Roxette: "Joyride" / 808 State: "In Yer Face"

23 January 1991

"The beginning sounds like ABBA and I thought ABBA were really good."

— Iain Baker

"It's good that there's no wailing soul singer over the top as well."

— Mike Edwards

Roxette as reviewed by Jesus Jones

Hard as it is for me to admit, there was once I time when I didn't despise Jesus Jones and Roxette. I didn't love either of them but they weren't horrible and their songs didn't make me wretch. Until both of 'em did.

Jesus Jones had been a struggling indie outfit on the struggling indie label Food, a company that would soon make a fortune from cockney four-piece Blur. Run by former Teardrop Explodes keyboardist David Balfe, it had a lineup of respectable acts from various parts of Britain playing a wide variety of styles. Diesel Park West were a sixties garage rock/jangle pop revival act from somewhere up north. Crazyhead hailed from the Midlands and they were punks. Jesus Jones came from the south and they were part of the new wave of indie dance-rock acts.

"Info Freako" was the debut release from ver Jones. Fresh and thrilling then, it remains quite wonderful to this day. "It'll definitely frighten your grandmother," concludes an admiring Richard Lowe. It just missed the Top 40 but things were looking up for them. Then, the nineties arrived and they lost their spark. Grannies were by now more likely to be singing along than hiding behind the chesterfield. "Real Real Real" was a passable let down of a breakthrough hit but "Right Here Right Now" was an abominable creation. (The easy conclusion to draw from this change is that they sold out but it's just as likely that their initially scary look and sound was a pose and that they had been over-serious and charisma-free all along)

Roxette were formed in Sweden and their popularity may have remained strictly domestic until Minnesota exchange student Dean Cushman brought their second album Look Sharp! home and started spreading the word. It didn't matter that, in the words of critic Måns Ivarsson, their once "subtle Swedish lyrics [had] become desolate English nonsense", Roxette had become superstars in the US. "The Look" was huge and it was soon followed by "Dressed for Success", "Listen to Your Heart" and "It Must Have Been Love". If Americans felt bad about giving ABBA short shrift, then they certainly made up for it by falling at the feet of their less talented countrymen.

Where Roxette didn't quite take was in the UK. "The Look" made the Top 10 but subsequent singles flopped. It was only after "It Must Have Been Love" was featured in Pretty Woman that they had a second wind on the charts in Britain. Jesus Jones weren't exactly killing it in Britain either. Much like the Swedes, they found much more success across the Atlantic. Honestly, the US deserved Jesus bloody Jones. No one does earnest pop-rock like the Americans so it's no wonder this group from Wiltshire found a home over there. "Real, Real, Real" deals with challenging the motives of facile pop acts and this mentality plays into Americans obsessed with "rock 'n' roll authenticity" and "keeping it real" and all that nonsense. "Right Here Right Now" is about manifest destiny and buying into that 'end of history' crap that resulted from the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Even on their worst day, U2 and Simple Minds were never this po faced.

Roxette are lucky that I've got Jesus Jones occupying most of my derision in this entry. By comparison, "Joyride" isn't quite so bad. Limp and lifeless when it's meant to be, well, a joy ride, nowhere close to as fun to listen to than Marie Fredricksson and Per Gessle no doubt had recording it and a prime example of "desolate English nonsense" in their songs but not utterly loathsome. I'd much rather be indifferent to a poor pop song than get into a strop over one. (Plus, it helps that Gessle and the late Fredricksson are/were friendly, down-to-earth people; Mike, Iain and presumably the rest of the Jones are just a bunch of prats) As I previously mentioned, the pair have enjoyed something of a critical re-evaluation in recent yeas (particularly since the sad passing of Fredricksson. I approached this record (the only one of their's I sort of liked when it first came out) with this in mind and hoped it would be a fun singalong rocker. And indeed it is for some but I'm not feeling it. Being better than Jesus Jones simply won't do.

But! There's another record that Mike Edwards has put forth in favour of "Joyride"! ("It does nothing for me at all" is his accurate verdict of Roxette's new single) It comes as welcome relief to be looking at 808 State if only to wash away the foul stench of the other Single of the Fortnight and the band reviewing them. It's bound to be great next to the rest of this detritus, right?

808 State seemed to be a house group who got lumped in with the Madchester indie rock bands. Being from the same hometown as The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and rising to prominence at about the same time, it was natural that music hacks would have made the connection that they otherwise wouldn't have made note of. (And, really, it was 808 State who were following the much more logical path of acid house) But where others tried playing rave music on guitars, the quartet/quintet of Graham Massey, Gerald Simpson, Martin Price, Darren Partington and Andy Barker remained behind their synths and mixing desks.

