It’s late October 1993 and TOTP seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis. Almost exactly two years ago, the ‘year zero revamp’ took place, culling the Radio 1 DJs as presenters and seeking to reinvent the show as the home of music for the youth population. Noble intentions indeed but just look at the some of the artists on this show:

• Bryan Adams
• Phil Collins
• Meatloaf
• David Hasselhoff!

Sure, it was a chart based show and it could be argued that the choice of artists reflected those shifting the most units but in reply I would refer you to that list again and say David Hasselhoff!! What’s that? Wasn’t the Breakers section there to showcase the more left field tunes in the chart? Good point and there are indeed some of them in tonight’s jam packed Breakers feature like The Grid and The Good Men but when there’s five of them like tonight you literally get about twenty seconds worth of those artists. Plus, included in that section tonight are Tina Turner and a song by a character from a sit com! What was going on?! This needs a deeper look so let’s get started…

I’ve banged on about this opening song in many a previous post as its singer was everywhere in 1993 with three Top 40 hits already prior to this one being the biggest of the lot. I’m on about Dina Carroll and her single “Don’t Be A Stranger” and my search for the reason why her record label A&M kept its release back for so long. Anyway, it’s here now and up to No 4 and would spend nine weeks inside the Top 10 as follows:

10 – 4 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 8 – 8

Such was its consistent selling that I think it may still have been in the Top 10 when the follow up single “The Perfect Year” was released in the December. Enough of its chart stats though, was it any good? It’s certainly an accomplished ballad and Dina can deliver on its drama with her vocal range. Apparently it was re-recorded from the album version but the main difference seems to be the addition of a longer intro (almost an overture in classical terms) and turning those spiky strings up a bit in the mix maybe. Why did it resonate so much with the record buying public though? Well, Christmas was approaching and a love song always goes down well at that time of year. Indeed, the chart for the festive period 1993 was littered with them – “Babe” by Take That, “Hero” by Mariah Carey, “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by the Bee Gees and “True Love” by Elton John and Kiki Dee leap out after just a cursory glance at the Top 40.

In this performance, the backing track doing the ‘Don’t Be A Stranger’ part of the chorus rather than Dina singing it herself does jar slightly but otherwise she does a good job of selling the song without the need for any stage gimmicks. I’m guessing we might be seeing this one again in future TOTP repeats.

Here comes Björk to completely undermine my theory that I posited in the intro about the show being full of mainstream, rock royalty artists. Of course she does. After her first two singles as a solo artist failed to tear up the charts peaking at Nos 36 and 29, she made a much better fist of it with third release “Play Dead” though she wasn’t quite on her own for this one. British film composer David Arnold is also officially credited on the record as it was part of the soundtrack to the crime drama movie The Young Americans starring Harvey Keitel (can’t say I’ve ever seen it).

Now I’ve been critical of Björk’s voice in the past but by any measure, this is a spellbinding piece of music, full of dramatic, swooping, swirling orchestration that ally perfectly with her…distinctive voice. It really is quite a thing. Its chart peak of No 12 was well deserved and sensibly her record company included it as an extra track on international pressings of her “Debut” album. I say sensibly but it apparently caused many official complaints from fans who had already bought the initial “Play Dead” lite version of the album.

The Breakers? Already? Yes, just two songs in we get those ‘happening’ tunes causing a stir somewhere in the chart. They usually pop up after about four or five songs but they’re here early this week for whatever reason. They start with a band who, like Björk before them, are most definitely not swimming in the mainstream. The early to mid 90s saw the Levellers at their commercial peak. Their eponymous third album released in August had peaked at No 2 whilst the follow up two years later “Zeitgeist” would top the chart. “This Garden” is as the second single released from the former and would become, quite oddly, the band’s fourth hit in six releases to peak at No 12. It’s quite the tune as well with loads packed into it including jungle rhythms, a didgeridoo, squawking bird sound effects, an (almost) rap and some lyrics that I presumed were about environmental issues but seem to be discussing the state of society and its culture as a whole on closer inspection. Interesting stuff.

