Tag: Belinda Carlisle

NOW 20 – Giant Floating Letters in Space

One of the fun things about this blog is the amount of misremembering I’ve been doing; you know that weird feeling you get when you are utterly convinced of something from your past despite all the evidence to the contrary. Like me thinking the NOW pig lasted for years rather than just three albums, that Bros’ I Owe You Nothing was on NOW 11, or that NOW 16 was any good. The biggest mis-memory (if that’s a real word) on my journey so far is the 1990s changing of the guard at Radio 1, that glorious time when Matthew Bannister came in and did away with the Smashie and Nicey brigade. He decided that the station that’s y’know, for kids, should really appeal to, y’know, kids and it was time for The Hairy Cornflake to pack up his Quack Quack Oops and Batesy should concentrate on his video certificate introductions (which are there to help you make the right choice, thanks for listening). Regular readers may have noticed I’ve been building up to it for quite a while, the first mention coming way back on NOW 8, and the inclusion of Queen’s Innuendo as the last track on NOW 19 seemed to perfectly dovetail in my mind with the changing of the guard over at NOW Towers as well, with the GIANT FLOATING PERSPEX LETTERS IN SPACE replacing whatever you called that abomination that had adorned the previous two covers.

But it transpires I was wrong. TWO YEARS wrong. It wasn’t until 1993 that the axe was swung and Radio 1 changed forever. So, for at least another two years, the charts, and consequently NOW, would continue to lead strange pot pourri lives, despite the best efforts of Belgian techno producers eyeing the charts like so many Bond villains eye killer missiles.

NOW 20 is nothing if not eclectic. Dance is not as prominent as it had been on the previous few releases, there’s some absolute corking tunes, and there’s no Bryan Adams. This may not seem like a big deal to younger viewers, but 1991 saw the Canadian axe man take the number one slot hostage for four months. Yes, MONTHS. As a Warner Brothers release it would have needed licensing, but for whatever reason it was not included (maybe they were aware that by Christmas that year how utterly sick of the thing the public were, a trick sadly not repeated with Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around a few years later). So for once the Christmas NOW release would not feature the biggest hit from its release window and not one person cared.

As with the previous couple of releases, the opening is a bit of a surprise given the calibre of acts on show, but it’s great to have Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff kicking things off with their spirited version of Dizzy. As a huge fan of both at the time this was one of the best singles of the year as far as I was concerned and it’s still a great party record. It is however not the best version of the song with that honour falling to Kurt Russell. Yes, that Kurt Russell.

NOW stalwart Belinda Carlisle contributes Live Your Life Be Free, coming soon to a cruise liner advert near you. The song I mean, not Ms Carlisle. It’s an odd beast; repetitive, with a throat ripping vocal which Carlisle is clearly not enjoying and a strange, seconds-long, hip-hop breakdown towards the end for no apparent reason other than to make it sound a bit more immediate. A bit like U2’s The Fly. The song which finally ended Bryan Adams top spot occupation it divided listeners more than probably any song of the period. It’s difficult to imagine the commotion this thing caused on release. U2 had become every Dad’s favourite band, and The Joshua Tree was almost as ubiquitous as Brothers in Arms had been a few years previously. Then The Fly happened. I think the fact that it pissed off so many Dad’s made it more appealing to teenagers than it would have been otherwise. It certainly did for me. It doesn’t sound like much else that was around at the time (though their time in Berlin had obviously been spent listening to a great deal of Industrial music). It could be argued (as I have done) that the seeds had been sown for this kind of thing with Simple Minds’ Kick It In back on NOW 15, but U2 made it commercially successful and, more importantly, listenable. It heralded a gear change for the then biggest band in the world and would prompt similar about-turns from acts like INXS in the coming years. Reinvention for the 90s became de rigeur.

Except possibly for the Pet Shop Boys. They decided to once again prove themselves as masters of the cover version with their wonderfully wry mash up of U2’s pompous Where The Streets Have No Name and the standard Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. If this had come out after The Fly you could have made a case for it being a brilliant pastiche of U2’s new direction (also arguing from the benefit of hindsight that it looks forward to the ridiculousness of the Pop-era of Discothèque and The Edge’s Village People moustache). But it came out six months before, making it the oldest track on the album. It had, however, been double A-sided with How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously, a critique of pop stars jumping on the charity/humanitarianism bandwagon at the drop of a cowboy hat. The Pet Shop Boys themselves are no strangers to this kind of thing themselves of course, but Bono is a particularly loathsome example, worthy of their ire.

All that silliness if followed by Erasure’s brilliant Love To Hate You, probably my favourite track of theirs, but one which never seems to get its dues. OMD’s Sailing on the Seven Seas marked something of a comeback for them and continues the knob twiddling mini-theme. It was a huge hit but listened to now it’s pretty weak tea, with a pink wafer on the side. Andy McClusky would apparently become disillusioned with the pop industry shortly afterwards and decided to get his revenge by creating Atomic Kitten.

Breast — **“Are these whole again chicken fillets?”**

Then it gets weird. Simple Red’s Something Got Me Started contains the most chilling intro to a song I’ve ever heard, especially if you know how about the randy exploits of the ginger-bonced one (or you would if your parents bought the News of the World as mine did). It’s not a bad tune for Hucknall, but it’s still Hucknall, and that’s still an issue. Lisa Stansfield is far more palatable (and like Hucknall, a buy-in from the currently AWOL Hits stable). Change is a beautiful song, and I rate it far higher than the all-conquering All Around The World, but it makes the fatal error of being low-key with a less memorable chorus. She acts now. Been in Miss Marple and everything.

(At the time of writing, I’ve just seen her on The One Show. I don’t know what she was plugging because it was The One Show and I’d rather pour concrete into my eyeballs than actually pay it any attention.)

Also lovely on the ears is Zoe’s Sunshine On A Rainy Day. The echoed drums and incessant hi-hat date it slightly, but it’s one of those irresistible “punch the air and sing along” tunes, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Less lovely are the next two tracks, as NOW 20 goes all sexy. Well, not sexy exactly. Just um… sex, really. Just talking about sex isn’t particularly sexy, is it? As with the earlier Push It, on NOW 12, what was once considered sexy and daring now comes across as crass and sleazy, and sadly for Salt n’ Pepa once again, Let’s Talk About Sex is a bit like a kid who has learned a new swear word. There’s none of their former sass and attitude on show here. I’m not sure if Color Me Badd ever had attitude as such, but they certainly had suits based a packet of Opal Fruits. Frankly they look a child grooming gang. They hit number one with the foul I Wanna Sex You Up, and they all must be in their late 20s, if not older, singing a song that would only have ever appealed to teenage girls who probably felt equally threatened and excited at the same time by those green suits, styled facial hair and Vanilla Ice quiffs. It just turns my stomach. Have a listen to Faith No More’s Edge of the World and tell me that’s not an intentional sound-a-like.

Oddly, the other ‘sex’ song on offer here, Prince’s Gett Off is bumped a track further on, to make way for the oddly inoffensive Kenny Thomas. You might remember he had a couple of hits, but don’t worry if you don’t; you are missing nothing. Gett Off itself is pure filth, but you already knew that. Prince knows it too which is probably why he wrote it. The man just has so much sex coursing through his body he has to channel it somehow. Rozalla’s Faith In The Power of Love is not as well known, or as good as, Everybody’s Free. She played at my work’s Christmas party a few years back performing all (both) her hits. I don’t think many people knew who she was.

And then… Holy shit…

The intro is misleading, probably you haven’t heard it very often. Oddly, the exact same intro was heard on Jesus Jones’ bizarre cover version of Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile a year later. But once that deceptive few seconds have passed there is no denying what you are listening to. You could almost Name That Tune in one. It’s cheap, nasty, repetitive and nausea inducing. It’s the musical equivalent of a four year old bouncing on your head and feeding you Tootie Frooties, whilst a mysterious black suit and shades sporting gentleman injects heroin into your ankle. Your brain gets confused; the signals are all distorted and crossed. Am I angry? I want to die but this is soothing, this is warm, this is pop. You submit, just momentarily, and that’s it. You’re caught, like a fly in a web, you can do nothing but struggle. But struggling only makes its grip tighter. So you resign yourself. Wait. Maybe the end will be painless. You half hope it won’t be, and it will be so quick you won’t feel anything at all. Your head is being torn off by a big fluffy kitten; it strips your limbs from your torso one by one, like a team of ants with tiny scissors. And as you finally go into convulsions, your brain can’t quite shut off the incessant noise. A few more seconds more as you finally fade away into nothingness. Then, relief. You catch the final beat and it disappears, echoing away into the distance. It’s over. You made it. You listened to an entire 2 Unlimited track. Then, horror, as you realise it wasn’t No Limits and you still have to deal with that another day…

Side two rounds off, thankfully, with 3 very listenable tracks. Moby’s Go is a one trick pony, taking a sample from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, adding someone shouting “Go! Yeah!” and occasionally “alright”, but it is good at what it does. As are The KLF, this time appearing as The JAMMS, with Its Grim Up North. A brilliant attempt to get any old crap into the charts, this runs off a list of northern towns and cities over a heavy industrial noise-based musical arrangement. The whole thing is, once again, a massive joke, and no doubt a pun on the then emerging industrial music scene coming out of Europe), even finishing with a synthesised version of Jerusalem mixed with a cacophony of noise. I love it.

One trick pony samples continue with PM Dawn’s massive Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, which would be extremely dull without its Spandau Ballet nugget. That sample makes the tune memorable and listenable. This idea of building a whole track out of one seconds long sample from somewhere else would eventually become a goldmine for lazy producers, with many people not knowing that tunes like Groove Is In The Heart, then later monsters like Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, would be nothing without those snippets of genius from elsewhere.

So, the first half has been quite a mixed bag, and part two struggles to fill a whole CD with enough tracks and as a result includes a few rum suspects indeed. Things start blandly with Paul Young’s long forgotten cover of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over. Young hadn’t darkened a NOW album for a while but the single did manage to broach the top 20. Recorded as the token ‘unreleased’ track on his greatest hits album, it’s no doubt included to increase sales of that album, though quite why NOW would want to plug the Greatest Hits of an artist on a rival label is unclear (Young was signed to CBS at the time). Perhaps some negotiation was involved to get other artists included? If you want those you have to take this too?

Also unclear, to me at least, was the success of Enya, whose dreamy soundscapes I’ve never understood. But at least her Caribbean Blue is in good company (relatively) sitting alongside such dull ballads as Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush and Mark Cohn’s Walking in Memphis. Cathy Dennis and Alison Moyet also contribute tunes no one remembers either. Any Dream Will Do demonstrates how weak Jason Donovan’s voice was when removed from the SAW production grinder, and then there’s Glass Tiger’s My Town. I saw this in the track listing and had absolutely no idea what it sounded like, but recognised it instantly as soon as it started. A rugby club anthem in the making with guest vocalist Rod Stewart, this was a favourite of the old guard Radio 1 DJs at the time, but not with the public, as it only limped to number 33. The Canadian diet rockers only had one other top 40 hit, in 1986, with the aptly titled Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone. We can’t make any promises, guys.

Then there’s the perennial problem of Julian Lennon. I’ve always felt a bit sorry for the older Lennon Jr because he had to work a lot harder for himself (younger Lennon Jr, Sean, was always daddy’s favourite) and Julian has been picked up, dropped, praised, ridiculed, loved and despised perhaps more than any other rock star spawn. I’ve no idea why his 1989 single Now You’re In Heaven wasn’t a hit, but I suspect its scary ventriloquist doll video kept it off the telly, and the lack of a proper chorus kept it off the radio. With Saltwater, the track up for display here, he took the easy option and finally caved in to do what everyone wanted him to do: he ripped off his dad. And, it pains me to say, the results are absolutely tragic. It makes so many mistakes it’s almost a test case in bad song writing. Lennon was, it’s fair to say, a committed environmentalist who has used huge amounts of his own cash to fund projects and causes; that doesn’t mean we want a heart-tugging, guffaw-inducing song about how everything makes you cry. With the ‘worthy’ box tick, let’s move onto the lyrics: rhyming ‘crying’ with ‘dying’ is as hackneyed as using sub-George Harrison guitar noodling for your instrumental break. Oh you did that too. Harrison did in fact scribble some chords for Lennon but declined to actually appear on the record making him the only Beatle to maintain a modicum of dignity come the 90s. Anyone familiar with The Rutles will recognise Saltwater under a different title, Cheese and Onions, just with nonsense lyrics of a different kind. “What will life think of me the day that I die?”, he asks. Sadly this will be the soundtrack to the epitaphs, which will no doubt contain the phrase “failed to reach the heights of his superstar father”, which is a genuine shame. Saltwater, however, is just shameful.

