie, rather unbelievably, with his first Top 10 hit since “Absolute Beginners” in 1986. Inspired by the tragic story of his half brother Terry who committed suicide in 1985 by walking out in front of a train, it also had a powerful video that has been described by some critics as Bowie’s finest hour as an actor in a music promo. Bowie’s acting credentials though are a mixed bag. Brilliant in The Man Who Fell To Earth but hammy in Labyrinth and downright awful in Jazzin’ For Blue Jean (Shush! Remember the fan base!). “Jump They Say” was easily the biggest hit of the three singles released from the album but my favourite of his in 1993 was none of those but the theme song he wrote for the TV adaption of Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha Of Suburbia novel.

In a post a few weeks back, I admitted to my complete dislike of Lulu. Imagine my delight then when I read the running order for tonight’s show and saw that she’s on again. I remembered her single “Independence” that she performed then but I really thought we were shot of her until much later in the year when she would pop up on Take That’s “Relight My Fire” single. I was wrong as she literally sings “I’m Back For More” on her duet with Bobby Womack. I have zero memory of this song probably because it is so unmemorable. A complete drag. Don’t get me wrong, Bobby’s vocals are as great as you’d expect them to be but Lulu’s scratchy, annoying voice really grates.

Of much more interest are the dance moves of the studio audience members positioned behind the pair. I’m especially drawn to the guy extreme right of the screen who’s turned up in clobber as if he’s expecting a call up to be the sixth member of the aforementioned Take That. That ‘curtains’ haircut and waistcoat combination is oh so early 90s.

“I’m Back For More” peaked at No 27. The parent album “Independence” stalled at No 67. It was Lulu’s only studio album of the decade and yet bizarrely her record label saw fit to release a collection album in 1999 called “I’m Back For More: The Very Best Of Her Nineties Recordings”. Eh? Isn’t that just the “Independence” album then? Well (or rather ‘wellllllllll’) I checked and yes, it pretty much is. If she could sell that then maybe she was the woman who sold the world.

It’s a final week of two at the top for the final ‘S’ of the night – Shaggy and his “Oh Carolina” single. I’d forgotten that the track appeared on the soundtrack to the film Sliver, a erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone (wait, add another three S’s to the tally!). That soundtrack would also feature another No 1 song which would become the second biggest seller in the UK of 1993 – UB40’s version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love”.

As it’s the final week for Shaggy, I’m going to shoehorn in another and much more tenuous link between “Oh Carolina” and Sliver. Shaggy of course was also the name of a character in the legendary cartoon Scooby Doo the theme tune of which includes these lyrics:

Come on Scooby Doo, I see you pretending you got a sliver

But you’re not fooling me ‘cause I can see the way you shake and shiver

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sybil	When I’m Good And Ready	Nah
2	The Bluebells	Young At Heart	Not in 1984 and not in 1993 either
3	Shabba Ranks	Mr Loverman	Mr Dickhead more like – NO!
4	Jade	Don’t Walk Away	Nope
5	Robin S	Show Me Love	Not my thing
6	Cliff Richard	Peace In Our Time	As if
7	Bananarama	More More More	No No No
8	Sunscreem	Pressure US	Nope
9	David Bowie	Jump They Say	I didn’t…jump or buy it
10	Lulu and Bobby Womack	I’m Back For More	No
11	Shaggy	Oh Carolina	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00196dt/top-of-the-pops-25031993

TOTP 14 JAN 1993

Posted on June 10, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid January 1993 and I’m pissed off. The night before this TOTP aired, my beloved Chelsea had lost 2-1 to Middlesbrough in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. That result combined with losing to Crystal Palace in the League Cup the week before effectively ended our season at the halfway stage. Bloody Hell! This was in the days before rolling coverage and every game being on TV. I tuned into Sportsnight to find out the result and it just came up on the screen. No highlights, no post match interviews, no report from the ground just the presenter reading out the result. Brutal. Anyway, as such, I was in a bad mood at work in the Our Price store in Rochdale the next day. I wonder if I sold any of the singles on this TOTP that day?

Well I certainly remember this tune as shifting a fair few copies. West End featuring Sybil and “The Love I Lost” seemed to strike a chord with record buyers that maybe few of us saw coming. Or perhaps we really should have. Let’s examine the evidence…

Firstly, Sybil was a known singer with a small but healthy track record of recent hits. In 1989 she’d bagged herself two chart entries with cover versions of Bacharach and David songs “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Walk On By” which peaked at No 19 and No 6 respectively. Ah yes, that’s the next piece of evidence- cover versions. The charts were full of cover versions around this time so why not jump on the bandwagon? Thirdly, this wasn’t just any cover version. The original was by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and what usually happened to Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes cover versions historically? Yep, they were massive hits. The Communards take on “Don’t Leave Me This Way” was the biggest selling single of 1986 whilst Simply Red’s 1989 cover of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” went to No 2. Fourthly, it was produced by Mike Stock and Pete Waterman who knew a thing or two about hit records. Or was it? Here’s @TOTPFacts:

Producer Eddie Gordon: "I was West End, solely… The reason you won't find my name on the record is because Pete Waterman and Mike Stock decided that due to the success of [the track] they would now be West End, until I threatened to sue them." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 10, 2022

There’s more…

"… They then sent a fax around to the UK's major labels' A & R departments to say that I played no part in the recording process, to try and stop West End from being hired as remixers." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 10, 2022

And finally…

"Tony Dortie introduced the act on TV with, 'and the man behind West End is Eddie Gordon', after another PWL employee at the rehearsal told Tony what Waterman was up to." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 10, 2022

Wow! What a tangled web we weave! Sybil didn’t care though and used the success of “The Love I Lost” (it made No 3) to give her career a shot in the arm and bagged herself a Top 5 follow up single in “When I’m Good And Ready” and a Top 20 album in “Good ‘N’ Ready”. Two more singles were released from it but in a remarkable case of bad luck, both peaked at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41.

Oh, here we go. A sure sign that Take That were now officially a big deal is the fact that they’ve done a little to camera piece from Germany explaining why they can’t be in the TOTP studio to perform “Could It Be Magic”. They were now that established! Although it only lasts a few seconds, it’s interesting to note that the only band member not to speak is Robbie Williams who I would have guessed would have been all over this especially as it’s him on lead vocals on the single. Maybe he wasn’t very well, poor thing.

As I recall there was a lot of praise for Take That’s treatment of this Barry Manilow track at the time in terms of turning it from the original ballad into an up tempo disco stomper. What I didn’t know then was that Donna Summer had already performed that transformation in 1976 and had a huge hit on the US dance chart with it (in the UK it barely grazed the Top 40).

Donna’s version isn’t quite as frenetic as Take That’s and takes a good minute or so to warm up but once it gets going, you can hear that the teen sensations couldn’t claim to have come up with the original concept. I mean, what they did with it was pretty good and all and even won them a BRIT for Best British Single but original? No.

“Could It Be Magic” peaked at No 3 for Take That.

Shanice?! She never had another hit other than “I Love Your Smile”. I know because I checked for my review of 1992 so why is she back on TOTP in 1993? Oh, it’s the US charts feature and she’s having a big hit with “Saving Forever For You” over there. I see. The single ultimately peaked at No 4 across the pond but we were harder to please here in the UK and it stalled outside the Top 40 despite this TOTP appearance.

As host Tony Dortie says, the song is from the soundtrack to hit 90s US teen drama Beverly Hills 90210. My wife used to watch this on a Saturday morning after I had hauled my sorry ass onto the early morning bus to Rochdale for work. Despite saying nothing to us about our lives, it was popular in the UK as well making the lead actors like Jason Priestley and Luke Perry major stars. It ran for ten years and was reactivated in 2018.

