"Corey! My favorite! As long as Corey pays me $20 he can by my favorite."
— Greg Senzer, Until December dirtbag
"The biggest song of all time! The best thing to come out of Canada since the Guess Who!"
— Adam Sherburne, another Until December dirtbag
"He's a poet warrior!"
— Bryan Weisberg, dirtbag from, you guessed it, Until December
If you've been following this blog for a while then (a) thank you very much especially if you aren't a family member or friend who's just been doing so out of pity and (b) you'll know that I previously went "off book" by writing about a review from serious-inky-turned-pop-mag Record Mirror just over a year ago. It was the first in an occasional series of pieces looking at singles reviews in magazines that either competed with or were related to Smash Hits. This time, we're going to look at Star Hits, a sister mag based in the USA which was meant to be an American equivalent. It lasted from 1984 through to the end of the eighties (with an eventual rebrand of Smash Hits). It was a nice idea and it resulted in a pop mag that was nearly as good as its longer-lived cousin across the pond. But Americans don't seem to take kindly to taking the mickey out of their music heroes, preferring instead to wading through pages and pages of advertising in Rolling Stone before getting to some highly unfunny prose from P.J. O'Rourke which probably didn't have anything to do with music. American magazines always seemed to suck the life out of pop music.
It can be fun going through old issues of Star Hits to see how it lined up with its forerunner and how the two differed. Longer articles were often pinched from Smash Hits but features such as Get Smart (with Jackie standing in for Linda), Start in place of Bitz, a gossip section that would predate the British publication by several years, the letters page (known as Bold Type rather than Black Type) and reviews were all original. Being a monthly publication, the American mag had more to choose from for its album reviews, often with two or three pages devoted to LPs. The singles, however, lost out and frequently ended up relegated to sidebar status and often weren't included at all. When they began saying that 'home taping is killing music' perhaps they meant that kids were no longer buying singles that they could tape off the radio (or MTV or, if you happen to be Canadian like me, MuchMusic). Aside from a Bryan Adams — more on him in a bit — maxi single on cassette, I didn't buy singles until I lived in the UK in 1989. Later on, I bought a handful of cassingles (Enigma's "Sadeness" and Pet Shop Boys' "Can You Forgive Her" being the only two I'd rather admit to having purchased) but, whether vinyl, tape or CD, these never seemed like items to seek out for North American purchasers. Generally speaking, you waited for the album to come out. But here is a rare singles review from the January 1987 edition of Star Hits. Much like Number One magazine, the task seems to have been given to singers and groups of various degrees of fame and relevance. (It's possible that another factor as to why the singles got such short shrift is that no one on staff could be bothered doing them and they may have struggled securing pop star volunteers)
My deepest thanks to the administrator of the excellent Star Hits Facebook page for all their help with this entry as well as some kind words of encouragement. Do consider joining this group and you can get a better idea of just what a terrific but sadly short lived magazine it was. They post scans of old issues all the time and they are quick to reply to all of your relevant queries.
~~~~~
Hmmm, I get the feeling they're being sarcastic...
Not unlike the those rough around the edges class clowns from school who might rub people the wrong way but possess enough charm and humour to get away with it, there's something to be said for uncouth pop "stars" bitchily crapping on other records. Sure, it's mean-spirited and it doesn't have much of a function but it may also be accurate and entertaining. Still, there's a fine line between ripping into records and taking personal shots at the acts behind them. Most stay well clear of that division, while others manage to deftly balance along it. Then there's the Until December approach.
Until December emerged out of San Francisco in the eighties with a mix of goth, new wave and synth-pop. They looked absurd (though this was hardly unusual for the time) and acted like the worst possible combination of college frat boy culture and the dark and lonely outsider. (To an extent, they were not unlike the contradictory psyche of Kurt Cobain, who lamented Nirvana's work being enjoyed by jocks yet also used his pull to ensure that the last night of the 1992 Reading Festival that they were headlining wasn't filled with "lame-ass limey bands") Nevertheless, their records aren't as atrocious as one might expect. "Heaven", their best song, is half-decent and they may have forged a respectable career as a kind of American equivalent of Pop Will Eat Itself had they carried on. A good thing they didn't though since nothing good can come from flirting with rape culture.
You may have guessed from the picture of them on the singles page and/or from reading their "reviews" that these three guys are (or were, in the case of at least one of them) pukes. Serving up plenty of homophobia, misogyny and unnecessarily crude remarks, they manage to undermine whatever humour and intelligence they may have had in dumping on these pop singles in a much more conventional fashion. Had they dialed it back a bit with just the odd nasty quip, they might have come across as silly jerks with a comically lovable side. But they were anything but and, as if trying to make up for his group's many transgressions, leader Adam Sherburne would eventually have a radical change of heart and go on to form the leftist industrial rock/hip hop group Consolidated. Good on him for that anyway.
