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 Billboard Hot 100 for the week of April 13, 1994 gives an indication of how British artists were doing on the other side of the Atlantic. Starting down at the bottom, there's either I to I or 1 to 1 with "The Right Thing" which was taken from the Richard Curtis rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral. I have seen this movie many, many times over the years and I have no memory of this song. Perhaps it's "featured" in the closing credits as the names of various "key grips" are mentioned but I'd have to check on that. Also, I'm not completely sure this I to I group is even British though I'm inclined to include them anyway.

Moving up into the seventies we find James with "Laid". I thought it had been a hit earlier in the year and, given the amount of radio play it got at the time, I would've figured it did better than its modest sixty-one peak. Then, there's the Brand New Heavies who I'm a bit surprised to encounter on here. "Dream on, Dreamer" is a terrific song but it seems rather out of step with all that post-grunge, frat boy indie rock and formulaic R&B which dominated the US at the time. Rod Stewart is one step up on ver Heavies with a single and don't recall and have no interest in investigating. For spite.

Heading up the Top 60 is Morrissey with "The More You Ignore Me the Closer I Get" which surprised many by doing as well as it did. Juliet Roberts is a few spots higher than Moz, then there's Gabrielle's "Dreams", Rod the Bod and Sting in their horrible team up with Bryan Adams from some stupid movie and Phil Collins making a final push for relevancy before we get to the highest placing hit by a UK act. And look who it is: Eternal with "Stay" at number thirty-three. Yes, Mark Frith appears to be correct, the Americans were about to steal them away.

I think that makes ten UK singles on the Hot 100 that week. A tenth of the chart but nothing in the Top 30. The bulk of these are songs few in North America remember and some they probably weren't even aware of at the time. I personally have no memory of Eternal being on the charts in North America but I do recall the quartet appearing on MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent to MTV. Easther, Kéllé, Louise and Vernie looked delighted to be living their lives as they answered the VJs questions. What I wasn't to know was that this interview was probably the only one they gave during their promotional trip across the Atlantic that didn't leave a sour taste in their mouths.

While the picture painted by longtime Hits writer Alex Kadis is of the foursome enjoying themselves on their first promotional tour of the US, the group would later admit that the Americans didn't quite know what to make of them. Being a multi-racial vocal group, it was said that black radio stations tended to focus on their questions on Easther, Kéllé and Vernie while the white pop stations would zero in on Louise. Hard to imagine this happening to Hootie & The Blowfish around the same time. This schism isn't discussed by Kadis and indeed it seems like music industry types described in the piece treated them respectfully and didn't even seem surprised by their unusual black-white dynamic. But this sunny account contrasts with that of Q's Robert Yates which has less of the faint whiff of PR spin to it.

Mark Frith had already made an Eternal record his Best New Single at the start of 1994 and he's even more impressed with "Just a Step from Heaven". Admitting it is more of a grower than their previous hits, he nevertheless feels it has "the best of both" in one cracking song. I can't agree. It's a perfectly fine third single from their Always and Forever album but it doesn't come close to "Stay" or "Save Our Love" — and this isn't a knock against it. There's plenty to dig in this one but the effortless pop hooks just aren't present to the same extent. The first two hits had videos but didn't even need them; in the case of "Just a Step..." it's the promo that is the biggest take away.

With the outlook on their promotional jaunt being mostly positive, it must have seemed like the British were indeed about to "los[e] them to America". Yet, the encouraging chart performance of "Stay" wouldn't be repeated even by the equally wonderful "Save Our Love". The video for "Just a Step from Heaven" had the glitzy US production values but it did little to aid their cause Stateside. No doubt appearing on MTV and Arsenio Hall and Entertainment Tonight and at the Soul Train Awards did the them a world of good but they were as good as forgotten by the time they got back to Britain. 

