The Levellers

TOTP 21 DEC 1995

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s four days before Christmas in 1995, a time of great excitement and anticipation yet the line up for this TOTP looks as flat as week old cola. The decision making process around this particular running order is as sound as Tory MP Chris Philp’s grasp of geography. For example, who thought that the show should build towards a headline act that most of us had never heard of. Sure there are some gigantic names in there but they’re all represented by a promo video. The actual acts in the studio are (mostly) not what you’d call box office. At least the presenters would have been considered as rising stars – Ronan and Stephen from Boyzone (who seemed to be on the show every week around this time).

We start with Corona who by anybody’s standards couldn’t have been seen as a massive deal well over a year after their biggest hit “Rhythm Of The Night” could they? Well, they had followed it up with two Top 10 singles during 1995 so maybe I’m being unfair to them? Nah, I don’t think so. I worked in a record shop selling those hits and I couldn’t have told you what they were called without looking them up even with a gun to my head. For the record, this one was called “I Don’t Wanna Be A Star” and would be their last UK Top 40 entry (if you discount a megamix single the following year which I do) peaking at No 22. Listening to it now, it has a very retro feel to it. Disco strings and even handclaps are in the mix giving it a sheen of 70s authenticity. It’s actually not too objectionable and no doubt would have gone down a storm at work Christmas parties across the country. Even so, it’s hardly a classic tune by a legendary name is it?

Next up we have *checks notes* Mary Kiani *double checks notes* yes, that’s right Mary Kiani who was *triple checks notes* the vocalist with dance act the Time Frequency (one Top 10 single) before going solo and achieving two Top 20 hits. OK, I’m laying it on thick but really TOTP?! Corona followed by Mary Kiani?! You’d feel shortchanged if you were in the studio audience for this one (unless you were a Boyzone fan I guess). “I Give It All To You” was not one of those two Top 20 hits as it peaked at No 35 (yes, despite this prime time exposure, the single tumbled down the charts the following week giving more clout to the argument of why was Mary on the show in the first place). As opposed to her first hit “When I Call Your Name” which was an M People-lite dance/pop track, this one is a big ballad complete with bagpipes no less. Sadly, if she thought she was coming across as the Scottish Celine Dion*, I’m afraid that this track screams Eurovision Sing Contest. The single was actually a double A-side with a song called “I Imagine” but reviewing two Mary Kiani songs is beyond me I’m afraid.

*Dion did go a bit Celtic on her mega hit “My Heart Will Go On” from the Titanic movie which featured a tin whistle. She couldn’t have been inspired by Mary Kiani could she?

In the back end of 1984, the Top 40 seemed to be overrun with Queen related hits. “Hammer To Fall” and “Thank God It’s Christmas” were split by Freddie Mercury solo single “Love Kills”. Fast forward eleven years and there was another plethora of product from the band. No 1 album “Made In Heaven” came out at the start of November preceded by the single “Heaven For Everyone”. And just as there had been a Christmas single in 1984, so there was in 1995 when “A Winter’s Tale” was released two weeks before the big day. Maybe it was the fast ride that was working in retail over the festive period but this one, like so many, passed me by. It’s very reflective and melancholy in nature as you would expect given that it was one of the last songs recorded by Freddie Mercury before his death but it kind of drifted over me when watching this TOTP repeat. Tellingly, it hasn’t replaced that 1984 single in Christmas compilation albums nor do you hear it played in the radio much every December. Maybe there just wasn’t room for two seasonal hits called “A Winter’s Tale” and given the choice, I’ll take David Essex every time.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I’m not convinced that the audience would have been wowed or in awe by being in the presence of the next artist The Levellers. Not that they’re a terrible band – I don’t mind a bit of their brand of folk/Celtic/anarchy-punk/rock (how do you categorise them?) every now and again. It’s just that they didn’t exactly exude glamour and celebrity did they? In truth, I think those elements would be the last thing that The Levellers wanted to convey? They didn’t court the trappings of a pop star life like Spandau Ballet for instance. Look at the lyrics to this track “Just The One” for evidence of this claim. An observation on hedonism and why we like to go out and get wasted one way or another (though we know it’s not good for us) just because we can. Not really the sort of self knowledge and reflection you’d expect from a band gorging on fame. This was the third and final single taken from the band’s No 1 album “Zeitgeist” and would peak at No 12, the fourth of their last six single releases to do so. Now there’s a band living up to their name which meant ‘making something equal or similar’.