Another atypical act now (the more conventional stuff is coming I promise), this time electronic house explorers The Grid who were Dave Ball of Soft Cell and record producer/DJ etc Richard Norris. They’d actually been around releasing material for years but had only discovered chart gold once before earlier in 1993 when “Crystal Clear” rose to No 27. “Texas Cowboys” was the follow up and did even better peaking at No 21. I’m sure it made sense to teenagers listening to it whilst playing Sonic the Hedgehog on their Megadrive but it sounds likely to induce a migraine to me.

The Grid would release their most well known track “Swamp Thing” the following year which, after it went Top 3, caused “Texas Cowboys” to be rereleased and it duly beat its initial chart peak by four places.

OK so this isn’t exactly mainstream but was it really what the kids were buying? How do you explain this. Well, in a year when Mr. Blobby would be the Christmas No1, anything was possible and so it was that a song from a space themed sitcom performed in character (a character by the way which was a humanoid evolved from a pregnant cat over three million years) was a hit in the UK charts. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Red Dwarf I just didn’t see the need for this drippy, insipid Motown pastiche to be in the charts. I mean if you want to do a spin off from a successful comedy TV series, it surely has to be funny doesn’t it or am I missing something? If it had been something like The Young Ones and Cliff Richard doing “Living Doll” for Comic Relief I could have got on board but I just didn’t see the point of “Tongue Tied” by The Cat. Even the video directed by Danny John-Jules who played The Cat wasn’t funny.

It was actually used as part of the story in the last episode of season two called “Parallel Universe” so it wasn’t an entire anomaly construct but that episode aired in 1988 so why release it five years later? Oh, reading up on it, the reason seems to be to help promote the launch of season six which makes more sense. It turns out that Danny John-Jules had some previous in the pop star lark. He’s in the video for Wham!’s “Edge Of Heaven”…

And so the tidal wave of mainstream music begins with this little trickle in the Breakers from Tina Turner. Like Dina Carroll earlier, Tina was all over the charts in 1993. “Why Must We Wait Until Tonight” was the third single from the soundtrack album to the biopic of her life called What’s Love Got To Do With It and the third consecutive hit after “I Don’t Wanna Fight” (No 7) and “Disco Inferno” (No 12) peaking at No 16. Compared to those two songs though, this one didn’t seem to have much about it – in fact it’s a bit of a dirge. Oh and if you’re thinking it’s unfair to consider Tina mainstream then know this – “Why Must We Wait Until Tonight” was co-written by Bryan Adams.

And a final, parting shot across the bows of TOTP from those making more alternative forms of music at this time from The Good Men. Now if you’re thinking haven’t we seen this one before fairly recently then you’re right, we have. Back in August, “Give It Up” got as high as No 23 before sliding out of the charts. However, such was its banger status in the clubs it never really went away and resurfaced in the Top 40 in late October before spending four weeks in the Top 10 and settling on a peak of No 5. There have been countless examples of singles that have been rereleased and become bigger hits than they were when first out but one that had already been a middle sized hit just two months earlier? That takes some doing I think. The track’s legacy wasn’t quite as impressive being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 single “Fairground”. Give it up Hucknell.

Right, that’s your lot for anything outside of the mainstream canon. From here on in its pure establishment rock beginning with Bryan Adams who gets a whole five minutes allocated to him to perform “Please Forgive Me”. This was a new track specifically recorded to promote his first Best Of album “So Far So Good” and his first single since “Do I Have To Say The Words” fifteen months previously. Presumably this compilation was to plug the gap between Bryan’s studio albums – there was five years separating “Waking Up The Neighbours” and “18 Till I Die”.