"Imagine all the dolphins, eating all the fish... oo-oo..." — **“Imagine all the dolphins, eating all the fish… oo-oo…”**

Shameful heart-tugging kicks off the final terror that is side four of NOW 20. The Scorpions are probably now more famous in the age of the interwebs for their dubious 70s album covers (NSFW) than for their music. The sexist German rock that made them millionaires with drink and drug problems was forgotten as they attempted to dethrone Bryan Adams from number one, with a hymn to the newly reunified fatherland. It comes across as a little odd, to say the least. This kind of thing had not troubled the upper reaches of the charts for a few years, so why this struck a chord in 1991 is anyone’s guess. It was stuck behind Adams for weeks so the record company even launched a press campaign to get people to buy it and topple the Robin Hood botherer, but to no avail. Thank Christ, because it’s bloody awful. Yes, even worse than Bryan Adams.

It does set the tone for the rest of the side though, being the usual odds and sods that don’t fit neatly anywhere else, but with a definite lean towards your Dad’s side of the market (maybe manoeuvring itself into a potential last minute Christmas gift for Dad for a change). There’s two good songs still to come. James’ Sit Down, finally a hit on its 47^th re-release, is the sound of 1990s student common rooms and indie discos. It’s still a good tune despite that sentence, though far from their best. Also great is the surprise return of Voice of the Beehive. I hinted on NOW 12 that they would return but I’m sure many would have struggled to remember what with. Their cover of I Think I Love You is fun pop, just what they did best. It doesn’t pull up any trees, but is a perfectly fine cover version of a throwaway bubble-gum pop hit, that puts a smile on your face and doesn’t outstay its welcome. In pure pop terms, I suppose Roxette’s Joyride delivers too, but it’s not very memorable and hasn’t aged well.

The rest of the side is frankly shocking. INXS toss away the live-album-flogging Shining Star, surely little more than a B-side beefed up to single status to help shift Live Baby Live (where it appears as a studio track in the middle of a concert album!). There’s the basis of a song here, but we only get one verse and one chorus, yet it still lasts over three minutes. Slade’s final top 40 hit (bar endless re-entries for Merry Xmas Everybody) has the indignity of featuring Mike Smash, sorry, Mike Reid making an appearance doing a dreadful American DJ accent. Radio Wall of Sound is utter bilge with only Noddy’s bellowing over the chorus to rescue it. He hated the thing apparently.

Monty Python’s Always Look On The Brightside of Life got a re-release thanks to Simon Mayo continually playing it on the Radio 1 breakfast show after hearing it at a Tottenham football match. It probably helped that there was a Monty Python compilation album that needed flogging too. You all know this so I’ll just leave you to consider how on earth the most chillingly bittersweet comedy moments in cinema history has now been reduced to Eric Idle’s pension plan, and a cheap gag to roll out for the Royal Variety performance. Of sole interest is the fact that NOW 20 includes the radio version (not commercially released) which features a re-recorded outro by Idle. That might make it worth one more listen if you can be bothered.

NOW 20 contains 35 tracks, the most in the series so far. What is odd is that it could have had at least two more but for the fact they decided to close the album with a song lasting a ball-busting eight and a half minutes! And it’s not even a good song. Well, it’s one of those that people say they like, and occasionally drunkenly bellow out at karaoke (always forgetting how long the bloody thing is and getting bored halfway through). I hate American Pie. I hate its pomposity. I hate its length. I hate the slow intro, the jaunty middle and the ridiculously protracted ending. I hate Don McLean’s stupid stars and stripes thumb. I hate the fact that Don McLean has the same name as a 70s comedian and Summertime Special stalwart. I hate Madonna’s cover version, I hate that it’s never explained what the bolloclks lyrics are all about. (Yes, I know it’s about Buddy Holly, but how? Why? Where?). And I hate the fact it got re-released in a full version for no good reason in 1991, reached number 12 and ended up on NOW 20.

So the second half of NOW 20 has hit a quite stunning low. But no one cares. No one cares either that NOW 20 was the last NOW album with an accompanying VHS release. All anyone cares about when it comes to NOW 20 is it was the first album to feature the still-going GIANT PERSPEX LETTERS… IN SPAAAAAACE!!!! Design. And in a single stroke any sense of innovation, charm and individuality that the series had was lost forever.

I’m fully aware that for anyone buying a NOW album between 1991 and today this is what a NOW album looks like; that doesn’t make it right. Maybe Don McLean was right after all: 23^rd November 1991, the release day for NOW 20, really was the day the music died. Moving into 1992, my NOW odyssey is getting harder.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 20

Release date

18th November 1991

Biggest tracks

Dizzy – Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff

The Fly – U2

Wind of Change – Scorpions

Lost gems

It’s Grim Up North (Part 1) – The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

Love to Hate You – Erasure

Forgotten tracks

My Town – Glass Tiger

Shining Star – INXS

Worst Tracks

I Wanna Sex You Up – Color Me Badd

Get Ready For This – 2 Unlimited

What’s missing?

There’s No Other Way – Blur

I’m Too Sexy– Right Said Fred

More Than Words – Extreme

NB: Last NOW release to have an accompanying VHS release

Track listing

CD 1
Dizzy	Vic Reeves & The Wonderstuff
Live Your Life Be Free	Belinda Carlisle
The Fly	U2
Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)	Pet Shop Boys
Love To Hate You	Erasure
Sailing On The Seven Seas	Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Something Got Me Started	Simply Red
Change	Lisa Stansfield
Sunshine On A Rainy Day	Zoe
Let’s Talk About Sex	Salt ‘N’ Pepa
I Wanna Sex You Up	Color Me Badd
Best Of You	Kenny Thomas
Gett Off	Prince & The New Power Generation
Faith (In The Power Of Love)	Rozalla
Get Ready For This	2 Unlimited
Go	Moby
It’s Grim Up North (Part 1)	The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss	PM Dawn

CD 2
Don’t Dream It’s Over	Paul Young
Caribbean Blue	Enya
Saltwater	Julian Lennon
Rush, Rush	Paula Abdul
Any Dream Will Do	Jason Donovan
Too Many Walls	Cathy Dennis
This House	Alison Moyet
Walking In Memphis	Marc Cohen
My Town	Glass Tiger
Wind Of Change	Scorpions
Shining Star	INXS
Joyride	Roxette
Sit Down	James
I Think I Love You	Voice Of The Beehive
Radio Wall Of Sound	Slade
Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life	Monty Python
American Pie (Part I)	Don McLean

April 2, 2014

NOW! 19 – Not quite the time of your life

1991 was to prove to be a game changing year for NOW. Hits was now dead in the water and to celebrate NOW would unveil an exciting, sexy new look. That, however, would have to wait, as the year began with a continuation of the dreadful pub wallpaper, shouty brash styling of its predecessor, but at least NOW 19 is a huge improvement. Oddly, although it contains five number ones, I suspect many people would struggle to remember them from the track listing, and would probably misidentify a couple of songs as chart-toppers that weren’t.

The advert, which chooses to highlight some odd selections, mentions six number ones. I wonder if they are cheekily including The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, which was a number one in 1965, but only number 3 on it’s 1990 re-release.

We start with one of the ones that DID hit the top spot at the time, with the peerless The Clash and their denim-flogging Should I Stay or Should I Go. A brilliant song, no doubt, but should such an old song (from an advert no less) be opening the album? What used to be the prime slot of a NOW album, usually reserved for the biggest track available, it was increasingly being used as brinkmanship and devoted to artists the labels wanted to plug the most. The fact that The Clash was licensed from WEA for inclusion makes this doubly strange as none of the NOW labels benefit from additional sales. Maybe it was considered a big enough hit to warrant a negotiation with WEA to get it front and centre.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that the rest of side one is almost exclusively dance orientated. But none of this is as odd as the second track, a tune I’ve spent 20 years trying to decide if I like or not, and I’m still not sure. Much like Candy Flip’s Strawberry Fields Forever, Scritti Politti’s take on the Fab Four’s She’s a Woman (a lesser known mop-top track, being the B-side to I Feel Fine) is a ridiculously contemporary take on a Beatles’ track, so over-produced, bleeding-edge and, frankly, camp, that you wonder if it’s not all some elaborate joke at the listeners’ expense. Add in everyone’s favourite homophobic rapper, Shabba Ranks (making his UK chart debut), and you have the perfect punchline. Seeing Green Gartside in the video looking like Richard Madeley doing his Ali G impression, wearing a very hot-looking tracksuit and baseball cap (right way round, thankfully) is something to behold. It’s not a bad track, not by a long shot; it’s just so wonderfully odd. I’ve had my doubts before about how seriously The Politti’s take themselves (see NOW 12) so I’m happy to assume that, like The Beautiful South, they’re happy for people to take their songs how they hear them and not sneer at them for ‘not getting it’. It’s one of the lowest charting tracks on NOW 19, reaching only number 20.

Just two songs in and we next get one of the best songs on the album with You Got the Love. The track has a massively convoluted genesis which I won’t delve into here, but needless to say the vocal is old (around 1986) and this arrangement was a re-working of a previous bootleg release (1989). Even this 1991 release appears in various different guises. The one on NOW 19 is the one I remember from the charts at the time, but has subtle differences to the one more commonly played on the radio now and heard on 90’s compilations (the track has been remixed and re-released so many times, it’s impossible to know which version you’re going to get).

So things are shaping up nicely, a drop must be due, surely? Well, not yet there isn’t. The KLF’s 3AM Eternal is next, somehow managing to sound like a perfect fusion of rap, dance and rock and simultaneously sound like it’s sending it all up. That’s followed by C and C Music Factory with Gonna Make You Sweat (still a pop-tastic floor-filler) and Nomad’s I Wanna Give You Devotion. In NOW 19’s only sop to the alternative scene we get EMF’s I Believe, a fine follow up to megahit Unbelievable, and 808 State’s In Your Face, probably the hardest track featured on a NOW album. It’s the kind of thing that people say isn’t music, it’s just noise. It’s not quite as teeth-shattering as Cubik from the previous year, but it gives the bass a good rattling. Amazingly this was a top ten hit. Good, because it’s great.

Side one has been pretty damn good, it has to be said, but it saves the best until last, with, in my opinion anyway, the best track featured in the whole series, Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy. It’s simply one of the most perfect records released in my lifetime: a subtle sample, a wonderful vocal, great lyrics, and more atmosphere than the best of Russ Abbott’s parties. It still gives me chills and stops me doing whatever I’m doing when I hear it. It’s so perfect it’s hard to believe it’s actually on a pop compilation and had it not been for this blog I would never have known that it appeared on a NOW album. It reached a sorry number 13 in the charts, a fact I feel the country as a whole should hang its collective head in shame for. Its inclusion does however cement in history a moment of BBC craziness which has been long forgotten. As the single was released at the height of the Gulf War (part 1) Auntie took it upon itself to ban, edit and rename a whole list of songs and artists (including the Happy Mondays, whose track Loose Fit lost a line about blowing up an air force base and wiping out your race; they didn’t have a problem with the lines about getting stoned though). As such Massive Attack were persuaded, through their record company, to lose the ‘Attack’ or risk not getting any airplay, unfortunately making them Massive, and sounding like any number of generic Belgian DJs then cluttering up the lower reaches of the chart. It’s under that name that they appear here.

"Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! ... and we all like vindaloo!" — **“Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! … and we all like vindaloo!”**

So, as good as side one is, it’s inevitable that it would have a bad and evil twin. Side two is that twin. Well, to be fair, it’s more that the bad ones are SO bad, they taint the rest of the side. The only track on side two I would choose to listen to is Kylie’s What Do I Have To Do?, part of her sexy re-invention phase. It’s one of the weaker efforts from this period, paling in comparison to Shocked or Better The Devil You Know. Of the rest, Kim Appleby’s G.L.A.D. is fun without scoring as highly as Don’t Worry. Wiggle It, from 2 in a Room, just sounds creepy (and I could have sworn was released a couple of years later than 1991). McHammer’s Pray is poor and only here because if he had a single out it had to be included to make up for the fact that NOW missed out on U Can’t Touch This.

Vanilla Ice and Hale and Pace (featuring Brian May!) slug it out for worst track on the album. I hadn’t heard either Play That Funky Music or The Stonk since 1991 and a bloody good thing too. If any excuses can be made for these, at least Vanilla Ice’s was never meant to be anything other than a pocket-money grabbing, quick buck follow-up to Ice Ice Baby. The Stonk has no such excuse. I hate the idea that charity records, and particularly Comic Relief records, are allowed to be rubbish because the music isn’t the point. Don’t release a record then! Release a comedy video instead, release a book, do a comedy telethon (oh, for the days when Comic Relief actually featured comedy rather than just Children in Need with swearing). The Stonk is a foul, festering boil of a song. Badly written and with little talent on show, either comedically or musically, it is possibly the worst comedy record of all time. It’s certainly the worst one to get to number one. You bloody idiots.

Side two does finish off with a few interesting tracks (no doubt considered mere filler by the compilers of the day). Jesus Loves You was Boy George’s return to the charts, and Bow Down Mister is nowhere near as awful as I remember it from back in the day. In fact its hymn to Hare Krishna actually sounds much more worthwhile now. Enigma’s Sadness Part 1 is one of the oddest number ones we’ve seen so far, mixing monks, pan pipes and a dance beat. I’ve never liked it, for I blame it for introducing us to the endless stream of compilations of Pan Pipe Moods, Chill Out Moods, Moods Moods and Moods. If I want to hear Smells Like Teen Spirit played on pan pipes I’ll go back to University thanks.

