The Smashing Pumpkins

TOTP 16 MAY 1996

Posted on August 28, 2024 by 80stastic

The BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule is all over the place at the moment with some rather large gaps punctuating the 1996 episodes. As such, I’ve taken my eye off the ball somewhat but have realised that there are two shows from that year that I haven’t reviewed yet so I’m officially back to it. We pick it up in the middle of May and find footballer Ian Wright in the ‘golden mic’ slot. I think this may have been his very first shot at TV presenting which kicked off a lengthy and varied media career including game shows, panel shows, his own talk show and, of course, football punditry. Back in 1996, though coming to the end of his career, Wright was still an Arsenal player and over a year away from becoming their all time top goal scorer at the time. However, the 1995-96 season which had just finished had not been a happy one for Wrighty. He didn’t have a good relationship with dour Scottish manager Bruce Rioch leading to him putting in a transfer request (albeit that was later withdrawn). I’m guessing that Rioch wouldn’t have automatically given his blessing to one of his players hosting a pop music show (just as well that the football season had just finished) but then Wright had a natural affinity with the show having been a pop star himself (nearly) in 1993 when his single “Do The Right Thing” got to No 43 in the charts. It wasn’t totally terrible in fairness…

Anyway, TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill showed considerable foresight giving Wright his break in TV presenting given what he went on to do in his post football media activities. I’m expecting a lot of bubbly enthusiasm from him. Let’s see how he does…

We start, confusingly though, with another footballer (sort of). Eric Cantona had risen Lazarus like from his ‘king fu’ take down of a Crystal Palace fan in 1995 and the eight month ban that followed to drive Manchester United to a second double in three seasons having just scored the winner in the FA Cup final just five days before this TOTP aired. His star would never shine so bright as it did at the culmination of the 1995/96 season. To mark his remarkable comeback from potential football oblivion, there was a song in the charts honouring his achievements. In the ‘direct to camera’ section at the very start of the show, the producers had hired a Cantona lookalike to stand in a United shirt as a camera spins around him and a football commentary plays in the background. I’m not sure it works on reflection especially as the guy doesn’t look that much like Cantona and has an expression on his face that says “Ah what you gonna do? They’re paying me for this!”

Enough of football though, to the music and we start with “There’s Nothing I Won’t Do” by JX. I really haven’t much to say about this apart from I don’t remember it obviously. Their previous single- “Son Of A Gun” – I could confidently have named unprompted, probably because it was a hit twice (No 13 in 1994 and No 6 the following year) but this one? My memory banks are emptier than Liz Truss’s head. And yet, listening back to it some 28 years later, it does sound familiar but I’m putting that down to the generic nature of its Eurodance sound. As my Dad used to say to me back in the 80s, “it all sounds the same”. With awful inevitability, I know say the exact same words to my 14 year old son when he plays his music in the car.

Not remembering one Eurodance hit out of a whole ocean of them in the mid 90s is one thing but not being able to bring to mind a whole artist? That’s another level but that’s what has happened with this next artist. Who is/was Horace Brown?! I would have thought that a name like Horace would have made him more memorable to me; I mean, how many Horaces are there in the history of music? There’s Horace Andy the Jamaican roots reggae singer songwriter and…erm…Horace Wimp from the ELO song? Anyway, it turns out that this Horace was an American R&B singer who had two middling sized hits in the UK whilst signed to the Motown label. This one – “One For The Money” – was the bigger of the two when it peaked at No 12.

Taking lyrical inspiration from “Blue Suede Shoes”, it sounds a bit like… well…Another Level (to use that phrase again). Whilst those 90s soul boys were all about the sass and sang about whipped cream and licking things (eeew!), Horace Brown was less salacious and more tedious singing the rather childish line “Three to get the honeys”. That’s not even the worst lyric of “One For The Money” though. At one point he sings about “living in an eight room mansion on the hill”. An eight room mansion?! Surely a mansion has more rooms than that?! I live in a mid terrace house in Hull and we have… let me see…nine! OK, we had a loft conversion done but still. Maybe he meant eight bedrooms? Details Horace, details!

It’s yet another football song now that still (still!) isn’t that one nor is it even the Eric Cantona single but instead comes courtesy of Liverpool FC & Boot Room Boyz whose “Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)” is this week’s highest new entry.

Wrighty gives it the big ‘un about those now infamous cream suits that the Liverpool team wore as they strolled about the Wembley turf before kick off sarcastically calling them “blinding” but Ian himself hasn’t always got his fashion choices correct. Who could forget his bouncy castle puffer coat?

If this was old twitter there would be an account called Ian Wright’s big coat pic.twitter.com/NgD4GQq90f
— Cake 🍰 (@rigby113) December 3, 2023

Now here’s a mystery. Quite why did Black Grape feel the need to release this standalone single called “Fat Neck”? The usual answer would be to fill the gap between albums. There were two years and three months between the band’s debut “It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah” and disappointing follow up “Stupid Stupid Stupid” so a new track was an established record company strategy of maintaining their artist’s profile. Mystery solved. Except…a month after “Fat Neck” another Black Grape single came out and yes, it was another football song – “England’s Irie” for the Euro 96 tournament. Admittedly, it was a collaboration with Joe Strummer and Keith Allen but surely everyone knew it as a Black Grape song which would have done the job of keeping the band’s name in lights without the need for “Fat Neck” as well?

Added to this was the fact that back in March, they’d released the third and final single from “It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah” in the form of “Kelly’s Heroes” meaning that Shaun and co had three singles out in four months. Both “Fat Neck” and “England’s Irie” were released on the same label (Radioactive) and even had sequential catalogue numbers so this was clearly deliberate and not a scheduling cock up between two different labels’ calendars. So the question remains why the need for “Fat Neck” especially when it wasn’t much of a song but rather Black Grape-by-numbers. In the label’s defence both singles ended up going Top 10 so maybe they knew what they were doing after all.

As Ian informs us in his next intro, it was the Eurovision Song Contest two days after this TOTP aired so it must be time for a plug for the UK entrant Gina G with “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. I’ve lost count the amount of times Gina has been on the show now but it’s a lot. She secured herself one further place in the running order* by going to No 1 in the charts the week following Eurovision despite finishing an underwhelming 8th on the big night.

*BBC4 didn’t show that particular TOTP denying us one last Gina performance of her most famous tune but we’ll go into that in further detail in the next post.

Quite why Gina’s undeniably catchy song failed to garner more votes remains unsolved. It was a Top 10 hit all round Europe including Norway where the contest took place. It was suggested that perhaps Gina wasn’t actually up to doing the live singing on the big night with her credentials for doing so seeming to rest on the fact that she was the songwriter’s then girlfriend rather than her vocal talents. I’m not sure if that’s correct or fair though as she had done some singing for an Australian dance group called Bass Culture in the early 90s with a single called “Love The Life” getting a legitimate commercial release. Whatever the reasons behind her lacklustre points total, it didn’t matter when it came to being a pop star as, in addition to bagging the first UK No 1 single to originate from Eurovision since Nicole’s “A Little Peace” in 1982, she would go on to achieve four further Top 40 hits including two Top Tenners. She was a bona fide pop star for a while and how many of us can say that?

I said in a previous post that one of Gina’s backing dancers reminded me of Samantha Janus though it wasn’t actually her. This time, I’m thinking she looks like another EastEnders actress but this time Kim Medcalf who played Sam Mitchell (the second version) on two separate occasions over a period of 20 years. Again, I’m fairly sure it’s not her in reality. These are hardly ‘doof doof’ revelations are they?

Surely with deliberate planning on behalf of the producers, we now have the rarely seen/heard “Ooh Aah” segue as we switch from Gina G to 1300 Drums featuring Unjustified Ancients of M.U. and their hit “Ooh! Aah! Cantona”. Yes, it’s another football song but still not that one! What’s going on here?! Anyway, I’m guessing that this track was released to cash in on the Cantona effect. Eric was possibly at the peak of both his powers and profile at this time having successfully resurrected his image following the ‘kung fu’ incident the previous year which led to a ban of eight months from playing football. As mentioned earlier, five days before this TOTP was broadcast, he’d scored the only goal of the FA Cup final to secure Manchester United the ‘double double’. He’d almost single-handedly hunted down a Newcastle United side that held a twelve points lead over United at one point. Within a year, he would be gone, retiring at the age of 30. Following his retirement, he had both the phrase “Ooh Aah Cantona” with which his adoring fans serenaded him and his name and number from his shirt (Cantona 7) patented as commercial trademarks. If that was to prevent further records by the likes of 1300 Drums being made without his approval, then I raise my collar to you sir for this hit was missing an ‘s’. It’s just a generic Italo House backing to what I always thought was a fairly moronic chant. What a bunch of chancers! The Unjustified Ancients of M.U. were nothing to do with The KLF’s Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond as far as I’m aware but just a pathetic play on words.

