Purple reign
01/05/86 (Mike Smith)
Maxi Priest – “Strollin’ On” (32)
Making his debut but the song got no higher.
Janet Jackson – “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” (3) (video/chart)
At its peak.
Princess – “I’ll Keep On Loving You” (24)
On her way to number 16.
Madonna – “Live To Tell” (4) (video)
Made it to number 2.
Depeche Mode – “A Question Of Lust” (28) (breaker)
At its peak.
Hear ‘N’ Aid – “Stars” (26) (breaker)
This heavy metal for Africa charity single went no higher.
Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald – “On My Own” (19) (breaker)
Peaked at number 2.
Joyce Sims – “All & All” (25)
With her debut hit which peaked at number 16.
George Michael – “A Different Corner” (1) (video)
Third and final week at number one.
Level 42 – “Lessons In Love” (9) (video/audience dancing/credits)
Peaked at number 3.
Next up is May 8th.
Smitty is on his own this week, which at least spares us attempts at "comic" bits of business with a co-host, though he does make sure to plug his new Radio 1 breakfast show at the end. Shame he didn't keep those shades on for the whole programme, as they would have served to obscure part of his annoying visage...
ReplyDeleteMaxi Priest showcases some impressive dreads for his TOTP debut, and he certainly gives his vocal a certain amount of distinctive welly, but unfortunately the song doesn't really go anywhere; I was more interested in the attempts of his brass sections to keep their moves in sync. Janet's video again next, which thankfully becomes the last to have to share the screen with the Top 40 rundown - good to see Duane Eddy spelt properly this time, but still no such luck for Atlantic Starr!
Princess looked a bit lonely on that big stage, but still gives a confident performance of a song that, while decent enough, ultimately fails to catch fire. By contrast Madge gives us one of her best ballads, and her new lower vocal style is showcased to good effect. I've never seen the film this was used in, though judging from the clips in the video Christopher Walken should have steered clear of that moustache. Madge's ill-fated starring vehicle with her then-hubby, Shanghai Surprise, was a few months away from release at this point.
Two breakers won't be seen again this time, which we can only be thankful for in the case of Hear 'N' Aid, one charidee bandwagon-jumper from the time that I don't remember at all. I was grateful for the fact that they named the singers in the video, as I didn't recognise any of them, and seeing the names left me none the wiser - they all sounded the same, anyway! It was hard to get a handle on the Depeche Mode track from the limited amount we heard, but listening on YouTube it sounds like a reasonable effort with some Soft Cell overtones. Rather surprising to see Martin take lead vocal, but he doesn't do a bad job.
Joyce Sims gets the benefit of a smaller stage than Princess, and seems to enjoy herself as she performs a perky dance track that, as with the Princess song, isn't quite first division material; better was to come from her. Level 42 close the show with an upbeat, energetic number which shows how well they had made the transition to an accessible pop sound. Quite a colourful video too, but their studio-bound ship isn't exactly convincing...
I would have to agree that Live To Tell was one of Madonna's very finest efforts, as a ballad, which was as good as her disco-floor single Into The Groove. 1986 was seeing Madonna at last maturing (or evolving) from a disco-diva of 1985 into a ballad artist by 1986, but hey, it was still not as good as this week's Breaker from Michael McDonald & Patti Labelle which was just heavenly and a perfect summer single.
