Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)"

17 May 1989

"I don't have to listen to this one. I know it really well already."

— Pat Sharp

It was July and our year in England was slipping away — though given my lethargy at the time, you'd hardly know it. The novelty of spending weekends in a host of British cities and towns had worn off and if I never saw another full English breakfast again I would have been a happy twelve-year-old. I didn't want to leave the UK but I didn't especially want to see any more of it either. I wanted to spend weekends at home watching the telly and listening to music — even if it happened to be in our uninspiring little hovel in Laindon, Basildon.

We had neighbours who we could see and/or hear quite easily. My sister and I would spy on an amourous couple across the square from us and noises of varying volume were easy to listen to. The bedroom we shared was separated by a thin wall with teenagers we never met but whose tastes in music dovetailed with our own. It was during this scorching summer that they came home one day with "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)" and put it on their hi-fi. We nodded approvingly and didn't complain when they promptly put it on again. And again. And again. It didn't stop. Had it been a lesser song, we would've gotten sick of it.

"Back to Life" was unavoidable that summer. In my memories of those waning days before our return to Canada in August, it soundtracked everything. Shops played it, pub jukeboxes had it on an endless loop, schoolmates sang it as they pranced around the playground. Almost everyone seemed to love it and those that didn't still couldn't avoid it. The song of the summer a year earlier had been "The Only Way Is Up" by Yazz but I only became aware of it as it as sliding down the charts; I wasn't about to miss out this time round — and, indeed, its ubiquity ensured that there was no danger of that happening anyway.

Soul II Soul were seemingly a 1989 creation but they were sowing the seeds of their success a year earlier. Their debut single didn't exactly storm the charts on a national level but it got a good word-of-mouth and people in the know were impressed. "Fairplay" must have seemed too relax to fit in longside acid house and techno but it did well enough for a first try. Rose Windross gives a charming vocal performance and her girlish "Okay!" near the beginning never fails to put a smile on my face. It did so well that its slightly inferior follow-up, "Feel Free" with guest vocalist Do'reen, did about as well on the charts. While not as good, it set the London collective up for a big year ahead.

Caron Wheeler subsequently came aboard for third single "Keep on Movin'". It wasn't a big favourite of guest reviewer Pat Sharp but itdid well enough to give them a Top 10 breakthrough and it was even able to linger on the listings for longer than your average hit single. Relaxed but active enough to become a dancefloor staple, it was like Chic's "Everybody Dance" but for a generation more accustomed to the more chilled out Second Summer of Love (and all its requisite drugs) than to coke-fuelled Studio 54 disco vibes. With a better song and a stronger promotional push, there was every reason to expect that the next single would continue the upward trend.

But is "Back to Life" that much better than "Keep on Movin'"? As pairings go they were not unlike fellow label mate Inner City's outstanding one-two punch of "Big Fun" and "Good Life", albeit in vastly different forms. In both cases, leaders Jazzie B and Kevin Sauderson created a unique sound with their first hit singles and then replicated them beautifully for their respective follow-ups. (It didn't hurt as well that Wheeler had returned for "Back to Life" just as Paris Gray was on vocal duty for "Good Life"; Soul II Soul had always dubbed themselves a "collective" but having the same singer on back-to-back records suddenly made it seem like they were a proper group) Inner City, however, amped up the pop hooks but minimized the subtleties that helped make "Big Fun" so glorious; Soul II Soul refined the swaying dancefloor cool of "Keep on Movin'" into something even more extraordinary.

Tom Ewing likes "Back to Life" a lot but he can't quite muster the same kind of enthusiasm for it that he has for Massive Attack's phenomenal 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy". I can see what he means but I respectfully disagree. While the Bristol trio would smartly tap into indie angst in order to bridge it with the ascending trip hop movement, Jazzie B and co. invited all into their diverse realm without barriers. Everyone seemed to love "Back to Life", even baby boomers who normally wouldn't have had anything to do with such stuff. And it still sounds great to this day (though, in fairness, so does "Unfinished Sympathy"): the easy answer would be to say that it has aged well but I suspect that the world has never aged out of it. Jazzie's promise of a "happy face and a funky face for a loving race" should have been cringe-inducing but it's something we all still need.

A few months after "Back to Life" had its memorable four week run at the top of the British charts, I was back in Canada. The song wasn't all over the place but it had successfully crossed the Atlantic and it even got played on the debut episode of the Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. By this point, I had given up on the current music scene in my homeland and I was content to simply relive the previous year by listening to my collection of tapes from the UK as well as a handful that I subsequently picked up. One was Keep on Movin' (retitled in North America because Club Classics Vol.1 wouldn't do in a land that typically didn't have much use for British dance music). I had previously only been familiar with their two hit singles and this was my introduction to Jazzie B's world of house music, funk, jazz and world beat. I was impressed by much of it (and I love it even more now) but the stripped down, acapella version of "Back to Life" proved to be a disappointment. The thrill of those strings, that beat and that tune that refused to exit my brain was replaced by a shell of the song's "However Do You Want Me" section. This wasn't the "Back to Life" that I knew and remembered and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But that's what makes this amazing record even more of a triumph: Jazzie B cobbled together parts of songs, samples and a Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra backing track into something utterly remarkable and addictive. An easy Single of the Fortnight, Single of the Year and, hell, Single of the Century. Any century.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Beautiful South: "Song for Whoever"

The Housemartins were by now long gone but The Beautiful South had taken their place. So, was the music scene jubilant? Not especially. Fans cried out for ver Martins and Paul Heaton's newest band reacted back in drunken vengeance. It would take another five years before people fully began to accept The Beautiful South — by which point they had already begun to decline creatively. "Song for Whoever" still did well as people either enjoyed the joke or for whatever reason became convinced that it was a sincere statement. A backlash was already brewing but it was one ver South managed to thrive under. The Housemartins would quickly become Heaton's second best band no matter what the nay sayers claimed.

Neneh Cherry: "Manchild"

3 May 1989

"There's loads of floaty "Pshoooo!" noises and curious keyboard wizardries and it's highly creepy and mesmerising and makes you go all funny in the head."

— Sylvia Patterson

1989 produced some nifty Singles of the Fortnight — for the moment anyway — but many have been lacking serious competition. With all due respect to the likes of Yazz, Chaka Khan and Elvis Costello, they weren't exactly up against a selection of stellar records. Which makes Neneh Cherry's "triumph" in this issue's singles review all the more impressive. Between Fuzzbox (see below) tapping into pop glory, the sound of Bobby Brown making the most of his imperial period, Paul McCartney happily doing what Macca does best, Sinitta with a throwaway earworm, Elvis Costello not letting himself get tripped up in his clever-clever wordplay and Tone Loc at his drrrty peak, there's some good stuff that came up short in the mind of review Sylvia Patterson. (Mind you, she picked the right song) Sure, there's some glum numbers from a duetting Aretha Franklin and Elton John, Sam Brown and Mandy Smith but the good stuff outweighs crap this fortnight.