Now to another music legend but who’s not in the TOTP studio – here’s Madonna with “Oh Father”. Just like Queen before her, Madge’s video has a wintery feel to it and also just like Queen, the entry into the charts by this single meant she had two songs in the Top 40 simultaneously*

*Queen had “A Winter’s Tale” as a new entry and previous hit “Heaven For Everyone” in the lower reaches of the charts whilst Madonna had this one and “You’ll See” still in the Top 40.

Released to promote her “Something To Remember” ballads collection, “Oh Father” was actually not a new song but a track from her 1989 album “Like A Prayer”. In America, it had been the fourth single lifted from it and caused a commotion there for two reasons. Firstly, it halted Madonna’s run of Top 5 hits stretching back fifteen singles when it peaked at No 20. Secondly, the video (or more specifically the scene where the protagonist’s mother’s corpse is seen in her funeral casket with her lips sewn together) caused MTV to pull it from its schedules until the scene was removed. Madonna called their bluff and refused to stating she would cancel future deals with the station if they refused to show it. In the UK, “Oh Father” wasn’t released as a single in 1989 due to the controversy and instead the Christmassy “Dear Jessie” got to be the last Madonna single of the 80s over here. In the intervening six years, that standpoint had clearly softened though interestingly, the clip shown here doesn’t include the lips scene. As for the song, it was clearly written about Madonna’s troubled relationship with her father and it swoops and soars with some power though it’s all a little too melodramatic for me. It would peak at No 16 in the UK making it her joint lowest charting single over here during the 80s and 90s combined*.

* “Take A Bow” peaked at No 16 in 1994.

They’re not one of the legendary names on the show tonight but you still couldn’t escape The Beatles in December of 1995. Not only were they at No 3 in the chart with “Free As A Bird”, not only was there a version of “Come Together” in the Top 30 courtesy of The Smokin’ Mojo Filters (Pauls McCartney and Weller plus the Gallagher brothers) via the “Help!” charity album but there was also this – Jimmy Nail with a cover of John Lennon’s “Love”. Now this song is not to be confused with another Lennon composition “Real Love” (even though “Love” begins with the lines “Love is real, real is love”) which would become the second Beatles single from the “Anthology” project following “Free As A Bird”. No, this track dated back to 1970 and Lennon’s debut solo album on which it featured. I didn’t know it from then (only being two years old at the time) but I was aware of it from its 1982 release as a single to promote the “John Lennon Collection” album that went to No 1 selling nearly a million copies. The single itself missed the Top 40 peaking one place below it but I must have heard it on the radio at the time I guess. Thirteen years later and it would be reactivated by Jimmy Nail as the second single from his “Big River” album. The track’s solemn power quite suits Jimmy’s doleful vocals though its No 33 peak suggests that better release scheduling would have benefited its chart chances – I think it got swallowed up in the Christmas rush.

The gimmick about having his son on stage with him for this performance doesn’t really work for me. For a start, I really don’t believe he’s a child guitar prodigy – his hand barely moves along that guitar neck. I wonder if his son followed his Dad into show business?

*checks internet*

Well, that’s not very satisfactory. All I can find out about him is that his name’s Tommy. Maybe he went on to become a pinball wizard?

Despite not getting to No 1, I’m prepared to state that “Wonderwall” is one of Oasis’s most well known and enduring tunes. A go to song for buskers around the world, it can also divide opinion. Judging by some of the online opinions offered after featuring on these TOTP repeats, some people really can’t stand it. I have to say that it’s not one of my favourites of theirs and I was a bit of an Oasis fan. I bought a lot of their singles during this period yet somehow I didn’t feel the need to purchase this one. Maybe it suffered from over exposure even back then. After all, it was another of those hits that was on the chart at this time alongside Everything But The Girl, Boyzone and Björk – it spent 11 weeks yo-yoing around the Top 10. Truth be told, I don’t think it’s even the best song on the CD single – that would be track number four “The Masterplan”. Now if that had been chosen as the single, I probably would have bought it.

Say the words ‘Dog Eat Dog’ to anyone of my age (I’m 56 in a few weeks -56!) and I’m guessing they’ll immediately think of the Adam And The Ants hit. I’m pretty sure though that you could also say those words to anyone of any age and they wouldn’t automatically think of an American punk rap group of that name who had one hit single in this country called “No Fronts”. Who the hell were these guys and why were they on the show?! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the answer:

Hmm. Sounds a bit to me like a vanity project then. Look at this shiny, new act that I give to you. Anyway, Dog Eat Dog kind of remind me of EMF. For many of us, the first time we saw those cheeky little Epsom Mad Funkers was when they performed at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party so there’s an obvious similarity there plus their sound wasn’t a million miles away from each other though Dog Eat Dog were a little more rap based? Having said that, the sax sample in the chorus of “No Fronts: The Remixes” (to quote its full title) sounds like it was lifted direct from Spandau Ballet. It’s actually very catchy (just as EMF’s “Unbelievable” was) but somehow I just don’t find it very authentic. I think it might be the fact that the band themselves don’t look convincing. The bass player resembles American stand up Emo Philips (famed for his lank hair and idiot savant delivery) whilst the lead singer has the most sensible looking haircut ever seen on someone in a band. In fact, he looks like that guy who plays Bumper, the leader of the Barden Treblemakers a cappella group from the Pitch Perfect films.

