1992 Whitney Houston: I Will Always Love You

Here's a startling fact - of the 52 weeks that make up any given year, two songs from the soundtracks of films starring Kevin Costner sat at number one for exactly half of them. '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You' notched up a record busting 16 weeks there, while this song from 'The Bodyguard' managed a still not to be sneezed at 10. Spooky? Maybe. Something diabolic anyway - Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' is one of those songs whose popularity is almost perfectly balanced by the amount of critical bile flung its way. And it's not undeserved; bombastic, overbearing, histrionic, sonorous - 'I Will Always Love You' delivers all of these adjectives and more as Houston mangles the coy promise of Dolly Parton's original into a bug eyed, hurricane blast of obsession and threat. The Houston pipes are in fine fettle, and for the first minute or so she keeps enough of a lid on to make it a not unpleasant listen. But at 1:48 she fires a starting gun that takes 'I Will Always Love You' down into power ballad hell where hollow bluster masquerades for love and the title becomes the calling card of a stalker's unwanted attentions. I have a mate whose wife to be walked down the aisle to this at their wedding. The marriage didn't last three years - what Whitney hath joined together, let an emotional vacuum put asunder. Says it all really.

1992 Charles And Eddie: Would I Lie To You?

....and as if to show exactly what I meant in calling 'The End Of The Road' cartoon soul, Charles And Eddie pitch up to show us exactly how it should be done with a song that showcases how it used to be done. With the US in the grip of an endless slew of hip hop/new jack swing/R&B beat led productions, 'Would I Lie To You' harks back to the funky, sweet Philadelphia Sound and an Al Green inspired vocal (on a tune that recalls his 'Tired Of Being Alone') that even manages to celebrate love through negating doubt. "Look into my eyes, can't you see they're open wide. Would I lie to you baby" - I'd believe them in a heartbeat, even without the spoken, open wound honesty of "Do you think I give my love away/that's not the kind of game I play" at 2:30. It's not pastiche or parody and neither is it homage; 'Would I Lie To You' is straight up revival of a sound from yesterday with nary a moment of originality in its whole running time. But while I'd be the first to say that you can't move forward by standing still, it's a real shame that an act who could produce something as glorious as this was so short lived.

1992 Boyz II Men: The End Of The Road

It's an interesting question I suppose - when is a boy band not a boy band? In essence a nineties phenomena, 'boy band' is generally used as a derogatory description of a certain class of group who are somehow not regarded as legitimate. For example, The Rolling Stones are (or were) all boys, but they have never been classed as a 'boy band' the way (for another example) Boyzone were. How the act came together, who writes the songs, who produces is and for what specific audience - all these factors play their part in determining how an act are perceived and whether they are due any kudos because of it.

For my money, Boyz II Men walk a fine line between credibility and whatever you imagine the opposite to be. Taking their lead (and name) from New Edition (a definite boy band if ever there was one), the genre's influence is palpable, but Boyz II Men nevertheless plied a more sophisticated take to the norm that always knew its place in its own history, with 'The End Of The Road' being as good as an example as any. Though signed to Motown, their reading of this borrows less from the pop history of their label and more from the swing of Philly soul; I can hear more than a splash of The Delfonics' 'Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)' in its amalgamation of solo and harmony vocals set to a smooth groove that builds in intensity as the desperation grows. As such it's a song that would benefit from a more tentative watercolour approach instead of the elephant stomp we get.

Writer/producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds' latter day CV reads like a who's who of modern R&B, but the clipped and icy separation on each of the music tracks on 'The End Of The Road' ring with a cold and hollow clang. They provide too hard a bed for the song to lie comfortably on and would have benefited from a little blurring round the edges instead of being laid on thick in poster paint primary colours. Vocally too the Boyz aim for an earnestness of tone that ultimately translates as seriousness of the furrowed brow, chin stroking variety that are devoid of the warmth they aspire to. The shuddering diction on each of the 'girl's makes them sound like an insult based on gender and the spoken word middle eight at 2:35 ("I’m not out to go out and cheat on you all night. Just like you did baby but that’s all right") would play better with a little vulnerability instead of a Darth Vader intensity and it all serves to unravel 'The End Of The Road' and re-knit it into something bordering on parody. It's a decent song with a class and a pedigree, but ultimately I'm afraid its larger than life Hanna Barbera soul doesn't have either of its feet in any kind of reality that I can relate to.

