— Cliff White
~~~~~
Welcome to the one hundredth post on VER HITS! And on a Saturday too! And with a single from six years prior to where we're currently at! How very odd.
But this is no mere one off. I started off this blog with a splendid record from the middle of '81 and pointed out in the introduction a week earlier that very few prior singles were picked out for special attention the way they would be from around that point on. I acknowledged the smattering that had been chosen from previous issues but I've subsequently come to realise that there are quite a few more that passed me by. I've also been finding myself having to infer Singles of the Fortnight from time to time — even up to this past week — and it occured to me that I might as well go back and do so for those that I missed. We'll "start" in February of 1979 when Smash Hits went from monthly to fortnightly and when they ditched the "nonsense of segregating" between disco/soul and rock/pop records. And what a record to kick it all off with!
Weekly posts — currently at the beginning of June '85 — will continue on Wednesdays with these earlier pieces once a fortnight on Saturdays or Sundays. If critics state a favourite then it will be written about; otherwise, I will attempt to infer a SOTF based on how much praise it gets but it will be down to my own discretion. If you disagree then please post a comment below or find me on Twitter in order to give me the telling off I deserve.
~~~~~
I wonder if the person who coined the expression "to sell out" is proud of themselves. He or she really did us all a service by giving us a term in which we could all jealously knock an artist for the crime of being successful. Well done, douchebag.
Also, are music purists content up there on their high horses? Are they pleased with themselves for bashing former favourites who had the gall to stretch out with something different?
I ought to be at the age now where I don't care about such people harping on about "selling out" and I mostly don't but I do pity them for being foolish in denying themselves great music. If a rethink results in something better than what's the point in getting all worked up about it?
Coming off a peerless run of singles — "Denis", "(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear", "Picture This", "Hanging on the Telephone" — Blondie were at the peak of their powers but success at home in America continued to allude them. (Did they knock their heads together like The Beatles, T-Rex, Duran Duran, Oasis and generations of UK groups who puzzled over a similar dilemma? There's something comical about a US group wondering how to go about cracking the States) To those who weren't in the know and/or didn't care to find out, it might seem like leeching off of disco would be a perfect way to get themselves that hit they needed. But there's more to it than that.
The purists might have had more of a case had Blondie not held "Heart of Glass" back as the third single from landmark album Parallel Lines in favour of rockier numbers "Picture This" and "Hanging on the Telephone" and well after the LP had hit the shops. Doesn't seem like they had that much faith in its commercial potential, does it? (Either that or they were worried about alienating their New York CBGB's following though you'd think the millions of punters over in Britain, the rest of Europe and Down Under might have been a bigger priority) Of course, there have been plenty of instances of tracks that have been ignored as potential singles that end up busting the charts wide open ("Don't You Want Me" being a classic example) but sell outs are supposed to be far more calculating, aren't they?
And speaking of being held back, it's odd that Debbie Harry and Chris Stein would have sat on this goldmine for as long as they did. Already aware that they had something — gasp — with a beat you could get down to, they even named this mid-seventies composition "The Disco Song". An early recording features some pretty sweet (if overly busy) guitar playing but has little else to recommend it (Harry's vocal being uncharacteristically bland). So poor were its prospects that it didn't make it onto their patchy second album Plastic Letters.
Finally, Blondie didn't exactly rush to go full-on disco once "Heart of Glass" took off. Follow-up "Sunday Girl" is a return to a rockier sound — as, indeed, is the bulk of Parallel Lines — as are the first pair of singles taken from their next LP Eat to the Beat, "Dreaming" and "Union City Blue", before going all Studio 54 with the brilliant "Atomic". As the group's popularity "became more selective" in the early eighties they only opened themselves up to more styles which they didn't always pull off well; their last swing at NY club sound being "Rapture" which have worked a lot better had it not been for Harry's awful rap "skills".
All of the above, though, is useless but for the fact that "Heart of Glass" is an astonishing piece of work that deserved to be the gigantic worldwide hit that it became. A vocal turning point for Harry, she veers between her "usual Sweet Little Sixteen" sound that Cliff White makes note of and a more mature and relaxed performance ("...in between, what I find is pleasing and I cannot hide...") which really sets up the duality of a relationship gone wrong while looking back with some fondness. It also hints that, yes, she was in her thirties by this time and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Stein's guitar parts have been dialed back in favour of some superb production pyrotechnics and a solid but simple rhythm backing.
I like to think that had I been a committed Blondie fan and was few years older than my nine months old I would have reacted in disgust at the thought of the best group in the world going disco. I might even have resisted purchasing their latest record and tried avoiding it as best as possible. But I would have succumbed eventually. How couldn't I have?
And how do purists who are so obsessed with selling out manage to resist something so wonderful? I'd rather not understand.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Pretenders: "Stop Your Sobbing"
A cover of a deep cut filler on The Kinks' debut album, The Pretenders don't have a lot to work with here but they do all right and manage to top the original. There's a callousness to the way Ray Davies sings it (something you never normally find in a Kinks record) that makes Chrissie Hynde's more understanding reading the preferred version — plus there's something about the words to a song about how you shouldn't be such a baby that sound far more effective being sung by a woman. The group also puts in some much needed post-punk muscle into the recording. They had much better material in them but you gotta start somewhere.
