The BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule is missing the 9th February show as it included the video for convicted sex offender R Kelly’s “Bump N’ Grind” over which the chart countdown played. It isn’t the only thing missing as on 17th February 1995 the Vauxhall Cavalier belonging to Richie Edwards of Manic Street Preachers was reported as abandoned near the Severn Bridge. Edwards had been missing since leaving the London Embassy Hotel on 1st February. Attending police found evidence that the car had been lived in but although it had been left near a notorious suicide spot, there has never been any conclusive evidence that Richie committed suicide. Despite numerous sightings of him over the years, his whereabouts and status have never been confirmed until 2008 when he was officially ‘presumed dead’ although he is still listed as a missing person.

So much has been written about the story of Edwards disappearance that it has almost become legend. As such, it’s hard to recall initial reactions to the news but it remains a huge event not just for Manics fans but also in rock history. What I do recall is that there was much discussion about what the remaining members of the band would do next. Ultimately they decided to carry on and returned in 1996 with possibly their most well known album “Everything Must Go”.

Continuing the ‘missing’ theme, looking at the running order for this particular TOTP, it strikes me that there’s something else absent and that’s the presence of Britpop. Isn’t 1995 meant to be the year it exploded? So where are all its representatives? Now you might be thinking to yourself, “What’s this guy on about? What about Elastica?!” Yes, that’s true. Before the show has even started, you’ve got Justine Frischmann and co announcing their presence on the show tonight in the message to camera slot. However, check out some of the rest of the artists on the running order:

• Elton John
• Annie Lennox
• Celine Dion
• Gloria Estefan

Hell, there’s even a classical violinist on the show albeit she was a rather unusual flavour of that particular genre.

Not mentioned in that list are tonight’s opening act who are Alex Party. This Italo House collective had a minor hit the year before with “Alex Party (Saturday Night Party)” but it’s this one – “Don’t Give Me Your Life” that is surely the one they are known for if, indeed, they are remembered at all. Now I’ve had my say on all these generic dance tunes clogging up the charts around this time and nearly all of it has been negative. What can I say? I’m a pop kid at heart not a dance head. However, it did seem to me that within this one there was almost the semblance of a proper song structure. I’m sure I can detect verses and a bridge into a chorus. This wasn’t the norm was it or hadn’t I been listening to all the other dance hits properly? True, said chorus incorporates a deadly annoying bleeping synth riff that seemed to be a feature of the genre but tiny credit where it’s due I suppose. “Don’t Give Me Your Life” would peak at No 2 in the UK selling 400,000 copies along the way.

The first of four songs that we’ve only just seen next – that’s the fall out from missing an episode I suppose. I went into quite some detail about Scarlet and their biggest hit “Independent Love Song” in the last post so what to say about them this time?

Well, maybe that it seems to me that they’re not talked up enough as being a commercially successful group from Hull; after all my adopted city isn’t full of them. Yes, of course, there’s The Housemartins and The Beautiful South and Mick Ronson but after that? Everything But The Girl met at Hull University and took their name from a Hull shop but neither Tracey nor Ben were actually from Hull. Kingmaker had a smattering of Top 40 hits between 1992 and 1995 but I would suggest they are ignored in a similar fashion to Scarlet. Who else? The Paddingtons were tipped for superstardom at the start of the new millennium but never really lived up to those expectations. Any more? Wait, what?! Throbbing Gristle? The industrial music pioneers led by Genesis P-Orridge were from Hull?! I never knew that! Mind you, if you’ve ever heard any of their stuff, I’m not surprised the good people of Hull don’t big them up.

So, back to Scarlet. Sure, they only had two UK Top 40 chart hits but, on the other hand, they had TWO UK CHART HITS! How many of us can lay claim to that?! Oh and why does host Mark Goodier say he feels overdressed in reaction to Cheryl Parker’s flamboyant, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen-esque studio outfit. Surely he means underdressed or is he being ironic? Probably lose the irony and stick to the straight down the line script that you’ve built a career on eh Mark, there’s a good chap.

Hi, is that the fumigators? Good. I’ve got an urgent job that needs doing. There an horrendous stench in the TOTP studio due to the presence of a massive stinker at No 19 in the charts! I don’t mean to be disrespectful but Gloria Estefan’s version of “Everlasting Love” is malodorous in the extreme. The third track released as a single from her “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” album, this is one of the worst covers I think I may ever have heard. OK, not the very worst. Nothing can can hold a candle to Paul Shane butchering “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” but it’s still absolutely awful.

