It’s the day before my 19th birthday! In 1987. To put that into context, I will be 51 years of age on my birthday this year. There’s no avoiding it, I’m an old git. I wasn’t back then though. I was a young man with the rest of my life ahead of me. What happened? How did I get to be this old? It’s a familiar lament of many a middle aged man. I started doing this blog to avert a mid life crisis by wallowing in some nostalgia. I’m not sure that the plan has worked. The only comforting thing is that everyone on this TOTP is also middle aged (if they’re not dead).
For example, host Gary Davies, who has been resurrected by the BBC to host their Sounds of the 80s programme, now looks wizened and creased. His once flowing locks now shorn and with flecks of grey everywhere. His stubble look is also peppered with white hairs. It comes to us all.
Tonight’s first act Erasure were enjoying their third Top 40 hit single at this time in ’87. Once more, to put that into context, they are now up to 35 at the last count. “Victim Of Love” was again taken from their “The Circus” album and was a sensible choice I thought. It was another lively number but for me, it had much more about it than previous single “It Doesn’t Have To Be”. It has a deceptive rhythm to it, undeniably uptempo and yet it almost slithers its way through the song. I always found that to be its greatest hook.
Despite its heavy reliance on synthesizers, there’s no sign of one on stage with Vince and Andy. In fact, the only instrument on show is the former’s acoustic guitar and yet they somehow they still look credible. Maybe that sheen of credibility was why I used to try and copy Andy’s dance steps at my fave Sunderland nightclub ‘Rascals’ back then too. “Victim Of Love” made No 7 on the UK singles chart and they would release one more single before the year was out.
We didn’t get to see U2 perform “With Or Without You” on any previous shows presumably because they were Mike Smith’d but here they are with follow up single “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. The second single from their game changing “The Joshua Tree” album, this gospel influenced track made it to No 6 in our charts.
SHIT ANECDOTE KLAXON!
Around this time, I went to Sheffield with a friend from Poly as it was her home city. Along with my girlfriend (now wife) we spent the afternoon trawling around Sheffield centre looking for a pair of new shoes for me. I couldn’t find anything that appealed and every shop I went in seemed to be playing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. How we all laughed! I’ll get me coat.
Ye gods! Pepsi and Shirley had more than one hit? After the god awfulness of “Heartache” came “Goodbye Stranger” which is essentially the same song. Once again, P&S have gone for some odd stage outfits. Are they camouflage puff ball dresses they’re wearing? I don’t know why I’m asking as I’ve no idea what I’m talking about. What I do know is that this is dreadful shit and should never have got anywhere near the No 9 chart placing that it achieved.
Here come the Breakers and some big news! Jody Watley is leaving Shalamar behind her and launching her own solo career. Yeah…I know…meh. I genuinely can’t remember how “Looking For A New Love” goes. Wait there for 4 mins 32 secs….
Hmmm….well it didn’t ring any bells at all. The intro sounds like the X Files theme tune and then it goes a bit Sheila E and after that it just flatlines into a very dull R’n’B tune. Wikipedia tells me that this song was a very big deal in the US though where it was No 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. I had no idea.
A catchy song with a dark subject matter next. “Luka” was a track from Suzanne Vega’s second album “Solitude Standing” and was written from the point of view of a child who was suffering abuse. The lyrics were very much at odds with the light melody of the song which Vega explains as:
“I felt I had to make it accessible because it was such a dark subject.”
I’m not sure that I understood the dark nature of the song on initial hearing as I was probably focussing on the musical hooks but at some point I must have become aware of what it was all about and it’s now impossible to divorce one from the other.
A massive No 3 smash in the US, we were a bit more luke warm about it making it a No 23 hit in the UK.
A hit straight out of left field next but one which has achieved enduring popularity to this day. Back in 1987 though nobody but nobody had heard of John Farnham outside of Australia. Born in Dagenham but emigrating to Australia at the age of 10, he had been a teen idol throughout the ’70s but once that period was over, he struggled to retain his appeal. Fortune struck though when he was offered a demo of “You’re The Voice” co-written by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band singer Chris Thompson. Knowing he was onto a good thing, Farnham snapped up the song whilst rejecting the chance to record “We Built This City”. How different would the world have been if he’d reversed his choices? Probably not that different at all to be fair.
Anyway, “You’re The Voice ” became a huge international hit (No 1 in Australia, Germany and Sweden and No 6 in the UK) and its inclusion on Farnham’s album “Whispering Jack” helped it to become the 2nd biggest selling album in Australia of all time with only Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” ahead of it.
Although essentially an AOR power ballad, the song has something about it that means it can’t just be simply defined in those terms. Is it the clickety clap intro or maybe the memorable lyrics like “We’re all someone’s daughter, we’re all someone’s son, how long can we look at each other down the barrel of a gun?” Nope, it has to be the bagpipes that make an appearance as the song reaches its climax. Bizarre? Certainly. Baffling? Indeed. Stroke of genius? Unquestionably.
