Black Box: "I Don't Know Anybody Else" / Tears for Fears: "Advice for the Young at Heart"

7 February 1990 (with some Requiem-like spillover here)

"I like this — this is my single of the fortnight because it's what the people want now."

— London Boy Edem

"This is my single of the fortnight — especially because its got that sun on it. It must be the symbol of the 90's!"

— London Boy Dennis

Pop groups were once a lot more prolific. In 1965 The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and The Byrds released two albums apiece, with The Rolling Stones going one better with a trio of LPs. Sure, albums tended to be shorter back then but the rapid pace artists kept keeping the product coming more than made up the difference. A work rate of an album a year was still commonplace into the eighties though it really depended on the act in question. People that toured their albums to death typically had a larger gap between follow-ups and the business model pioneered by Michael Jackson's Thriller also slowed things down considerably. When blockbuster albums could potentially result in six, seven or even eight singles, there's every reason to expect record labels to want to milk it for as long as possible.

Tears for Fears didn't really fit either of these trends but they, too, were happy to let the years pass between albums. Their acclaimed debut The Hurting came out in the spring of 1983 and it hugely successful follow-up Songs from the Big Chair arrived just under two years later. Not bad even if plenty of other groups were able to lap them at the same time. It would then be another five-and-a-half-years before third album The Seeds of Love would come out. (In approximately the same amount of time Prince, R.E.M. and XTC all managed to release six albums apiece) This relatively slow work rate may or may not have been to their liking, though you'd have to think that their record label would've loved a new LP in about 1987. If it was their doing then all the power to them. However, such slow output robs listeners of accurate picture of how they were progressing. How a band develops

Roland Orzbal and Curt Smith really began to emerge in North America with the singles "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout" both from Songs from the Big Chair. They were immediately lumped in with Culture Club, Duran Duran and Wham! as a part of the so-called Second British Invasion of the early-to-mid eighties. It was a designation that didn't mean a whole lot since everyone who happened to come from the UK was a part of this SBI (not unlike the way groups like Radiohead and Manic Street Preachers were considered to be Britpop in the US even when no one would've applied the term to either of them back home) but they had little in common with these other groups. English New Pop had arisen out of the ashes of punk, new wave and post punk but Tears for Fears were much closer to prog rock derived acts like Thomas Dolby, Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw. These were the sort of people who probably all had their own home studios so they could live out their dreams of being a Todd Rundgren-esque sonic wizard. Fantastically talented musicians who made immaculate home demos. People who spent at least as much time producing others as they did on their own work. Acts who often proved that brilliant musicianship doesn't a great pop song make . Luckily, Tears for Fears were by far the best of the bunch.

I once really liked Curt Smith. Far from being the other one in Tears for Fears, he was the only reason I had anything to do with my sister's favourite group. For one thing, he looked so utterly English. He had vaguely angelic facial features that deftly masked an individual who could handle himself in a pub brawl, the midway point between Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Dynamite Kid. Plus, he had a lovely voice. His TFF partner sounded like his throat had been permanently coated in phlegm but Smith's singing was clear and wistful and you could just tell that he meant every word.

It wasn't until I grew up that I realised that I got it all wrong. I don't take anything back about my description of Smith (I have to say I'm rather chuffed about comparing him to Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Dynamite Kid) only that he wasn't the one to care about in Tears for Fears. Roland Orzbal wrote most of the songs and he could get something out of nearly every instrument he'd pick up. Aging into adulthood even gave me much more of an appreciation for his vocals. Roland was the heart and soul of Tears for Fears and I wish I had been more aware of this as a youngster.

With the gap between albums ever widening, we were already seeing TFF entering a premature musical middle age with The Seeds of Love. A third album should be the point in which a group begins to really hit its stride not where they get all reflective and start harping on about how much better the sixties were and all that stuff. The duo had once been synth-pop adjacent but they were now starting to come across as baby boomer rock royalty. (It certainly didn't help when they appeared alongside Phil Collins, Cliff Richard and Pink Floyd at the 1990 Silver Clef Award Winners Concert and as part of the accompanying Knebworth live album) Eurythmics had evolved in a similar fashion but at least they were of an appropriate age.

