Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #50 (Part 3): March 21st 1996 - The Movement That Wouldn't Feel The Benefit

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Chart Music #50: March 21st 1996 - The Movement That Wouldn't Feel The BenefitThe latest episode of the podcast which asks the question: What was David Stubbs doing while the Rainforest was falling?It's our half-century. Pop-Crazed Youngsters, but we're not making a fuss about it, bar the raising of the bat and a nod to the stands before returning to the job of whacking at a random episode of Top Of The Pops. And oh dear: this particular slice of Thursday evenings past comes at us during the even more devastating Second Wave of Britpop, with Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley playing the roles of Peelie and Janice. Musicwise, we're fully into the Ric Blaxill era, so expect a morbid carousel of Proper Music played on Proper Instruments, with a smattering of past-it Eighties sorts thrown in, and all mixed together with an offensive distain for the charts. Rick Witter may or may not be wearing a Tena underneath his Martin Fry suit. Lionel Richie's head is lowered into a Desperate Dan beard. Prince Naseem Hamed pitches up with Kaliphz to remind us that dance music was somehow still going in the mid-Nineties. Menswear bring along a string section. Oh God, it's Madonna again. Celine Dion wafts about a circus putting in no graft whatsoever. Take That offer up the most half-arsed swan song in musical history, and - finally - Oasis enter the Chart Music arena.Simon Price and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham for a bit of Gay Exchange-advert-dancing upon the ashes of '96, veering off on such tangents as going into the off-licence in Napoleonic headjoy, stripping in front of someone off Coronation Street, being a Lion Bell-End, bum-rushing the Camden KFC, being made by a Manic Street Preacher to dance to the Ramadan No.1 of 1974, the Horseshoe Of Shame, and a rate and quality of swearing that times like this demand.  Video Playlist | Subscribe |  Facebook  | Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart to? Chart music. Chart music.

It's Thursday night. It's just about ten past seven. It's March the 21st, 1996. And it's a complete unwiped arse of an episode of Top of the Pops. Ey up, you pop-crazy youngsters. Welcome back to part three of Chart Music 50. Let's not fanny about. Let us rejoin the episode in progress.

One of the greatest songs of the year from Pop's favourite son's Oasis. Next up, a brief history of Madonna, hairdo by hairdo. Thanks, Madge. A brief history of Madonna, hairdo by hairdo. Thanks, Madge. I turned around too late to see the falling star I fell asleep and never saw the sun go down

Before the sun go down. Wiley, on her own and malingering around a corner next to a double top of the Pops logo, tells us we've just heard one of the greatest songs of the year by Pops' favourite sons. Fuck off, Wiley. Before introducing One More Chance by Madonna. We're sick to fucking death of having to talk about Madonna on chart music. And this single is the follow-up to Oh Father, which got to number 16 in January of this year.

It's the third cut from Something to Remember, a compilation of old and new ballads, which was put out last November, and heralded a softer less pointy abroad Madonna. It's entered the chart this week at number 11 and we're getting the video which is a cut and shut of clips from her videos for Rain, You'll See, I

Want You, Take About and Lais La Bonita because Madonna was too busy shooting Evita to do anything new. Oh God, here we go again. Yeah. Can we talk about Oasis a bit more? I mean, the only thing I can chuck in here

is that the opening bit of the song is a direct nick, another nick, of Stoning Love With You by Stylistics, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I'm impressed you could even locate a tune in there to compare it to. Well, yes. I mean, she's 37 at this point madonna and you know she spent the 90s moving away from pop and and to an extent doing a sex you know she's still

snogging bullfighters and everything but is that a decision on her part or has she been pushed into it because she's 37 no no i think everything's a decision on her part that's the thing with madonna was why i find her career so joyless is because she never allows just chance to happen in a sense and sort of randomness she she controls entirely throughout her career the narrative around her so at this point yeah she's reasserting her voice and her music more than her sex books um and this video is an appalling cut together of the other videos but fucking hell what a dreary fucking song um you know you can almost see the guy we will see this guy by the way later that the acoustic guitar player perched on a fucking stool. Yes.

Doing shopping centre flamenco. It's an attempt. I mean, the thing is, this is a recurrent thing that we've seen quite often. Do you see a bit of the rundown in this? Yes, because that is the style of top of the pops of the 90s, they're using the videos that they have to show to sneak the charts in because they don't mean shit anymore. Yeah, and they've chosen a really boring song to do it.

And luckily they're adhering to those diktats that were thrown down a few years before that live performances could only be three minutes and videos could only be two minutes. So I was mainly distracted by the rundown and remembering my unaccountable soft spot for the Connells 74 to 75. And also remembering how fucking fantastic Looney's was.