Dog Eat Dog managed to get to No 9 in the UK charts with this single, their only Top 40 hit in this country. Apparently, they’re still a going concern with their last album coming as recently as 2023 but the chances of a Dog Eat Dog revival over here are zero and I’m adamant about that.

Four days after this TOTP aired, “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson was named as the UK’s Christmas No 1. My inclination at the time was that it probably wouldn’t be as it had already been at the top of the charts for three weeks by that point so I thought it might run out of legs just before the finishing line allowing The Mike Flowers Pops to steal in at the final moment. I made a mistake. What would prove to be another mistake (if an enjoyable one) would be the decision to hold our Our Price Christmas do (Stockport branch) at a member of staff’s house on the evening of the 23rd December. The whole shop took an oath together that we would all turn up for work the next day (Christmas Eve) no matter what went down – no exceptions – and you know what, we all turned up. The state we turned up in was another matter. I arrived home at 5.00 am and woke up two hours later with my face in a bowl of cereals. Somehow I hauled my arse into work and was actually the first person there. As we all assembled, it was obvious that a few members of staff still smelt of booze so strongly that they had to be kept away from serving the public and so were assigned back room duties or cashing up. Somehow, the day finally came to an end and I wound my way home for the second time. On arriving in our flat, my wife had some friends from work round whom I astonished by eating seven bags of crisps on the spin (crazy nibbles). I have a memory of Michael Jackson being announced as Christmas No1 the next day and my wife saying “I’m not having that”, turning off the TV and playing “The Candy Man” by Sammy Davis Jr instead. Quite right too.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1CoronaI Don’t Wanna Be A StarNo
2Mary KianiI Give It All To YouBut I don’t want it Mary – no
3QueenA Winter’s TaleNope
4The LevellersJust The OneI did not
5MadonnaOh FatherNegative
6Jimmy NailLoveNah
7OasisWonderwallI didn’t somehow
8Dog Eat DogNo Fronts: The RemixesNever happened
9Michael JacksonEarth SongI choose Sammy Davies Jr instead

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/m001y56w/top-of-the-pops-21121995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 28 OCT 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

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”…

Go to 3:10

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.

https://youtu.be/9EHAo6rEuas

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!

https://youtu.be/VevijL3CMkM

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?

Order of appearance ArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Dina CarrollDon’t Be A StrangerBanged on about it, never bought it
2Björk and David ArnoldPlay DeadIt’s a no
3LevellersThis GardenNah
4The GridTexas CowboysNope
5The CatTongue TiedNever
6Tina TurnerWhy Must We Wait Until TonightI did not
7The Good MenGive It UpNo
8Bryan AdamsPlease Forgive MeI don’t Bryan, I really don’t
9Phil CollinsBoth Sides Of The StoryOf course not
10David HasselhoffIf I Could Only Say GoodbyeHell no!
11MeatloafI’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)I’d do anything for music (but I didn’t buy that)

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

TOTP 08 JUL 1993

Posted on by 80stastic

On the day this TOTP aired, and presumably straight after it finished, Phil Mitchell got married for the first time in Eastenders. His wife was a Romanian refugee called Nadia with the object of the nuptials being to get her a visa so she could stay in the UK. As soon as she was married, she went off with her boyfriend. Fast forward 29 years and Phil is about to get married for the fifth time to Kat Slater but as with his first wedding, it doesn’t go to plan. I wonder how many of the songs on tonight’s TOTP could apply to Phil’s love life?

A perfect start with “What Is Love” by Haddaway! Does Phil know? I doubt it. How about Haddaway? Did he have any inkling? He probably didn’t care as he was up to No 2 in the charts and onto his third TOTP appearance. Piece of piss this pop star lark he probably thought after ditching his career in the navy (presumably he said “sod this for a game of sailors”). So easy did he find bagging a hit that he did it again…and again…and again. His debut album would give him three further Top 10 hits though I couldn’t have named any without checking his discography. So effortless was Haddaway’s rise to fame that he didn’t even bother to name his album properly instead just calling it “The Album”. A bit like Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead calling his dog ‘dog’ then. I once found myself in Xanadu nightclub in Rochdale where I was working and being surrounded by punters dancing to Haddaway was a bit like being on the set of The Walking Dead in retrospect.

