George Michael: "Praying for Time"

8 August 1990

"...the type of record you sort of drown in."

— Chris "Toffer" Heath

It never seems to occur to artists, management and record executives that massive success is not likely to be repeated. Fleetwood Mac's brilliant Tusk album was initially considered to be a flop because its sales were a small fraction of its predecessor Rumours. There was talk in the late-eighties that Michael Jackson had been disappointed by Bad "only" selling a third of predecessor Thriller. Oasis worked in cahoots with label Creation and their publicity team in a ham-fisted attempt to get third album Be Here Now to be just as big as (What's the Story) Morning Glory? But given how George Michael attempted to follow-up his ginormous, multi-million seller, he either (a) knew it couldn't be done or (b) didn't care either way.

Michael had not been gone for long by the time he had returned following his monstrously big Faith album. His first solo LP had sold millions and millions of copies and six singles were released from it. While this resulted in the law of diminishing returns setting in for each subsequent record in Britain, nothing of the sort happened in the US (opening single "I Want Your Sex" would fail to top the Hot 100, a feat not repeated until final offering "Kissing a Fool" some fifteen months later). He toured Faith to death and lavish promos for all of its singles were shown regularly on MTV and other video channels and shows around the world. The man was everywhere — and if the public hadn't quite tired of him, he had certainly tired of fame.

Yet, he didn't want to vanish entirely. Instead of withdrawing completely, he kept the product coming while easing himself away from the spotlight. Famously, the singles from his latest album Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 were going to be released without accompanying videos (though this would quickly be altered when Michael bowed to record label pressure by allowing promos albeit without him being in them). The cover featured a crowd of people from the thirties or forties at a beach — I wonder if any of them had prejudices of one kind or another — in black and white. And there was that album title: as dour as anything either New Order or Sting had used for any of their LP's but with a hectoring quality unlike anything before it. One of the most famous faces in the world was no longer being seen and he was putting out an album with a stark title and cover art: at least the songs inside went well with the package. (The irony of Michael's attempt to steer clear of making music videos was it would free him up to become a more prolific artist. Legal battles with record label Columbia and personal troubles scuttled whatever momentum he may have gained from discarding pop superstardom and he wouldn't put out another new album until 1996's Older. It's hard to say if a trouble-free life in the early-nineties would have got him to record more but I suspect his muse was fussier than he let on)

"Praying for Time" was first up from Listen Without Prejudice and its release was met with some enthusiasm but it was nothing compared to the ludicrously hyped "Bad" by Michael Jackson or the controversial "Like a Prayer" by Madonna. No obnoxious twenty minute promo with a narrative no one cares about, no Catholic League-threatened boycott to overshadow it, jut a plaintive song that we were meant to listen to...without prejudice, though we also had the luxury of reading along to the ultra simplistic video of the song's text.

I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed at first. While I would very quickly tire of songs like "Winds of Change" and "Right Here Right Now" celebrating the end of the cold war, this felt like too much of a depressing attempt to spoil the party. 1990 was a strange year in which there should have been a renewed sense of optimism in light of the Berlin Wall having been toppled and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison but recession, environmental issues and the oncoming first Gulf War made things seem even gloomier. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher was about self-destruct but George Michael was the party pooper who wanted to remind everyone that things weren't getting any better.

Over time, however, I have come to appreciate "Praying for Time" much more. A lot more in fact. The early part of the twentieth century has not exactly been a time flush with optimism so the song isn't able to play the spoiler so much as it simply soundtracks the current state of the world gradually coming undone. Back in the nineties it was easy to pick on professional athletes and pop stars for being the greedy that Michael takes shots at but now they're rightly seen as the low hanging fruit. Billionaires and autocrats control everything and they're not about to start sharing the world's resources now. 