1992 Tasmin Archer: Sleeping Satellite

So, 'Sleeping Satellite' - my reaction to this back in 1992 was hatred to the point I would physically leave any room where it happened to be playing. Which might seem a tad extreme considering what it is, but nevertheless it irritated me to the point of no return. But much like the earlier Bryan Adams song, it's something that seems to have faded from view since its day in the sun and I can't recall hearing it at all really over the past ten years, which begs the question as to whether those intervening years mellowed my opinion? Alas, no - on exhuming it from its natural grave tonight for a fresh listen, that opening "I blame you for the moonlit sky" raised the hair on my arms as if it had never been away. Welcome back Tasmin.

And yes, the annoyance really does set in that quickly, chiefly because of Archer's insistence on modulating her tone at the end of each line to deliver her statements as if they were questions; it's unexpected and it immediately throws the song skewiff, though not in a good way. I'm all for subverting the norm, but this always makes me feel I'm one minute late for the party and that 'Sleeping Satelllite' has already welcomed its guests with an introductory bon mot that I missed that makes sense of why it then goes off on a wander of its own along a light beat, slow dance shuffle without ever resolving itself into anything satisfactory.

Structure aside, what provides the lead weight to truly sink 'Sleeping Satelllite' are the awful lyrics; Archer is trying to make a grand, new age friendly statement about....something or other....but it plays out like the over earnest prose of a pretentious teenager on speech day. "Have we lost what it takes to advance? Have we peaked too soon? If the world is so green then why does it scream under a blue moon?" - it's meaningless nonsense to a word and this lack of a solid core of anything gives 'Sleeping Satelllite' all the style and substance of smoke wafting from the flame of a scented candle. And for those with no nose for this type of thing (like me), it leaves an irritating stench in its passing.

1992 The Shamen: Ebeneezer Goode

This might be starting to sound like old news by now, but it's worth pointing out again that dance music was a big deal in the UK of the early nineties. So much so it's impossible for me to overstate how big it was. Fuelled since the late eighties by drug of choice ecstasy and stamped with the smiley yellow face logo, for all the world it looked like the loved up kids dancing at their 'raves' had found a way to express themselves within a culture that didn't harm anyone. The Sun newspaper, always keen to exploit anything that could improve their circulation, even carried an offer to buy a "cool and groovy" smiley T shirt. And everybody was happy. For a while anyway. And then around the turn of the decade it all turned nasty. The Sun, jumping on the growing anti-rave mood of the public now ran screaming 'EVILS OF ECTASY' headlines to highlight the drug abuse within the culture, and the establishment itself moved to outlaw the it completely with the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994's attempt to stamp out raves with the boot of authority.

But I'm getting ahead of myself now - in the early nineties there was still bandwagon enough ripe to be jumped on, and in the same way that disco gave a second wind to some unlikely acts in the late seventies, a number of hitherto low key indie acts began to proclaim that there was always a dance element to their music before hopping on shamelessly with a stolen ticket. Primal Scream made the biggest splash with their shift from the fey jangle of Byrds wannabes to the era defining 'Screamadelica', but other acts like Pop Will Eat Itself, The Farm, Soup Dragons, The Mock Turtles all found a degree of success within this field (certainly more than with anything they'd done previously).

And to that list can be added The Shamen - initially sixties psychedelia revivalists, their shift to electronic dance began earlier than their peers and by 1989 they were fully converted to all things acid house/techno where they were respected players. All of which makes 'Ebeneezer Goode' something of a mystery. While the genre was never without humour, The Shamen themselves were never renowned for playing anything for laughs, and yet how else are we to take the pure tabloid baiting "E's are good" chorus of this? A novelty cash in to file next to Smart E's Sesame Street sampling 'Sesame's Treet' that was number two a few weeks previous, or a KLF type prank to get the country to unwittingly trumpet the joys of Class A recreational drugs?

I think the truth falls somewhere in-between with The Shamen happy to hedge their bets. The "Ya ha ha ha ha ha" laughs and "Naughty naughty very naughty"'s are knowing and played for (what else) pure comic effect, but then Mr C's rap highlighting the benefits of Mr Goode ("He takes you for a ride and as if by design the party ignites like he's comin' alive. He takes you to the top, shakes you all around then back down, you know as he gets mellow then as smooth as the groove") are a clear antidote to media frenzy of the drug's evilness that even comes with a "He's the kind of geezer who must never be abused" warning for moderation. All set to a day-glo, 127 bpm techno rush.

