Heaven 17 'Sunset Now'

Chart Peak: 24

YouTube

Their only appearance with a song that isn't 'Temptation', as the big follow-up hit 'Come Live With Me' never made the cut. In fact this is a remarkably small hit to have shown up on here at all, and whatever impression it might have made is long forgotten now, so I heard it for the first time over the weekend. With that in mind I did wonder whether I should hold back a bit and give the song more of a chance to grow on me, but I'm enough of a procrastinator at the best of times, so it's first and second impressions to go on.

At first, I was distracted by the admirably low-budget video: the cardboard cut-out of the band which pops up (literally) for the backing vocal is cute. In fact, the song itself hasn't made a lot of impact on me at all, as indeed is the case with most of their oeuvre. It seems like another instance of their sarcasm; a deadpan delivery of lyrics that, written down, seem to be about a war, but I sense that the formula had been used better before. I reserve the right to change my mind though.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 23
Available on: How Men Are

Tina Turner 'Let's Stay Together'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

My Dad's always been a big Tina Turner fan (Happy New Year if you're reading this!) so I remember the Private Dancer album (where this track appeared the following year) on pretty heavy rotation in the car for my formative years.
Back then, of course, I was entirely unaware that Tina Turner had any previous career, or that she was any older than any other pop star. As a matter of fact, this was the song that relaunched her, her first ever solo hit in the UK, and one that proved that this already-established performer was happy to pick up on the prevailing trends of the day; of course the fact that she probably didn't feel too much nostalgia for her former hit-making days might have helped with that. The track was originally recorded with the BEF (ie Heaven 17) who had a sideline in recording cover versions with what were then state-of-the-art production values and guest vocalists. Although they released two albums of these, it was this one track that became the biggest-ever success from the project. Listened to in the 21st century, the monotonous, programmed backing track does sound dated, but as with their own 'Temptation' it's somewhat rescued by the excitement of the vocal performance, which is given plenty of room by the starkness of the arrangement around it. It all sounds very much of its time of course (particularly those backing vocals, which admittedly might be a joke) but then again so does Al Green's original - that one just so happens to be in a style I'm more comfortable with. Neither would have been a fraction of the record it is without the quality of the singing, that's for sure.

Also appearing on: Now 4, 6, 16, 17, 18, 21, 25, 26, 32, 34, 44
Available on: Private Dancer

Heaven 17 'Temptation'

Chart peak: 2

YouTube

Our second consecutive track to result from a band schism, Heaven 17 being of course ex-members of the Human League.
I'm not totally sure whether I can remember this song from 1983, but it's certainly a song I know well; the only one of theirs I really can claim to know, actually, but then they did only have one other really big hit.
It's easy to see why it would stick in a child's mind, anyway - there's certainly not much room for confusion about what this one is called, and the combination of the incanted title and the excitable female vocal makes a strong instant impression. That female singer, though not given full chart credit, was one Carole Kenyon, who strangely also has a presence in my record collection as a backing singer on Gene's 'We Could Be Kings'.

As I grew up and started to establish a musical taste, I really began to detest this sort of thing, that rather portentious tone and the sense that they're trying to make some very important point that they haven't really thought through. And the whole way that records of this time sound, with those very clean booming production values, was utterly anathema to me. However, coming back to it on this occasion I find that I've actually warmed to it somewhat. Maybe it's a sign of ageing, maybe it's because I've heard how much worse people like The Killers do this sort of thing nowadays, or maybe my sense of musical appreciation has got a bit more complex. It still doesn't mean anything to me, but I no longer care about that so much.
However, it's still nowhere near as good as the New Order song of the same title. And it's only better than the Everly Brothers song because of the awful backing vocals on that. And the stupid 1992 remix is still beyond the pale, but an interesting sign of what an albatross this song became for them.

A couple of video-related notes: the Limahl vid I linked to in the previous post might very well have been encoded from the VHS version of Now, as it gives you a slight spoiler of this song at the end. Also, I'm sure he's a nice bloke but if you watch too much Glenn Gregory in one sitting he starts to creep you out a bit. Or maybe that's just me.

Also appearing on: Now 4 and 23 (with that remix!).
Available on: The Luxury Gap