For whatever reason, jazz is a style of music that hasn't produced a lot of dynastic families. The giants of the genre produced their fair share of offspring but a surprisingly small number of them followed their famous parents into Dixieland, swing, be-bop and fusion. Those few that did — Mercer Ellington, T.S. Monk, Ravi Coltrane, the Brubeck brothers — were destined to be stuck in the shadows of their renowned fathers.

Some, however, chose to spurn improvised music in favour of something closer to pop. Mike Melvoin toiled as a jobbing session pianist for the likes of John Lennon and The Beach Boys but his heart was in jazz, playing on some first rate recordings with Stan Getz, Milt Jackson and Leroy Vinnegar. His son Jonathon was an accomplish keyboardist in his own right and toured with Smashing Pumpkins prior to his untimely death in 1996 while twin daughters Susannah and Wendy were both involved with Prince in various capacities. Wendy would later form Wendy & Lisa with fellow erstwhile Revolution member Lisa Coleman and they appeared in this blog a few months back (and they'll be returning in a few weeks). Charlie Haden hailed from the midwest and, as such, had a background in country and folk but left them behind in order to pursue jazz. He eventually ended up as bassist for Ornette Coleman's influential piano-less quartet that released a series of remarkable albums including The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. He would later spearhead the brilliant Liberation Music Orchestra and he would go to the grave in 2014 having recorded dozens of top notch LPs. His son Josh is a talented songwriter who formed the critically acclaimed slow core group Spain and their 1995 debut The Blue Moods of Spain rivals many of his father's masterworks. Triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden have all had careers in music as well.

One of Haden's mates in the Ornette Coleman group was the trumpet player Don Cherry. His full time association with the saxophonist was prolific but short lived. He would subsequently go solo and release some superb albums on Blue Note such as Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. He remained tight with his old bandmates and would join Haden on the 1970 Liberation Music Orchestra LP. From there, his recordings became increasingly wild and he began exploring so-called world music. Taking a page from his mentor, who would sometimes take a break from the sax by picking up the trumpet or violin, Cherry began playing a wide variety of instruments from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia. I've only tapped the surface of this period of his career but I can say that the first two Codona albums (the not-very-imaginatively-titled Codona and Codona 2) are masterpieces of free jazz, world beat and new age. Along the way, he married a Swedish woman and became one of many expat American jazz musicians who chose to settle in Europe. It was there that he raised a musical family of his own.

The Melvoins, The Hadens, The Cherrys. They're all outstanding musical families but no one emerged from the second generation like Neneh Cherry. Her father's name didn't carry a lot of weight (when Smash Hits would bring up her lineage it was meant to be just a fun fact — pop kids weren't heading out to explore Symphony for Improvisers or Codona 2...at least not yet) and she seemed to be making it on her own. Though only in her mid-twenties, she had been around for nearly ten years, first appearing as vocalist for post-punk jazzers Rip, Rig + Panic before branching out in the direction of dance and house music. She was linked with Bristol's the Wild Bunch (soon to become Massive Attack) and had chums in acid house (in addition to namedropping the Wild Bunch, solo debut "Buffalo Stance" also referenced Bomb the Bass). Yet her own considerable talents and musical pedigree led her to success before most of her associates.

"Buffalo Stance" had been her memorable first hit single. While its quality turned heads, few recognized something previously unheard of in it. It was a hip hop single and a great one at that and that's all there was to it. "Manchild", therefore, became the Neneh Cherry record that sounded like nothing else. Where she rapped the verses and sort of sang the chorus on "Buffalo Stance", she does mostly some nice R&B vocalisms here and strategically saves the spoken word bits: the track opens with a bit of a rap but you assume that's all there is to it once the song gets going proper. You float along with the laid back rhythm that would eventually come to be known as 'trip hop' only to be jarred by another aggressive Neneh rap. It probably shouldn't work but it somehow does. It isn't as well-remembered as "Buffalo Stance" these days but it certainly deserves to be.

"Manchild" became Cherry's second big UK hit on the bounce and it did similarly well on the Continent but it failed to get much attention in North America. The merging of R&B and hip hope was well under way on the other side of the Atlantic (led by Bobby Brown, also reviewed this fortnight) but there wasn't much room for women to break through. It was left to the poppy but unremarkable "Kisses on the Wind" to struggle along as a makeshift follow-up and this may have done her reputation in the US more harm than good. ("Heart" would be a similarly blasse single release in North America and it convinced no one) "Buffalo Stance" had been at the forefront of Cherry's musical revolution but "Manchild" had been right there with it and, if anything, it pointed the way forward much more. British and European hip hop had languished but it was poised to take its rightful place on the charts. Cherry had done her part but her chums the Wild Bunch weren't ready. It would be left to a London-based collective to further move the needle.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fuzzbox: "Pink Sunshine"

Those of us who seldom bought singles really ought to have stepped up to the plate. (And I was one of them: buying bargain bin 7" records for 50p wasn't helping) The newly remade/remodelled Fuzzbox enjoyed a pair of Top 20 hits in the first few months of 1989 but they should've done much better. They had the tunes, choruses you just couldn't shake, excellent promos and they all looked great. (If Susanna Hoffs mastered the side glance, no one did the comedy eye roll quite like the Fuzzies) I actually liked "International Rescue" a bit more but "Pink Sunshine" became an anthem for those of us who were knocking on the door of the teens and we were the sort of fanbase that was happy to record their hits off of Radio 1 and/or to tape their vids off of Top of the Pops or Saturday morning kids telly. We put up posters of them, we dreamed of forming bands just like their's and some of us even dreamed of snogging them — it's just too bad we didn't get round to buying their records in sufficient quantity.

Chaka Khan: "I'm Every Woman"

19 April 1989

""Climb Every Woman" — classic! Oh! I mean "I'm Every Woman"!"

— Holly Johnson

Some pop stars who sit in as a guest Smash Hits singles reviewer put a great deal of thought into the task they've been given (Martin Fry, Gary Kemp, a surprisingly insightful Zodiac Mindwarp). Others do it in as basic a "I like/don't like this" format as possible. Some used it as a pulpit to self-righteously yammer on (yes, I'm thinking of you, Gary Numan), while others just moaned the entire time (Erasure). But I will say that all managed to make a good faith attempt to listen to as many records as possible — until now. Holly Johnson wasn't about to waste a whole hour on doing the task that was asked of him.

Of the fourteen new releases in this fortnight's Hits, Johnson either outright refuses or demands immediate removal of six of them (considering they consist of a Cher/Peter Cetera duet, Bon Jovi, a still-rootsy Texas, a washed-up Pretenders and ho-hum efforts from both Kylie Minogue and Cyndi Lauper, I can't say as I blame him but it still wouldn't have killed him to have given them all a go). The ex-Frankie Goes to Hollywood frontman's lack of interest is even amusingly remarked upon in the 'Also not reviewed by Holly this fortnight!' sidebar.

