David Sylvian 'Red Guitar'

Chart Peak: 17

YouTube

I'm going right to the wire here, posting this on the last day of the second month of writing about Now 3, even though it's only a 30-track album. I thought it was going to be one of the easier ones (Glitter aside) but a lot of delays have got in the way for various reasons.

Anyway, we wind up at the end of Side 4 with the only series appearance by the former lead singer of Japan, an act who seem to have become anomalously big pop stars for such high-minded art rockers. I say "seem" because I know very little of the band, they were around just a little too early to have made an impression on me at the time and seem largely overlooked by 21st-century radio programmers so my knowledge of them is basically 'Ghosts' and a couple of other tracks I have on compilation albums somewhere. My knowledge of Sylvian's solo music, as much as I've always been aware that he's around, pretty much boils down to a few plays of this. It was his biggest solo hit, presumably still aided by the Japan fanbase, but I'm given to understand that it's one of his most commercial recordings anyway. Certainly, it's a song with a conventional pop structure and a recognisable melody, although it has a very sparse arrangement. It is as usual topped off by David Sylvian's distinctive vocal style, which sounds like Bryan Ferry being forced to sing at gunpoint. Now, I know this is supposed to be important and influential music and everything, but I must admit that I find it somewhat unengaging and not much of a gateway to his back catalogue. Perhaps it's even a victim of its own influence, as the experimental elements have been rendered commonplace but it still not a wholly convincing pop song. You never know, it might grow on me in a decade or two.


So, here ends Now 3. But if the audio tracks aren't quite enough, here's my first ever YouTube playlist, a reconstruction of the VHS equivalent of this album. I managed to find all the songs (many of which aren't on the album), though not all the actual videos.


Back next month...

Available on: A Victim Of Stars 1982-2012

Madness 'One Better Day'

Chart Peak: 17

YouTube

One of a few acts to have appeared on all the first three volumes, a run that ends at this point as they're not on Now 4 (or Now 5 for that matter). 'One Better Day' was also the last Madness single to be released on Stiff records, and indeed one of the last big hits on the original version of that label before it ran out of money a couple of years later; it's presumably for this reason that there was no video budget available and the band had to fund it themselves, and they saved a few bob by using Bette Bright (aka Mrs Suggs) to play the part of the homeless woman. It's good that they bothered though, because there's something rather sweet about the finished clip which amplifies the song's sentiment, a reminder that the poor and dispossessed are still humans with feelings.

In sound only, this is probably the furthest of all their singles from their most famous Madness sound, although it does occur to me that if all the Madness songs you'd ever heard were the ones on Now albums you'd get quite a different impression of them from their best-known songs. The title (buried in a middle-eight) is of course a play on the phrase "seen better days" and there are no laughs to be had here as such, just a sympathetic depiction of life in and out of hostels. Of course, anyone who really knows Madness and their music will realise that the undercurrent of sadness and social commentary has always been there, but rarely did they foreground it as much as here. Though somewhat of its time, the track is brilliantly arranged and the soon-to-depart Mike Barson is particularly impressive on percussion and piano, with that quotation from 'Dancing Queen' (possibly via 'Oliver's Army') providing an additional hook. And even as an agnostic when it comes to saxophone solos, I can't fail to notice Lee Thompson's versatility - his bluesy lead-sax part here is completely different from 'One Step Beyond' but feels totally natural. It's a good record, but it's not what people expected or wanted from Madness, hence the relatively disappointing chart position: their lowest ever peak at the time though each of their next three singles did progressively worse.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 6, 8, 21, 43
Available on: Total Madness

The Art Company 'Susanna'

Chart Peak: 12

YouTube

Another track I heard for the very first time when I was timing Now 3, so unfortunately I have no hilarious anecdotes about calling them The Fart Company when we were kids or anything. Apparently they were a Dutch act, known in their homeland as VOF de Kunst, who topped the charts in the Netherlands with the original of this song in 1983. After a translation of band name and lyric (and a slight spelling change of the title from 'Suzanne', they somehow took this number into the British Top 20, presumably appealing to people returning from holidays. The version on the album (and presumably the original single) does include that crowd noise and sounds as if the song is already familiar to the audience, who are playing along anticipating the punchlines. Perhaps it was funnier in Dutch, or in the 1980s, but it just leaves me baffled now.