And I think the duality is what caused most of the stink - a song at number one advocating drug use with enough handholds to lead young and old with its chortling Pied Piper allure of good times ahoy. Popular music has always contained coded messages relating to sex and drugs, and The Shamen themselves had already released a more sober track advocating the benefits of drug use in 1987's 'Christopher Mayhew Says' ("When he sits in merry disarray with a smile that says it all. He's found a distant bliss too beautiful for words") to no controversy whatsoever. But of course, that was from when The Shamen were still a niche indie band tucked away from the masses - this was too blatant, too amoral, too pleased with itself and too bloody easy for a Play School audience to sing along to. It had to be banned and the BBC duly obliged. 'Ebeneezer Goode' is not a good example of it's genre - minus the controversy it's predictable and formulaic, a Ford Mondeo of dance music. But as a complete package, it exudes the generational splitting mischief of pop music at its best.

1992 Snap!: Rhythm Is A Dancer

And now to drive a coach and horses through all my previous 'Eurodance one hit wonder acts' comments, here come Snap! with a second number one to prove me wrong. Though still in the dance genre, 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' is a different proposition to 'The Power', and rather a less interesting one at that. Based around the ubiquitous (in the early nineties anyway) bouncing piano riff, 'Rhythm' is classic Italian house crossed with a Europop mentality that, lacking the chorus drop-out gimmick of 'The Power', relies on its own rolling internal rhythm and Thea Austin's repeated "Lift your hands and voices, free your mind and join us. You can feel it in the air" message of nightlife hedonism.

It makes 'Rhythm' a tune for the clubs rather than pop for the bedroom and that's fine, but it's a style over substance product that was everywhere in the nineties - any Fantazia DJ would have played ten hours of this solid on a nightly basis and the only thing that makes 'Rhythm' stand out from the herd is another pedestrian Turbo B rap that stamps on the brakes with a "I'm serious as cancer when I say Rhythm is a dancer", a line so jarringly bad it ought to stop any rave in its tracks, switch on the lights and help the DJ pack away his turntables.

I'm pretty sure my comments on all this will draw howls of protest from those with fond memories of the era, and maybe they will have a point - I was no dedicated club goer at that time (too busy listening to Pixies and Throwing Muses in my bedroom for any of that) and so, having no such memories to pin it on, I'm forced to take 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' on its own merits. And on those it has to be stamped 'ordinary'.

1992 Jimmy Nail: Ain't No Doubt

From Vic Reeves' comedian turned singer to an actor turned singer - Nail is best known to the UK as Geordie brickie 'Oz' in TV's 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet'. Best known to me anyway and to the extent that in 1992 I found it next to impossible to separate the two - as far as I was concerned, it was Oz up there singing this in the same way as it was Bart singing 'Do The Bartman'. Which meant I couldn't take it seriously. Unfair maybe, but it wasn't my fault that Nail had typecast himself to such an extent, and anyway time the leveller has since done much to put enough distance between the two for me to tackle 'Ain't No Doubt' on its own merits.

You can tell an actor is behind all this - Nail opens with a spoken moan about a woman giving him the runaround ("She says 'it's not you - it's me. I need a little time, a little space. A place to find myself again, you know?"), but when she tries to re-assure him with an "I don't want nobody else, I love you", Nail can only respond with a stage whisper "she's lying" aside to the listener before setting out his main beef on the chorus: "Ain't no doubt, it' plain to see, a woman like you's no good for me". Questions as to why he just doesn't dump the brazen hussy aside, there's a pleasingly neat roundness to the song's narrative structure but it's execution ties its laces together so that it falls flat as soon as it tries to run.

And that's because 'Ain't No Doubt' aims for the soulful satisfaction of other sung/spoken tales of lost love like (for example) The Chi-Lites' 'Have You Seen Her?' Which is a lofty enough aspiration to be sure, but 'Ain't No Doubt' instead sounds as provincially low rent as the horrid sung/spoken tale of lost love that was Driver 67's 'Car 67'. Nail can carry a tune, but he carries it in a mouth that clogs fall out of whenever it's open, and to compound the gulf between aspiration and reality,the music has a tinribs thin eighties production of a Level 42 B side coming down a telephone line. Which is all a bit of a shame really because there's potential here, the raw material to fashion something of a gem. Shame then its been wasted by mounting it on a plastic locket hung on a toilet chain.

