R.E.M.: "Nightswimming"

7 July 1993

"I know it's boring always making R.E.M. records Best New Single but if they persist in being so wonderful, what do you expect?"

— Mark Frith

"Drive" ⭐

"Man on the Moon" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Everybody Hurts" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Nightswimming" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Find the River" ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is how all six of the singles from R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People were rated in the increasingly indie-averse Smash Hits. Simply put, they were crushing it. Only a pair of Singles of the Fortnight Best New Singles but two more came within inches and I have to wonder if fear of overdoing the praise kept them from claiming the crown more. Those four all received the full five star treatment (even if ver Hits for whatever reason used circles, which may or may not have been moons, in place of stars) with "Find the River" getting a more than respectable four. Only "Drive" and its one star stands out from the pack — and this was likely down to a misprint since guest reviewer Rob Newman has only good things to say about it (as opposed to his feelings of vitriol towards R.E.M.'s self-important fans; what must he think of U2's fanbase?)

This sextet didn't exactly cause chart dominance for them but their's was the triumph of records which were more than the sum of their parts. Though "Find the River" missed the Top 40 entirely — and honestly, who would have needed it at the end of '93, especially since they seldom put fresh B sides on their singles by this point? — the rest performed well enough but the real beneficiary was its parent album.

R.E.M.'s eighth studio album seemed set to repeat the trajectory of predecessor Out of Time. Both debuted at number one then spent the next few months drifting around the Top 10. But while "Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People" were both global hits, subsequent singles from Out of Time fared less well, with "Near Wild Heaven" and "Radio Song" spending a total of three weeks in the Top 40 combined; the 45s from Automatic, however, had greater legs, especially when "Everybody Hurts" came out in the spring of 1993. About six months after first hitting the top of the album chart, Automatic was back at number one and it would go on to enjoy two more non-consecutive weeks at the summit. It was still in the Top 10 that summer as fifth single "Nightswimming" gave it yet another second wind.

It was by this point that Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe must have known that they had become far more popular in Britain than they were back home in the US. (Whether or not they cared is a whole other matter) Out of Time had been their long-awaited breakthrough in the States with its two signature hits both Top 10 radio staples. Released just a year-and-a-half later, Automatic only managed to peak at number two — stuck behind the immovable behemoth The Chase by Garth Brooks — and its chief singles, "Drive", "Man on the Moon" and "Everybody Hurts" only just made the Top 30. These were perfectly acceptable results but not close to how they were doing across the pond.

"Nightswimming" is every bit as wonderful as Mark Frith claims but it didn't need to be a single beyond further propping up an already best selling album. Like "Try Not to Breathe", "Sweetness Follows" and "Star Me Kitten" it has the whiff of a seriously good deep cut about it, the kind that fans of bands like R.E.M. can't get enough of — and I should know since I'm one of them. With all due respect to "Driver 8" and "The One I Love", they had always been an albums act. (The above-mentioned album tracks could join the likes of "Catapult", "Harborcoat", "Cuyahoga", "You Are the Everything" and "Texarkana" to make up a compilation that would easily rival Eponymous, In Time or any of their many singles-focused collections)

Made up of just Mike Mills on piano along with a string section arranged by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, the stark musical backing really puts the spotlight on an awfully rough-voiced Michael Stipe. I have heard people referring to him being such a great vocalist that he could "sing the phonebook" (something he came awfully close to doing on the eccentric B side "Voice of Harold") but this is down to his phrasings and mannerisms rather than his technical abilities, as "Nightswimming" aptly displays. Yet, this is a strength. A flawless voice would never be able to match the raw vulnerable power of Stipe. On something like the annoyingly catchy "Stand", that nasally whine can become grating; here it's simply proof that no one else could have been the frontman for R.E.M.

With all I said above about R.E.M. being an albums band, I will tip my hat to this group of phenomenally good singles. "Drive" isn't really my idea of a hit but I do consider it a perfect opening track to rival "Begin the Begin" but the rest are simply magnificent. "Man on the Moon" is poignant even if you have no idea who this "Andy" Stipe is singing about it. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" is loaded with lyrics I get wrong but it is that rarest of songs that I'm happy to have stuck in my head. "Everybody Hurts" remains as heartbreaking as ever. And "Nightswimming" is a peerless torch song wonder. I'll be getting to "Find the River" before long but I will say that I'm convinced my beloved Pet Shop Boys used it as the basis for their outstanding song "Luna Park" from their return to form 2006 album Fundamental. The best albums don't always have ace singles and great singles often crop up on less than stellar albums but Automatic for the People is so brilliant that it had it all. They couldn't possibly persist in making them so wonderful forever but it's nice to bask in the glow of a time when R.E.M. was a streets ahead of the competition.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Take That: "Pray"

Take That would be one of my guilty pleasures but for the fact that I don't feel the least bit ashamed for liking them. Earlier efforts were a mixed a bag but "Pray" set everything right. In a UK music scene that had finally rid itself of Stock Aitken Waterman, it's strange to discover their patented sound given a nineties sheen courtesy of Gary Barlow. Frith likens it to previous hit "Why Can't I Wake Up with You?" but the That wisely dialed back on the depressing American-style R&B for its follow-up. They took their time getting that long sought after number one hit but everyone must have known this would be the one that would put them over the top which would only be confirmed when "Pray" entered the charts all the way in the top spot. Why America passed on this I'll never know.

Sananda Maitreya: "Do You Love Me Like You Say?"

14 April 1993

"A fantastic and vibrant record — if it doesn't get to number 1, so help me I'll eat Ian Beale's socks."

— Tim Southwell

Apologies for the deadnaming but Terence Trent D'Arby is known to millions while Sananda Maitreya is seldom-remembered. No doubt there are those out there with well-worn copies of Introducing the Hardline... who aren't even aware that the artist behind this successful and influential album changed his name way back in 2001. As someone who has known about it I would nevertheless have struggled to tell you what it is.

