T'Pau 'I Will Be With You'

Chart Peak: 14

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Previous 4 singles all made Top 30... A new release on 13/6/88

If I'd ever heard it before, thought, I don't remember that. In fact, I don't think I bothered to play it when I first obtained Now 12 either, so I'm effectively hearing it for the first time. And I've got to say that it's not doing a lot for me now. Thuddy eighties-style drums punctuate a fairly bland song that sounds like a fifth single even to those of us who don't remember the third and fourth. Carol Decker's voice is very thin too, but I'm guessing that's not where people's attention was at the time.

Side 2 has been an interesting ride and remarkably diverse, with two tracks that would seem like outliers on any Now album at all. But as it peters out here and goes back into its inner bag, the time comes to look forward to another change of mood on the second disc.

Also appearing on: Now 10, 11, 13
Available on: Bridge Of Spies

T'Pau 'China In Your Hand'

Chart Peak: 1 (5 weeks)
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Nine tracks in and this is only the second Number One single, albeit a long-running one (indeed it was the incumbent at the time of release) and one with a very minor place in history as the 600th single to top the UK chart.

I used to know all the words to this. Or at least, I thought I did: for some reason I thought the chorus was "Don't push too far your dreams of china in your hand," whereas in fact T'Pau are claiming that dreams *are* china in our hands. Yet as my mother, who used to work in the crockery department at Jones Brothers, pointed out, china isn't actually that likely to break in your hands, which is why they make teacups and things out of it. Still, it makes as much sense as the rest of the song, I suppose - when I was nine, I think I just assumed that songs were meant to be written in this sort of self-consciously "important" psuedo-mystical way, but now I know better. I also know that it's possible to write much better tunes than this, but by far the worst part of this must be moment when it appears to end, only to break into that ghastly sax solo. At best this is a terribly watered-down version of 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart', at worst it's everything dislikeable about 80s music.

Also appearing on: Now 11, 12, 13
Available on: T'Pau: The Greatest Hits