The final track of side two is the real curve ball though, and perhaps best sums up how ephemeral the charts were becoming: Only You by Praise. Ring any bells? It didn’t with me, even though it was a top 5 single. No? Was featured in a car advert? Maybe that’s jogged a few memories. As soon as you hear the opening, ghostly female moan bouncing from one speaker to the other you’ll recognise it. In a similar vein to Sadness, but much more atmospheric, better produced and likely to still sound contemporary for many years, this is a tune ripe for rediscovery. Or is it an embarrassing mix of would-be spiritualism, dolphin noises and with a whiff of the Ikea catalogue about it. It’s one or the other.

The decision to top load the album with the dance tracks (with the odd exception of The Clash) does the job of making NOW seem trendy again and down with the kids. What it conversely does it make the second half incredibly dreary by comparison, filled as it is, once again, with old timers, covers and re-issues. A quick glance at the line up for sides 3 and 4 turns up just two tracks I’d choose to listen to, and one of them is Chris Rea!

We are definitely in black and chrome dinner party mode to start things off. Oleta Adams’ Get Here shows off her vocal skills admirably but it is a boring bank advert soundtrack (actually I think Royal Mail ended up using it in a TV commercial, with crushing inevitability). Rick Astley’s Cry For Help was an admirable attempt to demonstrate he could still operate without SAW pulling the strings (he grew his hair long and everything) and it’s nice, if uneventful. The public, of course, wanted the funny little dance, so this would be his last major hit. The cheese is supplied by Robert Palmer, this time wasting his talents on a dreary cover of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me and I Want You, combining the two songs to no noticeable effect.

Next is a bunch of old tracks: I’ve Had The Time of My Life gets the reissue treatment following Dirty Dancing’s TV premiere (!). Berlin’s Take My Breath Away had similarly gone stratospheric following Top Gun’s TV debut, but luckily that wasn’t included for a second time. The Righteous Brothers record company had followed up Unchained Melody (the best-selling track of 1990) with the infinitely better You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling to keep the Greatest Hits album sales ticking over. This was a double A side release with the even better, but less well-known Ebb Tide. The radio only ever played the more famous track though. Shame.

Seal then pops up to tell you the world is doomed in Crazy. I never quite understood why we have to get crazy in order to survive, but there you go.

Finally a good song arrives. It’s still a little on the maudlin side, but Banderas deserve to be better remembered than they are, at least if This Is Your Life is any kind of evidence. It hasn’t aged that well, but its left-field and dancey approach to the ‘state of the planet’ song so popular at the time is far more appealing than Seal’s diatribe. It’s one of the lesser known tracks on here and needs a wider audience.

It’s followed by a song I swear I had never heard before in my life, this despite the fact it reached number six at a time when I still had a vague passing interest in what was in the top ten: The Postman Song by Stevie B. It is bloody awful and genuinely sounds like it could have been a massive hit at any point in the past 20 years (I suppose that’s some kind of compliment but it’s not meant to be). Lyrically naive, as if written by a child, it’s also musically bland (horrible electronic piano abounds), over produced (quite odd considering how sparse it is) with far too much echo on the trying-too-hard vocal. Mr B (probably no relation to Derek or Radio 1 DJ Emma) clearly fancies himself as a successor to Jacko, but that rhotacism does creep in occasionally, making his cries of “because I love you” sound like Kim Jong Il in Team America. So ronery.

Side four, thankfully starts off well, with two solid songs. Chris Rea’s Auberge has always been a song I’ve had a fondness for because I’m a sucker for a good horn section (ooh, cheeky). No idea what it’s about but his gravelly voice suits it perfectly and I remember there was an amusing video which helped a lot too. Chris Issak’s Blue Hotel is the long-forgotten follow up to his massive Wicked Game. As good as that song was I’ve always preferred this. This kind of stuff was so rare at the time it was refreshing to hear someone who wasn’t ashamed of being considered old fashioned (Harry Connick Jr was breaking at the same time with his crooner revival). The charts were full of old songs at the time anyway, like Free’s All Right Now, clogging up the top 5 like so much swallowed chewing gum. Never understood the attraction of this sweaty slice of 70s cheese and that hasn’t changed with age.

The rest of side four returns to NOW standard and meanders its way home with the off-cuts, forgotten tracks and artists that needed a push (sometimes off the roster). And Queen.

While INXS didn’t really need a push, the album X wasn’t selling as well as anticipated. Disappear was a weak track and the chart position it reached reflected this. Falling by the wayside for a second time was Belinda Carlisle, with the dull Summer Rain. Also rans in attendance also include The Railway Children (the odd Every Beat of My Heart drifts between Aztec Camera, House of Love and Johnny Hates Jazz without coming close to any of them, not even the latter) and Thunder (one of those bands, like Runrig and Wildhearts, who always seem more popular than their record sales suggest, failing to score big hits but selling out Wembley for a week).

But the strangest song is saved for last: Queen’s Innuendo. It’s probably their most successful attempt to recreate the template for Bohemian Rhapsody (something they’d been trying to do since 1975) but that does not make it any good. It ain’t. In fact it’s one of their worst singles ever, so quite why it became only their second number one after Rhapsody is completely beyond me. Radio 1 certainly helped. The old guard were still holding court but were faltering and most (DLT especially) just seemed to doing whatever the hell they liked by this stage. I remember Simon Bates, who had the mid-morning show, was going to give the record its first airing. Not only did he play the whole song (all six and a half minutes) with a reverential silence unheard of other records, he then declared it a masterpiece and played the whole thing again! It’s no masterpiece: it sounds like the darker cousin of their 1989 minor chart fancier, The Miracle, with an added Spanish guitar and castanets wig-out halfway through, and a truly odd rock opera interlude. It’s the kind of thing Muse aspire to now, but at least you think they are aware of their own ridiculousness. At least I do.

A few years earlier, Innuendo would have opened a NOW album, but Queen (number one or not) were not relevant to the NOW buyers anymore. Despite the abundance of re-releases on show, dance music now dominated the teenager’s music choice. NOW, the charts and Radio 1 were going to have to adapt to the new order.

The other thing to change, for NOW, would be look of the thing. The new 90s look needed a refresh and after just two outings the brash, gaudy look (along with the exclamation mark) would be ditched in favour of something far more refined, stylish and NOW.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 19

Release date

25th March 1991

Biggest tracks

Should I Stay or Should I Go – The Clash

You Got The Love – The Source feat. Candi Stanton

Unfinished Sympathy – Massive

Crazy – Seal

Lost gems

This Is Your Life – Banderas

She’s A Woman – Scritti Politti feat Shabba Ranks

Forgotten tracks

Only You – Praise

Because I Love You (The Postman Song) – Stevie B

Worst Tracks

The Stonk – Hale & Pace and The Stonkers

Play That Funky Music – Vanilla Ice

What’s missing?

Grease Megamix – John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter – Iron Maiden

Hippy Chick – Soho

Track listing

Side one
Should I Stay or should I Go	The Clash
She’s A Woman	Scritti Politti feat. Shabba Ranks
You Got The Love	The Source feat. Candi Stanton
3 a.m. Eternal	The KLF feat. The Children Of The Revolution
Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)	C+C Music Factory pts. Freedom Williams
(I Wanna Give You) Devotion	Nomad feat. MC Mikee Freedom
I Believe	EMF
In Yer Face	808 State
Unfinished Sympathy	Massive Attack

Side two
Pray	M C Hammer
G.L.A.D.	Kim Appleby
What Do I Have To Do (7 Mix)	Kylie Minogue
The Stonk	Hale & Pace & The Stonkers
Wiggle It	2 In A Room
Play That Funky Music	Vanilla Ice
Bow Down Mister	Jesus Loves You
Sadness Part 1	Enigma
Only You	Praise

Side three
Get Here	Oleta Adams
Cry For Help	Rick Astley
Mercy Mercy Me/I Want You (Medley)	Robert Palmer
(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life	Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’	The Righteous Brothers
Crazy	Seal
This Is Your Life	Banderas
Because I Love You (The Postman Song)	Stevie B

Side four
Auberge	Chris Rea
Blue Hotel	Chris Isaak
All Right Now	Free
Disappear	INXS
Summer Rain	Belinda Carlisle
Every Beat Of The Heart	The Railway Children
Love Walked In	Thunder
Innuendo	Queen

Note: NOW 19 was the first album not to have an accompanying VHS release.

March 11, 2014

NOW! 18 – The pompatus of love

In some ways the much-derided (by smart arses like me), and often ignored (by everyone else) re-vamp of the NOW design is nice and simple. No one was calling the albums by their full name, so why bother putting the whole title on the cover? They barely bothered with NOW 17, but retained the iconic balls for one last round. Also, the series had been going for so long now, surely everyone had given up on the numbering by now? The latest release would be just another NOW album, people will flock to buy it anyway, it doesn’t matter what number it is. We’ll keep the number, but we’ll hide it on the sleeve, like a game, or like some cryptic cigarette ad. With NOW 18, the balls were chopped off in their prime and replaced by what I can only compare to old pub wallpaper, with the word NOW! emblazoned across the front (note also the addition of the kiddie-friendly but otherwise useless exclamation mark). It’s breathtakingly dreadful. Even as a teenager I knew this was a horrible design, mainly because it looks cheap and generic. Add some band photos down the side and it’s not a million miles away from the rip-off Out Now! series Chrysalis and MCA records briefly released in the mid 80s.

This might be excusable if NOW 18 bestrode the charts like a sales statistic behemoth (whatever one of them might look like) but it doesn’t, and I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s me or the music. This blog was a direct result of me wondering if pop music got bad or did I just get old. The question I forgot to ask myself was, do we only like the pop music from when we were kids? Does every generation think their music was the best?

NOW 18 is certainly not short on number ones; side one kicks off with three in a row, and features a further three later on. The Beautiful South’s A Little Time, Steve Miller Band’s The Joker and Reg Dwight’s first UK number one, Sacrifice, represent probably the lowest key opening to a NOW album so far. Strange that they re-brand, presumably, to appeal more to a hip, happening teenage market (it’s unlikely many who bought the first NOW were still buying them by this stage), and then they choose to open the album with some of the most insipid, turgid, beige-sounding songs of the year. The Joker in particular, featured in a Levis ad, so a nailed on number one, really perplexes me now. What was it about this song (apart from its ubiquity on the TV) that made it so popular, particularly when it failed to score on its original release in the 70s? Lest we forget this is the song that stopped Deee-Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart from reaching number one. Elton John’s song is a mystery too, since Sacrifice and it’s double A side brother, the much better, Healing Hands, had BOTH been released as singles the year before, and neither had charted!

The dirge doesn’t stop there. It Must have Been Love isn’t a bad ballad (and I was sure it had been a chart-topper but it stopped at number 3), but following on from Baldy Reg (still in hat-wearing rather than bad weave mode) just demonstrates why you shouldn’t pack all your smooch songs too close together. Four songs in and NOW 18 is making me reconsider whether this blog will ever get finished. A lively horn section and a small orchestra jerk me back into action. Sadly it’s courtesy of Phil Collins’ Something Happened On The Way To Heaven, surely one of the worst song titles of all time. The song’s alright, nothing special, but I’m probably giving it an easier ride because of what came before it. Collins somehow manages to snag himself a prime location as the first artist name on the cover, a spot normally reserved for the coveted side one, track one artist.

Just as side one is starting to feel like a complete washout, NOW 18’s first forgotten gem arrives. Last year Wilson Phillips’ Hold On got itself a bit of a mini revival thanks to the awful Bridesmaids movie (a film whose best scene features a group of ladies in wedding dresses suffering explosive diarrhoea…), but listening to it again here it still generates that “I haven’t heard this for years” feeling. Given they are the daughters of various Beach Boys and Mamas and Papas, it shouldn’t surprise that they can hold a cracking pop tune. It’s ridiculously uplifting and nice in a fun way rather than being nice because it’s not dreadful.

The mood then drops immediately, but to be fair, it is for one of the best songs on the album, if not the whole of the 90s: Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor. Given its release date, this really should have featured on NOW 17, and one can only suspect it was held back so as not to affect sales of Ms O’Connor’s album (which sold very well, thank you very much). As breathtakingly good as the song is, it brings to a close the least inspiring side of NOW I’ve experienced thus far.

And things don’t improve on the flipside either, at least not at first. Thanks to the movie Ghost, Unchained Melody found itself vying with The Joker for the title of Biggest Selling Re-release of 1990. The Righteous Brothers were victorious, becoming the biggest selling single of the whole year into the bargain. I’ve always found this endlessly popular (and endlessly covered) song to be a bit of a slog and in the Righteous Brothers discography I’ve always preferred You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling and the less well-known Ebb Tide, both of which were released as a double A-side later in the year, but performed less well.

