The word ‘unprecedented’ has been much overused in recent times but this particular TOTP show really was worthy of such a description. This was the first time that the programme had been presented by two female hosts with no men in evidence at all. That the show should be in its 26th year before such an occurrence is probably not one of the BBC’s proudest moments. The two hosts given the honour were Sybil Ruscoe and Jenny Powell. Let’s hope they had some decent tunes to introduce…
….hmm. Not a great start in my book. I could never see the appeal of “If Only I Could”. It was musical wallpaper to me – I barely registered that it was playing if it came on the radio. Also pretty anonymous at the time was its singer Sydney Youngblood. So little was known about him that when Smash Hits ran an article, it was entitled ‘Great Sydneys Of Our Time” and lumped him in with Sid Vicious, Sydney Australia and Carry On legend Sid James!
Undeterred, Sydney did develop some notoriety when he was accused of plagiarising the sound of Soul II Soul for his use of soul vocals over hip-hop rhythms. He responded by releasing a remix of his earlier hit “Feeling Free” (featuring Elaine Hudson) called “The Jazzy Who? remix” in reference to Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B. The track featured a piano lead that sounded similar to the UK soulsters’ “Happiness” and used a beat identical to “Jazzies Groove”. Was there anything in it? Judge for yourselves….
Now here’s someone we haven’t seen around these parts for ages! Not since 1985 had Kate Bush released an album of new material and she hadn’t been in the Top 40 singles chart since 1986 when “Experiment IV” was released to promote her “Whole Story” Best Of album. “The Sensual World” was the title of not only her first single since then but also of the parent album and was originally intended to be just the words from the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses put to music. However, Joyce’s estate wouldn’t give permission for their use at the time so some original lyrics were written based upon the book’s character Molly Bloom.
When I was a wet behind the ears first year at Sunderland Poly I tried to impress my new found course mates by making out that I had read Ulysses, all 730 pages of it. I hadn’t at all but it had been name dropped by Stephen ‘Tin Tin” Duffy who I considered to be a massive intellect at the time (I know!) so I thought I’d try it. My gambit failed when my friend John asked me what it was like. What could I say ? I didn’t have a clue. I opted, of course, for ‘It’s alright’ and John seemed to accept that. Phew! I still haven’t read it 34 years later.
Anyway, back to Kate and “The Sensual World” – the single would peak at No 12 whist the album would go platinum in the UK and achieve a chart high of No 2. I quite liked the song. The celtic instrumentation on it sounded intriguing and I liked the bells at the beginning of the song although it’s not my favourite track to begin with the sound of pealing bells. That would be this….
A new look for The Beautiful South next who have recruited vocalist Briana Corrigan to their ranks. Also adopting a new look is Paul Heaton who is sporting some very peculiar optical eyewear. Whilst “You Keep It All In” wasn’t one of my fave tracks of theirs, watching this performance back I am struck by the fact that the band employs three different singers to deliver solo spots within the song’s structure which strikes me as pretty unusual.
Corrigan stayed with the band until 1992 when she left to pursue a solo career. There were also reports that she fell out with the band over the lyrics to “36D” which criticised British glamour models. Dave Hemingway later admitted that “We all agree that we should have targeted the media as sexist instead of blaming the girls for taking off their tops”.
“You Keep It All In” peaked at No 8.
This next song was once described by Bob Stanley (he of Saint Etienne and DJ-ing fame) in Melody Maker like so:
“not only was it a compelling dance track with a chorus so contagious it could keep you awake at night, it also formed part of the best Top Three in years when it was sandwiched between Black Box and Sidney Youngblood.”
He was of course referring to “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic and he was also of course wrong as it was and remains a terrible record…in my humble opinion of course.
P.S. I’m guessing that Top 3 sandwich is due very soon in these TOTP repeats as this weeks’ chart has Black Box and Technotronic enduring a sandwich with Richard Marx as the filling. Yuk!
