Diana Ross: "Mirror Mirror"

4 February 1982

"The 12" version has a lot going on, and may be worth paying more for."

— Charlie Gillett

"Not only is this Diana's first release on Capitol," states Bev Hillier in her November, 1981 review of the album Why Do Fools Fall in Love, "but also her first shot at producing her own material". They wouldn't introduce Album of the Fortnight to Smash Hits for a while but if it had existed at the end of 1981 she would have taken the runner up spot behind Fad Gadget's Incontinent. Among the LP's Diana Ross finished in front of in a pretty strong batch are Japan's Tin Drum (a very worthy 8 out of 10), Depeche Mode's Speak and Spell (a respectable 7/10), Earth, Wind & Fire's Raise! (also a 7/10 but surely it deserved better), The Bee Gees' Living Eyes, Adam & the Ants' Prince Charming (both with a deserved 5/10), Prince's Controversy (4/10 seems ungenerous but I'm not sure Hillier's wrong) and Rush's Exit...Stage Left (again, 2/10 is a bit of a chintzy score but Mike Stand's remark — "I would close with the standard attack on their interest in dodgy philosopher Ayn Rand if only I knew who the hell he was" — makes it all worthwhile). Bloody hell, this Fad Gadget dude must've been good...

For Diana Ross to have thrived up against such strong competition (and Rush!) is not such a big deal for someone with her pedigree but for her to have done so on an album she also produced is another matter entirely. One would think that a diva of her stature would have more pressing matters than sitting behind a grubby mixing desk with a sad, friendless engineer while barking orders at overworked, underpaid session musicians. Yet, she proved up to the task enough that she would go on to produce the bulk of the material that would make up her next three albums.

Not to take anything away from the legendary ex-Supreme but she did have a few advantages that your average first time producer wouldn't normally enjoy. First, she had use of the finest recording studios in the United States at her disposal. She also had a team of first rate musicians in her employ, including well-rounded guitarist Eric Gale and tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, individuals who had played on her now overlooked 1979 album The Boss (her much better remembered Diana LP from '80 had been done with Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers who effectively made a Chic album with Diana Ross singing on top of it; Why Do Fools Fall in Love set the clock back by utilizing previous sessioners and is probably a more accurate indication of where she was creatively and professionally at the time). Finally, she had nearly twenty years of studio experience to rely upon; in my previous review of "Mirror, Mirror" I argue that years of working alongside Motown's studio wizards as well as Edwards and Rodgers must have rubbed off on her.

The one thing that Ross failed to account for was decent songs. Well played and sung by all concerned, "Mirror, Mirror" is nevertheless a flimsy composition. Time had not endeared it to me since the last time I wrote about it though I will acknowledge that Charlie Gillett was correct in favouring the 12" mix to its 7" counterpart. Disco tunes need time to settle in and, if anything, six minutes is probably not quite long enough. Eric Gale's hard rock guitar playing doesn't quite fit the shorter version while the lengthier mix allows for sufficient space. Seemingly stuck in a noble sixties' mindset of keeping albums down to thirty to forty minutes, Ross' album sacrificed dancefloor excellence for unnecessary brevity. Instead of "Mirror, Mirror" being the album's longest track it should have been the median. 

I love Chic as much as the next person but to give them the bulk of the credit for Diana Ross' success in the early eighties overlooks the fact that their team-up was short lived and that she was doing well for herself both before and after they worked together. With all due respect to their talents as ace musicians and producers it was their songwriting that likely benefited her most. Not since the heyday of Holland-Dozier-Holland had Ross worked with such a formidable team. Producing seemed to suit her so why didn't she take up songwriting while she was at it? She could've given it a go by collaborating with colleagues like Lionel Richie or Smokey Robinson a busy-but-always-willing-to-help-a-friend Michael Jackson. She could have even written a few songs on her own and it's not a stretch to suggest she would have been capable of something better than the cliche-ridden "Mirror, Mirror" or the dated "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Why rely on covers and third rate nonsense when she could have done it herself? After-all, Diana Ross was no mere diva.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fun Boy Three with Bananarama: "It Ain't What You Do..."

