It's time for us to look at the top UK charting songs of 1989. It's a Jive Bunny Free Zone, before you start, because feck that rabbit. As with previous years, for a song to qualify for the years top 40, it has to have reached the UK top 40 in that year. Again, I tend to err against repeats that could have been listed in an earlier year. And yes, at least one controversial artist from the time period will show up on the list, because you have to separate art from artist in these matters.
That's right, Mick Hucknall will show up at one point. You have been warned!
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The List of Songs Which Could Have Been Contenders (But Aren't)
Mean Man (WASP), Invisible Man (Queen), Scandal (Queen), All Around the World (Lisa Stansfield), Eternal Flame (Bangles), Back to Life (Soul II Soul) , Sweet Surrender (Wet Wet Wet), Eve of the War (Jeff Wayne), I’ll Be There for you (Bon Jovi), This Woman's Work (Kate Bush), When Love Comes to Town (u2/BB King), Second Summer of Love (Danny Wilson) , Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins), She Bangs the Drums (Stone Roses), Peace in our Time (Big Country), Pure (Lightning Seeds), Licence to Kill (Gladys Knight), If You don't Know Me by Now (Simply Red) The Best (Tina Turner), Toy Soldiers (Martika), Cha Cha Heels (Eartha Kitt/Bronski Beat),Belfast Child (Simple Minds), Right Here Waiting (Richard Marx)
If we have no space for the War of the Worlds, Kate Bush, Big fn Country, Eartha Kitt and Queen tracks, then surely what was left must be pure gold.
That's my Troy McClure impression done. On with the countdown.
40. Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy
Co-written by Roland Gift (and thus
taking advantage of his vocal range), She Drives Me Crazy was a top 5 hit for
the Fine Young Cannibals in the UK, and exported well, with number 1s in Australia,
Canada and the US dance charts. It remains the bands most famous song. The
guitar work from Andy Cox is a few beats off fitting on a Parliament Funkadelic
album, and if you like snare drum, this is the song for you. As with most FYC
tunes, this lives or dies on the vocals and with Gift working on it, this one
works better than most.
39. Stone Roses - Fools Gold
The Stones Roses had
already broken through with Elephant Stone in 1988 and She Bangs the Drum, but this was their most successful chart hit to date, and its opening trance like beat is
still the best example of the Madchester scene. Inspired by The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre, which is a recommended watch, incidentally. We don’t need no
stinkin’ chart watch…
“The band performed
it on Top of the Pops the same week the Happy Mondays played Hallelujah, a
mainstream arrival for the Madchester sound when indie still suggested some
kind of deviation from the mainstream.”
David Pollock, Stone Roses – 10 of the best, Guardian 15 June 2016
38. Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time
Like many Doctor Who
fans, here Cher longs for the ability to bring a recording device back to the
1960s to nab those episodes of Marco Polo. It is hard to conceive of a time
when Cher wasn’t one of the most famous women in music but incredibly she went
a whole 10 years without a chart hit in the UK. Sixteen years if you don’t want
to count Dead Ringer for Love, though why you’d discount a duet with Meatloaf I
have no idea. In fact, record sales had decreased so badly by the 1980s that
Cher gave up singing and became an actor, with the help of Robert Altman. Only
to go and win the bloody Oscar for Moonstruck, which is another film worth
watching. As a gamble, jumping from one art to another, it paid off in spades,
with Cher having more success in the 1990s than she did in the 1960s, having
number one hits and appearing in successful films, such as Tea with Mussolini.
What all of this did was increase the interest in Cher the singer again, and
she had a number of hits, of which this one was her biggest in America since
Dark Lady. It’s a tune inspired by Grace Slick’s work at the time, and the
writer, Diane Warren, had to convince Cher it would work for her. It also gave
the Cher comeback tour a signature song. She wasn’t going to go down in flames
just like Jesse James.
That was next year…
(Since writing this bit, we have lost Meatloaf. Rest in peace, you mental, incredible performer.)
