Tag: Jaki Graham

Now That’s What I Call Music 8 – Not perfect, but perfect for you

Welcome to the future!

For Christmas 1986, NOW would deliver a lovely shiny package for its fans, because the future is always shiny, isn’t it? NOW 8 is fit to burst with number ones, top ten hits, legendary tracks and a team up between Dr and the Medics and Roy Wood that nobody remembers. It was also bursting with extras too, boasting a competition and the opportunity to purchase official NOW merchandise! NOW was big business and they were going to take you for everything you’ve got.

But it was still better than Hits 5.

NOW 8 was the first of the series in which European music giant Polygram was involved; it was the first to be designed by Quick on the Draw (who still design the albums today) and it was the first to be released on a regular CD (after the false start with NOW 4), even if it only featured half the tracks. The idea of a full, double CD release must surely have been contemplated, but given that the core audience for the albums was still teenagers, the thought of them being able to afford such a thing must have been a key factor in delaying their releases for a further two albums. In the mid-to-late 80s a double CD could set you back anything up to £20, depending on where you bought it. That sounds an obscene amount today, let alone 27 years ago! So, clearly, a single CD selection was deemed the preferred option with which to test the water. So four years after a re-issue of an old Billy Joel album became the first commercially available CD (in Japan, at least) NOW finally decided that the time was right, the public was ready and a CD had to be part of their package.

Not only did they produce artwork to represent this monumental decision, as if the CD had been forged in the artwork itself, the silver, shiny new dawn was also plastered all over the TV ad, featuring, for the first time, the unmistakable tones of David “The now very far from a kid” Jensen.

Ironically, NOW 8 would have been a great choice with which to launch a full CD release, as the line up is a very strong one, including three number ones. They even got lucky anticipating the hit songs they included before they were released (with one very notable exception). It’s perhaps the purest pop selection so far in the series. Side one is wall-to-wall pop goodness from the leaner, funkier Duran Duran, right through to OMD’s bouncy (Forever) Live and Die, not, as I briefly thought at the time, the theme to a Bond movie I’d heard of but not seen.

The Duran’s Notorious is simply brilliant and, maybe surprisingly for a lifelong Duranie, I now think it’s their best single. You’ve got to admire their balls, frankly, for going back to the bear pit of the pop charts, no longer the biggest band in the world, and with their tails between their legs after two satisfying, but hardly earth-shatteringly successful side projects, short two members, one of whom is openly malicious and dismissive about you, and carrying a sound unlike anything you’ve done before. Those screaming teenagers didn’t know what hit them, losing both Wham and Duran in a matter of months. Spandau Ballet and the withering Culture Club just didn’t compare.

Disco king, Nile Rodger’s production adds a whole new level to their sound, sensibly playing up John Taylor’s amazing bass work in the wake of losing a regular lead guitarist. the fact that Notorious made number two in the USA, but struggled to scrape into the top ten here in the UK is a travesty to which, I think, we all should feel a little ashamed.

The Pet Shop Boys continue to produce wonderfully overblown fluff masquerading as social commentary with Suburbia, which is followed by the still toweringly good Walk This Way, which suffers the same fate as it does on the radio – when should it be faded out? Here they settle for around 3 minutes 30, though officially it can go on for almost another two minutes.

While Walk This Way is probably the biggest track on offer, in legacy terms, the ACTUAL biggest track here is in fact the biggest track of 1986, as The Communards finally got the success they deserved as they rework, reinvent and rejuvenate Harold Melvin’s Don’t Leave Me This Way. I recently saw a list of “Songs You Didn’t Know Were Cover Versions”, which featured Soft Cell’s Tainted Love. Well, if that’s on there, then this surely should have been included too. This was the sound of late summer 1986, and it still sounds great today (though, as I’m a contrary bugger, I prefer their version of Never Can Say Goodbye, which found itself on NOW 10).

Swing Out Sister were a new band on the scene in 1986, and newly insurrected Polygram were obviously keen to plug them, including the single Breakout just two weeks after its release (this was back in the days when singles could take weeks to reach their highest position; going straight in at number one, or even in the top ten, was considered a rarity). Luckily for them Breakout‘s mix of pop, jazz and electro was perfectly timed. Despite that description, they never had the feel of the kind of ‘yuppie pop’ tag that ended up tainting people like Sade or Level 42. Swing Out Sister were fun, the way all the best pop is. The same is true of OMD’s (Forever) Live and Die, perhaps not one of their better-known tracks, but still a good pop track.

Also, surprisingly good (although given his history, perhaps not) is Steve Winwood’s Higher Love. It’s a track I often dismiss as the kind of Dad-rock which became so prevalent as the 80s went on; the alternative scene in the 80s was so far underground, people like Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Status Quo just kept on having hit after hit. I bracketed Winwood into that camp. I always had a fondness for Roll With It, but maybe because I’m older now (and have a new appreciation for his earlier work) I can now accept something like Higher Love with a new maturity. Genesis’ In Too Deep smells of poo though, something even its association with American Psycho can do nothing about.

I dread to think what Larry Blackmon’s cod piece smells like, but it’s back on display with the now legendary Word Up. Hard to believe this is the same band who produced the frankly dreadful Single Life on NOW 6 (where I incorrectly stated that it had the same intro as Word Up; turns out, it was the other way around). Both feature samples from Ennio Morricone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack, back when sampling was still in its infancy.

And so we find ourselves in the dance zone, this time taking over side two, where it feels a bit more at home, keeping the party going following on from all that pop malarkey (almost ruined by smelly old Genesis). In a touch of creative compiling, Larry Blackmon’s flattop is immediately followed by the same haircut in the shape of Grace Jones’ I’m Not Perfect. It’s a got a similar sound to Notorious, unsurprising given the involvement of Nile Rodgers, but fails to capture that wonderful otherworldliness she can bring to music, as on Slave to the Rhythm. That track could only have been performed by Jones. This could be a Eurythmics b-side. Another track included on NOW 8 before its actual release, it would prove to be a notable flop, failing to make the Top 40. Much better, and more successful is Mel and Kim’s Showing Out, their first single, and the first of four top ten hits (with their only four singles!) before Mel’s tragic illness. Yes, it’s a cynical Stock, Aitken, Waterman production (and they’ll be much more of that over the next few NOW albums) and, surprisingly for that production team, it’s very rough around the edges. Stuff isn’t quite cut together as cleanly as it should be, with notable jerks and slices through the song which once you know they’re there can’t be unheard. Shame as it’s a great dance-pop tune.

As is Jermaine Stewart’s We Don’t Have To … It’s fluff, but it’s fun. I’m not sure what’s happening with the title here though. At first I thought NOW were being a tad coy with their titling, but there is genuine confusion as my two source books list it differently (The Guinness British Hit Singles as We Don’t Have To… Take Our Clothes Off and The Guinness Top 40 Charts as We Don’t Have To…). The single sleeve shows it as one sentence with no ellipses. I don’t know…

Jaki Graham is back, for her fourth appearance in a row, and her last. Step Right Up hadn’t been released when NOW 8 hit the shops, but it is pretty forgettable, and would prove to be her final top 40 hit. In contrast Janet Jackson was celebrating her first hit with the still awesome What Have You Done For Me Lately. So different from what her big brother was selling trillions of records doing, it still sounds like it’s about six months ahead of its time, even though, oddly, it was the oldest track on NOW 8, having been released in March 1986, eight months previously.