But it is an attempt by her to reassert her proper musicianliness. Partly successful to some idiots, but snooze-worthy for the rest of us. Simon, I went through that chart, 40 to number 11. I only knew a third of those tunes which is shameful of a man of my age at the time i just need to ask it is whatever you want by tina turner recover a status quo no but yeah there's that strip along the bottom and there's this word do you know sometimes you you see a word that everyone else suddenly seems to be using like it's a normal word but you've never seen before in your fucking life

well lately I've seen this word Chiron or Chiron or however you say it C-H-Y-R-O-N that apparently is the word for that ticker tape along the bottom of the screen yeah yeah yeah well yeah you're right there's all this stuff that I've never heard of but I know it says a massive amount

of dance music there's just I noted a few of them down Sunscreen, Gusto, Faithless Bizarre Ink and in a top 20 you would think that the ones that made the top 20 you would at least remember there's one by DJ Mischia and DJ Tim called Access

and one Gat Decor, Passion I don't remember either of those but that was the mainstream And the stuff that we consider the mainstream There are a few in there You've got Bon Jovi, you've got Queen You've got all these old fuckers, Tina Turner you just mentioned

Then you've got the slightly newer mainstream Like the Connells that Neil just mentioned You've got Lifted by the Lighthouse Family You've got Joan Osbourne, One of Us That and the Middle of the Road business And you've got Out and Out Pop like 3T, Peter Andre Eternal, that kind of middle of the road business and you've got out and out pop like 3T, Peter Andre, Eternal

tiny bit of hip hop with Looney's, got five on it, but in terms of guitar music, there's stuff that Blacksill is wanking himself off over apart from the songs we've just seen, Oasis and Shed 7

the only guitar records there's Britpop in terms of Supergrass and then an old 80s goth band, Killing Joke. They're at the bottom of the chart. Who even knew they had a hit in the 90s? So it's very interesting that despite Blackstone's best efforts, this is still what people are buying. Yeah, but we're not seeing it, are we? No, we're not. And are we no and to a certain

extent some of those singles that simon mentions the dance ones we probably weren't hearing them on the radio either um whereas whereas the kind of stuff that is featured on top of the pops did feature on the radio quite a lot as i recall so it's not the fault of those records maybe it's just the way that the culture worked at that time was to showcase these gobbly bands and push to the edges, that kind of music, even though it was selling in sufficient numbers to get in the chart. Yeah. I mean, Rick Black's still here. Do you want to have

a guess how old he is at the time? Rick Black's still here. No, I have no idea. What? He's got to be, I mean, 35? He's 33. Which means when he was in his late teens it was the aventures and that eclectic melange of brilliantness and he wants lumpy guitar shit it's like mate what's going on going back to the intro to this madonna song uh where you've got uh wiley um sneaking around the

corner there uh trying to be sexy she goes um a brief history of madonna hairdo by hairdo thanks madge i just want to say i hate that madge thing i've always hated that but the other thing i found weird and this is down to black seal is um the picture suddenly turns into a barrel shape and twirls towards you and somebody has got a nice new effects box in the fucking control gantry and they're playing with it big time aren't they in this episode getting on to Madonna herself for a start she's had a pretty bad lockdown

the start of lockdown seems forever ago now but you may remember that she decided to send out this kind of supposedly morale boosting message to the world and it was her in a fucking bath a very expensive bath full of rose petals it's like yeah cheers mate you're having the best you're having your fucking best life yeah thanks for reminding us um we've we've we've done we've done madonna before in the 90s where she was having hits that none of us can

fucking remember yeah and i think this is a vaguely interesting thing about her career in the 90s that she was repeatedly getting into the top 10 with songs that I couldn't pick them out of a fucking police line-up this is another one of those, it's called One More Chance fuck knows, I don't know it's slow

excellent research as always yeah, I'm a fucking pro if nothing else it's slow, Excellent research as always, Simon. Yeah, I'm a fucking pro, if nothing else. It's slow. It's got Spanish guitars. There seems to be footage of a film with a bullfighter in it. I mean, she loves a bit of animal cruelty, does Madonna. Yeah.

You can kind of see the future here, where she got married to Guy Pearce and started going out shooting grouse, wearing plus fours and tweeds. She loves a bit of animal cruelty. And, of course, she turned up at Hyde Park for one of her gigs in the noughties wearing a coat made out of 40 chin chillers. So, you know, the sight of her treating bullfighting as something that's sort of sexy and romantic

is not the least bit surprising. I absolutely despise Madonna. I will accept that she's made maybe ten really good singles. that's sort of sexy and romantic is not the least bit surprising i absolutely despise madonna i will accept that she's made maybe 10 really good singles you can't take that away from her but as as a personality i think she's vile and this song's a piece of crap she's miles away from pop madonna by now isn't she yeah it's the madonna that people liked or at least tolerated or grudgingly accepted well in a way it's similar to Kylie in the 90s that Kylie had her kind of indie Kylie phase where she tried to go serious but then uh she kind of figured out that people didn't want that and she

came back with the gold hot pants and spinning around and all that Madonna did that when she came back with like you know music and a cowboy hat phase and all that kind of stuff so yeah the hen do era yeah yeah yeah so this is her trying to be serious phase yeah music and ray of light are better singles and probably the only ones i remember for the night is but the thing is at this stage i think all those people who developed fandom of madonna in the 80s were basically buying her records when they came out it didn't matter what they sounded like. So that was sufficient to get her up to, what, number 11. But it drops to number 29 week after. And until she actually comes out with a single

that in some way speaks to an audience beyond her own congregation, it's going to keep happening. So the following week, as Nils just said, One More Chance dropped 18 places to number 29. And the follow-up and first cut from the Evita soundtrack, You Must Love Me, got to number 10 in November and was immediately followed up by Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, which closed out 1996 at number three in the last chart of the year.

