With 1988 having been retrospectively positioned as a year when a seismic change happened in the UK’s musical landscape bringing with it the huge sinkhole that was house music opening up and swallowing youth culture whole, what would the aftermath be? Would 1989 be more of the same or would another transformative movement appear to shake things up yet again? On reflection I would have to say that, for the majority of the year, it was all a bit of a let down. There was very little change and the status quo (not Francis Rossi and co!) was mainly preserved with some very unchallenging acts and songs ruling the charts. Stock, Aitken and Waterman accounted for over a third of the UK’s total No 1 records for the year (7 out of 18) and when they weren’t at the top of the charts we had the utterly dispicable and inexplicable sales phenomenon that was Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers clogging up the charts placing them alongside Gerry and the Pacemakers and Frankie Goes To Hollywood as the only acts (at that point) to have their first three releases go to No 1. What the Hell was going on?!

We did see some previous chart sensation return with the likes of Wet Wet Wet, Bros and erm…Curiosity Killed The Cat back in the Top 40 with new material but none managed to match their previous heights I would suggest. Certainly in the case of Bros, they managed not only to shed a band member but also layers of their popularity to a new and emerging menace from across the pond – the appropriately named New Kids On The Block. Only Madonna truly showed her superstar credentials by returning in a maelstrom of publicity and controversy (and more importantly huge sales) with her “Like A Prayer” album after her gap year of ’88.

Of the list of No 1s below, I bought one (a charity record but not Band Aid II) and liked hardly any. Of the new acts to achieve a chart topper, only Soul II Soul and Lisa Stansfield had any credibility in terms of being able to consolidate on having a No 1 record and build themselves a career of longevity I would argue. On reflection, it’s a very piss poor collection of chart toppers, possibly one of the worst of the decade I would posit.

Chart date (week ending)	Song	Artist(s)
7 January	“Especially for You“	Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan
14 January
21 January
28 January	“Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart“	Marc Almond with Gene Pitney
4 February
11 February
18 February
25 February	“Belfast Child“	Simple Minds
4 March
11 March	“Too Many Broken Hearts“	Jason Donovan
18 March
25 March	“Like a Prayer“	Madonna
1 April
8 April
15 April	“Eternal Flame“	The Bangles
22 April
29 April
6 May
13 May	“Hand on Your Heart“	Kylie Minogue
20 May	“Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey“	The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney,  Gerry Marsden and Stock Aitken Waterman
27 May
3 June
10 June	“Sealed With a Kiss“	Jason Donovan
17 June
24 June	“Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)“	Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler
1 July
8 July
15 July
22 July	“You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You“	Sonia
29 July
5 August	“Swing the Mood“	Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers
12 August
19 August
26 August
2 September
9 September	“Ride On Time“	Black Box
16 September
23 September
30 September
7 October
14 October
21 October	“That’s What I Like“	Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers
28 October
4 November
11 November	“All Around the World“	Lisa Stansfield
18 November
25 November	“You Got It (The Right Stuff)“	New Kids on the Block
2 December
9 December
16 December	“Let’s Party“	Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers
23 December 30 December	“Do They Know It’s Christmas?“	Band Aid II

Hits We Missed

We didn’t miss any episodes of TOTP this time around as every show was repeated by BBC4 hence there weren’t many Top 40 entries that we missed. Indeed, they seem to play any old shite including niche stuff like W.A.S.P. at every available turn. However, I have found a few that I think we missed that made the charts but didn’t get the TOTP producer green light to appear on the show…

Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – The Rattler

Peak UK Chart Position: No 37

Haling from Bathgate, Edinburgh (as referenced in The Proclaimers hit “Letter From America”), Goodbye Mr Mackenzie first came to my attention with their eponymous debut single in 1988 which could and perhaps should have been a Top 40 hit but it peaked at No 62. Also piqued though was my attention so when “The Rattler” came down the line (to paraphrase its lyrics) in early 1989, I took note.

A re-release of a very early recording from three years prior and made before they signed to major record label Capitol, it took the band into the Top 40 (just) after a 4 week preamble. For me, it should have been a much bigger hit with its ‘rattling boy’ refrain and rootsy rock sound. Sadly, despite debut album “Good Deeds And Dirty Rags” achieving a very respectable No 26 chart placing, “The Rattler” would prove to be their commercial zenith. Moving across EMI from Capitol to Parlaphone as they began recording their second album in Berlin probably didn’t help and after the first two singles from it failed to chart, Parlophone refused to release the album. A further change of label enabled it to finally be released but by this time (1991), all momentum was lost.