(NB: I have subsequently decided to reverse this position. The excuse above is a weak one. If some of us aren't aware of the singer's real name then it behooves us to learn it. With the exception of the above, I have replaced his former name with the one he prefers to go by. The same goes for every other piece in this space written about him)

That out of the way, let's get to the tale of the genius from the late eighties who was big for a year or so then faded away and everyone forgot all about him. Except that someone didn't get the memo, while the UK still wasn't done with him (at least for the time being).

Tom Breihan's column on the 1988 American number one hit "Wishing Well" (a Top 5 smash about a year earlier in Britain) relates the story of the singer getting rejected by a series of UK record labels because they supposedly didn't want another Michael Jackson or Prince. The pop critic is skeptical and with good reason: who wouldn't have wanted another fabulously talented and charismatic singer with oodles of crossover appeal? But I'm a little doubtful that this was even what happened. More likely is that the likes of BMG, EMI, Polygram and Virgin took a pass on him because he refused to be just like the superstars of the day.

In a previous mini review of "Wishing Well", I took issue with reviewer Vicky McDonald's comparison of Maitreya to Prince but I think the similarities grew as the younger singer's career progressed. By refusing to be just like his supposed idol, he became more resolute, more independent, more single-minded and, thus, more like Prince. Still, if I'm going to take others to task, I might as well do the same for myself. For some reason, I chose to assert that "Wishing Well" was something that the "future Sananda Maitreya would have difficulty topping". All I can say is I didn't have his overlooked output from 1993 on my mind back then. Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby was his lone blockbuster album but he didn't begin to come into his own until third L.P. Symphony or Damn* (*Exploring the Tension Inside the Sweetness). (Though Tom Breihan remarks that no one did audacious album titles like Maitreya, he didn't even bother to bring up this one)

Having made a second album that derailed his superstar status so spectacularly that it arguably undermined just how massive he had been (Introducing the Hardline... managed to top the British album charts for nine weeks, an astonishing total for anyone much less an artist with their debut release; such was its obscurity that Simon Reynolds didn't bother including sophomore release Neither Fish not Flesh in his list of 'Career Killing Albums'), everyone would've forgiven Maitreya for retreating back to tried and tested slow song territory. So for him to re-emerge with the rock and funk attack of "Do You Love Me Like You Say?" was an especially bold move.

"Talent borrows, genius steals" (though wouldn't the truly talented genius come up with something less cliched?): taking every element of "Do You Love Me..." apart there's nothing especially original going on. There's a percussionist in the accompanying promo and he sure did a bang up job nicking the that "Funky Drummer" part. The rhythm guitar playing is, yes, decidedly Princian. The backing vocalists chirp away like in an old school soul record. And, of course, there's Sananda Maitreya at the centre of it with a throat-shredding performance that nods to his gospel roots. As I say, nothing new to see here but for the fact that they've seldom been sewn together so seamlessly. "She Drives Me Crazy" had been a huge global hit back in 1989 for Fine Young Cannibals but the way they pieced together all its disparate elements seemed jarring; in these more capable hands, however, they merge so well that you'd think they'd always been together.

Even though it had been a return to form and then some, Symphony or Damn couldn't match the sales and chart lifespan of Introducing the Hardline... It would debut at number four but would quickly end up drifting around the lower reaches of the albums chart for the remainder of its run.Yet, its singles all did respectable business with each one nabbing a Top 20 spot in the UK. It's as if everyone found a Sananda Maitreya song they liked and loyally stuck by it at the expense of his other releases, even the sleeper album released at the same time. The Sananda that rocks out, the Sananda that croons soulfully, the Sananda that dabbles, the Sananda that trips on acid rock and post-punk: at most, you may have one Sananda Maitreya but I'll take 'em all.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "Everybody Hurts"

I was going to nix my plan to write about every single from Automatic for the People and go with Trash Can Sinatras instead but I couldn't be arsed. Why write about people who want to be R.E.M. when you can have the real thing instead? There are bots out there on social media who claim that this and U2's "One" are lousy; I know they're bots because no human being with a soul would say such things. Quite why Warner Brothers chose to sit on "Everybody Hurts" as long as they did is a mystery — had they put it out as the second single from the album it might have given them that US and/or UK number one that they never had. And that video! I had resisted them for long enough and it was at this point that I started to crack. While it's depressing that it frequently takes a moving slow song to get the public to shell out for a worthy group, at least R.E.M. were getting the giant hit they deserved. If only they'd been so kind towards the future Sananda Maitreya.

Saint Etienne: "You're in a Bad Way"

3 February 1993

"They should be encouraged in their admirable search for the perfect pop moment."

— Mark "Tall" Frith

I am not much of a musician. My parents made me take band in grade 7 so I chose the trombone and immediately came up with a catchy slogan ("never leave home without your bone!") but I seldom practiced and didn't care. Though I was a moody youth and had only myself to blame for my apathy, my folks could have encouraged me to sign up for band rather than ordering me to do so. Then I took up the bass out of my own accord and liked it but didn't make much progress. How little did I develop? Well, I recall hearing about how I was going to learn about playing chords and it's now thirty-two years since my first bass lesson and I still don't know what a chord is.

I was about to say that my inexperience as a musician keeps me from fully appreciating Saint Etienne until I realised this is utter nonsense. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs were lifelong pop obsessives who formed with very little technical skill behind them — though I imagine they figured out what a chord is along the way. The former had been a music journalist while the latter was a DJ. Indeed, it was the skills Wiggs learned spinning records that put Saint Etienne into the position of being an outfit that used hip hop-style samples in order to put together pop records. If someone told me tomorrow that the pair never played anything on their recordings and had instead relied entirely on samples of obscure Northern Soul discs and BBC Radiophonic Workshop tapes I wouldn't bat an eye.