The song was later covered in Spanish by Ricky Martin and in Italian by Adriano Celentano, which I mention as an excuse to post 'Prisencolinensinainciusol'.

Gary Glitter 'Dance Me Up'

Chart Peak: 25

YouTube

I admit this wasn't a post I was in any hurry to write. In fact, if I'm really honest the knowledge that this song would be coming up was one reason I made the decision more than four years ago not to continue this blog in chronological order: at the very least I wanted to wait until I had my own copy of Now 3 to refer to. At one point I contemplated not posting a YouTube link on this post, though I ultimately decided that would be going too far; the fact that one of my other online hobbies is posting old charts and making up playlists of them which include Glitter's tracks where necessary would have made it pointlessly inconsistent.

Of course the sensible, high-minded thing to do would be to write about the record without taking any account of Glitter's (or, more accurately, Paul Gadd's) crimes, as I've tried to do with other controversial acts. But the reality is that it's almost impossible to do that because we all know about it, and because his arrest effectively removed his music from the airwaves indefinitely. Not that I remember hearing this one on the radio before 1997, indeed it probably didn't get many plays after about 1985, but it's still a surprise to hear his voice now. And it's hard to resist finding unfortunate double meanings in lyrics and song titles (if this title isn't bad enough, the B-side was called 'Too Young To Dance'). There s something faintly disturbing now about hearing him sing "Bring on the dancing girls!", especially if you see the video on YouTube where he's at a Radio 1 Roadshow with actual children dancing on stage.

This song does at least reduce any moral dilemmas about endorsing it by not being any good at all. Producer Mike Leander (who was also responsible for all the Seventies hits, and who died not long before Gadd was arrested) does a serviceable job of aping mid-80s production values, in what must have been one of the last attempts to sell Glitter as a contemporary star before he became the ironic nostalgia act I remember him as. But the song itself is utterly woeful, a mix of clashing and not very strong hooklines with rotten lyrics that can't even do innuendo properly. And Glitter's vocal is surprisingly poor as well, however did he pass the audition for Jesus Christ Superstar? The song succeeded to the extent that it was his last "normal" Top 40 hit (his last ever was of course 'Another Rock N Roll Christmas') and earned him his only appearance in the main now series, but I've just listened to it in full for the second time in my life and I'm not planning a third.

Weather Girls 'It's Raining Men'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

I know reading YouTube comments isn't generally wise, but there's a comment on the Now 3 TV commercial where somebody suggests that it must be the gayest Now album ever, and as the advert flashes through video clips of 'Smalltown Boy', 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' and this, you can kind of see what they mean. If only it had been 'Relax' instead of 'Two Tribes' we'd have had a full set. That said, 'It's Raining Men' obviously doesn't have quite the same relationship with gay culture as those other songs, being fronted by a female duo; a pair of former Sylvester backing singers known as Two Tons Of Fun until this single. The song was co-written by Paul Shafer, later better-known as the bandleader on David Letterman's TV show and possibly not a regular at Studio 54. Indeed I've seen at least one person on a web forum criticise this as an outsider's version of gay culture.

To give credit where it's due, though, it's a strong pop record, though as previous and subsequent versions of the song have proved, it's quite dependent on the vocals and personality of the Weather Girls themselves. They have good voices but they also get credit for entering into the spirit of things, embracing the silliness and  innuendo with gusto. They really make this the camp classic it is, even at the price of encouraging a lot of inferior cover versions. Amazingly, this never even went Top 40 in America.

Available on: 100 Hits Of The '80s

Thompson Twins 'You Take Me Up'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Second of the trio's three appearances in the series, though actually their latest song to show up as this song was a hit after 'Doctor Doctor', which appears on Now 4. Unfortunately, we leave them just as they're hinting at becoming interesting then, as the intro hints at a slightly more imaginative arrangement with harmonica and melodica laid over the insistent beat. Things revert to type a bit more once Tom Bailey's vocal starts and we're back into the realms of silly songs sung seriously, although unlike 'Hold Me Now's endless milking of the chorus this one keeps you waiting quite a while. Even when the chorus does arrive it doesn't quite seem to fit with the verses, although it's OK in its own right, and could possibly have done with a more expressive singer than Bailey. I'm sure I remember it showing up in a coffee advert at some point, though a long time on YouTube when I should have been writing this post turned up nothing.

