The follow-up to 'Don't Get Me Wrong' charted at No. 56 on 9th December 1986 and made No. 8 for 2 weeks in January 1987.This was a bit of a comeback era for the Pretenders (or at least for Chrissie Hynde, the only original member still in the band at this point). The aforementioned 'Don't Get Me Wrong' had become her/their first Top 10 single in almost five years, and this was the only occasion in their career when they scored back-to-back Top Tens (though the run soon ended with their next single falling short of the Top 80). The former was the song I liked at the time, though I may have been swayed by the old cars in the video. I don't think it's aged all that well since, though, especially the production. This song, apart from its odd title that seems like it was supposed to be a pun, didn't grab my younger self's attention much at all and it wasn't one I expected to like at all now to be honest.
The first hit for Barnsley's Ward Brothers charted at No. 74 on 6th January and finally peaked at No. 32 in early February.I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking "the who brothers?" when I first encountered this. Lurking near the end is a track that must rank highly in anyone's list of the most obscure tracks in the series; a single that struggled to a peak outside the Top 30 by an act who never troubled the Top 75 again. It's hard not to suspect that their record company or management were owed a favour somewhere.
Charted at No. 37 on 16th December 1986, made No. 20 for two weeks in January 1987.You can tell it was the 1980s because this was the first of no fewer than five singles from Wild Frontier, an album of only eight tracks. Unlike Genesis, Moore only managed to place three of them in the Top 40, but that's not bad going for a blues-rock singer I suppose. The other dead giveaway as to the song's age comes in the controversial decision to use programmed drums rather than a live musician - something that apparently didn't go down too well with the other people who were playing on the record. Drum machines have their place, to be sure, but Moore's about the last person you'd expect to use them in this context. It doesn't sit too easily with a set of songs that found him rediscovering his Irish roots following the death of Phil Lynott (the album's title song was apparently written for Lynott to sing, but he didn't live to hear it.
Charted at No. 71 on 28th October 1986, became the first Swedish group to top the British chart since Abba when 'The Final Countdown' was No. 1 for 2 weeks in December.Of course, "first since Abba" seems like a long time ago now, but 1986 was only six years after Abba last topped the chart with 'Super Trouper' - and it was about that long to the next one I can think of, Ace of Base. It is true though, that for all of the success of Swedish producers and songwriters, relatively few have topped the chart in their own names and only in recent weeks has Avicii become the second Swedish act to be credited on two UK Number One singles. Perhaps this single has an even greater place in history as the one and only Number One single from the so-called hair-metal subgenre; Europe were hardly the biggest act operating in this style but somehow time was on their side.
Charted at No. 28 on 18th November 1986, sold steadily for a number of weeks before peaking at No. 14 in January 1987. It was the group's third British Top 20 hit in a row since June last year.
Charted on 21st October 1986 at No. 40. 'Livin' On A Prayer' became the group's biggest British hits to date when it reached No. 4 in early December as the follow-up to 'You Give Love A Bad Name'Hello again, rock music.
Charted at No. 22 on 17th February, had raced to No. 11 by the following week - their first hit single.Their penultimate hit single too, it turned out, with only a Number 37 follow-up to save them from official one-hot-wonderdom. A visually striking act in the mould of Sigue Sigue Sputnik (whom they apparently supported on tour) Westworld took their name from founding members Derwood (a former member of Generation X) and Elizabeth Westwood. They were one of those acts who were everywhere for a brief moment and then seemed to vanish, their second and third albums not even seeing a release in the UK.
The follow-up to 'Cry Wolf' charted at No. 17 on 24th February. Their first six British hits have all made the Top 10.It famously took the Norwegian trio a while to score a significant UK hit, but once they broke through they had a decent run of chart smashes - rather a better one than you'd expect from their three Now appearances, in fact. This track, despite its promisingly high entry, proved to be the song that broke their run of Top 10 singles. Perhaps the teenybopper audience they'd gained at this stage were beginning to tire of them, or something.
Originally a Top 30 hit for the Four Tops in 1966, this track is Nick's follow-up to 'Each Time You Break My Heart'.And the retro-soul returns, in cover version form, thanks to Nick Kamen, the young man best known for taking his clothes off in an advert for trousers. Thanks to this and other modelling work, he got a record deal and scored a Top 5 hit with the Madonna outtake 'Each Time You Break My Heart', one of her few writing credits on a song she never released herself. I presume his management sensed the musical climate of the times and decided on a safe cover version to keep the momentum up. It worked on this occasion, although this proved to be the last time he would trouble the Top 39 positions in the UK chart.
Charted at No. 63 on 6th January, had reached No. 6 by 10th February. Taffy's real name is Kathy Quaye.Another act generally recognised as a one-hit-wonder, although unlike Steve "Silk" Hurley, Taffy did at least manage a second Top 75 single. This isn't a song I remember from the time, and it's a fairly forgettable Italo-pop hit of the sort that was soon to be overtaken by house music. Kathy Quaye herself is probably British (though some sources claim her as American) but the track was written and produced by Italians; the stage name supposedly derives from a failed attempt to pronounce her real name. Of course, writing a song about how much you love radio to flatter your way to airplay is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and there are many other examples in the Now series. 'I Love My Radio' is most notable for the fact that a special UK radio edit was produced to replace "my midnight radio" with "my deejay's radio" due to the lack of all-night broadcasting in mid-eighties Britain. Perhaps they were worried that it would be seen as advocating pirate radio or something? I suppose it's of some mild linguistic interest that they ended up with the lyric "I love my radio, my deejay's radio", a phrase that a native English speaker probably wouldn't have coined, but I'm clutching at straws to try and make this sound interesting. It's an enjoyable bit of pop fluff, but no more, and anything but memorable.
