Lisa Stansfield: "The Only Way"

28 October 1982

"Nominating this as star single isn't going to win me any credibility points. It's the kind of obvious, blatantly commercial number that everyone sneers at until it makes the top five and then some vaguely apologetic voice pops up with: "actually I quite like this"."

— David Hepworth

Much like two weeks ago when I wrote about The The, this week's entry is drenched in memories that would come much later. While I knew that Matt Johnson's outfit had a past of some sort, I had no idea Lisa Stansfield was releasing music this early on — she was only sixteen back in 1982 — and I had probably assumed that she emerged fully formed with her breakthrough hit "People Hold On" in '89. The single was made in cahoots with Coldcut, who had previously had a hit with Yazz, another newcomer, with "Doctorin' the House" a year earlier. These house music boffins were ace at digging up unknowns and making them into stars. Well, sort of. 

Turns out, Stansfield had been toiling away at that whole stardom thing for the entire length of the eighties. Emerging victorious on the UK talent show Search for a Star, she got signed up by a major record label and made further TV appearances. She was well-known enough to have merited an ITV documentary but her notoriety didn't translate into chart success. She would eventually form the group Blue Zone with a pair of mates which would eventually morph into her second and much more successful crack at a solo career. (It's unthinkable in this day and age to have an X Factor winner take the better part of ten years to establish themselves. On the other hand, given short chart career lifespans of such contestants, she may have been better off in the long term that it took her so long to have a hit)

So, "The Only Way" is a part of Lisa Stansfield's back story. On the sleeve, she looks very young, her hair nicely permed and sporting (in David Hepworth's words) a "rather fetching string vest"; a far cry, then, from the mature, short cropped (with a curl prominently featured on her forehead) and tailored (though no less fetching) power suits look she would have at the end of the decade. (Being just sixteen, it seems appropriate that her image has more than a little of the yearbook to it) Her voice, too, is different. Though still powerful — Hepworth credits producer David Pickerill with "boosting her little girl voice until it's just this side of glass-shattering" but that's as much a tribute to Stansfield's performance — her singing lacks that distinctive elasticity that would eventually convince a lot of people that she was a major talent. Still, there's enough here to see that she had loads of potential.

What brings things down a bit is the song itself. Living and dying by its catchy chorus and hooks a plenty, the lyrics are awfully hollow, depicting Lisa getting up early and being in a rush and going off to do whatever it is she has lined up for the day before heading back home to the dinginess of home that evening. The day itself isn't even worth mentioning. Now, perhaps this is a commentary on how the pursuit of pop music glory renders everything into a blur with scarcely any time for living one's life. The only way to get ahead is to be constantly on the move (or something). All well and good but how about some resolution to the story or more detail beyond generalities like "touch of the Monday morning blues" or some sort of acknowledgement as to why I'm supposed to care. Throw me a bone, people.

Perhaps a similar attitude sunk its chart fortunes in spite of Hepworth considering it a "contender". No Top 5 position, no lost credibility points, no apologetic chiming in its defense. So, let me be the first to belatedly say (above quibbles aside), "actually, I quite like this": actually, I quite like this.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Marvin Gaye: "Sexual Healing"

While other sixties holdovers were beginning to be critically dumped on (see Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones) around this time, Marvellous Marvin was enjoying a revival of sorts. "Sexual Healing" has always struck me as undeserving of its classic status even if it's probably the best he was capable of at this late stage of his life. Having alienated many more people than just his long-suffering ex-wife with his controversial masterpiece Here, My Dear four years earlier, it's easy to see why so many people were happy to have the louche and gentle Marvin of old back. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of Ian MacDonald's assertion that Gay "longed to be a messenger but hadn't much to say". (I was going to say that it's lyrically trite but how often do you come across songs that rhyme 'oven' with 'lovin'?) It's worth noting that something in his dark heart is there longing to be expressed: could sexual healing be the only thing to give him respite given the creative, financial and personal troubles that plagued him? Too bad the porn-without-the-explicit-bits video that accompanies it kind of undercuts the trace amounts of expressiveness old Marv was able to inject.

Kim Wilde: "Child Come Away"

14 October 1982

"Add Kim's strong vocal performance plus a piccolo-headed arrangement that nudges into the realms of folk-rock and you have a Rak track that will ensure standing room only throughout Kim's current tour. Outstanding."

— Fred Dellar

A little girl is growing up in a small town. Everything about her life is normal: she goes to school, plays with her friends, argues with her brothers and sisters and refuses to eat anything with onions in it. She spends her pocket money on sweets and is disappointed that her parents still won't relent and get her a puppy. Then she learns about the abduction of a girl close to her age and her world is turned upside down.

"Child Come Away" is a song about two girls: the one who gets snatched and left for dead and the one who is privy to the unraveling of everything around her. Innocence ends up being yanked away from both. Obviously the former is put through so much more but the lingering affects are left as a burden on the former: not knowing quite what happened (much less how or why), learning little snippets of detail but being denied the full story by parents and a town that doesn't want to discuss it, living in fear that she could be next. Fred Dellar mentions a "town filled with terror" but I suspect there's more to it than that. The community is in denial, perhaps even complicit, as to what's been going on.

