Kajagoogoo 'Big Apple'

Chart Peak:

YouTube

Well, I suppose you can't accuse the compilers here of taking sides. We've already had Limahl on his own after he was fired, so here are the rest of the band without him - bassist Nick Beggs took over lead vocals for the remainder of their career.

This is another one I'd never heard before, and I don't feel I can disagree with the YouTube commenters who say this was better than 'Too Shy'. Beggs doesn't seem any worse a singer than Limahl, and the song is mildly less ridiculous than their other hit, although still somewhat trite: I don't know that we really needed a song to tell us that the pace of life in New York City is fast, thanks. Whilst the music is competent (maybe they'd got a bit more practiced since 'Too Shy'?) it doesn't seem to me to capture much of an NYC atmosphere - but then again I've never been there, so I can only assume that. Although there isn't really anything wrong with this, it's not hard to tell why it's not been much remembered by posterity.

Either way, though, this does make Kajagoogoo the first act to appear twice on a Now album, unless you consider Limahl to have done so already. They're definitely the first to appear twice on one and then never make it to another.

Available on: Islands

New Edition 'Candy Girl'

Chart Peak: 1 (1 week)

YouTube

And so Side Three starts, like the previous two, with a Number One single. What's possibly more remarkable is that this is first encounter with a boy band. New Edition were, of course, a fairly obvious attempt to reinvent the Jackson 5 for the 1980s, and Bobby Brown seems to have followed the blueprint a little to literally in his transition to adulthood. In these more innocent times, their biggest hit is a distant cousin of the family group's 'ABC', with the Motown backbeat replaced by squelchy synths, everything seemingly pitched quite high to avoid clashes with the pre-pubescent vocals. The one other concession to the era are some brief rap segments, which help to break some of the monotony built up by the almost identical verses and chorus.
Oh yeah, and there's a middle eight where they seem to be talking about how great their girlfriends are. Or something like that - dogs might be able to hear the words a bit better. Much as I try to avoid being prejudiced about music, I do find it very difficult to find much to say about this. I suppose the best thing about it is that it's not the Babybird song of the same title.

Available on:Candy Girl

Paul Young 'Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)'

Chart Peak: 1 (3 weeks)

YouTube

And by a coincidence of running order, this follows the track it deposed from the top of the chart. I worry sometimes that I might be writing too much about myself in these entries, but the first thing I remember about this song is that I failed to understand the metaphor and wondered what he was doing with all those hats. Now I've grown up a bit and realised that it's about a man leaving a trail of one-night-stands behind him, it seems like there are several different ways to play the lyric: shamefully, boastfully, fearfully (as if you've just found the consequences coming back to haunt you) or perhaps most tantalisingly in a kind of "Aw shucks," way , employing confession as a pretext for boasting - I can imagine Sinatra doing quite a good job of it. Paul Young, however, doesn't seem to attempt any of these approaches, or if he does he's not very persuasive, and that's a double problem with a song whose protagonist has to be quite a persuader in order to, ahem, lay his hat that often.

The obvious thing to do was to turn to Marvin Gaye's version, which doesn't completely work either, although Gaye is the more convincing vocalist. Or maybe I just think that because of what I know about his life. It does heighten how different this arrangement is though: I'd remembered it as being very heavy and overdone, but actually there's not very much to it. It's just that Pino Palladino's fretless bass is so dominant that it makes the record feel sort of muddy and overwrought. Young's scat-singing on the way to the last chorus is in retrospect reminiscent of Gaye, which suggests that he was a fan, but he doesn't measure up to the man here. What he did do was to establish himself as a star, going on to apply this formula to various other songs for many a year to come.

This is the last track on the first disc of the album, so it represents a sort of half-way mark for me.

Also appearing on: Now 5, Now 20
Available on: Wherever I Lay My Hat: the Best of Paul Young

Rod Stewart 'Baby Jane'

Chart Peak: 1 (3 weeks)

YouTube

This one, I remember. And I remember that even then I knew who Rod Stewart was; at any rate I had an idea who he was, which was obviously based on the sort of person he seemed to be at that time, and I probably thought he was American too. I thought all rock stars were American unless I knew they weren't.
In retrospect, Stewart's last Number One single plays a bit like an attempt to recapture his first ones; like 'Maggie May' and 'You Wear It Well' it's a second-person monologue, in which Rod is nominally addressing some sort of femme fatale character, although in no case do you really believe that he'd say any of this out loud to her, if he even could. Our "Jane" here seems reminiscent of the social-climbing characters from 'Out Of Time' or '(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone', at least in the minds of their respective narrators. But for perhaps the last time in his career, Rod Stewart appears to acknowledge the passage of time, his protagonist here coming over as somewhat more mature than Maggie's toyboy. He's "said goodbye so many times the situation ain't all that new," and he can probably afford his own pool cue too. Thus the tone is more rueful than mortally wounded - yes, he reminds Jane that he knows secrets about her, but he doesn't seem to be rushing to divulge them in any way, just taking a deep breath and (in the chorus) hoping for better luck next time. The material's interesting enough to inspire one of his better vocal performances too, although it can't stop him doing that odd look left-look right dance in the video.
It's unfortunate that the rest of the song doesn't seem to deliver on the promise of the singing, with its muddy post-disco production and that awful sax solo. It's interested me enough to want to hear Belle & Sebastian's version, which I'm guessing isn't delivered in quite the same style. This doesn't add up to one of his best records, but I don't think he's done anything better since.

And in case anybody asks, I did assume this song was named after the film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? but I've never seen it.

