Salt 'N' Pepa: "Expression"

10 January 1990

"I think it's a great song, I love it, but it's not an incredibly strong single. But it was great."

— Matt Goss

The Chart Music podcast team, and show regular Taylor Parkes in particular, often speak about the so-called 'eighventies', a vague period of time in which the seventies and eighties blended into one another. One decade, it would seem, was keen to get started prior to it even beginning while the other desired carrying on well past its time running out. I was just three-and-a-half when the seventies gave way to the eighties so remnants of the 'eighventies' are difficult for me to spot but I am aware of a similar occurance known as the 'neighnties'. No one spoke of the neighnties at the time and it only really seemed to be a curiosity in retrospect. It's odd to think, for example, that the Pixies existed before Roxette or that there was still pop metal as late as 1992 but these weren't remarked upon then.

With the nineties just over a week old, it would have been little too much to expect the past decade to be rid of completely so early on. Instead, we have a very late-eighties pop star reviewing the new releases (all of which would have been written, recorded and cut in the eighties) with his pick for Single of the Fortnight being a very late-eighties rap combo who were looking to shake the tag of having one megahit to hold their hats on. It was going to take a while for the eighties to be extricated completely from the nineties.

Matt Goss last appeared in this space just a few months' ago. Bros had been at the forefront of British consciousness in 1988 but their star had gradually begun to wane over the course of the following year. Craig 'Ken' Logan took a leave of absence (he wasn't on stage with the Goss brothers at their Wembley Arena show in mid-January, much to the bitter disappointment of my sister) before officially departing in the spring. Having been all over the place a year earlier, the public was sick to death of them and their legion of Brosettes was diminishing as allegiances were transferred over to Jason Donovan and New Kids on the Block. Now a duo of Matt and twin brother Luke, they wanted to tell everyone of how serious they were and that they'd be around for years. Yeah, about that...

Bros' attempt at reviewing the singles in Smash Hits in September of 1988 is poor even by the modest standards of guest pop star critics. They recommended poor records and, worse, they made the whole thing all about them. Taking on the task alone this time, I am pleased to report that Matt Goss handles it much better the second time round. He tries a little too hard to prove what catholic tastes he has ("I do like rock — I love Journey") but at least he sticks to giving his thoughts on the music he's been given. That said, he makes a bit of an arse of himself when he knocks the New Kids for being "white boys...trying to sound black and not succeeding". Oh the irony.

Salt 'N' Pepa were another trio that rose to fame in 1988. "Push It" had been a near number one but it is now far more beloved than the song it was stuck behind (Glenn Medeiros' "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You"). Bros' first hit single that year ("When Will I Be Famous") also released the runner-up spot and it led to a further four Top 5 smashes; Salt 'N' Pepa's breakthrough success only led to modest performances subsequently. "Shake Your Thang (It's Your Thing)" rode its predecessor to a Top 30 spot but good luck finding anyone who remembers it today. A fun cover "Twist and Shout" returned them to the upper echelons but, again, when did you last hear it?

The group had a quiet 1989 but at least they managed to get out of it without anyone jumping ship. DJ Spinderella, Salt 'N' Pepa's very own Ken (admittedly it was difficult to accept that an outfit with two people in the group name would be a trio), would be a mainstay until being abruptly terminated in 2019. Much of the year was spent working on their second album and "Expression" was to be the first single. Fans expecting another "Push It" weren't going to be disappointed.

In spite of Goss' odd recommendation (see the quote above), "Expression" would ultimately end up being held off until finally being released that April. (It appears in the ALSO RELEASED THIS FORTNIGHT sidebar, reviewer Sian Pattenden having a much tougher selection of singles to sift through as the neighnties really began to heat up) This postponement may have contributed to its shockingly poor chart record as it only just crawled into the bottom of the Top 40. Any worries that they were heading down the dumper would quickly be reversed when follow-ups "Do You Want Me" and "Let's Talk About Sex" made them relevant all over again.

