Supergrass

TOTP 17 OCT 1997

The volatility of the Top 40 around this time – the advent of first week discounting meaning high chart debuts followed by a sharp decline in sales – must have been an issue for the Beeb’s grand old pop music show. Except for a few anomalies, the days of hits taking weeks to slowly climb the charts allowing for multiple TOTP appearances on the way were a thing of the past. In my teenage years, No 1s would stay at the top for at least three weeks but by 1997 we were at the stage where we were experiencing six different chart toppers in the same amount of weeks. Executive producer Chris Cowey tried to address this by allowing repeat performances of hits that had peaked and were either descending the charts slowly or remaining in the Top 10 as a non-mover. This resulted in creating a platform for songs that were still popular to feature on the show but also meant that singles entering the lower parts of the Top 40 didn’t get a look in. Another strategy was to have an ‘exclusive’ performance of a song the week before its release and then a second appearance when it actually entered the charts the following week. Neither of these measures were ever going to restore the show to its past glories and the peak viewing figures it experienced in the 70s and 80s but at least Cowey was trying.

Having said all of that, we start with a song that didn’t fall into either category I have just outlined above. “U Sexy Thing” by Clock was on the show’s running order as a new entry at No 12 and would feature again the following week after climbing one place to No 11. Morrissey once said in Smash Hits when reviewing the week’s singles releases “There are indeed worse groups than Modern Romance but can anyone seriously think of one?”. Lord knows what Mozza must have made of Clock then who make Modern Romance sound like peak REM.

I don’t remember this but apparently they started out as a typical Eurodance outfit with a sound similar to Cappella according to Wikipedia. However, around the middle of the decade, they took the decision to go overtly commercial with an out and out pop sound by doing hideously trashy cover versions. Tracks by Harold Faltermeyer and Tag Team were followed by more mainstream songs like “December 1963 (Oh What A Night)” and this – “You Sexy Thing”. Irritatingly, they would slightly rename the song titles giving the impression that they weren’t just cover versions but brand new tracks so the Four Seasons classic became simply “Oh What A Night” whilst Hot Chocolate’s well loved hit was “U Sexy Thing”. Just nasty. Actually, not just nasty but cynical too in the case of the latter. The choice to cover that particular track was surely influenced by its resurgence in popularity thanks to its use in the box office smash The Full Monty. In their defence, they weren’t the only people to have that idea – another tacky version was released at the same time by a duo called T-Shirt but it lost out to Clock when it failed to make the UK Top 40. In the end, the Hot Chocolate original was rereleased and beat both the updated takes on it by riding to No 6 in the charts. This made it the third time it had been a hit – it was a No 2 in 1975 and made it to No 10 when rereleased for the first time in 1987. As for Clock, they would continue to mine the rich seam of cover versions by having hits with KC And The Sunshine Band’s “That’s The Way (I Like It)” and “Blame it On The Boogie” by The Jacksons before having the decency to pack it all in by the end of the decade.

Next up is another hit that doesn’t conform to the appearance policy I described in the intro to this post – I’m beginning to think I might have got this all wrong! Anyway, the hit concerned is “Closed For Business” by Mansun and it’s on the show as it’s gone straight into the charts at No 10 which clearly justifies its place in tonight’s running order. However, a band like Mansun presented a different sort of consideration for Chris Cowey. A large and devoted fanbase meant large sales in week one but a quick drop off thereafter. “Closed For Business” (the lead track from the “Seven EP”) spent just a fortnight inside the Top 40 dropping a whopping 27 places in its second week. I guess Cowey’s dilemma here was balancing reflecting what was popular in that particular week without pandering to a specific section of the record buying public. Was there also an issue of scheduling in terms of being able to get the band in the TOTP studio at that exact point of optimum popularity of their single? Remember, Cowey didn’t seem keen on showing videos unless he really had to.

Enough of that though, what about the music? Well, this was one of those bridging-the-gap releases between albums that we’ve seen many times before. Debut album “Attack Of The Grey Lantern” had come out in the February of 1997 and follow up “Six” would not appear until 18 months later so some interim material was required to maintain Mansun’s profile presumably. As with their earlier work, “Closed For Business” had that wide screen feel to it that overwhelmed your senses without suffocating them. It was gloriously epic. I’d really liked that first album and yet, somehow, I’d lost interest by the time their sophomore effort arrived. As with Garbage, Roachford and Skunk Anansie before them, I really should check out their later work. However, I don’t think I’ll be venturing as far as their other release called “Closed For Business” – a 25 disc box set retrospective. Twenty-five!

P.S. The sleeves to the CD singles of “Closed For Business” featured paintings by artist and early Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe whose story I’m always fascinated by. In fact, the whole narrative of those involved in the history of The Beatles but who didn’t end up as who we know as the ‘Fab Four’ does. Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Jimmie Nicol…all people whose lives could have been so so different.

Wait…Siedah Garrett was in the Brand New Heavies? When did that happen? Well, 1997 obviously but how did it happen and where’s N’Dea Davenport? Well, apparently she’d been gone a couple of years by this point having left the band due to that old chestnut ‘irreconcilable differences’ (I have no info on whether there were of the musical variety) with Garrett replacing her. She’s an interesting character Siedah – I think I only knew her as duetting with Michael Jackson on “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” but there’s so much more to her than that. As Jayne Middlemiss hints at in her intro, she had a hit in 1984 with Dennis Edwards with “Don’t Look Any Further” (which was later covered by the Kane Gang and M People) and she also co-wrote Jackson’s hit “Man In The Mirror”. She toured with both Jacko and Madonna and wrote a Grammy award winning single for the Dreamgirls film. She co-wrote a number of tracks on Quincy Jones’ seven Grammy Awards winning album “Back On The Block” and has even presented America’s Top 10 deputising for the legend that was Casey Kasem (the original voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo!).

Back to the Brand New Heavies though and despite them having the reputation of being pioneers of the acid jazz movement built upon two platinum selling albums, when it came to huge hit singles, there weren’t that many. Of their fifteen releases that made the Top 40, only one went Top 10 and that was this one – a cover version of Carol King’s “You’ve Got A Friend”. It seems kind of odd that a cover would be their biggest hit, as if it somehow invalidates their other work though, of course, they had already gone down that route when their version of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” went to No 13 in 1994. For what it’s worth, I don’t think they added anything much to the original – indeed, I would argue that it stripped it of its lush, warm feel. It’s not a terrible version just…unnecessary. Not even the (rather over the top) twenty strong gospel choir employed here could make it into something special.

Given that it was the fourth and final single from their “In It For The Money” album, perhaps not surprisingly, “Late In The Day” failed to maintain a run of five previous Top 10 hits for Supergrass when it peaked at No 18. For me, it’s not one of their best though it was probably better than many of its contemporary chart peers. Am I alone in thinking Gaz Coombes looked pretty cool despite his mutton chop sideburns?

Finally we have a hit that conforms to one of the appearance policies I described at the start of this post. Eternal were on the show last week with their single “Angel Of Mine” which had debuted on the chart at No 4. Despite falling a place to No 5 seven days later, it was still deemed popular enough to warrant a repeat of that performance on this show. When it comes to conversations about UK girl groups, I’m not sure that Eternal would be the first name on everyone’s lips. Girls Aloud, the Spice Girls, Little Mix and even Bananarama are more likely to be mentioned before them it seems to me and yet they had 15 consecutive hit singles and three platinum selling studio albums and one Best Of compilation. Was it that they didn’t crack America* that has lessened their legacy? Certainly the Spice Girls crossed over the Atlantic though I’m not sure if any of those other names above did although Bananarama had sporadic yet spectacular success including a US No 1 in “Venus”. Was it that they kept haemorrhaging group members that has dinted their reputation? Presumably not as pretty much all those aforementioned artists similarly shed original members from their line ups along the way. Does it just come down to the memorability of their tunes then? Despite the number of hits, how many could the average person name do you reckon? I’m guessing it would be less than almost every other name in that list depending on who you asked obviously. One last thing, is any of the above fair to Eternal? Don’t ask me, I’m just filling here for a lack of anything else to say which itself possibly does say a lot.

*Monica did have a US No 1 with her version of “Angel Of Mine”

It’s time for Sash! again (or should I say ‘encore une fois’?) who are back with their third consecutive No 2 hit called “Stay”. Now apparently this lot hold some sort of record for having the most No 2 hits (five in total) without ever having a chart topper or something. All those No 2s…insert your own (obvious) joke here *———-*. All three hits so far featured another artist – Sabine Ohmes, Rodriguez and now someone called La Trec as vocalist. To me, it was much the same as its predecessors albeit with more added vocals than usual. I’m sure it all made sense if you were frugging out on the dance floor but I could never understand anybody wanting to listen to it in their bedroom at home. How wrong was I though as not only did Sash! sell lots of singles but, unusually for a dance act, they shifted lots of units of their album as well. Their debut offering “It’s My Life” went platinum in the UK selling 300,000 copies and making it to No 6 in the charts.

It’s that weirdly over the top performance by Janet Jackson of “Got Till It’s Gone” again now which is being repeated as the single has gone back up the charts from No 9 to No 8 having peaked at No 6 in its debut week on the charts. Now, what links the aforementioned Supergrass to Janet Jackson (apart from being on the same show)? Well, apparently the former’s hit “Late In The Day” was inspired by a track from Graham Nash’s “Songs For Beginners” album. Nash, of course, was a founding member of The Hollies but left in 1968 to form the folk rock group Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) and subsequently Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). He would write one of their best known songs “Our House” about a simple domestic event that occurred when he was living with his then partner in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. The name of that partner? Joni Mitchell. I don’t need to join the dots on this one any further do I?