I have no recall of the music featured in the show though and a glance at the track listing of the soundtrack album released in 1992 doesn’t help – I don’t know any of the songs on it. “Saving Forever For You” was however written by prolific songwriter Diane Warren who has been responsible for some of the biggest US hits over the last 30 years or so including nine No 1s so it had pedigree though that clearly cut no ice with the UK record buying public. It sounds a bit like “Miss You Like Crazy” by Natalie Cole which Warren didn’t write but which she probably could have.

Shanice’s performance here throws up a few questions. Why has she turned up wearing multi coloured dungarees like a Play School presenter, why was she sat down for the majority of the song and what was the deal with the lone floral arrangement behind her?

The next studio performance looks and sounds chaotic but not in a good way. Pop Will Eat Itself had, possibly against the odds, racked up a steady flow of Top 40 hits since the late 80s with their brand of sample driven indie rock that the music press decided should be called ‘grebo’. I say it was unlikely not because they weren’t any good – “Def. Con. One” and “X Y and Zee” are great records – but they always seemed to be swimming against the tide of what was chart popular. They were outliers in their sound and image. Yes, the other members of that Stourbridge triumvirate had also managed to achieve chart hits but certainly in the case of The Wonder Stuff, that seemed to have come about because of a deliberate decision to go for a more commercial sound (“Size Of Cow” etc).

PWEI still seemed really out there to me and this is ably demonstrated in their performance for “Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!”. This was all over the place and, let’s be fair, the vocals were hardly on point. One of the band has turned up with hair like Johnny Depp’s portrayal of the Mad Hatter whilst the other fella looks like Wee Willy Winkie but with dreadlocks instead of a hat. I suppose what I’m saying is that I just wasn’t feeling this one. Other punters did though sending it to No 9 (NINE!) in the charts making it their biggest ever hit though I’m putting that down to a slack sales period following Xmas and a loyal fanbase.

After playing Arrested Development’s “Revolution” in the Breakers the other week, TOTP have flipped to the other song in the double A-side single this week as we get “Mr. Wendal” this time around in a live by satellite performance from Atlanta, Georgia. I always liked this and actually preferred it to “People Everyday”. An insightful piece on the status of being homeless, it had a vibrancy to it and an undoubted groove as well.

This performance reflects the record with a high stepping, high kicking, star jumping backing singer, a guy spinning some tunes whilst…erm…constantly sitting down and an old fella (Mr. Wendal?) sat in a rocking chair cleaning a pair of shoes! OK, maybe it didn’t reflect the energy of the track completely but if you’re going to listen to a pop song about homelessness, wouldn’t you prefer it to be this over “Another Day In Paradise”?

“Mr. Wendal” peaked at No 4.

I didn’t know the source material for this next song until I checked it out the other week and I have to say listening to the Marianne Faithfull original was hardly a road to Damascus moment. I guess Sunscreem should be given credit for attempting to turn “Broken English” into a dance anthem but for me it never quite gets going and then all of a sudden it’s over. The repeated lyric ‘What are you fighting for?’ lent itself to the repetitive beat of a house banger but all the jumping around by singer Lucia Holm and the addition of two podium dancers and a key change can’t sell it to me.

Sunscreem’s version of “Broken English” peaked at No 13.

Here come this week’s Breakers starting with those funky divas En Vogue and their latest single “Give It Up, Turn It Loose”. Now, if I was on Popmaster on Radio 2 and got through to the 3 in 10 challenge, I reckon I could do it if Ken Bruce asked me for three hit singles by En Vogue. However, this wouldn’t have been one. This must have totally passed me by back in the day. Listening to it now, the first word that comes to mind is ‘smooth’. These girls knew how to put a soul vibe together.

Being the fourth single from the album hampered its chart chances but “Give It Up, Turn It Loose” still managed a respectable peak of No 22. Oh, I would have gone for “Hold On”, “My Lovin’ ( You’re Never Gonna Get It)” and “Free Your Mind” on 3 in 10 by the way.

Now I was pretty sure that of the singles released from the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, all but one of them were by Whitney Houston with the anomaly being Lisa Stansfield. If I’m right in this assumption (which according to Wikipedia I am), how do you explain T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. and their Bill Withers’ inspired hit “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day”? Well, I’m reliant on Wikipedia again here which tells me that this lot were a Clivillés and Cole (of C+C Music Factory) project featuring one Michelle Visage on lead vocals. Yes, that Michelle Visage of Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Big Brother and Ru Paul’s Drag Race fame. Also part of the ensemble was a singer called Octavia, a name which, if you’re reading this and are my age, should be giving you some heavy Pipkins vibes right now.

Anyway, this track was definitely on The Bodyguard soundtrack, though I don’t remember it as being at all. All I think of when I think of that album is Whitney Houston and power ballads. I certainly don’t think of T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. whom I’ve learned to dislike immensely on account of what a pain in the arse it is to type out their name.

“It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day” peaked at No 17.

Now I do remember this next one. In 1986, you couldn’t escape Peter Gabriel. His “So” album was a No 1 around the world propelled to success by the single “Sledgehammer” and that video. It would be another six years before the follow up album “Us” appeared. In the intervening years, there’d been just a film soundtrack album (“Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ”) and a Best Of compilation “Shaking The Tree”. What would his new material sound like? Well, if “Steam” was anything to go by, it was exactly the same as the old material.

The second single from the album, this was “Sledgehammer Pt II”. Not that this was a bad thing, it was just that I think we were expecting something more from a creative like Gabriel. Not only did “Steam” sound like “Sledgehammer”, it looked like it too as the accompanying video was directed by Stephen R Johnson who had made the promos for “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time”. It would win a Grammy for Best Music video, the second consecutive triumph for a Peter Gabriel video after “Digging The Dirt” the previous year. The motion capture technology for the water sequences was used again in the video for TLC’s “Waterfalls” video a couple of years later which again generated awards a plenty. As engaging as the “Steam” promo is, it does make Gabriel come across as a creepy sex pest in places.

Despite a chart high of No 10, we never got to see any more of the video on TOTP other than this glimpse in the Breakers which seems kind of odd and must have pissed off Gabriel and Johnson. So successful was the single in Canada that it knocked Whitney Houston off the No 1 spot which must have taken some doing. Just one more thing on this song, if you mash up “Steam” and “Sledgehammer” you just about get the title of a great single of the 80s which should have been huge but which missed the charts altogether…

Of the twelve songs featured in tonight’s show, half of them are cover versions. Here’s another one now and this one might just be the strangest of the lot. The reason given by Faith No More as to why they covered “Easy” by the Commodores was that they wanted to wrong foot some of the traditional rock crowd coming to see their gigs. Originally recorded to be a B-side to their “Be Aggressive” single, their label decided to make the release a double A-side instead. It was a good decision as the cover got all the airplay and made the single a No 3 hit. So far so straightforward. Where’s the strangeness in that then? OK well, firstly the track was retitled as “I’m Easy” but…only in Europe. What was that all about? Secondly, they did it absolutely straight, almost a carbon copy of the original even down to the Lionel Richie “oooh!” sound after the middle eight. Why bother? Whet was the point of that? Finally, given its similarity to the original, why were punters buying in their droves? Did they not know the original at all? Did they think it was a Faith Mo More song? I just didn’t get it.

The single went all the way to No 3 in the UK at a stroke easily becoming their biggest hit. It wasn’t on the initial pressings of the band’s “Angel Dust” album but given the single’s success it was rereleased with the track included. Obviously.