After having a Top 10 hit with the still brilliant "Pacific" (aka "Pacific State") they got involved with MC Tunes and scored another smash with the memorable "The Only Rhyme That Bites" (pretentiously credited to 'MC Tunes vs. 808 State'). They were quietly becoming one of the finest acts in Britain (it would have been difficult to predict who would've had the more promising career between them and Orbital) and entered the new year with a banger to take them over the top.

"In Yer Face" only kind of managed to succeed. It was yet another hit but, again, they couldn't quite get into the upper reaches of the hit parade. Getting to number nine was only a modest improvement on previous hits "Pacific", "The Only Rhyme That Bites" and the double A-side "Cubik"/"Olympic", all of which stalled one spot below. On the other hand, there were some class singles placed above it during its two week peak: the presence of Nomad's "Devotion", The KLF's "3 AM Eternal", Oleta Adams' "Get Here", Praise's "Only You", Kylie's "What Do I Have to Do" and The Source featuring Candy Staton's "You've Got the Love" meant there was no shame in "In Yer Face" only getting as high as it got.

No, there's no shame in being not quite good enough. The above singles are all superior to 808 State's biggest hit (The Simpsons, see below, and 2 in a Room also finished above them so it wasn't all banger upon banger) and deserved to place higher. "In Yer Face" is unique and futuristic but it fails to go anywhere. Great pop instrumentals are able to tell a story. The Tornados' extraordinary "Telstar" is a document of space age aspirations and a world of analog and digital working in unison. The sound effects might sound dated and yet it still sounds of the future — or a future as it was imagined. The first several seconds of "In Yer Face" are startling but that is its only real selling point. Nothing emerges, there's no development, a story isn't told.

Yet, it's the best of a very poor bunch this fortnight. Having been spoiled by some prominent groups and solo artists in the singles a fortnight earlier, it is quite the comedown having to deal with an especially lousy offering this time. "In Yer Face" no longer does anything for me but it was an amazing sound experience when I was a spotty fourteen-year-old with mood swings. Perhaps I am down on it now because I no longer feel the urge to listen to nightmarish techno-pop. The record itself hasn't aged at all but I sure as hell have.

  

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Simpsons: "Do the Bartman"

Long before I despised The Simpsons for being so painfully unfunny, I was once a big fan. Prior to that, however, I was initially unimpressed. It was similarly free of humour back in its first season and only dumb asses at school liked it at that early stage. Season two began to turn things around ("Three Men and a Comic" is probably their first great episode) but this wasn't reflected in the music that inevitably found its way into the public consciousness during that early rush of Simpson-mania. As Tom Ewing notes, it comes from a time when the show was never more visible yet it was far from the omnipresence it would eventually become. (He mentions that it was more something people heard about because it was only available on Sky, which wasn't nearly as big as it would soon become; the show as more of a brand carries on to this day in many countries where Simpsons merch still does the rounds even if hardly anyone watches the show). While it would become a number one hit, the results are dismal. A good thing they would eventually bring the world the likes of "Monorail Song", "See My Vest" and "Kamp Krusty" when the creators of The Simpsons decided to focus on making a great TV show while stepping away from the cheesy marketing. Funny how that works.

Roxette: "Listen to Your Heart" / Billy Idol: "L.A. Woman"

25 July 1990 (with more "wry" "observations" here)

"Wouldn't buy it, though."

"I met Billy's mum and dad once actually, and it's funny but I never thought of Billy Idol having a mum and dad."

— "Uncle" Phil Collins

Remixes, dance-rock, cover versions, Euro-dance: the likes of grunge, shoegaze, jungle and whatever it was that Hootie & The Blowfish and Spin Doctors played was still ahead of us but the nineties were well underway. But try telling that to Roxette, Billy Idol and, indeed, Phil Collins. To all of them, it was as if 1983 had never ended.

Collins was a good deal older than your average pop star moonlighting as a singles reviewer in Smash Hits, especially by 1990 when the magazine was trending younger. On the other hand, guest critics by this point were on the downswing of their careers. Matt Goss did the singles in the first issue of the new year and was then followed by London Boys, two of the blokes behind Jive Bunny and the members of And Why Not. Not exactly pop's hottest acts. If anything, our Phil was still going strong even if his UK chart placements were starting to peak lower. (As he accurately guesses, not a whole lot of people bought his latest, the Britain-only "That's Just the Way It Is", no doubt because "everybody's bought" his latest blockbuster album ...But Seriously, even though I sure as hell didn't)

The eighties were already starting to fall out of fashion but Collins was having none of it. Roxette's "Listen to Your Heart" is essentially a heavy metal slow song — for the love of god, even the video plays into this with tropes such as a swaying audience and hard rock poses from the band which could've been straight out of a Whitesnake promo — while Billy Idol's cover of "L.A. Woman" is all eighties' lust and eighties' pomp blanketing a seventies' record that needed no frills. It may not have been acknowledged at the time but the trio of Collins, Idol and Roxette might as well have been the new dinosaur acts for a new decade.

