Thursday 30 December 2021

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


"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.

Wednesday 22 December 2021

Neneh Cherry: "Manchild"


"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.

Wednesday 15 December 2021

Chaka Khan: "I'm Every Woman"


""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

Saturday 11 December 2021

Neil Young: "Hawks and Doves"


"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.

Wednesday 8 December 2021

Yazz: "Where Has All the Love Gone?"


"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.

Wednesday 1 December 2021

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


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.

Eternal: "Just a Step from Heaven"

13 April 1994 "We've probably lost them to America but Eternal are a jewel well worth keeping." — Mark Frith A look at the Bil...