Now That's what I Call a Pop Group Publicity Photo. I love this a bit too much. — **Now That’s what I Call a Pop Group Publicity Photo. I love this a bit too much.**

An act whose chart career seemed to end almost at the same time as the the 80s was Belinda Carlisle. Her chart placings had been steadily declining since she burst onto the scene at the tail end of 1987, with successive singles registering lower and lower, so it was a bit of a surprise that the fifth (FIFTH!) single from her Runaway Horses album would not only be a hit, but would be her biggest hit since Heaven Is A Place on Earth. It’s not that much of a surprise though when you learn that single was the car- flogging We Want The Same Thing. Now regarded as one of her best-loved songs, the single version was a radical reworking of the version on the album, at least that’s what Wikipedia says. Not having a copy of the album to hand I can’t verify this, and the interwebs are no help either, offering only this, more famous version. It follows the template of Heaven to a tee, and is a brilliant pop single as a result. A number six finish seems a bit harsh now for such a great pop nugget, but the charts were much tougher in those days.

Sadly, the charts weren’t quite tough enough to prevent Status Quo’s Anniversary Waltz from reaching number two! Obviously conceived to try and cash in on the success of Jive Bunny the previous year, The Quo take a three-chord-wander their way through a succession of 50s rock n’ roll standards with all the enthusiasm of a pub band on a wet Tuesday night. Dreadful. Much better is INXS’ Suicide Blonde. The first new single after the massive success of the Kick album, this was always going to be a tricky prospect. Luckily, it still sounds pretty damn good, though that harmonica does have a tendency to wow and irritate in equal measure. INXS takes us into a cul-de-sac of ‘indie’ tunes, but with baggy imploding as quickly as it started, it’s left to two old hands and one doomed new act to provide our left-field choices this time around.

Public Image Limited’s (PiL) Don’t Ask Me is the big “huh?” on NOW 18. Never a big hit (and PiL were never more than critically-acclaimed rather than chart successes) it is a pretty good tune. Not as good as This Is Not A Love Song or Rise, this does strike me as filler for a NOW album. Were Virgin really trying to sell PiL to the kids of the early 90s? One band that definitely was successfully sold back to the kids was Talk Talk. Never as successful as they should have been, a greatest hits album led to a couple of top 20 hits with It’s My Life (on show here) becoming their biggest ever hit, 6 years after its original release. Such a brilliant track, it opened up the band to whole new audience (myself included) who had not been aware of them. Listened to now it’s easy to spot Talk Talk’s influence over so much of the alternative scene in the intervening years, it’s shameful it took a contract-fulfilling compilation to get them noticed in their own country.

You mean I could have my landline, broadband and TV all handled by just ONE 80's experimental rock band? — **I could have my landline, broadband and TV all handled by just ONE 80’s experimental alternative rock band?**

The La’s also never got their dues and are more widely regarded as one hit wonders. Due to its ubiquity, it may be hard to fathom that There She Goes only reached the dizzy heights of number 18 and remains their only top 40 single. Despite it being a wonderful piece of jaunty pop fluff (allegedly about heroin addiction) I’ll gladly never hear it again. If you like it, I implore you to buy their debut (and to date, only studio) album. There at least five songs on it better than this.

Side two then finishes itself off with the seemingly obligatory inclusions for Tina Turner’s Be Gentle With Me Baby (kind of like The First Cut Is The Deepest by way of Stay With Me Baby) and Robert palmer and UB40’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, which is playful if not exactly good. Palmer helps a lot.

Perhaps reflecting the shift in sales to CD’s, there seems to be a definite attempt to theme the halves of the albums now, with, usually, sides three and four given over to dance music, as is the case here. This reflects the charts at the time, but it’s telling that five of the number ones on NOW 18 were on the first half, in with all the rock and pop, while the second half, almost exclusively dance-orientated features just the one, which we’ll come to in a moment. The Pet Shop Boys return with So Hard, and ‘proper’ bands get a brief look in thanks to the wonderful remix of The Cure’s already wonderful Close To Me, and the dreadful Ben Liebrand remix of Sting’s already dreadful An Englishman In New York. There’s also the jaw-droppingly simple but effective remix treatment given to Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner, which still impresses.

Producer-led dance was taking over though: Fascinating Rhythm from Bass-o-matic (which I always thought was a great name for a washing machine) sounded great in 1990, but sounds awfully generic now. It’s probably no fault of the song, but the endless, pointless samples are over the top and irritate enormously. Soul II Soul’s Missing You is pretty ropey stuff compared to their 1989 vintage, despite the presence of Kym Mazelle on vocals. This should have made for a stronger vocal than Carol Wheeler, but somehow it ends up sounding even weedier. Also disappointing is Neneh Cherry’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin; a self-conscious attempt to re-write Prince’s awesome Sign o’ The Times, it fails completely. Cherry’s vocal is fine, and the subject is laudable, but it feels contrived and cheap. Blue Pearl’s Little Brother is only here in anticipation of it being as big a hit as its predecessor, Naked In The Rain. Not a chance, but it’s not as bad as I remember considering it’s a very difficult song to remember.

Please tell me this image doesn't need a caption... — **Please tell me this image doesn’t need a caption…**

Side four feels like it will be the proper party side, kicking off with Kylie’s Step Back In Time (a change in chart fortunes no doubt prompting her re-appearance, two years after I Should Be So Lucky appeared on NOW 11). Kim Appleby’s Don’t Worry is one of the best songs on NOW 18. Lyrically it’s about getting over a bloke, but everyone knew it was really about the tragic death of her sister, Mel. For a floor-filler it’s genuinely moving stuff. The public agreed pushing it to a number two slot that, sadly, subsequent releases couldn’t match. It was produced by Ken from Bros, fact fans!

Next we get two absolute jokes of tunes. Technotronic’s Megamix (I can’t believe that’s the title, but that’s how it’s credited… just Megamix) is one of the most shameless rip-offs I’ve ever heard from the music industry. Having sold the public the same song four times (only Rocking Over The Beat showed any sign of variety) they then cut all four together, along with a fifth, unidentified track, and sell it back to the kids again! It’s like KFC taking all your left over bones and bits of skin, re-heating them and then selling them back to you as “Spicy Scraps” or something. And given that all the songs are bloody identical, it couldn’t have been too much of a chore to mix them all together. One point of mild interest comes from the fact that MC Eric (pfft) is rapping a different lyric from This Beat is Technotronic. Meh.

Next comes the gobsmackingly awful Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Polka Yellow Dot Bikini from Bombalurina (aka Timmy Mallett, crazy name, crazy guy). You all know this, don’t you? Bloody awful… number one all summer… novelty crap… Well, I’m shocked to report that you are wrong. All of you. It’s actually pretty good. I don’t mean in a Pet Sounds/ The Queen Is Dead sense of the word good. We’re not talking about topping a Q magazine list of the greatest number ones of all time. I mean, it’s good in a good, fun pop song kind of way. On NOW 12 there was some discussion (in my head) of the KLF’s Timelords project and how it was a cynical attempt to ‘create’ a number one record. They succeeded. I see Bombalurina as an attempt to use the same principles but to create, not a deliberately bad record but, a good fun pop record. It samples The Incredible Bongo Band, Holly Johnson, Gil Scott Heron and that “ah yeah” heard on every record in 1990. Mallett can’t sing but holds the whole thing together. And let’s not forget, the song is not some great work of art to start with; it’s pop fluff, Mallet just updated it, retaining the fun (an aspect of pop that was slowly being eradicated) and having a massive hit into the bargain. And all power to him. The man was one of the greatest kids TV presenters ever and by all accounts is a thoroughly decent gent. I’ll not hear a word said against him.

Legend — **Utterly utterly utterly utterly brilliant**

Fun pop continues with Betty Boo’s wonderful Where Are You Baby?, which is still brilliant, and Dirty Cash from The Adventures of Stevie V. Not a favourite of mine back in 1990, listened to now (for the first time in two decades) it’s actually rather splendid. Dark, moody and still danceable, it’s just a shame about the incongruous rap that appears halfway through. It’s completely out of place, but luckily, quite short.

The whole thing finishes off with a couple of smoochers. That old Scottish rapper McHammer deconstruction of The Chi-Lites’ Have You Seen Her? deserves little mention, but Jimmy Somerville’s To Love Somebody is rather special. Giving his best vocal performance for years, it somehow manages to make white-boy reggae listenable again. Compared to UB40 this feels a lot more heartfelt and honest. But it’s another notch on the cover version/re-release bedpost, taking NOW 18’s total to a whopping 16 songs! It’s a pleasant end to the album but one which is indicative of the album’s underwhelming whole.

An underwhelming hole, yeaterday — **An underwhelming hole, yesterday**

In NOW 18’s defence (a bit) 1990 was far from a banner year for pop music, and was definitely a transitional year. Stock, Aitken and waterman were on their way out, with ‘purer’ dance music coming to the fore, mainly from Europe. It wasn’t all good, far from it, but it was to become the dominant sound of the charts and arguably still is today. It should be no surprise to learn that NOW only had two regular releases in 1990, but there were three NOW Dance releases (I may come to NOW Dance at a later date). Indie took a bath, and it would be a few more years before it would re-emerge in any meaningful way in the NOW universe. The notable absence is rap. While the charts today are happy to mix hip hop with chart regulars, the record buyers of 1990 were notably unsure, and after a few fruitful years, it too seemed to be on the wane in the mainstream.

NOW 18 is a fair reflection of its cover: shouting from the rooftops about good it is, and how big its hits are, just like the Hits Album used to, but just like Hits, it flatters to deceive. There is some absolute class on show here, but it’s suffocated by old songs, insipid ballads, poor programming and a lack of innovation. Ironic given its ‘innovative’ new look.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 18

Release date

19^th November 1990

Biggest tracks

Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor

It Must have Been Love – Roxette

Unchained Melody – The Righteous Brothers

Forgotten tracks

Little Brother – Blue Pearl

Missing You – Soul II Soul ft Kym Mazelle

Hidden gems

Hold On – Wilson Phillips

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini – Bombalurina (seriously… try it again)

To Love Somebody – Jimmy Sommervile

What’s missing

King of Wishful Thinking – Go West

Kinky Afro – Happy Mondays

The elephant on the room is the best single of 1990…

Groove is in the Heart – Deee Lite, which had sadly snapped up for The Hit Pack, the latest incarnation of the Hits series.

Track listing

Side one
A Little Time	The Beautiful South
The Joker	Steve Miller Band
Sacrifice	Elton John
It Must Have Been Love	Roxette
Something Happened On The Way To Heaven	Phil Collins
Hold On (Single Edit)	Wilson Phillips
Nothing Compares 2 U	Sinéad O’Connor

Side two
Unchained Melody	The Righteous Brothers
(We Want) The Same Thing	Belinda Carlisle
Anniversary Waltz (Part One)	Status Quo
Suicide Blonde	INXS
Don’t Ask Me	Public Image Ltd
It’s My Life	Talk Talk
There She Goes	The La’s
Be Tender With Me Baby	Tina Turner
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight	Robert Palmer Featuring UB40

Side three
So Hard	Pet Shop Boys
Fascinating Rhythm	Bass-o-Matic
Missing You	Soul II Soul Featuring Kym Mazelle
Tom’s Diner	DNA featuring Suzanne Vega
An Englishman In New York	Sting
Close To Me	The Cure
I’ve Got You Under My Skin	Neneh Cherry
Little Brother	Blue Pearl

Side four
Step Back In Time	Kylie Minogue
Don’t Worry	Kim Appleby
Megamix	Technotronic
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini	Bombalurina
Where Are You Baby	Betty Boo
Dirty Cash (Money Talks)	The Adventures Of Stevie V
Have You Seen Her	M C Hammer
To Love Somebody	Jimmy Somerville

August 1, 2013

NOW 16 – Not The Man You Used To Be

NOW 16 signals the end of an era. Not only was it the last NOW album of the 80s, the decade of its birth, but it was also the last NOW album I owned. 1989 proved to be, pretty much, the end of my love affair with chart music. I’d been dabbling with big brother’s records for a while, but his imminent departure out on his own would mean I’d have to start buying my own copy of the NME now, and my meagre pocket money was not going to stretch to that, Smash Hits AND saving for NOW albums. Something had to give, and it proved to be all things pop that bit the dust.

Looked back from a remove of two and a half decades, NOW 16 confirms a lot of what had been happening over the previous couple of years: dance music was now very much part of the mainstream; Stock, Aitken, Waterman had half the charts sewn up; pop bands were being replaced by pretty-boy ‘manufactured’ acts; and any attempt to create something meaningful would result in the kind of overblown, overwrought and over-long musical pot-pourri that produces the likes of Sowing The Seeds Of Love. Amazingly, opening the compilation in a near full version (just 30 seconds shy of the album version, but still much more than they’d play on the radio), it’s a huge, expensive mess, but I still love it, because it’s a huge, expensive mess, and it’s easily the most interesting song on NOW 16. The rest of the album is mostly a display of pop blandness at its most beige, and was indicative of the severe lack of ‘top chart hits’ EMI, Virgin and Polygram produced in ‘89, but also how dreadful the public’s tastes had gotten.

With the exception of Tears for Fears, side one is fairly ordinary, without being particularly bad. Belinda Carlisle’s Leave A Light On is strating to demonstrate her lack of variety (or rather that of her writers); Erasure’s Drama is good, but not a classic; and Debbie Harry’s I Want That Man similarly pales in comparison to the best of Blondie, or even French Kissing in the USA.

