Jesus Loves You: "Bow Down Mister" / "Love Hurts"

20 February 1991

"It's a bit silly, but it's got a bit of spirit and it's so catchy, we could all be marching around chanting Hindu mantras before you know it."

— Richard Lowe

The Dumper. Few have fallen into it only to climb their way out as frequently as Boy George. Though Culture Club's third album Waking Up with the House on Fire was considered a disappointment by many, it was only on their following long player that the end looked near — and it wasn't going to be pretty either. The dumper surely beckoned for the once imperial Culture Club.

George O'Dowd's heroin habit spiraled out of control but he steeled himself to nab a number one single with his cover of "Everything I Own". It was painfully on the nose but it didn't matter: Boy George was something of a national treasure in Britain and he possessed enough goodwill with the buying public to take him all the way to the top of the hit parade. People wanted to like it but they weren't loyal enough to keep him in Top 40 hits indefinitely. Three more minor hits followed before he was back in the dumper. This time, it looked like it might be for good. Reviewing his 1989 number sixty-eight "smash" "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip" in Smash Hits, Richard Lowe notes that his lack of success is "terribly sad" because he's a "nice bloke, a great pop star and he's yet to make a truly awful record (even his flops like "No Clause 28" and "Keep Me in My Were Rather Good")". Indeed, this second period of dumperhood resulted in some of his best work since the heyday of Colour by Numbers and "Karma Chameleon".

Boy George would end up having seven flop singles on the bounce, a streak that would take him into the nineties and see him adopt the band/collective name Jesus Loves You. He had once been the golden goose for Virgin Records but you've got to think that he was under threat of being dropped at this time. But rather than go the tried and tested cover-version-ofa-famous-ballad route to resuscitate his career, he instead stayed the course. The pop kids would eventually find their way back.

It's hard to say they fully did but he did have spurts of chart action. He once again crawled his way out of the dumper with the fourth Jesus Loves You single "Bow Down Mister". ("Love Hurts" made it part of a double A-side even though it failed to garner much interest; I wonder if it was given co-prominence just in case DJ's were turned off by its companion's religiosity; otherwise, there's not much else to say about it) Less of a nod to underground house music than some of his other recent material, it's still far from being a cynical attempt to give him a hit at all costs.

In pop culture, the Hare Krishnas were those people in orange robes who for some reason were always at the airport. I didn't fly a lot as a youth and so I never encountered them but that was the collective impression (one that would be spoofed by The Simpsons). Not to be simply uttering a bunch eastern mystical babble, they went by the name 'Jesus Loves You'. In 1991, I was a fourteen-year-old atheist who found anything remotely pious to be embarrassing. (I even hated the use of gospel choirs in pop videos, finding them to be the height of groups trying way too hard to be authentic) "Bow Down Mister" didn't have a hope in hell of appealing to me.

But somehow or other it did. It certainly helps that it's as catchy as Richard Lowe says. References to "karma" (if you're a decent person then others will be good to you, which is nonsense) and "kun kun" (something you put in your hair) are there but they don't overwhelm the song. Boy George was said to have been moved by a visit to India and this prompted him to pen "Bow Down Mister" (under the pseudonym 'Angel Dust': good job getting the drugs out of your system there) in tribute. It's not likely he immersed himself in it much since it isn't exactly awash in much beyond cliches about 'sacred cows' and 'lotus flowers' (what, no tantric sex?) and that's for the best. 

It says a lot for George's skills as a pop craftsman that he could pull it all together. Lowe likens it to a mix of country and western, gospel and folksy church songs that "trendy vicars put on to "relate" to the kids. All those are there, even if I don't hear much country myself, but there's also some bollywood melodies and some simple house chords at the end. Not unlike West India Company's equally outstanding East meets West extravaganza "Ave Maria", it dabbles in all sorts of styles and philosophies. Rather than being cultural appropriation, it's an example of cross-cultural blending. Though his once silky-smooth voice sounds rougher, he gives an impassioned performance, deftly lagging slightly behind his colleagues in the chorus to a sparkling effect.

