— David Hepworth
A bit of a cheat this one since David Hepworth didn't exactly bestow a SOTF among this lot. We're still a ways away from it becoming an established part of the singles review page so it's not as if they were being mandated at the time. But he reserved the bulk of his praise for this particular record and that's good enough for me.
Hepworth is currently co-host of the splendid A Word in Your Ear podcasts (along with fellow erstwhile Hits scribe Mark Ellen, more on him at some point in the future). They typically sit down with music journalists, biographers or musicians flogging a memoir but on a couple of occasions they've engaged in some fond reminiscences with other hacks from Britain's top pop mag. Well, mostly fond. Hepworth has admitted that the singles review was a particular bugbear for him, recalling that:
In any event, the Sheffield soulsters' musical integrity remained following their transformation. But what the likes of "Being Boiled" and "Empire State Human" lack is pop dramatics which "Love Action" and its predecessor "The Sound of the Crowd" have in spades — and this is well before we even get to a certain cut from parent album Dare that would close out the year.
The Human League brought so many elements together to make "Love Action" such an outstanding single: the pained, ravaged baritone of Phil Oakey, an industrial yet elegant synth backing, the presence of backing singers/dancers Joanne and Susan adding a touch of working class glamour, even the sinister but still kind of amusing video from a year later. Sheffield Soul in all its glory.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Hepworth is currently co-host of the splendid A Word in Your Ear podcasts (along with fellow erstwhile Hits scribe Mark Ellen, more on him at some point in the future). They typically sit down with music journalists, biographers or musicians flogging a memoir but on a couple of occasions they've engaged in some fond reminiscences with other hacks from Britain's top pop mag. Well, mostly fond. Hepworth has admitted that the singles review was a particular bugbear for him, recalling that:
"Half way through you start resenting the singles. You have to respond to these things and you don't feel like doing it. You just start making cheap jokes at their expense which the readers loved."Hepworth had a fractious relationship with Smash Hits readers over the singles reviews, although just how much of that was played up to tease the audience is guess work. The 21 February 1980 issue saw a change in format with new releases all discussed in a page-long article. Hep prefaces with the following bit of baiting:
Heh, heh, heh. That's put a spanner in your work's hasn't it? New format, y'see. Specifically designed to foil those folks who scan the page for names of their favourites and then grab pen and paper to fire off the usual "Who does David Hepworth think he is?" letter. Gotcha!A month and a half later and he's back doing the singles, which have begun to waver from one issue to another between the old (and future) format of highlighting each release with its own entry and what we'll call the Hepworthy style. This time he begins with a slightly different tack to take on readers:
First, I must deal with my correspondence. I am grateful to the Arsenal and Police fan who wrote from Enfield to point out that he/she didn't care for the way the Singles Column was currently laid out. Thank you for you helpful advice. Now why don't YOU go stick YOUR head up a dead bear's (Look, Dave, it's no use being diplomatic — you've got to be firm with 'em! — Ed.)Leaving aside issues with the singles and a surly reviewer, this entry marks the ascendancy of The Human League to the frontline of UK pop. A decent avant-garde outfit who'd yet to tap into the public consciousness, they abruptly went pop in 1981 and found themselves slowly beginning to catch on. In one of their aforementioned Smash Hits-themed podcasts, Mark Ellen put forth a theory that the arrival the magazine altered the landscape and helped move once serious-minded, album-oriented acts — such as Adam & The Ants, Dexys Midnight Runners, Madness and, yes, The Human League — in the direction of the teen dominated singles market. Not so much a sell out as a realisation of just what was going on — although that is often exactly what selling out amounts to. It's a tired and pathetic charge to level upon most and in this case it has absolutely no merit whatsoever — to the extent that as I write this I suspect that I'm trolling myself in order to conjure up an argument when one doesn't exist.
In any event, the Sheffield soulsters' musical integrity remained following their transformation. But what the likes of "Being Boiled" and "Empire State Human" lack is pop dramatics which "Love Action" and its predecessor "The Sound of the Crowd" have in spades — and this is well before we even get to a certain cut from parent album Dare that would close out the year.
The Human League brought so many elements together to make "Love Action" such an outstanding single: the pained, ravaged baritone of Phil Oakey, an industrial yet elegant synth backing, the presence of backing singers/dancers Joanne and Susan adding a touch of working class glamour, even the sinister but still kind of amusing video from a year later. Sheffield Soul in all its glory.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Kim Wilde: "Water on Glass"
Hepworth's grumpiness should be considered in the context of the awfully dire pile of 45's he had to sift through this issue. No one save for ver League escaped lashings from his curt pen. And who can blame him? "Water on Glass" is rather good in a scramble-to-find-a-third-single-off-an-unexpectedly-successful-album kind of way but Our Kim's coasting when held up next to "Kids in America" while her — in Hep's words — detached vocal sounds a wee bit too apathetic for a song dealing with tinnitus, even though this is something she would soon perfect on her very fine run of upcoming singles. Her bandmates, however, deliver the goods with a rousing performance that just about saves a pretty mundane SOTF runner-up. She could and would do better.
No comments:
Post a Comment