So, they're amateurs at heart and I ought to appreciate that. Plenty of people who are much more knowledgeable about music than I am love them (and they also no doubt know what a chord is!) so what's stopping me from fully embracing them? Which brings me to not being much of a music critic. Reviewers are damn near unanimous in their praise for the 'Tienne which must involve Stanley's role as a pretty great writer. I know what it's like to plan out a band in advance: I basically spend the majority of my early teen years working out the musical direction of the group I would one day take to fame and fortune. But having done so

Here I am knocking a group I do like at times in a blog post involving one of their very best records so how's about I get down to why "You're in a Bad Way" is so brilliant. Well, it can't really be the lyrics since they don't exactly read well. Sure, Mark Frith's observation that the line about "crew cuts and trainers" being "out of style again" is funny and does indeed qualify it for Single of the Fortnight Best New Single honours alone. Yet, the narrative is slim and does it really convey deep depression all that accurately? Nevertheless, if your group is lucky enough to have the flinty vocals of Sarah Cracknell then words don't need to be your biggest priority.

Musically it must've sounded fresh to many thirty years ago but old observers with tastes as catholic as Stanley and Wiggs would have known that it was an obvious nod to the sixties. With Madchester and retro dance pop a thing of the past and Britpop still more than a year away from exploding, there wasn't much call at the time for sounding old but this was a Saint Etienne special. Boring old power pop groups like Teenage Fanclub and Sloan could have The Beatles and The Beach Boys and The Byrds, Cracknell, Stanley and Wiggs made the best use of their love for old school Northern Soul and Joe Meek productions and ye-ye pop. (Appropriately for a band named after a legendary French football club, Saint Etienne was always the most Continental English group) One YouTube comment noted that "You're in a Bad Way" is the "Telstar" of the 90s and how can anyone possibly disagree?

This pursuit of the "perfect pop moment" as Frith puts it is a good summation of both why I like a lot of Saint Etienne's music and why I have reservations towards them at the same time. I admire them aspiring to such lofty heights and I recognise that with both "Avenue" and, yes, "You're in a Bad Way" they reached them. Yet, it all feels a little too perfect. While their output isn't wall-to-wall greatness, very little of what they have recorded together feels like a stumble on their part, like they had this vision that they've resolutely stuck to. As I wrote above, I look back at my teenage obsession with planning out the trajectory of my fantasy pop group with fondness but listening to Saint Etienne makes me feel sort of glad that none of it came to pass. Whether or not a band hits it big, there's usually little that can be predicted but it's almost as if Cracknell, Wiggs and Stanley managed to work out the formula for pop success which makes loving them a lot harder than it ought to be.

With the emergence of Bjork, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Suede and Wu-Tang Clan, 1993 is no doubt a year many look back on with fondness. Big names like Nirvana, Sting and U2 released albums while others such as New Order and Paul Weller, who many had written off, were back with respectable releases of their own. Longtime faves of mine Pet Shop Boys and The Wonder Stuff had returned as well. Yet, it was the first time since '87 in which I couldn't have cared less about the music scene. It also happened to be the first time in six years in which I went through a serious Beatles phase. I was glad to be looking back at another era so it's too bad I hadn't yet discovered Saint Etienne to guide me through the past, present and future — especially at a time when I wasn't so jaded and could identify more with a band that planned every step of their progression just as I had. Oh why did I have to age out of that way of thinking?

 

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight"

I'm just going to run with writing about every possible single from Automatic for the People because I want to and anyone who follows this space is just going to have to deal with it.. I was initially immune to R.E.M. but a chance listen to Top 20 hit "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" got me to rethink them. An unexpected choice for converting me over to the Athenians but it was the first record of their's which I was genuinely able to appreciate instead of feeling annoyed by. Frith likes the fact that Stipe laughs at one point but I hope it's just a bit of a crack up in the studio that they chose to keep rather than finding his own lyrics about "a reading from Dr. Seuss" to be for whatever reason amusing. Yet again, I mishear the words differently than you do: I always thought it was "don't even try to wake her up" which is closer to the real thing than that silly "calling Jamaica" shit that others are convinced of. (Bloody hell, I'm not particularly smart but it sure seems like a lot of people are much thicker than me) The second best song about this type of rattlesnake after Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" and one of about eleven highlights from R.E.M.'s masterpiece ("New Orleans Instrumental No.1" is the closest thing to a duff track and even it belongs). See you when we get to "Everybody Hurts"; it won't be long.

R.E.M.: "Man on the Moon"

11 November 1992

"A shimmering diamond amongst a sack of dirty socks."

— Pete Stanton

Only once since becoming an adult have I found myself convinced that there was a hidden conspiracy. It was the last day of August, 1997 which had been something of a golden summer. I had been working at a Calgary-area liquor store and on the drive back there came the news of a serious car accident involving Diana, Princess of Wales and her new lover Dodi Fayed. Not being a royalist, the initial shock quickly wore off and I forgot all about it. That evening, however, the news came in that the former future Queen of England had passed away from injuries sustained in said crash. Almost immediately, a thought flashed through my mind that I must have felt was going to rock the very foundation of the British monarchy: they must have faked it.

We're conditioned to believe in conspiracies from infancy: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. The simple prospect that it could be our parents who were behind these childhood misdirections didn't even enter into it. Then there's God, who I had mercifully avoided hearing about until my parents put me into a Baptist church-run playschool when I was four. (Even then, Santa still seemed vastly more plausible) Fictional givers of gifts, chocolates and/or money and that twisted nutcase up in the clouds were all handed to me to accept or reject but the only thing I was prepared to believe in due to my own personal creed was wrestling. There were whispers that it was fake but I wasn't having it. Rotten Ron Starr once smashed a bottle of champagne over his head while being interviewed by Ed Whalen on Stampede Wrestling: was it fake when Starr screamed at the camera, his face now a mask of crimson? "Macho Man" Randy Savage once crushed Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat's windpipe with the ring bell: was it fake when Steamer was stretchered off as he gasped in agony?

