Gloria Estefan: "Here We Are"

21 February 1990

"As usual her "man" is being a rotter, as usual she loves him regardless and as usual there are tinkling pianos and fluttering Spanish guitars galore rustling in the shrubbery."

— Chris Heath

Blimey, 1990 was off to a slow start. The decade has so far seen some awfully poor Singles of the Fortnight but at least the charts were every bit as subpar. Christmas number one holdover "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II was the first chart topper of the year and it was followed by the equally awful "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on the Block. Next was Kylie Minogue's very unremarkable version of Little Anthony & The Imperials "Tears on My Pillow", which was better than its number one successors but not much. It lasted just a week on top and was replaced by a single so brilliant that it ended up turning the whole year around.

Unfortunately, Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" ended up being passed over for a Smash Hits SOTF even though it was a bona fide Single of the Decade for a ten year period that was just two months' old. Scan old issues of ver Hits from the time and you'll discover that not only was it not reviewed but it wasn't even included in the Also Released This Fortnight consolation category.  And yet, it still spent four weeks at number one and ended up being a worldwide smash — and it has aged beautifully even if the rest of us haven't.

Less endearing today is Chris Heath's pick for this issue's SOTF, "Here We Are" by Gloria Estefan. He admits this isn't exactly the strongest batch of new releases so his choice is by default. His write up isn't even glowing with his nibs using an awful lot of 'as usuals'. And who can blame him? Gloria and her longstanding Miami Sound Machine — whether acknowledged or not they were still present — crew had long since settled on a formula of going back-and-forth between slushy love songs and dancefloor numbers about how the best thing one can do is get on that dancefloor pronto.

Critic Tom Breihan has described Estefan as "America's most successful wedding singer" and it's hard to disagree. "Anything for You", "Can't Stay Away From You" and "Don't Wanna Lose You" are just the sort of songs You might want to have Your first dance to with Your new spouse (no one I know personally, mind you); the likes of "Conga", "1-2-3" and "Get on Your Feet" could all encourage grannies and kiddies and friends of your parents to get dancing while everyone else goes straight to the open bar.

"Here We Are" was the third single from Estefan's first solo album Cuts Both Ways. Torch song "Don't Wanna Lose You" came out first in the summer of 1989 and it was followed by the uptempo "Get on Your Feet" in the US and "Oye Mi Canto" in Britain. So far, so adequate. None of these songs was about to blow anyone away but they were all sturdy enough records that weren't about to get people running from the room in terror. For the most part, the album as a whole was quite good too. Predecessor LP Anything for You (known as Let It Loose in North America) may have had the stronger singles (I still like "1-2-3") but Cuts Both Ways was the stronger record from top to bottom. The three singles spread over various territories amounted to the decent material that could be siphoned off Estefan's album but such thinking never occurred to record company execs.

It was vastly inferior to "Don't Wanna Lose You" but you could always rely on a gloopy Gloria number to be a big hit, though not for much longer. "Here We Are" did well in the US but people were beginning to tire of all these so-called ballads that all sounded the same. Anything for You had been a slow burn in the UK and it's four singles did well on the back of it; Cuts Both Ways sold really well right away and its 45's suffered as a result. A year earlier "Here We Are" might've been a Top 10 hit but in 1990 it drifted around the lower half of the Top 40 for a month and was quickly forgotten about. Even the news that she'd been seriously injured when her tour bus got crushed on March 20 couldn't save this very ordinary recording.

Estefan recuperated from spinal surgery over the next year and the world seemed to move on. I had started 1990 off by playing Cuts Both Ways to death but the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and Madchester taken over and by the end of the year I had outgrown this music that was so painfully adult. I wasn't terribly impressed by her 1991 comeback "Coming Out of the Dark" and I'm not so sure it was just because I had moved on. It was too inspirational and too calculated. I would later have my own brush with death in 2002 and I listened a lot to Stevie Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale at that time. An account of dealing with his own mortality, it was (and remains) poignant and relatable. Listening to it made me think of how poorly Gloria Estefan handled such weighty material. We all got sick of her because her stuff all sounded the same but then we wanted her to go back to sounding the same when she tried to be serious. Some people just can't win.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Railway Children: "Every Beat of the Heart"

The one Heath ought to have picked. He likes it for the most part but then dampens his praise by stating that the tune is "nicked from an old New Order song". That might well be true but I find it's just generally inspired by NO, not cribbed from one number in particular. The bass part is straight out of the Peter Hook Book of Bass Playing for Lead Guitarists but much of the rest is just good old, highly irresistible jangle pop. Heath also mentions Del Amitri as a not dissimilar group but I'll take the melancholy of lead Railway Child Gary Newby any day. Proof of what a sucker I am for depressing songs that also manage to be uplifting. A superb single then, now and always — and a sign that sweet indie pop was back (BACK!!).