Having been absent from the charts for nigh on 12 months, Wet Wet Wet are amongst us again. “Sweet Surrender” was the lead single from new album “Holding Back The River” and I was very….underwhelmed by it I have to say. It’s always seem like a bit of a throwaway, nothing of a song to me. I was perpetually waiting for it to get going but it never really did. In a Smash Hits feature at the time, even the band themselves said of it:
‘It’s not the obvious one is it. But it’s a nice wee number, we wanted a sort of… lovers rock feel’.
Wet Wet Wet and lovers rock?! Really?! Retrospective wisdom suggests that “Holding Back The River” should really have been the band’s third album and not their second*. “Holding Back The River” was quite a leap in terms of a more mature sound from its much poppier predecessor. With a the title track that was supposedly about alcoholism for example, were their fan base struggling to appreciate this more grown up sound? Certainly the singles released from it achieved rather disappointing chart showings:
| SINGLE | CHART PEAK |
| Sweet Surrender | 6 |
| Broke Away | 19 |
| Hold Back The River | 31 |
| Stay with Me Heartache | 30 |
You could tell the band were clearly taking themselves more seriously as some of them had grown their hair long whilst Marti Pellow had grown a little beard as displayed on the front cover of that Smash Hits issue under the tag line ‘Och Aye Jock McKay! Look at the state of the Wets!’
In hindsight, third album “High On The Happy Side” with its lush No 1 single “Goodnight Girl” was a more logical choice of sophomore album with “Holding Back The River” being perfect ‘difficult third album’ material. Ah well, I guess it all turned out alright in the end
* I’m dismissing any claims that “The Memphis Sessions” was their second album despite its chronological release date claims. on the grounds that it was just a collection of initial recordings and demos for their first album “Popped In , Souled Out” which were subsequently aborted.
Just the two Breakers this week starting with “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel a song that is routinely panned as utter shite but which is still worthy of more discussion than that I propose.
For the defence:
Yes it’s one of those ‘list’ songs (see also “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by REM, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan and even “Nothing Ever Happens” by Del Amitri) which seems to be the main complaint that people have about it in that it’s perceived to be a very lazy genre of songwriting. ‘We could all do that!’ they cry but could they? Could anybody just cram a sizeable list of world events / figures into a three minute pop songs structure and get them all to make some sort of rhyming sense? Not sure I could. And there is a structure. Until the final stanza, every two lines represents a year with the song opening in 1949, the year Billy was born.
Then there’s the accusation that the majority of the events listed are very American based. Where are all the UK references? Well, there are some including:
- England’s got a new queen
- British Beatlemania
- British politician sex
In any case Billy is an American so it seems reasonable for him to write about his own country’s history.
And it’s educational. The fifth grade class at the Banta Elementary School in Menasha, Wisconsin used the lyrics of the song to select topics for their history reports. Joel’s record label responded by issuing cassettes containing the song and a 10-minute talk by Joel to 40,000 students.
For the prosecution though, I call….Billy Joel. Yes, Billy himself isn’t a massive fan. “It’s terrible musically. It’s like a mosquito buzzing around your head.” he has said of the song.
I’m somewhere in the middle – I don’t mind it but I can see why it bugs the hell out of some people.
“We Didn’t Start The Fire” peaked at No 7 over here and was a No 1 in the US.
Hans up who thought Curiosity Killed The Cat were down the dumper when their last single “Free” in 1987 did’t even make the Top 40?
*Your blogger raises his hand*
Well, we were all wrong as here they are two years later back in said Top 40 with a new single called “Name And Number”! And according to the band they were never down the dumper in the first place. No, according to guitarist Julian Brookhouse “We didn’t go down the dumper”. See I told you. He carries on… “We’ve only been away for 16 months and to us that didn’t seem like a very long time”. 16 months not a long time in the world of pop music?! Come off it mate! Anyway, they’d actually been away recording a second album to follow up their No 1 debut “Keep Your Distance”. However, “Getahead” was a huge commercial disappointment peaking at No 29.
