Top of the Pops

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{{Infobox Television | show_name = Top of the Pops | image = Image:TOTP Logo.jpg | caption = UK Version details | format = Music chart | runtime = 30 minutes | creator = Johnnie Stewart | developer = | executive_producer = | starring = Current presenter: Fearne Cotton
Former hosts include: Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman, John Peel, Tony Blackburn, Gail Porter, Jamie Theakston | country = UK | network = BBC Two,
formerly on BBC One | first_aired = 1 January 1964 | last_aired = present | num_episodes = 2000+ | website = http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp | imdb_id = 0139803 | tv_com_id = 8566 }} Top of the Pops is a long-running British music chart television programme shown each week on BBC Two and now licensed for local versions around the world. Each programme consists of half an hour of performances of some of that week's best-selling popular music.

Contents

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History

Image:RadioTimesTOTP.jpg Top of the Pops began on New Year's Day 1964 in a studio set in a disused church in Manchester. DJ Jimmy Savile presented the first show, which featured (in order) The Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man'", Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to be With You", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", The Hollies with "Stay", The Swinging Blue Jeans with "The Hippy Hippy Shake" and The Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one. Savile rotated with three other presenters: Alan Freeman, Pete Murray and David Jacobs. Over 2000 episodes have been shown over the years; and the act that has appeared in the most episodes is the British rock band, Status Quo.

It was originally intended to have only a few programmes but has been going for over 40 years. During its heyday in the 1970s, it attracted 15 million viewers each week [1]. It was traditionally shown on a Thursday night, but was moved to a Friday in 1996, a change which caused some controversy.

For most of its history the show had very strict rules about which singles could be featured. A song could not appear if it was going down the charts, nor could any track appear on consecutive weeks unless it was at number one. These rules were abandoned in 1997, possibly as a response to the changing nature of the Top 40 (since the mid-1990s climbers in the charts have become a rarity, with almost all singles peaking at their debut position).

Image:Totp old.gif By November 2004, viewing figures had plummeted to below three million, prompting announcement by the BBC that the show was going to move again to Sunday evenings on BBC Two, thus losing its prime-time slot on BBC One which it had maintained for forty years.[2]. This move has been widely reported as a final "sidelining" of the show, and perhaps a move towards cancelling it altogether. However, it was insisted that the move was in fact so that the show would air immediately after the official announcement of the new top 40 chart on Radio 1, as it was thought that by the following Friday, the chart seemed out-of-date. The first edition on BBC Two was broadcast on 17 July 2005 at 7pm.

This chart show has seen many changes through the decades: in style, design, fashion and taste. It celebrated its 2000th show in 2002. The show has historically been closely associated with the BBC radio station Radio 1, usually being presented by DJs from the station (although from October 1991 to January 1994 no Radio 1 DJs presented the show, and the association has not been as close as it once was). In its heyday during the glam rock era of the early 1970s, the show featured the tightly choreographed dance troupe Pan's People (later succeeded by Legs & Co.), something which has been widely imitated on similar shows ever since. Pan's People were used when an act was unable to appear in person and no footage of them was available - a common occurrence in the era before promotional videos.

Acts performing on the show have traditionally mimed to a pre-recorded track and this accounts for a number of performers who never appeared on the show due to a resistance to mime. For a few years from 1991 the show adopted a live vocal to pre-recorded backing track policy. While this resulted in some of the show's best performances — notably Kurt Cobain's singing on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — it also exposed a number of poor live singers, and was dropped as a general rule. Image:Totp logo 1998.jpg In November 2003, the show was radically overhauled in what has been widely reported as a make-or-break attempt to revitalise the long-running series. In a break with the previous format, the show is to play more up-and-coming tracks ahead of any chart success, and also to feature interviews with artists. The new show was hosted by MTV presenter Tim Kash until his contract expired in August 2004. It was not renewed due to his apparent lack of popularity with TV viewers. The show was co-hosted by Reggie Yates and Fearne Cotton until 11th July 2005 every Friday night. Since the move to Sundays, Cotton has continued to host with a different guest presenter each week, such as Rufus Hound or Richard Bacon. It now averages around 1.5 million viewers.

The BBC have also had a show called TOTP2 which shows archive footage from as early as the 1960s of musicians on earlier Top of the Pops shows. It has been shown on BBC2 since September 1994, although the network's new controller Roly Keating announced in the summer of 2004 that it was being "rested" (repeats, however, continue on the digital channel UKTV G2). A more recent spin-off is Top of the Pops Reloaded (previously Top of the Pops Saturday), showing on Saturday mornings on BBC One. This is aimed at a younger audience as is part of the CBBC Saturday Morning lineup.

Although the original four presenters are still alive, five presenters of the show have passed away — Stuart Henry, Kenny Everett, occasional presenter Caron Keating, John Peel and Tommy Vance. In addition, the creator of the show, Johnnie Stewart, died on April 29, 2005.

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"TOTP" in Europe

The TOTP format was sold to RTL in Germany in the 1990s, and aired on Saturday afternoons. It was very successful for a long time, with a compilation album series and magazine. However, in 2006 it was announced that the German show would be ending. Domestic versions of the show continue to run in France, The Netherlands and Italy.

