The world seems to thrive on revivals these days. Whether it’s dreadful sitcoms, the Gallagher brothers or Nazism, it seems we can’t go a week without something from the past being dredged up, brushed off and shoved back in our faces again. One such irritation the past few years has been the vinyl revival. Kickstarted by Record Store Day, a genuine attempt to revive the humble independent record shop which ended up getting hijacked by the major labels as a way of convincing £50 Man (remember him) to part with said amount of money for a limited edition 7” of a ropey live recording of a song he could probably find on Youtube if he could be bothered. The continued baffling success of the enterprise seemed to do more damage to those very retailers it was meant to promote, as they were starved of the product which was the very point, in favour of the resurgent high street stores. Well, HMV.
The Second Coming of HMV has been instrumental in the mass marketing of over priced vinyl for the ‘collector’s market’ and a whole new range of tatty players, the like of which used to be found cluttering up Woolworths (and Woolco) around this time of year.
(Full disclosure: Christmas 2016 saw me temping in said record emporium, and I was guilty of plugging players I knew to be substandard, mainly because customers would always roll their eyes in disbelief when I’d tell them they would probably need to spend over £200 to get a half decent player, while they were longingly stroking a Crosley Cruiser for £69.)
A Crosley Cruiser yesterday
But, as is customary, I digress. This also led to an outpouring of re-releases for vinyl which had previously been widely available to those who were happy to hunt for them, for a quid or two in their local charity shop. £20 became the standard price for a record as, after years of complaining the industry had ripped them off over the cost of CDs, men of a certain age were quite happy to let the industry rip them off over the cost of vinyl instead. Vinyl of albums they most probably already owned in at least one CD format.
NOW were never going to let an opportunity like this pass them by. But just as when they fluffed the CD releases of the original series (only releasing the inaugural album and then… none of the others!) they made the baffling decision not to re-release the series on 180gm vacuum packed collectable gorgeousness. No, they decided to re-release the original Christmas album, but not.
The Christmas Album: 12 Songs of Christmas
Happy Xmas (War is Over)
John & Yoko/The Plastic Ono Band
Last Christmas
Wham!
Fairytale of New York (Feat. Kirsty MacColl)
The Pogues
Merry Christmas Everyone
Shakin’ Stevens
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Brenda Lee
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Andy Williams
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Wizzard
Driving Home for Christmas
Chris Rea
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Dean Martin
Merry Xmas Everybody
Slade
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Band Aid
White Christmas
Bing Crosby
First up, I have no idea what this album is called. On the official NOW site it’s referred to (rather tellingly) as NOW Christmas Vinyl, HMV list it as The Christmas Album: The 12 Songs of Christmas, Amazon it’s NOW The Christmas Album (Vinyl). Who knows. What I do know is just a cursory glance at that tracklisting sets alarms ringing.
First off, there’s no way NOW could have done a genuine re-release of the original Christmas album. The presence of a certain Gary Glitter back in 1985 would have made it impossible. Another potential fly in the ointment is Queen. Thank God it’s Christmas was included originally, but has never appeared on any subsequent NOW Christmas release, for reasons I do not know. It’s a popular tune, gets loads of radio play, and Queen are on one of the NOW labels. I can only assume it’s a decision by the band.
Point two, there have been a fair few ‘classic’ christmas tracks released since 1985. Not many, I’ll grant you, but a few. And the lack of some of them on a NOW Christmas album (even a supposedly nostalgic one) would be sacrilegious. So out would go Shaky’s Blue Christmas in favour of Merry Christmas Everyone. The Greatest Christmas Song of All Time ((c) BBC4 and 6Music) Fairytale of New York also demands to be included, and neglecting Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas would seem churlish. Mariah Carey’s absence, whilst irritating, is probably explained by the fact that she’s a bit too female and poppy for an album clearly aged at middle-aged men; see also The Waitresses’ Christmas Wrapping).
Not appearing on BBC4 anytime soon
But then things get a bit murky, as you realise some of the original tracks missing are pretty huge: Elton John, Jona Lewie, The Beach Boys, even Lord thumbs aloft himself, Macca. But what’s odder is those brought in to fill the gaps. Brenda Lee, Dean Martin and Andy Williams were nowhere to be seen back in 1985, so why include them now at the expense of, probably, better loved and highly regarded tracks that were included on the original release?
The whole enterprise stinks of a cynical cash grab with little regard for its origins, its audience or, frankly, its artists. It’s no better than £3 cds you see in the petrol station with tiny print on the back cover stating “some tracks may have been re recorded without the original artists”. The lack of the original NOW logo on the front cover is the final cherry on the turd.
As I said before, a proper re-release it completely out of the question, but a partial one, omitting the two tracks mentioned, and possibly even with the Shaky substitution, would have been better than what was released. The fact that in my six weeks Christmas work in HMV last year I only saw one copy come through my till may tell a story, but the fact it’s back in the shops this year (and being plugged by said shops) would also suggest they still think somebody wants it. But then if it’s only going to be played on a Crosley Cruiser for a few weeks of the year, what does it matter?
By 2005, it had been five years since the last NOW Christmas Album, and it was time for a reboot. But things had changed in the interim. Popstars: The Rivals and lying in wait The X Factor, had the Christmas number one all but monopolised, which had a strange effect of leading to both the dullest ‘races’ for Christmas number one ever and also a resurgence in the popularity of the Christmas music of old. The previously mentioned Golden Period from the early 70s to mid-80s became particularly venerated on radio and on the multitude of music channels now available. Unfortunately, this didn’t lead to a great deal of new Christmas music, at least not any GOOD new Christmas music, which may explain the decision to slim back NOW Christmas 2005 to a single cd.
It still retains the core tracks you would expect with no surprises or baffling inclusions, bar one. A chap called Patrizio Buanne, who sounds like a lecherous ice cream man with an awful karaoke backing track. It’s so stinky bad it makes you think Michael Buble isn’t actually that bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl4RpS-Gmv0
The album does, though, feature the giant Perspex NOW lettering in a suitably festive landscape, but labels itself as NOW Massive Christmas Hits XMAS which is a tad unwieldy. This may have been a dig at the BMG/WEA backed Christmas Hits (as in NOW’s great 80’s rival, The Hits Album). They had knocked out their first spoiler album in 2001, utilising a near identical track listing to NOW, beefed up to 50 tracks, but crucially including those big tracks (well, two tracks) NOW no longer had the use of: Wham’s Last Christmas, and the more recent Christmas classic Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas. Christmas Hits would appear again in 2004, expanded to 60 tracks and filling itself with a lot more obscure (to UK ears) tracks by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and a Backstreet Boys B-side. On the plus side it includes T-Rex’s oddly neglected Christmas Bop and Wombling Merry Christmas. So it’s clearly brilliant.
In 2006, and no doubt noticing a distinct drop in their December cashflow the previous year, NOW Christmas is back and up for a fight, expanding to 3 discs and 60 tracks. Its title is back to the more normal, NOW That’s What I Call Xmas, but it’s still using Xmas instead of Christmas. No doubt this is something they focus grouped.
(This link to Allmusic is the only tracklisting I can find for the 2006 release; the info on the official NOW site is incorrect, and is actually the 2009 release. Oops.)
Upping the ante to three discs results in some fine introductions (The Waitresses finally make an appearance, a couple of Motown classics, Squeeze’s long forgotten Christmas Day, to my knowledge the only Christmas song to namecheck Morecambe and Wise, feel free to prove me wrong in the comments), a selection of much older tunes and some carols for the oldies (disc 2 would no doubt be given short shrift by the kids) and the inevitable contract fulfilling excretions by EMI/Virgin acts, although ALL of the dreadful tracks mentioned on the 2000 release (Robbie, Spice Girls, Ronan Keating, Billie) have gone. Thank Christ.
In their place however, we get Samantha Mumba’s horribly weedy (and far cheaper, in every respect) version of All I Want For Christmas Is You. Despite its belief that a Spector-like Wall of Sound is achieved by chucking as many different sounds into the mix as possible, it actually achieves the near impossible feat of making perhaps the best Christmas song of the past 25 years utterly unlistenable. It even steals Macca’s squelches. Slow hand clap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obsUKs78VhY
Slightly saucy Andrew Sisters knock-offs The Puppini Sisters (who, incidentally do a rather superb Dixie jazz version of the Mariah track) deliver the most recent track on the album. Their fun version of Jingle Bells was made available as a download only track, but only AFTER the NOW album had already been released. It was all good publicity for them and their soon-to-be released album, no doubt. Girls Aloud’s Not Tonight Santa is one of the bonus guffs from the Christmas cash-in release of their album Chemistry in 2005. It’s the slightly naughty tale of the Girls’ boyfriend (it’s not clear if they all share the same one or if they are singing about their own significant others) and what he can offer that Santa can’t. Sadly, they missed the opportunity for references to bulging sacks and only coming once a year. It’s fairly dreadful, considering the cracking tunes they could knock out.
His great Lord Cliffness manages to snag three places on the album, with the perennial Mistletoe and Wine being joined by the almost as ubiquitous Saviours Day (whose video reminds me so much of the Wicker Man I once mashed them up) and long forgotten almost-Christmas-number-one-that-no-one-remembers, Little Town. No idea why, maybe Cliff had a Greatest Hits out that year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJzdxjGEWhk
Other newcomers include a one-time only appearance of Kate Bush’s Home for Christmas. It’s pleasant but inconsequential (it’s less than two minutes) and pales next to the brilliant December Will Be Magic Again. There’s also Band Aid 20, the ’20 years on’ rerecording of Do They Know It’s Christmas? with a bunch of acts most of which have now been long forgotten just 11 years later. There are many problems with this, the biggest of which is that it gave Sir Bob a handy excuse to forever consign Band Aid II (the Stock, Aitken, Waterman version) to the dustbin of musical history forever. There was the fact that Robbie Williams and Dido desperately wanted to be on it, but couldn’t be arsed to get to the studio with everyone else, but they still let them record a bit and included it; there’s Justin bloody Hawkins who thinks a Christmas charity song is the perfect place for his oh-so-ironic axe wanking; there’s bloody Bono and that bloody line (obviously he had his nose very much put out by Matt Goss and Jason Donovan’s reading of the line in 1989 that he felt compelled to come back, despite the fact Mr Hawkins was intended to sing it); there’s the fact that Bananarama weren’t even asked to be on it, and maintain a 100% appearance rate; there’s Chris Martin’s bafflingly out of tune piano; there’s the Sugarbabes sounding like a computer generated girl band; there’s the John Lennon/Give Peace a Chance ending. Perhaps the most maligned aspect at the time of release was Dizzee Rascal’s rap. Listened to now, that’s probably the best part. At least he’s trying, everyone else sounds so utterly bored. One of the problems with Band Aid 20 (and its later 30 cousin) is the sense of duty involved. Adele got absolutely pelted by the media in 2014 for not appearing on Band Aid 30 despite Bob Geldof insisting he never asked her. If you don’t appear on a Band Aid single you are worse than Hitler. So artists trudge to a grotty recording studio on a cold Sunday morning, probably the worse for wear, and sing a song they’re probably just as sick of hearing as we are. You’re bound to be sound a bit bored. At least on the 1984 original the concept alone was exciting enough to generate much enthusiasm (that and coke, probably), but no one ever thinks about why (let alone gets angry because) so and so isn’t on it (Clare Grogan of Altered Images has at least admitted they were asked and they turned it down, brave girl.)
Sod it. You’re not going to hear it on the radio this year. Or any year.
Even Band Aid 20 isn’t the worst track on NOW Christmas ‘06. State of the Heart’s smooth jazz radio version of Last Christmas takes that particular accolade this time round.
There is a rogue element on here that should be mentioned though: East 17’s Stay Another Day. It’s not a Christmas song. It’s sentimental, yes. It’s got bells on, yes. It has a suitably snowy video wiv da boyz from Da Stow in dare puffer jackets, innit. But it ain’t a Christmas song.
Onto 2009 which features identical artwork but a different tracklisting. A couple of attempted ‘modern’ Christmas songs find their way onto this one, some of which never saw the light of day again. Probably the most celebrated (i.e the one you hear the most) was from Spinal Tap wannabes The Darkness, whose Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) from 2003 was a genuine attempt to wrestle the Christmas number one back for ‘proper’ Christmas songs. You know, proper Christmas music made by sarcastic piss takers who want to write themselves a fat annual cheque. It’s as cynical and calculated as anything The Dark Lord Cowell ever does and the fact people thought this should be number one over the Popstars is frankly laughable now. What was most chucklesome at the time was the fact that it DID outsell that years’ Pop Idol contestants version of Merry Xmas (War Is Over) (good lord) but couldn’t outsell Gary Jules’ Mad World, a song which managed to out depress Tears for Fears, and instill itself into the nation’s hearts. That track has yet to find itself of a NOW Christmas album, but is a Christmas music channel staple now.
(Amazingly, The Darkness, who have had what some may refer to as a comeback this year, are having another pop at the Christmas charts in 2015, withI Am Santa, an utter dirge of a tune which even a wonderfully well made retro video can’t rescue.)
