Showing posts with label Midge Ure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Midge Ure. Show all posts

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Ultravox 'Vienna'

Chart Peak: 13 [2 in 1981]
YouTube
'Vienna' originally ade No. 2 in 1981... It returned to the chart in February '93 reaching No. 13... lead singer Midge Ure also had a successful solo career as well as having earlier hits with Slik and Visage.
You might have noticed that I've been a little late (like, about three weeks) with some of these posts. My apologies for that but on the positive side, it means I can report on what happened when a group of Eurovision fans including my brother went to Austria for the contest.










I've also had time to discover that somebody appears to have done an Ultravox/Shostakovich mash-up. It's handy to have a bit of extra content actually, because the trouble with writing about 'Vienna' is that everyone knows it. At least, I'm fairly confident that anyone who bothers to open this post will be very familiar with the song that was stuck in the runner-up position behind John Lennon and Joe Dolce. It was re-issued to promote a combined Ultravox/Midge Ure compilation and as it worked its way up the chart, I remember my Mum joking that it was at risk of being kept off the top this time by Rolf Harris, who was charting with his version of 'Stairway To Heaven'. Of course it didn't come to that in the end, but it was a big enough hit to justify an appearance on Now 24, if only to make up for the fact that there weren't any Now albums in 1981.

I've kind of vacillated in my opinions of the song over the years. Obviously I was too young to really notice it when it was in the chart originally, then as a slightly older child I wasn't interested in a slow song. Later I learnt of its history as a song denied the Number One position by a novelty record and came to the conventional wisdom that this was a travesty... then I decided it was pretentious and boring (as Tom Ewing said on Popular, 'Vienna' is certainly funnier than 'Shaddap You Face'). Now I've moved on again, probably as part of my greater appreciation of the music of the 1980s, and I've come to see the song's overwrought nature as a feature, more than a bug. I like that they've combined a very icy synth-pop melody with a big (and well-recorded) grand piano part and a string section, and also that this is a rare example of a hit single that speeds up in the middle. It has a proper big finish too, and for that reason I think this probably should have been pushed one place further back in the running order. Still, it's safely in my Top 3 Ultravox songs now with 'Young Savage' and 'The Voice'.

Also appearing on: Now 3
Available on: The Best Of Ultravox

Posted by Chris Brown at 22:00 0 comments
Labels: , , ,

Friday, 8 March 2013

Ultravox 'Dancing With Tears In My Eyes'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

Five tracks in and we're already onto the second song about a nuclear apocalypse. Admittedly the video to this song implies that the cause of this one is accidental rather than military, although that's not made clear in the lyric, which is more about the reaction of a protagonist. Parts of the lyrical imagery and the concept are reminiscent of David Bowie's 'Five Years', although this one is obviously about a shorter timescale. Despite the greater urgency, though, this track does seem to share a flaw with a lot of pop from this era - a lack of development. There's no increase in tension as the song progresses and really once you've heard the first minute you've heard the remaining three as well; with this subject matter in particular that seems a bit of a lost opportunity.

Midge Ure does go some way to closing the gap with an impassioned vocal which is the most powerful element of the track. And the song is certainly catchy - it's one of only two Ultravox songs I can remember hearing in the 1980s (you can probably guess what the other one was) but I didn't pick up any sense at all of what it was about, even though I was just about old enough to have heard of such things. I sort of feel that if you're going to delve into such deep subject matter you have some duty to raise your game a bit.

Also appearing on: Now 24
Available on: The Very Best Of
Posted by Chris Brown at 22:00 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Midge Ure 'If I Was'

Chart Peak: 1

YouTube

On 1st October 1985, 'If I Was' became the third single featuring Midge to make Number One in Britain. The first was 'Forever And Ever' by the group Slik in 1976 and the second was the Band Aid single. The classic 'Vienna', which also featured his vocal, was kept off the Number 1 spot by Joe Dolce in 1981.
I'm not sure whether it's a significant historical data point or just a reflection of the target age for this compilation that it was considered worth mentioning that 'Vienna' hadn't topped the chart. I don't know exactly when it did develop its reputation as the classic case of a song denied the top spot by frivolous opposition, or at what point everyone forgot it had also been kept off by John Lennon; but that's another story for another album.

In the meantime, we have Midge's consolation-prize Number One to deal with. For a long time I'd casually assumed that this was another example of a lead singer carrying on with his old band's style after they split, but as I figured out a few years back he was still in Ultravox at this point: their last album with him (until 2012) was U-Vox, released almost exactly a year after this. Although the band were generally held to be losing focus at this point (hence the album sometimes being nicknamed U-Bend) this solo spin-off doesn't really sound like a man trying to do things on his own he couldn't have done within the group structure. Although he's working with different people on this track, including Mark King from Level 42 on bass (without the clown costume, let's hope), the effect isn't actually that different from some big Ultravox hits, with that very tight synthetic sound. That doesn't really work in the context of the shy, unconfident lyric - it's a juxtaposition that could have been interesting the other way around but just seems phony this way. Ure's vocal provides the only trace of emotion but it's wasted among the synth pads and the dull melody. Only when the chorus kicks in can I get any sense at all of what attracted people to it in such numbers.


Also appearing on: Now 7
Available on: Pure Hits
Posted by Chris Brown at 22:00 0 comments
Labels: ,

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Midge Ure 'Call Of The Wild'

Chart Peak: 27

YouTube
Charted at No. 46 on 10th June 1986 - had reached No. 27 by 8th July. It is his fourth solo Top 30 hit in Britain.

Anyone who's been following the 1976 Top Of The Pops re-runs will have noticed that 1986 also marked the tenth anniversary of Ure's first chart appearances as a member of Slik. At this point he was still a member of Ultravox, although they were only a few months away from splitting, and he already had one solo album under his belt but the really big singles were already starting to elude him and this non-album 45 seems pretty much forgotten now; I don't know whether he'd have been more inclined to use it for the next album had it been a bigger hit.

It may not have been intentional, but 'Call Of The Wild' seems now a bit like an attempt to blend the Central European sensibility of Ultravox with some traces of Ure's Scottishness - it didn't occur to me to wonder until today, but the rest of the band weren't actually from Scotland. The video director certainly seems to have picked up on the Celtic element, even if it leaves Ure looking slightly embarassed at the cliché. I've warmed to the man somewhat over the years but this is still a song that seems to huff and puff a lot without really saying anything much. Perhaps I'm not Scottish enough.

Anyway, it's the end of a second side that's been slightly rocky - certainly more so than might have been expected when it started with Chris De Burgh.

Also appearing on: Now 6
Available on: No Regrets
Posted by Chris Brown at 23:56 0 comments
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)