The Brand New Heavies

TOTP 24 OCT 1997

This particular TOTP was broadcast a day after one of the most bizarre football matches ever was played and it involved my beloved Chelsea. Having won the FA Cup for the first time in 27 years the previous season, the blues were in the European Cup Winners Cup competition in the 1997/98 campaign. In the second round they were drawn against Norwegian side Tromsø with the first leg away at the home of the most northerly top-flight team in the world, deep within the Artic Circle. As the game started, the pitch looked atrocious and Tromsø soon raced into a 2-0 lead. Worse was to come though as a snowstorm hit at halftime bringing with it massive flurries and causing the match to be stopped twice in the second half so ground staff could clear snow off the pitch to allow line markings to remain visible. Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit spent the entire second half arguing with UEFA officials beseeching them to abandon the game. However, it transpired that they were under pressure to get the match completed at all costs due to scheduling issues and play continued. In the end, the game finished 3-2 to Tromsø with Gianluca Vialli scoring two late goals for the blues as he skated through the home defence displaying a sureness of foot that Robin Cousins would have struggled to pull off. In the return leg, Chelsea put Tromsø to the sword to progress in the competition which they ultimately would win the following May. That away game in Tromsø though is still talked about as one of the most farcical games of professional football ever to have taken place. There surely couldn’t be any musical equivalent on this TOTP to rival its preposterous nature could there?

Well, the very first image that hits our screens is, if not entirely ludicrous, then random at best. The Spice Girls rather than the presenter do the “it’s still No 1” intro and they are joined by a camel for the clip. Yep, a camel. Perfectly normal staging. It turns out that the girls are in New Delhi, India for the Channel V Awards where they won gongs for best international song and best international album (hence the camel) and we’ll be seeing them later in the show as *SPOILER ALERT* they have this week’s new No 1. With the intro delivered we’re straight into the tunes and…well, this is really quite perverse. We open the show with Tina Moore and her hit “Never Gonna Let You Go”. This is the fourth time she’s been on the show! The fourth! Her first appearance was way back on the 29th August – that’s nearly two whole months previous! How is this possible?! Let’s have a look at her hit’s chart performance during that time to see if we can make any sense of it. Here are its chart numbers up to this point:

7 – 11 – 9 – 12 – 9 – 11 – 11 – 17 – 15

That seems an awful lot of exposure for a hit that never got any higher than No 7. Sure, it was durable, selling consistently though not spectacularly but this last appearance was presumably justified because it had moved up two places to No 15, even though that was its second lowest chart position to that point. And more than that, they’ve used the same performance every single time – the double denim, transparent stage, minimal dancing shot from underneath performance! It seemed executive producer Chris Cowey really couldn’t let Tina Moore go!

Continuing the Scandinavian theme, we travel from Norway to Denmark and arrive at one of the most annoying and yes, preposterous hits of the decade – it can only be “Barbie Girl” by Aqua. So what was all this about? Was it just a silly pop song that poked some fun at the best selling toy in history or was it a social comment on negative body image issues raised by the unrealistic figures the Barbie dolls were designed with? Well, here’s a small film with the story behind the song supposedly:

Why does the narrator insist on calling them ‘Arkwa’? Anyway, make your own minds up. What isn’t in doubt is the song’s success. A global No 1 with worldwide sales of eight million, it went four times platinum in the UK alone being the second best selling single of 1997 here behind “Candle In The Wind ‘97”. It will be our chart topper for four weeks so I’ll leave it there for now except to say do you think the young guy in the studio audience has recovered yet from his close encounter with singer Lene Nystrøm when she playfully grabs his face. I bet he’s dined out on that story for years. Conversely, I’m willing to wager that the young lady who had a similar experience with male vocalist René Dif across the other side of the studio has never spoken about it since.

By the way, tonight’s host is Jo Whiley and the fact that she’s had to introduce Aqua I do find amusing given her serious music pretensions. She dismisses “Barbie Girl” as music for those who find “The Teletubbies an intellectual challenge”. A bit unnecessary that. Anyway, the next band is much more her thing as we get Ash with “A Life Less Ordinary”. Established as mega-successful chart stars by this point after a two year period that saw them rack up four hit singles and a No 1 platinum selling album, a song on a movie soundtrack probably seemed like the next logical step for the band. Not only that but the film that soundtrack came from (also called A Life Less Ordinary) was directed by Danny Boyle who had just had enormous success with Trainspotting the year before and Shallow Grave in 1994. The former movie had spawned a massive selling soundtrack so Ash must have thought they’d hit the jackpot by being so obviously associated with Boyle’s next project. It didn’t quite work out as maybe they’d envisioned though. Whilst their title track to the film would secure them a third consecutive Top 10 hit, the film itself was a huge disappointment after its two predecessors both commercially and critically. Starring Ewan McGregor (completing a hat-trick of Boyle films) and Cameron Diaz, the plot about angels on earth helping a kidnapper and his hostage fall in love just didn’t strike the right chord with audiences. Neither did the soundtrack which didn’t sell in anywhere near the same quantities as Trainspotting despite including contributions from artists like The Cardigans, Beck, REM and Faithless. I’m sure we had a massive overstock of it in the Our Price where I was working. I thought I’d watched the film at the cinema but if I did, I’ve blanked it from my memory as nothing about its plot sounds familiar.

As for Ash’s song, it was OK I thought though it always gave me the impression that a “that’ll do” approach from the band had been applied – certainly not one of their best. I think it’s significant though as it’s the first release to feature Charlotte Hatherley as a full time band member who, in this performance, looked like one of those pale and interesting girls that wouldn’t have looked twice at the very ordinary me during my youth.

Jo Whiley adopts a pretentious, pseudo- religious angle in her intro to the next artist. “Welcome to the church of rare groove and the priest of high fashion. Pray silence for the gospel according to the Brand New Heavies” she witters on. WTF are you talking about Jo?! Despite attempts to make it look like the band are in the studio, the fade up cut away reveals that it’s just a repeat airing of their first performance of “You’ve Got A Friend” from the other week. Executive producer Chris Cowey was very keen on recycling studio performances – indeed, it was something of a trend with him. Quite why he needed to try and disguise what it was though I’m not sure. I don’t think the watching TV audience would have been offended if Jo had just said “Here’s a clip from a previous show of the Brand New Heavies” instead of banging on about churches, high priests and the gospel. Less of the heavy stuff and remember that you’ve got a friend in the British public Jo*

*Actually, I couldn’t stand her at the time.

Jo continues to make herself look silly in her next segue as she calls the guy on stage the future of rock ‘n’ roll or something. He would, in fact, turn out to be a one hit wonder. Welcome to the curious case of Jimmy Ray. You’d be excused for not remembering this guy – I barely do and I was working in a record shop selling his single. On initial examination, this seems to be a simple story of the over promotion of a flawed record company idea – let’s reinvent rock ‘n’ roll by going back to its roots and having our face of the campaign look like a 50s throwback (© Vic Reeves, Shooting Stars, 1997). However, there might have been more to this whole saga than meets the eye. For a start, Jimmy Ray (actually his real name for once) had started out as part of techno-pop outfit AV alongside one Graham Drinnan who’d had a minor chart entry as Gypsy in 1996 with “I Trance You (Remixes)”. After AV split without releasing any material, he was somehow picked up by Simon Fuller who put the Spice Girls together (how random is that?) and then linked up with a guy called Conall Fitzpatrick who’d written Shampoo’s hit “Trouble”. Together they came up with the song “Are You Jimmy Ray?”. In truth, there’s not a lot to it – a 50s style guitar riff reminiscent of Bo Diddley’s “Mona” (though many might have known it from Craig McLachlan’s 1990 cover) allied to lyrics that name check various random people just because they are phonetically similar to the surname ‘Ray’. Ah yes, names. This track was all about names and most importantly that of Jimmy Ray himself – a clever bit of self promotion really, taking the ‘Who is Tasmin Archer?’ poster campaign to its logical next step. Indeed, Ray himself has wondered if Fitzpatrick was influenced by some London graffiti that had appeared around this time asking the question “Who is Christian Goldman?’*

*Supposedly Christian Goldman was a US producer and the graffiti part of a campaign for his “Happy Days” single.