Other newcomers include Gabriella Cilmi (Warm This Winter) whose attempt at a career in the UK (rather than in her native Australia) needed a boost. What better way than to have your Christmas track included in a supermarket ad campaign, along with a NOW appearance. The Wombats (crazy name, crazy guys) tried their hand at the ‘tell it like it really is’ Christmas song, which isn’t bad, but not exactly great either. For a song from 2008, there’s a distinct whiff of 2005 about this. If you heard it on the radio you’d struggle to recall if it was The Kaiser Chiefs, Futureheads, Razorlight or any number of XTC-rip off merchants from the dark days of the mid 00’s. Even an introduction from Les Dennis can’t raise this above ‘meh’.
Other than this the 2009 vintage is starting to taste extremely familiar, with only the late arrival of The Pretenders’ 2000 Miles and Chris Rea’s Driving Home For Christmas (finally) making the thing slightly more definitive than it ever has. Wham and Mariah are still missing, but we still have State of the Heart and Samantha Mumba to annoy the hell out of people who only want to buy one album with all their faves on it.
2010 appears to be identical music wise, but the artwork has been subtly changed from red to purple and given a tad more room to breathe. The Wombats are still on it.
Joy to the world! The Wham has come! In 2012 people stopped writing crap Amazon reviews of the NOW Christmas Album because of ‘the shitty instrumental version of Last Christmas’ because, finally, Wham’s version returned to NOW for the first time since the original release. In light of this it was also given a prominent place as number three in the almost immovable disc one tracklisting. That running order was given a bit of a spruce and shake up. Not radically so, but at least it didn’t look like nothing had changed, as with the previous couple of go arounds.
George Michael’s second appearance on the album comes from his more recent, and rather neglected, Christmas song, December Song (I Dreamed of Christmas). It’s a proper heart-tugger, which features one of George’s best vocal performances for years. It’s in no way a party tune though, which may account for its lack of airplay in the time since its release in 2009.
Whilst State of the Heart had to give up their slot of Last Christmas to its rightful owner, Samantha Mumba suffers the indignity of being let go in favour of ANOTHER cover version of Mariah’s hit, from someone (or something) called Lady Antebellum. Now, I had to look this one up because that name meant less than bugger all to me, and I really wish I hadn’t. I wonder if this is supposed to be one of those ‘cool christmas’ things that have been popular for a while whereby hipster acts do covers or even attempt a new Christmas song (I blame Sufjan Stevens for all of them). This comes across like S Club 7 trying to do a really heartfelt reading of what was a great pop song. It’s almost interchangeable with Never Had A Dream Come True.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmbLDpy4z50
Mick Hucknall’s Happy This Christmas can, however, sod off. No hit for years? I know, I’ll write a god awful song, stick Christmas in the lyrics, add some bells and ‘little drummer boy’ percussion. Bingo! Or not. It didn’t chart. If it wasn’t for this blog post, and the radio station Smooth Christmas, I would probably never have heard it.
In other changes The Darkness (after just one appearance), Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews, and, sadly, Squeeze, were let go, and replaced by the distinctly unfestive Coldplay (another dreary would be ‘modern classic’), a suprising return for Sinead o’Connor (her brilliantly haunting Silent Night) and mum favourites Il Divo.
The 2013 release should have been a cause for much celebration as Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas finally made its NOW debut (straight in at number two, pop pickers; John Lennon is still hanging on at number one after all these years), but this is a tainted release for just one reason, and massively controversial it was too (in my head). The past few years have seen the emergence of a new Christmas tradition, and like all great new Christmas traditions it is in fact the revival of an old one. When I was a lad way back when, Christmas didn’t start until the unveiling of that years star-studded Woolworths christmas advert (also available at Woolco). Whether it was Eric Bristow battering a kid at darts, Anita Harris twirling a record stand, Joe Brown being a ringmaster, or The Goodies dancing to an astonishing Super Trouper knock off, you could guarantee it was all anyone was talking about the next day. That and which Star Wars figures you weren’t going to get this year. Well, that tradition is back with us, with many proclaiming John Lewis Day as the official start of the yuletide festivities now. This has not only led to ever increasingly budgeted super commercials by them and their rivals, but also a clamoring to be the unknown (or in Lily Allen’s case, desperate for the work) artist doing an insipid cover of a (sometimes) very famous song in the ad. In 2012, whilst the ad was very good (the snowman getting his snow lady a scarf) the accompanying song was anything but. Worse, Gabrielle Aplin’s cover of Frankie’s The Power of Love usurped its big brother on the NOW album that followed it a year later. I’m not sure why though. The Power of Love is, frankly, one of the best songs of the 80s; powerful, evocative, gut-wrenchingly beautiful, brilliant produced, and, rather sadly in my eyes, a Christmas classic (I say sadly, because it’s so much better than to only be confined to December airplay). Aplin’s version retains none of the original’s potency, replacing a strong message (which incidentally fits the ‘never say die’ message of the ad much better) with a weedy, fragile vocal where the singer sounds like she can barely finish the song. And a year later, no one even remembered it, because, like most Christmas related things, you forget about last year because this year is already creeping up the drive ready to shove a ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ up your jacksy any second now. No one would have noticed if Aplin’s version wasn’t there; no one would have set up an online petition demanding to know why NOW how snubbed it. No one would have cared. I imagine many DID care that Frankie wasn’t there.
Even more annoyingly it was still present and correct on the 2014 release, which is a carbon copy of 2013.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest NOW Christmas 2015 may be the best edition since the first, 30 years ago this very year. The convergence of record companies over the years has led to a situation where almost every major label (Warners being the exception) now falls under NOW’s umbrella, meaning almost everything is up for grabs. What this means is that they can now separate the wheat from the chaff and still knock out a 70(!) track compilation that would keep most festive parties happy. The tracklisting has been shaken to its very core with John Lennon finally forgoing his position at the top of the tree for the first time since the original release (both on the record and in the ads too, where he is now nowhere to be seen) to be replaced by Mariah Carey. No harm done. Interestingly, along with Lennon, many of those survivors from 30 years ago now find themselves bringing up the rear on CD3, including, rather surprisingly, the original opener, Band Aid, though thankfully only in its original incarnation with Band Aid 20 falling by the wayside and (Jesus praise you) no one had the bright idea of including Band Aid 30.
There is a sprinkling of new tracks and a massive addition of new/old tracks too. The actual new stuff (as in songs from the past few years) seems to fit quite nicely, and I’d actually be happy to see them again. Kelly Clarkson manages the best Spector sound-a-like since Mariah’s with the big and bouncy Underneath the Tree. THAT’S how you do a modern Christmas song.
Leona Lewis’ One More Sleep is a perfectly pleasant modern confection which is so in thrall of Christmas past its video even knocks off the one for Last Christmas. The inclusion of Do You Wanna Build A Snowman? is, sadly, inevitable, but at least it isn’t Let It bloody Go, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
What takes it up to another level is the extra classic Christmas tunes of old, many of which will be ingrained in your brain from endless Christmas shopping trips and Christmas movies, but have never before appeared on a NOW Christmas Album. James Brown’s masterful reading of Merry Christmas Baby and Eartha Kitt’s version of Santa Baby are just the start of it. We now have half (HALF!) of the Phil Spector Christmas album. the missing tracks are all replaced by other versions of the songs with the exception of Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (which means naff all to UK listeners) and, tragically, Darlene Love’s majestic Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home), a song the combined mights of Springsteen, Bono and Buble have failed to tarnish. Marshmallow World is here though, and that’s almost as good.
There’s also a superb Ella Fitzgerald hat-trick, providing criminally ignored versions of Sleigh Ride, The Christmas Song and (along with Louis Jordan) Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnEbRaFaqfg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xg6FcaYHf4
There appears to be a great deal of thought in the sequencing of the tunes too, with CD1 clearly being everyone’s favourites along with the party and more up to date hits; CD2 is the classic disc for the oldies (and the not quite that oldies); and CD3 is the more thoughtful, sombre side of christmas, with a couple of carols chucked on for good measure.
But there is one very notable, and elephant-in-the-room-sized omission. Stevie Wonder may be singing about what Christmas means to him, but to a great deal of the UK population, when it comes to Christmas music, Christmas means to them… Cliff Richard. But he is nowhere to be seen. How has the Lord Cliffmass himself managed to go from three tracks a few editions ago, to none. Normally I’d speculate wildly here about the reasons for it, but I can’t afford very good lawyers, so I’ll leave you make up your own minds. Some may argue it isn’t Christmas without Cliff. I am not one of them.
“Hello ladies…”
It’s pretty difficult to see where NOW Christmas goes from here. Obviously we could see a swathe of new Christmas classics released in the next few years, but I doubt it. How many could you name from the past decade? Looking back over the past 30 years, it’s amazing that almost all the original 18 tracks on the 1985 edition have survived all this time. Obviously Gary Glitter isn’t here anymore; Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas seems a strange omission, but the fact that it has never appeared again after the 1985 edition may suggest the band don’t want it included; Shakey’s Blue Christmas was quickly replaced in the nation’s affections by Merry Christmas Everyone, so that’s an acceptable loss. But the rest are all still here, most of them ever-present. I think that’s rather lovely. And makes me wonder if my generation’s views on Christmas music were probably shaped by that album. I obviously know sod all about the kids today, but I often feel my generation is the one that most cherishes Christmas music, the generation that most enjoys it, reveres it, and criticises the fact that none of the new stuff is as good as the old stuff. I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that I believe everyone thinks the pop music from their youth is the best period. With Christmas music, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think everyone, no matter how old, could pick their top ten Christmas tunes, and it would encompass a vast, diverse range of artists, periods and styles. And they’d probably all be quite different as well. Though most would probably pick Fairytale of New York or All I Want For Christmas as their number one, instead of Wombling Merry Christmas. The idiots.
The internet never fails to amuse itself by asking “Want to feel old?”, does it? “Here’s what the kid from Cadbury’s Fudge advert looks like now”, “We’re now further away from the release of back to the Future than the number of years Marty travels in the whole trilogy”, and of course, “That person you fancied in your teens now looks like your Nan/Grandad”.
Well, now it’s my turn. Want to feel old? This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first NOW Christmas album. Yep, 30 years since this the sound of John Lennon heralded the arrival of one the most ubiquitous adverts of the festive season (everywhere except on You Tube it seems, where the original remains oddly elusive), and the album became a party must-have for every generation that followed.
If you weren’t around when the first NOW ChristmasAlbum landed in 1985, it’s difficult to convey just how legendary this was. Finally, all your favourite Christmas songs could be found on one album (if the words ‘favourite’ and ‘Christmas songs’ do ever feature in your particular vocabulary). In the dark times, before NOW, Christmas albums fell into very distinct categories. There was your album of standards popularised by the likes of Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra (in our house the Elvis Christmas Album would hit the deck as we were decking the halls and wouldn’t leave the record player until mid-January). Occasionally, someone like James Brown would pop up with a truly interesting attempt to do something different, but these were rare and often overlooked in the December record buying chaos. (Brown’s Funky Christmas is a brilliant piece of work, combining the familiar and new, socially conscious Christmas fare. It does have a dreadful, fuzzy felt-style cover though). Next was your loose collection of artists from the same record company performing contractually-obligated numbers for a ‘Merry Christmas From…’ collection (the best examples hail, of course, from Motown and the Phil Spector Christmas Gift For You, which hasn’t let the fact that the producer/genius/nutcase is a convicted murderer prevent it from being an annual best seller). There was also your ‘Sing-a-long-a-thons’ from the likes of Chas n Dave and Max Bygraves, instrumental concoctions from Mantovani and James Last, and the inevitable Carols from King’s type affair. As ‘traditional’ as these may all have been, come the 80’s it was very difficult to have a Christmas party and only stick one album on. At least for an hour. Party DJs needed serious help, and Christmas 1985 saw that help arrive in the shape of the first NOW Christmas Album.
If you’ve paid any attention to this infrequently updated collection of ramblings about 80s pop, you’ll know that by the end of 1985 NOW was huge business. The regular series of chart compilations were beginning to be augmented with additional collections under the NOW brand, starting with NOW Dance in the summer of 1985. A Christmas addition must have seemed like a no brainer, particularly with so little serious competition. Even nearly 30 years on the tracklisting is pretty definitive, having the advantage of coming at the end of the Christmas song Golden Age which kicked off in the early 70s, with the likes of Mud and Slade, and ending with Band Aid, Wham and Shakey’s Merry Christmas Everyone (1985’s yuletide chart topper, but sadly, and obviously, omitted).
The great thing here also is the songs are all so ingrained in your brains that I don’t have to spend too much time discussing the merits (or otherwise) of individual tracks and can instead witter on about useless trivia and be rude about Chris de Burgh and Paul McCartney. Hooray!
NOW That’s What I Call Music – The Christmas Album (1985)
(The spine title is NOW – The Christmas Album. The cassette version was known as NOW – The Christmas Tape, and the CD release in 1986 was, rather cunningly, titled NOW – The Christmas Compact Disc)
Tracklisting
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
Band Aid
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Roy Wood With Wizzard
Merry Xmas Everybody
Slade
Last Christmas
Wham!