It’s the fifth and final week at the top for “Candle In The Wind ‘97” / “Something About The Way You Look Tonight” by Elton John but clearly a decision was taken weeks ago to play the latter track as this is the third week on the spin we have got the promo for that one and not the cobbled together video for the former. Was it a decision based on taste? Was a fortnight of “Candle In The Wind ‘97” deemed a respectable amount of time for national mourning? Would any more have been seen as shoving it down the throats of the public? I don’t know the answer but what I am sure about is that these BBC4 TOTP repeats will have almost certainly been the first time we will have heard “Candle In the Wind ‘97” since they were originally broadcast. You never hear it on the radio. Like Ever.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Clock	U Sexy Thing	Never
2	Mansun	Closed For Business	No – missed this one
3	Brand New Heavies	You’ve Got A Friend	No – give me the original every time
4	Supergrass	Late In The Day	Negative
5	Eternal	Angel Of Mine	Nope
6	Sash!	Stay	No
7	Janet Jackson	Got Till It’s Gone	Nah
8	Elton John	Candle In The Wind’97 / Something About The Way You Look Tonight	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/m002b250/top-of-the-pops-17101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 20 JUN 1997

Posted on March 17 by 80stastic

We’re still in the early weeks of the Chris Cowey tenure of TOTP and this would seem to be the experimental stage where he’s trying things out to see what sticks. For example, we’ve gone from just seven featured songs from a couple of weeks ago to a whopping ten on this show. TEN! I better get my skates on then…Tonight’s host is Jayne Middlemiss for the second time in three weeks and hopefully she’ll have conquered those nerves which she displayed on her debut appearance. She gets an early opportunity to demonstrate that she has because, as with Jo Whiley last week, our host does a direct to camera piece before the credits have even rolled. There’s no prop for Jayne to kick over though like Jo had. Instead, there’s a shot of a studio clock and an ‘On Air’ sign and Jayne telling us it’s time to dance in front of the telly before doing that head nod thing she does – that might start to get annoying very quickly. It’s probably the nerves again.

We start though with an artist who never seems anything less than serenely confident in her own abilities. Lisa Stansfield had been having hits since the late 80s with the biggest and most well known of those arriving early on with “All Around The World”. Inspired by ‘The Walrus of Love’ Barry White, the track contained a tribute to him in its spoken word intro that was based on the album version of White’s “Let The Music Play”. Eight years on, Lisa would go into full on honour mode by recording a cover of White’s 1974 hit “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up”. In terms of topping and tailing Lisa’s chart career, it couldn’t have been more perfect as it would prove to be her final UK Top 40 hit when released as the second single from her eponymously titled 1997 album. The radio edit is a pretty faithful version but numerous remixes of it by the likes of Hani and Frankie Knuckles would propel it to the top of the US Dance Club Songs chart. The latter would receive a Grammy for the Best Remixed Recording, Non Classical category. Lisa would ultimately satisfy her Barry White fixation by duetting with him in 1999 on “The Longer We Make Love”.

I talked in the past post about not being sure that the presenter links were filmed at the same time and in the same studio as the actual performances due to the cutaway and cutback shots between the two. Well, I’m still thinking that way for this show. Curiously, last week, the only time the two were in sync was when Jo Whiley interacted with Wet Wet Wet who were the second act on and the same pattern is repeated in this show as Jayne Middlemiss is definitely in the same geographical and temporal space as this week’s artist who are second in the running order. Was something going on or am I reading too much into it? For the record, said second artist is Supergrass with their single “Sun Hits The Sky”. Similar to Skunk Anansie, I sometimes think this lot don’t get the credit they deserve. Certainly I’d forgotten or not known in the first place how many great tunes Skin and co had released and although I was more aware of the Supergrass output (I had two of their albums), it’s an easy trap to fall into to immediately think of “Alright” when you hear their name. However, they had so many more great (and better) tunes than that like “Moving”, “Pumping On Your Stereo”, “Caught By The Fuzz” and this one. “Sun Hits The Sky” is a tight, nifty indie rock tune that powers along with some force.

It was the third single taken from the album “In It For The Money” the title of which tied in quite nicely with an event that took place in April of 1996 when lead singer Gaz Coombes met the train robber Ronnie Biggs in Rio. Biggs had his own footnote in music history of course, having recorded with the Sex Pistols on two songs for The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle plus The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was the basis of the 1985 Paul Hardcastle hit “Just For Money”. “In It For The Money”? “Just For Money”? It’s close enough for a tenuous link isn’t it?

And so to the fourth and final appearance on the show by Eternal on the back of their hit with Bebe Winans, a previous chart topper, “I Wanna Be The Only One”. Fourth?! Yes, four weeks on the bounce they’ve featured but in defence of whoever’s decision it was, the single entered the charts at No 1 and then spent three consecutive weeks at No 2 so it was a very consistent seller. It’s taken until this fourth performance though to find a different way of promoting the single which they do here by doing a ‘live acoustic’ version of the track. Fair play as I think it works pretty well. Were the pure white outfits the girls are wearing a deliberate choice to project the gospel flavour this version has? If so, it’s kind of undermined by the stage they’re performing on which seems to have a leopard print design on it. Bit odd.

Despite its high sales and being the UK’s sixteenth best selling single of the year, it was towards the back of the queue in that list when compared to all the year’s other No 1 records. Only four chart toppers appeared below Eternal in the Top 40 of 1997 – the 1996 Christmas No 1 from the Spice Girls which is understandable but then also their 1997 festive hit which isn’t. The other two below Eternal were the dance hit “You’re Not Alone” by Olive and the Verve’s only No 1 “The Drugs Don’t Work”.

From current “I Wanna Be The Only One” hitmakers to a band whose first single to make the charts was “The Only One I Know” which peaked at No 9 in 1990. In the seven years since that breakthrough hit for The Charlatans, it hadn’t been a string of subsequent huge chart successes* since then. Of the twelve singles the band released between 1990 and 1995, none had got higher than No 12, five hadn’t cracked the Top 20 and three hadn’t even made the Top 40. Of course, high chart positions are no guarantee of song quality and the public cruelly ignored some cracking tunes. The nation finally got with it in 1996 with the release of “One To Another” which went Top 3 whilst follow up “North Country Boy” made No 4. Then came “How High” which peaked at No 6 giving the band three consecutive Top 10 hits for the first time ever. It was an impressive run of chart numbers but more importantly, they were all quality tracks and not a cover version in sight.

*It was a different story when it came to their albums with three of the five released up to this point having topped the charts.

“How High” is not only a quality tune but surely unique in referencing this TV show from my youth which made a huge impression on me and had kids up and down the country saying “Ah, grasshopper”. Not even “Kung Fu” by Ash mentions it in its lyrics.

We’ve finally arrived at the last Michael Jackson release that I’ll ever have to discuss in this blog, if not quite his final TOTP appearance. As I will be stopping at the end of the 1999 repeats, “HIStory/Ghosts” will be the last Jacko single I have to write about as he would not release another one until 2001’s “You Rock My World”. And there have been oh so many that I have had to comment on. My blogging started way back with the 1983 repeats and “Billie Jean”. Since then, the self styled ‘King of Pop’ had…

*checks Wikipedia*

32(!) UK Top 40 singles! My God! I haven’t gone back through all my posts to see if I reviewed every single one but it must be a pretty high number. So, 32 singles over 15 years (‘83-‘97) is almost exactly two a year, every year except it didn’t work like that of course. Jacko’s singles would come in gluts with the timing of them obviously based around when he had an album out which was pretty consistently every four to five years. And when an album came out, so did a bucket load of tracks released as singles from them. Seven from “Thriller”, nine from “Bad”, nine again from “Dangerous” and then five from “HIStory”. The final two of those 32 were taken from the “Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix” album with the very final one being this double A-side. There will be one final TOTP appearance in the 90s for Jacko with this single so I’ll devote this post to the “HIStory” track and the final one to “Ghosts”. So what can I say about “HIStory” the song? Not much apart from it’s hideous. I get that it’s a remix but seriously, Michael Jackson meets what? Italian house is that? I don’t care to find out any more. Even Chris Cowey can’t have been convinced as we get less than two minutes of the promo. There were periods in the early 90s when whole shows were structured around the screening of a video exclusive for his latest release which would command a good seven minutes of screen time.

Right then, what’s going on here? Two artists squeezed into just over a minute and a half of screen time? We’re not going back to having a ‘Breakers’ section are we? Well, no we’re not – it makes less sense than that. It seems to be essentially a plug for upcoming performances by artists on the show but here’s the thing – the clip used is just that; a minute long clip sourced from the actual performance that would be shown in full the following week. Why didn’t they just show the whole thing now? In the case of the first artist featured Blur, their single “On Your Own” had been released on the Monday before this TOTP aired as far as I can tell so why not just have played the song in full? They could have labelled it as an ‘exclusive’ if need be seeing as it hadn’t charted yet. Oh well, maybe it’s for the best given that we won’t see the full performance episode due to the Puff Daddy/P Diddy issue – a minute and a half is better than nothing at all as it’s a great track.

