Kylie Minogue: "Give Me Just a Little More Time"

8 January 1992

"Kylie has a big problem: living up to Better The Devil You Know, one of the greatest singles in the history of the cosmiverse. Solution: This."

— Sian Pattenden

A flip through this issue of from the start of 1992 and it's very much the Smash Hits of old. Longstanding segment Bitz kicks things off with features on a bunch of people I'm unfamiliar with (bands Airhead and Senseless Things as well as comedy duo Trevor & Simon, who apparently were a bit of a thing even when I resided in the UK) and a deeply uninteresting bit about Madonna's feelings about other pop stars. The venerable Black Type is busy chirping away at the letter writers while good old Gordon Bennett! is answering queries from the pop kids. And then there's Kylie Minogue nabbing her fourth Single of the Fortnight, putting her in a tie with the likes of The Cure, Billy Idol (for the love of God, how did he get so many?!?) and, yes, Madonna for third place behind only Pet Shop Boys and George Michael.

But not everything remained the same. Kylie's sexier look had been a thing for close to two years though she was now getting even raunchier. The backlash that had been building against her had begun to expand with previous SOTF "Word Is Out" having paid the price. (Of course, you can always bet on a pop star going downhill when they begin to go R&B) Ver hits had also recently been taking a page out of the increasingly irrelevant Number One mag with a celeb gossip section near the back of every issue. More and more, the mandate appeared to be a focus on the famous rather than pop stars in particular. 

Finally, this issue closes with two pages devoted to promoting next fortnight's edition of the all-new Smash Hits. Gasp at the POSTER WITH EVERY ISSUE! (Surely the Hits had long been a cradle for youths looking to decorate their walls so this wasn't anything new) Dance about at the prospect of EVEN MORE STAR-PACKED PAGES! (Sixty-four pages to be precise; note that they did not mention the accompanying price increase) Get your rocks off to the prospect of a SONGBOOK WITH EVERY ISSUE! (Was spreading the lyrics throughout really such a burden for ver kids?) And who would be appearing on the cover of this reboot? One Kylie Minogue.

"Give Me Just a Little More Time" was certainly her best single in ages. Possibly well before the overrated "Better the Devil You Know". Credit to her for giving a commendable vocal and to Stock Waterman (I will never get used to the absence of Aitken) for producing a quality single but the real MVP is the song itself. Though not strictly speaking a Motown number, it was nevertheless composed by the famed Holland-Dozier-Holland team (though under their 'Dunbar & Wayne' pseudonym). A huge hit for trio Chairmen of the Board, it was something of a throwback to the glory days of The Four Tops and The Temptations. You might think that a cover version of a classic from the early seventies written and performed by African Americans would have been the perfect choice for Kylie's mature R&B sound but for the fact that it's as pop as it comes.

Even at their best SAW would have struggled to write something as effortlessly brilliant as "Give Me Just a Little More Time" but by the beginning of '92 it was unlike anything else they had in their increasingly bare cupboard of potential hits. No wonder Sian Pattenden hails it as sounding "funkesque and boppy in a Kylie-That-We-Know-And-Love way". A return to form and, better yet, superior to most of her discography because the material she had to work with was better than ever.

Kylie and SW really don't do much with what they have — but that is probably for the best. When people protest that covers ought to be better than the originals (or at the very least somehow different from them) they are overlooking the fact that this is an extremely tall order. Take the example on this blog when I wrote about both the outstanding "Money's Too Tight (to Mention)" by The Valentine Brothers and its passable remake by Simply Red. Sure, Mick Hucknall could have revamped the arrangement but what purpose would that have served? And good on Kylie for refraining from aping lead singer Harrison Kennedy's impassioned vocals, though she does mimic those fantastic "bbbrrrr's" in the chorus, the "best bit" according to Pattenden.