Step Into Christmas
Elton John
In Dulci Jubilo
Mike Oldfield
Another Rock ‘N’ Roll Christmas
Gary Glitter
Wonderful Christmastime
Paul McCartney
Blue Christmas
Shakin’ Stevens
Merry Christmas (War is Over)
John Lennon & Yoko Ono*
I Believe In Father Christmas
Greg Lake*
A Spaceman Came Travelling
Chris De Burgh
Stop The Cavalry
Jona Lewie
Little Saint Nick
The Beach Boys
Thank God It’s Christmas
Queen
Lonely This Christmas
Mud
When A Child Is Born (Soleado)
Johnny Mathis
White Christmas
Bing Crosby
(* – omitted from the 1986 CD re-issue)
As I said, that’s pretty much all you need, right? Everyone is going to have their favourites on that, but for me the standouts are Step Into Christmas (a song I seem to love more and more each year), In Dulci Jubilo, and Greg Lake’s wonderfully sardonic I Believe In Father Christmas, a song written in criticism of modern Christmas that has become a staple of the very thing he is railing against. I’m sure his bank manager doesn’t mind though. That’s not to say Slade, Wizzard, Wham and all the other artists whose names are only one word bring nothing to the table. Christmas would not be Christmas without Noddy’s yell, Roy Wood’s glittery cheeks or George Michael’s bouffant, even for someone like me who endured seven years of shop work at Christmas having them beamed directly into my cerebral cortex from mid-October.
Obviously there are some problems though. The ridiculously popular-with-my-Dad-for-reasons-I-never-understood A Spaceman Came Traveling has much to answer for, not least because it was included here BEFORE De Burgh became a star through The Lady in Red. No one had given a toss about this song for the previous decade, so its inclusion here not only led to it gaining a reputation as a ‘Christmas classic’ (and annual appearances everywhere) but also increased his popularity with the public and, probably, led to the success of The Lady in Red the following year. Chaos theory.
The other pop music criminal hiding in plain sight is Macca, positively glowing on the cover whilst delivering one of the worst pieces of music ever recorded. I’ve said before that the billions he made off of Yesterday and Hey Jude were just flukes, and I submit Wonderful Christmas Time as Exhibit A. Maybe that theory about him dying in the 60s are true, because it’s hard to believe that the same guy wrote this and Hey Jude. What IS that squelching noise? It sounds like a synthesised version of someone playing a guitar through a synthesiser. And then synthesising it. Take the sleigh bells off and you’ve just got a squelchy noise. Macca apparently recorded the whole thing himself, which is a shame as he could have done with a Wing or two to point out it was shite, despite making him a reported £200,000 a year. Which just makes me sick. (I’m rather fond of this Tom McRae cover version which, for me at least, wonderfully sums up the utter joylessness of listening to the bloody thing.)
Paul McCartney, Yesterday
And Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a little Glitter. Yes, we are never going to see Another Rock n Roll Christmas gracing a UK Christmas compilation ever again, because while it’s fine to continue to swell the coffers of a convicted murderer like Phil Spector, Glitter is now considered something less than human. It’s still a great track, though. There, I said it.
Of the rest, Shakey’s Blue Christmas seems like an afterthought to modern eyes, presumably because he didn’t want Merry Christmas Everybody included and damage his chances of getting the festive top spot (he’d already held the track back a year to avoid a clash with Band Aid in 1984) and it was cheaper than licensing the far superior Elvis version (which, although not the first recording is probably the definitive recording). In fact Shakey’s version was a huge hit, and was only stopped from being his first festive chart topper by the baffling popularity of Renne and Renato’s Save Your Love; The Beach Boys experiment with the sleigh bells which they would soon adopt and become the only band allowed to use them the rest of the year; and Jona Lewie becomes a millionaire overnight despite not actually writing a Christmas song (this is a theme which will recur as we move through the ages, not least here, where Johnny Mathis’ When A Child is Born makes no specific reference to Christmas beyond mention of a ‘tiny star’, but the production is amazing…)
Ol’ Black Eyes, Bing Crosby, is the sole inclusion from outside the Golden Age, but you always need something for the old folks, don’t you, so what better than perhaps the most famous Christmas song of all time (and even that made the top 10 during the Golden Age, in 1977).
The Golden Age of the Christmas song is worth brief further analysis (with the emphasis on the word anal) as it’s often bemoaned that the recent crop of crimbo chart-toppers (say, the last 20 years) aren’t really in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, being as they are now manufactured and manipulated by the telly to snag the top spot from the rightful grasp of some millionaire pop stars ruthlessly manipulating the charts by releasing a festive themed tune around December in the hopes of securing the summit, and a tasty pension pot at the same time. This is, of course, nonsense. In the entire history of the singles chart only 12 Christmas number ones have actually been about Christmas. That’s 12 out of 61. That 12 includes When a Child is Born (which is tenuous), 3 Band Aids, 2 Mary’s Boy Child and Slade and Mud. But not Wizzard. It doesn’t include the ‘adopted’ Christmas songs such as East 17’s Stay Another Day, which just happened to be number one at Christmas, and thanks to the music TV channels are as ingrained in the public consciousness as any number of sleigh bell riddled ditties. It is interesting though that five of those twelve appeared between 1973 and 1985, and since then only The Lord Antichrist Cliff and Band Aid have had actual Christmas number ones. So any talk that the Christmas number one isn’t the same as it used to be is both way off the mark, but also true if you of a certain age (as, to be fair, most people who complain about it are).
But what of NOW, or rather ‘then’. The first NOW Christmas is pretty perfect but a few omissions stand out. From today’s perspective, The Waitresses’ Christmas Wrapping is perhaps the biggest miss, but the fact is it wasn’t a hit when released in 1981, and only made number 45 the next year, the compilers may have assumed the public wasn’t interested. Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again is a more puzzling MIA as Ms Bush is an EMI stalwart and the song is now a long forgotten gem. The Pretenders’ 2000 Miles, Bowie and Bing’s Little Drummer Boy and Wombling Merry Christmas can be excused by, presumably, prohibitive licensing fees from rival record companies. Paying extra for Wham’s Last Christmas (the biggest selling single in the UK not to get to number one, fact fans!) is one thing. It’s a bit harder to justify it for a bunch of overgrown muppets, even if it is one of the greatest Christmas songs ever.
While we’re on the subject of myth debunking, here’s another: NOW do not re-release the Christmas album every year, and add one track to the tracklisting to get you to buy it again. That would be silly, and not very cost effective. But mostly silly. The album (in its most recent incarnations) is certainly re-issued every year but the tracklisting has only changed nine times in the 30 years since the original release, and all of those changes have occurred since 2000. (Wikipedia states that the original album was reissued in 1986 missing the Queen track, but I haven’t been able to verify this and every copy available on eBay and Discogs seems to have the track present and correct. The first CD issue, also from 1986, is missing the Greg Lake and John Lennon tracks for some reason, but the Queen track is on it, so it would appear odd for it to be taken off of the vinyl and cassette. The track has, however, never appeared on any subsequent new release.)
Part of the confusion for this may arise from the fact that for some reason in 1989 EMI broke ranks from their NOW partners and released It’s Christmas. The tracklisting was near identical but out went Wham, Mike Oldfield, Gary Glitter and Queen, in came Cliff’s Mistletoe and Wine, the aforementioned Kate Bush track, Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song. Shakey’s Merry Christmas Everyone replaced his Blue Christmas. It’s branding and cover design are near identical to the NOW design, so it’s very easy (and probably deliberate) that many punters assumed it was the latest incarnation of the more famous cousin. It’s Christmas was reformatted as It’s Christmas Time in 1992, with Glitter and Queen reinstated, as well as Steeleye Span’s Gaudete, which the kids had been crying out for inclusion on a Christmas compilation I’m sure. And more was to come.
Before NOW Christmas was rejigged and re-released at the turn of the decade/century/millennium (delete where appropriate) Virgin would become the second NOW partner to go rogue, in 1993, releasing The Best Christmas … Ever! This album raised the stakes by being a double, and brought in a lot more ‘classic’ (i.e. old and possibly neglected) Christmas tunes from the likes of Eartha Kitt, Doris Day and Dean Martin. More modern tastes were catered for by Snap’s Mary Had A Little Boy and Enigma’s Sadness, which was one of many songs included for their more tenuous links to Christmas (others included Freiheit’s brilliant Keeping the Dream Alive and The Flying Pickets 1983 Christmas chart topper, Only You) which just struck of padding. Along with the usual suspects, some interesting inclusions included a rare appearance for Mel (Smith) and Kim (Wilde)’s version of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (recorded for Comic Relief in 1987) and Miles Davis’ extraordinary Blue Christmas, which is sequenced immediately before Willie Nelson’s version of the more famous song with that title! An almost identical tracklist appeared as the more familiar sounding Best Christmas Album in the World… Ever! (along with truly terrifying cover art)in 1996.
Various other cheaper, tattier, collections would start to litter the shelves of Our Price throughout the 80s and 90s, but special mention must be made of A&M records A Very Special Christmas, which managed to avoid all the obvious Christmas tracks, and included tracks from the likes of Eurythmics, U2, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and is possibly the only mainstream Christmas collection to include Run DMC’s Christmas in Hollis (“This IS Christmas music, man!”). Sadly, while it includes a Bon Jovi track, it isn’t R2D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas.
And so we all meet up in the year 2000, a year which once seemed to promise so much but which ultimately delivered exactly the same stuff in slightly different packaging… like the NOW Christmas Album (do you see what I did there?). After 15 years the annual festive best seller was given a dusting down, a spruce up and an influx of some 22 extra tracks. In keeping with The Best Christmas Album a few years before, a single disc just wouldn’t cut it anymore, and whilst this means an increase in great tracks from the 50s and 60s, it also means more tenuously connected tracks (Angels?), along with some truly bizarre cover versions to bring down the cost of licensing the more famous versions, as we will shortly see.
(From this point I’ll link to the official NOW site for tracklistings, or this is going to get very very very long)
Firstly, the cover. It’s dreadful. The giant floating Perspex letters in space had long been established as the NOW house style, so, I’m not sure what they were thinking branding the Christmas album with what looks like a Poundshop tree topper, and with the NOW logo banished, almost invisibly into the corner. This may go some way to explaining its relatively poor sales, but I would suggest the tracklisting helped also.
Of the new additions, no one can possibly argue with the inclusions of Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, The Jackson 5 and Brenda Lee. The Love Unlimited Orchestra’s It May Be Winter Outside is pushing things a bit, but I’ll let it slide, along with Frankie’s The Power of Love which pub bores will argue about til the cows come home; fact is, it’s not a Christmas song, even if the video did play up to its release date, but I’d miss it if it wasn’t here, mainly because it’s one of the best songs on offer. Walking in the Air seems a no-brainer as well, despite not exactly being a party tune, but then neither is Sinead O’Connor’s Silent Night which is almost as good (but not nearly as bone-chilling) as Simon and Garfunkel’s take on the carol (including THAT would have taken a very brave man). Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews Baby It’s Cold Outside had taken about 30 nanoseconds to become a Christmas mainstay, and in the process rejuvenated a long forgotten song for a new generation and even more cover versions in the following years.
The most bang up to date track is S Club 7’s Perfect Christmas which was mere days old when NOW Christmas was released, being one of the B-sides to Never Had a Dream Come True. Frankly this was good enough to be released on its own and but for the fact its big brother was chosen to be the official Children in Need single for 2000, and thus released in late November, they could have had a good run at that year’s Christmas number one. It’s not a classic, but it is pretty much what you expect an S Club Christmas single to sound like, and that ain’t too shabby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCUit4tMHVg
Also bang up to date, but in hindsight ridiculously presumptuous, is Hannah Morris, whose version of When a Child is Born means poor old Johnny Mathis (and his amazing production) are jettisoned in favour of a flash in the pan teen sensation signed to Virgin on a one album deal. I’d never heard of her and any information about her seems to have been removed entirely from the internet. Fair play, she’s got a great voice for a 14 year old, but this is woeful stuff. The whole thing is slavered in church bells and ye olde Oirish charm. I’d include a link, but I can’t find one. Anywhere.
Robbie Williams’ anointed status in 2000 as the biggest solo artist going (and EMI golden boy) meant he had to be included, so we get Angels just because, that’s why, but also that single’s appalling B-side, Walk This Sleigh (younger readers may need to ask a grown up to help them find out what a B-side is, or rather was). Thankfully it isn’t in anyway an attempt to re-write the Aerosmith barnstormer with hilarious festive lyrics. It’s somehow worse than that. It probably set the template for a number of Christmas hits which followed which tried to repaint Christmas not in hues of white and blue, but in the beige and brown reality that most people experience but try to escape by listening to the likes of Wizzard and Cliff. For some reason Robbie sings most of it a scouse accent, slags off the Spice Girls (who at the time of the single’s release were Robbie’s biggest chart rivals) and whilst it’s clearly a dry run for Millenium, it also invokes the Muppets Manna-Manna just for the sake of being really annoying.
