The Conway Brothers 'Turn It Up'

Chart Peak: 11

YouTube

This'll be another of the tracks that occasionally show up on here that I've never heard of at all. Not even the (admittedly less than memorable) name of the Conway Brothers rang any bells.

As it transpires, we're staying on the dancefloor for this number, even if the Conways themselves seemed to have a little bit of difficulty dancing to it on Top Of The Pops. It's a very solid funk production, if a little dated-sounding now, but it's a little too clubby to make sense to me in my living room. The gag about people asking them to turn it *up* wears thin over the full length of the track, but I expect I'd like this a lot more on a night out.

Available on: 100 Hits - 80s Dance

Jaki Graham 'Round And Around'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

Gaah! Again with the fake-recording-session videos. And how come she's got a microphone but the backing singers haven't?

We're staying in the clubs with this one, although it was an obvious crossover pop hit as well. Jaki Graham notched up a decent number of hits at the time, but despite her heroically massive hair seems a slightly forgotten act now, perhaps because she falls between the stools of one-hit-wonder and big star, so there's no one song that everybody remembers her for. This first hit is maybe the closest she comes to a signature hit on her own, one that broke no new ground even 25 years ago but is eminently pleasant to hear. My favourite part is the subtle downward shift of the meldy leading into the chorus, which seems to give a slight flavour of trepidation about the possibly unrequited love she's confessing here.

Also appearing on: Now 6 [with David Grant], 7, 8
Available on: Original Hits - The Girls

Steve Arrington 'Feel So Real'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

Another one for the list of songs I don't really recall from the time but have become familiar with since. Arrington had previously been the singer and drummer in the funk band Slave, whom I don't remember at all even now, but apparently they had a Number 64 hit in 1980. His biggest UK hit as a solo artist came with this track which sounds quite typical of groove-oriented music of the time. It's actually rather good, but doesn't provide a lot of fodder for discussion.

Of course, talk of "feeling real" sounded like pure disco-speak at the time. However, Arrington had apparently experienced a religious awakening around this time and soon quit secular music for almost twenty years. Only in recent months has be resumed recording, evidently. So perhaps this song can be read another way too.

Available on: Smash Hits 1985

Simply Red 'Money'$ Too Tight (To Mention)'

Chart Peak: 13

YouTube

It feels strangely topical to be writing this post now. Not only for economic reasons, but because the seemingly endless Simply Red retirement, which seems to have been going on for longer than some bands' entire careers, is finally winding to a close, with a Greatest Hits album back in the midweek Top 10 thanks to ITV. Back in 1985, though, I don't think many people could have guessed from this successful debut single how enduring an institution Mick Hucknall and his employees would become. Admittedly, this hit didn't launch them on the fast-track to stardom:
their next three singles peaked at 66, 51 and 53.

Although I'd gleaned somewhere down the line that this was a cover version, I hadn't actually heard the Valentine Brothers' original until today - indeed, until fairly recently I'd assumed it was a much older song than it actually is. Actually, aside from dropping a verse, this version hasn't really reinvented the song all that much; the most notable shift of emphasis is that Hucknall seems to downplay the reference to the "almighty father", reading that line as if it's his literal parent. That and the "ad lib" at the end of "Did the earth move for you, Nancy?" which of course I didn't understand at the time. Still, he was in pretty fine voice back then and the record is a good pop track, even if it's too smoothly done to sound realistic.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 9, 20, 21, 23, 24, 32, 33
Available on: Picture Book (Collectors Edition)

Mai Tai 'History'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

It's difficult to agree with the YouTube commenter who says of this "I love these simple eighties' videos as they concentrated on the talent of the singer(s) more than the glitz and glamor of the visuals." There's even a computer in the first shot, and a bloke who, intentionally or not, looks a bit like a low-budget version of Prince in his 18th-century costume.

The record itself is clearly aiming for the same territory as Sister Sledge sometimes were, but despite the lack of big names involved it's much more effective - even if it carries no more wait, it's a much more convincing production and danceable enough to move you physically if not emotionally. The lyric may be acidic "Our love is history/Gonna burn the letters you been sending me" but the emphasis is clearly on the freedom of finally kicking the guy to the curb. Every bit of footage I've found of them performing this shows them having a whale of a time, and I'm not at all surprised.

Also appearing on: Now 6
Available on: Ultimate Woman

Sister Sledge 'Frankie'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

After the numerous US Number Ones (by British acts) that cropped up on the first disc of this album, we have to wait until the top of the second disc to find the first and only track that topped the UK chart. Ironically, it's by an American group, but it's a single that was unsuccessful in their homeland, peaking only at 75.

Sister Sledge claim their place in pop history largely thanks to a series of hits from their 1979 album We Are Family, written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic fame. Some of this material was revived over here in 1984 with such success that it seemingly helped pave the way for them to chart with new material the following year. It's probably also the reason why I keep getting them mixed up with the Pointer Sisters, but that's another story. Remarkably, Rodgers is back in the producer's chair for this track (which makes him the third ex-member of Chic to fall from grace on this album, after the contributions of Edwards and Tony Thompson to the Power Station track). The song could hardly be more different from the lush, hedonistic disco of their earlier collaborations though; instead it's a rather childish song, which doesn't get away with it even by admitting that it harks back to a teen romance, because the melody is just too facile. In fact, I think I even liked it when I was seven, which just proves the point, really. And the arrangment and performance is quite astonishingly stolid and one-dimensional; it might just about make sense as the work of children but the whole premise of the song is an adult woman meeting Frankie (a name that doesn't lend itself well to singing, by the way, but I suppose it's gender-neutral enough for the songwriter to have been hedging her bets). Perhaps you could compare the storyline to Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With A Kiss', but with none of the depth.

Also appearing on: Now 3, 24
Available on: Definitive Groove: Sister Sledge

Phil Collins 'One More Night'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

After what feels like a very long time we finally - finally - get to the end of the first disc with another US chart-topping single. Over there this was the first single from his most successful album, No Jacket Required, whilst it was held back for the second single in this country, presumably because it was so slow.

I admit that the subject matter of this song makes the slowness seem logical. Like a lot of his work from this era it's about romantic abandonment, although I'm not entirely sure whether the lyric "Give me one more night, cause I can't wait forever" actually makes sense. It's painfully obvious that he wrote this song to a drum machine, as he often did, because it gives a rather stately effect that completely undermines the desparation he's trying to portray. By the time the obligatory sax solo shows up things have got so dull that in the video even Collins himself walks out during it.

Also appearing on: Now 1, 3, 6, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 27, 41, 44, 68
Available on: No Jacket Required