Tag: Inner City

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 15 – Cruel Summer

For the second year in a row, NOW’s summer release would take the season as the inspiration for its cover. Sadly the content is about as anti-summer as it’s possible to get. When I think of summer pop I think of breezy, twangly guitar tunes, repetitive dance beats and swoony ballads. What NOW 15 gives you (at least to start off with) is one of Queen’s worst singles ever and an unlistenable Simple Minds track. In terms of opening moves, NOW 15 stumbles out of the traps like a three legged daschund at a greyhound race. I Want It All stands very far away from I Want To Break Free, whilst Kick It In is at least better than Belfast Child (and suggests The Minds were a year or two ahead of U2 in the obtuse, angular re-invention stakes) but it’s just not very well executed. I vividly remember Danny Wilson guest reviewing the singles in Smash Hits, and saying they would have taken the record back to shops thinking it was scratched. Their single of the week was the theme to the Batman TV series which had been re-released in the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman movie. That’s nice.

Pop salvation arrives in the form of the majestic Good Thing by the Fine Young Cannibals. Its 60s vibe (a nostalgic theme runs through many tracks on NOW 15, oddly) was the result of its original appearance being in the underrated film Tin Men, which was set in the Mad Men era Baltimore. It works brilliantly in the song’s favour, as it’s now impossible to date, and is still wonderful.

Almost as underrated as Tin men is Holly Johnson’s solo career. Eschewing Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s raw sex and aggression, his solo debut Blast! is a wonderful pop record, producing the huge hits Love Train and Americanos, which appears here. A supposedly jolly tune, again evoking nostalgia for 50s/60s apple pie America, it is also covered in barely concealed cynicism (“everything’s organised, from crime to leee-zure time”) hidden underneath a killer tune and a chorus which introduced a generation of kids to the joys of Oreos. Transvision Vamp’s Baby, I Don’t Care and INXS’ Mystify are solid, as is Roxette’s The Look, even if it fails to suggest just how big a deal they would become (at least everywhere else in the world; the UK tended to keep them at arm’s length, only allowing It Must have Been Love to break ranks and become a huge hit).

We next get two very odd selections from a couple of dinosaurs, Stevie Nicks and ‘Thumbs Aloft’ Macca. I’d forgotten how odd Rooms on Fire was, or that it was that big a hit. Yes, Fleetwood Mac had been, maybe surprisingly, successful in the late 80s with the album Tango In The Night, but was Nicks really that big a draw to the kids? It only reached number 16 but was a radio mainstay for months, probably saying more about Radio 1 DJs at the time, than what the listeners actually wanted, and remains Nicks’ only significant solo release.

Paul McCartney ceased to be significant as a solo artist around the time of The Frog Chorus, so it was a surprise to see him kicking off side two of NOW 15 not once, but twice! My Brave Face is the first, co-written by Elvis Costello of all people, it appears to be some kind of dirge about the perils of fame (oh woe is me and my millions). It’s not really important, as the man who made more money than God just for fluking a song writing goldmine with Yesterday still continues to churn out this guff on an annual basis, whilst his contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Ray Davies and even, to an extent, The Rolling Stones, continue to evolve and create new, interesting music. McCartney’s guff cloud hangs over Ferry Cross The Mersey. Joining Holly Johnson (also making a second appearance), The Christians and original ferry passenger Gerry Marsden, this charity release was recorded in aid of the families of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster which had happened earlier in the year, and was produced by the now ubiquitous Stock, Aitken and Waterman. The far more fitting, in my opinion, You’ll Never Walk Alone, had been appropriated for the charity single for the victims of the Bradford City fire in 1985 (and also featured Marsden and McCartney), and this should also not be confused with the dreadfully named Ferry Aid single, a cover of The Beatles’ Let It Be, from 1987, in aid of the Zeebrugge ferry tragedy (also featuring Macca; for Christ’s sake, he gets about). Thankfully they resisted the urge to come up with some awful punning band name this time. Johnson has already covered this track once before, on Frankie’s debut album, and it’s a far better, and emotional, reading than this, a typically empty SAW production, with uninspiring vocal performances, topped by Macca screaming his head off towards the end and trying to pretend the song was his all along.

The Beautiful South make their NOW debut next, with the wonderfully sardonic Song For Whoever, a song which confuses a lot of people, not least Philip Schofield, who in his capacity as presenter of the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party in 1989, picked it as his choice for worst single of the year. The idiot. Kirsty McColl’s lovely version of The Kinks’ Days is next, and an attempt to create a real summer feel is carried on with Danny Wilson’s Second Summer of Love. Their only non-Mary’s Prayer top 40 hit, and probably not very well known, it’s actually pretty good; a nice-foot-tapping number having a pop at the acid/ecstasy/rave generation then clogging up the motorways and charts at the time. It’s like an upbeat Mumford and Sons, so should be a due a revival by the Dalston hipsters soon. But only ironically, of course.

"Yeah, I was like into Danny Wilson years ago, like, when the First Summer of Love came out" — **“Yeah, I was like into Danny Wilson years ago, like, when the *First* Summer of Love came out”**

Next comes the big forgotten track on NOW 15, at least by me, but sadly not an undiscovered gem: Cry by Waterfront. This is a truly odd piece which seems to have a slightly dodgy undercurrent. Any song which features like about “I know that you are not a child” and “your Daddy would kill for you” just conjures up images of a teenage girl being seduced by a (much) older man, who gets his jollies then dumps her because “of course, we’ve done nothing wrong but THEY won’t understand that”. The addition of a sleazy, Walk on the Wild Side riffing saxophone just adds to the sleaze. Uncomfortable. These guys were EMI’s big hope for ’89 and Cry was a big hit in the USA, hitting the top 10 (slightly worse in the UK where it only reached number 17) but they never followed it up and didn’t trouble the charts again.

Side two then proceeds to fade into dreary obscurity with hue and Cry’s pleasant but unremarkable Violently and Cliff Richards’ The Best Of Me, a dreadful dirge of a ballad which managed to snag a number two spot thanks to a huge marketing campaign (and massive radio support) due to it being Cliff’s 100^th single. Thanks to Jason Donovan’s Sealed With A Kiss, it still didn’t get to number one though, HAH!

Sides three and four are dominated by dance tracks, and a few oddities that wouldn’t fit on the first half, reflecting the charts shifting away from pop to dance, both mainstream and underground varieties. We get the only absolute classic track on the whole compilation with Soul II Soul’s Back To Life, a song which seems to just get better and better with every passing year (back in ’89, I much preferred Keep On Moving or Get A Life). Neneh Cherry’s Manchild still sounds great too, and was a perfect follow-up to Buffalo Stance. Equally confident as it’s predecessor and infused with John Barry-esque strings, I’ve no idea what it’s about but it still sounds brilliant. The video features her young son, who was still, famously, unborn, when she appeared on Top of the Pops for Buffalo Stance.

Neneh Cherry might be having another baby in this photo, I'm not sure — **Neneh Cherry might be having another baby in this photo, I’m not sure**

So with things picking up, it’s inevitable that the quality will dip, and it does quite spectacularly. Former New Edition singer (who had appeared way back on NOW 1) Bobby Brown’s Every Little Step sounds like a discarded B-side hastily promoted to single status in the wake of his enormous, and rapid, success. Unbelievable as it may sound now, Mr Brown was the most successful chart act of 1989, and managed just two weeks of the whole year not to feature in the top 40, and amazing feat, especially when you consider not one of his singles got to number one. Every Little Step is pretty poor compared to earlier hit My Prerogative (or even Don’t Be Cruel) and only features one verse and chorus, repeated throughout. That’s just lazy.