Now here was a song that certainly wasn’t a cover. By 1993, popular opinion decreed that Duran Duran were dead in the water. A pop group from the 80s that had elicited far more screams from their adoring fans than favourable reviews from the music press at their peak daring to think they could still be relevant in the 90s? On yer bikes lads! They had started the new decade with an underperforming album in “Liberty” that seemed to be the final nail in the coffin. ‘Look guys, you had a good run now do one will you’ seemed to be the perceived wisdom. Maybe another band would have indeed done one but Duran Duran weren’t any other band. Like U2, whatever you think of them, their longevity deserves some credit.

And so it came to pass that “Ordinary World” would be the catalyst for a revival of fortunes that was a pivotal moment, a turning point in their career. Widely recognised as their best ever tune, it was such a mature sound that record buyers seemed to forget any prejudice they may have been holding against the band and bought it in huge quantities. Written about the death of a friend, Simon Le Bon’s notoriously (ooh see what I did there?) oblique lyrics were never stronger than on display here. It was a masterpiece of composition. It went to No 6, the band’s highest chart peak since “A View To A Kill” eight years before.

The band had lost two core members back in 1985/86 in the Taylors Andy and Roger but the three remaining originals were now joined by guitarist Warren Cuccurullo on a permanent basis and his guitar sound on the record would prove to be instrumental in its success. The album sold well – 100,000 units shifted in the UK and 1 million in the US. Two more singles were released and charted with “Come Undone” an especially good follow up. Their positive reviews was short lived though as their next album “Thank You”, their covers project, was panned and has been described by dissenting music press columnists as one of the worst albums of all time.

Back in 1993 though, I recall that the album “Duran Duran” (aka “The Wedding album”) came out in the February and we had a customer in the Our Price store in Rochdale where I was working come in and ask to reserve the vinyl version for her super fan husband (along with the cassette and CD formats). We were a small store and didn’t stock vinyl so to ensure we had a copy in stock on the day of release, we had to order it one week in advance. The customer was adamant that it was imperative that her hubby got his hands on all available formats on the big day so I promised I would sort it for her/him. And I did. The vinyl came in on time but unfortunately neither the woman nor her husband did…ever. We were left with a vinyl copy we couldn’t display. Bloody Durannies! The song itself though was a beauty and I’m surprised it didn’t hit Top 3 at least.

As for their performance on TOTP, Simon Le Bon’s notoriously (ooh I did it again!) shonky vocals just about stand up in that there’s no flat note incident as per their Live Aid appearance but he seems to be struggling a bit in the fade out. Still, as Tony Dortie says, it was nice to see them back and in such good form.

It’s seven weeks at No 1 for Whitney Houston and “I Will Always Love You” with the single achieving enough sales to be confirmed as the biggest selling single by a female solo artist ever at the time. She was toppled in the UK of that title by Cher whose 1998 single “Believe” sold 1.79 million copies. I’m not sure if that record still stands. I don’t understand the charts now which seem to allow anything to be a chart entry if it gets enough streams. I think Kate Bush might be No 1 this week with “Running Up That Hill” due to its use in the finale of Netflix horror drama series Stranger Things. It’s a crazy world we live in these days.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	West End featuring Sybil	The Love I Lost	Nope
2	Take That	Could It Be Magic	Nah
3	Shanice	Saving Forever For You	Did anybody?
4	Pop Will Eat Itself	Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!	I did not
5	Arrested Development	Mr. Wendal	No but my wife had the album
6	Sunscreem	Broken English	Did nothing for me
7	En Vogue	Give It Up, Turn It Loose	No
8	T.H.E. S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M.	It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day	Negative
9	Peter Gabriel	Steam	It was OK but I was never going to buy it
10	Faith No More	I’m Easy	No – didn’t get this at all
11	Duran Duran	Ordinary World	Not the single but I have it on something I’m sure
12	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017wty/top-of-the-pops-14011993

TOTP 07 JAN 1993

Posted on June 7, 2022 by 80stastic

1992 has bitten the dust and to celebrate the dawning of 1993, there are a glut of new songs on the first TOTP of the new year. Traditionally a time when singles don’t have to sell that many copies in the post Xmas sales slump to bag a Top 40 placing, let’s see if we can spot any examples of that here….

Could this be a contender? Now admittedly there was a time when Jesus Jones were one of the hottest properties on planet pop but that was back in 1991 and we all know that the old adage about a week being a long time in politics can also apply to the music industry. Would they still have an audience nearly two years on? Well possibly but one big and committed enough to send their new single “The Devil You Know” straight into the Top 20?

This was the lead single from third album “Perverse” which was one of the first albums ever to be recorded entirely on computer and the concept behind it according to rock journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine was “to make techno palatable for the pop masses”. A worthy ambition or a pointless pursuit? The music press of the time couldn’t make their minds up and reviews were mixed. The album has been revisited more positively retrospectively so maybe Mike Edwards and co were just ahead of their time?

As for the single itself, I think I can hear the sound they were trying to meld but I’m not sure that it was any good. There’s an Eastern influence to it at the beginning (an Iranian instrument apparently) and a bit of a panel beating techno riff where the chorus should be. All a bit of a mess really. The single went to No 10 and I’m stating for the record that chart peak would not have been achieved at any other time of the year.

Having just been pipped to the best selling single of the year title late doors by Whitney Houston, Snap! have followed up “Rhythm Is A Dancer” with their ode to the daleks “Exterminate!”. Not as gigantic sounding a tune as its predecessor, it was hardly understated either though. There some Enigma “Sadeness” vibes thrown in the mix but the biggest change is the omission of rapper Turbo B from proceedings. I’m not sure of the exact timeline but he left the Snap! family around this time and so it was left to ex-Madonna backing singer Niki Haris to do the vocals and be the public face of the whole project. Given “Exterminate!” achieved an ultimate chart peak of No 2, you’d have to say she did a pretty decent job. And yet, asked to name a song by Snap!, how many of us would opt for it? “Exterminate!” you say? By Snap!? Like Kajagoogoo having hits without Limahl, it just doesn’t compute.

Something else that didn’t compute was this next performance by a band making their TOTP debut. More specifically it was their look that didn’t make any sense.

The Frank And Walters (not Frank And The Walters Tony Dortie!) hailed from Cork, Ireland and “After All” would turn out to be their only UK Top 40 hit when it peaked at No 11. A couple of EPs got them noticed by the Go! Discs label who released their debut album “Trains, Boats And Planes” from which “After All” was taken.

I liked “After All”. It was quirky, catchy and blazed its own little trail for unlikely pop stars. Listening back to it now, it seems to have a sliver of “Sit Down” by James about it. However, it did seem to divide opinion. I once worked with someone who absolutely detested it though I could never quite work out why.

So getting back to their image, my use of the word ‘unlikely’ doesn’t rally cover what was happening in front of our eyes with this performance. Bright orange roll necks and hideously patterned trousers?! Really?! Here’s singer Paul Linehan (courtesy of @TOTPFacts) with some more detail:

Paul Linehan on this #TOTP performance. “We bought the polo necks in a charity shop on Castle Street [Cork] and we got the trousers in Leaders on North Main Street – I think they were there since the ’70s." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

And the hair? Here’s Paul again:

“My mam did my hair. I had tried to get the same cut in the barbers, but he couldn’t do it. My mam had a bowl that fitted my head perfectly and she just cut around it.” #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) June 3, 2022

None of the above explains why though? Were they influenced by the Trevor and Simon ‘Singing Corner’ characters from Going Live? Or were they the influencers? Was Mike Flowers watching this show and taking hairstyle notes for launching his tilt at the charts with that bizarre cover of “Wonderwall” in 1995?