Though just a Top 30 hit, "Bow Down Mister" helped Boy George out of the dumper. A re-release of the 1990 Jesus Loves You flop "Generations of Love" (another quality item) gave him a second minor hit before he would be dumper bound once again. Things would be so grave that he would be persuaded to go the cover-version-of-a-famous-ballad route. Luckily, he was Boy George and was up to the task of pulling it off.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Beautiful South: "Let Love Speak Up Itself"

"Not their best", admits Lowe, who spends much of his review of "Let Love Speak Up Itself" praising Paul Heaton's talents as a songwriter (he's much better than that "pompous, self-obsessed bore" George Michael, you know; I would agree though I'm not quite as down on George, though I probably would have concurred back then). No, not The Beautiful South's best tune but a worthy one nonetheless. Free of humour and irony, even if "the oldest swinger in town" is an unexpected character, this is about as earnest as Heaton gets. The magnificent "My Book" failed to reach the Top 40 (a major comedown following the number one success of "A Little Time) and this did even worse. In truth, a single no one needed but it's still a fine track on their underrated second album Choke. The Beautiful South had entered their unpopular period which happened to also be their creative zenith. Weird how that works.

Happy Mondays & Karl Denver: "Lazyitis (One-Armed Boxer)"

30 May 1990

"What's "Lazyitis" when it's at home? If this single's anything to go by it's an ailment that afflicts top Mancunian pop rascals rendering them too idle to compose their own tunes. So they pinch other people's."

— Richard Lowe

This batch of singles has a distinctly Mancunian air to it. With five Greater Manchester acts represented, this truly was the year of Madchester. Or was it? Among the groups here hailing from the so-called Warehouse City (does anyone actually call it that?) is New Order and A Certain Ratio, not exactly the baggiest of groups. That said, why shouldn't they qualify too? Just what linked these bands beyond their locale (and even that was flexible given that Scots Primal Scream and The Soul Dragons and Scousers The Farm were also involved)? Was it that they all made indie music that people could dance to? Only sometimes really. Oldham's Inspiral Carpets were on the second tier baggy groups and no one could possible get down to any of their stuff — and, also, New Order's best material is their songs you can dance to. Was it that they were all one indie labels? I suppose so even if the indies in 1990 were an entirely different beast from a decade earlier — and, also, New Order and A Certain Ration both happened to be on small labels themselves. Did they tend to be young? Not for the most part, barring the odd Charlatans — most weren't a whole lot younger than members of New Order and A Certain Ratio. In an era when anyone could do Madchester, everyone seemed to belong.

Usually when it's your year, everything goes right. The Human League toiled through half-a-decade's worth of anemic sales before and general indifference before their commercial prospects blossomed with hits such as "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", "Open Your Heart" and, of course, the global smash "Don't You Want Me". They did so well that a grave pop injustice was righted when former flop "Being Boiled" got reissued and they had yet another Top 10 hit. ABC quickly became the next Human League when their Lexicon of Love album took the place of Dare as Britain's LP of choice in the early eighties. They also reeled off a string of hits from their masterpiece. A year on and it was Culture Club's turn to sell boat loads of albums and singles.

Though different from The Human League, ABC and Culture Club in terms of style and form, Manchester's Happy Mondays seemed to be the same sort of group that could do no wrong during their big year. "Step On" had already given them a breakthrough Top 5 hit and they seemed primed for more of the same. The only trouble was they didn't have anything new to capitalize on their fame. Their third album wouldn't come out until close to the end of the year and a proper follow-up was being held back until closer to that time. Until then, it would have to be yet another remix that would have to suffice.

"Layzitis" had originally popped up on their second album Bummed back in 1988. Like much of that LP, it's a fine track that didn't draw much attention to itself beyond the blatant theft of The Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" in the chorus. Ripping off from the Fab Four as well as Sly & The Family Stone and David Essex may seem beyond brazen but it's actually a clever way of hiding all that plagiarism. Feel nervous about having stolen a riff or chord? Why not bury the song in yet more layers of riffs and chords that have been nicked from a variety of sources. Sure, clever clog reviewers like Richard Lowe will notice but no one else will. The group that had previously relied on sampling themselves was now bogged down in plundering others to such an extent that it could scarcely be heard.

Perhaps what is most surprising is how this 'One-Armed Boxer' mix sounds so unlike a remix at all. You're not going to track down the great yodeler Karl Denver only to pointlessly use him on some dodgy Ibiza party mix, are you? While not a folk or country record that the veteran singer would have been accustomed to, a straight up jangle pop record suits him just fine. What is off-putting at first is the fact that he and Happy Mondays leader Shaun Ryder are out of synch with one another. It's not unlike the overrated David Bowie/Bing Crosby Christmas perennial "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", only it seems less deliberate. While old pros Bing and the Dame find their sweet spot to finally come together ("Every child must be made aware..."), Denver and Ryder meet up almost accidentally at the song's half-way point. It is only then that I realised that the two were singing the same lyrics. Indie pop's greatest living junkie had laid his vocal down much earlier and there clearly wasn't any effort made for him to re-record it along with Denver for this remix. It's unprofessional and slipshod but I think it gives the song character and charm. And in any event, why would you be anything but shoddy on a song called "Lazyitis".