Do You Love What You Feel is the least remembered of Inner City’s four top 20 hits, and with good reason: it’s desperately dull. Is this really the same act that recorded Good Life? Equally forgettable is D-Mob’s irritating It’s Time To Get Funky, a piece of toy town-rap crap that has the nerve to criticise rave culture, after D-Mob made a mint of off We Call It Acieed months before. Somehow this also went down a storm with the same kids who had made the previous single such a hit. At the same time Public Enemy couldn’t buy a top 30 hit. A massive club hit in its day, but horribly dated now, Donna Allen’s Joy and Pain only stuck in my mind because it seemed to be on the Chart Show’s Dance Chart for about two years before it reached the top 10. It’s got that summer ’87 sound down to a tee, so maybe it was that old; cheap production, but with a big chorus that no doubt helped it become a hit, because the rest of it is massively forgettable and generic.

Being generic is not something you could accuse of Gladys Knight, but her long overdue promotion to the ranks of Bond theme chanteuse is just that. It’s not that Licence To Kill is a bad Bond theme (there are plenty worse) it’s just bland and, like a-ha before her, it’s totally infused with the sound of its time. The whole thing is based around the trumpet sting from Goldfinger, so, like many of the worst Bond themes, it sounds like a Bond parody. Add to that the horrible twinkly synth noise all US dance music had at the time, and it becomes impossible to love. Knight’s vocal performance is great though. Equally good vocals come from Natalie Cole on I Miss You Like Crazy. Sadly that song is also horribly bland.

**An old, and horribly dated, Viz Crap Joke**

With NOW 15 threatening to stumble into dullsville, it’s left to side four to salvage some dignity, which thankfully it does, with some style, despite it featuring Jive Bunny. The Pet Shop Boys’ It’s Alright may be their least played track, but it’s great. A cover of Sterling Void’s club hit, it failed to match the success of many of their earlier hits, as did other releases from the album Introspective, despite them being among their best work. Then there’s Jive Bunny. Now regarded as a bit of a joke and providing endless material for low rent comics and nostalgia clip shows, were they really that bad? What exactly is so wrong about a couple of producers talking loads of old songs and stringing them together under a dance beat to make a simple four minute party song? And then doing it again? And again? It’s essentially harmless, if not exactly an example of high art. I think people’s opinion of Jive Bunny is just based around the fact they were SO successful and SO omnipotent that summer (and on to Christmas 89) on the radio, that you couldn’t escape it. But people were buying the records! At the time Jive Bunny became only the third act in history (after Gerry and the Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood) to have their first three singles go to number one. Even The Beatles didn’t do that. Now, of course, any act with a decent marketing budget can do it, and most do. But back in the 80s that was a big deal. Swing the Mood (based around Glenn Miller’s In The Mood… geddit?) is listenable to a point and at a party would probably still make a few grannies get up for a shuffle. Is it any worse than say, Coldcut’s Beats and Pieces? At least you can sing along to Swing the Mood. We-we-well-well…

More oldie time fun is supplied by a returning Swing Out Sister, channelling Burt Bacharach on the grin-inducing You On My Mind, one of the few songs here that actually takes me back to the summer of ’89. There’s a lovely feelgood feeling to this that once again makes you wonder why they were never able to have sustained success. Bananarama managed to sustain for a good few years, but the tide was starting to turn on them by 1989. What better way to commemorate the sun going down on your career than by re-recording a song about how crap the summer is. Cruel Summer ’89 would be their last top 20 single, sadly, and it’s a sad epitaph to their career. One of their best early songs, it was re-recorded with new member Jacqui, and slathered with SAW production, limping its way to number 19. If you like the original steer clear of this; it’s bloody awful.

The rest of NOW 15 is thankfully much better, and contains the best tracks on the whole album, a rarity when side four is so often the dumping ground. De La Soul’s anti-drug anthem Say No Go may not have won them any fans from the hardcore rap community, but they were a real breath of fresh air for the slightly awkward kids who were never taken seriously when they said they liked Public Enemy (yes, I’m talking about me). I mean, who samples Hall and Oates and hopes to retain their credibility? These guys didn’t give a stuff. Real innovators and the songs are still charming, witty and damn good to dance to. Fatboy Slim was still using his real name, Norman Cook, when he released Blame It On The Bassline (a double A-side backed by his version of Billy Bragg’s Won’t Talk About It) with vocals provided by the ludicrously named MC Wildski. The track would later appear on Cook’s Beats International album, Let Them Eat Bingo, along with the smash Dub Be Good To Me, but the version on NOW 15 fades out about 45 seconds early. Another cracking, fun, rap tune with heavy sampling (mainly from the Jackson 5, you wouldn’t get away with that nowadays without the lawyers coming a knocking) it’s refreshing to hear two fun rap tracks back to back. So how about three? Luckily Rebel MC is just crazy enough to pull it off. Introduced to the world by producers Double Trouble, Just Keep Rockin’ is another sample-heavy dance track, with fun running through it like a stick of rock. I don’t think rap was ever this much fun again, so I really love this snapshot of when it wasn’t all about beating 5-0, girls and bling. If I was as rich as some of these rappers I’d be going on about fun stuff, like buying a kitten or building a funfair in my back yard, rather than how hard life is in the ghetto that I wouldn’t been seen dead in now I’m rich and famous.

A grumpy rapper. Probably MC Scat Kat. — **A grumpy rapper. Probably MC Skat Kat.**

I’m sure Robert Smith has a funfair in his back garden, but he has to wear a hair net just in case he gets his barnet caught in the workings of the waltzers. Quite why the NOW compilers decided to place The Cure directly after all that jollity, and closing the album to boot, I’m not entirely sure. Lullaby remains one of my favourite Cure tracks and can probably still give kids the willies (I will test this theory once my own are old enough to experiment on) but to finish off a summer compilation? Maybe it’s the grit in the oyster that NOW 15 needs, but that would suggest that NOW 15 is an oyster. It’s more of a limpet. Even “The Kid” seems to be struggling to drum up enthusiasm for this one.

Oddly filled with nostalgic tracks and sugary blandness, when it pops it’s superb, but it’s not exactly memorable. This may explain why, in my teenage years, it was the album that signalled my defection (briefly) to the Hits series, and the far better Hits 10. Two albums in and 1989 is shaping up to be NOW’s most disappointing year so far. There’s nothing new on offer here at all, it’s just regurgitating what’s gone before. It sounds ridiculous but the refreshing track here is Kick It In. It’s completely unlistenable, but at least it’s different.

There are three number ones on NOW 15, but I bet most readers would be hard pressed to remember which tracks they are, that’s how forgettable most of this is. Side four rescues it from being a complete dead loss, but things need shaking up. Would NOW 16 provide that? If it was going to, it would have to do it the hard way, as NOW 16 was to become the only album in the series to contain not one single, solitary number one hit…

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 15

Release date

14^th August 1989

Biggest tracks

Back To Life – Soul II Soul

Good Thing – Fine Young Cannibals

Lost gems

You On My Mind – Swing Out Sister

Blame It On The Bassline – Norman Cook ft MC Wildski

Forgotten tracks

Kick It In – Simple Minds

It’s Alright – Pet Shop Boys

Just Keep Rockin’ – Double Trouble ft Rebel MC

What’s missing?

The continued absence of Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue is telling. Both signed to PWL, maybe Pete Waterman didn’t want NOW appearances to take away from their own album sales?

Another PWL absentee was the one hit wonder that was I’d Rather Jack by The Reynolds Girls. Maybe NOW didn’t want to include a song which criticised the kind of artists who still constituted a large proportion of their roll call.

