The Bluebells 'Young At Heart'

A new month and I'm not going to bother with the jokes this time (especially as I'm posting in the evening) so we drop straight into Now 24, an album I was pleased to find for a decent price because it plugged some gaps in my collection. Of course any Now album I buy plugs its own gap but I must admit there have been one or two that's I've picked up more out of duty than excitement. It's our second visit to the music of 1993, give or take a few tracks from late 1992, but I have a slight preference for the spring Now albums because they often have some of the more interesting hits from early in the year. 



Chart Peak: 1
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'Young At Heart originally reached No. 8 in 1984... the use of the track on a VW advert sent it racing to No. 1 in late March '93... Bobby Ken, David, Lawrence and Russell split up some years ago and are now pursuing different careers.

For topicality's sake, I've included the Top Of The Pops performance of this track from 22 years ago today. I think more people might actually remember the previous week's appearance, with the camera attached to Bobby Valentino's violin bow. I guess that caused too much motion sickness for them to repeat the experiment. I did link to the original video in my previous post on this song, if you want to hear what the original 1984 vocal sounded like. As an aside it was pretty rare for the same act to be allowed on TotP two weeks running, although of course the Number One single was always an exception. It's particularly remarkable that the Bluebells made two consecutive in-person appearances considering that they had split almost a decade earlier. Though they seemed to enjoy these appearances they didn't do as you'd expect a band in a similar situation to nowadays and persist with the reunion; as far as I know it was another fifteen years before a partial lineup returned to live work as a support band for Edwyn Collins.

As to the song itself, well I don't think my views have changed much in the last two years although it might be worth noting that I remember the song more from this release than its original appearance, and that it seemed very old at the time even though it was only from nine years earlier. Hard to imagine a song from 2006 seeming out of place now, although in fairness 'Young At Heart' was already retro even when it was new. Overexposure of this song seems to have put paid to anyone remembering their other material, though. It means too that I don't go out of my way to listen to the song unless I'm doing this and it tends to wash over me when I do hear it, though I realise it's actually a good song.

Also appearing on: Now 3 [same track]
Available on: The Singles Collection