Amazingly it’s not even the worst track on the album. Other contenders include Billie Piper’s pointless, soul-less and emotionless version of Last Christmas which starts off rather effectively with the sound of Billie trapped in a blizzard and whispering to the apparition of her dead boyfriend who has just appeared to her as a vision, but then becomes the worst karaoke backing track of Last Christmas you’ve ever heard, combined with one of the most ‘sod it will this do’ vocal performances I think I’ve ever heard. It also proves what a dreadful song it can be in the wrong hands and, like most Christmas songs, should never be covered unless you do something really special with it (and no, I don’t mean Jimmy Eat World, or even Crazy Frog. Nor sadly do I even mean Whigfield). It was released in 1999 as the B-side to She Wants You if you’re at all interested.
Michael Ball’s version of Driving Home for Christmas is rather odd. Ball is a fine vocalist, but this song needs Chris Rea’s gravelly tones to best replicate the terrain of a bumper-to-bumper motorway on Christmas Eve. Interestingly, possibly, is the fact that Rea’s version wasn’t a big hit on initial release in 1988, only reaching number 53. It took a couple of Iceland campaigns, and then a re-release for the charity Shelter, to get the song to deserved status it has now. Thankfully not for this version though. State of the Heart (presumably some kind of in-house covers band) provide a suitably dreadful version of Please Come Home For Christmas (on later NOW Christmas’ they submit their inimitable take on Last Christmas, which puts Billie’s in a whole new light). This is the kind of toss that turns up in the background of Christmas specials of sitcoms that won’t fork out serious money for proper Christmas songs, and gives Christmas music a bad name.
But perhaps the greatest cover crime on offer comes from the Spice Girls. Now, whilst they had dominated the Christmas charts in the late 90s they hadn’t released an actual Christmas song. (Both 2 Become 1 and Goodbye do feature Christmas themed videos, ensuring annual dust offs by the music channels; the video for their second Christmas number one, Too Much, was slightly scuppered by having to promote the Spice World movie.) For Goodbye, the third of their hat trick of Christmas number ones, someone decided it was a good idea to desecrate one of the greatest Christmas songs of all time. Luckily being a B-side, and appearing on one of the lowest selling NOW Christmas albums, the fallout was minimal. Thank Christ, because their version of Christmas Wrapping is the stuff wars are made of. I’ll admit I don’t hate the arrangement, it’s suitably updated (i.e. it sounds ridiculously cheap and tacky and like it was recorded using Music 2000 on a PlayStation, which it probably was) but the whole thing stinks of a ’15 minutes of studio time left and we need another track for the 3 CD limited edition digipack edition with fold out poster (1 of 5 to collect)’. There’s the fact that Mel C is reduced to sounding as bored as she ever did whilst in The Girls; the fact Emma can’t pronounce “ending” properly; the fact they ‘hilariously’ update the lyrics to mention 24 hour garages and Tesco; the fact that three of them don’t appear to sing on it; the fact it’s a minute shorter (and seemingly cut off early); the fact that it has a billionth of the heart, soul and, let’s face it, brilliance of the original. So, once again The Waitresses miss out on well-deserved royalties from NOW simply to appease the manager of one of the labels biggest acts who had just split up anyway. Sorry, were on ‘hiatus’.
But what’s this? What’s THIS? Maybe the Spices’ isn’t the worst. I’ll let you decide if you think Ronan Keating’s oh-so-heartfelt cover of Fairytale of New York should take the crown. If you read my review of NOW 10 from way back when you’ll know exactly how I feel about this song, and I’ll be honest I’ve only ever listened to Ronan’s version all the way through once before. I’d heard about ‘that’ lyric change and was prepared for it, so what surprised me was how utterly fake the whole thing sounds. It’s like an American producer took the song and decided it needed to be a bit more Oirish, because Oirish is very big right now. Yes Ronan, I like your accent, but can you play it up a bit, it’s not quite hitting the numbers we’d like. We focus grouped it and decided we need more penny whistle, more wistfulness, less aggression apart from that bit you try it and it just sounds like you’ve sworn in front of your parents for the first time to try and show them how independent you are now but you’re actually a bit embarrassed by it all. You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned his accomplice in this, but that’s because no one ever remembers her, despite her being (and this was news to me) the lead singer of Clannad. Though no one’s sure if she’s called Maire or Moya.
Almost as a footnote, his Cliffness doubles up with Mistletoe and Wine, and as an added bonus his long-forgotten (even just a year later) Millenium Prayer, which would have been number one if Radio 1 had played it (*stifles guffaw*). This began a (kind of) tradition of including one or two tracks intended for New Years parties too, supposedly to ensure an extra week’s shelf life for the album. Later releases would include ABBA’s Happy New Year as standard, and various Auld Lang Syne’s would soon join it.
From fear of dulling your senses into submission like so many turkey sandwiches, I’ll pause here and allow you a breather.
It would be a further five years before NOW Christmas got a reboot, and in that time pop music changed, man. Just how this affected NOW Christmas, we’ll find out soon.
Note:
The original 1985 release features a note on the rear cover stating:
“A donation from the proceeds of sale of this record will be made to the NSPCC”
I’m not sure if this was a gesture that extended to the subsequent releases.
Like 1988 before it, 1992 is not one of those banner years in the annuls of music. Flipping through the ‘1992 in music’ page on Wikipedia turns up such nuggets as Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love got married, Kylie parted company with Pete Waterman and Billy Idol punched a woman in the face. Three of pops darkest days I’m sure you’ll agree. Musically it is devoid of much worth commenting on. 1992 did see the release of Hiphoprisy Is The Greatest Luxury, Sugar’s Copper Blue and Take That and Party, but it also begat The Bodyguard soundtrack, still one of the biggest selling albums of all time. You idiots. The accepted wisdom is that 1992 (and to some extent, 1993) are the dark hinterlands between the grunge ‘explosion’, which generated just three top ten hits, and 1994’s birth of Britpop (copyright 6Music for the whole of this year), which ruined everything. And judging by NOW 21, those sorts of people who get asked to discuss the merits of Right Side Fred versus The Breeders on BBC Four filler shows are absolutely right: 1992 smells worse than teen spirit.
As seen on ‘I’ll Say I Love Any Kind of Music for £250 plus exees’
NOW 21 is the last NOW album I have any experience of in the real world. Whilst I was now fully ensconced in a world of John Peel, the NME and whatever my now-moved out brother was sticking on C90s for me, a friend of mine had NOW 21 on CD and insisted on putting it on whenever I was at his house. I hated it at the time, and was only interested in the Jesus and Mary Chain track mainly because it seemed so out of place. It wasn’t a patch on the JAMC stuff I was listening to at home, but I just couldn’t understand why Far Gone and Out was on it. My mate didn’t care and insisted on only playing Bohemian Rhapsody and Mr Big’s Be With You. I never did keep in touch with him when I left school. Can’t think why.
NOW 21 is top heavy with number ones, but sadly shoots its wad too early. It begins with Bohemian Rhapsody, re-released the previous Christmas as a tribute to the death of Freddie Mercury, making it the only song to score a Christmas number one twice, in the same version. You know this back to front so there’s little point in me discussing it further.
We Wet Wet’s Goodnight Girl does warrant a bit of further discussion. Like With a Little Help From My Friends, this is probably long forgotten as a Wets’ number one, but top spot it did reach. No idea why though. It’s a trite, piano-based soufflé of a song which features no drums whatsoever. That’s a no-no in my book. It also has, to my ears at least, some rather suspect lyrics: “I won’t tell a soul, I won’t tell at all, Do they have to know about my Goodnight Girl”… make of that what you will.
Far more wholesome, if nonetheless bonkers, is the triumphant return of Shakespeare’s Sister. Stay is just so wonderfully hat stand that you can’t help but love it. I’m sure most of those who pushed it to number one are the same kind of people who made Babybird’s You’re Gorgeous a hit, i.e. people who don’t really listen to music. Of course, Stay makes no sense without its video, which makes the fact it was so popular even more amusing. I wonder what cultural historians of the future will make of this one.
They’ll have far more fun dissecting that one than they will explaining the continued success of Simply Red, who offer us Stars this time round. That’s preceded by the albums token “song from a hit movie”, with the Temptations My Girl, and followed by The KLF’s Justified and Ancient, a re-recording of the final track from their White Room album, with new vocals from Tammy Wynette. As a fan of the original album version, I’m not keen on this, and see it as the KLF taking their joke to the extreme where it becomes irritating rather than amusing. The fact that it was in the running for the Christmas number one in 1991 was probably the point. The KLF will, amazingly, feature again later.
Justified and ancient
Madness provide the third re-release on side one. It Must Be Love is great, obviously, but it does make you start to wonder if there was anything new that was good about at the time. The fact that Genesis could score top ten hits in 1992 probably means the answer is no. I Can’t Dance is one of those songs that was probably more successful as a result of its (admittedly, through gritted teeth) amusing video, taking the piss out of Levi commercials, than it was for the inherent merits of the song itself. Julia Fordham’s Love Moves in Mysterious Ways is, possibly, the token act being plugged on side one. A fairly forgettable piano-based dirge, it’s not particularly memorable even given Fordham’s slightly odd vocal recalling Beverly Craven’s much better Promise Me, with hints of the heavy breathy type of singer that would become popular when Mariah Carey started selling millions. I’m amazed more X Factor finalists haven’t given this a pop; it’s right up their street as an example of fragile yet strong singing. Oooo-oooh.
The next half does get better, eventually, but takes its time getting there. Crowded House’s Weather With You is always embedded in my mind thanks to an impromptu sing-along on the last day of school, when someone decided it was a perfect way to say our goodbyes to everyone, whilst I was writing sub-Pixies lyrics in everyone’s ‘Farewell Journals’ or whatever the hell they called them.
Deeply Dippy, the final number one on the album, has survived pretty well, I think. It’s a cracking pop tune which never seems to get any respect. If Ian Dury had written and performed that exact same song, everyone would say it was a masterpiece. I think it’s almost a masterpiece, with only the slightly weedy brass section holding it back.
The afore-mentioned Mr Big is next with their horribly hand-clappy sing-a-long-a-barnyard Be With You. An unbelievable hit at a time when grunge was supposed to be ruling the charts, this recalls the worst of the likes of John Cougar Mellancamp and other US country-rock acts that you only know the names of if you ever watched America’s Top Ten. We Brits can conjure up our own insipidness though, thanks to Everything but the Girl, once again scoring a surprise hit with a cover version a few years before they had their trip-hop renaissance which they were working on at the same time as Tracey Thorn was providing vocals for Massive Attack. Honest. Just as forgettable is Roxette’s Church Of Your Heart. You know this is a duffer because the bloke sings it.
I said things got better. Well not quite yet. Bryan May’s Driven By You stinks up the speakers next. With this May makes his second appearance on a NOW album. Just like he did on NOW 19. Christ. Driven By You, younger viewers may not know, was especially written for a Ford car commercial (no doubt to one up Vauxhall who had been having great success using the riff from Eric Clapton’s Layla for a few years). In the ad, it sort of worked, as a Top Gear, petrol-head, greasy overalls theme to shots of jets, R and D departments, Transit vans and the like. As a song, it fails miserably mainly because May seems to have forgotten to change the lyrics from ‘everything WE do’ to ‘everything I do’ for huge sections of the thing, even confusing matters by saying ‘we’ and ‘I’ in the same sentence. So is he singing to Anita Dobson about how together, everything they do is driven by her? Or is he suggesting that the Ford Corporation of America are responsible for the continued married bliss they share? I’m none the wiser.
Studio Line
So, to the good stuff, and there’s very little. The Wonder Stuff appear for the second NOW in succession with the jolly Welcome to the Cheap Seats (with uncredited Kirsty McColl on backing vocals).The incongruous Far Gone and Out follows it, to the bafflement of a nation of teenage NOW buyers. It’s C-grade Jesus and Mary Chain (as was most of the album, Honey’s Dead), but it’s still miles better than most of the crap on offer here. JAMC were on a Warners subsidiary, so one can only assume this was a potential sop to grunge, having failed to snag a Nirvana or Pearl Jam track for inclusion. I’m speculating wildly here, but you have to but this makes no sense at all.
James’ Born of Frustration is a bit more at home, its rallying warble still sounds great. It’s better than Sit Down anyway (though most James singles are). The first half finishes off with one of the rare appearances for The Cure. High sounds like pretty much every Cure song, with that twangly guitar, lyrics tumbling from Robert Smith’s gob, and mention of a cat. Textbook stuff.
Textbook could also describe the running order of CD 2. Apart from the now standard ditching of some odds and ends at the finale, and one hilarious hand grenade of a track, it’s dance all the way, kicking off with Shanice’s I Love Your Smile. Even a cold hearted cynic like me can appreciate how nice this is, but that’s also its problem: it’s sickeningly nice. And you hum it for hours afterwards. The Pasadena’s cover of I’m Doing Fine follows, bringing banality to the niceness of Shanice to produce a horribly soul-less version of the soul classic. I never got on with these guys at the time, finding their reappropriation of soul legends for their own ends cheap and tacky. My opinion has not changed.