In preparation for this blog post, I thought about immersing myself in the unique works of Andy Kaufman. Note my use of the phrasal verb 'to think about' because that's basically all I did. I didn't binge watch all five seasons of the classic US sitcom Taxi. I didn't watch hours of Kaufman's material on YouTube. I only made it about five minutes into My Breakfast with Blassie before deciding it made for pointless viewing — which was at least a useful reminder that the great man didn't always hit 'em out of the park. I didn't even bother with the 1998 Jim Carrey biopic Man on the Moon though I did watch most of its companion documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton.

Having been such a big wrestling fan as a boy, I was especially drawn to Jerry "The King" Lawler's appearances in Jim & Andy. The Memphis legend had been in cahoots with Kaufman when they did their infamous spot on David Letterman but no one knew for sure at the time that they were friendly behind the scenes. Such was the world of kayfabe. (Kaufman's untimely passing at the age of thirty-five did not sway Lawler, who was a good guy in the Memphis territory, into saying anything positive about his old adversary) Taking this on, Carrey refused to break character while on the set of Man on the Moon, much to the annoyance of director Milos Forman and many others. Lawler, for his part, seems baffled and even at times disturbed by Carrey's behaviour. But give credit where it's due: it takes a special kind of talent to out-kayfabe an old school pro wrestler.

The film Man on the Moon got its title from the 1992 hit single by R.E.M. I assumed there must have been a Kaufman sketch about an oddball astronaut landing on the Moon or one involving Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descending from the Apollo 11 craft only to meet a character like Latka who was already there. But no, the title simply refers to Moon landing conspiracies and how they relate to rumours that Kaufman engineered his own demise in 1984. But also, his commitment to the characters he played. The wrestling heel he portrayed in Memphis in the early-eighties came out of legit grappling exhibits he would put on with any woman who was willing to challenge him. He wasn't able to apply the figure-four leglock, couldn't execute a drop kick and probably didn't even know how to throw a realistic-looking punch. When he and Lawler finally met up in the ring, the King invited him to put him in a headlock, only for his opponent to get out of it with a minimum of effort. Lawler the proceeded to give him two dangerous piledrivers which led to Kaufman wearing a neck brace in public for the next several months.

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, which isn't too far away from the professional wrestling hotbed of Atlanta, southerners Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry fashioned a good old country-rock number in an appropriately unexpected way of paying tribute to Kaufman. While the three instrumentalists may shine in other R.E.M. tunes, it's the singer who takes centre stage. Stipe has never been noted for his humour and he wisely steers clear of the understandable but misguided approach of being funny as a way of tipping his hat to the great man. Instead, we get some of his finest cryptic lyrics with references to board games (because of the randomness of a roll of the dice can generally override any actual skill), historical figures (mythology) and the seventies band that did "All the Young Dudes" (I have no idea on this one; I always used to think the song's opening line was "Martin Luther and the Game of Life")

Reading Pete Stanton's review I'm struck by how little he's aware of all this stuff about conspiracy theories and wrestling and Elvis; his prime concern is with "Man on the Moon" being "so beautiful you could snog it". (Not snog to it, you can do that to damn-near any record but it takes a really potent song for you to stick your lips to the vinyl and smack away; if you happened to have a North American 7" with the giant hole pressed through the middle you could get up to some kinky stuff if that's your thing; I'm not advocating being a record fetishist, I just think great songs have a way of getting you to do things you wouldn't normally do is all) Whatever meaning there is underneath would be for nothing if it wasn't so brilliant. But it is and then some. Even held up alongside the likes of "Radio Free Europe", "Talk About the Passion", "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville", "Driver 8", "The One I Love", "You Are the Everything", "Losing My Religion" and on towards future greats like "Tongue", "Leave" and "I've Been High" (hey, I don't care if it sounds like Chris de Burgh!), "Man on the Moon" stands tall. It may not be the best track on the mighty Automatic for the People but it's hard to argue that they bettered it at any other time in R.E.M.'s long and storied career.

When right-leading types who complain about political correctness and cancel culture have a tendency to play what Cody Johnston of YouTube channel Some More News calls the "Carlin card". Comedian George Carlin would never have put up with these snowflakes crying about being offended, they seem to be saying (though they never acknowledge that he was able to change with the times and refused to punch down). What's forgotten is that it's Andy Kaufman who would have found more of a home in this era of social media and conspiracy theories. While it's easy to think that we've all become more like Kaufman as we push vaccine skepticism and fake news and all that nonsense, the reality is that we only would've ended up as fodder for more of his shenanigans. Oh the fun he could have had. (Or is currently having?)

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

INXS: "Taste It"

Is it just me or did INXS have a lot of singles that got to number twenty-one in the UK charts? I'm sure they only had two or three but coming in just shy of the Top 20 seems like the optimum chart position for your average XS' hit. 1992 saw the release of the strong Welcome to Wherever You Are, an album that helped get them through their early-nineties' wilderness of good songs that all sounded the same. Self-parody was avoided (at least for the time being) but this was still very much INXS and only INXS. The touch of R&B — not, mind you, the same R&B that had been taking over the charts, more that vaguely laid-back style of groove-heavy dance rock that pops up every so often — proved to be a nice addition as the guitars were scaled back except for in the chorus where they suddenly explode. Yet another top INXS single though it would be more memorable if it wasn't quite so forgettable. Funny how that happens, isn't it?

The Cure: "A Letter to Elise"

30 September 1992 (carrying on over on the next page)

"Sombre, beautiful, packed with ideas...I've gone all cheery! There's a big sloppy grin on my face!"

— Rob Newman

I recently quit Twitter. It was a day or so after the stupid X rebrand but it had been a long time coming. And it wasn't all the fault of that dipshit Musk. I was bored. Others found Music Twitter to be a welcoming place where opinions could be shared and everyone could discover new acts to follow but all too often I found it to be a place where I'd go to be ghosted. And, in a way, fair enough: if people didn't want to hit that 'like' button then I just had to deal with it. Plus, the challenges had begun to get to me. One month it would be 'Post a song about travel', then the next it would be 'Post an album that defined your teenage years' and so on ad infinitum.

