1993 Take That: Babe

John Peel once mentioned how he didn't have much time for any song with the words 'rock and roll' in the title. I have a similar aversion, though with me it's 'Babe' (unless it's being used to describe someone under three years of age). Thankfully, there haven't been that many; Styx made my skin crawl in 1980 with theirs and now Take That have a bash at changing my mind with their own story in song; a guy (this time with Mark Owen singing lead) is once again pining for a wayward female who still has his heart in a jar, though this time at journey's end he finds she has a readymade family for him in the shape of his bastard son.

Yes it's all so much sentimental mawk, but I've no doubt this twist goes all out to engender a warm, feelgood glow in the heart to leave us on an 'up'. Only it doesn't. Not in my heart anyway - there's some curiously old fashioned mores and a sexist feel to 'Babe' that repulses. Its gift wrapped veil of solemnity and hushed reverence setting aims to drape Owen's homecoming in the quasi-religious aura of the return of the prodigal when, truth be told, he's been a bit of a self centred twat. That his delivery of "Babe I'm here again, I tell you I'm here again. Where have you been?" rings with a cardboard passion of urgency with all the presence of a hologram does not help build a bridge to me either.

But insincerity aside, it's the brevity of the song that insults most, both in its basic storytelling and also what that story isn't telling us - Owen and his cheeky grin arriving on the doorstep is held up as plenty enough to make any babe's day, but where has he been all this time? Who left who and why did they lose touch? Why is he suddenly interested again and why does he assume she feels the same way? Why didn't he know about his child - did she choose not to tell him? So many blanks and so many questions. Yet whilst I don't generally feel the need to analyse the lyrics of a pop song any more than I feel the need to question why Jack and Jill went up that hill with a pail instead of digging an irrigation channel to bring the water to them, as Gary Barlow and his five Ivor Novello's are frequently held as an example of a latter day songwriting genius then I feel duty bound to investigate any evidence available to substantiate the claim.

And when weighed in that particular balance it's found wanting - 'Babe' shows the sheer cack-handedness of Barlow's 'craft', the sound of a meagre talent patronising its fanbase by spreading itself thinly over the flimsiest white bread the Poundshop has to offer. For a teen heartthrob pandering to his demograph, Barlow's continuous inablity to project anything from the female point of view with any believeability is glaring.* The world of 'Babe' is a male oriented domain where the sins of the past and past fathers can be wiped clean with a simple "Got so much to tell you about where I have been" promise mixed in with a few coos of "babe" that infantilise this single mother and her whole gender into emotional submission of acceptance. And its done with the crudeness of a mallet blow courtesy of a set of lyrics that clunk heavier than a bag of spanners thrown one by one down a metal spiral staircase ("I come to your door to see you again, but where you once stood was an old man instead. I asked where you'd be, he said "she's moved, on you see, all I have is a number you'd better ask her not me").

For my own part, listening to 'Babe' is to look at an extreme anaglyph 3D image without the cyan/red glasses; all I see a jumbled mess, and the harder I stare, the more it hurts (though I expect the 'glasses' required to make sense of this come with their own distinct chromosome - hey, if Gazza can be sexist then so can I). The best I can say is that 'Babe' plays out like a Mills and Boon potboiler with every other page torn out, including the last one, though I'd like to think this 'babe' had the good sense to slam the door in Owen's face so hard it left teeth marks.


* But they say the same about Joseph Conrad too, and nobody is calling him a hack.