— Chris Heath
I had now been in the UK for two months. I had by this point adjusted well enough to my new school, Mayflower Comprehensive in Billericay. I had quickly sussed that Drama was my favourite class, Religious Studies was somehow worse than I'd been expecting and Information Processing was useless without computers. I did really well in French and Geography, I sucked at Art and General Science and was just sort of all right in everything else. Along the way, I picked up a group of friends who I remained tight with for the rest of the year and had even master tying the tie I was required to wear every day. Every Friday my dad (a Maths teacher at Mayflower) gave me a pound to buy lunch and I typically used it on a slice of pizza, chips and an iced bun, washed down with something approximating cola from a machine. I missed Canada but that longing to be back was fading.
At home I began watching Grange Hill, Neighbours and Top of the Pops but the Saturday morning telly with all the music-focused programming would be something I would only know of rather than get into fully since we were going away almost every weekend. Overnight trips weren't quite a part of our routine (something that would begin just a few days after this issue of Smash Hits came out when we took the train to Scotland for half-term break with my grandparents who were visiting; I spent much of the journey up to Edinburgh engrossed in this very issue which my sister was already finished with) but we were already into day trips into London as well as visits to Colchester, Oxford, Southend and some hit-and-miss Essex villages. Getting away from out depressing little hovel as much as possible was a priority but I wish it hadn't been at the expense of just a little bit more telly.
When in the room I shared with my sister, I was happiest reading Smash Hits (or the pop bits of my sister's Just Seventeen mags) dreaming about one day forming a group of my own and listening to Radio 1's Sunday evening Top 40 countdown with Bruno Brookes. It was at this time that I began to experience my first (and strongest) bout of pop fandom rage. Not everyone seemed to share my opinion that Kylie Minogue's latest single, "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", was the greatest song in the world and I couldn't take it. For three consecutive Sundays I sat by the radio awaiting the results and for three consecutive Sundays I ended up bitterly disappointed. Enya's "Orinoco Flow" (my bête noire) didn't lodge itself at the top spot for long but it was nevertheless painful to be me for the better part of a month. Kylie then began to fade (the forgettable other side of the single's double-A "Made in Heaven" did "Je ne sais pas pourquoi" no favours) and my anger shifted to Robin Beck (and with good reason), Yazz and other usurpers. A pop injustice had occurred!
Blame? Oh there was a fair amount of it to go around. I thought people were stupid for buying Enya's dreadful record and not picking up Kylie's instead (this ire was not directed in part at myself since I didn't vote with my wallet, records being embargoed from out house because we didn't have a record player — at least not yet). I got annoyed whenever they'd play the naff video for "Orinioco Flow" on TV. But I reserved most of my wrath for Chris Heath for inexplicably trashing what I reckoned to be the best single I'd ever heard. His "clumsy, plodding ballad" was something that had gripped my eleven-year-old heartstrings. He found it "horribly dull" but I couldn't get enough of it. And I was certain that there were pop kids out there who'd refrained from buying it because some know-it-all writing in Smash Hits told them that it would be a waste of their hard "earned" bob.
(I would remain furious with Heath throughout the course of November but I eventually got over it. He soon became one of my favourite Smash Hits writers and I would eventually read his very fine books Pet Shop Boys, Literally and Pet Shop Boys Versus America, a pair of works that expertly dissect the the genius, insights and grumpiness of my favourite group)
What I didn't do, however, was target my derision in the direction of Brother Beyond, the band behind Heath's Single of the Fortnight. A Stock Aitken Waterman composition just like "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", it followed the near-number one success of "The Harder I Try", a single that was peaking two months' earlier when I arrived in the UK. It wouldn't be for a few weeks that I started following the charts and if I did hear the 'Yond's breakthrough hit it meant nothing to me. Thus, "He Ain't No Competition" became my introduction to the one legitimate alternative to Bros. And I was impressed — though not as much as my sister as it quickly supplanted Erasure's "A Little Respect" as her favourite song. (She never took to Kylie) It was only when I finally heard "The Harder I Try" proper on a compilation album that I got for Christmas that I realised that their second hit wasn't quite as good as their first and that maybe, just maybe, it had rode its coattails into the Top 10.