I didn't bother to announce my departure, nor did I bother to join a rival social network. (A couple weeks' prior to quitting, a guy I follow posted a survey asking if we were planning to join (a) Bluesky, (b) Mastodon, (c) another network whose name escapes me or (d) just stick with Twitter till it breathes its last dying breath. I would have chosen option (e) ('To hell with social media') but, alas, it wasn't provided)

One of the (many) weaknesses of Music Twitter was that it got me sick to death of acts that I don't normally have anything against. I had my David Bowie phase back in 1998 when I went on and on about Ziggy Stardust and Low but I have since moved on, yet on a daily basis I would be greeted with tweets about the alleged virtues of Hunky Dory, Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, Scary Monsters and, ludicrously, Tin Machine. My Joy Division period was even earlier than my dalliance with Dame David and didn't really result in much so I quickly tired of seeing the memorable cover of the overrated Unknown Pleasures regularly popping up on my feed. Music Twitter is (was?) also flush with Fall fans, people who seem unaware that if you've heard one album recorded by Mark E. Smith and his ever-changing line-up then you've heard them all. I once liked Depeche Mode quite a bit until I got sick of them constantly popping up on my feed. And then there's The Cure: the world's best band that I've never been all that fussed about.

I've known some Cure fans. They're pretty much the same as any other group of people who are into something that I am not: nice people on the whole though I don't have a whole lot in common with them. What I was unaware of is how many of them there are. Music Twitter seems to have a lot of time for Pornography and Disintegration, albums that have always provoked not much more than mild disinterest. But I'm probably just jealous: Twitter Cure and Twitter Mode and Twitter New Order are much more popular than Twitter Pet Shop Boys or Twitter Beautiful South — and, yet, fans of those bands are far more likely to mark themselves down as outsiders.

A Smiths fan since the early nineties, I went along with that made up rivalry with The Cure. Apparently, we just had to choose between the two. This was absolute nonsense and I for one should have known better since I dug "Love Song" every bit as much as I was into "Everyday Is Like Sunday". Yet, my antipathy remained, even after I had moved on from my late-teens worship of Morrissey and Marr. Goth Cure left me feeling cold and unmoved, while jangly Pop Cure could depress me a lot more than their darkest stuff. Beyond Smith and co.'s mastery of the music video, there hadn't been much for me.

This blog has corrected this misjudgment on my part, though only to an extent. "The Lovecats" and "The Caterpillar" are both brilliant singles and I'd have a higher opinion of "In Between Days" if it wasn't such a prototypical Cure outing. None of these singles had been unfamiliar to me prior to when I started up VER HITS but fresh ears can do a world of good. "Jumping Someone Else's Train" isn't so bad itself, even if it isn't quite up to the standards of early efforts like "Killing an Arab" and "Boys Don't Cry".

Yet, "A Letter to Elise" tests the patience and provides a welcome reminder that while I may respect Robert Smith's considerable talents and dig some of his work, I'll never love his band. Rob Newman makes a good case for it virtues which would no doubt be echoed by many Cure fanatics out there. Actually, he probably makes a better pitch for them than devotees ever could, unless, of course, big sloppy grins are much more commonplace than I ever would have guessed. A "great testament to human survival against the banal in these times" is about the nicest thing I've ever heard said about The Cure, even if I don't understand it myself.

Maybe it's my state of mind at the moment but I'm struggling to think of a record previously covered here that I felt so numb towards. I've disliked plenty of others far more but few have inspired such an uninspired state. I've been listening to it for weeks yet I can't recall anything about it. I know that Newman is correct about the lyrics being so thoughtfully considered — it's actually one of Smith's strengths as a songwriter — but I couldn't tell you without looking them up what any of them mean or what this letter from Robert to Elise is all about. It's useful mainly as a reminder of what a slog their ninth album Wish has always been. Convinced I'd be into it, I borrowed my sister's copy only to discover that its more than sixty-six minutes of running time was way more Cure than I could hope to handle. But that's being a Cure neutral in a world of Cure Twitter: I don't need them in my life even if I'm glad they're still around.

 

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "Drive"

"I loved Losing My Religion and hated Shiny Happy People", Newman states. Indeed, much of his review of "Drive" consists of him deriding the latter's "breakfast time jolliness" while also knocking R.E.M.'s fanbase for being far too precious and snobby. Perhaps this explains why he gave their latest single just one out of five despite having a "bit of genuine emotion and depth". Sounds like three out of five to me. Then again, what were they doing putting out "Drive" as a single when they had four or five better 45's on the way from their forthcoming masterpiece Automatic for the People as well as deep cuts like "Try Not to Breathe" and "Sweetness Follows". "Drive" is a perfect opener to such a brilliant album but I would never have considered it for singlehood. Not unlike "A Letter to Elise".

Hammer: "Addams Groove"

11 December 1991

"It's good because he hasn't used bits from anyone else's songs in this like he used to all the time."

— Rozalla

In the summer of 1990 MC Hammer, aka Stanley Burrell, hit it big with a huge pop-rap tune while sporting ultra-baggy pants, a pair of glasses that he didn't really need and a goofy smile that gave away how delighted he was with his new found popularity. "U Can't Touch This" dominated the airwaves that year, even though Capitol Records conspired to hold down its single release in order to ensure stronger sales of the album Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, a practice that would soon become the (annoying) standard in North America's music scene. (For more information, check out Chris Molanphy's Hit Parade podcast episode "The Great War Against the Single Edition") It spent nearly half a year at the top of the US album charts and it did pretty well damn-near everywhere else too. No one would've thought so at the start of the year but a 

A year later and he already seemed to be having a mid-life crisis. Trashed as a sell-out within the hip hop community, he toughened his image a bit, returning with "2 Legit 2 Quit" which everyone could see was a little too on-the-nose, while the title re-affirmed the suspicion that he had Prince-like pretensions in mind. Nevertheless, the re-branded Hammer was back and keen to show off his bona fides as a real ale rap star who wasn't just for ver kids. You know what would've been a clever move? Anything but doing the theme song to a family-friendly movie.