Goss points out that their singing in the chorus makes for a nice change and he's right. Doing tough comedy rap was only going to take them so far and working out a new approach turned out to be the right move. The other big change "Expression" marks is an embrace of feminism. They aren't explicit with this message but just who were these young women trying to encourage if not teenage girls? When they first arrived they seemed horny and up for a laugh but now they were trying to go deeper and mostly pulling it off. I don't suppose this is the "message" that rap fans of the time would allude to but it's a message all the same and one that your Public Enemies and NWA's weren't interested in pushing into their material.

What's missing is originality. With an oft-repeated chorus imploring listeners to "express yourself..." they were either knowingly or unknowlingly inviting Madonna comparisons. "Express Yourself" had been a global hit for Madge only six months' earlier and it couldn't have helped the chances of Salt 'N' Pepa's comeback. Why it was chosen to mark their return is anyone's guess even if it's a well-intended effort. I don't imagine they meant to copy Madonna but that's not how it would've been taken. For his part, Goss doesn't bring this up and it's possible no one noticed.

The first Single of the Fortnight of the nineties, "Expression" ushered in a period of hip hop becoming much more critically acceptable in the pages of Smash Hits. And, for once, they weren't being lauded for not boasting about themselves as previous wags had gone out of their way to give props to the likes of Run-DMC, De La Soul and Redhead Kingpin. Hip hop could finally be taken as hip hop and there would be plenty of room for the braggarts, do-gooders, gangstas and hippies. Salt 'N' Pepa would carry on and continue to do well throughout the decade ahead. As for Bros, well...

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Deacon Blue: "Queen of the New Year"

"Ha-Hoo-Ha!" Timing, as they say, is everything. Ver Blue's second album When the World Knows Your Name had come out about nine months' earlier. I got it for my twelfth birthday and I have always associated it with the hot summer of '89 as a result. Sure, there was this song about the New Year that opened it (as well as two further numbers that mention Christmas) but the big choruses and drums and all that yodeling made for fun listening on warm evenings as well as car trips around the south of England. Jump ahead to the start of 1990 and "Queen of the New Year" suddenly made sense and became my favourite song on an album that was now all about snow and ice and staying in. An LP for all seasons even if the cool kids weren't having any of it.

Jermaine Stewart: "Don't Talk Dirty to Me" / Fairground Attraction: "A Smile in a Whisper"