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"TOTP" in New Zealand

The Top of the Pops brand has also been exported to New Zealand which for many years had to rely on music-video only shows to demonstrate its Top 20 (as well as the occasional season of the UK version of TOTP) as the world's top acts found New Zealand just too far away from the major markets to visit regularly. This all changed when the New Zealand government suggested a voluntary New Zealand music quota on radio (basically a threat that if the stations did not impose a quota themselves then one would be imposed on them). This worked and suddenly the amount of indigenous music played on radio stations shot up, as did the number of New Zealand hits in the top 20. Therefore a new version of a show like Top of the Pops became feasible for the first time, and the show was commissioned by TVNZ. The show began in early 2004 with host Alex Behan. The hour-long show (as opposed to the 30 minute UK version) which is broadcast at 5pm on Saturdays on TV 2 (New Zealand) contains a mixture of songs recorded in the Auckland TVNZ studios as well as performances from the international versions of the show. The New Zealand Top 20 singles and Top 10 albums are also featured. Alex stayed as host for two years before Bede Skinner took over. The show is currently being rested but fans remain hopeful a 2006 season will begin shortly.

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"TOTP" in the United States

Top of the Pops had short-lived fame in the United States. In 1987, the CBS television network decided to try an American version of the show. It was hosted by Nia Peeples and even showed performances from the BBC version of the programme. The show was presented on late Friday nights and lasted almost a year.

In 2002, BBC America presented the BBC version of Top of the Pops as part of their weekend schedule. The network would get the episodes one week after they were transmitted in the UK. BBC America then tinkered with the show by cutting a few minutes out of each show and moving it to a weekday time slot. Viewer interest was gone and the show was taken off BBC America's schedule.

On January 23, 2006, record producer Lou Pearlman made a deal to bring "Top of the Pops" back to the airwaves in the United States. It is expected to be similar to the 1987 version, but it will also utilize the Billboard magazine music charts, most notably the Hot 100 chart. It is being planned for a possible Fall (Autumn) 2006 launch.

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'Edited' TOTP on BBC Prime

An edited version of the UK show can be seen on BBC Prime, the weekend after UK transmission.

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Compilation Albums

A number of compilation albums utilising the Top of the Pops brand have been issued over the years. The first one to reach the charts was "BBC TV's The Best Of Top of the Pops" on the Super Beeb record label in 1975, which reached number 21.

Earlier on in the 1970s there was a rival series of "Top of the Pops" albums that reached the charts, however these had little to do with the series, being a range of budget compilation albums recorded by anonymous session singers and released on the Hallmark record label.

In the 1990s, the BBC "Top of the Pops" brand was again licensed for use in a tie-in compilation series. Starting in 1995 with Sony Music's Columbia Records label, these double disc collections moved to the special marketing arm of Polygram/Universal Music TV, before becoming a sister brand of the Now That's What I Call Music range in the EMI/Virgin/Universal joint venture.

Similarly to the roles of "Top of the Pops" on BBC 1 and BBC 2 in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the compilation albums range featured current hits for the main series and classic hits (such as 70s Rock) for the "Top of the Pops 2" spin-offs.

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Number One in the Compilation Charts

These albums in the series reached No. 1:

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Top of the Pops magazine

Top of the Pops magazine has been running since the 1990s, and filled the void in the BBC magazine portfolio where Number One magazine used to be.

An early feature on the Spice Girls coined the famous "Spice" nicknames for each member (Baby, Ginger, Posh, Scary and Sporty) that stayed with them throughout their career as a group and beyond.

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Send-ups

A number of performers have sent up the format in various ways. Mainly this has been performers who disliked the mime format of the show, often as a more effective protest of this rather than just refusing to appear.

  • While performing their 1982 hit "Jackie Wilson Said" the band Dexys Midnight Runners were seen performing in front of a projection of the darts player Jocky Wilson. This was a deliberate joke by the band and the production staff, but many people (including, apparently, host David Jensen) didn't realise this and thought it was a genuine mistake. Despite this, to this day, many TV nostalgia shows and other sources still claim this was an error.
  • When Oasis performed "Whatever for Top of the Pops in 1994 they mimed and one of the cello players from the symphony was replaced by rhythm guitarist Bonehead, who clearly had no idea how his instruments is supposed to be played. Towards the end of the song, he gave up the pretense and stared using the stick to conduct. A woman plays his rhythm guitar.[3]
  • In 1995 Oasis played their single "Roll With It" featuring singer Liam Gallagher pretending to play guitar, while guitarist Noel Gallagher pretended to sing, just to show how fake the 'live' performance was. It also mocked the habit people had in Oasis' early years of confusing the brothers, not being able to tell them apart. The set ended with the band erupting in laughter at the Gallagher's impressions of each other.
  • For the 1984 Christmas Day edition all of the performers from Band Aid had been booked to appear apart from Bono. The performance of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" witnessed the unlikely scene of Paul Weller lip-syncing to Bono's vocals.
  • In a 2005 performance of "Lyla", Liam Gallagher made no secret of the fact that he was miming his lyrics by walking away from the microphone and chewing gum when he was supposed to be singing.
  • Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton also showed he was obviously miming a performance by sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth during closeup shots.
  • In Nirvana's only performance on Top of the Pops, frontman Kurt Cobain "played" his guitar with his fingers inches away from the frets, drummer Dave Grohl danced around in his seat for most of the performance, and bassist Krist Novoselic waved his instrument around his head. For this performance Cobain was trusted to sing live vocals to a pre-recorded backing track: instead, he sang in a low, mournful wail; he was later to claim this was his attempt to sound like Morrissey. This performance has been taken to heart by Nirvana fans, who affectionately refer to it as "Teen Gothic".
  • Singer Les Gray of Mud went on stage to perform with a ventriloquist dummy during the performance of Lonely this Christmas and had the dummy lip-synch to the voice-over in the middle of the song.
  • Fish, the face painted lead singer of early 1980s prog rockers Marillion, made sure that the cameras caught a close up of his firmly closed mouth during a particular section of their single Punch and Judy. The lyric he did not mime to was ... "I'm miming"!
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Theme Music