The dance side then slows it down for some smooching, with Human League’s Human (which on closer listen is a pretty horrible song about a couple who keep cheating on each other because they’re “only human”…) and Boris Gardiner’s I Wanna Wake Up With You. This wasn’t the guy who parachuted out of a spaceship last year; this is a guy who somehow managed to have a massive number one with a dreary, repetitive love song that sounded like it was recorded in his bedroom with a Casio keyboard. He may also have been a reggae pioneer in the 70s, but on this showing I think that’s a lie.

Things get a bit serious on side three, as we enter Dad territory. In fact, with the exception of Huey Lewis and the News’ Stuck with You (another song that on closer listen doesn’t sound like the lovely song you always thought it was) this is all very low key and moody. Don’t Give Up and Think For A Minute were clearly only included because of the success of Peter Gabriel and The Housemartins’ previous singles, as neither screams “Top Chart Hit”. Madness’ Waiting For The Ghost Train was a disappointing end to their golden period (it’s billed here as their farewell single), and Status Quo’s In The Army Now snatches the worst song on the album title from Boris Gardiner’s clutches. What was the country thinking sending this to number two (kept off the top by Every Loser Wins, which I’ll deal with in a moment)? Big Country’s One Great Thing is not one of their better tunes.

status_quo — **In The Army Now got to *WHERE* in the charts?**

The side closes out with a surprise: Billy Bragg’s single NOW appearance with the wonderful Greetings to the New Brunette. Obviously hoping it would repeat his top 30 showing with Levi Stubbs’ Tears, this equally good tune was included pre-release, but sadly (unbelievably) it failed to dent the magic 40. Not that I’m sure Mr Bragg gave a monkey’s about things like that. Just as I’m sure he wasn’t bothered about being followed by Cutting Crew’s (I Just) Died In Your Arms (it must have been something I ate). Don’t know what happened with them or why the public fell out of love with them so quickly. Maybe the appearance of the near identical Then Jericho the next year had something to do with it.

From all that doom and gloom, we are firmly back in pop wonderland with side four. Kim Wilde’s You Keep Me Hangin’ On is in the same vein (and is arguably as good) as The Communards, in re-visiting classic soul for an 80s audience. Respectful, but also great on its own terms. It Bites would join Cutting Crew in the dumper soon after their only major hit Calling All the Heroes, which, to a kid like me, sounded like the future of pop, but now I realise is a massively pretentious piece of prog-rock, synth, jazz, pop blancmange nonsense. It’s massively over-produced, much like their Wikipedia page, which is bursting with such choice bon mots as ” a band composed of voracious pop fans with a parallel taste for progressive rock.” No… stop it. That’s just silly. For a band who only had one hit, it’s pretty comprehensive stuff.

Also very silly is the big boo-boo by the compilers. We’ve noted a couple of early inclusions which proved to be a bit wide of the mark, but Dr and The Medics with Roy Wood just make them look very foolish. I know that everyone reading this has just gone “Wha…?”, I did too when I first saw the track listing, and saw their inclusion with a version of ABBA’s Waterloo. I’ll just repeat that, as it may have trouble settling your brain: Dr and the Medics (as in Spirit in the Sky), with Roy Wood (as in Wizzard, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday), covering ABBA’s Waterloo… NOW certainly thought it was a guaranteed winner, and I shall quote:

“Roy Wood was number 1 with The Move (Blackberry Way) and with Wizzard (See My Baby Jive & Angel Fingers. Dr and the Medics were number 1 with Spirit in the Sky. Waterloo was number 1 and a Eurovision winner for ABBA. So this new version should get to…”

That’s the actual blurb on the sleeve, word for word, including the cheeky ellipses. That is utterly ludicrous confidence. And since you’ve probably never even heard it, I should tell you it managed to get to the dizzying heights of number 45.

More successful was Debbie Harry’s French Kissin’ in the USA and Robert Palmer’s I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On. Oddly not as successful was Paul Hardcastle’s The Wizard, which stalled at number 15 despite weekly advertising as the then theme for Top of the Pops (replacing the epochal Yellow Pearl by Phil Lynott).

In contrast to the brilliant 80s versions of 60s classics we’ve already seen, Gwen Guthrie’s remodelling of (They Long To Be) Close To You is everything that’s wrong with 80s cover versions; sludgy synthesisers, over-confident crooning, wildly inappropriate backing singers and arrangement, mention of “I love your sexy sexy moves”… it’s a mess. And that’s coming from someone for whom The Carpenters make me want to staple my ears shut. Still at least there’s Nick Berry to look forward too.

**Do you know how much of a disappointment you are to your mother because you are not him?**

Everyone who slags off The X Factor or The Voice should be forced to listen to this (along with Anita Dobson and The Banned (Sharon and Kelvin)) and realise that hearing people who can actually sing is a bit of a novelty compared to when any old stage school hack who manages to snag a part in a soap opera managed to get to number one. It wasn’t just Eastenders either (though they were the main culprits). Neighbours of course would provide half of all the top 40 hits between 1988-90, and then there were the hits from Malandra Burrows, Martine McCutcheon, Adam Rickitt and The Cat From Corrie’s Opening Titles; unwanted chart botherers the lot of them. So next time you look at the charts and think “who are these talentless idiots?”, remember they are only following a time-honoured tradition of milking your 15 minutes for all it’s worth. And at least it kept You’re In The Army Now from getting to number one.

But wait! There’s more!

With NOW 8 there is also the amazing opportunity to own a piece of pop history! Yes you too could own an official Now That’s What I Call Music sweatshirt! Light in weight but heavy in warmth, they were available in ‘Chinese Jade’ (green) or ‘Electric Blue’ (oo-er!). Made by Le Coq Sportif, they were advertised as being for a limited time only. But then they were still available when NOW 9 came out due to “exceptional public demand”. Not because “we’ve still got a warehouse full of the things”. Not at all. And at £20 a pop I’m not surprised; that’s about £50 in new money. And they were worried about people forking out for a double CD at the same price?

NOW 8 also featured a competition, which handily also doubled as a plug for all the other great NOW albums still available (and no doubt would make great last minute Christmas gifts). Note that alongside NOW 7, the re-released Christmas Album, and the latest NOW Dance, there’s an anomaly on show: NOW That’s What I Call Music ’86. I’ll come to this in due course, as it is an oddity and one which requires its own post. The CD version of NOW 8 is intrinsically linked with NOW ’86, so I’ll discuss that in more detail there too (everything on the CD is on NOW 8 as discussed above, so you won’t miss out on me being sarcastic about any of the songs, it’s more to do with how the selection of tracks for NOW 8’s CD and NOW ’86 are interlinked).