Deletemaxi priest: i definitely don't care for this new way of presenting the show with a pre-recorded voiceover accompanied by fake applause. "stroolin' on" (as mr priest puts it) is yet more utterly disposable and lightweight reggae from this era. i was never a massive fan of the genre to start with. but it's definitely got a lot worse since the 70's
ReplyDeleteprincess: oops, i commented on this last week when it was a mere breaker - i try only do so on them if i know they never appear again (see below):
madonna: i almost overlooked her with regard to writing this review - that's how little if i think of her these days. not one that i could remember offhand, although a dutiful listen has brought most of it back to me. the chorus is by far the stand out part, although that's down to the songwriting and production (with patrick leonard probably doing most of the heavy lifting) than her vocal performance. the video is yet another tie-in with a movie - this time it's "shanghai surprise" which was her first starring film role (if you disregard some low-budget flick she made before she became famous), featuring plenty of clips of then-boyf sean penn (who unlike her has always been held in extreme high regard as an actor, although i find him far too sullen and intense for my liking). there also seems to be clip of christopher "dead eyes" walken in it, although he's apparently not credited as appearing in the film itself
depeche mode: even including the word "lust" in the title couldn't help this get any higher than the bottom reaches of the top 30 - probably because it's just more of the same old electro-dirge they kept churning out. sadly though in my view it wasn't yet the end for them
hear n aid: other than a soft beginning (presumably to signify the subject matter) it's bogstandard metal (like reggae, i find it hard to differentiate between much of it). what's so amusing about this is that all the singers sound exactly the same
joyce sims: the street sounds/hip hop dance scene had been around for several years before this, but was (much to my chagrin) now rising up from the underground to compete with if not replace the more sophisticated club music productions of jam & lewis et al. although fairly mild in comparison with what's to come, it still does little if anything for me. and the complete absence of something resembling a tune doesn't do it any favours either
level 42: i'm guessing they appear in person later on, but if not then i'll say now that this is probably their peak in terms of writing catchy dance pop as well as their commerial one in the singles charts. also it was the first hit off what was to be their last great album in my view ("running in the family") before the gould brothers stormed off in disgust at what they saw as selling out from their jazz-funk roots
Madonna's Live to Tell isn't from Shanghai Surprise, it's from At Close Range (see my comment below). Though she does have her Shanghai Surprise hairdo in the video. Presumably they thought they could give a dour film a lift if there was a hit single from it, and Madge was called in for a favour.
DeleteIf I remember rightly, Shanghai Surprise was such a flop that it contributed significantly to the demise of George Harrison's HandMade Films, previously responsible for Life of Brian and my personal favourite film, Time Bandits.
Deletethanks for that thx - it explains the presence of ol' dead eyes in the video. perhaps not surprisingly with regard to my error i've never seen "shanghai surprise", and given my loathing of madonna these days i don't suppose that's ever likely now - although taking into consideration what a hard-bitten piece of work she is, at least by being cast as a caring missionary she wasn't just playing herself!
Deletejohn i think it was the double whammy failure of the above (in which mr harrison had a cameo role as a night club singer)plus "absolute beginners" the same year that did for handmade - which to my recollection was initially formed so harrison as a fan could fund the monty python film "life of brian", which was probably not going to be financed otherwise?
I have seen Shanghai Surprise and can say without any doubt it is utter shite. Behind the scenes, everyone hated each other, the late, great Richard Griffiths had some great anecdotes about the palaver.
DeleteBut Absolute Beginners was from a different British indie studio: Goldcrest, and did better than their other, actual flops, Revolution and The Mission. Basically, unless you were heritage cinema or backed by Film Four, Brit flicks were doomed in the 80s!
Handmade films went on much longer than you might think. Also, they were responsible for the majestic Withmail and I the following year. They then were absorbed by another company who bank rolled the equally as majestic Lock Stock and smoking barrels.
DeleteHardly a ruined company.
....not to mention having a hand -ahem- in Danny Boyles Oscar bothering 127 hours.
DeleteThat's all true, Leetree, but I think it was financial losses from films like Shanghai Surprise that led to the end of HandMade in its original form - it had ceased operating for a few years prior to Paragon (a Canadian company) absorbing it. Incidentally Wilberforce, you are right that the company came into being in order to fund Life of Brian, as Harrison was a friend of the Pythons and EMI had pulled out if financing it at the last minute.
DeleteOn the subject of Goldcrest, at this time they were bankrolling Robin of Sherwood, which was part way through its third and final series when this TOTP was broadcast. There was supposed to have been another series, but thanks to the financial problems caused by Revolution flopping badly Goldcrest couldn't continue supporting it, and the show came to a premature end.
harrison obviously couldn't resist the bright lights despite now being a backroom boy with his new film production company, as he also made a very brief cameo appearance in "life of brian":
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJDvMpLafI
Harrison's in The Rutles as well, which he helped into existence. And he contributed the end credits song for Time Bandits. In fact, come to think of it, he's in Shanghai Surprise too!