But he isn't simply apatheic, he's largely unimpressed even by most of what he bothered listening to. Diana Ross? Edie Brickell? Paul Abdul? He's not having any of it. The Cure's "Lullaby" is perhaps the one true classic here and even it fails to spark much out of his nibs. While he digs the violins, he also admits that there isn't "much of a song hidden beneath" the arrangements (No doubt he hadn't seen the song's video because that would've made it a dead cert Single of the Fortnight) and doubts its chart potential. Considering that far more radio-friendly Cure singles like "In Between Days" and "Just Like Heaven" only performed modestly on the Top 40, it's probably no surprise that he didn't think this spooky nightmare about being devoured by a spider man stood much of a chance. And yet, it proved to be their biggest UK hit of all time.

In the end, we're left with a remix of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" to take the Single of the Fortnight almost by default. This being Holly Johnson, he still finds things to complain about with elements of the spruced up house sound jarring on him. Though he does acknowledge that it's "better than usual" compared to most remixes out there, he still dislikes the piano and the "deadful" drum infills. Even a great record can't please the most slovenly of curmudgeons.

Remixing older hits had been a popular trend among DJ's in the late-eighties and, as Holly suggests, they had this knack for sucking the life out of the original. Old Motown gems "Reach Out I'll Be There" by the Four Tops and "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 (later credited to 'Michael Jackson with The Jackson 5') ended up getting re-released in 1988 with more modern sounds added that only detracted from what a pair of brilliant songs they always have been. Bill Withers had some of his oldies rejigged at around the same time to somewhat better results even if they still seemed faintly pointless. If it's neigh on impossible for a cover version to top its source, what hope did a remix have?

I won't say for sure if the '89 mix of "I'm Every Woman" tops Chaka Khan's original from 1979 but just the fact that I have to think about it says all you need to know. Listening to her first post-Rufus outing now, I'm struck by how disco records always seemed to be flooded in strings. Ten years on, there was less of a demand for violins on dance music and Danny D's remix smartly pushes the chamber orchestra to the background. The other instruments remain and it gives the remix a brighter sound. Khan's voice also seems more dynamic under these conditions. While you'd never confuse "Reach Out I'll Be There" or "I Want You Back" for modern pop, if you weren't aware of "I'm Every Woman"'s past life, you'd be convinced it was a current slice of late-eighties' dance pop.

Khan's original doesn't typically get cited as a feminist anthem possibly because it could just as easily be taken as a song about begging a man by being, er, every woman. Either way, the remix underscores the point of the song because she was able to be as relevant as ever in spite of changing fashions. Just as I had written a few weeks' ago about Elvis Costello, I was similarly certain that Chaka Khan was much older than she was back in 1989. Donna Summer had just returned with the triumphant collaboration with Stock Aitken Waterman "This Time I Know It's for Real" and this gave her a youthful quality in spite of her pushing forty. Khan had an oldie (which you could tell by the video) and this seemed to make her even more advanced in years, despite being four years Summer's junior. And yet, this too makes the song more empowering. She's no longer a young singer with her life ahead of her but a grizzled veteran who still boasts of being all that. She had only just turned thirty-six but she might as well have been one of the Golden Girls to me.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

The Funky Worm: "You + Me = Love"

The Funky Worm were probably the flop act most familiar to me due to them being included on both The Hits Album 9 (with "The Spell", which didn't even make the Top 60) and The Hits Album 10 (with this, a modest chart improvement on its predecessor), despite "Hustle (To the Music)" being a hit and failing to make it on to The Hits Album 7 or 8 (those Hits comps used the word 'hit' quite liberally). Disco and funk revivalists long before the likes of Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai, there's something charmingly unpolished about them. Vocalist Julie Stewart probably didn't have the vocal chops to overdo it but that's for the best. "The Spell" was the better of the two but the cheery blandness of "You + Me = Love" has aged better than I would have thought and there's more going on in the background than I ever gave it credit for. A shame they didn't last longer, they might have even made it on to The Hits Album 11. 

Neil Young: "Hawks and Doves"

11 December 1980

"The old country waltz updated. Young has class enough to urinate all over the field here."

— Ronnie Gurr

As I suggested previously, there didn't appear to be a lot of quality material vying for the 1980 Christmas number one. There were a fair share of big names (the now-sadly deceased John Lennon being the biggest of them all) but few were offering their best work. Yet, here we are just two weeks away from the big day and the singles review page in Smash Hits is teeming with quality. Sure, The Police's "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" is as rubbish as ever and I will never comprehend the appeal of Adam & The Ants — even if "Ant Music" is one of their better efforts — but there are some excellent, if relatively minor, singles on offer as well. 

XTC were coming off a year that should have broken them big but their creative momentum was such that the seemingly tossed off "Take This Town" from the Times Square film soundtrack is nevertheless quite wonderful. The Clash's "The Call Up" was largely ignored by record buyers and is generally forgotten today but it ought to be ranked in the top flight of their singles. Dexys Midnight Runners were already moving on from their Searching for the Young Soul Rebels album with the brand new release "Keep It Part Two (Inferiority Part One)", which Kevin Rowland must have known was destined to be a chart longshot despite being as good as anything they'd done up to that point. Ronnie Gurr puts all seasonal releases together in a mass round up which give short shrift to Kate Bush's lovely "December Will Be Magic Again", which probably should have performed much better than it did. And then there was yet more fresh product from one of the leading groups of 1980 who were only just hitting their peak.

The Specials had only emerged as a national concern in 1979 with the brilliant "Gangsters" and they went on a run of unbeatable singles — "A Message to You Rudy"/"Nite Club", The Special AKA Live!, "Rat Race", "Stereotype". With The Specials and More Specials being similarly outstanding albums, with some fine B-sides to boot, there wasn't a better group in Britain during their two year prime. A flash in the pan they may have been but, as a certain wise old songsmith once said, it's better to burn out than fade away. (They left the fading away to their second incarnation following the departures of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple six months later) Their fans would have become accustomed to their exceptionally high standards by this point and "Do Nothing" didn't let them down.

Like most Smash Hits reviewers of the time, Ronnie Gurr doesn't specify a Single of the Fortnight and I had assumed that this latest single from The Specials was is his pick of the litter here, and not just because it would certainly have been my choice. "Great Reginald Dixon sound from Jerry Dammers and more exemplary trombone etchings from Rico," Gurr coos. "A truly excellent single". High praise to edge it above Adam Ant ("Pretty irresistible actually"), XTC ("...a great single") and The Clash ("In which The Clash prove that they really are the failure creeps you suspected all along": he likes this record, right?) and that was good enough for me. Then, I happened to read the entire singles page and discovered that he likes it when whiny Canadians take a giant piss all over their competitors. Classy indeed.

I often think of Neil Young as the ultimate example of an artist who only does slow songs. Of course, he has recorded countless faster-paced rockers over his lengthy career but are the bulk of them any good? (I've heard plenty of them in my time but I can't think of a single one that managed to make any kind of impression on me) Certainly it's not the louder material that makes me think of the so-called Godfather of Grunge. I associate Young with "Expecting to Fly", "After the Goldrush", "Helpless", "Heart of Gold", "Old Man", "Like a Hurricane", "Harvest Moon" and "Philadelphia" and I can give or take the faster and the harder stuff — even the updated country waltz stuff.