The third single from their eponymously titled fifth studio album, it tends to get overlooked when lined up against the No 1 that was “Beetlebum” and the memorable ‘woo-hoo’ of “Song 2” but it’s a good track in its own right. Damon Albarn has described it as the first ever Gorillaz track and you can understand where he’s coming from. It might not have the whiplash energy of “Song 2” but it has its own irresistible momentum and a huge hook in the singalong chorus. I have a distinct memory of being in a Birmingham nightclub six months later (I was visiting my younger sister) and being slammed around the dance floor along with the rest of the ravers when the DJ played “Song 2” and “On Your Own” one after the other. I was approaching 30 at the time so I don’t know what I thought I was doing but my sister is five years younger than me so I guess she would have still been in her club going years?

“On Your Own” would debut and peak at No 5 maintaining a fine run of hit singles for the band. Check these numbers out:

1 – 5 – 7 – 5 – 1 – 2 – 5

Their album sales weren’t too shabby either. Blur would return in 1999 with a fourth consecutive No 1 album called “13”.

We encounter the same curious plugging strategy that was reserved for Blur also applied to the Pet Shop Boys whose version of “Somewhere” from West Side Story is given a 30 seconds slot to big up the fact that the full performance will be on the show not next week even but in two weeks time! Just play the whole thing now for chrissakes! The single was released three days after this TOTP so surely it would have helped build anticipation for its release?

Anyway, why were Neil and Chris putting their stamp on this Bernstein and Sondheim classic? Well, it was to promote their mini residency at the Savoy Theatre in London called Pet Shop Boys Somewhere (Ok, we get it guys). The single would also be added to a rerelease of their latest album “Bilingual”. Of course, the duo had some history with cover versions stretching back to their 1987 Christmas No 1 “Always On My Mind”. They followed that with a mash up of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” and Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to glorious, extravagant effect in 1991 before taking on a one of the campiest of camp disco classics in “Go West” two years later. All of these had worked out pretty well to my ears (especially “Always On My Mind”) but I don’t think they quite pulled it off with “Somewhere”. Maybe, Neil doesn’t gave the vocal chops for such a towering song and attempting to turn it into a club anthem by adding a techno beat just to suit his voice isn’t the answer. Maybe the answer would have been to leave well alone. My wife loves West Side Story but can’t stand Tennant’s singing so I’m pretty sure she was not a fan of this one. Pet Shop Boys had twenty UK hit singles in the 90s of various sizes of which “Somewhere” was the eighteenth. There’s not much further to go now my wife will be pleased to hear.

They’re not hip, they’re not cool but, as Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, “they’re top turns” and I’ve always got room for a bit of Del Amitri when the chance arises. Often criminally overlooked and undervalued, the Scottish pop rockers have a very decent back catalogue albeit that their chart positions weren’t always a standout. The band had notched up 11 UK Top 40 hits to this point in their career but none had got any higher than No 11. And yet…in an unlikely turn of events, they had managed to go Top 10 just two years earlier in the US with the surprise hit “Roll To Me”. Did it make them happy? Not likely. In true dour Scot style, they weren’t big fans of the song (despite having written and recorded it) and considered it rather a throwaway tune. No pleasing some people.

Anyway, they were back in 1997 with a new single (which hopefully they did like as it was the lead track off new album “Some Other Sucker’s Parade”) called “Not Where It’s At”. Was it a musical demonstration of self knowledge about their image? Probably not but listening back to it now, it does prick something in my mind about identity. Is it me or is there a smidgen of a whiff of XTC about this one? I may be committing an act of musical heresy but it just came to me all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the jangly guitars, I don’t know. I was so taken with the idea though that I asked ChatGPT what “Not Where It’s At” would sound like done by XTC. The answer I received was almost instantaneous but it also showed how AI is based on assumptions that don’t always hold water. In its final reckoning it seemed to me to be saying if XTC had come up with the track, it would have been…well…better which I’m not sure is fair. Maybe my question wasn’t fair so I asked ChatGPT a control question – “Who was I?” It’s answer? That I was a former TOTP presenter! AI – it’s not where it at.

Next up is a guy you don’t hear much about these days but whom, for a while back there, was going to be the next new music superstar after winning a MOBO and a BRIT. Finley Quaye came from a musical family – his Dad was jazz and blues pianist Cab Quaye whilst his Mum would take him to see sets at Ronnie Scott’s legendary jazz club in his childhood. Almost inevitably, he moved into a career in music in his early 20s and appeared, fully formed, in 1997 with his double platinum selling album “Maverick A Strike” and a clutch of hit singles the first of which was “Sunday Shining”, a Bob Marley track from his 1978 album “Kaya”. It’s a radically different version though blending the reggae of the original with an accessible 90s soul sound that carried itself with an air of knowing conviction – or maybe that was the super confident Finley himself?

Talking of which, as with Beck, the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth to name a few, just about all the cool kids that I worked with at Our Price loved this guy. Given this statement, it is of no surprise that my eternally ever cooler than me wife had his album and I think she caught him live as well. Can’t remember what she thought of him but at least he turned up which he failed to do whilst playing Hull (where I now live) in 2022 and, as I understand it, failed to rock up at the venue with paying customers already inside. Mind you, he has form in that area. He was booted off stage in 2015 after just 30 minutes of a gig by the promoter of a venue in Gloucestershire for being shambolically awful. Bloody mavericks! I’d strike them off.

New show director Chris Cowey is still tinkering with the format and this week has turned his attention to the chart rundown. Having already dispensed with a full run through of the Top 40 in favour of just the 20 best selling singles that week, he’s now tacked it on to the Top 10 countdown and it’s voiced by host Jayne Middlemiss. There’s no run up to this – we’re just straight into it after Finley Quaye’s performance. It’s all a bit jarring. Anyway, Hanson are still at No 1 with “MMMBop” but it’s the last of their three weeks at the top. It’s an unusual title for a song so what’s it all about? According to band member Zac Hanson in an interview with the Songfacts website in 2004, it’s about holding on to the things in life that matter and that MMMBop represents “a frame of time or the futility of life”. Mmm…(Bop). Whatever. I do recall a lady coming into the Our Price where I worked at the time to buy the single for her granddaughter and she was pretty sure that she had asked for the right thing at the counter but wanted to double check and so asked again what it was called. My colleague Jim who was serving her said, rather understandably, “It’s called MMMBop” and we both looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh at the oddness of him saying those words out loud*.

*I should probably be absolutely clear that we were laughing at the song title not the lady buying it!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Lisa Stansfield	Never, Never Gonna Give You Up	Nope
2	Supergrass	Sun Hits The Sky	Negative
3	Eternal featuring Bebe Winans	I Wanna Be The Only One	Yes but for my wife
4	The Charlatans	How High	No but I had a Best Of with it on
5	Michael Jackson	HIStory/Ghosts	Nah
6	Blur	On Your Own	No but I had the album
7	Pet Shop Boys	Somewhere	No
8	Del Amitri	Not Where It’s At	See 4 above
9	Finley Quaye	Sunday Shining	No but my wife had the album
10	Hanson	MMMBop	Yes but for my six year old goddaughter

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/m0028nyj/top-of-the-pops-20061997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 07 MAR 1996

Posted on June 14, 2024 by 80stastic

After Justine Frischmann the other week, now we get the other of the two biggest female names of the Britpop movement in the TOTP ‘golden mic’ slot. Louise Werner was/is, of course, the lead singer of Sleeper and as such the connection to and similarities with her Elastica counterpart were always going to be highlighted by a lazy music press. In March 1996, Sleeper were just about to reach the peak of their popularity with the release of sophomore album “The It Girl” just two months away. Said album would go platinum in the UK and harbour four hit singles. I caught Sleeper around this time at the Manchester Academy and they were pretty good as I remember. I always preferred Louise to Justine as she seemed the less intimidating of the two and, if I’m brutally honest, I fancied her more. There, I said it. Neither though seemed particularly at ease with the role of TOTP host and both came across as a bit awkward. Well, you can’t be good at everything I suppose (says the man who isn’t good at anything). As well as being singers in successful bands, both Justine and Louise had subsequent creative careers as an artist and author respectively.

Anyway, ready or not, it’s time for the music and we begin with a song called…erm…”Ready Or Not” by The Lightning Seeds. This was the lead single from their fourth album “Dizzy Heights” and was very much in the same vein as pretty much everything else they’d ever done – a jaunty, catchy, uplifting pop tune high on hooks but low on substance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite partial to the odd Lightning Seeds tune but even Ian Broudie would surely admit that his band were hardly Radiohead. This one though is perhaps a bit more lightweight than usual with lots of “La la la la’s” thrown into the mix including the whole of the outro. That’s maybe appropriate though given that the band’s drummer Chris Sharrock once played with The La’s as well as The Icicle Works and later Robbie Williams, Beady Eye and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.