1992 Erasure: Abba-Esque

I can tell you from memory that Abba's UK stock circa 1992 wasn't at a premium. The recent past really was another country, and whilst it's fair to say that they'd never really gone away completely, their name was only there to be dropped in an eyebrow raising 'look how funny they were' dismissal of seventies kitsch culture that saw them lumped in as part and parcel of tartan trousers, kipper ties, Ford Cortinas and lava lamps. Not everybody of course, but popular culture and mass acceptance had moved on without taking Bjorn and the gang along with it and it left them stranded as a tolerated memory rather than a genuinely fond one, and something that UK folk were as keen to put behind them as post war Germans were of the Nazis.

All changed now - nostalgia became big business with the turn of the century with the BBC's series of 'I Love' programmes that brought some sun to what were previously regarded as winters of discontent and the seventies/eighties came to provide a rich seam of cultural touchstones and shared memories that, once regarded as straw, could now be spun into the gold of cash. Abba's corpse was as fair game as anything else and it was given the initial kiss of life via tribute acts like Bjorn Again spreading the word while later, the musical 'Mamma Mia' unfroze hearts, removed stigma and cemented Abba as everybody's favourite singalongaseventies band, even if some still feel the need to caveat their liking with the defence of irony. A simplistic analysis true, but accurate enough for my purposes.

Erasure's EP played no small part in kick-starting this re-juvenation. In some ways it was a brave move - a successful pop act at their peak risking potential career suicide by rewinding the clock to revive four songs from a discredited band. But then on the other hand, not that brave at all - Vince Clark was a man born with a ear for a good tune and he knew that, when stripped of all the glam and glitter, Abba came stuffed full of them. Over the course of the four songs on this EP, he unpicks their backbone so that each is driven by a core synthesiser bounce that spotlights the main melody inherent in each. Yet despite their back to basics execution, the four songs on offer here are rendered curiously flat and impersonal, reduced to their lowest common denominator with the emotional core so important to the best of Abba's songs removed until they're plucked out as a karaoke backing track with an unwanted vocal. And 'unwanted' because what's also sorely lacking are the dynamic sparks that flew from the clash of Anni-Frid and Agnetha's ice and fire vocals. Put simply, Andy Bell's nasally whine can't compete and it adds little to the tunes, least of all personality.

Take the opening lines of 'SOS' as a case in point - "Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find" - Agnetha's vocal was heartbreaking in its resignation, a sense of human fragility underpinning the juggernagught of a chorus that made it something more than a simple pop tune. In contrast, Bell's disinterest lights no fires and his overly respectful approach vacuums out all the joy to render it a flat plain carried by the tune, itself served up on the same low key keyboard tricks Clark learned back in his Depeche Mode days. The same goes for the remainder - 'Voulez Vous' former icy glide gets fitted with snow tyres to cramp its style, and while 'Lay All Your Love On Me' aims for trance anthem status, it's brought down to earth by Bell's disinterest. The only real addition of note is an MC Kinky rap over 'Take A Chance On Me' that's as unexpected as a black cloud in a clear blue sky and it fires a shotgun blast into the face of the tune's jovial bounce to kill it dead.

In fairness, Erasure always saw this project as a diversion with nobody trying to re-invent the wheel and on that level the EP is pop fun and perfect fodder for a provincial nightclub playlist on a nineties Saturday night. But there's a strain about the songs that tarnishes their efforts, of trying to take the songs to a place where they really don't want to go. Like your dad showing he's still got 'it' at the disco, appreciation borders on humouring toleration and is in any case firmly on a camp and ironic level only (though when something is as formulaic, predictable and ordinary as this then there can be no surprise that it finds its own level).

1992 KWS: Please Don't Go

I mentioned back on 'The Power' about how the early nineties were a fertile ground for one hit wonder Europop dance merchants to ply their lightning in a bottle trade before fading back into obscurity. KWS are a case in point......to a point - 'Please Don't Go' was originally a 1979 KC and The Sunshine Band ballad given a dance makeover to get it moving with a purpose. There's no great art to layering a 4/4 dance beat over an existing piece of music to 'dance it up'; after all, anyone can do it* but in this case 'Please Don't Go' actively benefits from the spark the beat provides by giving a firm boot in the pants to the lethargic self pity of the original (KC was never that convincing on the slow stuff) that puts a twinkle in the eye of the plea of the title. Never too busy or brash, there's enough going on without going any hardcore dancecore throwing the baby out with the makeover (if you see what I mean) and KC's song provides a touchstone that's never far below the surface.