21 September 1988

This is the second in an occasional series in which pop groups review the singles and fail to agree on a favourite. The Communards did pretty well for themselves in spite of their disagreements, picking a pair of top level pop records for joint Single of the Fortnight. Not up to the task as well, Bros sift through the new releases and wind up choosing a pair of nondescript numbers. And fair enough, they're hardly the first "critics" to pick a mediocrity and they're far from the last. But not only are the songs not up to much but Matt, Luke and Ken don't have much to say about their picks either. No, there was only one review present in which they contribute anything worth writing about more than thirty years later and it's about their bete noire The Wonder Stuff. So, for this post I'll be focusing on the supplementary post (as always, filed under Also of some cop) with their respective SOTF only being touched upon briefly. A one-off roll reversal, then. Enjoy!

~~~~~

"The b-side's called "Astley In The Noose" is it? Presumably they hate us as well, right?"

— Matt

"The thing that annoys me is that we play as much live as they play live, exactly the same instruments except with a different style and different music so I don't know what they're on about."

— Luke

"Sick."

— Ken

Also "Reviewed" This Fortnight

The Wonder Stuff: "It's Yer Money I'm After, Baby"

"It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" was The Wonder Stuff's fifth single. Their debut album The Eight Legged Groove machine had been released a month earlier to positive reviews (even in Smash Hits; it wasn't just the "serious" music press that championed them) and previous single "A Wish Away" had only just missed the Top 40 so things were starting to look up. They were still a few years away from being one of the biggest groups in the country and it would've difficult in 1988 to imagine them getting that big but there was something to them. In Miles Hunt they had a charismatic frontman who was equal parts Noddy Holder, John Lydon and Robert Plant. They looked a state but they could play and had already cultivated a loyal following. All they needed was for the media to start paying attention. Good thing they had a song called "Astley in the Noose" to do just that.

It was only a b-side but it was getting attention. The song is actually discussed twice in this fortnight's issue of Smash Hits. Rick Astley sat down with Hits scribe Tom Doyle to look at some questions that fans had sent in. Among some very Hitsian queries — Have you ever had the urge to run into Tescos and shout "Sainsburys!"?, Which Muppet from The Muppet Show do you think resembles you the most — one pop kid wrote in to ask, What do you think about The Wonder Stuff writing a song called "Astley in the Noose"? (The record had only just come out and it was already coming up in a Q&A so clearly there was a buzz surrounding it)

Perhaps surprisingly, Astley took it in good humour. He wasn't overly familiar with them ("are they some indie band or something?") but seemed impressed by the sentiment ("I suppose I'm quite honoured in a way. Good on you The Wonder Stuff. I'd like to meet them someday..."). If his feelings had been hurt by the imagery of him being hanged he didn't express it here. Rick Astley understood how to be the bigger person and how to take a slight and make light of it.

Flip over to the singles review page and you'll note that Bros reacted differently. Now, they could have fired back by standing up for the singer. Matt Goss could've said "Rick Astley's a good bloke and doesn't deserve to be treated this way", Luke could've said "Rick's a performer just like them and should be treated with respect" and Ken could've said "Yeah" and all would've been fine. They would've missed the point of the song either way but at least they would've been nobly defending the honour of a fellow pop star.

But they went a different way by making it all about themselves. Having shot to fame that year with mega hits "When Will I Be Famous?", "Doctor Boy" and "I Owe You Nothing", they quickly developed a thorny relationship with their critics. They delighted in having the tabloids cover their every move until it came back to bite them and they often felt disrespected by other bands. Though they hadn't really paid their dues, they still expected to be treated like any other group and would eventually claim that they were "about longevity", which fascinated that great observer of all things pop Neil Tennant (to the extent that he used it in "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously", one of the Pet Shop Boys' great ironic numbers). So to have a shouty Miles Hunt lay waste to Astley them was just not on.

Their "review" begins with some guarded praise of "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby". It isn't really their thing (no big shock there) but they do have positive things to say, with Ken admitting that it has a "good melody". Then, they take note of the song on the flip side and suddenly all bets are off. Matt says that they would never be so crass as to have a song called "The Wonder Stuff In The Noose" while Luke admits that he doesn't know "what they're on about". (Giving it a spin would've helped)

Had Bros given a listen to this song with the title that offends them so much, they may have discovered a thing or two. First, they likely would have been even more horrified by the "I wouldn't kill you even if you paid me" line ("Presumably they wouldn't kill us even if someone paid them too..."). More significant, however, is the reveal that he they "shouldn't take this to heart / it's all to do with art and entertainment". Rick Astley Bros aren't the target, it's their crappy music. Somehow I don't think this would have placated the Goss twins and the other one.

Ultimately, "Astley in the Noose" is a good tune but the lyrics are a little too on the nose and speak more to Hunt's rage than to crafting great pop of their own. Significantly, The Wonder Stuff would channel more or less the same sentiments into their following single. "Who Wants to Be the Disco King?" is just as pointed an attack on the state of current pop but with subtler imagery and Hunt shifting between anger and wistfulness. While "It's Yer Money..." only just dented the Top 40 with a single week at the very bottom of the table, "...Disco King" peaked at no. 28 and was the highest new entry that week. Slow, modest steps but encouraging and a sign that maybe there were more potential Wonder Stuff fans out there. I happened to be one of them but not for another two or three years.

