— Kenny Thomas
Kenny Thomas? Who???
There have been a lot of pop stars who've joined Smash Hits to give one off singles reviews over the years. Some did well, others less so but I have been aware of all of them. Until now. At first, I wasn't even sure that this Kenny bloke was a rider on the Giddy Carousel at all and that maybe he was a new face in the Hits staff. (It was only the obligatory photo of him holding a half-dozen records, making a face and giving them the thumbs down that clued me in) But certainly he didn't have the look of a pop star. In the past, a critic like Peter Martin tried to make himself look like he belonged in the pages of ver Hits; now, pop stars looked like they were more at home on the editorial board of a top pop mag.
The name couldn't have helped. When Bros emerged in 1988, the one member who wasn't a Goss twin, bassist Craig Logan, was almost immediately dubbed "Ken" by pop mags like the Hits. (Suddenly, Larry Mullen Jr. being "the other one" in U2 didn't seem quite so harsh) But where did ver Hits get the idea that "Ken" was that most generic of names to apply to the most generic of people? Ken Barlow off of Coronation Street? (Fittingly, the Ken from Corrie would sue The Sun for being boring) DJ Kenny Everett, yet another British pop culture figure who meant next to nothing elsewhere? Ken the longtime paramour of Barbie who no doubt had difficulty pleasing her? Nothing against the Kens of the world — I used to know one who was a sweet guy — but there's a reason so many of them are notable only for being so painfully Kennish.
Though she had been kicking around for almost the entirety of the eighties, Lisa Stansfield didn't amount to much until she recorded her vocal part on Coldcut's 1989 single "People Hold On". The DJ/production duo of Matt Black and Jonathan More had managed to make a star out of Yazz when she guested on their hit "Doctorin' the House" a year earlier and it seemed likely they were going to repeat the trick. The result was astounding: a loopy, irresistible house tune with the elastic voice of Stansfield commanding the top. It gave her a long sought after hit but in reality it should've performed better than number eleven. It was fantastic then and it remains every bit as great more than thirty years on.
The only problem was it proved to be unfollowable. Sure, Stansfield had bigger hits to come. "All Around the World" even gave her a number one smash in the latter part of '89. She would prove to be a reliable hit maker up until about 1997. But she would never cut anything nearly as good as "People Hold On". Not only that, it was a success that gave everyone the wrong idea that she was going to be a far more significant figure going forward. Lisa Stansfield seemed like the coolest person on earth for a few weeks there but it wasn't to last.
House producers have a way of lending out their cool to guest vocalists. One of the most striking examples occurred in 1990 when an obscure singer called Seal appeared on "Killer", the aptly-named chart topping single by Adamski. No, it wasn't credited to 'Adamski featuring Seal' or 'Adamski with Seal' or (mercifully) 'Adamski vs. Seal', it was marked simply to the alter ego of British DJ Adam Tinley. The guy singing on it went uncredited (at least for the time being). Though the public in the UK were made aware that there were two individuals behind one of the most striking records of the era, I was in Canada and only first heard about it from Now That's What I Call Music 17. Information was scarce and I assumed that this Adamski character had been responsible for everything. Whoever was behind it certainly earned every penny they made: "Killer" is simply one of the finest records of the era, superior even to something like "People Hold On".
Though the single-artist credit would cause a rift between the two, Seal managed to earn sufficient notoriety from "Killer" to launch his solo career. "Crazy" emerged and proved to be only a notch below his first hit. Listening to them both now, it's clear that "Killer" is the much stronger effort: not only is the music powerful and sinister but Seal's vocal performance is abrasive, confident and vulnerable. With "Crazy" it was as if he was left to his own devices and struggled a bit with it. "We're never gonna survive unless we are a little crazy" was the junior high school yearbook quote of choice that summer (at least for me) but in terms of profundity, it pales next to something like "solitary brother, is there still a part of you that wants to live?". Nevertheless, Seal's debut as a solo artist was excellent. Without an acid house DJ to work with, the former Henry Samuel smartly signed with the hip ZTT label, which meant that he had Trevor Horn as his producer. Though not as renowned as Horn's eighties' work with ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Art of Noise, he still had an innate grasp of modern techno pop. Seal went from one cutting edge figure to another and this no doubt helped prolong his own cool factor.
Inevitably, however, it wasn't to last. The association with Horn would continue over four albums (almost all of which were given the imaginative title Seal) but his place as a leading figure in dance pop would vanish. In the UK, he would rack up five hits from his debut LP but in North America most of the interest centred around "Crazy". A rerecorded "Killer" returned him to the British Top 10, this time with Adamski's name removed in favour of the now more famous singer. As for "The Beginning", it makes more sense as an album cut, appropriately as its opener. The LP version is also superior to this single remix, which tries a bit too hard to get that "housey sound" that Kenny Thomas is so fond of. It's a good example of the sort of no-win situation artists like Seal can get themselves into: great singers become tethered to their vocals to the extent that when they try to do something musically adventurous, their singing gets drowned out or becomes an afterthought — but if we're not meant to be as impressed with his voice then what's the point?
"The Beginning" continued a downward trend of Seal singles. While "Crazy" got all the way up to number three, follow-up "Future Love Paradise" fell short of the Top 10, in spite of it being a strong record in its own right. People were buying Seal's album, which suggests that he was already cultivating an older audience than the pop kids who snapped up "Killer" a year earlier. Even with the aforementioned remix, "The Beginning" only managed to go Top 30. It no longer mattered that if he happened to be on the nexus of nineties' dance because people loved Seal because of that voice. (That and he looked really good) Good singers become victims of their vocals even though they owe their careers to them. I wonder how Kenny "Ken" Thomas managed to do with his?
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Guns N' Roses: "You Could Be Mine"
Rock 'n' rollers were finding themselves in a no-win situation of their own in 1991 — and this is still prior to the rise of grunge which uprooted everything to do with heavy rock. Their fast paced numbers (such as GNR's "You Could Be Mine") proved to be far less popular than their over-done ballads (like Thomas' fave "Patience" or the still-to-come "Don't Cry" and "November Rain") and yet it is those bone crunchin', head smashin' rockers that are the essence of everything they stand for. Getting a boost from the forthcoming and much-anticipated Terminator 2, "You Could Be Mine" was nevertheless a far more modest hit in the US than pounding hits "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Paradise City". Yeah, Thomas has a point that it gets samey after a while but I don't think people flocked to Guns N' Roses to be surprised — and in any case, given how they would fall off a creative cliff post-Use Your Illusion, it really doesn't seem so bad in retrospect. GNR should've stuck to their boozy rockers and kept the slow songs to a minimum. But I would say that, wouldn't I? Girls would never dance with me to "November Rain", just as they similarly turned me down to "Kiss from a Rose". But I'm not bitter, god no.
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