Next up, one of Kylie’s forgotten hits, despite it reaching number 2 at the time. Like The Pasadena’s, Give Me Just A Little Bit More Time is a drab soul cover with uninspired SAW production (without the A this time) and a horribly strained vocal from Ms Minogue, who by the year’s end, would be finally stepping out from under the Hit factory’s wing. On this evidence, not a moment too soon. The cover versions continue with East Side Beat’s Ride Like The Wind. It’s a surprisingly listenable track, sounding every inch the forefather of the likes of D:Ream and similar chart botherers who would go on to litter the charts (and NOW albums) in the coming years. It’s an Italian DJ re-working a Christopher Cross non-hit (in the UK at least) from 1979. The original is a late era disco track from the time when everyone was releasing disco records (i.e. when they got rubbish). ESB’s version adds a slightly ballsier vocal and more bass, but essential they aren’t that different.
The Daddy Mack’ll make you… JUMP! JUMP!
That’s followed by the Fisher Price hard house of 2 Unlimited with the forgettable Twilight Zone, which doesn’t even sample the Theme from The Twilight Zone. Idiots.
Thankfully, all that nastiness is firmly blown away by the musical equivalent of a photobomb thanks to the compiler dropping KLF’s America (What Time Is Love) into the mix and showing everyone else on the record how to produce ball-busting dance music. Yes, it’s another cover version on a side filled with them, but at least it does something different to the original chart version (which in itself is only one of various versions of the track). Featuring the riff from Ace of Spades and the singer from Deep Purple, along with a hellish choir, a ludicrous prologue…you need to hear the full 9 minute version to appreciate this tune’s almighty power, but even the truncated radio version here is enough to satisfy. It’s also crying out for someone more talented than me to mash it up with Neil Diamond’s America.
We continue with two pretty good tunes: Civilles and Coles’ Deeper Love sounds like the kind of thing that would have inspired a fair few people. It’s got some swing to its standard house beat and a really good sassy vocal to add some grit to this particular oyster, not sure about that protracted ending though. It’s not one I particularly liked in the day, but sounds pretty good now. As does Opus III A Fine Day. What both these tracks have is the inability to date them. Deeper Love could be from anywhere between 1987 and 1995. A Fine Day, too, is fairly impossible to pin down. I was genuinely surprised to see it on this album, thinking it at least a year younger than 1992. This has turned up on at least two Pete Waterman compilations even though he had bugger all to with it, other than it was released by his PWL label.
Erasure’s Breath of Life seems a little out of place in this kind of company, and it’s clear from their lowly position midway through CD2 that their star was starting to wane for the record company. Including them was still obligatory because they were still having top 10 hits (and would continue to do so for another decade) and it’s a great tune, it’s just unfortunate that former album openers now found themselves in the pick n mix bin, next to McHammer, stinking up the charts with the god-awful Addams Groove. Produced to promote the Addams Family movie, it desecrates the original famous theme, but at least has the grace to bury it in the mix so much you can barely hear it. By this point he’d dropped the Mc, so this was credited as just Hammer on the single, which would prove to be his last top 10 hit, with only one further single (something called Do Not Pass Me By, hopefully a cover of the Ringo Starr composition) even breaching the top 40. And no one cared. The pop-rap vibe continues with Salt n’ Pepa’s Expression. Clearly inspired (i.e. ripping off) Madonna’s Express Yourself, this is all about getting the sisters to do it for themselves and “believe in me”. I’m not quite sure how “come on and work your body” fits into this proto-Girl Power theme, but there you go. It’s not aimed at me so I’m not meant to get it. By this point any innovation S n P may have once showed has long gone, and they are now sounding like almost every other ‘new jack’ R n’ B act starting to occupy the UK charts at the time. Like Ce Ce Penniston who followed up the wonderful Finally, with the bland and by-the-numbers We Got A Love Thang (god, even typing that made me cringe). Meh.
Seasoning in the sun
The next track is thankfully odd enough, if not necessarily any good, to elicit some interest: Paula Abdul’s Vibeology. It’s a little strange that such an odd thing would turn out to be her best track since Straight Up. I suspect it’s the result of some studio off cuts that didn’t quite make a whole song, being handed over to a producer to slap together. It’s a world away from the dreary ballads she seemed to have made her stock in trade, and pointed to a new direction she could have taken. If Madonna had recorded this, it would still be the subject of academic studies. As it is it’s left as a curious mix of sex, funk, juvenile humour, schoolgirl excitement and Paula’s Bart Simpson impression (“Let’s do it!”). I like it but I’m not sure why, as it’s not good in any sense of the word as I understand it.
The final dancey track is Alison Limerick’s Make It On My Own. This is one of those tracks that seemed to be forever laying in the ‘fun’ pubs and would be wine bars of my home town, at the time when I was first experimenting with fake IDs. It’s very good and worth having a new listen to.
But it’s all downhill from there: Tina Turner’s Way of the World starts off sounding like Let’s Stay Together… just like Be Tender With Me Baby did on NOW 18! It’s as a beige as a newly refurbished flat on Homes Under the Hammer, and just as mercenary. Ms Bullock had ceased to be relevant to NOW and its listeners for a while now so her inclusion with a number 13 hit, from 5 months previous, that barely anyone remembered at the time, let alone now, seems like unnecessary padding. At least Curtis Stigers’ I Wonder Why was a big hit. Its inclusion is at least understandable, even if the song is all kinds of wrong. Lounge-jazz sax invades this penthouse ballad with all the subtlety of a thrown brick and with even less charm. It sounds like the theme to a long forgotten yuppie soap opera about people who stare out of their high rise apartment windows across a city that doesn’t understand them anymore, high paid jobs they hate but which they can’t live without and relationships so convoluted you end up marrying yourself. Twice. Stigers has a very strange voice too, like he’s got a permanent bit of phlegm vibrating in the back of his throat he’s long since given up trying to dislodge. Listened to on headphones, there’s a constant rattle in the background that convinces you your Sennheisers are bust. Again.
NOW 21 breathes its last with one of the most insipid ballads, in a long history of insipid ballads, which the series has served up so far. Diana Ross’ When You Tell Me That You Love Me sounds like it was released in the early 80s, like it was a rejected song from a Lloyd Webber musical. She sounds like an X Factor finalist rather than one of the most successful soul singers we’ve ever had, and with its pointless key change, synthesised orchestra and choir filled finale, it has all the charm and heart of a Michael Bay movie. This managed to hold off KLF in the battle for Christmas number 1991, but its huge sentimentality was no match for the death of a national treasure. According to Wikipedia it missed the top shot by only a couple of hundred units. Ross tried to rectify this a decade later by re-recording it with Westlife, of all people, but that also stalled at number two. Oops.
So, is the perceived wisdom right? Is 1992 a dark, post-apocalyptic wasteland of pop nothingness? On this evidence, the answer is definitely yes. NOW 21 isn’t the whole story of the year (it’s not even the whole NOW story of the year) but as a snapshot of where things were it seems the public loved their cover versions, corny love songs and re-releases. But, there’s nothing resembling grunge here and no sign of the great British backlash to come, so what exactly are all these commentators banging on about on 6Music at the moment? 1992 is simply shaping up to be one of those forgettable years. Isn’t it?
Yes, that is the then voice of the Official Top 40, Mark “Goodie Bags’ Goodier, replacing ‘The Kid’ as the voice of NOW, where he remains to this day.
1991 was to prove to be a game changing year for NOW. Hits was now dead in the water and to celebrate NOW would unveil an exciting, sexy new look. That, however, would have to wait, as the year began with a continuation of the dreadful pub wallpaper, shouty brash styling of its predecessor, but at least NOW 19 is a huge improvement. Oddly, although it contains five number ones, I suspect many people would struggle to remember them from the track listing, and would probably misidentify a couple of songs as chart-toppers that weren’t.
The advert, which chooses to highlight some odd selections, mentions six number ones. I wonder if they are cheekily including The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, which was a number one in 1965, but only number 3 on it’s 1990 re-release.
We start with one of the ones that DID hit the top spot at the time, with the peerless The Clash and their denim-flogging Should I Stay or Should I Go. A brilliant song, no doubt, but should such an old song (from an advert no less) be opening the album? What used to be the prime slot of a NOW album, usually reserved for the biggest track available, it was increasingly being used as brinkmanship and devoted to artists the labels wanted to plug the most. The fact that The Clash was licensed from WEA for inclusion makes this doubly strange as none of the NOW labels benefit from additional sales. Maybe it was considered a big enough hit to warrant a negotiation with WEA to get it front and centre.
Adding to the mystery is the fact that the rest of side one is almost exclusively dance orientated. But none of this is as odd as the second track, a tune I’ve spent 20 years trying to decide if I like or not, and I’m still not sure. Much like Candy Flip’s Strawberry Fields Forever, Scritti Politti’s take on the Fab Four’s She’s a Woman (a lesser known mop-top track, being the B-side to I Feel Fine) is a ridiculously contemporary take on a Beatles’ track, so over-produced, bleeding-edge and, frankly, camp, that you wonder if it’s not all some elaborate joke at the listeners’ expense. Add in everyone’s favourite homophobic rapper, Shabba Ranks (making his UK chart debut), and you have the perfect punchline. Seeing Green Gartside in the video looking like Richard Madeley doing his Ali G impression, wearing a very hot-looking tracksuit and baseball cap (right way round, thankfully) is something to behold. It’s not a bad track, not by a long shot; it’s just so wonderfully odd. I’ve had my doubts before about how seriously The Politti’s take themselves (see NOW 12) so I’m happy to assume that, like The Beautiful South, they’re happy for people to take their songs how they hear them and not sneer at them for ‘not getting it’. It’s one of the lowest charting tracks on NOW 19, reaching only number 20.
Shabba!
Just two songs in and we next get one of the best songs on the album with You Got the Love. The track has a massively convoluted genesis which I won’t delve into here, but needless to say the vocal is old (around 1986) and this arrangement was a re-working of a previous bootleg release (1989). Even this 1991 release appears in various different guises. The one on NOW 19 is the one I remember from the charts at the time, but has subtle differences to the one more commonly played on the radio now and heard on 90’s compilations (the track has been remixed and re-released so many times, it’s impossible to know which version you’re going to get).
So things are shaping up nicely, a drop must be due, surely? Well, not yet there isn’t. The KLF’s 3AM Eternal is next, somehow managing to sound like a perfect fusion of rap, dance and rock and simultaneously sound like it’s sending it all up. That’s followed by C and C Music Factory with Gonna Make You Sweat (still a pop-tastic floor-filler) and Nomad’s I Wanna Give You Devotion. In NOW19’s only sop to the alternative scene we get EMF’s I Believe, a fine follow up to megahit Unbelievable, and 808 State’s In Your Face, probably the hardest track featured on a NOW album. It’s the kind of thing that people say isn’t music, it’s just noise. It’s not quite as teeth-shattering as Cubik from the previous year, but it gives the bass a good rattling. Amazingly this was a top ten hit. Good, because it’s great.
Side one has been pretty damn good, it has to be said, but it saves the best until last, with, in my opinion anyway, the best track featured in the whole series, Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy. It’s simply one of the most perfect records released in my lifetime: a subtle sample, a wonderful vocal, great lyrics, and more atmosphere than the best of Russ Abbott’s parties. It still gives me chills and stops me doing whatever I’m doing when I hear it. It’s so perfect it’s hard to believe it’s actually on a pop compilation and had it not been for this blog I would never have known that it appeared on a NOW album. It reached a sorry number 13 in the charts, a fact I feel the country as a whole should hang its collective head in shame for. Its inclusion does however cement in history a moment of BBC craziness which has been long forgotten. As the single was released at the height of the Gulf War (part 1) Auntie took it upon itself to ban, edit and rename a whole list of songs and artists (including the Happy Mondays, whose track Loose Fit lost a line about blowing up an air force base and wiping out your race; they didn’t have a problem with the lines about getting stoned though). As such Massive Attack were persuaded, through their record company, to lose the ‘Attack’ or risk not getting any airplay, unfortunately making them Massive, and sounding like any number of generic Belgian DJs then cluttering up the lower reaches of the chart. It’s under that name that they appear here.
“Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! Vindaloo! … and we all like vindaloo!”
So, as good as side one is, it’s inevitable that it would have a bad and evil twin. Side two is that twin. Well, to be fair, it’s more that the bad ones are SO bad, they taint the rest of the side. The only track on side two I would choose to listen to is Kylie’s What Do I Have To Do?, part of her sexy re-invention phase. It’s one of the weaker efforts from this period, paling in comparison to Shocked or Better The Devil You Know. Of the rest, Kim Appleby’s G.L.A.D. is fun without scoring as highly as Don’t Worry. Wiggle It, from 2 in a Room, just sounds creepy (and I could have sworn was released a couple of years later than 1991). McHammer’s Pray is poor and only here because if he had a single out it had to be included to make up for the fact that NOW missed out on U Can’t Touch This.