The real legacy of their trip to America was that it proved to be the first step towards Louise's departure just a year later. In turn, this would lead to the now trio Eternal becoming a boring and predictable R&B act while Louise proved to be out of her depth as a pop diva. They all did pretty well for themselves but there was always the feeling that they had been better off as a foursome. The group's manager Denis Ingoldsby predicted four potentially great solo careers for his charges ("You see, we've already got our Madonna in Louise," the pop svengali told Q. "Vernie can be Anita Baker, Kéllé can be Janet Jackson, Easther can be Whitney.") but the emphasis — especially at what was still a very early stage — should have been on continuing to focus on what made Eternal special. Even a rum old thing like "Just a Step from Heaven" was quite brilliant in the context of the '94 pop charts. They had plenty to work with whether America cared to know or not.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Crash Test Dummies: "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm"

Conventional wisdom states that everyone loved the global breakthrough smash for Crash Test Dummies up until the point that they suddenly didn't. Reviews were positive and it was played to death on radio stations all over the place. Then, it began appearing on Worst Songs Ever and Most Annoying Hits lists. (The Dummies would even pop up on Worst Bands of All-Time surveys which had clearly been put together by people who never bothered listening to anything else they ever recorded) Yet, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" had its detractors even from its earliest days. Frith is none too impressed by it ("being a Grandad is all about this" reckons the same bloke who one gave his seal of approval to old farts in waiting River City People) and it proved to be only a modest hit in their native Canada where their countrymen had far more time for fellow God Shuffled His Feet singles "Swimming in Your Ocean" and the masterful "Afternoons and Coffeespoons". As far as it stood with me, I found it to be a lesser "Superman's Song", the group's Canadian Top 5 hit from the summer of 1991. They proved they could make novelty songs sound poignant but they weren't up to repeating the trick.

C.O.D.: "In the Bottle"

12 May 1983

"The week's most modern dance sound."

— Neil Tennant

As has been discussed on here before, Neil Tennant was busy getting his musical aspirations in order while also toiling away the Hits. (I was going to say he was doing so in his space time but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the two tasks crossed over quite a bit) Pop dominance wasn't the forefront of his mind as this early stage, however; what he and partner Chris Lowe envisioned was to cut a single in the States that would only be available on import in the shops in Britain. With the balance of power in the hands of the big record labels at the expense of the indies and the spread of HMV, Tower Records and the Virgin Megastores in the nineties, imported music became easier to get but it still retained a certain cachet, if only to get a shrink-wrapped compact disc with an IMPORT sticker emblazoned on it. Nevertheless, it's not quite the same as poking around in a dusty old shop and coming across a record that somehow worked its way over the Atlantic or ordering the latest 12" dance sensation from an obscure enthusiast label (or so I hear, having never done so myself).

Sigh, another Tennant review, another piece all about the Pet Shop Boys. Readers of this blog will doubtless be wondering if I have nothing else of note to say about eighties' dance music and they're not wrong. If anything, this project has only upped my appreciation of ver Pet Shops as a pair who managed to cram the best bits of disco, hip-hop and synth-pop into their sound while deftly avoiding the pitfalls of their some of their forefathers. In short, what got them out of the specialty import shops and into every Our Price, Boots, WH Smith's and Woolworth's. In terms of song structure, no one influenced them more than Bobby O; as far as sampled sound effects go, we may look no further than C.O.D. Indeed, the first fifty-or-so seconds of "In the Bottle" practically sound like an awkward instrumental megamix of songs from the first Pet Shops album Please as well as some of its accompanying B-sides.

Where they don't work so well is on "In the Bottle" itself. A cover of the Gil Scott-Heron number from his Winter in America album about rampant alcoholism in the black community, it trades in the lush R & B groove and soaring flute of the original in favour of some hard-edge breakbeats (as was the style of the time). Scott-Heron's relaxed, effortless vocal, too, is dropped with preference on an angry rap. Choices made: nuance loses out but I can definitely see opting for a bitter take on the themes contained in this song. 