The Addams Family is one of those long-standing film/TV franchises which I've never had much to do with. I've never seen a re-run of the old television show from the sixties, I couldn't be bothered with either the 1991 cinematic remake nor its sequel two years later and I'm not particularly interested in checking out the recent Netflix series Wednesday. I do know they were ahead of the curve in reviving it as a movie in the nineties, a trend that would grow old very rapidly (with The Fugitive and Maverick being the two exceptions). Similarly, Hammer had a jump on cutesy rap numbers providing the theme song to pointless, unfunny so-called comedies. Damn, the nineties were pitiful, weren't they?

As Zimbabwean singer and guest reviewer Rozalla says, it makes for a refreshing change that Hammer's latest single isn't swamped in "anyone else's songs". That said, Burrell could've fitted a decent tune of his own around his raps if he wasn't going to rely on nicking other people's music. Meanwhile, he's more than happy to sample himself with "Addams Groove" closing out with repeated lines of "2 legit". Hammer is 2 Legit and so too are the Addams clan: I suppose if a cartoonish macabre horror family is to be considered credible than why not also a cartoonish hip hop star with a "message"?

Whatever charm "U Can't Touch This" had/has (it had little hope of appealing to me back then because (a) I didn't care much for hip hop beyond Dream Warriors and Monie Love and (b) it was impossible to avoid; nowadays I'd say that I don't hate it), Hammer's appeal had long since vanished by the time of "Addams Groove". The movie tie-in probably helped give him one more hit in the UK (American pictures would often have delayed release dates, giving their soundtracks the status as previews) but he was already done back in the States. Stanley 

Burrell's duality would persist: he tried his hand as a gangsta rapper and he has also been ordained as a minister. He may have fancied himself as tough and street savy but the Hammer that sampled Rick James, used Faith No More melodies, pranced around in pyjama pants with suspenders, soundtracked a sixties TV revival and had a "message" was, for all his other ills, the much more Legit option.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)"

I like a lot of the acts reviewed in this issue but I'm not too crazy about what most of them chose to put out. As such, I've reluctantly chosen this classic single from R.E.M.'s  patchy 1987 album Document. (I say "reluctantly" because I would've preferred to write about something current) Though Out of Time is a stronger album than Document, there's no question which of the two had the better selection of singles (for such a big album, it's a little odd that the big hits seemed to dry up after "Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People"). Interested in an R.E.M. that has both 45's and the long player down? Well, they were soon to unleash one. Meanwhile, Rozalla loves this "happy song" which happens to be about the apocalypse. Hey, if you can't make the end of the world into an excuse for a jolly rave up then I don't know what to tell you.

R.E.M.: "Shiny Happy People"

15 May 1991

"Summer's here and everything's groovy."

— Mark Frith

It is a song that everyone allegedly hates. Michael Stipe supposedly can't stand it and neither can his bandmates, to the extent that they chose to leave it off of their In Time greatest hits album. Hardcore R.E.M. enthusiasts deplore it. Many of those who were involved in indie rock at the time didn't care for it. Critics who aren't Mark Frith say it's a blot on an otherwise classic album and, indeed, a rare botch in one of the more sturdy and admirable discographies in all of popular music.

I always feel that R.E.M. ended the eighties in a bit of a slump. After putting out four straight top quality albums, they began to slip, first with 1987's Document and then with Green, released the following year. The two are sometimes lumped together due to both having socially conscious material but their faults are in opposition to one another. Document has three brilliant singles — "The One I Love", "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" and "Finest Worksong" — but many of its deep cuts let it down; Green, in contrast, has some wonderful album tracks but its singles — "Stand", "Orange Crush", "Pop Song '89" — are uncharacteristically weak. Nevertheless, their trajectory was still looking up as their records were selling better. After a decade on the fringes, word of mouth had finally begun to spread.

1991's Out of Time sees them begin to reclaim their lofty status as one of the finest groups in the world. Melancholy but catchy first single "Losing My Religion" was everywhere for a while; in terms of airplay it certainly seemed like a number one smash. A Top 10 hit in several countries, it got no higher than number nineteen in Britain. This may seem like a modest peak for such a popular song but there's a little more to it. The single remained in the Top 20's penultimate spot for three weeks and then took its sweet old time to tumble out of the charts. Meanwhile, Out of Time proved to be the chief beneficiary: it entered the album charts at number one and remained in the Top 10 for twenty-one straight weeks. Not bad for a group who had previously been bit players in the UK.

Out of Time should have produced hit single after hit single but in effect it resulted in only two hits anyone remembers. ("Near Wild Heaven" and "Radio Song" both made only brief appearances on the charts but, significantly, their third substantial hit of '91 was a reissue of "The One I Love", a single that ranks right up there with "Losing My Religion") Instead, there was just one more record to consolidate their position and it just so happened to be the most commercial tune they would ever craft.

Frith loves "Shiny Happy People" (I'm going to assume that he didn't grow sick of it within a couple weeks of this issue of Smash Hits hitting the shops and that it remains a firm favourite to this day), I quite like it but, as I say above, it has many detractors, including R.E.M.'s own lead singer. Over the years, however, Michael Stipe has softened his stance on it.. He has stated that it's one of R.E.M.'s "fruitloop songs" along with "Stand", "Pop Song '89" and "Get Up". What makes it superior to any of those efforts is that it isn't so damn repetitive and that it makes no bones about it being a piece of pure pop. There's no indie rock bullshit here.