That's not to say that "Hawks and Doves" is poor. It's well made and he has one of those backing bands that everyone describes as "crack". As is typical, Neil Young doesn't exactly bowl you over with his vocal prowess but he does sound more self-assured and even a bit playful here. And there's a message about accepting people in there somewhere. The US had just elected Ronald Regan into the White House so it was timely to have a blue-collar anthem that tried to reach out across the aisle. (It could easily find a home in our current climate as well with all that culture war nonsense) 

But after a week of listening, I still haven't warmed fully to it nor has it gotten on my nerves to any real extent. It doesn't enhance my appreciation for Young not does it lower my opinion of him. I never need to hear "Hawks and Doves" again nor will I actively try to avoid it. He did some good country-ish recordings in his day (I'd take the decidedly more mellow Comes a Time over the roughhouse country rock of the Hawks & Doves album) often because gentler styles tended to bring out his more reflective side. This is why the "ballads" tend to stand out and why they're the numbers I'll keep revisiting.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Steely Dan: "Hey Nineteen"

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were in their early thirties when Steely Dan's seventh album Gaucho came out. They had previously been on an album-a-year streak from 1972's Can't Buy a Thrill to 1977's Aja but this one took a lot longer to finish. As a result, the duo may well have still been in their twenties when they composed this paean to midlife crisis. The Dan of old would have been happy to make "Hey Nineteen" into an amusing romp but there's real loneliness and desperation. How many fifty-year-old men have left their wives for a pretty young thing only to realise that they, too, got nothing in common. The surprisingly poignant "the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian" section could be about being all alone but even if "Nineteen" is present, it seems likely that this gentleman feels much more of a connection with his selection of narcotics than any human company. Another classic Steely Dan single — and the closest competition for The Specials.

Yazz: "Where Has All the Love Gone?"

5 April 1989

"Not to worry though, she's back on the road to recovery with this absolute corker of a ditty."

— Alex Kadis

Our year in England was moving right along. Though supposedly hardy Canadians, we shivered through a cold, damp winter in our tiny hovel with no central heating. A bandied about trip to Greece over the Easter break never happened, visits from grandparents, my aunt and young cousin and an uncle came and went and we were suddenly left we little to look forward to. My parents began planning our departure in August but this event was still months away and I carried on at school and kept up with the pop charts. Weekend trips became more and more frequent but their appeal began to dwindle in my eyes. That spring we visited Chester, Ipswich, Rochester and Rochester and all I wanted to do in these towns was visit their record shops (which generally involved flicking through singles and LP's in the local Boots, W.H. Smiths and/or Woolworths). The charts had changed as well and some of those mighty acts from the previous autumn were beginning to get left behind.

I had arrived in the UK in August of 1988 while "The Only Way Is Up" by Yazz & The Plastic Population was in control of the Top 40. As I wasn't quite tuned in to what was going on until it began to slip down the hit parade, the song passed me by but there was no escaping Yazz herself. She was tall, lanky and sported short hair that had been bleached white. She may not have looked like a pop star but she sure acted the part and there wasn't anyone else who seemed to be enjoying their time at the top as much as she did. Over the first few months I'd been in Britain, she was a chart fixture: follow-up single "Stand Up for Your Love Rights" was nearly as good as "The Only Way Is Up" and it came up just short of the top spot. She then unveiled a token slow song called "Fine Time" which did well enough, albeit with the gnawing sense that the law of diminishing returns was setting in. So-called "ballads" are often a singer's biggest hit but this wasn't the kind of thing anyone asked for from a dancefloor diva.

It was now spring and it was time for a change. Yazz returned with braids that may or may not have been real and a more girly image. As if addressing that her stature was not what it had been six months earlier, her latest single dealt with a lack of positive vibes. The second summer of love had produced the optimistic "The Only Way Is Up" and then as autumn arrived it was time to "Stand Up for Your Love Rights" but now it was a situation that asked "Where Has All the Love Gone?". Where once she she found hope in spite of not knowing "where our next meal is coming from" now she's found herself in a state of not having enough love to go round.

"Where Has All the Love Gone?" first appeared on Yazz's debut album Wanted. This original version was very much of its time with acid house all over it. The squelching and repetitive piano bits sound really cool now but by the early part of 1989 they had become hackneyed and tired and for the remix they were pushed to the background, giving the song a cleaner pop sound reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys. The "strings" lend the song an elegance that it didn't previously possess and they place it alongside Soul II Soul, who were then on the rise (and who we'll be seeing on this blog before long). Last year's dance music fad could easily be usurped by this year's and it's a credit to Yazz that she had the vocals and the tunes to adapt to new trends — though not for long.

While I wouldn't go quite as far as Alex Kadis in my praise of "Where Has All the Love Gone?", it is by far the rightful Single of the Fortnight. Granted, this issue's ten selections are a mighty poor crop. Inner City's "Ain't Nobody Better" is probably the closest thing to Yazz having some serious competition and it's a passable (if forgettable) let down after the Detroit techno duo's double whammy of fabness "Big Fun" and "Good Life". There's not much else of note with even the usually reliable Wendy & Lisa seemingly content to remain in Prince's shadow with the inconsequential "Lolly Lolly" — but at least they'd be back. U2 and B.B. King? Nah! Simple Minds? Pass! Given the bleak terrain, is it any wonder Kadis is so taken by a decent Yazz record?

This same issue of Smash Hits includes a short write-up in Bitz with a photo of another short-haired young woman and a headline asking, "Is This Woman the New Yazz?" Lisa Stansfield had been a veteran of close to a decade's worth of pop failure (she even had a Single of the Fortnight of her own way back in 1982) but she was now on the cusp of success for allegedly being just like the UK's biggest dance-pop singer of the time. Similarities were obvious (short crops, working with Coldcut, elastic voices) but only one would emerge as a true global star. Kadis is hopeful that Yazz would be on the road to recovery but her stock would plummet soon enough and a return in 1990 didn't amount to much. By then, Stansfield had started to have hits in North America and I began wondering why the Old Yazz wasn't able to be more like the New Yazz.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Debbie Gibson: "Electric Youth"

And speaking of singers whose chart life was on borrowed time. Debbie Gibson had been a talented musician and songwriter and her 1988 album Out of the Blue was only going to be the beginning. A year later and she was "pushing" nineteen and it was clearly time for her to get serious. "Lost in Your Eyes" did well in the US giving her a second number one single but the British failed to be similarly charmed by it the way they had been so taken by "Foolish Beat" a year earlier. So, how about another upbeat youthful singalong, then? Well, "Electric Youth" proved to be even less convincing than her earnest stuff. "Out of the Blue" and "Shake Your Love" had been glorious pop songs but this was just cheesy and cringe-inducing and the sort of thing that would've been more at home back in '86 to soundtrack the horrible American teen show Kids Incorporated. As Kadis says, songs about generations are generally poor and this is no exception. Yet, I liked it back in '89 but listening to it today I have no idea why.