A sign of Kylie's influence as a pop culture icon was that she was chosen to relaunch Smash Hits in the second half of January 1992. Prominently featured in this final issue of "classic" Hits with this SOTF, a softball interview with Marc Andrews, a bit of harsh criticism in the Letters page from one Stephen Toole of the Madonna Defense League (Kylie was copying Madge a little too much it would seem) and the lyrics to "Give Me Just a Little More Time", she was left off the cover in favour of former paramour and outgoing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat star Jason Donovan along with incoming "Joey" Philip Schofield. Yet, a fortnight later she was on the front of the new look Hits, ostensibly to shill a five-page spread inside called 'Who's Hot for Who?' about the stars and those they fancy. Kylie is the choice of noted Minoguist James Dean Bradfield which she in turn opts for Lenny Kravitz, who sister Dannii also had her eyes on (when you've been married to Lisa Bonet and you've begun dating Vanessa Paradis, I think it's okay to pass on a Minogue). Elsewhere, the new Hit Songwords pullout includes the lyrics to — huh? — "Give Me Just a Little More Time", in a rare bit of lazy double dipping by the editors. In truth, Kylie was on the cover just to be Kylie which was always reason enough.

And so, we reach the end of peak Smash Hits. Its circulation was already in decline from its late-eighties' peak but it was still the magazine of old. Now it was entering the back half of its lifespan in a pop scene that increasingly had little use for it. Rather than burn out, it would gradually fade away. Once an essential part of British life, now that thing that people used to like. But let's see if there was still some life in the old girl...

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Shakespears Sister: "Stay"

A number one smash for the better part of two months and fondly remembered to this day, Pattenden is nevertheless able only to enthuse over Marcella Detroit's impressive vocal. Otherwise, it "chooses to plod along in its own little cubicle of dullness". We can't like everything, reckons this humble blogger who happens to think that David Bowie's Hunky Dory isn't half as brilliant as everyone else says it is. As for "Stay", I can kind of understand why someone would have reservations even if I think it's ace. There's really not much of a song to it, for one thing; also, it really needs its video to make it a true goth-pop knock out. Plus, for a single which screams sizzling epic, it's surprising that the whole thing is wrapped up in well under four minutes. Yet, there's so much going on: a bit goth, a bit indie, a bit of power balladry, a touch of over-the-top Meat Loaf/Bonnie Tyler ludicrousness, the type of thing which is entirely derivative yet tricks the listener into believing that it is utterly original. Strong enough that it withstood eight weeks at the top without many people growing sick of it. Shakespears Sister even got the jump on all those many other groups with songs called "Stay". Why didn't they all just go away?

"Batman: Original Theme"

26 July 1989

"I didn't realise that it was written by Neal Hefti who used to work for Frank Sinatra — and we're all big Frank Sinatra fans, as you know."

— Gary Clark

"The lyrical content is great too. Straight to the point. Batmaaan...Batmaaaan!!"

— Kit Clark

"I've heard that the Joker has cigars that blow people's heads off. Sound good to me!"

— Ged Grimes

And the streak is over. After thirteen issues of Smash Hits and fourteen Top 40 hits, at last we have a flop. The last time a chart non entity had been named Single of the Fortnight was way back in January of 1989 when Tom Doyle handed the crown to Squeezebrain & The Machine featuring J.J. Jones for "Lovegroove". In the six intervening months we had gigantic worldwide smashes ("Like a Prayer", "Back to Life"), hits for artists on the rise ("Manchild", "Say No Go"), chart returns for faded stars of the past ("Nothing Has Been Proved", "I'm Every Woman") and at least one gem that hardly anyone remembers anymore ("You on My Mind"). But they all dented the Top 40. This one? Not so much.

Mainstream popular culture in the summer of 1989 was all abuzz over Tim Burton's Batman. Beetlejuice had been released a year earlier and proved to be a hit. For the director's next project to be the Dark Knight, the hype was tremendous, even in this pre-internet age. Displaying a trait which would eventually become tiresome, Burton returned to the well by casting Beetlejuice star Michael Keaton in the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman but the other big stars (Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger) were not rehires. Prince had even signed on to put together the soundtrack. This Batman movie was going to be a big deal.

The British, however, were just going to have to wait. Hollywood blockbusters would typically be delayed prior to being shown outside of North America and in this instance, Batman wouldn't come out until closer to the end of the year. Thus, they had to make due with the music and Prince's "Batdance" single swiftly rocketed up the charts and only came up short of becoming his first UK number one because of the immovable Soul II Soul. The soundtrack also did well, giving the Purple Perv his second chart topping album. If the British weren't one hundred percent sold on Batman, at least Prince could be relied upon to shift some "units".

