Youssou N'Dour featuring Neneh Cherry: "7 Seconds"*

8 June 1994

"Brilliant though it no doubt is, this isn't what summer hits are normally made of."

— Tom "Bunny" Patterson-Frith

Please note that this is an unofficial entry. I have no idea what was Single of the Fortnight Best New Single in this issue of ver Hits and, indeed, this will be all too common as scanned copies being posted online gets harder and harder to come by. As a result, I am suspending 1994 posts on this blog until more become available. For now, I will be re-publishing and editing (and, in some cases, re-writing) older entries from 1983 and onwards. I would have stopped a week ago but I thought that going on hiatus with a reggae cover of "Baby I Love Your Way" seemed like a lame way to finish up. It's possible that "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry was the actual SOTF BNS in the June 8 edition of Smash Hits but that will not be revealed until it gets uploaded — assuming it ever does. I don't hold out much hope, however: in the six years I've been keeping this blog going, I've only ever managed to guess one critical fave (which happened to be Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill"). But hey, I'm due! Plus, what kind of fool would go for something other than this mesmerizing ode to racial harmony? It's not like Hits writers and guest reviewers have screwed up before, is it?

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During the summer of 1994, I visited the UK for the first time since the end of our year there five years earlier. I was seventeen and had to spend the first couple weeks with my parents as we drove around Scotland and the north of England before heading back down to Essex where I stayed with my friend Neil. It was a nice trip but I was at an age in which I wasn't keen to spend this much time with them. I wanted to talk to girls but they were always around (plus I was a total chicken shit but that's hardly relevant here). I sometimes wanted to be alone but I couldn't shake them. 

One thing that seemed to work in my favour was that they were either unable or unwilling to listen to anything other than Radio 1. We didn't have it on all the time but it played enough for a number of songs to make an impression on me. The final day of our road trip took us from King's Lynn (don't ask) to Billericay with a stop around Constable Country. It was a beautiful day as we drove through East Anglia and the Radio 1 Roadshow they were broadcasting suited the mood perfectly. I happily sang along to old favourites like The Wonder Stuff's "Dizzy" and Deacon Blue's "Wages Day" and enjoyed current hits from the likes of The Grid (see below), Blur and East 17. 1994 may not have had the best weather (though it wasn't bad on the whole) but it was teeming with shine pop hits. Even lightweight fare from China Black and 

One thing that I neglected to go into in last week's post was one of the subtler differences between the UK singles charts in 1991 and 1994. As I have already gone into, there were a pair of dominant power ballads from films that took control of the charts top spot for months on end which any same person would have eventually gotten sick of. In the case of Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", it shared the Top 40 during its sixteen weeks on top with a hundred and forty-two other hits while the charts managed to stuff about one hundred and sixty-nine records as pretenders to Wet Wet Wet's immovable "Love Is All Around" — and in one fewer week to boot. While a few Top 10 smashes enjoyed prolonged residencies, the mid-nineties kicked off a period of one and done minor hits, the sort of singles which would debut at a spot like thirty-four or thirty-seven before falling out the following week.

A new entry at number forty for the week of June 19, 1994 may well have seemed like a one and done hit. Senegal's Youssou N'Dour had been a star in much of Africa and in France but the closest he'd ever come to a UK hit was with Peter Gabriel in 1989 with "Shakin' the Tree". So for him to even crack the lowest spot on the Top 40 was something of an achievement. That said, this would not have been encouraging for guest Neneh Cherry. Had "7 Seconds" tumbled down to, say, number sixty-seven the following week, it would've no doubt rivaled the likes of The Jam's "In the City", Dexys Midnight Runners' "Dance Stance" and The Breeders "Cannonball" as the greatest song to peak at the bottom of the hit parade.