Keyboardist and backing vocalist Shirley Manson would eventually leave the group and end up fronting 90s grunge popsters Garbage to huge commercial success. That pop footnote looked like being the thing that Goodbye Mr Mackenzie would be most remembered for but they reformed in 2019 against all odds (including one member having MS) to perform a number of shows (sans Manson) culminating in a sold out gig at Glasgow Barrowlands.

ABC – One Better World

Peak UK Chart Position: No 32

By the end of the decade, ABC had already achieved one successful comeback but pulling off a second proved to be too big an ask. After their sensational debut album “The Lexicon Of Love” had swept all before them, the band had come up with a second album in “Beauty Stab” that I loved but which the majority of their fan base had decidedly rejected. After haemorrhaging two band members and returning as cartoon characters for third album “How to Be a … Zillionaire!”, it looked like the game was up. However, they returned to form in 1987 with “Alphabet City” and attendant hit single “When Smokey Sings” bringing back glories of old.

By 1989 however, they were starting to seem irrelevant against the explosion of dance music and needed something special to bring them back to public awareness so they adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude and released a dance album of their own in “Up”. It tanked hideously peaking at No 58 on the album chart.

Lead single “One Better World” though wasn’t half bad – I liked its positive message and jagged house style back beat. Martin Fry and Mark White also went out of their way to embrace the late 80s house look – all pastel coloured clothes and floppy hair (White’s in particular is a perfectly sculpted example of young raver locks). “One Better World” remains ABC’s last Top 40 hit to date.

Duran Duran – Do You Believe In Shame?

Peak UK Chart Position: No 30

I’d kind of lost the plot and any lingering will with Duran Duran by this time to the point that I don’t really remember this single at all. It was actually the third and final track to be lifted from their 1988 album “Big Thing” and it turns out that there was more to it than I first imagined. Unfortunately, it’s all negative….

Firstly, there was a successful legal challenge made over its similarity to the song “Suzie Q” by Dale Hawkins which was made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Rolling Stones. Duran Duran denied any deliberate plagiarism and insisted it was all down to an unintentionally similar basic blues progression. Listening to the Creedence Clearwater Revival version, you can see why the courts found in favour of the plaintiff.

Secondly, the band’s waning chart fortunes weren’t helped by the revelation that the CD single format of the track had an overlong playing time that disqualified it from chart sales. The CD single was recalled and the issue rectified before being reissued a few days later but it meant that for several days during its initial promotion, the CD was unavailable in shops.

The video for “Do You Believe In Shame?” was the usual arty nonsense we’d come to expect from the band by this point with references to Andy Warhol, a falling dominoes sequence and Nick Rhodes and John Taylor looking all gaunt and gothic. Simon Le Bon on the other hand looks like a Hell’s Angel reject with a hairstyle that the possession of which should have been tantamount to a criminal offence.

The Jesus And Mary Chain – Blues From A Gun

Peak UK Chart Position: No 32

As the end of the decade came into sight, The Jesus And Mary Chain were starting to become Top 40 regulars. After a number of near misses at the start of their career, they had scored five consecutive Top 30 hits since their breakthrough EP “Some Candy Talking” in 1986. “Blues From A Gun” made it six on the spin and was the lead single from their much panned third album “Automatic”.

I wasn’t a die hard fan by any stretch of the imagination but I could appreciate their doomy yet melodic indie rock noise and I distinctly remember having this single in my hands in a record shop in Worcester (possibly Magpie Records) but it didn’t quite make it to the counter for purchase. Great song title though.

Arthur Baker & The Backbeat Disciples – The Meesage Is Love

Peak UK Chart Position: No 38

Legendary US DJ and producer Arthur Baker didn’t just work with some of the biggest names in music – I’m thinking Hall & Oates, Pet Shop Boys, Afrika Bambaataa and New Order for a start – but he also dabbled in releasing records under his own name (albeit he didn’t actually do any singing on them). Using the umbrella term Arthur Baker And The Backbeat Disciples, he released a number of tracks between 1989 and 1992 including “The Message Is Love” featuring the sumptuous vocals of Al Green. A Top 10 hit in four other countries, it got lost in the Xmas rush over here hence it only just breaking into the Top 40.

There was also an album called “Merge” that featured a host of guest artists including ABC, Andy McCluskey of OMD and Jimmy Sommerville in addition to the aforementioned Reverend Green. I liked this one so much I actually bought it (on cassette single no less).

N.B. Not to be confused with Al Green’s duet with Annie Lennox on 1988’s “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” from the movie Scrooged.

