Billy Bragg: "Sexuality"

26 June 1991

"His bonnet bee is buzzing about sex this time, brothers and sisters. Billy says: don't worry if you haven't got a body like Madonna because he'll like you anyway."

— Miranda Sawyer

The concert didn't get off to a great start. Coming on stage at approximately 9:00 PM, Billy Bragg didn't appear keen to be there for long. He zipped through a handful of numbers, not even pausing for between-song banter. His nibs looked distracted and his rather sloppy performance indicated that he didn't care. Then, a heckler emerged to save the show.

"These people aren't your fans", he shouted. "They're on your bandwagon."

Bragg didn't respond much at first. He simply kept on playing. But the disturber in the crowd wasn't going to let himself be ignored. With each number, our friend in the audience found a way to be offended. If Bragg played something from the recent Mermaid Avenue project, the heckler accused him of commercial pandering; if he played an old favourite, he'd sulk that the rest of us weren't around when they first came out. And, he demanded, what were these people doing dancing at a Billy Bragg concert?

"They can dance if they want to," replied Billy. "They can talk if they want to. This concert's for them".

The crowd roared with approval. At last audience and performer were seeing eye-to-eye. Bragg's patience eventually evaporated and the heckler was forcibly shown the door. His solo acoustic set ended well; after a short break, he was back out with his band The Blokes and they proceeded to tear the house down. What had started off as a by numbers show had come to a close with everyone looking pleased with themselves.

After the show ended, I went down to the campus pub with my friend Tasya. As she proudly looked at the copy of the setlist that she snagged from the stage, I sipped at my pint and wondered why anyone would shell out twenty bucks just to roast a supposedly favourite singer. Didn't he have anything better to do? What did he think he was achieving? And what was he doing at a Billy Bragg concert to begin with?

I had been a fan for about seven years at that point. It started off with "Sexuality". At first, I was into the catchy tune and I dug the video, particularly the bit in which he covers the first two letters of the sign for 'ESSEX' with 'SAFE' and 'NO'. I've always been a sucker for sunshine indie pop because of course I am. It was the song's message that resonated with me most though. Having been ostracized by a small group of so-called friends the previous year, it was welcoming to have a singer accept me for who I am.

Gay? No, I'm not that way inclined. But the fact that these people had a problem with it seemed to be reason enough to be rid of them. Even if I happened to be gay, what the hell was it to them? No matter my sexual orientation, I didn't deserve their harassment.

Luckily pop music wasn't going to turn its back on me. My modest collection of tapes had no interest in judging me, even if none of them were up to tackling my current state of angst. I was then listening to Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, groups with strong LGBTQ connections but they weren't in the business of addressing straight fans who were being wrongly outed at school. Few, if any, are.

Billy Bragg wasn't even addressing my predicament in "Sexuality" but that's how I chose to take it. Being sex-positive meant that it was all good, something I was already aware of, but I needed to hear someone state it. "Just because you're gay", Billy sang, "I won't turn you away": here was someone who was going to accept me no matter what, so to hell with those losers at school.

Bragg's 1991 album Don't Try This at Home has often been labelled as an attempt to make him into a proper pop star. With a full band, a selection of big name guests and goofy videos, it seemed like Go! Discs was finally going to cash in on their long term investment. To an extent this worked out: the LP sold well and some new fans had come on board. But to deal with gay pride was bound to be a risky chart proposition. "Sexuality" only barely outperformed his last real hit "Levi Stubbs' Tears"  when it had all the elements to possibly take him into the Top 10. If Go! figured they had a new pop star in the works, their protegee wasn't about to make it easy for them.

It was on a summer's night in 1998 that a lanky individual in his late-twenties went to a Billy Bragg concert. He was probably a decent enough fellow. I'm sure he could be a nice guy with progressive ideals that dovetailed with most of us who go to see the Bard of Barking. The only trouble was, he figured he owned a piece of Billy and could dictate just how he wanted him to be. He tried to stick around but he didn't allow himself much common ground, something you need to have if you wish to be a real fan of his.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Cathy Dennis: "Just Another Dream"

Miranda Sawyer describes this fortnight's also-rans as a "sorry troupe" and she couldn't be more correct. Alongside a down the dumper Bros and Martika, there's a bevy of no-names. 35 Summers, The Party, Subsonic 2, Paul Varney: not exactly a bumper crop of stars. (Dannii Minogue also appears but at least she was something of a hit maker, even if her singles were on the duff side as well) Cathy Dennis seems like a big name only she wasn't terribly big in her homeland despite a string of early-nineties hits in North America. I thought she was really good at the time though I wonder quite what I saw in her at the time. Her voice seemed really good then but, as Sawyer states, she struggles with a "nasely squeak". The song itself is nothing special either: Dennis would go on to compose far better pop songs a decade later but that's no reason to be curious about her own brief career as a starlet. Lousy and yet probably the second best new release this fortnight. The world of pop was entering a sorry state indeed.