"Somebody should give these guys a lesson on writing dynamics into their records, with middle-eights and bridges and all that stuff," states Gillett in an otherwise complimentary review. He doesn't seem aware that Terry, Lynval and Neville, along with newcomers Sarah, Siobahn and Keren, didn't compose this record. Indeed, he seems unaware that it was already over forty years old and had been a jazz standard until the FB3 gave it an update. All things considered, the Boys and the 'Narns had a minor masterpiece on their hands. Lots of fun (I like the Fun Boy Three a lot but they didn't always live up to their name), catchy, addictive and a great way to introduce the world to the genius of Bananarama, who would soon overtake their male counterparts as regulars on the giddy carousel of pop for the remainder of the decade. Gillett concludes by wishing a poorly Lynval Golding well; I'll sign off with a regretful RIP Terry Hall. (And RIP Charlie Gillett while I'm at it)

(Click here to see my original review)

Dusty Springfield: "Nothing Has Been Proved"

8 February 1989

"It's been written and put together by the Pet Shop Boys and it's extremely slow and moody and is a bit of a "grower" (i.e. everyone declares that it's "useless" the first time they hear it then change their minds pretty sharpish)."

— Chris Heath

At the conclusion of a lengthy piece in the Smash Hits Yearbook 1989, Neil Tennant is asked how they foresee the future of the Pet Shop Boys when they finally wind up going down the dumper:

"Everyone thinks it's a joke but it's serious. The Pet Shop Boys will carry on, but we'll stop being the front men. Instead we'll change the line-up every year or so — suddenly there will be four sixteen year old boys as the Pet Shop Boys and the next thing you know they'll be replaced by two thirty-five year old Elaine Page types. We'll be fed up with it all by then so we'll just write the music. We'll be able to spend our time doing nice things like going to bed early. We won't have to have our photograph taken or be asked why we're called the Pet Shop Boys. We can just make the records. And make lots of money."

It has now been nearly a third of a century since this article was published and the Pet Shop Boys of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe remains. The Pet Shop Boy Band has yet to materialise and neither have the Pet Shopettes. If they didn't quite crash into the dumper, then they certainly witnessed their popularity begin to tail off over the course of the nineties though their aging fanbase remains loyal enough that their great-to-indifferent albums still sell well and they're a strong concert attraction. (Not bad for a group that once described themselves as "not a live band, really" while on tour) Their back catalog is one of the most admired in British pop. They've even written a musical together.

Yet, composing for others has always garnered more mixed results for the Pet Shop Boys. They've written for Dusty Springfield, Liza Minnelli, Tina Turner and Kylie Minogue albeit in rather forgettable fashion and they have wisely saved their best material for themselves. The relatively trivial "Heart" had originally been earmarked for Hazel Dean and, later, Madonna but in the end it wound up on their second album Please with a remix of it giving them their fourth UK number one hit. "One in a Million", a deep cut from 1993's Very and theme tune to long-running South Korean sketch comedy show Gag Concert, had an eye on rising boy band Pet Shop Boys Take That. Even those tracks they gave away to others were generally better when done in one form or another by the pair themselves.

"Nothing Has Been Proved" is a special case for the Pet Shop Boys because it hadn't been composed with anyone in particular in mind and wasn't even initially intended to be used in a film. Tennant wrote it on a guitar in the seventies when he was a struggling young musician and the song languished as his prospects began to take off after meeting Lowe and then hooking up with Bobby O. The group became interested in film soundtracks and had even been approached with the possibility of doing a Bond theme. While Norwegian pop group A-ha would go on to do the theme to The Living Daylights, they remained interested in doing film work. (Disappointingly, they didn't bother recording any fresh music for the soundtrack to their own cinematic project It Couldn't Happen Here) Producer Stephen Wooley then requested a song from them for the film Scandal about the Profumo affair of the early sixties. How serendipitous that Tennant already had such a song.

