Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more ~ it's the 3rd of June 1993 edition of Top of the Pops!
Flower power
3-6-93: Presenter: Tony Dortie
(18) HADDAWAY – What Is Love
Getting the show underway with what became his first of four top ten hits when it peaked at number 2.
(2) UB40 – (I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You (video) (and charts)
Will be number one next week.
In the studio with his hat but the song got no higher.
(26) TASMIN ARCHER – Lords Of The New Church (video)
Got no higher.
(24) SADE – No Ordinary Love (video) (Breakers)
Went up ten more places.
(13) LISA STANSFIELD – In All The Right Places (video) (Breakers)
Peaked at number 8.
(5) GREEN JELLY – Three Little Pigs (video) (Breakers)
Got no higher.
(22) A-HA – Dark Is The Night
In the studio tonight and the song went up three more places.
(NEW) P.M. DAWN & BOY GEORGE – More Than Likely (via satellite)
Live from Disney Land but the song only made it to number 40.
(23) BRYAN FERRY – Will You Love Me Tomorrow
Performing another cover but it got no higher.
(1) ACE OF BASE – All That She Wants (video)
Third and final week at number one.
10th of June is next.
So chuffed that TOTP is now back at it's original 7-8pm slot for the two shows reeled out each week by BBC4. For too long it had escaped to later in the evening which didn't suit, so this is just great, and hope it stays as first up on BBC4's Friday evening roster.
ReplyDeleteHaddaway - I remember at the time really liking this one cos of its cross between song and techno, but it got so overplayed in the 90s that by a couple of years after charting I just would switch over to another channel if I heard it again on the radio.
UB40 - it's a case of I Can't Help but get ready for a stint at No.1 like Red Red Wine ten years earlier in 1983 which also had a black & white video. What was it about UB40 and black & white videos as their success route to the no.1 position in the singles charts?
Green Jelly - TOTP couldn't have played them sooner, as it was a new entry at No.5 this week, and if they were given a full slot as a No.5 should, it would have been inappropriate family viewing cos of the pot-smoking pigs and Harley-davidson riding wolf to speed up the huffing and puffing and blow the pigs' house in. It was scary enough in the original fairy tale, but this took it to a more scary level, so just as well it was limited to a Breakers slot even at a very high position of No.5 in the charts.
A-Ha - final Top 20 single for them, but not their last single, as the three singles still to come all peaked outside the Top 20. Not one of their best singles this one, but I can see it would have some appeal with its chorus.
PM Dawn & Boy George - interesting combination here, but not all that surprising, and would only make No.40 at peak after this new and exclusive slot on the show, and turned out to be PM Dawn's final Top 40 single in a short but interesting Top 40 career between 1991-1993.
Bryan Ferry - still interchange this with Chicago's two singles Love Me Tomorrow and Will You Still Love Me. It's bye bye Bryan from here, as he too like PM Dawn bow out on this show for their last Top 40 hit in a glittering career.
This show is messing with my sense of space and time. I swear I thought we'd already had Haddaway but I must have confused him with someone else. Terrible clash between the live and recorded vocals at first but improves. As Dory says, great track initially, killed by over exposure.
ReplyDeleteUB40 for the zillionth time instead of the Spin Doctors. Kay then.
Speaking of Kays, here's Jamiroquai just before Jay Kay's more annoying personality traits take over altogether.
Tasmin Archer - this isn't bad but not sure what it's about. Some kind of anti capitalism thing? I do note the use of ring lights 25 years before they become synonymous with influencers, what a pioneer.
Breakers are all OK. I'd forgotten Green Jelly charted so high.
PM/BG - Nice enough but blatantly not a good choice for a single It has album track/B side written all over it.
Bryan F - zzzz more covers.
AoB - I'm glad they had a new studio performance last week, enjoyed the staging. I'd say I'm ready for a new number one but as it's going to he something we've heard almost as often as this, I'm less excited about the prospect.
Top dance tunes to kick of the show with Germany's Haddaway. "What Is Love" a really catchy floor filler that has stood the test of time. Strong vocal as well on a dance tune.
ReplyDelete.
UB40 with next weeks Number One. Definitive version of "(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You" for me.
Jazz/Funk mix next from Jamiroquai which I should really not be enthralled by but they bring enough pop sensibility and class to make this work. "Blow Your Mind" a long forgotten number that I enjoyed.
Shame no live Tasmin for her religious tune "Lords Of The New Church". Decent video for what is actually a really good song. Enjoyed that more than I thought I would.
Breakers:
SADE – All going swimmingly
LISA STANSFIELD – Never seen the film
GREEN JELLY – What fresh hell is this?
It's time to state the bleeding obvious next with A-ha. "Dark Is The Night" plays to Morton's vocal strengths but the song does nothing for me and never gets going.
P.M. Dawn & Boy George – "More Than Likely" this is the first time anyone has heard this song since 1993. Never even realised the large round purple one and Boy Smurf had recorded this. I must say I really really liked it. Highlight of the show for me.
It's basic but sung well and I enjoyed the performance from Bryan Ferry. Will You Love This Tune Tomorrow? Maybe not.
So long Ace Of Base – Couldn't recall the "All That She Wants" video and there is a good reason. It's crap.
.