Michael's melancholy side always resulted in his best records — "Careless Whisper" is remarkably mature for such a young songwriter, while "A Different Corner" is simply one of the most beautiful songs you're likely to hear; the slower, more considered numbers on Faith remain that album's best tracks — but this was something altogether different. It isn't especially musically complex but the arrangement and production are first rate; it would have been very easy for Michael to have decided to drown the recording in melodramatic strings but the lonely horns that appear from time to time are much more satisfying. As many, including reviewer Chris Heath, point out, there's no chorus but in a way it's almost all chorus — or, better yet, it's all build-up to a chorus that never comes.

"Praying for Time" continued the trend from the Faith album of his singles in the US vastly outperforming how they did back in Britain. Yet, he was at the end of his imperial period stateside while fans in his homeland would remain loyal. Several tracks off of Listen Without Prejudice would be released as singles but they all gave him his worst chart showings to date. Becoming a Howard Hughes of pop had come with a price. And yet, what did it matter in the end? Sales fell off but they probably were going to anyway and he was still one of the biggest pop stars on Earth. He still had fans that would remain in spite of lengthy periods of silence and some bad publicity. He may have rejected stardom but there were many who had no interest in rejecting him.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

World Party: "Way Down Now"

Ah power pop: traditional, simple and oh-so predictable. On the other hand, members of these groups tend to have top quality taste in music — it's just a shame they aren't able to make much of their own. Luckily, Karl Wallinger is one of the more talented power poppers out there. I'm not much of a fan of World Party but they don't make me roll my eyes so I'll give them that. "Way Down Now" is one of his finest compositions, thrilling and good fun and with hidden depths to the lyrics that you hardly notice because of all those power pop chords and riffs and stuff. Sure, it's traditional, simple and oh-so predictable but these are trivial matters to overlook when you're talking about a song as good as this.

Gloria Estefan: "Here We Are"

21 February 1990

"As usual her "man" is being a rotter, as usual she loves him regardless and as usual there are tinkling pianos and fluttering Spanish guitars galore rustling in the shrubbery."

— Chris Heath

Blimey, 1990 was off to a slow start. The decade has so far seen some awfully poor Singles of the Fortnight but at least the charts were every bit as subpar. Christmas number one holdover "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II was the first chart topper of the year and it was followed by the equally awful "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on the Block. Next was Kylie Minogue's very unremarkable version of Little Anthony & The Imperials "Tears on My Pillow", which was better than its number one successors but not much. It lasted just a week on top and was replaced by a single so brilliant that it ended up turning the whole year around.

Unfortunately, Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" ended up being passed over for a Smash Hits SOTF even though it was a bona fide Single of the Decade for a ten year period that was just two months' old. Scan old issues of ver Hits from the time and you'll discover that not only was it not reviewed but it wasn't even included in the Also Released This Fortnight consolation category.  And yet, it still spent four weeks at number one and ended up being a worldwide smash — and it has aged beautifully even if the rest of us haven't.

Less endearing today is Chris Heath's pick for this issue's SOTF, "Here We Are" by Gloria Estefan. He admits this isn't exactly the strongest batch of new releases so his choice is by default. His write up isn't even glowing with his nibs using an awful lot of 'as usuals'. And who can blame him? Gloria and her longstanding Miami Sound Machine — whether acknowledged or not they were still present — crew had long since settled on a formula of going back-and-forth between slushy love songs and dancefloor numbers about how the best thing one can do is get on that dancefloor pronto.

Critic Tom Breihan has described Estefan as "America's most successful wedding singer" and it's hard to disagree. "Anything for You", "Can't Stay Away From You" and "Don't Wanna Lose You" are just the sort of songs You might want to have Your first dance to with Your new spouse (no one I know personally, mind you); the likes of "Conga", "1-2-3" and "Get on Your Feet" could all encourage grannies and kiddies and friends of your parents to get dancing while everyone else goes straight to the open bar.

"Here We Are" was the third single from Estefan's first solo album Cuts Both Ways. Torch song "Don't Wanna Lose You" came out first in the summer of 1989 and it was followed by the uptempo "Get on Your Feet" in the US and "Oye Mi Canto" in Britain. So far, so adequate. None of these songs was about to blow anyone away but they were all sturdy enough records that weren't about to get people running from the room in terror. For the most part, the album as a whole was quite good too. Predecessor LP Anything for You (known as Let It Loose in North America) may have had the stronger singles (I still like "1-2-3") but Cuts Both Ways was the stronger record from top to bottom. The three singles spread over various territories amounted to the decent material that could be siphoned off Estefan's album but such thinking never occurred to record company execs.