Also appearing on: Now 38 [N-Trance featuring Rod Stewart]
Available on:Some Guys Have All The Luck [2CD + DVD]

Rocksteady Crew '(Hey You) The Rocksteady Crew'

Chart Peak:

YouTube

This being 1983, there was nothing new about rap music but, as we've already seen on this album, it had yet to gain very much traction in the mainstream as more than a novelty. By now, we'd obviously moved on from "Oh wow, it's like he's talking instead of singing!" and instead the focus seemed to be on breakdancing, something I can dimly recall a big craze for in the middle of the decade, accompanied by the usual warnings not to try it at home. Funnily enough, I don't recall hearing this track at the time, but with hindsight I probably did: it's just that there's not much to it other than as a vehicle for the video, the Crew themselves being dancers rather than singers. And if the imagery of the video wasn't cliched then, it became so fast enough not to have stuck specifically in my mind.
Of course, this is another record that really begs to be judged on its own terms. Anyone looking for any more positive musical endorsement than "catchy" is barking up the wrong tree, and even after three minutes of listening in front of a computer it's threatening to outstay its welcome - but I'm sure it'd work much better dropped into a well-constructed DJ mix. Really it only exists as a way to cash in the fame they'd accrued by appearing in Flashdance and they were too good at what they did for me to begrudge them that. In fact, I find myself warming to this more than the Malcolm McLaren track, even though by any sober analysis that one's probably better.

On a less cheerful note, I believe this track represents the first posthumous appearance on this blog, since Frosty Freeze died earlier this year.

Available on: Fantastic Day One of the most random compilations ever?

Men At Work 'Down Under'

Chart peak: 1 (3 weeks)

YouTube

"Very good at sending themselves up, the Australians," said my mum when we saw this video on the telly. And that, whatever else you might say about this record, is certainly beyond dispute. Perhaps this is why they were able to produce a parody of their own stereotypes that not only conquered the world, but was embraced by their compatriots too; it seems to have become something of an anthem to the Aussies in Britain.
To my four-year-old self, there wasn't a lot here except a bunch of Australian guys doing a silly dance and singing about coming from "Down Under" - I suppose it shows how broad the humour is that I could get it even at that age - and I don't think I really understood any of the words in the verses, or even noticed that there were any (Colin Hay does seem to run out and just start bellowing over the fade-out). I didn't decipher until we went there years later what a Kombi was (a VW camper van, in case anyone hasn't caught up yet) and not until later still why he'd have a "head full of zombie". Listening back now, it's pretty much a shaggy dog story as the protagonist travels around the world (including Belgium, for some reason) and is constantly greeted with the same images from everyone he meets. By all accounts, this turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy for many a year thereafter, because Australian tourists and ex-pats got this sung back at them. Of course, the very idea that they're wandering around the world without any obvious intent is itself another stereotype.
As a child, I don't think I had any idea what Australian music would sound like, but with hindsight there isn't much local colour beyond the lyrics. There are hints of reggae in the rhythms and in Hay's vocal, but with no pretence at any sort of authenticity - it's almost a good-time version of The Police. The most notable feature of all is that infectious flute riff that would surely have made this song a single even had it not had such instantly marketable subject matter. It also distracts Greg Ham from the sax he seems to have ladled over every other track on the Business As Usual album.

Of course, the trouble with having this kind of novelty hit is that the only way is down, because people who bought this wouldn't all appreciate the (slightly) more serious tone of their other material: and if they had tried to persist with this direction buyers would have got tired of it anyway. Thus Men At Work won't trouble us again here, although whilst few people remember it they did notch up a couple more Top 40 singles in Britain. Strangely enough, their other US Number One, 'Who Can It Be Now?' is not among them.

Funny thing is, Colin Hay's actually Scottish...


Available on: Business As Usual

Mike Oldfield 'Moonlight Shadow'

Chart peak: 4

YouTube

Let's get the obvious thing out of the way first, shall we? "4am in the morning." Of course it's in the morning! That sort of phrasing has always annoyed me, and it's worse than usual in this case because it's not even necessary for scansion. "Four O'clock in the morning" would be less jarring and is anything a little bit folkier.

Anyway, now I've got that out of the way, I can write about the rest of the song. When this was a current record (I have some memory of hearing it in the end-of-year chart for 1983) I had no idea who Mike Oldfield actually was, or what sort of music he might ordinarily be expected to make. Anyway, this was the first single from his album Crises, possibly his most successful one without the word "Tubular" in the title, and (I now know) much more conventional a pop song than the sort of epic multi-layered pieces with which he first made his name. Indeed, the video seems to present it as a sort of wintertime, folksy singalong around the fire, and perhaps that's how Oldfield himself perceived it; in reality, of course, it's still a very produced-sounding record, clearly the result of a lot of studio time which can make it sound a little bit heavy-handed to these ears. On the positive side though, Maggie Reilly's vocal adds some humanity to the process and I've got to concede that even though Mike Oldfield is the sort of musician I tend to dislike (and by some accounts not a particularly appealing person either) he's managed to create a decent record, though nowhere near as important a one as I suspect he thinks this is.

Incidentally, I'd never thought of this until I read it on Wikipedia, but apparently at the time some people thought the lyrics were somehow alluding to the death of John Lennon, presumably because they contain the word "gun". Of course, this comparison falls apart after even the most cursory examination: Lennon wasn't shot six times by a man on the run, it wasn't a Saturday night, and it certainly wasn't 4 am in the morning...

Available on:Crises [MP3 download]