A version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" by C. C. S. was used as the show's theme tune for most of the 1970s, and also in a remixed version between 1998 and 2003, although ironically the band never performed on the show. In 1981 an original song 'Yellow Pearl' by Phil Lynott was commissioned as the new theme music. This was replaced in 1986 with "The Wizard", a composition by Paul Hardcastle. The theme is currently a remixed version of the one used between 1991 and 1995 and is composed by Tony Gibber.

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Trivia

  • As of November 2005, the longest performance was of Green Day's Jesus Of Suburbia lasting 9 minutes.
  • The shortest performance was Super Furry Animals with Do or Die clocking in at 95 seconds.
  • Cliff Richard has performed the most on Top Of The Pops, recording over 150 performances.
  • The most complaints the show received for a single episode was in 1994 when Manic Street Preachers performed their song "Faster" in a manner that was seen as intimidating and featured lead singer James Dean Bradfield wearing a balaclava such as would be worn by an IRA terrorist.
  • The first unsigned band to play Top Of The Pops was Scottish twee pop group Bis.
  • The show's relaunch with Andi Peters as producer was widely considered the point where Top Of The Pops was Jumping The Shark. It noticeably had Victoria Beckham promote her new song "This Groove", with a performance 7 times in the first 8 shows, including the (pre-recorded) Christmas special.
  • In 1980, the then fledgling heavy metal superstars Iron Maiden became the first band to play live on the show since The Who in 1972, when they refused to mime to their single "Running Free".
  • Super Furry Animals once got the whole audience to sit down during a live performance of theirs
  • Because of the BBC's former policy of deleting old programmes, nearly all of the episodes from the first ten years of the programme's history have been lost, including all of The Beatles' appearances.
  • When Elvis Costello performed "Radio Radio" on the show, he changed the lyrics to criticise Tony Blackburn who was the presenter that week.
  • When John Peel first presented the programme in 1968 he forgot the name of Amen Corner who were appearing that week. Possibly because of this, his next appearance as presenter wasn't until Christmas 1981.
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Songs which mention Top of the Pops

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  • The Scottish punk band The Rezillos lampooned the show as a vehicle for vapid commercialism and for paying little or no attention to talented, unknown bands, in their song "Top of the Pops." Ironically the band actually ended up performing the song on the programme (twice) when it entered the charts — it would appear the producers misunderstood the song's lyrics and thought it was an affectionate tribute. Template:Listen
  • "C-30 C-60 C-90 GO!", originally by Bow Wow Wow and covered by Seattle, WA band Pretty Girls Make Graves
  • A song entitled "Top of the Pops" appeared on the Kinks album, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One
  • Rat Trap by The Boomtown Rats
  • "Me Plus One" by Anne Lilia Berge Strand or more commonly Annie
  • The song "Formed a Band" by Art Brut includes in its lyrics, "We’re gonna write a song as universal as happy Birthday, that makes sure everybody knows that everything is going to be OK, we’re going to take that song and we’re going to play it 8 weeks in a row on Top of the Pops." In their song "Bad Weekend," the band also sings, "sometimes it's hard to stop when your heart is set on Top of the Pops, Top of the Pops." Art Brut LyricsIn addition to this, Art Brut & Friends recorded a song titled "Top of the Pops", lyrics being the name of their band followed by TOTP e.g Art Brut! Top of the Pops! The Long Blondes! Top of the Pops!
  • Akira the Don's single, 'Living in the Future'
  • The New Jersey power pop band The Smithereens recorded a song entitled "Top of the Pops" on their album "Blow Up."
  • Billy Bragg's "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward" boasts the lyric, "It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll; from Top of the Pops to drawing the dole".
  • Carter USM's song "Glam Rock Cops" has the lyric "I've been fitted up for size for Top Of The Pops / In a uniform supplied by the glam rock cops". Unlike most other examples here it was actually performed on Top of the Pops.
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External links

fr:Top of the Pops nl:Top of the Pops simple:Top of the Pops fi:Top of the Pops

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