(Critics frequently cite Tennant as one of pop's great purveyors of irony but few give him credit for his historiography, perhaps in part due to the relative obscurity of these numbers of his. "Nothing Has Been Proved" is a rare case of one of his historical songs receiving the prominence of a single; "Jack the Lad" and "Don Juan" were both B-sides while "My October Symphony" and "Dreaming of the Queen" were deep cuts. All, however, remain firm fan favourites)

In an age when politicians will not step down from their positions under any circumstances (at a time, ironically, of supposedly rampant cancel culture) it's hard to believe that the Profumo affair was such a big deal. Conservative member of parliament John Profumo had been engaged in an extra-martial tryst with nineteen-year-old Christine Keeler. The Tory Secretary of State for War was asked about it and he denied any involvement on his part. His lie was exposed and it ended up bringing down the government of prime minister Harold MacMillan. All of this happened but it isn't what "Nothing Has Been Proved" is about; what we have, instead, is individuals on the periphery whose names weren't in the papers as much — if at all — and aren't remembered but who were affected by this scandal all the same. At least one took much more of a fall than the names that were on everyone's lips.

In a way, "Nothing Has Been Proved" is Tennant's equivalent of The Smiths' "Suffer Little Children" from the group's 1984 debut album. Both songs recount shocking events from the sixties, one a political scandal, the other a series horrific child killings. Tennant and Morrissey were just kids themselves when news of these events broke and it's natural to assume that they didn't really understand what was going on. Whispers, rumours, stuff they each heard on the playgrounds of their schools. Obviously its impossible to compete with the sorrowful content of "Suffer Little Children", in which Morrissey identifies with the innocent victims, but "Nothing Has Been Proved" has pathos in its own right. While Moz quotes Myra Hindley's infamous line "whatever he has done, I have done", Tennant doesn't bother repeating the famous words of Keeler's friend Mandy Rice-Davies, "well he would, wouldn't he?" and opts for quoting from Stephen Ward's suicide note instead ("I'm guilty till proved innocent in the public eye and press"). Most importantly, the two songs give a voice to those who aren't able to speak for themselves but who we should be trying to remember.

Chris Heath alludes to the song's peculiar nature of name-dropping people that hardly anyone knows but it's one of its most beguiling elements. I've never seen Scandal but I know a bit about the affair and so I have a vague idea who 'Christine', 'Mandy' and 'Stephen' are; as for 'Vicki' and 'Johnny', I haven't the faintest idea, though I guess the latter was played by Roland Gift of the Fine Young Cannibals (there's a clip of him shooting at someone or something in the video just as Dusty utters the line "Johnny's got a gun" so I think it's a safe assumption). But, again, these aren't celebrities, they're ordinary people caught up in something extraordinary. Profumo would end up getting hounded out of political life but he would live long enough to witness his rehabilitation. Keeler and Rice-Davies would be tabloid fodder for years but they both lived to their seventies and had families. Ward ended up committing suicide on the eve of being sentenced for the crime of "living off immoral earnings". (Profumo and others paid those "immoral earnings" but they all somehow got off scot free) By using their Christian names, Dusty Springfield is passing rumours about them on to those of us listening, making all of us culpable.

One part of the song that has always stood out for me is the repeated reference to The Beatles, a line that either captures the mood of the times or intrudes upon the narrative, depending on how I'm feeling. "Please Please Me's number one": it is said to be about the Fab Four's debut album which had been dominating the LP charts but I'm convinced it's really about the single of the same name. Not technically a number one, it had nevertheless topped several unofficial charts and would have been widely accepted as a number one regardless of singles chart rules. More importantly, it was rumoured to be about fellatio, with John Lennon supposedly promising a fair and equitable exchange of head. Buttoned-down, gentlemanly English society was being rocked by a pair of beautiful call girls and a quartet of Scouse lads, all of whom were from humble backgrounds. All of this is appropriate to consider within the context of the song but it is used twice which feels a bit lazy and what's it even doing there among all these references to 'Mandy' and 'Johnny' and 'Stephen in his dressing gown' anyway?

So, I've gone this far without mentioning Dusty Springfield which is simply unforgivable. She was pushing fifty by this time (Heath notes that she was "quite a lot older than Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan put together") but her voice still oozes that same mix of lust, melancholy and wisdom. There are cracks here and there and she's even more nasal that ever but no one listens to Dusty expecting a technically flawless performance. It's her limits as a singer that make her one of the all-time greats. I don't know how much of an effect her living through early-sixties' Britain has on her performance here but certainly her years of being in the public eye, of stardom and a faltering career, lends itself to the subject matter of the song. She experienced rumours surrounding her private life and faced deep depression of her own. This isn't the story of her life by any means but it's one she understood all too well.