I don't believe a girl like me I was a fool, but now I understand. That's Madonna, famous for getting her kit off, and here's a band famous for getting their kit on. Suits you, sir. This is menswear and being brave. Summer's almost here And the evening's getting in the way Screw my head on a different way

Le Mac essentially calls Madonna a slapper. See, Madonna, you can't escape it, no matter how much flamenco guitar you have. As a linking device to getting a shit impersonation of them out of the fast show, as he introduces Being Brave by Menswear. Formed in London in 1994, Menswear were first mentioned in the media

in a select article about the mod revival revival in the summer of that year when Chris Gentry and Johnny Dean, two regulars at the blow-up club in Camden, made mention of a top new unsigned band which didn't actually exist yet. After forming their own band a few months later, Menswear played their first gig in a club in Regent Street, which was reputedly attended by two dozen A&R men. And the resultant coverage in the music press sparked a label bidding war, with London Records eventually signing them up for £90,000 and a whopping 18.5% gross revenues

and a publishing deal for half a million pounds for a band who at the time had written only seven songs. Despite making their first appearance on Top of the Pops and making the cover of Melody Maker before they'd actually released anything, their debut single, I'll Manage Somehow, only got to number 49 in April of 1995. somehow only got to number 49 in April of 1995. However, the follow-up, Daydreamer, got to number 14 in July of that year. This is the fifth release of the LP Nuisance, which was released in October of 1995 and got to number 11 in the UK album charts. It's the follow-up to Sleeping In, which got to number 24 in Decembercember of 1995 and it's crashed

into the charts this week at number 10 we've got to talk about the presentation style of uh steve lamac he's he's not necessarily dislikable but he's clearly not suited to tv presentation he's very awkward i mean this is this is probably why they were having so many celebrity presenters at the time because the current batch of radio one presenters clearly aren't up to the job well he doesn't quite know what to do with his face yes um when he talks so he shoots the odd look he is definitely not only a face for radio but it's kind of expressions of her radio as well whereas wiley conversely it's almost as if she's already planning her future TV career. Yeah. With her endless thinning of her eyes to look intense and focused. But yeah, LeMac, he's not got a face for telling.

So, yeah, he makes this show and he goes, here's Madonna, famous for getting her kit off. And here's a band famous for getting their kit on. Who suits you, sir? And, you know, so he's doing that fast show impression. Doesn't quite land. No. And what doesn't help it, and this is not Steve's fault that fast show impression doesn't quite land no and what what doesn't help it and this is not steve's fault this is black seal's fault it's undercut by some shitty

high tempo techno music which you know and it's as if you know unless our pulses dare to slow down even for a second you've got to have this going on underneath yeah and and which you know really crashes the vibe of the next song to be honest and the next song being brave drenched in tears raindrops and violins it's one of the great end of the affair songs it's menswear's the bitterest pill menswear's motorcycle emptiness menswear's i know it's over and on saint St. Valentine's Day, 1996, it'll be menswear's first number one. Thus spake Simon Price of Melody Maker in October of 1995 in an interview with the band. In that interview, Johnny Dean also says

that he saw you in an all-night garage wearing a Napoleon hat, Simon. Well, there's a bit of an in-joke there, which I should probably get on to. Go ahead. Okay, well, first of all, your summary of who menswear were and where they came from is pretty much spot on.

Oh, thank God. But they are seen in retrospect, the whole affair, the whole menswear thing, is seen as being the kind of high point of brit pop hubris and lunacy that you could get this band that didn't actually exist and almost sort of henry higgins like take this humble flower girl and turn them into a lady you know and so yeah they they were just knocking around used to see them around camden these these young mods dressed lads um at uh Up, which was, if I remember rightly, held at a pub called the Laurel Tree at the time. And they were discovered by a

manager called Adrian Webb, who clearly played a blinder here when you look at how much money he took the industry for. There were rumours, essentially, that they were a boy band that were put together and there were scurrilous and somewhat homophobic rumours that a casting couch had been involved and people used to sing Chris Gentry Rear Entry to the tune of

Daydreamer, their previous hit record. They were, as you say, on the front of Melody Maker before they had a record out. They were on the front of Select. Whose decision was that? To you say on the front of um malady maker before they had a record out there on the front of select and they were whose decision was that to put them on the front uh well i would imagine that um we all just nobody would have disagreed this is the thing that there would have been a few dissenting voices but there would have been this this massive consensus in the editorial meeting that because we were a weekly paper,

you had to go with these ridiculous, you know, sort of overnight sensations that will be forgotten about the following week. That's what a weekly paper is for, in a way, just to sort of convey that rapid turnover, that excitement of pop. So if we didn't put menswear on the front, and indeed if we hadn't put the romo bands on the front um you know a few months earlier then we would have been failing and at least failing part of our duty of what melody makers should have been about um so yeah

and i think select called them the indie take that and there was that aspect to them that they were five reasonably presentable and you know in, in some cases, really beautiful young men. They're not really playing that up here on that performance, are they? The rest of them are in standard jeans and tops. They might as well be members of Shed 7. Yeah. I've noticed that they've got daffodils on. Everyone's got fucking daffodils on in this episode.

Is it a cancer charity thing or something? Yes, it's Marie Curie daffodil thing. Yeah, because March the 1st is St. David's Day, and I guess that's why the Marie Curie thing just carries on through the month. But yeah, they've really gone for a big time in this episode, haven't they? Everyone has. It's essentially like, you know when footballers get guilt-tripped into wearing a poppy? If they don't, they get all kinds of shit for it.