The song would share its title with a No 1 hit by The Fugees from later in the year but that’s not the only link between the two. As Euro 96 fever took hold of the country and “Three Lions” topped the charts, it traded places at No 1 that Summer with The Fugees’ cover of “Killing Me Softly” with both songs reaching the top of the charts on two separate occasions. Oh yes…”Three Lions”. I’m afraid it’s coming soon to these TOTP repeats. Oh, and the lyric in “Ready Or Not” that goes “It’s like the tipper most topper most high”? It was surely inspired by this John Lennon line:

Who are these people and what on earth are they doing? Well, the artist was Sasha & Maria but they’re not the two berks making tits of themselves messing around with what looks like a bedsheet. I think this tweet sums up my thoughts on the matter:

I was expecting Derek Smalls to come out of it tbh pic.twitter.com/b9ICqmeUwp
— George McIntosh (@georgemcintosh) May 31, 2024

Sasha was the Welsh DJ and record producer of Sasha and John Digweed fame whilst Maria was Maria Nayler who was a member of Ultraviolet in the early 90s and who would go on to guest on the Robert Miles hit “One And One” later in 1996. Here though, she was supplying the vocals for this, the similarly titled “Be As One”. Apparently, the track had been flooded into record shops via unlicensed white labels which led to Deconstruction Records contacting the BPI anti-piracy unit and taking out full page ads in the trade press to warn people off the illegal copies. Obviously, the track did/does nothing for me and watching it now it’s giving off strong Eurovision vibes but was clearly big in the clubs and made No 17 on the UK singles chart.

Louise Werner tries to loosen up a bit with an amusing reference in her next intro about Sleeper producer Stephen Street being called Jon Bum Bogey on account of his once big hair. OK, amusing might be pushing it but at least she’s trying. I’ve said it before but Bon Jovi were on a commercial role in this country in the mid 90s. Between 1993 and 1996 they racked up thirteen Top 40 hits including nine Top 10 entries. “These Days” was the penultimate of these and the title track of their 1995 album. A long way from the bluster of their poodle rock era, this was definitely showcasing their melancholy side – more “Save A Prayer” than “Livin’ On A Prayer” you might say. After one more hit, the band would take a pre-agreed four year hiatus before returning in 2000 with the “Crush” album. Whilst still a big name, I wonder though if the youth will know Jon as the father-in-law of Millie Bobby Brown rather than being the singer of one of the most successful rock bands of all time?

Next, we have one of those pointless hits. I don’t mean ‘pointless’ as in “what was the point of releasing that?” but rather Pointless as in the TV show. Asked to name an obscure Eternal single, an answer of “Good Thing” would definitely impress Alexander Armstrong. The third single from second album “Power Of A Woman”, it maybe wasn’t what we’d come to expect from the group. This was more of an – dare I use the word? – urban style rather than the slick, R&B/pop hybrid they’d been so successful with. Was it conceivable that the members of All Saints were set at home watching this performance and thought “Aye aye, we could do that but in cargo pants and crop tops”?

An interesting side plot to this hit is that the following week, ex-member Louise would release her second solo single “In Walked Love” which would peak at No 17 whereas “Good Thing” got to No 8. Chalk one up to Eternal but who was the ultimate winner in this battle do you reckon?

I’m getting really bogged down in all these dance tunes that have been on the show of late. Here’s another one. Gat Decor were, according to Wikipedia, one of the earliest exponents of ‘progressive house’ music. I’ve neither the time nor inclination to investigate what that particular strand of dance music was all about but having watched this performance of “Passion”, my uneducated view is that it’s yet another tune that resembles “Show Me Love” by Robin S. As for the track’s personal history, as Louise Werner says, it was originally a minor hit in 1992 as an instrumental but it was mashed up with “Do You Want It Right Now “ by Degrees Of Motion by an East London DJ who put out some DJ only copies of it turning it into an underground club sensation. Properly licensed and with vocals sung by Beverley Skeete, this 1996 version would peak at No 6.

After the bedsheet debacle of Sasha & Maria earlier, the now ubiquitous staging distraction for this dance hit was a guy behind Beverley giving off some strong Live And Let Die vibes.

Our host really tries to liven things up in her next intro which would no doubt be seen as inappropriate at the very least and possibly as racist now. Teeing up Boyzone who are live by satellite link from Korea, Louise says “I hope they’re not eating puppies or anything”. Gulp! Well, the lads definitely aren’t doing that as they’re too busy performing an especially lame song called “Coming Home Now”. This was their only single to be written solely by the five of them without any input from outside co-writers and it shows. There’s nothing really to this wisp of pop fluff that drifts aimlessly along to destination nowhere. It would be their only hit not to make the UK Top 3 in the first part of their career before their initial split in 2000. Interesting to note that Shane Lynch and Keith Duffy are only allowed to do the short, spoken word parts rather than a spotlight vocal like Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately get to do. As for poor old Mikey Graham, he’s not allowed to do anything except be in the background which was pretty much his only contribution to Boyzone ever. Talking of splits, they must have been thinking “we’re in here” when the news of Take That’s forthcoming break up hit the headlines. Indeed they were as their next two singles of 1996 would both go to No 1. The King is dead, long live The King!

The Women of Britpop theme continues now with Louise Werner introducing Camden drinking buddies Lush who are in the studio to perform their single “Ladykillers”. Probably the band’s most well known song, it was deliberately written by lead singer Miki Berenyi to be a hit with her admitting it was her attempt to give the press what they wanted, an affirmation of the band’s Britpop credentials. This may explain why it sounds like “Waking Up” by Elastica which itself lent heavily from “No More Heroes” by The Stranglers. The song has been taken up as a feminist statement due to its lyrics that lampoon the sexual bravado of men towards women. A few months later the Spice Girls would take up the baton and go global with their ‘Girl Power’ slogan. I suspect that Lush would have preferred another drink down the Good Mixer, Camden Town than all that world domination business though.

It’s Britpop overload as the next act on are Supergrass with their “Going Out” hit. When they performed this as an ‘exclusive’ the other week, did they have the brass trio with them? I’m sure I would have remembered three guys who looked like Tom Petty, Bill Bailey and Mike Barson from Madness (it isn’t him is it?). I saw Supergrass live in York in the early 2000s and they refused to play “Alright”. That’s the last time I spend an evening ‘going out’ with them.

Take That have predictably gone straight in at No 1 with their ‘final’ single “How Deep Is Your Love”. Their run of success was quite remarkable with eight of their last nine singles topping the chart. In my head, they absolutely were a singles band with their albums not as successful but a quick check of their discography shows that the three albums of the first part of their career all sold well with the biggest being “Everything Changes” which shifted 1.3 million copies in the UK alone. I think it was the fact that they’d released more videos than albums (six to three) by this point that made me undervalue them. A few years later I was living in York and hosted a pub quiz as the regular guy was on holiday. I included a question about Take That and made the mistake of making a derisive comment about them (this was before their wildly successful comeback in 2006) and was perhaps rightfully rounded on by the assembled throng of quizzers. Take that indeed!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Lightning Seeds	Ready Or Not	Not
2	Sasha & Maria	Be As One	No chance
3	Bon Jovi	These Days	Nah
4	Eternal	Good Thing	No
5	Gat Decor	Passion	As if
6	Boyzone	Coming Home Now	Never
7	Lush	Ladykillers	Nope
8	Supergrass	Going Out	I did not
9	Take That	How Deep Is Your Love	No but my wife had their Greatest Hits CD

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/m001zqtv/top-of-the-pops-07031996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 15 FEB 1996

Posted on May 31, 2024 by 80stastic

It’s the day after Valentine’s Day 1996 but there’s only one token slushy love song on this TOTP. What there is though are eight ‘new’ songs on the show with only the No 1 having been on previously. The grip of Britpop on the nation is on display with two bands in the running order who could be described as being part of that movement though probably not by themselves. In addition to that, the host for this one is Justine Frischmann, lead singer of Elastica, who were undeniably of that parish.

We start with one of those Britpop associated bands who were making their TOTP debut despite having been in existence for seven years by this point. I have to admit to never having heard of Ocean Colour Scene before “The Riverboat Song” though. We would all come to know the band and that song in particular thanks to the championing of them and it by Chris Evans. Not only did he play “The Riverboat Song” extensively on his Radio 1 breakfast show but six days before this TOTP aired, he had the band as the very first musical guests on the very first episode of TFI Friday performing it. Said track was subsequently used as the walk-on music for every guest as they made their way along a walkway to the bar area to be interviewed by Evans. As the show lasted nearly five years, the PRS cheques for the band must have been a substantial earner.

The success of the single (a No 15 hit) would pave the way for a run of six consecutive Top 10 hits and two multi platinum albums in “Moseley Shoals” and “Marchin’ Already”. In the April of 1996, they were the opening act on the bill supporting Oasis at their two Maine Road gigs. I went to the Saturday gig but to my shame missed Ocean Colour Scene as I was too busy pre-gig drinking with friends. We arrived in time for second support artist Manic Street Preachers though. I can’t remember much about the gig except I have a clear memory of the massive queue for the bar and pints being handed back to customers over people’s heads. A sad indictment on me that my memories of the day are mainly alcohol related.

Back to “The Riverboat Song” though and it is widely considered to be heavily influenced by the Led Zeppelin track “Four Sticks”. As I have never been a regular traveler on the boat to Led Zep island, I’ve no idea if this is true so I’ll have to investigate…

…yep, a definite similarity. However, what I’d really like to hear would be a Led Zeppelin/ Two Ronnies mash up of the track. They could call it “Four Candlesticks” (sorry).

I give myself a hard time in this blog about not recalling artists and songs from back in the day but seriously, who remembers “Giv Me Luv” by Alcatraz? Apparently this was a No 12 hit though it only remained on the Top 40 for two weeks. Listening to it now, it sounds like a mash up of “French Kiss” by Lil Louis and “Show Me Love” by Robin S. Quite what genre of dance music that would be described as I have no idea.