The Franks came close to a second hit when follow up single, the wonderfully titled “Fashion Crisis Hits New York” stalled at No 42. A gap of five years until their next album was never going to be good for maintaining momentum and the charts would never make their acquaintance again though they have continued to release material with their last album coming in 2016.

After that portal into a possible parallel world where the charts weren’t full of nasty, homogeneous dance hits, that wormhole is firmly shut by the arrival of next act Slipstreem and their hateful single “We Are Raving”. A rave version of “Sailing”?! What in the name of Rod’s beard? Who were these people and just what the f**k was going on here? Actually, I couldn’t care less who they were and I know what was going on. This was cashing in pure and simple. Jumping on a bandwagon and then bastardising it for a shit hit and a quick buck.

And what a dog’s dinner of a performance to promote it. There’s the obligatory two guys on keyboards because hey! This is a dance hit you know. Then there’s two dancers in wet suits (obviously) and the ‘singer’ in a de rigueur puffa jacket. And then there’s the other two. A Captain Birdseye lookalike is behind a ship’s wheel bedecked with a tartan scarf but for any viewers who hadn’t quite cottoned onto the Rod Stewart connection there was the shittest Rod lookalike you’ve ever seen stumbling about the stage ramming the point home. He’s definitely not wearing it well.

“We Are Raving” peaked at No 18.

After that unedifying spectacle, it’s time to chill out, with some come down music and that must be the first time rockers Little Angels have been described as such. Let’s face it, they’re hardly Röyksopp are they? We do, however, find them in reflective mood at least with new single “Womankind” which would prove to be their biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 12.

Taken from their No 1 album “Jam”, it’s a decent rock ballad and singer Toby Jepson has some pipes on him for sure. I could imagine it being used to soundtrack some dramatic scene in a big Hollywood blockbuster. They’ve even got some orchestra strings thrown into the mix to give it a big, epic feel. Plus, I always quite liked the phrase “desperate proclaimer” in the lyrics. Yeah, not a bad effort all round.

Are you kidding me? FIVE Breakers?! This better not be how it’s going to be for the whole of 1993! There had better be some decent tunes amongst them then. We start with…ah…a decent tune from Prefab Sprout. How can anyone not love Paddy McAloon? As the 2018 song he wrote for the aforementioned Rod Stewart “Who Designed The Snowflake” says in its lyrics, he’s a genius work. So many great songs and yet, like XTC who I referenced in my review of 1992, so little commercial success.

“Life Of Surprises” was a new track taken from the previous year’s Best Of album of almost the same name and its peak of No 24 meant it became only the band’s fifth ever Top 40 hit. Indeed, in their whole career they only had six all told. Compare that to, oh I don’t know, Snap! who were on earlier who had fourteen UK Top 40 entries. More than double! Where’s the justice?

That Best Of album actually supplied three of their six hits as new tracks “Sound Of Crying” and “If You Don’t Love Me” had earlier achieved chart highs of Nos 23 and 33 respectively. “Life Of Surprises” was actually an older track from fourth studio album “Protest Songs” from 1989 and had already been released once as the B -side to “From Langley Park To Memphis” single “Nightingales”. It’s typical McAloon fare with a fine melody allied with Paddy’s almost whispered vocals. Lovely stuff.

Paddy is still writing and recording with his most recent release being 2019’s “I Trawl The Megahertz”. He suffers from tinnitus which makes his output even more remarkable and has grown a massive Gandalf like beard in later life, far removed from his clean cut image in this video.

Hasn’t this one been out before? I’m sure “Love See No Colour” by The Farm has already been a hit once hasn’t it?

*checks internet*

OK, so not a hit (it peaked at No 58) but it had been released 12 months previously. Why was it given another promotional push? Well, I’m guessing that sales of their second album of the same name had been a massive disappointment after their debut “Spartacus” had been a No 1. After they’d finally got a hit single out of it by resorting to a cover of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, record company Sony must have wanted to consolidate on that bit of success.

Their solution was to get the band to re-record “Love See No Colour” with an emphasis on a synth sound and gospel feel. They even commissioned a new video to help promote it. None of their strategies really worked though as the single got no higher than No 35. Sales of the album didn’t improve and the band were dropped. Quite a fall from their “All Together Now” peak, a 2.0 version of which they were presumably trying to recreate by re-recording “Love See No Colour”.

You wait for ages for one band from Cork to have a hit and then two turn up at once! Yes, unbelievable as it seems, The Sultans Of Ping FC, like The Frank And Walters earlier in the show, were also from Cork. It’s not quite up there with that bizarre phenomenon of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all hailing from Stourbridge in the West Midlands as Cork is three times the size population wise but it’s still quite a thing. There was a third Cork band around at this time called Stump who achieved a minor chart placing with the gloriously eccentric single “Charlton Heston” but for now it was all about The Ping.

Having released a trio of singles on independent label Divine Records during 1992 (including the marvellous “Where’s Me Jumper”), the band had been picked up by Epic through which their debut album “Casual Sex In The Cineplex” was released. Trailing it was the single “You Talk Too Much” which had much more of a punk vibe than their fellow Corkonians The Franks and their simultaneous hit single.

Around this time I was visiting my mate Robin in London and wandering around Piccadilly Circus we arrived at the Virgin Records store just in time to catch a p.a. and set by the band. Robin has reminded me that there were some hecklers in the audience and the lead singer came back with “we’re No 27 in the charts. Have you ever been in the charts?”. Excellent.

The album included the track “Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass)” which was inspired by a remark from his Brian Clough when talking about brilliant Nottingham Forest winger John Robertson. Here’s his quote in full:

John Robertson was a very unattractive young man. If one day I was feeling a bit off colour, I would sit next to him. I was bloody Errol Flynn compared to him. But give him a yard of grass and he was an artist. The Picasso of our game.

The legendary Brian Clough there. Still sadly missed. As for The Sultans Of Ping FC, they went through a few name alterations dropping the FC, then removing the Ping part before finally restoring it to Sultans Of Ping in 2005.

Another cover version now but an unlikely one. The decision process behind Sunscreem‘s choosing of a 1980 Marianne Faithful single that flopped takes some fathoming. “Broken English” was the title track from her comeback album after years of health and addiction problems. It is widely regarded as her ‘definitive recording’ and Faithfull herself described it as her “masterpiece”. I was surprised to find out then that it bombed in the charts peaking at No 57. The title track from it sank without trace. I have to admit to not knowing it at all so I gave it a whirl…

Hmm. It doesn’t (Sun)scream techno anthem to me I have to say. The Essex groovers version adds a few interesting squiggles in the background but I can’t imagine it being that easy to dance to but then I wasn’t spending much time in the clubs around then. It would become the band’s highest charting hit when it settled at No 13 and they would follow it up with a rerelease of early single “Pressure.

The final Breaker is a bit confusing. In my head, Arrested Development followed their huge hit “People Everyday” with another big seller called “Mr. Wendal” so what was this track “Revolution” all about? Well, both tracks were released as a double A-side. “Mr. Wendal” was from their “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” album whilst “Revolution” was from the soundtrack to the Spike Lee directed biopic Malcolm X starring Denzel Washington. In the US they were released as separate singles but in Europe they were doubled up. I have zero recall of “Revolution” but “Mr. Wendal” was a tune. Hope we get to see that in future TOTP repeats.