Track listing

Side one
I Want It All	Queen
Kick It In	Simple Minds
Good Thing	Fine Young Cannibals
Americanos	Holly Johnson
Baby I Don’t Care	Transvision Vamp
Mystify	INXS
The Look	Roxette
Rooms On Fire	Stevie Nicks

Side two
My Brave Face	Paul McCartney
Ferry Cross The Mersey	Gerry Marsden/Paul McCartney/ Holly Johnson/The Christians
Song For Whoever	The Beautiful South
Days	Kirsty MacColl
The Second Summer Of Love	Danny Wilson
Cry	Waterfront
Violently (7″ Version)	Hue And Cry
The Best Of Me	Cliff Richard

Side three
Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)	Soul II Soul Featuring Caron Wheeler
Manchild	Neneh Cherry
Every Little Step	Bobby Brown
Do You Love What You Feel (Duane Bradley Remix)	Inner City
It’s Time To Get Funky	D-Mob & LRS
Joy And Pain	Donna Allen
Licence To Kill	Gladys Knight
Miss You Like Crazy	Natalie Cole

Side four
It’s Alright	Pet Shop Boys
Swing The Mood (Medley)	Jive Bunny & The Master Mixers
You On My Mind	Swing Out Sister
Cruel Summer ’89	Bananarama
Say No Go	De La Soul
Blame It On The Bassline	Norman Cook & MC Wildski
Just Keep Rockin’	Double Trouble & The Rebel MC
Lullaby	The Cure

June 2, 2013

NOW 14 – On and off and on again

1989 was a year of major upheaval for NOW. They’d been turfed out of the official album charts into the compilation top 20, a chart no one ever saw, referenced or cared about. It looked like they’d seen off their biggest rival, the Hits Album series, whose disastrous rebrand around Christmas 1988 had seen sales plummet, whilst NOW’s corresponding NOW 13 had gone on to be one of the biggest selling albums of the year. (Hits would not die quickly however, but a series of rebrands, reboots and revisions would mean it was never a serious competitor again.)

Although they probably never noticed, or cared, NOWs 12 and 13 had been pretty dreadful, at least looked at from a distance of 25 years as I’m smugly doing now. Honestly, could these people not see that two and a half decades later their obsession with Jellybean and Johnny Hates Jazz was going to look ridiculous? This is why I should be running a major record label, rather than being all picky and sarcastic about them from the comfort of my computer.

NOW 14 feels much fresher, more exciting, than the turgid NOW 13. Ballads are few and far between, and a couple of tracks qualify as outright classics. There are also a couple of huge hits that have certain “huh?” factor about them. Cover versions abound again, but at least this time they are interesting and, more importantly, good. This may also be the first NOW album to feature a shockingly blatant piece of product placement. I was never entirely sure what was going on with that cover though. Any ideas?

As usual, the opening to a NOW album is pretty good. Marc Almond’s brilliantly overblown cover of Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart (duetting with Gene Pitney, who despite rumours to the contrary was NOT the original artists to record it; that honour falls to David and Jonathan (?)) was perhaps a surprise hit, but history tells us it was an appearance on Terry Wogan’s chat show what won it, and sent hordes of baby boomers to Our Price to buy it. When you think of the crap that Wogan has plugged on his Radio 2 show over the years and turned into hits this kind of lets him off the hook. The nostalgia continues with Phil Collins’ Two Hearts, the second track to be released from the Buster soundtrack, a film where he gave a reasonable performance as an actor portraying a vicious East End gangster with a heart of gold (and probably loved his dear old mum). Two Hearts was an even bigger hit than its predecessor, A Groovy Kind Of Love. Well, it was everywhere except in the UK. Although an original composition, it shamelessly riffs on 60s Motown, sounding exactly like his earlier cover of You Can’t Hurry Love, a fact acknowledged in the video for this, where he again plays every member of a band. It’s a pop song you dearly want to hate but can’t. Unlike Erasure’s Stop! Which is a fantastic pop song which, had it not been released at Christmas, would have easily been a huge number one.

Surprisingly not a number one was Bananarama’s Help! The band never had a number one in the UK, not even with this charity record at a time when anything charity related would be top of the charts in pre-orders alone. Backed by French and Saunders (and Kathy Burke) as Lananeeneenoonoo, a good natured pastiche of the band they’d performed on their TV show, Help! Is a reasonably shoddy treatment of a great song, with humour that doesn’t translate without the video, and even then it’s not particularly funny.

Hue and Cry’s Looking for Linda is much better, a nice surprise given it’s a song (I think) about an alcoholic woman fleeing an abusive relationship. Yeah, go pop! It does signal the inevitable drift towards the centre of the record, which continues with Yazz’s lovely, dreamy Fine Time. Her last top ten single, it’s very far removed from the Hi-NRG dance of her earlier hits, and it shows there was more to her than smiling and punching the air. Sadly, the public wanted her smiling and punching the air. Kim Wilde’s late 80s comeback continues with the anonymous Four Letter Word, before the side ends with the still amazing Stop from Sam Brown. The first time two different songs with the same title have appeared on the same NOW album, fact fans.

Side two is again an attempt to collect together rock tunes, so of course it starts with Roy Orbison. You Got It is still pretty good, though to be fair, The Big O could sing Crazy Frog and make it sound great. Fine Young Cannibals returned in style with She Drives Me Crazy, a song that has now, very rightly, achieved legendary status, and another song on NOW 14 that you won’t believe didn’t get to number one. Like INXS’ Need You Tonight, which the foolish British record buying public needed TWO attempts to get it into the charts; it had originally stalled on number 58 when released in 1987. In one of the sloppiest errors on a NOW album ever, the end of the song (“You’re one of my kind”) is rather ignobly chopped off chopped off and the anticipation of the payoff is replaced by the introduction of Status Quo’s horrible Burning Bridges (On and Off and On Again). I’ll never understand why this track was such a big hit, but it’s becoming clear to me that the 80s record buyer would buy any old crap with a dreary, repetitive chorus that sounded like something from the terraces at Stamford Bridge. Interestingly, the song would gain a second life, in 1994, as a football chant, when the famously Spurs-supporting band took a big sack of Old Trafford cash to re-record the song with different lyrics for Manchester United, scoring a number one in the process. Unforgiveable.

I never thought I’d say it, but thank God for Then Jericho. Big Area was one of only two top twenty hits the band had (The Motive (Living Without You) being the other), and frankly, they should have been massive, managing to combine hard rock, pop and stadium sized tracks to surprisingly good effect, the best bits of Big Country, U2, Simple Minds and countless other bands they often get confused with (Cutting Crew, The Alarm). They had an added touch of glamorous sex appeal from lead man Mark Shaw, whose ego got the better of him (hey, sleeping with Belinda Carlisle will do that to the best of men) and he left the band in the lurch for a (no doubt) hefty solo contract with EMI. Where for art they now? The Butlins nostalgia tour and Shaw sometimes performs in an 80s ‘supergroup’ that includes Tony Hadley, Paul Young and Fish!

(As a side note, while preparing this review I happened to catch a dreadful piece of TV about talent shows, which featured clips from Reborn in the USA, a show where 80s pop stars were sent on a tour of the States to try and revive their careers. Mark Shaw was one of the participants and was, undeniably, an arse. It seemed his only ally was one Tony Hadley, so maybe their supergroup fortunes were forged on that fateful and, for Shaw at least, truncated road trip.)

Morrissey’s Last Of The International Playboys seems thoroughly out of place in this testosterone-fuelled, denim-clad company (though I’m sure many would argue he could challenge Mark Shaw in a “being an arse” competition). It’s a song I loved as a kid but now sounds very Second Division in Moz’s discography. Poison were always a bit Second Division in everything, and Every Rose Has It’s Thorn is an utterly dire attempt at a rock/country knock off of Guns n’ Roses.

The first half of NOW 14 closes with possibly the most forgotten number one in the series so far. Even telling you it was Simple Minds’ only number one will not nudge your brain any. Belfast Child is, frankly, odd. This song has no business being a single, let alone a chart-topper. It’s trite, depressing, mawkish, of questionable judgement and, for the first half, almost listenable. I just don’t get it; maybe someone who bought it can enlighten me.

Thankfully, side three brings back some fun to proceedings, providing our dance tunes for this episode. Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance is still great, and Inner City’s Good Life sounds a lot better to my ears now than it did back in the day. I wasn’t a huge hit in 1989, but it’s aged well and still sounds surprisingly contemporary. Sadly, I can’t say the same for S-Express’ Hey Music Lover which is still good fun, but is let down by cheap 80s production far removed from the slickness of Theme from S-Express or even Superfly Guy (which failed to appear on a NOW album, sadly). Quite what Living In A Box are doing mixed up on this side is anyone’s guess, but here they are. Blow The House Down is a good, efficient, pop-dance track but is instantly forgotten long before it finishes. Thankfully this would be the last appearance for the Paul Weller imposter, as The Style Council sign off with their farewell single, Promised Land. No, I didn’t remember it either.