Four songs further down the chart from previous Top 40 charters, at peak position this week with no TOTP for them:
ReplyDeleteNo.30 Barbara Streisand - With One Look
Can't say I remember this one, but all it got was on the Top 40 rundown over the UB40 video this week, but Streisand will be back in 1994 with a No.20 single, so it's goodbye only for a little while then.
No.48 Snow - Girl I've Been Hurt
Follow-up to Informer which was still in the Top 40 this week at No.35, going down obviously after reaching the giddy heights of No.2 in the UK and No.1 in America. Poor follow-up this one I thought.
No.49 Inspiral Carpets - How It Should Be
Wow a new entry this week, only to fall right out of the Top 75 the following week. Their only single released in 1993 after a reasonable 1992, but 1994 would turn out to be a much better year for them chartwise with two Top 20 singles.
No.62 Freedom Williams - Voice Of Freedom
Turns out that Williams had left C&C Music Factory as their 'featuring' artist, and going it alone on this single with demising returns. Freedom who?
Also making their chart debut this week were X-Press 2 for one week only at 59 with progressive house classic London X-Press. A near decade later, in 2002, they achieved a number 2 success with David Byrne and their single, Lazy, taken from their eventual debut album.
DeleteNot keen on “What Is Love”, and a dreadful sync car crash at the start but, as we’ll see, Haddaway had a way with top ten hits in 1993. See what I did there?
ReplyDeleteSound down during the non-mugshots and we see the first of two ‘blink and you miss them’ chart showings for New York singer Loni Clark, who’ll briefly make the top 30 next year.
Welcome to Acid Jazz Club. Niiiiiice! Can’t believe something sounding so off the wall as this nearly made the top ten. Look at those outfits and the set design - extraordinary!
Poor old Taz is too ill even to do a Bert Anderson and turn up to sulk. Not that she would. A new hairdo and no suit with overlong shirt in the vid. Anti-Cliff soft rock, no bad thing, and I reckon this would have had the potential to be a grower if it had charted higher and longer. Just one more appearance from Tamsin soon and, sadly, that’s her lot.
Breakers: Sade turns a mermaid into MOR-maid, a fine snippet of by Lisa accentuated with footage of Demi Moore (yes please), and then a right old pile of pig shit.
A-ha? A-half-hearted compared to their towering hits. Morten looking too self obsessed and of wavery vocals.
I wonder how many people at Disneyland wondered what scary film those characters on the plinth were in? Reminded me of the Scottish joke about the different between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney… Bing sings but Walt dis’nae! “A big hit for the summer” – well done, Dorky, you know how the chart careers go for these exclusives. Next week, Arrested Development and Sting from Skegness Butlins.
What a climbdown from the debut heights of “Virginia Plain” to a limp cover version. Bye bye, Bry.
Blimey, that’s the dullest video you could possibly have made for a Club 18-30 take-home chart topper. Definitely Base.
'A-HA:The Movie' is in on tonight at 9pm on Sky Arts on Freeview, which is a new 2021 film and a biographical documentary about their career, so could be a good watch for A-HA fans.
DeleteAnother eclectic mix of styles that we start off via cosmic inflation special effects with a set of plastic palm trees at night. Is our first act of the evening a fan of the Leyton Buzzards? I doubt it but Haddaway was a fine singer who was better than his one hit wonder status which I'm sure he is to most people. He has another single, the gorgeous 'I Miss You' which, I've noticed, rather cruelly coincides with Tony's final show. 'What Is Love' is most definitely a banger with a classic early '90s dance hook. He's flanked by two female dancers in apparently de- rigeur fringed / tasselled tops. The girl on the left doing the now not so obligatory miming to a sample.
ReplyDeleteThe camera pans over to catch Tony midway through some sort of dance related roleplay which may have gone right in rehearsal but which morphs into him looking totalled befuddled then momentarily embarrassed. He gets it together to introduce chart part 1, again to UB40 with their particularly uneventful CCTV footage.
Jamiroquai in the studio and laying on the acid jazzisms a little thick perhaps? Not just Jay Kay's vocals and moth eaten clothes but the title and the band playing on sofas. Looking down on this faintly patronising scene, that silhouette image that his management weirdly thought was a selling point for a while. There's a monster in 'The Muppet Show' that chases Julie Andrews round a park bench that looks like that.
Tasmin Archer is ill and not in the studio to apologise. Tony, good of him, wishes her well and shows the video for 'Lords of the New Church'. Maybe a little too lyrically obtuse for a big hit but it's a good song with a charming opening part.
Breakers; Sade putting 'No Ordinary Love' out again. Lisa Stansfield; Beautiful song from the heyday of really strong UK female singers.
Green Jelly; Different.
A-ha; Good to see these '80s stalwarts still on the show but it didn't do much for me. A title like that is ramping up the expectation. A piece of music with a very similar title by Blind Willie Johnson was on a disc placed on the Voyager spacecraft in order to let alien lifeforms know what human beings sound like.Only the cascading dry ice was striking about this. I liked Tony's comment afterwards, something like, "great song A-ha!" and unintentionally sounding like Alan Partridge.
P.M Dawn and Boy George from Disney Land. Strangest satellite linkup so far.
Even Mickey and co didn't liven that up.
Bryan Ferry crooning a classic but that was very dull.
As was the video to 'All That She Wants'. That edition tailed off rather badly.
I'm anonymous again!
ReplyDeleteJust remembered there was a punk / goth 'supergroup' in the 80's called Lords of the New Church. Never had any hits, mind you.
ReplyDelete