But yeah, you've got matt everett on drums who um people used to say he looked a bit cid and i could kind of say that um simon white guitars he'd been around a bit uh he's the only one i think he'd been in a couple of funny enough steve lamac approved um indie bands of sort that would play at the bull and gate in kentish town that kind of thing um uh you've got chris gentry who i mentioned who at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, that kind of thing. You've got Chris Gentry, who I mentioned, who was the youngest and sort of slightly blank-faced but pretty skinny boy. And then you've got Johnny, and I've got to say,

Johnny looks like a fucking fantastic pop star here. He really does. He's got Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie hair, a granddad collar with a pearl button very nice eyeshadow he looks absolutely gorgeous he should have been in a romo band he was born to be in a romo band but um this leads me on to the thing about the napoleon hat yeah that would have been a little in joke because uh he and i were were neighbors for a little while uh he lived off holloway road and so did i. Was Shaking Stevens his landlord?

Yeah, not in that property, in a different one. But yeah, Shaking Stevens, as we've established in a previous episode, was the Britpop landlord. Yeah, because Menswear and Knicky, among others, all lived in a Shaking Stevens house. You know people sing at Scouse's, you all live in a Robbie Fowler house. You can sing that to any Britpop band, you all live in a Robbie Fowler house you can sing that to any Britpop band you all live in a Shakin' Stevens house but yeah

basically because menswear's entire reputation was built on wearing sharp suits and looking very styled styled to within the inch of their lives and this is a true story I once saw Johnny from menswear going to the late night BP garage

at the end of my street to just get some i don't know some skins or whatever i don't know what he's going there for but he was wearing like a pair of hawaiian shorts and some flip-flops and a pretty bad shirt and he just didn't look like johnny out of menswear and this led to the thing called it became a sort of competitive thing the johnny for menswear game where you had to sort of uh say yeah well i saw johnny for menswear and he was wearing dot dot dot and it would be you know increasingly ridiculous things like one of those one of those hats with um two cans of drink either side and straws going into your mouth or a revolving bow tie or a global hyper color t-shirt that was all different colors because he'd been sweating and all this kind of stuff and i think uh that may have um fed its way into neil's uh rumor mill

gossip column that we would have these fake sightings of johnny dean and it was probably it was my fault and uh so that that would be why he's talking about me wearing a napoleon hat so that didn't happen then i mean i'm not saying i've never worn a napoleon hat i could not be confirmed or denied it sounds like the sort of thing i would have done circa romo at the height of my self-belief as as the uh svengali yeah i i interviewed them um i got with them pretty well and uh johnny was really into sci-fi stuff uh um really sort of nerdy about star wars and star trek and i I remember I interviewed them in this diner in the Victoria

area of London, and it was all sort of sci-fi themes and the best thing about it was, when you walked into the toilet, in the gents' toilets, you opened the door and they had a sound effect that was like the sliding doors on the USS Enterprise so you could go, shh shh, it's absolutely amazing.

That's one of my favourite menswear memories. Funny enough, it's the sound of toilet doors opening and closing. Because there was a lot of toilet doors opening and closing went into making menswear what they were.

Let's put it that way. I mean, at the end of the interview with the band, where those toilet doors were mentioned, you wrote, I want menswear to be brilliant. Anyone who doesn't is a dead, dead soul. But they're not yet, and I think they know it. Doesn't that sum up the attitude of the music press at the time,

this desperation to create legends? Or was that more to do with the fact that you were mates with them? Neither of those things. It was to do with the fact that they had it in them to be a brilliant pop thing. In fact, they were already becoming a brilliant pop thing. And boring and reductive as it may be, it would have been handy if they had the songs to back it up because that would have just tipped them over the edge into being massive.

You know, they had style. They had a bit of personality, a bit of flash about them. You know, and they weren't afraid to be a bit puffy. They weren't afraid to wear makeup on top of the pops in a way that would have absolutely disgusted Liam Gallagher. You know, so I would rather menswear being a bit crap at what they're doing than Oasis being competent to what they're doing.

Let's put it that way, all day long. And I actually think this is a good song. Obviously, they've really laid it on thick, the idea that it's a classy ballad by bringing in a string section. And I just noticed that on this episode in general, indie bands are really pushing the boat out because you've got Oasis with their grand piano,

you've got Shed 7 with the fucking horn section, and now you've got Mensasis with their grand piano, you've got Shed 7 with the fucking horn section, and now you've got Menswear with the strings. But yeah, everything that you quoted me saying about being brave all those years ago, I would stand by, apart from its chart position. Oh, it wasn't that far wrong. It got in the top 10. I think it's a great lyric about being heartbroken

and about missing someone. Winter's gone away and the mornings aren't so cold. Rub the sleep out of my face. Hook my pillow and try not to count the days. Get your face out of my brain. I think that's a really good lyric about heartbreak. So yeah, I stand by them as a really likeable pop thing, even if they didn't always deliver.

Johnny's a fucking amazing looking pop star and i think this is a great song i think it's the best song on the episode neil your man here johnny is he's clearly a better singer than pissy rick but he once again singing live as top of the pops is making people do it's not helping to put the band over is it yeah yeah i feel johnny is kind of hampered here by the live things. These were, I mean, for me, Johnny is a singer who would have benefited from miming so that he could have concentrated

on the visual side of the performance. The live thing that had been brought in a few years earlier insists that you have to sing at your absolute best, and therefore you concentrate on your singing because you know that a bum note that might pass on stage will get massively noticed on TV. menswear antagonized an awful lot of melody maker readers for precisely

the reasons that you've already discussed um the thing but the thing is i always loved a kind of biff bang pow you are gonna love this band cover even if i didn't end up liking the band yeah you know so things like i mean i remember the way Suede were first introduced to me and Romo and it reminded me an awful lot actually of kind of back in the day when I started reading the music press of who the fuck are the Sugar Cubes who are suddenly on the front

