Greetings, Time Travellers! 👋

It’s January 31, 1993 again

📰 Michael Jackson becomes the first-ever Superbowl halftime act (there’s also a football game, which the Dallas Cowboys win.)📽️ Jeremy Irons ruins his life for Juliette Binoche (and who can blame him) in steamy drama Damage.📺 On telly, a young Kate Winslet makes her screen debut in Casualty.

🎶 Number One song in the UK Top 40 is still “I Will Always Love You”, but today let’s look at…

This week’s Number 6: “Ordinary World”—Duran Duran

Folks, we’re getting close to 100 issues of This Week In The 90s! Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you’ve found some of it interesting.

Also, I realise you may have some unanswered questions. Questions like, “Why do you care so much about old Top 40s?” and “You’re Irish, so why do you talk about the UK Top 40?” and “Why do these emails keep getting longer? Don’t you have any other hobbies?”

To answer those in reverse order:

• No, I work, sleep, and do this

• I’m sorry! If you want to volunteer to be my editor, please get in touch!

• Many reasons, one of which is the answer to your first question…

• Because of Top Of The Pops

I’m a child of the late 70s, which means that my mushy brain started taking things in around 1981, which happened to be a golden age for Top Of The Pops.

My siblings were teenagers around this time, which meant that TOTP was appointment viewing in our house. Our whole family, including my parents, crowded around the TV on Thursday nights, laughing at the lipsyncing and arguing about who would be this week’s Number One.

One of my formative memories is of feeling a bit scared by the gloomy video for “Vienna” by Ultravox. When the funny and unthreatening Joe Dolce held them off the Number One spot, it felt reassuring, as if a brave knight had slain a terrifying dragon.

Came in from a rainy Thursday

A quick explainer for Americans and people under 35:

Top Of The Pops was a half-hour weekly show, broadcast by BBC and carried in here Ireland by RTE. The show featured a countdown of the UK Top 40, with live performances* of some of the songs. Whoever was Number One got to close the show, which was a big honour.

(* Live performances were usually lipsynced. If the artist wasn’t available, they showed the video. If no video were available, they played the song over a sexy interpretative dance.)

TOTP first aired on January 1st, 1964, featuring The Rolling Stones. who appeared live, and The Beatles, who did not, and it was hosted by Jimmy Saville, who was later unmasked as a monstrous paedophile.

Truly, this show had everything.

People like me could drone on for hours about the cultural impact of Top Of The Pops, but I think it’s all neatly summarised in that one “Starman” performance where Bowie pointed down the camera and turned all of Britain’s teenagers bisexual:

Top Of The Pops hit the rocks in the late 70s, thanks to a mix of poor creative leadership and issues with the BBC musicians union. On top of that, the thriving post-punk scene was happening outside of the Top 40, which meant that Britain’s most exciting bands weren’t even eligible to appear on the show.

At the start of the 1980s, two things happened.

First, a strike forced TOTP forced off-air for the first time in almost 20 years. New producer Michael Hurll grabbed this opportunity to reboot the show, pumping it full of snappy, youthful energy.

Second, post-punk evolved into something more mainstream. Manifesto-driven art projects like The Human League decided that the only way to defeat capitalism was to fill the charts with songs that lampshaded the artificial nature of consumerist pop culture. Songs like “Don’t You Want Me Baby” were intended as a kind of Red Pill that would snap you out of the Matrix.

(Spoiler alert: capitalism somehow survived Phil Oakey.)

Punk energy + pop sensibility = the greatest moment in British chart music since Beatlemania. A Cambrian explosion of classic pop songs, each combining classic melodies, futuristic synths, and wry lyrics. An absolute golden age of catchy bops.

And where did all of these pop pioneers launch their new projects? Top of the Pops.

Where is the life that I recognize?

Duran Duran were kind of a big deal in my house, given that my sister was a teenager and Duran Duran were five very good-looking boys.

Lucky for her, they played TOTP nine times between 1981 and 1984. Their first performance saw them dressed in full New Romantic glam while Tony Blackburn introduced them as “Durran Durran”. Their last live performance of that streak saw them return as global rock stars, doing an epic prduction of “Wild Boys”.

Did I see all of these performances? Almost definitely. My family never missed an episode back then.

Duran Duran didn’t play TOTP in 1985, although BBC did play the clip for their smash hit Bond theme, “A View To A Kill”. In 1986, they came back to perform “Notorious”, which would be their last TOTP appearance of the 80s.

Did I see this last performance? It’s harder to say. TOTP stopped becoming a regular family event in my house by now. Time had passed and, one by one, my siblings had aged out of the show’s target demographic.

Something similar happened to Duran Duran’s fans. While Duran Duran were not quite a boyband, their career trajectory was certainly boyband-esque. The atomic energy of a million teenage crushes had catapulted them to stardom. But teenagers grow up, crushes cool down, and everything that rises must someday fall.

In 1990, “Serious” became the first Duran Duran single to miss out on the UK Top 40, peaking at Number 48. They were not mentioned on that week’s Top Of The Pops, where the Number One song was “Ice Ice Baby”.

Fear today, forgot tomorrow

Lots happened in the early 90s.

John Taylor married 19-year-old Amanda de Cadenet. Top Of The Pops went through a disastrous reboot and viewing figures suffered a mortal wound. I became a teenager. It was a wild time for everyone.

Rave, Grunge and Hip-Hop had taken over the world, so the last thing anyone wanted was a new Duran Duran record. This was a bit of a blow for Duran Duran, who had just recorded a new record. Like many of their 80s peers, the band couldn’t get arrested in the 90s. The media ignored them, the label disowned them, and the band looked like they’d reached the end of the road.