The performance here is bizarre but then I’m not sure what on earth any choreographer could have done with this. Presumably, the Can Can dancers are to reflect Eric being French but it’s all a bit tenuous. Then they wheel out the aforementioned Cantona lookalike who does pretty much nothing other than stand there with a cup which, by the way, looks about as much like the FA Cup as he did like Cantona. If he does look like a footballer at all it’s Chelsea legend Dan Petrescu who himself is a dead ringer for X Files star David Duchovny. There’s a couple of guys in Cantona masks which I’m guessing were modelled on his Spitting Image puppet. In 2009, said masks were used to superb effect in the Ken Loach film Looking For Eric which is a great watch if you get the chance. Cantona himself would, of course, embark on his own career in film after leaving football appearing in multiple movies (including the Loach one as himself) and only this morning I saw him on my TV as the face of the latest William Hill bookmakers advertisement. The world has not forgotten Cantona, and you can bet on that.

The TOTP producers have missed a trick with this next artist. Judging by the cutaway from Ian Wright’s intro, this is just a repeat of the studio performance from the other week of Smashing Pumpkins doing “Tonight, Tonight”.

So what you may ask? Well, they could have shown the promo film for the single which won six awards at the 1996 MTV Music Video Awards including Video of the Year. Stylistically based on the 1902 Georges Méliès silent film A Trip To The Moon, it featured primitive special effects, backdrops and puppets which made for a piece that was at turns both charming and disturbing. The plot concerns a male and female protagonist couple making a journey to the moon on a zeppelin. On arrival, they jump off the zeppelin to fall to their destination with their descent slowed by their umbrellas. Once on the moon, creepy looking hostile aliens take them prisoner before our heroes fight them off again with their multi purpose umbrellas. Escaping in a rocket, they then encounter a sea-god type who fortunately is friendly and puts on a show for their entertainment featuring mermaids and starfish before returning them to the surface in a bubble. Lovely stuff as Alan Partridge might say. Stylus Magazine put it at No 40 in their 2006 list of the top 100 music videos of all time. I think the video might have lived in the memory longer for the TOTP audience longer than the straight studio performance they’d already seen before .

Right, let’s have a little check in with how Ian Wright is doing as host. Well, he’s been competent I would say in not fluffing his lines and has kept his Tigger-ish over exuberance in check. However, he does seem overly intent on name checking his then Arsenal teammates. We had ‘Ooh Aah’ Ray Parlour during the Gina G link and now he manages to squeeze in Tony Adams for the next artist on account of the fact that it is his namesake Bryan Adams. Somewhat surprisingly, “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” was his first single released from a studio album since “Do I Have To Say The Words?” in July 1992. I say ‘somewhat surprisingly’ as it wasn’t as if Bry hadn’t been seen in our charts since then. Quite the opposite in fact. Look at this lot:

“Please Forgive Me” – No 2 – 1993 – to promote a Best Of album
“All For Love” (with Sting and Rod Stewart) – No 2 – 1994 – Three Musketeers soundtrack
“Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” – No 4 – 1995 – Don Juan DeMarco soundtrack

On top of that, he appeared on TOTP alongside Bonnie Raitt for a performance of non-hit single “Rock Steady”. It was like he’d hardly been away and yet here he was back for more with the lead single from a new album called “18 Til I Die. I couldn’t be doing with any of those stop gap, turgid ballads listed above but “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You” was more of a return to form. He was back with some bluesy rock swagger and a memorable hook in the chorus (that tiny bit of guitar that pre-empts the words “is you” makes it). Sure, the lyrics are a bit hackneyed and the title undeniably cheesy but, for me, this was his best hit in quite some time.

We’re into the home straight now as Wrighty gets to grips with the Top 10 countdown. He goes for a straightforward, factual, no gags presentation until he gets to No 5 when he can’t resist taking the piss out of poor old Chris Eubank’s lisp from a few weeks back by pronouncing it as “Thethilia and Thuggth”. Before introducing George Michael at No 1 for a third week with “Fastlove”, he’s back on the footballer name drop game when he mentions his mate Paul Ince aka ‘The Guv’nor’. It’s a clumsily constructed reference with it only being made it so he can call George the guv’nor of the music business but otherwise I think he’s done an OK job as host. I didn’t know this until now but Ince has a solid link to pop music and no, it’s nothing to do with him appearing on any Manchester United singles. He is the uncle of ex The Saturdays star and now TV presenter Rochelle Humes. Well I never!

As for George Michael, I’m kind of surprised that “Fastlove” stayed at top of the charts for three weeks given that we were entering the era of weekly straight-in-at-No1s but looking at the charts, the competition wasn’t that strong at the time with the Top 3 stagnating rather with two hits that had been around for ages in “Return Of The Mack” and “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. Eventually, “Fastlove” couldn’t resist the push given to Gina G following the Eurovision Song Contest which aired two days after this TOTP.

As Wright closes the show with a massive Afro wig on for some reason, Bryan Adams wonders into shot from out of the studio audience wearing a Chelsea shirt! What?! Our host asks Bryan the question I want to know the answer to – “Are you a Chelsea fan?”. It turns out that he is and has been since about 1985 which is when he came to live in London. How did I never know that the Groover from Vancouver supported my beloved Chelsea?! Clearly I can’t have watched this particular TOTP when it aired originally.

The play out video is “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette. Like the aforementioned singles by Mark Morrison and Gina G, this was another hit that was enjoying an elongated time on the charts. Seven weeks inside the Top 40 was quite the run and this second outing on TOTP was due to it going back up the charts from No 25 to No 23 having spent the previous three weeks descending them.

As with the Smashing Pumpkins video I mentioned earlier, the promo for this one also won big at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards collecting three gongs but losing out to Billy Corgan and co in the Video of the Year and Best Direction in a Video categories. One of those three wins was for Best Editing and you can see why with the illusion of there being four different Alanis Morissettes travelling in a car all done without any special effects. The different versions of herself are colour coded (red, green and yellow sweaters) to display different aspects of her personality. According to Alanis, the driver in the red beanie hat is the responsible one in control, yellow sweater with the braids is the quirky one, red sweater is a romantic risk taker and green sweater is the fun one who gets into trouble. To be honest though, I can’t see much to distinguish them from each other as they all just seem to spend the entire journey laughing, shouting, singing and throwing their arms about. Ok, red sweater (the risk taker) climbs out of the window and is nearly taken out by a bridge and the (responsible) driver tries to stop her but that seems a to be the only demonstration of their dominant character traits. There is a final ‘irony’ at the video’s end when the car runs out of petrol despite the start of the promo showing Alanis driving away from a petrol station. We don’t actually witness her filling up the tank though so maybe she just bought the coffee in her hand potentially confirming that “Ironic” really is the song that can’t stop not being ironic. That’s a little ironic, don’t you think?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	JX	There’s Nothing I Won’t Do	No
2	Horace Brown	One For The Money	Negative
3	Liverpool FC & Boot Room Boyz	Pass & Move (It’s The Liverpool Groove)	Never
4	Black Grape	Fat Neck	Nah
5	Gina G	Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit	Nah
6	1300 Drums featuring Unjustified Ancients of M.U.	Ooh! Aah! Cantona	As if
7	Smashing Pumpkins	Never Never	No but I probably should have
8	Bryan Adams	The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You	Nope
9	George Michael	Fastlove	I did not
10	Alanis Morissette	Ironic	No but I bought her album

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/m0021s8x/top-of-the-pops-16051996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 02 MAY 1996

Posted on July 27, 2024 by 80stastic

When I write these reviews, I try and make reference to what else was going on at the time of the show’s broadcast either nationally, globally or indeed personally on occasion. Well, I’ve made a discovery on the last of those angles – I’ve found an old diary from 1996. I’d forgotten that I used to keep one from about 1991 to 1997. I can’t find the rest of them which were presumably lost in various house moves but the ‘96 one is intact. Now obviously I’m not going to reveal my inner most thoughts from back then but it might prove to be a gold mine for filling in some background details. So what was I doing on the day of this particular TOTP?

