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 appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	What Is Love	Hadaway and shite!
2	Taylor Dayne	Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love	No
3	Michael Jackson	Will You Be There?	No I won’t be and indeed wasn’t
4	Kim Wilde	If I Can’t Have You	Nope
5	Chaka Demus & Pliers	Tease Me	Never happening
6	U.S.U.R.A.	Sweat	Negative
7	Kenny Thomas	Stay	As if
8	AC/DC	Big Gun	Big log more like – no
9	The Levellers	Belaruse	Nah
10	M People	One Night In Heaven	No but my wife had the album
11	Gloria Gaynor	I Will Survive (Phil Kelsey remix)	I did 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/m001btp2/top-of-the-pops-08071993