Two brilliant, and very different, songs follow. Adeva’s stunning cover of Respect is up first, and it is bound to polarise opinion. Made famous (but not originally recorded) by Aretha Franklin, I must confess I hated this back then, really despising it. I now feel I was too hasty. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s cover versions which just replicate the original song. Adeva’s version of Respect is as different from Aretha’s version, as Aretha’s version is different from Otis Redding’s version. It certainly doesn’t replicate anything, though I’m not sure exactly what it does do, but it’s one of the most radical cover versions I’ve heard for a good long while. As brave as Scissor Sister’s version of Comfortably Numb, but without the camp theatrical winks, this is an artist saying “I’ve got the balls to take this classic track, and do it MY way, and screw you all!” It’s got a bit of a strange time signature and no melody, Adeva changes the lyrics, scats over parts of it… Bar the late 80s tinny drums this would be considered a classic. I love it.

I also love Tone Loc’s Wild Thing. Not a big hit in the UK (it only reached number 21) it still kills with its drumbeat and sparse guitar stab melody (mostly stolen from Van Halen’s Jamie’s Cryin’), it also manages a nice line in self-depreciation: in two verses, Mr Loc fails to do the wild thing. The song feels like a humorous jibe at some of his contemporaries’ obsession with sex, but probably ended up becoming a template rather than a warning.

Side three finishes rather oddly with Natalie Cole’s dreadful, turgid I Live For Your Love, which I hadn’t heard since I bought this album 24 years ago. It features a rather strained vocal performance from the talented Ms Cole, and is nothing to write home about. On the CD version of NOW 14, I Live For Your Love provides the stepping stone from the dance tracks into the balladry to follow, another indicator of the programming more for CDs than just the album and cassette versions.

The biggest track on NOW 14 is not very well remembered now, but in 1989 Robin Beck’s The First Time was huge (or at least it was when it came out in late 1988). You may be struggling to remember it now, so why not have a sit down and pour yourself a brand-leading cola beverage and have a think. NOW 14 even provides you with a handy little advert next to Ms Beck’s mugshot for said fizzy, brown, tooth-rotting liquid. Having been played in Coke ads relentlessly for six months prior to release (and it seemed for months afterwards too!), I’m not sure it was necessary for NOW to include the product logo in the inner sleeve to remind listeners where it was from, but then it’s more likely it was Coke’s decision rather than NOW’s: “You want one of the biggest, most globally recognised songs of the year? Fine, but stick this half inch ad in your sleeve or no dice” was probably the conversation had between two fat men in pinstripe suits smoking cigars. It doesn’t matter whether The First Time is any good or not, but for the record it’s not. The fact that Ms Beck would never have another single (or even release an album in the UK) leads me to suspect she may have had a sex change and become a global superstar all over again, as Beck, though that may be a lie.

Another track impossible not to include was Paula Abdul’s Straight Up. Now best known as a Simon Cowell hand puppet, Abdul had been THE go to choreography for the great and the good in the 80s (including Whitney and Madge). Straight Up was a surprisingly edgy debut single which still sounds great, and was wildly different to most mainstream pop-dance at the time. It had only just been released at the time of NOW 14’s appearance in the shops, so this was THE hot track on the album, so why it was buried away here god only knows. She never successfully followed through on this though, becoming a less-popular Gloria Estefan (flitting between forgettable pop and dreary ballads; come to think of it, pretty much like Jon Bon Jovi too). There was Opposite Attract, which we’ll come to on a later album, but we all know that MC Scat Cat was the true star of that one.

Sam Fox’s I Only Want To Be With You is a Stock, Aitken, Waterman-produced abomination which warrants no further coverage here. But it does lead us into the pop-dumping ground of the remainder of side four. The biggest surprise here is, again, Brother Beyond. As with their appearance on NOW 13, I was shocked at how un-dreadful Be My Twin is. It’s teenage pop for sure, but it’s a bit more sophisticated, and shows a lot more pop nous, than the over-produced TV pop the kids get served up nowadays. What I’ve realised about Brother Beyond is, although the guiding hand of SAW hangs over their shoulder (the Hit Factory viewing them as a Bros sized meal ticket), they wrote all their own material. Be My Twin is therefore more reminiscent of, say, The Blow Monkeys than Bananarama, and as a result has aged much better. It’s a shame that they are now considered boy band has-beens as they, on this showing at least, had far more to offer than the Brothers Goss (and Ken). One of the band is now a massively successful writer, working with the likes of Adele, and won an Ivor Novello for Will Young’s Leave Right Now. What’s Matt Goss written recently, apart from his housing benefit application?

Those perennial writers Climie Fisher return for the last time with the disappointing Love Like A River. It seems odd that the same pens that write Love Changes Everything could also write this, but you can’t win them all. It would appear their star was fading faster than anticipated. Duran Duran’s star had faded more than most, and All She Wants Is would prove to be their last top ten hit for a long while (they would manage just two more over the next two decades). A truly great song that sounded unlike anything else they’d ever done, and, to be honest, anything else tearing up the charts at the time. Looked at with modern ears (if you can look at something with your ears) you could argue it pointed the way to the likes of Curve and Nine Inch Nails, with its crunching guitar and industrial beat. Duran Duran, the forefathers of Industrial? I’m sure they’d rather that title than ‘the band The Killers wish they were’.

The Duranies appearance on Celebrity Masterchef did not go well

80s survivors Level 42 are still hanging around with Tracie, a jolly but uninspiring midlife crisis ditty, before we reach the bitter end of NOW 14, Michael Ball’s Love Changes Everything. No relation to Climie Fisher’s epic pop anthem, the title was pilfered by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his latest blockbuster West End show, Aspects of Love. Despite the song being one of his biggest chart hits, the show itself was a huge flop, remembered more for the fact that Sir Roger Moore was meant to be in it, but pulled out at the last minute. All is, of course a massive star (if you like that kind of thing; personally I’d rather do something unpleasant to my private area than ‘take in a show’) and a huge talent, but this song is so dull you can almost hear Ball sighing “really, this is the best you can do, Webber?” at some of the lyrics. He doesn’t sound as if he’s particularly interested in the song at all, or even bothering to make an effort, perhaps a result of having to reign in a big theatrical voice in the confides of a tiny recording booth. It’s a sorry end to NOW 14. Show tunes have no place on pop compilations (but this won’t be the last) and makes you forget the hard work the album had already put in to try and make up for the poor quality of its predecessors.

NOW 14 to an extent, does redeem the series, but the same nagging doubts remain. What is pop doing? Where is it going?

Two more NOW’s in 1989 would attempt to answer those questions and neither gets any closer to answering them. Speaking of answers… it’s supposed to be an art gallery

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 14

Release date

20th March 1989

Biggest tracks

The First Time – Robin Beck

Need You Tonight – INXS

Somethings Gotten Hold Of My Heart – Marc Almond and Gene Pitney

Lost gems

Respect – Adeva

Be My Twin – Brother Beyond

Forgotten tracks

Fine Time – Yazz

Promised Land – The Style Council

What’s missing?