~~~~~
Welcome to the one hundredth post on VER HITS! And on a Saturday too! And with a single from six years prior to where we're currently at! How very odd.
But this is no mere one off. I started off this blog with a splendid record from the middle of '81 and pointed out in the introduction a week earlier that very few prior singles were picked out for special attention the way they would be from around that point on. I acknowledged the smattering that had been chosen from previous issues but I've subsequently come to realise that there are quite a few more that passed me by. I've also been finding myself having to infer Singles of the Fortnight from time to time — even up to this past week — and it occured to me that I might as well go back and do so for those that I missed. We'll "start" in February of 1979 when Smash Hits went from monthly to fortnightly and when they ditched the "nonsense of segregating" between disco/soul and rock/pop records. And what a record to kick it all off with!
Weekly posts — currently at the beginning of June '85 — will continue on Wednesdays with these earlier pieces once a fortnight on Saturdays or Sundays. If critics state a favourite then it will be written about; otherwise, I will attempt to infer a SOTF based on how much praise it gets but it will be down to my own discretion. If you disagree then please post a comment below or find me on Twitter in order to give me the telling off I deserve.
~~~~~
I wonder if the person who coined the expression "to sell out" is proud of themselves. He or she really did us all a service by giving us a term in which we could all jealously knock an artist for the crime of being successful. Well done, douchebag.
Also, are music purists content up there on their high horses? Are they pleased with themselves for bashing former favourites who had the gall to stretch out with something different?
I ought to be at the age now where I don't care about such people harping on about "selling out" and I mostly don't but I do pity them for being foolish in denying themselves great music. If a rethink results in something better than what's the point in getting all worked up about it?
Coming off a peerless run of singles — "Denis", "(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear", "Picture This", "Hanging on the Telephone" — Blondie were at the peak of their powers but success at home in America continued to allude them. (Did they knock their heads together like The Beatles, T-Rex, Duran Duran, Oasis and generations of UK groups who puzzled over a similar dilemma? There's something comical about a US group wondering how to go about cracking the States) To those who weren't in the know and/or didn't care to find out, it might seem like leeching off of disco would be a perfect way to get themselves that hit they needed. But there's more to it than that.
The purists might have had more of a case had Blondie not held "Heart of Glass" back as the third single from landmark album Parallel Lines in favour of rockier numbers "Picture This" and "Hanging on the Telephone" and well after the LP had hit the shops. Doesn't seem like they had that much faith in its commercial potential, does it? (Either that or they were worried about alienating their New York CBGB's following though you'd think the millions of punters over in Britain, the rest of Europe and Down Under might have been a bigger priority) Of course, there have been plenty of instances of tracks that have been ignored as potential singles that end up busting the charts wide open ("Don't You Want Me" being a classic example) but sell outs are supposed to be far more calculating, aren't they?
And speaking of being held back, it's odd that Debbie Harry and Chris Stein would have sat on this goldmine for as long as they did. Already aware that they had something — gasp — with a beat you could get down to, they even named this mid-seventies composition "The Disco Song". An early recording features some pretty sweet (if overly busy) guitar playing but has little else to recommend it (Harry's vocal being uncharacteristically bland). So poor were its prospects that it didn't make it onto their patchy second album Plastic Letters.
Finally, Blondie didn't exactly rush to go full-on disco once "Heart of Glass" took off. Follow-up "Sunday Girl" is a return to a rockier sound — as, indeed, is the bulk of Parallel Lines — as are the first pair of singles taken from their next LP Eat to the Beat, "Dreaming" and "Union City Blue", before going all Studio 54 with the brilliant "Atomic". As the group's popularity "became more selective" in the early eighties they only opened themselves up to more styles which they didn't always pull off well; their last swing at NY club sound being "Rapture" which have worked a lot better had it not been for Harry's awful rap "skills".
All of the above, though, is useless but for the fact that "Heart of Glass" is an astonishing piece of work that deserved to be the gigantic worldwide hit that it became. A vocal turning point for Harry, she veers between her "usual Sweet Little Sixteen" sound that Cliff White makes note of and a more mature and relaxed performance ("...in between, what I find is pleasing and I cannot hide...") which really sets up the duality of a relationship gone wrong while looking back with some fondness. It also hints that, yes, she was in her thirties by this time and there was no point in pretending otherwise. Stein's guitar parts have been dialed back in favour of some superb production pyrotechnics and a solid but simple rhythm backing.
I like to think that had I been a committed Blondie fan and was few years older than my nine months old I would have reacted in disgust at the thought of the best group in the world going disco. I might even have resisted purchasing their latest record and tried avoiding it as best as possible. But I would have succumbed eventually. How couldn't I have?
And how do purists who are so obsessed with selling out manage to resist something so wonderful? I'd rather not understand.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Pretenders: "Stop Your Sobbing"
A cover of a deep cut filler on The Kinks' debut album, The Pretenders don't have a lot to work with here but they do all right and manage to top the original. There's a callousness to the way Ray Davies sings it (something you never normally find in a Kinks record) that makes Chrissie Hynde's more understanding reading the preferred version — plus there's something about the words to a song about how you shouldn't be such a baby that sound far more effective being sung by a woman. The group also puts in some much needed post-punk muscle into the recording. They had much better material in them but you gotta start somewhere.
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