That the Wilde family was able to come up with this gripping four-minute thriller is absolutely remarkable. Having already trotted out a pair of sorrowful yet superb singles with "Cambodia" and "View from a Bridge", they were well positioned to deliver yet another tragic piece and "Child Come Away" is their zenith. Kim seems to have toned down the vocal frostiness that worked such a treat on her early records, leaving room for a sweetness that captures the childlike wonder and confusion going on. I don't know if I agree with Dellar that the "piccolo-headed arrangement" moves the song into the realms of folk-rock but it is effective. I have to wonder if it's intended as a Pied Piper-esque tool to symbolise a child being lured away, while other children are being shuffled off to the side and told to go and play and stop asking so many bloody questions.

It's as a piece of writing, however, that "Child Come Away" truly shines. The lack of clarity in the story may seem strange at first but that's precisely the point. What exactly happened to this girl in the sand? What kind of appalling state was she left in that everyone in town — including the judge at the trial — turns away from her now? Has she been cast aside by the community as much as her captor/torturer ("I saw her face in the back of the car / As they were speeding out of this town")? We aren't to know, just as the other young girl in this song isn't to know. And we can look at this situation and gasp the heartlessness of the townsfolk but that's how close-knit communities often deal with these situations. How was this not used in the TV series Broadchurch?

So, all that said, how did it fail to catch on, falling short of the Top 40? Being her third single on the trot dealing with dark subject matter may have turned people off, especially deejays who were content around this time to spin sunny reggae-pop by the likes of Musical Youth, Culture Club and Eddy Grant instead. (Hopefully it did indeed manage to grip audiences during Wilde's tour; I like to think that she still occasionally floors her fans with it at shows to this day) In retrospect, it's a shame it wasn't released as a double A-side with its jauntier — though still appropriately angsty — flip "Just Another Guy": come for the whiplash pop-rock, stay for the searing devastation.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

ABBA: "The Day Before You Came"

And while we're on the topic of great melancholic pop that punters and radio conspired to spurn, all hail ABBA's swansong "The Day Before You Came". Variously interpreted as recalling the last days of mundane loneliness before finding love, some sort of murder/suicide plot or the tale of a stalker, the very ambiguity of just what motivates this song's protagonist is precisely what makes it so intriguing. (I tend to lean towards the stalker theory although I'm beginning to warm to the concept that the whole thing is a delusion with 'You' never coming) Dellar mentions the amusing line about watching every episode of Dallas but I also like the fact that this lonely, aimless soul reads both the morning and evening papers, a throwback to the omnipresence of print media. Just imagine how much more miserable she would be if she spent her commutes playing nothing but Candy Crush on her mobile?

The The: "Uncertain Smile"

30 September 1982

"Never mind record of the week, this is the week of the The The record."
— Johnny Black

There are many acts I've been dealing with in this space who were unknown to my five-year-old self back in 1982 that I would later became familiar with. The following three fortnight's worth of entries are all of individuals who I came to know during my crucial '88-'89 year in England. (I had been considering doing a trilogy of pieces about what preteen Paul would have thought of these records in the context of their later stuff but I abandoned it when I realised how little he had to say...also I hate trilogies; nevertheless, I hope that at least some of that concept survives below) 

The The were an act that I had occasional encounters with over more than a decade but who I could never conjure up much enthusiasm for, which also goes for their name. Johnny Black mentions their "damn silly moniker" which is about how I've always felt, even if I can appreciate how the double 'the' could potentially throw people. While groups like Eagles, Pet Shop Boys and Talking Heads have bristled at being labelled 'The Eagles', 'The Pet Shop Boys' and 'The Talking Heads', it's always faintly annoyed me when people leave off the definite article from groups that tend to use them. Colin Larkin's absolutely indispensable Virgin Encyclopedia of... series lists groups as 'Beatles' and 'Clash' and — this one's especially jarring — 'Who'. I've never bothered checking but I suspect he chose not to label the present act as simply 'The'. But, yeah, it's a stupid name.

To come upon The The at this early stage has brought back memories of the bits and pieces they later released. "The Beat(en) Generation" with its irritating in-word parentheses was a Top 20 single in the UK in 1989 and was something that I recall deejays and journalists really getting behind, as if they felt it important or something. I wasn't terribly impressed. At the time, I was bothered by its faint whiff of country and western music which I had absolutely no time for. I still don't think much of it now though more due to Matt Johnson's hectoring lyrics which seemed to talk at young people living through the doldrums of Mrs Thatcher's reign rather than to them. "Kingdom of Rain" was a follow up (also taken from their Mind Bomb album) with a video that featured seahorses possibly copulating and a sullen young woman who most certainly was not guest vocalist Sinéad O'Connor. What it lacked was anything approaching a memorable tune. I would later come across singles from the Dusk and Hanky Panky albums which were equally forgettable. Finally, I acquired a promo copy of 2000's NakedSelf when I was supposed to interview Johnson for my university paper; it actually wasn't too bad but I was too interested in Gomez and Grandaddy to care too much (particularly after the interview fell through due to a scheduling conflict; incidentally the only question I can recall preparing to ask him was if The The could be anything more than just a solo project, so it's probably for the best that we never spoke).