cover of this you know that kind of just boldness of saying you are going to love this band because they're amazing I used to prefer that to a kind of yeah they've been in the van for 10 years it's finally time that they got their due yeah for me with menswear i mean i went to see them live i remember i reviewed them i think pricey maybe edited the review uh live i went to see them at the the sort of peak hype if you like at the beginning of this year i mean i fucking loved daydreamer and i still do um just a guaranteed dance floor hit and i saw

them live felt the hype immensely because i fancied chris gentry like fuck um but um yeah this isn't bad but um i would rather have the sort of hype and hoopla if you like about a band who perhaps don't justify that hype than yeah than just the ruthless competence of somebody like Oasis. I never used to mind those ridiculous kind of front covers. This band are going to dominate this year. This band are going to be this. This band are going to be that. I think that precise,

well, like Simon said, that was our job. It wasn't our job to just pointlessly coast the music scene along. It was our job to antagonize as well and to annoy and to sometimes go off on daft tangents like that so yeah menswear certainly from the 90s period that we're talking about are absolutely not the enemy and i don't mean the band the enemy um they are you know they're on the side of the

righteous i would suggest whereas shed seven and oasis aren't yeah so although this isn't one of my songs i'm most fond of i remember remember that year, 96, the year of menswear if you want to call it that, but I remember the hype at that gig, it was unbelievable and I don't think that was entirely fostered by the music press, I think it was fostered by the strength of songs like Daydreamer because Daydreamer was just a

real classic it's a daft record but it's a great record yeah because it was completely derived from Line Up by Elastica which in turn yeah was completely derived from i am the fly by wire um so you get this kind of well i wouldn't say diminishing returns because i do think as you say daydreamer stands up as as a great record yeah but yeah i mean it was all over pretty quickly they made a second album as i'm sure you'll get into it in your outro, which never quite recaptured the excitement of this. I mean, you were clearly mates with the band, Simon.

Yeah. At the time. What's it like to be a music journalist and a friend of a band that suddenly fall off? Well... Is it awkward? Yeah, and it's the reason why I usually say that making friends with musicians should be discouraged if you're a music journalist, because at some point they will make a shit record.

And your duty as an honest critic is to say so. Yeah. So, you know, it was actually probably easier for Neil than it was for me because he lived up in Cobb. Yeah. I was there in London and he would end up kind of befriending these people or at least sort of becoming friendly acquaintances with them i didn't know men's wear into each other yeah having a drink and that yeah i didn't know men's wear before they were men's wear uh but as soon as they became men's wear inevitably i moved in

the same circles and got to know him got on with him pretty well and yeah um if if they brought out a record i thought was really shit and it was put in front of me i would have had to be honest and i would have had to say so in print and if that meant they threw a drink at me next time they saw me in camden so be it that's just that's just how you have to be so when when you do befriend musicians it's always with a slight undercurrent of sadness because you know that it's quite likely to end horribly at some point for exactly that reason yeah no well i mean that's absolutely it it's kind of i'd like to say i militantly stayed in cov for a principled reason it wasn't it was just shyness and fear but but part of what made it easy was thinking yeah i i can still i'm not saying writers in london lost their critical faculties or something but i'm a coward man if i made friends with musicians i would feel a bit not duty bound to give them

positive reviews but i'd feel that i wouldn't be able to cut loose to a certain extent so i never faced that because at the end of the night or the first thing in the morning i could always get that train back to car for where i could say what the fuck i liked one of the funniest things about the whole menswear hoopla that neil alluded to was that um once you had this phenomenon of a band who'd only written seven songs didn't actually kind of really exist yet but were on the front cover of melody maker um it was everyone was then looking around for the next one and you had some sort of very enterprising kids who started telling themselves like there was this um this guy i knew called toby slater who was um 17 but looked about 12 and always somehow ended up backstage uh at um festivals and stuff like that um i think his um

his stepdad was angus deaton so that can't have done any harm uh but um he used to go to say to people say yeah i'm in this band we're the next menswear, we're called Bratish. And, you know, they're all these sort of, they were private school, privately schooled teenagers who, yeah, they actually eventually became a real band called Catch. Oh. Yeah, sort of indie boy band Catch. And in the meantime...

Best known for being the band whose video was cut on ITV when they announced the Lady Di car crash. Absolutely, yeah. On the chart show repeat. And I actually ended up running my Romo Night Arcadia with Toby out of Bratish slash Catch. And that was quite fun because Angus Deaton would turn up afterwards in his

massive SUV in Soho and pick him up and drive him home at the end of the night and technically he was too young to even be at the fucking club so yeah these are the circles I moved in at the time and it was hilarious that people were just really thinking well if

a scam like menswear can get into the top 10, let's just keep doing it. Let's fight another one and another one and another one. So the following week, Being Brave dropped 23 places to number 33. The follow-up, We Love You, got to number 22 in September of this year, but their second LP was only released in Japan. They never troubled the charts again and they split up in