I think it’s just the utter laziness with which Gloria approaches the song. That homogenous Eurodance sound has just been applied lavishly to this classic pop song made most famous by The Love Affair who took it to No 1 in 1968. Those Italo House piano flourishes just seem so incongruous and make the thing sound so clunky.

The performance here does nothing to aid the song either. It’s another underwhelming live by satellite exclusive, this time from Miami (obviously) but I’m not convinced that the whole thing isn’t just filmed against a green screen with a fake background added in. Also, Gloria’s backing band look like the uncoolest collection of musicians ever assembled. In short, the whole thing was a bad idea with a botched execution. Must do better.

And so to the aforementioned classical violinist. There are examples of classical music crossing the divide into the pop charts but as Mark Goodier alludes to in his intro, it didn’t happen often. Off the top of my head, there’s “Nessun Dorma” by Luciano Pavarotti but that was off the back of the BBC’s Italia 90 coverage. Then there’s Ravel’s “Balero” but again that was due to another sporting event – Torvill and Dean’s gold medal winning skate at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Of course, there have been pop hits inspired by classical music. How about “World In Union” by Kiri Te Kanawa which was based on a movement from Holst’s The Planets (again though that hit came about as part of the promotion of the 1991 Rugby Union World Cup). There’s always “Fanfare For The Common Man” by Emerson Lake & Palmer I guess which was an adaptation of composer Aaron Copland’s work of the same name. OK, there’s been a few but it must be a tiny percentage that have occupied the charts compared to pop/rock acts over a 70 year period.

Seeking to change all that was a then 16 year old Singaporean-born classical violinist called Vanessa-Mae. Hailed by some as the female Nigel Kennedy, she made her first professional appearance aged just 10 and by 1995 she was already onto her fourth album. However, it was that album -“Violin Player” which would send her into the Stradivarius stratosphere with sales of 1.2 million worldwide. The album was produced by Mike Batt of Wombles and “Bright Eyes” fame and the lead single from it was “Toccata And Fugue”, a take on J.S.Bach’s “Toccata And Fugue In D Minor”.

Now, and I deliberately omitted this one from my list above, we had already seen a version of this piece in the UK Top 40 back in 1980 when Sky took “Toccata” to No 5. This though was the golden era of classical/pop music crossovers – I think this was also when that horrible Hooked On Classics phenomenon was about.

In 1995 with Eurodance and Britpop dominating, the prospect of a classical artist breakthrough seemed unlikely. I guess that Vanessa-Mae wasn’t your average classical artist. Was there some negativity from the classical music world to how she was promoted at the time? I see to think there was. Certainly her performance here was challenging the accepted and expected norms of the genre. Backing dancers lifting her up in the air and then appearing to do ‘The Locomotion’ dance? The insertion of a sample that says “Fasten Your Seat Belts” halfway through? And what about Vanessa-Mae’s outfit? Leopard print top and micro skirt? Remembering she was just 16 at the time was there any outcry about that back then or was it not seen as a big deal as the era of ‘lad culture’ approached? The single made No 16 which was a position not to be sniffed at given its musical style. The rest is history. By 2006, she was listed as the wealthiest entertainer aged under 30 in the UK.

Maybe spare a thought for Ed Alleyne-Johnson though. The one time New Model Army member and violinist recorded “Purple Electric Violin Concerto” three years before “Violin Player” and fused a classical instrument with a more pop/rock vibe to great effect and critical success but nowhere near the commercial sales of Vanessa-Mae. Then again he didn’t look like her either.

Phew! I didn’t anticipate having so much to say about Vanessa-Mae. Consequently, the next act might be given the briefest of write ups especially as, like Scarlet before them, they’ve already been on before. I refer to MN8 who are up to No 5 with “I’ve Got A Little Something For You”. There was some debate online recently in the wake of their appearances on TOTP as to what that little something actually was. I say debate but it’s pretty clear they were singing about their penises isn’t it? Oh and there’s this titbit about member Dee Tails. He became an actor and has played four different Star Wars characters. What’s that? Make a joke about light sabres. I wouldn’t stoop so low!