Yet, fade away it didn't, even though it would have an unconventionally slow path towards its eventual peak position. The week after its debut it would modestly climb to number thirty-five before dropping down a spot seven days later. Your typical minor chart hit dies upon dropping down but this wasn't Then it shot up ten places to number twenty-six before moving up an additional two where it would be stalled for a fortnight — and then it kept on climbing, albeit only gradually.

How did this happen? I figured that it struggled to find airtime until a chance booking on Top of the Pops saved it but Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry wouldn't appear on TOTP until the end of August by which time "7 Seconds" was a legitimate hit and on the cusp of the Top 10. There may have been other TV spots that aided its cause but if this did occur we aren't to know now since there's no record of them on Wikipedia. Most likely is that "7 Seconds" gradually caught on due to word-of-mouth while being held back somewhat by its overall dour sound — not to mention the glum black and white video that accompanied it. The Radio 1 Roadshow we listened to as we drove through Suffolk didn't have room for such a record. Neither did the pub jukeboxes which we spinning Take That's "Love Ain't Here Anymore" and, to be sure, "Love Is All Around".

And while we're on the subject, Wet Wet Wet's megahit seemed to be everyone's favourite song but the sentiment wouldn't last. Whereas the lengthy chart sojourn of "7 Seconds" only seemed to endear people more towards it. Somehow or other it managed to creep up on enough of the British public that it wouldn't be out of the Top 40 until the middle of October and it wound up on plenty of year end best of lists.

One of the keys to its success has to have been its wide-ranging appeal. With a mood not unlike Sting's magnificent "Shape of My Heart" and Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia", it was profound in a way that would catch the ears of Baby Boomers who otherwise wouldn't have cared about the team up of a little-known Senegalese singer and a Swedish hip hop star. Yet it maintained a cool factor comparable to Beck or Bjork. The song's dreaminess even placed it alongside ambient hits of the day by Engima and Deep Forest. Plus, it's easy for there to be something for everyone when you've got such an exquisite song to work with. It may not have soundtracked a nice fin de siecle summer but its very inability to do so may well be why it has refused to go away ever since.

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Also (Possibly) Released This Fortnight

The Grid: "Swamp Thing"

Another candidate for single of the year, The Grid seemed to get caught in that very brief fad for countrifying Eurodance music. While "Swamp Thing" was on its way up the charts it was joined by "Everybody Gonfi-Gon" by Italian act Two Cowboys. Things exploded a few months later with the massively overplayed Rednex smash "Cotton Eye Joe". Unlike those two, however, The Grid deftly avoided novelty song hell. Whether the late Roger Dinsdale played the banjo throughout or if he was just sampled it really doesn't matter: either way, it still sounds as fantastic as it did thirty years ago. How convenient that this Tom "Bunny" Patterson-Frith got to review two of the finest singles of the entire decade in one go! 

Neneh Cherry: "Inna City Mama"

13 December 1989

"Dark, brooding, funky and utterly fabulous re-mix from her "Raw Like Sushi" LP in which Neneh smoulders through a tragic tale of inner city blues and "mamas"."

— Lola Borg

And so the eighties come to a close.

It's appropriate that the final Single of the Fortnight of the decade would be by an individual who had been one of the most arresting acts of the year and looked set to be the future of pop music in the nineties. The final issue of Smash Hits of '89 even featured a prominent photo of a smiling Neneh Cherry alongside pics of Jason Donovan, Bros, Soul II Soul's Jazzie B, New Kids on the Block and Axel Rose of Guns 'N Roses. It's a round-up of the past year but clearly these were people to keep an eye on for the next twelve months — and, indeed, well into the future. Suffice it to say the nineties didn't belong to any of them.

Neneh Cherry's four British singles from Raw Like Sushi all represented something different. "Buffalo Stance" grabbed people's attention, "Manchild" convinced any remaining doubters as to her artistic cred, "Kisses on the Wind" proved she could do late-eighties' pop with the best of 'em and, finally, "Inna City Mama" was meant to to place her in a much more serious context.