It was vastly inferior to "Don't Wanna Lose You" but you could always rely on a gloopy Gloria number to be a big hit, though not for much longer. "Here We Are" did well in the US but people were beginning to tire of all these so-called ballads that all sounded the same. Anything for You had been a slow burn in the UK and it's four singles did well on the back of it; Cuts Both Ways sold really well right away and its 45's suffered as a result. A year earlier "Here We Are" might've been a Top 10 hit but in 1990 it drifted around the lower half of the Top 40 for a month and was quickly forgotten about. Even the news that she'd been seriously injured when her tour bus got crushed on March 20 couldn't save this very ordinary recording.

Estefan recuperated from spinal surgery over the next year and the world seemed to move on. I had started 1990 off by playing Cuts Both Ways to death but the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and Madchester taken over and by the end of the year I had outgrown this music that was so painfully adult. I wasn't terribly impressed by her 1991 comeback "Coming Out of the Dark" and I'm not so sure it was just because I had moved on. It was too inspirational and too calculated. I would later have my own brush with death in 2002 and I listened a lot to Stevie Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale at that time. An account of dealing with his own mortality, it was (and remains) poignant and relatable. Listening to it made me think of how poorly Gloria Estefan handled such weighty material. We all got sick of her because her stuff all sounded the same but then we wanted her to go back to sounding the same when she tried to be serious. Some people just can't win.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Railway Children: "Every Beat of the Heart"

The one Heath ought to have picked. He likes it for the most part but then dampens his praise by stating that the tune is "nicked from an old New Order song". That might well be true but I find it's just generally inspired by NO, not cribbed from one number in particular. The bass part is straight out of the Peter Hook Book of Bass Playing for Lead Guitarists but much of the rest is just good old, highly irresistible jangle pop. Heath also mentions Del Amitri as a not dissimilar group but I'll take the melancholy of lead Railway Child Gary Newby any day. Proof of what a sucker I am for depressing songs that also manage to be uplifting. A superb single then, now and always — and a sign that sweet indie pop was back (BACK!!).

Cat: "Catwoman"

1 November 1989

"Every single person I know (including me) said when they first heard "Catwoman": "What a useless, tuneless and boring dance record — I'd rather have my hair cut like Richard Marx than listen to this again". And all of them have had to shame-facedly admit a few days later that they've changed their minds."

— Chris Heath

Here is the second part about what it means to be 'Princian' — for good or bad.

Wendy & Lisa represented the musically literate side of Prince's vast entourage. While no one in Prince's employ could come close to his abilities, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were (and remain) accomplished multi-instrumentalists, talented songwriters and excellent vocalists. They even came from good musical stock, with Melvoin's father Mike having been a notable jazz pianist while her brother Chris would later go on to be the touring keyboardist for alternative rock superstars Smashing Pumpkins.

But the Prince stable was populated by more than just ace session cats. Being a showman of the highest caliber, the Purple Perv cultivated first rate dancers for his renowned concerts and he kept many of them around. While Wendy & Lisa were easy on the eyes themselves, these girls were gorgeous, sexy and knew their way around a stage. In some ways they were as necessary to Prince's shows as his crack backing band.

Cat Glover came on board at roughly the same time that Wendy & Lisa departed following the purge of Prince's band The Revolution. She appeared in some of his videos and became an increasingly prominent part of his critically lauded Lovesexy tour. Magazines like Smash Hits would refer to her by the mononym 'Cat' with only the added bit of info that she was "Prince's foxtress". It looked like she was becoming properly famous.