I always quite liked the only hit single from it though. Yes, it was immensely cheesy with that answer machine message motif but it had a good beat and you could dance to it. No! That’s far to middle aged Dad like. Strike that from the post. It was …funky? No, that’s no good either. Look. I just liked it OK. I wasn’t the only one either. De La Soul sampled it for their 1991 Top 10 single “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)”…
Whatever you may think of Erasure ( I like them) you cannot deny how prolific they were in the 80s (and beyond). “Drama!” was their twelfth single release since 1985 of which nine were Top 40 hits. It was also the lead single from forthcoming album “Wild!”, their fourth studio album of the decade! Like I said, prolific.
But was it any good? While it has to be admitted that “Drama!” was hardly a radical new direction for Andy and Vince, it was still a solid enough tune to my ears. Building slowly and atmospherically (with Andy’s vocals very low key) before bursting into the usual snappy dance track that includes an almost neurotic chorus. The shouts of ‘guilty!’ were supplied by The Jesus And Mary Chain who were recording in the next door studio. Top trivia!
The video isn’t up too much although it’s one which includes the rarely spotted sight of Vince Clarke sporting a relatively standard haircut. “Drama!” peaked at No 4 whilst the “Wild!” was another No 1 album for the duo producing four Top 20 hits and ensuring Erasure started the next decade in the same successful fashion as the one they left behind.
Officially a solo Gloria Estefan effort, you could have been forgiven for thinking “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” was made with her usual collaborators Miami Sound Machine given that it sounded very much like some of their other Latin tinged efforts like “Conga”, “1-2-3′ and “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”.
This one was a huge hit across Europe but fared much less favourably in the US. I could imagine it featuring heavily in a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar and possibly starring Penélope Cruz. Oh, there is such a film and it’s called Volver.…which I’ve seen….and “Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice)” isn’t in it. Yeah, doesn’t really work that previous comment does it?
Top 10
10. Tears For Fears – “Sowing The Seeds Of Love”
9. Beautiful South – “You Keep It All In”
8. Damian – “The Time Warp”
7. Madonna – “Cherish”
6. Erasure – “Drama!”
5. Tina Turner – “The Best”
4. Sydney Youngblood – “If Only I Could”
3. Technotronic – “Pump Up The Jam”
2. Richard Marx – “Right Here Waiting”
1. Black Box – “Ride On Time”: How many weeks is this now? Did Sybil say four? We all know about the scandal, behind who actually sang the vocals on “Ride On Time” but I didn’t know until now that the guys in the band haven’t seen front woman Katrin Quinol since about 1992 but they did some sort of deal that allowed her to do PAs under the name of Black Box in Europe but not in the UK. Guess that means a trip abroad if you want to see her perform this song again. Given the current state of the world, I’ll pass thanks.
The play out video is “Secret Rendezvous” by Karyn White. Apparently this track was written by hitmakers Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and Antonio “LA” Reid to sound like Prince and I can kind of hear what they were trying to do I guess although it sounds more like Janet Jackson to me.
“Secret Rendezvous” peaked at No 22.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
| 1 | Sydney Youngblood | If Only I Could | But I really couldn’t – no |
| 2 | Kate Bush | The Sensual World | No but I think my wife had the album |
| 3 | The Beautiful South | You Keep It All In | No but I had the album |
| 4 | Technotronic | Pump Up The Jam | Techno-bollox more like – no |
| 5 | Wet Wet Wet | Sweet Surrender | Nah |
| 6 | Billy Joel | We Didn’t Start The Fire | No but I bought another single from his album Stormfront which had it as an additional track |
| 7 | Curiosity Killed The Cat | Name And Number | Nope |
| 8 | Erasure | Drama! | No but again I think my wife had the album |
| 9 | Gloria Estefan | Oye Mi Canto (Hear My Voice) | I do hear it Gloria and I don’t like it |
| 10 | Black Box | Ride On Time | I didn’t |
| 11 | Karyn White | Secret Rendezvous | 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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jqyf/top-of-the-pops-28091989
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/2019/09/september-20-october-3-1989.html
TOTP Rewind - the 80s 