NOW had embraced the future and was now selling itself to a new market, the upwardly mobile of society. No longer the sole preserve of bedroom-ensconced, pop-loving, but probably spotty and grumpy, teenagers, the CD age was taking NOW to the mobile-phone buying, Porsche-driving, Filofax-touting nouveau riche. NOW 9 would model itself in their image.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 8

Release date

24th November 1986

Biggest tracks

Walk This Way – Run DMC (Aerosmith are not credited)

Don’t Leave Me This Way – The Communards

Word Up – Cameo

Lost gems

Greetings to the New Brunette) – Billy Bragg

Forgotten tracks

I’m Not Perfect – Grace Jones

(They Long To Be) Close To You – Gwen Guthrie

Waterloo – Dr and the Medics with Roy Wood (fair play, the video is fantastic, unfortunately the sound on this is very ropey)

What’s missing

All I Ask of You – Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman

(I don’t like it, but it was a huge top ten hit)

Track listing

Side one
Notorious	Duran Duran
Suburbia	Pet Shop Boys
Walk This Way	Run DMC
Don’t Leave Me This Way	The Communards
Breakout	Swing Out Sister
Higher Love	Steve Winwood
(Forever) Live And Die	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
In Too Deep	Genesis

Side two
Word Up (7” Vocal Version)	Cameo
I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You)	Grace Jones
Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)	Mel & Kim
We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off	Jermaine Stewart
Step Right Up	Jaki Graham
What Have You Done For Me Lately	Janet Jackson
Human	The Human League
I Wanna Wake Up With You	Boris Gardiner

Side three
Don’t Give Up	Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush
Think For A Minute	The Housemartins
(Waiting For The) Ghost Train	Madness
In The Army Now	Status Quo
Stuck With You	Huey Lewis & The News
One Great Thing	Big Country
Greetings To The New Brunette	Billy Bragg
(I Just) Died In Your Arms	Cutting Crew

Side four
You Keep Me Hanging On	Kim Wilde
Calling All The Heroes	It Bites
Waterloo	Doctor & The Medics with Roy Wood
French Kissin’ In The USA	Deborah Harry
I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On	Robert Palmer
The Wizard	Paul Hardcastle
(They Long To Be) Close To You	Gwen Guthrie
Every Loser Wins	Nick Berry

CD track listing

Notorious	Duran Duran
Suburbia	Pet Shop Boys
Walk This Way	Run DMC
I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You)	Grace Jones
Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)	Mel & Kim
Step Right Up	Jaki Graham
Breakout	Swing Out Sister
You Keep Me Hanging On	Kim Wilde
Calling All The Heroes	It Bites
Waterloo	Doctor & The Medics with Roy Wood
French Kissin’ In The USA	Deborah Harry
Stuck With You	Huey Lewis & The News
Don’t Give Up	Peter Gabriel / Kate Bush
(Waiting For The) Ghost Train	Madness
(Forever) Live And Die	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
In Too Deep	Genesis

Video version

Venus had previously appeared on the album of NOW 7. Sometimes by Erasure would later appear on Now 9.

Four other tracks do not appear on any NOW album (marked with *)

Duran Duran – Notorious
Pet Shop Boys – Suburbia
Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark – Forever Live and Die
Erasure – Sometimes
The Communards – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Mel & Kim – Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend)
Bananarama – Venus
Jaki Graham – Step Right Up
Swing Out Sister – Breakout
The Housemartins – Think For A Minute
Madness – Waiting for the Ghost Train
The Damned – Anything*
Big Country – One Great Thing
Ultravox – All Fall Down*
Status Quo – In the Army Now
Glass Tiger – Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)*
Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Warriors of the Wasteland*
Kim Wilde – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
Boris Gardiner – I Wanna Wake Up With You

April 9, 2013

Now That’s What I Call Music 7 – Let’s make lots of money

To talk about NOW 7, you have to have a copy to hand. And I don’t mean a digital copy, or a playlist made from the track listing. You have to have an actual physical copy that you can listen to at your disposal. There are two reasons for this, the second I’ll come onto later, but the first is because of a cheeky decision made in the song selection that would be lost if you only had the track listing to hand rather than actually hearing the album.

A friend recently told me that as a kid he had NOW 6 on tape, and when side one started with Queen’s One Vision, he was convinced the tape was being mangled in his cassette player. Well, I’m sure a similar problem occurred in teenage bedrooms across the country with NOW 7 following the unusual, but very welcome, decision to include the album version of Sledgehammer as side one, track one. You see, most people think Sledgehammer starts with that killer, loud, saxophone sting, because that’s how they would normally hear it on the radio, on VH1 or on some 80s compilation (a sting, incidentally, borrowed from John Coltrane’s Chronic Blues). But the song actually starts with around 30 seconds of barely audible synthesised shakuhachi flute, which no doubt prompted many to turn up their stereos, thinking there was nothing on their shiny new record, only to find when the sax did kick in they’d probably buggered their speakers and/or jumped back across the room in fright.

Sledgehammer, somehow, didn’t get to number one, but it’s probably the biggest track here, in terms of longevity. In fact, despite containing four number one’s (one of which, Lady in Red, hadn’t even reached the top when the album went to press) they are among the least well-remembered of the decade. Or in the case of Lady in Red, among the least well-liked. Many of the other tracks here are far more fondly remembered. You have to wonder about a nation which sends Spirit in the Sky to number one rather than Bananarama’s Venus.

Now 7 picks up where NOW 6 left off and is pretty much a carbon copy; for the most part it’s a solid pop compilation with an acceptable number of duffers and a disappointingly bland final, dance-orientated, side. There’s few outright classics but for the most part it’s impressively solid and would have satisfied the contemporary buyer.

Things take an early wobble after Sledgehammer, with the ubiquitous appearance from UB40, this time with the particularly dull, even by their standards, Sing Our Own Song. The light was going out on the Brummie boys, and this would be their last original top ten hit, relying for success for the rest of their careers on collections of karaoke cover versions to keep them out of the dole office. I believe they released Labour of Love Volume 62 last year.

Improvement comes next with Sly Fox’s Let’s Go All The Way. An odd combination of a former Parliament-Funkadelic member (Gary ‘Mud bone’ (eeew!) Cooper) and a Puerto Rican vocalist (Michael Camacho), brought together by a British producer to basically create a prototype boy band, with only two members. The idea of two coke-head New Yorkers singing songs about ‘going all the way’ to wet-knickered teenage girls should have been a licence to print money, but after the success of the first single they never again recaptured the brilliant cross-over potential that made this such a hit. It’s one of those songs that you’ll remember if you were there at the time, but looked at now it has all the hallmarks of an 80s cash-in. Which of course it was, and that’s why it was a hit, it sounds like everything else successful at the time, but all in one song.

Things continue to get better with Level 42 (a sentence I never saw myself writing when I was in my youth) and The Pet Shop Boys wonderful soundtrack to a million 80s documentary montages, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money). This was their first NOW appearance, but they would become reliable regulars for the next decade and a half. Pete Wiley’s Sinful! is a welcome addition to what is traditionally the pure pop side of a NOW album. His first single without the Mighty Wah, it’s no Story of the Blues, but it’s still a bit of a corker despite the horribly dated 80s production. he’s also got one of those voices I love: not flash, no messing about, just a bloke bellowing from the bottom of his very soul.