As if to test this out, record label WEA (the same company that Prince, perhaps just a touch dramatically, would later claim had enslaved him) had Glover signed up to their subsidiary Red Dot Records. With her old friend having just released the Batman soundtrack, it seemed like a stroke of genius to have her debut single be titled "Catwoman". It's just a pity that everyone was beginning to conclude that while the movie itself was really good, the music sucked for the most part. Prince, it would seem, couldn't simply belch out an entire album's worth of songs about Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vail's romance and electric chairs and expect everyone to fawn all over it. Whatever hit single potential Cat's response had, it would pay the price for Prince's worst album to date.

But could "Catwoman" have been a hit? Possibly. New jack swing was beginning to really take off with the massive success of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 and it could easily have taken off as a result. With hits like "Miss You Much" and "Escapade", the youngest of the Jackson clan was staking a claim to territory previously occupied by her brother Michael; the hits weren't as big in Britain however. Luckily, Cat's single was very much a product of and for the UK with Bomb the Bass' Tim Simenon producing and references to Radio 1 and Radio 2. Turns out, it didn't do so well but at least it got itself a spot of the lower reaches of the UK charts.

Chris Heath admits to "Catwoman" taking its time to grow in his esteem and its lack of immediacy also may have hampered its chances. On the other hand, it hasn't altered much for me over the last few days. It sounded like a mess — an engaging mess but a mess all the same —  but one that wasn't so off-putting that I had to turn it off. Not "useless, tuneless and boring" but neither is it "quite wonderful" either. A more than acceptable first — and, indeed, only — try from Cat.

As for the song's Princian aspects, it's all surface level. Hard-hitting R&B with a hard rock guitar solo are key elements to some of his most well-remembered songs but they were hardly required in order to make a Prince tune great. Creativity, swagger and a willingness to stick one's neck out were elements that his nibs used to craft some of the most memorable pop of the age (and I say that as a bit of a Prince agnostic) but they aren't present and correct here. Wendy & Lisa had those qualities while Cat had the stage presence and confidence. Prince had it all and that X factor. In the end, perhaps it's a willingness not to be just like The Beatles or Prince that makes a band truly Beatlesque or Princian. They didn't wish to follow anyone, so why would you want to follow them?

Finally, a look at the single's review this fortnight shows a glut of product on offer. In addition to the thirteen records evaluated by Heath, there's another two dozen listed in the 'Also Released This Fortnight' sidebar. It being the start of November, it was once again time to start looking towards the Christmas Number One sweepstakes. As ever, these "contenders" were too early to put up much of a fight as the real favourites were still to come. But these singles also suggest a staleness in pop in the waning weeks of the eighties. The sidebar does give off some hope with The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Wonder Stuff and Lightning Seeds all releasing new singles. Indie would be British pop's saviour as the nineties kicked off and one of its key records was about to emerge.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Phil Collins: "Another Day in Paradise"

Phil Collins' many critics have some legit reasons for loathing his music but they might wish to try for a bit of nuance. Yes, "Another Day in Paradise" is a rich man's sob story about encountering homeless people but it isn't that bad. In fact, it all seemed very noble, if quite preachy, back when it hit the charts at the end of 1989. Where Phil got it wrong was in a lack of understanding: rich guy sees people begging out of the corner of his eye and he's moved enough to promptly write a song about it. And that's fine only there's nothing else to it. Compare it to the Pet Shop Boys' "The Theatre" from the Very album and it feels even more shallow. The following spring my English Language Arts teacher Mrs Reid had us do presentations about protest songs. Lazy bugger though I was (and still am), I was up for this assignment and I did well speaking about U2's "Silver and Gold". Most of my classmates also gave good presentations on the likes of John Lennon, Tracy Chapman and Public Enemy. The girl who chose to speak to the class about "Another Day in Paradise", however, struggled. From what I can recall, she didn't seem to have much to say beyond simply "homelessness is bad". And who can blame her? That's all Phil was able to contribute too.

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.

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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.

Brother Beyond: "He Ain't No Competition"

19 October 1988

""It's always been a mystery why Stock, Aitken & Waterman never wrote songs for a group of boys and now, of course, they do."

