4 March 1982
"The song is excellent with an Abba-style piano tune (at least, I think it's a piano) breaking up the verses, rolling drums and a lyric which starts in the shower and proceeds to a party."
— Neil Tennant
"At least I think it's a piano". Much as I love music, I must confess that I have no ear. I can't hold a tune for the life of me, I've never been much cop at playing an instrument and aspirations to form a massively successful pop group long ago evaporated when I finally began to accept what I failure I've always been. (My one talent, if you can call it that, is for composing parodies, albeit done strictly at a dilettante level) Nor do I understand music to any degree beyond the basics. I used to think that squelching and DJ scratching came as a result of tricks of the mouth. And I'm still not completely sure exactly what a chord is.
It is therefore nice to read a Smash Hits critic expressing some confusion as to an instrument being played. And this particular Hits hack is no mere lightweight. Neil Tennant may have been a History graduate from the north of England with a background in publishing but he was soon to front my favourite group of all time. His musical ignorance makes me feel a little bit better about my own. (Tennant would have done well to check out "Party Fears Two"'s accompanying video in which the camerman spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on a fetching Martha Ladly of Martha & The Muffins as she nonchalantly twinkles the keys)
I'd been anticipating this first Tennant review ever since I unleashed this blog and I was hoping it would be a good one. Long familiar with some of his most arresting lyrics, I wondered if his criticism would mark a not dissimilar territory. (In particular, I imagined that his bitchy, irony-strewn numbers such as "Miserablism" and "Shameless" would make for superb critical fodder) It comes as a surprise, then, to read that Tennant has his music lover's hat on here, expressing appreciation for rock and funk and jazz and Gary Numan, genres I would never normally associate with Neil Tennant's discerning tastes.
But I hesitate from making this piece all about its critic — especially since he'll be making a fair share of appearances as both reviewer and reviewed in the years ahead — because the SOTF is an absolute gem, a gorgeous mix of sunny joie de vivre and acute melancholy. McKenzie's operatic Bowie vocal doesn't quite gel at first but it gradually makes itself at home in the song, eventually cascading into a blissful twenty second finale alongside Ladly's catchy as all hell keyboards and some lovely strumming from Alan Rankine. And it only gets better with each subsequent listen.
It's sad, then, to consider that this would end up being as great as The Associates ever got, their promise imploding on McKenzie's increasingly temperamental behaviour. Their position as the future of British pop ended up being usurped by the once and former Smash Hits scribe Neil Tennant.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Weekend: "The View from Her Room"
Indie-inflected jazz that isn't simply ahead of its time, it's better than virtually any of the generation of UK-based, Sinatra-inspired acts that were soon to emerge from Glasgow and Hull and, yes, Woking. Tennant fails to mention that Weekend's vocalist is Alison Statton, late of influence-on-everyone, bought-by-no-one's the Young Marble Giants, who manages the transition from sparse post-punk to jazz balladeering rather well. Like The Associates, we're hearing a future that never happened: it all could have been so different.
"The song is excellent with an Abba-style piano tune (at least, I think it's a piano) breaking up the verses, rolling drums and a lyric which starts in the shower and proceeds to a party."
— Neil Tennant
It is therefore nice to read a Smash Hits critic expressing some confusion as to an instrument being played. And this particular Hits hack is no mere lightweight. Neil Tennant may have been a History graduate from the north of England with a background in publishing but he was soon to front my favourite group of all time. His musical ignorance makes me feel a little bit better about my own. (Tennant would have done well to check out "Party Fears Two"'s accompanying video in which the camerman spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on a fetching Martha Ladly of Martha & The Muffins as she nonchalantly twinkles the keys)
I'd been anticipating this first Tennant review ever since I unleashed this blog and I was hoping it would be a good one. Long familiar with some of his most arresting lyrics, I wondered if his criticism would mark a not dissimilar territory. (In particular, I imagined that his bitchy, irony-strewn numbers such as "Miserablism" and "Shameless" would make for superb critical fodder) It comes as a surprise, then, to read that Tennant has his music lover's hat on here, expressing appreciation for rock and funk and jazz and Gary Numan, genres I would never normally associate with Neil Tennant's discerning tastes.
But I hesitate from making this piece all about its critic — especially since he'll be making a fair share of appearances as both reviewer and reviewed in the years ahead — because the SOTF is an absolute gem, a gorgeous mix of sunny joie de vivre and acute melancholy. McKenzie's operatic Bowie vocal doesn't quite gel at first but it gradually makes itself at home in the song, eventually cascading into a blissful twenty second finale alongside Ladly's catchy as all hell keyboards and some lovely strumming from Alan Rankine. And it only gets better with each subsequent listen.
It's sad, then, to consider that this would end up being as great as The Associates ever got, their promise imploding on McKenzie's increasingly temperamental behaviour. Their position as the future of British pop ended up being usurped by the once and former Smash Hits scribe Neil Tennant.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Weekend: "The View from Her Room"
Indie-inflected jazz that isn't simply ahead of its time, it's better than virtually any of the generation of UK-based, Sinatra-inspired acts that were soon to emerge from Glasgow and Hull and, yes, Woking. Tennant fails to mention that Weekend's vocalist is Alison Statton, late of influence-on-everyone, bought-by-no-one's the Young Marble Giants, who manages the transition from sparse post-punk to jazz balladeering rather well. Like The Associates, we're hearing a future that never happened: it all could have been so different.
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