Hits That Never Were

It turns out that I hardly bought any of 1989’s hit singles that appeared on TOTP and I was left with having to find multiple ways to say so at the end of each blog post – you can only say ‘nope’, ‘nah’ or just a basic ‘no’ so many times. It seems I was more interested in songs that didn’t make the Top 40. Here are a few that I either bought, convinced me to buy the parent album or just caught my ear…

1927 – That’s When I Think Of You

Peak UK Chart Position: No 46

Asked to name an Australian rock band, no doubt many of us would come up with one of INXS, AC/DC or Crowded House as our answer. If we were being really clever and pedantic, maybe The Bee Gees or if we were looking for a cheap laugh then possibly Men At Work. 1927 though? Surely a pointless answer.

For a while though back in 1989, they looked like they had a shot at the big time with a five times platinum album in their own country in “…ish” – shocking title by the way – and a No 6 hit there as well with debut single “That’s When I Think Of You”. I’m not sure how I became aware of this song but it was very much my kind of thing at the time – bit of melodic rock with a great key change at the song’s finale. It reminded me of “Your Love” by English rockers The Outfield who made it big in the States but never amounted to much back home.

Just like their more successful countrymen INXS, 1927 also had siblings in their line up in the brothers Bill and Garry Frost. That’s where the similarities end though as they were unable to build on that initial success and they split in 1993 although a version of 1927 was still going as recently as 2019 (and that’s far too many years in one sentence).

Danny Wilson – Never Gonna Be The Same

Peak UK Chart Position: No 69

After showing steely commitment to their act throughout ’87 and ’88 by releasing and therefore promoting “Mary’s Prayer” three times before it became a hit, Virgin Records couldn’t pull a second rabbit out of the hat for Danny Wilson when it came to the next stage of their career. Despite having already secured a Top 40 hit in the calendar year in “The Second Summer Of Love”, the rest of ’89 became a sorry tale of missed chances and diminishing returns for the band.

“Never Gonna Be The Same” was the second single to be released from their excellent “Bebop Moptop” album and was a perky pop tune about a very non -perky subject, that of the break up of a relationship. What was clever about the lyrics though was that it also referenced not just the main protagonists but also those associate members, the collateral damage of when a relationship ends – the siblings and family members and friends who also have to come to terms with things having changed irrevocably. As Gary Clark sings:

Tell your brother and your sister ray
That I probably won’t be round again
But I’d always give them the time of day
Tho it’s never gonna be the same

None of that seemed to strike a chord with the UK’s pop fans though who were still enthralled by Italo House or whatever specific genre of dance music was flavour of the month at that time and so a perfectly weighted piece of pop was consigned to the musical dustbin. Apparently Virgin struggled to find enough airplay for the song given that Radio 1 especially seemed inescapably gripped in a dance music fever. Tossers.

For my part, I bought the album on the strength of this single so my conscience is clear.

It Bites  – Still Too Young To Remember

Peak UK Chart Position: No 66 (1990 reissue No 60)

Perennial members of the Hits That Never Were gang, this year’s entry from It Bites was the lead single from their “Eat Me In St Louis” album which saw them follow a much harder rock direction than previously. Gone were the overblown noodling of their prog-rock influences and in came shorter, more direct guitar orientated songs aimed at breaking the US market. The band backed this up with a full on, all out hard rocker look – long hair, leather jackets and in the case of keyboard player John Beck, a Slash style top hat.

“Still Too Young To Remember” was a great song I thought. An interesting mix of guitar riffs, intricate melodies and plaintive vocals, I could even forgive the seedy lyric “there’s a woman in my head, she should be in my bed”. Despite Record label Virgin’s best efforts, the single stalled at No 66. Subsequent singles from the album faired even worse (“Sister Sarah” made No 79 whilst “Underneath Your Pillow” crashed out at No 81). Desperate to not let their endeavours be in vain, Virgin returned to “Still Too Young To Remember” and re-released it in 1990. Its peak position of No 60 was the final nail in the coffin. Amid tension strewn recording sessions for their fourth album, the band announced in November 1990 that lead singer Francis Dunnery had left the band.

It Bites recruited a new singer but despite two band name changes (including the dreadful Navajo Kiss), they quietly split in 1991 before reforming in 2003. After several line up changes, they seemed to have finally given up the ghost in 2019.

The Call – Let The Day Begin

Peak UK Chart Position: No 42

This single was massively championed by Simon Mayo I seem to remember. He had a habit of doing this. He did the same for “Street Tuff” by Double Trouble and the Rebel MC and who could forget his campaigns to make a hits out of Andy Stewart’s “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” and Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”? Cheers for that Simon!