— Chris Heath

I had now been in the UK for two months. I had by this point adjusted well enough to my new school, Mayflower Comprehensive in Billericay. I had quickly sussed that Drama was my favourite class, Religious Studies was somehow worse than I'd been expecting and Information Processing was useless without computers. I did really well in French and Geography, I sucked at Art and General Science and was just sort of all right in everything else. Along the way, I picked up a group of friends who I remained tight with for the rest of the year and had even master tying the tie I was required to wear every day. Every Friday my dad (a Maths teacher at Mayflower) gave me a pound to buy lunch and I typically used it on a slice of pizza, chips and an iced bun, washed down with something approximating cola from a machine. I missed Canada but that longing to be back was fading.

At home I began watching Grange Hill, Neighbours and Top of the Pops but the Saturday morning telly with all the music-focused programming would be something I would only know of rather than get into fully since we were going away almost every weekend. Overnight trips weren't quite a part of our routine (something that would begin just a few days after this issue of Smash Hits came out when we took the train to Scotland for half-term break with my grandparents who were visiting; I spent much of the journey up to Edinburgh engrossed in this very issue which my sister was already finished with) but we were already into day trips into London as well as visits to Colchester, Oxford, Southend and some hit-and-miss Essex villages. Getting away from out depressing little hovel as much as possible was a priority but I wish it hadn't been at the expense of just a little bit more telly.

When in the room I shared with my sister, I was happiest reading Smash Hits (or the pop bits of my sister's Just Seventeen mags) dreaming about one day forming a group of my own and listening to Radio 1's Sunday evening Top 40 countdown with Bruno Brookes. It was at this time that I began to experience my first (and strongest) bout of pop fandom rage. Not everyone seemed to share my opinion that Kylie Minogue's latest single, "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", was the greatest song in the world and I couldn't take it. For three consecutive Sundays I sat by the radio awaiting the results and for three consecutive Sundays I ended up bitterly disappointed. Enya's "Orinoco Flow" (my bête noire) didn't lodge itself at the top spot for long but it was nevertheless painful to be me for the better part of a month. Kylie then began to fade (the forgettable other side of the single's double-A "Made in Heaven" did "Je ne sais pas pourquoi" no favours) and my anger shifted to Robin Beck (and with good reason), Yazz and other usurpers. A pop injustice had occurred!

Blame? Oh there was a fair amount of it to go around. I thought people were stupid for buying Enya's dreadful record and not picking up Kylie's instead (this ire was not directed in part at myself since I didn't vote with my wallet, records being embargoed from out house because we didn't have a record player — at least not yet). I got annoyed whenever they'd play the naff video for "Orinioco Flow" on TV. But I reserved most of my wrath for Chris Heath for inexplicably trashing what I reckoned to be the best single I'd ever heard. His "clumsy, plodding ballad" was something that had gripped my eleven-year-old heartstrings. He found it "horribly dull" but I couldn't get enough of it. And I was certain that there were pop kids out there who'd refrained from buying it because some know-it-all writing in Smash Hits told them that it would be a waste of their hard "earned" bob.

(I would remain furious with Heath throughout the course of November but I eventually got over it. He soon became one of my favourite Smash Hits writers and I would eventually read his very fine books Pet Shop Boys, Literally and Pet Shop Boys Versus America, a pair of works that expertly dissect the the genius, insights and grumpiness of my favourite group)

What I didn't do, however, was target my derision in the direction of Brother Beyond, the band behind Heath's Single of the Fortnight. A Stock Aitken Waterman composition just like "Je ne sais pas pourquoi", it followed the near-number one success of "The Harder I Try", a single that was peaking two months' earlier when I arrived in the UK. It wouldn't be for a few weeks that I started following the charts and if I did hear the 'Yond's breakthrough hit it meant nothing to me. Thus, "He Ain't No Competition" became my introduction to the one legitimate alternative to Bros. And I was impressed — though not as much as my sister as it quickly supplanted Erasure's "A Little Respect" as her favourite song. (She never took to Kylie) It was only when I finally heard "The Harder I Try" proper on a compilation album that I got for Christmas that I realised that their second hit wasn't quite as good as their first and that maybe, just maybe, it had rode its coattails into the Top 10.