Angel of Harlem –U2

Especially For You – Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan

My Prerogative – Bobby Brown

I Don’t want A Lover – Texas

Track listing

Side one
Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart	Marc Almond & Gene Pitney
Two Hearts	Phil Collins
Stop!	Erasure
Help!	Bananarama
Looking For Linda	Hue And Cry
Fine Time	Yazz
Four Letter Word	Kim Wilde
Stop	Sam Brown

Side two
You Got It	Roy Orbison
She Drives Me Crazy	Fine Young Cannibals
Need You Tonight	INXS
Burning Bridges (On And Off And On Again)	Status Quo
Big Area	Then Jericho
The Last Of The Famous International Playboys	Morrissey
Every Rose Has Its Thorn	Poison
Belfast Child	Simple Minds

Side three
Buffalo Stance	Neneh Cherry
Good Life	Inner City
Hey Music Lover	S-Express
Blow The House Down	Living In A Box
Promised Land	The Style Council
Respect	Adeva
Wild Thing	Tone Loc
I Live For Your Love	Natalie Cole

Side four
First Time	Robin Beck
Straight Up	Paula Abdul
I Only Want To Be With You	Samantha Fox
Be My Twin	Brother Beyond
Love Like A River	Climie Fisher
All She Wants Is	Duran Duran
Tracie	Level 42
Love Changes Everything	Michael Ball

May 29, 2013

NOW 13 – Don’t worry, be crappy

Why, in the winter of 1988, it was decided to base a cover of NOW 13 around a charmingly retro spaceship design, I do not know. But it’s a fab design and, even better, features roman numerals for the first time since NOW 2, sorry NOW II. NOW 13 was a huge release, reaching the top 5 selling albums of the year despite being on sale for only the last six weeks of the year. As my quick look at the Hits albums explained, this may in part have been helped by that rival series’ near suicidal rebranding. But surely there’s more to it than that? What about the tunes?

Well, erm, maybe NOW 13’s success lays absolutely on the fact that Hits shot itself in the foot, because this is a pretty shocking affair. Dreary, uninspiring and, in some cases, simply embarrassing. The highlights are all dance tracks, house, hip-hop and rap (whatever the difference between those two is, I’ve never been entirely sure). These genres were now firmly established as pop and chart mainstays and would be for the foreseeable future.

As if to demonstrate, Yazz’s The Only Way Is Up, the killer track of the year, rightly opens the album. It’s dance-pop at its best with that wonderful trumpet-train horn intro, its fist pumping chorus and a joyous atmosphere throughout. You really get the impression that Yazz’s grin throughout the video was genuine and had been there throughout the recording sessions as well. It dominated the charts throughout the summer of ’88 and narrowly missed out on being the biggest selling single of the year thanks to the Antichrist’s Christmas single, Mistletoe and Wine. The rest of side one, in comparison, is a very mixed bag, veering from the sublime (Erasure’s A Little Respect) to the, well if not ridiculous, then at least the utterly forgettable (Hands to Heaven by Breathe?).

Womack and Womack’s Teardrops irritated the piss out of me when it was released, seemingly spending all year stuck at number three. Harvest for the World (The Christians) and Breakfast in Bed (UB40 with Chrissie Hynde) are two of the worst cover versions ever to appear on a NOW album. The Christians were always a bit too worthy for my liking, and UB40, well I think I’ve given them far too much attention on this blog already. But, how on earth do you take a song like that (one of the sexiest ever written when Dusty Springfield sings it), get the Goddess Chrissie Hynde to sing it, and turn it into an insipid pop-reggae dirge like this? That takes skill. In total there are SIX cover versions throughout NOW 13.

A certain amount of skill was required to keep Hue and Cry out of the charts, but they managed it. Ordinary Angel is one of the best songs on here, but it’s also one of two tracks that failed to make the top 40. Robert Palmer is someone I’ve always had a lot of time for, but not for She Makes My Day, beyond enjoying its odd time structure. The problem is, it’s jazz, and jazz is not pop. Speaking of which, Johnny Hates Jazz went AWOL this time, so the bland, sophisti-jazz-pop slot was taken by the now-long-forgotten Breathe who were almost as hilariously unsuccessful as the turn of the millennium, money-haemorrhaging website that shared their name. Hands to Heaven was their only hit, and I’m sure they still get the odd royalty cheque when it’s used for a montage on some dreadful, low rent US hospital drama, but you never hear it on the radio, do you? There’s probably a very good reason for that.

Seriously... these guys were briefly pop stars. Smash hits cover and everything. look at them (Watermark supplied by Getty Images) — **Seriously… these guys were briefly pop stars. Smash Hits cover and everything. Look at them (Watermark supplied by Getty Images)**

Side two is, if anything, even worse. Phil Collins begins a dirge-fest with his horrid cover of Groovy Kind of Love. Half of this side is covers and re-releases (Tom Jones’ Kiss, The Hollies’ He Ain’t Heavy, Bryan Ferry’s Let’s Stick Together) while the rest consists of Kim Wilde (having one of her perennial ‘comebacks’; You Came has not aged well, unlike Ms Wilde herself), Bobby McFerrin (who most definitely did NOT kill himself after recording Don’t Worry Be Happy) and Bother Beyond, who, oddly, are not dreadful. The Harder I Try’s low-rent Motown sound is actually quite pleasant. Nathan Moore can’t sing, but it matters not. Fancy that.

For some reason, in the midst of all this is an absolute diamond: Bomb the Bass’ Don’t Make Me Wait. A cracking follow-up to Beat ‘Dis, it was a double A-side with the equally awesome Megablast, but it was obvious that this track was the single, and it should have been as big a hit as its predecessor. If you want to be picky (and what are sarcastic blogs for, if not to be picky), you could argue the vocal is a little weak, but it’s a brilliantly produced piece of dance-pop, cut from a slightly harder, rougher cloth than Yazz and her Plastic Population. Maybe that was why it wasn’t as successful.

It does seem odd to sandwich a hard dance track between Kim Wilde and Brother Beyond, particularly when NOW 13 managed to cobble together a whole dance orientated side, of which a couple of other tracks would have been better suited to sit alongside such pop luminaries, and allow Bomb the Bass to nestle more comfortably amongst its contemporaries. Sadly, compared to NOW 11’s unmatchable dance collection, NOW 13’s end of year vintage in a tad vinegary. At a remove of a couple of decades, only Yello’s The Race and The Beatmasters brilliant Burn It Up (with the legendary PP Arnold on lead vocals!) are worthy of further listening. The Fat Boys try to replicate the success of Wipeout!, by roping in Chubby Checker and covering The Twist (Yo Twist!, as they insist on calling it). For some reason the photo on the sleeve shows them with Freddie Krueger, rather than Mr Checker, a character they had a later, much less successful team-up with. I wonder if a generation of kids grew up thinking that the purveyor of said Twist was the same guy who played a horribly burned, child molesting dream demon. Which does also raise the point, who on earth thought it was a good idea for a comedy rap group, ostensibly aimed at kids, to make a record with as vile a character as Freddie Krueger? In our post-Jimmy Savile world (which will be as epoch-making for the Brits as post-9/11 is for the Americans) the predatory child molester has taken on a rather different public persona that of a wise-cracking murderer. Very odd.

Next up: Derek B and Stuart Hall with Yo, Knockout! — Next up: Derek B and Stuart Hall with *Yo, Knockout!*

Twisting continues with Salt n’ Pepa’s awful cover of Twist and Shout. It was a much bigger hit in the UK than anywhere else which probably explains a lot about our pop sensibilities in 1988 than any number of my nostalgia-fests could. Wee Rule, by the Wee Papa Girl Rappers, was a song much beloved of my school year and sadly that’s what it still sounds like: a song for kids. This went top five while The Cookie Crew couldn’t buy a hit. It’s a disgrace. Also a disgrace is the shameless bandwagon jumping of D-Mob’s We call It Acieed. Seizing on tabloid headlines about the new ‘horror drug’, that had, of course, been around since (at least) the 60s, and had probably been taken by the same journalists now condemning it. But then it wasn’t about the drugs at all, it’s always about the grownups fear of young people having a good time. So if there’s a musical movement to go along with it, all the better. D-Mob ensured there was, cynically using the media backlash to generate sales from kids too young to go anywhere near an illegal rave, let alone popping pills. And it’s also painful to listen to: name-checking trendy London nightclubs, that awful high-pitched squeal of the title continuously and then one of those dreadful little plastic keyboards that you could blow into… you know the things. Even as a kid I knew that was pretty weak for a supposedly trendy dance track. D-Mob would, briefly, redeem themselves by later introducing the world to Cathy Dennis.