It's in the production of lead C.O.D.'er Paul A. Rodriguez and boffin Man Parrish where it really comes apart. Aside from having a song about the ill-effects of boozing being lost on your average clubber and/or breakdancer, there's a pointlessness of putting together a song with such an important message only for much of it to be drowned out by this all-you-can-eat buffet of effects. It's as if Rodriguez and Parrish knew all about crafting music to be danced to but hadn't the faintest idea about making pop records for the simple pleasure of listening. 

Cue Tennant and Lowe. While the pair had no more charisma than the likes of Bobby O or John "Jellybean" Benitez (and less so than dance groups like Shalamar, The S.O.S. Band and, yes, even C.O.D.), they weren't as married to the dancefloor as many of the artists who were helping to pave the way for them. As a lonely boy — with no strength, with no joy — Tennant understood the angst-ridden impulse to consume music in solitude. One should be able dance to great pop but one shouldn't be obligated to do so. Only a select number of individuals in the early eighties seemed aware of this state. The struggling songwriting/production team of Stock Aitken Waterman proved up for the challenge and so did a young singer from Michigan who went by the mononym of Madonna. These three would prove to be the future of dance pop and we were all the better for it.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

XTC: "Great Fire"

When it comes to great songs that somehow missed the charts, there isn't a greater pop injustice than that of "Great Fire". Phil Sutcliffe in Q once described it as "Strawberry Fields Forever meeting Penny Lane halfway" and he's correct. Tennant claims it's the first XTC single "in a long while" but a year or so isn't that long a hiatus, is it? Coming off the uneven and overrated English Settlement album, transitional release Mummer looks ahead to the Industrial Revolution pop-rock of The Big Express, the pastoral beauty of masterpiece Skylarking and even to the acid rock pomp of alter-ego The Dukes of Stratosphear, which is where "Great Fire" fits in. It even acts as something of a look back on Andy Partridge's roots as a Beatles and Beach Boys-obsessed youth. (Bassist Colin Moulding's contributions are a similar rewind albeit more in the direction of his love of progressive rock) Not on his high horse for once, Partridge takes to the subject of arson and uses it to delve into love and his neurotic imagination. Tennant is impressed and I suspect he actually prefers listening to it over "In the Bottle". (He's similarly taken with Wham!'s "Bad Boys" as well as a few others this fortnight: the pop will out) Either that or I'm projecting my own immense adoration of this extraordinary tune on to a songwriter I admire just as much. It's probably the latter if I'm being honest.

(Click here to see my original review)

Prince: "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"

30 March 1994

"Squiggle — you're a genius."

— Mark Sutherland

That's right, Squiggle. Not The Artist Formerly Known as Prince or The Artist or TAFKAP but Squiggle. Sure, I suppose the staff at ver Hits could've knocked their heads together until they came up with something a little wittier but there's something to be said for the first thought being the one to go with. Squiggle: it really takes the air out of the tires of a singer with an overinflated sense of self-importance.

It was almost easy to forget that old Squigs was as prolific a recording artist as ever what with his name change and all. In '92 Prince was still a major pop star with the Diamonds & Pearls album and its accompanying singles (an oddity here was that its lower charting hits — the title track, "Money Don't Matter 2 Night", "Thunder" — were all vastly superior to Top 10 smashes "Gett Off" and "Cream"); a year later and all anyone seemed to discuss in relation to him was his new, unpronounceable name. Though the stunt earned him plenty of publicity, Squiggly Wiggly no longer seemed especially relevant when it came to his music.

But Rip, Squig + Panic had plenty left in him. While it's true that his eighties' peak couldn't be touched, it's a credit to the man that he never fell off to any noticeable degree. As thoroughly unnecessary as Batman and Graffiti Bridge undoubtedly are, they don't come close to the nadir David Bowie had been going through at the same time which stretched from Never Let Me Down to Tin Machine II. That said, this consistency paired with how he just kept pumping out the material meant that he could be taken for granted. While Q Magazine made it their mission from about 1993 on to help bring Bowie back into relevance, there was little need to do so for the Purple Perv.