It’s right wing nutter masquerading as Home Secretary Stella Braverman’s current nemesis now. In the Tory government’s quest to turn the nation against each other by vilifying nurses, doctors, teachers, rail staff etc, I didn’t see Elton John as an obvious target for them. As if the world wasn’t mad enough. Anyway, back in 1995, Elton was on a hot streak. Unlike the second half of the 80s when he couldn’t buy a hit, the 90s had already provided him with eleven Top 40 singles including two No 1s. Even that though wasn’t enough to satiate Elton and less than a year after his “The Lion King Soundtrack” album came out, he released his next one called “Made In England”. The lead single from it was “Believe” which received critical acclaim but to me sounds like a rewrite of his 1992 plodding ballad hit “The One”*. Seriously, Elton could have knocked this one out whilst polishing his multiple music awards. In fact, “Believe” was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance but didn’t win.

*Interestingly, the B-side of the single is the aforementioned “The One”. Hmm.

The black and white promo with Elton travelling in a zeppelin was probably bigged up at the time as a feat of video production but it hasn’t aged that well. “Believe” peaked at No 15 but to be honest, I couldn’t recall what it sounded like before listening to it and I’ve already forgotten how it goes now. Still, anyone who gets up the nose of Suella Braverman is OK by me.

Another song now that I wrote loads about in the last post and also an example of how your brain shifts and re-edits events over time. I described Annie Lennox’s hair during her performance of “No More ‘I Love You’s’” as being a bit Minnie Mouse-esque. There was clearly something lingering in my mind that triggered that comment and here it is. Actual Mini Mouse headgear! I must have forgotten Annie wore some for real! She’s lost the drag queen ballerinas for this one and replaced them with some guys who look like they’ve raided Scarlet’s wardrobe with their ruffled shirts.

Something else I talked about in the last post was what I felt was an odd decision from Annie to make her second solo album a collection of cover versions. I’ve since discovered that the reason for her decision is that she felt emotionally spent after pouring everything into debut album “Diva” and a covers album was a way of releasing an album without the same emotional investment and also allowing her to spend more time with her children. That work/life balance worked for Annie as she went one better than Elton John by winning the Grammy she was nominated for when “No More ‘I Love You’s’” won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

And so to this week’s ‘exclusive’. After looking completely ill at ease during the message to camera piece at the top of the show, Elastica look much more comfortable on stage performing their single “Waking Up”. This was their third consecutive Top 20 hit but rather unbelievably given the band’s profile, it was also their last. True, they did release their first album a month on from this that went to No 1 and broke records for a debut album in the UK so chart-wise, that was their biggest achievement but it’s still surprising. Or is it given that the band didn’t release another single in the UK until 2000* by which point Britpop had long since burnt out?

*I’m not including the 6 track EP released in 1999 that was a collection of demos and rarities.

So why was there such a big gap between releases? Well, after their album came out, they embarked on a huge round of touring (they went round North America four times). The punishing schedule led to bass player Annie Holland leaving the band citing exhaustion. This put into action a flurry of line up changes which, allied with Justine Frischmann’s heroin addiction, proved to not be conducive to the recording of new material. Record label issues and a poor reaction to second album “The Menace” led to the band calling it a day in 2001.

With that all said, I guess it’s time to confront the elephant in the room, the dreaded ‘P’ word – plagiarism. All three of Elastica’s hit singles faced accusations of copying other artists’ work. “Line Up” and “Connection” sounded a bit too similar to songs by post-punk rockers Wire whilst “Waking Up” bears an undeniable resemblance to “No More Heroes” by The Stranglers. This led to litigation action from several music publishers which were settled out of court. Does that tarnish the Elastica legacy or their place in musical history (however big or small that might be)? Personally, I don’t think so but maybe I’m being hypocritical as Ed Sheeran can get to f**k with his song stealing ways as far as I’m concerned.

It’s a second week at the top for Celine Dion with “Think Twice”. Somehow, despite this being its fourteenth week on the Top 40, “Think Twice” had managed to position itself in pole position just as Valentine’s Day rolled around. This may just have been a factor in not just seeing off competition from Annie Lennox who was strongly tipped to replace it but also in helping Celine to capture the album top spot in the shape of “The Colour Of My Love”. February 1995 – what a time we were all having!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Alex Party	Don’t Give Me Your Life	No
2	Scarlet	Independent Love Song	Surely I bought this? No?
3	Gloria Estefan	Everlasting Love	Everlasting shite more like. No
4	Vanessa-Mae	Toccata And Fugue	Nope
5	MN8	I’ve Got A Little Something For You	Negative
6	Elton John	Believe	I did not
7	Annie Lennox	No More ‘I Love You’s’	No but I have the original by The Lover Speaks from 1986
8	Elastica	Waking Up	I didn’t as it goes
9	Celine Dion	Think Twice	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/p00fsvgs/top-of-the-pops-16021995