Vanilla Ice and Hale and Pace (featuring Brian May!) slug it out for worst track on the album. I hadn’t heard either Play That Funky Music or The Stonk since 1991 and a bloody good thing too. If any excuses can be made for these, at least Vanilla Ice’s was never meant to be anything other than a pocket-money grabbing, quick buck follow-up to Ice Ice Baby. The Stonk has no such excuse. I hate the idea that charity records, and particularly Comic Relief records, are allowed to be rubbish because the music isn’t the point. Don’t release a record then! Release a comedy video instead, release a book, do a comedy telethon (oh, for the days when Comic Relief actually featured comedy rather than just Children in Need with swearing). The Stonk is a foul, festering boil of a song. Badly written and with little talent on show, either comedically or musically, it is possibly the worst comedy record of all time. It’s certainly the worst one to get to number one. You bloody idiots.
Entertainment, 1991 style!
Side two does finish off with a few interesting tracks (no doubt considered mere filler by the compilers of the day). Jesus Loves You was Boy George’s return to the charts, and Bow Down Mister is nowhere near as awful as I remember it from back in the day. In fact its hymn to Hare Krishna actually sounds much more worthwhile now. Enigma’s Sadness Part 1 is one of the oddest number ones we’ve seen so far, mixing monks, pan pipes and a dance beat. I’ve never liked it, for I blame it for introducing us to the endless stream of compilations of Pan Pipe Moods, Chill Out Moods, Moods Moods and Moods. If I want to hear Smells Like Teen Spirit played on pan pipes I’ll go back to University thanks.
The final track of side two is the real curve ball though, and perhaps best sums up how ephemeral the charts were becoming: Only You by Praise. Ring any bells? It didn’t with me, even though it was a top 5 single. No? Was featured in a car advert? Maybe that’s jogged a few memories. As soon as you hear the opening, ghostly female moan bouncing from one speaker to the other you’ll recognise it. In a similar vein to Sadness, but much more atmospheric, better produced and likely to still sound contemporary for many years, this is a tune ripe for rediscovery. Or is it an embarrassing mix of would-be spiritualism, dolphin noises and with a whiff of the Ikea catalogue about it. It’s one or the other.
The decision to top load the album with the dance tracks (with the odd exception of The Clash) does the job of making NOW seem trendy again and down with the kids. What it conversely does it make the second half incredibly dreary by comparison, filled as it is, once again, with old timers, covers and re-issues. A quick glance at the line up for sides 3 and 4 turns up just two tracks I’d choose to listen to, and one of them is Chris Rea!
Not an auberge
We are definitely in black and chrome dinner party mode to start things off. Oleta Adams’ Get Here shows off her vocal skills admirably but it is a boring bank advert soundtrack (actually I think Royal Mail ended up using it in a TV commercial, with crushing inevitability). Rick Astley’s Cry For Help was an admirable attempt to demonstrate he could still operate without SAW pulling the strings (he grew his hair long and everything) and it’s nice, if uneventful. The public, of course, wanted the funny little dance, so this would be his last major hit. The cheese is supplied by Robert Palmer, this time wasting his talents on a dreary cover of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me and I Want You, combining the two songs to no noticeable effect.
Next is a bunch of old tracks: I’ve Had The Time of My Life gets the reissue treatment following Dirty Dancing’s TV premiere (!). Berlin’s Take My Breath Away had similarly gone stratospheric following Top Gun’s TV debut, but luckily that wasn’t included for a second time. The Righteous Brothers record company had followed up Unchained Melody (the best-selling track of 1990) with the infinitely better You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling to keep the Greatest Hits album sales ticking over. This was a double A side release with the even better, but less well-known Ebb Tide. The radio only ever played the more famous track though. Shame.
Seal then pops up to tell you the world is doomed in Crazy. I never quite understood why we have to get crazy in order to survive, but there you go.
Finally a good song arrives. It’s still a little on the maudlin side, but Banderas deserve to be better remembered than they are, at least if This Is Your Life is any kind of evidence. It hasn’t aged that well, but its left-field and dancey approach to the ‘state of the planet’ song so popular at the time is far more appealing than Seal’s diatribe. It’s one of the lesser known tracks on here and needs a wider audience.
It’s followed by a song I swear I had never heard before in my life, this despite the fact it reached number six at a time when I still had a vague passing interest in what was in the top ten: The Postman Song by Stevie B. It is bloody awful and genuinely sounds like it could have been a massive hit at any point in the past 20 years (I suppose that’s some kind of compliment but it’s not meant to be). Lyrically naive, as if written by a child, it’s also musically bland (horrible electronic piano abounds), over produced (quite odd considering how sparse it is) with far too much echo on the trying-too-hard vocal. Mr B (probably no relation to Derek or Radio 1 DJ Emma) clearly fancies himself as a successor to Jacko, but that rhotacism does creep in occasionally, making his cries of “because I love you” sound like Kim Jong Il in Team America. So ronery.
The sound of side three
Side four, thankfully starts off well, with two solid songs. Chris Rea’s Auberge has always been a song I’ve had a fondness for because I’m a sucker for a good horn section (ooh, cheeky). No idea what it’s about but his gravelly voice suits it perfectly and I remember there was an amusing video which helped a lot too. Chris Issak’s Blue Hotel is the long-forgotten follow up to his massive Wicked Game. As good as that song was I’ve always preferred this. This kind of stuff was so rare at the time it was refreshing to hear someone who wasn’t ashamed of being considered old fashioned (Harry Connick Jr was breaking at the same time with his crooner revival). The charts were full of old songs at the time anyway, like Free’s All Right Now, clogging up the top 5 like so much swallowed chewing gum. Never understood the attraction of this sweaty slice of 70s cheese and that hasn’t changed with age.
The rest of side four returns to NOW standard and meanders its way home with the off-cuts, forgotten tracks and artists that needed a push (sometimes off the roster). And Queen.
While INXS didn’t really need a push, the album X wasn’t selling as well as anticipated. Disappear was a weak track and the chart position it reached reflected this. Falling by the wayside for a second time was Belinda Carlisle, with the dull Summer Rain. Also rans in attendance also include The Railway Children (the odd Every Beat of My Heart drifts between Aztec Camera, House of Love and Johnny Hates Jazz without coming close to any of them, not even the latter) and Thunder (one of those bands, like Runrig and Wildhearts, who always seem more popular than their record sales suggest, failing to score big hits but selling out Wembley for a week).
But the strangest song is saved for last: Queen’s Innuendo. It’s probably their most successful attempt to recreate the template for Bohemian Rhapsody (something they’d been trying to do since 1975) but that does not make it any good. It ain’t. In fact it’s one of their worst singles ever, so quite why it became only their second number one after Rhapsody is completely beyond me. Radio 1 certainly helped. The old guard were still holding court but were faltering and most (DLT especially) just seemed to doing whatever the hell they liked by this stage. I remember Simon Bates, who had the mid-morning show, was going to give the record its first airing. Not only did he play the whole song (all six and a half minutes) with a reverential silence unheard of other records, he then declared it a masterpiece and played the whole thing again! It’s no masterpiece: it sounds like the darker cousin of their 1989 minor chart fancier, The Miracle, with an added Spanish guitar and castanets wig-out halfway through, and a truly odd rock opera interlude. It’s the kind of thing Muse aspire to now, but at least you think they are aware of their own ridiculousness. At least I do.
Minipops Queen
A few years earlier, Innuendo would have opened a NOW album, but Queen (number one or not) were not relevant to the NOW buyers anymore. Despite the abundance of re-releases on show, dance music now dominated the teenager’s music choice. NOW, the charts and Radio 1 were going to have to adapt to the new order.
The other thing to change, for NOW, would be look of the thing. The new 90s look needed a refresh and after just two outings the brash, gaudy look (along with the exclamation mark) would be ditched in favour of something far more refined, stylish and NOW.
NOW 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
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 TheMiracle 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.
Champion! The Wonder Horse!
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
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.
Bonjour
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…
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.
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.
*…sigh…*
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”
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 100th 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
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…
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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 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…
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.
End of year compilations were not NOW’s style. They tried it once before, using NOW 4 as a way of hoodwinking the public into buying a compilation that had only a passing resemblance to the vinyl album of the same name. The fact that they ditched the idea straight away probably suggests the public didn’t take too kindly to the deceit. So, it was very odd to discover when researching NOW 8 that while that album was the first to be released as a proper CD version (all be it, one which contained little over half the songs of its vinyl big brother), it also found itself in competition with a rival, and not just a Hits album either.
For some reason, NOW made every effort to scupper the fledging CD format for their wildly successful series, by releasing an end-of-year compilation (on CD only) just two weeks before the release of NOW 8, and in doing so, robbed NOW 8’s CD of the album’s choicest songs, nabbing them for the year-end party edition instead. This sounds utterly absurd but I’m going to try and give NOW the benefit of the doubt and see if I can decipher what the hell was going on here.
First things first, in 1986, as I discussed in relation to NOW 8, the thought of a double CD release for a series geared towards pocket moneyed teenagers would probably have been prohibitively expensive. In today’s money, a double CD cost around £45-50, at a time when some kids (like little old me) we lucky to get about £2 a week. It’s also pretty steep for something as ephemeral as a NOW album, to be fair. Forking out around £10 (in old money) for a double album or cassette for yourself, or for a present for someone didn’t seem quite as bad (though today’s kids seem quite happy to pay £45 for a video game they’ll only play for a few months before the next ‘must have’ release arrives, but I digress…).
This is not the CD you’re looking for. or maybe it is…
So there may have been some twisted logic in this: why not release TWO albums, each mutually exclusive of the other; there is not one track which appears on both NOW 8 (CD) and Now ’86. You give the public the opportunity to make its choice, and, no doubt, the series would continue on with which ever concept sold more copies.
It’s a risky strategy, but it’s the only possibility I can think of. I really have no idea what they were thinking. With the rival Hits Album also releasing a CD version of its latest release (Hits 5 featuring George Michael, Whitney Houston, Paul Simon and, er, Don Johnson) maybe panic set in. November 1986 would prove to be very busy: Hits 5 was released on 10th November, Now ’86 a week later on the 17th, with NOW 8 following a fortnight later on the 28th. It was normal for NOW and Hits to give each other a couple of weeks breathing room, normally enough for both to take number one, if only for a week, but NOW would eventually win out, far outselling its main competitor. But the sudden appearance of NOW ’86 must have muddied the waters somewhat.
What NOW ’86 DIDN’T do, was tear up the charts. It managed just four weeks on the chart, reaching a dismal number 65 (this can be partially explained by the fact it was only available on CD). In contrast Telstar’s Greatest Hits of 1986 reached number 8, selling well over 100,000 copies. It was a double album, and not available on CD, but its line up was weaker than either NOW or Hits, being a mixed bag of the less popular tunes from both camps, and a couple of ‘couldn’t care less’ inclusions like Modern Talking’s Brother Louie and Atlantic Starr’s Secret Lovers. Meh.
Now ’86’s chart performance is somewhat baffling, even given its format restriction. It has a much better line-up than any of its rivals, containing four number ones (West End Girls, Don’t Leave Me This Way, I Wanna Wake Up With You, Chain Reaction) and countless should-have-been-number-ones (Absolute Beginners, A Kind of Magic, Sledgehammer and others). It’s a brilliant selection. It was even plugged on the telly.
Ah, Our Price. Never forgotten.
But what it did was strangle the CD version of NOW 8 at birth, as it pilfered all its best tracks. NOW 8 featured three number ones, but none of them make it onto the CD version. Two wound up on NOW ’86, whilst Nick Berry seems to have got himself locked in a cupboard on the way between the two offices. Among the other tracks, you get a couple that had appeared on NOW 7, but also a lot that haven’t been round these parts before. This is the only time West End Girls has appeared on a NOW album, for instance, which, along with Chain Reaction, had been licensed for Hits 4, from EMI, meaning their inclusion on NOW 7 or 8 was out of the question. Their rightful place on a NOW album is therefore taken . The inclusion of the slightly brilliant Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent, whilst Gwen Guthrie’s abysmal cover of Close to You appeared on NOW 8 is somewhat baffling though.
A stock image library representation of the word ‘confused’
NOW ’86 is undoubtedly a brilliant collection (UB40 and Status Quo aside) but maybe it showed that the public wasn’t ready for NOW CD’s just yet; maybe it also shows the public doesn’t like being confused. Imagine buying someone a NOW album for Christmas 1986. Now 8, NOW ’86 or the newly re-issued NOW Christmas Album… which one did they ask for again? NOW Dance had now established itself as a secondary series, but its release pattern was carefully planned so as not to interfere with the regular series. NOW ’86 was like a hand grenade in NOW 8’s path, that somehow it survived.
I can’t find sales info for just the CD version of NOW 8, but I suspect they were poor. a fact reflected in the 2nd hand market, where copies in any condition can set you back between £30-40 for one in good condition. I can get a CD of NOW ’86 for less than a fiver.
It’s a curious business. Maybe it was the uncertainty of the CD market, maybe it was concern over Hits stealing its sales, maybe it was just greed, but the year-end compilation would be put on ice, to be revived, more successfully, in the mid-90s, whilst the regular series would continue into 1987, and NOW 9 would again be given the ‘CD selection’ treatment. Thankfully this time, there was no direct rival from its own stable to scupper it.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC ’86
Release date
17th November 1986
Biggest tracks
West End Girls – Pet Shop Boys
Chain Reaction – Diana Ross
Though, really, every track is BIG
Lost gems
Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent – Gwen Guthrie
To talk about NOW 7, you have to have a copy to hand. And I don’t mean a digital copy, or a playlist made from the track listing. You have to have an actual physical copy that you can listen to at your disposal. There are two reasons for this, the second I’ll come onto later, but the first is because of a cheeky decision made in the song selection that would be lost if you only had the track listing to hand rather than actually hearing the album.