But manager Tommy Manzi was not prepared to let Duran Duran die. In one final throw of the dice, he leaked advance copies of the new single to some radio stations in Florida. A few obliging DJs gave it a spin…

…and the audience went bananas.

I will learn to survive

Let’s give Durran Durran the credit they deserve.

First, “Ordinary World” is a really good song. Not their best song, and maybe not even the best song on this album (“Come Undone” is terrific), but a fine tune and perfectly judged for that cultural moment.

But they didn’t just update their sound for the 90s. “Ordinary World” actually predicts a lot of what’s going to happen next in music, especially the kind of radio-friendly alt-pop acts like Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox 20. These guys are not followers, but leaders.

“Ordinary World” got a Stateside release in late 92 and went rocketing to Number One in the Billboard charts.

It peaked at Number 6 in the UK, but transformed the band’s reputation. Duran Duran (aka The Wedding Album) was a smash hit, and “Ordinary World” scooped the next Ivor Novello award. As had happened with ABBA the previous year, the band got a long-overdue reappraisal, and the cultural consensus from “embarrassing floppy-haired poseurs” to “fine songwriters with a strong back catalogue.”

Wouldn’t it be great to stop here and say that Duran Duran lived happily ever after? Sadly, the 90s had some rocky moments ahead, including their 1997 breakup and that horrifying cover of “White Lines”.

Things also went downhill for Top Of The Pops. The show was now locked in a terminal decline, and by 1999 it was surviving almost entirely on goodwill.

But that’s all ahead of us. For now, let’s pretend that it’s January 1993 again. It’s around 7pm on a Thursday. You’re in the living room with the whole family, everyone’s just had dinner and now you all have a nice cup of tea. Someone puts the telly on, and Top Of The Pops has started. All new music tonight; some okay, some awful.

Then your mum says, “oh is that Duran Duran?” And you feel a deep glow of contentment, because you’re all together and the fire is lighting and Duran Duran are on Top Of The Pops, and it’s been a while since you’ve had such a profound feeling of being at home, and you can tell that Simon le Bon feels at home too.

Elsewhere in the charts

Number 5 (↑ from 12): “Deep”—East 17

Of all the many differences between Take That and East 17, perhaps the most important is this:

Take That wrote songs about holding hands, while East 17 did not.

The radio version of “Deep” tones things down considerably, so radio listeners hear Tony sing “while we cuddle, you can fantasize” instead of the much raunchier original: “lay back and close your eyes/while I fiddle, you can fantasise.”

Pure filth.

Number 9 (New Entry): “How Can I Love You More”—M People

M People started off slow. “How Can I Love You More” came out in 1991 as the first single from debut album Northern Soul, which did okay but didn’t set the world on fire (although “Colour My Life” is a great song.)

1993 saw a re-released, re-mixed version which made Top 10 and helped establish them as a serious force. In October, they’ll release Elegant Slumming and become superstars.

Number 20 (New Entry): “I Lift My Cup”—Gloworm

Gloworm specialised in doing big, spiritual Gospel songs with pumping house beats. Not the only person to mix religion and rave (see also: “You’ve Got The Love”) but it’s rare to hear anyone so emphatically pro-Jesus in a mainstream pop song.

This track was produced by Rollo, which means that Rollo has worked with the faithful and Faithless.

Number 24 (New Entry): “Sweet Thing”—Mick Jagger

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a double. But wouldn’t it make more sense to apply that theory to Mick Jagger? Consider the evidence:

• Has always been aged somewhere between 40 and 90

• Survived multiple events that should have killed him (socialising with Keith Richards)

• Kinda seems like a guy doing an exaggerated Mick Jagger impression

Anyway, this is a fun solo effort, regardless of who’s really singing.

Number 27 (↓ from 22): “Hip Hop Hooray”—Naughty By Nature

A rare example of a two-hit wonder. Naughty By Nature released six albums between 1989 and 2002, but they only bothered the pop charts twice, with this and “O.P.P.”.

“Hip Hop Hooray” has the most contagious chorus since “We Will Rock You”, but the rapping on the verses is also very good because NbN are very talented rappers. It’s a shame that pop-rap got such a bad reputation because I wish we had a million more songs like this.

Album of the Week

This Leaden Pail—Half Man Half Biscuit

Irish people had access to Top Of The Pops, but we sadly did not have access to John Peel’s radio show, which means that I missed a huge chunk of my musical education.

Also, it means that I’ve never heard a Half Man Half Biscuit song in my life. For real.

Listening to them now feels like trying to join a conversation at a party, just constantly trying to pick up on the references and names. Having listened to This Leaden Pail four times now, I’m still none the wiser. Who is Chester Barnes? Is Farmer Coombes a real person? What is Junior Kickstart?

Normally, I would just Google this stuff and act like I always knew, but I think it’s important to be honest, especially if you are also approaching HMHB for the first time.

What I will say is that they’re a lot of fun, kind of like if Billy Bragg was the funniest guy in the pub. You can see it in the tracklist, which includes titles like “13 Eurogoths Floating in the Dead Sea”, “Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite”, and “Running Order Squabble Fest”, which ends with a hooligan-style chant of “you’re going on after Crispy Ambulance”

However—and this is really important—that doesn’t mean Half Man Half Biscuit are a goofballs doing Sultans Of Ping-style zaniness. This Leaden Pail is a document of prosaic working-class life, a world of ordinary people doing ordinary things. If you’ve lived this life, you understand why comedy is so deadly serious. A good joke is like magic, and magic is a rarity in the real world.

HMHB can also write catchy tunes, like the bouncy “4AD3DCD”, which is honestly better than half the stuff that charted in the Britpop era:

Kind of sad that I missed out on Half Man Half Biscuit fandom now. I see why Peel got excited about them. They’re a proper 80s indie band with a nice blend of humour and substance.

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