Roxette have been enjoying a bit of a critical re-evaluation as of late. They did very well for a little while but they became irrelevant by about 1992 when listeners really started getting the eighties out of their systems. From then until quite recently they were regarded as naff. (Say what you will about a group like Kajagoogoo but at least they were of their time and not clinging to a bygone era) Nostalgia for eighties and nineties acts seemed to forget all about them. Then, singer Marie Fredriksson passed away near the end of 2019 and Generation Xers remembered how much they liked them way back when. It's not inconceivable that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct them at some point.

The story of how Roxette broke through in the America has practically become a legend. What seldom gets mentioned is how the British stubbornly tried to resist them, to the extent that it mirrors how the US attempted to ignore fellow Swedes ABBA fifteen years earlier. True, "The Look" gave them a Top 10 hit in May of 1989 but follow ups "Dressed for Success" and a first try for "Listen to Your Heart" missed the fun forty altogether. It was only after the syrupy "It Must Have Been Love" returned them to the British charts that their earlier flops got a second chance. Neither of them did anywhere close to the same roaring business they attracted in the US but they both did all right, ensuring that Roxette would be respectable chart regulars in Britain while remaining monsters elsewhere — at least for a little while. Of the two, "Listen to Your Heart" is the sturdier record. As Collins says, it's a bit Bryan Adams (the poor bits) and a bit Heart (the rest) and it had been done a million times before. Very bland, very cliched but I can listen to it from end to end; "Dressed for Success" is just pitiful.

While Roxette still had another year or two of hits to go, Billy Idol was fast becoming forgotten as early as 1990. Where he had once cultivated a diverse cross-section of listeners from pop kids to metallers and from punk holdovers to assorted of castoffs and misfits, Sir Billiam audience had by this point dwindled down to his core following. Middle age suited Collins and Sting but only seemed to make Idol seem even more ridiculous than he already was. Old school punks no longer seemed to have a place at the table (a returning Adam Ant seemed to be an even sadder proposition) when there were sufficient hardcore acts and indie bands for outsiders to embrace.

His — gasp! — fourth Single of the Fortnight (joining Elvis Costello, The Cure and Pet Shop Boys in this once-exclusive group), "L.A. Woman" is nevertheless Idol's weakest record to date. There's much to recommend in the original by The Doors: it's intense, it's them at their grubby blue-rock best, at times it's poppy and catchy, Jim Morrison gives a ballsy but not highfalutin performance and they capture a city they knew all too well. None of that can be found in Idol's rendition however. It opens sounding much more like Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" than anything The Doors would ever have touched and it's only downhill from there. Subtlety goes out the, er, door. Idol's Morrison impersonation is spot on at times (at other points he sounds either like Peter Murphy or someone doing a poor Billy Idol impersonation) but Morrison himself didn't sound like Morrison by the end of his life. 

The only thing that saves "L.A. Woman" is that I buy Idol being enraptured by a gorgeous groupie from Venice Beach in a way that locals wouldn't appreciate. Morrison sang it as if he'd been around these girls his entire life; Idol comes at it from the perspective of a British rock 'n' roller living it up in the California sun for the first time in his life. There's a tradition of New Yorkers arriving in L.A. and despising it while Brits who descend upon the west coast end up living it up on endless groupies and a sea of vodka. Idol always made you believe that he made the most of his rock lifestyle and all its assorted "accoutrements".

~~~~~

Also of some cop

New Kids on the Block: "Tonight"

It seemed like the long and depressing reign of the New Kids was never going to end. Luckily, they were just about to come apart and the a-bit-better-than-I-remember "Tonight" gives clues to their undoing. As everyone knows by now, your best days are clearly behind you if you go into being self-referential ("Taught you 'bout hangin' tough / As long as you've got the right stuff...": did kids who weren't me think that quoting themselves was cool at the time?) and any thoughts that they were representing the future of music had been dashed by them suddenly trying to sound like The Beatles. And then there's the fact that they had put out a single all about how much they loved their fans at precisely the same time that they were being knocked in the press for lip-synching at their concerts. Still, at least Danny, Donnie, Joey, Jon and Jordan weren't living in the past. In fact, you could say that between being a boy band, poorly trying to ape The Beatles, miming to their own recordings and being meta with their lyrics the New Kids were paving the way for the nineties.