Deleteyes he is thx - as i mentioned above! of course there's no shortage of pop stars who have had a go at acting in movies over the years (usually to less-than-great critique), and a few like harrison have even got involved in financing them. but to my knowledge the only one who directed a film was sinatra, and he only ever did one! even macca (who did practically everthing else in it, probably including making the tea) passed on directing his own vanity project "give my regards to broad street"!
DeleteMaxi Priest makes his debut with his brand of friendly reggae, I didn't mind him at the time, but he was never very exciting, as this tune demonstrates, plodding along genially but never getting into gear.
ReplyDeletePrincess, after a second listen this is growing on me, it's really quite pretty with its "two choruses" technique. Maybe it deserves to be revived more often, it made the Top 20 after all. OK, maybe it deserves to be revived full stop, as no one has thought about it since 1986. Not sure about Mike calling her "Britain's Queen of Soul", mind you. Talk about a lot to live up to.
Madonna, Live to Tell, one of her finest singles, I'd say. Wistful but with a real edge of menace and trepidation, which does suit the film, At Close Range, one of the most depressing movies of the 80s, though Penn and Walken pitted against each other does energise a horrible true story. Madonna has her Shanghai Surprise hairdo, an indication of what she was up to when she was making this video.
Breakers, I thought I recognised the Depeche Mode effort, but once the chorus got going I realised it wasn't ringing any bells. Sort of a lesser amalgam of their better material of this time. Hear 'N' Aid, however, is hilariously bad, I watched the whole thing on YouTube and all these men trying to out-metal each other, presumably with an avalanche of cocaine assisting backstage, was utterly ridiculous. And yet, still better than We Are the World.
Joyce Sims, always thought that was a very mundane name for a soul diva, but here she is making her Pops debut. I remember this one, with its bleating, stuttering synth melody and Joyce almost yodelling the vocals, but it trips along nicely and I liked it at the time.
Level 42, always thought the verses were better than the chorus in this one, but it's a decent slice of funk pop and its dum-diddle-dum bassline is infectious.
Out of (masochistic?) interest, I checked out the Number 40 record (as high as it got), which was The Queen's Birthday Song from St John's College and the Grenadier Guards. It was utterly brilliant. Ah, only joking, it was horrible, and I can't imagine even Her Maj gave it many spins on the royal turntable. Weirdly poet/Private Eye regular Christopher Logue seems to have co-written it (the words, presumably).
The Queen turned 60 in 1986, and I'm sure nobody would have thought at the time that she was only about halfway through her reign. I have taken a look at the record label for this single on 45cat, and it doesn't specify if this was the school choir attached to St John's College Cambridge, where I spent my university days, but there must be a good chance it was.
DeleteSo we get Madge and Her Maj in the same chart. I'll get my robe!
Deletein contrast to thx i (still) think the choruses of "lessons in love" are by far the best bits, and could quite happily listen to them all day long. in fact when i got hold of the 12" version not that long ago i was hoping there would be more of them. but it turned out to have other bits added instead, that were nowhere near as good!
DeleteThe 12" of 'Lessons' has a couple of extra lyric lines which are not even on the album cut; "All the plans that we were making, ours for the taking". Reminds me a bit of Duran Duran's 'Hold back the Rain' which actually had the extra lyrics printed on the album sleeve but only included them on the 12" (B Side of 'Save a Prayer').
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ReplyDeleteRethinking my previous post, we actually had Queen, Madge and Her Maj in the same chart! Was that birthday song also available on 12-inch?
ReplyDeletePS - GRRRRR! Despite repeatedly hitting the 'remove this ad' button, I keep getting a sodding pop-up advert on this site for Mariah Carey's upcoming festive tour, named after the one song of hers I really, REALLY detest above all the others!
so arthur i take it you won't be queueing up this friday at 9am for a ticket? me neither!