A real taster next of the direction the charts would be going in this year although in truth, Apache Indian was actually ploughing his own furrow. Real name Steven Kapur, this guy grew up in the multicultural metropolis that was Birmingham in the early 80s listening to reggae and dancehall music. Creating a stage name for himself, Steven set about fusing those influences with the cultural sounds of his own Indian background. That fusion of ragga and Bhangra drew positive reactions from audiences of both genres and so bhangra ragamuffin was born or bhangramuffin as it became known.

Picked up by the legendary Island Records, Apache Indian recorded his debut album “No Reservations” in Jamaica’s Tuff Gong studios and from it came the single “Arranged Marriage”. The controversial track dared to take on the normally taboo subject of its title and provoked negative criticism from some of the Indian community. This guy was no ordinary pop star and was determined to do things his own way.

The performance here is great and nothing like we’d really seen before. There were no sitars à la Monsoon and “Ever So Lonely” from the early 80s. “Arranged Marriage” would make No 16 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song. However, Apache Indian will surely be best remembered for his later single “Boom Shack -A- Lak” which took him to the Top 5.

In the Story Of 1993 BBC documentary, Kapur opened up about his experiences of this year and he explained that he was good buddies with Shaggy, one of the year’s other big reggae fusion/dancehall movers alongside Shabba Ranks and Snow. The charts they were a-changin’..,

From someone brand new to one of the biggest artists in the world. Paul McCartney hadn’t released any new material in the 90s so far but delivered on his fanbase’s hopes of a new song with “Hope Of Deliverance”. Taken from his ninth solo studio album “Off The Ground”, it was hardly the stuff of legend. Yes it was bright, breezy and positive but it was also the wrong side of predictable and ever so slightly annoying.

The album achieved gold status but didn’t furnish any further hit singles (“Hope Of Deliverance” peaked at No 18) and surely can’t be any Macca fan’s favourite album of his? This phase of his career very much reminds me of his mid 80s era when his “Press To Play” album was commercially and critically received in much the same way and the singles from it were only minor hits. He would return four years later with “Flaming Pie” which got his best reviews since 1982’s “Tug Of War”.

If we were thinking that Whitney Houston’s reign at the top would be over when the Xmas decorations were put away for another year then we were completely and utterly mistaken. Any of us under that illusion hadn’t factored in that the film “I Will Always Love You” was taken from, The Bodyguard, wasn’t released in the UK until Boxing Day therefore instantly giving the single another impetus of sales. Whitney’s run at No 1 still had plenty of legs left yet.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Jesus Jones	The Devil You Know	Nah
2	Snap!	Exterminate!	Nope
3	The Frank And Walters	After All	Liked it, didn’t buy it
4	Slipstreem	We Are Raving	NO!!!
5	Little Angels	Womankind	No but I had a promo copy of their album
6	Prefab Sprout	Life Of Surprises	No but I had the Best Of album it was taken from
7	The Farm	Love See No Colour	Nope, neither time it was released
8	The Sultans Of Ping FC	You Talk Too Much	See 3 above
9	Sunscreem	Broken English	No
10	Arrested Development	Revolution	No my wife had the album though
11	Apache Indian	Arranged Marriage	Interesting though it was, no
12	Paul McCartney	Hope Of Deliverance	Very weak – no
13	Whitney Houston	I Will Always Love You	I did not

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/m0017wtw/top-of-the-pops-07011993

TOTP 15 OCT 1992

Posted on April 13, 2022 by 80stastic

It’s mid October in 1992 here at TOTP Rewind and something very odd is happening to the UK singles charts which seems to have been infiltrated by a string of acts that have very little to do with music. Now if you haven’t been enjoying these TOTP repeats on BBC4, you may want to argue they could apply to most of the Top 40 occupants but I’m talking about a very specific form of chart interloper. These were entities that have no genuine musical connection nor talent but are just spin offs from another form of ‘entertainment’. Who am I talking about? Well, here’s an example; “Tetris” by Dr Spin, a track based on the theme tune to a computer game. Ah yes but that’s just one song you may say. You’d be wrong. In a week or two there will be another computer game based hit by an act calling themselves Ambassadors Of Funk (oh the irony) entitled “Supermarioland”. OK, so there was a mini craze for computer game inspired novelty hits. So what? It’s hardly the sound that ate the world. True but that’s not the end of it. Soon our eyes and ears will have to cope with the sight and sound of an all male stripping troupe gyrating up the charts as The Chippendales make their musical bow. Not to be outdone in the manliness stakes, the WWF Superstars will soon be pile-driving their way into Top 5 with their “Slamjam” single.

Where was all this coming from? Well, one influence may have been ITV’s new Saturday teatime show Gladiators that had just premiered the weekend before this TOTP aired. Remember that? Where members of the public tried to outdo the programme’s ‘gladiators’ in a series of physical challenges called things like Swingshot, Joust and Pole-Axe? It was presented by Ulrika Jonsson and John ‘Awooga’ Fashanu and made stars of the ‘gladiators’ like Jet, Hunter and Wolf. It was quite the ratings sensation for a while. Although there was no spin off single from the show until 1996 (an horrendous cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Boys Are Back In Town”) it was certainly part of the cultural landscape. Unfortunately we will be seeing two of these cultural giants in tonight’s TOTP.

We start though with Sunscreem who I was amazed to find had eight Top 40 hits. I have to admit that I couldn’t have named any of them without looking at their discography. I do remember them being around at this time and that they were a dance act but their material seemed to have passed me by. Listening to this track “Perfect Motion”, they’re a lot more accessible than I would have imagined, a hybrid of dance floor bpm and pop. They sort of remind me a little of New Order – certainly the single’s title sounds like a New Order track. Image wise, singer Lucia Holm was a sort of grunge version of Yazz. Hmm. Yazz does New Order? Is that really the comparison that m looking for?

Now what’s going on here? Pan’s People on TOTP in 1992? According to host Mark Franklin it was part of a retrospective strategy to celebrate the show’s forthcoming 1500th edition by revisiting highlights from its past. Pan’s People are dancing to “(They Long To Be) Close To You” by The Carpenters which was a No 6 hit in the UK in 1970. Mark though tells us it’s from 30 years ago to the day in 1972. I’ve checked the official charts database and can’t see anything on there to confirm that the song was in the charts then. According to the next-episode website there was no TOTP broadcast on that day so what gives? Surely the producers haven’t just made it up to fit with a neat narrative?

Pan’s People were the dance troupe that I remember from my first memories of the show which include Mud performing “Tiger Feet”. At some point they changed to Legs & Co and then Zoo was it? When were Ruby Flipper then? It doesn’t matter I suppose. Pan’s People’s performance isn’t too un-PC I guess. I’m sure there are some right howlers in the archives though.

Meanwhile back in the studio in 1992 we find Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown once more with their hit single “I’m Gonna Get You”. There’s two things that sprang to my attention whilst watching this back. Firstly, what was the deal with the keyboards made to look like swings? It’s literally the worst look for a musical instrument since the key-tar. Secondly, the different coloured alternate backdrops remind me of something but I can’t put my finger on it. It’ll come to me….oh God. I’ve got it. It’s Naked Attraction that weird dating show on Channel 4! The very last thing I want to put my finger on! It’s the multi coloured booths that the naked contestants stand in which reveal their bodies from the feet up! Not that I watch it myself you understand but I’ve seen it on Gogglebox. Honest!

“I’m Gonna Get You” peaked at No3.