The best track on side three, by a mile, is The Beatmasters’ Burn It Up. A brilliant updating of disco (which was still relatively unfashionable despite the best efforts of the likes of S-Express, who are conspicuous by their absence) with the wonderful honey voice of PP Arnold. It shames everything else on this side of the record and so, of course, was one of the least successful tracks on it, reaching just number 14. By contrast, the most successful song on side three was Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True, though when NOW 13 hit the shops, the track was still climbing the charts, and none of the later unpleasantness was known about. If you don’t know the story of Milli Vanilli why are you here? Seriously, stop reading this, read about Milli Vanilli then come back. OK? One of the greatest pop stories ever told isn’t it? For all the scandal and tragedy, Girl You Know It’s True was always going to be a hit no matter who the hell was singing it. It’s not good exactly, but it’s efficient, and pushes all the right pop buttons. I’m not sure about that weird burping ‘bah’ noise throughout though.

**Milli Vanilli: Owners of the tightest trousers in pop, until Razorlight stole their crown**

Side four, so often the graveyard of a NOW album, is actually the best side on offer this time. Level 42’s Heaven In My Hands shows a rockier approach from them and is still very listenable. Belinda Carlisle’s former Go-Go cohort Jane Wiedlin makes her sole appearance, with her only UK top 40 hit, the wonderfully saucy Rush Hour, a great tune that should have led to further, and greater success, but strangely didn’t. The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) has of course reached that legendary status reserved for songs you liked but hope to God you’ll never hear again thanks to Peter Bloody Kay. There’s no denying it’s brilliant, but that kind of association is difficult to shake off.

The rest of album is solid without being outstanding, and features some tracks many will struggle to remember, if you heard them at all. T’Pau’s Secret Garden, their last NOW appearance, is actually a brilliant song that never found an audience. Their fans clearly wanted more power ballads and this jaunty lead off from their second album was a big hit, and the bargain bin beckoned. Shame.

New on the block were Transvision Vamp. Led by a gobby, nymphette blond, Wendy James (replacing Ms Carlisle in my teenage affections) they scored big with I Want Your Love but failed to immediately follow it up (the next few singles did little business). They basically had to start all over again the following year, with readers of Smash Hits even thinking they were a new band, landing them a spot in the Best Newcomer category at their Poll Winners Party in 1989. Idiots. Far from new, but always seemingly starting over, were Duran Duran. Stung by the relative failure of the singles from Notorious things were going to get a lot worse over the next few years. I Don’t Want Your Love, brilliantly sequenced after Transvision Vamp’s track, did not do well, reaching number 14. The follow up, All She Wants Is, hit the top ten and is featured on NOW 14, but the accompanying album, Big Thing, was dead on arrival and a few fallow years were ahead.

Don't Google Wendy James. Remember her this way, — **Don’t Google Wendy James, remember her this way**

Other former chart-toppers having trouble were The Human league. Love Is All That Matters was supposed to be the new track with which to plug their Greatest Hits album. While the album did great business, the single became the other track on NOW 13 not to break the magic 40. Another example of the craziness of the charts in 1988, particularly when you consider even All About Eve managed a top ten hit with Martha’s Harbour, a dreamy sea shanty (and probably metaphorically very rude) which is now best remembered for their legendary Top Of The Pops appearance. It was so similar to the dirges they regularly turned out you just wander “why this one?”. It could well be the dullest finish to a NOW album so far, and therefore quite fitting considering what a god awful experience this was.

NOW 13 promises the the stars and delivers The Daily Star. The decision to revert to three albums a year again has inevitably led to a drop in quality, as seen here and with the previous release, neither coming close to the majesty of NOW 11. But the record buying public are not exactly blameless either. It’s not really Now’s fault that most of the biggest selling singles of the release period are uninspired cover versions, songs from adverts and bandwagon jumping dance tracks. They just reflect the sales. But, of course, they don’t, since they included two tracks that didn’t make the charts. So, the compilers DO have a choice.

Whatever the reasons, three releases a year would continue into 1989, with similar results. But NOW’s chart dominance would not continue. Despite The Hits series’ implosion, compilation album were now to be banished to their own chart, apparently after upsetting one too many big act, upset that they could never snag the Christmas number one album slot. (I never realised the spot was so coveted; and if that’s the case, can’t they do the same for reality TV show singles at Christmas?) The fact that NOW 13 was, somehow, one of the biggest selling albums of the year, would mean no radical rebrand was needed just yet. But a radical change in quality most defiantly was.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 13

Release date

21^st November 1988

Biggest tracks

The Only Way Is Up – Yazz and the Plastic Population

A Little Respect – Erasure

Don’t Worry, Be Happy – Bobby McFerrin

Lost gems

Burn It Up – Beatmasters with PP Arnold

Don’t Make Me Wait – Bomb the Bass

Ordinary Angel – Hue and Cry (a lovely version with them performing it with a children’s orchestra, on long forgotten kids show What’s that Noise?, with Pat kane looking suspiciously like Dylan Moran!)

Forgotten tracks

Hands to Heaven – Breathe

Love Is All That Matters – Human League

The Harder I Try – Brother Beyond

What’s missing

Superfly Guy -S-Express

Nothing Can Divide Us – Jason Donovan

Tears Run Rings – Marc Almond

Track listing

Side one
The Only Way Is Up	Yazz & The Plastic Population
Teardrops	Womack & Womack
A Little Respect	Erasure
Harvest For The World	The Christians
Ordinary Angel	Hue And Cry
Breakfast In Bed	UB40/Chrissie Hynde
She Makes My Day	Robert Palmer
Hands To Heaven	Breathe

Side two
A Groovy Kind Of Love	Phil Collins
Don’t Worry Be Happy	Bobby McFerrin
Kiss	The Art Of Noise featuring Tom Jones
Let’s Stick Together	Bryan Ferry
You Came	Kim Wilde
Don’t Make Me Wait	Bomb The Bass
The Harder I Try	Brother Beyond
He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother	The Hollies

Side three
The Twist (Yo Twist)	The Fat Boys & Chubby Checker
Wee Rule	The Wee Papa Girl Rappers
Twist And Shout	Salt ‘N’ Pepa
The Race	Yello
Big Fun	Inner City
We Call It Acieed	D-Mob & Gary Haisman
Burn It Up	The Beatmasters & P P Arnold
Girl You Know It’s True	Milli Vanilli

Side four
Heaven In My Hands	Level 42
Rush Hour	Jane Wiedlin
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)	The Proclaimers
Secret Garden	T’Pau
I Want Your Love	Transvision Vamp
I Don’t Want Your Love	Duran Duran
Love Is All That Matters	The Human League
Martha’s Harbour	All About Eve

May 23, 2013

Now That’s What I Call Music 9 – Taking your breath away

In 1987, for the first time since they had co-existed, NOW released its first compilation of the year in the Spring, leaving Hits 6 to take over for the summer, presumably because it gave NOW the opportunity to produce a selection containing no less than seven number ones, the most on a single release since their first collection. And we’re not just talking of fly-by-night chart toppers like Jack Your Body, or Everything I Own. There were HUGE number ones, that are still listened to and loved (by someone, surely) today like Take My Breath Away and The Final Countdown. Iconic, monster hits which etched themselves into the collective memories of generation after generation of music lovers. And love or hate them, these songs help to make NOW 9 one of the strongest collections so far in the series, providing a winning mix of great pop and iconic rock. The dance scene takes a backseat here (with a notable exception) as the UK fell in love with Soft Metal and rediscovered hair-rock.

But first, this cover. I had no idea what this was supposed to be. For years I thought it represented a photo album, or possibly a white wallet (it was the 80s, stranger things have happened). The inner gatefold confuses matters further by featuring a ring binder in the centre. Just what the flip is going on here? Then I saw the advert… oh dear.