Opening with a sitar (an instrument that had a brief resurgence in British pop near the end of 1988: Hue & Cry also used one on their near-hit "Ordinary Angel") and a quick instrumental sneak peak of the chorus (a SAW trademark), "He Ain't No Competition" is from the off a much faster-paced number than its predecessor. Indeed, one of the charms of "The Harder I Try" was in its soulful, laid-back sound that flirts with lovers rock. 'Yond members Carl Fysh and David White might have even written it themselves; its follow-up has more in common with SAW, seemingly the sort of thing they had lying around in need of an artist or group to give it a good home. It resembles one the deep cuts on the second side of Kylie's debut album, such as "I Miss You", a track that Heath wishes had been the single instead of "Je ne sais pas pourquoi".
Nathan Moore got to play the vulnerable lad who made a million girls cry on "The Harder I Try" but his overlooked talents as a vocalist aren't needed as much here. There are verses where he gets to play the feeble little lamb but the chorus is all about strutting. Fair enough, he was a handsome guy with a champagne smile who clearly enjoyed the adulation of pop life and his confident vocals reflect this. It's likely that Pete Waterman had designs on Moore playing the roll of the teen heart throb even though this had already been achieved. Waterman was beginning to see himself as a pop svengali who molded his stars to suit his vision but he should have remained on the course previously set when SAW catered to the talents of their acts rather than the opposite. "The Harder I Try" had been tailored to Brother Beyond; "He Ain't No Competition" would be the vision that Waterman had for them. The fact that it's still a pretty good record is indicative of SAW not having quite lost their grip though it wouldn't be long.
Brother Beyond would move away from SAW following "He Ain't No Competition". Their debut album Get Even would be revamped to include their two Top 10 hits and would get a very favourable review in Smash Hits a month later. In the meantime, ver Hits also gave them that year's Most Promising New Group award (that the fans may not have actually voted on). Things were looking up for a band that hadn't had much luck until that summer. Riding the wave of their chart success, the 'Yond started off 1989 with their first self-penned hit "Be My Twin" (remixed to sound as much like a SAW number as possible) but the law of diminishing returns was already starting to affect them. A fourth hit, a remix of old flop "Can You Keep a Secret?" failed to reach the Top 20 and the bloom was off the rose. They would end the year outside the hit parade, right back where they had been at the beginning of '88.
The hits dwindled (though they did manage to fluke an American hit in 1990 with "The Girl I Used to Know", a better song than most of their non-SAW material) but Brother Beyond made the most of their fleeting time near the top.They did the media rounds, were always on the telly (probably even more than I was aware since, as I already said, I seldom got the chance to enjoy the Saturday pop shows) and were up for the Smash Hits program. They would even give reviewing the singles a go — and they even managed to do so without making this young pop kid cross.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
INXS: "Need You Tonight"
I still quite like both SAW contributions this fortnight but neither of them comes remotely close to this re-release of "Need You Tonight", a global smash in 1987 that the UK initially chose to spurn for some crazy reason. Subsequent singles "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart" managed to nab Top 30 spots — that were still way lower than they should been — so their sole American chart topper got a second chance a year on from its previous failure. This time, the British public almost made up for the injustice by taking it all the way to number two, a triumph that was dulled by finishing behind the horrible Coke-shilling "The First Time" by Robin Beck. Still, it got people talking and INXS would eventually become bigger in the UK than across the Atlantic. Sexy, unsettling, irresistible and one of those songs that cleverly manages to sound fresh in spite of how derivative the Aussies were. One of the singles of the year, just as it had been in '87. Amazingly, it was their only Top Ten hit in Britain.
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