From Naked Attraction to “Erotica” by Madonna. What a segue! Was this the peak of Madge’s controversy? She’d already incurred the wrath of the Vatican three years earlier with her “Like A Prayer” video and its imagery of the Ku Klux Klan’s burning crosses but now she was back with a three pronged attack on society’s moral standards according to some commentators (Mary Whitehouse must have had something to say about it all). Firstly there was the “Erotica” single with its S&M undertones which sees Madonna assuming the pseudonym of Mistress Dita and its MTV banned video (presumably the version shown on TOTP was heavily edited). Then there was a whole album called “Erotica” with its themes of fantasy, desire and pleasure. Lastly, and this was the real moral majority baiting clincher, there was the ‘coffee table’ book Sex. Has there ever been such a misnomer? Well, apparently not as it has sold 1.5 million copies and is the biggest and fastest selling coffee table book of all time. This was a 128 page spiral bound tome that featured images of nudity, simulations of sexual acts, bondage etc. It came in a sealed bag presumably to stop casual browsers seeing what all the fuss was about. I remember being in WH Smith around this time and some curious teenagers asking the poor sales assistant to open the seal so they could peruse the contents. Happily, she refused to do so.

As for the song “Erotica”, was it really that different to “Justify My Love” from two years prior? I’m not so sure. Maybe Madge was just taking continuing that theme to its logical conclusion? Where could you go with it other than to illicit more outrage? I have to admit I wasn’t that convinced.

“Erotica” the single peaked at No 3.

I may not have been convinced by Madonna’s latest offering but it was wholly preferable to the next act as we arrive at the first of these chart outliers that I mentioned before. I speak of Doctor Spin and the Game Boy influenced track “Tetris”. Now, there had been computer games when I was growing up in the 70s but despite amazing the pre-teenage me, they were incredibly basic. I had a Binatone console…

Ah, happy memories. By 1992, things had advanced dramatically but I had never gone back to the world of gaming after my 70s foray. Consequently, when Our Price for whom I was working started selling them in the early 90s I was a bit lost. I was in the Rochdale store at this time and we were stocking a Nintendo and Sega range. I recall there being a big deal about the latter’s release of the follow up to Sonic the Hedgehog. The release date was specifically shifted to a Tuesday so the marketing for it could be framed as Sonic 2sday which was the 24th November. That marketing budget by the way was $10 million and it worked generating 1 million sales in the US and 750,000 in the UK in a day selling out everywhere.

All of this helped establish gaming as not just a legitimate leisure pursuit but as one of the fastest growing. The cash-in spin-off was inevitable I guess and so it came to pass that Andrew Lloyd Webber exploited the gap in the market with this heinous load of nonsense. Who bought this? “Tetris” peaked at No 6 which presumably was the average age of the punter who purchased it.

We move seamlessly (not even a voice over intro) onto the next stage where Boyz II Men are patiently awaiting their cue. What on earth must they have been thinking about British taste watching Doctor Spin on before them?! They here to perform “End Of The Road” of course and, given its popularity back in the day, I was surprised to see very little love for it out there in Twitter land. Look at this guy for example:

Horrific. The auditory equivalent of rabies.
— Peter (@DasJarg) April 8, 2022

Wow! If that’s what he thought of Boys II Men I wonder what he made of Doctor Spin?! As for me, I didn’t doubt these guys could sing but their staging and image was bizarre. They’ve got the prop of a streetlight which I guess references the origins of doo-wop which was clearly an influence on the band but why are they all wearing baseball caps, jackets and jeans?! It’s ludicrous. Also, why has one of them got a walking stick? Did he have a genuine leg injury or was it an affectation Mick Hucknall style? Boyz II Men – crazy name, crazy guys!

Four Breakers now starting with a cover version which is surely one of the most pointless and also most forgotten in musical history. It had been nearly two years since The Farm had been riding a wave of popularity off the back of two huge hit singles in “Groovy Train” and “All Together Now”. Debut album “Spartacus” had risen swiftly to the top of the charts. However, subsequent singles releases had been minor hits and by the time they were releasing new material from second album “Love See No Colour”, those minor hits had turned into flops. The title track and follow up single “Rising Sun” had both missed the Top 40 altogether so what do you do when in need of a hit to reverse your chart fortunes? We all know the answer to this by now. Their choice of cover version was decidedly odd. Choosing The Human League’s classic No 1 “Don’t You Want Me” seemed frought with issues not the least being that Phil and co’s version was so definitive that anything that came after it was destined to be seen as inferior. That applied to the video as well as the song so what The Farm served up as their promo looked ghastly. Some sort of karaoke bar setting with sing-a-long lyrics on screen and a cameo by well known alcoholic George Best? My God. What were they thinking?!

The cover version trick worked though and returned the band to the Top 20 and paved the way for a rerelease of the “Love See No Colour” single which made No 35. However, it proved to be a false dawn and their only two subsequent chart entries were with reissues of “All Together Now”.

I’ve seen many a band come and go, many a musical genre rise and fall in the course of these TOTP reviews but one constant has been AC/DC. Racking up hits whatever else was going on in the charts, they never seemed to go out of fashion. They are back in our Top 40 courtesy of a live version of “Highway To Hell” which was to promote their live album called…erm… “AC/DC Live”. I’m guessing this was released to plug the five year gap that would follow the release of 1990’s “The Razors Edge” album and its follow up “Ballbreaker” which didn’t arrive until 1995. I remember that “AC/DC Live” was a double album and the slip case for the cassette version was a bugger to get back on without tearing it after taking it off. That, and that the single made No 14, are all I have to say about this AC/DC release.

The Wedding Present’s single for this month was a number called “Sticky” which I don’t remember at all but then they did release 12 singles in 1992 as part of their “Hit Parade” project so I’m not going to give myself a kicking over that.

The clip of the video we see here has a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe to it with a bloke in the desert telling the listener to get out using a speeded up animation effect before a devil figure wrestles with someone in a white room with a black and white chequered floor. Very weird. The single peaked at No 17, the second consecutive single to do so in their attempt to equal Elvis Presley’s record for the most hit singles in one year.

The final Breaker comes from The Orb. After the genre breaking ‘chess’ performance on the show for the last single “Blue Room” that apparently had a major effect on Robbie Williams and his view on how to make music, they’re back with standalone single “Assassin”. I have to say this does/did little for me but then I was never a bpm fiend. The video reminds me of one that a group of students on my course made way back in the mid 80s at Sunderland Polytechnic. We all had to write, film and edit a small film as part of the module. My group’s was called “Wet Dream” but it was not what you’re thinking and nothing approaching similar to Madonna’s “”Erotica” promo! One of the other groups ran out of time so in the end just filmed some of them sat down and added some visual effects over the top to a soundtrack of Jean Michel Jarre. I didn’t think much of it at the time but I think so prefer it to The Orb’s video.

“Assassin” peaked at a No 12.

The return of Bon Jovi next. It had been four years since their last album “New Jersey” and the musical landscape had changed almost beyond recognition. Added to that, the band were facing some existential demons after taking a deliberate hiatus during which Jon Bon Jovi wrote a film soundtrack and Richie Sambora a solo album. Jon is on record as saying that “We’d been kicked in the teeth by Nirvana but we didn’t pay attention to that. We got rid of the clichés, wrote some socially conscious lyrics and got a haircut. I didn’t do a grunge thing and I didn’t do a rap thing but I knew I couldn’t rewrite “Livin’ On A Prayer” again so I didn’t try. And it paid off”.

It was true. “Keep The Faith” the single and the album were no attempt to jump on the Nirvana bandwagon but nor were they more of the poodle rock on which they’d made their name. For a start it was (and remains) the longest album they’d ever recorded clocking in at 66 minutes. The album version of the title track is nearly 6 minutes long itself though it was edited down for radio. Now I’m not suggesting that longer means a more mature sound necessarily but neither were they looking for the quick thrill opening of something like “Born To Be My Baby”.

