1995 Simply Red: Fairground

Whilst Simply Red's slick and cosy, nouveau soul tends to draw a fairly clear love it/hate it line in the sand, 'Fairground' is a difficult song to get to grips with. Hucknall's reliable vocal and the warmth of the recurring "I love the thought of coming home to you" urge me to clasp it to my heart, but its setting is too jagged and prickly for that and it's one that serves to keep it at arm's length - 'Fairground' tips its hat to dance culture and serves up a more angular clatter in place of the usual bedrock of brass/string driven winebar soul. And yet for all the undercurrent of rough abrasion, there's a formlessness about 'Fairground' that's difficult to reason with and harder to enjoy; it's not a song I can lose myself in, but to listen with any intent reveals the smoke and mirrors that its sophisticated adult sheen is built on. 'Fairground' is a more fragment than a fully formed song, but it's given substance by studio trickery and overdubs in the way a factory farmer will stuff a cow with hormones and steroids to make it bigger than it would otherwise be. It might be their only number one, but 'Fairground' would not make the cut of any 'Best Of Simply Red' that I was asked to compile.