All that said, what am I to make of "Uncertain Smile"? Well, I will acknowledge that it would be my choice for SOTF as well. Although certainly a marked improvement on last fortnight's glum crop of singles, the likes of Ultravox's "Reap the Wild Wind" and The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" are pleasantly unremarkable efforts but nowhere close to this good. A lovely, floating melody with some fine flute and sax solos courtesy of one Crispin Cioe provide a nice undercoating for an intriguing lyric which manages to read rather well as poetry. Johnson's vocal is vaguely whiny which seems to suit such a restless and insecure song. A very pleasant surprise.

My only reservation is that I keep finding myself connecting "Uncertain Smile" to Johnson's later work which I've never thought much of. Johnny Black concludes his review admitting that much of their early stuff was "a bit aimless, but this is right on the button". I agree but from the perspective of what came much later. Perhaps it's time I filled in the gaps, not just to see if Matt Johnson was up to churning out more equally formidable gems but also if I can catch where it all began to go south. Till we meet again, The.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Tears for Fears: "Mad World"

An earnest pair with a truckload of earnest songs and an earnest name, it's no bloody wonder earnest Americans eventually took to Tears for Fears. Earnestness was always their worst trait, especially whenever Curt Smith took on lead vocals as he does here. A pretty great composition that so succinctly captures depression, it is let down a bit by Smith's bland delivery. It's hard to say if Roland Orzbal's mouthpiece for humanity vocals would've been any better suited to such an individualist track so maybe he was right to give it to his more nuanced partner. Perhaps there just isn't a perfect vocalist for such personal work. Best just to sing it to yourself with as much or as little earnestness as you see fit.

Musical Youth: "Pass the Dutchie"

16 September 1982

"This cover of an excellent Mighty Diamonds song — originally it was "kouchie" they were passing — boasts some fine youthful "biddley-biddley-bong" toasting and a rock solid rhythm."

— Dave Rimmer

Beverley Hills Cop. Bull Durham. The Flight of the Navigator. The Goonies. Gremlins. The Neverending Story. Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Risky Business. Robocop. Say Anything. Terminator. True Blood. Withnail & I. Popular eighties films all, none of which I have ever seen. Feel free to take this time to lift your jaw off the floor, if that's how you feel you must overreact to such news. Movies unseen have a strange power to astonish people in a way other forms of entertainment do not. If I say, for example, that I've never read Charles Dickens' Bleak House, which I haven't, I'm likely to be answered with either a "oh really?" or a "oh you should, it's great". If I've never seen Swan Lake, which, again, I haven't, then I'm probably most likely to get a response of "neither have I". But movies seem to be a medium in which many people assume we have as a common reference point. Of course, it's all bunk. Some cultural touchstones make an imprint and other just pass us by as if they never happened.

I'd never heard "Pass the Dutchie" until a few months ago (not so surprised by this discovery, are you?), around the time I began compiling a list of Smash Hits Singles of the Fortnight. While I decided to embargo most SOTF's that remain unfamiliar to me until I have to deal with them, this one piqued my curiosity due its status as a number one hit (the first one we're encountering on here though the next one isn't far off). If not exactly a near universally loved chart topper handed down from one generation to the next like "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Wuthering Heights" and "Ghost Town", it may be more in the vein of "Maggie Mae" or "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" or "The Only Way Is Up", a huge success that those present at the time took great pleasure in and remember fondly to this day (it was recently the subject of a How We Made feature in The Guardian), if not so much those of us who missed out. It may even have more than a little of the zeitgeist to it.

Being very much of its time, it's tempting to dismiss "Pass the Dutchie" as dated. It's a term I try to avoid using — even though that hasn't stopped me in the past — because it's unhelpful and smacks of being a cop-out argument. In any event, I wasn't there at the time (well, I was five-years-old in '82 but given that my favourite album at the time was Sesame Street Disco it wasn't as if my tastes were refined enough even for Musical Youth) and didn't even have knowledge of this song a half-dozen or so years later when I was approaching the age of Dennis, Kelvin, Michael, Patrick and Junior and might have understood it so how can I say one way or the other if it hasn't aged well.

Listening to it now, however, I can happily say that there's plenty going on to enjoy. Tom Ewing's analysis makes the case that if it is gimmickry then at least it's "gimmickry with ambition, the very best kind." (Perhaps this also explains why we're both so fond of "Mouldy Old Dough" by Lieutenant Pigeon since it's a prime example of a creative novelty hit) Kelvin Grant's very youthful toasting contrasts well Dennis Seaton's smooth — though not slick — vocals. Some Caribbean clichés have been added (a reference to Jah here, some delicate steel drums there) but it refuses to be married to a reggae purity — there's far too much pop ebullience in the way for any of that nonsense.

