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Eternal are four all-singing girls from South London. 'Stay' is their very first hit and had reached No. 4 by 17th October '93.
Maybe it's just my pesky cynicism, but calling them "four all-singing girls" sounds a bit like an insult to their dancing abilities. It's a mid-90s Now album so of course Eternal are going to show up, a moment I rarely look forward to: it's not that I dislike their music so much as I struggle to find perspectives about it.
'Stay' does at least have the distinction of being their debut single, and also their only hit in the US - it reached 19 on the Hot 100, which is not a bad achievement at at time when there was a little demand over there for British music as there ever has been. But that also tips you off to how exact a pastiche this is of then-current swingbeat. That too is something you can admire, since as far as I can tell it was produced by British people, but it feels rather pointless from any perspective other than a strictly commercial one. It feels too much of its time and place to have any resonance here in the 21st century. Even the title feels generic: it's the third most common one-word title for a hit single, and the group used one of the other two as well ('Crazy' in 1994). I think this is part of the reason why Eternal's actually mildly impressive chart feats rarely seem to get a mention nowadays, they're just too forgettable.
Also appearing on: Now 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38
Available on: Stay - The Essential Eternal Collection
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