37. Donna Summer - This Time I Know It's for Real
The penultimate hit
of Donna Summer’s 9 UK top 10 singles, This Time I Know It’s For Real saw Donna
Summer working with Stock Aitken Waterman, much to the surprise of Pete
Waterman. Summer’s career was in somewhat of a furlough after, at the very
least, ill advised public comments about the AIDS crisis. Determined to find
what worked in contemporary music, she went to the hit factory, and the
combination provided a memorable track.
“You did it Donna
Summer's way or you didn't do it at all. That was the same with us – you could
love us or you could hate us, it didn't matter, but you wouldn't hear a record
we weren't happy with. She didn't make excuses for people. Donna always used to
say: "When you work with me you work on Summer time." In other words:
when she turned up you'd work and when she didn't you bloody wouldn't.”
Pete Waterman, The Guardian, 4 July 2012
Ok, you were warned...
36. Simply Red - A New Flame
This made the
countdown and If You Don’t Know Me by Now didn’t. Another annoyingly catchy
track penned by Mick Hucknall. Fritz McIntyre, who died last year, providing
the keyboard at the heart of the song. It’s also different from the former
track, which is told from the perspective of a relationship on the rocks. We’ve
been together so long and you still don’t know me. Whereas the intensity to the
broken up bits of New Flame doesn’t burn any less intense when the singer talks
about his new sweetheart, whose “warm smile is never gonna leave me”. It’s
lurching from one extreme of emotion to the next. Then keep in mind, A New Flame
narratively comes before If You Don’t Know Me By Now in the album. It was a
doomed love from the off!
“One of the few of
theirs I think is decent.”
Jon Arnold
35. Luther Vandross - Never Too Much
“A thousand kisses from you
is never too much.” Listen to the smoothie going velvet smooth there. As
arguably close as Luther Vandross ever got to Marvin Gaye’s suave styling. This
was a re-release of his 1983 single, which had failed to get into the Top 40 –
in 1989, it made the top 20. Marvin Millar’s baseline is the bit everyone
remembers.
34. Paul McCartney - This One
Thankfully the decades may
pass, but every so often the incurable optimism of Paul McCartney rises its
head to cheer everyone up. As a songwriter, Macca may have achieved his highest
heights in the 1960s, and thus his later career is oft looked down on. Although
in that regard, if you judge anything to the standards of Yesterday or Eleanor
Rigby, then yes, it would look lesser in comparison. But luckily, we’re not
judging This One on classics from my parent’s childhood, but on the charts in
1989. In a world of neo-liberalism, suffering, and that fecking Jive Bunny, we needed
McCartney’s wide eyed belief in true love and that things would be OK. There
never could be a better moment than this one…
33. Dusty Springfield - Nothing Has Been Proved
With the Pet Shop
Boys duet, Dusty Springfield was back in vogue and here she is in the top 40
again, with the theme song to Scandal. Scandal was about the Profumo Affair,
the common name by which we know the political scandal which made a public
scarlet letter for young model Christine Keeler. The film focuses on (the dodgy
but mostly just a) scapegoat Stephen Ward, excellently played by John Hurt. In one
moment which lingers, Hurt’s Ward realises in court he is being stitched up by
the establishment to protect senior figures, and blurts out a stunned “This
isn’t fair!”
Dusty’s song does
have Ward as a main figure in the drama – you cannot avoid him – but seems to
see events from the POV of Keeler. It references Mandy Rice-Davies attempt to
flee to Spain, and Johnny Edgecombe’s attempt to shoot her. Even Lucky Gordon
gets a one line reference, and he outlived nearly everyone else involved in the
scandal. He even outlived Dusty Springfield, who we lost far too young, thanks
to cancer, in 1999. This was her first top 40 album in 20 years, and two
Greatest Hits albums and a further collection of new songs (A Very Fine Love)
sold very well before her health declined. She remains one of the greatest
singers of the 20th Century, and was the voice behind some of the
greatest songs ever written. For example, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me,
which only gets better in subtext when you realise Dusty is singing to Norma
Tanega.