1998 I mean we've said before about the mayfly like existence of chart singles that crash straight in and go out again and no wonder I mean this was what was this this was their fifth release off an album yeah fifth

release off an album Don't Look Back In Anger's been available on vinyl for you know What was this? This was their fifth release off an album. Yeah, fifth release off an album. Don't Look Back In Anger's been available on vinyl for nearly a year. It's ridiculous, man. People are just... It's the band's fault that singles aren't important anymore, I'd contend. Plus extensive and massive reformatting of things

because singles, 12 inches, extra 12 inches with extra remixes etc so every single single had about three different other products attached to it yeah and that that really sorted out the wheat from the chaff in terms of who was any good at songwriting because um you had bands like blur who were forced to write enough songs to fit on cd1 and cd2 of their single that would just have to churn out any old shit and usually written while they're on tour and then you had bands like suede who seem to be fucking brilliant at it to the extent that when they put

out a compilation of their B-sides sci-fi lullabies it was probably better than any of their actual albums I don't believe that the earth breaks my heart Brave, but unbounded. thing, and that is my own podcast, Talking to Actors, with Anna Mann, where I meet those rarest of creatures,

the actors. That's Talking to Actors. Look out for the new series starting soon on the Great Big Hour. We're tipping the new prodigy single Firestarter to be number one next week, and you can see the video exclusive on Top of the Pops 2 on Saturday.

And it's a particularly smoochy kind of show tonight, and fittingly, we have the Lord of the Love song performing live, Lionel Richie. CHEERING Well, it's Spence Week. Oh, yeah. Everything seems to be going wrong. The Mac spoilers next week's number one and shills the exclusive airing of the video on Top of the Pops 2 at the weekend. While Wiley declares it to be a smoochy kind of show tonight,

after we've had fucking Oasis and Shed 7, as a way of crowbarring in an introduction to Lionel Richie singing Don't Wanna Lose Ya. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1949, Lionel Richie turned down careers as a priest and a tennis player to become a member of the Commodores in 1968, who were immediately signed to Atlantic Records for one LP. After signing to Motown in 1972 and being installed as a support act for the Jackson 5 tours

their first single on the new label Machine Gun got to number 20 in the UK charts for three weeks in October of 1974 but thanks to Rich's songwriting they moved away from funk towards a more easy listening style which paid off when Easy got to number nine in August of 1977 and Three Times a Lady got to number one for five weeks in the late summer of 1978. By the late 70s Richie had started to write for other artists, notably Kenny Rogers who took Lady to number one in America and after testing the water with Endless Love, a duet with Diana Ross which spent nine weeks at number one in America, he finally went solo in 1982, notching up nine top 20 hits in the UK throughout the 80s, including six weeks at number one with Hello in the spring

of 1984. After the release of the Greatest Hits compilation Back to Front in 1992, Richie took an extended break but this year sees a comeback and this single is the lead cut from his fourth LP Louder Than Words which is due out in three weeks. It's the follow-up to Love, Oh Love, which only got to number 52 over here in November of 1992. It was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and

here he is in the studio. Well, this is usually the main event for top of the popsers of this era, isn't it? Big star from the past coming back yeah actually being there gracing us with his presence do you think he was pissed off that he didn't get to do the intro he's a pro he's an old pro so no i don't think that would have pissed him off the thing of the use of lionel richie maybe madonna as well i don't know does top of the pop still

feel that it has to appeal to its previous audience or is it confidently striking out on young turf? It's kind of in between two stalls in a way. But yeah, I think you're absolutely right that if there was a big American star who'd had hits 10 years earlier, they would be a shoo-in. Because Michael Bolton turned up, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the likes of Curtis Stigers and all those people. Those are the pop people that you would get on the show.

And it's a bit of a dereliction of duty to ignore all the more interesting pop music that's in the charts. I want to hear some of the, you know, Stop Pricey was going on about the rundown. I don't remember half of them either. Half of those dance singles. And I want to hear them. And I want to see the freaks who made them on my weekly pop show, please. Yeah. Well, this is clearly a song.

I mean, I don't remember a single second of it and only watched it about three hours ago clearly not the peak of his post commodore's output that has to be the um the sort of slightly sub racist lion king stylings of his accent on all night long but um in this one i mean look i gotta admit i wasn't really listening i was watching his beard yeah um i was looking at his beard i mean i prefer tash richie yeah but this iron filings like beard he's got yeah um it looked like he's got actually a perfectly hairless head but it was lowered gently into this beard um so i just stared at that for the entire duration i've got to say well i mean lionel richard with short hair and not wearing a jumper just looks fucking wrong it does a bit you see

him in a suit and you just think oh god what's happened to lionel yeah i'm i'm equally fascinated by it well yeah but with the with i mean the thing is i think he actually looks pretty good considering how old he is here yeah um the lack of his hair's not fluffed out though that's no it isn't but imagine how old and he would have looked way older if he did have the old hair though al i think he needs 46 here so well yeah so he's looking pretty good for his age but yeah i just remorselessly stared at his beard honestly so i really haven't got much to report back about this song um which is perhaps more revealing of the song than his beard because it's a pretty dull thing.

I mean, Jammer Lewis, great producers, but they can't really do jack shit with this, can they? No, no. I mean, he can sing, though. He is live, and he's definitely live because he does that spoken word bit at the end that singers do when they want to prove that they're not miming. I'm fascinated, as Neil is,

by his beard in this. And also his hair. His hair looks kind of painted on, like John Travolta went through a weird phase in the years after Pulp Fiction, where he had this very short, seemingly painted on hair. What it looks

like, it looks like the woman from the hello video who made the plasticine bust of his head has put it in the oven or gone at it with a blowtorch or something and it's just like this perfectly smooth head that somehow resembles Lionel

Richie but also doesn't at the same time those days when you could touch someone's face. When you can't even touch your fucking own these days, man. Yeah, it's not much of a song, is it? I mean, fucking lyrics that rhyme, makes me feel all right with probably Tonight or something like that. Was this even a hit in the end?