Being in North America, however, this narrative didn't apply. "Manchild" had been just a deep cut on the other side of the Atlantic as it got passed over in favour of the more radio-friendly "Kisses" and "Inna City Mama" was similarly ignored, this time to the so-so "Heart", another pop number that didn't do much. She may have still been the future of pop in Europe but her standing across the water was already in decline.

The title is a clear nod to "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", the outstanding closing track from Marvin Gaye's influential 1971 album What's Going On. The version on Raw Like Sushi opens with the same "New York, just like I pictured it..." bit from Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" from his equally important album Innervisions. This suggests she'd been exploring vintage Motown at the time but any further influence isn't apparent. Rather than aping a pair of soul music legends, perhaps she was simply trying to place herself in the same rarefied air.

Remixes as a justification for a fourth, fifth and even sixth single from an album was becoming all-too common at around this time. Often the changes made would be subtle, a gentle sprucing up of the sound in order to stem the tide of the law of decreasing returns. I'm sure there's some of that spirit here but this is far more than your standard producer adding and/or removing samples or putting greater emphasis on the bass part. For one thing, Cherry seems to have given her vocal a complete redo. Her aggressive reading on the album version is replaced with a more restrained performance on the single. There's also less of the pretense of trying to do something hardcore. The verses and chorus are fairly laid back and it is only at the rap in the bridge where she shows some intensity. (The remix does a poor job transitioning from the two parts which is its only big drawback compared to the album version) 

The remix/re-record of "Inna City Mama" proved to be mostly effective but it failed to stem the downward trajectory of her singles and it only managed to limp into the lower reaches of the Top 40 (and this was during the annual January chart lull). Cherry would return to the hit parade later in 1990 with a strong cover of the Cole Porter classic "I've Got You Under My Skin" from the Red Hot + Blue charity album. She would continue to enjoy success but she would never again be the figure she had been for much of 1989. Nineties wouldn't end up belonging to Neneh Cherry but I'm sure she was fine with not achieving what she never set out to accomplish.

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Also of some cop

Electronic: "Getting Away with It"

Lola Borg mentions the blight of seventies' rock 'n' roll supergroups and draws a direct line to this mash-up of New Order, Pet Shop Boys and The Smiths that was Electronic. I'd like to say she's wrong to be disappointed but I can't. Yes, it does sound like a "mardy New Order LP track" and it doesn't approach the best work of Johnny Marr, Bernard Sumner and Neil Tennant. It does, however, point to New Order's eventual pop direction nearly four years later as well as the Pet Shops' gradual acceptance of the guitar as an instrument to not necessarily avoid like the plague in their recordings. Again, they'd put them to better use in their day jobs in the future (as opposed to Marr who no longer had a permanent band to fall back on). To their credit though, they soldiered on and subsequent singles "Get the Message" and "Disappointed" proved to be a lot better. Still less than the sum of their parts but worthy nonetheless.

Neneh Cherry: "Manchild"

3 May 1989

"There's loads of floaty "Pshoooo!" noises and curious keyboard wizardries and it's highly creepy and mesmerising and makes you go all funny in the head."

— Sylvia Patterson

1989 produced some nifty Singles of the Fortnight — for the moment anyway — but many have been lacking serious competition. With all due respect to the likes of Yazz, Chaka Khan and Elvis Costello, they weren't exactly up against a selection of stellar records. Which makes Neneh Cherry's "triumph" in this issue's singles review all the more impressive. Between Fuzzbox (see below) tapping into pop glory, the sound of Bobby Brown making the most of his imperial period, Paul McCartney happily doing what Macca does best, Sinitta with a throwaway earworm, Elvis Costello not letting himself get tripped up in his clever-clever wordplay and Tone Loc at his drrrty peak, there's some good stuff that came up short in the mind of review Sylvia Patterson. (Mind you, she picked the right song) Sure, there's some glum numbers from a duetting Aretha Franklin and Elton John, Sam Brown and Mandy Smith but the good stuff outweighs crap this fortnight.