Then before we get to the odd but enjoyable Paranoimia (Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom!), there’s a problem, by the name of Stan Ridgeway. Well, I say he’s the problem, that may not be entirely fair, as he sounds like a genuinely talented and interesting guy. He’s worked with people like Stewart Copeland, Roger McGuinn, and even Frank Black, so he can’t be all bad. But, he sadly also wrote and recorded Camouflage. And it’s bloody awful. I hated it when I was kid (just as nobody’s Dad did) and I hate it even more in adulthood. I never understood (and still don’t) the 80s obsession with all things ‘Nam. There were the endless films, the songs (19, I Wanna be Your Drill Instructor), even a bloody magazine, Nam!, which built weekly into your own personal journal of the ‘Nam experience. It was inescapable. It’s been suggested that some people didn’t take kindly to Paul Hardcastle cut-and-pasting genuine Vietnam veteran interviews into a trendy dance track for 19, but to fair, for a lot of kids it was the first they’d ever heard about Vietnam (bar the introduction to The A Team, obviously) and they may have learnt more from it than any history lesson on the subject. But somehow, Camouflage gets away scot-free, and I’m not sure why.

Camouflage is the tale of a ghost (or zombie) soldier rescuing another who has been mortally wounded in battle in Vietnam. Chuck in a few racial references as well, and you’ve got yourself an honest to goodness flag-waving, patriotic winner. OK, so big hit in the States, I can accept, despite what my overturning stomach says, but top 5 in the UK? That’s just a bit odd.

Amazingly though, Camouflage isn’t the song I dislike the most on NOW 7. That accolade is reserved for Chris de Burgh, kicking off side two with the thoroughly unlikeable, and downright creepy, Lady in Red. “Unbelievably,” goes the blurb “this is Chris de Burgh’s first top 40 single”. Why was it unbelievable? He writes insipid, dull and creepy songs which no one likes. People pretend to like them, or buy them for people they think like his music. No one buys Chris de Burgh for themselves. The same goes for all those tedious ballads that hang around the charts like bad smells (Everything I Do, Love is All Around, My heart Will Go On), they are always bought for other people, who no doubt send them to the nearest charity shop when they split up with that person. No one chooses to listen to songs like that… ever.

Anyway, once he’s whispered his last, in one of the most unnerving fade outs in recorded history, side two gets good. Bowie’s Absolute Beginners is one of his all-time best (and another song you can’t believe wasn’t a number one), whilst Invisible Touch and All The Things She Said are listenable enough tracks from bands capable of better. Happy Hour is still brilliant (though The Housemartins best stuff was always less successful) and I amazed myself by enjoying Big Country’s Look Away. I never got Big Country as a young ‘un, but they’re attempt to create a truly unique, Scottish kind of rock is really interesting and it’s easy to see why they were so successful during this period.

One band who were very far from successful during this period was Furniture, who fill the “token left of centre slightly alternative track” slot. I’ll admit I knew very little about Furniture beyond this song. turns out they were the victim of record company shenanigans, and ultimately bankruptcy, internal differences and general bad luck. Brilliant Mind remains their only hit single (not another single or even an album made the top 75 despite gathering popularity) before they eventually split in 1990. Several members went on to form the more successful Transglobal Underground.

Call of the Wild closes out side two, one of the most forgettable tracks on any NOW album. Who was that by again?

The big guns are out for side three, with NOW licensing tracks from three of the Hits album’s stable, Wham, a-ha and Simply Red. Wham in particular was bit of a coup being as it was Wham’s farewell single (no concurrent Hits album was out at the time to snag the track for itself).To be fair, Edge of Heaven is a bit bland for a much-promoted final single; the previous release, I’m Your Man, is much better, and much better remembered. It’s certainly better remembered than Owen Paul, whose My Favourite Waste of Time may have been a massive top three hit, but it would prove to be his only hit. Apparently he gave up a promising football career (he was on Celtic’s books) after seeing the Sex Pistols, and decided to become a singer. He’s probably best known now for an embarrassing appearance on TV where he (and, to be fair, his band) completely failed to mime along to the track. Things like that can completely damage someone’s career, and so it was for Paul, who was seen performing backing vocals for Mike and the Mechanics.

Amazulu’s fun cover version Too Good To Be Forgotten still sounds good, and it makes a nice change to hear pop reggae sound by someone black for a change, rather than a nice middle-class boy.

And then we come to Spirit in the Sky. What is it about this bloody song, that whoever records it, it goes to number one? Three times by three different artists: Norman Greenbaum, Dr and the Medics and Gareth bloody Gates and the bloody Kumars. George Osborne could probably record it and hit the top. It seems the only version which didn’t get to number one was the best one, by Fuzzbox, which unfortunately was released around the same time as The Medics’ version. It never stood a chance.

Bananarama’s Venus is just pop genius, I don’t need to add anything about that. a-ha’s remix of Hunting High and Low is infinitely better than the version which appeared on the album of the same name, but it’s still a bit dreary, enlivened somewhat by some over-dramatic production on this single version. They were huge enough at the time to warrant inclusion if they just released a version of the alphabet, but this doesn’t show them in their best light. Holding Back the Years continued Simply Red’s run of hits, but it would be another five years before they had a top ten single with an original hit despite massive album success. I’m not a fan.

Which leaves one track on side three to discuss, and it’s a doozy. New Beginning by Bucks Fizz does not immediately get the blood pumping. Yes, for a year or two at the start of the decade, they were pop royalty, with a string of fun, pure pop hits, and a couple of number ones along the way. If you only know Making Your Mind Up or Land of Make Believe, you literally will not know what hits you when you hear New Beginning. It’s not perfect, but as one of those songs by a band desperate to change its image it’s right up there with U2’s The Fly or Duran Duran’s Notorious. Reportedly it took months to record, and cost quite a bit too, but the band were determined to try something grown up, as they saw it. It’s got a lush, rich production sound to it, rather than the then-omnipotent 80s synth sounds; whereas everyone seemed to be using drum machines, this sounds like it’s got proper drums on it. And not just one set either, a whole town full of drums. It also uses African influences, of a kind that would become de rigueur after Paul Simon made them commercial. It reached a very respectable number eight, their biggest hit for four years. Sadly, the accompanying album flopped (as did the subsequent singles) and the band fell into a spiral of holiday camps, coach crashes, splits, lawsuits and endorsing diet plans.

But wait! There is actually one more song to discuss on side three, though you wouldn’t know it from the track listing, which finishes with Simply Red. It’s also the other reason why you have to have a physical copy of NOW 7 lying around to properly review it. Curiously, the front cover of NOW 7, at least in its original release, featured a sticker on the front proclaiming that it contained a bonus track, one A Kind of Magic by Queen. Why they would keep a top three hit, one of the most popular songs of the year so far, as a bonus track is unclear. It features prominently in the TV ad as being on the album, but it is not listed anywhere. Many sources say it was a bonus track on ‘some’ copies of the album, but those same sources list it as being the final track on side three, so what constitutes it being a ‘bonus’? That normally suggests it was only on certain copies, or on a certain format, but it seems to have been on the cassette as well. It’s all a bit baffling, and maybe, dare I say it, suggests a last minute cock-up on someone’s part, that the song was never listed, but was always meant to be there?

now 7 bonus — **So when is a bonus track NOT a bonus track?**

Anyway, shall we dance?