~~~~~

The late Jermaine Stewart had hit it big around the world with "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" in 1985 but his fortunes dipped by '88. UK success, however, had continued with the Top 20 hits "Say It Again" and "Get Lucky". "Don't Talk Dirty to Me" is more of the same, a throwback to the NY clubs that was still clinging to relevance. Yeah, there were still popular records just like this at the time but they were beginning to fade away. Luke and Ken love it because it's their type of thing and that's fine but in the end it's just another R&B disco tune in a world packed to the brim with 'em.

~~~~~

The buskers from up north had surprised many when they went to no. 1 with "Perfect". Riding the momentum, follow-up "Find My Love" (which this blogger maintains is the superior single) got itself a Top 10 spot but the hits were running out for Fairport Fairground Convention Attraction. "A Smile in a Whisper" is a fine opener to their album The First of a Million Kisses but it has no business being a single — and, indeed, the same goes for everything else on their LP. Scraping the bottom of the barrel tends to go a lot deeper but maybe this is less a barrel and more a sugar bowl on the kitchen table. And there's nothing like trying to dislodge an encrusted clump of the sweet stuff just to make your bowl of Special K that bit less tasteless, is there?

The Housemartins: "Me and the Farmer"

26 August 1987

"This single proves — once and for all! — that The Housemartins have wit, intelligence, brevity, humour and the sparkliest nippy pop tunes ever created."

— Sylvia Patterson

With all due respect to the likes of Brian Wilson, Carole King, various members of Fleetwood Mac and Max Martin, none of them can write a song about relationships like Paul Heaton. During his time with The Beautiful South, he captured couples on the brink of breaking up ("A Little Time"), dealing with an unwanted pregnancy ("Bell Bottomed Tear"), being unable to communicate ("You Keep It All In"), growing old ("Prettiest Eyes") or sticking with loving but unfulfilling relationships ("Tonight I Fancy Myself", "We Are Each Other"). These traits would eventually descend into either grotesque pieces about dominance and S&M ("Worthless Lie", "Mini-Correct", a song so vicious that it prompted Brianna Corrigan to quit the group and she was able to put up with the controversial "36d") or self-parody ("Perfect 10") but these shouldn't gainsay how he was once able to craft work dealing with couples that was realistic yet imaginative, cynical yet romantic.

This quality was a marked change from when Heaton was leader of previous group The Housemartins. A common charge leveled at The Beautiful South was that they had become "soft", that the boozy Marxism of "Happy Hour" had been watered down to songs about cozy domestication. Yet, socialism and football terraces aside, there had always been the spirit of the individual buried in his material. "Happy Hour" is drunkenly sung along to in pubs all over the world to this day but this belies the fact that it's about being alienated by the jollity of crowds and the watering holes they frequent. The skiffle-drenched favourite "Sheep" deals with being baffled by the mentality of mindless mobs. Yet, they didn't really do one-on-one human interaction.

The very day that Heaton and the supposedly dishy Stan Cullimore (sorry, Sylvia, but I just don't see it) wrote "Happy Hour", however, the pair composed a song about a relationship. It wasn't about a miserable couple who may once have been in love but about an employer and his employee. "Me and the Farmer": workplace dysfunction in song. Though it was kept, it didn't make the cut for their first LP and would have to wait so it's possible they weren't as thrilled by it as they should have been. They weren't to know it then but they had a breakthrough on their hands.

It's hard to picture this song having a basis in reality. A peasant toiling the land wouldn't have had this kind of close contact with his feudal lord. In more recent times, a migrant worker or a penniless labourer wouldn't be so indentured to their boss to the point that quitting their job would be (at least technically) impossible. Nit picking? Sure but the song is so great that it retains its potency.

Heaton refuses to allow the song's narrator to feel too sorry for himself. The song opens with a line, "me and the farmer get on fine / through stormy weather and bottles of wine" that indicates a camaraderie. But if this farmer sometimes treats Heaton well, then he's still a ruthless land baron and has no qualms about using humans, animals and nature to his ends. Being very much of its time, it's clearly a parable for Thatcherite deregulation, albeit one told on the scale of a single individual.

I never knew The Housemartins when they were active. I was still a good decade away from entering university during their brief two years of activity so I was well outside their target audience. For me, they were primarily the group that Paul Heaton used to be in. Going from the 'Hooses' to ver South was hardly the most radical creative shift that a singer-songwriter has made (bassist Norman Cook's post-Martin career took a much more unexpected turn, even if he always had an affinity for DJing and house music) but it wasn't without howls of protest. Early South gigs from 1989 were marred "fans" chanting for Heaton's old act as well as demanding they play calling card single "Happy Hour" (the band, for their part, responded in kind with a barrage of rude words hurled back at the crowd).