For whatever reason, jazz is a style of music that hasn't produced a lot of dynastic families. The giants of the genre produced their fair share of offspring but a surprisingly small number of them followed their famous parents into Dixieland, swing, be-bop and fusion. Those few that did — Mercer Ellington, T.S. Monk, Ravi Coltrane, the Brubeck brothers — were destined to be stuck in the shadows of their renowned fathers.

Some, however, chose to spurn improvised music in favour of something closer to pop. Mike Melvoin toiled as a jobbing session pianist for the likes of John Lennon and The Beach Boys but his heart was in jazz, playing on some first rate recordings with Stan Getz, Milt Jackson and Leroy Vinnegar. His son Jonathon was an accomplish keyboardist in his own right and toured with Smashing Pumpkins prior to his untimely death in 1996 while twin daughters Susannah and Wendy were both involved with Prince in various capacities. Wendy would later form Wendy & Lisa with fellow erstwhile Revolution member Lisa Coleman and they appeared in this blog a few months back (and they'll be returning in a few weeks). Charlie Haden hailed from the midwest and, as such, had a background in country and folk but left them behind in order to pursue jazz. He eventually ended up as bassist for Ornette Coleman's influential piano-less quartet that released a series of remarkable albums including The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. He would later spearhead the brilliant Liberation Music Orchestra and he would go to the grave in 2014 having recorded dozens of top notch LPs. His son Josh is a talented songwriter who formed the critically acclaimed slow core group Spain and their 1995 debut The Blue Moods of Spain rivals many of his father's masterworks. Triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden have all had careers in music as well.

One of Haden's mates in the Ornette Coleman group was the trumpet player Don Cherry. His full time association with the saxophonist was prolific but short lived. He would subsequently go solo and release some superb albums on Blue Note such as Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. He remained tight with his old bandmates and would join Haden on the 1970 Liberation Music Orchestra LP. From there, his recordings became increasingly wild and he began exploring so-called world music. Taking a page from his mentor, who would sometimes take a break from the sax by picking up the trumpet or violin, Cherry began playing a wide variety of instruments from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Indonesia. I've only tapped the surface of this period of his career but I can say that the first two Codona albums (the not-very-imaginatively-titled Codona and Codona 2) are masterpieces of free jazz, world beat and new age. Along the way, he married a Swedish woman and became one of many expat American jazz musicians who chose to settle in Europe. It was there that he raised a musical family of his own.

The Melvoins, The Hadens, The Cherrys. They're all outstanding musical families but no one emerged from the second generation like Neneh Cherry. Her father's name didn't carry a lot of weight (when Smash Hits would bring up her lineage it was meant to be just a fun fact — pop kids weren't heading out to explore Symphony for Improvisers or Codona 2...at least not yet) and she seemed to be making it on her own. Though only in her mid-twenties, she had been around for nearly ten years, first appearing as vocalist for post-punk jazzers Rip, Rig + Panic before branching out in the direction of dance and house music. She was linked with Bristol's the Wild Bunch (soon to become Massive Attack) and had chums in acid house (in addition to namedropping the Wild Bunch, solo debut "Buffalo Stance" also referenced Bomb the Bass). Yet her own considerable talents and musical pedigree led her to success before most of her associates.

"Buffalo Stance" had been her memorable first hit single. While its quality turned heads, few recognized something previously unheard of in it. It was a hip hop single and a great one at that and that's all there was to it. "Manchild", therefore, became the Neneh Cherry record that sounded like nothing else. Where she rapped the verses and sort of sang the chorus on "Buffalo Stance", she does mostly some nice R&B vocalisms here and strategically saves the spoken word bits: the track opens with a bit of a rap but you assume that's all there is to it once the song gets going proper. You float along with the laid back rhythm that would eventually come to be known as 'trip hop' only to be jarred by another aggressive Neneh rap. It probably shouldn't work but it somehow does. It isn't as well-remembered as "Buffalo Stance" these days but it certainly deserves to be.