Anyway, this was one of his better calls (excuse the pun) I would suggest. I always thought this lot were Irish but it turns out that The Call were from Santa Cruz, California. Maybe my flawed perception of their non-celtic roots comes from their close alliance to Scottish rock gods Simple Minds for whom The Call opened on some of their tours. Indeed, the similarity between “Let The Day Begin” and the former’s “Waterfront” had to be ran by Jim Kerr for fear of plagiarism claims but Jim was cool with it (perhaps the only time in his life he was ever cool some might say – not me though). Listen to the intro of “Let The Day Begin” and close your eyes and you could well believe you were listening to the opening bars of “Waterfront”. Bizarrely, when Simple Minds covered the song for their their 2014 album “Big Music”, they made it sound nothing like “Waterfront”.

The song was also covered by Los Angeles-based rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as one of their band members was the son of Michael Been who sadly died of a fatal heart attack in 2010. Despite not being a big hit in either the UK or the US, the song continued to have a life of its own when it was used by Al Gore to soundtrack his ultimately unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign against George W. Bush.

Viewed retrospectively from 2020, lead singer Michael Been reminds me of the character of Father Stack from enduring 90s sit com Father Ted. Not sure The Call would have been on Father Stack’s playlist of banging house tunes though…

Spandau Ballet – Be Free With Your Love

Peak UK Chart Position: No 42

If they weren’t sure before, then they must have been by this point. For Spandau Ballet, their 80s ride of success was pulling into a final and full stop. The game was up. It was all over. After the failure of “Raw” to make the Top 40 the previous year, the band really needed the next single to be a hit. Their album “Heart Like A Sky” hadn’t been released at the same time as “Raw” but was held back until September of ’89 – were the record company nervous? Probably. They would undoubtedly have liked, nay needed, a hit single to promote it and put all their chips on “Be Free With Your Love” – a much more radio friendly sound than its predecessor with its free wheeling, joyous chorus and samba style middle eight. Yes, this was just the ticket you could almost her the record company big wigs saying.

Sadly for the band, it was all too little to late. Their imperial phase had ended long ago together with Duran Duran, Culture Club and the other new pop big hitters. It probably died the day that Wham! played their The Final concert in ’86. Also too late was Gary Kemp’s mullet hair. Yes, after years of resisting the urge to follow suit with his fellow band mates, he finally grew his hair long at the back just as the rest of them had cut it all off. This visual representation of the split between the band would play out in a much more sinister way in the courts in the 90s when the rest of the band (except brother Martin) sued Gary Kemp for songwriting royalties.

Sadly, I was one of the few that was still keeping the Spandau faith and bought “Be Free With Your Love”. I think I was trying to convince myself that I was still 15 and not the 21 year old having to face up to working out what to do with my life. That’s my excuse anyway. Two more singles were released from “Heart Like A Sky” but neither got higher than No 94 in the charts.

The River Detectives – Chains

Peak UK Chart Position: No 51

There seemed to be a fair few Scottish groups around the end of the decade all jostling for a shot at chartdom. I’m not talking those established stars who had already made it like Deacon Blue, Wet Wet Wet and Aztec Camera but those who wished to follow in their footsteps. Like who? Well, off the top of my head there were The Big Dish, The Silencers and Love and Money (of whom more later). And this lot. The River Detectives were a folk rock duo hailing from Craigneuk, North Lanarkshire who briefly built up some momentum surrounding themselves with the release of their debut album “Saturday Night Sunday Morning” which scored a respectable No 51 in the album charts.

Four singles were released from the album but the one I knew best was “Chains”, a lovely piece of jangly guitar pop (the intro even has a whiff of The Stone Roses about it) and a chorus with such a whopper of a hook that no river detectives were required to provide evidence of its existence. Sadly the single could only match its parent album in terms of chart placings and I lost track of The River Detectives after that despite them leaving a trail of clues to be followed in the form of follow up album “Elvis Has Left The Building” in 1992. They carried on into the new millennium before finally calling it a day in 2009 leaving behind one of the unsolved mysteries of 80s pop – namely why “Chains” wasn’t a huge chart hit.

Love and Money – Up Escalator

Peak UK Chart Position: No 79

Ah yes, the aforementioned Love And Money. I’d first heard of this lot in 1986 when their debut single “Candybar Express” gained some traction via consistent airplay on Radio 1. Sadly it failed to make the Top 40. Despite debut album “All You Need Is…” being produced by Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor, that also failed to make any impression on the UK record buying public.