*refers to diary*

Ah excellent! It was my day off (I was working in the Our Price store in Stockport) so what did I do with it? I went into town to pay our council tax bill! The 27 year old me knew how to live back then! In my defence, I don’t think I paying bills by direct debit was commonplace in 1996 and though I was no poll tax rioter, I probably wanted some control over when I paid it on account of permanently being skint. Paying bills wasn’t the only thing I was doing though. In an unlikely push to better myself, I was doing two courses at this time. One was a First Aid class and the second was about 50s music. Get me! These days I struggle to read an online article in its entirety. I also note that on this day, Glenn Hoddle accepted the offer of becoming the next England manager and would be leaving my beloved Chelsea at the end of the season. I write this post the day after Gareth Southgate has just resigned as national team coach following England’s loss to Spain in the Euros 2024 final. Whilst it may have seemed as if the appointment had come a bit early in Hoddle’s career, he looked like Pep Guardiola compared to the current crop of names being lined up to replace Southgate. Graham Potter?! Do me a favour!

Now this is all very interesting (or not) but what about TOTP? What about the music? You’re right of course so let’s get to it and we start with “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” by Gina G. Despite having been on the show at least twice already, she’s back on tonight in another promotion push as the UK’s 1996 Eurovision entry with the contest just over two weeks away. Due to the multiple appearances, Gina and her backing dancers were step and word perfect by this point and I have to say it all hangs together pretty well. Gina seemed to be channeling her inner Kylie with her glittery micro dress and wide, perma-smile and why not? One of her dancers (the one in the pink dress) looks a bit like ex-EastEnders actress Samantha Janus who of course represented the UK at Eurovision in 1991. It isn’t her but she had me fooled for a while or perhaps I should say just a little bit.

In a recent TOTP repeat, we witnessed the sad spectacle of Miss Diana Ross making a fool of herself by covering Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic “I Will Survive” as she searched desperately for a hit to keep her relevant in the mid 90s. I said at the time of reviewing her performance that we would be seeing and hearing another cover of the track very shortly and that time is now. Chantay Savage (nothing to do with Robbie, Lily or Doc) however took the track in a completely different direction, slowing it down so much that it was reconstructed as an R’n’B ballad. Although it did little for me, I give her full marks for creativity. Sadly, such imagination was lacking when it came to naming her album which was called “I Will Survive” (Doin’ It My Way)” – a more literal title it’s hard to conceive. Chantay would never have another UK hit single in her own right though she did co-write “We Got A Love Thang” for CeCe Peniston in 1993 which went Top 10.

I should have said that tonight’s host is the very affable Michelle Gayle who is perhaps being slightly disingenuous when she says in her intro to The Manchester United FA Cup Final Squad and their hit “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” that she doesn’t know if United will win the league and FA Cup double for the second time in three years. History records that the Red Devils did indeed do the ‘double double’ in 1996, a view that was obviously not available to Michelle seeing as those events were yet to happen but I’m pretty sure that they were red hot favourites to do so. Three days after this TOTP aired, Fergie took his team to Middlesbrough, easily won 3-0 and secured the Premier League title having successfully hunted down Newcastle United who led the table by 12 points in January, Kevin Keegan rants and all. Six days on from that, they were at Wembley for the FA Cup final against a Liverpool side who were no slouches but neither were they anywhere near the great teams of their 70s and 80s history. It would have been a shock (albeit a mild one) had the Scousers triumphed. As it turned out, the 1996 final was a terrible game with Eric Cantona’s late winner sparing us the misery of extra time. The fact that the final is best remembered for the Liverpool squad’s horrendous cream suits says everything.

Alex Ferguson’s United were in the middle of their 90s pomp but at least their dreadful cup final song for this season didn’t replicate the success of its 1994 counterpart “Come On You Reds” which inexplicably topped the charts. The good news is that unless they released one for the 1999 FA Cup final which formed part of their historic treble (I can’t recall if they did or not) this should be the last time I have to review any more of their singles. The bad news is that we haven’t seen the last of football related hits in 1996 by a long chalk.

Blimey! This next song is as dull as my diary! If I thought 3T’s last hit “Anything” was as drippy as the roofs of some of the stadiums at EURO 2024, I hadn’t reckoned on its follow up “24/7”. Jacko’s nephews have tried to inject a slightly more uptempo beat to it than its predecessor but it seems to just shine an even harsher light on how insipid a tune it is. The guy who dramatically flung his rucksack to the ground during performances of “Anything” (I’ve no idea which one he is out of Taj, Tyrell and TJ) seems to have lost his prop for this single – maybe the song wasn’t his bag (ahem).

I’m guessing that after being introduced by Chris Eubank the other week as “an absolute tottie’, Sleeper’s Louise Werner might have expected a less suggestive intro from a fellow female artist but Michelle Gayle can’t resist referring to her as “sexy” and lumping her in with similarly categorised pop star Louise (“she’s called Louise – aren’t they all?”). Louise and her band (now I’m at it, making it all about the female lead singer) are into the Top 10 for the first time with “Sale Of The Century” and to celebrate, she’s come in a top that is appropriately Britpop in style. In fact, what with that and her jumping and hopping stage moves, she’s coming across like a feminine version of Damon Albarn (more of whom later). At least she’s not just standing there statuesque (see what I did there?).

Louise would go on to be a successful author post Sleeper and before their reforming in 2017 writing both fiction and an account of her music career Just For One Day: Adventures In Britpop (also published as Different For Girls: My True–life Adventures In Pop). The blurb for that autobiography includes the line “eating Twiglets backstage and enviously eyeing up Damon Albarn’s plate of foreign cheeses”. Don’t cheddar tear over him Louise! It’ll ruin your mascarpone. These cheese puns are starting to grate now aren’t they?

As is the case with Erasure, there’s a list of every Pet Shop Boys single in my memory banks from 1985 to the early 90s that I’m pretty sure I could recite in its entirety. However, as is also the case with Erasure, it all starts to go a bit hazy around the mid 90s when, despite working in record shops for the entire decade, I must have taken my eyes off what both duos were up to. “Before” is a case in point. This track is definitely not anywhere to be found in my ageing grey matter cells. It was, however, the lead single from sixth studio album “Bilingual” which was actually Chris and Neil’s first since 1993’s “Very”. However, there had been Pet Shop Boys releases in the meantime in the form of the collections “Disco 2” and “Alternative” which were a remix album and B-sides compilation respectively.

“Bilingual” didn’t appear until the start of September so “Before” preceded it by four months making it feel like a stand alone single which maybe explains why I don’t remember it. I do recall second single “Se a vida é (That’s The Way Life Is)” which came out a few weeks before the album which is presumably why I would have sworn that was its lead single. Why the early release date for “Before”? I’m not sure but Wikipedia tells me that in 1995, Neil and Chris ended their contract with the American arm of EMI and singled with Atlantic who launched a renewed marketing campaign to promote the duo in the US so maybe that had something to do with it? Or maybe they wanted to consolidate on the success they had achieved with their collaboration on “Hallo Spaceboy” with David Bowie in the February and didn’t want to leave a gap of six months until their next single? Either way, I’m not sure “Before” deserves all this retrospective attention and consideration as it’s a pretty weak track in my opinion. Sure it was a Top 10 hit but the Pet Shop Boys fan base would always guarantee that for a release of brand new material. It’s not terrible it’s just not that memorable. Listening to it now, I could imagine its chorus being sung by (the horror!) Take That on one of their 90s hits. Even the video is just full of special effects and computer graphics which seems to dominate all their promos around this time and which showed a lack of foresight as they have dated so much as to appear naff now if not…erm… before.