When the Going Gets Tough is the oldest track on here, having been released in January (NOW 7 itself came out in August) but was bound to be included as it was number one for four weeks and one of the year’s biggest sellers. Today it’s considered something of an 80s classic despite being horrifically dated, but it’s not for me. I much prefer Get Out of My Dreams, but we’ll have to wait for NOW 11 for that one. Jaki Graham makes her third consecutive appearance, this time with the track she’s probably best known for, Set Me Free. It’s pretty good too, easily the best of her NOW appearances.

We then to three tracks so of their time, the only people who will have heard of them, let alone like them, would have had to have been avid chart listeners in 1986. Nu Shooz I Can’t Wait somehow managed to get to number two, though I’ve no idea how. It’s the sound of a wine bar distilled through a Roland 808 and onto vinyl. It’s dull, goes on forever and is thoroughly annoying.

The complete opposite is (Bang Zoom) Let’s Go Go. Now, I’m no scholar of rap music, and I’m sure there are those out there who will dismiss this as chart-friendly pop trash compared to what Run DMC and the like were doing in 1986, but as far as introducing rap to the masses this is near perfect (horrible synth Fred Astaire breakdown accepted). The Real Roxanne was a respected New York hip-hop MC, who was involved in some nonsense over answer records (like all that Fuck You business at the start of the 2000s) which I’ve got no idea about. It’s on the internet if you need to know more.

I’m sure you don’t want to know more about the incredibly ugly Lovebug Starski who for some reason thought the path to stardom involved recording a rap record based on a horror film released a decade before, and include loads of unfunny impressions of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Maybe it was the legacy left by Ghostbusters and Thriller, but forgetting that those songs were actually good.

Headlines and You and Me Tonight and just wisps of songs, stuck in the middle ground between the death of disco and the new emerging dance scene, which, to be fair, had yet to find a proper sound. Both are completely forgettable, by completely forgotten artists. We finish off with On My Own, a sugary ballad, that of course was a huge hit, lifted by Patti La Belle’s lovely voice, and Michael McDonald, an artist I can never listen to a straight face anymore since his contribution to the soundtrack for South Park: The Movie

And so, yet again, the album kind of dissipates in a puff of undistinguished guff. But at least you now know what a synthesised shakuhachi flute sounds like. It wasn’t what the advert had promised.

That does, however, answer my query for years about what the hell that was supposed to be on the cover. Obviously the influence of the Clothes Show, and fashion culture in general, was being felt even in the hallowed halls of NOW Towers. The ‘Feel the Quality’ tagline would be dropped after NOW 7 as would the design team who created it. But that wouldn’t be the only change for the NOW series. Christmas 1986 would see them renew their battle with Hits, and this time it would take place in the future! And the future was NOW.

Or something.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 7

Release date

11th August 1986

Biggest tracks

A Kind of Magic – Queen

Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel

Venus – Bananarama

Lady in Red – Chris de Burgh

Lost gems

New Beginning (Mamba Seyra) – Bucks Fizz (sadly, this video will do nothing to convince you it’s a good song)

Brilliant Mind – Furniture

Forgotten tracks

Call of the Wild – Midge Ure

Headlines – Midnight Star

You and me Tonight – Aurra

What’s missing

Rock Me Amadeus – Falco

I Heard it Through the Grapevine – Marvin Gaye

The Chicken Song – Spitting Image

Track listing

Side one
Sledgehammer	Peter Gabriel
Sing Our Own Song	UB40
Let’s Go All The Way (Short Blix Mix)	Sly Fox
Lessons In Love	Level 42
Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)	Pet Shop Boys
Sinful!	Pete Wylie
Camouflage	Stan Ridgway
Paranoimia	The Art Of Noise And Max Headroom

Side two
The Lady In Red	Chris De Burgh
Absolute Beginners	David Bowie
Invisible Touch	Genesis
All The Things She Said	Simple Minds
Happy Hour	The Housemartins
Look Away	Big Country
Brilliant Mind	Furniture
Call Of The Wild	Midge Ure

Side three
The Edge Of Heaven	Wham
My Favourite Waste Of Time	Owen Paul
Too Good To Be Forgotten	Amazulu
Spirit In The Sky	Doctor & The Medics
Venus	Bananarama
New Beginning (Mamba Seyra)	Bucks Fizz
Hunting High And Low	A-Ha
Holding Back The Years	Simply Red
A Kind Of Magic	Queen (Bonus Track)

Side four
When The Going Gets Tough	Billy Ocean
Set Me Free	Jaki Graham
I Can’t Wait	Nu Shooz
Bang Zoom (Let’s Go Go)	The Real Roxanne With Hitman Howie Tee
Amityville (The House On The Hill)	Lovebug Starski
Headlines	Midnight Star
You And Me Tonight	Aurra
On My Own	Patti Labelle And Michael McDonald

Video version

The video version contained three tracks not featured on any NOW album (marked with #). Interesting that one of those tracks was by Culture Club, who just two years previously were one of Virgin records cash cows. They were obviously feeling they were not warranting the same kind of profile and promotion as before, or it was felt including them on NOW 7 would damage the sales of their current album.

Two further tracks (marked with *) would later appear on NOW 8.

Queen – A Kind of Magic
UB40 – Sing Our Own Song
Sly Fox – Let’s Go All the Way
Level 42 – Lessons in Love
Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
Pete Wylie – Sinful!
Stan Ridgway – Camouflage
Art of Noise with Max Headroom – Paranoimia
Jermaine Stewart – We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off*
Culture Club – Move Away#
Simple Minds – All the Things She Said
The Housemartins – Happy Hour
Big Country – Look Away
Midge Ure – Call of the Wild
Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11#
Doctor and the Medics – Spirit in the Sky
Jaki Graham – Set Me Free
Samantha Fox – Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)#
Genesis – Invisible Touch

April 5, 2013

Now That’s What I Call Music 6 – Re-election day

Christmas 1985 would see NOW reclaim its crown, in some style. Not only did NOW 6 indicate a return to form, but they also had the trump card of the Now Christmas Album. I’ll discuss the Christmas album (and its various incarnations) elsewhere, but it was a cunning one-two, releasing both within a fortnight of each other, that Hits just didn’t see coming. Released the same day as Hits 3, NOW 6 won out. It had a stronger line-up, better design, and the now all-important brand loyalty. What better way is there is to make people feel all warm and fuzzy about your brand than selling them a lovely, festive collection of classic Christmas hits?