As I was also clueless as to who this lot were, I googled them but there seem to be a few groups called Alcatraz or variants of that name throughout musical history. There’s the English heavy metal band called Alcatrazz who formed in 1980 but split in 1983 after being dropped by their label. Picking up the baton immediately were an LA rock band also called Alcatrazz featuring Graham Bonnet, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen (great name!) in the line up. Formed in 1983, they are still a going concern or rather two going concerns as, after an internal dispute, there are two versions of the band, one led by Bonnet and one by Jimmy Waldo (another great name!) and Gary Shea. If that’s not confusing enough, there was also a German band called Alcatraz (with one ‘z’) from the 70s who played Black Sabbath and Soft Machine covers. Oh, and also an outfit called Alcatraz House Band, an acoustic rock trio who play covers by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, The Cult and Tom Petty. Seriously people, enough with naming yourselves after a Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco! I’ve been to Alcatraz Island and done the prison tour and I wouldn’t wish that place on anyone, not even the people that gave us “Giv Me Luv”!

Next a reefer anthem that got past the BBC censors presumably because they didn’t know what the slang term of the title meant. “I Got 5 On It” by Luniz was all about splitting the cost of a $10 bag of marijuana and laying down your half. It’s logical at least. After not understanding that “No Fronts” by Dog Eat Dog was all about blazing up just the other week, the Beeb did take a more cautious approach to this one as we only get to see two minutes of Luniz performing live by satellite in LA with the Hollywood sign prominent in the background. Did cutting the length of the track in half mean the watching TV audience didn’t get exposed to any drug references? Erm… not really. I watched it with subtitles turned on (in case I misheard anything) and read “hoochies wanna puff on it”, “you take a puff and pass my bomb back”, “messin’ with that weed”, “I’ll be damned if you get high on me for free” and “Hell no, you best to bring your own spliff chief”. I mean, come on! What did they think they were rapping about?!

“I Got 5 On It” crashed into the charts at No 3 continuing the popularity of huge hip hop hits in the UK at this time like “Regulate” by Warren G and Nate Dogg and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”. My main association of this song though is via my friend Paul. At this time, having moved to the area because of his wife’s work, Paul, who is a chef, was living temporarily out of a hotel in Manchester and used make use of our flat’s washing machine to wash his work whites. While there, he would open the flat’s big sash windows and blare some hip hop tunes out of them including “I Got 5 On It”. Thankfully, the local drug dealer who we called Mr Dodgy never seemed to notice.

Despite having been a UK No 1 way back in 1979, we still couldn’t get enough of “I Will Survive” in the mid 90s. Gloria Gaynor, of course, had that original chart topper with the song and it’s her version that is the definitive take on the track. She took it back to No 5 in 1993 when all sorts of 70s acts were having a revival. However, she wasn’t the only artist to take on the disco staple. In 1994, Dutch group Hermes House Band topped the charts in their home country with a version retitled “I Will Survive (La La La)” whilst later in these 1996 TOTP repeats, I’m sure we’ll see American singer Chantay Savage’s restyling of it as a ballad which went to No 12 in our charts. One year later, the musically eclectic US band Cake would score a minor hit with their version of it.

And then there was this by Diana Ross which managed a UK chart peak of No 14. Yet again I have zero recollection of this even existing so my first (and probably the only one required) question is WHY?! Yes, Miss Diana Ross (I bet they rehearsed and rehearsed Justine Frischmann to make sure she got that right in the intro!) is a Motown and soul legend but she didn’t add to her legacy with this limp version of a disco belter. She just hasn’t got the voice to do it justice and so we get a weak, watered down facsimile of it. I’m guessing she needed a hit as the other three singles from her “Take Me Higher” album hadn’t done any heavy lifting sales wise but even so. Also, why wear a jacket only to awkwardly take it off a few seconds into the performance and what were those gloves all about?!

Talking of being taken higher, here’s another song that is widely believed to be about drug use. Red Hot Chilli Peppers had certainly come into contact with illicit substances during their then 14 year old career in rock ‘n’ roll and were no strangers to writing songs about their experiences with “Aeroplane” appearing to be one of them, especially if you believe the online analysis. With the opening line of “I like pleasure spiked with pain”, it’s not hard to see why many would come to the conclusion it’s referring to drug use. Then there’s the lyrics about “decomposing” and “turning to dust” which could be construed as being about singer Anthony Kiedis having a relapse after being clean for a number of years. However, some offer the opinion that it’s about sex and more explicitly S&M with the titular aeroplane being the rock music lifestyle that afforded such…erm…activities. All I know is that the line about the “star of mazzy ” must surely refer to the band Mazzy Star and their track “Into Dust”. The full lyrics include the use of the ‘f’ word twice but said word is omitted in this live by satellite performance. Presumably someone had a word with Kiedis beforehand about time differences and the UK watershed!

After Supergrass announced themselves to the mainstream in 1995 with one of the anthems of the Summer in “Alright”, it all went quiet for six months. No rerelease of non-hit “Caught By The Fuzz”. Nothing. I guess they were working on second album “In It For The Money”. The problem was that the album would not be released for another fourteen months (meaning a gap of nearly two years) since debut “I Should Coco” came out. Given their new found popularity and the predominance of Britpop (of which they were seen as a prime mover), that was too long to wait for new material. Enter “Going Out” to plug the gap. This wasn’t one of those one off, non-album, standalone singles though. It would end up being the lead track from “In It For The Money” despite the gulf between their releases.

If we’d been expecting a retread of “Alright” though, we didn’t know Supergrass that well. “Going Out” was no blatant attempt to repeat the formula of their biggest success or to pin their colours firmly to the Britpop mast. Rather it harked back to the psychedelic end of 60s pop in sound – I could imagine The Kinks of the Small Faces having recorded it for example. Its No 5 peak was a very solid consolidation of their success but I wonder what Gaz Coombes was talking to the keyboard player about mid performance here? Do you think it was a pre-rehearsed set up because he didn’t know where to put himself during the instrumental break? Or maybe he was asking him about what he’d read in the papers about drummer Danny Goffey who was in the tabloids for his relationship with fashion designer Pearl Lowe at the time. Indeed, Goffey almost fell out with Coombes as he thought “Going Out” was written about them. Coming to that conclusion from the very sparse lyrics seems a bit of a stretch though.

Mariah Carey must have enjoyed doing TOTP – she always seemed to be in the studio in person and here she was again to perform her latest single “Open Arms”. This was the third track to be released from her “Daydream” album and, as a big ballad, was presumably timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. I think she’d done the same thing two years before with her cover of Nilsson’s “Without You”. Lo and behold, and I had no knowledge of this until this very day, “Open Arms” was also a cover version. Originally recorded by American soft rockers Journey of “Don’t Stop Believin’” fame, Mariah took her take on it to No 4 in the UK charts. It’s the usual Carey production but it’s all a bit lacklustre sounding to me and was panned by the critics. Having checked out Journey’s recording, I can’t say that it’s much better to my ears though it made No 2 in 1982 in the American chart. Despite my opinion of the song, Justine Frischmann referring to Mariah as “Mazza Cazza” does seem ever so slightly disrespectful.

Now, is this the most people ever on one stage for a TOTP performance? There’s a multitude of extras up there with Sting. Obviously, the majority of them are made up of the gospel choir he’s brought with him (you don’t get small gospel choirs do you?) and it’s an impressive sight. Sadly, the word ‘impressive’ can’t be applied to Sting’s song as “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” is quite the dirge. The lead single from his fifth studio album “Mercury Rising”, it was inspired by a truly affecting story of a friend of his who was suffering from AIDS. It seems wrong to be so glib about a song that tells such a story but I found it really dull. Well performed and recorded I’m sure but dull nevertheless.

As ever, Sting’s fan base made sure the album was a success though it sold only half the amount of copies as previous album “Ten Sumoner’s Tales”. “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” would peak at No 15, easily the best performing single from the album chart wise. However, Stimg had a nice little side line being a ‘featured artist’ on other people’s hits in 1996. He’d already appeared on Pato Banton’s cover of The Police’s “Spirits In The Material World” and would also guest on Tina Turner’s “On Silent Wings” single in the May.

Another week at the top for Babylon Zoo with “Spaceman” and is Jas Mann starting to take it all a bit for granted and not putting the effort in any more. It looks like he’s got a five o’clock shadow in this performance. Maybe he thought superstardom was in the bag or that he’d have the biggest hit of the year at least even though it was only February at the time. However, despite selling 1.15 million copies, despite being the best selling single since “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles and despite being the fastest selling debut single in British pop music history, it wasn’t the biggest UK hit of 1996. It wasn’t even the runner up.* In an extraordinarily strong field sales wise featuring the phenomenon of the Spice Girls, and the fever pitch propelled football anthem “Three Lions”, the biggest selling single in the UK came courtesy of an American hip hop trio who’d only had one minor hit here before and who would only ever record two albums in their career…

*”Spaceman” came in third

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Ocean Colour Scene	The Riverboat Song	Don’t think I did
2	Alcatraz	Giv Me Luv	Never
3	Luniz	I Got 5 On It	No but clearly my mate Paul did
4	Diana Ross	I Will Survive	As if
5	Red Hot Chilli Peppers	Aeroplane	Nah
6	Supergrass	Going Out	Nope
7	Mariah Carey	Open Arms	I did not
8	Sting	Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot	Nope
9	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

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/m001zj09/top-of-the-pops-15021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 27 JUL 1995

Posted on December 22, 2023 by 80stastic

Right, that’s Christmas and New Year celebrations well and truly over with for another year and a return to normality beckons. However, that isn’t on the cards for these BBC4 TOTP repeats. As far as I can tell, we won’t be returning to these 1995 shows until late January at the earliest as the 60th anniversary commemorations of the show via a series of retro programmes focusing on performances from the 60s, 70s and 80s continue. So, after being behind with my reviews for weeks, I now have ample opportunity to catch up. Hurray!