Holly Johnson: "Americanos" / Swing Out Sister: "You on My Mind"

22 March 1989

Welcome to yet another in an on-again, off-again series of pop groups reviewing the singles in Smash Hits and failing to agree on a favourite. We have previously looked at "reviews" from The Communards, Bros and Brother Beyond and now it's the turn of the then-husband and wife pair at the heart of rockers T'Pau, Carol Decker and Ronnie Rogers. The group had been commercially strong in 1987 and '88 with hits like "Heart and Soul" and "China in Your Hands" but their success had begun to taper off more recently. Nevertheless, they were still relevant enough and not quite as down the dumper as they'd eventually be (joining, among others, Bros and Brother Beyond) at the time, with the scruffy Rogers being the butt of some ver Hits "hilarity". With guest reviewers being much more geared towards the pop "bent", it makes for a welcome change to have a rock 'n' roll duo to shake things up. But is that what they managed to accomplish? Were they trying to accomplish anything beyond keeping their names in the kiddy pop mags so as not to tumble off the giddy carousel of pop? In any case, props to Decker and Rodgers for being pop fans first and foremost, rather than tragically pathetic rock 'n' rollers. It's something I've noticed from a lot of the guest reviewers who are closer to the rock end of the scale: a lot of these axe-wielding, scruffy longhairs were much more open-minded than us pop kids would have thought. 

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"This is very much in the same groove as "Love Train". See, what I like is variation — to release a fast one then a slow one."

— Carol Decker

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a lesson in how to be an earth-shakingly huge pop star courtesy of Carol Decker. "Release a fast one then a slow one": I hear that's what George Martin instructed The Beatles to do after "Please Please Me" hit big. The Fab Four went on to follow this 'fast-slow' pattern with "From Me to You", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and so forth. (John Lennon, the heart and soul — see what I did there? — rocker handled the fast stuff while that big girl's blouse McCartney did all those weepie slow songs. Our Carol sure learned from the best.

Kidding aside, Decker has a point. Holly Johnson was a great pop star but one of dubious talents. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's run of chart topping singles — "Relax", "Two Tribes" and "The Power of Love" — remains unassailable but otherwise there's not much else of note. His solo return was a pretty big deal in the early part of 1989 and "Love Train" and "Americanos" were both big hits but the rot would soon reveal itself. I remember that summer getting the latest issue of Smash Hits that had the lyrics to third single "Atomic City" which I still hadn't heard. It didn't take my sister and I long to work out how it would go. And the slower numbers on his solo debut Blast! weren't fooling anyone ("Heaven's Here" was the album's fourth single and it deservedly flopped). Johnson was capable of one type of pop song and that's where it began and ended. (While I quite like "The Power of Love", there are plenty who don't even rate it and it's by far Holly's best attempt at a weepie ballad)

America. (Essex girls called 'Amer-eee-ca') Bloody hell, the British were obsessed with America back in 1989, even though I'm sure plenty of Brits would deny it now. Living in the UK, we were always bemused by how a country with all this great music and literature and musicals and beautiful villages would ever envy the crass Americans but that is precisely the "Great" Britain that we were living in the middle of. Sure, Canada had a feeble culture and a pitiful sense of national self-esteem but what excuse did the British have? When I think back to sad American-themed restaurants, English youths who were into the NFL, stars of Dallas and Dynasty being fawned upon by talk show hosts and a nation that couldn't stop going on about the US I still shudder. The last thing I needed was a pop song that delved into all this nonsense.

"Americanos" (this was before the term came to mean an espresso with hot water added; I live in South Korea where for some reason it is a much more popular drink than a cup of brewed coffee) celebrates Britain's infatuation with the superpower across the water while also sending it up. The video makes it clear that we're dealing with irony here but if you were only listening to it on the radio and/or watching Holly Johnson mime to it on Top of the Pops, it might have been lost on your average listener. I was still just eleven-years-old and I figured he meant every word. I had enjoyed predecessor single "Love Train" but I was naturally cooler towards this one.

In a Britain so enamoured with all things America, we're meant to think that Johnson's lyrics are a celebration of the USA but are they? "Coke, Pepsi and Oreos": a line that sounds awkward set to music and one that kind of gives away the game. Coke and Pepsi are available everywhere and if these admittedly delicious beverages (I'm more of a Pepsi man myself but I wouldn't turn down a Coke) are supposed to be America at its best than it may not be quite as wonderful as we've been led to believe. "Need it or not, that's what you got" takes aim at mass consumerism and the real kicker is the song's best line, "everything's organized from crime to leisure time". 

So, "Americanos" has humour but not quite enough to save it. Johnson had turned himself into much more of a family-friendly entertainer after his provocative Frankie Goes to Hollywood years and he always had an underrated voice but the results are grim. Try as he might, he wasn't able to transcend the tediousness of the British and how they licked the boots of those Yanks. It only made me want to be back in Canada where we loved to hate the Americans better than anyone.

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"I predict it will go to number 14. It's got a number 14 feel to it."

— Ronnie Rogers

Well, how about 28 instead, Ronnie Boy?

So, "Americanos" is all right but nothing like this would-be classic from Swing Out Sister. They had previously found chart fame and fortune with "Breakout", a catchy and stylish record that nicked from "West End Girls". This theft gave people the false impression that they were the next big synth-pop act but their hearts were in classy Bachrach & David numbers, with a bit of Continental pop sprinkled in. Thus, they managed to find a home alongside the likes of Everything but the Girl and The Style Council in what would eventually come to be known as sophisti-pop.

It was a genre that was popular but the rate of success from one group to the next could vary widely. A cynic might suggest that the more accomplished they were, the worse they'd end up doing and they wouldn't be wrong much of the time. Wet Wet Wet, Johnny Hates Jazz and Breathe did well on the charts despite an awful lot of subpar material while critical favourites like Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti often struggled. But with "Breakout" and fellow Top 10 hit "Surrender" and a number one album It's Better to Travel, Swing Out Sister looked to be a rare sophisti-pop group that crafted quality music that also sold. Instead of becoming the next Pet Shop Boys, they started to look more like the next ABC. And they had a pretty sweet single they were about to unveil that was sure to turn heads.

Yeah, about that: "You on My Mind" has all the components of a great pop record yet smacks of being too effortless. I wrote last week about Madonna's "Like a Prayer" being too much of a throwback to sixties' gospel and soul to fit in with the dance trends of '89. This was no bad thing and no one complained at the time but that didn't stop Ms. Ciccone from rewriting history when she came to include a dramatically remixed version of the hit on her greatest hits a year later. Swing Out Sister approached their follow-up to It's Better to Travel in much the same way — albeit without them going back on it later on. A simple yet propulsive bass guides "You on My Mind" and when the horns come in, they're luxuriating in a bygone world of Scott Walker, Françoise Hardy and socialites kicking back on the Mediterranean. The late-eighties had a lot of time for the sixties but only for the hippies; the chic side of the decade that swung could forget it.