Despite being released earlier, The Christmas Album didn’t hit the top until the week before Christmas, being kept off by NOW 6, but also by another pretender to the throne: Telstar’s Greatest Hits of 1985. Telstar had been set up a few years previously, and specialised in compilation albums, usually accompanied by a heavy TV marketing campaign. The Greatest Hits of… series would continue into the 90s, but were never a serious threat to NOW as with only one release a year, most of the tracks would have already featured on either of the competing series’ offerings, and those that were exclusive to the album would rarely warrant an additional purchase. 1985’s release did feature Paul Hardcastle’s 19, a rare number one which neither NOW or Hits had included; however it also featured several songs from 1984 including Everything She Wants, Ghostbusters and Do They Know It’s Christmas. It managed a solitary week at number one before the big boys moved back in, NOW 6 and NOW The Christmas Album racking up 6 consecutive weeks between them.

Speaking of number 1’s, NOW 6 manages to include four, the most since NOW 2, whereas Hits 3 managed only two, one of which, Frankie, had already appeared on NOW 5. (The other was Jennifer Rush’s The Power of Love. Hits 3 also featured Huey Lewis and The News’ The Power of Love, but not Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power of Love. 1985 was a confusing year for pop fans.) Things like that don’t go unnoticed. At least not by people like me.

With the pig now sent to the slaughterhouse, a new team brought a more sophisticated look to the album. For this, and the next 10 releases, NOW’s look and feel would be more commonly seen on contemporary cigarette ads than the brash, strutting, look of the Hits series. The NOW! Logo would find itself in various strange locations and scenarios, but never appear out of place. Here it appears as a label inside a leather jacket (this may not be immediately apparent, but the TV ad makes it explicit). It’s a nice idea, and very understated compared to its predecessors. No more Max Headroom-a-like, eye-straining, gut-wrenching, lasers and stripes and whatnot. Simple, clean, efficient. Much like the content, which, after an astonishingly good start, stumbles a bit, before regaining its composure to throw up a few pleasant surprises. As the tagline on the back exclaims: Feel the quality.

You really can’t argue with side one, at least until the final two tracks. Kicking off with Queen’s One Vision, through Nik Kershaw’s first flop single (but also probably his best), the Maria McKee-penned A Good Heart, the absolutely stunning There Must be An Angel (for me, the best song on a NOW album so far) and Simple Minds perennial Alive and Kicking, it’s about as good a start as a NOW Album has ever had. The final two tracks hint at the mood change to come (Empty Rooms and Lavender both being examples of the overwrought balladry far too popular with rock acts of the time; too well-made to be labelled as ‘soft rock’ they don’t particularly warrant multiple listens unless you’ve got a bottle of whiskey and some paracetamol to hand). The Bryan Adams and Tina Turner collaboration which straddles the gap between the good and the dreary, manages to be both at the same time, featuring a cracking opening riff which dissolves into a deathly dull, well, Bryan Adams song, which just happens to have Tina Turner on it. She pops up again on side two, singing about her thunderdomes.

Dreariness continues on side two where Phil Collins, Cliff Richard and Elton John battle it out for the prize of most insipid ballad ever on a NOW album, while Kate Bush valiantly delivers Running Up That Hill amid the gloom. Level 42 seems a welcome respite in the midst of this, and Something About You stands up pretty well.

Side three is a very odd assortment. Whilst it features two number ones (If I Was, and UB40, in collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on I Got You Babe), it’s also possibly, the worst charting side of tracks so far. Of the rest, only one made the top ten. The fact that that one track is Arcadia’s none-more-80s Election Day probably has more to with the fact that they were a side project for Duran Duran than for the fact that it’s a good song. It’s not. It’s stupid, nonsensical, pretentious claptrap which, to make matters worse, features an uncredited cameo from Grace Jones. But, dammit, it’s got something I can’t put my finger on.

Eighties, by day we run, by night we dance! — **Eighties; by day we run, by night we dance!**

Of the remaining 5 tracks, Lost Weekend was the only one to make the top 20; Uncle Sam and Cities in Dust both stalled at 21, The Communards rather lovely, and under-valued, You Are My World only hit 30 (though their time would come soon enough), and the Fine Young Cannibals make history as Blue is he first single to feature on a NOW Album not to make the top 40. The anti-Tory declamation is no Ghost Town, but it’s a pretty good tune, to be fair, and puzzling that it did so poorly after the top ten success of Johnny Come Home (this may be explained by it appearing, in a different version, on the b-side of that single). The inclusion of Lloyd Cole and a rare appearance for Siouxsie suggests the compilers were still keen to get some exposure for less mainstream acts, but it always feels more like tokenism than because the artists warrant inclusion on the basis on chart performance.

Incidentally, going back to UB40, as on NOW 1, they make two appearances, with the dreary, repetitive Don’t Break My Heart fitting in right at home on side two. And is just me, or does Ali Campbell sound just like Jim Davidson doing his horrible Chalky voice on I Got You Babe?

Even just using a picture of Jim Davidson for witty illustrative purposes made me sick a little in my mouth, so here's a kitten instead. — **Even just using a picture of Jim Davidson for witty illustrative purposes made me sick a little in my mouth, so here’s a kitten instead.**

The ghettoised dance side finds itself closing out the album this time, instead of the more usual maudlin closing numbers, and things start off with Paul Hardcastle’s ridiculous For the Money. This was one of the tunes that I had no recollection of until I heard it again, and suddenly it all came flooding back. A truly ‘of its day’ affair, it combines sub-Herbie Hancock synth twiddling with Laurence Olivier talking about ‘money being the root of all evil’, while Bob Hoskins tries to convince another cock-er-nee geezah (Hardcastle himself!) to pull a blag with him, with the persuasive line “Just fink abaht the moneee!” and “it’s the life o’ luxury!” over and over and over again. It’s a bit like an 80s version of Sexy Beast, with Hoskins in the Ben Kingsley role, but slightly less frightening, particularly with his clichéd “just don’t mess it up or the only place you’ll be gahn is dahn the Scrubs!”. All this, plus two badly accented bit part actors pretending to be 1920’s Chicago gangsters (one of whom turned out to be Hollywood bit part actor Ed O’Ross; he dies in nearly every 80s action movie), and some swooning backing singers making the whole thing sound more like one of the song parodies from Alexei Sayle’s Stuff. Though it’s worth it for the sound of Lord Larry having his voice scratched.

Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice Theme is the perfect antidote to all that nonsense, being a brilliant example of how electronic music (still sniffed at in most quarters even in 1985) can be evocative, exciting and somehow timeless too. Three things that most certainly DON’T apply to Maria Vidal’s Body Rock, a shameless rip-off of Madonna’s Borderline (though also oddly sounding like Open Your Heart, six months before its release), or Baltimora’s horrible Tarzan Boy.

The long-forgotten Mai Tai make a return with another nice, fun, dance track. Heart and Soul is another of those songs that you know you’ve heard countless times before but can never remember its title or who it’s by. It seems odd they only had the two hits (this and History, which featured on NOW 5), as they were certainly no worse than some comparable acts who achieved more success at the time. Like Cameo. Now I like Word Up as much as the next person, but there’s something extremely icky about Single Life. From the opening, which is EXACTLY the same as Word Up, this tells the story of some guy, who you know has a penthouse apartment with black chrome shelves, metal chairs and a Playboy bunny quilt cover. Hearing the giant codpiece singing about the single life just creeps me out, and like the aural equivalent of rohypnol, it’s liable to send you to sleep and when you wake up you’ll feel utterly violated.