Undeterred, they returned with sophomore album “Strange Kind Of Love” in 1988 with an even more stellar list of contributors including Toto’s drummer Jeff Porcaro and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen with the whole thing overseen by the latter’s producer Gary Katz. It racked up 250,000 sales world wide and yet still they were unable to buy a hit single in the UK. It wasn’t for the lack of trying. Four radio-friendly singles were released from the album and I liked them all but my favourite was the final one “Up Escalator” with its slinky back beat and biting chorus.

Despite releasing another fine album in 1991’s “Dogs In The Traffic” including the terrific single “Winter”, the band couldn’t break through the chart barrier that prevented them from becoming mainstream pop stars. They broke up in 1994 before reforming in 2011 and are still headed up by lead singer James Grant who, back in the day, had a quiff to rival Morrissey’s.

Ellis, Beggs And Howard – Big Bubbles, No Troubles

Peak UK Chart Position: No 41

Unfairly dismissed at the time due to his background, this Nick Beggs project saw the ex-Kajagoogoo bassist and occasional Chapman Stick player collaborate with the titular Simon Ellis (keyboards) and Austin Howard (vocals) to fashion a wonderfully eclectic yet musically proficient sound that was lost on many of the UK’s music fans. For those of us that did stumble upon it, we were richly rewarded.

“Big Bubbles, No Troubles” was the debut single that was initially released in 1988 when it topped out at No 59 but it was reactivated 8 months later when it couldn’t have gone closer to breaking into the Top 40 by peaking at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. It’s got an almost filthy sounding funk vibe going on which brings to mind Prince allied to some very strong vocals from Austin Howard who on reflection, was Seal before there ever was a Seal.

Their album “Homelands” was one of the 80s best kept secrets. Wildly varied in style from riff laden rock to their own twisted version of Motown to sensitive world music ballads. If those sound like unfathomable descriptions, it’s because I don’t quite have the words to describe them. Two further tracks were released as singles (“Bad Times” and “Where Did Tomorrow Go”) but neither got any higher than No 98. The basis of a second album was recorded but never finished but was eventually made available under the title ‘Ellis Beggs and Howard – The Lost Years Vol 1’ as a digital only release years later via Beggs’ website.

Simon Ellis opted to pursue a much more out and out pop career after the band split writing hits for the likes of The Spice Girls, S Club & and Westlife whilst Beggs has continued to work in music on various and varied projects including a reformed Kajagoogoo in 2004. As for Austin Howard, he suffered from a rare form of cancer in 1991 but recovered to return to the music industry with rock band Ruff As Stone in 2011.

Terry, Blair And Anouchka – Missing

Peak UK Chart Position: No 75

I’m not sure that I knew about this song until the early 90s when I was working for Our Price and I bought a CD called “Terry Hall : the collection” and it was on there. I was aware that there had been this group (or possibly collective is a better word) called Terry, Blair and Anouchka and that the titular Terry was indeed Mr Hall but I never heard any of their stuff at the time.

“Missing” was the lead single from their “Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes” album and it does indeed have a nursery rhyme quality to it and that’s not a criticism. It manages to combine a whimsical even chirpy sound to some relentlessly miserable lyrics about a couple going through a separation leading to divorce. Quite a feat but then Terry always has been a gifted songwriter in every phase of his career. I love the unusual way that he changes the lyrics of the chorus around constantly rather than having a static text so we get…

the kids are crying
the dog is dying
and I just got the flu

and…

the snow is falling
it’s christmas morning
it might as well be June

Very simple but they work perfectly. What I didn’t know until now is that Anouchka is Anouchka Grose who is listed in Wikipedia as being a Lacanian psychoanalyst and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. Wow! I’m guessing she didn’t write those lyrics otherwise they would have been much more deep and academic in nature.

The Terry, Blair and Anouchka project folded not long after its inception. Terry continued to record some phenomenal work either as a solo artist, collaborating with others like Dave Stewart for Vegas and of course with a reactivated The Specials who scored a No 1 album in “Encore” in 2019. The previously unmentioned Blair went onto form Oui 3 who had some brief chart success in the mid 90s.

Tin Machine – Under The God

Peak UK Chart Position: No 51

The late 80s had not been kind to David Bowie. His 1987 “Never Let Me Down” album had been critically panned and under performed commercially. As the decade closed, he was left feeling disillusioned with trying to make music for the fans he had acquired after the mainstream success of “Let’s Dance” rather than the music he wanted to make himself. His remedy was to go in a completely different direction and form a band. And not a band playing remakes of “Let’s Dance” but one which would turn out some heavy rock sounds that weren’t always the most easy to listen to.