The album would spawn six hit singles and go to No 1 in the UK and No 5 in the US. Incredibly they released the last single from it (“Dry County”) nearly 16 months to the day since the album came out. It was, in short, a monster.

Jon Bon Jovi seems to be channelling his inner Davy Jones from The Monkees in this performance with his maracas action. I had a promo copy of the album through work at one point but I’ve no idea what happened to it. You can’t really say the same of Bon Jovi.

Tasmin Archer is at No 1 for the first week of two with “Sleeping Satellite”. It really was a magnificent achievement for a debut single especially when you consider that major, established acts like Madonna and Bon Jovi had new material out at the time. Written about the moon landing and the Apollo missions of the 60s and early 70s, it must be the best (and only) song to reference space hardware since Kirsty MacColl had a hit with Billy Bragg’s “New England” in 1985. Do you hear it played on the radio these days? Maybe on the retro stations like Absolute 90s. Whether it is or not, there will always be a part of 1992 that belongs to Tasmin Archer.

And finally Cyril (one for you Esther Rantzen fans), there was an epilogue to this show where we got a glimpse (possibly unwanted) of an act on next week’s show and it’s the second of those cultural chart outliers. We are ‘treated’ to a few seconds of the new single by The Chippendales “Give Me Your Body” plus a personal invitation from one of them to join them on the show next week. You have been warned.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sunscreem	Perfect Motion	Nope
2	The Carpenters	(They Long To Be) Close To You	No but everyone has a Carpenters Greatest Hits album don’t they?
3	Bizarre Inc featuring Angie Brown	I’m Gonna Get You	No
4	Madonna	Erotica	No, I wasn’t convinced
5	Doctor Spin	Tetris	Sod off!
6	Boyz II Men	End Of The Road	I didn’t think it was the auditory equivalent of rabies but I didn’t buy it either
7	The Farm	Don’t You Want Me	No, no I didn’t want you
8	AC/DC	Highway To Hell	Not my thing
9	The Wedding Present	Sticky	Nah
10	The Orb	Assassin	See 8 above
11	Bon Jovi	Keep The Faith	Not the single but I had that promo album for a while
12	Tasmin Archer	Sleeping Satellite	Good song but 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/m001648v/top-of-the-pops-15101992

TOTP 23 JUL 1992

Posted on March 14, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re in mid Summer ‘92 at TOTP Rewind. The Euros have been and gone (and with them Graham Taylor’s credibility as the England manager) and the Olympics in Barcelona are just about to start and we all know what that means…yes that bloody song by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe will be everywhere including the top end of the charts very soon. For now though, we have a TOTP which is, yet again, a right mix bag of music and artists. We’re back to a presenting duo rather than the solo host we have seen recently with Tony Dortie being paired with Claudia Simon. The producers are sticking with the small changes to the format they made recently meaning we get to see Claudia and Tony do an intro even before the titles roll and then do the Top 10 countdown before we see/hear any artists. I’m not convinced about any of it.

When we do get to the actual music, the first intro is very odd. As the camera alights on Claudia and Tony, the latter says “This record is massive on the dance floor” but the camera keeps moving down towards the stage. Claudia says out of shot “Making their debut on Top of the Pops…” and then…nothing. Surely Claudia was teeing up actually saying who the first act was?! What happened? Did her mike fail? Did she forget who she was introducing? Or did the producers say “Just forget it. Too late now anyway. They’ve started and the artist graphic is on screen already”?

That artist graphic told us that the band were Sunscreem with “Love U More”. So who were these lot? I remember the name but the only other thing I recall about them was that they were a Sony artist (the curse of opening all those deliveries while working for Our Price in the 90s strikes again!). Turns out that they weren’t just another anonymous dance act put together to front a hit single. They were a house band from Essex- no I don’t mean they were the resident band for the whole of the county but that they played ‘house’ music – and actually performed live concerts.

Having been tipped as the next big name in dance music during ‘91, they finally broke into the UK Top 40 with “Love U More”. Listening to it now, it does ring a few bells one of which reminded me of “Sunshine On A Rainy Day” by Zoë. If that bell was ringing though then there was an air horn going off in my head about their performance which is giving me heavy D:Ream vibes. It’s not just their sound, the lead singer even has a tartan suit on!

That singer is Lucia Holm who recorded a fine version of one of my favourite ever songs “Heaven” by The Psychedelic Furs in 2005.

Not only that, check out this fact from @TOTPFacts about her involvement in another of my favourite tunes:

Sunscreem singer Lucia Holm also played cello on "Life In A Northern Town" by The Dream Academy – from which her playing was later sampled by Dario G for his dance track "Sunchyme". https://t.co/s2CrslZ6jO #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 11, 2022

I had no idea! I was also in the dark that Steps covered “Love U More” on their debut album. Look!

Nice to see some actual, proper musical instruments on display in a dance outfit performance though I’m not sure about the two dancers throwing some shapes. Sunscreem would go on to have eight UK Top 40 hits though none would get any higher than No 13. “Love U More” itself would make No 23.

Snap! are up to No 2 with “Rhythm Is A Dancer” and it’s obvious now that it’s going to be a chart topper. I’m not sure I would have predicted it spending six weeks as the nation’s best seller though but then what did I know eh? Oh yeah, I was working in a record shop at the time so maybe I should have had my finger in the pulse a bit more.

The track routinely features in the ‘Best No 1s /dance anthems of the 90s’ polls but I bet nobody involved in the record could have foreseen its influence extend to this extent…

Thought Shakespear’s Sister only had one hit? You are sorely mistaken for they had six UK Top 40 hits in total though I’m guessing this one would have a decent chance at being a very low scorer on Pointless. “Goodbye Cruel World” was actually the lead single from their “Hormonally Yours” album and not the all conquering “Stay” but nobody noticed it when it was initially released in late September ‘91 and it struggled to a high of No 59. Maybe that would have been the end of the band had they not had that Dave Stewart penned No 1 song up their sleeves but up their sleeves it was and the rest is (you’re) history.

Essentially a straightforward rock/pop song, it had enough quirkiness about it to make it stand out from the crowd. However, it never made it above its chart position here of No 32 in spite of this TOTP exposure. To be fair, the whirling dervish routine of Siobhan Fahey was starting to irritate and they did seem to shoehorn in a platform for Marcella Detroit’s to display her operatic range every song. Siobahn seems to think it’s Xmas time judging by the white fur trim in her outfit but it’s their bass player that my eyes are more drawn to. She looks ever so familiar and judging by the #TOTP tweets for this show, a fair few people thought the same and wanted to identify her. General consensus was that its Claire Kenny who has worked with the likes of Orange Juice, Sinéad O’Connor and Brian Eno though I think it’s Amazulu that I recognise her from which probably says quite a lot about me.

The Breakers are in a much more sensible place in the show this week and we start with the poster boys of grunge Nirvana. To say how influential they were, their career was pretty short and their back catalogue fairly small. Three studio albums and six UK Top 40 hits in a seven year existence. Yes, you could argue that The Beatles only existed for a decade and look at their legacy but they released thirteen albums in that period. You could also make the case that Nirvana’s potential for longevity was truncated by Kurt Cobain’s death but I think that the band were never likely to pull a U2 and carve out a 40 year career. Cobain’s heroin addiction was always an issue and the group almost broke up after disagreements surrounding Kurt’s attempts to reorganise their royalties structure so that he got more to reflect his songwriting input. There’s also that theory that those who shine the brightest burn out the quickest and that the band were always destined to fulfil that particular narrative but is that just a lazy take on their story?