Aside from referencing King Kong actress Fay Wray, American 50s singer Johnnie Ray (already immortalised in 80s pop culture by “Come On Eileen”) and fictional French detective Maigret, there also a lyric which is both juvenile and unnecessary…

“I’ve gotta let it out, there’s somethin’ in my jeans“

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Conall Ronan Fitzpatrick / James Ray
Are You Jimmy Ray? lyrics © Island Music Ltd., Mca Music Ltd., Sony Music Publishing (uk) Ltd, Wixen Music Uk Ltd, Wixen Music (uk) Ltd

Hmm. I’ve seen it spelt online as ‘genes’ in which case it’s just clever wordplay rather than obvious innuendo or I’ve completely misunderstood what was going on there.

The single was a hit going to No 13 in both the UK and the US but Jimmy would have no further success despite him looking the part – he was more Charlie Sexton crossed with Gene Vincent than Shakin’ Stevens. Subsequent singles all missed the Top 40 and his album remained unreleased in this country. Apparently, Jimmy is still in the music business of sorts and last released new material in 2017. I wonder how many people have actually asked him “Are you Jimmy Ray?” recently though?

From the 50s to the 70s now (yes, I kind of nicked that link from Jo Whiley) as we find Clock doing their hateful update of the Hot Chocolate classic “You Sexy Thing” retitled as “U Sexy Thing”. Again, this was just a reshowing of a previous performance and was justified by this ghastly record going up one place from No 12 to No 11, a move assisted I’m guessing by only a small number of entries into the Top 10 in this week (Brand New Heavies were similarly aided by moving from No 11 to No 9 this week resulting in their second appearance on the show).

In 2004, vocalist Lorna Saunders appeared in the ‘identity parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks when it was revealed that she had left the music industry and was working as a legal secretary (she subsequently went on to become a lawyer). The other guest in the ‘identity parade’ that episode? Benny Anderwear from ABBA tribute Björn Again which was apt. No, not as it maintains this post’s Scandinavian theme but because Clock were pants.

Once again, I’m not quite sure what Jo Whiley is on about in her next intro when she describes US band Smash Mouth as being “from San Jose, California via the casinos of Wigan. It’s Northern Soul with an American accent”. Now, I’m no Northern Soul aficionado (in fact I know bugger all about the movement really) but I would never have described this lot as Northern Soul. A touch of ska yes, power pop maybe but Northern Soul? Never occurred to me. Wikipedia tells me that the band have a penchant for cover versions but looking at the list of other people’s songs they’ve attempted, none of them appear to be by Northern Soul artists. Is it possible then that Jo has just got this one wrong?

The band have only had two hits in this country of which “Walkin’ On The Sun” was the first peaking at No 19. Written as a reaction to the Rodney King beatings and the 1992 LA riots following the acquittal of three of the police officers involved, it chugs along in a pleasing fashion propelled by that organ sound that drew comparisons with “She’s Not There” by The Zombies. Parallels were also drawn with another band which I somehow must have failed to notice at the time but listening back to Smash Mouth now is completely obvious – The Doors. That Hammond organ that Ray Manzarek played so distinctively but updated for the 90s? How did I miss that?

It would take two years for a follow up hit to arrive in the form of “All Star” which sounded even better than its predecessor to me and which I duly bought. Handily, it had “Walkin’ On The Sun” as an extra track on the CD single. The band then seemed to carve out a niche career supplying songs for the original Shrek movie with both “All Star” and the band’s version of “I’m A Believer” made famous by The Monkees featuring on its soundtrack. Smash Mouth are still together though only bass player Paul De Lisle remains from the original line up. Singer Steve Harwell died in 2021 from liver failure following years of struggling with alcoholism.

The time of “ Candle In The Wind ‘97” is over! We have a new No 1! Hallelujah! Oh, it’s by the Spice Girls though. Never mind. Going against the performance of their previous four chart toppers, “Spice Up Your Life” will only be No 1 for one week! Sadly, then it’ll be deposed by “Barbie Girl”. Oh.

So, with this release, the Spice Girls made history by dint of their first five singles going to the top of the charts. I’m guessing its shortest of tenures at No 1 may have ruffled a few feathers at Spice World HQ though. Ah yes, Spice World. Apparently, the single was recorded in between shooting their movie which may account for it sounding a bit rushed. I mean, you can’t deny its energy but it’s all a bit muddled and has a throw-the-kitchen-sink feel to it. Supposedly written as a global rally cry for all of humanity, its lyrics instead manage to just name check a load of dance styles including flamenco, lambada, the foxtrot, polka and salsa. Then there’s the potentially racist “yellow man in Timbuktu” line which received criticism even back then. As for its title, as with Jimmy Ray earlier, there’s a huge dose of self promotion going on (as if they needed any more!). Finally, it’s actually not that far from “Wannabe” with its exhortations to “slam it to the left” and “shake it to the right” echoing “slam your body down and wind it all around”. Musically, it jumps on the Latin pop bandwagon that Ricky Martin and No Mercy had already had success with in this year. The single received mixed reviews in the press and I for one wasn’t impressed.

After ultimately losing out to Aqua, the link between Barbie and “Spice Up Your Life” was renewed some 26 years later when it featured in the hit movie of the same name starring Margot Robbie although it didn’t actually make it onto the soundtrack album.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Tina Moore	Never Gonna Let You Go	Nope
2	Aqua	Barbie Girl	Definitely no
3	Ash	A Life Less Ordinary	Negative
4	Brand New Heavies	You’ve Got A Friend	No
5	Jimmy Ray	Are You Jimmy Ray?	Nah
6	Clock	U Sexy Thing	As if
7	Smash Mouth	Walkin’ On The Sun	No but it was an extra track on ‘Allstar” which I did buy
8	Spice Girls	Spice Up Your Life	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/m002b252/top-of-the-pops-24101997?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 17 OCT 1997

Posted on April 29 by 80stastic

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 10 AUG 1994

Posted on May 12, 2023 by 80stastic

This TOTP aired on a Wednesday rather than the normal Thursday due to the BBC’s coverage of the European Athletics Championships taking place in Helsinki. A couple of years later, the show was permanently shifted from a Thursday to a Friday night initially in a 7pm time slot before some idiot made the decision to move it to a 7.30 start time thereby putting it up against Coronation Street. What on earth was the thinking behind that decision? It’s as if someone was deliberately trying to kill the show off. Hmm. This was also a ‘live’ episode so be on alert because, as Commander Shore said on Stingray, “Anything can happen in the next half hour…”

Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo is tonight’s host and the first act he introduces are Red Dragon featuring Brian and Tony Gold with their hit single “Compliments On Your Kiss”. I went into the back story of this one the last time it was on the show so I don’t propose to go onto that all over again. Instead, I’d quite like to talk about this performance and more specifically the staging of it.

I can understand the naff, cardboard cut out palm trees as it’s a lilting, summery tune that conjures up images of sunny beaches and obviously the neon lips do tie in with the song title but is that meant to be a smouldering volcano in the background? What’s that all about? Oh, is it meant to be a dragon as in Red Dragon? It’s hard to see because of the dry ice pouring out of it but I really can’t detect much of a dragon shape in there. They really should have blown the props budget on something like this from Star Trek…

Now, here’s an immediate chance for the TOTP producers to redeem themselves props wise as The Brand New Heavies perform “Midnight At The Oasis”. So the clue is in the song title guys. What image comes to mind when you think of an oasis (that’s an oasis not Oasis as in the Gallagher brothers whose band were hardly household names at this point anyway)? Palm trees? A natural water source like a spring or well? That’s the classic take on it when people see mirages in the desert no? Easy. So we do have some palm trees or at least some vegetation (whether it’s fake or not) which is an upgrade on the cardboard version that Red Dragon got. There’s no water to be seen though but I guess Health & Safety would have put a stop to any of that with all those electrics about. However, what is not understandable is the pyramid towering large at the stage at the back. Why is that there? The pyramids have nothing to do with an oasis do they? That’s just really lazy.

As for the song, I would suggest that this is the band’s most well known (though not biggest) hit what with it being a cover of a song that had already been a hit in the UK. The original was by Maria Muldaur and peaked at No 21 in the UK in 1974. The Brand New Heavies’ version is a pretty faithful to its predecessor and was perfect daytime radio playlist fodder for that long, hot summer of 1994.