"Nothing Has Been Proved" is yet another masterful Pet Shop Boys' work and hints that the Tennant-Lowe songwriting team had a future composing for others full time. This has yet to happen as they continue to focus on their own recordings. With both of them being in their sixites, it seems unlikely that they'll ever choose to farm out the duties of being pop stars to anyone else at this point. It's no great loss: Dusty aside, they never found anyone to compose for who could match or exceed Tennant's role as vocalist (although the guest performances by Frances Barber, Rufus Wainwright and Robbie Williams on the wonderful live album Concrete suggest that there are vocalists out there who are able to do Pet Shop's songs justice). If finding replacement Pet Shop Boys wasn't a joke, it definitely should have been.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bananarama/Lananeeneenoonoo: "Help!"

Heath tips it to be Bananarama's first number one but it came up just short, even though this humble blogger did his part by buying a copy of the 7". The umpteenth cover version the Bananas had done but "Help!" is quite easily the best source material for a reinterpretation. There's none of Lennon's vocal power but they're as faithful to The Beatles as one would expect for something cut in 1989. It's still quite funny even now probably because Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Kathy Burke ham up the backing vocals but don't bulldoze their comedy chops all over the recording. The video spoofs all those cheesy Bananarama promos of the time and makes fun of Help, The Beatles' very pointless, very boring film. I like to think that had he survived, Lennon would have adopted the Lananeeneenoonoo backing vocals ("down-down-down!", "dow-ow-ow-own") when playing live. He was perverse enough to have been into it.

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions: "My Bag"

23 September 1987

Pat: "Whawha guitars and funky clipped chords on a Lloyd Cole record???"

Greg: "And that's because both the drummer and the guitarist used to rehearse with us and they've obviously learnt something."

Pat: "That's the most arrogant statement Hue and Cry have yet made — we taught Lloyd Cole and the Commotions all they know — you print that."

— Pat and Greg Kane (Hue & Cry)

There seemed to be a trend among British pop stars of the late eighties to hate pop music. During my year of being an avid reader of both Smash Hits and Number One, I read a lot of interviews and I was always struck by how little most of them cared for what their contemporaries were doing. They all seemed to worship Marvin Gaye and their musical heroes were largely drawn from old Motown and soul. Rock and metal acts were devoted to old school rawk and coffee house singer-songwriters were all about the previous generation of singer-songwriters who also played coffee houses. But that was about it. Current pop? Pull the other one!

Pat and Greg Kane are brothers from Glasgow and had formed the duo Hue & Cry a couple years' earlier. Like a lot of Scottish acts that tried to brush off the supposed pop naffness of seventies groups like the Bay City Rollers and Silk, they were serious about their craft. Painfully serious. While it wasn't necessarily a rule that Caledonian bands be such humourless tits, the bulk of them were. Some, to their credit, managed to pull it off. I've never been a fan of Simple Minds but I have to admit that their glum approach worked: they did über-serious post-punk that a lot of people to this day rate very highly and they transitioned to stadium rock act without losing a trace of their earnestness. The Blue Nile all wore overcoats and looked like they'd never cracked a smile between them but they did bleak but touching songs.

The 'soulcialist' wing of Scots pop in the eighties, however, seemed buried in their weightiness, when a touch of lightness could have come in handy. Wet Wet Wet were quickly becoming a mammoth act by copying Al Green, a task they were very serious about; they also despised the vast majority of pop in '87. Deacon Blue would prove to be the best Scots group of the year with their excellent debut album Raintown but there was no hiding the fact that they too were low on humour (which makes Ricky Ross' forced chuckle on the single "Loaded" even more inexplicable). Good or bad, these people from Scotland all seemed to be deeply serious while intensely disliking most current pop — and Hue & Cry were right there with them.

A naturally gifted vocalist who could easily have followed the money to lounge singing, Pat Kane was much more rooted in jazz than many of his fellow Scots. He and Greg were talented individuals but much of their material was boring, even if they did have their moments. Their biggest hit, "Labour of Love", tapped into the Red Wedge and anti-Thatcher sentiments of the time and it has a lot more meaning that much of their early material. Like far too many leftist acts of the time, their politics frequently ended up losing out to bland love songs that gave them hits. As with Simply Red and their decent if unremarkable cover of "Money's Too Tight (to Mention)" and the Wets with "Wishing I Was Lucky", the Kane's were at their best when airing their left wing views, something Billy Bragg and The Housemartins never shied from. But why be interesting when you can be doing lame Sinatra pastiche that no one asked for?