This is where the naysayers miss the point. As an alternative rock group, R.E.M. weren't supposed to have a pop song in them. Those fellow "fruitloop" tracks off of Green benefited from having more musical muscle behind them (at least in the case of "Get Up") and "Pop Song '89" had that naughty video with topless girls but there was no hiding what was behind "Shiny Happy People". I didn't care much about college rock and it didn't irritate me. I even liked it a bit. Not as good as "Losing My Religion" but plenty good enough to have on and not switch off. Pop you don't especially need but pop you're rather glad to have.

But just who are these Shiny Happy People anyway? I remember hearing that it was meant to be a touching tribute to mentally challenged people who we may pity but who often go about their lives seemingly happier to be alive than the rest of us. Stipe has said that it was originally a propaganda slogan used to calm the masses down in post-Tiananmen Square China, a claim that I don't recall being made at the time. To Frith, however, they're simply "those types you'll see wandering around the streets this summer being friendly, giving big hugs left, right and centre and being generally amiable". This is the most probable interpretation. The lyrics are straightforward and minimal. If Stipe is feeling down then it's best he see some smiling faces to cheer him up — though it doesn't always work that way.

Released in May of 1991, it came out a little too early to really qualify as a summer hit. No doubt Britain was experiencing yet another scorching spring that got headmasters to decree the dispensing of blazers and jumpers from school uniforms and those maddening hose-pipe bans but I was back in western Canada which was entering a pattern of cool summers with afternoon showers at ten in the morning. A lot of the those nineties' summers were miserable so we needed shiny happy pop more than ever to help get us through them. Is it any wonder I was dying for some old school jangle pop, especially since I was fourteen and in serious need of curing some of my angst.

In the end even if you don't care for it, "Shiny Happy People" has its place. Hardcore fans of their's from the eighties hated it, likely viewing it as proof that popularity and being signed to a major record label had sucked the life out of them. And the band may well have agreed. Notably, R.E.M. didn't tour their first blockbuster album, promotion of follow-up singles was minimal and they promptly went back to various favourite studios around the US to record 1992's Automatic for the People. Not only had they returned with one of their finest albums but the material was much more serious. (The only two numbers that dealt in lighter matters — singles "Man on the Moon" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" — did so with absurdity rather than cheeriness). Rather than doing a sprightly line dance, their videos were edgy and filmed in black and white. The album was even tipped to be a return to more plugged-in rock in the vein of Document, though this is something they would eventually decide to put off until 1994's Monster. They had indie cred to be worried about, even as they were set to once again become the greatest group in the world.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Massive Attack: "Safe from Harm"

Like Out of Time, Massive Attack's Blue Lines was a popular and influential album that failed to launch a half dozen or so memorable singles. There's a reason "Unfinished Sympathy" is the only song anyone remembers off of it. As Frith states, there's really no need for "Safe from Harm" to have been released in 45" form (unless it encouraged a few more people to go out and purchase a copy of the album, that is). In fact, it could have enjoyed the reputation as an outstanding deep cut — not unlike "Country Feedback" and "Texarkana" on Out of Time — but I guess being a quite-like-the-last-one-only-not-as-good hasn't really harmed its reputation. Massive Attack have had some glorious moments but they've also been ordinary and even awful at times. I'll go right out and admit it: "Safe from Harm" is no "Shiny Happy People".

R.E.M.: "Stand"

2 August 1989

"It's brilliant. I love this. It sounds like a song we like by a band called The Pixies."

— Shirley Manson

"It's a good pop record and I like it because the guitar solo's slightly incompetent."

— Martin Metcalfe

Oh blimey!! Not another special edition of VER HITS!!!

Until now, special editions of this blog have covered Record Mirror and both the American and Australian versions of Smash Hits but I had yet to write about the magazine's chief competitor and bête noire Number One. Established in 1983, it was never able to escape the shadow of ver Hits despite the fact that it was a weekly rather — than a fortnightly — publication. The writers generally weren't as good (sorry John Aizlewood), the layout looked cheaply done and it catered a little more toward celebrity gossip. They did print the weekly Top 75 singles and albums charts but these listings came from The Chart Show and they never quite matched the proper Top 40 on Radio 1 and Top of the Pops. (In this particular issue, the singles that made up the Top 10 are the same albeit in different order)

It may sound like I was never a fan of Number One but I used to buy it semi-regularly. I could get impatient during that two week wait between issues of Smash Hits and picking up a copy of its poor cousin satiated my desire somewhat, even if I would never shell out for it when the real thing was available. While music journalists such as Andrew Panos and Ro Newton would sift through the new releases in past issues, it had since become all about having guest reviewers by the end of the eighties. Being a weekly, it's clear they often had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find enough pop stars, DJ's and other celebs to do the deed. Among the "big" names they had during my state in the UK were Climie Fisher, Angry Anderson and Swedish "sensation" 2 Brave. Not all of them were third rate but enough were to make the singles review page much more of an ordeal than it was in Smash Hits. It was for this very reason that I held off writing about the singles in Number One until now: I couldn't find a single and/or reviewer that I felt any desire to write about. I didn't buy this issue but I would have had I been paying attention. I would subsequently buy two more import copies of Number One in Canada and I am planning to write about those when they come up.

Martin Metcalfe and Shirley Manson are this issue's reviewers. The lead singer and keyboardist/backing vocalist out of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie respectively, they had one Top 40 entry with the punchy "The Rattler", a record that owed as much to the Celtic stadium rock of Big Country and Deacon Blue as it did to indie stalwarts Orange Juice and The Jesus and Mary Chain and one that deserved to do better than its modest number thirty-seven placing. Much like the group they picked for their Single of the Week, they seemed set for big things. One of them would go on to enjoy a remarkable career but they would have to wait a bit.