There's nothing wrong with musical maturity, only that it seemed to hit Orzbal and Smith at a fairly young age. Ironically, a song entitled "Advice for the Young at Heart" would prove to be one of their most middle-of-the-road numbers. As always, it's well played and arranged but it's also tame. Orzbal takes lead vocals on most of The Seeds of Love and his soulful voice gives the LP some much needed passion; Smith's singing here only exposes how bloodless the whole thing is. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" had been a wonderful bit of Beatle-esque pop (at a time when being "Beatle-esque" still meant something) that gave the duo their last big hit; "Woman in Chains" introduced the world to the spectacular voice of Oleta Adams and it's a excellent composition. But this? It's not even a great deep cut and it's status as a single smacks of needing to put the spotlight on Smith for a bit. Few were convinced and it had a three week stay in the lower reaches of the Top 40 before disappearing.

Smith would end up departing not long after, making Tears for Fears effectively a solo project for Orzbal. His/their nineties output varied in quality. The pair would eventually reform and they remain a top group. It's just a shame that they've only managed to put out seven albums in nearly forty years of recording activity. It would've been nice to have seen them young and hungry, successful and riding that wave, experimental as the hits began drying up, doing an obligatory fan-service, play-it-safe album as they began to mellow and, finally, approaching more advanced years with a nothing-to-lose mentality of once again being adventuresome. We got a taste of these periods but never a sustained progression of moving from one to another. Prog rock groups are supposed to progress, you know.

~~~~~

Gosh, there's also a Black Box single to review, isn't there? I spent the past several days thinking so much about Tears for Fears that I neglected to give much consideration to its co-Single of the Fortnight. Let's see if I can find much to say about it now.

Black Box's "Ride on Time" began dominating the UK singles charts a few weeks after I returned to Canada. It was hardly the first Eurodance or Italo house record but to many it might as well have been. Jive Bunny's "Swing the Mood" had spent a very long month at the top of the charts so its usurper was bound to be appreciated. It ended up spending six weeks at number one and it did similarly brisk business in the record shops all over Europe. To this day, many pop kids of the eighties have fond memories of it

Yet, it never did anything in North America. Mind you, there's nothing strange about that: European success means squat on the other side of the Atlantic. What is odd is that subsequent Black Box singles made the charts in the US and Canada. "I Don't Know Anybody Else" (listed as "I Don't Know Anyone" in this issue of Smash Hits) was a respectable Top 30 entry in early 1990 and then "Everybody, Everybody" became a Top 10 stormer later in the year. "Ride on Time" never meant a thing in the new world but they were still able to become relevant, at least for a time.

"I Don't Know Anybody Else" is London Boy Edem's Single of the Fortnight (even if I'm not entirely convinced it was his favourite) but he admits that it isn't quite "Ride on Time". Their first hit, he reckons, "was a complete one-off" and this follow-up is just more of the same. Very good but clearly lacking the thrill of old. But the group's unusual path towards having hits in North America suggests that this was simply to do with release dates rather than one record being vastly superior to the other. "Ride on Time" came out first and, as such, it was the bigger hit and made more of an impact. Your favourite Black Box song is just like your favourite Wes Anderson movie: whichever you hear or see first will the one you are fondest of.

Black Box's lip-synching issues would end up being dwarfed by Milli Vanilli's at about the same time. Partly this was down to the former being far bigger, particularly in North America. The pair were also more than happy to boast of their considerable talents. What happened to Rob and Fab is sad but it was difficult to feel sorry for them at the time. "Groups" like Black Box managed to come away from it intact because it was clear their "vocalists" were simply a front. Eurodance would carry on typically with a duo of a female singer and a male rapper in the mould of Snap!, Culture Beat or 2 Unlimited. I had no idea if any of these people did the vocals on their hits but I did know that it didn't matter anyway. It was the studio boffins working behind the scenes who deserved all the credit anyway.

~~~~~

Finally, a word about Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller, this issue's guest singles reviewers. The London Boys have already been covered in this space but I don't imagine they'll be reappearing. Their chart run was brief but hit singles "Requiem" and "London Nights" were appealing hi-NRG pop-dance records. They also had the look of good pop stars and the pair carried themselves well in interviews and, indeed, in this singles review. They always looked like the type of people who were enjoying every second of their ride on the giddy carousel of pop. Sadly, they were both killed by a drunk driver in early 1996. VER HITS salutes them and I hope that their hits will remain dancefloor favourites forever.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Electribe 101: "Talking with Myself"

German vocalist Billy Rae Martin and her chums from Birmingham weren't giving up on this number and with good reason. I remember reading about it a year earlier in a Chris Heath review in Smash Hits and wishing I could hear it. Naturally I didn't seek it out, I instead waited for it to come to me — and maybe I wasn't the only one. We're still a year away from Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy" and the dawn of trip hop but no one told this to Electribe 101. The London Boys aren't particularly fussed but maybe it was just too ahead of its time. An outstanding single that deserves to be remembered today.

