Take That 'Could It Be Magic'

Chart Peak: 3
YouTube

Take That's version of 'Could It Be Magic', a hit for its co-writer Barry Manilow, was voted Best Single Of 1992 by Radio 1 listeners... It followed 'A Million Love Songs', I Found Heaven' and 'It Only Takes A Minute' into the Top 20 and finally peaked at No. 3 in January '93.

Not sure I'd have voted it the Best Take That Single Of 1992, but that's boyband fans for you. What's not mentioned in the sleevenote - and wouldn't have been considered worth mentioning at the time - is that this one of the two first-run Take That singles to feature Robbie Williams on lead vocal, and as a result I recall this getting played on VH-1 a good deal at the turn of the century to the exclusion of almost anything else by the group, due to the massive fame of the solo Williams at the time. Oddly, I don't remember 'Everything Changes' getting the same exposure. It's a pretty functional kind of cover, which sounds slightly less dated than I expected now, possibly because it wasn't that up to date at the time either. It's not particularly interesting either though, so my attention is drawn more to the video. Frankly it looks like they were paying more attention to their dance moves than the song too, which might explain why Gary Barlow, whom you'd expect to be bang up for a Manilow cover, is hardly in it. It's one of those singles that seems to do the job rather than impressing.

Also appearing on: Now 22, 26, 29, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 79, 90
Available on: Never Forget - The Ultimate Collection

Take That 'Pray'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

Gary, Howard, Jason, Mark and Robbie have already had 4 massive hits in Britain year... 'Pray', a No.1 in July, was the biggest seller of them all.

They'd got off to a relatively slow start, by modern boyband standards, and had to wait until their ninth single to get to the top of the chart - but this was the start of a run of four consecutive Number Ones for them. It's the only representation in the Now! series of their second album Everything Changes, which proved to be the biggest seller of their original career. Like a lot of their catalogue, it was rarely heard between about 1994 and 2005, but has become a regular airplay favourite in more recent years. In truth, it's a good fit for commercial radio, a smoothly-produced song with a clear soul influence but no real grit to it. It lifts up in all the right places for a chorus, but as with a lot of Gary Barlow's compositions, I find it easier to nod at how well it's done than to be caught in any sort of passion about it, emotionally or rhythmically. It is clever that they thought to angle their musical style to appeal beyond the typical boyband audience and thus prolong their career but I'm more impressed than pleased.


Also appearing on: Now 22, 24, 29, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 79
Available on: Everything Changes

Take That 'Patience'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

'Patience', Take That's first single in ten years, shot to the top spot in November 2006 and has just won the boys a Brit Award for Best British Single... Their album Beautiful World also gave them a No. 1 - They've proved to be as successful as ever with a sell-out reunion tour last year and a new sell-out tour just announced for the end of 2007.

As it turned out, "as successful as ever" ended up being an understatement, with that album ultimately outselling all their previous albums and becoming one of the UK's all-time top-sellers. It's hard to know how intentional it was, but with hindsight Take That wrote the perfect script for a successful comeback: first they (or at least the four of them who weren't Robbie Williams) reunited for a TV show, then released a best-of album to tie in with that. A successful tour followed and only then did they announce they'd signed a new record deal for new material, still leaving the door open for a possible full reunion with Williams. Perhaps this was all planned in advance but at least this arrangement gave them the opportunity to sell each stage in the process as a response to public demand, and of course to have pulled out had the momentum not been there - a lesson that seemed lost on many of the other boy bands who re-emerged in their wake, booked a load of arenas and wondered why there was such a big echo.

Anyway, the stage was clearly set for 'Patience' to become a big hit for them but the sheer scale of that success was still impressive. As I concluded, it was clearly the right song at the right time. But that's not to say I was ever fond of it - for all that the writing credit is to all four members and producer John Shanks this sounds very much like Gary Barlow's show and it's easy to imagine this coming out as a Barlow solo single a couple of years earlier and scraping the lower end of the Top 40. For me it's very much an example of his excessively formal and formulaic writing style, with every note going exactly where you expect and a lyric by turns whiny and patronising "My heart is numb/has no feeling" explains Gary in case we didn't know what the word "numb" meant). Shanks, known largely for his work with North American AOR acts, gives the record a radio-friendly sheen that suggests an attempt to break the US market, and it's precisely the sort of thing that can easily shift units with the right image on the front of it. Even if all the other three Thatblokes seem to do is a bit of humming in the background, lending their collective name did the trick.

Also appearing on: Now 22, 24, 26, 29, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 79
Available on: Beautiful World