Tonight’s episode is hosted by Craig McLachlan, probably still best known at this time as Henry from Neighbours though he had carved out a brief career for himself as a pop star at the turn of the decade with his No 2 UK hit “Mona”. Quite why he was perceived to be a big enough name to host TOTP in July 1995 though is a question that’s not immediately obvious to answer to me. He’d left Ramsey Street long ago and his last chart hit in this country – a version of “You’re The One That I Want” with Debbie Gibson as part of the cast of Grease – had been two years prior. However, he had just finished starring in the BBC crime drama series Bugs so that could be the reason behind his appearance here. I never watched that show so maybe that’s why I didn’t quite understand the height of his profile. Whatever the reason for his ‘golden mic’ slot, he turns in a pretty lacklustre performance. Giving a pretence of what you perceive to be cool and actually being cool are two very different things though why he thought he could pull off an all-in-one leather singlet outfit with shades accessories, only he will know. Maybe he was trying on a future look for size as there’s something a bit Frank-N-Furter about it, a role that McLachlan would play more than once in productions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Looking remarkably ordinary in comparison (thank goodness) are opening act The Boo Radleys who have clocked up a third consecutive Top 40 hit. After the ubiquitous airplay hit that was “Wake Up Boo!” at the start of the year, the band had followed it up with what I believed was an infinitely better tune in “Find The Answer Within” but once again I was in the lower percentile of the record buying public when it peaked at No 37. Undeterred, a third single from the “Wake Up!” album was released and “It’s Lulu” would fall between two stools, peaking a whole 12 places higher than its immediate predecessor but nowhere near the Top 10 position of the (almost) title track.

As much as I liked it, I believed there were better tracks on the album (which I’d bought) and had hoped “Twinside” or the beautiful ballad “Wilder” would have been chosen as the third and final single from it. Sadly it was not to be and the perfectly decent but rather obvious “It’s Lulu” was given the shout (ahem). I’m guessing it wasn’t actually about the diminutive Scottish singer as the lyrics seem to tell the story of a teenage girl who feels the angst of her age group admitting that she can’t buy any clothes that fit, gets her facts from Smash Hits and is only understood by the posters on her walls. OK, they’re a bit clunky but they beat the pants off Lulu shouting endlessly about not very much.

Now it’s never occurred to me before but is there something in the verses to “It’s Lulu” that’s reminiscent of a certain cult classic advert from the early 80s?…

OK, this was just getting silly now; silly and confusing. “Stuck On U” was the sixth consecutive Top 40 hit for those cheeky scamps PJ & Duncan including one inside the Top 10 and four registering respectable chart peaks of either No 15 or No 12. Quite how they were mining these hits from a very narrow vein of pop/rap material…well…I can only assume that the people buying their records were actually buying into their likeable personalities as the music was formulaic at best. But was it their personalities or their characters because – and this was where the confusion came in – the lines between the real duo (as in Ant & Dec) and their Byker Grove constructs were really blurred around this time. You see despite still continuing to release records as PJ & Duncan (a trend that would carry on until 1996), they were doing a side hustle as TV presenters (having left Byker Grove well behind them) under their own names. Indeed, just three months before this TOTP aired, the first episode of their own show entitled The Ant & Dec Show (!) was broadcast on CBBC. Identity crisis at all?

To add to the confusion, “Stuck On U” was the lead track from their second album “Top Katz” (an awful, dreadful title) which Wikipedia informs me only made it to No 46 in the charts despite containing four hit singles and yet it went gold selling 100,000 copies. No 46 but it sold 100,000 copies? That can’t be right can it? This is a case of advanced orders from record shops masquerading as actual customers sales isn’t it?

Next, what would be called a collaboration these days but back in 1995 it was probably…what? A duet? Maybe not. Anyway, whatever it was, it featured…oh that was probably it wasn’t it? One of the artists featuring the other.

*checks cover of single*

Yes! Officially, it was Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige. Method Man was one of those rap artists that definitely required a temporary insert in place of the actual CD sleeve when on display in any of the Our Price stores I worked in along with Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, 2 Pac, NWA etc. This single “I’ll BeThere For You / You’re All I Need To Get By”, released on the legendary Def Jam label, was supposedly one of the first examples of the ‘Thug-Love’ genre which I wasn’t aware of at the time but which I understand now to be the combination of a rapper doing the verses and an R&B soul singer doing the chorus (I think). Said chorus plunders heavily the melody from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s hit 1968 hit “You’re All I Need To Get By” which is the only bit which appeals to me I have to say. The track did appeal in its entirety to a lot of people though going to No 3 in the US and Top 10 in the UK. Was it from a film as that might have had an influence on its success?

*checks Wikipedia*

It doesn’t seem so but it was the biggest hit for either artist at the time. Mary J. Blige is one of those names which I know and who have been extraordinarily successful even earning the moniker of the ‘Queen of R&B’ but whom I’m not sure I could name even three of her songs. The same without doubt applies to Method Man. That clearly says more about my musical tastes than either’s profile.

We’re only three songs in and already Craig McLachlan is becoming insufferable in his role as host. In his link to the next act he says “Yo! Top of the Poppers!” Oh dear. I tried out that greeting affectation once when I was a student at Sunderland Poly. My wife (then girlfriend) was with me at the time and nearly dumped me on the spot. I’ve never used it since. McLachlan then goes on to say that people are always asking him what his favourite type of music is. There’s a couple of things about both this revelation and his answer that don’t ring true to me. Firstly, that anyone would be that interested in his musical preferences in the first place and secondly that he would reply with The Lightning Seeds. Yes, I know it was just a lame line, a construct to segue between artists but couldn’t the scriptwriters have done better here?

Anyway, this was the point where Lightning Seeds really got into gear as a chart hit making machine with “Perfect” being their third Top 40 single of 1995, all of them from their “Jollification” album which would achieve platinum sales by the end of the year. Unlike its high speed predecessors “Change” and “Marvellous”, “Perfect” was a much slower, reflective tune, some may even say melancholy. In fact, listening back to it now, it strikes me that perhaps this was actually Ian Broudie’s attempt at writing his own version of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”. Now I’m not suggesting that his song is on a par with the classic track from the iconic “Transformer” album – of course not – but it does have a feel of it, possibly.

As for the performance here, the TOTP producers obviously felt that, despite ex-Icicle Works drummer Chris Sharrock doing his best Keith Moon impression, Ian Broudie sat at a keyboard wasn’t the most interesting spectacle. As such, they came up with a special effect that saw his head, detached and blown up in size dangling over the stage like some pop music version of the Wizard Of Oz (before we got to see the real Oz behind the curtain).

A rerelease of “Lucky You” would see Lightning Seeds clock up four hit singles in 1995 before returning in 1996 with the enduring football anthem “Three Lions” the following year and there was nothing cowardly about that song.

Craig McLachlan does some awful Guinness referencing intro for the next act who are, of course, Irish boyband Boyzone. Unlike the Lightning Seeds who followed up two uptempo hits with a slower song, the pretenders to Take That’s crown did the reverse, releasing a pop tune that bounces along after two consecutive ballads. I made the point previously that the group’s second hit “Key To My Life” was surely a forgotten Boyzone hit. Well, if that one is forgotten then “So Good” must be consigned to oblivion. It’s basically just a chorus with some other bits thrown in as an afterthought. Now, I can’t help noticing the dancing on display here (because the music is hardly captivating is it?) and it occurred to me that though there is definite progress from this…

…most of their moves involve wiggling a leg around Riverdance style and generally just jumping on the spot. Yes, at least they do it in time and their matching outfits lend the whole thing a sense of synchronicity but it’s not that slick is it? Still, maybe it was better that they weren’t super tight. I always admired Bananarama for their amateurish dance steps (earlier in their career at least) and couldn’t stand the synchronised swimming precision of some of the boy bands that emerged later in the decade.

After two hits that they’d had a hand in writing themselves, Boyzone would return with a cover in Cat Stevens’ “Father And Son” that would give them another enormous festive hit just as their version of “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds had done the previous Christmas.

Now I could have sworn that I didn’t know this song by REM but having watched the video for “Tongue”, it does ring a fair few bells and so it should as it has a very distinctive sound. The fifth and final single from the “Monster” album, Michael Stipe sings the whole song in falsetto and it seems to my ears that there’s very little instrumentation to the track save for the sustaining sound of a dominant organ. It’s quite striking so how it seems to have escaped my accessible memory banks is bemusing.

Something else that seemed to have slipped my mind (if I ever knew it in the first place) was the song’s subject matter. Michael Stipe is on record as saying that it is about cunnilingus. Off the top of my head, I can only think of “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours as a pop song that is inspired by a particular sexual act though I’m sure there will be more. I wonder if host Craig McLachlan knew the story behind the song. It would certainly have made his intro take on a complete different tone. Replace every mention of Rapid Eye Movement here with the word ‘cunnilingus’ and see what difference it makes:

“Let me talk to you about Rapid Eye Movement . Do you know what that is? Rapid Eye Movement – have you experienced it? You’re about to…R…E..M!”.