The last time The Cure were on the show performing “The 13th” I wasn’t especially complimentary about the song. I’m not the only person who has a downer on it. A regular reader of this blog commented that the whole album it was taken from – “Wild Mood Swings” – was such a disappointment when it came out and the fact that “The 13th” was one of the better tracks on it shows how poor it was. Online forums seemed to be split in their judgement on it. Some people rate it in their Top 10 songs by The Cure whilst others state (and I quote) “The 13th is justifiably shat on by most fans” and that “it sounds like something brought up from the sewer”. On reflection, have I been too harsh? Sure, it’s a bit out there and maybe not what we might have expected but look at their back catalogue. The Cure have always innovated and reinvented themselves. Look at the difference between “The Walk” and “The Lovecats” first example – two non-album singles that were released within four months of each other in 1983 but were years apart sonically it seemed to me. If only “The 13th” could have peaked at No 13 instead of its actual high of No 15, my musical itch would have been scratched.

If asked to come up with a song by the Smashing Pumpkins then “Tonight, Tonight” would be the only track I could name with total confidence. Nothing to do with the Genesis hit which almost shared the same title (theirs had an extra ‘Tonight’ in it), there’s a reason why this one has stood tall and proud in my music recollections – it’s magnificent. A sprawling epic masterpiece, it was recorded with a 30 piece string section courtesy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It’s one of those rare songs where the standout hook of the chorus is actually purely instrumental with no vocal, well for me it is anyway. Those swooping, descending strings allied to rousing guitars and a galloping drum riff – remarkable stuff. Somehow though it didn’t make me explore their material any further. Maybe I should do now that investigating an artist’s back catalogue is so much easier due to streaming platforms like Spotify. As for host Michelle Gayle’s claim that although it was the band’s first appearance on the show that she was sure it wouldn’t be the last, as far as I can tell, they never made it back to the TOTP studio despite having a further five UK Top 40 hits.

George Michael is straight in at No 1 with “Fastlove” just as he did with previous single “Jesus To A Child”. This was impressive stuff given it was all happening at the peak of Britpop and George’s chart toppers had been a melancholic ballad and then a funky, R&B workout. The successful streak continued when parent album “Older” was released eleven days after this TOTP aired and immediately went to No 1, going on to sell 1.8 million copies in the UK. It was quite a comeback given his last studio album had been six years earlier.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had consecutive No 1 singles. His first two solo hits “Careless Whisper” and “A Different Corner” both scaled the heights albeit two years apart and punctuated by a raft of Wham! releases. If you count his 1987 duet with Aretha Franklin “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” then it’s three on the bounce. Similarly, if you go back to George’s involvement in the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and his version of “Somebody To Love” on the “Five Live EP” in 1993, then there’s also a run of three No 1s including “Jesus To A Child” and “Fastlove”. However, despite a subsequent string of No 2 hits, the latter would prove to be his final UK chart topper.

Perhaps lazily, when talking about the Battle of Britpop in the Summer of 1995, the phrase ‘Blur won the battle but Oasis won the war’ is often trotted out. This translates as “Country House” beat “Roll With It” to No1 but in terms of albums, “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” sold loads more than “The Great Escape”. Whilst that is true with the former achieving sales equivalent to seventeen times platinum compared to the latter’s three times, Blur’s fourth studio album sometimes unfairly gets a bad rap. Yes, all the critical plaudits go to “Modern Life Is Rubbish” and “Parklife” for being musical milestones and I don’t disagree but if you apply a purely statistical analysis, “The Great Escape” is the only Blur album to furnish the band with four Top 10 hits including a No 1. 1997’s eponymous follow up album came close to matching that accomplishment but was let down by fourth single “M.O.R.” peaking at No 15. The fourth single from “The Great Escape” was “Charmless Man” which is a decidedly decent song that doesn’t have the profile it maybe deserves with TOTP not contributing to it by only showing 30 seconds of its video over the closing credits. Said video features the actor Jean-Marc Barr as the titular protagonist who would be one of the actors regularly employed by the controversial film director Lars Von Triers in his movies. In this very year of 1996, the first of his Golden Heart Trilogy of movies was released. Breaking The Waves though, is one of the most miserable films I have ever seen – truly charmless.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Gina G	Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit	I did not
2	Chantay Savage	I Will Survive	No
3	The Manchester United FA Cup Final Squad	Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)	Never!
4	3T	24/7	I’ll give you one guess…
5	Sleeper	Sale Of The Century	Nope
6	Pet Shop Boys	Before	Negative
7	The Cure	The 13th	Nah
8	Smashing Pumpkins	Tonight, Tonight	Apparently not but I really should have
9	George Michael	Fastlove	It’s another no
10	Blur	Charmless Man	No but I had The Great Escape album

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/m0020sr3/top-of-the-pops-02051996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 08 FEB 1996

Posted on May 29, 2024 by 80stastic

OK so the ‘golden mic’ host thing, I get it. An attempt by TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill to inject an element of glamour to the proceedings, to shake up the traditional format, to maybe spring a surprise on the millions watching at home. So we had various members of Take That and Boyzone for the swoon factor, PJ and Duncan honing their presenting skills for their future careers, a number of comedians including Jack Dee, Phill Jupitus, Jo Brand and Mark Lamarr to add some humour to the links and some names that defied explanation based on performance (Craig McLachlan was truly awful). However, one of the oddest incumbents of the ‘golden mic’ slot was surely the host of this particular show – Julian Cope. Quite why the head shaman of rock ‘n’ roll, the too cool for school arch-drude, a guy so out there that he lives not just in the left field but on the extreme peripheries of it, would be seen as a good fit for a mainstream pop music show is strange indeed.

Now, let me be clear – I like Julian and some of his music is mighty fine (not that I claim to know all his canon of work). I’ve read his double autobiography Head–On / Repossessed and I’ve even attended one of his megalithic exhibitions though sadly it wasn’t the one in the British Museum where he arrived in five inch platform boots and doused in so much hairspray that he set the fire alarms off causing the building to be evacuated. That’s how you walk into a room! He’s also one of the world’s first bloggers dating back to 1997 and has written an ‘Album of the Month’ review since May 2000 and hasn’t ever missed a month. As a blogger who has been reviewing TOTP repeats these past eight years, I utterly respect his commitment to the cause. And yet…was he really a sensible choice for hosting the grand old show? For a start, would the watching youth even know who he was? Yes, he’d performed on the programme some six months previously promoting his “Try, Try, Try” single but he was hardly a chart regular. Then there was his propensity for protest. Hadn’t Ric Blaxill figured out that Julian would use this prime time exposure to further causes that were close to his heart and wouldn’t that cause a problem in compromising the BBC’s impartiality? Predictably, Cope does exploit his half hour in the spotlight to promote his objection to the building of the Newbury bypass in a series of sloganed T-shirts. OK, well let’s see how this turns out…

The opening act, like it so often was, is a dance act and also as was often the case, their single had already been a hit. “Loving You More” by BT had got to No 28 in September 1995 but made No 14 when rereleased the following year. Obviously, I don’t remember this one as I wouldn’t have been interested in it back then. What do I think of it now? Well, it’s still not my bag but I’ve heard much, much worse in the course of these 90s TOTP repeats. It’s actually quite a smooth sound and vocalist Vincent Covello has a decent set of pipes as well as looking like a swarthy version of Marti Pellow. As for the guys at the front of the stage, they look like they’ve just wondered in from a Fast Show sketch. Most odd.

Talking of odd, let’s check in on host Julian Cope and see how he’s holding up. Well, he’s brought his mascot Sqwubbsy with him for moral support. You may recognise Sqwubbsy as he’s been on the show before dancing in the studio audience as Julian performed the aforementioned “Try Try Try” and he also made an appearance at the Poll Tax riots of 1990 (hence his pin badge here). Again, I’m surprised he got away with flouting such political credentials on TOTP. Anyway, Cope manages not to fluff his intro for second act Joan Osborne and her single “One Of Us”. Nothing to do with the ABBA song of the same name, this was an example of a curious trend in the 90s of American female solo artists having one big hit over here and then disappearing almost as soon as they had arrived. Starting as the decade began with Alannah Myles and “Black Velvet”, there followed the likes of Lisa Loeb and her only hit “Stay (I Missed You)”, Paula Cole with “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”, Meredith Brooks (“Bitch”) and Jennifer Paige (“Crush”).