All in all, it's pure nineties Eurodance that's endured/dated as a guilty-ish pleasure the way most of them have. Which is interesting, seeing as KWS were a duo very much from the UK. But they remain an example of my observation in that their version of 'Please Don't Go' is straight re-tread of Italian act Double You's dance version released early 1992, faithful to the last beep and close enough certainly for the Italians to take legal action and win. Which makes this a rip off of a cover. And KWS a pair of very bad eggs.


* Jonathan Peters/Luminaire even managed to do as much to 'The Flower Duet' from Delibes' 'Lakme' in 1999, a re-mix that's as effective as it is unexpected.

1992 Right Said Fred: Deeply Dippy

Always a curious proposition, Right Said Fred's 'I'm Too Sexy' 1991 debut had all the hallmarks of a novelty, Europop one ht wonder. Nothing that could be logically followed up anyway so they didn't try to, which is why the lush 'Don't Talk, Just Kiss' came as a delightful curveball that confounded expectation. Another year on and 'Deeply Dippy' switches track yet again to a chunky bounce of sunlit bubblegum that's a close cousin to The Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream'. With an inbuilt grin to deliver its feelgood 'I love you' message, 'Deeply Dippy' is bedrock pop of no pomp or substance that's refreshing in its total lack of pretension. Only Richard Fairbrass's flat Surrey vocal, lonely in its isolation, spoils the party with a stiffness that seems unable to join in the fun. But nevermind that; the song is strong enough to compensate and by the time the horns blare up, everybody should be smiling - after all, who could bear too much malice to any song with 'dippy' in the title?

1992 Shakespears Sister: Stay

"wasn't expecting that second bitch.. i may have nightmares now" - not a comment of mine, but one I saw posted in response to the 'Stay' video on YouTube when I looked it up today. And it made me smile because it more or less sums up my own reaction to this when I first heard it way back when. 'Stay' is very much a song of two halves; the first being an ambient meander led by an impassioned vocal from Marcella Detroit. But at precisely halfway through, other sister Siobhan Fahey barges in on the back of a violent change of key and tone to croon her sinister warning ("You'd better hope and pray that you make it safe back to your own world") over a fuzzy guitar that panics Detroit's earlier plea of 'stay' into a scream.

Unexpected certainly, but so is walking into a lamppost and both jar in their unexpectedness - not to the point of ruinous, but it didn't make much sense to me and it took seeing the video to set this house in order; Detroit is pleading those 'stay with me's to a dead/comatose male body on a gurney, wrapped up in her anguish until wicked witch Fahey appears, all wide eyed and grinning, intent to drag the poor chap to hell. As a visual compliment, the two catfighting over the body is striking and it brings the duality of the song to life with some satisfaction.

But then it also makes that satisfaction dependant on those images. That's not to say that 'Stay' isn't an enjoyable piece of nonsense in its own right, because it is - a low calorie Diamanda Galas workout of pantomime wailing and moaning with enough of a toehold in pop sensibilities to keep it on course despite that handbrake turn, it's the closest we would ever get to a Goth number one (not that I'm saying that's a desirable thing you understand). As a package of pop music as theatre though it's far more striking, a film short with accompaniment that packs wallop enough to get a reaction out of anyone. Even if they are just nightmares.

1992 Wet Wet Wet: Goodnight Girl

'Goodnight Girl' is often set up as a calculated attempt by the band to develop a more mature sound from their poppier eighties work and tap into an older market. I'm not so sure about that myself - lead Wet Marti Pellow may have drawn a line in the sand by growing a Bono mullet, but the band's young following always seemed to have sought them out rather than vice versa via any blatantly pop output. But the observation is a useful one for my ends here because whilst there is an effective 'grown up' ballad trying to break free in 'Goodnight Girl', it's never allowed to.

And that's because like an over-concerned parent clucking around their offspring on their first day at work, 'Goodnight Girl's overly fussy arrangements smother it in a gloop of strings, a harshly struck, migraine inducing piano and some multitracked 'ahhhhhh's that sew in the nametag marked 'cheese' that dogged much of the band's output. And the weightiest albatross is Pellow and his vocal - despite possessing a perfectly serviceable white soul voice, he wraps his tongue around 'Goodnight Girl's lyric like an oversized gobstopper, force lolling it into Dairylea before it oozing it out through his ever fixed grin. No, 'Goodnight Girl' is too restless, too overstated and too busy to be the heartfelt ballad it craves to be; it meanders and races like water on glass when at heart all it really wants to do is pull up a chair to chat. It's mores the pity that nobody lets it.