— David Hepworth
What The Human League were to 1981, ABC were to '82: suddenly widely successful, flourishing creatively with a terrific album stuffed with potential hit singles, making inroads around the world and tipped to be the future of British pop. Beyond asking them, there's no way of knowing if they modeled their pathway to success after ver League but there certainly are striking similarities. Both got things started with nice, low-key singles that proved to be breakthroughs while still missing out on the Top 10 — "The Sound of the Crowd" and "Tears Are Not Enough" respectively — which they then followed up with improved chart fortunes that really got the momentum going — "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" and "Open Your Heart" from ver League, "Poison Arrow" and "The Look of Love" from ver "C" — before finally releasing albums that sold like mad and were salivated over by the critics — Dare and The Lexicon of Love. All that was left was a killer single to take them over the top: "Don't You Want Me" performed the trick less than a year earlier and now it was "All of My Heart"'s turn.
But did it stand much of a chance? A clear standout on an outstanding album, it nevertheless lacks the immediacy of its chart predecessors — not to mention ace deep cuts such as "Show Me" and "Many Happy Returns". Being as grand a record as they'd ever cut, however, it couldn't not be a single. Fans who'd only previously been exposed to their hits may have looked on in wonder at this great leap forward while other may well have been turned off by the pretentiousness of the single's cover, its B-side being a classical overture of their work, the adult nature of the video and the image of them on the cover of this fortnight's Smash Hits. It's possible, in other words, that they were attracting new listeners just as others were starting to go off them. (Then again, The Lexicon of Love was the consensus album of the year in the UK and Martin Fry's been making bank off of its name in more recent years; not unlike OMD, people didn't really start to turn their backs on ABC until they began to get less pretentious)
Musically it's as magnificent as David Hepworth says and proof that Trevor Horn's work behind the production desk involved far more than plugging in the fairlight synthesizers. Roping in Anne Dudley to orchestrate its gorgeous score was a final touch. Lyrically, however, things are a different matter. Far from the kind of Costello/Weller-type wordsmith, Fry tended to keep things simple, though sometimes in a complicated way. Opening with "Once upon a time when we were friends / I gave you my heart, the story ends / No happy ever after, now we're friends" made me wonder at first if he really thought things through. Then, after several listens, I began to think that he was righter even than he lets on. Settling for friendship when one party clearly wants more never works out, despite what an endless parade of rom coms will have us believe. "All of My Heart" is about laying it out on the line for that special someone, being rejected and then trying again. There's a desperation at play that results in an over-abundance of clichés ("wish upon a star", "...at the end of the rainbow") while being resigned to a situation that will never work out ("Skip the hearts and flowers, skip the ivory towers"). Fry's vocalising deftly balances the melodrama and the nihilism in a way few of his contemporaries could ever think to pull off.
In the end, "All of My Heart" was a Top 5 hit but it came short of the top of the charts, with Hepworth no doubt having lost a few quid along the way. Getting there instead was fellow reviewee "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" ("A hit, quite possibly," concludes his nibs; how was this great don of music journalism and man who is always struck by something to know that it would be the chart topper that "All of My Heart" wasn't) by Culture Club, another group who were looking to become widely successful, flourish creatively with a terrific album stuffed with potential hit singles, make inroads abroad and become yet another future of British pop. 1982 had to give way to '83.
Since then, "All of My Heart" has had a mixed legacy. Being a key part of arguably the album of the decade (it's either that or Hounds of Love surely) doesn't hurt but it isn't as well remembered as fellow hits. The YouTube numbers say it better than I could: its video's three million views trails those for both "Poison Arrow" (six million) and late-eighties' hit "When Smokey Sings" (just under five million) and dwarfed by "The Look of Love" (over twenty million). But, hey, at least it beats out "That Was Then but This Is Now" which isn't even on the group's official channel. What a duff pile of crap that song is.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Shalamar: "There It Is"
I only recently found out about Shalamar's legendary Top of the Pop's performance. It was on one of those fun timewasters on the Watch Mojo YouTube channel. I had been expecting to see Neneh Cherry prancing about while heavily pregnant but instead they chose to include Jeffery Daniels doing a moonwalk a full year before Michael Jackson (though still about fifty years after it was actually invented). The more I listen to Shalamar the more I appreciate what they were trying to do in moving Chic-esque disco-funk into the eighties. Hepworth notes that their TOTP spot had moved them into a "very special place in the public's affections". It's one thing to be a national treasure but do be able to do so when you're from an entirely different country is no mean feat. Who can blame the British in this instance? Shalamar are the greatest.
(Click here to see my original review)
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