Joan wasn’t quite the one hit wonder as she had one other solitary UK Top 40 entry but “One Of Us” is undoubtedly her best known song. Imagining God arriving on Earth being a regular person dealing with the trials and tribulations of everyday life like riding on the bus, it was written by founding member of The Hooters (of “Satellite” fame) Eric Bazilian. Its memorable lyrics helped propel it to success but also landed Joan in hot water in some territories who objected to the lines:

What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Eric M. Bazilian
One of Us lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Now when I was listening back to this, another song immediately sprang to mind, a connection that I hadn’t thought of at the time. Anybody else getting a hint of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies? Well, that connection it seems was deliberate as Bazilian admits that as he sat down to record the song’s demo, he had a voice in his head, that of Brad Roberts of the Canadian folk rockers and that the verses of “One Of Us” share a similar melody to that of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”. Hmm (hmm hmm hmm).

The first video of the night comes from The Smashing Pumpkins who are onto their fourth UK hit single in “1979”. Another one of those bands that I probably should know much more about than I do, the bits that I do know, I quite like including this track. The video for it won the MTV Music Video Award for Best Alternative Video in 1996. What’s the significance of the year 1979? Well, songwriter and lead singer Billy Corgan says the song is about the transition from youth to adulthood and that feeling like you are on the cusp of things in your life changing and a new chapter about to happen. That’s all fine but Corgan was born in 1967 so he would have been just 12 years old in 1979, not even a teenager let alone nearly an adult so that doesn’t really work does it? By that logic, the song should have been called “1984” but then that title had already been taken by George Orwell I suppose and Eurythmics who wrote “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)” for the soundtrack of the film of said novel.

Writing all of this got me thinking about other songs whose titles are just years. Off the top of my head there’s “1999” by Prince, “1963” by New Order but the one I’m plumping for is this whose lyrics include the marvellous lines:

She rocked out to Wham, not a big Limo Bizkit fan

Thought she’d get her hand on a member of Duran Duran

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jaret Ray Reddick / John Lowe Kenneth Allen / Mitchell Allan Scherr
1985 lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

“We’re sailing high over the Mother Earth tonight. We’re clearly out of our trees” trills our host before introducing a band that would receive more flack and accusations of blandness than anyone since Level 42 were in their heyday. Lighthouse Family were Tunde Baiyewu and Paul Tucker who met at Newcastle University and began writing songs together one of which, “Ocean Drive”, brought them to the attention of record label Polydor. However, not impressed by the calibre of the rest of their material, the duo needed to come up with a surefire hit or risk being dropped. Enter “Lifted”, a feel good soul song that almost drifted into easy listening territory. Backed by a bundle of airplay, much was expected of the single but it stiffed at No 61 on initial release in 1995. Fortunately for the band, they still had the aforementioned “Ocean Drive” track which breached the Top 40 a few months after the failure of “Lifted” making them a bona fide chart act. With that foothold secured, a rerelease of “Lifted” seemed a sensible career move and it duly went straight into the chart at No 4 before spending a further three weeks inside the Top 10. “Ocean Drive” also received the rerelease treatment going to No 11 before the album of the same name became a huge success going on to sell 1.8 million copies in the UK.

So where did all the cries of them being bland come from and did they deserve the criticism? Well, they didn’t do much for me but there has always been a space for lowest common denominator music that appeals across the board but which offends those who consider themselves as ‘serious’ or ‘true’ music fans. I’m thinking Simply Red, Dido, Savage Garden, James Blunt etc. Certainly Lighthouse Family were never going to get high praise from the ‘inkies’ music press who were in thrall to Britpop. Even today, a quick search of the internet unearths online forum comments such as ‘Shitehouse Family’ and ‘offensively inoffensive’. Is that fair? Look, I refer you to my mate Robin who, in response to me saying to him that he couldn’t just state that he hates every single song Elton John has ever recorded, replied “Yes I can. I thought you knew that music taste is subjective”. It’s a fair point. If you like Lighthouse Family then good luck to you.

East 17 were a hit making factory to rival Stock Aitken & Waterman in the mid 90s. “Do U Still?” was their 13th consecutive UK chart hit of which nine went Top 10. They had a formula and it worked for quite some time. ‘If it wasn’t broken, why fix it?’ was their motto to the point that by 1996, they were just rewriting previous hits. This one was almost a replica of their 1993 hit “Deep” which was a great record but three years in, shouldn’t the band have been doing more than just retreading the same water? Well, the record buying public disagreed with me as they often did and sent it to No 7. They still had another four UK chart hits in them of which three went Top 3 so clearly the band weren’t quite done yet but was there more gravitas than we realised at the time to their lyrics to this one of “Do you still love me…do you still need me…do you still want me?”.

With the then current No 1 being propelled by a TV advert, was there room for another such generated hit? Well, yes there was as the Levi’s campaign wasn’t the only one to employ a song that would capture the public’s imagination. The Coca Cola TV advertisements had been hugely successful in not just promoting their brand but making hit records of the music that soundtracked them stretching back to 1971 when the New Seekers took “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”* to No 1.

* A Britpop obsessed UK would make a hit out of this song when covered by Oasis cover band No Way Sis in 1996.

Seventeen years later, the unknown Robin Beck also hit the top spot with “First Time” after providing the music for a Coca Cola campaign. Come 1996 and it was a revitalised song from the 60s that slinked its way up the charts in the form of “I Just Want To Make Love To You” by soul singer Etta James. I, for one, didn’t know anything about Etta but I’d certainly seen the advert her song soundtracked. The construction worker who takes his shirt off while having a diet coke break under the gaze of the swooning female office staff? Sure you know it. This one…

Anyway, the success of the song meant an appearance on the UK’s premier music show was required so we get a satellite link from San Diego where Etta and her band are ready to go with an idyllic setting of the ocean behind them. Unfortunately, the wind that day was pretty strong and it makes for an uncomfortable experience for the performers and watching TV audience. You can actually hear the wind swirling about them and see the fringes on their leather jackets tossing around. Just when you’re thinking that this is all a bit odd, the cringe factor is turned up to ten when two guys in sailor outfits stroll onto the set in a blatant attempt to recreate the vibe of the Cola advert. Gulp!

Doubling down on the awful satellite performances, 3T (as opposed to BT earlier) are up next from Malibu Beach to mime their hit “Anything”. Presumably they’d closed down a part of the beach to film this as it appears deserted which gives the whole thing an eerie feel. It’s not helped by the weird camera angles focussing on the driftwood. In fact, it puts me in mind of the iconic finale of the original Planet Of The Apes film when astronaut Taylor sees the Statue of Liberty and realises he’s been on Earth the whole time. All that’s missing is for one of 3T to drop to his knees and scream “You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to Hell!”. The closest they get is when the one with the backpack (maybe he’s got their packed lunches in there) flings it to the ground at the song’s climax. I hope he didn’t have any cans of coke in there; they’ll make a right mess when he opens them.

After what seems like a lifetime spent away from the studio after those back to back satellite performances, we’re within its confines again with, for me, easily the best song on the show tonight. After a run of six consecutive chart hits that all peaked tantalising just outside the Top 20, Terrorvision would break their huge hit duck and how when “Perseverance” careered into the Top 5 in week one. I think it’s fair to say that these West Yorkshire guys weren’t your standard rock outfit with brass parts and almost doo wop vocals incorporated into their songs. After trialling their style in their early work, “Perseverance” was when it properly all came together for me (a bit like with Shed Seven the other week). Some great hooks allied with that memorable lyric about the ‘whales and dolphins’ made this their best tune yet and would also be their biggest hit until “Tequila” made it to No 2 three years later. The fact that it was in and out of the Top 40 inside three weeks just reflected the changing chart life of new release singles and how big the band’s fan base had become. Indeed, the album the “Perseverance” trailed – “Regular Urban Survivors” – would become their highest charting collection when it peaked at No 8 and it would provide the band with a further three hit singles during the calendar year. We might well be seeing more of Terrorvision in these 1996 TOTP repeats.