It's very much a grower and must have been too strange for much in the way of public consumption. Lowe considers it the "weirdest record in a long time" and this is a point in its favour for him. But the pop kids who shelled out for "Step On" must have found this a difficult one to swallow. A light, twinkling melody? A slightly warped take on sixties' baroque pop? An old man with a crackling voice who could've been Ryder's dad? It may not have mattered that one couldn't dance to it because it was Madchester all the same but that didn't mean they had another sure-fire hit on their hands. Unjustly but understandably, "Lazyitis" just missed the Top 40. (A few weeks of chart action may have allowed listeners to get used to it and it might have enjoyed a more respectable run) In what seemed to have been the Happy Mondays' year, they couldn't avoid having a flop single to throw off their momentum a tad. The run up to the release of their third album — more on that in a few weeks: this blog is sure getting its fill of these loony Mancs — was handcuffed enough that it failed to reach number one, yet another odd anticlimax in a year that was should've been filled with nothing but highs. But enough about Shaun Ryder's drug habit...

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Englandneworder: "World in Motion"

And New Order's Single of the Fortnight-less streak continues. "Lazyitis" is an excellent record and it would normally be a fine SOTF but it's no "World in Motion", not even close. (Discerning listeners love the Substance compilation which covers the early part of New Order's recording career but I'm more partial to The Best of New Order which is well stocked in their 1988-93 pop side of which this is one of many highlights) People will always point out that this is easily the finest football pop song but it's outstanding even without factoring in the chanting at the end and the samples of the patrician announcer calling the final seconds of England's '66 World Cup triumph. The lyrics from comedian Keith Allen manage to evoke the beautiful game while avoiding being drowned in it and that's all you can ask for. Purists scoff but there aren't many New Order songs that are better — and, for once, it's as if they know this too. No longer everyone's second or third favourite group.

Max Q: "Way of the World"

20 September 1989

"This is the "solo" project of Michael Hutchence of INXS. He's teamed up an Australian musician pal of his and come up with this scorching epic."

— Richard Lowe

With absolutely no Top 40 hits to his name, the late Matt Fretton is likely the most obscure pop "star" to make the cover of an issue of Smash Hits. Then just eighteen-years-old, he was in an edition that also featured the second in a three part series called 'Who's Who' with the bios of people who all would've been better suited to the front page. The prominence didn't do much and single "It's So High" only put up a modest chart performance. Tellingly, then-editor Mark Ellen would later confess to some bad luck he had with choosing who to put on the cover, citing JoBoxers and Jimmy the Hoover but neglecting to mention Fretton. Imagine being so forgettable that you're not even remembered for your obscurity.

As Ellen has stated, there have been some curious choices — and not just under his watch. The magazine did a soft launch in the north of Britain with Belgian star Plastic Bertrand  on the cover but at least he had been a big deal in much of la Francophonie. One hit wonders such as Secret Affair, Classix Nouveaux, Department S, Marie Brennan of Clannad (on the cover with Bono, who wasn't on all that many Hits covers) and Hollywood Beyond were all Hits cover stars. Barry McIlheney took some grief for putting Wayne Hussy of The Misson on the front in 1987 and they had a few hits!

So, what if I was to tell you that Michael Hutchence was another of these more unusual selections for the front page of Smash Hits? The sex god lead singer of INXS, one of the biggest bands in the world in the late-eighties? A man who had Mick Jagger's charisma with infinitely more attractive features? A man who was not unlike Jim Morrison without all the unsavory elements? This man was on the cover of Smash Hits and it was a strange decision?

But consider the circumstances. INXS had been slow to take off in Britain. The modest Top 30 performances of both "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart" weren't enough to get them on the cover in place of, say, Rick Astley or the Pet Shop Boys. The group would only ever have one UK Top 10 hit when "Need You Tonight", a flop from a year earlier, came just short of hitting number one in November of 1988. Cover stars during that month were Yazz, Wet Wet Wet and Kylie and Jason (which happened to be the first issue I ever bought, my sister and I having decided that we could no longer share). A swift re-issue of another single from the hit-packed Kick in the New Year might have put them on the cover but "Mystify", rather mystifyingly, didn't hit the shops until that April.