Phil Mitchell must have proclaimed “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” to one of his many wives down the years in that rasping voice of his. Taylor Dayne wasn’t one of them though as she’s never married Wikipedia tells me though she does look a little bit like the character Chrissie Watts (played by Tracy-Ann Oberman) who was married to Dirty Den and indeed murdered him. Hmm. I seem to have gone down a rather bleak rabbit hole there. I’m sure Taylor, on the other hand, is as sweet as popcorn….

Yes, after a career that took in acing, Broadway and pop stardom, the younger generation will know Taylor as Popcorn from The Masked Singer. Back in 1993 though she was promoting her “Soul Dancing” album via her cover of Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Babe” though it failed to cut through like her “Tell It To My Heart” debut that went double platinum in the States. She did however continue to have hits on the US Dance chart into the new millennium.

“Will You Be There?” Phil Mitchell might have been thinking to himself this week as he stood in church waiting for a very late Kat Slater to arrive. Michael Jackson must have been asking himself “Will you be a hit?” seeing as this was the eighth single to be taken from his 1991 (yes that’s 1991!) album “Dangerous”. He needn’t have worried as it made No 9 making Jackson the first artist to have an album generate eight consecutive Top 20 hits (it would have been eight consecutive Top 10 hits but for “Jam” peaking at No 13).

I thought I didn’t know how this one went but on hearing it back, it does sound familiar. It’s got a very gospel feel to it while the melody puts me in mind of “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers. However, it was another song that sounded similar which caused Jacko some legal problems when Italian songwriter Albano Carrisi launched a plagiarism suit claiming “Will You Be There” copied his composition “The Swans Of Balaka”. The claim was ultimately rejected.

Unbelievably, a ninth single – the prophetically entitled “Gone Too Soon” – was released from “Dangerous” nearly two years to the day since the album came out. That was a step too far though and it struggled to a peak of No 33 in the UK.

And the 1993 disco revival is still going strong. After Taylor Dayne covering Barry White earlier comes Kim Wilde who has recorded a cover of Yvonne Elliman’s 1978 hit “If I Can’t Have You”. Why? Well, it’s to promote her Best Of album “The Singles Collection 1981-93”. Kim, of course, had history when it came to cover versions to help restore former glories. In 1986, she did a version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes to revive a career that was stalling. That proved to be a master stroke as it went to No 1 in the US and No 2 over here. “If I Can’t Have You” wasn’t quite the same success though it did supply her biggest hit since “Four Letter Word” in 1988 by peaking at No 12. It would also be her last ever UK Top 40 hit which presumably means this is also Kim’s final ever TOTP appearance (sob!). That Best Of album performed pretty well though going gold in the UK and just missing the Top 10.

What? An Eastenders connection? Oh well, didn’t Alfie Moon say to Kat the other night something to the effect of “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby”.

It’s Chaka Demus & Pliers now for what I think is the third time in the show with “Tease Me”. I think I’ve had enough of this one now Mr. TOTP producer! In his intro, host Mark Franklin states that 50% of this week’s Top 10 are live in the TOTP studio and I can’t help thinking that maybe CD & P were fitted into the running order just so that the show could make that claim. In fairness though, they had just moved up a place to a peak of No 3 so no doubt that’s how their inclusion would have been justified. After all, “Tease Me” was a hit all over the world but nowhere bigger than in the UK where it sold 400,000 copies.

I’m struggling to get a Phil Mitchell reference in for this one although surely he must have used a pair of pliers during a car repair down The Arches at some point down the years?

I’m giving myself a break from Eastenders references for the Breakers mainly because none of them lend themselves to the soap or Phil Mitchell at all. I mean, where’s the connection with U.S.U.R.A. and “Sweat”? These were the people who brought us “Open Your Mind” on the achingly trendy Deconstruction label and this was the follow up. Not being a dancehead, this did nothing for me (neither did its predecessor) though I understand it was a big hit in the clubs. “Sweat” peaked at No 29.

Now a guy who was a breakthrough success in 1991 but whom we hadn’t heard from since. Back in those 1991 posts, I admitted to an irrational hatred of Kenny Thomas back in the day, an opinion I had to modify on account of Kenny being a stand up, decent guy according to all sources.

My view of his music remained the same though – I wasn’t a fan and so I’m pretty sure that the thought of a second album of songs from him wouldn’t have had me counting down the days until its release date. “Wait For Me” was that album and its lead single was “Stay”. As Mark Franklin says in his intro, it was a cover though he doesn’t advise us who did the original so I did the detective work and tracked it down. I’m still none the wiser though even with the answer in front of me. It was the title track of a 1986 album by US R&B group The Controllers but only made No 77 in the UK charts. I have no idea about any of the content of the previous sentence.