Opening with a sitar (an instrument that had a brief resurgence in British pop near the end of 1988: Hue & Cry also used one on their near-hit "Ordinary Angel") and a quick instrumental sneak peak of the chorus (a SAW trademark), "He Ain't No Competition" is from the off a much faster-paced number than its predecessor. Indeed, one of the charms of "The Harder I Try" was in its soulful, laid-back sound that flirts with lovers rock. 'Yond members Carl Fysh and David White might have even written it themselves; its follow-up has more in common with SAW, seemingly the sort of thing they had lying around in need of an artist or group to give it a good home. It resembles one the deep cuts on the second side of Kylie's debut album, such as "I Miss You", a track that Heath wishes had been the single instead of "Je ne sais pas pourquoi".

Nathan Moore got to play the vulnerable lad who made a million girls cry on "The Harder I Try" but his overlooked talents as a vocalist aren't needed as much here. There are verses where he gets to play the feeble little lamb but the chorus is all about strutting. Fair enough, he was a handsome guy with a champagne smile who clearly enjoyed the adulation of pop life and his confident vocals reflect this. It's likely that Pete Waterman had designs on Moore playing the roll of the teen heart throb even though this had already been achieved. Waterman was beginning to see himself as a pop svengali who molded his stars to suit his vision but he should have remained on the course previously set when SAW catered to the talents of their acts rather than the opposite. "The Harder I Try" had been tailored to Brother Beyond; "He Ain't No Competition" would be the vision that Waterman had for them. The fact that it's still a pretty good record is indicative of SAW not having quite lost their grip though it wouldn't be long.

Brother Beyond would move away from SAW following "He Ain't No Competition". Their debut album Get Even would be revamped to include their two Top 10 hits and would get a very favourable review in Smash Hits a month later. In the meantime, ver Hits also gave them that year's Most Promising New Group award (that the fans may not have actually voted on). Things were looking up for a band that hadn't had much luck until that summer. Riding the wave of their chart success, the 'Yond started off 1989 with their first self-penned hit "Be My Twin" (remixed to sound as much like a SAW number as possible) but the law of diminishing returns was already starting to affect them. A fourth hit, a remix of old flop "Can You Keep a Secret?" failed to reach the Top 20 and the bloom was off the rose. They would end the year outside the hit parade, right back where they had been at the beginning of '88.

The hits dwindled (though they did manage to fluke an American hit in 1990 with "The Girl I Used to Know", a better song than most of their non-SAW material) but Brother Beyond made the most of their fleeting time near the top.They did the media rounds, were always on the telly (probably even more than I was aware since, as I already said, I seldom got the chance to enjoy the Saturday pop shows) and were up for the Smash Hits program. They would even give reviewing the singles a go — and they even managed to do so without making this young pop kid cross.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

INXS: "Need You Tonight"

I still quite like both SAW contributions this fortnight but neither of them comes remotely close to this re-release of "Need You Tonight", a global smash in 1987 that the UK initially chose to spurn for some crazy reason. Subsequent singles "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart" managed to nab Top 30 spots — that were still way lower than they should been — so their sole American chart topper got a second chance a year on from its previous failure. This time, the British public almost made up for the injustice by taking it all the way to number two, a triumph that was dulled by finishing behind the horrible Coke-shilling "The First Time" by Robin Beck. Still, it got people talking and INXS would eventually become bigger in the UK than across the Atlantic. Sexy, unsettling, irresistible and one of those songs that cleverly manages to sound fresh in spite of how derivative the Aussies were. One of the singles of the year, just as it had been in '87. Amazingly, it was their only Top Ten hit in Britain.

Hipsway: "The Broken Years"

19 June 1985

"If all their songs are this excellent we're going to hear an awful lot more of them."