Let’s get this out there straight away – “Please Forgive Me” is not a good song. Actually, it’s dreadful. I say this as someone who isn’t anti-Bryan Adams. I even saw him live back in 1987 and he was a great performer but this? No. No thank you. And I thought that song he wrote for Tina Turner was bad. Everyone else seemed to love it though. Crashing in to the chart at No 3, it would finally settle at No 2. What this whole saga does show us is the transformative power of a huge No 1 single. After sixteen weeks at the top with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”, Bry was a proper chart star with his subsequent releases of new material being a big deal. The idea of him entering the UK charts with a single at No 3 in week one back in 1987 would have been laughable. He couldn’t buy a hit back then.

The album was a huge success going to No 1 and three times platinum here and sell 13 million copies worldwide. Adams would return in 1994 as part of a trio with Sting and Rod Stewart with the equally awful “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers film.

Is there anyone more mainstream than Phil Collins? An easy target for the music press who consistently dissed him as the omni-creator of the worst type of sterile, bland music, he was also accused of turning prog-rockers Genesis into lamentable peddlers of lame pop-rock. Just as a solo artist, he dominated the 80s with four albums and fifteen hit singles – come 1993, had the public’s Collins saturation point been reached? It appeared not. His album “Both Sides” went double platinum and was a No 1. Lead single “Both Sides Of The Story” went Top 10.

Phil’s in New York to perform it on TOTP via satellite and curiously he doesn’t get a spoken intro. The show seemed to have developed this convention during the ‘year zero’ era. I’m not sure what the reasoning was behind it. The artist was so big and well known that they needed no introduction? Anyway, it’s the usual Collins turn with Phil gurning and over emoting his way through the song with a backing band that did nothing to promote TOTP’s desire to be at the heart of youth programming. The keyboards player looks like ex-Dragons Den overlord Theo Paphitis for Chrissakes!

Who do you go to after Adams and Collins? For the TOTP producers there was only one answer – ‘The Hoff’ himself, the one and only David Hasselhoff! For the love of God! What were they thinking? Yes, he had quite the singing career in mainland Europe in places like Austria and Germany but he was surely considered a joke in the UK no? Everything about this is wrong, so depth plumbingly wrong. There’s the song for starters. Were “If I Could Only Say Goodbye” a facial expression it would be a grimace at best. Look at some of these lyrics:

I remember the day you came into my life
I remember how time stood still
You were my lover, my friend, my joy
You were my life
I loved you then and I always will
How time has its way with things
And all the changes it brings, baby
If I could only say goodbye
There will always be a part of me for you
If I could find the reason why
If I could only say goodbye

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: James Barry / Michael Fallon / Peter Fallon
If I Could Only Say Goodbye lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Somebody wrote those down, read them, considered them and decided “yeah, they’re fine”! WTF?! Then there’s Hasselhoff himself in his ridiculous, sleeveless denim shirt and his barely passable crooner voice. Just no. As with Phil Collins, there were people on his backing band that caught my eye. He had two (two!) keyboard players one of which seemed to be a younger version of himself and the other was a dead ringer for host Mark Franklin. As if this whole farce wasn’t bizarre enough!

This turn has a way to go though to top Hasselhoff’s most famous performance in the bizarre stakes…

So impactful was this broadcast that ‘The Hoff’ is now synonymous in some minds with being responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union! Not quite but kudos to him for being part of one of the biggest events of 20th century world history. Despite this TOTP appearance, “If I Could Only Say Goodbye” struggled to a peak of No 35. Thirteen years later, an online campaign saw his song “Jump In My Car” go to No 3. There are no words.

There’s only one way to end this. How? With a monstrously epic soft rock ballad courtesy of Meatloaf of course. “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” remains in top spot and still has weeks to go before its reign is toppled by Mr.Blobby (1993 really was batshit).

Right, let’s address that song title. What exactly is the ‘that’ Meatloaf won’t do? Well, here’s the man himself to explain it with a blackboard and pointer…

Got it? Good. And it’s definitely not what this guy John Thundergun says it’s about OK?

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/m001drbn/top-of-the-pops-28101993