— Andy Bell
"I'd rather not pick one for best single — they're all terrible."
— Vince Clarke
So, what was it I was saying about Erasure being a pair of old grumps?
They were a pop group but one that seemed loath to play the pop game. Vince Clarke had already experienced that side of it and perhaps that explains their surprising lack of visibility in the pop mags of the time. Unbelievably, the pair never appeared on the cover of Smash Hits, despite racking up eighteen top ten hits, just three shy of the Pet Shop Boys. The music press reviewed their albums, singles and concerts but never went out of their way to celebrate them. They were a pop group that retained a mystery about them but as a consequence they became everyone's third or fourth or fifth favourite group but not the sort of act that thrilled the kids to pieces. Still, they got snagged for the task reviewing the singles for an issue of ver Hits at the end of March, 1988. Even so, they didn't do their standoffish image any favours by ripping into every single up for consideration. These people may have made pop music but they sure didn't seem to like it.
Their chosen Single of the Fortnight was from a familiar group that fans were passionate about. They were the favourite or second favourite group of a lot of young people in the late eighties. A group that did play the pop game. A group that had already appeared on the cover of Smash Hits on five occasions (including this very issue), with several more to come. Like Erasure, they were a duo with a curiously charismatic frontman and a stern keyboardist. Both groups played synth-pop but the similarities end there. While not exactly a world apart, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure couldn't have been more different. (There was sometimes a bit of a thorny relationship between Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, like a low-key version of the The Cure-Smiths rivalry. Bell once expressed dismay at the favourable treatment Tennant and Lowe tended to get from the press while Tennant didn't seem to respect Bell and Clarke too much. It was never discussed at length on either side and I don't think fans felt the need to back one side at the expense of the other. If there happened to be any ill will by this point, it happily isn't brought up by Erasure here, which is more than can be said for other pop stars who used critiquing the singles as a means to bash their rivals)
They say that following up a debut album is often tricky because an artist or group has a lifetime to draw upon to create that first work but only a few months to then come up with a second. Some, however, have a greater wealth of material to fall back on for a sophomore release. Noel Gallagher had accumulated enough songs over the course of his early-to-mid twenties to fill two LPs and so came the only good albums Oasis ever made, Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Similarly, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had been working together for five years before "West End Girls" gave them their first hit single and they had enough tracks to even see spill over to their third, fourth and fifth albums (early composition "It's Not a Crime" would eventually evolve into "Left to My Own Devices", "Jealousy" had been in limbo for nearly a decade before winding up on Behaviour and "To Speak Is a Sin" had been tried out early on only to be abandoned until 1993's Very). Nevertheless, most of the best songs were already earmarked for Please, leaving the swift follow up Actually as a bit more of a pick and mix collection. Tennant has said that it doesn't hang together as well as other albums of their's and it's easy to see why. It's sort of a less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts release with filler ("Hit Music", "I Want to Wake Up" and, yes, "Heart") alongside some of their strongest material with seemingly little thought given to track order — aside from "King's Cross" which had originally been slotted in as the album's opener before they wisely gave it a rethink and tacked it on to the end where it belonged.
Erasure's Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are in agreement with me, if much more avowedly so. I still really like Actually, I just don't think it's as strong as their other peak-period albums (on some days I'll even take later works like Fundamental and Electric over it too); for them, it's clearly a subpar effort following their impressive debut. And, certainly, Please is the better of the two. (Coincidentally or not, they would soon start approaching each album with a purpose. Introspective consisted of half-a-dozen stretched out 12" mixes of potential singles and Behaviour was meant to be a rootsy return utilizing analog synthesizers and being free — for the most part — of samples. They never did concept albums per se but the generic, whatever-is-available attempt at creating an LP would be a one time thing) Actually's first three singles — "It's a Sin", "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Rent" — are superb but their options for a fourth were limited. That cheerful, irony-free love song on the second side would have to do.
Given that they made it their SOTF, you'd think Bell and Clarke would have plenty of praise for "Heart". The singer does make note of Tennant's deadpan vocals being a highlight (even if he undermines it soon after by knocking the "backing track with any old vocals slapped on top") but that's basically it. They don't knock the record as much as the others so there's that too. Otherwise, we've got a very unimpressive SOTF and, as Clarke states in the quotation above, it's a wonder why they even bothered.
I understand Erasure's take on "Heart" but I still can't get fully on board with them. Much as I kind of want to say otherwise, it's a plenty good enough pop song by any standard. That said, the standards of Tennant and Lowe were already high enough that "Heart" doesn't quite match up. The singer has admitted that it was a "one-off" for the group and they famously wanted to give it to Madonna before losing the nerve and deciding to record it themselves. Spruced up with a remix, the single version has a little more pop to it, a rare instance (along with "Suburbia") of a PSB single being superior to its album version. I would never consider it to be one of my favourites of their's and I don't think I'd miss it if it was somehow expunged from their catalog but try telling me that when I'm happily singing along with it. They didn't play it when I went to see them but I wouldn't have complained if they had,
Helped along by an outstanding video, "Heart" went to number one just as Bell predicted. While "West End Girls" was like nothing that had come before it and both "It's a Sin" and "Always on My Mind" were epic singles that couldn't not have topped the charts, the group's final number one is relatively characterless in comparison. But that's the thing with having an imperial period: even the so-so stuff manages to connect with people. This is something that happened to The Beatles with "I Feel Fine" and "Hello Goodbye", Blondie with "The Tide Is High", ABBA with "The Name of the Game" and "Super Trouper", Madonna with "Who's That Girl?": it's one thing to top the charts with a magnificent single but quite another to do so with something that's just sort of all right.
The end of an imperial period may coincide with a group's demise (see both ABBA and Blondie) but some are able to shrug off the sudden lack of guaranteed magahits in order to reach a creative peak. This would be where the Pet Shop Boys would be headed once this nice, inconsequential love song had been done and dusted. It won't be long before they're back (BACK!) on this blog. As for Erasure, they too will soon be back (BACK!) with something of a "Heart" of their own.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
a-ha: "Stay on These Roads"
While Erasure have little good to say about "Heart", they save their best jabs for other singles on offer this fortnight. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, Bell and Clarke used to like a lot of a-ha's stuff but they're super underwhelmed by their latest offering. I am happy to say that I strongly disagree. "Stay on These Roads" is one of a-ha's finest singles, a power ballad with some eerie Norse angst at its heart. Sure, Bell's correct that it's nigh on impossible to understand anything Morten Harket is singing about but that's nothing new. They're quick to dismiss the trio's move towards a more "serious and credible" side but this is hardly a nineties pop group going through a miserable R&B phase; "Stay on These Roads" is a hybrid: part stadium rock anthem (Clarke admits that he can imagine it being sung at a football match), part Blue Nile-esque sophisti-pop gem, part drippy love song for teens to awkwardly sway to at a high school dance. So very eighties, yet so very timeless. With all due respect to the Pet Shops, this is the rightful SOTF.
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