Wednesday 21 December 2011

Big Fun 'Can't Shake The Feeling'

Chart Peak: 8

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Big Fun are Jason, Mark and Phil... Their first hit was 'Blame It On The Boogie' - a cover of the Mick Jackson/Jacksons hit, it made No. 4 in early September... This is the follow-up which is due for release on 13th November 1989.
It probably won't have escaped your notice that 'Big Fun' was also the title of a hit by Inner City, and it wouldn't have been totally surprising for them to have been sequenced next to each other for that very reason, although the effect is undermined somewhat by putting them on different sides of the record. And had they actually included 'Blame It On The Boogie' they could have had three revivals of late seventies pop in a row. Incidentally, a note to younger readers: Mick Jackson was not related to The Jacksons, but he did write that song and his version was released in competition with the more internationally famous Jacksons rendition.

You can sort of tell I'm trying to put off writing about 'Can't Shake The Feeling' can't you? It is of course, a Stock/Aitken/Waterman composition and production, coming at the tail end of their imperial phase of success. They'd suffered a backlash as long as they'd been as famous as the acts in front of them of course (I should know, I was part of it) but it has to be said that Big Fun really are everything the SAW detractors accused them of - even with the benefit of studio techniques it's obvious that they couldn't sing, and on the evidence of that TotP appearance they couldn't really dance either. Even the song is pretty second-division for  PWL, a sort of high-NRG without the energy. I'm sure Big Fun were lovely lads but they didn't really have enough going for them to overwhelm the criticism and within nine months of this hit their chart career was over.

Available on: A Pocketful Of Dreams

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