— Patsy Kensit
A bit of a "swizz" this fortnight as Patsy Kensit chose to abuse her position as guest critic by sneaking a record that isn't eligible in to be her Single of the Fortnight. This is pointed out by Smash Hits editors but the actress/singer/giant diva batted her eyes and got her way — or this is how I imagine it occurring. Granted, I was just eleven back in 1988 but if Patsy Kensit was going to sneak a usurper into the batch of new releases, I wouldn't have been the one to stop her.
Oddly, though, if you didn't know any better, you might not necessarily assume "Englishman in New York" to be her favourite. Sure, she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else here (I get the feeling she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else in the entire history of mankind) but the record itself? I'm not so sure. The fact that she decided it was going to be her favourite before she even listened to it says it all and her praise for the single is positive but not overwhelmingly so. The bulk of her relatively lengthy review is saved for her admiration for Sting and to fill the readers in on the song's subject matter, the transplanted gadabout with a craving for the spotlight Quentin Crisp. Otherwise, Kensit loves it because it's by Sting and she even asks the good people at Smash Hits if they would be able to arrange a meeting. (I wonder if they ever did meet; how would Sting have taken it when she told him that she loves his songs because he made them?)
Of course, the record had already been reviewed so we also have the observations of Tom Hibbert from four weeks' earlier to go by. Sadly, he doesn't offer much either, find it a boring single and giving off vibes that it's been a good while since he had much regard for the Stinger. But this is Hibs and he still has a surprise for the reader: mentioning that its first verse is about "how awful it is for English folk to partake of an American breakfast", he goes on to admit that the Yanks "do bacon much more crispily and tastily than anything we can expect in a cafe over here". And there I was thinking that a cornerstone of being British is pretending to love that sad item that the Americans call "Canadian bacon" (which no one in Canada actually consumes).
The British have been transplanting themselves to the United States for centuries. It isn't the most radical cultural divide people have crossed although you'd never know it by the way they describe being a fish out of water in the New World. That's what we have at the beginning of "Englishman in New York" ("I don't take coffee, I take tea my dear...": one line in and there's so much to unpack; do the English 'take' their hot drinks rather than 'drink' them? It's better to address a waitress as 'dear' rather than 'sweetheart', right?); as it moves forward, it's about feeling accepted in a place we may not belong. Crisp had made his name as a raconteur but it always bothered him that his homosexuality had never been accepted in his homeland (strange it irked him so much considering he would one day speak out against gay rights); his fondness for makeup and his flamboyance were peculiarities that New Yorkers made note of but he was content that people seemed to like him for who he was. While Sting celebrates this side of Gotham, it is worth noting that John Lennon was extolling that virtues of the city that left him alone just two days before a psychopath shot him dead. The Korean-born writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was raped and murdered in New York just a week after her extraordinary memoir Dictee had been published. Pie-eyed outsiders who ❤ NY seldom consider the city's dark side.
Kensit expresses displeasure that Sting's previous single ("We'll Be Together") failed to be a hit single but at least she was prepared for this one to do even worse. The bulk of Sting's post-Police 45's were flops even as his albums still did well. Current release ...Nothing Like the Sun had been a chart topper in the autumn of 1987 despite failing to produce a single top 40 hit. Fans of his who may have bought "Message in a Bottle" or "Walking on the Moon" back in the day were now getting older and, assuming they were still sticking around, were probably more inclined towards a Sting long player than one of his singles, while the kids probably weren't interested in such stuff. This trend would largely continue with even the surefire megahit "Fields of Gold" from 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales only seeing modest top 20 action. It was only when he descended into film soundtrack hell with the abominable "All for Love" with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart that his British chart fortunes were revived.
Nevertheless, "Englishman in New York" would eventually find its way into the UK charts after Dutch DJ Ben Liebrand remixed it in 1990. Songs revamped by boffins usually lose some of their original spark but the Dutch producer actually made this record better, adding next to no sampled cliches and pushing Branford Marsalis' soprano sax to the background where it belongs. The track lends itself to remixing, especially at 2:34 when the jazz instrumental jazz ("the kind of thing stuck over the slapstick passages of some Woody Allen "movie"", reckons Hibs) gives way to a percussion breakdown, which Liebrand chose to open his version. It isn't hugely different but the little things are improved upon and that's what makes it the preferred record.
This spruced up "Englishman" came out a few months' ahead of Sting's follow up album The Soul Cages and it might be a song that fits in better with his more expressive works in the nineties. Finally free from trying to solve the world's problems in song (not always a bad thing, mind you), Gordon Sumner became a much more soulful songwriter as his forties approached. His work was still hit-and-miss but "All This Time" and "Shape of My Heart" and, yes, "Fields of Gold" are some of the finest songs he's ever written. Sting would claim that "Englishman" had been half about Crisp and half about himself and this was a step in the right direction: it wouldn't be long and he'd be writing all about himself — at least some of the time.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
Morrissey: "Suedehead"
Possibly the rightful SOTF — or it certainly would be if I had had anything to say about it. Morrissey hasn't been particularly relevant this century and his solo career has been extremely spotty but his debut post-Smiths effort is still a blinder, a (misplaced) sign that he didn't need his old band. In fact, his first three singles rival anything The Smiths did and his first solo album was pretty good too. Obviously, they could have recorded a song like "Suedehead" but it's all the more important that he did it himself (along with some not untalented people he chose to work with). Sting went solo in the mid-eighties and did pretty well for himself but he could never quite shake The Police; Moz looked to be swiftly ridding himself of the Johnny Marr shackles as his old band was being left behind. It could never last.
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