"Manchild" became Cherry's second big UK hit on the bounce and it did similarly well on the Continent but it failed to get much attention in North America. The merging of R&B and hip hope was well under way on the other side of the Atlantic (led by Bobby Brown, also reviewed this fortnight) but there wasn't much room for women to break through. It was left to the poppy but unremarkable "Kisses on the Wind" to struggle along as a makeshift follow-up and this may have done her reputation in the US more harm than good. ("Heart" would be a similarly blasse single release in North America and it convinced no one) "Buffalo Stance" had been at the forefront of Cherry's musical revolution but "Manchild" had been right there with it and, if anything, it pointed the way forward much more. British and European hip hop had languished but it was poised to take its rightful place on the charts. Cherry had done her part but her chums the Wild Bunch weren't ready. It would be left to a London-based collective to further move the needle.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fuzzbox: "Pink Sunshine"

Those of us who seldom bought singles really ought to have stepped up to the plate. (And I was one of them: buying bargain bin 7" records for 50p wasn't helping) The newly remade/remodelled Fuzzbox enjoyed a pair of Top 20 hits in the first few months of 1989 but they should've done much better. They had the tunes, choruses you just couldn't shake, excellent promos and they all looked great. (If Susanna Hoffs mastered the side glance, no one did the comedy eye roll quite like the Fuzzies) I actually liked "International Rescue" a bit more but "Pink Sunshine" became an anthem for those of us who were knocking on the door of the teens and we were the sort of fanbase that was happy to record their hits off of Radio 1 and/or to tape their vids off of Top of the Pops or Saturday morning kids telly. We put up posters of them, we dreamed of forming bands just like their's and some of us even dreamed of snogging them — it's just too bad we didn't get round to buying their records in sufficient quantity.

Pet Shop Boys: "Left to My Own Devices"

16 November 1988

"According to this record, a day in the life of a typical Pet Shop Boy consists of getting up at half-past ten and going shopping, but somehow this single twists such everyday normalities into something distinctly threatening."

— Miranda Sawyer

The Christmas Number One sweepstakes of 1988 were heating up after a slow start a fortnight earlier. Bros, the hottest British act of the year, made their bid with the double A-side "Cat Among the Pigeons" / "Silent Night", a mix of yet another cut from their album Push and a seasonal favourite that might get more than the hardcore Brosettes to shell out. Rick Astley, the bookies choice a year earlier, was back with the SAW composition "Take Me to Your Heart". Michael Jackson was really starting to scrape the bottom of the Bad barrel with "Smooth Criminal". Kim Wilde taking the blubsome, heartbroken waif angle with "Four Letter Word". Phil Collins going all Motown on "Two Hearts". A-ha with yet another standard A-ha record "You Are the One". Ver kids were spoiled for choice when it came to buying presents for their brothers and sisters — and, indeed, for spending their prized Christmas record tokens from their uncles and aunties.

Also present is the Pet Shop Boys, who were the upset winners a year earlier. I don't know if them taking the best ever version of "Always on My Mind" to the top was a huge upset but Rick had been the one expecting it and a whole generation of pop kids are salty to this day that The Pogues didn't manage to pull it off so it seems at least a few people were upset by it. In any event, "Always on My Mind" proved to be one of the strongest non-festive Christmas number ones of all time and is frequently cited as the among the greatest cover versions ever recorded. It proved to be the apogee of their imperial period with a video that teased their upcoming film It Couldn't Happen Here with momentum aplenty to take the perfectly acceptable but still kind of underwhelming follow-up "Heart" to its own trip up to the top of the charts.