DeleteFortunately for BBC4 viewers, we weren't missing much here although Mike Smith is thankfully a lot less annoying as a solo presenter.
ReplyDeleteMaxi Priest - Extremely lucky to get on while poor Belouis Some get overlooked again (who knows if a TOTP appearance might not have boosted 'Some People' above the 30s?) especially since it's average at best.
Princess - Definitely a grower, a rather understated sound for the time and none the worse for that. Her 2nd best song.
Madonna - One of her very best, though being chopped down to fit a 3 minute slot robs us of the slowly building intro.
Breakers - Depeche Mode fans seem to wet themselves over every song they did regardless of quality. I'm afraid the one featured here is very dull indeed whatever they may think. The Hear'n'Aid one is like a parody, even more so since I spotted Spinal Tap in the line-up! It's more lively than Labelle & McDonald though which is another dirge.
Joyce Sims - Horrid, tinny production that has dated really badly. You can say the same for almost all her songs but this one is probably the worst.
Level 42 - It's not bad, I wouldn't switch it off if it was playing on the radio but I wouldn't be singing along either.
Thanks Neil B. for making it possible…
ReplyDeleteFirst of May edition…”When I was small, and Christmas Trees were tall…”.
Not a lot to comment on actually (agree with Noax). Smithy seems to have grown his hair a bit.
Two new charity records in the chart; one was featured; ‘Stars’ by a load of people I’ve never heard of, which is why I don’t recall this at all. The second one was not mentioned as a charity record nor featured sadly, but was Dire Straits’ superb ‘Your latest Trick’. This was one of those tracks that if you bought the Album CD, was surprisingly longer than the vinyl version, with a nice brassy intro. The charity btw was the very worthy Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.
I FF’d a number of songs on this edition, but had to ensure Janet Jackson’s effort as they plonked a very hurried chart rundown over it. Thought they’d dropped that idea…
What I did enjoy was:-
Madonna – Live to Tell – Fabulous taster for the ‘True Blue’ album which would yield hit after hit. It’s amazing just what a good run of songs she was producing at around this time and well into 1989. As for Penn, who appears here, before Madonna he was engaged to Elizabeth ‘Countess of Grantham’ McGovern.
George Michael – A Different Corner – Perhaps a repeat of the studio appearance would have been better though?
Level 42 – Lessons in Love – Not keen on the video, but the song still sounds top notch and the ‘Running in the Family’ album that followed was a classic too.
THX – thanks for your ‘review’ of the Queen’s Birthday Song. With a teaser like that I just had to check it out myself. Gosh! You’re right – it’s awful! Shame on Tony McCaulay (who wrote countless wonderful songs of which David Soul’s two number ones are just two..),
Like the subtle use of the Bee Gees lyric there, sct, though it immediately reminded me of "Meaningless Words" by The Heebeegeebees!
DeleteDon't mention it, Sct! When I listened to it, the upload was at 54 views - after this, I imagine it's at least 55 now.
Deletewith lyrics like "the world is very very large, and butter is better than marge" and "the world is very very big, and bacon comes from a pig", the heebeegeebees piss all over "the chicken song". of course the music for both was actually done by the same guy (philip pope), but the heebeegeebee lyrics were written by another sitcom stalwart (richard curtis)
DeleteThanks once again, Neil B. How many times now have we been indebted to you?
ReplyDeleteI’ve done this about face as, due to life getting in the way, I’ve critiqued the next show first. Oh well!
Could they not at least have kept Dixie Peach on for this show instead of an admittedly less annoying Shitty? I’m ashamed to say I quite like the colour of his jacket.
Maxi Priest, more like Mini Bishop with a mellow but unmemorable song, unlike his dreadlocks, which reminded me of a non-League footballer I saw about 25 years ago. He was Reuben Kildare, a social worker who played for an all-Caribbean team called Willesden Hawkeye. He was no more than 5 foot 8 and his dreads were so long and thick (about 2 stone / 13 kg, I’d guess) they reached his kneepits and he needed a very large shirt to tuck his locks inside so you could see his shirt number.
What have you done for me lately, Janet? Not much. Get your own identity!