“What about Sydney Youngblood?” absolutely no one cries. If Only I Could is a sickly sweet “can’t we all just get alone” ode to world peace with a weedy, hand-clap-heavy, dance beat nicked from Raze’s Break 4 Love, with added funky wah-wah AND Spanish guitar, for no reason other than they had to add something to make it more interesting. It didn’t work.

The only picture of Sydney Youngblood you're likely to see anytime soon — **The only picture of Sydney Youngblood you’re likely to see anytime soon**

Fondly remembered, but pretty dated is the return of Curiosity Killed The Cat with Name and Number. It’s much better than their earlier stuff; it’s got a neat line in synthesised saxophone and provided the inspiration for a De La Soul song, so not all bad. But people only ever remember the chorus, which everyone my age knows verbatim, and it goes on forever. The Beautiful South and Wet Wet Wet both provide lesser-loved tracks, with You Keep It All In and Sweet Surrender, the latter of which sounds like it was written for some god-awful US teen drama.

Side two does not improve things immediately, but eventually springs a few surprises. Queen’s Breakthru is among their weaker efforts (though conversely, is one of the better singles off of The Miracle album), but that is followed by the only true ‘classic’ track on NOW 16: Tina Turner’s The Best. It’s not a favourite of mine, but it’s the closest thing we have to a legendary, iconic song here and I don’t think you have to like a classic to appreciate that it is one. To this day, there are people who can’t hear it without doing Ms Bullock’s crazy horse/Tommy Cooper impression dance.

Far from classic is Transvision Vamp’s Born To Be Sold, a forerunner of the ‘list’ song that would become ubiquitous in 1990 (Madonna’s Vogue, The Beloved’s Hello etc). It’s pleasant, nostalgic and different to the raucous, scream-a-thons that made them stars (alright, made Wendy James a star). It also demonstrates that Ms James did not have the best of voices, and this single was the start of their relatively swift decline. Oddity number one appears with the long forgotten Wendy and Lisa with Waterfall ’89, the ‘89 indicating this was a remix of an ‘87 track about their leaving The Revolution, Prince’s old backing band. Released as a follow up to the chart-dodging Lolly, Lolly, and minor hit Satisfaction, Waterfall also failed to reach the top 40. It’s a good tune, though different to the funky grooves of those other singles, and worth a listen.

A top 40 hit was probably the least that was expected of Kate Bush, whose The Sensual World appears here to baffle and confuse unsuspecting teenage listeners. I’d forgotten how good this was even if it doesn’t scale the wondrous heights of her classic work. Certainly, only she could have created it and that, in my book, makes it worthwhile.

Oddity number two comes from the fact that NOW 16 was the subject of some format fiddling. The CD version contained three bonus tracks dotted across, and the first of these appears mid-way through side two, with the Fine Young Cannibals and the wonderful I’m Not The Man I’m Used To Be. I think this qualifies as the best track on the album; I’ve always loved this and never really understood why. It’s fairly basic, even monotonous, melody-wise, but somehow that works in its favour. The thoughtful lyrics seem to resonate with me much more now perhaps than they did all those years ago. It would sadly prove to be The Cannibals’ final chart hit, bar one minor, greatest hits-flogging new track, The Flame in 1996.

Also disappearing over the pop horizon was Then Jericho. Sugarbox is the kind of overblown balladry that gave rock a bad name back in the 80s. A million miles better than the likes of Whitesnake, it may be, but it’s still got that stadium pomposity, massive orchestrations and barely-concealed naughtiness of the title. Their collaboration with Belinda Carlisle, What Does It Take?, was much better, but failed to make much of a dent on the charts. Also saying farewell to NOW was Living in a Box, whose final hit (and joint best-seller with their eponymous debut single) really sounds like they’re taking the piss. Always good pop song writers, Room In Your Heart sounds like a parody of the kind of heart-tugging ballads so popular at the time. It’s completely beige and inoffensive bar the bizarre ‘other-worldly’ opening, but once we hit the third chorus and Richard Darbyshire is bellowing his head off like a man possessed, you know we’ve entered a whole new realm of scariness altogether. It’s probably the same realm where Richard Marx lurks, awaiting unsuspecting teenage girls to bump off and dump in the river. But that was the other song he sung. Right Here Waiting is the song he sings AFTER he’s bumped them off, and he’s sitting in his bedroom crying over a photo of them, slowly rocking back and forth.

A boy's best friend is his mother — **A boy’s best friend is his mother**

Bizarrely, things don’t immediately pick up on the start of side three, and these things normally do. By now, this was established as the opening of the dance (and pop pick n mix) party. Technically, yes, Milli Vanilli were a dance act, but Girl I’m Gonna Miss You is a dreary, 2 am, “this one’s for the ladies” sad sack track and is an awful way to start the second half of the collection. Given that the track listing (and programming) of a NOW album involved a certain amount of brinkmanship, you have to wonder what favours were done by ‘Vanilli’s’ people to get them such a prominent spot on the album with a wholly inappropriate song. Thank god for the Rebel MC, returning with Street Tuff. A much bigger hit than Just keep Rockin’, I’m not sure it’s as good though, sounding much more chart friendly and commercial than the earlier track. Still good fun though.

Bobby Brown’s dominance of 1989 continued with On Our Own, one of the oldest tracks on show, hailing from July. It sounds like exactly what it is, an old, unreleased track, dusted off and given a new verse about the Ghostbusters thanks to its inclusion in that summers’ Ghostbusters II (along with Brown himself, who pocketed a cool half mill for opening a door and asking Dan Aykroyd for an autograph). One of his better tunes, it has dated horribly and anyone not around in 89 will wonder what all the fuss about Brown was all about. Technotronic’s Pump Up The Jam on the other hand is one of those tracks that you know would be a hit pretty much whenever it was released in the past 25 years. While not the most nutritious of jams, it’s pop reduced to its bare bones, being almost an alchemic as 2 Unlimited’s No Limits, while never being quite as irritating.

The second bonus track on the CD is L’il Louis’ truly odd French Kiss. What begins as a bassy, sexy, stripped down dance track descends into pure filth around the 90 second mark with the arrival of a lady who certainly sounds as if she is enjoying herself. I still vividly recall first hearing this track in the family car one Sunday evening on the top 40 chart show. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed me or my mum; dad took it in his stride, declared it “a load of crap” and calmly switched to radio 2 with little fuss, returning to the charts a few minutes later. I’ve no idea how many times it was played on Radio 1 but it can’t have been many. To hear it on a NOW album is a truly disturbing experience (especially on a packed commuter train, as I did this morning, wondering if anyone else can hear it).

**A rather obvious, but not rude illustration of French Kiss**

Sanity is restored, to an extent, with Adeva’s I Thank You, which is a huge disappointment following on from her barnstorming Respect from NOW 14. D-Mob’s only just-about-listenable track, Come On And Get My Love is up next, made palatable by the astonishing voice of a then just 20 year old Cathy Dennis, but the voice sounds at least ten years older than that. Briefly a star in her own right, Dennis is now best known as a writer of other people’s massive hits, including Kylie’s legendary Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. Come On And Get My Love would be nothing without her contribution, which says a lot about her talent. Two cool, late night tunes finish off side three, with De La Soul’s lovely Eye Know, and Inner City’s Watcha Gonna Do With My Lovin’, a brief return to form for them before they slid into obscurity.

The final side of NOW 16 is possibly the best example of everything that was wrong with pop, circa 1989. The last side was often used a dumping ground for the cast offs and filler tracks, and on NOW 16 it’s no different. Two tracks stand out: Shakespeare’s Sister’s wonderful You’re History was a brilliant breath of fresh air on its original release. Now surpassed by the massive success of Stay a few years later, it shouldn’t be forgotten how exciting this sounded. To think this was from someone who was in Bananarama, and who was this crazy falsetto-bawling woman in the background? It’s got the now-familiar Sister’s oddness sprinkled all over it and I still love it. The other stand out is Neneh Cherry’s Kisses On The Wind, which severely underperformed on its original release, reaching just number 20. I find this truly odd, as it’s on a par with her previous singles. A sexy, hot summer tune it seems a tad out of place on this winter release, but its quality cannot be denied.

So what of the rest of side four? Well, there’s a double dose of SAW, with Big Fun’s Can’t Shake the Feeling, which no one remembers, and an unholy alliance with Cliff which resulted in the god-awful I Just Don’t Have The Heart, in which The English Elvis (pfft) continues a loveless relationship and strings the ‘partner’ along because he hasn’t got the balls to tell them he doesn’t love them anymore, if ever. The bastard. Former SAW poster boys, Brother Beyond attempted a comeback without the axis of evil, with Drive On, which reached the dizzy heights of number 39 (and was the final CD only track, at least with this one you can understand why it was only included on the CD). Jimmy Somerville’s Comment Te Dire Adieu (a tentative first solo single, duetting with June Miles-Kingston) just sounds odd. Singing in French is perfectly fine if you’re French. When you’re a wee Scottish guy who looks like a potato it’s a tad off-putting.

The final few tracks pick up the quality a bit, even if they are now all but forgotten. There have been worse cover versions in the NOW series so far, but Oh Well by…err… Oh Well is certainly among the strangest. Who thought a cover of a bluesy Fleetwood Mac weirdy-beardy track from 1969, given a dance beat, would be a good idea? Well, a German producer did, roping in some UK musicians to assist him. To be fair, the track has been covered several times, by the likes of Joe Jackson, Tom Petty and Steve Marriott, but never like this. Euro-dance-tastic, but not camp, it’s a truly once in a lifetime experience, as proved by the failure to follow it up with a similar sounding version of Radar Love. It’s got a certain charm to it but smells of the end of the end of the 80s.

Redhead Kingpin (and the FBI)’s Do the Right Thing seems to be looking forward, rather than back, and sits in a strange middle ground between De La Soul and Public Enemy. Not featuring in the Spike Lee film of the same name (from no doubt where the title came from) it WAS featured in the film People Under The Stairs! It was their only UK hit but still has a certain something that conjures up a late 80s vibe. Unlike Fresh 4 featuring Lizz E (!), whose dreadful cover version of Wishing on a Star finishes off the album and is possibly the worst closing song of the series. Whilst it features that weird, ubiquitous hollow waste bin drum sound which seemed to feature on every other dance track for a couple of years, this also features an awful, out of tune vocal performance and layer upon layer of noises. There’s no melody, just odd trumpet noises, dolphin (or bird) noises, whistles; anything they could slap over it to cover up the singing, which is also passed through about 6 echo chambers at the same time. And I haven’t even mentioned the dreadful Cockney rap that appears out of nowhere towards the end. An absolute, sorry mess.

And that was the end of the eighties.

Just a week before NOW 16 hit the shops, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays both appeared on the same, epoch-making, earth-shattering edition of Top Of The Pops. At least it was for my generation. The odd alternative act may have snuck into the charts before, but since new wave died out in the early 80s, the charts were definitely pop’s domain. Soul II Soul and Inner City had breathed fresh new life into British dance music, and De La Soul and Public Enemy was doing it across the pond. I think it’s telling that the TV ad focusses on the dance tracks rather than the pop stars.

The mainstream of 1989 was in a sorry state, leaving NOW in a state itself, so much so that the revived Hits series (now rebranded as Monster Hits) had nicked all the number ones from the second half of the year, including Black Box’s Ride on Time and Lisa Stansfield’s All Around the World. They even managed to snaffle a Madonna track (Cherish) for inclusion. NOW 16, by comparison, looked out of date. Y’know, for kids.

1990 was around the corner, bringing with it a fresh approach from the compilers. It was time for NOW to follow the public and embrace the left field like never before. It may be another half decade before ‘indie’ dominated the charts, but for now, and for NOW, 1990 would signal a change of style, mood and attitude. Sadly, it would be doing it without me…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 16

Release date

2nd December 1989

Biggest tracks

The Best – Tina Turner

Sowing The Seeds Of Love – Tears for Fears

Lost gems

I’m Not The Man I Used To Be – Fine Young Cannibals

The Sensual World – Kate Bush

Forgotten tracks

Kisses On The Wind – Neneh Cherry

Waterfall ‘89 – Wendy and Lisa (youtube only has the original version unfortunately)

Oh Well – Oh Well

What’s missing?

Personal Jesus – Depeche Mode

You can’t really blame the compilers for failing to include Stone Roses’ Fools Gold or Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah as both were released far too late for consideration.