Lloyd Cole could have been one of these same earnest Scots. An Englishman, he attended the University of Glasgow in the early eighties right in the midst of the city's post-punk pop boom that produced Altered Images, Aztec Camera and Orange Juice as well as the influential indie label Postcard. These groups were attempting to forge their own sounds and could even be — gasp! — playful in their music and lyrics. Looking like a more well-nourished Morrissey (I'm, of course, talking about Morrissey back in the eighties; he looks like he has enjoyed plenty of vegetarian quiches in more recent years), Cole had the trappings of a guy who wouldn't know a joke if he'd jammed with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band but his songs had wit and the spark of free-thinking individual about them. At a time when anything 'studenty' in pop could be counted on to be sneered at (in contrast to the US where the college rock charts were becoming influential), Lloyd Cole & The Commotions were students who made music for students. They never became a major indie act the way New Order and The Smiths would but they had a loyal following and a generation of British songwriters namecheck Cole as a major influence.

"My Bag" is an engaging record, if not terribly remarkable by the usual standards of the Commotions. Sort of a more-of-the-same record with added bells and whistles to disguise that they were beginning to run out of ideas. As Pat Kane says, the guitars are a departure (as are the 'cha-cha' samples at the beginning, which could have come straight out of a Pet Shop Boys single; the purist Kane's for whatever reason fail to point this out) and could very well have been pinched from groups like Hue & Cry, even if it's just the sort of thing that comes straight out of the Nile Rodgers playbook and had been used on Aztec Camera's superlative 1984 single "All I Need Is Everything". Pat's being facetious, I guess, though since they're normally allergic to any kind of jollity, who's to know?

Though the cult of Cole-Commotion was as loyal as ever, "My Bag" missed the top 40 and the group's subtle creative decline was mirrored by the commercial slide they took with the ironically-titled final album Mainstream. The group would disband in 1989 and Cole would relocate to the US, where he resides to this day. It may have been the fresh environs or having new bandmates to kick ideas around with (or both) but either way the change was good for him as his solo career became much more interesting and his songwriting continued to develop. Meanwhile, Hue & Cry carried on for a bit as a relevant chart act with a level of success comparable to the Commotions before Pat Kane got into journalism. I sure hope he, too, improved upon his craft; maybe he even managed to throw in the odd funny line.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bananarama: "Love in the First Degree"

Yet another fantastic Narns single dismissed on the Smash Hits singles review page. At least Dave Rimmer had positive things to say about "Cruel Summer" and "Robert De Niro's Waiting..." (and at least he mentions their name, for the love of god) but all the Kanes are able to do here is bash Stock Aitken Waterman. They're either unaware or don't give a toss that Keren, Sara and Siobahn wrote it with SAW and don't even bother giving consideration to its quality. They hate the record simply for political reasons. I guess that's fair enough but they missed out on some top pop while being all high and mighty. Their stint with Britain's dominant songwriting-production team (I had no idea they were already considered ubiquitous back in '87; I wonder how Pat and Greg felt in '89 when their ever-presence had become nauseating and their records really began to suck) didn't always result in classic singles but "Love in the First Degree" is one of their finest moments. A great song from a three-piece that was about to lose Siobahn to marriage and Shakespears Sister. They'd never be the same again.

Scritti Politti: "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)"

1 March 1984

"Well, well. Long time no see."

— Dave Rimmer

It seems Scritti Politti had been on hiatus. Nowadays it's not uncommon for groups to go the better part of a decade between releases but the early eighties were a different time. We last encountered ver Scrits on this blog nearly a year ago when ABC's Martin Fry gushed over their single "Faithless". Now they're back from a lengthy layover of two whole years. (Dave Rimmer obviously isn't able to anticipate that leader Green Gartside would make a habit of over-long sabbaticals with this one being relatively short by comparison) But Scritti Politti weren't like most groups and never would be.

I once had a roommate who was a member of a choir. I never went to see them myself but apparently they were quite good. Good enough, in fact, that they occasionally performed  at weddings. Preparing for once such nuptial, she told me they were rehearsing "God Only Knows" which left me baffled. Imagine the words "I may not always love you" being sung to a pair of newlyweds: something feels a bit off there.