Strategic reissues are nothing new in the music business, especially when rival record labels are concerned. I knew less about the record industry when I was twelve than I do now in my forties (and I still don't know much about it) but a re-release of the original "Batman" from the sixties' TV series at this time didn't surprise me at all. I had spent a year in England following the charts and there had been a drippy and pathetic power ballad that got to number one simply because of a Coke commercial. Shortly after arriving the previous August there had been two different versions of "He Ain't Heavy (He's My Brother)" vying for chart supremacy at the same time. (I didn't care all that much for the better-known recording by The Hollies but it is vastly superior to the deplorable "reading" by erstwhile Righteous Brother Bill Medley from the soundtrack of Rambo III) That autumn, Tom Jones teamed up with synth experimentalists the Art of Noise for a cover of Prince's "Kiss"; the much better original by his nibs would be promptly back in the shops even though no one bothered with it at that point.

Giving their thumbs way up to the Neal Hefti composed, Nelson Riddle conducted "Batman" are the Scottish threesome Danny Wilson. A zany trio, they crafted meticulous records but never acted as if they were above the pop "game". Indeed, they could easily have acted all high and mighty about their choice for Single of the Fortnight while rubbishing the state of current music. In fact, they don't have a lot positive things to say about most the other pop fare but they keep their negativity to the music and to poking fun at their contemporaries, as one should. Neneh Cherry's admittedly rather twee "Kisses on the Wind" reminds them of the jingle for Skittles, The Lilac Time are compared to a flat bottle of energy drink Lucozade, they consider putting the Then Jericho sleeve on the turntable in place of the actual record ("I bet it would sound a lot better!"), Big Fun are dismissed as being not unlike poor chocolate biscuits and the latest from Simple Minds sounds "like a Billy Idol record that somebody had spilt their tea on" (irrefutably true). Slagging off modern pop has never been such fun!

Still, it wouldn't have killed them to have a pop at "Batman" for good measure. With Hefti and Riddle in charge it was always going to be a sturdy enough theme tune, one that a good chunk of the populace would still be familiar with to this day. While the chorus is kept afloat by a rudimentary surf rock beat, it is the funky jazz solos in the bridge that really brings it to life. The cries of "BATMAN!" may well be iconic but they sure are lacking any kind of passion. The overly emotive Neal Hefti Singers would've been a welcome improvement on these staid lasses. Otherwise, there's not much to quibble about though I'll still take The Marketts and their outrageous cover version over this.

Finally, it's worth noting that this would be my final issue of Smash Hits. When it hit the shops in the last week of July, I was on a coach tour in Italy with my family along with an assortment of British and American tourists. By the time the following edition had been published, I was back in Canada. In the meantime, we would return to Britain for a few days before our departure on August 4. One of my final activities in the UK was a day trip to London with my dad and sister. My mum chose to stay home and get things packed. In her haste she grabbed the stack of Smash Hits and Number Ones on the floor next to my bed and threw them out (as well as the oversized farewell card that everyone in my class had signed for me on my last day of school which, naturally, I had intended to keep). This issue was one of the few that survived the purge. The singles review by Danny Wilson was something I would re-read over the next few years as I began to contemplate a way in to this pop world, a place I am still nowhere close to penetrating.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Shakespears Sister: "You're History"

Bananarama had Keren, the good looking one, Sarah, the confident one, and Siobhan, the talented one. (She would be replaced by Jacquie, the other one) That was the narrative at least. Shakespears Sister began as a solo project for Siobhan Fahey following her departure from the 'Narns but it gradually became a group with helium-voiced Marcella Detroit joining in. Gary from Danny Wilson reckons it sounds too much like Eurythmics while Ged wonders if Fahey's hubby Dave Stewart worked on it in secret. Proof that going all dark and edgy can't save a poor record, even if the good looking one, the confident one and the other one were proving to be no better off with their awful reworking of the once great "Cruel Summer".