Track listing

Side one
Sowing The Seeds Of Love	Tears For Fears
Leave A Light On	Belinda Carlisle
Drama!	Erasure
I Want That Man	Deborah Harry
If Only I Could	Sydney Youngblood
Name And Number	Curiosity Killed The Cat
You Keep It All In	The Beautiful South
Sweet Surrender	Wet Wet Wet

Side two
Breakthru	Queen
The Best	Tina Turner
Born To Be Sold	Transvision Vamp
Waterfall ’89	Wendy & Lisa
The Sensual World	Kate Bush
I’m Not The Man I Used To Be	Fine Young Cannibals (CD Only)
Sugarbox	Then Jerico
Room In Your Heart	Living In A Box
Right Here Waiting	Richard Marx

Side three
Girl I’m Gonna Miss You	Milli Vanilli
Street Tuff	The Rebel MC & Double Trouble
On Our Own	Bobby Brown
Pump Up The Jam	Technotronic featuring Felly
French Kiss	Lil Louis (CD Only)
I Thank You	Adeva
C’mon And Get My Love	D-Mob & Cathy Dennis
Eye Know	De La Soul
Watcha Gonna Do With My Lovin’	Inner City

Side four
Can’t Shake The Feeling	Big Fun
I Just Don’t Have The Heart	Cliff Richard
Comment Te Dire Adieu	Jimmy Somerville Featuring June Miles Kingston
Drive On	Brother Beyond (CD Only)
You’re History	Shakespeare’s Sister
Oh Well	Oh Well
Kisses On The Wind	Neneh Cherry
Do The Right Thing	Redhead Kingpin
Wishing On A Star	Fresh Four ft Lizz E

June 7, 2013

NOW 12 – the compilation they forgot to bomb, come, nuclear bombs

So what does summer sound like to you? Maybe it’s some Hi-NRG dance track imported from the med by swathes of hormonal twenty-somethings. Perhaps it’s some cool, magic-hour ballad sung as the sun sets on another fleeting August romance. It may even be, at a stretch, the sound of Daleks screeching “loadsamoney” over a Gary Glitter sample. As dreadful as all those may sound, they are all present and correct on NOW 12, given a summer theme on its cover, and ALL are preferable to the dirge that opens the album.

It’s always difficult to criticise charity records, particularly ones put together for a fledgling charity, with the best intentions, and which did amazing work in raising the charity’s profile. Sadly Wet Wet Wet’s awful version of The Beatles’ With a Little help From My Friends is pretty much indicative of how lazy and dreary the 80’s pop scene was becoming. The song was part of a re-recording of the entire Sgt Pepper album, as Sgt Pepper Knew My Father, by contemporary artists, organised by the NME to raise money for the then upstart ChildLine charity. Among the other artists involved were the more NME-friendly Wedding Present, Sonic Youth, Frank Sidebottom (!) and The Fall’s amazing cover of A Day In The Life. Also included, and backing up the Wet’s single, was a heart-breaking version of She’s Leaving Home by Billy Bragg. It’s emotional, moving, relates to the cause at hand in a much more human way than the Wet’s “let’s record the song right here”, slapped together atrocity. For a number one record, and one deemed worthy of opening a NOW album, it’s probably been all but forgotten now, and good thing too. Bragg’s song would have made a nice closer to NOW 12, to bookend the whole album. Lest we forget, the single was a double-A-side, so Bragg did technically get to number one also. Good fact to remember for pub quizzes, if you are ever asked what was Billy Bragg’s only chart topper.

**Smash Hits used this joke at least twice per issue in 1988**

After this false start, NOW 12 settles into a summer groove which probably seemed very appealing and astonishingly up to date in July 1988, but now looks awfully dated and has one reaching for the ffwd button (or skip, you modern thing you) rather than the volume up. Belinda Carlisle’s Circle in the Sand has not aged well and what seemed impossibly exotic and sensual now sounds cryptic and downright odd, even if it does a good job of conjuring images of Californian beaches at dusk. A good thing too when you grew up in the mud hole of Weston-super-Mare. Maxi Priest’s Wild World has fared slightly better, probably because it’s a cover of a song from the 60s, and they generally do. It’s definitely chart friendly pop reggae, which was the turn also taken by former purveyors of the ‘real thing’, Aswad. They no doubt jumped the bandwagon on the back of the surprise success of their former single, Don’t Turn Around. The follow-up, Give A Little Love, on show here, is the kind of reggae that gives reggae a bad name.

Four tracks in, and you are already beginning to fear for the integrity of the NOW series… Has the 80s finally got so bad, that even a NOW album can’t collect together a listenable collection of Top Chart Hits? Just when you think things can’t get any worse, pop comes flying to save the day in the nick of time. Climie Fisher’s Love Changes Everything is probably the best pop song on the whole album. I never liked it as a kid (thinking it soppy and girly) but now, as far as pure pop goes, I think it’s an amazing song. And like all the best pop, you can’t really explain or define why it works so well. It’s just perfect. The fact that Climie Fisher didn’t fully capitalize on its success (cruelly kept at number two by The Pet Shop Boys’ Heart) is truly baffling. Maybe the Stock, Aitken, Waterman pop puppet conveyor belt did for them. The fact is they were better song writers and producers than SAW, but like KFC, SAW knew the secret formula (possibly heroin) which kept the kids hooked and coming back for more. We’ll come back to SAW shortly.

In a similar Adult-Orientated vein Elton John is back with, what I think is his best song of the 1980s. So of course, I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That was ridiculously unsuccessful, reaching only number 30. A stomping pop song with a wonderfully odd hydraulic hissing drum noise and a brilliantly camp video, I have a theory its chart chances were scuppered in its first week when on the top 40 show the CD stopped and the DJ (possibly Bruno Brookes) skipped to the next song in the charts. Given that the countdown was the only chance a of record buyers heard songs, I wonder if this had an impact on its sales the following week. Or maybe I’ve been reading too many 9/11 conspiracy theories.

The young, impressionable me that didn’t care much for Climie Fisher did, for some odd reason, adore Scritti Politti’s Oh Patti, but I’ve no idea why. Listened to now, it’s got that familiar ‘plinky plonky’ artificial sound so abundant in a multitude of bland tunes around at the same time (some present on NOW 12), so I can only suppose what raises it out of the beige, for me, is the impression I always get from Scritti Politti that they are not taking themselves terribly seriously. There is always some witty word play, and a wry grin on Green Gartside’s face in every video. You get the impression he knows exactly how ludicrous this all sounds. It’s probably not a valid excuse for blandness to admit that you know it’s bland, and that’s sort of the point, but it does make you listen with slightly different ears. Someone who needs different ears was the person who edited the NOW 12 page on Wikipedia which (until recently) stated that the version of Phil Collin’s In The Air Tonight included was listed as the ’88 remix, but was actually the original recording. Sorry, but it is most certainly the remix, featuring as it does, a pointless, and barely audible, extra drum track from the start of the track, whereas the original, as we all know from our ‘oh so witty’ chocolate ads, features no drums until the gorilla starts playing them halfway through. This song will appear later on our journey on the back of said advert.

Wrote a song about someone drowning after seeing someone drown. And is a gorilla. — **Wrote a song about watching someone drown after watching someone drown. And is a gorilla.**

After all that depression, side two puts us briefly back in the mood for a summer party promised by the cover, with the still wonderful Don’t Go, from Hothouse Flowers. Of course, the song is so impossibly upbeat it must actually be about something really sad, which it is, being about the death of a loved one. But, hey!, it’s still wonderfully jolly and its mix of harmonica, glockenspiel, accordion, Hammond organ and even bagpipes, can’t fail to put a smile on your face. Such jollity is short-lived, however, with Moz arriving to remind us that Everyday is Like Sunday. Growing up in a seaside town that they forgot to bomb, this song has always had an extra frisson for me and I still think it’s his best solo single. It doesn’t suffer from a too contemporary production that befell too much of his solo stuff (and some Smiths’ tracks too).

From the tunefully downbeat we move to the dreamy pop balladry of Danny Wilson’s Mary’s Prayer…which I hate. I know I’m invoking some pop fatwa here, but I really dislike this song. Maybe it’s the fact it rhymes “careless” with “care less” in the first verse. After that I’m done. You can’t come back from such a crass piece of song writing as that. And if it’s so great why did it have to be released three times before it was a hit? This wasn’t a song failing to find an audience; this was the record company hitting the public over the head with the record until we bought it. Which we (by which I mean you) did in our (your) droves. And, the minor success of The Second Summer of Love aside, Danny Wilson were never to trouble the charts again. Go back to football management, Danny.

Also rubbish is yet another appearance for Johnny Hates Jazz (another act that the record companies loved to batter the public into submission with), with Heart of Gold, one of the few upbeat, jazz-influenced pop songs about the sex industry. Much better is Voice of the Beehive’s Don’t Call Me Baby. Good solid pop and a track that rarely gets an airing these days. You may be surprised to discover this was not their only NOW appearance, but we’ll get to their second in due course. Hair rock finds itself demoted from a whole side to just three tracks at the end of side two, with Iron Maiden making their only NOW appearance with Can I Play with Madness?, Heart’s turgid In Dreams, and T’Pau’s I Will Be With You, again a better song than China in Your Hand.

I've been slagging them off for three albums, I could at least show a photo of them — **I’ve been slagging them off for three albums, I could at least show a photo of them**

Side two’s mix of and match of styles is probably a reflection of the fact that three and four are where the real party is at, and the first sign that NOW were starting to sequence the albums with CD’s in mind as well as the four-sided LPs and tapes. What follows is a huge dance fest of rap, soul, house, samples, Hi-NRG and enough Rolands to keep Grange Hill running for four more series (If you’re younger than about 30 that will mean nothing to you). There’s also four further number ones, the first of which is now probably one of the rarest tracks to appear on a NOW album, as it never appeared on any other album and the single was deleted.

The Timelords’ Doctorin’ the Tardis was, of course, the work of pop pranksters The KLF, before they became rich and famous under that name. Part of their attempt to completely subvert the music industry from within and bring it crashing to its knees, they created a massive number one record, made a fortune (which they allegedly set fire to in the name of art), used the song as the basis for a bestselling book, and got Gary Glitter back on Top of the Pops when such an act was just irritating rather than deeply subversive. Doctorin’ The Tardis is dreadful, but that’s not really the point. It demonstrated that the public will buy any old crap, which WAS the point. I’d forgotten that the Daleks said “Bosh, bosh, loadsamoney” though. That made me chuckle.

Chuckles of a very different kind are supplied by Sabrina’s Boys, mainly as a result of the fact the over-endowed chanteuse can’t sing for toffee. The song is now only remembered for (and was possibly only ever bought as a result of) the video which featured Sabrina “accidentally” falling out of her bikini top for a split second. No chance of such shenanigans from Bananarama, sadly. I Want You Back was the first single featuring the long forgotten Jacquie O’Sullivan. Given the shameless candy floss sound it’s a surprise to find it had actually been recorded when Siobhan Fahey was still in the group, and her vocals re-done by O’Sullivan But it’s far removed from Venus or Cruel Summer, and sounds like a rejected Kylie b-side. So of course it was their biggest hit in years.

One of the biggest hits of the year (the 5^th biggest to be precise) was, of course, Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now. Not much I can say about this that you probably don’t already know except it’s a brilliant pop tune (obviously, because it’s a cover of an old 60s song) but I always prefered Debbie Gibson, who, being signed to Atlantic (a subsidiary of Warner Brothers/WEA) only appeared on Hits albums. Boo.

SAW return with Hazell Dean’s Who’s Leaving Who, which is far better than the Banana-fluff from earlier. Dean could never be a big chart star today, sadly, with her fuller figure, butch looks and songs that sound like an Essex Gloria Gaynor. She’d probably (and in fact does) have a cult following, but top ten hits? Unlikely I’m afraid, which is a shame. Who’s Leaving Who is a great hi-NRG tune hampered by unimaginative and repetitive lyrics. Very much of its time. That vibe continues with the Communards There’s More To Love, a track I was convinced was Jimmy Somerville’s first solo release. A plea for sexual tolerance, its sentiment is laudable, but musically it’s cheap and muted, reminiscent of, and far too similar too, the then re-vamped Grange Hill theme.

Much better, and the absolute diamond in the rough of NOW 12, is Jermaine Stewart’s Get Lucky. Another one of those songs that managed to slip the net of my memory, maybe it just needed more mature ears. This is brilliant, frankly, a bit dark, with a sprinkle of the Will Youngs about it, so much so that with just a few knob twiddles to beef up the tinny production, this could possibly have been a hit for Mr Pop Idol himself in the past decade. Worth a listen.

Such quality cannot last and sadly that means the anti-music provided by Glenn Medeiros must be tackled. Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You was one of the most incomprehensibly popular songs of the 80s; a trite ballad, with added sleazy saxophone, a boring melody, cheesy lyrics and a soft focus video on a beach. Of course the reason it was popular was because it appealed to the wet-knickered fantasies of the more impressionable 13 year old girls of 1988 (some of whom may well be reading this now, and if so, I don’t apologise for that potentially disgusting image because you bought the thing and made it popular). No doubt the class of 2013 require a bit more raunch from their surrogate boyfs, or maybe not. It’s not like I know a bloody thing about what teenage girls think. I certainly know a damn sight less now than I did when I was surrounded by them at school. Though reading some of the stuff they tweet to Harry from One Direction they are maybe a tad more insane than back in my day. But sadly, I now hate NOW 12 for the simple fact that it made me listen to this bloody song again for the first time in 25 years. Thanks a bunch.