Peaking at 2, this represented the peak of their commercial success although Bailey and his then-partner Allanah Currie kept the band going into the 1990s. She later married one of the KLF.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 4
Available on: Love, Lies And Other Strange Things: Greatest Hits

Wham! 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go'

Chart Peak: 1 [2 weeks]

YouTube

At about the 1:14 mark in this video, George Michael is wearing a pink shirt, tight shorts, fingerless gloves and ear-rings and singing "You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day." 14 years later he announced he was gay, whoever would have guessed etc.

'Wake Me Up' was Wham!'s first Number One and marks the start of their hugeness: presumably its placement as track 24 on Now 3 represents an attempt to spread the big songs throughout the album, rather than an attempt to bury the song. It's a turning point in their career too, as they moved away from the political and social commentary of early songs like 'Young Guns' and 'Wham! Rap' in favour of glossier, more straightforward lyrics allied to a Sixties musical pastiche - or at least what George Michael would have thought was a Sixties sound at the time, it's now rather obviously of its time. Despite the presence of a drummer in the video, the drums on the track are synthesised, just as Pepsi and Shirlie are clearly miming to Michael's backing vocal for most of the song. And as much as I realise that the video isn't really part of the remit of this blog (it doesn't even have the excuse of being on the VHS version of Now 3) it's hard not to notice it, because it seemed so much a part of the success of the duo, and seemed so emblematic of the times: even I can remember people wearing those CHOOSE LIFE t-shirts and variations on them, although I don't recall that Andrew Ridgeley's Foreign Legion-style helmet ever took off in the same way. The song and video seem to have fixed most people's idea of what they were, much to Michael's later annoyance but the more pompous and self-regarding his solo career gets the more time I have for daffy little numbers like this one. Not a song I'd go out of my way to listen to, but I can at least admit to its qualities now.

Also appearing on: Now 7
Available on: The Final

Flying Pickets 'When You're Young And In Love'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

Another song with potentially topical connotations this week, but you'll be pleased to know I'm going to ignore those entirely, not least because I don't think they were really relevant to the success of the single at the time. The second-ever a capella track to appear on a Now! album, it's the follow-up to the first, the 1983 Christmas Number One 'Only You'. Whilst some of the other tracks on their track were similarly daring choices musically (eg 'Psycho Killer' or 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling') and one or two hinted at the group's political origins, the actual second single was a fairly conservative [with a small "c"!] selection, a cover of a song originally recorded by 1960s vocal group Ruby & The Romantics and previously a US hit for both the Marvelettes and Frankie Valli. It's a nice little song, written by Van Mccoy, and this is a good rendition of it but the effect is pleasant rather than important.

Also appearing on: Now 2
Available on: Lost Boys

Tina Turner 'What's Love Got To Do With It'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

It wouldn't be quite right to say this song was the start of her solo career, but it's perhaps the start of her real solo stardom. After 'Let's Stay Together' had put her back on the map (and granted her a slot on the very first Now album of course), the follow up was a cover of the Lennon/McCartney standard 'Help!' in an odd ballad style, which only made the very bottom rung of the Top 40, and was swiftly forgotten. It was this third single from her comeback album that established her as a star in her own right, not just somebody who got lucky with a cover version. Though this isn't a cover version as would conventionally be understood, this was not Turner's own composition, but a song from jobbing songwriters which had been rejected by Cliff Richard. Bucks Fizz got as far as recording a version but were gazumped by this hit and didn't release it at the time.