Debbie Harry: "French Kissin' in the USA"

5 November 1986

"Why, I was just saying the other day, "What the world needs now is the return of Debbie Harry", and lo and behold here she is, sounding just as brill as she did 250 years ago with Blondie."

— Barry McIlheney

More changes were "afoot" in the Carnaby St. offices of Smash Hits in the autumn of 1986. Longtime design editor and editor-in-"chief" of the past eighteen months Steve Bush was off to the greener pastures of other magazines. He was the last holdover from the seventies, witnessing the early days of Dexys Midnight Runners, Dexys at their commercial and creative zenith and Dexys' long, painful slide into the dumper — though, alas, he didn't stay long enough for Kevin Rowland's return in drag. He received cross words from Hits faithful who were none-too-pleased that he mixed up the two sides of Madness' first single but he overcame that particular hiccup to help oversee it into the phenomenon it would become. Did you enjoy many of those covers back in the day? The layout? The fonts? The fact that every little single-page photo would "helpfully" point out that what you have is a poster? Be sure to thank Steve Bush for making your teenage years just that little bit less of a nightmare.

With his departure, it became incumbent on the bigwigs to find someone else to thanklessly put together eighty-eight pages of pop delight every fortnight to enthrall ver kids. Choosing not to go in "house", they found their man in Barry McIlheney (aka Barry McWhateverhe'scalled as he's dubbed in the affectionate tribute to Bush in this issue's Bitz). Recently employed at trusty muso journal the Melody Maker, McIlheney decided to immature with age by jumping over to Smash Hits. He has admitted in interviews that everyone at parent company Emap was young, a sharp contrast to the aging staff found at the Maker and this prompted him to cross enemy lines. With a new job on his "plate", you would think the last thing McIlheney would have wanted was more of a burden on his hands. Yet, here he is in his maiden issue reviewing the singles. Wisely, this was not something he did often during his tenure of just over two years.

Given all of his new responsibilities, I'll give him a pass with his choice of a decent-but-nowhere-near-as-good-as-she-used-to-be effort from Blondie's Debbie Harry when he could have opted for vastly superior singles from Billy Bragg (see below) and New Order. With the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna in the pop charts, it's odd that he would express the desire to have a blonde vamp from an earlier time back but I sort of see what he means. First, Blondie were a brilliant group, their run of hits from "Denis" through to "Island of Lost Souls" being pretty much flawless. Then, there's Harry herself: more attractive than those who had followed her, she cut a striking figure on stage and in print and she gave the average heterosexual male that dream image of a dreamy woman fronting a fantastic band (see also: Stevie Nicks).

This desire on McIlheney's part to have her back may have contributed to him overestimating comeback single "French Kissin' in the USA". Just as brill, Barry? Really? Compared to her appropriately icy reading of "Heart of Glass"? The sensual existentialism of "Atomic"? The coy flirtations of "Dreaming"? (To be fair, she restrained her instinct to rap so there is that) She didn't write the song (it was written by Chuck Lorre, who would later create a number of successful but not terribly funny American sitcoms) so she probably didn't have as much invested in it but "Denis" had been Blondie's UK breakthrough back in 1978 and it was a cover version.

Mention of their first British hit brings to mind the last time she tried singing in cod French. On "Denis", she does so because her beaux is a Parisian rogue who has her wrapped around his little finger and she's trying to impress him ("Denis Denis, je suis si folle de toi / Denis Denis, oh embrasse-moi ce soir /Denis Denis, un grand baiser d'eternite), not unlike the way Paul McCartney tries to tap into the tender heart of a French girl on "Michelle"; here, it seems to be in aid of giving her performance a sexy vibe that is otherwise lacking. Repeating the line of "embrassez si Francais" doesn't really do much for me though I suppose at least it's funny that it sounds like she's saying "are you sexay, Francais?".