If it’s Simon Mayo in the presenter seat then we are bound to get an awful attempt at comedy from him at some point and it comes in his intro for Future Sound Of London – “which is almost certainly coughing, gasping and wheezing” he quips – what a card! Anyway, I remember there being a certain amount of fuss about these electronic dance pioneers and I definitely remember the rather striking artwork on the cover of their “Lifeforms” album though I couldn’t have told you what it sounded like at all. Listening back to the title track that was released as a single, there’s an awful lot going on in there; some trip-hop beats, some ambient stylings and an otherworldly vocal from Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. All a bit too overwhelming for my pop ear* though with the whole thing not helped by the visually overstimulating computer graphics video that seemed to be all the rage in this year (didn’t we see a similar type of thing from Pet Shop Boys for their “Liberation” single recently?). “Lifeforms” (the single) peaked at No 14 whilst its album counterpart made it to No 6.

*Sounds like Popeye’s long, lost cousin

Now I did attempt some humour in a recent post about the name of the next act but that doesn’t excuse Simon Mayo from doing the same here with his reference to Head & Shoulders. Away with you! Shampoo (for it is they) are on the show again to promote their single “Trouble” and I’m drawn to the fact that for the second time, their performance hardly involves any movement by the duo at all. They just sort of stand there, slightly crouched leaning into other for the duration. Were they not confident dancers or can’t you actually dance to their track? Judging by the efforts of the studio audience, it might be the latter.

The last time they were on, I talked about how they somehow carved out a little footnote for themselves in pop history despite only having a smattering of hit singles (of which this was the biggest). What I didn’t mention was that they invented ‘Girl Power’ before the Spice Girls took all the credit for it. Well, invented is probably a stretch but their final hit was called “Girl Power” and it charted one week before Sporty, Baby, Scary, Posh and Ginger’s debut “Wannabe”. To be fair though, although Geri Halliwell admitted in a 2016 interview that she pinched the phrase from Shampoo, Jacqui and Carrie themselves probably weren’t the original originators as Martin Fry once sang. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:

"Girl Power" was previously the title of a 1991 zine by US riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, which is presumably where Shampoo saw the phrase. Mel C: "It was very much in existence already. It was then Geri who shouted it during an early television interview and it stuck." #TOTP pic.twitter.com/MGeGawG3pU
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 21, 2023

“Trouble” was covered by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine as the B-side to their 1995 single “The Young Offender’s Mum”.

Of the many sub genres of dance music that did the rounds in the 90s, surely one of the nastiest was Eurodance covers of rock and pop songs. We’d already had the likes of East Side Beat desecrating Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like The Wind” and Rage do a similar hatchet job on “Run To You” by Bryan Adams but by 1994 the timeline between the original track and the naff dance treatment was shortening. In the case of DJ Miko, the time elapsed was just one year from 4 Non Blondes taking “What’s Up” to No 2 and them releasing their vile version. What a truly awful record this was. A tacky, happy hardcore backing applied to an unconvincing rock vocal and…well, that was it really. DJ Miko wasn’t really a DJ nor in fact an actual person but an umbrella term for an Italian dance collective fronted by keyboardist Monier Quartararo Gagliardo featuring a number of studio vocalists with the whole thing going managed by Milan based record company Dig It International. The latter had quite an appropriate name as the whole sorry enterprise should have been buried at the conception stage with a clear instruction for the soil never to be disturbed.

https://youtu.be/2SyKio7ksuU

Right, what’s Mayo on about now? Woodstock 2? When did that happen? Well, turns out he was right as this follow up festival to its legendary predecessor took place in Saugerties, New York (70 miles from the site of the 1969 original) on the weekend following this TOTP. I suppose he had to get that right as he was plugging Radio 1’s coverage of it. Anyway, billed as 2 More Days of Peace and Music, it was, by all accounts, poorly managed with the size of the crowd (estimates had it at 350,000) meaning security rules and policies surrounding alcohol etc were unenforceable. Tragically, three people died whilst attending the festival. As it was a three day event, the number of artists appearing was colossal including Metallica, Aerosmith, Green Day, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel…I could go on but won’t. Look it all up for yourself on Wikipedia like I had to.

For a festival promoted as being about peace, there were certainly a lot of incidents that didn’t fit the vibe. The lead singer of Jackyl, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, took a chainsaw to a stool and fired a rifle in the air. Meanwhile, the large volume of rainfall created a huge mud bath on the site that resulted in the break out of mud fights between both Green Day and Primus and their audiences. Nine Inch Nails admitted to playing the festival purely for the appearance fee to offset the cost of their current tour – so much for peace and music then. A number of artists that had performed at the original Woodstock reappeared for the 1994 version including The Band, Santana, Crosby, Stills & Nash and the next artist on this TOTP – Joe Cocker.

Now my knowledge of Joe is limited to say the least. I know he was from Sheffield, that he had a very gravelly voice, that he had a No 1 with a cover of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends” that was used as the theme tune to The Wonder Years, that he duetted with Jennifer Warnes on that song from An Officer And A Gentleman and…well, that he’s dead I suppose. I certainly don’t know about this song – “The Simple Things” – without looking it up online. It was taken from an album called “Have A Little Faith” and would reach No 17 but it seems very lacklustre to me and entirely forgettable. Sadly, Joe would die of lung cancer in 2014 having smoked 40 cigarettes a day until he quit in 1991.

The early to mid 90s saw a host of female soul singers* come to the fore. Juliet Roberts, Shara Nelson, Dina Carroll, N’Dea Davenport who we saw with The Brand New Heavies earlier…add to that list Carleen Anderson who, having found initial success with Young Disciples, carved out a solo career for herself. “True Spirit” was not only the title track from her album but the third hit single on the spin for her in 1994. It doesn’t do a lot for me though. Clearly she has a great voice but the track itself seems so sluggish and a bit to caught up in trying to display its soul credentials. I think that for each of those singles, Carleen has appeared on TOTP and every time, the show’s caption person has noted that she is the goddaughter of James Brown. Give it a rest! Despite what I said about all those female soul singers, anybody would think it’s a man’s man’s man’s world.

* Is that Caron Wheeler of Soul II Soul fame up there with Carleen on stage doing backing vocals? Yet another soul singer that came to prominence in the 90s!

No! It can’t be! Not again! Is this the fourth time Let Loose have been on the show performing “Crazy For You”?! What more am I supposed to say about this lot and their song? Look, here’s some stats for you OK? 16 weeks on the Top 40, 9 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and the 8th best selling single of the year. Enough? No? Well, despite all that success, they never really consolidated on it to become the next big teen group did they? Sure, six hit singles followed it including two further Top Tenners but could you name any of them? Well, I looked them up and I do recall the follow up “Seventeen” but of the rest of them, the only title I recognise is a cover of Bread’s “Make It With You”, a blatant attempt at career-reviving if ever I saw one. Still, to be remembered for one massive hit song is no mean achievement. How many of us out there can boast the same?

Well, if I was struggling for words for Let Loose, what more is there to be said about Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around” after an 11th week at the top of the charts? Well, I’m not going to say anything but instead refer back to Simon Mayo’s intro for it in which he says that when it first went to No 1 “Jürgen Klinsmann was just a cheating German”. I knew it! I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist making a comment about how the striker had signed for his beloved Spurs! I said so in the last post when I made mention that he’d signed for them on the day that TOTP aired and that it was a good job it was Mark Goodier as that week’s host and not Mayo as the latter would definitely have gone on about it and here he is a week later doing just that. Not just smug but predictable as well then.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Red Dragon featuring Brian and Tony Gold	Compliments On Your Kiss	No
2	The Brand New Heavies	Midnight At The Oasis	No. but my wife had the album
3	Future Sound Of London	Lifeforms	Not for me thanks
4	Shampoo	Trouble	Nope
5	DJ Miko	What’s Up	Hell no!
6	Joe Cocker	The Simple Things	Nah
7	Carleen Anderson	True Spirit	Negative
8	Let Loose	Crazy For You	No but my wife did
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	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/m001ldp8/top-of-the-pops-10081994

TOTP 09 JUN 1994

Posted on April 9, 2023 by 80stastic

OK, so this ‘golden mic’ feature of TOTP producer Ric Blaxill’s that saw celebrities, pop stars and comedians brought in to host the show has stepped up a gear in recent weeks. After the rather obvious choice of Take That’s Mark Owen and Robbie Williams and the ‘it just about worked’ decision to give the over the top Meatloaf a go, Blaxill had gone in the opposite direction by inviting the sardonic wit of Jack Dee into the studio recently. Of the three guest turns, it was Dee’s deadpan delivery that worked best for me. Maybe it did for Blaxill as well as he’s opted for not one but two comedians this week. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were fast becoming household names by 1994. Having broken through with Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990/91, the duo had made the move to BBC2 with their latest show The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer. The first series had aired in the Autumn of 1993 and brought us some brilliant new characters like Uncle Peter (“Donkey!”), The Bra Men – Pat Wright & Dave Arrowsmith (“Are you sayin’ I’ve got nowt”) and the wonderful Slade parody Slade In Residence. Vic had himself become a pop star of course in 1991 with the hits “Born Free” and “Dizzy” (a No 1 record no less) so maybe with feet in both camps, Vic & Bob were a logical choice to host TOTP?