It seems fair to say that it's hard to imagine either of those acts singing it now. In its finished incarnation, the song seems a perfect fit for Turner, with its deliberate pace and complex lyrical message. As much as the protagonist is dismissing the appeal of love, you can tell she's trying hard to resist it, even before she admits in the middle eight that she's "thinking of my own protection" and "it scares me to feel this way". To sound convincing in that role means projecting a combination of strength and vulnerability that's none too easy to carry off, but she manages it superbly here - the fact that this might in some way fit her personal history is at best incidental. The production works surprisingly well too, even though obviously of its time now (synthesised harmonica never really caught on) because it sounds as if it knows its place, supporting the singer rather than trying to hit you over the head itself. I don't think I understood all this at the time, but I liked the track a lot then, even trying to learn some of the words; and at the time I had no idea she had any previous career at all, let alone one that stretched into previous decades. In fact, at the age of 44 she was at the time the oldest woman to top the US singles chart, though over here she fought hard in the crowded charts of summer 1984 and had to settle for Number 3, which means this was ultimately outcharted by Warren G's cover version. Writers Britten and Lyle got a lot of repeat business from Turner, most of which proved to be decidedly bland, but at least for these four minutes it worked.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 4, 6, 16, 17, 18, 21, 25, 26, 32, 34, 44
Available on: Simply The Best

Propaganda 'Dr Mabuse'

Chart Peak: 27

YouTube

As we get deeper into the second disc, some smaller hits seem to sneak in. The very high-concept debut single from the German electronic pop act was a Top 10 hit in West Germany but failed to match that level of success over here, allegedly because their label ZTT had to concentrate its promotional resources on Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This is apparently also why it took more than a year for a second single to emerge, the genuinely impressive 'Duel' (which would have been a nice addition to Now 6). By that point, though, there were already tensions within the band due to an allegedly unfair record contract and the fact that lead singer Claudia Brucken's husband at the time, Paul Morley, was a co-owner of the label.

I'm sure this track is very clever, and it works well as an excuse for a video based on the Fritz Lang silent movies that made the Mabuse character famous. But listening to it without the benefit of all the pretentious extra-musical, I frankly find myself waiting for the tune to start. Probably the most disappointing track yet.

Available on: Noise And Girls Come Out To Play / A Compact Introduction To Propaganda

Bananarama 'Robert De Niro's Waiting'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

I can understand that they wouldn't have been able to afford the actual Robert De Niro for the video, but maybe they could have tried to get somebody who looked vaguely like him if they were going to do that idea. But then again, maybe they should have used some pizzas that look like they'd actually been delivered, and weren't little individual ones that they'd bought from Bejam. There again, the second Bananarama-related track in a row (and the second in three to involve Swain and Jolley) is somewhat about unreality. Their early songs mostly seem to be about the desire to glam up and escape the gloominess of early-80s Britain. Perhaps this is why they seemed to lose it a bit musically the more successful they became. At this point they were still fun though, and this is possibly their best single. They even try to do some harmonies.

Also appearing on: Now 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 (with Lananeeneenoonoo), 15
Available on: Bananarama (Platinum Re-Issue)

The Bluebells 'Young At Heart'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Charted at No. 54 on 19th June - sped to No. 36 the following week.

Including this song when it hadn't gone Top 30 at time of going to press seems confident (especially since the front cover of the album promises "30 Top Thirty Hits") but it was the follow up to a Number 11 hit. In the event the confidence was justified when this swooped into the Top 10 and effectively overshadowed anything else they ever recorded. And whilst I don't normally throw forward to appearances on volumes I haven't yet written about, it seems dishonest to overlook the fact that this single was Number One twenty years ago this week, having been re-issued off the back of a TV advert: it was thus promoted to become the opener of Now 24.

Not bad for what started out as an unimpressive Bananarama album track, co-written by Bobby Bluebell (not his real name) and thus borrowed for his own band's debut album. The Bluebells version is heavily re-written; even more, as it turned out, when violinist Bobby Valentino successfully sued for a share of the writing credits. He seems to have used the proceeds to sue the RnB singer of the same name who appears on Now 61. Anyway, this version is a definite improvement in arrangement and performance, and plays up the gypsy-folk element which had been made trendy a couple of years earlier by Dexys Midnight Runners. It's a bit jollier, and the lyrical changes actually play down slightly the original meaning of the song, which in the Nanas version is clearly about the grown-up child of a divorcing couple. The Bluebells drop the section about not taking sides, and the song becomes more of about nostalgia and growing up, as the narrator wonders aloud why he now feels the love for his parents when as a teenager he only wanted to get away from them. Only the line in the first verse where marrying young "was their only crime" really foregrounds the original intention, but the vibe has its own merit and this is in fact a good single, though so overplayed nowadays that it's only for this sort of thing that I really take the time to listen to it properly.