So sadly it’s bye-bye to Princess. A very short reign but I’ll miss her. I think she could have been huge if not more of a chart stayer. Those wristbands must have weighed her down. A grower of a track and fair play that she didn’t join in the backing vocals and kept it first person.
Definitely one of Madge’s better ballads. If life’s a door, Sean Penn’s surely the knob.
So what did Dave Gahan do during this Mode track? Get the tea / drugs in? I thought Martin did a good job there vocally. Depeche Mode followed this up with a song with almost the same title – “A Question Of Time”.
Hear ‘N’ Aid reminded me of when I visited a Yankee mate near Chicago for an Independence Day celebration and we went to a free gig by Blue Oyster Cult (a lot of bands who’d had hits back in the day play those celebration gigs over there). Not completely my bag but they were superb.
The former LaBelle and The former Doobie with a black lightbulb and Wilkinson Sword style depresser. Next!
All in all, a catchy (in an infectious way) track from Joyce Sims. Choppers alert!
You want a different corner, George? Try Apex Corner near Twickenham!
Level 42’s ‘ship’ reminded me of the video for “Chasing Pirates” by Norah Jones, where she’s on the top level of a block of flats which gets sails and then voyages through the adjoining blocks.
The Jamaican-German tennis player Dustin Brown has an impressive set of dreads too.
DeleteNorah's video sounds like the short film at the start of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, The Crimson Permanent Assurance.
it seems a rather stupid idea to me to have a hairstyle that can actually hinder your sporting performance! athletes (particularly female ones) seem to be the worst in that regard as it's mostly just about being able to run faster than anyone else as opposed to any real skill being involved. and yet that doesn't stop them from wearing loads of chunky jewellery (including watches on their wrists, that they hardly need to look at given there are clocks all over the stadium) and having absurdly big and elaborate hairstyles that surely must slow them down to some extent? some even compete wearing wigs, which as you can see here is a potential recipe for disaster:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_bYVohc9Q
Andre Agassi used to compete wearing a wig, and would often be more concerned about it falling off than the match, he said!
DeleteBut the big stars are sponsored to wear watches, etc, Rafael Nadal always has a huge timepiece on his wrist, it doesn't do him any harm.
Not much excitement from Smithy as he introduces a bit of reggae from Maxi Priest. He will have a few hits over the next couple of years, Wild World being the biggest but I don't remember this one.
ReplyDeleteReggae was obviously the in thing in 86 as even Bucks Fizz had later Aswad hit "Give A Little Love" as a b-side later in the year.
How 80s does Mike look, full Miami Vice.
Not quite done with the awful chart rundown over a video. Mike does a good job.
Princess gets a live appearance before she jets stateside. Wonder how she did over there. Amazed this song did so well. It's poor.
SAW by numbers.
Madonna with a fabulous song. Live To Tell one of her best ballads. Don't remember the film at all even after Smithy named it. She really could do no wrong mid 80s music wise but the films weren't so hot.
Breakers:
Day-peche Mode with a slower tune. Does them no favours this one.
Hear N Aid have to have captions to tell us who's who which kinda defeats the purpose of an all-star charity line up
Patti and Michael with a soul classic. Nice tune, nicely sung. So much hairspray they are probably responsible for destroying the ozone.
Joyce Sims with a pumped up disco song that is not bad at all. This needs to get more airplay. I like this. Deserves to be a big hit. Best thing on the show tonight.
Last week at the top for George and we are sticking with the video. Would have been nice to see the live performance again.
Level 42 and a chance to see the great video. Great song too.
I would have been tuning in to the Breakfast Show Mike...was a regular listener.
Unburdeed with that prat Wrighty, Mike does an excellent solo hosting job this week.
Not sure how Princess did across the pond at the time, but she relocated there and retired from the music biz (to the point where she never released an album namechecked on an independently released single) due to the trauma of her mum dying and a brother being murdered. As mentioned in an earlier thread, she's back in the game now, bizarrely called HRS Princess.
DeleteCheeky request...any chance of making 1 May 86 available again please? Thanking in advance.
ReplyDelete