Anyway, if Blaxill was hoping for some zany comedy to add some zoom to the show, what he got was a whole lot of controversy courtesy of opening act Manic Street Preachers. After becoming somewhat disillusioned with the direction that they had taken with the radio friendly, melodic rock of sophomore album “Gold Against The Soul”, the Manics decided a back to basics return to their origins was required. Where they ended up though was a very dark place indeed. With 75% of their third album “The Holy Bible” being written by Richey Edwards whose mental state was fragile to say the least, the songs were bleak. Where previously we’d had “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “Little Baby Nothing” from first album “Generation Terrorists”, now there was “Archives Of Pain” and “The Intense Humming Of Evil”. And yet the songs were valid. This was no death metal nonsense. The tracks spoke of the extremes of the human condition detailing suicide, anorexia, serial killers and the holocaust.

When ABC released “Beauty Stab” in 1983 as the follow up to the iconic “Lexicon Of Love”, it was seen as a the ultimate example of killing your career. Eleven years later it seemed like a case of the Manics saying “hold our beers” but although the sales of “The Holy Bible” were initially disappointing, its legacy has far overtaken its chart achievements. Routinely voted as one of the best albums of the 90s if not of all time, it is also the album held most dearest by the band’s fanbase.

The lead single from it was “Faster” which certainly sounds rawer than any of the singles from “Gold Against The Soul” but it was the choice of James Dean Bradfield to where a balaclava on this TOTP appearance that caught the headlines. The IRA connotations led many a viewer to believe the band were IRA sympathisers which the band, of course, vehemently denied. The BBC received 17,500 complaints and the band’s record company Sony were concerned that they would not be allowed on the show again. They were eventually invited back but not for another two years when they were a trio following the disappearance of Richey Edwards on 1st February 1995. My own opinion of balaclava -gate? I believe their defence detailed by @TOTPFacts below but for such a politically switched on band, it seemed a bit naive to not have foreseen such a reaction.

"Because we were all dressed in army regalia, it felt like we were parodying the use of legitimate power, like the special forces. It didn't enter our heads that people would see it as an Irish paramilitary symbol." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) March 31, 2023

As for “Faster”, I couldn’t engage with this era of the band. Maybe I was just that bit too old at 26 but I know people who swear by “The Holy Bible” album. Maybe I should explore it further.

As the camera switches back from the Manics to Vic and Bob, we get an unintentional piece of comedy gold when the former asks an unsuspecting member of the studio audience if she had liked the last performance. Having not been listening but suddenly confronted with a microphone in her face, she answered in the only way she could and with a belief that this was what was required of her, she whooped. Marvellous stuff.

The next act is a kind of diva supergroup. Kind of. I suppose a collaboration between disco/Hi-NRG heavyweights Kym Mazelle and Jocelyn Brown was as inevitable as it was obvious but the fact that it was the idea of Simon Cowell kind of discredits it slightly. Why were they doing a cover of the disco classic “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)” made famous by Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer? The aforementioned Cowell alongside producers Matt Aitken and Mike Stock (working together for the first time since the split of SAW) had heard the version made by Erasure’s Andy Bell and k.d. lang for the Coneheads movie and thought they could do it better. And better in their eyes meant Kym and Jocelyn.

It made sense though. Jocelyn was the voice behind 80s club classic “Somebody Else’s Guy” and in the 90s had supplied vocals on Top 10 hits for Incognito and Right Said Fred. Meanwhile, Kym had duetted with Dr. Robert of The Blow Monkeys on Top 10 dance hit “Wait” in 1989. More recently, she’d been in the Top 30 in 1993 with Rapination on “Love Me The Right Way”. Put them together on a legendary disco track and you’ve got a sure fire, gigantic hit on your hands yes? Well, sort of. Despite entering the charts at No 15 and the exposure of this TOTP appearance, the single topped out just two places higher. The only country where it was a bigger hit than that was The Netherlands. By comparison, the Streisand/Summer original was an American No 1 and UK No 3. Why wasn’t it a bigger success second time around? Did the kids not know the original? Was it seen as too retro compared to the contemporary sounds of, say, Eurodance? Who knows but let’s just hope it pissed off Simon Cowell.

It’s that bloody “Absolutely Fabulous” song again! I think this is the third time it’s been on the show. There was no Comic Relief live event in 1994 so maybe the single was being given an extra push by the BBC? The song is of course the work of the Pet Shop Boys and seeing as I have nothing else left to say about what must be their worst ever single, how about I squeeze in a link between it and the aforementioned Barbara Streisand? Neil Tennant is on record as saying that after he and Chris Lowe had shot the video with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, they all went for a meal at a restaurant in Holland Park and got pissed. Right at the end of the evening, into the restaurant walked John Cleese, Joan Collins and Christopher Biggins who had all been to see Barbara Streisand who had been playing at Wembley Arena. Naturally, Tennant had already been to see her the previous week. So that’s Cleese, Collins, Biggins, Saunders, Lumley and the Pet Shop Boys all in the same place at the same time. It sounds like the best Blankety Blank line up ever! Absolutely fabulous darling!

Meanwhile, back in the studio, Vic and Bob are weaving their particular brand of comedy magic via the gift of scotch eggs. “Would anyone like a scotch egg?” they ask the studio audience on the gantry to which one game girl, with an unshakable desire to get herself noticed, shouts in Vic’s face, “I’ll have a scotch egg! Hiya Mum!”. Excellent work!

After that classic example of letting your parent know that you’re on TOTP, we get Blur who are in a much more sombre mood with the second single from their “Parklife” album. I’m guessing that the images and sounds that come to most of our minds when we think of the “Parklfe” era of the band, it’s Damon and Phil Daniels lord marching it up on the title track or the hypnotic, non sequitur chorus of “Girls & Boys”. However, there are also some majestically understated songs on the album too. “End Of A Century” falls into that category for me and then there’s “To The End”. The obvious choice of second single would surely have been the title track but then Blur weren’t always obvious and had depths to them that it could be argued their Battle of Britpop opponents Oasis didn’t. “To The End” was such a change of mood from “Girls & Boys”. A dramatic ballad with a full orchestral accompaniment, did it wrong foot record buyers after the faux hedonism of its predecessor? Certainly, it was nowhere near as big a hit peaking at No 16.

A year or so later, the band would release an even grander ballad in “The Universal” from their “The Great Escape” album. It put me in mind of Madness from a decade earlier when The Nutty Boys broke from their hits formula to release two wistful, pensive pieces in “One Better Day” and “Yesterday’s Men” in 1984 and 1985 respectively.

The performance here is suitably melancholy. The black and white camera tint, the formal suits the band are wearing and the deliberate lack of movement on stage (Alex James seems almost Ron Mael-esque). Damon just about pulls off the vocals but who was the woman sat on stage with them? Apparently, Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab adds some vocals on the recording but I’m not convinced that’s her next to Damon. Whoever she was, as Vic Reeves noted afterwards, she didn’t do much did she?

Acid jazz was in the air (waves) back in 1994. After Galliano appeared on the show the other week, here were label mates The Brand New Heavies with their sixth consecutive Top 40 hit “Back To Love”. I was never that much of an Acid Jazzer though my wife was quite keen and I think she bought the album that this track came from (“Brother Sister”). However, I quite liked the breezy Summer feel of this one – a real daytime radio winner. The band doubled down on that vibe with their next release, a cover version of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which I would suggest would become their best known hit. Meanwhile, “Back To Love” would peak at No 23.