Their chances didn't seem quite as good the following year as they aimed to be the first group since The Beatles (back when it wasn't even a big deal) to nab back-to-back Christmas chart toppers. The following issue of Smash Hits did a feature in Bitz about the potential winners and they didn't like the chances of "Left to My Own Devices". They were "in poor form this festive season" and that "grannies won't have a clue what they're on about". In short, they were no longer content to make music that could appeal to as many people as possible; Tennant was beginning to write in a much more autobiographical fashion and Lowe was drawing upon house music for inspiration. Mass popularity had arrived and now it was time to guide the listeners and viewers to some new places.

"Left to My Own Devices" wasn't the biggest single that Christmas but it was the best tune on the charts. "Heart" had been an enjoyable let down but it led them towards their most creatively fertile period. Just being a standard synth-pop duo was no longer good enough. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe began approaching their albums thematically but Introspective arrived at a time when they could sacrifice LP cohesion in favour of an ambitious plan to record every track long. Other groups cut singles that would be extended for the 12" mix but they were interested in doing the reverse. "The idea," Tennant would later explain, "was to have an album where every track was a single". (Indeed, a companion EP could easily be compiled of the four singles from Introspective, as well as Eighth Wonder's cover of "I'm Not Scared" and the original b-side release of "I Want a Dog": suffice it to say it would be vastly inferior to the album itself) Introspective was met with mixed reviews (William Shaw thought they were guilty of "messing about a bit too much", while my mum was furious that there were only six songs on it) but it is now regarded as one of their finest works and the start of their creative peak.

Written in piecemeal fashion by Tennant and Lowe and with perfectionists Trevor Horn and Stephen Lipson producing, "Left to My Own Devices" took its time gestating before a proper song resulted. This could easily have turned the work into a mess but all concerned were on the same page in crafting their grandest number to date. It would be the first song they'd record with an orchestra and the video would be their first in ages to lack a narrative. But for all the new elements involved, it is classic Pet Shops. Tennant proved again that he's better at spoken word than singing (the trio of "West End Girls", "Left to My Own Devices" and "Being Boring" are all either rapped, narrated or whispered; it would only be until "Yesterday When I Was Mad" that he may have taken talking over their records a step too far) and their streak of pristine singles was in no danger of coming to a close. The only thing missing was that the eight minute album version was just that much more epic and over-the-top.

"Left to My Own Devices" peaked at a routine number four but it was out of the Top 20 by the time Bruno Brookes announced that year's Christmas number one. They would never be as popular as they had been in 1987 but their devoted fanbase remained and they happened to be at the peak of their powers. Loneliness, isolation, making a virtue out of not fitting it, dark humour: those of us who remained committed were set to learn a lot from them. Meanwhile, other pop stars would be factoring into the 1988 Christmas number one stakes including a certain synth-pop duo who were the chief rivals to the Pet Shop Boys.

The singles were reviewed this fortnight by Miranda Sawyer, another one of my favourite writers from the year I was a Hits devotee. In common with both Sylvia Patterson and Tom Doyle, she had the perspective of being a similarly obsessive fan of the magazine prior to working for it and it shows in much of her writing. Pop kids of the time could live out their fantasies of being pop stars, meeting pop stars, snogging pop stars, bashing pop stars and taking the mickey out of pop stars and this generation of hacks had that same mindset about them. The days of older, more serious critics lampooning Duran Duran were long gone and in their place were these young writers who loved pop and making fun of it as much as possible.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Neneh Cherry: "Buffalo Stance"

Not a favourite for the Christmas Number One, "Buffalo Stance" proved to be a slow burn up the charts and it didn't peak until the New Year by which point the Swedish singer/rapper and step-daughter of jazz trumpet player Don Cherry had made a name for herself with a legendary performance on Top of the Pops. The kids didn't know what a "Buffalo Stance" was nor were we clued in to the fact that the song seemed to be about prostitutes. The only stuff that mattered was that (a) it was a brilliant pop song and (b) Cherry was an awesome pop star. We'll be seeing her here again before long.