The band seem to have tired of this success too, splitting not long after. They did however reform to promote the re-release.

Also appearing on: Now 24 [same track]
Available on: Take On Me - 80's The Collection

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

Cyndi Lauper 'Time After Time'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

Though not as high-charting a single as 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', and less of a staple of compilations nowadays, this apparently sold more copies here during the 80s (I'd imagine her first hit has overtaken again in the download era). It's the flipside of the youthful exuberance of that song, being a song full of uncertainty and people fumbling towards trusting each other. Although Lauper was thirty years old by the time the single was released, she captures what feels very like a a teenager's emotional confusion, presumably from memory, and sings with such conviction that you don't need to know or care how current the feelings are.

As a record, 'Time After Time' is notably subtle for the era, impressively reluctant to over-emphasise the genuinely strong chorus and lacking the gloss that we tend to associate with the 1980s. It's the faint strains and imperfections in her vocal performance that make it feel powerful and genuine, along with co-writer Rob Hyman's slightly odd backing vocal, which is in places quite divergent from the lead. That fits, and as she stumbles to the end of the song whispering the title, you feel like you're right there with her in whatever adventure is going on. It took me long time to realise just how good this was, and I think I might only really have got it when I happened to buy an 80s compilation that bucked the trend and did include this one.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 29
Available on: Time After Time: The Best Of

Queen 'I Want To Break Free'

Chart Peak: 3
YouTube
Side Three starts with another song of escape, albeit a somewhat lighter-hearted one. And proof that Queen aren't always the first track on a Now album, though they usually start a side.

'I Want To Break Free' was the second single from their album The Works and managed to spend three consecutive weeks at 3 in the charts; all of them were behind Phil Collins at 2, but there were two different Number One singles involved. Sales were perhaps helped by the fact that this was a different mix from the album track: unusually, the single edit is longer thanks to that dramatic intro. They were surely also assisted by the track's memorable promo video, which I can even remember seeing at the time. The cross-dressing allegedly caused some controversy in the USA, although as a British six-year-old raised on pantomimes, I didn't think there was anything particularly strange about it, it was just a little bit silly that Freddie Mercury still had his moustache while he was in drag. I hadn't noticed at that point that he does actually appear clean-shaven in one of the fantasy sequences.

The song was written by John Deacon, probably my favourite member of Queen, not least because he was the only one never to attempt a solo career and the one who seems to have been least involved in the disreputable attempts to keep the band going after Mercury's death. In a band of showmen, he was the calm sideman. Although my favourite of his was 'Another One Bites The Dust', which is too early for the series, this inclusion means that all four members of Queen individually appear on the Now albums as songwriters, as well as tracks credited to them collectively.  It lacks the emotional burden of the Bronski Beat track, seeming more a work of imagination, but when I say it's one of Queen's best ever pop songs I don't consider that at all a bad thing.


Also appearing on: Now 2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Greatest Hits II

Bronski Beat 'Smalltown Boy'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

All this year, Radio 2 are running a documentary series called The People's Songs, which makes the lofty claim of revisiting British social history through the lens of popular music. 'Smalltown Boy' was the subject of the latest episode, which offers such a thorough overview of the song and the culture it was released into that it doesn't leave me a lot to say (one reason this post is so late). Coincidentally, the song also shows up in this recent post at the AV Club about adults-only pop videos from the early days of MTV, although the content of this one is notably less salacious than most of the others featured. Interesting side-note that virtually all those videos are by British acts.