Anyway, one of those six hit singles was “Lithium” which was the third track to be released from “Nevermind”. It’s a good song and all that but it doesn’t stray far from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” template in that the verses are subdued lulling us into a false sense of security before the violent eruption of the go apeshit chorus.

The video is a collage of gig footage. Cobain had originally had an idea for an animation to tell the story of a girl called Preggo who lives in a forest and takes some eggs she found in her closet to a king in a castle. This was shelved when it became apparent that it the video would take four months to make. They couldn’t think of anything else to do than just cobble some concert clips together?

“Lithium” peaked at No 11 in the UK singles chart.

Still bleeding the “Stars” album dry are Simply Red or more accurately their record label EastWest. I’m wondering about the wisdom of releasing a fifth single (“Your Mirror”) from an album that had been out for 10 months by this point and which had sold so many copies in the first three of those months that it became the biggest selling album of the whole year.

Were EastWest hoping that there were still some punters out there who hadn’t yet been persuaded into buying “Stars” by the first four singles off it but who might be convinced by the fifth? Surely not. Was it designed to appeal to completist super fans who couldn’t resist the lure of Simply Red product? Did such people exist? Were there exclusive extra tracks on the single? Or was it as I first thought just a case of milking the label’s elite cash cow as much as they could?

“Stars” was the band’s fourth album – would that have bought them to the end of their current record deal? Were EastWest concerned they might lose their lucrative charges? As it turned out they didn’t but it would be four years before the next Simply Red album. Had they thought that might be the case and so wanted to maximise sales of the current one by going all Michael Jackson on its singles release schedule? Were the band on tour and so the single was to promote that?

So many questions to which I’m not sure I actually care what the answers are. This is Simply Red and Mick Hucknall we’re talking about here after all! Suffice to say “Your Mirror” did nothing for me but it reached a respectable No 17 on the charts which presumably meant something to EastWest.

Talking of Jacko…after the first three singles from Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album had been given the ‘exclusive’ treatment by TOTP, the video for his latest single only warrants a slot in the Breakers! Possibly to prevent litigation from The King of Pop’s lawyers, it gets a full outing on the following week’s show.

The single in question is “Who Is It” and the critical reception it received at the time suggested that it was “Billie Jean” 2.0. I can certainly hear that in the bridge into the chorus but is there a bit of “Dirty Diana” in there as well?

It managed to get to No 10 in the UK despite it being the fourth single off the album but curiously wasn’t released simultaneously in the US where they went with “Jam” as the fourth single release. I didn’t really care for it at all. Oh, and never mind ‘who is it’, the question I wanted to ask was why doesn’t the song title have a question mark at the end of it? Answer me that.

So who did get the ‘Exclusive’ slot this week instead of Jackson? It’s gone to Enya? Really?! Are you sure?! Yes, for she was in the studio to promote her single “Book Of Days” from the album “Shepherd Moons”. As Tony Dortie says, it also featured in the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman film Far And Away. I think I went to the pictures to see that one. It was OK but far too long and the ending is one of the worst in cinematic history.

As for the performance here, there’s a few things to unpack. Firstly, is she singing live as per TOTP policy? She could be but with all those vocal effects on the record it’s hard to tell. Secondly, what was the deal with the platinum blonde wigs on the cello players? Was it a tribute to Gerry Anderson’s UFO and the purple wigs worn by the female staff at moon base? Finally, the flowers on the piano and studio floor – was that an influence on the cover to the Oasis single “Don’t Look Back In Anger”?

“Book Of Days” peaked at No 10.

Obviously “Sexy MF” by Prince was never going to get any airplay if the true word behind the acronym hadn’t been blanked but it’s not like the rest of the lyrics were squeaky clean. Some of them were filthy:

You seem perplexed I haven’t taken you yet

Can’t you see I’m harder than a man can get

I got wet dreams comin’ out of my ears

I get hard if the wind blows your cologne near me

Sheesh! Where was the censor? Presumably on the dance floor.

“Sexy MF” peaked at No 4.

Action from the US chart next as we get a first look at an artist who’s about to bring his success over here. I say first look but if we’d have been watching Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine carefully we’d have seen his guy before. I have to admit that as a teenager I was probably more interested in directing my gaze at Gloria rather than her band! Anyway, enough of that! The guy in question is Jon Secada and “Just Another Day” would be first and biggest hit.

I could never see the appeal of this song and found it quite laborious and dull. I seemed to be in the minority though as it went to No 5 both in the UK and the US. Now I’m not saying the guy can’t sing but, as someone commented on Twitter, he doesn’t half make a meal of this performance which is a flurry of gurning expressions, mike stand wielding and fist clenching. He makes Spandau’s Tony Hadley look like a wallflower. No doubt we’ll be seeing more of Mr Secada in future repeats.

You wait ages for one ‘Exclusive’ (that never comes if you’re Michael Jackson) and then two come along. The second one after Enya earlier is from Elton John and Eric Clapton who have collaborated on a little ditty called “Runaway Train”. The second single released from Elton’s “The One” album, I have to say that this is utter garbage. A right dirge and money for old rope for the pair of them. This did nothing for either protagonist’s reputation. Even the video effects are horrible and only serve to increase the strength of the headache listening to the song will give you.

Unfortunately Claudia Simon stumbles over her words in the intro to this one saying that the video was “shot at the Wembley during Elton’s worldwise tour’. Sadly, there was nothing wise about this train wreck of a release and it peaked at a lowly No 31.

Jimmy Nail is No 1 again with “Ain’t No Doubt” and he’s in the studio again doing his weird, shambling performance that he’s done every week so far in that same dark suit and T-shirt ensemble. He almost motionless and it’s left to his brass section to provide all the movement on stage. The dinner jackets, black bow ties and shades they’re all wearing remind me of the backing singers Nick Heyward had for his single “Warning Sign” back in 1984:

Jimmy was riding high on the back of the success of his Spender TV series which was huge back in the day and regularly pulled in audiences of 14 million. I’m pretty sure I was one of them though I can’t recall any of the episodes or stories now. In keeping with my own memory, it’s almost as though that it’s entirely forgotten now. Never repeated on TV and never even released on DVD or video and yet his first big hit series Auf Wiedersehen Pet is never off the likes of ITV 4 or the Drama channel.

We play out with “Shake Your Head” by Was (Not Was). Some of the things that the lyrics say you can’t do are palpably untrue. ‘You can’t win money at the horses” for example. I’ll wager some of the thousands attending this week’s Cheltenham festival would disagree. The biggest whopper though is “And you can’t influence the masses”. Vote Leave campaign anyone?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sunscreem	Love U More	Nah
2	Snap!	Rhythm Is A Dancer	Nope
3	Shakespear’s Sister	Goodbye Cruel World	I did not
4	Nirvana	Lithium	No
5	Simply Red	Your Mirror	Certainly not
6	Michael Jackson	Who Is It	Negative
7	Enya	Book Of Days	It’s a no from me
8	Prince	Sexy MF	Not the single but I have it on a Best Of CD I’m sure
9	Jon Secada	Just Another Day	Never happening
10	Elton John and Eric Clapton	Runaway Train	I’d have rather bought Runaway Train by Soul Asylum and that’s shit as well
11	Jimmy Nail	Ain’t No Doubt	And no
12	Was (Not Was)	Shake Your Head	Not the single but I bought their Best Of album Hello Dad…I’m In Jail with it on

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00156d0/top-of-the-pops-23071992

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 18 JAN 1996

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TOTP 01 APR 1993

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TOTP 25 MAR 1993

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TOTP 14 JAN 1993

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TOTP 07 JAN 1993

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TOTP 15 OCT 1992

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TOTP 23 JUL 1992

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