This is the fourth and possibly last Single of the Fortnight/Best New Single for Squiggy McSquigface. While both "1999" and "Sign O' the Times" represent his creative zenith, "Anotherloverholeinyohead" is a welcome reminder that he couldn't quite manage to strike gold at will. "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", however, seems to fall somewhere in between. Not especially showy though still infused with more than enough of his swagger, it's plenty likable even if it struggles to grab the listener's attention. Squiggy Smalls is probably the last person you'd imagine having a song that you can put on and scarcely notice but that's what happens here. And it's not even a disadvantage. While you may not come away from it with an earworm, his sometimes grating voice sounds better than it usually does and his highfalutin tendencies are kept in similar check. As Mark Sutherland says, some of the song's ropier lyrics were in danger of being used to "chat up" disinterested girls

Yet, it "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" must have caught the attention of enough of the British public since it ended up becoming Squigonometry's sole UK number one hit. As Alexis Petridis notes, it's surprising he never managed it until the spring of 1994. On the other hand, did he really come that close prior this point? The magnificent double A-side of "1999" and "Little Red Corvette" from 1985 was unjustly denied the top spot by some load of shite from Foreigner but the only other time he was within inches of the summit was with "Batdance" which didn't have a hope in hell against Soul II Soul's immovable "Back to Life". As such, many regard this triumph as a lifetime achievement number one. I have to say though that I appreciate the fact that this one succeeded where so many others failed. Those of us who could give or take Can You Squig It's work were down for this one. Plus, the raunchy material no longer seemed to matter; what the Squigmeister did best in the nineties was craft smooth, effortless soul. What more did we need?

The practice of using Squig Newton's so-called 'love symbol' was quietly phased out come the millennium as her reverted to Prince. (Though it may not have seemed like it at the time, it was inevitable that he would eventually drop the squiggle; perhaps this explains why the great man turned down maverick Canadian musician/producer Bob Wiseman's million dollar offer to buy the name 'Prince' from him) By this point everyone had given up anyway so it hardly mattered. Squiggle never caught on outside the Smash Hits offices — and probably only performed modestly inside them — so it was collectively decided to deadname the old scamp. While he was never quite as successful as he had once been, his influence only seemed to grow, especially after his famous solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in tribute to George Harrison. The Squiggle years became this curious blip, one that deserves reappraising. Squigboy did his thing in a more understated manner. This may not have been the Prince we wanted but it was certainly the Squiggle we deserved.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul: "Fallin'"

What the faded-rock-legend-duets-with-imperial-period-pop-phenom dynamic was to the late eighties, the groups-of-wildly-different-styles-team-up was to the mid nineties. Sutherland doesn't anticipate much but surely he's a pop critic and thus incapable of identifying any weaknesses in either of these lauded and "deeply influential" bands. The Fannies don't seem to contribute much and it frankly doesn't help that a Tom Petty sample is the most stand out part of the backing. Honestly, the entire thing sounds sampled, begging the question of why they didn't at least choose to plunder a stronger TFC record. Luckily, De La Soul are present to pick up the slack and thus transforming a wholly forgettable work into a merely passable one. It's a pity the DLS zaniness didn't rub off on the Fannies since the Scots power poppers really could've used a bit of pizzazz. On the other hand, at least Trugoy, Posdnuos and Maseo didn't become a bunch of dullards thanks to hanging out with Norman, Ray, Gerry and the "Monkey Without Portfolio" so there is that.

K7 & The Swing Kids: "Hi De Ho"

16 March 1994

"If you're not into K7 then get with it grandma/grandpa! (delete as applicable)."

— Pete Stanton

The St. Louis Blues are a club in the National Hockey League. They are best known to me as the organization that seemed to always get fleeced in trades with my favourite team the Calgary Flames but they also always used to be perennial dark horses, the sort of club that you would predict to do well in the playoffs because you were sick of it always being Colorado or Detroit or "Jersey", the hockey team which is evidently based in the tax haven Channel Island.