But this was a different time, you might be saying. Indeed it was since the gay bashing wouldn't have been deemed fit to print nowadays; back then, it was not only approved of by editors but it doesn't even appear to have even been commented upon. The Bold Type letters page only received one complaint — at least that they saw fit to publish — and it was from one Belinda's Gold Earrings From The Heart (possibly not his/her real name) who objected to their shabby treatment of Belinda Carlisle. Gold Earrings stands up for the singer before questioning Until December's talent (what this has to do with anything is beyond me) and making something of a none-too-veiled homophobic slam of his/her own. If readers did happen to recognize what utter creeps they were then they were righter than they knew.
The first conscious musical choice I ever made wasn't Beatles-Stones, Blur-Oasis or Britney-Christina. It was in about 1985 and it involved Canada's two biggest male singers of the time, Bryan Adams and Corey Hart (sorry Larry Gowan, Kim Mitchell, Gino Vannelli and Alfie Zappacosta). I don't know if this Sophie's choice scenario presented itself to other kids around my age in my homeland but it mattered a great deal to me, at least for a very brief period. "Heaven" (no, not the one by Until December!) or "Never Surrender"? "Cuts Like a Knife" or "Sunglasses at Night"? "Summer of '69" or "Boy in the Box"? Er..."Heat of the Night" or "I Am by Your Side"? Of couse, 'none of the above' would seem the logical option to go for but it wasn't one I was aware of. If only.
I opted for Bryan Adams, a choice which ought to have vindicated me years later as his was the career that remained relevant for much longer but this also ensured that he'd have a lot longer to outstay his welcome, which he did. These (a) or (b) options are frequently petty and it was as much to do about my distaste for one as it did my admiration for the other. Bryan's biggest asset was his songs. In addition to those already mentioned (except for "Heat of the Night"), he had "It's Only Love", "Run to You" and "Somebody"; Corey had little beyond those songs mentioned above and I didn't even think much of them. Angst-ridden and brooding, it's easy to see why a generation of Canadian teens fell for him while virtually everyone else remained immune. As I got older, I would eventually grow to appreciate "Sunglasses at Night" but it never gave me the thrill that "Summer of '69" provided me when I first heard it. Yes, I was one of those Canadians you'd hear saying stuff like "yeah, but Bryan Adams used to be good!"
As for Until December, just what did they see in Hart's "I Am by Your Side"? Clearly they despise it as much as anything else on offer yet they greet it with the quotes above (not to mention Adam's verdict that he's right up there with Phil Collins as "one of the true visionaries of our time"). I suppose they see it as a fitting way to deal with such an apparently meek and mild character. They can slur and piss all over virtually everyone else (they seem to genuinely like Sigue Sigue Sputnik so clearly their taste in music wasn't up to much) but Corey? Corey's not gonna hurt anyone. His music had already lost whatever spark it once had and the little he had to say had been used up and he had become reduced to pledging to always be there for his woman. What could Until December say about him beyond insulting him with praise? And that is what they should have done with every record here. Eurythmics' "When Tomorrow Comes"? The building block of our civilization. Belinda Carlisle's "I Feel the Magic"? You'll swoon yourself silly. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Rage Hard"? A song and a mustache to launch a thousand ships.
"I guess that does it," Adam concludes at the end of Madonna's "True Blue". "Sixteen Phil Collins reviews. Does Star Hits have enough trash now?" What a shame they had to be even trashier than even the vilest record here. They certainly didn't need to be this way.
~~~~~
Also "Reviewed" This Month
Dweezil Zappa: "Let's Talk About It"
The one thing that Until December almost manage to get right is their dismissal of this MTV-approved sham. Their penchant for always taking the load road means "singer" Moon Unit Zappa (strangely not given artist co-credit with her "guitarist" brother) is trashed as a "hag" when they should have simply focused on her very limited vocal chops and what an incredibly terrible record this is. I'm no fan of patriarch Frank Zappa (a man who, incidentally, was always keen to point out the phoniness of others except for yuppie MTV veejays) but even he never came close to how wretched this is even on his worst day. You'd think it was all meant to be a joke but the conviction with which Moon sings and Dweez plays convinces me they really believe this. Let's talk about how crap your record is, shall we? (See? You can be nasty and not offend everyone!)
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