The British didn't purchase enough copies to take it to 14 (personally, I reckon it deserved to get to number 7) but the newly two-piece Swing Out Sister of Corinne Drewery and Andy Connell had recorded a firecracker single. Yes, it's middle-of-the-road but what does that matter when you're listening to it and you know full-well that you'll be playing it a second time. Try to get sick of Drewery's pitch perfect vocal delivery or those lush, warming horns. Try not to envy the pair for composing something simple but so effective, the type of thing any budding songwriter would kill to have crafted themselves.

While "Americanos" pretended to be a tribute to the US, "You on My Mind" is much closer to something that pays real homage to the States. It brings to mind the great songwriting teams — in addition to Bachrach and David, there's also Goffin and King and Holland-Dozier-Holland — and those wonderful in-house studio groups in New York, LA, Detroit, Memphis and Muscle Shoals. "You on My Mind" could even have been a part of the Great American Songbook. It passed me by back in 1989 — as singles that only get to 28 will sometimes do — but I have made up for it more recently. I could never be without it.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Transvision Vamp: "Baby I Don't Care"

Decker and Rodgers could have taken up their allotted space here by ripping into Wendy James but they admirably take the high road. They admire her and quite like some of ver Vamp's other stuff but they aren't fussed about what would become their biggest hit and signature number. I respectfully disagree but I'm impressed that they were keen to judge them (and by 'them', I mean 'her') on their (her) musical merits. They don't even bother knocking her lousy voice and to those that do, don't be so misguided. As Decker diplomatically notes, James doesn't have a "vocalist's voice" and I'd say she puts its limits to good use on "Baby I Don't Care". Appropriately, she doesn't give a toss if she sounds strained and the song's message would end up getting lost if Decker herself or a Wilson sister from Heart tried to record it. The best use of bad singing since "With a Little Help from My Friends" — and a killer tune to boot.

Jona Lewie: "Stop the Cavalry"

27 November 1980

"In cavalry terms, it's called reversing the charges."

— Mark Ellen

As chart bronze medalists go, they don't get much bigger than "Stop the Cavalry". 1980's Christmas number one stakes ought to have been a thrilling race with credible challengers Adam & The Ants, Madness and The Police all in contention. (Curiously, both ABBA and Blondie released their swansong imperial period chart toppers — "Super Trouper" and "The Tide Is High" respectively — too early on in the autumn for a serious push come December) Still, none of these groups delivered their best work and it ought to have been left to perennial also-ran Jona Lewie and his poignant wartime anthem to take that year's crown. And it would have had it not been for Mark David Chapman and a children's choir. "Stop the Cavalry" got stuck in the trenches with no chance of further advancement.

In the aftermath of his shocking assassination in New York on December 8, 1980, there was a glut of John Lennon product filling the shelves. While the Americans loyally took the already released "(Just Like) Starting Over" to the top for over a month, the British had a great deal more to choose from. "Starting Over" was already slipping down the charts by the time Lennon was gunned down but it had a head start on its rivals and rebounded by flying straight to the top a week later. Others would join it soon. The week of Christmas there were three Lennon singles in the Top 10 (the other two being the seasonal classic "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and the now often unfairly maligned "Imagine") and it put them in competition with each other. (A week later the three singles remained in their exact same chart spots before "Happy Xmas" managed to climb two places in the first week of 1981, a sign of how high the demand was for Lennon material at this sad point) This left a spot open for Jona Lewie, who unfortunately ended up getting usurped by the St. Winifred's School Choir with their unspeakably awful "There's No One Quite Like Grandma".

Sally Lindsay was a seven-year-old student who sang on the unexpected Christmas number one and who would one day go on to play the character of Shelly on Coronation Street. She has said how bad she felt that they deprived Britain of having Lennon top the charts over the holiday because their record was "crap". But the real shame was that Jona Lewie's vastly superior Christmas record didn't have the legs to beat out both of them.

Lewie was one of those people who had been signed to the Stiff label and, thus, was tied to the pub rock scene. Like of a lot figures attached to it, he was older than your average pop star, having been a veteran of a variety of bands throughout the seventies. The pub rockers had some things in common — they tended to place a premium on songwriting and had their roots in sixties' pop — but the music itself varied greatly from one artist to the next. Lewie had been raised on blues and jazz but he also had talents that gravitated towards folk. Those pub rockers knew their stuff and could play damn-near any style requested of them.

As Mark Ellen notes, Lewie had been left behind as his colleagues ventured beyond the Canvey Island clubs. The charts alluded him until the spring of 1980 when "You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties" gave him a much needed Top 20 hit. Sounding like a much more laid back Ian Dury, he spins a humourous yarn about, er, always being in the kitchen at parties. He's backed by a vaguely reggae beat and plenty of sythny bits which are interesting if not quite engaging. If it happens to be a novelty song then the gag wears thin pretty quickly; if it isn't a novelty then it just seems like a joke and not even a very funny one.

"You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties" gave Lewie a foothold in the hit parade but it's likely that "Stop the Cavalry" would have done well regardless. He may not have written it with Christmas in mind — though isn't it odd how these unintended Yuletide numbers always appear just in time for the big day — but the combination of the season, the song's message, the instrumentation and a tune that thousands of people could get behind ensured that it was going to do very well.

That bit of reggae remains from its predecessor — albeit slowed down and played as if on a pump organ — but the synths are kept in check by what Ellen calls a "sort of Salvation Army backing" of "tubas, drum rolls, sleigh bells, etc.". (Again, why is it that sleigh bells always end up in songs that aren't supposed to be meant to be Christmassy?) While "...Kitchen at Parties" tried too hard to be jolly, there's nothing similar going on here. Lewie plays the part of a simple Tommy and it is his less-than-lettered observations that make the song so charming ("...I'll run for all presidencies": a vow he clearly didn't put much thought into); by contrast, lyrics that hint at much more aware soldier ("while the Tsar and Jim have tea": I feel compelled to look up who this 'Jim' is meant to be but I also feel like I shouldn't have to) distract a bit from the concise narrative. But why nitpick when I can happily listen and sing along?

There's nothing especially brilliant about "Stop the Cavalry" but it's difficult to imagine a Christmas compilation or playlist without it. Yet, there are worries that it may gradually fade from Britain's seasonal canon in favour of olde time American classics by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as well as Mariah Carey's slightly overrated "All I Want for Christmas Is You". The British deal with reality in their Christmas songs, even if it's a fantasy of said reality. It was bad enough when Mark Chapman and some brats from Manchester ruined Jona Lewie's chances of nabbing the Christmas number one but the chances of someone like him getting that close again are growing increasingly remote.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bow Wow Wow: Your Cassette Pet

Ellen describes this eight song mini album (which, strangely, qualified at the time as a single due to only being available on tape) as "Brilliant!" but he neglects to mention the music within, so I chose to disqualify it as a de facto Single of the Fortnight on those grounds. Malcolm McLaren's charges that he nicked from the original Adam & The Ants as well as teenage vocalist Annabelle Lwin were expert at pressing people's buttons as well as keeping a more genuine punk spirit alive, even if it was as contrived as Jimmy Pursey put upon rage. After-all, no one else championed tapes like they did: they released the first cassette single (with a blank second side) and this was in effect a brand new LP available only in this most D.I.Y. of formats. A triumph of packaging and marketing to the extent the music within hardly matters.