That fall, however, there was suddenly a dearth of potential cover stars. The number one spot had been taken up by Jive Bunny, a cartoon rabbit front for studio boffins no one cared about, and Black Box, a similarly faceless Italian outfit with lip synching models, so there wasn't much for the magazine racks. Luckily, the lead singer of INXS had a single and album to promote. The fact that it happened to be with a side project was likely neither here nor there to the Hits staff; they weren't going to be pining for photos of Garry Gary Beers or Ollie Olsen. Nevertheless, Hutchence was on the cover of Smash Hits not as lead singer of a world famous rock group but as the one guy people would know in an otherwise no-name Melbourne musical project.

Michael Hutchence never sought to be a tabloid superstar. His looks and talent made millions swoon — while making plenty more bitterly jealous — but he was keen to prove there was much more to him than being a pinup. Like fellow model-dating heartthrob superstar Simon Le Bon, he wanted to show a deeper side. Luckily, Hutchence had connections and not simply ace studio musicians, producers to the stars and record company moguls. Having starred in the 1986 cult film Dogs in Space, he became acquainted with Olsen, whose roots were in early electronica and experimental music. The very unlikeliness of the pairing was what made the team up so appealing ("We both took a perverse interest in what would happen", he told Lola Borg in Smash Hits).

With the rest of INXS busying themselves with other projects, Hutchence made a go of cutting records without being a pop star. Infamously, the first sign that something was amiss was that he had gone out to his barber and returned a good deal lighter. (Ver Hits would comment that he looked like a vicar but they didn't speculate that this new do had anything to do with his new musical direction) With the new haircut came a certain anonymity that he hadn't enjoyed in his day job. His beautiful features are barely visible in the "Way of the World" video and the Max Q collective had their faces collaged together for the cover of their self-titled album. He didn't make any secret of his involvement but he didn't use his looks to get them onto the charts. (That said, he only took this reduced role so far; he was at last a Smash Hits cover star after-all)

With a different Michael Hutchence showing up, it's only right that a different side of him would come out in the music. INXS had never been a particularly political group (though they did appear on the Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors compilation from around this time) which makes "Way of the World" a particularly impressive piece. He used his voice differently as well, the Max Q album being a showcase for his underrated range and vocal power. The excellent INXS: Access All Areas podcast argues that his singing here marked a turning point as he would begin to use his voice to better effect on INXS' 1990 album X. (Similarly, the musical mishmash of Max Q may have contributed to its more experimental follow-up Welcome to Wherever You Are in 1992) On "Way of the World" he sounds not unlike Matt Johnson of The The with a sort of angry defiance. If no one was going to be looking at him then they were damn well going to listen.

"Way of the World" came out in a time of radical change in the world. The Tianamen Square protests had taken place in China that June and the Berlin Wall was soon to come down. Pop music became a vehicle for these sentiments but not all of it resulted in stellar work. (A number of people despise Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" but I'd still take it over either Jesus Jones' "Right Here Right Now" or The Sporpions' "Wind of Change") While others seemed to buy into that "End of History" nonsense, Hutchence's contribution retains a skeptical eye. Naysayers of the Russian Revolution some seventy years earlier would eventually contend that nothing changed and that power just shifted to another group (which doesn't explain why they supported the other side in the first place but I digress); if true, then why should we expect anything to change now? This pessimism could've been taken as raining on the parade back then but it makes the song even more potent considering the current state of the world. Hutchence never lived to see 9/11, the second Gulf War, the return of supposed strongmen leaders, the climate crisis and the current situation in Ukraine but he had seen enough. Indeed, the then-eminent wars in the Balkans showed that yet again all this talk of change wasn't going to do a damn thing.

Max Q ended up being a valuable interlude for Hutchence. The album as a whole isn't really my kind of thing but the the two main singles ("Sometimes" would follow "Way of the World" later in the autumn and it ended up doing a bit better on the charts) are very good. More importantly, it was a bold creative statement from someone who had been for too long dismissed as just a sex symbol. (Guitarist Andy Gill would say much the same about working with the singer on his posthumously released solo album) While the popularity of INXS would gradually begin to fade over the course of the nineties, their output remained strong. Max Q helped give those later years a shot in the arm that they needed.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Belinda Carlisle: "Leave a Light On"

Richard Lowe admits to being a "sucker for thoroughly predictable American rock records with whistlable tunes, chugging guitars, big blustering choruses and words about nothing in particular except for general lovey-doveyness" and I'm right there with him — except, of course, when non-Americans try to do this sort of thing. With the nineties just weeks away, you'd think someone would've warned Belinda Carlisle about a sound that was soon to go out of fashion but it's something she stuck with for quite a while. (My aside above about post-Cold War political pop reminds me that the early nineties ended up being a useful time for everyone to fully excise the previous decade from their systems) "Leave a Light On" is one of those songs that you could easily forget all about for decades until it comes on and it all comes flooding back. I will probably forget all about it again tomorrow but I'm digging it today.