For those not in the know, the song was of course the chart debut of Jimmy Somerville, and an early taste of the lyrical themes that resonate throughout his career; it's about growing up gay in a small town and having to move away to a big city to find acceptance and start a new life. But you don't have to be gay or from a small town to be affected by it - strictly speaking, even the Glaswegian Somerville is only one of those things. I was too young to understand or appreciate the song at the time, but whenever I hear it now I'm assaulted by the beautiful sadness of it. Though obviously derived from the disco and hi-NRG sounds popular in gay clubs at the time, the song has a haunted, mournful tone achieved through a simple synthesiser line; the combination of purely electronic instrumentation and emotively human melodies reminds me somehow of Kraftwerk. Only in the middle section does the song break into a more forceful sound, presumably to indicate the Boy's hopes for his new life, and even that's undermined by the fact that Somerville's lyric at this point is "Cry boy cry!" Finally the song goes back to where it started with a repeat of the first verse, which may be intended to suggest that the Boy needs to move on again - or maybe it's addressing a different character, one of the many who found themselves needing this kind of escape and, despite the strides we've made in the past thirty years (and for that matter, the ones we already had in the preceding thirty) still do. Throughout the song, the fact that the lyric is in the second person adds an intimacy, and it's also interesting that the subject matter is never stated directly. Possibly this was to some extent a commercial decision but it does also lend the song a greater universality and perhaps makes it easier for a broader audience to sympathise.

Even though the final fade is a bit of a non-ending, the one significant flaw to the track, Side 2 of Now 3 has a strong claim to be the best-ever side of a Now album. But will Side 3 keep up the quality?

Also appearing on: Now 4
Available on: The Age Of Consent

Bob Marley And The Wailers 'One Love/People Get Ready'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

Unless I'm missing something, this is the first posthumous Now appearance (for Marley, obviously, not all the Wailers), not that the sleeve note feels the need to mention this. It's the first of three such appearances for him, with a 1977 album track that was belatedly released as a single to promote the immensely popular Legend compilation, reportedly the biggest-selling reggae album of all time. In fact, the original version of the song, in a more traditional ska style, was released by the Wailers in 1965. The subtitle, incidentally, reflects the fact that the song is based on 'People Get Ready' by The Impressions.

I've always been resistant to the deification of Marley since his death, and indeed I'm one of the few who never did buy a copy of Legend, but as it is 'One Love' is a short but sweet little number with a utopian sentiment that obviously appealed in 1977 (when he'd fled Jamaica after an apparent assassination attempt) and after his death. Just in case, the promo video tries to tug the heartstrings a little further with its combination of archive footage and a child actor, plus the endorsement of various celebrity cameos. Paul McCartney doesn't quite do the full thumbs aloft but he's certainly in that mood and Suggs and Chas from Madness have brought some of the stock footage from the 'Return Of The Las Palmas Seven' video. There's a zeitgeist moment when Marley's voice sings "fight this holy Armagideon" while Ronald Reagan appears on a TV screen.

Also appearing on: Now 23, 44 [with Funkstar Deluxe]
Available on: Legend

Style Council 'You're The Best Thing'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

Paul Weller's first Now appearance in this - and therefore any - guise comes a while into the Style Council's career. By this point they'd already released several singles and the album Café Bleu but for supposed "value for money" reasons that ignored the early hits and featured a different version of 'My Ever Changing Moods'. So 'You're The Best Thing' was their first single really taken from an album (albeit in an edited version), and even then it was officially half of a single called Groovin' with the new track 'Big Boss Groove'. Yes, it was the eighties, and in those days it was acceptable to call a single that.

I jest of course, but I suppose if there was one thing the early Style Council was about, it was doing things that Weller couldn't have got away with while he was in The Jam. And whilst 'You're The Best Thing' isn't most people's idea of a daring or experimental record, it is quite a departure from the sort of thing his audience would have been expecting just a couple of years earlier: no power chords, no leaping up in the air, no machismo but a sincere (or at least unironic) love song in a decidedly tender falsetto. Weller has claimed that the song was inspired by the Isley Brothers hit 'Between The Sheets', which is just about audible, although fortunately this track is much less priapic (no sign of the grunting from the second half of the Isleys track). In fact, if I were to name a Style Council song that was sonically similar to 'Between The Sheets' I'd probably have mentioned 'Long Hot Summer', which is even closer in tempo and has a similar keyboard sound. Source notwithstanding, though, this is a song that succeeds totally on its own terms, and I can say that wholeheartedly as somebody who ranks Sound Affects among his all-time favourite albums. It's a staple of love song compilations and oldies radio stations and for once deserves to be so. Weller has obviously always been a lover of soul music, which he's referenced even since the first Jam album, and unlike say Phil Collins he has a genuine aptitude for the style too. Typically his gruff vocal is part of that but even in this higher register he's an outstanding singer and the mood is just right too, with a real sense of vulnerability that makes this seem more than an exercise in genre, whether or not it actually is one. Also this track features what I reckon is my favourite sax solo in pop music, a lovely reedy sounding one that adds to the atmosphere instead of just sounding like somebody wants to get on one of those compilation albums.

