— Barry McIlheney
More changes were "afoot" in the Carnaby St. offices of Smash Hits in the autumn of 1986. Longtime design editor and editor-in-"chief" of the past eighteen months Steve Bush was off to the greener pastures of other magazines. He was the last holdover from the seventies, witnessing the early days of Dexys Midnight Runners, Dexys at their commercial and creative zenith and Dexys' long, painful slide into the dumper — though, alas, he didn't stay long enough for Kevin Rowland's return in drag. He received cross words from Hits faithful who were none-too-pleased that he mixed up the two sides of Madness' first single but he overcame that particular hiccup to help oversee it into the phenomenon it would become. Did you enjoy many of those covers back in the day? The layout? The fonts? The fact that every little single-page photo would "helpfully" point out that what you have is a poster? Be sure to thank Steve Bush for making your teenage years just that little bit less of a nightmare.
With his departure, it became incumbent on the bigwigs to find someone else to thanklessly put together eighty-eight pages of pop delight every fortnight to enthrall ver kids. Choosing not to go in "house", they found their man in Barry McIlheney (aka Barry McWhateverhe'scalled as he's dubbed in the affectionate tribute to Bush in this issue's Bitz). Recently employed at trusty muso journal the Melody Maker, McIlheney decided to immature with age by jumping over to Smash Hits. He has admitted in interviews that everyone at parent company Emap was young, a sharp contrast to the aging staff found at the Maker and this prompted him to cross enemy lines. With a new job on his "plate", you would think the last thing McIlheney would have wanted was more of a burden on his hands. Yet, here he is in his maiden issue reviewing the singles. Wisely, this was not something he did often during his tenure of just over two years.
Given all of his new responsibilities, I'll give him a pass with his choice of a decent-but-nowhere-near-as-good-as-she-used-to-be effort from Blondie's Debbie Harry when he could have opted for vastly superior singles from Billy Bragg (see below) and New Order. With the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna in the pop charts, it's odd that he would express the desire to have a blonde vamp from an earlier time back but I sort of see what he means. First, Blondie were a brilliant group, their run of hits from "Denis" through to "Island of Lost Souls" being pretty much flawless. Then, there's Harry herself: more attractive than those who had followed her, she cut a striking figure on stage and in print and she gave the average heterosexual male that dream image of a dreamy woman fronting a fantastic band (see also: Stevie Nicks).
This desire on McIlheney's part to have her back may have contributed to him overestimating comeback single "French Kissin' in the USA". Just as brill, Barry? Really? Compared to her appropriately icy reading of "Heart of Glass"? The sensual existentialism of "Atomic"? The coy flirtations of "Dreaming"? (To be fair, she restrained her instinct to rap so there is that) She didn't write the song (it was written by Chuck Lorre, who would later create a number of successful but not terribly funny American sitcoms) so she probably didn't have as much invested in it but "Denis" had been Blondie's UK breakthrough back in 1978 and it was a cover version.
Mention of their first British hit brings to mind the last time she tried singing in cod French. On "Denis", she does so because her beaux is a Parisian rogue who has her wrapped around his little finger and she's trying to impress him ("Denis Denis, je suis si folle de toi / Denis Denis, oh embrasse-moi ce soir /Denis Denis, un grand baiser d'eternite), not unlike the way Paul McCartney tries to tap into the tender heart of a French girl on "Michelle"; here, it seems to be in aid of giving her performance a sexy vibe that is otherwise lacking. Repeating the line of "embrassez si Francais" doesn't really do much for me though I suppose at least it's funny that it sounds like she's saying "are you sexay, Francais?".
The French kiss is about as French as the 1918 Spanish Flu was Spanish. So named because the French are so much more open and far less uptight than the Americans or British, it would only make the act of necking naughtier and more illicit, reserved for the back row of a cinema or one of those lookout points where people park their cars late at night. Harry sings of the act as something sophisticated but the accompanying video makes it clear that the damn Yanks are gonna ruin it all with their tacky, nouveau riche Walmart culture. A young woman in a bikini makes out with a blow up Godzilla flotation device and this is a good ten years prior to freak show reality TV and talk shows. Of course, this would have gone right over the heads of British audiences who happily welcomed Harry back to the Top 10. The mid to late eighties was peak UK adulation for all things American, what with the popularity of Dallas and McDonald's and Michael Jackson and this video fed into that misguided romanticism — though, with the charts filled with offerings from the cast of Eastenders and plenty of novelty song pap, who could blame them? McIlheney advises that we should "listen with eyes firmly closed and tongue in cheek for best effect" but I'm convinced few bothered listening to him. Good thing Barry McIlheney would have the chance to help turn British pop around just as the magazine he was now in charge of was reaching its apogee — and at a time when the Aussies would begin taking over from the Yanks.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Billy Bragg: "Greetings to the New Brunette"
Billy Bragg typically kept his love songs and his political message numbers separate but he brought them together beautifully for "Greetings to the New Brunette". With some of his funniest and most touching lyrics, there's lots to unpack here which space and laziness precludes me from going into too much. It's unclear just what becomes of Billy and Shirley but I'm convinced it's painful and this is his way of saying goodbye with as much dignity as possible. The "new brunette" he sings of may be her replacement for him (a rare case of reverse sexism has to be the fact that men with brown hair are classified as 'brunettes') or his for her which gives the song a heartbreaking climax: someone else will come along but they'll never replace what we had. In any case, "Greetings..." should have been the moment in which the UK gave itself over to Billy Bragg; too bad they were so infatuated by everything American.
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