Elvis Costello: "Veronica"

22 February 1989

"It also boasts the best funny noise on a record this fortnight courtesy of a bloke called Benmont Tench who does his stuff on a "Baldwin spinnet". And you thought it was all done on computers these days."

— Richard Lowe

There are a lot of questions I would love to pose to former Smash Hits writers. I'd ask William Shaw how he managed to make the transition from pop journalism to mystery novelist. I'd ask David Hepworth if having to the review the singles was really the chore that he made it out to be. I'd ask Tom Hibbert why he felt the need to make bloody Limahl his Single of the Fortnight. But most of all, I'd ask Richard Lowe what made him so damn cheerful in this issue.

Lowe was the newly-appointed editor of ver Hits and, not unlike predecessor Barry McIlheney, he chose to do the singles at the start of his reign. And he didn't exactly give himself the easiest bunch of records to sift through. Of the ten he evaluated, seven failed to make the "Fun 40" and two more weren't exactly big chart movers either. He had faded giants (Boy George, Howard Jones), recent fluke number one artists trying to make failed attempts at another big hit (Robin Beck, Gene Pitney), acts that were clinging to Top 10 glories from several months earlier (Breathe, Tanita Tikaram) and a fine if inconsequential live track that no one asked for (Depeche Mode). The one flop of note is "Info Freako" by Jesus Jones, a group that was busy fusing Brummie grebo with the emerging sound that would soon be known as "baggy" or "Madchester" and seemed like an act to keep an eye on (though no one would have predicted just how popular they'd become two years later).

Little of note on offer yet Lowe is smitten with all of it. Breathe's "Don't Tell Me Lies" has a "brilliant singalong chorus" while Howard Jones' "Everlasting Love" sounds "just like his old ones" and has an "infernally catchy chorus". Tanita Tikaram's "World Outside Your Window" is "ace" while Gene Pitney's cover of Roy Orbison's "It's Over" ought to be loved by everyone unless you are in reality a "dead sheep". Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts" is still a "perfectly agreeable tune" which sounds much the same as it did only now it's recorded in a "basketball stadium or something" while Jason Donovan's "Too Many Broken Hearts" (see below) has Lowe proclaiming that the Stock Aitken Waterman writing/production team is the "bee's knees" (one of the things that made Lowe such a perfect Smash Hits writer for this period is that he was equal parts indie rocker and pop kid). Boy George's "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip" is a "cracker", Robin Beck's "Save Up All Your Tears" is "very stirring" and Jesus Jones' "Info Freako" is a "smashing record" that will "definitely frighten your grandmother". Blimey, Lowe's Single of the Fortnight must be the greatest pop song ever written next to all these supposed heavy hitters!

I had never heard of Elvis Costello until reading Lowe's review of "Veronica". Had I been twenty-one at the time, my initial reaction would have been that his name sounded made up (which, of course, is true); instead, I was eleven and figured that he was old. Dead old. Had I been asked about his age in relation to Neil Tennant's, I would've guessed that he was about ten years older than the Pet Shop Boys frontman. Turns out, he's a month and a half younger.

In fairness to my poor judgement, there were plenty of reasons for assuming that he was of advanced years. First, this was Smash Hits I was reading and anyone over twenty-four was basically a cranky old pensioner in their eyes. Lowe mentions that Costello "has been knocking around for donkeys' years" and that he was now working alongside Paul McCartney ("the legendary Fab Macca out of the so-called "Beatles"", as he mysteriously notes). Then there's the fact that this latest single happened to be about an old lady slipping into senility, hardly the subject matter for youngish pop types. The accompanying photo one the singles page is of a unsmiling man who looks well into middle age. Yeah, this Elvis Costello bloke must've been ancient — or so I thought.

In the first ten years of his recording career, Elvis Costello released eleven albums. Artists tended to be more prolific back then but this is still an impressive feat. In both 1981 (with Trust and Almost Blue) and 1986 (King of America, Blood & Chocolate) he put out a pair of LP's and 1985 would be the only year he wouldn't put out at least one album. But such creative hot streaks don't last and Costello was going to have to take his feet off the gas at some point. Seemingly cut from the same cloth as Bob Dylan, David Bowie and, yes, Paul McCartney, he was never the same once he began to slow down.