Fuck knows. I don't remember it being a hit. This, of course, this is before young people kind of rehabilitated him so this is before that before he did the legend slot at glastonbury and all of that nowadays you can't go to a fucking club night without millennials ironically dancing to dancing on the ceiling or all night long or something and saying that you know lionel is a legend and that kind of stuff this would have been his wilderness years when nobody gave a fuck. And it's a bit of a shame really for a guy who had made great

records like Machine Gunner, like Brick House, fucking hell. How great is Brick House? I mean, imagine if Brick House suddenly cropped up on this episode now. That is all we'd be talking about. What a fucking record that is. But yeah, you can hardly believe it's the same guy. Weirdly, he's not

at the piano and you've got to wonder why. Somebody else is at the grand piano and I hardly believe it's the same guy. Weirdly, he's not at the piano. And you've got to wonder why. Somebody else is at the grand piano. And I wonder if it's because he saw the footage of Liam Gallagher sort of slobbering all over it and thought, fuck that, I'm not touching that. Yeah, it's not much of a song. Yeah, I mean, this goes to prove that finally by 1996,

the break with the 80s has finally been made because he's on here as a heritage act, isn't he? Yeah, but it's also revealing of Black Seal's attitude towards any music that isn't guitar-y music. I think as soon as it's away from guitar bands, all he sees is sales figures, in a sense, and how much of a career somebody's got. So when you look at the people on this episode who aren't in indie bands,

they're extremely reliable names, but Black Seal's not listened to these records at all. Why would you put a Dead Spot song like this and like the Madonna one in the middle of the show? Well, they're big names, and that's all that matters when it comes to any music other than guitar music, because essentially to Black Seal,

it's not really music. These moments that are wasted on Richie and wasted on Madonna might have been better spent getting some of those dance singles that are in the charts on instead because even the menswear song is a ballad and when Wiley says it's a bit of a smoochy show or whatever

basically what it means is it's a bit of a boring show there are too many slow songs all in a row and then at the end yeah he stares down the barrel didn't he and he goes i'm coming home this time i'm never gonna leave you this i promise and i tell you what tell you what lionel it's fine you know stay out just get get a night in the travel lodge it's fine i'll see you in the morning mate so two weeks later don't Wanna Lose Ya entered the chart at number 17 and immediately slid down.

The follow-up, Still In Love, only got to number 66 in November of this year, but he'd go on to have seven more top 40 hits in the UK in the late 90s to mid-naughties. This would have been another stop-off on the grand tour of light entertainment TV shows of the 90s isn't it? For Lionel, yeah probably got on the National Lottery as well I don't want to lose you baby

I'm coming home this time I'm never going to leave you this I promise I'm never gonna leave you Another skinniest woman in the world Something I whistling about the home of mine obviously is the number one LB at the moment Celine D on the title track falling into you See ribbons of colour I see us Inside of each other

We're actually allowed to see two members of the audience as the camera swings across to Le Mac. One of them looks a bit like Robbie Fowler. LeMac tells us that the following artist is the skinniest woman in the world and that he whistles this song in the bath. I think he's being ironic. A very 90s conceit.

He's doing that John Peel thing, isn't he? Very much so. It's Falling Into You by Celine Dion. We've already covered White Knee Houston in chart music number 21, and this is a follow-up to Misled, which got to number 15 in December of 1995. It's the lead cut from her fourth LP of the same name, and is a cover of the 1994 single written and originally recorded by the Argentinian singer Marie Claire Debaldo.

It entered the chart at number 10 three weeks ago, then dropped to number 11, then dropped to number 13, and this week it stayed at number 13, but the LP has just gone in straight to number one, giving Top of the Pops a reason to whack it on again. So yeah, they're still doing this LP chart thing, but not on a regular basis yeah so a song that's essentially falling or a non-mover um gets you know that's enough to justify it yeah

it's not great is it yeah that introducts a bit harsh of lemac there going on about how skinny she is it's not a good thing she's skinny she's i mean famously she's got a long neck very long neck sort of giraffe like um but yeah i wonder if that kind of thing would fly now, sort of making remarks about the physical appearance of female singers. This is essentially what Madonna wants to be at the moment, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. And again, I can't remember this song.

I've got to admit, I think this is probably the best song on the whole thing, and I can't believe I'm saying it about a Celine Dion song. Fucking hell, Al. I'm shocked. Yeah. It's like a tune that you hear on Eurovision and immediately go, well, that's going to fucking win. You know what I mean?

Well, she did enter, didn't she? She did enter Eurovision. Yes, and won, representing Luxembourg in the mid-'80s. Well, I'm glad it lodged with you, Al. The only thing that lodged with me in my thoughts was that line, I see us inside each other. I'm sorry. I'm puerile enough that that amused me.

But beyond that, again, another song like the Madonna one, where essentially I was distracted by the, what's it called again Simon? The thing that goes along the bottom of the screen? Signage. Oh Chiron. Yeah that predicts Top of the Pops predicts that these records will be in the charts next week. A replacement I guess for the

Breakers thing that was really awful. Top of the Pops predicts chart entries on Sunday for Prodigy Mark Snow, Ken Doe, Cast, Wet Wet Wet and Biss.

