Kool & The Gang 'Cherish'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

And now onto a song I just wish I didn't remember. I've never had that high a tolerance for sentimentality in pop, or falsetto, and the combination here threatens to drown us all in slush. In fact even listening to this was something I put off, let alone actually trying to find anything interesting to say about it.

In some ways I feel slightly ashamed of myself for being so negative, when I find it easier to forgive records that express less noble sentiments. Perhaps I'm flattering myself to think that positive ideas are too obvious, or maybe it's some sense that these things are too easy to say and harder to live up to. Possibly my head was turned by a documentary that I vaguely recall seeing years ago where somebody explained how they kept being surprised by how many lowest common denominators Kool & The Gang managed to find to lower themselves to. Fairly or unfairly it's hard to feel convinced by this.

Also appearing on: Now 57 (with Blue)
Available on: Music For Romancing

Stephen "Tintin" Duffy 'Icing On The Cake'

Chart Peak: 14
YouTube

Another Number 14 single I'd never heard before! Mind you, my ignorance was a little more targetted in the sense that I do actually own an album by him, albeit one from over a decade after this when he was a slightly bitter-sounding Britpopper. Over a long career under various names he's been a folk rocker and even an early member of Duran Duran, but this is during the most commercially successful times when he was a sort of synthpopper. 'Kiss Me' had been released three times (initially credited to Tintin until Hergé's estate complained) before finally becoming his biggest hit. This is the follow-up that seems less remembered now, even though it did OK at the time: mind you, even Roland Rat couldn't get the title right.

It's certainly a good deal less stupid than his more famous success, but there's still something a little bit sneery about it, as if he's patronising the audience a little bit; perhaps that impression comes more from the video than the record itself though. Anyway, if you can forgive that it's pretty and harmless piece of fluff, and certainly better than the Dead Or Alive number. But maybe it's not a surprise that this proved to be his last taste of the Top 40, at least if you forget 'Hanging Around' by Me Me Me - and I'd strongly advise that you did.

Available on: They Called Him Tin Tin

Dead Or Alive 'In Too Deep'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

It's not the first time I've had to write about a song called 'In Too Deep' and it probably won't be the last either, but it'll be the only time I'll have to do it from scratch: like many people I'm sure, I only really knew one DoA song (and you can probably guess which one, too) and aside from that I really knew of Pete Burns as an annoying person who kept showing up on the telly and wore a coat made out of endangered monkeys.

Well, I have heard this song now and I have no idea what the fuss was ever about. It's a very dull song, with none of the drama of Stock Aitken Waterman's most interesting work. It's obviously meant to be about a disfunctional relationship, but somehow that becomes the most boring subject in the workd here. Maybe the video was good or something, because I can't imagine anyone caring about this at all otherwise.

I doubt I've encouraged anyone to buy this track, but just in case, it'd seem only fair to donate a few bob to a primate conservation charity as well.

Also appearing on: Now 63
Available on: Rip It Up

Fine Young Cannibals 'Johnny Come Home'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

It's pretty much irrational of me I know, but I've always hated videos set in recording studios. Seriously guys, unless you've got some clever twist going on you're fooling nobody: we know you don't all stand about wearing make up with your back to the drummer (and shouldn't you be singing into a microphone?). I'm prepared to forgive them a little because they probably weren't given much of a location budget for their first single, and they do at least add a little silliness with their dance moves.

It's an interesting metaphor, in a way, because the finished record has a certain lightness of touch and a jolly oomph in the rhythm track. That and Roland Gift's distinctive (if somewhat unintelligible) vocal go some way to sugar-coating the dark subject matter of this song. Johnny is a kid (of not entirely specified age) who's run off to the big city and found it's not all it was cracked up to be. A protagonist implores him to come call his mum and come home - but then also repeats in every chorus that "we're sorry". And somebody's asking "What is wrong with my life that I must get drunk every night?" Perhaps that's Johnny himself reflecting on his troubles, or maybe the narrator of the rest of the song has been driven to drink by his absence... but the more obvious conclusion is that drink has made him(?) do what he's sorry for and occasioned Johnny's departure in the first place. It's to the song's credit though that it doesn't hammer you over the head with this, preferring to let you wonder as you listen to that excellent muted trumpet.

Also appearing on: Now 6, 14, 16 (CD only)
Available on: The Platinum Collection

Harold Faltermeyer 'Axel F'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Needless to say, I wasn't allowed to see Beverley Hills Cop until much later than this, but this instrumental was very familiar to me long before I knew what it was called (and even longer before I knew why). I don't particularly remember it as a hit they way I do with something like 'Crockett's Theme' but I suppose it was used as background music on the telly and stuff like that.

It's an obvious point that I'm sure I've made before, but there's little in the field of human endeavour that seems to stand the test of time less well than mid-eighties synthesiser instrumentals. Such was the march of techology that even by the time this record was ten years old (maybe even five) what was state-of-the art sounded like the sort of thing kids would do at school. Fifteen more years down the line and this sounds almost primitive, the sort of thing that even the smallest portable electronic devices should be able to outdo. In some ways that's a little unfortunate, because melodically it's simple but remarkably effective - one might even say annoyingly effective, so difficult is it to forget. Trouble is, it doesn't really make that much sense when you can't see Judge Reinhold running along during it.

Available on: True Disco (3 CD Set)

Scritti Politti 'The Word Girl'

Chart Peak: 6

LiveVideo

Apologies for the break in transmission, I wasn't feeling too well and thought I should be in full command of my faculties to give this track a sporting chance.

It's a slighty oddity that Scritti's biggest UK hit seems to be about the only one not on YouTube at time of writing (should you be reading this in the future, you can always try your own search).

I'm sure I've said this before, but I never really know what to make of most of Green's work, which it's often easier to be impressed than moved by. There's some clever tricksiness in this song, with the pseudo-Biblical "How your flesh and blood became the word" - this title is apparently to be parsed as "the word 'girl'" rather than being about a word-girl - and the production is so spotless you could eat your dinner off it. But for all the influence of soul and reggae music, the finished article comes over as a bit more of an essay than a pop song. Even though I can appreciate it more fully than I did when I was only seven, I find myself enjoying it less, today at least.

Also appearing on: Now 12, 19
Available on: Cupid and Psyche '85

Duran Duran 'A View To A Kill'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Second time lucky, I'm finally going to tackle Now 5 this time. And maybe that was the right verb, because the very first track made a bit of a dent in my enthusiasm, as I seem to have exhausted my current allocation of Duran Duran tolerance.

'A View To A Kill' has a place in history as the highest-charting James Bond theme in the UK (and indeed in the US, where it got to the very top of the chart), but for all that it doesn't seem the most remembered of them. Nor indeed does the film, which is why I'm not entirely sure whether I've actually seen it: the clips in the video look familiar, but that might just be from seeing the video itself at the time. To be fair, the ridiculousness of the Bond films is a good fit for the band, who I can never take seriously for all the huffing and puffing and earnest psuedo-funk of this track. And to their credit, they seem to have entered into the spirit of things in the aforemented promo video, although I'm not sure whether that beret is supposed to be funny or not. It still feels a bit of a throwaway, but in Duran terms I don't always consider that a bad thing.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 24, 25, 31
Available on: Best of Bond...James Bond