Pop to be sure but not manufactured pop. Having cut my teeth as a music fan on the formulaic — though, admittedly, occasionally brilliant — late-eighties pop of Stock Aitken Waterman and the family friendly, boy/girl next door images they cultivated in their charges, it's wonderfully refreshing to come across a band of youngsters who'd clearly cooked up something from their own collective imagination (though ironically co-produced by one Pete Waterman). It's a cover sure (in fact its a mash-up of "Pass the Kouchie" with U Roy's "Rule the Nation" and U Brown's "Gimme the Music) but one that they brought enough of themselves into while not sacrificing any musical authenticity. Expunging the original's drug references probably ought to have rendered this a ham-fisted and watered-down recording, consigned to going no further than a very rough home demo on a dodgy tape recorder. The very fact that they pulled it off to the tune of an addictive hit record is nothing short of remarkable.

It probably wasn't inevitable that Jamaican music's seventies golden age and UK ska's two year window of chart dominance would usher in a reggae pop boom but that is indeed what happened in the waning months of 1982. New Pop had gone on sabbatical and five London lads stepped up to fill the void. Musical Youth were never spoken of alongside the progressive leftist pantheon of the Rock Against Racism or Two Tone but what they had to offer may have been just as radical and self-sufficient. British kids of all races could only look on and wonder if they too could be part of the generation to rule the nation.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Jam: "The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had to Swallow)"

Blimey, what pitiful pack of singles poor old Dave Rimmer had to sift through. Far too many covers and more than a smattering of established acts who were floundering creatively. I  didn't have much desire to write about yet another Jam single but the glut of inspiring records has left me with little choice. Coming in the group's imperial phase, "The Bitterest Pill" made the runner-up spot in the charts — held off by the young bucks above — and is a decent first attempt at grand gesture lush pop, something Paul Weller would improve upon in the next three years. Irritatingly overloaded with garbled, indecipherable  lyrics, it doesn't quite work although I've long had a distant fondness for it as something you'd never expect The Jam to record. It's almost as if Weller needed something new to come along.

ABC: "All of My Heart"

2 September 1982

"A stately arrangement full of elegant flourishes and studded with truly memorable detail encases Fry's courtly vocal and simply compels you to play it again and again. This record is going to number one. Not least because I have money on it."
— David Hepworth

What The Human League were to 1981, ABC were to '82: suddenly widely successful, flourishing creatively with a terrific album stuffed with potential hit singles, making inroads around the world and tipped to be the future of British pop. Beyond asking them, there's no way of knowing if they modelled their pathway to success after ver League but there certainly are striking similarities. Both got things started with nice, low-key singles that proved to be a breakthrough while still missing out on the Top 10 — "The Sound of the Crowd" and "Tears Are Not Enough" respectively — which they then followed up with improved chart fortunes that really got the momentum going — "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" and "Open Your Heart" from ver League, "Poison Arrow" and "The Look of Love" from ver "C" — before finally releasing albums that sold like mad and were salivated over by the critics — Dare and The Lexicon of Love. All that was left was a killer single to take them over the top: "Don't You Want Me" performed the trick less than a year earlier and now it was "All of My Heart"'s turn.

But did it stand much of a chance? A clear standout on an outstanding album, it nevertheless lacks the immediacy of its chart predecessors - not to mention non-single album tracks "Show Me" and "Many Happy Returns". Being as grand a record as they'd ever cut, however, it couldn't not be a single. Fans who'd only previously been exposed to their hits may have looked on in wonder at this great leap forward while other may well have been turned off by the pretentiousness of the single's cover, its B-side being a classical overture of their work, the adult nature of the video and the image of them on the cover of this fortnight's Smash Hits. It's possible, in other words, that they were attracting new listeners just as others were starting to go off them.

Musically it's as magnificent as David Hepworth says and proof that Trevor Horn's work behind the production desk involved far more than plugging in the fairlight synthesizers. Roping in Anne Dudley to orchestrate its gorgeous score was a final touch. Lyrically, however, things are a different matter. Far from the kind of Costello/Weller-type wordsmith, Martin Fry tended to keep things simple, though sometimes in a complicated way. Opening with "Once upon a time when we were friends / I gave you my heart, the story ends / No happy ever after, now we're friends" made me wonder at first if he really thought things through. Then, after several listens, I began to think that he was righter even than he lets on. Settling for friendship when one party clearly wants more never works out, despite what an endless parade of rom coms will have us believe. "All of My Heart" is about laying it out on the line for that special someone, being rejected and then trying again. There's a desperation at play that results in an over-abundance of clichés ("wish upon a star", "...at the end of the rainbow") while being resigned to a situation that will never work out ("Skip the hearts and flowers, skip the ivory towers"). Fry's vocalising deftly balances the melodrama and the nihilism in a way few of his contemporaries could ever think to pull off.