Here’s a rather nice thing. A 50s doo-wop song given the hard rock treatment. The first era of Guns N’ Roses was coming to an end and it did so with a rather unexpected finish. The band’s decision to record an album of cover versions in 1993’s “Spaghetti Incident” seemed a bit odd to me but I guess it was to plug the gap between albums of new material. Nobody could have known that gap would be 17 years long. It sold well enough but in nowhere near the numbers of the “Use Your Illusion” albums and “Appetite For Destruction”. A collection of mainly punk and hard rock songs by the likes of New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Damned and Nazareth, it also included “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners.

https://youtu.be/x2rdbTd4OXk

Easily for me the stand out track on the album, it really shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Axl Rose’s angular, throat throttling vocals should decimate the song but actually it’s safe in his hands…erm…mouth (?). Being the hard rockers they are though, the band can’t resist adding their own imprint on the track so in the middle we get the line “Yep, we’re f****d”. I’m guessing that didn’t feature on any radio edit of the song.

Now I would have bet money that this had been released around Christmas in 1993 but clearly not. However, it had been planned to put it out then and subsequently in February but was pulled both times so that might explain my confusion. “Since I Don’t Have You” peaked at No 10. The band’s next single – another cover, this time of “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones for the film Interview With The Vampire – would be their last for 14 years.

Another one of those dance records next that hung around the Top 40 for weeks on end like one of those floater turds that won’t flush away without the need to resort to a literal shitty stick to break it up. Apologies for the excrement metaphor but I really have had enough of having to find something to say about these ‘club anthems’ that lingered like a nasty fart (see also Reel 2 Real’s “I Like To Move It”). “Get-A-Way” by Maxx was one such record. It stayed on the Top 40 for 10 weeks of which 5 of them were inside the Top 10 peaking at No 4 for 2 weeks.

The last time this lot were on the show they performed against the backdrop of a police car for no discernible reason and this time their dancers are jigging away behind some wire mesh fences. Why? Were they meant to have been caught by the fuzz and now be in some sort of detention centre? Just ridiculous.

A classic one hit wonder (huge hit then nada) next as Dawn Penn takes to the stage with her song “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”. Back in 1994, my reaction would have been the same as Vic Reeves – who? As it happens, Dawn was part of the ‘rocksteady’ movement of the late 60s that was a successor to ska and a precursor to reggae (Wikipedia tells me) and she’d originally recorded the track (then just titled “You Don’t Love Me”) in 1967. Dawn then took a Guns N’ Roses style 17 years off from singing before returning to the track and doing a dancehall version of it. Thanks to her appearance at an anniversary show for her original label Studio One Records, the song was released as a single and with plenty of radio support became a huge hit in the UK peaking at No 3.

The UK had always been susceptible to one hit wonders from out of the leftfield like this one. I’m thinking Althea and Donna, Phyllis Nelson, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley etc and just like those acts, Dawn seemed an unlikely pop star. She was already 42 when she appeared on TOTP which I guess is fairly old to be having your first hit. “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” entered the charts at No 9 and spent the next four weeks inside the Top 10. Despite Dawn’s protestations, the UK did love her.

It’s the second of fifteen (gulp!) weeks at the top for Wet Wet Wet and “Love Is All Around”. They’re in the studio pretending to be hippies again but this time scenes from Four Weddings And A Funeral have been interspersed into the performance. I’m guessing the production company or distributors pushed for that though the film didn’t need any more promotion as it was top of the box office charts for weeks. I have to say I do like the film – it’s one of those that I always tend to end up watching if I stumble across it whilst channel flipping. Its appeal may have waned over the years but I still think the acting performances are good (apart from a rather wooden Andie Mac Dowell) and the pacing works really well. I wonder if some of the negativity that it attracts now is related to the Wets single putting people off by being No 1 for so long? I’m bound to refer to the film agin over the next 13 weeks but I think I’ll leave it there for now.

The play out tune is back after being omitted last week and it’s yet another dance tune, this time “Harmonica Man” by Bravado. I can’t tell you much about this as I don’t remember it and I can’t be arsed to research it online but it seems to have been inspired by The Grid’s “Swamp Thing” with its banjo theme but they’ve used an harmonica instead. Apparently it spent one week inside the Top 40 peaking at No 37.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Manic Street Preachers	Faster	I did not
2	Jocelyn Brown and Kym Mazelle	No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)	No
3	Pet Shop Boys	Absolutely Fabulous	Not even for charity
4	Blur	To The End	No but I had the Parklife album. Didn’t we all?
5	Brand New Heavies	Back To Love	No but my wife had the album
6	Guns N’ Roses	Since I Don’t Have You	No but I have it on their Greatest Hits album
7	Maxx	Get-A-Way	Hell no
8	Dawn Penn	You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)	No, no and indeed no
9	Wet Wet Wet	Love Is All Around	Nope
10	Bravado	Harmonica Man	Nah

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/m001kkld/top-of-the-pops-09061994

TOTP 24 MAR 1994

Posted on February 28, 2023 by 80stastic

This is the eighth show since new producer Ric Blaxill took over the TOTP reins and by my reckoning the breakdown of presenter appearances after bringing back the Radio 1 DJs is as follows:

Simon Mayo – 4
Mark Goodier – 2
Bruno Brookes – 1
Robbie Williams and Mark Owen from Take That (guest presenters) – 1

What was this blatant favouritism for Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo?! I’ve stated my dislike for him many times on this blog but he seems to be even more self satisfied (if that were possible) since returning to the show after the three year hiatus imposed by the Stanley Appel era. It’s as if he’s subliminally saying to the watching TV audience “See, told you the show would suffer if I wasn’t on it”. Tonight, he’s full of football related comments during his segues (Mayo is a Spurs supporter) to show…what exactly? That he was an original ‘lad’ before ‘lad culture’ when into hyperdrive in the mid 90s? Nob.

Before the opening titles of tonight’s show we get a message to camera from Salt ‘N’ Pepa advertising their upcoming appearance later on live by satellite from New York and then we’re straight into it. Opening the show are D:Ream with “U R The Best Thing” although Mayo seems to have confused them with “Groove Is In The Heart” hitmakers Deee-Lite judging by his intro. “OK. Deee-liteful, deee-lovely… err…D: Ream” he quips in his intro. Yes, I know he hasn’t really confused the two acts and that he’s trying out what he believes to be a humorous line but it just isn’t funny. At all. Or is he yet again trying to demonstrate his huge knowledge of pop music. Ooh look at me! I know about a record that was in the charts four years ago! I say again…nob.

It is D:Ream though who surely couldn’t believe their luck given the chart run they were on. Having managed to carve out a couple of medium sized hits the previous year with this track and “Things Can Only Get Better”, they must have thought that those needed to be consolidated on with some new hit material. The usual pop career strategy wasn’t for them though as they embarked upon an even more successful commercial run using the same songs. Talk about recycling; D:Ream were pop’s great environmentalists! In their defence, this was a Perfecto remix of the original track just as “Things Can Only Get Better” was remixed for re-release and they did then put out some different tracks from their album as their next two singles. Their had been speculation that they would move onto “Unforgiven” and “Star/ I Like It” which had also been Top 30 hits in 1993. There is no defence of Peter Cunnah’s chequed suits though. This version of “U R The Best Thing” peaked at No 4.

https://youtu.be/fCjZEAXyTU4

What’s this then? A track by Soul Asylum that isn’t “Runaway Train”? Yes it is and it’s title affords Simon Mayo the opportunity to air his first side-splitting football reference of the night. “And now it’s Soul Asylum playing Eric Cantona’s favourite record “Somebody To Shove” he tells us, so obviously pleased with himself. His comment needs putting in context 29 years on to make sense of it. Cantona had been sent off twice in four days for violent conduct in the week that this TOTP aired. Ok, we get it Mayo but it’s still not a genuinely entertaining line is it?

Anyway, enough of my disdain for the host, what about the music? It seems that Soul Asylum were doing a D:Ream in that they were in a cycle of re-releasing singles one after the other. Their most well known song “Runaway Train” was originally released in June of 1993 and came to a premature halt at No 37. “Somebody To Shove” was pushed out as the follow up in the September and peaked at No 34. Then “Runaway Train” was given the green light again and this time ran as far as No 7 over the Christmas period. And finally “Somebody To Shove” was put into motion as its follow up for a second time in March 1993. I think I need some asylum for my poor brain let alone my soul. Was it all with it? Well, “Somebody To Shove” peaked two places higher on the UK charts second time around at No 32 and it’s a decent rock tune in the vein of recent chart stars Gin Blossoms but it didn’t have the cut through pull of “Runaway Train” in the same way that casual punters never went for any of Extreme’s material other than “More Than Words”. As for Eric Cantona, there was much worse to come the following year in the shoving stakes.