It’s time for another appearance by Seal as his single “Kiss From A Rose” is up to No 5. Somewhat surprisingly, despite his profile, Seal would only have another two UK Top 40 hits under his own name. In fact, his chart success fell away pretty spectacularly. Despite his first two albums going to No 1, his third, 1998’s “Human Being”, only made it to No 44 selling 10x less than its predecessor. He did have more of a return to form with “Seal IV” making No 4 appropriately in 2003 but he has not had another Top 10 album since. We won’t see him in the UK singles chart again for nearly 18 months when another song from a film – his cover of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle” from Space Jam returned him to the Top 20.

It’s the album chart slot now which means a chance for Supergrass to plug their debut album “I Should Coco” which has risen to the top of the charts off the back of the success of their No 2 single “Alright”. To celebrate the achievement, the band are live by satellite from Vancouver performing “Caught By The Fuzz” which was their first ever single which failed to make the Top 40 on its release in the autumn of 1994.

Wikipedia tells me that a mugshot of Hugh Grant – who had been caught by the fuzz (and indeed his short and curlys) receiving oral sex from prostitute Divine Brown on Sunset Boulevard exactly a month before this TOTP aired – was intended to be the artwork for the sleeve of the US release of the single. However, Grant’s lawyers complained and the idea was dropped. Not completely it would seem though as bassist Mick Quinn is wearing a T-shirt in this performance with that infamous Grant mugshot emblazoned all over it. I wonder if Hugh’s lawyers were watching?

As for the song itself, I’m slightly surprised that it never got a rerelease off the back of the band’s subsequent success. Maybe they thought they’d plundered the album enough by this point and wanted to avoid over exposure seeing as “Alright” had been all over radio and TV. Good tune though.

Oh dear. Inevitably, Craig McLachlan has got a guitar out and is singing the next intro (and I thought Mike Read was bad back in the day). Quite who the two blokes with him are or why they are dressed as Arabs I’m not sure. Could the disguised duo be any of the artists that were in the studio that day? Well, having inspected the footage, it’s clearly not PJ & Duncan / Ant & Dec nor any of Boyzone – could it be any of the Lightning Seeds or The Boo Radleys? I’d like to think they wouldn’t have lowered themselves.

Anyway, said intro is for Julian Cope who is enjoying his first UK Top 40 hit since the rather lovely “Beautiful Love” from 1991. “Try Try Try” was the lead single from his twelfth solo studio album “20 Mothers” – wait, his twelfth was in 1995?! So how many has he done in total?

*checks his discography*

My God! He’s up to 36 now! Like him or loath him (and I very much like him), you have to admire the prolific frequency of his output. Listening back to “Try Try Try” now, I’m struck by how conventional a sound it is which is at odds with his outlandish appearance (he does look like a knacker in that druid hat). It sort of reminds me of The Who in places, something about the melody perhaps? I’d sort of lost track of Julian by this point having kind of drawn a line under him when buying his 1992 compilation “Floored Genius” though I’m sure I went to an exhibition he curated at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester around this time.

There’s an episode of Rock Family Trees about the post-punk scene in Liverpool in the early 70s where Pete Wylie talks about Cope having been in the short lived but near legendary Crucial Three with him alongside Ian McCulloch. His relationship with Julian has been antagonistic over the years and he describes him as being this rather unwanted, weirdo type figure tutting “Here comes Julian” whenever Cope arrived. My wife and I still use this phrase today usually when our cat is pissing us off referring to him as Julian even though his name is Peter Pan.

The Outhere Brothers are still at No 1 with “Boom Boom Boom”. Fear not though as their four week reign at the top will be ended in the next show by *SPOILER ALERT* Take That who also ended the run of their other chart topper “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)”. This, in some way, almost makes up for the fact that they couldn’t depose Mr. Blobby as the Christmas No 1 in 1993. Almost.

The play out video is “Violet” by Hole. Apparently the lyrics relate to Courtney Love’s past relationship with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and it got me thinking about how many other songs are about relationships that have gone bad. Off the top of my head there’s “A Good Heart” by Feargal Sharkey which was written by Maria McKee about the end of her relationship with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench. Then there’s the follow up single “You Little Thief” which is written by Tench and is supposedly his response to McKee’s song. Perhaps the most famous example though is Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”. For years there was speculation about who the song was about but Carly has finally admitted that it was about ex-lover Warren Beatty – well, the second verse at least if not the whole song. There must be many more out there though surely?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Boo Radleys	It’s Lulu	No but I had the album
2	PJ & Duncan	Stuck On U	As if
3	Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige	I’ll BeThere For You / You’re All I Need To Get By	No
4	The Lightning Seeds	Perfect	Nope
5	Boyzone	So Good	Never happening
6	REM	Tongue	Nah
7	Seal	Kiss From A Rose	I did not
8	Supergrass	Caught By The Fuzz	See 1 above
9	Julian Cope	Try Try Try	Sorry Julian but no
10	The Outhere Brothers	Boom Boom Boom	Hell no!
11	Hole	Violet	Not for me thanks

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/m001tdmj/top-of-the-pops-27071995

TOTP 13 JUL 1995

Posted on December 13, 2023 by 80stastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

** Yes, it was of course from Soap

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

TOTP 11 MAY 1995

Posted on November 11, 2023 by 80stastic

We’ve arrived in May of 1995 here at TOTP Rewind and we know what happens in May – finals. The day before this TOTP aired, Arsenal lost the European Cup Winners Cup Final to Real Zaragoza when Nayim famously lobbed Seaman (ahem) from the halfway line and a week later Everton would upset the odds to triumph over Manchester United in the FA Cup final (more of that later). And then there was the annual music final. This year’s Eurovision Song Contest took place on the Saturday following this TOTP (more of that later). Before any of that though, I bring bad news – tonight’s host is Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo. Expect a procession of oblique and unfunny references to news stories of the time that Simon thinks make him sound clever but which in fact make him look like a prick.

We begin with Supergrass and their second UK Top 40 hit “Lenny”. One of the names that always comes up when Britpop is mentioned, Gaz, Mick and Danny also suffered from being associated with one song in particular despite achieving fourteen Top 40 hits including six inside the Top 10 and two No 2s. That song is, of course, “Alright” which will be along in a few weeks on these TOTP repeats. So damaged were they by its notoriety that when I saw them live in York in 2003, they didn’t include it in the set list which seemed a bit churlish if I’m honest. For now though, they were just trying to follow up their Top 20 hit “Mansize Rooster” from the year before and did so ably with “Lenny” which made it to No 10. A muscular, driving guitar heavy track with a galloping drum backing, it’s a thrilling if short ride – we get just over two minutes worth in this performance.

Visually, I was struck by the band’s three person guitar/bass/drums set up which immediately put me in mind of that other famous UK trio The Jam. Paul Weller would never have sported Gaz Coombes’ lamb chop sideburns though. He went in for those carefully shaped side strands of hair grown from the head rather than the face that curled into a point. Very modish and a look my Weller obsessed brother would sport for years. Anyway, as I said, Supergrass will be back soon enough smoking a fag and putting it out whilst keeping their teeth nice and clean whether they like it or not.

The first Simon Mayo ‘gag’ is here – something about Rugby Union administrators. I can’t be bothered to research what he was blathering on about but fortunately here’s @TOTPFacts so I don’t have to:

Simon Mayo's rugby union quip was presumably a reference to the furore over England captaIn Will Carling being demoted after referring to the sport's administrators as "57 old farts". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) November 3, 2023

Hysterical work from Mayo there. The second act tonight is Montell Jordan who is the latest (or perhaps he was the original?) to use that nah-ner-ner-nah-nah-ner-ner- nah-nah hook that also featured in MN8’s recent hit “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” and would pop up again on Peter Andre’s “Flava” a year later. “This Is How We Do It” was the first R&B release on the legendary Def Jam label and was No 1 in the US for seven weeks. It didn’t do quite as well over here peaking at No 11.

Instead of being a basketball player (he really was 6’8”), Montell chose a career in music and rather cannily came up with a tune that he himself describes as a “universal idea”. Said idea was that the chorus could apply to doing an unspecified activity by an unspecified group in an unspecified location thereby meaning the song could be adopted by anyone for any project or endeavour. As such, “This Is How We Do It” has been used in numerous films and TV shows such as Glee, The Nutty Professor, 8 Mile, Pitch Perfect 2 and Sonic The Hedgehog 2. Montell would have further hits both here and in the US though none as big as his debut hit albeit that “Let’s Ride”, his collaboration with Master P and Slikk The Shocker (no idea) made it to No 2 over the pond.

And so to the first ‘final’ reference of the night. The 1995 FA Cup final was contested by Manchester United and massive underdogs Everton. The previous year they had completed the league and cup double by beating my beloved Chelsea 4-0 in a rain soaked day at Wembley. This season though hadn’t quite gone to plan. Unfashionable Blackburn Rovers would pip them to the league title and they would lose the cup final 1-0 to Everton to finish the season trophy less for the first time in six years. I watched the cup final in a pub in Chester as a group of us were having a Poly reunion there. It was an unpleasant experience as the pub seemed to be full of horrible racist Everton fans spoiling for a fight and going around asking people who they supported. When one of them approached my mate Robin he defused the situation by replying “Carlisle United”* which totally wrong footed the thug. Just as well he wasn’t as well versed about Carlisle as Eric Morecambe:

“What news of Carlisle?”

