17 February 1993 (with plenty of spillover here)
— Tony Mortimer
It could have been the circles I travelled in at the time but 1993 felt like a year in which the Venn diagram of generational music tastes spilled over a great deal. Of course, in a year with Nirvana's In Utero and Dr Dre's The Chronic, there was still plenty of pop that didn't crossover but they were starting to seem like the exceptions to the rule rather than the rule itself. The mainstream was trying to suck in as many people as possible — and all they had to do was be as bland and formulaic as pop could be capable of.
One of the big albums of the era was Diva by Annie Lennox. It came out in 1992 but it seemed to make a greater impression a year later. Some kids bought it, others borrowed it from their parents and then there was the Margach household which was free of it on any format — but it was this two-pronged Boomers/Xer's approach that helped give it a prolonged chart stay. My family wasn't so fortunate when it came to Genesis. 1991's We Can't Dance brought the former pro rock giants back in a big way, especially in my native Canada. I never gave serious thought to buying anything of their's but I didn't hold them in any contempt either. Then, during the '92 Christmas break, a friend in Britain sent me a copy of The Way We Walk, Vol.1: The Shorts, a live album of their hits from the past six years or so. I didn't mind it so much even if there was the gnawing feeling that this was middle-class, middle-age music that I should be keeping my distance from. (My two big albums of the period were The Clash's London Calling, which made me feel like I ought to be going the rebellious route — even though I wasn't interested in doing so — and the Barenaked Ladies' Gordon, the sort of vaguely naughty Canadian comedy pop which had the pretense of having indie cred but which appealed to older generations because of their zaniness and cornball humour)
People like Dina Carroll never seem to go out of fashion. Perhaps that's why they come and go so easily since there's always someone else to take their place, no matter how promising they seem or how many people of influence like Tony Mortimer predict how "massive" they'll become. And they often aren't wrong either. As many British artists of the nineties regardless of genre had begun to discover, American success proved elusive but she had some hits in the UK and around Europe and I'm sure she can pop up on a stupid reality TV show to this day and cause some buzz. Yet, I suspect Mortimer figured she'd be bigger than someone who would go on to rack up four Top 10 hits plus ten more spread throughout the Top 40.
Still, going only by singles success can be deceiving. Her smooth MOR sound wasn't initially being picked up by curious kids on CD single or cassingle but by grownups purchasing her album So Close. Though not quite a number one, it debuted in the runner-up spot and then remained in the LP charts for the next year and beyond. By the time she had become a "proper" pop star with the Top 5 hits "Don't Be a Stranger" and the Andrew Lloyd Weber penned "The Perfect Year", So Close was back at number two, held off only by the similarly cross-generational Bryan Adams and his best of So Far So Good. In the short-term, Mortimer was correct but this proved to be a high point she couldn't quite get back to.
In the meantime, Dina Carroll was one of those stars who would only place modestly in the singles charts while reigning supreme on the album listings. Not unlike Sting who never did much in the Top 40 after the demise of The Police and who was also doing very well for himself in 1993 with his Ten Summoner's Tales album. Kids, such as myself, really liked "Fields of Gold" but we weren't buying it. We didn't need to since so many mums and dads had already picked it up. (Though not in my case; that same friend who sent me the Genesis live album gave me a copy on cassette that summer when he came to visit) "This Time" sounds like it has big hit written all over it but it only managed to bounce around the Top 30 for three weeks until it fell out of the charts. Not much of a hit but it was building on the foundation of previous singles which also placed respectably. The parents weren't going to be buying any of these singles, they were just going to wait for the album. (Also, I can't be bothered to look it up but I get the feeling that So Close was the sort of album that kids were gifting their mums, either for birthdays, the following Christmas or that spring for Mothering Sunday)
I would argue that "This Time" is a woeful excuse for Single of the Fortnight Best New Single but it doesn't even seem worth the effort to try. It takes a hell of a torch song to make my insides crumble to pieces and this isn't one of them. Nevertheless, it passes the time pleasantly enough: I don't feel resentful or even bored when it's on and then I can happily forget all about it as soon as it's done. When people talk about disposable pop I'm not sure they're necessarily alluding to a record like this but that's precisely what it is.
The record, cassette and CD collections of our parents used to be plundered for The Beatles, a band who I happened to become seriously interested in back in 1993. But a lot of people's folks were still buying up albums well into the nineties and they weren't just re-purchasing old favourites on the still new and novel compact disc format. Older artists were back in '93 and some were even doing well for themselves. (Mind you, Paul McCartney wasn't one of them: his album Off the Ground is perhaps his weakest since Back to the Egg; to be fair, he hasn't made a poor album since) There were also a number of younger acts with competent songwriters and producers in their corners and studio pros and management and all that good stuff to make well-made and forgettable recordings. They get on the radio and you either listen to it and hopefully get into the artist in question or you tune it out and get on with your life. And if you miss out on someone like Dina Carroll then there's always going to be someone else just like her coming right around the corner.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Ugly Kid Joe: "Cats in the Cradle"
Since we're on the subject of music for Baby Boomers that was also intended to appeal to Generation X, why don't we discuss how there were so many wretched metal bands who chose to cover classics from the sixties and seventies. Tesla did a crappy version of the Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" and Guns N' Roses did "Live and Let Die" and The Lemonheads (who weren't metal but probably liked it just to be ironic because that's the sort of dipshits they were) gave us a cover of "Mrs. Robinson" which no one wanted. (Also, wasn't metal supposed to be dead by this point? It's like grunge never happened) Ugly Kid Joe just about did comedy on "Everything About You" but getting all dark and serious was well above their pay grade. Yet, the public liked it enough to give them a second hit that people might just about remember them for. It was around this time that my mum began to scoff at updated covers and remark that people just can't write their own hits anymore. She may have had a point.
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