Alison Moyet 'Love Resurrection'

Chart Peak: 10

YouTube

Yes, I managed to resist posting this on Easter Sunday, despite the obvious temptation of the title. Not that this song is really about Easter of course; at the time if I'd thought about it at all I'd have guessed that "we need a love resurrection" was a lyric about the need for people to be more caring about each other and create a more sympathetic society; and the song must really be about that to some extent. Those sort of ideas were especially common in pop at the time, and it's certainly a sentiment that crops up elsewhere on the Alf album. But then again, I must have been a teenager when I started investigating charity shops (a habit that persists to this day) and bought the album on vinyl. Reading the lyric printed in the inner sleeve, I must admit another interpretation did cross my mind, looking at lyrics about a "warm injection" and "I want you to grow in my hand"... and what do you get if you elide the first syllable of the word "resurrection"? Exactly. That sort of innuendo would not, it seems, be out of place with Moyet's sense of humour, and might even contribute to the joy with which she sings the song.

Like most of the album, 'Resurrection' was written by Moyet and producers Swain and Jolley, with whom there was apparently something of a falling out after the album's release, and they never worked together again. Heard as a showcase for her vocal talent, it's a total success, giving her a melody with plenty of scope to sing the heck out of it. And it is catchy, with that vaguely Arabic motif that presumably inspired the Bedouin imagery in the video (although I always suspected it was actually filmed in Eastbourne or somewhere). The production has dated badly though, and it must be said that all the soul is really in Moyet's voice. It was still a good start to her solo career, good enough for it to be a slight disappointment that from this point onward she was co-opted to the rival Hits Album series and crops up only once more on a Now album. So far, anyway.

Also appearing on: Now 20
Available on: Singles