It kind of seems appropriate that Julian Cope finishes his hosting stint by introducing a song called “Spaceman” at No 1. As the man himself says “It is cosmically correct that this is No 1 so I get to introduce it”. Yep, it’s another week at the top for Babylon Zoo. Despite being seen very much as a one hit wonder (which they’re not), it’s overlooked that their album “The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes” actually sold pretty well placing at No 6 in the charts and shifting 100,000 copies in the UK alone. Some (though not all) of its reviews in the music press were even favourable but history has not been kind with it routinely turning up in lists of the worst albums ever made. If punters were disappointed when they heard “Spaceman” in full for the first time, what were the reactions like of people that bought the album on the strength of the single? The only albums that fall into a similar category that I can think of are “Laughing At The Pieces” by Doctor And The Medics which promised much with the success of “Spirit In The Sky” but delivered very little and Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Flaunt It” which arrived in a blaze of publicity following the “Love Missile F1-11” single and was meant to be the future of rock ‘n’ roll but very much wasn’t. Unlike the Sputniks, at least Babylon Zoo had some self knowledge by calling their 1999 comeback single “All The Money’s Gone”.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	BT	Loving You More	Of course not
2	Joan Osborne	One Of Us	Negative
3	The Smashing Pumpkins	1979	I did not
4	Lighthouse Family	Lifted	No
5	East 17	Do U Still?	Nope
6	Etta James	I Just Want To Make Love To You	Nah
7	3T	Anything	Never
8	Terrorvison	Perseverance	Liked it, didn’t buy it
9	Babylon Zoo	Spaceman	I am going to admit to buying it but not for me for a friend who was obsessed with it so she could use my staff discount – honest!

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z96z/top-of-the-pops-08021996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 26 OCT 1995

Posted on March 27, 2024 by 80stastic

After four consecutive shows of not having to suffer the frankly insufferable Simon Mayo as host, the smug one is back and this time he’s brought his mates with him. Yes, lingering around the studio for this TOTP is Chris Evans and his breakfast show crew but more of them later. The last time he was on, Mayo did that whole ‘Rhymin’ Simon’ schtick which was just intolerable. We don’t have that this time at least but he does start with some line that relates to a news story about a supermarket sandwich not being fresh. What that news story was actually about I have no idea but if you asked Mayo today what it was about I bet he would know. He’s the sort of bloke who’d have a spreadsheet of all the times he was on the show, what his links were and a laughter rating system as to how funny he was.

Anyway, let’s get to it with the music. 1995 was the year of rereleases with those afforded another chance becoming a much bigger hit second time around. However, the recipients of this exercise were generally dance tracks – The Lightning Seeds were most definitely and defiantly pop and none more so than the tracks on their “Jollification” album. This one – “Lucky You” – was initially the lead single from the album when released in August of 1994 but somehow missed the Top 40 when it peaked at No 43. Three hit singles and 14 months later it was made available again and this time made it all the way to No 15 becoming the album’s second highest charting single in the process. “Lucky You” is such a model example of a pop song that you would think it had been created in a laboratory. Crafted and perfected to within an inch of its life, it was ideal for daytime radio. The Lightning Seeds were my go to band on a Saturday afternoon in the Our Price store I worked in at the time if we needed to shove something on in a hurry as the last CD had finished playing. As a consequence, many of my colleagues hated The Lightning Seeds with a passion.

Ian Broudie has always maintained pretty much the same look throughout his career – mop(top) of hair, goatee beard and shades permanently attached. Only the flecks of grey these days indicate the passing of any time. As much as he knows how to write a good pop tune, I’ve never been overly convinced about his voice which isn’t the biggest you’ve ever heard. He wrote “Lucky You” with Terry Hall and it would suit the sadly deceased singer’s voice better I think. I much prefer Hall’s version of “Sense” which he also co-wrote with Broudie.

In direct contrast to Ian Broudie comes Meatloaf and his massive voice. In this week’s chart, he found himself in a four way tussle for the coveted No 1 spot. His new single “I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)” was up against another new release from Coolio whilst the previous week’s No1 and No 2 from Simply Red and Def Leppard respectively were both performing well. In the final sales count, Meatloaf would just fall short of repeating the feat of “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by entering the Top 40 at No 2. It was still quite the achievement though for an artist who had only had one UK Top 10 hit prior to the biggest selling single of 1993 and confirmed how much the success of the “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” project had done to revive Meatloaf’s career and profile.

Oof! What on earth is this? Well, obviously it’s a horrible remix of one of the classic pop singles of all time. The more pertinent question is why? After The Human League made a successful if rather unexpected return to the charts earlier in 1995 with the album “Octopus” and its hit singles “Tell Me When” and “One Man In My Heart”, their previous record label Virgin decided to cash in on their ex-artist by rereleasing their first Greatest Hits album from 1988 which had gone double platinum in the UK. In a clever piece of negotiation with the band’s new label East West, they managed to licence the aforementioned “Tell Me When” and a new song entitled “Stay With Me Tonight” to be included on the album’s track listing thereby ensuring it lent it a veneer of authority and comprehensiveness.

A third track was added to the album which was a remix of “Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)” by Snap! and it was this abomination that was chucked out into the shops to promote the collection. Maybe it’s just that people of a certain age who were around at the time of its original 1981 release (like me) have an emotional attachment to it (especially as it was also that year’s Christmas No 1) that we find it hard to accept any deviation from its true form. Or, perhaps more obviously, the 1995 remix was a just piece of worthless shit and that’s why we hate it. There was certainly no love for it on social media when this TOTP repeat aired on BBC4 recently. The 1995 remix somehow got to No 16 in the charts but as for who was buying it, I can only assume completist super fans or the tone deaf.

Next we have perhaps the ultimate rerelease of the whole decade let alone 1995. I say rerelease but it’s actually a remix of a 1994 single that originally only made No 69 on the chart. By 1995, despite critical acclaim and being eight albums into their career, Everything But The Girl had only ever had three Top 40 singles of which two were cover versions. All that changed with “Missing”. Originally a lo-fi electronic dance single from their “Amplified Heart” album, the duo’s American record label suggested that it be reworked by the legendary remixer Todd Terry to be played in New York clubs. His beefed up house beats treatment of the track combined with Tracey Thorn’s enchanting, ethereal vocals and the killer line “like the deserts miss the rain” propelled the song into becoming a monster hit of epic proportions all around the world. In the UK it peaked at No 3 but even more impressively, it spent 14 (!) weeks inside the Top 10. Look at these chart positions:

8 – 6 – 6 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 4 – 4 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 4 – 5 – 8

How’s that for consistency?! It would sell over a million copies here whilst in America it got all the way to No 2 after a 28 weeks climb to get there. It would spend a then record breaking 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. These were unbelievable stats – this is Everything But The Girl we’re talking about! They were hardly a gargantuan unit shifting monster. As much as I’d always liked them, I would never have predicted that they could sell this many records but then “Missing” was no ordinary song. It had that much sought after but rarely achieved quality of being able to crossover into lots of different markets. Punters who would never have listened to a dance track let alone buy one were queuing up at the local record shop to purchase a copy. The track transcended its supposed status as a song of the pop charts to become a part of the cultural tapestry. Tracey Thorn herself has said that “Missing” has been played at funerals and memorial services. Given its chart run detailed above and that we’ll likely be seeing EBTG a fair few times over the forthcoming repeats, I think I’ll leave it there for now.

Watching this next video, I’ve realised that I really don’t know that much about The Smashing Pumpkins. Sure, I know the titles of their first three albums and I could recognise their covers from having sold them to punters whilst working in record stores throughout the 90s. What they actually sounded like though? I wouldn’t be so sure. I know their hit “Tonight, Tonight” which I like but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge of their back catalogue. Take this single for example. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” was the lead single from third album “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” and reached No 20 on the UK Top 40 and yet I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it before. How is this possible if I worked in a record shop you ask? Sadly, the stereotype of leaning on the counter all day, brew in hand listening to all the cool and groovy new sounds and being rude to any customers who attempted to ask you anything wasn’t true at all. Sometimes you were so busy that if I’d been asked at gunpoint to tell you what had been played on the shop sound system that day, I couldn’t have.

So now I’ve heard “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, what is my considered opinion of it? Well, it’s OK I guess. An interesting chorus but it seems to take forever to get to it with the verses being as dull as. I wasn’t that keen on Billy Corgan’s voice either. Give me this instead by the Mock Turtles for a song about butterfly wings any day of the week…

“Ain’t Nobody” by Rufus and Chaka Khan is such an enduring song. 40 years old now and it is still a staple of radio playlists whether you’re Radio 2 or Retro Soul Radio. It’s a remarkable legacy for a song that was a big hit but not one of the biggest sellers of all time. It made the UK Top 10 in 1984 and No 22 in the US though it did top the R&B charts over there as well. Its long lasting nature is perhaps partly due to how many times it has been covered by other artists. “Ain’t Nobody” has been recorded by Jaki Graham, LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige, Natasha Bedingfield and as an interpolation with the Human League’s “Being Boiled” by Richard X vs Liberty X as “Being Nobody”.