In the end, "All of My Heart" was a Top 5 hit but it came short of the top of the charts, with Hepworth having lost a few quid along the way. Getting there instead was fellow reviewee "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" ("A hit, quite possibly," concludes His Nibs) by Culture Club, another group who were looking to become widely successful, flourish creatively, make inroads abroad and become yet another future of British pop. 1982 had to give way to '83.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five: "The Message"

"Rap has a message," I'd often hear schoolmates say with a condescension that never failed to get under my skin — and I'm sure that's precisely what they were going for. Quite what that message supposedly is no one ever bothered to elaborate on. Maybe Grandmaster Flash can provide The Answer. It seems life is pretty damn hard, loaded with injustice, petty crime and poverty. Good, well done. I always felt that blues, folk, punk, reggae and soul artists had all been avoiding these hard hitting issues, so it's a credit to rappers that they were finally being tackled. I'm always suspicious of pop songs that are praised mostly for their importance and influence but there's not much to say about its quality. Though by all means opt for "The Message" if you believe that rap has a message; I like my hip hop futuristic and mind-expanding so I'll have me some "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa instead.

Rockers Revenge featuring Donnie Calvin: "Walking on Sunshine"

19 August 1982

"It stands out from the crowd because of the depth and rhythmic density of the arrangement which teases the melody with endless invention. And, leaving all that aside, it's a new dance classic."

— Neil Tennant

Looking over the charts in the eighties, it's interesting to note how often American dance music was able to penetrate the UK Top 40 yet failed to garner much interest at home. Some, like The S.O.S. Band and Cameo, enjoyed early success in the States before achieving fame across the pond, while others like techno pioneers Inner City were never able to gain much of a footing at all. Of course they all found fame on the R&B and/or Dance Music charts which only goes to show how ghettoised black pop music was at the time. The British, unencumbered by (musical) prejudices, just lumped it all together and let punters go out and vote with the few bob in their pockets.

Written and recorded by Eddy Grant, the original "Walking on Sunshine" probably didn't have much potential for club play. It is a dance number but better suited for a Mardi Gras parade in the middle of Port of Spain than Studio 54. Reggae adjacent, it brims were sunny vibes — even if it's let down by a horribly weedy synth driving the arrangement — and a lighthearted vocal from Grant, who may not give the sort of powerful throaty performance with which he's capable but one that suits the record nonetheless.

The Arthur Baker-led Rockers Revenge got hold of "Walking on Sunshine" and added some much needed big city sizzle. Yes, the clubs got a hold of it and took it to the top of the Club Play Charts but it's just as easy picturing this blasting out of a boombox on a street corner in the middle of Harlem — assuming, of course, that radio was having anything to do with it. Perhaps no one quite knew how to classify it. I for one love how this seems to be a throwback to a wonderfully catholic New York scene. Rap was beginning to emerge, the DJ's from the disco boom were looking at ways to move on, home computers were making programming and sampling as easy as playing an instrument and there was room for funk, synth-pop, soul and reggae mixed together in such a landscape.

By now a committed fan of dance music, it's easy to hear this track having a profound affect on Neil Tennant the budding pop star. (Honestly, I had no idea that an offshoot of this blog would be to act as a deep dive into the psyche of the future Pet Shop Boys vocalist as he goes from Smash Hits scribe to stardom but I might as well go with it at this point) Just as important, New York's musical culture was rubbing off on him as well. All he needed was to find an NYC studio boffin of his own.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Raincoats: "Running Away"

While we're on the topic of cover versions that top the originals, here's indie faves - because of course they're indie: how could you call yourself 'The Raincoats' and not be indie? - The Raincoats running with their take Sly & The Family Stone's "Running Away", from their massive There's a Riot Goin' On album. Once again, it's updated with a fresh coat of paint and all the better for it. Charming and stately in the crack hands of Sly and co., it becomes irrepressible and snotty when done by the London foursome. The childish naughtiness of running away from home in the original stands in marked contrast to the comical teenage apathy of taking off and not giving a shit. Quite which one you prefer depends on your tastes — though I can't conceive of anyone opting for the lousy Paul Haig version — but the fantastic trumpet of Harry Becker puts this one over the top for me.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions: "Man Out of Time"

5 August 1982

"Excellent, but so is everything Elvis does. What he needs is another "Oliver's Army" — a big hit that will become a standard — and this is not it."
— Tim De Lisle

Did The Beatles give everyone the wrong idea about creativity and success going hand in hand? The fact that they were able to parlay their wildly popular early hits into works of increasingly greater experimentation, introspection and sophistication all the while maintaining their commercial dominance is probably more astounding today since no one else has been able to replicate it. Even among the Fab Four's contemporaries there was little correlation between artistic achievement and the charts. The Beach Boys were starting to falter commercially just as Brian Wilson was delivering his masterpiece Pet Sounds, The Byrds found themselves releasing one better album after another with ever decreasing sales and The Kinks best album suffered the indignity of missing the charts completely. (Of course I'm cherry picking examples that suit me here but it only goes to show that there was never a rule to go by; not that anyone ever suggested there was a rule...is it possible to strawman yourself?)

The Beatles example may have been what virtually everyone aspired towards — even if they had denied at the time — but few could have expected even a fraction of the same for themselves. Elvis Costello, a passionate devotee of every genre of music from rag time to ye ye and something of a pop music scholar, would've known that better than most.