It’s another outing for that live by satellite performance from New York of “Dry County” by Bon Jovi next which acts as the soundtrack to the chart countdown. I haven’t got much else to say about this one having already discussed it previously so I’ll instead talk about their single previous to this one. Why? Well, it was called “I Believe” which was also the title of two different hit singles in the chart around this time by Marcella Detroit and Sounds Of Blackness. It got me thinking about how many other songs there are called “I Believe”. Well, there’s EMF’s follow up to “Unbelievable”, Tears For Fears’ fifth single from their “Songs From The Big Chair” album and the song that both Frankie Laine and the execrable Robson & Jerome took to No 1. My personal favourite though, if we ignore the brackets, is Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)”. As Alan Partridge might say ‘lovely stuff’.

I’m guessing that if asked to come up with a list of boy bands from the 90s, Worlds Apart wouldn’t be one of the first names on it. Take That? Obviously. Boyzone? Of course. Westlife? Indubitably. East 17? Were they a boy band? Go on then. After that you might have to delve a bit deeper to come up with names like 5ive, 911, A1 and Another Level. Then there’s the American counterparts that made huge impacts both sides of the Atlantic. New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, even Hanson maybe? Worlds Apart though? Well if you were asking the question in the rest of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong etc then they might well be the first and immediate response. They were massive in those territories, immersing themselves in people’s consciousness to the extent that they had their own brand of orange juice and Haribo sweets in the shape of their heads! The reaction to them in the UK was lukewarm at best though. Their albums absolutely tanked over here and they only troubled the Top 40 singles chart compilers on four occasions with their best return being this No 15 hit, a cover of The Detroit Spinners’ “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”.

Looking at them here, they have all the classic boy band ingredients:

There’s five of them
At least two of them have the 90s curtains haircut
One of them looks like John Barrowman
They’re all wearing oversized, unbuttoned shirts over T-shirts and one of them has the obligatory waistcoat on
Their doing a cover version

It’s all very predictable but also validates their boy band credentials so why weren’t they bigger over here. Perhaps we should just not worry about it and thank our lucky stars they weren’t. Where were David Grant and Jaki Graham when you needed them though?

Back with Simon Mayo and he’s in the groove now with his football-related segues. After having referenced French striker Jean-Pierre Papin in his intro to Worlds Apart – his beloved Spurs were reportedly interested in signing him from AC Milan but it never came to anything (could it be were falling in love with Jean -Pierre Papin? Geddit?) – he’s now resorted to taking the piss out of other teams. In his sights tonight were Swindon Town who were struggling at the bottom of the Premier League at the time. “OK, 9 – 10 – 12 – 12 – 10 – 9 – 7. No, not Swindon’s goal against tally, it’s the last eight chart positions for Reel 2 Real.” Right, I’ve fact-checked this statement and whilst the chart positions are correct, Simon appears to not be able to count as there the last seven chart positions not eight you arse! So far tonight we have established they Mayo is not funny, a football bully and his grasp of even the most basic of numbers is appalling. What a guy!

Anyway, about Reel 2 Real featuring Mad Stuntman (to quote their full artist title), that is quite the rollercoaster of a chart journey. Their single “I Like To Move It” certainly had legs. It would ultimately spend 11 weeks inside the Top 10 and 15 inside the Top 20. In total it spent 5 months on the Top 100. Given all of the above, why had TOTP ignored it until now? After all, it was one one hell of an ear worm although it wasn’t especially welcome in my auditory system. Wasn’t this just a 2 Unlimited / K7 hybrid? And why didn’t they call it “I Like To Move It (Move It)”?

Impressive as its 1994 chart life was, that was nothing to the legacy it has amassed since. It has been heavily used in the Madagascar film franchise and has also made its way into the gaming world via Singstar Dance and Fortnite. I’m pretty sure it was also the inspiration for this Top 5 hit later in the year…

Now, after a run of over nine years, we have to say goodbye to the Breakers section which was jettisoned by new producer Ric Blaxill after this show. It first appeared on TOTP in January 1985 and whilst I understand the concept behind it, the slot had become unwieldy and unworkable with often as many as five tracks crammed into a 2 minute time frame. Anyway, for what it’s worth, these were the last of them starting with The Brand New Heavies. Having garnered critical acclaim with their first two albums – the eponymous debut and “Heavy Rhyme Experience, Vol 1.”, the band would discover the secret to combining that with commercial popularity with the release of third album “Brother Sister”. A platinum selling, No 4 charting collection of songs, its appeal was no doubt helped by the inclusion of the band’s cover of Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight At The Oasis” which weirdly was omitted from the US version of the album. I’m getting ahead of myself though. The lead single was “Dream On Dreamer”. A radio friendly, acid jazz infused soul/pop track, it would peak at No 15 becoming their biggest hit at the time.

Here come Roxette next with the video for their single “Sleeping In My Car”. The promo is set in what seems to be an underground car park and reminds me of the video for Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur” the final scenes of which are set in a similar location. The Duran video is filmed in black and white (as are parts of Roxette’s) and was inspired by Liliana Cavani’s erotic and disturbing cult film The Night Porter. Whilst “The Chauffeur” is all very stylised and has high artistic pretensions, the “Sleeping In My Car” promo seems a lot less aesthetic and if it was influenced by a film, it was probably Rita, Sue And Bob Too.

The final (ever) Breaker is one of those aforementioned “I Believe” songs from Sounds Of Blackness. The track was written and produced by the legendary Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (who produced the rest of parent album “Africa To America: The Journey Of The Drum”). Apparently they were convinced to work with the 40 strong collective after taking their long time collaborator Janet Jackson to one of their shows and witnessed her enthusiastic response to them.

“I Believe” peaked at a very impressive No 17 and they followed it up with “Gloryland”, the official theme song of World Cup USA 94 which they recorded with Daryl Hall.

Time for that Salt ‘N’ Pepa live by satellite exclusive now. Simon Mayo is back with his spectacularly unfunny one liners, blathering on about Finsbury Park tube station but it doesn’t distract from the performance. It should be stated, of course, that “Whatta Man” was a collaboration with En Vogue. Up to this point, both artists had a chequered history when it came to UK hit singles. For En Vogue that meant a huge debut song in 1990 (“Hold On” – No 5) followed by three releases that all failed to chart. Then another massive song in 1992 (“My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It) – No 4) then a run of three middling hits and two chart flops before “Whatta Man”. As for Salt ‘N’ Pepa, it was a similar story with huge hits (“Push It”, “Twist And Shout”, “Let’s Talk About Sex”) punctuated by smaller ones (“Shake Your Thang”, “Shoop”, “You Showed Me”). It was probably mutually beneficial to both parties to join forces to seek out a huge record.

And whatta hit! A No 7 in the UK and No 3 in America, it sold 200,000 copies in the former and 1,000,000 in the latter. It’s not hard to hear why. The combination of En Vogue’s silky vocals with Salt ‘N’ Pepa’s sublime, chiming rhymes made for a killer track. The performance here is full of sass and swagger and a large cast but I’m not sure that En Vogue are any of them. That’s not them on vocals at the back of the set is it? So what happened next? For Salt ‘N’ Pepa, “Whatta Man” would prove to be the final time they made the UK Top 10 though they did return to the charts on four further occasions though none of those entries got any higher than No 19. En Vogue faired better. Their 1997 album “EV3” went platinum in the States and furnished them with one last huge hit in “Don’t Let Go (Love)” which went to No 5 in the UK and No 2 in the US.

The Take That juggernaut continues to play fast and loose with chart records. “Everything Changes” was the title track of their second album but it was also their fourth consecutive single to enter the charts at No 1 which it will do the week after next. Their first chart topper to feature Robbie Williams on lead vocals (he took on that role for the band’s cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” but that peaked at No 3), it was also specifically written for him by Gary Barlow as a deliberate ploy. I have to say that I always found it quite weak and insubstantial but then again, if it had appeared on the second (much poppier) Wham! album “Make It Big”, would we have been talking about yet another George Michael classic?