A friend recently told me that as a kid he had NOW 6 on tape, and when side one started with Queen’s One Vision, he was convinced the tape was being mangled in his cassette player. Well, I’m sure a similar problem occurred in teenage bedrooms across the country with NOW 7 following the unusual, but very welcome, decision to include the album version of Sledgehammer as side one, track one. You see, most people think Sledgehammer starts with that killer, loud, saxophone sting, because that’s how they would normally hear it on the radio, on VH1 or on some 80s compilation (a sting, incidentally, borrowed from John Coltrane’s Chronic Blues). But the song actually starts with around 30 seconds of barely audible synthesised shakuhachi flute, which no doubt prompted many to turn up their stereos, thinking there was nothing on their shiny new record, only to find when the sax did kick in they’d probably buggered their speakers and/or jumped back across the room in fright.
Sledgehammer, somehow, didn’t get to number one, but it’s probably the biggest track here, in terms of longevity. In fact, despite containing four number one’s (one of which, Lady in Red, hadn’t even reached the top when the album went to press) they are among the least well-remembered of the decade. Or in the case of Lady in Red, among the least well-liked. Many of the other tracks here are far more fondly remembered. You have to wonder about a nation which sends Spirit in the Sky to number one rather than Bananarama’s Venus.
Now 7 picks up where NOW 6 left off and is pretty much a carbon copy; for the most part it’s a solid pop compilation with an acceptable number of duffers and a disappointingly bland final, dance-orientated, side. There’s few outright classics but for the most part it’s impressively solid and would have satisfied the contemporary buyer.
Things take an early wobble after Sledgehammer, with the ubiquitous appearance from UB40, this time with the particularly dull, even by their standards, Sing Our Own Song. The light was going out on the Brummie boys, and this would be their last original top ten hit, relying for success for the rest of their careers on collections of karaoke cover versions to keep them out of the dole office. I believe they released Labour of Love Volume 62 last year.
Improvement comes next with Sly Fox’s Let’s Go All The Way. An odd combination of a former Parliament-Funkadelic member (Gary ‘Mud bone’ (eeew!) Cooper) and a Puerto Rican vocalist (Michael Camacho), brought together by a British producer to basically create a prototype boy band, with only two members. The idea of two coke-head New Yorkers singing songs about ‘going all the way’ to wet-knickered teenage girls should have been a licence to print money, but after the success of the first single they never again recaptured the brilliant cross-over potential that made this such a hit. It’s one of those songs that you’ll remember if you were there at the time, but looked at now it has all the hallmarks of an 80s cash-in. Which of course it was, and that’s why it was a hit, it sounds like everything else successful at the time, but all in one song.
Things continue to get better with Level 42 (a sentence I never saw myself writing when I was in my youth) and The Pet Shop Boys wonderful soundtrack to a million 80s documentary montages, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money). This was their first NOW appearance, but they would become reliable regulars for the next decade and a half. Pete Wiley’s Sinful! is a welcome addition to what is traditionally the pure pop side of a NOW album. His first single without the Mighty Wah, it’s no Story of the Blues, but it’s still a bit of a corker despite the horribly dated 80s production. he’s also got one of those voices I love: not flash, no messing about, just a bloke bellowing from the bottom of his very soul.
Then before we get to the odd but enjoyable Paranoimia (Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom!), there’s a problem, by the name of Stan Ridgeway. Well, I say he’s the problem, that may not be entirely fair, as he sounds like a genuinely talented and interesting guy. He’s worked with people like Stewart Copeland, Roger McGuinn, and even Frank Black, so he can’t be all bad. But, he sadly also wrote and recorded Camouflage. And it’s bloody awful. I hated it when I was kid (just as nobody’s Dad did) and I hate it even more in adulthood. I never understood (and still don’t) the 80s obsession with all things ‘Nam. There were the endless films, the songs (19, I Wanna be Your Drill Instructor), even a bloody magazine, Nam!, which built weekly into your own personal journal of the ‘Nam experience. It was inescapable. It’s been suggested that some people didn’t take kindly to Paul Hardcastle cut-and-pasting genuine Vietnam veteran interviews into a trendy dance track for 19, but to fair, for a lot of kids it was the first they’d ever heard about Vietnam (bar the introduction to The A Team, obviously) and they may have learnt more from it than any history lesson on the subject. But somehow, Camouflage gets away scot-free, and I’m not sure why.
Camouflage is the tale of a ghost (or zombie) soldier rescuing another who has been mortally wounded in battle in Vietnam. Chuck in a few racial references as well, and you’ve got yourself an honest to goodness flag-waving, patriotic winner. OK, so big hit in the States, I can accept, despite what my overturning stomach says, but top 5 in the UK? That’s just a bit odd.
Amazingly though, Camouflage isn’t the song I dislike the most on NOW 7. That accolade is reserved for Chris de Burgh, kicking off side two with the thoroughly unlikeable, and downright creepy, Lady in Red. “Unbelievably,” goes the blurb “this is Chris de Burgh’s first top 40 single”. Why was it unbelievable? He writes insipid, dull and creepy songs which no one likes. People pretend to like them, or buy them for people they think like his music. No one buys Chris de Burgh for themselves. The same goes for all those tedious ballads that hang around the charts like bad smells (Everything I Do, Love is All Around, My heart Will Go On), they are always bought for other people, who no doubt send them to the nearest charity shop when they split up with that person. No one chooses to listen to songs like that… ever.
The public are urged NOT to approach the man if they see him, and to alert their nearest police station immediately
Anyway, once he’s whispered his last, in one of the most unnerving fade outs in recorded history, side two gets good. Bowie’s Absolute Beginners is one of his all-time best (and another song you can’t believe wasn’t a number one), whilst Invisible Touch and All The Things She Said are listenable enough tracks from bands capable of better. Happy Hour is still brilliant (though The Housemartins best stuff was always less successful) and I amazed myself by enjoying Big Country’s Look Away. I never got Big Country as a young ‘un, but they’re attempt to create a truly unique, Scottish kind of rock is really interesting and it’s easy to see why they were so successful during this period.
One band who were very far from successful during this period was Furniture, who fill the “token left of centre slightly alternative track” slot. I’ll admit I knew very little about Furniture beyond this song. turns out they were the victim of record company shenanigans, and ultimately bankruptcy, internal differences and general bad luck. Brilliant Mind remains their only hit single (not another single or even an album made the top 75 despite gathering popularity) before they eventually split in 1990. Several members went on to form the more successful Transglobal Underground.
Call of the Wild closes out side two, one of the most forgettable tracks on any NOW album. Who was that by again?
The big guns are out for side three, with NOW licensing tracks from three of the Hits album’s stable, Wham, a-ha and Simply Red. Wham in particular was bit of a coup being as it was Wham’s farewell single (no concurrent Hits album was out at the time to snag the track for itself).To be fair, Edge of Heaven is a bit bland for a much-promoted final single; the previous release, I’m Your Man, is much better, and much better remembered. It’s certainly better remembered than Owen Paul, whose My Favourite Waste of Time may have been a massive top three hit, but it would prove to be his only hit. Apparently he gave up a promising football career (he was on Celtic’s books) after seeing the Sex Pistols, and decided to become a singer. He’s probably best known now for an embarrassing appearance on TV where he (and, to be fair, his band) completely failed to mime along to the track. Things like that can completely damage someone’s career, and so it was for Paul, who was seen performing backing vocals for Mike and the Mechanics.
Amazulu’s fun cover version Too Good To Be Forgotten still sounds good, and it makes a nice change to hear pop reggae sound by someone black for a change, rather than a nice middle-class boy.
And then we come to Spirit in the Sky. What is it about this bloody song, that whoever records it, it goes to number one? Three times by three different artists: Norman Greenbaum, Dr and the Medics and Gareth bloody Gates and the bloody Kumars. George Osborne could probably record it and hit the top. It seems the only version which didn’t get to number one was the best one, by Fuzzbox, which unfortunately was released around the same time as The Medics’ version. It never stood a chance.
Bananarama’s Venus is just pop genius, I don’t need to add anything about that. a-ha’s remix of Hunting High and Low is infinitely better than the version which appeared on the album of the same name, but it’s still a bit dreary, enlivened somewhat by some over-dramatic production on this single version. They were huge enough at the time to warrant inclusion if they just released a version of the alphabet, but this doesn’t show them in their best light. Holding Back the Years continued Simply Red’s run of hits, but it would be another five years before they had a top ten single with an original hit despite massive album success. I’m not a fan.
Which leaves one track on side three to discuss, and it’s a doozy. New Beginning by Bucks Fizz does not immediately get the blood pumping. Yes, for a year or two at the start of the decade, they were pop royalty, with a string of fun, pure pop hits, and a couple of number ones along the way. If you only know Making Your Mind Up or Land of Make Believe, you literally will not know what hits you when you hear New Beginning. It’s not perfect, but as one of those songs by a band desperate to change its image it’s right up there with U2’s The Fly or Duran Duran’s Notorious. Reportedly it took months to record, and cost quite a bit too, but the band were determined to try something grown up, as they saw it. It’s got a lush, rich production sound to it, rather than the then-omnipotent 80s synth sounds; whereas everyone seemed to be using drum machines, this sounds like it’s got proper drums on it. And not just one set either, a whole town full of drums. It also uses African influences, of a kind that would become de rigueur after Paul Simon made them commercial. It reached a very respectable number eight, their biggest hit for four years. Sadly, the accompanying album flopped (as did the subsequent singles) and the band fell into a spiral of holiday camps, coach crashes, splits, lawsuits and endorsing diet plans.
But wait! There is actually one more song to discuss on side three, though you wouldn’t know it from the track listing, which finishes with Simply Red. It’s also the other reason why you have to have a physical copy of NOW 7 lying around to properly review it. Curiously, the front cover of NOW 7, at least in its original release, featured a sticker on the front proclaiming that it contained a bonus track, one A Kind of Magic by Queen. Why they would keep a top three hit, one of the most popular songs of the year so far, as a bonus track is unclear. It features prominently in the TV ad as being on the album, but it is not listed anywhere. Many sources say it was a bonus track on ‘some’ copies of the album, but those same sources list it as being the final track on side three, so what constitutes it being a ‘bonus’? That normally suggests it was only on certain copies, or on a certain format, but it seems to have been on the cassette as well. It’s all a bit baffling, and maybe, dare I say it, suggests a last minute cock-up on someone’s part, that the song was never listed, but was always meant to be there?
So when is a bonus track NOT a bonus track?
Anyway, shall we dance?
When the Going Gets Tough is the oldest track on here, having been released in January (NOW 7 itself came out in August) but was bound to be included as it was number one for four weeks and one of the year’s biggest sellers. Today it’s considered something of an 80s classic despite being horrifically dated, but it’s not for me. I much prefer Get Out of My Dreams, but we’ll have to wait for NOW 11 for that one. Jaki Graham makes her third consecutive appearance, this time with the track she’s probably best known for, Set Me Free. It’s pretty good too, easily the best of her NOW appearances.
We then to three tracks so of their time, the only people who will have heard of them, let alone like them, would have had to have been avid chart listeners in 1986. Nu Shooz I Can’t Wait somehow managed to get to number two, though I’ve no idea how. It’s the sound of a wine bar distilled through a Roland 808 and onto vinyl. It’s dull, goes on forever and is thoroughly annoying.
The complete opposite is (Bang Zoom) Let’s Go Go. Now, I’m no scholar of rap music, and I’m sure there are those out there who will dismiss this as chart-friendly pop trash compared to what Run DMC and the like were doing in 1986, but as far as introducing rap to the masses this is near perfect (horrible synth Fred Astaire breakdown accepted). The Real Roxanne was a respected New York hip-hop MC, who was involved in some nonsense over answer records (like all that Fuck You business at the start of the 2000s) which I’ve got no idea about. It’s on the internet if you need to know more.
I’m sure you don’t want to know more about the incredibly ugly Lovebug Starski who for some reason thought the path to stardom involved recording a rap record based on a horror film released a decade before, and include loads of unfunny impressions of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Maybe it was the legacy left by Ghostbusters and Thriller, but forgetting that those songs were actually good.
Come on, who really thought this would make a good publicity shot?
Headlines and You and Me Tonight and just wisps of songs, stuck in the middle ground between the death of disco and the new emerging dance scene, which, to be fair, had yet to find a proper sound. Both are completely forgettable, by completely forgotten artists. We finish off with On My Own, a sugary ballad, that of course was a huge hit, lifted by Patti La Belle’s lovely voice, and Michael McDonald, an artist I can never listen to a straight face anymore since his contribution to the soundtrack for South Park: The Movie
And so, yet again, the album kind of dissipates in a puff of undistinguished guff. But at least you now know what a synthesised shakuhachi flute sounds like. It wasn’t what the advert had promised.