This brings us disgustingly onto Mated, a second duet betweenJaki Graham and David Grant. Even as a ten-year old, this title seemed wrong, just a bit too animalistic for what sounds like a sickly, sweet love song about finding your soul-mate. It’s not my cup of tea at all, and hearing them croon “We are mated” at each other just turns my stomach. I’d argue it’s one of the least romantic romantic songs ever, and a disappointing end to the album.

An interesting design choice was taken on the inside this time, in a rare case of NOW taking a nod from Hits. On the gatefold, the blurbs are now accompanied by album covers rather than the standard star photos, at least in most cases. Level 42 miss out, presumably, because the artwork for World Machine wasn’t ready, though the album is mentioned, but poor old Mai tai’s album had been out since June, and since it only got to number 91 they probably could have done with having it plugged better than it is here!

The rear cover also, teasingly, says “You’ve heard the record, now buy the book”… The book? Now That’s What I Call Music Mastermind, a quiz book compiled by Ashley Abram himself, was available at the time for “a steal at £2.99”. A scurry round the interwebs finds there only appears to be two copies left in existence, both going for over £60! I did find a picture of the cover though, which in a rare case of branding inconsistency, still features the pig. It also looks incredibly cheap compared to the albums.

So, NOW was back on top. For the next couple of years, an uneasy cold war between the two compilation behemoths would see them only releasing one album each during the year (Hits at Easter, NOW in the summer) with both going head-to-head at Christmas. It was their biggest, most lucrative, time of the year so neither was willing to yield that, and there was always the possibility that a strong line-up could see Hits go back on top. In a years’ time they would get the chance, but until then NOW had seven months to prepare its next chart attack.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 6

Release date

25th November 1985

Biggest tracks

One Vision – Queen

Alive and Kicking – Simple Minds

There Must be An Angel (Playing with my Heart) – Eurythmics

Lost gems

When a Heart Beats – Nik Kershaw

You Are My World – The Communards

Forgotten tracks

Blue – Fine Young Cannibals

She’s So Beautiful – Cliff Richard

Just For Money – Paul Hardcastle

Single Life – Cameo

What’s missing

Money for Nothing – Dire Straits

White Wedding – Billy Idol

Dancing in the Street – David Bowie and Mick Jagger

(A case could also be made for West End Girls, by The Pet Shop Boys, as it does appear on the accompanying video, but to be fair to the compilers, it only charted at number the week that NOW 6 was released, and, as a first single, there was no indication of what a huge hit it would be, except for the fact that it was brilliant.)

Track listing

Side One
One Vision	Queen
When A Heart Beats	Nik Kershaw
A Good Heart	Feargal Sharkey
There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)	Eurythmics
Alive And Kicking	Simple Minds
It’s Only Love (Live)	Tina Turner With Bryan Adams
Empty Rooms	Gary Moore
Lavender	Marillion

Side Two
Nikita	Elton John
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)	Kate Bush
Something About You	Level 42
We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)	Tina Turner
Don’t Break My Heart	UB40
Separate Lives	Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin
She’s So Beautiful	Cliff Richard

Side Three
Election Day	Arcadia
I Got You Babe	UB40 Featuring Chrissie Hynde
Blue	Fine Young Cannibals
If I Was	Midge Ure
Cities In Dust	Siouxsie & The Banshees
Uncle Sam	Madness
Lost Weekend	Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
You Are My World	The Communards

Side Four
Just For Money	Paul Hardcastle
Miami Vice Theme	Jan Hammer
Body Rock	Maria Vidal
Tarzan Boy (Original Version)	Baltimora
Body And Soul	Mai Tai
Single Life	Cameo
Mated	David Grant & Jaki Graham

Video version

The video version contained five tracks not featured on the main album (marked with *)

Queen – One Vision

Fergal Sharkey – A Good Heart

Kate Bush – Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God)

UB40 featuring Chrissie Hynde – I Got You Babe

Madness – Uncle Sam

Marillion – Lavender

Bryan Adams & Tina Turner – It’s Only Love

Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls*

Thompson Twins – King for a Day*

Simple Minds – Alive and Kicking

Depeche Mode – It’s Called A Heart*

David Grant And Jaki Graham – Mated

Gary Moore – Empty Rooms

The Cult – Revolution*

Baltimora – Tarzan Boy

Ian Dury – Profoundly In Love With Pandora*

Cliff Richard – She’s So Beautiful

UB40 – Don’t Break My Heart

Arcadia – Election Day

March 31, 2013

Now That’s What I Call Music 5 – Harold Faltermeyer is 5 foot 11 inches tall

After losing Christmas 1984 to The Hits Album, NOW! took a short sabbatical in the new year. Clearly they were no longer the only game in town and things were going to have to change. Rather than rush release another NOW! album straight away and try to reclaim the crown quickly, they sat back and watched as Hits strutted its way to Volume 2 in April 1985, attempting to consolidate their position. For NOW! watchers, April brought a surprise in the shape of NOW Dance, a collection of 12″ mixes which would be the first of many ‘special NOW! releases. (NOW Dance would itself become a complimentary series alongside the regular releases. These will be discussed elsewhere.)

NOW 5 finally arrived in the summer. With no Hits album around the way was clear for NOW! to strike back and make a bold statement that they were still top dog. But in reality, it seems a tad lazy in comparison to some of its predecessors, and, to be fair, even compared to Hits 2, which featured four chart toppers among its fairly strong line-up, compared to just the one on show here (Sister Sledge’s Frankie).

While initial thoughts are that NOW 5 will be a strong return to form, its deficiencies become apparent pretty soon, on side two, and continue throughout. But before you even get to the music, there’s the small matter of the artwork, possibly the worst in the entire series.

Retaining the pig, for what would be his final appearance, seems a solid decision, but the design is dreadful. For the first time in the series, artist photos are ditched in favour of names and logos, which are emblazoned across the pig’s garish stripy yellow shirt (the NOW! balls making up the shirt buttons) whilst shapes, streamers and paint splatter explode in the background, along with a series of incomprehensible arrows. Thankfully the NOW! Balls are also fairly prominent, just in case an unsuspecting record shop patron should mistake the sleeve for some piece of long forgotten pop art, of a kind it so desperately wants to emulate. It’s truly ghastly. The rear of the sleeve replicates the image as if seen from behind. The reversed NOW! logo is a nice touch, but other than that, it just looks like a fat pig in a badly fitting shirt. The theme continues inside the gatefold where a rather creepy looking sketch shows the pig (still in his horrendous shirt) sitting on the edge of a diving board watching someone diving (badly) into, presumably, a swimming pool. But it’s so badly conceived (and the diver appears to have twisted awkwardly mid-dive) that’s it’s hard to know exactly what’s supposed to be going on here. But thankfully, it doesn’t take up much room and is easily missed if you didn’t know it was there.

So does the content do anything to make up for this pictorial abomination? Not really.