"Veronica" was the first single taken from Spike, Costello's first album since Blood & Chocolate. Working with McCartney paid off for both of them as they also wrote songs that would appear on Macca's Flowers in the Dirt, released later on in 1989. Notably, these were their first LP's recorded in the CD era and it shows. Spike in particular is guilty of filling up as much compact disc space as possible, with a generous fifteen tracks and over an hour of listening "pleasure". (In spite Lowe's love for "Veronica", he was none-too-thrilled by the album as a whole in a review the following fortnight; if anything, the score he gives is inflated given his critique) It also suffers from being recorded in a multitude of studios in Britain and America with a vast selection of session musicians and special guests. This disparity makes Spike an uncharacteristically generic record. There's no attempt at the sort of album unity he managed with the soul/Motown influenced Get Happy!! or the country-roots romp King of America. Not only are deep cuts "God's Comic" and "Chewing Gum" both subpar songs for him but the swampy, Bayou rock of the former and the Celtic folk of the latter ensures that they aren't even able to mesh well. 

"Veronica" is one of the better songs on the album but it still has its flaws. For whatever reason, he chose not to record it in the UK sessions with McCartney, Nick Lowe and Chrissie Hynde but cut it instead in Hollywood with a large group that included Mitchell Froom, Jim Keltner and Roger McGuinn, as well as then-regular collaborators T-Bone Burnett and Cait O'Riordan of The Pogues. Costello had some talented folk working with him but it was a lineup that needed paring down. A basic quartet or quintet could have done a much more efficient job of recording a song like "Veronica". Kettle drums? Those weedy (possibly synthesized) "Beatlesque" trumpet bits? That "Baldwin spinnet" [sic] thing?

Costello's singing doesn't really suit the song's subject matter either. While often spitting out (in Lowe's words) lyrical "tongue-twisters" in the vein of "Love for Tender" or "Tokyo Storm Warning", he could often utilize his strained voice to a more sensitive effect on the likes of "Allison" and "Little Angel" but he takes the lightning-fast spittle approach on "Veronica" as if covering up the narrative of an elderly woman with dementia in order to appeal to younger listeners. If this was his intention then it worked as it gave him sizable American hit and even took him to the top of the US Alternative Rock charts. It was just a minor success in the UK, however, and it quickly became forgotten in his homeland. Elvis Costello wrote and performed many stronger songs in the previous decade than this — and he would even compose a few more in the coming decades.

The Costello-McCartney pairing didn't prove to be as fruitful as promised. A lot of people have speculated that Macca was interested in finding a talent and personality not dissimilar to John Lennon but for whatever reason the two didn't work well. They didn't appear to fully embrace their team-up and I wonder if that's what really held them back. Instead of Spike and Flowering in the Dirt as separate releases, there should have been a cohesive album combining to the two. But this only aids Costello's case: McCartney's album is the stronger of the two and proved to be his best LP since Tug of War. The gradual rehabilitation of Macca was beginning while Elvis Costello began to fade from relevance in the nineties. No wonder he seemed so old.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Jason Donovan: "Too Many Broken Hearts"

"Jason sings it perfectly adequately," enthuses Lowe; I wonder if this was meant to be funny. Jason Donovan struggled through the horrible "Nothing Can Divide Us" and managed to be badly out-sung by Kylie Minogue — not a strong vocalist herself — on the duet "Especially for You" so I suppose doing the job "perfectly adequately" is an achievement of sorts. Donovan had been a throw in pop star up until this point (Kylie was doing just fine so why not her male counterpart?) but "Too Many Broken Hearts" marks territory of his own. Perhaps acknowledging this, Stock Aitken Waterman inserted a guitar "lick" onto the beginning — either that or they were trying to mask what was becoming formulaic pablum. Yet, what did it matter? Jase looked great, he seemed to be enjoying every second of his life and everyone either looked up to him or wanted to go to bed with him. Who needs to be able to sing if you've got all that?

Kylie Minogue: "Got to Be Certain"

18 May 1988

"And so the debate rages across the land."

— Richard Lowe

The team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman last earned themselves a Single of the Fortnight all the way back in the summer of 1984 with the much-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be "You Think You're a Man" by Divine. An awful lot changed in the four years since: the SAW production team's client base grew and writing songs became a much more standard part of their MO and they enjoyed their first UK number one with Dead or Alive's memorable "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". They took in established acts like Bananarama and had a US chart topper with their cover of seventies hit "Venus". They began making stars out of performers such as Sinitta and Rick Astley. Divine, who had one of their first hits, passed away in March of 1988. And, on a seemingly unrelated note, an Australian soap opera began broadcasting episodes on the BBC.