Madonna: "Like a Prayer"

8 March 1989

"Madonna returns triumphantly. Gasp in amazement."

— William Shaw

It was in the early part of 1989 that Madonna was back (BACK!!) after what seemed like a lengthy sabbatical of making movies no one liked (or so I've been told: I'm quite sure that I've never seen a single Madonna picture) and breaking up with Sean Penn. The hits from Michael Jackson and George Michael's blockbuster albums were finally beginning to dry up, people were starting to tire of U2, Prince was losing the plot a bit and the time was right for a Madonna comeback. The public was ready to welcome her back with open arms and, as William Shaw implies, she could've offered up a steaming pile of dung for a single and the punters would've been pleased to have her back (BACK!!).

A slew of singles followed over the course of the year but it wouldn't be long before she was back (BACK!!) yet again in 1990. I'm Breathless was a relatively low-key release used to promote the Dick Tracy movie (a rare Madonna vehicle that critics didn't despise) but the "Vogue" single quickly became one of her career defining moments. A long-awaited greatest hits, The Immaculate Collection, was released closer to the end of the year and it was an event. She didn't take the easy road of titling it The Very Best of Madonna or The Singles or something similarly trite and she even took the bold step of leaving some of her biggest hits off of it. (It is probably for this reason that records like "Gambler", "Angel", "Causing a Commotion" and "Dear Jessie" have felt like second division Madonna songs)

Those fifteen established tracks that made the cut for The Immaculate Collection were all remixed. While the likes of "Lucky Star" and "Into the Groove" sounded pretty much the same as they always had, a pair of more recent hits, "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself", were radically different from what they had been like just a year or so earlier. Then, in a bout of collective amnesia, everybody seemed to forget all about the originals and accepted that these revamped cuts had never been changed at all.

Therefore, it comes as something of a shock to discover that the 1989 "Like a Prayer" is an altogether different beast from what ended up on The Immaculate Collection eighteen months later. (We'll get to the sorry state of "Express Yourself"'s status before long) It should be said that as remixes go, it isn't awful. The song is too good for Shep Pettibone or whoever it was to ruin it completely. The acid house-esque squelching suits the tune well enough and there's a nice dramatic build up that is a little harder to identify in the original. Nevertheless, there's far too much hi-hat, the 'Yea! Whoa!' is cliched and the breakdown is utterly pointless.

There's nothing to quibble over with the original single version though. Prince pounds out a mad guitar riff to open before the ethereal sets in. But that soon gets swept away by a chugging and infectious gospel beat. It could almost be a Motown song and Madonna's debt to sixties' black pop is emphasised by quoting from Wilson Pickett ("in the midnight hour, I can feel your power") and Dionne Warwick ("like a little prayer" and "I say a little prayer") Rising to the challenge she set for herself, Madonna sings as beautifully as she ever has. She smartly avoids the vocal tricks that frequently grate (her occasional husky-voiced bursts can be funny but they do her no favours) and manages to employ a fine balance of feeling and joy. She isn't typically regarded as a technically brilliant singer or anything but it would be hard for anyone to top her performance here.

Then there's the choir. I would soon get sick of the use of gospel choirs in pop (it often felt like they were there to provide meaning in otherwise meaningless songs) but "Like a Prayer" shows how effective they can be in the right hands. As I just mentioned, Madonna doesn't have the strongest voice and she rightly stays out of their way perhaps knowing that she'll be exposed in their presence. ("Let the choir sing" is a lyric that doesn't need to be there but it's a good way for a woman with a supposedly gigantic ego to shine the spotlight elsewhere; the 1990 remix undercuts this a bit by featuring the choir prior to Madonna's introduction)

"Like a Prayer" became a massive hit around the world but it doesn't sound like much else from 1989. Being a masterful hybrid of black pop, it has a timelessness about it that you don't come across everyday. Yet, it was too timeless a year on and had to be transformed into a product of the late-eighties to fit better with Madonna's vision for her first greatest hits set. It's not everyday you get someone taking something timeless and willfully choosing to make it dated.

What the revamped version of "Like a Prayer" ended up doing is that it unknowingly opened the door to the second phase of Madonna's career. She was no longer translating the sound of the New York clubs that was in her heart into her records, nor traces of new wave, disco and glam rock she grew up on; from here, she was content to let her producers and remixers take the lead. This being Madonna, it still worked though not on as consistent a basis as in her eighties' imperial period. Ironically, it was in the nineties that people started praising her for being "clever Madonna" but I'd say she was much smarter back before everyone began figuring her out.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Roachford: "Family Man"

It had only been thirty years since the heyday of Chuck Berry, Larry Williams and Little Richard but somewhere along the line the idea of black rock music had become a novelty. Andrew Roachford had as soulful a voice as anyone (and probably still has; he now sings with Mike + The Mechanics which makes me wonder how nice his delivery of "you can whistle as well as you hear" must be) which makes his decision to rock out admirable when he could've easily gone the R&B Romeo route. The power of his voice works well with the rockist sounds of his band but "Family Man" has always felt more like an album cut than single material to me. "Cuddly Toy" had hooks aplenty and it rightfully gave him a memorable Top 5 hit at the start of the year. Its follow-up was more of the same but less immediate and more forgettable. Good stuff but there's a reason it stalled outside the Top 20. And with that, Roachford's career seemed to stall a bit. He's had a fine career but it always seemed like he was going to be bigger. But how about a second opinion?

Elvis Costello: "Veronica"

22 February 1989

"It also boasts the best funny noise on a record this fortnight courtesy of a bloke called Benmont Tench who does his stuff on a "Baldwin spinnet". And you thought it was all done on computers these days."

— Richard Lowe

There are a lot of questions I would love to pose to former Smash Hits writers. I'd ask William Shaw how he managed to make the transition from pop journalism to mystery novelist. I'd ask David Hepworth if having to the review the singles was really the chore that he made it out to be. I'd ask Tom Hibbert why he felt the need to make bloody Limahl his Single of the Fortnight. But most of all, I'd ask Richard Lowe what made him so damn cheerful in this issue.

Lowe was the newly-appointed editor of ver Hits and, not unlike predecessor Barry McIlheney, he chose to do the singles at the start of his reign. And he didn't exactly give himself the easiest bunch of records to sift through. Of the ten he evaluated, seven failed to make the "Fun 40" and two more weren't exactly big chart movers either. He had faded giants (Boy George, Howard Jones), recent fluke number one artists trying to make failed attempts at another big hit (Robin Beck, Gene Pitney), acts that were clinging to Top 10 glories from several months earlier (Breathe, Tanita Tikaram) and a fine if inconsequential live track that no one asked for (Depeche Mode). The one flop of note is "Info Freako" by Jesus Jones, a group that was busy fusing Brummie grebo with the emerging sound that would soon be known as "baggy" or "Madchester" and seemed like an act to keep an eye on (though no one would have predicted just how popular they'd become two years later).

