YouTube
A number 8 hit from June 1985 for Katrina Leskanich and the Boys - It also made the American Top 10.Finally, 17 tracks in we reach the first track here that's also on a main series Now album (Now 5 to be exact); it's also the only track common to this and the 2014 Now That's What I Call Summer
. Not a surprising choice, since the song is a staple of 80s compilation albums and frequently revived for adverts and similar. It even recharted in 1996 when re-released from such a usage, though at that time they had only one other Top 40 or even Top 75 hit to their name, though a further five singles made the Top 100. Despite the eventual Top 3 success of their Eurovision-winning ballad dross 'Love Shine A Light', they were effectively a one-hit-wonder for a long time but one of the most enduring of them. Here's somebody on X-Factor who doesn't seem to know the words fighting through Autotune. And here's a version of the song sung by the cast of a forthcoming movie. It looks awful, but at least it shows that the song continues to resonate into a fourth decade, even though the kids today wouldn't be expected to understand waiting for a letter to arrive in the post.Although it's a record you can hear too much of, it has an irrepressible quality that's hard not to warm to - well, for the listener at least. I can't imagine what it's like for a band to spend twelve years when most of your audience only want to hear one song, and when that song is as cheerful as this it must be even worse. It was almost four years ago when I had to give this song a thorough listen for possibly the first time to write my previous post about this song. Curmudgeonly as I am, I found myself liking it then and I haven't really stopped. I hear it often enough that I don't need to go out of my way to listen to it, but it's enough fun when I do. As long as nobody's throwing tomatoes around.
Available on: Tainted Love 80s Pop Classics