The story of 1987 wouldn’t be complete without at least one viewing of the Beastie Boys. Recalling that period of the band’s history, it’s almost as if they were an entirely different entity back then and nothing to do with the act that they became. Signed to fledgling label Def Jam and ditching their punk origins for rap, the trio of Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D released the best selling rap album of the 80s in “Licensed to Ill”. The fourth single from the album, “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)”, broke them in the UK and they became public enemy No 1 in the press overnight when their tour reached our shores. The gigs were plagued by controversy with women dancing in cages and a huge inflatable motorized penis. What I remember the most about their notoriety though was the outrage caused by the craze of their fans pinching the VW badges from Volkswagen cars in an attempt to emulate the look popularised by Mike D who had one hanging from his neck on a gold chain. The papers really went to town on that story with there even being calls for the band to be deported. Reportedly, in the first weeks of June 1987, Volkswagen were replacing as many as 250 badges a day for their customers.
“No Sleep Till Brooklyn” was the follow up single to “Fight for Your Right” and it was very much in the same vein as its predecessor. Some shouted rap lyrics over the top of a basic back beat with a Deep Purple -esque guitar riff holding it all together. The band’s sound would change drastically over the course of the next 20 years with explorations in sampling, multi layering, funk and jazz.
Did I like them? Err…I didn’t really get it at the time and I guess I dismissed them for many years. During my Our Price days during the 90s, just about everyone I ever worked with loved the Beastie Boys and I began to appreciate them a lot more. The band effectively disbanded after the death of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch in 2012.
Another trip down to London from Clydebank for the boys from Wet Wet Wet next. Their original performance of “Wishing I Was Lucky” saw them adopting a very casual approach to their outfits and they’ve gone for something similar again here. To be honest, the rest of the band would have had to appear stark bollock naked for the TOTP female audience to have gazed at them over Marti Pellow.
I always liked the “He would swear by his mouth almighty” line but their next two single releases would see them get into hot water for plagiarism. That’s for another post though.
Top 10 time…
10. Pespi and Shirley – “Goodbye Stranger”
9. Tom Jones – “A Boy From Nowhere”
8. Donna Allen – “Serious”
7. Erasure – “Victim Of Love”
6. Wet Wet Wet – “Wishing I Was Lucky”
5. Johnny Hates Jazz – “Shattered Dreams”
4. Mirage – “`Jack Mix II”
3. Johnny Logan – “Hold Me Now”
2. Starship – “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”
1. Whitney Houston – ” I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”: This record going to No 1 was a foregone conclusion from the moment it first leapt out into the nation’s consciousness from their radios. After the coup of Whitney being in the actual studio the other week, we get the video this time around. As with the song being basically “How Will I know” regurgitated by the same song writers, so it is with the video which was produced by the same people who made …wait for it…”How Will I Know”. Its the same video! Well, once the coming off stage black and white intro is over it’s Whitney in glorious technicolour messing about whilst some backing dancers do some over exaggerated dance steps. Don’t fix something that isn’t broke though eh?
Like many of us, I assumed that ex-page 3 model Sam Fox‘s foray into the world of pop music would be a fleeting, one-off single type exercise. How wrong we all were. Not to be confused with Starship’s concurrent hit, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” was the fourth of nine (!) Top 40 hits for ‘Our Sam’ and was produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman as if you couldn’t already tell. It’s relentlessly ghastly and we shall never speak of it again.
Oh and my birthday celebrations? How did they go? I got absolutely shit faced in the student bar and honked all over the place. I vowed never to drink again and I lasted a whole 6 days. Not bad going.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
|
1 |
Erasure | Victim Of Love | No but my wife had the album |
|
2 |
Wet Wet Wet | Wishing I Was Lucky | See above |
|
3 |
Pepsi and Shirley | Goodbye Stranger | Goodbye Pepsi and Shirley. Please never darken our doors again |
|
4 |
Jody Watley | Looking For A New Love | Nah |
|
5 |
Suzanne Vega | Luka | No but my wife’s record collection to the rescue one more |
|
6 |
John Farnham | You’re The Voice | Guilty pleasure but never bought it |
|
7 |
Beastie Boys | No Sleep Till Brooklyn | No – I didn’t really get it |
|
8 |
Whitney Houston | I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) | Not for me |
|
9 |
Sam Fox | Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now | Unbelievably bad record – no! |
Disclaimer
OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show as I can’t find the full programme on YouTube.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00030wm/top-of-the-pops-05061987
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.
Some bed time reading?
http://likepunkneverhappened.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-3-16-1987.html
TOTP Rewind - the 80s 