Yes, pop music obsessives can get awfully touchy when it comes to members of the public misinterpreting lyrics — and "God Only Knows" is far from the worst culprit in this respect (the lyrics generally betray the sentiments of the opening, a line which Brian Wilson initially objected to). R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" has been so misunderstood by Generation X couples that the band subsequently overcompensated by exaggerating the song's anti-romantic stance (rather than "savagely anti-love" or "really violent and awful" I'd argue that the idea of having a "simple prop to occupy my mind" is just a very lax attitude towards love). Bruce Springsteen's massive hit "Born in the U.S.A." was famously quoted by a campaigning Ronald Reagan who was unaware that the song is really about a Vietnam War vet who comes home and has been left neglected by the very country he served. Of course there are good reasons why people got them wrong. In the case of R.E.M., this was the first time anyone could make any sense of Michael Stipe's lyrics and the public must have figured they might as well take the simplest interpretation. As far as The Boss goes, fans got got up in the rousing chorus (are there actually any other words?) and he didn't clarify the song's true meaning until well after the fact. Plus, most people don't put a whole lot of thought into the music they listen to. (And this doesn't even consider the more relativist types like John Lennon who permit their songs any meaning the listener wishes it to have

"Wood Beez" isn't exactly a tune that has lit up wedding dances (at least not to my knowledge) but it did charm enough good folk to get into the top ten — and it's safe to say that the vast majority of punters did so because of Green's silky smooth vocals, the layers of hip hop beats and lush synth pop and a superb tune ("The only conditions", the singer says in a Smash Hits interview from later in March, "are that you make a record people like the sound of, and it's as simple as that" which neatly echoes what I've written above, something I totally did not plan) And I'm not trying to lay claim to some degree of expertise here: I've spent the bulk of the past week trying to figure out any hidden meaning; once I had that out of the way I had difficulty squaring this with Green's own observations. Had it not been for Wikipedia I probably wouldn't even worked out that there is anything else going on beyond love and trying to say a little prayer the way Aretha Franklin did.

For those of us who enjoy a deeper dive, what we have here is an  exploitation of the nonsense of pop. Green could have easily done so by taking shots at Bucks Fizz or Bardo so some other moronically successful group of the day but bravely chose to examine the Queen of Soul instead. Putting gospel-drenched passion into inane lyrics fascinated him — though I never did anything creative with it, much less anything that sparkles like this, I, too, went through my own similar period, kicked off by Meat Loaf's ability to put so much of himself into lyrics about nothing, which led to me "drolly" observing that he should have been singing in commercials. Thus, we have lines like "there's nothing I wouldn't do / including doing nothing" and "there's nothing I wouldn't do / to make you want for nothing" and "there's nothing I wouldn't take / not even intravenous". What does it all mean? There's nothing he wouldn't do. NOTHING. Not the most complex analysis, is it?

This could have degenerated into a comedy record or a meta commentary (something Green certainly wasn't above attempting) but for the fact that it's such a beautifully crafted pop record. Imagine Michael Jackson at his very best but with such an acute musical mind, taking the punk roots where he cut his teeth into the finest New York City studios with top-notch musicians and the cream of production boffins to create the finest pop of the age. You may look at it on the surface as a simple pop-soul love song or as a commentary on woeful lyricisms and still come away in awe. Scritti Politti weren't like most groups: they were so much better.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bananarama: "Robert De Niro's Waiting..."

Rimmer denied the Narns a SOTF a year earlier with the magnificent "Cruel Summer" and has done so again with perhaps their finest moment. With a peak of powers Scritti Politti getting the nod, I wouldn't go so far as to say they got jobbed this time 'round but for sure Rimmer's critique ("cheery but unexciting", "...could do with a bit of spit and polish") seems a tad uncharitable. Again, it isn't absolutely necessary to know the song's true meaning in order to appreciate it: to the majority of listeners (myself included until just a few years ago) it's desolate and lonely, a testament to how Sara, Siobhan and Keren were able to sing in unison yet manage to sound so singular. To discover, then, that it's really about date rape only furthers the paranoia and tension. Stupendous. And even if you aren't convinced, at least you can enjoy one of pop's all-time classic mondegreens: no, I'm afraid the Taxi Driver guy isn't "talking to Tanya".