Tin Machine comprised the unconventionally named Reeves Gabrels and the Sales brothers Tony and Hunt as well as Bowie himself. I remember there being a lot of commotion about the coming of Tin Machine and not all of it was positive. To me, a lot of the negative reaction seemed to be that people didn’t much like David Bowie with a beard which he had grown for the project but I’m sure the inkies music press had much more valid reasons for their caution. The style of music being peddled didn’t suit a lot of his fan base of which lead single “Under The God” was a prime example. Too rough and heavy seemed to be the main criticism but time has been kinder to the project with critical revisits declaring them ahead of their time and trailblazers for the likes of Nirvana and the grunge explosion.

As for Bowie himself, he was very keen to point out that Tin Machine were a band and not his band and that all four members had equal input and should receive equal levels of publicity. Yeah, that was never going to happen David. And me? What did I think? Nah, far too noisy for my liking.

Tin Machine lasted for two years and two albums before dissolving.

One 2 Many – Downtown

Peak UK Chart Position: No 43

It wasn’t just Simon Mayo who could use his Radio 1 profile to champion a specific song or two. Mark Goodier was at it as well in 1989. He even put his name to an album full of songs that he shouted up as being quality tunes. I should know, I bought the thing. It was smugly entitled “The Hit List: cuts above the rest”. Its sleeve notes included this arse clenchingly pompous statement from Goodier:

The Hit List is for the discerning music lover. It is a unique collection of sharp songs from bands who are right at the cutting edge of today’s music.

And I fell for this crap! Shame on me! And who pray were these bands at the cutting edge of today’s music? Why, there was Wet Wet Wet, Texas and erm….Waterfront?? OK, it’s easy to criticise in hindsight and with a good 30 odd years worth of perspective to confirm your opinions but I’m not sure Marti and the lads were ever considered cutting edge were they? And as for Waterfront…to be fair though, there were some decent bands and tunes on there such as the aforementioned Love And Money, The Beautiful South and the much loved but cruelly unrewarded commercially indie rockers House Of Love.

Goodier (I’m presuming these were his words) saw fit to pontificate some more with individual sleeve notes for each track. They really are quite insufferable and sycophantic. Here’s his view on The Alarm’s “Sold Me Down The River”:

If ever a band deserve huge success, it’s The Alarm. Mike Peters leads the group who never fail to deliver a stunning live set and a very strong album – this song is a fine example from their latest album Change.

There’s more. What do you think about Wet Wet Wet Mark?

The Wets are a good example of how much a group can achieve if they possess real talent. In five years they have gone from being unsigned to one of Britain’s best live bands. “Sweet Surrender” was the curtain raiser for their recent “Holding Back The River” album.

Oh OK. My favourite though is his take on And Why Not?

Not many groups start their career in the top 40 with their debut single, but it is nothing less than And Why Not? deserve. They may be young but they’re a musical force to be reckoned with as you’ll hear on their album “Move Your Skin“.

Yeah that prediction didn’t pan out too well.

There was another artist on “The Hit List” that I wanted to reference in One 2 Many. Goodier loved this lot and their catchy song “Downtown” (nothing to do with Petula Clark by the way). They hailed from Norway and one of their number had toured with A-ha as the keyboardist. However, it’s not the “Take On Me” hitmakers influence that can be heard on “Downtown” but the unmistakeable sound of one trick pony Bruce Hornsby on the piano riff. It wasn’t actually Bruce who played on it but the Bee Gees keyboard guy who were recording an album in the studio next door. He was asked to add a flourish to the song that was reminiscent of “The Way It Is”. He didn’t let them down (town) with a textbook copycat solo.

Originally released in 1988 it peaked at No 65 in the UK but was reissued the following year when it was a No 37 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. Despite huge airplay support, it just missed the Top 40 again and before you could say ‘Who’s round is it?’, One 2 Many had split. And what did Goodier’s sleeve notes have to say about them? This:

“Downtown” was a huge turntable hit – in its time, one of the most played records on the radio. It was also an American number 1 and started a promising career for One 2 Many

It wasn’t an American No 1 and it didn’t start a promising career – an epic fail there Mark.

The Bible – Honey Be Good

Peak UK Chart Position: No 54

Bringing together a few different strands of the Hits That Never Were section come The Bible, surely the most tipped band for superstardom of the whole decade who never actually had a Top 40 hit – not for the want of trying though as we shall see. The first connection is that they were also on “The Hit List” album with Goodier reserving perhaps his most pompous of sleeve notes comments for them:

Loved by true music fans, The Bible still wait for the hit they deserve. Their self-titled album contains many outstanding songs – including “Honey Be Good”.

True music fans Mark? As opposed to those of us labouring under the impression that we like music but are in fact fooling ourselves with the falsehood of our preferences? Talk about elitist!