Aerosmith: "Love in an Elevator"

6 September 1989

"They are the only band I still mime to in front of the mirror."

— Mark Shaw, along with his dog cat Rover

Rock and roll, it has long been established, is a young person's game. (Though it clearly isn't anymore) When Elvis Presley slimmed down, dyed his hair and squeezed himself into a leather jumpsuit for his famed 1968 comeback he was thirty-four years old, an impossibly advanced age for someone to be singing "That's All Right" and "Heartburn Heartbreak Hotel". Yet, twenty years later, it was relatively young to be in one's mid-thirties. Among the most successful and/or critically acclaimed albums of 1989 were Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy, Paul McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt, Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl and The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels. Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt at forty had her long overdue breakthrough with the aptly named Nick of Time. Tom Petty moved out of the shadows of his idols and reached a whole new level of popularity with the bestselling Full Moon Fever. Even David Bowie (working a band called Tin Machine) and Queen were still active, even if they hadn't done their most stellar work that year. In this sort of atmosphere, it isn't too surprising that Aerosmith would be bigger than ever while advancing into their forties.

Once a blatant Rolling Stones rip off (Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were the poor men's Mick Jagger and Keith Richards respectively), Aerosmith had been active since the early-seventies. They had early hits in the US with "Sweet Emotion" and the original "Walk This Way" but their fortunes declined as they entered the eighties and it was only when the latter was famously covered by hip hop group Run-DMC that they experienced a revival. Tyler and Perry guested on the rap-rock "Walk This Way" and it gave all concerned a Top 10 hit around the world. Aerosmith were back — indeed, they likely benefited more from the collaboration than Run-DMC ever would.

It's likely that this hugely important single was only a part of the story in their renaissance. While rock had always been intended for younger groups, there was a new found openness towards older acts, particularly in the realm of glam metal. Heart and Whitesnake were both made of up members who had seen their twenties come and go several years earlier and both groups had American number one hits in 1987. Not coincidentally, Aerosmith released their comeback album Permanent Vacation that very year. Both Tyler's screams and Perry's riffs were dialed up to maximum volume. First single "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" played up to metal machismo while subtly undermining it. Their hardcore classic rock fanbase took to it and so did the younger headbangers. Aerosmith were so metal that they even had a logo that could have doubled as a tattoo.

Nevertheless, interest in them in the UK had been minimal. Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" had been a smash but nothing else that Tyler and Perry had been behind managed to catch on. (While "Dude" almost reached the Top 40, follow-up "Angel", which had been their biggest chart hit in the States to date, was a total flop) There was no reason to expect any different from "Love in an Elevator" (or "Eleven and Elevator" as I initially thought it was) which makes its Top 20 performance all the more remarkable. While it may have fluked a hit, it's possible that it unknowingly rode the coattails of Alice Cooper's "Poison", a surprise Top 5 smash a month earlier. One hard rocking American hit could've help push another to a spot that it otherwise wouldn't have had a hope of attaining.

Mark Shaw of Then Jerico reviewed the singles in this issue. Being a rock star more in his own mind than in practice, it's probable that he saw his own aspirations in Aerosmith. A jobbing rock band that had hit it big while doing very much their own thing is something that once appealed to generations of young musicians. The fact that they never lost their humour is also something to be admired in them (even by me and I am by no means a fan). And as much as their music doesn't do much for me, they were always entertainers on a par with their idols The Rolling Stones. Real heavy metal was always about earnest things like the music and the women and wine but Aerosmith were first rate performers who took as much pleasure out of making fun of rock 'n' roll as they did out of trying to carve out their own legacy as rock gods. And perhaps that's how rock bands should go about aging gracefully: by aging with as little dignity and good sense as possible.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Tears for Fears: "Sowing the Seeds of Love"

Roland Orzbal had been so impressed by XTC's attempt to ape the sound of "I Am the Walrus" that he tried it out himself with "Sowing the Seeds of Love". It wouldn't be long before the term Beatlesque would be code for 'boring, three-chord rock' so this slice of Pepperland magic makes for a welcome listen. Shaw loves the bulk of it but isn't overly fond of the song's midsection but the whole five-and-a-half-minutes is brilliant to these ears. A definite should've been Single of the Fortnight — and I imagine it would've been had it been up to your average Smash Hits scribe. A great song but it's sad in retrospect that they were just about done. Then again, The Beatles were never the same after Sgt Pepper so why should it be any different for their protegees of the eighties?