Even the fleeting glimpse back at greatness that Side four threatens to offer is short-lived. The Theme from S-Express and Salt n’ Pepa’s Push It are, rightly, considered classics of their form, though I feel Push It’s star has faded slightly and what was once naughty and exciting to a teenager now seems a tad sleazy and unpleasant. Jesus, what has happened to me? Sleazy and unpleasant are two words that could also apply to Derek B’s Get Down, a wonderful track blighted by a final verse documenting a woman’s breasts “like basketballs” and how her downstairs lady parts were like “Niagara Falls”. Thankfully, there’s no such vulgarity on the rather wonderful Bad Young Brother which is the track that appears here. I’d forgotten how great this was, and there are little of the Americanisms that Mr Boland was accused of early in his career. This is (almost) proper London rap, and was instrumental in my teenage self’s fondness for the genre. It uses samples sparingly (the drum beat for Led Zep’s When The Levee Breaks and an “oh yeah” from prince’s Sign O’ The Times), unlike most hip hop of the time stole freely, often from the godfather of Soul, James Brown. To level the playing field somewhat (and no doubt to claw back some royalties) we get the Payback Mix. Put together by Coldcut it stitches together 23(!) different James Brown classics, most of which were being sampled left right and centre at the time, to create one, bold statement that you can steal from the best, but the best will still be the best. It’s epic.

Rose Royce gets the remix treatment too, for similar reasons no doubt, as it’s been estimated Car Wash is the single most sampled track of all time, as a result of its famous clapping intro. I doubt if many could tell this was a remix, to be frank. After such a classic, the rest of the album can only disappoint, and it drifts away on a tide of forgettable dance pop: Natalie Cole’s Pink Cadillac (a bit hit in the day, but not well-remembered now); flipping Jellybean again (Just a Mirage is actually the best of his NOW appearances, but that’s saying nowt); finally there’s Will Downing’s A Love Supreme. Meh.

NOW 12 is a massive disappointment, particularly after NOW 11 had been so great. There are few outright classics, but there’s a lot of very skippable, mediocre, bland, forgettable ‘product’. And it’s this sense of churning out crap for the kids that permeates throughout the whole affair. There’s little innovative, game-changing tunes here, just a by-the-numbers, this’ll do attitude. Maybe as NOW was going back to three albums a year this is inevitable. We saw earlier in the series that the initial decision to produce three albums a year resulted in a severe drop in quality, so the same could be true here. But also, the industry seemed to be in the wrong mind set. The record industry didn’t know what to do about sampling (from a legal point of view) or the rise in house and hip-hop (from a financial point of view), so they just tried to rip off both, badly, and shovel more mass-produced plastic pop to keep the little ‘uns quiet.

These men are not MPs. They were far more powerful than that... — **Ed Balls, Danny Baker and Rodney Marsh celebrate another hit record**

NOW 12 is certainly NOT the coolest album around, David “the Kid” Jensen…

Take Climie Fisher, S-Express and Tiffany out of the equation and all the great pop tunes are gone. Further take out the hidden gems (Don’t Go, Get Lucky, Bad Young Brother) and you’re left with a very sorry representation of the charts circa summer 1988. Going head to head with Hits 8 couldn’t have helped. The Hits albums were always a poor relation, but Hits 8 featured Aztec Camera (Somewhere in My Heart), Fairground Attraction (Perfect), Bros (I Owe You Nothing) and the wonderful Crash by The Primitives. It’s a far better collection.

NOW 12 is probably the first album in the series that I would gladly never listen to again. I’m a cynical, heart-like-a-piece-of-flint kind of guy at the best of times, not an easily swayed teenager lost in the wealth of good feeling that the onset of the school summer holidays can bring. I need more than this. I need something out of this world…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 12

Release date

11th July 1988

Biggest tracks

I Think We’re Alone Now – Tiffany

Theme From S-Express – S-Express

Love Changes Everything – Climie Fisher

Lost gems

Get Lucky – Jermaine Stewart

Bad Young Brother – Derek B

Forgotten tracks

Don’t Go – Hothouse Flowers

With a Little Help From My Friends – Wet Wet Wet

I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That – Elton John

Worst Track

Nothings Gonna Change My Love For You – Glenn Medeiros

What’s missing

Heart -The Pet Shop Boys

Got To Be Certain – Kylie Minogue

Loadsamoney (Doin’ Up The House) – Harry Enfield

Track listing

Side one
With A Little Help From My Friends	Wet Wet Wet
Circle In The Sand	Belinda Carlisle
Wild World	Maxi Priest
Give A Little Love	Aswad
Love Changes (Everything)	Climie Fisher
I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That	Elton John
Oh Patti (Don’t Feel Sorry For Loverboy)	Scritti Politti
In The Air Tonight	Phil Collins

Side two
Don’t Go	The Hothouse Flowers
Everyday Is Like Sunday	Morrissey
Mary’s Prayer	Danny Wilson
Heart Of Gold	Johnny Hates Jazz
Don’t Call Me Baby	Voice Of The Beehive
Can I Play With Madness	Iron Maiden
These Dreams	Heart
I Will Be With You	T’Pau

Side three
Doctorin’ The Tardis	The Timelords
Boys (Summertime Love)	Sabrina
I Want You Back	Bananarama
I Think We’re Alone Now	Tiffany
Who’s Leaving Who	Hazell Dean
There’s More To Love	The Communards
Get Lucky	Jermaine Stewart
Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You	Glenn Medeiros

Side four
Theme From S-Express	S-Express
Push It	Salt ‘N’ Pepa
Bad Young Brother	Derek B
The Payback Mix (Part One) (Medley)	James Brown
Carwash	Rose Royce
Pink Cadillac	Natalie Cole
Just A Mirage	Jellybean Featuring Adele Bertei
A Love Supreme	Will Downing

May 21, 2013

NOW 11 – I know you gonna dig this

Every decade has its game changing year, the year that rocks the music world, the year where, if you’ll pardon the cliché, nothing will ever be the same again. It may be the birth of rock n’ roll in 1956, the flower power of 1967 or the twin-pronged disco-punk revolution of 1977. Some years just define their generation like few others.

1988 is not one of those years. It may have been the year that the charts took on a train-spotters fascination for a certain 12 year old not a million miles away from this keyboard, but it’s hardly remembered for any epoch-making musical movement. Of course there was some great music. The end of year lists may have been dominated by Public Enemy and their album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, but that won’t really concern us here. Neither will The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa or Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. You see, as brilliant, ground-breaking and influential as those albums may have been, there were not even close to troubling the top 40 chart compilers. In fact the public was more interested in buying pretty much the same things they were buying the year before. Bad, Faith and Tango in the Night were all top selling albums in 1988 despite being a year old. Yet another Cliff Greatest Hits was, astonishingly, the second biggest selling album of the year! He found himself sandwiched between two young upstarts who made their names early on in 1988, but would go on to have wildly different careers: Kylie Minogue and Bros.

Despite all this, and despite me misremembering that Bros’ When Will I Be Famous was on it, NOW 11 somehow manages to be the best album in the series, at least so far. It always held a special allure for me, remaining tantalisingly out of reach, being released at Easter, when all my spare cash went towards the annual school French trip. This allure was not misguided. For sheer pop gold it is unstoppable, but it also manages to balance this with a sprinkling of alternative acts and a single themed side of cutting edge house and hip hop that is utterly wonderful, and remains possibly the finest side of music on a NOW album.

Being released in April gives the compiler the advantage of having the best of the year so far, and also hovering up the remaining cream missed at the end of the previous year. This, inevitably, leads to what football managers refer to as “a nice problem to have”. Track 1, side 1, for instance. As every mix tape enthusiast knows, the first track is the trickiest: hit them hard, fast and where it hurts. So when you have the choice between a massive number one, a couple of months old, from a hot new act, or the biggest act in the country with their (distinctly non-festive) Christmas number one, but which is a tad older, which way do you go? NOW 11 plays the Nick Hornby/High Fidelity mix-tape how-to guide to the letter with a stonking one-two that hits them hard, then takes it UP a notch.

The Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind starts the party, followed by the biggest recent hit on offer, Heaven Is A Place On Earth. (The album’s third chart-topper, Kylie’s I Should Be So Lucky, will kick off side three).

**Very distracting to a 12 year old boy**

Both these tracks are fantastic. Always On My Mind is generally accepted as one of the greatest cover versions of all time, while former Go-Go, Belinda Carlisle, finally got her solo career off the ground a couple of years after it started in the US (helped in no small part by a prolific song writing team including Diane Warren and fellow Go-Go Charlotte Caffey). Heaven Is A Place on Earth is a great pop/rock song which can still make people jump out of their seats with its rousing intro, rock guitar and soppy lyrics.

Pop highs continue, moving from rock to dance with Billy Ocean’s Get Out Of My Dreams. Easily his best song, bafflingly the UK was about the only country it didn’t get to number one (peaking at number 3) despite heavy TV play thanks to its sophisticated animation-meets-real life video, months before the world had heard of Roger Rabbit. Dance continues with less success with Jermaine Stewart’s inoffensive but bland Say It Again, before I lose interest completely with Eddy Grant’s Gimme Me Hope Jo’anna. Reggae has never really been my bag (though I have a fondness for the 60’s/early 70s variety popularised by Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff), but Grant is capable of better than this. Like I Don’t Wanna Dance years previously, this is repetitive to the point of irritating. I’m fully aware that the song is an anti-apartheid anthem and is well-loved. That doesn’t stop it being thoroughly annoying, but it was a massive hit across the world so what do I know. Although it only made number 7 in the UK it, maybe surprisingly, made number one in Spain and, maybe less surprisingly, Holland.

Levis get their plug with the peerless C’mon Everybody from Eddie Cochran (at a little under two minutes it’s one of the shortest songs ever in the series) before the compiling genius of Ashley Abram follows that with rockabilly rebel Morrissey’s first solo single, Suedehead. Whilst The Smiths made only one NOW appearance, Moz solo would prove to be a reliable mainstay of the series, at least until he stopped having top ten hits. Being signed to Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary, rather than The Smiths who were signed to the indie Rough Trade, probably helped. Side one closes out, rather incongruously, with a live version of Elton John’s Candle In The Wind. Now best known as “the Diana song”, and the biggest selling single of all time, it’s rather strange to hear it with its original lyrics. And blow me, if it’s not actually a little bit good. Released as a single to plug a live album recorded in Australia a couple of years before, this is a great performance of a song which, like a lot of Reg’s biggest hits, is susceptible to maudlin. Not here; this is pure emotion and, strangely, far more moving than the later Diana version. Reg’s anguished roar with the last chorus, his voice breaking in the process, is pretty stunning stuff, leaving the listener speechless. Perhaps, the most amazing thing is that it was such a big hit in 1988, when it had failed to make the top ten on its initial release in the 1970s.

Side two replicates Now 10 by turning over a side to soft metal, hard rock and a couple of tracks that didn’t comfortably sit anywhere else on the album. Like Wet Wet Wet, whose Angel Eyes is one of those really annoying songs that you want to hate for being so bloody smug and pleased with itself, but you can’t help but smile when you hear it. It does serve the purpose of being a whole lot better than Johnny Hates Jazz though, who follow the Wets with the uncompromisingly insipid Turn Back The Clock. When people criticise 80s music, Johnny Hates Jazz are what they are talking about. It smells like artificial sweetener, tastes like supermarket own brand Angel Delight, it’s wearing suede brogues and has a Filofax stuffed into the pocket of its black raincoat. And it makes me hate music.

That fact that T’Pau swoop in to ensure your ears won’t be lopped off by the nearest sharp (or blunt for that matter) object somehow makes Johnny Hates Jazz even worse. To be fair to Valentine, it’s a bit of a corker, which sadly sits in the long shadow cast by China In Your Hand. It does confirm my belief that the more famous track may actually be the worst single they released (with the exception of the makes-a-bit-of-sick-in-my-mouth Sex Talk). Any woman who has ever done the bottle of wine on your own, Bridget Jones, All By Myself, sing-a-long, you are really missing a trick with this one. Valentine really is the song of unrequited, woe is me, pissed up self-loathing. Sadly, even being released around the same time as the most depressing ‘holiday’ of the year couldn’t shove it any further up the charts than number 9. And just three singles in, it would be their last top 10 hit.

**OK, you can have a drink, but for God’s sake stay off twitter, Carol!**

Hot in the City continued Billy Idol’s late 80s revival (all calculated to coincide with the release of a Greatest Hits package, hoovered up by the public, and me, a few months later). Like his previous hit, and NOW appearance, Mony, Mony, Hot in the City had originally been recorded in the early 80s and failed to make much of an impression, and this was a re-recorded version. Or was it? I’ve discovered, over the years, that it’s a song that exists in many incarnations, and unpicking the history is a bit fraught. The original, single version from 1982 is the most commonly heard. It’s the one with the windy fade-in intro, with the sexy backing singers crooning “stranger, stranger”. It also features Idol’s bellow of “New York!” later in the song. In 1985, the ‘Exterminator Mix’ of the track appeared on a compilation album entitled Vital Idol, featuring selected songs and remixes from his early work, presumably to cash in on his new success with Rebel Yell and a re-released White Wedding. This version is almost 2 minutes longer, features a much longer intro, each instrument coming separately, has an increased and thoroughly re-worked instrumental break, and loses the “New York!” in favour of a clumsy record scratch effect. This version has a clear end rather than fading out. The version released in 1988, as evidenced by this rather risqué video, which was allegedly banned by MTV, features a cut down version of this remix, reinstates the “New York!”, and has the abrupt ending. Now it gets more complicated: the version on NOW 11 includes this same cut down remix BUT has the scratch effect rather than the “New York!”, and fades out as per the original recording! I’ve not found this version anywhere else. Every other compilation version I’ve found, on Idol’s own compilations and on loads of 80s compilations, all use the original 1982 version, even if they sometimes bill it as the ’88 (and sometimes ’87!) remix. The version on NOW 11 appears to be utterly unique.

