Tag: Natalie Cole

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 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