— Chris Heath

Though a potential career ambition of writing for Smash Hits was staring me right in the face, I spent the bulk of my teen years hung up on making it as a pop star. Why scribble a bunch of nonsense for the magazine, went the gist of my thoughts at the time, when I could appear in it instead? I thought a good ride on the giddy carousel of pop — but I couldn't get it to go anywhere in practice. I lacked talent, wherewithal, pluck, determination, confidence and any other distinguishing traits that separate successful musicians from everyone else. I guess I could write lyrics passably by the standards of a fifteen-year-old (I only knew two other people who wrote songs at that time and they both "played" in the same "band" as I did - and they were both a year younger than me!)

Musically speaking, the only thing I could ever manage was to hum a vague melody - likely based on a tune I'd just heard — while repeating a word or phrase. These "ideas" wouldn't be taken any further: I'd have it swirling around in my mind for a while before getting distracted by something else and moving on. There was never any potential in them so why would I bother with just an insignificant trifle? Or perhaps I should have stuck with it. Listening to "The Broken Years" there's not a whole lot else to it beyond a catchy funk riff and a simple chorus of the title repeated and repeated. Simplicity at its finest — unless of course you want something inspiring or something that takes you someplace or the feeling that you're connecting with a song.

Chris Heath is captivated by the little that's going on and his analysis is mostly spot on. Yes, it does kind of sound like a "punchy mixture of The Kane Gang and The Smiths" and, indeed, there isn't anything "startlingly new or original about it" (to bring these two observations together, indie groups going through a Chic phase was old hat by the mid-eighties so it's really no wonder "The Broken Years" didn't catch on). I might even give him the point that it's "sung brilliantly by the deep-voiced Graham Skinner" but I'm not sure that suave and carefree vocals are called for. These broken years he sings of should seem difficult and ought to have taken a lot out of the populace and, you know, be broken. Hardship isn't something that comes out of the very confident Skinner and I'm not convinced they've been all that broken for him — or that he even has much empathy for those who have been through hard times. To be fair, however, I'm not sure anyone could have pulled out a good vocal from such terrible lyrics. "Ah, broken by the years / Lie in the broken years / Just like always everyone / Token of my fear...": 1) what are you boys talking about? and 2) no, scratch that, I don't care.

The one thing it might have in its favour is a thrilling quality that most of the other records this fortnight lack. From the heavy hitters (Dire Straits, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna) all the way down to once-great indie acts (quite the fall from grace for Pink Industry), there isn't much else to recommend so I guess Hipsway can nab a SOTF by default. Of course, Heath's review is much more glowing than that ("This, the first single by four blokes from Glasgow, is simply the best record I've heard for months") to which it could be suggested that something needed to come along to drag pop out of the slump it was going through. To some extent, that's true. Overly-slick records with little by way of substance (like, cough-cough, "The Broken Years") were easy to come by in '85 but one had to look elsewhere. Other issues of Smash Hits for one. Heath could have found irresistible cowpunk, nonsensical yet charming sixties pastiche and first rate Teutonic dance pop to explore. That was the thing about the eighties: the best stuff rarely rose to the top but it was still in there to discover for ourselves.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Style Council: "Come to Milton Keynes"

A grotesque travel brochure for the infamous New Town, "Come to Milton Keynes" is effectively Mrs. Thatcher's "no such thing as society" quote in song — which, granted, was spoken two years after Paul Weller wrote this but it's not like the Tories hadn't been acting like this was the case all along. People have their little homes, they lock themselves away, draw the curtains and pretend like everything isn't going to hell outside. Good material on which to base a song but this is merely good. Quite why they chose to release a cut that works well on their excellent album Our Favourite Shop but which doesn't really do much on its own is anyone's guess. The probably the first sign that things weren't quite right and that a half-decade's creative roll might just be up.

Frank Chickens: "We Are Ninja (Not Geisha)"

31 January 1985

"Utterly silly."