Echo & The Bunnymen: "Never Stop"

7 July 1983

"Easier to dance to than philosophize about, which is all well and good."

— Dave Rimmer

It has now been just short of a year since I first launched VER HITS and we've already come across a few acts more than once (and that's not even including the so-called "cop" picks I've been making). In these cases, it's been interesting seeing how each managed to progress — assuming, of course, that's what they were striving for. ABC's second effort ramps up the loucheness of their first, while Kim Wilde's second kick at the SOTF crown is a tinkering of her patented gloomy song stories that had made her a darling of the Smash Hits staff. The Jam were progressing towards their demise, "Beat Surrender" being as far as they could possibly go. (Only Bobby O's pair of star singles hints at a static level of creativity; for all I know, he could well have cut his two entries at the same session)

We last encountered Echo & The Bunnymen here back in September with David Hepworth anointing a SOTF upon "The Back of Love" which also happened to be their first hit single. I describe it as a "breakthrough" for the Bunnies and Heps seems particularly pleased to discover that they at last seemed "fed up with loitering in the backwaters of hipness". Jump ahead eight months later (fifteen if you insist on going by what the calendars recorded) and there's Dave Rimmer pleasantly surprised that they've finally come out with something you might want to dance to rather than ponder over. Ian McCulloch and his Bunny chums seemed to have a lot of trouble shaking their reputation for making music that isn't necessarily to be enjoyed but should make their fans feel vastly superior to those poor, uninitiated sods.

Rimmer is so pleased by this apparent shift that he might be guilty of overdoing the praise a touch. While it's hard to disagree that it's "probably the best Bunnymen single ever", I don't know that I'd go so far as to describe the opening as "joyous" or that I'd sum it all up by saying that it's "sheer bliss". Nevertheless, there's plenty here to admire. Musically damn-near flawless (now who's overselling), the cello, disco percussion and "what sounds like someone tapping out a tune on the ribs of a skeleton" manage to overshadow some fantastic Will Sergeant guitar playing (the instrumental break in which he does some fast-paced chugging followed by some fun with a whammy bar is remarkable). Rims is also taken by McCulloch's "heartfelt vocals" but they sound like Mac doing what he always did (and probably still does): a more powerful Terry Hall, a less melodramatic Bono, a Robert Smith you can relate to (yet, strangely, not close to as compelling as any of them). Distinctive enough — when a random song comes on I certainly know when it's not him — if not exactly individual, his histrionic wail couldn't have suited the Bunnymen sound better. If he's heartfelt on "Never Stop" then he's equally affecting elsewhere. (Still, I suppose it provides the only Top of the Pops clip of McCulloch untucking his shirt mid-performance — or is it? — so perhaps that gives his nibs points on the soulful scale)

I get the feeling that hacks at ver Hits really had high hopes for Echo & The Bunnymen and that goes some way to explaining why they held their weaknesses — the ultra-hipness, the penchant for philosophy — against them so much and celebrated when they were able to overcome them. From the perspective of three and a half decades on, it's difficult to fully comprehend why they were so esteemed. A fine frontman, an inventive guitarist, a tight rhythm section, sure, but there's something missing that kept them from being special. McCulloch may reckon that they could have easily been U2 but I'd say it's much more likely that U2 could have been Echo & The Bunnymen.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bananarama: "Cruel Summer"

I have to admit my that my enthusiasm for "Never Stop" is reduced slightly because a far superior record got jobbed out of a rightful SOTF. As a boy I always appreciated "Cruel Summer" for perfectly capturing the tedium of a long summer vacation from school, which would always begin so promisingly by meeting friends to go for bike rides or swimming but would soon descend into days on end of nothing but gameshows and reruns on TV. Dealing with summer romance gone sour, this song is so bathed in humidity that it's easy for anyone who has ever had to cope with a heat wave to relate to. The atmosphere is so muggy that it's like being in the middle of a huge city in the tropics with air so thick you have to expend extra energy to make your way through it. The extra touch of a cabasa rattle in the background brings to mind the dense, heat-fueled sound of cicadas. The first classic single from the 'Narns, this is the greatest summer hit since "Hot Fun in the Summertime".