And then there’s this version by Diana King. Needing a follow up to her mega selling hit “Shy Guy”, she (or her record label possibly) went for that tried and trusted strategy of releasing a cover version of a well known song. And it worked – sort of. It reached No 13 in the UK and made No 4 on the US Dance Club Play chart but it was nowhere near the seller that “Shy Guy” was. Perhaps deservedly so in my opinion. It seems fairly ordinary to my ears despite Diana trying to put a ragga tweak in there early on by randomly shouting out “Have Mercy!” in the intro. There then follows a fairly faithful rendition of the original but with a horrible, tinny sounding backing which loses all the smooth groove of the original. The whole performance is not helped by the location for this satellite exclusive which appears to have been filmed in the car park of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yep, a car park. Diana is joined by two guys in flasher macks one of whom looks like he’s going to have a piss in a flower bed when he turns his back to the camera. At one point there’s a shot which is a close up of a tree because it has a small street sign which says ‘Top Of The Pops’ on it. A close up of a tree! This was a real low for these satellite performances. Bon Jovi at Niagara Falls this was not! Sadly, I can’t find the clip on YouTube though. Diana would have one more UK hit two years later with another cover version (this time of ”I Say A Little Prayer”) before the hits ran out completely.

The aforementioned Chris Evans finally appears on camera for this next link though mercifully he says nothing choosing instead to eat from a packet of crisps. Instead, Simon Mayo ignores Evans (presumably this was cooked up by the pair beforehand) and instead introduces the Radio 1 Breakfast Show newsreader Tina Ritchie to do the link. Ritchie does her job well enough despite Mayo doing a gyrating movement opposite her while she speaks. He seems to lower himself down her body while she speaks (though that may be the camera angle) as if he’s lap dancing for her. It’s a truly sickening sight. Why was he allowed to do it?! Horrible man.

UB40 is the act that Tina Ritchie introduces with a song I have zero recollection of. “Until My Dying Day” was released to promote the band’s second Best Of album snappily titled “The Best Of UB40 – Volume Two” which collected all their hits from 1988 to 1995. The first volume had gone six times platinum in the UK but its follow up did nowhere near the same business despite including their 1993 No 1 “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You”. Its sales can’t have been helped by “Until My Dying Day” which, dearie me, is dreary to the point of being soporific. @TOTPFacts says that the track was originally written for the soundtrack of the James Bond film Goldeneye. That can’t be right can it? Goldeneye? UB40’s song is more like Jap’s Eye!

Wait, wasn’t Cher on the show and in the studio last week? She bloody was you know! As if to distinguish between the two appearances, she’s come in fancy dress as Elvis this week seeing as her hit – “Walking In Memphis” – is all about him (sort of).

It’s an attempt to do something different I guess but she doesn’t really look like Elvis, rather a tired stereotype of a 50s Teddy Boy. It’s all a bit silly and Cher’s dance moves don’t add any authenticity at all. Maybe I’m missing the point and should just accept it as a bit of fun but I can’t get past the fact that Annie Lennox beat Cher to this look by a good 12 years and did it so much better…

And so to another new No 1 and this one has gone straight into pole position in week one making it the ninth single to do so up to this point in 1995 and the third on the bounce following Shaggy and Simply Red before it. Coolio was the winner of that aforementioned four way chart tussle with his “Gangsta’s Paradise” song. I say Coolio but I should also give props to his oppo LV who was also formerly credited on the track. This was an absolute monster of a record and similar to “Missing” earlier in the post, stayed on the UK Top 40 for what seemed like an eternity. Two weeks at No 1 but then three at No 2, two at No 3 and a further five inside the Top 10 on top of that.

Famously interpolated (there’s that word again) with Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”, it was also featured heavily in the hit film Dangerous Minds starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Also like “Missing”, it was a huge crossover hit with record buyers who wouldn’t normally listen to rap music purchasing the single. It also garnered airplay support from radio stations that wouldn’t normally touch rap with a barge pole. In a 2020 poll by digital publication The Pudding, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was one of the most recognisable 90s songs amongst Millennials and Generation Z’ers.

I’m wondering now if our appetite for the song hadn’t been whetted by the film Pulp Fiction. The opening line “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” from Psalm 23:4 is very reminiscent off this scene courtesy of Samuel L. Jackson whilst the whole film, like the song, is about gangsters…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Lightning Seeds	Lucky You	Not the single but I think I may have had the Jollification album at some point
2	Meatloaf	I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth)	Definitely not
3	The Human League	Don’t You Want Me (Remixes)	Love the original but not that remixed shite!
4	Everything But The Girl	Missing	No but I must have it on something surely?
5	The Smashing Pumpkins	Bullet With Butterfly Wings	Negative
6	Diana King	Ain’t Nobody	Nah
7	UB40	Until My Dying Day	Nope
8	Cher	Walking In Memphis	I did not
9	Coolio / LV	Gangsta’s Paradise	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/m001x9fl/top-of-the-pops-26101995?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 JUL 1993

Posted on September 13, 2022 by 80stastic

I seem to have spent a lot of time recently talking about 90s American sitcoms. There was Cheers and its memorable theme tune one week and then Blossom the next thanks to tonight’s opening act. There’s a connection to yet another one on this show as well but we’ll come to that in due course. For now, it’s that Blossom star Joey Lawrence who is in the studio to get teenage girls’ hearts racing as he performs “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix”. I suppose there was a tradition of young male US teen idols making a splash in the UK that proceeded Joey. I’m thinking David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson of course…OK, I’m not making a case that Lawrence had anywhere near the success of those guys but maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised that he did translate over here. Good looking lad, de jour pop tune, hit TV show to his name. Look if Leif Garrett and Glenn Medeiros could have huge hits over here why not Joey Lawrence?

Looking through his film and TV credits, he seems to have played characters called Joe or Joey six times. Talk about being typecast. Still, he sells his song well enough here though his sleeveless leather jacket (very “Bad Boys” era Wham!) seems a bit dated and I’d have to say that Blossom herself had the better dance moves…

https://youtu.be/o5hc7oGt6Pg

It’s ~~Debbie~~ Deborah Harry’s birthday so host Tony Dortie tells us. She was 48 then which makes her 77 now! I suddenly feel older than usual and I feel ancient most of the time anyway. We get her video for “I Can See Clearly” tonight after that nonsense with the magician in the studio the other week which sees her cavorting around in a field at night during a storm complete with lightning strikes. Not sure how that would help her see clearly unless the video director was using the illumination from the lightning as a metaphor? As for that song title, do you think she deliberately left the word ‘now’ off despite the chorus including it just so people wouldn’t think she’d done a Johnny Nash cover?

“I Can See Clearly” peaked at No 23 and remains her last UK solo hit.

https://youtu.be/KQx6eppDdjs

Well, what a disappointment! After the sparkling and sprightly tune that was “Regret”, New Order followed it up with the completely dreary “Ruined In A Day”. The intro promises so much more but then it just flatlines as soon as Bernard’s vocals come in. Sometimes Sumner’s lo-fi singing is the perfect foil for the track but here it’s just a drone. Surely there must have been better options on their “Republic” album than this for a single? Yes, yes there was as the third single from it, “World (The Price Of Love)”, was a much better choice which makes you wonder why they didn’t just go with that instead seeing as they released it anyway.

“Ruined In A Day” peaked at No 22.

The first of two women in very large hats on the show tonight next as we get a 90s take on a70s disco classic. I think she’s called Yvonne Shelton and the guys behind her are Barry Jamieson and Jon Sutton. Together they were Evolution and, mixing in the same circles as A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State, they would go on to be huge names in the world of dance music, known for creativity and innovation working with the likes of UNKLE, Sasha and Jon Digweed. There doesn’t seem to be anything very innovative about adding some Italian House piano to Chic’s “Everybody Dance” to me though. Hadn’t we seen this sort of trick dozens of times before already in the dance era? We all have to start somewhere I suppose. Oh and Yvonne? Worzel Gummidge says he wants his hat back.