Another thing I know about this hockey team from Missouri is that a number of years ago they were struggling with choosing a new theme song for when the players skate onto the ice or score a goal or win a game or whenever a streaker runs across the ice. Yes, that's right: a club named after a classic blues number by W.C. Handy and recorded by the likes of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (among others) needed a new theme song. You just can't make this stuff up.

This is where Cab Calloway is especially missed. He would have thought nothing of recording a fresh and contemporary version of "St. Louis Blues" for the mid-western hockey team just as he had with his signature "Minnie the Moocher" for a disco audience at the end of the seventies. Just as, in his frail state in the last months of his life, he made a cameo in the video for "Hi De Ho", the latest single from hip hop combo K7 & The Swing Kids.

Already having scored a Top 5 hit with "Come Baby Come" which was catchy and loads of fun, K7 seemed like the sort of hip hop act that would be one and done — and they just about were. The only thing that prevented them from being forever remembered as one-hit wonders (aside from the fact that it's a category that is only ever reserved for groups on the American Hot 100; anyone who only managed that solitary smash in another country need not apply) was the British being such unabashed suckers for the novelty song. Plus, there must have been a curious nostalgia for olde school jazz beats at the time: "Hi De Ho" was released hot on the heels of "Doop" and several months' before Scatman John's uber-annoying hits "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" and "Scatman's World".

Yet, it would be wrong to accuse K7 of bandwagon jumping. He had already put out album Swing Batta Swing, which included "Hi De Ho", in the latter part of 1993, so he couldn't have been aware of those Dutch DJ's who looked to revive the charleston in techno form. (The real inspiration may have been Guru's Jazzamatazz Volume 1, though it was a much more classicist work right down to the sleeve aping those "iconic" Blue Note covers) More to the point, there's nothing remotely gimmicky about this single. It's as if scat had been a predecessor of rap or something. Oh wait! That's exactly what it was!

This was a point which eluded the Cosby kids whenever Cliff Huxtable would admonish Denise, Theo, Vanessa and Rudy for their penchant for hip hop over jazz. What they should have told them (aside from insisting that he refrain from drugging and sleeping with so many women) was that the scatting that he no doubt loved was not unlike like the verse from the streets that they enjoyed. It may not have been quite as improvised — at least not by the nineties; early rap was built on MC's being able to cut impromptu vocal poetry — but then again, scatting itself had become a neutered art form with recording technology. Do you really think Dizzy Gillespie's jibber-jabber varied much from night to night?

Just a week on from listing off the various rap numbers that have come up on this blog and we've already got another (it's almost as if hip hop was becoming more popular or something). I'm in no hurry to provide an update but I will say that "Hi De Ho" takes a deserving spot alongside the likes of Run-DMC, Dream Warriors and Arrested Development — and it's streets ahead of the do gooder nonsense from Credit to the Nation. I'm not sure I'm quite as taken by it as Pete Stanton but he's not wrong. Spirited, oodles of panache and just the sort of thing that might have encouraged a few kids out there to dig out their dad's copy of Dave Brubeck's Time Out or their grandpa's Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall? My dad and grandpa didn't have those records, mind you, but I wasn't really into K7 either. More fool me.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bruce Springsteen: "Streets of Philadelphia"

This powerful film was beginning to draw to an end when I realised that virtually everyone else I was with was in tears. Sniffs and sobs surrounded me. Is there something wrong with me that I'm not so similarly overcome by emotion? What a heartless beast! And then the thing ended with that great song "Philadelphia" by that old greybeard singer...whatsisname...Neil Young. Oh wait, I was meant to be writing about the supposedly superior track that opened that unforgettable Tom Hanks film! Yeah, it's all right but I could never understand why it got all the love when Winnipeg's favourite son had a much more moving and heart-stopping piece in the same bloody movie! Who could possibly take the one about being battered and broken over the one about love and healing and those last moments of life. Maybe I'm not quite as heartless as all my friends thought.