The French kiss is about as French as the 1918 Spanish Flu was Spanish. So named because the French are so much more open and far less uptight than the Americans or British, it would only make the act of necking naughtier and more illicit, reserved for the back row of a cinema or one of those lookout points where people park their cars late at night. Harry sings of the act as something sophisticated but the accompanying video makes it clear that the damn Yanks are gonna ruin it all with their tacky, nouveau riche Walmart culture. A young woman in a bikini makes out with a blow up Godzilla flotation device and this is a good ten years prior to freak show reality TV and talk shows. Of course, this would have gone right over the heads of British audiences who happily welcomed Harry back to the Top 10. The mid to late eighties was peak UK adulation for all things American, what with the popularity of Dallas and McDonald's and Michael Jackson and this video fed into that misguided romanticism — though, with the charts filled with offerings from the cast of Eastenders and plenty of novelty song pap, who could blame them? McIlheney advises that we should "listen with eyes firmly closed and tongue in cheek for best effect" but I'm convinced few bothered listening to him. Good thing Barry McIlheney would have the chance to help turn British pop around just as the magazine he was now in charge of was reaching its apogee — and at a time when the Aussies would begin taking over from the Yanks.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Billy Bragg: "Greetings to the New Brunette"

Billy Bragg typically kept his love songs and his political message numbers separate but he brought them together beautifully for "Greetings to the New Brunette". With some of his funniest and most touching lyrics, there's lots to unpack here which space and laziness precludes me from going into too much. It's unclear just what becomes of Billy and Shirley but I'm convinced it's painful and this is his way of saying goodbye with as much dignity as possible. The "new brunette" he sings of may be her replacement for him (a rare case of reverse sexism has to be the fact that men with brown hair are classified as 'brunettes') or his for her which gives the song a heartbreaking climax: someone else will come along but they'll never replace what we had. In any case, "Greetings..." should have been the moment in which the UK gave itself over to Billy Bragg; too bad they were so infatuated by everything American.

Nik Kershaw: "Wide Boy"

14 March 1985

"What he's trying to say is that his critics think he's stupid but, because he's got so much success, it doesn't bother him."

— Marshall O'Leary

Paul is a Chickadee reader (aged 7) who lives in the neighbourhood of Beddington in the north part of Calgary. He wavers between Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" and New Edition's "Mr. Telephone Man" as his favourite song of all time. He doesn't have much to say about pop music as you can see below.

I'm sorry, I don't know who he is. Why doesn't he spell his name with a 'c'? It looks dumb spelled 'n-i-k'.

I asked some people around me what they thought of this song. Here's what they said:

My sister Julie liked it but she stopped caring when I told her who it was. She only likes Culture Club. Did you know that she was Boy George for Halloween? And that she was Boy George in her class air band show? Everybody looked at Julie because she was Boy George. No one knew who Sting was and no one knew who Phil Collins was and all those other people in Band Aid. I was proud of her.

Mummy only likes Paul Young now. She asked me to turn this down right away.

Daddy said "no thanks". He was watching a hockey game and didn't want to be disturbed.

My friend Kevin said it's not as good as Howard Jones who he likes a lot but I don't like Howard Jones because of his stupid hair and dumb songs. Maybe I should like Nik Kershaw if Kevin dislikes him.

Craig down the street never gave me back the Archie comic he borrowed so I didn't want to give him a copy. I asked him to come over to hear it but he wants to play street hockey at the Green instead. I want to play too so I should finish this soon.

Ethan at school was too busy sucking on cigarette butts from a flower bed in front of Highwood and didn't want to hear it. I think he hates music and he will probably be a lawyer or a doctor or something when he grows up.

Karim kind of likes it. He wasn't humming it at the bus stop or anything but he got his daddy to buy him the Nik Kershaw tape. Karim said he'd lend it to me and I gave him back his Return of the Jedi book so he won't mind lending it to me.

Paul B likes it a lot but then he bit me on the arm when I asked him why he likes it. Why am I still friends with him?

Do you want to know what I think? Well, it's okay. I think that Marshall is wrong about the meaning of "Wide Boy". I think it's about fat guys thinking they're really important. Grandpa Roy is fat and he thinks he's important. He sells houses. He doesn't care if people think he's fat. People laugh at fat guys but I think they don't care and they feel more important for being fat. I wonder if Nik Kershaw doesn't like fat guys. Ethan said that he doesn't like fat people but I can't say that because Grandpa Roy is fat and so is Louise who is friends with Mummy and Daddy. I think fat people are fine. And the song is nice but maybe he should be nicer to fat people. (By the way, hello to: Michael B, Michelle and Angie, Wesant and Mike from swimming lessons)

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Billy Bragg: Between the Wars

Daddy likes this kind of thing. He says that folk music tells a story but I think that Twisted Sister tells a story in they're song but he says they aren't folk so I don't know what he means. Marshall doesn't like Billy Bragg's voice but I think it's neat. People in England talk like him but they don't usually sing like him. He says he was a minor and a dockor and a railwayman between the wars. I didn't know that people have more than one job when they grow up. Daddy is just a teacher, he doesn't have other jobs. I don't know when these wars were. Grandpa Bill was in the Second World War. He told me that Hitler heard his foot steps and that's how the war ended.