“Your own personal Hits file…”

It’s a bloody Filofax! But of course they can’t say that as it’s a brand name, so instead, they have a little pop at their rival (probably). Only two albums in, and it looked like Quick on the Draw had dropped the ball already. But, I am looking at it from 25 years remove; I’m sure in 1987 this would have been at contemporary, and finger-on-the-pulse, as the shiny flying CD’s and liquid silver of NOW 8’s advertising. Personally, I think it’s pretty dreadful.

The peerless Reet Petite kicks things off in style, but sadly, it would signal a turn that pop in general would take over the next few years, thanks to the success of Levis use of classic tunes in their adverts. But before we get ahead of ourselves, despite what you may read on other websites, Reet Petite was never used in any such commercial for any product. Its rerelease was the result of an animated video, featuring a claymation Jackie Wilson, made for the song for an episode of the BBC Two arts series, Arena. The specially-commissioned video was such a success, and generated a renewed interest in the song, that it was rereleased, swiftly hitting number one in the process.

Carry On... Don't Lose Your Head — **Carry On… Don’t Lose Your Head**

NOW 9 features two other songs which had previously been hits, one of which, Ben E. King’s Stand By Me WAS used in a Levis advert, becoming the first, but certainly not the last, to be included on a NOW album on the back of the denim manufacturers’ campaigns. I’ve no idea why Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing was remixed and rereleased in 1987, by the then ubiquitous Ben Liebrand, but that too appears here. Silentnight mattresses, my first thought, didn’t start using it until 2001. The remix is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. In fact, I’ve no idea why Liebrand was so popular at the end of the decade, as every song he touched ended up being ruined.

Most NOW albums from this point on would feature at least one old tune, that was dragged back into the charts on the back of an advert, or a film. In some cases this would also tie in with a Greatest Hits package (good news for the record company) and would often see songs from previous NOW albums appearing again (such as Simple Minds Alive and Kicking, or Hue and Cry’s Labour of Love) as we will see as we delve further through the albums.

For now though, our focus is fully on NOW 9. Mental as Anything, sadly, never fulfilled the promise of the wonderful Live It Up. Massive in their native Australia, they never travelled well, with this being their only breakout hit anywhere else in the world (it made the top ten almost everywhere). It still sounds wonderful today. Simply Red’s The Right Thing also sounds good (I hate to say). Something about Mick Hucknall just makes me think he’s a bit of a mucky character (a fact maybe not helped by tabloid revelations about his private life during the nineties), and every original song he sings seems to be about sex, like a red-haired Mancunian Prince, without the humour. The Right Thing is one of his more listenable songs, but it still has the whiff of slimy guy on the pull at the wine bar about it.

Not an accusation you could level at Erasure. Making their first appearance, with many more to come, Erasure managed to create a hybrid of Yazoo (Vince Clark’s former chart conquering outfit), Pet Shop Boys and the hi-energy dance of Bronski Beat, to create a wonderfully commercial slice of electro-pop which dominated the top ten for almost a decade. Sometimes, their first hit, was huge, but was kept off the top by The Final Countdown, of which more later. It, oddly, is one of several tracks on NOW 9 from the previous year (albeit, the tail end of 1986) when many of the acts, Erasure included, had released further songs. No chance of including a further song by Robbie Nevil though. His C’est la Vie was his only big UK hit (though the long-forgotten Dominoes would scrape the top 30 later in 1987), but it was a belter.

Surprisingly, It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way was The Blow Monkey’s only top ten hit (lead singer, Dr Robert would hit the top ten with Kim Mazelle on the criminally underrated Wait in 1989, one of the best songs on the 80s) but their jazz-pop noodlings (somewhere between ABC and Level 42, but a tad more pretentious) makes their sound quintessentially “87”, and it’s probably the most ‘of its time’ track on show here, at least until we get to side three.

The Housemartin’s Caravan of Love was the song that stopped Reet Petite from being Christmas number one, and would prove to be their sole chart-topper, and I think it’s often forgotten that it was a number one. Many people cite Reet Petite as being Christmas number one in 1986, but sadly not. Caravan of Love is nice, but not a patch on some of their other tunes (The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death remains their best for me) and is pretty inconsequential.

NOW 9 avoids a problem many of its predecessors have of trying to crowbar a collection of dance tunes onto one side. Perhaps because there were so few around in the period covered by NOW 9, we instead get a scattering of loosely defined dance tracks throughout sides two and three. There’s reggae from Boy George’s cover of Everything I Own (his first solo release which unfortunately did not lead to a particularly successful second coming) and, of course, there’s bloody UB40 again, this time with Rat In Mi Kitchen.

The Gap Band’s Big Fun, is not a particular favourite of mine, but I think it’s worth mentioning how closely it resembles a track of the same name by Inner City, which was released the next year (and turns up on NOW 13). None of the writers are credited on the Inner City track, which I think is unfortunate as, while it’s not a direct cover, it is certainly influenced by The Gap Band track. Maybe the fact it was so forgettable explains why.

Dance-pop kicks in with Five Star and Bananarama showcasing lesser known tracks. I swear I had never ever heard Trick of the Night by the Nana’s, their first track to really betray the sound of Stock, Aitken and Waterman while still retaining their earlier sound, particularly Cruel Summer. Included here in anticipation of being a hit, it failed to reach the top 30. Between these two we find Pepsi and Shirlie, who until recently had been backing up George and Andrew in Wham, but now found themselves unemployed. It’s a mystery why they never sustained their early success, as Heartache (the track included here) and Goodbye Stranger are both fantastic pop tunes, and they had the sexy image to go with the tunes. Sadly, it was not to be, and, according to Wikipedia at least, the last gig they had was singing backing vocals on Geri Halliwell’s Bag It Up!

The pop dance party is brought to a shuddering halt by Berlin’s Take My Breath Away. As I said at the start, it’s a truly iconic piece of 80s music, straddling soft rock and pop in a way only non-English European acts seemed to be able to do. I can add nothing to the discussion about this song other than I absolutely despise it to its very core, and I’d gladly have my ears surgically removed if it meant I’d never hear it again.

Side three presents the greatest mix of styles on the album, from Freddie Mercury’s torch song version of The Great Pretender (sung brilliantly, but let down by some cheap-sounding production, it proves Freddie alone is good, but it’s not Queen) through Stand By Me and into Curiosity Killed The Cat’s Down to Earth. Somehow this remains their biggest hit (equalled by a cover of Hang On In Their Baby in 1992), proving more popular than their better-known hits Misfit and Name and Number (“Hey, how you doin’? I’m sorry you can’t get through…”). I always found this track incredibly dull, and Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot to be indicative of a lot of what was wrong about late 80s pop. Like many other acts at the time, it seemed to be style over substance, working out your look and your back-story before thinking about the tunes. When earlier acts like ABC or Frankie did the same, they at least had the tunes to back it up. People like Curiosity, Johnny Hates Jazz, Breathe and the like never did, and were swiftly dumper-bound. Though Curiosity would continue to pop up, using another of their cat’s lives, throughout the 90s.

The Communards So Cold The Night is the oddest track on here, being a strange mix of middle eastern sounds (played on a synthesiser, natch) and Jimmy Somerville stretching his falsetto to the max. As a follow-up to Don’t Leave Me This Way, it was a nailed on top ten hit, but I wonder how many people actually liked it. NOW waste no opportunity to plug NOW 6 in their blurb, mentioning that it contained the original version of You Are My World, which had been remixed and rereleased in the wake of their new success.

We’re back in dance party mode next with two wildly different tracks. Jack Your Body was astonishing on first listen back in 1987, sounding like it had been transported through time from the next century. Lyric-less (beyond the repeated urge to “jack your body”, whatever that meant), amazingly, it reached number one despite not being played on Radio One, which seems outrageous looked back on today. What is Radio One there for if not to play pioneering, exciting music like this (or rather, as this was, in 1987)? It would be unthinkable today for such a track to slip under their radar. But it probably shows up the regime that was running the show back then, the Smashie and Nicey brigade so brilliantly sent up by Harry Enfield, and so ruthlessly sent down by Matthew Bannister. When you’ve got DJ’s who’d rather play Status Quo and Phil Collins, than scorching hot, bleeding edge stuff such as this, something was clearly very wrong.