The Top 10 countdown gives Simon Mayo another opportunity to showcase his amazing talent for delivering lines that only he thinks are funny. “Now the Dutch have a great tradition when it comes to the UK No 1. There’s Pussycat and “Mississippi”…and erm…well “Doop” by Doop that’s it as far as I can think…” he deadpans to camera. Once more, as well as being humourless he is factually incorrect. He’s missed out 2 Unlimited* and “No Limit” which was a UK chart topper just 12 months before! Surely he can’t have forgotten that or did he purposely omit them to try and make his ‘joke’ work? My God, I think I’d rather listen to this Charleston nonsense one more time than year any more from Mayo!

*There have been numerous Dutch DJ types post 1994 to ascend to the No 1 spot plus who could forget Vengaboys in 1999?!

The play out song is “Hi De Ho” by K7. The follow up to “Come Baby Come”, this was an example of something called the swing revival. Or was it retro swing? Or even neo-swing? Whatever its name, it was a movement that displayed a renewed interest in the swing genre of jazz. Yeah, must have passed me by as well. I mean, I remember there was a minor hit single in 1988 by the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra that was a cover of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie The Moocher” but that surely doesn’t count as a whole movement? Yes, there was also the Doop phenomenon but did that count as swing music? A quick bit of research tells me that there was more to it than that but it mostly happened in America and was instigated by Los Angeles’ Royal Crown Revue band. These jump blues revivalists appeared in the Jim Carrey film The Mask whose soundtrack heavily featured swing music and indeed K7’s “Hi De Ho” track. The video for the song features a cameo from the aforementioned Cab Calloway himself and of course, he originally recorded “Hi De Ho Man’ upon which the K7 single is based. I’m pretty sure that I owned a copy of The Mask soundtrack (and therefore the K7 track) by default as there was a promo copy of it floating around the Our Price where I was working at the time so I took it home. Don’t think I ever played it and have no idea where it is now.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	D:Ream	U R The Best Thing	Nah
2	Soul Asylum	Somebody To Shove	No
3	Bon Jovi	Dry County	No but I had a promo copy of the album
4	Worlds Apart	Could It Be I’m Falling In Love	As if
5	Reel 2 Real featuring Mad Stuntman	I Like To Move It	Negative
6	The Brand New Heavies	Dream On Dreamer	No but I think my wife had the album
7	Roxette	Sleeping In My Car	It’s another no
8	Sounds Of Blackness	I Believe	I did not
9	Salt ‘N’ Pepa and En Vogue	Whatta Man	Liked it, didn’t buy it
10	Take That	Everything Changes	Of course not
11	Doop	Doop	Nope
12	K7	Hi De Ho	No but I had it on that promo copy of The Mask soundtrack

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/m001j65b/top-of-the-pops-24031994

TOTP 20 FEB 1992

Posted on January 26, 2022 by 80stastic

One of the more pleasing by products of reviewing all of these TOTP repeats is that I get to reminisce about what I was doing back then. OK most of it is pretty dull and of no significance nor entertainment to anyone but myself but there are some that can be a shared experience. TV shows that I was watching at the time for example. Four days prior to the broadcast of this particular TOTP, a new US TV series premiered (that’s what we say now isn’t it? I’d have said started back in 1992) that was a brilliantly quirky comedy drama that pulled myself and my wife in hook, line and sinker. Anyone else remember Northern Exposure on Channel 4?

It was a fish out of water tale of newly qualified NY doctor Joel Fleischman being assigned as GP to the tiny town of Cicely to repay the state of Alaska for underwriting his medical education. There he struggles to adapt to his new surroundings as he encounters some marvellously eccentric characters like his receptionist Marilyn Whirlwind, aspiring movie director Ed Chigliak and millionaire business man Maurice Minnifield. It seemed ground breaking at the time and yet you hardly hear it mentioned these days and I have not seen it repeated since its original run from 1992 to 1995.

It also had an interesting soundtrack which I bought my wife for her birthday including tracks by Etta James, Booker T And The MGs and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Well that’s enough TV nostalgia. Back to the music and proving that grunge wasn’t the only musical movement going on in the 90s, here are one of the major players in the acid jazz genre. Now I thought that The Brand New Heavies were indeed ‘brand new’ bursting into the charts with their “Dream Come True” single. However, it turned out that they’d actually been in existence since the mid 80s and released the track “Got To Give” on the Cooltempo label. As the clock clicked over into the new decade, they signed to the Acid Jazz label and released “Dream Come True” but not the version we saw on this TOTP. No, the original release featured a completely different singer called Jaye Ella-Ruth. It failed to chart and Jaye was destined to become the Pete Best of the acid jazz scene, being replaced by N’dea Davenport. A re-recorded version of the track featuring N’dea was put back out and bingo! A No 24 chart hit and a slot on TOTP. This would be the first of twenty-five Top 40 hits and two Top 5 albums during the 90s.

I wasn’t a convert to acid jazz I have to say though my wife was quite into it buying two consecutive Brand New Heavies album releases. What exactly was acid jazz though? According to Wikipedia it combined funk, soul, hip hop, jazz and disco and was characterised by danceable grooves and long, repetitive compositions. What?! What sort of description is that?! Maybe a list of its exponents might help. Well, there were BNH label mates Corduroy, Mother Earth and James Taylor Quartet whilst over on Talkin’ Loud the roster of acts included Galliano, Incognito and Young Disciples. Does that make things clearer? I’m not sure. It must have been a broad church because acts like Jamiroquai, Stereo MCS and Us3 are also mentioned under the same umbrella. I think I’ll just use Brand New Heavies as my default definition of acid jazz. Seems easier.

https://youtu.be/lrdqkifAVPM

The ‘year zero’ revamp had gone against the show’s history and ditched a Top 40 rundown in favour of a brief run through of just the Top 10 but there’s a change to that this week in the form of scrolling graphics across the bottom of the screen detailing that week’s new chart entries. What was the point of that? Was it some lip service response to negative viewer feedback? Never mind not hearing the tracks, we don’t don’t even get the title of the hit, just the name of the artist and a chart number. Utterly pointless. It’s like travelling all the way to the Grand Canyon and not being able to see the view because of fog. Actually, I know people that happened to. Can you imagine the disappointment?

Now I thought the pronunciation of the next artist’s name was not up for debate. Everybody said Rozalla as Ro-zar-la but Tony Dortie goes for a different approach with Ro-za-la. It reminded me of my late father-in-law who insisted on referring to Paul Gascogne as Gar-za rather than Gaz-za. Anyway, however you pronounced it, the “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” hitmaker was back with her latest single “Are You Ready To Fly”. Now she’s certainly not the first artist to stick to a winning formula but this really was just a rehash of her biggest hit just as her second single “Faith (In The Power Of Love)” had been. Talk about playing it safe. A hat trick of hits that were all basically the same song! Bah!

“Are You Ready To Fly” peaked at No 14.

https://youtu.be/SBSTQeYO9gM

It’s time for the weekly TOTP Macaulay Culkin spot! Well, at least it feels like he’s in permanent residence on the show at least. He’s on our screens again due to his featuring in the video for “My Girl” by The Temptations which has been re-released due to the film of the same name he’s starring in.

I never caught that flick and indeed, don’t think I’d ever seen any of the Home Alone films all the way through until the Xmas just gone when my son wanted to watch them. Consequently, I never understood what all the fuss was about Culkin. He just seemed really, really annoying. His brother Kieran on the other hand is currently flooring everyone with his character Roman Roy in HBO sensation Succession. Oh oh! I’ve strayed back in the world of TV drama but to be fair, I have nothing else left to say about The Temptations anyway. Job done.

I wrote quite a lot about Julia Fordham when she was a Breaker the other week as I wasn’t expecting her to actually make it into the TOTP studio but here she is meaning I’ve gone too early – damn it! OK, well you can’t fault her live vocal here as she sings “Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)”. Faultless. However, I have to say that it’s a bit of a dirge ain’t it? I mean, the backing singers can’t even be arsed to get off their stools at the back of the stage and do all their vocals while remaining seated. Julia could have taught them a thing or two about the art of the backing singer on TOTP from her days as a Wilsation supporting the beehived one herself Mari Wilson. Much more fun.

