2. Cher - "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)"
Or, "Will Thursday nights ever be the same again?"
I’m in a travel agent’s somewhere in the town centre and I’m bored. Of course, travel agent’s are boring to kids. But then I notice there are some toys in the corner, so I head over. It’s mainly cuddly toys, actually, and the thing that piques my interest the most is a giant, well… giant.
This thing is seriously huge. It’s so huge that it has to hunch over slightly so its head doesn’t hit the ceiling.
Anyway, without warning this thing comes to life and—as I’m sure you expect at this point—it begins to tickle me. Incessantly. I don’t like being tickled but I can’t tell the giant this because I’m laughing too much. There’s a phrase I’m desperate to communicate but I just can’t get out.
“You’re not supposed to tickle me. You’re supposed to eat me.”
You know how giants eat children, right? That’s common knowledge regardless of your age. So, after a few minutes of struggling through this tickle torture I manage to form those immortal words well enough that the giant can decipher them. At which point, he pauses, thinks, and then picks me up between his thumb and index finger, and flings me into his mouth.
At which point, I wake up screaming.
Yes, it was a dream and yes, this is still a music-focused Substack and yes, I promise I’ll bring this round to talking about Cher.
So, a dream all along but also, crucially, my earliest childhood memory.
I mention this because it’s generally not what I tell people when I’m asked what my earliest childhood memory is. That’s because I tell people it’s seeing the video for Cher’s “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” on Top of the Pops when it got to Number 1.
The accepted version of the truth is that seeing the Cher video on TOTP is my second-earliest childhood memory but who knows? There’s no way to fact-check it. And since this is my blog about my life, sorry but you’ll have to take my word for it.
I would have been nearly five years old when this topped the charts, and I have a memory of the video being shown rather than Cher coming into the studio to perform. It’s easy to see why this captured my attention.
It’s a three minute soul-pop classic (something which remains irresistible to me to this day) and the video has stuff a kid can easily latch onto: transitions from monochrome to colour, dance routines and film clips. I was captivated.
And while this song hit me at that moment, it was actually more of a pattern of me developing an interest in chart music, caring what was Number 1, and wanting to watch Top of the Pops every single week. Sure, I watched cartoons and whatever stuff the terrestrial channels pumped out at the allotted times for children’s programming (it was the early 90s, after all), but TOTP was what I really cared about.
Top of the Pops (1964-2006) now seems like a relic from a bygone age. How quaint that the acts with the biggest songs of a particular week would come into a BBC studio to record a lip-synced performance for primetime television. But as a kid, it was a window into an industry and a world that I couldn’t get enough of. After having missed some episodes due to its showing being past my recognised bedtime (7pm), I remember campaigning to my parents so I could be allowed to stay up late specifically on Thursdays in order to catch my favourite show.
My dark secret is that if ever I’m alone in my apartment for an evening, I’ll often scour YouTube for episodes of Top of the Pops from the 1990s. Sometimes I even find something I remember seeing first time round. It provides a nostalgia hit so pure and so concentrated, a million giant-based nightmares could never compare.
What didn’t get to Number 1 because of this song?
KLF - “Last Train to Transcentral (featuring The Children of the Revolution)”
What. A Song.
The KLF won’t have a feature article in One Life because I don’t associate their one number 1 single (“3 a.m. Eternal”) with anything specific in my life but I find them endlessly fascinating. I’m hugely into pop star mythology, aesthetics and, basically, anyone who goes all out to do something bonkers in the name of pop. Setting a million quid on fire, deleting your entire back catalogue, opening The BRIT Awards by performing with a grindcore band - I adore everything about The KLF.
Crystal Waters - “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”
An early 90s dance earworm which still sounds great today, sure, but it always strikes me as odd that a song about homelessness has such a glib, nonsense chorus.
Color Me Badd - “I Wanna Sex You Up”
Everything about this makes me feel ill. Even when this came out and I wasn’t even five years old, I knew I had more rizz than these clowns.
And then it replaced Cher as Number 1.