**These two ruthlessly led to the sacking of loads of old men from Radio 1. And they regret nothing. NOTHING!**

Taffy, probably didn’t mind, declaring her love for her radio (her midnight radio), with a piece of candy floss dance-pop that had managed to escape my brain until I heard it again.

Nick Kamen is a name which will mean nothing unless you were around in the 80s, much as the names of Big Brother or X Factor winners only resonate with those who actually saw them in their triumphs. An Essex model who hit the big time after stripping to his boxers in a launderette (another success for Levis!) someone decided this boy could sing, and he found himself courted by none other than Madonna, and top hits and worldwide fame was inevitable. Though, you wouldn’t know this if you were British, as, his first single apart, he was derided and considered something of a joke. Each Time You Break My Heart, written by Madge, hit the top 5, but he would never scale such dizzy heights again in his homeland. In Europe, he was huge. Loving You Is Sweeter, a cover of a Four Tops single, hit number one in Italy, and a later hit I Promised Myself, went top ten everywhere, except in the UK. Maybe he was just too pretty. In retrospect, there’s a bit of a comparison with the stuttering munchkin Gareth Gates. Pretty boy, weak but not unpleasant voice, courted by large bosomed, sexually confident, ladies (Jordan in Gates’ case, though she never wrote a song for him… maybe that might have helped). The track is a surprisingly pleasant, but not earth-shattering diversion before the sheer oddness of a-ha’s Manhattan Skyline.

They had already shown that they were not adverse to tearing up the pop chart hit rulebook with things like Hunting High and Low, but this is from another level, seemingly three different songs all fighting each other with a cacophony of synths, strings, drum machines and perhaps Morten Harket’s finest vocal performance. I bet Radiohead used this as a template when they prepared Paranoid Android. I love it, though it’s not as good as I’ve Been Losing You, their great forgotten track.

Speaking of forgotten tracks, side four kicks off with a song that made me grin like a loon when I heard it again, and could be the finest gem this whole exercise has unearthed so far: Sonic Boom Boy by Westworld. An amazing mix of rockabilly, dance and pop, it’s everything that made music exciting in the 80s, at least if you were in your teens. Listening to it now, it’s strangely similar to Aztec Camera’s brilliant Good Morning Britain, from 1990. Westworld are another band who never achieved anything near their potential, with this being their only big hit. The follow up, Ba-Na-Na-Bam-Boo, is more rocky but has a horrible 80s production that is nowhere near as polished as Sonic Boom Boy, and barely made the top 40. Shame.

Sonic boom... a-boom boy — **Sonic boom… a-boom boy**

Rediscovering tracks like this is what this whole thing is about. I’ve been lucky so far, in finding at least one track on every album that I’d either never heard, or had forgotten about, that still sounds amazing today. But this is the best one so far.

Side four continues familiarly with Livin’ On A Prayer (the first of only a few Bon Jovi tracks in the series), Land of Confusion and The Final Countdown. Much as with Take My Breath Away these are all far too well-known to warrant too much attention here except to say, astonishingly, I think the Genesis track is the best of the three. Maybe the video helps.

Gary Moore continues to be, bafflingly, included on NOW albums, with Over The Hills And Far Away, not a track I was familiar with, to the point where I actually thought it was Big Country. It’s got a big, rousing chorus, but it’s not memorable except for the use of what would now be referred to as ‘that Riverdance sound’ but is, of course, a traditional Irish sound. Very rare at a time when anything Irish was considered dangerous in the minds of many Brits.

The Ward Brothers mean nothing to me. Cross That Bridge means nothing to me. It will mean nothing to you either. Somebody at NOW obviously thought quite a lot of it though, including the tune despite the fact it only reached number 32, and would ultimately prove to be their only dalliance with the charts. It’s an extremely bland, pop-rock tune, sounding like any number of other songs from the same period. This, no doubt, would have been the most skipped song on the album.

Thankfully, the final track, for once, is lovely, rather than a song that makes you want to slash your wrists, and forget all the great pop you’ve listened over the past two hours. The Pretenders’ Hymn to Her is a great showcase for Chrissie Hynde’s voice and, while it is yet another album-closing ballad, it at least has heart to it, and is not as ordinarily pointless as most ‘slow dance’ tunes which normally occupy the final track slot.

Overall, NOW 9’s line up is strong. Some artists may appear with lesser tracks than may be appreciated, but its hit list of seminal tracks is indisputable, as is the amount of variety. Rock is definitely the prevailing mood on this one, but a change was on the horizon, as evidenced by Jack Your Body, and the continuing rise of Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Things were about to change for me to… the next NOW album, would be my ground zero.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 9

Release date

23rd March 1987

Biggest tracks

Take My Breath Away – Berlin

Livin’ On A Prayer – Bon Jovi

The Final Countdown – Europe

Lost gems

Sonic Boom Boy – Westworld

Jack Your Body – Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley

Forgotten tracks

Big Fun – The Gap Band

Loving You Is Sweeter – Nick Kamen

Cross That Bridge – The Ward Brothers

Trick of the Night – Bananarama

What’s missing

Real Wild Child – Iggy Pop

Skin Trade – Duran Duran

Running in the Family – Level 42

Track listing

Side one
Reet Petite	Jackie Wilson
Live It Up	Mental As Anything
The Right Thing	Simply Red
Sometimes	Erasure
C’est La Vie	Robbie Nevil
You Sexy Thing	Hot Chocolate
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way	The Blow Monkeys
Caravan Of Love	The Housemartins

Side two
Everything I Own	Boy George
Rat In Mi Kitchen	UB40
Big Fun	The Gap Band
Stay Out Of My Life	Five Star
Heartache	Pepsi & Shirlie
Trick Of The Night	Bananarama
Take My Breath Away	Berlin

Side three
The Great Pretender	Freddie Mercury
Stand By Me	Ben E King
Down To Earth	Curiosity Killed The Cat
So Cold The Night	The Communards
Jack Your Body	Steve “Silk” Hurley
I Love My Radio (Midnight Radio)	Taffy
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever	Nick Kamen
Manhattan Skyline	A-Ha

Side four
Sonic Boom Boy	Westworld
Livin’ On A Prayer	Bon Jovi
Land Of Confusion	Genesis
The Final Countdown	Europe
Over The Hills And Far Away	Gary Moore
Cross That Bridge	The Ward Brothers
Hymn To Her	The Pretenders

CD track listing

Reet Petite	Jackie Wilson
Live It Up	Mental As Anything
The Right Thing	Simply Red
C’est La Vie	Robbie Nevil
You Sexy Thing	Hot Chocolate
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way	The Blow Monkeys
Everything I Own	Boy George
Rat In Mi Kitchen	UB40
Stay Out Of My Life	Five Star
Heartache	Pepsi & Shirlie
Take My Breath Away	Berlin
The Great Pretender	Freddie Mercury
Stand By Me	Ben E King
Down To Earth	Curiosity Killed The Cat
Land Of Confusion	Genesis
Hymn To Her	The Pretenders

Video selection

For once, the video version contains all tracks from the accompanying album, with only one exception, for some reason substituting Gary Moore’s track for a different one.

As with the CD, it’s top heavy with tracks from the first two sides for some reason.

The Great Pretender	Freddie Mercury
Reet Petite	Jackie Wilson
Down To Earth	Curiosity Killed The Cat
So Cold The Night	The Communards
Heartache	Pepsi & Shirlie
Everything I Own	Boy George
Rat In Mi Kitchen	UB40
You Sexy Thing	Hot Chocolate
Caravan Of Love	The Housemartins
Wild Frontier	Gary Moore*
Sonic Boom Boy	Westworld
Jack Your Body	Steve “Silk” Hurley
Stay Out Of My Life	Five Star
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever	Nick Kamen
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way	The Blow Monkeys
The Right Thing	Simply Red

April 14, 2013