The The: "Uncertain Smile"

30 September 1982

"Never mind record of the week, this is the week of the The The record."
— Johnny Black

There are many acts I've been dealing with in this space who were unknown to my five-year-old self back in 1982 that I would later became familiar with. The following three fortnight's worth of entries are all of individuals who I came to know during my crucial '88-'89 year in England. (I had been considering doing a trilogy of pieces about what preteen Paul would have thought of these records in the context of their later stuff but I abandoned it when I realised how little he had to say...also I hate trilogies; nevertheless, I hope that at least some of that concept survives below) 

The The were an act that I had occasional encounters with over more than a decade but who I could never conjure up much enthusiasm for, which also goes for their name. Johnny Black mentions their "damn silly moniker" which is about how I've always felt, even if I can appreciate how the double 'the' could potentially throw people. While groups like Eagles, Pet Shop Boys and Talking Heads have bristled at being labelled 'The Eagles', 'The Pet Shop Boys' and 'The Talking Heads', it's always faintly annoyed me when people leave off the definite article from groups that tend to use them. Colin Larkin's absolutely indispensable Virgin Encyclopedia of... series lists groups as 'Beatles' and 'Clash' and — this one's especially jarring — 'Who'. I've never bothered checking but I suspect he chose not to label the present act as simply 'The'. But, yeah, it's a stupid name.

To come upon The The at this early stage has brought back memories of the bits and pieces they later released. "The Beat(en) Generation" with its irritating in-word parentheses was a Top 20 single in the UK in 1989 and was something that I recall deejays and journalists really getting behind, as if they felt it important or something. I wasn't terribly impressed. At the time, I was bothered by its faint whiff of country and western music which I had absolutely no time for. I still don't think much of it now though more due to Matt Johnson's hectoring lyrics which seemed to talk at young people living through the doldrums of Mrs Thatcher's reign rather than to them. "Kingdom of Rain" was a follow up (also taken from their Mind Bomb album) with a video that featured seahorses possibly copulating and a sullen young woman who most certainly was not guest vocalist Sinéad O'Connor. What it lacked was anything approaching a memorable tune. I would later come across singles from the Dusk and Hanky Panky albums which were equally forgettable. Finally, I acquired a promo copy of 2000's NakedSelf when I was supposed to interview Johnson for my university paper; it actually wasn't too bad but I was too interested in Gomez and Grandaddy to care too much (particularly after the interview fell through due to a scheduling conflict; incidentally the only question I can recall preparing to ask him was if The The could be anything more than just a solo project, so it's probably for the best that we never spoke).

All that said, what am I to make of "Uncertain Smile"? Well, I will acknowledge that it would be my choice for SOTF as well. Although certainly a marked improvement on last fortnight's glum crop of singles, the likes of Ultravox's "Reap the Wild Wind" and The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" are pleasantly unremarkable efforts but nowhere close to this good. A lovely, floating melody with some fine flute and sax solos courtesy of one Crispin Cioe provide a nice undercoating for an intriguing lyric which manages to read rather well as poetry. Johnson's vocal is vaguely whiny which seems to suit such a restless and insecure song. A very pleasant surprise.

My only reservation is that I keep finding myself connecting "Uncertain Smile" to Johnson's later work which I've never thought much of. Johnny Black concludes his review admitting that much of their early stuff was "a bit aimless, but this is right on the button". I agree but from the perspective of what came much later. Perhaps it's time I filled in the gaps, not just to see if Matt Johnson was up to churning out more equally formidable gems but also if I can catch where it all began to go south. Till we meet again, The.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Tears for Fears: "Mad World"

An earnest pair with a truckload of earnest songs and an earnest name, it's no bloody wonder earnest Americans eventually took to Tears for Fears. Earnestness was always their worst trait, especially whenever Curt Smith took on lead vocals as he does here. A pretty great composition that so succinctly captures depression, it is let down a bit by Smith's bland delivery. It's hard to say if Roland Orzbal's mouthpiece for humanity vocals would've been any better suited to such an individualist track so maybe he was right to give it to his more nuanced partner. Perhaps there just isn't a perfect vocalist for such personal work. Best just to sing it to yourself with as much or as little earnestness as you see fit.