The Council's desire to push boundaries led them down a lot of blind alleys over the years, many of them even more mistaken and futile than the mixed metaphor in this sentence. But when they hit the mark in the early days they made a notable contribution to their leader's stock of great singles, and this is among them.

Also appearing on:
Available on: Collection

Womack & Womack 'Love Wars'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

With Cecil Womack having sadly died last month (in South Africa, coincendentally) and Bobby Womack's profile at the highest it's been for years (his The Bravest Man In The Universe was probably my favorite album of 2012) it seems fitting to start this post by clarifying the family relationships: Bobby and Cecil were brothers, so Linda Womack was Bobby's sister-in-law and also his former stepdaughter via his marriage to Sam Cooke's widow. I believe they also had an affair at one point.

All this complexity seems to have provided some inspiration for the duo's first big hit, a brilliant piece of pop-funk that combines a big chorus with some dark moments in the lyric ("I promise to stop boxing you up, so don't scratch my face"). You can make your own judgement as to how positive the song really is, and how likely the protagonists ever are to make things better but it's hopeful and delivers more grit than most soul music of this era. Maybe it's slightly too slow to be danceable, and the full six-minute album version that's now available on CD is a trifle overlong, but this is extraordinarily catchy and driven by C. Womack's excellent bass playing. There's even a nice singalong moment with the title sung by a pseudo-choir at the start and various other points throughout the song. One of the lost classics of the Now series, I think.

Also appearing on: Now 13
Available on: Love Wars

Special AKA 'Nelson Mandela'

Chart Peak: 9

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That's right, it's not actually called 'Free Nelson Mandela', at least not in the UK. Allegedly the BBC warned Two-Tone that to make such an explicit political statement in the song title would be going to far, but leaving it in the chorus was OK. Like the song's subject, Jerry Dammers was willing to compromise and the result was the Special AKA's only major commercial success after the departure of Fun Boy Three in 1981 left the remainder of the group in disarray. By 1984 they'd become a fairly loose collective, hence the eventual album title Special AKA In The Studio and, seemingly, the impracticality of getting the whole band in the same shot for the video to this song. Still, we get to see Dick Cuthell's impressive moustache.

Beyond its placing in the history of one of the classic groups of the era, 'Nelson Mandela' must also rank among the most successful protest songs of the era. At the age of six, I was still asking my mum why she wouldn't buy the South African apples in the shops, but apparently a lot of adults hadn't heard of Mandela then either. Whilst it would of course be a massive overstatement to say that this song changed the course of history (especially since it was inevitably banned in South Africa), it publicised the issue in Britain. Of course it's highly unusual among protest songs in tone, being mostly upbeat and celebratory, although tempered by some downbeat moments, like that descending brass intro just before the main bouncy riff. Despite being written by a white man from Coventry, it's also a very African-sounding track, which seems to suggest that this isn't just a detached commentary from a distant Westerner but a gesture of direct solidarity with the South African people. That gives it a great deal of its power (even if people in SA couldn't actually hear it at the time) and makes it feel like a real rallying call.

Little can anyone involved in this record have imagined that less than ten years after Now III hit the shelves, Nelson Mandela would be the democratically elected president of his country. It's less earth-shattering but still notable that this song wasn't entirely forgotten after that happened either, and continues to feature on Specials/Special AKA compilations to this day. This is, for obvious chronological reasons, the only interface between the Specials and Now, and even if not their best ever track it's one of the most historically significant.

Available on: Stereo-Typical