1993 Gabrielle: Dreams | Take That: Pray

When doing a write up a couple of entries ago, I started setting out an opinion that the number ones were starting to look like a police identity line-up - that is, different, but with enough of a family resemblance to make you have to look twice to be able to tell them apart. Don't look for this; after a quick scan of the songs to come I decided to hold it back specifically because there seemed a more appropriate place to wheel it out. Here.

The nineties for me always had the air of being dominated by certain flavour of the month/year acts who had their day in the sun before being replaced by something else. Nothing new there, it was always thus, but this decade more than others seemed to have more than their fair share of dominant boy band/girl solo singers or a dominant girl band/male solo singers who seemed to either garner a lot of critical acclaim or else they garnered none at all and with a popularity that was either short lived or else had legs. It seemed almost pot luck as to which side of the line they'd fall and yet the output of all was grounded in the same dancey/soul/hip hop based pop groove (with the influencing genres taking more or less of a dominant role depending on the act) that, like a police line-up tended to blend into one sound of bland conformity. And to illustrate what I mean, I'm going to take 'Dreams' and 'Pray' in tandem.

Gabrielle was a London born singer songwriter whose debut single 'Dreams' hit number one. Her Wikipedia entry lists her genres as 'R&B, soul, blues, jazz, urban contemporary and dance'. Take That were nineties boy band par excellence who, to date, have scored eleven UK number ones (unlike Gabrielle, 'Pray' was their seventh single, not their debut). Their Wikipedia entry lists their genres as 'Pop', Pop Rock' and 'Dance'. It's the dominant boy band/girl solo singers I mentioned above and yet played in the background on low volume then both 'Dreams' and 'Pray' sound pretty much the same, two candidates in the 'nineties pop hits' line-up that the non partisan would struggle to tell apart.

Interchangeable certainly - the artists could have swapped songs with little detriment save Gabrielle would have made 'Pray' slightly more urban and Take That would have made 'Dreams' slightly more poppy, but both could/would still have dropped off the same conveyer belt of the nineties hit machine that provided the decade's distinctive/indistinctive stamp of tameness that, by merely skimming the froth off each of those genres and serving it up low calorie lite, smoothes over any jag or hint of originality and individuality.

To be fair, Gabrielle and Take That would not be the only offenders on that front, but as far as the songs at hand go, 'Dreams' goes for the inspirational 'don't give up' message for the rest of us after she's landed her dream squeeze but it's missing that extra gear, that extra key change to get you punching the air with a 'Yeah!' determination. "Dreams can come true" is positive enough, but Gabrielle sings with a curiously downbeat rasp that implies a layer of cynicism she probably didn't intend. 'Pray' is a dream not yet come true where the boys wish an absent female would come back ("All I do each night is pray, hoping that I'll be a part of you again someday"; a scenario that would become something of a theme in anything Gary Barlow wrote). I don't doubt the sincerity, but there's a dullness about the song, like chrome polished so hard that its worn through to the dull metal beneath, with most of the wear coming from the heavenly choir of bricklaying angels backing vocals that pour a jug of very cold water over Barlow's already damp enough squib of a voice.

Both are perfectly acceptable songs and neither set my teeth on edge, but then neither possess anything approaching a spark or bounce, nothing to make me want to turn it up and sing along. In short, neither is any fun. Were they meant to be? Probably not, but then there's nothing here that rewards any kind of in-depth listening either; 'Dreams' would have benefited from the glass half full optimism of 'Pray's arrangement while 'Pray' would have benefited from the slightly more gritty rationalisation of 'Dreams'. But regardless of all that, both are product of the nineties equivalent of Tin Pan Alley and I find it fascinating that two acts who should in theory not be comfortable at the same table are in fact drinking from the same bowl. A harbinger of the decade (and beyond) to come.