49 seconds of joy…#PeterCushing joins Eric,Ern and Ann, in the court of King Arthur…👑

What a legend..#HammerHorror #StarWars #DrWho #LaurelAndHardy #SherlockHolmes #StillBringingSunshine 👓🌞♥️#SaturdaySpecial #ChequesInThePost #PassItOn 👈🏻 pic.twitter.com/fsa1IY8o4L
— The Morecambe & Wise Archive 👓🌞♥️ (@eric_ernie_col) February 19, 2022

*Robin does actually support Carlisle United by the way

Anyway, as it was the cup final, back in the 90s that still meant cup final songs. United’s was officially credited to Manchester United 1995 Football Squad featuring Stryker and was called “We’re Gonna Do It Again”. Unlike last year’s execrable effort with Status Quo*, this time they went rap-tastic with this Stryker character. I’d never heard of him before and nobody else has heard from him since it seems. The fact that United lost the cup final meant that there would not only be no repeat of last season’s glory on the pitch but also the chance of another No 1 record was gone as well with “We’re Gonna Do It Again” peaking at No 6.

*Having said that, the bit that goes “again, again, again” does remind me of Quo’s “Down, Down”.

Next something that goes beyond even the realms of novelty offered up by the genre of the football song. How the hell did jazz scatting get into the charts?! Scatman John was John Larkin, a jazz pianist from LA who suffered from a stutter which had blighted his childhood but which he found didn’t hamper him from scat singing – the art of vocal improvisation to turn the voice into an instrument. Now I can’t really be doing with jazz of the freeform kind and don’t understand at all the appeal of an artist like Dame Cleo Laine so just adding some house beats and a bit of rapping to jazz scatting was never, ever going to win me over. What a racket!

I wasn’t alone in my opinion. My aforementioned friend Robin did a nice send up of Scatman John on that weekend in Chester I mentioned but then I was once on holiday in New York with him where there was nearly a jazz incident. We were over there for my wife’s 30th birthday with him and our friend Susan. On the Sunday afternoon, we’d walked for miles after doing a helicopter tour of the Manhattan skyline and were in need of sustenance and a rest for our feet. After deliberating for ages about which diner or bar to go in, we finally decided on one but as we entered the chosen establishment, Robin came to an abrupt halt and said “We can’t go in there! They’re playing live jazz!”. As a consequence, we all turned around and walked out again. Even allowing for my own mistrust of jazz, the other three of us were none too impressed by Robin’s musical proclivities that day. Another group of people who disagreed with him were the record buying public who took Scatman John (the scat Gareth Gates) and his tune “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” to their hearts and made it a No 3 hit, despite the fact that he looks like a Chuckle Brother at the ambassador’s reception in this performance.

Who are this lot? Blessid Union Of Souls? Nope, I’ve got nothing. Their only UK hit was “I Believe” which went Top 10 in America but only made No 29 over here. Listening to it, I’m surprised it wasn’t a bigger hit. A piano led ballad with a pleasant melody and some social conscience lyrics, it reminds me of “You” by Ten Sharp. Ah yes, those lyrics. Obviously the ‘N’ word is not sung during this performance by vocalist Eliot Sloan though it’s clear that’s what the word is. Sickeningly, that word was used by one of those Everton fans I mentioned earlier in that pub in Chester whilst he was shouting about Paul Ince. All very horrible. One of the few times in my life when it made me root for Manchester United.

The second band inextricably associated with Britpop on the show tonight are Shed Seven. Having broken into the charts in 1994 with three Top 40 singles and their gold selling album “Change Giver”, 1995 saw them release just one new song – “Where Have You Been Tonight?”. The first single off sophomore album “A Maximum High”, this was the sound of a band preparing to enter the peak period of their commercial success. I’d have to say though that this track in particular didn’t quite get them there. It’s not a poor song per se but compared to what came after it, well it was a bit underwhelming and in my mind, remains a somewhat forgotten Shed Seven single. The fact that the album didn’t come out for nearly another year perhaps adds to my perception. It almost feels like a stand-alone single.

By the time “A Maximum High” appeared, Britpop, lad culture and Euro 96 were happening and Shed Seven entered Shed Heaven hits wise – no artist had more Top 40 hits in 1996 than the five the York indie rockers racked up. The BBC’s Euro 96 coverage used two of them to soundtrack some England montage pieces as the national team progressed through the tournament. It was a heady mix and a case of being in the right place at the right time for the band. They might not now where they had been tonight but they had a good idea where they were going.

The second of the ‘final’ themed songs on the show tonight now with the inevitable appearance of the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry. With the competition final just two days away, there was no way that Love City Groove would not have been given one last promotional push via TOTP. Whilst this may have helped propel the song “Love City Groove” up the UK charts, it had no effect on the band’s appeal at Eurovision where they trailed in a disappointing tenth place. “The experiment has failed” Terry Wogan infamously quipped. Also failing was any prospect of a career post-Eurovision for the band. Subsequent single releases failed to break the UK Top 40 and even that fail safe plan of a cover version (Fatback Band’s “I Found Lovin’”) couldn’t reverse their fortunes and the group split for good in 1996. A small part of the UK’s Eurovision history will always belong to those people who sang (and rapped) about the the sun shining in the morning though.

Here comes Celine Dion who’s attempting to follow up a huge, big ballad with…yep…a huge, big ballad. “Think Twice” topped the UK charts for seven weeks having taken an eternity to get there and would end the year as the fifth best selling single in the UK. Following that was always going to be a big ask and “Only One Road” didn’t despite the decent showing of a No 8 peak. It’s all very formulaic and power-ballad-by- numbers which Celine can do in her sleep but which was always more likely to induce zzzzs than ££££s.

The staging of this one is slightly odd. It would appear that the TOTP floor managers have shepherded every studio audience member in grey or pastel coloured clothing to stand at the front of the circle around Celine thereby making her blood red top standout even more than it does naturally. The effect resembles that scene from Schindler’s List with the little girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. Comparing the holocaust with a pop music TV show feels offensive but I guess it does serve to demonstrate the power of that scene and its sustained effect upon me given that it can be brought to mind by even the most banal of incidents.

And so to the No 1 and it’s a third consecutive single to debut at No 1 after Take That and Oasis in recent weeks. At the time, this was only the second occurrence of such a sequence but by the end of the decade, a record going in at No 1 had become a weekly event. Widespread first week discounting by the major labels whereby CD singles were £1.99 instead of £3.99 and the cassette version 99p rather than £2.29 was the major reason behind this with punters cottoning on pretty quick to the strategy and creating huge sales in the first seven days before tailing off immediately in subsequent weeks. Was this the point when that practice started? I can’t remember for sure. Nor can I recall the exact time when record companies started to allow new releases to be delivered to stores ahead of their official release date rather than on the day they came out but I think that was maybe also a factor in driving sales with new singles hitting the ground running from 9.00 am Monday morning.

Whether these factors were in play with making Livin’ Joy the No 1 artist with “Dreamer” or not we’ll never know but No 1 they are despite this single having already been a Top 20 hit the previous Summer. After trundling along the bottom reaches of the Top 100 at the end of 1994, it suddenly crashed back into the top spot when rereleased the following May. I was never a fan of Italo House so the track didn’t do much for me. Nor did I care much for “Show Me Love” by Robin S to which it was compared so it really was a personal non-starter but its legacy is substantiated by those Best Of polls where it regularly turns up in the 90s dance varieties.

The play out track is “Can’t Stand Losing You” by The Police and when I initially saw this on the running order, I assumed it was to plug sister show TOTP2. I was wrong for this was a legitimate chart record despite it having already been a No 2 hit in 1979. How? Because this was a live version. There had never been a live album by The Police though it had been mooted twice before; once in 1982 to plug the gap between “Ghost In The Machine” and “Synchronicity” and again in 1984 after the Synchronicity tour but it was shelved in place of the 1986 “Every Breath You Take: The Singles” Best Of album. A live album finally arrived in 1995 and it was called…”Live!”. Well, it did what it said on the tin I suppose. “Can’t Stand Losing You” was chosen to promote it and made No 27 on the charts – not bad for a ‘live’ single. The original is a classic Police track which I remember my brother having I think (or maybe he taped it off the radio). The lyrics about a teenager committing suicide after losing his girlfriend are entrenched in my brain. It was kept off the top spot by “I Don’t Like Mondays by Boomtown Rats, another song with some pretty dark lyrics.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Supergrass	Lenny	No but we had the album ‘I Should Coco’ with it on
2	Montell Jordan	This Is How We Do It	No
3	Manchester United 1995 Football Squad featuring Stryker	We’re Gonna Do It Again	As if
4	Scatman John	Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)	What do you think?!
5	Blessid Union Of Souls	I Believe	Nope
6	Shed Seven	Where Have You Been Tonight?	No but I had a live album called ‘Where Have You Been Tonight?’ with it on.
7	Love City Groove	Love City Groove	I did not
8	Celine Dion	Only One Road	Never happening
9	Livin’ Joy	Dreamer	Nah
10	The Police	Can’t Stand Losing You (Live)	Negative

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/m001s1j2/top-of-the-pops-11051995

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My memories of 90s chart music

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