But with Dusty’s
views, the song ends with Stephen Ward’s fate. Charged with immortality,
abandoned by all his society friends, found guilty of being Keeler’s pimp.
(Which was based on him accepting rent money from the women who lived with him,
as well as the fact the security services had hoped to use Keeler in a honey
trap and were aggrieved, and couldn’t jail the Minister for War!) He killed
himself before he could go to jail. Lord Denning led an official enquiry into all
things Profumo and decided it was Stephen Ward’s fault. Especially the Russian
intrigue. (Yes, that is the same Lord Denning who said we wouldn’t have all
these campaigns to save the wrongfully convicted Birmingham Six if we’d only
hung them all at the time. Nice chap, clearly.)
Since then, art culture has kept interested with the trial. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a musical, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson wrote a book about how Ward was never given a free trial. He shows up in The Crown. Recently more focus has been on Christine Keeler, for the whole “being set up by the establishment to embarrass Russia” and “being a teenage girl whom a married 50 year old politician slept with, because there’s certainly no power imbalance there.” The Trial of Christine Keeler was excellent TV, although it toned down Keeler’s frankly horror story childhood, and while it has Ward as a dodgier character, it remains unconvinced that either of them did anything actually illegal. (Well, apart from the perjury, and again, there are mitigating circumstances.) Indeed, as Dusty Springfield sang:
“The funeral's very quiet because all his friends have fled
They may be false, they may be true, they've all got better things to do
They may be false, they may be true but nothing has been proved."
A nice track by
Tears for Fears, with added orchestral arrangement by composer Richard Niles,
who also worked with Ultravox and the Pet Shop Boys.
“It's all
preposterous, the Death by Chocolate of pop, and for that reason may not be
everybody's cup of sauternes, but they get away with it because beneath all the
razzmatazz lies a well-constructed song, particularly the chorus and the lovely
counterpoint between Orzabal's lead vocal and Curt Smith's "time to eat
all your words" lines.”
David Marsh, Old Music: Tears for Fears – The Seeds of Love, Guardian 27
September 2012
31. Belinda Carlisle - Leave A Light On
Confession time? I really
like Belinda Carlisle’s 80s work. It’s catchy and memorable, like a circle in
the sand. A former punk drummer turned lead singer of The Go-Gos, Carlisle
was the first female musician to write and perform her own band’s US number 1
album. In the UK, she never repeated her Number 1 feat from 1987, but continued
to score a number of respectable top ten hits well into the 1990s. While Heaven
starts off with her big intro, and Circle in the Sand builds slowly but firmly,
Leave the Light On anchors itself around a loud familiar chorus. Co-written by
Rick Nowels (now more famous for his work with Dua Lipa and Lana Del Ray) and
Ellen Shipley (who worked with Jennifer Rush), the duo were matched up with
Carlisle by Stevie Nicks. And just when you think this combination of pop writing aesthetic and powerful vocals can’t get any better, in pops George
Harrison’s famous slide guitar.
30. REM - Orange Crush
A typical REM trick to have a
catchy tune and make you barely able to work out what the hell Michael Stipe is
singing about! Even I was able to work out the reference to Agent Orange, the
chemical gas used during the Vietnam War, which Stipe’s own father was exposed
to during the conflict. (It’s ability to produce blood clots on the lungs even
decades later is what ended the in-ring career of Jesse Ventura and sent him
into movies and politics.)
"[Orange Crush] shows why Bill Berry was always REM’s secret weapon: his almost military drums power Stipe’s typically oblique lyric about Agent Orange. R.E.M. had deliberately progressed from their indie origins to the point where they were ready to be a stadium filling rock giant and the sheer power of Orange Crush was a harbinger of what they’d become in the mid-90s after turning themselves into the biggest band in the world by largely indulging their quieter side."
Jon Arnold, biggest REM fan in the entire world
“A line from it
that's always stuck with me is, "She spent thirty-five pounds on one pack
of ciggies", telling us effortlessly in ten words Linda's excuse to her
abusive partner as to where she was going and where she's actually gone (to the
railway station, to escape him).”
