Redhead Kingpin & The FBI: "Superbad, Superslick"

29 November 1989

"Look, He's got a CD round his neck."

— Ben

"I like that brring bit."

— Nick

"Energy without violence is just great too."

— Julian

"We'll all choose different records from this as our favourites but this is the one we all agree on."

— Migi

Over the last several months I have looked at bands doing guest spots as Smash Hits singles reviewers. Wet Wet Wet were the first group in some time to take on the task together (and certainly the first quartet to do so), with lead singers or prominent musicians handling said duties for the most part. The Scottish foursome came to a consensus, as did fellow Caledonians Hue & Cry a few months later. Erasure and Aswad also managed to agree on a Single of the Fortnight but this harmonious situation changed when Communards Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles went with separate picks. Members of Bros, Brother Beyond and T'Pau followed suit. None seemed interested in compromising.

But that is what the members of Curiosity Killed the Cat have done in this issue of ver Hits. As drummer Miguel "Migi" Drummond says above, they each have their own personal faves but they decided to present a solitary SOTF in a show of unity. I have included my thoughts on each of their individual picks before I get to the one they all agreed on.

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Kate Bush: "This Woman's Work"

Julian, the "Kate Bush authority", opts for the dramatic second single from the highly anticipated The Sensual World LP. He makes the faux pas of referring to her as 'Katie' but he's bang on in every other respect. A Top 30 hit though it deserved to do better but I suppose Katie's thirtysomething fanbase had all been happy to snap up the album instead. Nevertheless, "This Woman's Work" is outstanding. Also features a captivating video starring British actor Tim McInnerny, who played Lord Percy and Captain Darling in Blackadder, as Katie's devoted but brokenhearted husband. He even touched her once.

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Glen Goldsmith: "One Life"

Easily the worst of the individual picks. Ben doesn't exactly come right out and say it but it's either this or the hopeless new single from Curiosity Killed the Cat and we're not going to go there. Sounds like generic R&B pop from about three years earlier and its chart prospects were even bleaker than the hopeless new single from Curiosity Killed the Cat.

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Van Morrison with Cliff Richard: "Whenever God Shines His Light"

A clear Christmas number one contender pretender. Nick is very taken with it and Ben is right there with him but, tellingly, the other two don't bother to chime in. I thought it was lame Jesus nonsense as a youth but now I just find it a bore. Van was capable of much better and, indeed, so was Cliff. Amazingly, it was Van's biggest Top 40 hit since all the way back in 1965 when he was a grumpy young man in Ulster group Them.

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Soul II Soul: "Get a Life"

They last had a hit with Single of the Year "Back to Life" and followed it up with "Get a Life" — what the hell was Jazzie B playing at? (I'm still waiting for their cover of Opus' "Live Is Life") Not as immediate as their earlier hits but but the kids chanting "what's the meaning" and the (possibly) sampled flute sticks with the listener. The Bee's raps on Club Classics Vol.1 were a bit more effortless but this is easily the most commercial thing featuring his voice. A near Christmas number one that was only held off by some charity wretchedness and a horrific Jive Bunny megamix. Soul II Soul had managed to tap into the zeitgeist earlier in the year but their luster was soon to slip a bit.

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As for "Superbad, Superslick", it's a solid compromise choice. I wasn't fussed by Redhead Kingpin's "Do the Right Thing" that I covered on this blog a while back but this is a marked improvement. As I think I have said before, hip hop artists could get caught up in the "message" of their records that they'd often forget about trivialities like hooks and melodies and, you know, crafting a sturdy song. It was easy at the time to be down on boastful rappers but nine times out of ten they bested the irritating positive types.

Relying heavily on an organ part that may or may not have been played by David "Redhead" Guppy and a stuttering guitar part in the chorus, "Superbad, Superslick" is largely free of rap cliches. Even the use of a James Brown sample towards the end is a little used "get into it" bit and not one of the Godfather's grunts nor that "Funky Drummer" part that was absolutely everywhere at the time. The Ginger even raps more forcefully on this. His style isn't particularly unique but he's a more than adequate rapper.

The single is superior to its predecessor is every way but this made little difference to the British public as it had a two-week stay in the lower reaches of the charts at the end of 1989. Happily, there was a new form of hip hop that had been emerging over the course of the year and it was soon to really take off. Redhead Kingpin & The FBI might've found a home in this subgenre of jazzy, quirky hippies who opted out of either boasting about themselves or the plight of the streets. I am very much looking forward to the Daisy Age as this blog moves into the nineties.

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Also of some cop

Jason Donovan: "When You Come Back to Me"

With three number one singles and an album that was massive, 1989 was Jason Donovan's year. (His records spent just under seventy percent of the year on the Top 40 but I was expecting it to be higher) His fortunes were to fall off somewhat the following year and "When You Come Back to Me" gives a taste of his imperial period drawing to a close. Not only did it fail to hit number one (which Jase made up for by appearing on Xmas chart topper "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II) but it's duff even by his standards. The members of Curiosity despise it but they do admit to a bias due to their overall distaste for Stock Aitken Waterman. Well, I loved SAW at the time and still like some of their records and I can confirm that this is beyond horrible. Jason sounded lost on debut single "Nothing Can Divide Us" but he's probably the best thing about this. Kylie would be going strong for some time but Jason's fans wouldn't be coming back to him for much longer.

Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)"

17 May 1989

"I don't have to listen to this one. I know it really well already."

— Pat Sharp

It was July and our year in England was slipping away — though given my lethargy at the time, you'd hardly know it. The novelty of spending weekends in a host of British cities and towns had worn off and if I never saw another full English breakfast again I would have been a happy twelve-year-old. I didn't want to leave the UK but I didn't especially want to see any more of it either. I wanted to spend weekends at home watching the telly and listening to music — even if it happened to be in our uninspiring little hovel in Laindon, Basildon.

We had neighbours who we could see and/or hear quite easily. My sister and I would spy on an amourous couple across the square from us and noises of varying volume were easy to listen to. The bedroom we shared was separated by a thin wall with teenagers we never met but whose tastes in music dovetailed with our own. It was during this scorching summer that they came home one day with "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)" and put it on their hi-fi. We nodded approvingly and didn't complain when they promptly put it on again. And again. And again. It didn't stop. Had it been a lesser song, we would've gotten sick of it.

"Back to Life" was unavoidable that summer. In my memories of those waning days before our return to Canada in August, it soundtracked everything. Shops played it, pub jukeboxes had it on an endless loop, schoolmates sang it as they pranced around the playground. Almost everyone seemed to love it and those that didn't still couldn't avoid it. The song of the summer a year earlier had been "The Only Way Is Up" by Yazz but I only became aware of it as it as sliding down the charts; I wasn't about to miss out this time round — and, indeed, its ubiquity ensured that there was no danger of that happening anyway.

Soul II Soul were seemingly a 1989 creation but they were sowing the seeds of their success a year earlier. Their debut single didn't exactly storm the charts on a national level but it got a good word-of-mouth and people in the know were impressed. "Fairplay" must have seemed too relax to fit in longside acid house and techno but it did well enough for a first try. Rose Windross gives a charming vocal performance and her girlish "Okay!" near the beginning never fails to put a smile on my face. It did so well that its slightly inferior follow-up, "Feel Free" with guest vocalist Do'reen, did about as well on the charts. While not as good, it set the London collective up for a big year ahead.

Caron Wheeler subsequently came aboard for third single "Keep on Movin'". It wasn't a big favourite of guest reviewer Pat Sharp but itdid well enough to give them a Top 10 breakthrough and it was even able to linger on the listings for longer than your average hit single. Relaxed but active enough to become a dancefloor staple, it was like Chic's "Everybody Dance" but for a generation more accustomed to the more chilled out Second Summer of Love (and all its requisite drugs) than to coke-fuelled Studio 54 disco vibes. With a better song and a stronger promotional push, there was every reason to expect that the next single would continue the upward trend.

But is "Back to Life" that much better than "Keep on Movin'"? As pairings go they were not unlike fellow label mate Inner City's outstanding one-two punch of "Big Fun" and "Good Life", albeit in vastly different forms. In both cases, leaders Jazzie B and Kevin Sauderson created a unique sound with their first hit singles and then replicated them beautifully for their respective follow-ups. (It didn't hurt as well that Wheeler had returned for "Back to Life" just as Paris Gray was on vocal duty for "Good Life"; Soul II Soul had always dubbed themselves a "collective" but having the same singer on back-to-back records suddenly made it seem like they were a proper group) Inner City, however, amped up the pop hooks but minimized the subtleties that helped make "Big Fun" so glorious; Soul II Soul refined the swaying dancefloor cool of "Keep on Movin'" into something even more extraordinary.

Tom Ewing likes "Back to Life" a lot but he can't quite muster the same kind of enthusiasm for it that he has for Massive Attack's phenomenal 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy". I can see what he means but I respectfully disagree. While the Bristol trio would smartly tap into indie angst in order to bridge it with the ascending trip hop movement, Jazzie B and co. invited all into their diverse realm without barriers. Everyone seemed to love "Back to Life", even baby boomers who normally wouldn't have had anything to do with such stuff. And it still sounds great to this day (though, in fairness, so does "Unfinished Sympathy"): the easy answer would be to say that it has aged well but I suspect that the world has never aged out of it. Jazzie's promise of a "happy face and a funky face for a loving race" should have been cringe-inducing but it's something we all still need.

A few months after "Back to Life" had its memorable four week run at the top of the British charts, I was back in Canada. The song wasn't all over the place but it had successfully crossed the Atlantic and it even got played on the debut episode of the Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. By this point, I had given up on the current music scene in my homeland and I was content to simply relive the previous year by listening to my collection of tapes from the UK as well as a handful that I subsequently picked up. One was Keep on Movin' (retitled in North America because Club Classics Vol.1 wouldn't do in a land that typically didn't have much use for British dance music). I had previously only been familiar with their two hit singles and this was my introduction to Jazzie B's world of house music, funk, jazz and world beat. I was impressed by much of it (and I love it even more now) but the stripped down, acapella version of "Back to Life" proved to be a disappointment. The thrill of those strings, that beat and that tune that refused to exit my brain was replaced by a shell of the song's "However Do You Want Me" section. This wasn't the "Back to Life" that I knew and remembered and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But that's what makes this amazing record even more of a triumph: Jazzie B cobbled together parts of songs, samples and a Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra backing track into something utterly remarkable and addictive. An easy Single of the Fortnight, Single of the Year and, hell, Single of the Century. Any century.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Beautiful South: "Song for Whoever"

The Housemartins were by now long gone but The Beautiful South had taken their place. So, was the music scene jubilant? Not especially. Fans cried out for ver Martins and Paul Heaton's newest band reacted back in drunken vengeance. It would take another five years before people fully began to accept The Beautiful South — by which point they had already begun to decline creatively. "Song for Whoever" still did well as people either enjoyed the joke or for whatever reason became convinced that it was a sincere statement. A backlash was already brewing but it was one ver South managed to thrive under. The Housemartins would quickly become Heaton's second best band no matter what the nay sayers claimed.