As an alternative to all that train-spottery, there follow two rather good, if rather forgotten tracks, at least by the greater public. Sinead O’Connor is probably thought of as a bit of one hit wonder whose career was kept going by making controversial comments about the Catholic church and the treatment of women. People who think this may be right and it is a fact that she only had one BIG hit (which we will of course address in good time) but she was also far more talented than a mere Prince cover version gave her credit for. Mandinka, her first top 40 hit, would have caused minor ripples throughout polite middle-class living rooms had she appeared on Top of the Pops. In my house it was the sight of a shaven-headed woman, screaming out of her Doc Martens on The Chart Show that caused a fluster and bluster not seen since the days of Boy George sashaying across the nations TV’s in 1982. Mandinka is a storming way to introduce yourself to the public: angry, enigmatic, tuneful, and emotional. Everything good pop should be, but a bit shoutier.

The Mission would no doubt hate to be called ‘good pop’, but when your lead singer used to be in Dead or Alive, and you would later record a cover of Blondie’s Atomic, maybe you do have a sense of humour. I can’t imagine Wayne Hussey and Pete Burns in the same room, let alone the same band! Tower of Strength will be unfamiliar to many outside the goth and crusty communities (or people who like to hang around record shops on a Saturday afternoons) and that’s understandable. We’re not in Def Leppard territory here; this is the bridge between Led Zeppelin and The Sisters of Mercy. Handily, not being a huge fan of either, I love Tower of Strength’s overblown theatrics (provided by Led Zep’s own John Paul Jones on production knob-twiddling duties) and rate this as The Mission’s best song Obviously the super dedicated fans would no doubt swoon in horror at such a suggestion, like The Cure fans who hate anyone who says The Love Cats is their best song, because it’s so accessible and popular, and you should go and listen to A Forest or Killing An Arab, you ‘pop’ fan. Alternative music fans do have a tendency to take themselves rather too seriously.

Just like Whitesnake, whose tight leather trousers you can smell coming a mile away. You won’t remember Give Me All Your Love, and you’ll be grateful you don’t, but in case you care, it sounds exactly like Fool For Your Lovin’ from 1980, but worse. Now you’ve got that song in your head instead. Sorry.

I swear, you’ll never be so pleased to hear I Should Be So Lucky as you will be listening to NOW 11. I’m fully aware that most people still hate this song. I hated it when I was the audience for it. I was wrong, and everybody else who still hates it is wrong. It’s one of the most perfect pop records of all time and if you disagree with me there’s a comments section at the bottom of this page. But really you shouldn’t be reading this blog, as you clearly hate pop music.

The second of three Stock, Aitken, Waterman tunes on side three is Mel and Kim’s That’s The Way It Is. Not a patch on Respectable, which was snagged by Hits 6 the previous year, this is pretty forgettable, but the pair are still fun enough to make it listenable. Much better is Bananarama’s I Can’t Help It later on side three. For some reason I can’t my finger on, this is right up there with Venus and Only Your Love as my favourite Nanas song. SAW’s influence is really showing now, and would eventually lead to this being Siobhan Fahey’s final Nana appearance, but it’s much ballsier and sexier than the tracks given to Kylie (or what was to come from the girls) and the video is an absolute scorcher too! It’s a great track, woefully underappreciated at the time, and probably still is.

Between the SAW tracks there’s Come Into My Life, by Joyce Sims. A massive hit at the time, it now sounds like a brasher, shoutier version of Sade. I was surprised to discover it was produced by Mantronix, who were a couple of years away from their own chart success, though Got To Have Your Love would prove far more long-lasting than this New York disco crap. And there’s more where that came from too thanks to the return of the never-popular Jellybean. Who Found Who is as massively bland as his track on NOW 10, which I can’t even remember the name of, and really can’t be bothered to back and look up. Seriously, does ANYONE reading this have ANYTHING by Jellybean in their record collection?

Jellybean... insert your own joke here — **Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve STILL got no idea who you are**

I’ll actually be more surprised if you have anything by Dollar, early 80s “are they/aren’t they” duo (they were… for a bit) who had only mild success. Oddly, they reformed towards the end of the decade, recorded Oh L’Amour, a flop when released as Erasure’s first single, and found themselves back in the top 10, before disappearing as quickly as they had reappeared. On paper the song choice is sound, but David van Day’s voice pales in comparison to Andy Bell’s, and musically it’s identical to the earlier version. Pointless. Van day would later gain infamy by dumping a girlfriend live on TV’s The Wright Stuff, and advertising insurance. Classy fella.

Speaking of classy, Vanessa Paradis provides the first non-English hit on a NOW album. Joe le Taxi is pretty boring and dreary, but that was hardly the point. The point was that Mme Paradis was French, sexy and…um…14. In today’s climate it all seems a bit unsavoury, and, to be fair, it was. Thank goodness she went on to continued success as an adult. She’ll return later in our journey.

Side three finishes with one of the more troubling aspects of the NOW series: the comedy record. Thankfully rare, sadly there are still enough of them dotted throughout the albums to make their presence more than known. The Stutter Rap is skin-crawlingly bad, but, thanks to main man Tony Hawks (not the skateboarder) it’s also witty, clever and astonishingly well produced. It’s an enigma, wrapped in a mystery. The vocals are a wonderful parody of The Beastie Boys, the problem being that they, of course, were themselves a parody anyway. It’s the musical equivalent of Scary Movie spoofing Scream; you’re spoofing a spoof! Despite this, Morris Minor and the Majors snagged a top ten hit and a Saturday night kids show to boot. Sadly, the infinitely superior follow-up, This Is The Chorus (a note perfect spoof of SAW, which featured Queen’s John Deacon as Rick Astley in the video) failed to make the top 40. I can only assume that SAW fans didn’t buy it because it was taking the piss, and everyone else didn’t buy it because it sounded like a SAW track. There’s no justice like pop justice.

Despite this ludicrous oversight by the record buying public, they did somehow manage to buy enough good records to make side four of NOW 11 an absolute joy from start to finish. As we’ve seen on previous editions, themed sides are rarely a success, often resorting to one or two tracks which seem tacked on, or crow barred into the theme, and don’t quite fit. Not so here. Say kids, what time is it…?

Bomb the Bass, Coldcut and Beatmasters are the names that leap from the track listing, of course. Beat Dis still stands proudly alongside Pump Up The Volume as a genre-defining track. Amazing considering Tim Simenon created it, allegedly, in his bedroom for £500. Doctorin’ the House would launch the career of Yazz (though I’m still baffled as to who exactly the Plastic Population were) and was an amazing way for the pioneering Coldcut DJs to launch themselves at the public at large. Their contemporaries, the Beatmasters, would join them on an attack on the charts over the next 18 months, drafting in, and making stars of, a succession of guest vocalists including Lisa Stansfield and Betty Boo. For Rok Da House Beatmasters employed London female rap duo The Cookie Crew. Sassy, ballsy and not a little aggressive (like most of their male counterparts) they blazed a trail for successful female rappers in the UK (Salt n’ Pepa were just about to, finally, have a hit with Push It), but would never again reach the heights of the top five. Still sounds great today.

Between Coldcut and Beatmasters are two one off tracks which, while still good, do betray their vintage and have a slight whiff of bandwagon-jumping about them. Krush’s House Arrest was another huge top five hit and proved that this House music malarkey was probably here to stay. One half of the production team behind the track would go on to form Moloko in the late 90s, fact fans. Jack n’ Chill’s The Jack That House Built reminds me of the Italian film producers of the 70s and early 80s (bear with me) that would rip off anything that was commercial and just put familiar words into the titles, like Zombie Holocaust or Alien Contamination. And like both those films, The Jack That House Built is perfectly good entertainment. I’ve been unable to find out anything about Jack n’ Chill though, which simply adds to the fly-by-night nature of the exercise and suggests the sharks were probably moving in on the House scene already.

The greatest side of music in NOW history closes with two excellent, if unexpected, tracks from artists not normally associated with this kind of thing, one of whom manages to pull off a shameless cash-in with their dignity intact. First up is Two Men, A Drum Machine and a Trumpet (surely the best band name on a NOW album ever) the two men in question being Fine Young Cannibals without Roland Gift, who was off trying to be an actor at the time. They were no strangers to dance music and knob twiddling really, so it’s no surprise that Tired of Getting Pushed Around is so good. What is surprising is that it wasn’t more successful, only reaching number 18 when, as we’ve seen, just about any track featuring a House beat and samples would at least go top ten. It could, possibly, be explained by the fact that Tired of Getting Pushed Around is far more laid back, and stripped back, than its contemporaries. Whereas most tracks were layering sample upon sample, often to the point of incoherence (like mixing all your plasticine together to make one amorphous lump, a shade of brown not normally found in nature), Tired… relies on a couple of film dialogue snippets, a guitar thrash, and a light jazz trumpet and bass accompaniment. It’s refreshing, like an after-dinner mint.

**Obvious illustration of the point made in the previous paragraph**

The coffee course is supplied by Climie Fisher, a pair of successful, and highly respected, songwriters and session musicians who decided they fancied a bit of this fame thing for themselves. They didn’t really look the part, but in the 80s that didn’t really matter. What did matter were the tunes, and by golly they had them coming out of their arses. Rise to the Occasion was originally a slightly bland ballad until some bright spark decided to perk it up a bit with some samples and a House beat. Released as the “Hip Hop remix” (though not credited as such on NOW 11) it quickly found its way into the top ten. Mercenary? Cunning? Cynical? Thrice, yes. Great pop? Undoubtedly. And it was thanks to the success of such a scheming piece of work that would ultimately lead to their finest hour, but you’ll have to wait until NOW 12 for that.

NOW 11, side four, still sounds brilliant all the way through, and even today I think it still stands as the series finest achievement. But of course I’m biased. This was one of the defining periods of my musical education where I was absorbing absolutely everything that crossed my path. Combined with the fact that I know little of the NOW series beyond 1990 and maybe you could argue I’m jumping the gun on that assumption. And you may be right.

I don’t think I’ll find a quarter of a NOW album where every song is still listenable, thrilling and generates that feeling that great, pure pop can create. But I hope I do, because otherwise the remaining 70 odd albums are going to be one hell of a chore.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 11

Release date

21st March 1988

Biggest tracks

Always on My Mind – The Pet Shop Boys

Heaven Is A Place On Earth – Belinda Carlisle

I Should Be So Lucky – Kylie Minogue

Beat Dis – Bomb the Bass

Lost gems

Tired of Getting Pushed Around – Two Men, A Drum Machine and a Trumpet

I Can’t Help It – Bananarama

Forgotten tracks

Mandinka – Sinead o’Connor

Tower of Strength – The Mission

Rise to the Occasion – Climie Fisher

Worst Track

Give Me All Your Love – Whitesnake

What’s missing

Got My Mind Set On You – George Harrison

There Ain’t Nothing Like Shaggin – Tams

Track listing

Side one
Always On My Mind	Pet Shop Boys
Heaven Is A Place On Earth	Belinda Carlisle
Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car	Billy Ocean
Say It Again	Jermaine Stewart
Gimme Hope Jo’Anna	Eddy Grant
C’mon Everybody	Eddie Cochran
Suedehead	Morrissey
Candle In The Wind	Elton John

Side two
Angel Eyes (Home And Away)	Wet Wet Wet
Turn Back The Clock	Johnny Hates Jazz
Valentine	T’Pau
Hot In The City	Billy Idol
Mandinka	Sinéad O’Connor
Tower Of Strength	The Mission
Give Me All Your Love	Whitesnake

Side three
I Should Be So Lucky	Kylie Minogue
That’s The Way It Is (7” Version)	Mel & Kim
Come Into My Life	Joyce Sims
Who Found Who	Jellybean featuring Elisa Fiorillo
I Can’t Help It	Bananarama
Oh L’Amour	Dollar
Joe Le Taxi	Vanessa Paradis
Stutter Rap (No Sleep Till Bedtime)	Morris Minor & The Majors

Side four
Beat Dis	Bomb The Bass
Doctorin’ The House	Coldcut featuring Yazz & The Plastic Population
House Arrest	Krush
The Jack That House Built	Jack N Chill
Rock Da House	The Beatmasters featuring Cookie Crew
I’m Tired Of Getting Pushed Around	Two Men A Drum Machine & A Trumpet
Rise To The Occasion	Climie Fisher

May 12, 2013