“Stay” was all about the number two. It peaked at No 22 for two weeks.

AC/DC have come up many a time during these TOTP repeats and I’ve never really known what to say about them as I just don’t really get them at all. The throaty vocals of Brian Johnson, the misogynistic undertones of the lyrics and Angus Young’s schoolboy uniform stage outfits; none of it appealed to me. And yet there are people who I know and like who swear by the band.

Anyway, the end is nigh for AC/DC/TOTP as “Big Gun” is their penultimate UK Top 40 hit. Taken from the soundtrack to Last Action Hero, it made No 23. I’ve never seen the film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger but from reading the plot on Wikipedia it sounds like a stinker. I can appreciate there was an attempt to do something different with the action genre but it sounds like one of those movies where the kids are smarter than the adults which I’m not a fan of. The soundtrack is a who’s who of hard rock featuring Anthrax, Aerosmith and Alice In Chains alongside AC/DC and that’s just the ‘A’s.

Is this the first time we’ve seen The Levellers on TOTP? Well, yes and no. It is the first time we’ve seen them in these BBC4 repeats but not the first time that they appeared on the show. That was on 21st May 1992 when they appeared live by satellite from Paris performing “15 Years” but we didn’t get to see that repeat due to it being presented by Adrian Rose who refused to give permission for shows he featured in being re-broadcast. The band wouldn’t appear in the TOTP studio until 1995 when they performed “Hope Street”.

Back in 1993 though the band had just released their third and eponymous studio album and although they have retrospectively voiced their dislike of it, commercially it was their then best performing album peaking at No 2. In fact, The Levellers were on their way to the apex of their popularity which was displayed in a very visual way when they headlined Glastonbury in 1994 in front of 300,000 people.

The lead single from “The Levellers” album was “Belaruse” and it would start a bizarre run of chart placings which would see four of their next six single releases peak at No 12. Listening to it now, the hard drumming intro really reminds me of “Funeral Pyre” by The Jam.

The first of three songs that have been on the show before now starting with M People and “One Night In Heaven”. By the way, I can’t find the clips from this particular show so have had to use previous performance’s instead. Heather Small might be glad I have as there seems to be a curious tinny effect on her vocals as if the microphone isn’t working properly. She seems slightly uncomfortable up there as if she’s aware there’s a problem but it’s too late to do anything about it so she’s just going with it. Maybe it’s just because I’m playing it back through my phone.

“One Night In Heaven” peaked at No 6.

Stand aside Kim Wilde, here’s a true disco legend. Yes, you did a nice job with your cover of “If I Can’t Have You” but this is the Queen of Disco herself, Gloria Gaynor.

Look, I don’t need to tell you about “I Will Survive” though what I will say is that it’s been covered over a hundred times but maybe one of the more obscure versions is this from the Puppini Sisters who I caught live in a tiny venue in Hull that was completely oversold to the point that it really didn’t feel safe so I left early. Yes, I did survive.

Oh and one final Phil Mitchell/Eastenders reference – Phil has of course survived many a drama on the soap none more so than in the 2001 ‘Who Shot Phil?’ storyline when he survived being gunned down by ex-girlfriend Lisa.

It’s a final week at the top for Gabrielle with “Dreams”. Little did we all know that it would take seven years for her to get back to the top of the heap when her Bob Dylan sampling hit “Rise” made it to No 1 in early 2000. Not that there weren’t any hits in between of course. She clocked up nine Top 40 hits in the intervening years including five Top Tenners. The hits didn’t stop with “Rise” either with a further three Top 10 entries occurring in the subsequent 12 months. That’s sixteen hit singles in total plus seven charting albums (including a No 1). Maybe Gabrielle doesn’t get the credit she deserves?

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1HaddawayWhat Is LoveHadaway and shite!
2Taylor DayneCan’t Get Enough Of Your LoveNo
3Michael JacksonWill You Be There?No I won’t be and indeed wasn’t
4Kim WildeIf I Can’t Have YouNope
5Chaka Demus & PliersTease MeNever happening
6U.S.U.R.A.SweatNegative
7Kenny ThomasStayAs if
8AC/DCBig GunBig log more like – no
9The LevellersBelaruseNah
10M PeopleOne Night In HeavenNo but my wife had the album
11Gloria GaynorI Will Survive (Phil Kelsey remix)I did not
12Gabrielle DreamsAnd 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/m001btp2/top-of-the-pops-08071993