Luckily for me, I passed Goodier’s true music fan test as I did like The Bible, having first come across their single “Graceland” a couple of years before. To be fair, it was hard to avoid that single as it was eventually released three times, including one last failed attempt by their record label to make it a hit in May 1989 when it peaked at No 51. Three months later they released “Honey Be Good” (itself a re-release I think). When that avoided the Top 40 by 14 places, things started to go horribly wrong. According to Wikipedia, in scenes that would have been deemed to ridiculous for a comedy movie, the band flew to Germany to perform “Honey Be Good” on a music TV show which turned out to be a talent show and found themselves competing against a man calling himself Mr Gadget who wore a spinning bow tie with lights on it. Against all laws of probability, they lost and the humiliation proved too much and the band split.

They reformed briefly in the 90s and created another link to the Hits That Never Were section by writing an album with former Danny Wilson front man Gary Clark. Since 2011 they have been active on the live music circuit mainly doing concerts to celebrate release anniversaries of their back catalogue.

Norman Cook featuring Lester – For Spacious Lies

Peak UK Chart Position: No 48

This one was a bit confusing. Officially released under his own name but featuring vocalist Lester Noel, “For Spacious Lies” would ultimately end up on the Beats International debut album “Let Them Eat Bingo”. Norman was clearly having a bit of an identity crisis around this time, something that would stay with him into the 90s with his Fatboy Slim alter ego.

“For Spacious Lies” was much more in a pop vein than the dance output that Cook would make his name on and remains therefore somewhat of a anomaly in his canon. Including the memorable line ‘and Freedom’s just a song by Wham’, its joyous horns and Spanish guitars are juxtaposed with a rather more heavy lyrical subject matter of living through a cynical world built on lies and corruption.

Come the new decade, Cook would formalise his songs under the banner of Beats International with his previous hit “Blame It On The Bassline” joining “For Spacious Lies” on that project’s album. After scoring a huge No 1 with “Dub Be Good To Me”, a re-release of “For Spacious Lies” was issued under the Beats International moniker but only in France.

Les Negresses Vertes – The Fly (Zobi La Mouche)

Peak UK Chart Position: No 93

This lot were truly bonkers or seemed so to me at least. Categorising them proved difficult for the music press but they had a go anyway coming up with the likes of ‘gypsy punk’ and ‘world folk’ but no amount of description could have prepared me for “Zobi La Mouche”. A quite extraordinary noise full of energy, humour and erm…a fair amount of accordion. Lead singer Helno’s voice had something of John Lydon about it on reflection – sadly he would die from a heroine overdose just four years on from this.

The chaotic brew that Les Negresses Vertes served up proved too unpalatable for most of the UK audience who preferred the flamenco sound of fellow French musicians The Gipsy Kings but the band carried on after Helno’s death and into the new millennium but by then their style had drifted off into a more ambient dub concoction. I’m sure I had a promo copy of one of their singles once upon a time from my Our Price days though I’m not sure I ever played it more than once. I must dig it out one day and give it another spin.

Baby Ford – Children Of The Revolution

Peak UK Chart Position: No 53

And finally, just to prove that I wasn’t totally out of step with what was popular in 1989, a dance tune I quite liked. Admittedly, it’s based on 70s glam rock anthem “Children Of The Revolution” by T-Rex which I already knew and liked but this was, well…evolution for me, of a kind.

I didn’t know anything about Baby Ford at the time nor do I know much about them now (I haven’t bothered to check out their Wikipedia entry) but this track has stuck with me over the years. I think it was the ‘B-b-b-b-b-ump and griiiind’ scratched hook in the intro that made me notice it. Where did I first hear this? No idea. A club? Possibly, but if it was released after I’d left Sunderland Poly then probably not as my lack of finances seriously curtailed my club going habits. Would it have been played on daytime radio? Again possibly but I have no memory of hearing it on the airwaves. I guess sometimes you just get music that inexplicably drifts into your life and just as inexplicably stays there for the duration. This is one of mine.

1989 – their year in the sun

Big Fun

The Stock, Aitken and Waterman Jackson 5 …except there were only three of them. Three of these berks was more than enough though as they stank out the TOTP studio with their rancid version of “Blame It On The Boogie” and the woeful SAW original “Can’t Shake The Feeling” on multiple occasions. They rustled up a couple more middling hits into 1990 (including one for charity with stablemate Sonia) but thankfully for all our sakes then fucked off forevermore.

