1993 The Bluebells: Young At Heart

Now here's a song that weaves a tangled web - during the early eighties, Bluebells vocalist Bobby Bluebell was dating Bananarama's Siobhan Fahey and wrote 'Young At Heart' for inclusion on the girl's 1983 'Deep Sea Skiving' album.* An unremarkable clump of candy floss frump in its original form, The Bluebells re-worked the tune into a Cajun barndance reel and released it in their own right in 1984 where it reached number eight. Fast forward nine years and it was picked up by Volkswagen for use in a rather cynical 1993 television advert that took the "Old before their time, they married young" lyric literally to celebrate the virtues of divorce. The inevitable re-release took the song to number one, which is where we find it now.

Hailing from Scotland, The Bluebells themselves purveyed the jangly indie kid sound popularised by Scotland's own (immensely influential) Postcard Records but without its left field, off kilter credibility. True, 'Young At Heart'' has the scratchy, wiry sound of a Josef K or early Orange Juice (acts actually on the label), but its re-jigged chorus goes for the commercial jugular with a force of repetition that irritates rather than endears over its running time. In point of fact, the Volkswagen advert itself lasts for a mere 45 seconds and over that brief time 'Young At Heart' spills all of its beans - the remainder simply circles itself like water down a plughole. The 1984 'Young At Heart' shoved a rootsy (and welcome) two fingers up to its electronic/new romantic chart peers, but some ten years on it's garnered the gimmicky inauthenticity of a made up dance of yesteryear and has the awkwardness of a game mature student in a hall of residence full of freshers. Not bad, just unnecessary.

* I'm led to believe that Fahey's co-write credit was given out of love rather than any actual input and that Bob was mightily peeved when she received a huge chunk of the royalties from its second wind here. No doubt he was even more peeved when violinist Bobby Valentino successfully sued in 2002 to be credited as co-writer himself for coming up with the distinctive electric fiddle riff.