— Chris Heath

As Smash Hits continued to plow through the eighties, it gradually began to become more and more similar to the magazine that captured my imagination at the end of the decade. Making a gradual transition from black and white to glossy at around this time, the reviews were still very much a throwback, with only a trace amount of colour separating it from the serious inkies. Beyond aesthetics, the writing staff was showing some turnover. 1985 would be the year that Neil Tennant would depart to have a go at making his own pop records while editor Mark Ellen was nearing the end of his time as well (he would help launch Q the following year) and Dave Rimmer, preoccupied with work on his outstanding account of eighties pop Like Punk Never Happened and a move to Germany, began working on a freelance basis. It was, thus, time for some new blood: writers who grew up as fans of the magazine who would then be on staff at its zenith.

Chris Heath would go on to be the first Smash Hits writer to really make an impression on me. He seemed to love music of all kinds, didn't blush from declaring certain records to be utter crap and never gave off noxious vibes that he was a failed musician determined to use his platform to rip into anything beneath him. The very first time I read one of his reviews he tore into my favourite record of the time (something we're sure to get to in a few years) but I wasn't crushed by it. He had his reasons and they were in good faith and for the first time in my life I discovered you could read a negative review and not wish to tear up said top pop mag into a million tiny little pieces. (It was a lesson that I didn't end up paying attention to at the time but it's back with me now!) Heath was also the first Hits scribe to write a book that I would go on to read: I've gone through several since and I've enjoyed them all but none have come close to his.

This is just the second entry from the class of '85 and I'm still reeling from the sorry state of the Singles of the Fortnight from the previous year. I had always held 1984 in esteem growing up since this was when I started to become aware of current pop music but now I can only wonder if all those criticisms of the decade that I used to scoff at aren't somewhat true. And it wasn't simply a case of some poor choices for SOTF either: in many instances reviewers were right for choosing a so-so record over some pretty blase competition. As a boy 1984 seemed exciting: everyone dressed up, looked weird and didn't care what you thought. A pity the music wasn't up to much and that even extends to the highest of levels.

So, a new year and a fresh start, right? Well, sort of. "We Are Ninja (Not Geisha)" is a stupidly great record that beats virtually everything from the previous year. The problem? It comes from 1984 as well. Already reviewed eleven months earlier by an equally enthused Rimmer, it was only denied SOTF status by a peak-of-powers Scritti Politti. Unfortunately, a bizarre Japanese single on a tiny record label that wasn't going to be picked up by anyone other than John Peel didn't stand much of a chance in a year of crap pop and didn't do much better upon reissue here. Still, it seems to have delighted everyone who spun it, reviewed it and, I assume, decided to roll the dice with a purchase.

What did/do we all see in it? Well, it is indeed utterly silly and that's precisely what makes it so wonderful. The duo of Kazuko Hokhi and Kazumi Taguchi, along with producers Steve Beresford and David Toop, seem to have randomly thrown together disparate elements such as traditional Japanese music, avant-garde noise and synth-pop with some rapping and singing and chanting over top and the results are pure magic. Catchy as all hell and impossible to tire of, it could light up a discotheque or soundtrack a night in with some jazz cigarettes. Who knows or cares what all this nonsense means — and I suspect that it might puzzle a lot of Japanese speakers too — but I imagine they're making a commentary on western perspectives of Asian women. They're not here to serve you or please you with some rumpo but to attack you with some craziness. If we're going to use a lazy stereotype to describe them then why not use something better than 'geisha'? Good on them. Is it too far out for some? I suppose so but that's their problem. They can have all that boring crap from '84.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Red Box: "Saskatchewan"

I am well aware of the fact that the majority of Britons know next to nothing about Canada - it was the very first thing I learned about it when I lived there in fact. Thus, I won't quibble with Heath wondering why the members of Red Box are "singing about a Canadian town" when Saskatchewan is in fact a province (and, actually, he may not even be wrong since the lyrics go on about "Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan" which is sort of a town). Written by Buffy Sainte-Marie about the place of her birth, the original is reverential but so, too, is Red Box's interpretation. Quite whether Simon Toulson-Clarke and co. ever bothered going to the Canadian Prairie Provinces is something to ask them but his interest in native affairs is genuine and the record is heartfelt. Not the hit that Heath hopes for but they'd soon be in the top ten with another single borrowing liberally from the natives. I hope they sent a cheque to the good people of Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan.