TLC: "Baby, Baby, Baby"

19 August 1992

"The backing has been cut down to the bone and you can almost feel the girls whispering sweet nothings in your ears."

— Tony Cross

Back in the mid-sixties, The Who would describe their music as "Maximum R&B", a slogan that became so widespread that it was used as the title of a best-selling box set of the band's career and as something to have on t-shirts worn by women in Asia who've never heard of The Who. By the early nineties, however, the term 'R&B' was starting to be applied to slick vocal groups like Boyz II Men and Color Me Badd. There's quite the missing link in the seventies and eighties, isn't there?

R&B was intended to be taken seriously. Whitney Houston's run of eighties' hits ("How Will I Know?", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody") took her to the top of the pop world but it notoriously resulted in her being booed at the 1988 Soul Train Awards. The singer was said to have taken the blowback hard and went back to the drawing board to record the more street-smart I'm Your Baby Tonight album. Being a pop diva, it was completely unconvincing. It also further solidified the noble but misguided notion that going R&B meant having extra credibility.

Luckily, there were some younger acts who were able to pull it off. Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas dressed as if they associated with the likes of The Jungle Brothers and Monie Love but their sound was such a hybrid of nineties' Afro-American music as to seem wholly original. Their form of R&B didn't over-do-it with the emotion, a trait which always seemed to affect male vocalists in the genre much more than their female counterparts.

The TLC that would be one of the biggest acts in the world in the mid to late nineties wasn't as refined at this early stage. Still, given how much worse the sleeker, (supposedly) sexier Betty Boo was as she matured, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The video for "Baby, Baby, Baby" is set in a girls' dorm at a university where the trio prance around in baggy pyjamas and their finest casual wear all the while mugging for the camera at every opportunity. T-Boz does most of the actual singing with an assist here and there from Chilli with Left-Eye, well, left out a bit. A rap in the middle-eight from her wouldn't have been unwelcome but it isn't missed.

Nonchalantly gliding along for its four minutes, you scarcely notice "Baby, Baby, Baby" at first but eventually takes hold by which time there's no getting rid of it. (Much like TLC itself, a group I never needed until they were taken from us when I suddenly missed them; is it any wonder the public took Left-Eye's untimely death so hard?) Sometimes the most original thing to do is to take a variety of genres and subgenres (R&B, hip hop, sunshine pop) and roll them into one ultra-subgenre of which there is really only one relevant act. 

A magnificent follow-up to breakthrough hit "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg", "Baby Baby Baby" badly underperformed in the UK, not even managing to crack the Top 50. Tony Cross' words of praise could only take them so far. What surely sank its chances was Americans and their reluctance to do promo work abroad. Had TLC done the rounds of the pop and chat shows there's no reason to think they couldn't have had a smash on their hands. To think the British move to the States even when their prospects are bleak but the Americans can barely be up for a five day visit every so often. (Luckily, The Backstreet Boys would give this approach a re-think in the next few years as they must've figured the British were ready for them while they waited out their belated US breakthrough)

When people really began talking about "alternative" music in around 1992, they were naturally focused on white indie rock as being this so-called alternative. But what if playful R&B pop of En Vogue, SWV and TLC was just as much of a rebellion against the slick types who ran afoul of black pop? Sure, hip hop was an alternative itself but much of it had become a caricature by this point. Singers like Shanice and Ce Ce Peniston either knowingly or unknowingly tapped into being R&B stars who indie kids could feel welcome listening to. (Again, male acts were not welcome into this realm to anywhere near the same degree) Forget riot grrrl and girl power, this was the real feminist musical revolution wrapped up in glossy pop form.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Sting with Eric Clapton: "It's Probably Me"

It's a brave thing to do a soft open for what will ultimately be your finest solo album with such a lame single. Is brave the word I'm looking for? Misguided? Ignorant? Pea-brained? I'm definitely getting warm. It might seem strange putting Sting, Clapton, soundtrack guy Michael Kamen and the third in the Lethal Weapon series together but the singer and movie do share at least one thing in common: they're both convinced that they're much funnier than they actually are. (Let's not even get into the problematic opinions of Clapton and star Mel Gibson which would no doubt have given them plenty of poisonous shit to talk about) The Stinger was wise to rid himself of much of this baggage going forward ensuring that while "It's Probably Me" was not exactly a highlight of Ten Summoner's Tales, neither was it quite as lousy as this version suggests it would be. Good thing the brilliant "Fields of Gold" and "Shape of My Heart" were in the works to remind everyone that it's probably Sting who can occasionally deliver the goods.

Sting: "Englishman in New York"

10 February 1988

"I knew this would be single of the fortnight the moment I saw this."

— Patsy Kensit

A bit of a "swizz" this fortnight as Patsy Kensit chose to abuse her position as guest critic by sneaking a record that isn't eligible in to be her Single of the Fortnight. This is pointed out by Smash Hits editors but the actress/singer/giant diva batted her eyes and got her way — or this is how I imagine it occurring. Granted, I was just eleven back in 1988 but if Patsy Kensit was going to sneak a usurper into the batch of new releases, I wouldn't have been the one to stop her.

Oddly, though, if you didn't know any better, you might not necessarily assume "Englishman in New York" to be her favourite. Sure, she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else here (I get the feeling she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else in the entire history of mankind) but the record itself? I'm not so sure. The fact that she decided it was going to be her favourite before she even listened to it says it all and her praise for the single is positive but not overwhelmingly so. The bulk of her relatively lengthy review is saved for her admiration for Sting and to fill the readers in on the song's subject matter, the transplanted gadabout with a craving for the spotlight Quentin Crisp. Otherwise, Kensit loves it because it's by Sting and she even asks the good people at Smash Hits if they would be able to arrange a meeting. (I wonder if they ever did meet; how would Sting have taken it when she told him that she loves his songs because he made them?)

Of course, the record had already been reviewed so we also have the observations of Tom Hibbert from four weeks' earlier to go by. Sadly, he doesn't offer much either, find it a boring single and giving off vibes that it's been a good while since he had much regard for the Stinger. But this is Hibs and he still has a surprise for the reader: mentioning that its first verse is about "how awful it is for English folk to partake of an American breakfast", he goes on to admit that the Yanks "do bacon much more crispily and tastily than anything we can expect in a cafe over here". And there I was thinking that a cornerstone of being British is pretending to love that sad item that the Americans call "Canadian bacon" (which no one in Canada actually consumes). 

The British have been transplanting themselves to the United States for centuries. It isn't the most radical cultural divide people have crossed although you'd never know it by the way they describe being a fish out of water in the New World. That's what we have at the beginning of "Englishman in New York" ("I don't take coffee, I take tea my dear...": one line in and there's so much to unpack; do the English 'take' their hot drinks rather than 'drink' them? It's better to address a waitress as 'dear' rather than 'sweetheart', right?); as it moves forward, it's about feeling accepted in a place we may not belong. Crisp had made his name as a raconteur but it always bothered him that his homosexuality had never been accepted in his homeland (strange it irked him so much considering he would one day speak out against gay rights); his fondness for makeup and his flamboyance were peculiarities that New Yorkers made note of but he was content that people seemed to like him for who he was. While Sting celebrates this side of Gotham, it is worth noting that John Lennon was extolling that virtues of the city that left him alone just two days before a psychopath shot him dead. The Korean-born writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was raped and murdered in New York just a week after her extraordinary memoir Dictee had been published. Pie-eyed outsiders who ❤ NY seldom consider the city's dark side.

Kensit expresses displeasure that Sting's previous single ("We'll Be Together") failed to be a hit single but at least she was prepared for this one to do even worse. The bulk of Sting's post-Police 45's were flops even as his albums still did well. Current release ...Nothing Like the Sun had been a chart topper in the autumn of 1987 despite failing to produce a single top 40 hit. Fans of his who may have bought "Message in a Bottle" or "Walking on the Moon" back in the day were now getting older and, assuming they were still sticking around, were probably more inclined towards a Sting long player than one of his singles, while the kids probably weren't interested in such stuff. This trend would largely continue with even the surefire megahit "Fields of Gold" from 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales only seeing modest top 20 action. It was only when he descended into film soundtrack hell with the abominable "All for Love" with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart that his British chart fortunes were revived.

Nevertheless, "Englishman in New York" would eventually find its way into the UK charts after Dutch DJ Ben Liebrand remixed it in 1990. Songs revamped by boffins usually lose some of their original spark but the Dutch producer actually made this record better, adding next to no sampled cliches and pushing Branford Marsalis' soprano sax to the background where it belongs. The track lends itself to remixing, especially at 2:34 when the jazz instrumental jazz ("the kind of thing stuck over the slapstick passages of some Woody Allen "movie"", reckons Hibs) gives way to a percussion breakdown, which Liebrand chose to open his version. It isn't hugely different but the little things are improved upon and that's what makes it the preferred record.

This spruced up "Englishman" came out a few months' ahead of Sting's follow up album The Soul Cages and it might be a song that fits in better with his more expressive works in the nineties. Finally free from trying to solve the world's problems in song (not always a bad thing, mind you), Gordon Sumner became a much more soulful songwriter as his forties approached. His work was still hit-and-miss but "All This Time" and "Shape of My Heart" and, yes, "Fields of Gold" are some of the finest songs he's ever written. Sting would claim that "Englishman" had been half about Crisp and half about himself and this was a step in the right direction: it wouldn't be long and he'd be writing all about himself — at least some of the time.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Morrissey: "Suedehead"

Possibly the rightful SOTF — or it certainly would be if I had had anything to say about it. Morrissey hasn't been particularly relevant this century and his solo career has been extremely spotty but his debut post-Smiths effort is still a blinder, a (misplaced) sign that he didn't need his old band. In fact, his first three singles rival anything The Smiths did and his first solo album was pretty good too. Obviously, they could have recorded a song like "Suedehead" but it's all the more important that he did it himself (along with some not untalented people he chose to work with). Sting went solo in the mid-eighties and did pretty well for himself but he could never quite shake The Police; Moz looked to be swiftly ridding himself of the Johnny Marr shackles as his old band was being left behind. It could never last.

Sting: "Russians"

4 December 1985

"Appropriate in the light of recent summit talks between Reagan and Gorbachev, "Russians" is full of admirable sentiment — "there's no such thing as an invisible war, it's a lie we don't believe anymore" — swathed in a sweeping giant of a song that borrows heavily from Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev."

— Peter Martin

A funny memory I have from taking the school bus home involves discussing bands breaking up. "Did you hear that Wham! broke up?" "Did you hear that Culture Club broke up?" "Did you hear that The Police broke up?" I may have been eight (my age at the end of 1985) or nine-years old and I was discussing groups that had broken up. It's possible that only one of the above "Did you hear" conversations actually happened the way I remember but I do recall thinking about the end of all three at some point in the mid-eighties. The very fact that young elementary school boys talked about at least one band breaking up seems extraordinary now. For one thing, groups don't really split up anymore (they go on "hiatus"); also, when it does occur it's not particularly big news; and, finally, what were a bunch of kids doing talking about the end of The Police?

But this was a time when rock groups could be big and boy did Sting know it. His organization never formally announced a break up — which means we must have been rumour mongering on the school bus, also an odd thing for little tykes to be doing — but his profile was high enough that he could make a seamless jump to a solo career. He was no longer able to reel off one massive hit single after another but his debut solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles sold well around the world, he did three separate turns on stage at Live Aid (one with The Police as well as guest sports with Phil Collins and Dire Straits) and appeared in the film Plenty alongside Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman.

The Police last cropped up on this blog with "Invisible Sun", a haunting single about everyday people being left in the ashes of war. A far cry from some of their more well-remembered but facile hits, it let me to conclude that Sting really should have pursued weightier material more often. Well, perhaps not actually. It's now four years on and martial law in Poland, Beirut under siege and the military gunning down protesters in Korea has faded away. There are still problems in the world but lives aren't shattering to nearly the same extent as then. Why not look to an issue that hadn't yet killed anyone but which very well still could.

As Peter Martin says, there's an admirable sentiment here and Sting is making a statement that needed to be said. Fine but what of the record? Well, it's as if he's trying to jam puzzle pieces together that really don't fit. Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé is a great choice. It's a beautiful piece of music and one that represents Russia without caricaturing it: the listener doesn't instantly picture squat dancing, Russian dolls and the Kremlin as it's playing. Nevertheless, Sting's lyrics don't really work with the composition. Actually, the words just aren't all that good. Sting has his own unique delivery but there's an over-abundance of syllables that makes singing along nearly impossible (assuming anyone would ever want to). It's as if he has stuffed this record full of ideas but without crafting a good song.

It's amazing that "Russians" was even a single and that it managed to outperform "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" in the UK since it really sounds like a deep cut that you zone out on while listening to the album. It's great that Sting kept up the desire to tackle issues but not at the expense of a grim record. Though recorded well before it, this is very much a post-Live Aid single: intentions are good and that's good enough. At least for some.

"Russians" wraps up the 1985 batch of Singles of the Fortnight on a slightly damp note but it has been an unexpectedly good year. Last fall, just as I was wrapping up the '84 group, I began looking to the year ahead and it didn't seem like it was going to be up to much. The UK number one singles are, with the possible exceptions of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" and Madonna's "Into the Groove", poor and I thought that once you get past my top three or four albums (Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen, The Style Council's Our Favourite Shop and maybe R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction) the quality completely bottoms out. But I was wrong. Bob Stanley has complained that the eighties were lousy because great records were often at a disadvantage for chart success and he's right — and, indeed, even some of the higher placing hits from this year covered in this space have been some of the weaker entries. But at least there is some depth to an apparently shallow time.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Anya: "Moscow Nights"

A lot of cracks in the Soviet mystique began showing in '85. Mikhail Gorbachev, aka the smiling face of the Red Menace, took power, Samantha Smith, their symbol for peace in the United States, was killed in a plane crash and Rocky beat Drago. But if you thought the latter was embarrassing then get a load of "Moscow Nights" by Anya. A follow-up to Elton John's hit single "Nikita" — if you call releasing a record about the USSR after being cast as a Checkpoint Charlie border guard in pop video a "follow-up" — it tries to build on the exoticism of "One Night in Bangkok" but at least Murray Head, Bjorn and Benny from ABBA and/or Tim Rice probably went to the Thai capital and saw the clichés they sang and wrote about and that's more than can be said for this crap. Also, why is Anya singing with that accent? Leaving aside issues with cultural appropriation and all that, who does she think she is, a wrestling villain carrying around the hammer and sickle?