Redhead Kingpin & The FBI: "Do the Right Thing"

12 July 1989

"He's one of the those rappers whose words trip of the tongue with such casual ease, it makes the point he's trying to put across sound utterly simple and totally and completely obvious."

— William Shaw

It was 1968 and pop music was going through yet another sea change. The Beatles released the so-called White Album. The Byrds put out the influential Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Beach Boys delivered Wild Honey at the tail end of the '67 and followed it with Friends, both of which had dialled back from the days of 'pocket symphonies' "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations". The Kinks offered up The Village Green Preservation Society, their highly unsuccessful...

Wait, did I already go into all this? That's right, just last week I was going on about how the predominance of acid rock in the late-sixties had been exaggerated, especially given the fact that seemingly everyone at the time was doing against the supposed tide of psychedelic pop. This I then connected to rap having a reputation for being all about showing off and gold medallions and fancy cars and stuff when in actual fact most of the big names were busy creating hip hop records that dealt with a wide-variety of topics. Last week, comical hippies De La Soul proved they could be serious and fly in the face of all that rap posturing and this time it's the turn of a young man named David Guppy, who wished for everyone to Do the Right Thing.

De La Soul were part of a loose scene of playful hip hop artists who sampled from all kinds of sources, looked like hippies and appeared to be in it for a laugh. Other notable progressive rappers (aka The Daisy Age) included Monie Love, The Jungle Brothers and Dream Warriors (all of whom will be featured before long on this blog). Guppy and his mates (ie Redhead Kingpin & The F.B.I.) were not in this camp. They were as earnest as Chuck D but without his in-your-face attitude and forceful raps. Their music seemed to epitomize the idea of rap having a "message", one that was meant to be deep and meaningful. Stay away from drugs. Find alternatives to violence. Finish school. Respect yourself. All very noble and well-intended.

But is "Do the Right Thing" any good? Well, it's not bad and, as William Shaw says, the Kingpin has a facility with rolling verses off the tongue that not everyone can replicate. It doesn't exactly plant itself in the mind but at least I can get through the whole thing without turning it off. Not much of a recommendation but in a year with some extraordinary rap and house records, it's a surprisingly plain effort without much to make it stand out from the pack. Curiously, it's only the single's understated modesty that gives it a unique quality but that wouldn't suffice to make it a truly memorable cut. Getting that message out seemed to ensure that the quality of the music would be secondary. It's as if we're not even meant to enjoy it.

Guppy steered clear of the bling and boasting about what a righteous dude he was but "Do the Right Thing" is still something of a throwback. While Shaw praises the music — it "swings along with devil-may-care jollity — there's even an accordion twiddling away there" — it is unfortunately dragged down by an over-reliance on samples that were already cliches by the end of the eighties ("ah yeah" and "check this out" were they were both so 1987). Top DJ's of the time were able to utilize tried and tested bits of other records effectively in creating fresh works of their own but the Redhead's F.B.I. was not up to the task. A little Daisy Age fun would have been a welcome addition but I imagine it would have threatened to diminish the message — and you can't have that.

"Do the Right Thing" was supposed to be used in the influential Spike Lee picture of the same name but it got dropped prior to the film's release. (Rather unjustly, they didn't even bother to include it on the accompanying soundtrack album though it would eventually appear in Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs, which couldn't have been much of a consolation prize) Nevertheless, it became a Top 20 hit in Britain in the summer of 1989. This success would be fleeting but Redhead Kingpin will be back in this space soon enough. I just hope he didn't further sacrifice a good record in favour of his "message". We'll see.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Gloria Estefan: "Don't Wanna Lose You"

Miami Sound Machine → Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine → Gloria Estefan (Wendy James sure called it back at the end of 1988, didn't she?)

Easing her way into a "solo" career was probably a good strategy. Singles from final group album Anything for You were slow to take off in Britain and there wasn't much of a gap between "Can't Stay Away from You" and "comeback" "Don't Wanna Lose You". Two slow songs in a row went against the ver Sound Machine's policy of alternating between a weepie and a Latin dancefloor stormer but they seemed to get away with it all right. Estefan could sometimes be guilty of overdoing it on the vocal front but she does a commendable job of keeping her pipes in check. Earlier "ballads" could never quite measure up to the faster numbers but "Don't Wanna Lose You" placed her firmly in the realm material for teenagers awkwardly slow dancing. Adolescent lust had come roaring in and you can bet we didn't want to lose it.