Jef Hughes
A track off Hue and
Cry’s second album, Looking for Linda reached the top 20. Hue and Cry’s debut
single, Labour of Love, reached the UK top ten, and the heat was on for a
second album as successful as the first. What would David Bowie do, apparently
asked Pat Kane, and so the band took up refuge in Sigma Sound to create their
second album. The song is based on a true story of Pat Kane encountering an
abused wife on the Glasgow to Paisley train who tried to commit suicide. The
real life Linda got off the train at Gilmour Street and no one knows what
happened to her afterwards.
“Either she is not
still around, or I’d prefer to think she wouldn’t be so naff as to claim she
was the person in the song. She might have been on a death drive or heading for
a sticky end in any case. But I’d love to know if life worked out for her. I
hope she made it.”
Pat Kane, Herald, May 2021
28. Metallica - One
Oh look, it’s a
Metallica track, he’s even adding Metallica songs he’s not otherwise keen on.
Their most successful single before the 1990s changed their chart fortunes, One
is based on the film Johnny Got His Gun. If you’ve not seen that film, or read
the book by Dalton Trumbo, its an incredibly cheery tale in which Johnny is injured
in World War One, and lies in a hospital bed blind, deaf, no arms or legs, left
to tap Morse Code out via his head. He asked for the army to euthanise him, and
they refuse. James Hetfield was so moved by the book, he incorporated footage
into the music video and bought the rights to the film itself. Hetfield claimed
the message wasn’t anti-war, more that war is war and creates suffering no matter
the claimed cause or reason for it. (And if that sounds like an anti-war
message to you, well, yeah…)
That nihilistic
approach comes from the anger in the And Justice for All album. The band had
just lost their creative anchor, Cliff Burton, in a tragic road accident. They
didn’t get on with his necessary replacement. The subsequent album, from which
One is their most popular track, lashes out in every direction. Anger against
nuclear arms races, fury against judicial corruption, indignation against media
manipulation, ire against political scapegoating, outrage against anti-vaxxer
parents and toxic masculinity and crap mental health consoling. It consists of
tracks full of acrimony, temper and violence. Even the tribute track to Cliff,
is a pale imitation of the type of track he would put together. As Hetfield
later acknowledged, it’s got a lot of heavy guitar and not a lot of nuances.
But then, what sort
of songs do you write when you’ve just witnessed your best friend die in front
of your eyes? Because alongside that anger is the sense of incalculable loss.
Every note is weighed down by the grief attached to them. This song won
Metallica a Grammy (Jethro Tull weren’t playing that year), and if you don’t’
like all this context to a piece of art, and are not fond of Metallica at their
thrashiest, then I recommend a pretty good solo within by Kirk Hammett.
It’s also a bit
worrying that James Hetfield felt a connection to Johnny through his own
childhood upbringing. Sometimes Philip Larkin’s line was very true.
And sometimes that context raises a bit of art more than the song on its own.
Never go to sleep
on an argument, was the first of two bits of advice my gran gave me on my
wedding day. The second was to never start an argument when your other half is
holding a cast iron skillet, “as your dear grandfather found out one day”. The
couple in this song may be avoiding the latter but they sure as hell are
ignoring the first rule there!
“Just like that
murder in '73
Just like that robbery in '62
With all these things that have happened to me
I kept them all in
So why do you keep on telling me now?”
We all know that one isn’t going to end well!
26. The Cult - Fire Woman
More preppy and considerably
more popular than the other Ian Astbury track on this list. The Fire Woman is
an archetype rather than based on any particular movie star, according to
Astbury. One of those songs that played well on the dancefloor.
The Beautiful South wrote some of the finest pop songs about breakups you’ll hear this side of Abba. This one, with our male narrator hanging on limply to the bits of a dead relationship he thinks he can revive, impacts the internal cringe factor and deliberately so. “If you insist this is for the best then I’ll sail this ship alone.”