To be fair to Julia, she didn’t write the song so I don’t think I’m really dissing her by lamenting its soporific sound. It did manage to rise to No 19 in the charts. Not bad but it was a far cry from presenter Mark Franklin’s prediction that it would go Top 10.

https://youtu.be/uDOAH0bSLf0

Oh come on! This was a video ‘exclusive’ just last week wasn’t it and it’s on again already?! I talk of course of Bryan Adams and his single “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven”. This was the fourth of six singles released from his “Waking up The Neighbours” album and the only one (apart from “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” obviously) to make the UK Top 10. After his 16 week run at No 1 the previous year, did his record label A&M really think that amount of Adams material being foisted upon the public was justified? Had they never heard of the expression ‘less is more’?! Apparently not as the next release from Bry was 1993’s 14 track Greatest Hits package “So Far So Good”. Curiously, “Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven” wasn’t included on it but then, like Julia Fordham’s before him, the song was a bit of a duffer.

Talking of curious things, what a curiosity this next song was! Now I’m not being wise after the event but I genuinely did know the original 1983 single that this track was based around. “It’s A Fine Day” by Jane was an otherworldly sounding indie chart hit (it didn’t make the mainstream Top 40) and was basically an a capella delivery of a poem written by eccentric Manchester poet and musician Edward Barton. How did I know it? I’m not sure. I got my new music solely from Radio 1 back in 1983 so I must have heard it on there but who would have been playing it? Surely not the likes of Steve Wright? Peter Powell maybe? Or possibly the much missed Janice Long? Well, I heard it via someone and whilst I was never so avant garde at that age to buy it, its hypnotic weirdness was intriguing.

Fast forward nine years and probably not having given it a thought once in the intervening years, suddenly everyone was talking about it, or rather Opus III’s danceified version of it. Yes, inevitably, as it was the early 90s after all, somebody got hold of that 1983 leftfield outlier track, added a dance beat to it and shoved it out to the rave masses for consumption. Was nothing sacred? On reflection it puts me in mind of the film Reality Bites and the scene where Winona Ryder’s character has her documentary about her friends that she has spent so long crafting to portray them with integrity turned into some nasty, commercialised media soundbite by opportunistic new boyfriend Ben Stiller for his MTV-like cable channel. All of her original film’s soul is ripped out and replaced with flavour of the month bullshit designed to appeal to those riding the current zeitgeist.

https://youtu.be/R-U1cbX-y1E

So it was with Opus III though hats off to vocalist Kirsty Hawkshaw for her memorable delivery of the track. She struck a startling sight with her Mohawk hair topped off with…well whatever that was adorning her forehead. The touch of genius though was to get her to perform whilst rotating those…were they stress balls?… in her right hand giving the whole thing a mystical look which I guess was some sort of homage to the original track’s ethereal nature. I wasn’t a fan but at least it stood out against the rest of the dance anthems of the time peaking at No 5.

https://youtu.be/Xy-gkytR4Og

Oh do one Hucknall won’t you?! Simply Red again?! It was impossible to avoid the ginger one in 1991/92. His “Stars” album topped the best seller chart for both those years and daytime radio was all over him. “For Your Babies” was the third of five singles released from the album. That means just two more singles to go (and associated TOTP appearances) and we’ll be free of Mick for years as Simply Red won’t have any new material out until 1995. Come on! We can do this!

One of the more memorable songs of 1992 next and certainly the most relentlessly cheery. As Mark Franklin advises us, “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice came out the year before but nobody noticed (I didn’t). However, a remix by producer de jour Drizabone initiated another shot at the charts and this time it hit gold going all the way to No 2 in the UK Top 40. I’m not sure how different the versions were. Hang on. I’ll check…

*checks out Spotify*

Well, unless I haven’t actually been listening to the ‘91 original then I can’t hear too much difference. The album version does have a rap in it which the single version doesn’t but the song’s whole charm is that almost scat like ‘de de de de, do do do’ hook which dominates both the original and the remix.

“I Love Your Smile“ was manna from heaven for mainstream daytime radio, perfect for trying to put a lift in the listener’s day and a spring in their step. There was an album it came from called “Inner Child” but none of the other singles taken from it came anywhere near the Top 40. Was “I Love Your Smile” just too hard to follow up? Was it so perfectly radio shaped that any attempt to repeat the trick was doomed to fail?

As Tony Dortie says at the song’s end, Shanice was a Motown artist but he uses that reference to name check another Motown act that he tips for the top – Boyz II Men. He was certainly better at chart predictions than his mate Mark Franklin.

https://youtu.be/TMmKKp9dcBg

It’s those pesky Breakers next which make loads of work for me out of minimal screen time. I’m really starting to hate this feature. I wouldn’t mind but the TOTP producers’ choices for inclusion in it don’t stack up. Many of them are never seen/heard on the show again presumably because their subsequent chart placings didn’t justify further appearances. By logical extension they can’t have been much of a ‘happening tune’ (their words not mine) in the first place.

Exhibit 1 m’lud. “Steel Bars” by Michael Bolton. This was the fifth and final single from his “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and was co-written by Bob Dylan. This unlikely collaboration stinks of cynicism to me. Was this purely about the money for Dylan? Was his own stuff not selling too well at this point so he teamed up with an artist who was shifting millions of units? I mean, the song is pretty cruddy and surely not one that Bob would be that proud of. Look at this lyric for example:

Steel bars wrapped all around me, I’ve been your prisoner since the day you found me

What a stinker! So much of a stinker in fact that this was one of those Breakers that never made it back onto the show. And rightly so.

So what were Madness doing back in the charts? Their cover of Labbi Siffre’s “It Must Be Love” had been a No 4 hit in 1981 so why it’s reappearance in 1992? Well, it was to promote a Greatest Hits album of course. “Divine Madness” was that album and a very successful one, going to the very top of the charts. The huge public reaction to the album convinced the band to reform for a live gig promoted as Madstock. The decibels and vibrations at that gig were so loud that they caused nearby tower blocks to shake.

Of the 42 Madness singles, this one has stood the test of time better than most I would suggest. Not because it’s their best track (to my ears there are loads more worthy of that accolade) but something about it still resonates to the point that it must be one of their most played on the radio. Back in 1992, it was a welcome distraction to all those dance anthems. Talking of which…

…it’s another one of those ubiquitous dance anthems (and also one of those Breakers we never saw again). N-Joi had already had one major hit with ‘91’s reissue of…erm…”Anthem” but they were back for more in ‘92 with “Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)”. Yeah, sorry but this is all bells and whistles rave nonsense and did nothing for me then or now. Horrid. Wikipedia tells me that one of N-Joi’s members was called Mark Franklin. Hang on a minute. Surely not?

No it can’t be that Mark Franklin as he says of the Breakers that his money is in Michael Bolton and not N-Joi. Mark Franklin showing off his chart prediction skills there again. Here’s the chart peaks of those Breakers:

Madness: No 6
N-Joi: No 12
Bollers : No 17

And so to the new No 1 and it was a song that would be one of the biggest sellers off the year. “Stay” was of course written for Shakespear’s Sister by Siobahn Fahey’s then husband Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. Want to hear his version. No? Tough. Here it is…

Quite different really. More of a gospel track than the haunting and haunted goth spectacle that was Shakespear’s Sister’s version. It’s worth checking out “The Dave Stewart Songbook” album. Some interesting stuff on there. I especially liked his original of “Ordinary Miracle”. Vastly superior to the version by Sarah McLachlan (there’s that surname again) that was used in the film Charlotte’s Web.

We’ve got weeks of “Stay” at No 1 so that’ll do (as the farmer said in that other famous pig flick Babe) for now apart from adding that it’s still hard to watch this performance and not be bowled over by the difference in vocal quality between Marcella Detroit and Siobahn Fahey.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Brand New Heavies	Dream Come True	No but my wife had the album
2	Rozalla	Are You Ready To Fly	I wasn’t, no
3	The Temptations	My Girl	Nah
4	Julia Fordham	Love Moves (In Mysterious Ways)	Nope
5	Bryan Adams	Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven	I did not
6	Opus III	It’s A Fine Day	No – give the original any day
7	Simply Red	For Your Babies	Never!
8	Shanice	I Love Your Smile	Just too perky for me
9	Michael Bolton	Steel Bars	See 7 above
10	Madness	It Must Be Love	No but I have that Divine Madness Best Of
11	N-Joi	Live In Manchester (Parts 1 + 2)	On yer bike!
12	Shakespear’s Sister	Stay	No

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013mbs/top-of-the-pops-20021992

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 24 OCT 1997

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TOTP 17 OCT 1997

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TOTP 10 AUG 1994

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TOTP 09 JUN 1994

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TOTP 24 MAR 1994

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TOTP 20 FEB 1992

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