A big thanks as always to Michael Kane's excellent Flickr page for providing the scans from this issue. I highly recommend it for everyone who loves their music magazines.

~~~~~

It was Friday, August 4, 1989. I was wearing the Coca-Cola denim jacket my mother bought for me eighteen months' earlier. The sleeves were much shorter than they used to be. My baseball cap was only able to balance on the top of my head. I had already outgrown the life I had left behind in Canada a year earlier and now I was outgrowing the clothes I had brought with me. Why on earth was I heading back at all? (Oh right, because my parents said so)

Gatwick was a lot brighter and more modern than I remember it being fifty weeks earlier. It had all been a blur when I was first there but now I was just to glum to notice much. Such was my state that I didn't even have a look around. Had I peaked inside the WH Smith's that the airport almost certainly had, I would have noticed that there was a new issue of Number One that I didn't have. It would've added a flicker of joy to a day that I had been dreading. I hadn't wanted to go to England a year earlier and now that I had been here a while, I didn't want to leave. Having a fresh copy of a second-rate pop mag for the eight hour flight back to Canada would have made the trip that little bit less unbearable.

Still, I didn't miss much. The cover "story" involves TV's Lenny Henry answering a series of silly questions as his famous characters Theophilus P. Wildebeeste and Delbert Wilkins, the latter of which he put to more amusing use five years earlier when reviewing the Smash Hits singles. Elsewhere, there's the first in a two-part feature on songwriting/production monolith Stock Aitken Waterman (who bristle at criticism leveled their way while also claiming that groups like U2 and The Smiths are boring), Bruno Brookes' Radio 1 Roadshow Diary (those roadshows never seemed like much fun and this page confirms it) and yet another round of The Genius of Pop, in which various "stars" take a quiz on, you guessed it, pop music. On the plus side, the Indie singles chart is a welcome reminder of what an excellent year 1989 was for alternative music and, as if to confirm it, Martin and Shirley from Scottish group Goodbye Mr Mackenzie review the singles.

R.E.M. had spent much of the eighties quietly building up an outstanding back catalog. A raw, early pressing of the brilliant "Radio Free Europe" followed by the Chronic Town E.P. got the ball rolling and they would go on a hot streak of six albums in six years. Success was modest at first but it grew over the course of the decade, especially in North America where they toured extensively and were a staple of the so-called college rock scene. The word-of-mouth on albums such as Murmur and Lifes Rich Pageant was so good that their slight creative dip beginning with 1987's Document did nothing to halt their momentum. Indeed, single "The One I Love" gave them a Top 10 US hit that year. They had been poised for a breakthrough for some time and now it was coming.

Across the Atlantic things took a bit longer. Both "The One I Love" and "Finest Worksong" came close to reaching the Top 40 but fell short and the same fate befell "Stand" on its initial release at the start of 1989. Albums Fables of the Reconstruction, Document and Green all did reasonably well and, again, a breakthrough seemed inevitable. Then, "Orange Crush" gave them at Top 30 hit which led to a memorable performance on Top of the Pops in which Michael Stipe "sang" into a megaphone. The single fell off a week later but it was looking like this was going to be R.E.M.'s time in the UK. Two short years later and it finally was!

The Green album wasn't exactly packed with potential hit singles so someone decided to give "Stand" another try. It was at this point that Martin Metcalfe and Shirley Manson gave it their stamp of approval in Number One. Perhaps because of it being a reissue, they already seem familiar with it, with Manson mentioning how much she likes the video. But neither of them seem to know all that much about R.E.M. and if you didn't know any better you'd be convinced that this was their introduction to the Athens, GA foursome. Shirley's comment above about "Stand" being not unlike a single ("Here Comes Your Man" perhaps? It was currently on Number One's classic-packed Indie chart and is like a rich cousin to "Stand") by the Pixies implies she knows more about the latter than the former. (To be fair, Pixies were a much better group at that point, their albums Surfer Rosa and Doolittle far outpaced Document and Green, at least in terms of quality if not in numbers shifted) Metcalfe's praise for the "incompetent" guitar playing also indicates how little they knew: Peter Buck was an indie guitar hero to some but he didn't mean shit to the members of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie.

What all this really tells you is that R.E.M. still had a ways to go before conquering Britain. While "Orange Crush" at least has a strong beat, "Stand" and "Pop Song 89" (passed over as a single in the UK) began to expose them as a band that could get repetitive. All three songs have basic opening verses, choruses and not much else. They had nothing on the glorious jangle-pop of "So. Central Rain" not the mournful singalong "Fall on Me". (The Green album did have some nice deep cuts — the achingly lovely "You Are the Everything", the crunchy "Turn You Inside-Out — but overall it's an uncharacteristically inconsistent work) R.E.M. had lost their way and they would use their climb to the top of the pop mountain to reclaim it — for a while at least.

The future of rock was there on page 42 of this issue of Number One and not just due to the Single of the Week. Shirley Manson was a young Scots pianist and backing singer who would one day be part of a group that would rival R.E.M. in the 'biggest band in the world' stakes. Garbage was a subtly fine group that cleverly merged American grunge with UK shoegaze, filling a void that no had even noticed. They weren't exactly a favourite of mine but they certainly gave some life to the depressing music scene of 1995 that was overloaded with ghastly US frat rock and the self-parody ridden Britpop. Meanwhile, R.E.M. spent the year I graduated from high school on a highly lucrative world tour that proved to be the beginning of the end for them. And all this from a pair of groups that had two minor hits between them in 1989. Yeah, those big breakthroughs would come eventually.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

The Beatmasters featuring Betty Boo: "Hey DJ / I Can't Dance (to That Music You're Playing)"

Paul Carter, Manda Glanfield and Richard Walmsley weren't exactly pop star material but they knew more than a little about crafting great dance pop and finding charismatic stars to lead the way. They brought back P.P. Arnold for the appropriately-named "Burn It Up" but most of their guest stars were young. Cookie Crew, Merlin and, this time, Betty Boo: it looked like they had found the future of British hip hop and house music. Alison Clarkson had a tough style and pin-up looks and her Betty Boo character ought to have become even bigger. "Hey DJ" does the trick of setting up Boo as a player while once again affirming The Beatmasters as an overlooked force in British dance-pop. One of those fine records that I missed out on because my mum and dad just had ship us back home. The nerve of some people.