Julee Cruise Performs ‘Falling’ for Top of the Pops, Nov. 22, 1990

On Oct. 23, 1990, Twin Peaks mania descended on the United Kingdom as David Lynch and Mark Frost’s show began airing on BBC2. Just like several months earlier in the United States, interest in Julee Cruise’s music piqued once the wonderful and strange sounds filled the air. Nearly a month later, she was performing her hit song “Falling” for “Top of the Pops” on BBC1.

WHAT IS TOP OF THE POPS?

First broadcast on New Year’s Day 1964, Top Of The Pops was presented by disc jockey Jimmy Savile on the United Kingdom’s BBC.  The show, which featured top artists of the moment, was intended for a short run, but eventually ran for over 42 years until July 30, 2006. In the 1970s, Top of the Pops attracted over 15 million viewers each week. According to This Day in Music, many performances from the show’s early years were wiped: “…due to the BBC’s wiping old pop music programmes to save money on videotape, out of the first 500 episodes (1964–73) only about 20 complete recordings remain in the BBC archives.”

JULEE CRUISE RELEASES ‘FALLING’ AS A SINGLE IN THE UNITED KINGOM

Julee Cruise’s “Falling” arrived in record shops as a single on Monday, Oct. 22, 1990, as this day of the week was typically when all new music was released (a practice that would continue in the U.K. until 2015). A “Daily Telegraph” article on Oct. 17, mentioned her new single.

“Apart from the Simpsons and those infuriating turtles, the biggest cult figure of 1990 must surely be David Lynch, the director of the new series Twin Peaks which starts on BBC-2 next Tuesday. This is why I can confidently predict that the almost unknown singer pictured below will be famous by next week.

Until last autumn, Julee Cruise was just another struggling American chanteuse, whose album Floating Into The Night had sold a decidedly modest 20,000. copies. But within a few months of appearing as a nightclub singer in the first episode of Twin Peaks, her American record sales had increased to 200,000.

Unless something goes disastrously wrong, the same thing is going to happen in Britain. Cruise’s new single Falling, cannily released next week, is actually rather good. But as Cruise would probably admit, talent is bottom of the list of requirements for securing a hit record.”

No surprise, it was a success and propelled her to the top of the charts within a month.

TOP OF THE POPS PERFORMANCE ON NOV. 22, 1990

The BBC1 aired Top of the Pops at 7:00 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1990. The show would include performances by Vanilla Ice, Proclaimers, Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, Julee Cruise. Jimmy Somerville, 808 State and the Righteous Brothers (with Radio I).

She performed “Falling” in the #11 spot just after Rod Stewart and Tina Turner’s “It Takes Two.”

Standing on stage bathed in blue and white light, Julee sang the song in front of a rather packed venue.

Thanks to the Walter Lawler Archive on YouTube, you can see her nearly four minute performance.

Nearly a week later, “Falling” would climb from the number 11 spot to number 7 on The Hit List according to “The Guardian” on Nov. 27, 1990. It spent five weeks on the U.K. charts before peaking at the seventh place.

DID YOU KNOW JULEE SANG ‘FALLING’ ABOUT HER DOG, RUDY?

One of the more interesting anecdotes about Julee singing “Falling” is that she sang it about her dog Rudy that passed. She told the story to Greg Olson in his book “Beautiful Dark.”

“David wanted me to sing about love, but I didn’t love people. He never knew what my internal process was—he didn’t want to know. I sing ‘Falling’ to my cocker spaniel, Rudy, who died. He was my true love. People would wonder where the tears, the emotion of that song came from. They came from my dog.”

Rudy may have been in Cruise’s heart when she sang “Falling,” but she feels Isabella Rossellini was in Lynch’s. “He adored her, he used to call her ‘Bellini’; I think all those songs were about her.” (Page 586)