24. The Cult - Edie (Ciao Baby)
A song about Andy Warhol’s
friend Edie Sedgwick, who died of an overdose in 1971 aged only 28. The Cult
used her case to write a musical epitaph for all fallen friends. It worked its
way into my mind when I was young teen, and now, that I am older (not quite so
grey yet, steady on, Laurie Lee) and remember friends now permanently a fixture
of history, it only grows as a feeler. It’s not the only song written about
Edie Sedgwick either, as Bob Dylan wrote Just Like a Woman about her.
The generation gap
expressed in song. The Living Years is a song about father and son and how the
two just cannot talk to each other.
Eventually the son realises why his father was the way he was but can no
longer speak to him. He's dead. And so, they long for the living years. Being a
sod, I wasn't sure how that personal take, told in a rather saccharine style,
translated to others, but I have since found out others who have lost parents
find this song too painful to listen to. “We only sacrifice the future, it’s
the bitterness that lasts” sings Mike Rutherford, with more than a note of
regret in his voice.
It also had fans in
high places.
“[Burt Bacharach
is] currently working on a modern musical retelling of Snow White, which he's
writing with Mike And The Mechanics lyricist and former solo artist BA
Robertson. "The Living Years is one of the finest lyrics in the last 10
years," Burt declares.”
Mojo, March 1996
Rutherford (and
also Robertson who co-wrote the song) had lost his dad in 1986. The song tells
the story he’s told in interviews since, that his father was over forty years
older than him, and spent a lot of time away from his family, and wanted Mike
to be in his image, a respectable naval officer. So teenage Rutherford
rebelled, and went into music, but when he became a dad he realised how alike
he was to his own father.
“The number of
letters that we've had about that song continues to amaze me. When I write
something I never really think anyone's going to hear it, but The Living Years
has changed people's lives – made them pick up the phone to their fathers after
years of silence sometimes – and I'm very aware how lucky we were to have a
song do that.”
Mike Rutherford: The Precious Living Years with my father, Guardian 25 January
2014
22. Michael Ball - Love Changes Everything
The sort of song that
normally doesn’t do it for me, but wow, what a vocal this one has. The
combination of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, Don Black’s lyrics and a talented
singer produced no end of memorable tunes in the 1980s, see other years to come
for Phantom of the Opera tracks. (Or indeed, I Know Him So Well one
day, though that was written by Benny and Bjorn from ABBA!) This is the only
thing I know from the musical Aspects of Love.
21. Guns n Roses - Paradise City
Not usually a fan of Guns n
Roses, but it would be churlish not to admit they did have good tunes. This
anthem is one of their best. Paradise City, incidentally, is apparently
Bloomington. It was also the first track
that the entire band sat and wrote together, although Axl Rose is said to have
made several of Slash’s lyric suggestions more radio friendly in editing!
The demented sequel to
Driving Home for Christmas? Rea thankfully has no intention yet of traveling
that road to hell, having survived pancreatic cancer and a number of ailments
in recent years. Keep rocking, Mr Rea. It’s also clear that Chris Rea bloody
hates traffic jams, but finds them incredibly inspiring, creatively! Soon we’ll
find out Fool If You Think It’s Over is actually about congestion at Spaghetti
Junction. The song also acts as a metaphor for what Rea felt were bad life
decisions at the time.
19. Texas - I Don't Want a Lover
To be honest, I was surprised
that Texas showed up this early into the charts. I had presumed them a late 90s
band. They had formed the previous year, when the former Altered Images guitarist,
John McElhone, auditioned women for a new band and settled on then hairdresser
Sharleen Spiteri. That Ry Cooder/American inspired guitar intro also confused
audiences who assumed it was going to be a US band, not some folk from Glasgow!
Even as he faced the final
curtain, The Big O’s voice was like a nice silk blanket. It’s that combination
of the Orbison voice, and his style of tune, but effortlessly updated to the
ear of the 1980s. He could have gone on and on, and been a Johnny Cash, if life
hadn’t had other plans.