Tim De Lisle is concerned with Costello's lack of Top 40 action, urging readers to "Buy This Now!" all the while acknowledging that his self-composed singles hadn't gotten nearly enough punters to shell out the requist bob since "Oliver's Army". (I wonder if it rankled the man a touch that following his almost number one hit he only had two more placements on the Top 10, both of which were covers; on the other hand, maybe the old scamp musicologist took extra pride in getting his renditions of "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" and "Good Years for the Roses" into the upper echelons of the charts) Last week, I wrote about Marshall Crenshaw's "Cynical Girl" and how critics must have scratched their heads in wonder at the clever singer-songwriters they'd slather with praise that would never catch on beyond a loyal cult following. That's Elvis Costello, ramped up to someone people generally knew about and whose albums still sold pretty well but just didn't get the mass acceptance the press felt they deserved.

The centrepiece of Costello's one true flawless album, Imperial Bedroom, "Man Out of Time" is its lengthiest track but a swift five and a half minutes nonetheless. Opening with some a chaotic (possibly drunken) rock-out from the L.P.'s early sessions, it glides smoothly into the song's piano/organ-led dream-like melody. (So effortless is the abrupt transition that you'd think it all been recorded en masse) Tinkling away as if randomly at the keys, Steve Nieve's playing acts as a response to Costello's lyrics with some gentle mocking, adding some levity to what could very easily be an over-melodramatic tale.The nobleman/prominent politician depicted in the song is about to be found out, his entire life is about to crash down upon him — maybe he's going to get caught up in a sensational tabloid scandal or maybe a murder-suicide or maybe he's just a great big paranoid git who's built up guilt in his head and imagines that everything is about blow up: who the hell knows? Whether real or delusional, the pleas of "Will you still love / A man out of time?" are among the most poingiant Costello ever crafted, indicating that his own experiences or thoughts are hidden in the at least a part of this, his greatest song.

Applied to Costello as well is another meaning in the title. Clearly by 1982 he wasn't especially interested in contemporary pop — or even if he was, he certainly wasn't about to start making some of his own, or so everyone must have thought — and he was situating himself deliberately in another era. (At least as far back as the sixites but even to the days of Gershwin and Porter, two of his prime musical heroes) Drafting in Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick is evidence enough of that. Hence the lack of chart success that everyone felt he merited. But he'd soon be giving it all a rethink.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Kate Bush: "The Dreaming"

There are people out there who think that the valley of her career — between the peaks of her astonishing debut single "Wuthering Heights" and her just-as-astonishing album Hounds of Love seven years later — is the real Kate Bush. I don't know any myself, I haven't bothered researching them but I know they're out there because of course they are. And they aren't necessarily wrong. Erratic, sure, but Kate's the type who needs to be all over the place. "The Dreaming" tackles issues with Australian aborigines but all in her own uniquely Bushian style. Barmy stuff but if Kate Bush isn't going to do this type of thing, who would?

Weekend: "Past Meets Present"

22 July 1982

"The title is appropriate, as Weekend's music has one foot in today, and the other in Radio 2 about 20 years ago when it was called the Light Programme."

— Dave Rimmer

In a recent episode of the brilliant Chart Music podcast, host Al Needham and guests Taylor Parkes and Simon Price discuss a Top of the Pops episode from 1983 in which Siouxie & The Banshees The Creatures perform their cover of the Herbie Mann standard "Right Now". Though a half-baked attempt, it is still them dabbling in jazz, something that a number of groups in the UK began doing, one of Needham, Parkes or Price point out, as they moved beyond soul. "Oh, like Weekend," I immediately thought to myself. (I have to say I took a small amount of satisfaction in these former Melody Maker scribes failing to mention the group that immediately sprang to my mind. Then again, I've only been aware of them myself for just a couple months so I needn't be too pleased with my powers of observation)

Alison Statton is not an especially big name in pop and those that are aware of her are more familiar with her first group of note Young Marble Giants, a trio from Wales who were a major influence on Kurt Cobain and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (among others, I think) and one of the first acts to be associated with the term 'fey'. Of course being influential is interesting — up to a point at any rate — and worthwhile — so long as said acts themselves are any good — but it matters little if their stuff doesn't do much for you. That said, their one and only album, 1980's Colossal Youth, is pretty good listen, albeit one that you're better off only listening to just the once.

Better and arguably just as influential is Statton's next project, the jazzy new wave Weekend. As fey as ever, if not more so, their album La veriete and its concurrent singles, "A View from Her Room" and "Past Meets Present", are lush where Colossal Youth is sparse, matching better with Statton's deadened angelic vocals — a trait that would go on to influence an entire generation of indie popstresses. While Blue Rondo a la Turk were happy to get fans dancing to their brand of party hopping jazz, Weekend tasked themselves with some moody and reflective jazz pop that can be a tougher nut to crack but far more rewarding in the long term.