Little of note on offer yet Lowe is smitten with all of it. Breathe's "Don't Tell Me Lies" has a "brilliant singalong chorus" while Howard Jones' "Everlasting Love" sounds "just like his old ones" and has an "infernally catchy chorus". Tanita Tikaram's "World Outside Your Window" is "ace" while Gene Pitney's cover of Roy Orbison's "It's Over" ought to be loved by everyone unless you are in reality a "dead sheep". Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts" is still a "perfectly agreeable tune" which sounds much the same as it did only now it's recorded in a "basketball stadium or something" while Jason Donovan's "Too Many Broken Hearts" (see below) has Lowe proclaiming that the Stock Aitken Waterman writing/production team is the "bee's knees" (one of the things that made Lowe such a perfect Smash Hits writer for this period is that he was equal parts indie rocker and pop kid). Boy George's "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip" is a "cracker", Robin Beck's "Save Up All Your Tears" is "very stirring" and Jesus Jones' "Info Freako" is a "smashing record" that will "definitely frighten your grandmother". Blimey, Lowe's Single of the Fortnight must be the greatest pop song ever written next to all these supposed heavy hitters!

I had never heard of Elvis Costello until reading Lowe's review of "Veronica". Had I been twenty-one at the time, my initial reaction would have been that his name sounded made up (which, of course, is true); instead, I was eleven and figured that he was old. Dead old. Had I been asked about his age in relation to Neil Tennant's, I would've guessed that he was about ten years older than the Pet Shop Boys frontman. Turns out, he's a month and a half younger.

In fairness to my poor judgement, there were plenty of reasons for assuming that he was of advanced years. First, this was Smash Hits I was reading and anyone over twenty-four was basically a cranky old pensioner in their eyes. Lowe mentions that Costello "has been knocking around for donkeys' years" and that he was now working alongside Paul McCartney ("the legendary Fab Macca out of the so-called "Beatles"", as he mysteriously notes). Then there's the fact that this latest single happened to be about an old lady slipping into senility, hardly the subject matter for youngish pop types. The accompanying photo one the singles page is of a unsmiling man who looks well into middle age. Yeah, this Elvis Costello bloke must've been ancient — or so I thought.

In the first ten years of his recording career, Elvis Costello released eleven albums. Artists tended to be more prolific back then but this is still an impressive feat. In both 1981 (with Trust and Almost Blue) and 1986 (King of America, Blood & Chocolate) he put out a pair of LP's and 1985 would be the only year he wouldn't put out at least one album. But such creative hot streaks don't last and Costello was going to have to take his feet off the gas at some point. Seemingly cut from the same cloth as Bob Dylan, David Bowie and, yes, Paul McCartney, he was never the same once he began to slow down.

"Veronica" was the first single taken from Spike, Costello's first album since Blood & Chocolate. Working with McCartney paid off for both of them as they also wrote songs that would appear on Macca's Flowers in the Dirt, released later on in 1989. Notably, these were their first LP's recorded in the CD era and it shows. Spike in particular is guilty of filling up as much compact disc space as possible, with a generous fifteen tracks and over an hour of listening "pleasure". (In spite Lowe's love for "Veronica", he was none-too-thrilled by the album as a whole in a review the following fortnight; if anything, the score he gives is inflated given his critique) It also suffers from being recorded in a multitude of studios in Britain and America with a vast selection of session musicians and special guests. This disparity makes Spike an uncharacteristically generic record. There's no attempt at the sort of album unity he managed with the soul/Motown influenced Get Happy!! or the country-roots romp King of America. Not only are deep cuts "God's Comic" and "Chewing Gum" both subpar songs for him but the swampy, Bayou rock of the former and the Celtic folk of the latter ensures that they aren't even able to mesh well. 

"Veronica" is one of the better songs on the album but it still has its flaws. For whatever reason, he chose not to record it in the UK sessions with McCartney, Nick Lowe and Chrissie Hynde but cut it instead in Hollywood with a large group that included Mitchell Froom, Jim Keltner and Roger McGuinn, as well as then-regular collaborators T-Bone Burnett and Cait O'Riordan of The Pogues. Costello had some talented folk working with him but it was a lineup that needed paring down. A basic quartet or quintet could have done a much more efficient job of recording a song like "Veronica". Kettle drums? Those weedy (possibly synthesized) "Beatlesque" trumpet bits? That "Baldwin spinnet" [sic] thing?

Costello's singing doesn't really suit the song's subject matter either. While often spitting out (in Lowe's words) lyrical "tongue-twisters" in the vein of "Love for Tender" or "Tokyo Storm Warning", he could often utilize his strained voice to a more sensitive effect on the likes of "Allison" and "Little Angel" but he takes the lightning-fast spittle approach on "Veronica" as if covering up the narrative of an elderly woman with dementia in order to appeal to younger listeners. If this was his intention then it worked as it gave him sizable American hit and even took him to the top of the US Alternative Rock charts. It was just a minor success in the UK, however, and it quickly became forgotten in his homeland. Elvis Costello wrote and performed many stronger songs in the previous decade than this — and he would even compose a few more in the coming decades.

The Costello-McCartney pairing didn't prove to be as fruitful as promised. A lot of people have speculated that Macca was interested in finding a talent and personality not dissimilar to John Lennon but for whatever reason the two didn't work well. They didn't appear to fully embrace their team-up and I wonder if that's what really held them back. Instead of Spike and Flowering in the Dirt as separate releases, there should have been a cohesive album combining to the two. But this only aids Costello's case: McCartney's album is the stronger of the two and proved to be his best LP since Tug of War. The gradual rehabilitation of Macca was beginning while Elvis Costello began to fade from relevance in the nineties. No wonder he seemed so old.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Jason Donovan: "Too Many Broken Hearts"

"Jason sings it perfectly adequately," enthuses Lowe; I wonder if this was meant to be funny. Jason Donovan struggled through the horrible "Nothing Can Divide Us" and managed to be badly out-sung by Kylie Minogue — not a strong vocalist herself — on the duet "Especially for You" so I suppose doing the job "perfectly adequately" is an achievement of sorts. Donovan had been a throw in pop star up until this point (Kylie was doing just fine so why not her male counterpart?) but "Too Many Broken Hearts" marks territory of his own. Perhaps acknowledging this, Stock Aitken Waterman inserted a guitar "lick" onto the beginning — either that or they were trying to mask what was becoming formulaic pablum. Yet, what did it matter? Jase looked great, he seemed to be enjoying every second of his life and everyone either looked up to him or wanted to go to bed with him. Who needs to be able to sing if you've got all that?