That does, however, answer my query for years about what the hell that was supposed to be on the cover. Obviously the influence of the Clothes Show, and fashion culture in general, was being felt even in the hallowed halls of NOW Towers. The ‘Feel the Quality’ tagline would be dropped after NOW 7 as would the design team who created it. But that wouldn’t be the only change for the NOW series. Christmas 1986 would see them renew their battle with Hits, and this time it would take place in the future! And the future was NOW.
The video version contained three tracks not featured on any NOW album (marked with #). Interesting that one of those tracks was by Culture Club, who just two years previously were one of Virgin records cash cows. They were obviously feeling they were not warranting the same kind of profile and promotion as before, or it was felt including them on NOW 7 would damage the sales of their current album.
Two further tracks (marked with *) would later appear on NOW 8.
Queen – A Kind of Magic
UB40 – Sing Our Own Song
Sly Fox – Let’s Go All the Way
Level 42 – Lessons in Love
Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
Pete Wylie – Sinful!
Stan Ridgway – Camouflage
Art of Noise with Max Headroom – Paranoimia
Jermaine Stewart – We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off*
Christmas 1985 would see NOW reclaim its crown, in some style. Not only did NOW 6 indicate a return to form, but they also had the trump card of the Now Christmas Album. I’ll discuss the Christmas album (and its various incarnations) elsewhere, but it was a cunning one-two, releasing both within a fortnight of each other, that Hits just didn’t see coming. Released the same day as Hits 3, NOW 6 won out. It had a stronger line-up, better design, and the now all-important brand loyalty. What better way is there is to make people feel all warm and fuzzy about your brand than selling them a lovely, festive collection of classic Christmas hits?
Despite being released earlier, The Christmas Album didn’t hit the top until the week before Christmas, being kept off by NOW 6, but also by another pretender to the throne: Telstar’s Greatest Hits of 1985. Telstar had been set up a few years previously, and specialised in compilation albums, usually accompanied by a heavy TV marketing campaign. The Greatest Hits of… series would continue into the 90s, but were never a serious threat to NOW as with only one release a year, most of the tracks would have already featured on either of the competing series’ offerings, and those that were exclusive to the album would rarely warrant an additional purchase. 1985’s release did feature Paul Hardcastle’s 19, a rare number one which neither NOW or Hits had included; however it also featured several songs from 1984 including Everything She Wants, Ghostbusters and Do They Know It’s Christmas. It managed a solitary week at number one before the big boys moved back in, NOW 6 and NOW The Christmas Album racking up 6 consecutive weeks between them.
Speaking of number 1’s, NOW 6 manages to include four, the most since NOW 2, whereas Hits 3 managed only two, one of which, Frankie, had already appeared on NOW 5. (The other was Jennifer Rush’s The Power of Love. Hits 3 also featured Huey Lewis and The News’ The Power of Love, but not Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power of Love. 1985 was a confusing year for pop fans.) Things like that don’t go unnoticed. At least not by people like me.
With the pig now sent to the slaughterhouse, a new team brought a more sophisticated look to the album. For this, and the next 10 releases, NOW’s look and feel would be more commonly seen on contemporary cigarette ads than the brash, strutting, look of the Hits series. The NOW! Logo would find itself in various strange locations and scenarios, but never appear out of place. Here it appears as a label inside a leather jacket (this may not be immediately apparent, but the TV ad makes it explicit). It’s a nice idea, and very understated compared to its predecessors. No more Max Headroom-a-like, eye-straining, gut-wrenching, lasers and stripes and whatnot. Simple, clean, efficient. Much like the content, which, after an astonishingly good start, stumbles a bit, before regaining its composure to throw up a few pleasant surprises. As the tagline on the back exclaims: Feel the quality.
You really can’t argue with side one, at least until the final two tracks. Kicking off with Queen’s One Vision, through Nik Kershaw’s first flop single (but also probably his best), the Maria McKee-penned A Good Heart, the absolutely stunning There Must be An Angel (for me, the best song on a NOW album so far) and Simple Minds perennial Alive and Kicking, it’s about as good a start as a NOW Album has ever had. The final two tracks hint at the mood change to come (Empty Rooms and Lavender both being examples of the overwrought balladry far too popular with rock acts of the time; too well-made to be labelled as ‘soft rock’ they don’t particularly warrant multiple listens unless you’ve got a bottle of whiskey and some paracetamol to hand). The Bryan Adams and Tina Turner collaboration which straddles the gap between the good and the dreary, manages to be both at the same time, featuring a cracking opening riff which dissolves into a deathly dull, well, Bryan Adams song, which just happens to have Tina Turner on it. She pops up again on side two, singing about her thunderdomes.
Dreariness continues on side two where Phil Collins, Cliff Richard and Elton John battle it out for the prize of most insipid ballad ever on a NOW album, while Kate Bush valiantly delivers Running Up That Hill amid the gloom. Level 42 seems a welcome respite in the midst of this, and Something About You stands up pretty well.
Side three is a very odd assortment. Whilst it features two number ones (If I Was, and UB40, in collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on I Got You Babe), it’s also possibly, the worst charting side of tracks so far. Of the rest, only one made the top ten. The fact that that one track is Arcadia’s none-more-80s Election Day probably has more to with the fact that they were a side project for Duran Duran than for the fact that it’s a good song. It’s not. It’s stupid, nonsensical, pretentious claptrap which, to make matters worse, features an uncredited cameo from Grace Jones. But, dammit, it’s got something I can’t put my finger on.
Eighties; by day we run, by night we dance!
Of the remaining 5 tracks, Lost Weekend was the only one to make the top 20; Uncle Sam and Cities in Dust both stalled at 21, The Communards rather lovely, and under-valued, You Are My World only hit 30 (though their time would come soon enough), and the Fine Young Cannibals make history as Blue is he first single to feature on a NOW Album not to make the top 40. The anti-Tory declamation is no Ghost Town, but it’s a pretty good tune, to be fair, and puzzling that it did so poorly after the top ten success of Johnny Come Home (this may be explained by it appearing, in a different version, on the b-side of that single). The inclusion of Lloyd Cole and a rare appearance for Siouxsie suggests the compilers were still keen to get some exposure for less mainstream acts, but it always feels more like tokenism than because the artists warrant inclusion on the basis on chart performance.
Incidentally, going back to UB40, as on NOW 1, they make two appearances, with the dreary, repetitive Don’t Break My Heart fitting in right at home on side two. And is just me, or does Ali Campbell sound just like Jim Davidson doing his horrible Chalky voice on I Got You Babe?
Even just using a picture of Jim Davidson for witty illustrative purposes made me sick a little in my mouth, so here’s a kitten instead.
The ghettoised dance side finds itself closing out the album this time, instead of the more usual maudlin closing numbers, and things start off with Paul Hardcastle’s ridiculous For the Money. This was one of the tunes that I had no recollection of until I heard it again, and suddenly it all came flooding back. A truly ‘of its day’ affair, it combines sub-Herbie Hancock synth twiddling with Laurence Olivier talking about ‘money being the root of all evil’, while Bob Hoskins tries to convince another cock-er-nee geezah (Hardcastle himself!) to pull a blag with him, with the persuasive line “Just fink abaht the moneee!” and “it’s the life o’ luxury!” over and over and over again. It’s a bit like an 80s version of Sexy Beast, with Hoskins in the Ben Kingsley role, but slightly less frightening, particularly with his clichéd “just don’t mess it up or the only place you’ll be gahn is dahn the Scrubs!”. All this, plus two badly accented bit part actors pretending to be 1920’s Chicago gangsters (one of whom turned out to be Hollywood bit part actor Ed O’Ross; he dies in nearly every 80s action movie), and some swooning backing singers making the whole thing sound more like one of the song parodies from Alexei Sayle’s Stuff. Though it’s worth it for the sound of Lord Larry having his voice scratched.
Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice Theme is the perfect antidote to all that nonsense, being a brilliant example of how electronic music (still sniffed at in most quarters even in 1985) can be evocative, exciting and somehow timeless too. Three things that most certainly DON’T apply to Maria Vidal’s Body Rock, a shameless rip-off of Madonna’s Borderline (though also oddly sounding like Open Your Heart, six months before its release), or Baltimora’s horrible Tarzan Boy.
The long-forgotten Mai Tai make a return with another nice, fun, dance track. Heart and Soul is another of those songs that you know you’ve heard countless times before but can never remember its title or who it’s by. It seems odd they only had the two hits (this and History, which featured on NOW 5), as they were certainly no worse than some comparable acts who achieved more success at the time. Like Cameo. Now I like Word Up as much as the next person, but there’s something extremely icky about Single Life. From the opening, which is EXACTLY the same as Word Up, this tells the story of some guy, who you know has a penthouse apartment with black chrome shelves, metal chairs and a Playboy bunny quilt cover. Hearing the giant codpiece singing about the single life just creeps me out, and like the aural equivalent of rohypnol, it’s liable to send you to sleep and when you wake up you’ll feel utterly violated.
Word up
This brings us disgustingly onto Mated, a second duet betweenJaki Graham and David Grant. Even as a ten-year old, this title seemed wrong, just a bit too animalistic for what sounds like a sickly, sweet love song about finding your soul-mate. It’s not my cup of tea at all, and hearing them croon “We are mated” at each other just turns my stomach. I’d argue it’s one of the least romantic romantic songs ever, and a disappointing end to the album.
An interesting design choice was taken on the inside this time, in a rare case of NOW taking a nod from Hits. On the gatefold, the blurbs are now accompanied by album covers rather than the standard star photos, at least in most cases. Level 42 miss out, presumably, because the artwork for World Machine wasn’t ready, though the album is mentioned, but poor old Mai tai’s album had been out since June, and since it only got to number 91 they probably could have done with having it plugged better than it is here!
The rear cover also, teasingly, says “You’ve heard the record, now buy the book”… The book? Now That’s What I Call Music Mastermind, a quiz book compiled by Ashley Abram himself, was available at the time for “a steal at £2.99”. A scurry round the interwebs finds there only appears to be two copies left in existence, both going for over £60! I did find a picture of the cover though, which in a rare case of branding inconsistency, still features the pig. It also looks incredibly cheap compared to the albums.
So, NOW was back on top. For the next couple of years, an uneasy cold war between the two compilation behemoths would see them only releasing one album each during the year (Hits at Easter, NOW in the summer) with both going head-to-head at Christmas. It was their biggest, most lucrative, time of the year so neither was willing to yield that, and there was always the possibility that a strong line-up could see Hits go back on top. In a years’ time they would get the chance, but until then NOW had seven months to prepare its next chart attack.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC 6
Release date
25th November 1985
Biggest tracks
One Vision – Queen
Alive and Kicking – Simple Minds
There Must be An Angel (Playing with my Heart) – Eurythmics
Dancing in the Street – David Bowie and Mick Jagger
(A case could also be made for West End Girls, by The Pet Shop Boys, as it does appear on the accompanying video, but to be fair to the compilers, it only charted at number the week that NOW 6 was released, and, as a first single, there was no indication of what a huge hit it would be, except for the fact that it was brilliant.)
Track listing
Side One
One Vision
Queen
When A Heart Beats
Nik Kershaw
A Good Heart
Feargal Sharkey
There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)
Eurythmics
Alive And Kicking
Simple Minds
It’s Only Love (Live)
Tina Turner With Bryan Adams
Empty Rooms
Gary Moore
Lavender
Marillion
Side Two
Nikita
Elton John
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)
Kate Bush
Something About You
Level 42
We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)
Tina Turner
Don’t Break My Heart
UB40
Separate Lives
Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin
She’s So Beautiful
Cliff Richard
Side Three
Election Day
Arcadia
I Got You Babe
UB40 Featuring Chrissie Hynde
Blue
Fine Young Cannibals
If I Was
Midge Ure
Cities In Dust
Siouxsie & The Banshees
Uncle Sam
Madness
Lost Weekend
Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
You Are My World
The Communards
Side Four
Just For Money
Paul Hardcastle
Miami Vice Theme
Jan Hammer
Body Rock
Maria Vidal
Tarzan Boy (Original Version)
Baltimora
Body And Soul
Mai Tai
Single Life
Cameo
Mated
David Grant & Jaki Graham
Video version
The video version contained five tracks not featured on the main album (marked with *)
Queen – One Vision
Fergal Sharkey – A Good Heart
Kate Bush – Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God)
While we’re on the subject of myth debunking, here’s another: NOW do not re-release the Christmas album every year, and add one track to the tracklisting to get you to buy it again. That would be silly, and not very cost effective. But mostly silly. The album (in its most recent incarnations) is certainly re-issued every year but the tracklisting has only changed nine times in the 30 years since the original release, and all of those changes have occurred since 2000. (Wikipedia states that the original album was reissued in 1986 missing the Queen track, but I haven’t been able to verify this and every copy available on eBay and Discogs seems to have the track present and correct. The first CD issue, also from 1986, is missing the Greg Lake and John Lennon tracks for some reason, but the Queen track is on it, so it would appear odd for it to be taken off of the vinyl and cassette. The track has, however, never appeared on any subsequent new release.)