Jazz is only a part of what's on offer here: it also has a vaguely early-sixties French sound with touches of Baroque (although I must confess that I don't hear the "imaginary Beatles riff" that Dave Rimmer credits to Weekend guitarist Spike; I guess either he just imagined it or I'm not imagining enough). If "Past Meets Present" has a failing it's just that I don't dig it quite as much as cop pick "The View from Her Room" from a previous post. The sax solo near the end is nice but it doesn't quite leave quite as much of a mark the way the Lester Bowie-esque trumpet playing on "View" does. Statton's vocal, as Rimmer notes, is buried among the rest of the music which sounds pleasant but the lyrics are mostly lost on me; its predecessor has a story to tell about, er, views from some girl's room (or something) which makes it the choice of at least one Smash Hits-themed blogger out there.

"Past Meets Present" went nowhere just as Rimmer predicted but just a few months later Siouxie & The Banshees The Creatures were dabbling in jazz and a new outfit fronted by Jam mouthpiece Paul Weller was touching up his new sound with some Blue Note and the likes of Everything but the Girl and Sade were right around the corner. Give Weekend a bit of credit — or blame them if you are so inclined.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Marshall Crenshaw: "Cynical Girl"

Every pop music scene produces an American singer-songwriter who is widely championed by the music press but ignored by virtually everyone else. The hippies had John Fahey, the more individualist seventies had Randy Newman and the new wave early-eighties had Marshall Crenshaw. (The Generation X equivalent would probably be Elliott Smith although I feel Paul Westerberg fits in with this lot too) Irony seldom works in the hands of Americans so it feels like our Marshall really means it on this one — either that or he really means not meaning it. Good if inessential listening. "I wanna listen to an inessential song / One about love that ain't too long": oh, stop it.

Yazoo: "Don't Go"

8 July 1982

"Vince coaxes a sterling song out of his synthesizer while Alf balances its metallic clip with a deep, emotion-packed vocal that gets better with every hearing."

— Ian Birch

There were a pair of mix-gender duos in UK pop in 1982 (actually there were a lot more than the two — the hair salon model pairing Dollar springs to mind as well as the much maligned Renée & Renato — but for the purposes of this study let's just assume that there were just two who mattered). Both were fronted by unconventionally charismatic women, both of whom possessed deeper than normal voices. Backing them were a pair of moody gentlemen (hardly anything special in the world of eighties electropop) and some icy synths. But there were some differences between the two groups: one was young and inexperienced, the other a bit older and veterans of several bands who either went nowhere or swiftly faded away; one hailed from the detritus of an Essex New Town, the other from Glasgow and Sunderland respectively; one was on the rise, the other was floundering.

It's possible that you were able to guess that I am referring to Eurythmics and Yazoo from the above but you may be surprised to discover which one was happily riding the Giddy Carousel of Pop while the other could only look on with envy, hoping themselves to go for a spin soon. Every mum's favourite synth-pop group would soon have its (very prolonged) day but for now it's Basildon "super""group" Yazoo's turn to grasp on to chart success for dear life.

Coming off the initial burst of success for Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke had become alienated by, well, everything. Being unhappy with hitting the charts, touring and fan adulation might prompt some to start giving life a rethink but he was promptly in a new band and back in the Top Ten within just a few months. Quitting ver Mode may seem like a giant-sized blunder in retrospect but for (a) the synth-goth overlords would have been equally synthy but far less gothic and lordly had Clarke remained their chief songwriter and (b) Yazoo ended up being the best group he was ever to be a part of.

Which brings us to Alison "Alf" Moyet. A blues singer round Basildon way, she placed an advert in the Melody Maker and received only one reply. (I used to think that they hooked when Clarked returned to his old Essex stomping grounds following his departure from the Mode and discovered her crooning Roberta Flack hits in some dreadful Pitsea pub but, in effect, she found him) While other female singers of the time were content to warble out a vocal apathy or something downright weird, Moyet must have seemed positively old school by comparison — even though she seemed to apply some punk ferocity to belting out numbers with Aretha Franklin-like power.

Her extraordinary range is on full display on "Don't Go" but it lacks a fabulous musical performance to service it. The follow-up to their poignant debut single "Only You", it feels rushed, as though they felt an urgency to get a second single out while the going was good. While Clarke may have coaxed a sterling song out of his synth, as Ian Birch notes, his synth sure didn't coax much out of him. The song itself is rather good though and it's a minor crime that it hasn't become a standard by this point. (It's very easy to imagine "Don't Go" being interpreted across several genres by the likes of Shelby Lynne or Lauryn Hill or, yes, a bloke could sing it too, Rufus Wainwright) A shame that a little more care wasn't put into the recording.