What a time to be alive. Yeah, and they're trailing this TOTP2 thing, which I think is overstretching

the brand of Top of the Pops. It's a bit like, you know, with Match of the Day you get MOTD2 and MOTD Extra and as much as you love football, nobody fucking sits and watches them all.

There's only so much football or so much pop you can watch, I think. And I know I'm saying that as somebody who, when we talked about the 70s and 80s, Top of the Pops has gone on about how vital it was to see any pop on TV. I think by the 90s, we're a bit fucking oversaturated, wasn't it? So you're not going to sit and watch Top of the Pops 2. But they're obviously trying to really consolidate the brand there with that extra little

adjunct. So we get another video which Top of the Pops is clearly not up for showing. But it's a pretty expensive job this one isn't it? It's Celine working in a nice circus in France but without actually doing any work in no but this is the thing you see the main conceit about this video that bugs me

is that i love the bloody circus right um yeah it's set in a circus a circus is all about timing and tension and knowing your cues and working hard you know as a circus performer you're expected not just to be up on the tightrope but you're expected to sell the tickets and hand out the popcorn and everything she's just mooning about moaning she's not doing anything she's she's in love though neil come on give her a break she needs to fucking i did wonder what her role is because yeah you've got you've got people juggling you've got clowns you've got unicyclists i mean unless it's some kind of uh todd browning's freaks deal and she's the amazing giraffe woman i i don't know well i mean by by looking at it because it's you know the the top and tail has been cut out we're getting the middle bit and i i assume she's gonna have a go on the

trapeze because of the song lyric you know falling into you or something you know for all i know she could have been selling wessler's burgers out of tin or something so i actually went back to the video because she gets a card off someone saying bon chance from lv or whatever you are now a massive celine dion fan aren't you oh yeah i'm obsessed and it's like oh bon chance well obviously that's there's going to be an element of danger here. And it turns out she's the fire eater's assistant. Oh, I see. She stands there holding a tin with petrol in it with the sticks. And that's all she does.

I felt robbed. Oh, man. What's the location then? Because it looks like a lovely medieval... Yeah, it's shot in France. Oh, lovely. All right, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be as crassly

insensitive as Lamac is in the intro but she needs to pull her fucking weight I actually quite like Celine Dion not so much as a singer but just as a sort of person or personality as a concept for a start I love her mad French Canadian accent which

the only other equivalent in the media of that is the BBC's Lise Doucette. Have you ever seen her? No. Oh, she's this incredible... Again, she's French-Canadian. She's a BBC sort of foreign affairs reporter. And her accent's all over the place.

Is it Irish? Is it French? It'll change mid-word. It's a thing of quite fascination. I've got a French-Canadian friend. I've got to admit, I don't think she even knows this. I think it was a good six months before I could understand an entire sentence that she said. I could catch bits and bobs and I'd just nod. Yeah.

But yeah, it took a while to tune my ear to it. So yeah, I know what you're saying, Simon. But a thing I love about Celine to it so yeah i know what you're saying simon yeah but a thing i love about celine dion i don't know if you've seen this footage is after hurricane katrina uh when um there was a larry king special uh on american tv and they were getting various sort of famous people to come on and talk about this crisis and to see you know some of them were sort of trying to drum up money for various appeals and so on. And they got Celine Dion on there. And I think she was speaking to them from Las Vegas.

And she got very, very emotional about it. And bless her, you know, good for her for doing so. And of course, being from French Canada, she will have felt this sort of cultural affinity with Louisiana and, you know yeah the french bit of the uso um but she starts coming up with these ideas about what they could do to rescue people who are still there on their rooftops and she she says why can't people go in there with kayaks kayaks and she starts miming she mimes as if she's got the awe of the kayaks in her hand

and she's there talking doing this kind of motion kayaks kayaks and it's it's it's really quite something to see i really recommend looking for it i i um i do like some of his songs particularly uh it's all coming back to me now and um which of course is jim stymond at his finest uh you can imagine it being sung by by meatloaf and uh um it's it's a song it's one of those things that um i'm a terrible one for saying like my like my name was and uh if ever i'm remembering something vaguely i'll say it's all coming back to me now and i can't say that without then adding like my name was celine dion but that that is a that is a fantastic song it's a bit of a classic anthem at the club night I do,

Late Night Minicab FM, where we play all this kind of balladry. But I think this song badly needs a bit of Steinman because for me, like the Madonna single, the song barely exists. I can't remember it from the time and I can't remember it from just the other day watching this yeah what i like i mean what i like about celine dion is that i cannot imagine or rather i can imagine her existence um and it's not hanging around with sting or hanging around

with you too there's just a little level above it's almost like celine dion is it just lives in a world of princes and princesses and arab shakes yeah and and just impossible wealth beyond the normal level beyond the normal red carpet level she's just i'm not saying she's a cut above in any way but she seems to exist in this almost pre-modern world of just jetting about doing shit obviously she's not doing that at the moment but at a tier and a level that is just way above the normal sort of hoi polloi of pop, if you like.

She's proper aristocracy in a way. It's just leading this demented billionaire's lifestyle. And I like that about her. She's a bit, she's kooky in an interesting way. So the following week, Falling Into You dropped five places to number 18. The follow-up, Because You Loved Me, got to number five for four weeks in June of July this year, and she managed to ring three more top 20 hits from her new LP.

And let me kiss you And while you sleep And that, Pop Crazed Youngsters, puts the tin lid on this part of the episode of Chart Music. My name's Al Needham. I'll see you in a bit. Until then, stay Pop Crazed! Pop Christ Shark music