Neighbours was a smash and proved to be even more successful in the old country than down under. Everyone seemed to watch it and you just knew that those snobs who claimed to never watch it secretly did. I came to the UK that August with no awareness of it whatsoever and went about my first five days there similarly ignorant of it. Then, we visited our distant cousins in the north east of Essex and they showed it to my sister and me. From then on, we never missed it for the remainder of the year we spent there. From that first viewing, it was clear that the star of the show was a frizzy haired young woman who was kind of mouthy. On the show, her name was Charlene but in real life she went by Kylie, a name I'd never heard before. Nicola, Becky and Chris, our fourth or fifth cousins, told us that she was also a pop star. (Little did I know that she was already on the charts back in North America, no mean feat considering Neighbours never meant anything across the pond)

Kylie Minogue didn't invent the concept of soap stars cutting records but she certainly popularised the practice. Before her, actors on soaps might put out a single and possibly have a hit; after her, it was assumed they all would. And while many became successful, no one pulled of the career shift as well as she did. She tried her hand at films but they never usurped music. Nowadays singers try to make the jump to the more lucrative field of acting; Kylie went the other way and she achieved far more success making records then she did on TV and movie screens.

Minogue's relationship with SAW was different than any of their other acts. She quickly became their cash cow and deserved to be the focus of their attention during their waning years in the early nineties. Other acts would depart but she remained loyal to them. By 1989, their output was rapidly declining but she seemed to receive first refusal of all their best stuff. Recruits to the SAW stable — Sonia, Big Fun, the bloody Reynolds Girls — became increasingly uninteresting which only made her stand out more. Even the stuff they were handing off to Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan wasn't quite as strong as what they gave her. Her image would change drastically and she made a push for greater creative control but she was reluctant to break away from the people that made her.

It took some time, however, for Minogue to get their prime cuts. Her first hit was "I Should Be So Lucky" which has a certain moronic charm and it remains insanely catchy (annoyingly catchy, sure, but catchy nonetheless) but "Got to Be Certain", the follow up, has little to captivate beyond Kylie's cheeriness. It's more of the same, just nowhere near as good. It probably doesn't help that it's a recycled SAW product. Originally recorded by Mandy Smith earlier in the year, it remained unreleased until her debut album Mandy was reissued in 2009. With her glamourous image and infamously getting involved with Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones when she was just thirteen, the song's narrative of a bright girl trying to learn lessons from heartbreak probably suited Minogue better than Smith, who was more at home doing pop based around wrapping boys (and, to be sure, aging rock stars) around her little finger.

Re-using their originals was nothing new for SAW. The UK follow up to the global smash (and still culturally relevant) "Never Gonna Give You Up" was the forgettable "Whenever You Need Somebody", which had already been recorded in considerably different fashion two years earlier by female vocalist O'Chi Brown. In turn, Astley would go on to reject the insipid "Nothing Can Divide Us" which SAW then handed off to the more vocally lacking Donovan. The Minogue album track "Turn It Into Love" ended up getting into the charts after being released as a single by longtime stable vet Hazell Dean. 

SAW were hardly the types to put a great deal of care into their compositions but they were at their best when they wrote with an eye on their charges. Stock and Aitken have claimed to written "Never Gonna Give You Up" with Astley in mind and the hit singles they had with sister act Mel & Kim reflect the duo's tough, working class backgrounds. Even "I Should Be So Lucky", which was famously rush written as Minogue was waiting to meet them for the first time, was perfect pop fare for Kylie the girl next door. (There's an even more obvious case of the trio tailor-making a song which we will get to soon)

The debate, as Richard Lowe says, would go on for some time. SAW's records kept selling and the charts would be awash in their hit factory sound. Kylie Minogue would bear the brunt of the backlash against them but she came out of it with a bit of a creative renaissance and is still going strong in her fifties. I don't imagine many people would've bet on her career having these kinds of legs.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Elton John: "I Don't Wanna Go on with You Like That"

Ah, that "popping" percussion. Richard Lowe is taken by it and I have to agree that it's the one saving grace of a grim tune. While Elton John's slow songs post-"Sacrifice" began to get increasingly sappy and predictable, it is his piano-based rockers from around this time that commit even greater sins. This was long before YouTube and Spotify and "I Don't Wanna Go on with You Like That" counts on people's memories of the likes of "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" or "Philadelphia Freedom" being sketchy so they will assume that this is vintage Elton. It isn't. Whereas David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney were in similar creative doldrums at the time, they would all find their way back to something approaching their old heights, the Rocket Man never did. Still, that popping sound is pretty neat, huh?