It's impossible to say if Yazoo could have been Eurythmics — although as alternate scenarios go, it's certainly easier to swallow than Echo & The Bunnymen being U2. They had superior songs to hang on and a better vocalist in Alison Moyet but they weren't as keen to garnish their material in strings or some slick guitar (a much easier proposition for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, neither of who played synthesizers). I was going to write that Clarke and Moyet weren't chancers like their contemporaries but she was a struggling blues singer looking to put together a rootsy group when he rang her up so they were as opportunistic as they come. Maybe they just lacked that it factor that everyone talks about. (But then did Eurythmics have the it factor? Seriously? Those two?) You don't get it factor coming from Basildon.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Dexys Midnight Runners & The Emerald Express: "Come on Eileen"

From number one hit in '82 ('83 in North America in an era when it could take several months for a hit single to make its way across the Atlantic) to staple of eighties retro, it's hard to imagine a time when "Come on Eileen" wasn't ubiquitous but the early nineties were just such a terrain for once and future favourites to be cast aside. It was a song I'd read about and wanted to hear but I was unable to do so until I found it on a dodgy Rock 83 compilation tape of my sister's. I was beside myself with joy. A departure from their soul 'n' horns sound of the previous two years, this nonetheless fits in perfectly with their run of pristine singles. Birch wonders how much better it would be if Kevin Rowland had injected a dose of humour into it but wit was never their bag. For all of us who ever figured we could get a woman into bed by showing off our record collections: how wrong we all were. (Please see Tom Ewing's wonderful review which provides vastly more insight into this pop landmark than I ever could)

Wham!: "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)"

24 June 1982

"I'd be lost in admiration if I could find time to stand still."

— Neil Tennant

No one was to know it at the time but a pop music phenomenon and a major talent was quietly establishing itself in the summer of 1982. Wham! were the last of British pop's eighties big four to have a number one hit but the first to enjoy the modest status of a SOTF from ver Hits. While none were overnight sensations, Wham! had the distinct advantage of George Michael's astounding talent to help them avoid the creative wilderness that hampered the development of contemporaries Culture Club, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

While few were listening this early on, Wham! did have Neil Tennant on their side (who would later pen a sort-of tribute to the moody George Michael). While the pop music obsessive in him knew what a magnificent romp "Wham Rap!" is, wearing his critic's hat may have cottoned him on fast to Michael's considerable abilities and the budding pop star inside must have been jealous that these pretty boy nineteen-year-old's were able to cut something so irresistible and so on point at such an early stage.

Up until this point, songs about unemployment in Thatcher's Britain veered towards statements of hopelessness and hostility. The Clash's "Career Opportunities", recorded two years prior to Thatcher's rise to power, examines a wasteland of few job prospects out there for young people. XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel", while humourous in its own right, takes on clueless parents and government placement schemes assuming that their charges are indeed "happy in [their] work". "Wham Rap!" was an altogether different proposition. Thatcherism didn't simply cause thousands to go out of work but created a culture of permanent joblessness and Wham! were the first to capture this resignation while marrying it to a quintessentially eighties hedonism. Forget about getting a job, don't bother even if you manage land one, just sign on to the dole, collect benefits and enjoy your life. 

Wham! may have been first on the pop scene to make a virtue of unemployment but there were others out there with something similar in mind. The now mostly forgotten comedy Shelley was about a thirty something well-educated layabout with no desire to find work. (By the mid-eighties, this contented-on-the-dole mentality was even yuppified on the comedy-soap series Bread) In real life, meanwhile, a young and talented writer named Geoff Dyer was effortlessly making the transition from Oxford undergrad to the dole queue. ("If Oxford had given me a taste for idleness, living on the dole in Brixton refined it still further"; see his illuminating essay "On the Roof" for more on his period of being part of the "aristocracy of welfare dependence")

The very idea of George Michael kicking it in rap mode may seem laughable and it is. It's not unlike one of those shapeless, impromptu raps that adolescents in the nineties would conjure up for just for the hell of it (my own attempt was from all the way back in 1991 when I penned the immortal "Joys of Shopping", complete with "hilarious" verses straight out of a Will Smith lark). His music wouldn't be joyous for much longer so it's likely he never contemplated rapping again but it's a commendable one-off. (A white British pop act wouldn't be able to pull off rap until Neil Tennant tried his hand at it some three years later)

In researching this week's post I decided to google search 'songs about unemployment'. "Well, that was a waste of time," I said to myself five minutes after doing so. Of course there is a place for hard scrabble, all-American tunes about desperate individuals struggling to put food on the table but it comes from a world of the Dust Bowl and Steinbeck novels. Michael and best mate Andrew Ridgely both had their fill of plates of egg and chips but were determined to make life on the dole be the party that it always should've been.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Joe Jackson: "Real Men"

While George Michael was busy standing up for his (unemployed) manhood, Joe Jackson was questioning the very core of masculinity with "Real Men". Once a sickly youth who doubtless took no pleasure in mucking about in a rugby scrum, he was now ensconced in a New York gay subculture in the midst of enduring marginalisation, beatings and the growing AIDS epidemic and puts forth the theory that maybe these are the real men — if, that is, I'm reading it right. My song deciphering skills may not but up to much but I sure do appreciate Jackson's seriously good vocal performance, effortlessly spitting out bile and tugging at the heart all at once. Note: I'm seriously considering writing a parody of this written from the perspective of psychologist/YouTube superstar Jordan Peterson and his supposed crisis of masculinity. Anyone who can do good Kermit the Frog impersonation is welcome to get in touch with me.