As I mentioned earlier, critics, too, weren't always crazy about where Heaton was going as the nineties progressed. The Beautiful South's more MOR-friendly sound (as well as, implicitly, the fact that they always had a female vocalist) resulted in reviews that weren't always glowing. And the music journalists could never seem to get past what Heaton had previously done; by comparison, even Morrissey's hit-and-miss solo career wasn't as dogged by his days with The Smiths and only occasionally did New Order reviews bother to mention Joy Division. As a longtime fan of 'the Pet Shop Boys you can't dance to', I never understood this. It wasn't until after several years of South fandom that I turned to The Housemartins, and even then I did so reluctantly. The hacks were always trashing my second favourite band and I had little desire to discover that they may have had a point.

"Happy Hour" was their biggest self-composed hit and would cast an unwelcome shadow over both The Housemartins and Beautiful South. Well before the rise of laddish groups like The Stone Roses and Oasis, the Martins acted like a bunch of goons in their videos and looked like normal blokes who signed on every week, were regulars at the local betting shop and had wives who looked like barmaids. They enjoyed a pint and read The Sun. Their socialism didn't matter since you could sing "Happy Hour" with your mates on a bus and they looked just like their fans. All of this was completely true except for the fact that it was bollocks.

Heaton had been a longtime fan of Motown and Northern Soul and the influence of black music is all over his work. Added to the mix was some skiffle and indie rock of the age. All of these styles tended to appeal to working class types but it was a sound they began refining for their second album The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death. Just as the last Jam album could almost be the first Style Council LP, the use of a choir and horns on People... makes it a proto-Beautiful South record — at least in places. There's also a tougher sound with some rock guitar and pounding drums from new recruit Dave Hemmingway. This subtle change of pace might explain its lack of big hits and its lower album chart placing. Indeed, it would prove to be the lowest charting LP of Heaton's career until The Beautiful South's Gaze in 2003 (that said, it would also prove to be the last album of his to produce three top 20 hits for over ten years). But it's a better album than the very fine London 0 Hull 4 and there are hints that they were already keen to ditch what had made them successful.

"Me and the Farmer" was one of the rockier numbers from their forthcoming album. Predecessor "Five Get Over Excited" had the skiffle shuffle of old and a singalong chorus for the crowds to appreciate and the catchy "Bow Down" would prove to be a fan favourite album track but "Farmer" seems cut from a slightly different cloth. For one thing, the chorus is tricky to join in with due to the call-and-response (I can never decide if I should join in with his bandmates' backing vocals — "won't he let you go? — or with Heaton himself — "probably no"). And though the tune itself is yet another jolly number, the subject matter hardly seems fitting for a knees up round the pub. Fittingly, for an early piece about an individual, it appeals more to the solitary listener.

Much of this was obscured by the group's image, which remained steadfastly ordinary. It has a typically wacky video too. But people couldn't get behind it the way they did "Happy Hour", a song that they wrote ten minutes later but which sounds like it's from a much earlier age. Using up every second of its just-under-three-minute playing time to fullest effect, "Me and the Farmer" is simply wondrous pop, the kind of song that can easily hold up to repeated listens and which never fails to delight, as well as being a welcome reminder of just what an underrated group of musicians they were. You can have "Happy Hour" and I'll take this: a song they never bettered and which Heaton would struggle to equal.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bros: "I Owe You Nothing"

Matt, Luke and Ken would soon be causing a stir by getting the British youth to start putting Grolsch bottle caps on their Doc Martens (though no one ever explained how they got the ruddy things to stick) but they were far from a sensation in the midst of 1987. "When Will I Be Famous?" is one of the great boy band singles and a perfect debut for a trio so keen to grab hold of the spotlight but, in truth, this ode to their well-documented grumpiness is probably just as much a part of their reality. "People think we're completely contrived," complains Matt in this same issue of the Hits, a high horse they would never descend from. No, they didn't owe anyone anything but they sure felt they deserved everyone's respect from the off.