Jason Donovan

The Stock, Aitken and Waterman David Cassidy, our Jase was already a well known face on UK TV screens thanks to his starring role as Scott Robinson in Aussie daytime soap Neighbours. After fictional and briefly real life love interest Kylie Minogue struck gold with some insanely catchy SAW tunes the year before, it made sense to wheel out Donovan to exploit the teenage girl market while he was still hot property. Four Top 5 hits in the calendar year including two back to back No 1s laid the foundations for him to secure the best selling album of 1989 in the UK with his “Ten Good Reasons” debut.

It couldn’t last though and his popularity started to wane as the world moved onto the ghastly New Kids On The Block to fill up the poster space on their walls into the new decade. A final hurrah with 1991’s chart topper “Any Dream Will Do” from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in which he starred in the West End rather aptly brought down the curtain on his brief but brightly burning time as a bona fide pop star.

Sonia

The Stock, Aitken and Waterman Cilla Black, the diminutive scouse firecracker leapt to fame when she secured a No 1 record with her very first single in this year. Plucked from obscurity by Pete Waterman who seemed to be trying to convince us all that he was some sort of pop music King Midas, Sonia looked like she could scarcely believe her luck whenever she performed on TOTP. Despite notching up a string of Top 40 hits into the early 90s, she never got anywhere near that coveted top spot again.

That ignominious route to career resurrection that is the Eurovision Song Contest salvaged one final Top 20 hit for her before it was off to the graveyard of reality TV when she appeared alongside Todd Carty, Tony Blackburn, Colin Baker and Sherrie Hewson in Channel 5’s Celebrity 5 Go Caravanning.

Black Box

The autumn of ’89 was completely owned by Black Box and their ubiquitous “Ride On Time” No 1 single. Six weeks at the top and the best selling single of the year in the UK, these flag wavers of the Italo House phenomenon were hot property. Yes, there had been that controversy over who actually did the singing on the record (it wasn’t striking French fashion model Katrin Quinol who did all the promotional performances) but I’m guessing the clubbers dancing themselves into a frenzy over this huge tune cared not a jot.

Though certainly not a one hit wonder (they actually clocked up a further six chart hits between 1990 and 1991), they were never more in sync with the zeitgeist than in 1989.

A version of the act were still releasing music as recently as 2018.

Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers

As bizarre as it was heinous, this fluctuation in the pop music time continuum was staggering in its audacity and in its simplicity of concept. Quite how the nation was fooled into giving some DJs from Rotherham three consecutive No 1 records in return for a cut and past montage of 50s songs fronted by a shitty animated rabbit remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. How? Why? Who f**king bought the records? These questions are yet to be answered.

In my mind, Jive Bunny disappeared as soon as Christmas 1989 was over but Wikipedia tells me that they had another three hits the following year but thankfully I have blitzed them from my memory. If we have learned anything from this horrible experience it is that sometimes you really cannot trust the Great British public to do the right thing.

London Boys

They came, they saw, they mimed to some camp as tents Euro pop whilst performing back flips and they conquered the charts. One of the oddest sensations of the year, Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller briefly dominated the charts with back to back Top 5 hits and were clearly favourites of the TOTP producers who were only too glad to repeat book them for the show. I guess they did bring a sense of spectacle with them but the music was dire.

Tragically, the pair were killed in 1996 when their car was hit by a drunk driver in the Eastern Alps in Austria.

Last Words

I probably didn’t think so back then, but on reflection, 1989 seemed very much like killing time until the 80s were done – just treading water awaiting the new decade and all that it may bring with it. Yes, there was the Italo House phenomenon which helped to establish the dance music explosion of the previous year but there weren’t many exciting new acts and genres in this year. Obviously there were some notable exceptions like The Stone Roses, De La Soul and Soul II Soul but if Gene Pitney could have a No 1 then that tells you an awful lot about 1989.

There was an awful lot of ‘as you were’ going on with the likes of Erasure, Simply Red and Kylie Minogue all maintaining their chart runs (to varying degrees). There were also some major comebacks in the offing with Fine Young Cannibals returning with a massive hit album and re-inventing themselves as huge stars in America whilst 1989 also saw three established female stars back in the charts in a big way in Madonna, Cher and Tina Turner. There were also some solid innings from reliably classy acts like Depeche Mode, The Cure and REM.

Classic rock music was represented this year by Bon Jovi who consolidated on their global commercial breakthrough although they were seriously challenged in the popularity stakes by Guns N’ Roses who were The Rolling Stones to their Beatles. Hoary old 70s rocker Alice Cooper pulled off a surprisingly successful resurrection but Queen’s return after three years away sounded dreadful to me on the whole.

And so we turned our backs on the 80s and looked towards the 90s. What delights (or disappointments) would the new decade hold?

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.