Four Breakers again this week (seriously, 1993 TOTP – give me a break won’t you!) and we start with The Smashing Pumpkins and “Cherub Rock”. To say I spent almost the entire 90s working in record shops, I seem to have ignored many a band who others swear by. These Chicago indie rockers are a case in point. Even today, I probably only know about three Smashing Pumpkins songs most notably “Tonight, Tonight” their highest charting UK single. This track passed me by completely though I do recognise the cover of the album it came from (“Siamese Dream”) so I must have sold a few copies.

Weren’t they a bit like a US version of The The (who I do like)? Not in musical style so much as in the structure of the band which is basically Billy Corgan as The The is essentially Matt Johnson? Apologies if I’m outraging any Pumpkins fans here but in my defence, I don’t really know what I’m talking about!

Billy Idol on the other hand I do know something of though not so much this period of his career. The Billy Idol I knew about was the 1984-85 vintage when the UK finally welcomed his style of rock with reactivated singles “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” finally becoming Top 10 hits alongside his more toned down side as shown on “Eyes Without A Face”. I kept tabs on him through 1986’s “Whiplash Smile” album and again with more re-released hits in the late 80s like “Mony Mony” and “Hot In The City” to promote his “Vital Idol” Best Of.

As the 90s dawned though, I lost sight of him. “Charmed Life” passed me by and then came 1993’s “Cyberpunk”. A concept album no less (no really) which was inspired by Billy’s desire to embrace emerging technology and the digital world in order to create music. Idol combined this with his interest in the sci-fi sub genre of cyberpunk following a comment by a journalist about an electronic muscle stimulator on his leg which was part of his recovery process after a motorcycle accident. The album included spoken word narratives between tracks and was created in Idol’s home studio on his Mackintosh computer.

Reaction to the album amongst critics was overwhelmingly negative but I wonder if there’s some snobbery at play. David Bowie’s 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman about the role the internet would play in our future lives has seen him lauded as a visionary retrospectively. Rightly so of course.

However, shouldn’t Billy be afforded a bit more credibility for his own observations six years prior to Bowie’s?

“Shock To The System” was the album’s lead single written about the Los Angeles riots of 1992 with a video that seemed to be a mash up of Judge Dredd meets Robocop. Despite the kudos I’ve given Billy above, it’s a poor song which explains its peak at No 30 in the UK charts.

After Brian May and Cozy Powell stank the studio out last week, here’s another rock royalty amalgamation – Whitesnake’s David Coverdale and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page together on a single called “Take Me For A Little While”. I called Brian and Cozy hoary old rockers in the last post but Tony Dortie refers to David and Jimmy as “two dinosaurs of rock” in his intro. I’m not sure which is the bigger insult.

As with The Smashing Pumpkins earlier, I remember selling the “Coverdale-Page” album due to its plain but distinctive cover and we sold a lot of it quickly as all the rock fans of Rochdale where I was working made a trip to their local Our Price to pick up a copy of this imagination pricking collaboration. I don’t remember it being played in the shop though and therefore I don’t know this track at all. I never got the boat going to Led Zeppelin island and my knowledge of Whitesnake is limited so I’m not the best judge of its merits but I don’t think I’ll be playing it again. I’d rather have Robert Plant and his “29 Palms” I think.

Taylor Dayne? What “Tell It To My Heart” Taylor Dayne? Her? In 1993? Wow! I had totally forgotten this! Well, in the intervening eight years since her last UK hit, Taylor had scored a US No 1 record with “Love Will Lead You Back” which stiffed over here so when she presented Arista label president Clive David with her third album, he suggested she cover the old Barry White hit “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe” to boost its chances. Whereas Debbie Harry earlier had knocked off the word ‘now’ from her “I Can See Clearly” single to ensure it wasn’t confused with the Johnny Nash song, Taylor removed the word ‘Babe’ from her song even though it was actually a cover version. Hardly the best way to “Prove Your Love” of the original (see what I did there?).

Anyway, Taylor’s version of “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love” was produced by C+C Music Factory’s Clivillés and Cole and was a US dance chart No 1 and made a respectable No 14 over here.

Time for that second big hatted lady on the show now and she’s singing a song that will always transport me straight back to 1993 – “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. It’s one of those records that would become more well known than the band who made it (see also “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin and “(I Just) Died In Your Arms” by Cutting Crew). It’s also a song that, like it’s chart peer “Two Princes” by Spin Doctors, very much seems to divide opinion. Some seem to love it whilst others can’t abide it. I’m a bit more in the middle – I think it’s a good song but it probably suffered from bring overplayed on the radio. So much airplay did it receive that punters were asking for it before it had entered the Top 40. I recall we ordered a few copies in to see how it went (we didn’t normally buy in non chart singles) and they did indeed go straight away. The buyers at Head Office must have got wind and scaled out loads of it across the chain and…hey presto! With copies actually available in the shops, a huge hit ensued. It went to No 1 all over Europe (though No 2 in the UK) and would make the band almost perfect one hit wonders – one huge hit then nothing followed by the band splitting up. I say ‘almost’ as there was a follow up single called “Spaceman” but it tanked although their album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” did well going to No 4 in the UK.

Eighteen months after 4 Non Blondes had been and gone I was helping to shut down the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester as the company had sold the unit. I was clearing out the manager’s office and when moving a filing cabinet, found a CD of “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!” behind it. I took it home as I didn’t know what else to do with it (all the shop’s other stock had already been disposed of) but I’ve no idea where it is now.

Oh and that connection to another US sitcom that I mentioned earlier? Well, the woman in the big hat belting out “What’s Up?” is Linda Perry who was married to Sara Gilbert for five years and who is Sara Gilbert? She’s the actress who played Darlene Conner in Roseanne.

https://youtu.be/ZbDzp1Fm66s

Tony Dortie had a bit of a thing for Jade didn’t he? “Now it’s time for me to break out into a hot sweat” he brazenly tells us as he introduces their live by satellite performance from Los Angeles. “I Wanna Love You” was actually the trio’s debut single in the US but which was released in the UK off the back of the success of “Don’t Walk Away”. Maybe it’s just the similarity of song title but it sounds very much like Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up” to me. It’s almost as if “I Wanna Love You” is the clean version of that 1991 hit with the word ‘sex’ being replaced by the more wholesome ‘love’. At least there’s some extra content to this satellite performance with some pre-recorded shots of the group arriving at a venue before we get the standard fare of the track being sung in some soulless setting.

“I Wanna Love You” peaked at No 13 in the UK.

Next the moment that Dortie has been bigging up all show – Take That are in the studio! “Pray” was the first of their twelve (twelve!) No 1 singles of which eight came within the group’s first incarnation up to 1996. Those eight chart toppers were almost consecutive with only “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” breaking the sequence halfway through when it peaked at No 3. They’re impressive figures whatever your opinion of Take That. I did have an opinion though and it was that “Pray” was really lame and throwaway. Yes, it has that gospel feel chorus (pray geddit?) but compared to their high octane rendering of “Could It Be Magic” for example, it seemed so pedestrian.

As for their performance here, well it didn’t need to be anything special to sell the record and it wasn’t. An obvious gospel choir in the background and some twisty – turning dancing from the lads whilst Gary Barlow (now minus his peroxide blonde hair – a true non-blonde as it were) does the actual singing. It was all very underwhelming but then I guess I wasn’t the group’s target audience to be fair.

Gabrielle gets a second week at No 1 with “Dreams” and in 2023 she’s touring to commemorate its 30 years anniversary! I feel very old for the second time in this post. She’s even coming to my current home of Hull. Will I be going to see her? Dream on.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Joey Lawrence	Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix	Never happening
2	Deborah Harry	I Can See Clearly	No it was poor fare
3	New Order	Ruined In A Day	See 2 above
4	Evolution	Everybody Dance	No
5	The Smashing Pumpkins	Cherub Rock	Nah
6	Billy Idol	Shock To The System	Nope
7	David Coverdale & Jimmy Page	Take Me For A Little While	I did not
8	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	Negative
9	4 Non Blondes	What’s Up?	No but I had that found CD of the album for a while
10	Jade	I Wanna Love You	It’s a no
11	Take That	Pray	Of course not
12	Gabrielle	Dreams	And no

Disclaimer

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

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001btp0/top-of-the-pops-01071993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 16 MAY 1996

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TOTP 02 MAY 1996

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TOTP 08 FEB 1996

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TOTP 26 OCT 1995

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TOTP 01 JUL 1993

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