17. Queen - I Want It All
I debated for some time the
order of the Queen songs on this list. The ones that qualified, that is, I’m
afraid The Invisible Man wasn’t ever going to make the list. With a chorus
lifted off a quote by Anita Dobson, Brian May created an anthem for 90s civil
rights. There’s also hints of the future as Freddie Mercury sings about “so
much to do in one lifetime”.
16. London Boys - Requiem
A song called Requiem, by a
duo who both died young in a car accident, feels like a grim spot to start
here. And despite that unintended context, this is a banger of a tune. The
London Boys are so damn happy to be singing their song about love and regret!
Did someone call for a tune?
Because we’ve sent for Alice Cooper. It’s about bad relationships, masochism
and a coupling which is never going to end well.
A dark song which may be even
darker now depending on your view of the ongoing accusations about Michael
Jacksons private life the past thirty years.
13. Queen - The Miracle
Apparently it was a miracle
that Freddie Mercury lived long enough to record this song. A dying composer at
his most idealistic – “the one thing we’re all waiting for is peace on Earth,
an end to war”. We also name check some of his heroes, like Jimi Hendrix, and
the architectural and scientific miracles of the age. And sure enough, in a few
years, another seeming miracle would appear, with the first medicine designed
to tackle AIDS. There are people alive today who were diagnosed with HIV and
AIDS in Mercury’s lifetime, alive thanks to medical science and the advancement
of virus knowledge. It would have certainly seemed like a miracle in 1989 –
alas, Freddie was just that little bit too early.
12. Deacon Blue - Wages Day
You can have the world if you
do only as I say. We’ve all heard that one before. Ricky Ross was very good at
getting the stained underbelly of Scottish working class life in his songs, and
these characters all come to life in our minds because we know the archetypes.
In a fair world,
Orbison had only just begun again. He was fifty-two, we ought to have had
another few decades of songs like this one, or better ones, to come from his
renaissance. Instead, even as You Got It hit the charts, it was posthumous,
Orbison having died in late 1988 from a heart attack. Although, having
experienced the horrors and bereavement he did in his life, it is more of a
miracle his heart lasted as long as it did. Poor man.
The only recording of Orbison singing this song, from Belgium three weeks before he died, is used as the music video.
10. INXS - Mystify
A love song told with the
craft of a band who had carefully focus grouped their tunes in pub gig after
pub gig, refining them before public release. Michael Hutchence was fond of
songs about how no matter how bad life was getting, he could get distracted by
love. Hutchence took over the main songwriting due to a squabble, and instantly
made a song which focused on the singers voice!
Great singer, great song. Again
a familiar guitar plays – another cameo by George Harrison in this years list, working
on one of his fellow Travelling Wilburys songs. Jeff Lynne also worked as
producer on the track. With a top 30 spot in the charts, it was Tom Petty’s most
successful charting song. The song was used by George W Bush during his
election campaign in 2000, and Petty was so annoyed he allowed Al Gore to use
it instead! The songs lyrics have become so linked to US sports that when Tom
Petty died in 2017, AJ Styles quoted them before his PPV match in WWE that
weekend and got an audible “aww” from the crowd.
8. Queen - Breakthru
This song was
chiefly written by Roger Taylor, and has his frenetic style. Brought to life by
Deacon and May, they do the heavy lifting which allows Freddie Mercury to be
carried along, as all of them are by the train in the video. As great an
example of all four combining to produce a great track. The opening lyrics come
from a song Mercury had worked on but abandoned, and fit effortlessly into the
high tempo Taylor tune. “If I could only make you smile.. that would really be
a breakthrough”.
As with all late age
Queen songs, the added context of Freddie’s increasing frailty and terminal
illness adds nuance to lines such as breaking through “these barriers of pain”.
In their last two albums in Mercury's lifetime, Queen look heavily into the face of death, and
produced some incredible music from it. Beautiful music. Breakthru is perhaps
overlooked (The Guardian ranked it 42nd place out of 50 Queen singles, below Las
Palabras de Amor and Thank God It’s Christmas) as its zest for performance is
more in your face than the more reflective nature of the Innuendo album.