The Communards: "Never Can Say Goodbye"

4 November 1987

"In fact they really should do this sort of thing more often."

— Richard Lowe

Not everyone can be a Dylanesque voice of a generation — and fewer still should ever bother trying to be one. Political figures in pop are supposed to be earnest folkies but they come in all shapes and sizes and play all kinds of music. Some don't even "look" particularly political and their best music may have nothing to do with protest whatsoever. The rise of Thatcher resulted in a lot of great anti-Tory pop but standing up to the Iron Lady shouldn't have been just for Billy Bragg and Paul Weller — and, indeed, the Red Wedge movement wouldn't have gotten very far had it been so limited. Jimmy Sommerville and Richard Coles represented the synth-pop side of political protest in the UK at the time when most of their colleagues were disinterested in getting heavily involved. The Communards weren't the most talented of synth acts but it's a credit to them that they devoted much of their time during their two year peak to socialist causes when they could've been doing more lucrative forms of promo. (Notably, they were probably the biggest group in Britain in the late eighties not to get a Smash Hits cover)

I have previously been down on The Communards in this space and with good reason since "Disenchanted" wasn't very good. They would go on to enjoy a massive number one success with their cover of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes' "Don't Leave Me This Way" which seemed to put them in the company of Marc Almond, Simply Red and UB40 as acts that seemed to do better with other people's material than with their own. They weren't around long enough to fully descend into cover version hell but if they couldn't reach people with the so-so stuff that Jimmy Sommerville and Richard Coles wrote, they could always fall back on a standard. And quite right too. Their covers represented a creative step forward while their originals seemed to hold them back. 

Originally a hit for The Jackson 5 in 1971, "Never Can Say Goodbye" wasn't one of their more distinguished hits. Michael Jackson's youthful vigour on "I Want You Back" and "I'll Be There" is nowhere to be found and their recording just glides by. It sounds like a filler on one of their studio albums and it's surprising Motown deemed it good enough for single release. (The fact that it did as well as it did probably says as much about The Jacksons as a cash cow than the record itself) Gloria Gaynor's discofied cover is much better and it's clear that Sommerville was a fan. (It's also a welcome reminder that she had far more in her than "I Will Survive") Still, it sounds reigned in by seventies' dance music production orthodoxy. Can't anyone do this song and just let it all hang out?

Emulating Gaynor wasn't a difficult task for Sommerville but the spark of genius here was from whoever it was who figured the music should try to keep pace with the high octave vocalist. Sommerville often sounds out of place when attempting balladry or cod-reggae and the best solution is a hi-NRG recording that tries to be every bit as audacious. This is the music The Communards love to listen to but it is also fantasy of how they wish their favourite records would sound. The single's video  Admirably avoiding sticking to the safe formula that made "Don't Leave Me This Way" so big, they don't leave anything on the table as they go for a big dancefloor sound. The song's video presents Sommerville and Coles in a disco with several musicians who may or not have played on it but their performance quickly evolves into a giant discotheque rave up. Need a palette cleanser from all the agit-prop at a Red Wedge gig? "Never Can Say Goodbye" could rip a crowd into a frenzied ecstasy no matter their musical affiliation. Much like Stevie Wonder's epic "Another Star" on Songs in the Key of Life, it's the kind of dance track that you hope will never end.

Sommerville's political convictions were such that he didn't have to prove anything to anyone through the medium of his songs. "Smalltown Boy" had been his one truly successful issues number and it may have eaten at him that he hadn't been able to replicate it with The Communards. Yet, "Never Can Say Goodbye" indicates that his pop instincts had remained sharp. His partnership with Coles was soon to wind down and a solo album beckoned. It would only be at this stage that he was able to marry his gay rights activism with this kind of hook-leaden dance music. The result was "Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)", another piece of dancefloor magic. 

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

John "Cougar" Mellencamp: "Cherry Bomb"

He looked like a more put together Jon Bon Jovi with a voice even more rugged than Bruce Springsteen. John Mellencamp was never the superstar either of them were but 1987 was his year, especially if you happen to be from Canada where his album sold and sold and sold and where "Cerry Bomb", "Paper in Fire" and "Check It Out" were on a seemingly never-ending loop on the radio. He didn't make the same impact in Britain but it's nice to know that Richard Lowe is charmed by the Coug. Roots rockers love their nostalgia and few did it better. It certainly helped that Mellencamp had such an outstanding band to back him. Props in particular to Lisa Germano for some lovely violin. Maybe all those Canadian dads who bought The Lonesome Jubilee were on to something.