Charted at No. 18 on 6th January, had sped to No.1 by 20th January where it stayed for 2 weeks.A minimal note for a minimal track, but it hardly captures the impact this track must have had when it arrived at the top of the chart - the impact surely heightened by the fact that it knocked off 'Reet Petite' of all things. There can scarcely ever have been a greater contrast between consecutive Number One singles: The Prodigy deposing Robson & Jerome just under a year decade later maybe just about beats this. It was the first time house music had topped the UK chart and surely the most sample-based chart-topper to date. Mind you, if anything it looks even more impressive that the single entered the chart as high as the Top 20, since it can't have had much daytime radio play at first. I do remember hearing it on the radio, but that would have been on Capital, a relatively switched-on station in those days, and I'm sure it only forced its way onto the radio because it had been so popular. I wonder whether it's a coincidence that this is one of the tracks dropped from the CD version of the album, since it was obviously a bigger hit than many of the tracks that did cross over, or whether somebody thought the more upmarket potential buyers of a Compact Disc in 1987 wouldn't have been so keen on this one.
Charted at No. 26 on 25th November 1986, had made No. 8 by 16th December. It was the follow-up to 'Don't Leave me This Way', the best-selling single of 1986. For the original version of 'You Are My World' check out Now 6!That reference is of course because a remixed version of 'You Are My World' was released in early 1987 off the back of their breakthrough success. It didn't do that well, though, and 'So Cold The Night' remains the duo's only self-penned Top 10 hit. It still feels a bit like a cover version though. It doesn't resemble any particular song I know of (the falsetto vocal and parts of the melody faintly resemble 'What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend' by the Special AKA, but not that much); however, the writing doesn't quite seem of a piece with the prevailing style of the time. Even the title is intentionally old-fashioned, and it's a song of longing of a kind you didn't often hear in this era, especially not combined with the rather voyeuristic lyrics that begin and end the song with our protagonist spying on the object of his "affections". At least Jimmy Somerville's vocal brings a vulnerability to the song that makes it sound as much pathetic as threatening.
Charted at No. 70 on 9th December 1986, moved slowly at first but then sped to No.3 by 10th February 1987 where it stayed for 3 weeks.'Down To Earth' is kind of an apt title actually, you get a sort of culture shock with the segue from early-60s proto-soul to this slickly-produced blue-eyed jazz-funk number. Apparently, when Curiosity first began work on their debut album, Sly and Robbie were the producers, which sounds potentially interesting; but in the event they were replaced by Stewart Levine, who's also credited on two other tracks on Now 9, and lends the track a rather saturated tone with plenty of fretless bass - the sort of thing that was radio friendly between about 1986-8 but sounds curiously unengaging now.
Originally made No. 27 in summer 1961, re-charted at No. 19 on 10th February and "501"-ed its way to the top the following week. It was still firmly at No. 1 in early March.The otherwise impenetrable verb "501" is of course a reference to the use of this song in a jeans commercial starring Eddie Kidd, although to be honest that's not something I'd have remembered were it not in the sleevenote. I do remember that the song was used in the film of the same name, as the video that got shown at the time was the one made to tie in with the film, showing a 48-year-old King incongruously miming to the vocal he'd recorded half his lifetime ago, while Will Wheaton - before he became the world's most famous Google+ user - shows his dance moves.
Following the success of 'Love Kills' and 'I Was Born To Love You', Freddie's new solo single is 'The Great Pretender'. The song was originally a hit for the Australian singer Jimmy Parkinson in 1956 and also the Platters later that same year.
Charted on 21st October 1986 at No. 37, had flown to No. 1 by 4th November. It stayed at the top throughout the month and was still in the British Top 50 in late January 1987. The song was the love theme from the hit movie Top Gun.When people talk about Giorgio Moroder, it's fair to say that this isn't usually the first song they mention, but he did indeed produce the track, and co-write it with his car mechanic Tom Whitlock. It must be one of his biggest sellers. I suppose the slow, reverberation synthesised bass line does hark back to his days as an innovator of electronic music, but it's somewhat concealed by the washes of fake-string pads and Terri Nunn's vocal, which expresses the sort of emotion that only exists in Eighties power ballads. I'm not sure whether any of the other members of Berlin even contributed to this track, but by the end of 1987 they'd split due to disagreements over their direction; other members apparently thought they were a serious New Wave band and didn't want to carry on in this direction. A Simple Minds-like breakthrough was not to be for them.
Charted at No. 64 on 10th February, had reached No. 32 by 24th February.
Charted at No. 50 on 13th January 1987, had raced to No. 2 by 3rd February where it stayed for 2 weeks.As we'd all have known at the time, but younger readers may be less aware, Helen DeMacque and Shirlie Holliman had risen to fame as the backing singers for Wham! and in the context of this blog were last seen in the video for 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' on Now 3. After George Michael disbanded the duo in 1986, hoping to make more "mature" music, the two of them were evidently at something of a loose end and somebody evidently thought they'd be able to spin themselves off into a pop career in their own right. I presume Pete Waterman had some involvement in there somewhere, as this appears on his Hit Factory compilation albums even though he didn't write or produce it.
Charted at No. 24 on 3rd February, had reached No. 9 by 17th February. It is their first hit of 1987 after five successful singles in 1986.