However, it’s sheer joie de vivre in the face of inescapable odds sets it as a
worthy companion piece, and a hidden gem of the Queen back catalogue.
7. Kirsty MacColl - Days
A cover of an old Kinks song.
Ray Davies version reached 12 in the UK Charts in 1968. In 1989, Kirsty MacColl
covered it and it reached… number 12 in the UK charts. Nice bit of symmetry.
The music video, with Kirsty saving a cartoon fox, was my first introduction to
McColl in the mid-1990s. The other Kirsty MacColl single from 1989, Free World,
is a gritty satire on the cost of living and social health care in the
1980s, which is frighteningly timely even today, but alas the foolish record
buying public only got it to number 43 in the charts, and so it doesn’t qualify
for this list. MacColl continued to write wonderful tunes which didn’t chart,
but which sold well and which she toured constantly on, until her unlawful
killing in 2000. England 2 Colombia 0 is a good one, as was her cover of Miss
Otis Regrets. While her chart success was fleeting, she was a fantastic
singer-songwriter who should still be around now, writing wistfully about love
and bastards, and not dead aged 41 over 20 years ago. God, can you imagine the songs Kirsty MacColl would have written about Brexit? And so, when she sings
The Kinks, telling us that “and though you're gone, you’re with me every single
day”, she is almost foretelling the tragic loss of a much loved singer.
6. Madonna - Like A Prayer
Controversial yet catchy. I
suppose if anything could sum up Madonna, those three words do it best. The
song launched as a Pepsi commercial, then was revealed in full as an MTV video.
The video axed the commercial, and angered Christian groups, who seemed to be
annoyed by images of Madonna snogging a black Jesus. It’s the imagery of her
dancing in front of the burning crosses, daring and uncomfortable, which shocks
even today, however. As for those seemingly taken in by the more cutesy Pepsi
advert, FFS, this is Madonna. She’s already made the prayer/sex/love metaphor before,
what did you think you were going to get?
5. The Beautiful South - Song for Whoever
A song about a songwriter who
gets into many quick and messy relationships, so he can have material to write
songs about. Is this The Beautiful South leaning on the fourth wall? Is Paul
Heaton gently mocking Taylor Swift’s back catalogue before she was even born?
Heaton is one of the great underrated singer-songwriters of the 1980s and
1990s, and we’ll see him, in more than one band, show up time and again on
these countdowns. When The Housemartins broke up amicably (they still contribute
to each others projects even today), Heaton and Dave Hemingway formed The Beautiful
South with guitarist Dave Rotheray. In time they surpassed the success of the
Housemartins, which is now better known as that 80s band which had both the guy
from the Beautiful South and Fatboy Slim in it. As Paul Heaton was known for
disliking writing love songs (Norman Cook points out that he preferred angry
Marxist political lyrics!) it is perhaps no surprise that The Beautiful
South became known for satirical love tunes. So here the singer loves
the cheques that writing about his former loves brings, but after so much time
he’s forgotten their names, hence he’s also writing the song for…whoever. It’s
hilarious, but it also sounds like a love song, and so charted in 2nd
place in the UK charts, beaten to the top slot by Soul II Soul.
4. Deacon Blue - Fergus Sings The Blues
The age old internal
worries of an artist, bobbling along for little reward and acclaim, who looks
back at the mirror and wonders if they are being foolish. Imposter syndrome is
a genuine thing which can overwhelm folk, who look at the likes of a Bob Dylan
or a Stephen King or a David Tennant who make their whole craft look
effortless, and compare themselves unfavourably to them. Never mind the artists
position in their career. Have you ever seen that Simpsons episode where Homer
becomes an inventor, forever comparing himself to Thomas Edison, only to break
into Edison’s offices and discover that in the Simpsons world, Edison had forever
compared himself to Leonardo Da Vinci? It’s very true, and in Fergus Sings The
Blues, as Ricky Ross sings of Elvis and other personal icons and admits
self-doubt over his own career, we see this imposter syndrome brought to life.