About the only thing people remember about music in the summer of 1985 is Live Aid, so maybe all the big stars were too busy plugging their albums to a worldwide audience… sorry… giving up their free time for a worthy cause to be releasing their biggest and best hits.

The best remembered songs here, were not necessarily the most successful at the time. Whilst things kick off with A View to a Kill (the last Duran Duran appearance with their original line-up) it’s the other movie theme on side one that is probably the bigger song, Axel F, from Beverly Hills Cop. As the blurb helpfully, and pointlessly, informs us Harold Faltermeyer is “5 foot 11 inches tall”. Slightly more helpfully, it tells us he used to work with Giorgio Morodor and Axel F took four months to reach its number two slot after first charting in march ’85 at a lowly number 73. (Incidentally, that itself was one place higher than that reached by the infinitely superior Fletch Theme, which charted a few weeks after the release of NOW 5. But that’s irrelevant here. Anyway…)

Scritti Politti finally make an appearance, and would probably have been more successful before The Word Girl if NOW! had given them a bit of a push, and future perennials, Fine Young Cannibals make their debut with Johnny Come Home. Dead or Alive and Stephen “Tin Tin” “Was the singer in Duran Duran before Simon le Bon” Duffy both appear with lesser known as Hits 2 had snagged both You Spin Me Round and Kiss Me earlier in the year. To be fair I’ve always liked Duffy’s Icing on the Cake more anyway, as it sounds like a far more cynical pop song (and attack on the industry) than Kiss Me. If anyone can name another Dead or Alive track, you’ve got one over on me, so I was pleasantly surprised that their In Too Deep was not dreadful, and a perfectly good pop track. Kool and the Gang’s sickly Cherish and Paul Young’s textbook Every Time You Go Away round off things a safe, serviceable way.

Then to side two, where inertia, and a desire to tear one’s own ears off is briefly abated by the soothing sounds of Don’t You Forget About Me and The Power Station’s ludicrously overwrought cover of Get It On. This lovely filling is however sandwiched between Marillion, China Crisis, Phil Collins and David Bowie’s This is Not America, a song I’ve only ever listened to all the way through once. If I don’t want it on a Bowie compilation, I certainly don’t want it here.

We are into dance territory on side three. The blurb even mentions a “resurgence of dance music” in their piece on The Conway Brothers, who were so ineffectual at following up their number 11 smash Turn It Up, that they haven’t even got a Wiki entry). It’s shrugs all round to be honest, with Mai Tai, Steve Arrington, and more frequent top 40 botherers Loose Ends and Jaki Graham along with the Conway Brothers. Mai Tai’s History is particularly catchy, even if it sounds criminally ripped off from the act that precedes them, Sister Sledge, here ditching their disco roots for possibly the most annoying song on the whole double album, Frankie. Maybe it’s because it was always played at least five times at every school disco I went to, or because it seemed for three years girls would walk around the playground singing it… for whatever reason Frankie is an awful song. The fact that it’s the only number one on show here, proves that no one buying records in 1985 has any taste whatsoever. Graham’s track is pretty decent too, but nowhere near as memorable as her earlier duet with David Grant (later a judge on Fame Academy) Could It Be I’m Falling In Love.

And why the side finishes with Rory Bremner impersonating Richie Benaud is anyone’s business. It still brings a grin though, and Paul Hardcastle now admits producing the spoof of his own hit, 19 (which, oddly never appeared on a NOW or Hits album).

The final furlong initially promises things will pick up. A stunning quartet of Unforgettable Fire, Walls Come Tumbling Down, a ruthlessly cut short Walking on Sunshine (which only got to number 9!) and the speaker blowing combination of Gary Moore and Phil Lynott on Out in the Fields. Things mellow slightly with The Damned’s Shadow of Love, another of those odd choices that pepper the series, before the album collapses in on itself. Howard Jones’ dreadful Life in One Day is one of those insufferably chirpy songs you just want to punch in the face (particularly when, like me, you’ve been listening to it on your dreary, snow-delayed commute to work) but unlike, say, Walking on Sunshine, it has a sense of smug self-satisfaction which somehow depresses more than it inspires. It’s astonishing how angry synthesised penny whistles can make you.

And finally there’s Jimmy Nail absolutely murdering Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. Or at least that’s what I thought from hazy memories of hearing it as a kid, and wandering why that ugly bloke from Auf Weidersein Pet was on Top of the Pops. Nail has got a good voice, like a more delicate version of Joe Cocker, but, although this is much better than I remember it, this is not the right song, and he’s not helped by a smoky, BBC detective drama production going on behind him. Jimmy would have his day in a few years time, which we will come to in due course. But this is a distinctly, almost oppressively, downer ending for a pop compilation. Particularly one that promises so much hot summer fun from it’s cover and equally stomach-churning advert.

NOW 5 is pretty forgettable all round, its highlights simply enhancing the awful anonymity of the rest. With one side of dreary MOR ballads, and another of forgettable dance music, half the album is written off before you even start. Having stars next single after their big hit has been snaffled by your rival is unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean you HAVE to include them. And maybe, for once, the programming of the tracks seems to have been badly managed resulting in too much of a “side of this” and a “side of that” rather than the melting pot of hits and misses and genres we’d been used to.

It was time for a re-think. NOW! would need to own Christmas again, and in November they would strike back with a one-two that Hits wouldn’t see coming…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 5

Release date

5th August 1985

Biggest tracks

Axel F – Harold Faltermeyer

Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds

Walking on Sunshine – Katrina and the Waves

Forgotten tracks

In Too Deep – Dead or Alive

Feel So Real – Steve Arrington

Turn it Up – Conway Brothers

Magic Touch – Loose Ends

What’s missing

19 – Paul Hardcastle

Head Over Heels – Tears for Fears

I Feel Love (Medley) – Bronski Beat and Marc Almond

Track listing

Side One
A View To A Kill		Duran Duran
The Word Girl		Scritti Politti
Axel F		Harold Faltermeyer
Johnny Come Home		Fine Young Cannibals
In Too Deep		Dead Or Alive
Icing On The Cake		Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy
Cherish		Kool & The Gang
Every Time You Go Away		Paul Young

Side Two
Kayleigh		Marillion
Slave To Love		Bryan Ferry
This Is Not America		David Bowie & The Pat Metheny Group
Don’t You (Forget About Me)		Simple Minds
Get It On (Bang A Gong)		The Power Station
Black Man Ray		China Crisis
One More Night		Phil Collins

Side Three
Frankie		Sister Sledge
History		Mai Tai
Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)		Simply Red
Feel So Real		Steve Arrington
Round And Around		Jaki Graham
Turn It Up		The Conway Brothers
Magic Touch		Loose Ends
N-N-Nineteen Not Out		The Commentators

Side Four
The Unforgettable Fire		U2
Walls Come Tumbling Down		The Style Council
Walking On Sunshine		Katrina & The Waves
Out In The Fields		Gary Moore And Phillip Lynott
The Shadow Of Love		The Damned
Life In One Day		Howard Jones
Love Don’t Live Here Anymore		Jimmy Nail

No video version appears to have been released, but if anyone has any information I’d love to know and update this entry.

March 26, 2013