And as everything is circular, Deacon Blue became massive, and no doubt someone
somewhere listens to songs such as this and thinks how effortless they sound
and how their own attempts at music sound weak in comparison. To which we can
only say – if Dylan and Neil Gaiman suffer that, we all get it. Best just to
keep at it, and not compare your efforts to someone with considerable more
experience, with a life story unique to them alone.
With a tune inspired
by Michael Marra, rarely has such self-doubt sounded so fine on the ear.
Usually when Johnny Cash
covered a song he killed the appeal of the original (see Nine Inch Nails) but
there is enough about this track by Depeche Mode to stand the test of
time. It’s a powerful song, but the Cash
and Depeche Mode tracks are fundamentally different. In Cash’s hands, it was
the voice of the deliverance that comes for every man and woman. Under Depeche
Mode, it has the parasitical element of a Jimmy Swaggart, fleecing new converts
for cash. By preying on the alone they can make believers. Its all very
predatorial. The riff aides the cause. This was the first guitar dominant song
Martin Gore wrote. “If you see someone as God that’s not a very balanced view”
he told Spin magazine in 1990.
2. Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire
It’s always burning,
that’s climate change for you!
It says a lot about
how long it too me to write these things that when I originally drafted the
opening to We Didn’t Start the Fire, I noted that Doris Day was one of the few
people namechecked within still alive. Now you have to refer to Queen Elizabeth
II, Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker and Bob Dylan. Oh, and Bernie Goetz the
subway shooter, proving stand your ground type miscarriages never changed. 118
historical parts of the 20th Century referenced within 4 minutes of
song. Billy Joel’s 3rd US number one, and like his previous ones he
wrote it himself. Joel considered the song more of a “dentist drill than a
melody” but it remains one of his most popular (and his most parodied) tracks.
And to think it was born in an argument with a friend of Sean Lennon’s about
the 1980s being much worse to grow up in than the 1950s!
It's also useful for
jogging little bits of more obscure history to the mind. We all know the
Presidents and Stalin, but George Santayana, Roy Campanella (I thought it was
the old actor), and the odious Charles Starkweather might have otherwise been
forgotten.
Which just leaves us with our 1989 number one song, which seemed to foretell the future of music.
1. Marc Almond and Gene Pitney - Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
Jumping in bed with one of the hottest stars of the 1980s he might
have been but Gene Pitney wasn’t outshone here, and he got his debut number one. See? There's still time for Kim Wilde!
Gene Pitney had originally taken the song to 5th in the UK Charts in
1967. Long since removed from chart success, when he heard that Marc Almond had
planned to cover the song, Pitney suggested a duet. The musical coupling worked
and achieved four weeks at Number One, presenting Gene Pitney with his first
and only UK Number one hit. They performed together on Top of the Pops, and the
generational culture clash gave Pitney a whole new audience which kept him
touring until his death in 2006. It seemed to foresee how commonplace the old
and the new duets would become in the current century, to the point where we are
forever looking out for someone to finally get Kim Wilde her UK number one! Hey if you say it often enough...
The duet works
better than the solo efforts, as the juxtaposition of Pitney and Almond’s
vocals, with both men in different singing ranges, works majestically in the
songs favour. It becomes the old agreeing with the young about the mysteries of
life. This combination of 80s gay icon and a man who looked a bit like a
Columbo villain meshed well.
“Was Pitney aware
that he had a gay following? "Me? That I had a gay following? No, not
really." But surely he must have realised that there was something deeply
camp about his 1960s hits: the sawing strings, the sense of melodrama? "Oh
yeah, I can see that. Musically I got along perfect with Marc. The video in the
middle of the desert, with me in the white tux and him in the leather, that was
great."
Gene Pitney, to Alexis Petridis, Life after Tulsa, 14 May 2003.
“It was an honour to
have worked with him. He was a great, unique singer of great, unique songs.”
Marc Almond, to NME, 6th April 2006
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