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Though a fixture on these pages during the eighties, it's been quiet on the Madonna front of late. Top ten singles have been plentiful in the meantime, but it's been eight years since her last number one, a long time between hits for any dance/pop act. Why? Well any number of reasons could be offered up for debate, but I'm happy to put it down to a series of weak singles and weaker albums where an eye off the ball Madonna moved away from what she does best (i.e. dance music) to firstly flog a more overtly sexual image in seemingly a Cnut type attempt to deny the passing of time before a handbrake turn into the much coveted lead role in the 1997 film version of 'Evita'. Either way, there wasn't a lot of fun to be had for the average fan.
There's not much fun in 'Frozen' either; lead single from the heavily trailed 'Ray Of Light' album, the whole was hyped as a re-boot and relaunching of the Madonna brand to slip it into something more serious, and from the opening bars even the casual listener could tell a change was in the air. Not so much in terms of the music I think - much of 'Frozen' has too much precedent in 'Like A Prayer' before the beats started rolling for this to be completely virgin territory, but in Madonna herself. Never a convincing balladeer on past releases, the vocal lessons undertaken as part of her work on of 'Evita' have paid off and she delivers 'Frozen' with a hands off, measured maturity as the one time 'boy toy' tries to melt the heart of a man who doesn't care.
Is it surprising to report that a song called 'Frozen' sounds cold and distant? Not really - being deliberately more Sunday morning than Saturday night was part of the package, but what is surprising is how badly William Orbit's once famed production has dated; what once was hailed as fresh and innovative now only serves as a distraction. The cold burn Eastern string flourishes and rain on tin drum shuffle still create and maintain an atmospheric drive, but Orbit's trademark echo drenched percussive skitter and bursts now bleep like cashed in and tacked on trip hop throwbacks in a song which would in any case shimmer in its own cool frigidity without them.
Frigid? That's not something you can say about too much of Madonna's work and the asexual longing of her vocal is a move away from the norm for an artist not averse to lacing her output with rampant sexuality. Neither siren, flirt, tease or predator 'Frozen' is Madonna painted as vulnerable, an older, wiser being with the understanding that, unlike the cocksure "I've had to work much harder than this, for something I want don't try to resist me. Open your heart to me, baby" on 1986's 'Open Your Heart', love is isn't an asset any material girl can demand. Hindsight has shown that the maturity didn't last and Ms Ciccone would soon revert to type in releasing inconsequential albums ('American Life' anyone?) and wiggling her arse to let sex sell her product. 'Frozen' , however, remains an impressive statement from the 'new' Madonna for as long as she lasted, and in the final analysis it will be as indicative of her talent as anything in her catalogue.
As I've mentioned before, I personally lost interest in what was at number one in the charts sometime during the late eighties. My tastes then were such that I knew whatever was there wasn't going to be to my liking so why should I care? Any interest or knowledge was in passing only when snippets of information broke through my firewall of disinterest to register with me.
Which is how I learned that Cornershop were at number one - a chanced glance at the top forty listing in a music paper. That snippet got through, and it got through like a chainsaw through jelly. 'They can't call themselves that' I thought, 'there's already a band called Cornershop doing the rounds'. I should know; I briefly dallied with them in the early nineties when their 'In The Days Of Ford Cortina' EP appeared on the same label (Wiiija) as Huggy Bear and their rough and ready sound and multi-racial line-up somehow got them lumped them in with the UK Riot Grrrl movement. Briefly anyway.
Rough and ready? I'll say - I saw that Cornershop 'play' live in 1993 where they delivered a thirty minute set of discord and noise that ended when the Asian guitarist walked off stage leaving his instrument propped up against an amplifier where it protested with the loudest and most unholy feedback racket I've ever heard. It was a fitting end to the show. Whereas punk made a virtue out of not being able to 'play' their instruments properly, they at least filled the gaps with imagination and having something to say. At that concert, Cornershop had neither, and so when I found out that 'this' Cornershop were the same band as 'that' one, I almost fell off my chair in surprise.
So what had changed? Well nothing really. And everything; boasting the same Anglo/Asian line-up and influences, 'Brimful Of Asha' is a joyous celebration of Bollywood and, in particular, the titular celluloid backing singer extraordinaire Asha Bhosie. Like 'MMMbop' before it, 'Brimful Of Asha' was originally released the year before its success (it got to number 60 in 1997) but which was then picked up and dusted down with a dancey makeover, in this case by Norman Cook. Which in itself could be a convenient 'explanation' for its success - all credit due to the remixer and nothing to do with those Cornershop boys after all. But that would be unfair and untrue; Cook can't claim all the credit here.
Although Cook's input is quite obviously using the same workout The Dust Brothers gave Hanson as its template, most of the raw materials that form the backbone were there to begin with. Tune, chunky guitar riff and the hook of the chorus - these were all Cornershop's and carry over from the original. Cook's main contribution is to paint a (wider) smile on the song's face by picking out the inner groove that lay just below the surface and uncoiling it. His remix greases the wheels to make the song slide across the dancefloor by tweaking the speed upwards to shake off the cobwebs and relegating the guitar line to a supporting part beneath a funky drummer rhythm and an in your face handclap beat; the quality of the underlying song is recognised and this baby isn't thrown out with the bathwater.
True, the 'message' of the original is partly lost in the conversion to dance (which also takes some of the bite out of the band's name), but I can live with that - Cook plies it with just enough drink to make it the tipsy life and soul rather than pouring it neat from the bottle until it's overpowered and/or dragged into generic caricature. And through his deft touch, 'Brimful Of Asha' becomes an early dose of midsummer street party wrapped in the sound of good times (though even after all this time, Cornershop at number one takes some getting used to - next entry, Crispy Ambulance. Perhaps not - that's being too silly.)
Recording a love song for the soundtrack of a nineties blockbuster must have provided better financial returns than owning a goose that laid golden eggs daily. It was a big business. Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston et al had already had a go and banked the rewards and now for James Cameron's 'Titanic', Celine Dion gamely steps up to claim her slice of the same pie. Such is the obviousness of the artist/song pairing that, in hindsight, it's difficult to believe that she needed to be strong-armed into recording 'My Heart Will Go On'. As far as I can see she was nothing less than a shoe-in; the soundtrack to a tragedy that was literally a matter of life and death needed a classy touch to add the necessary respect and sense of occasion to make it work. And Celine Dion is nothing if not classy.
Who else was there? Pop divas like Maria Carey would carry way too much genre baggage to be able to even pull off Celine's pose on the cover, let alone deliver the song with any believability. But then it's precisely the prim starchiness Dion brings to the table that freezes 'My Heart Will Go On' until it leaves me colder than the iceberg the ship hit. Ms Dion runs through the "Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime. And never let go till we're gone" doggerel with the intense disinterest of one practising their scales, and the otherworldly dislocation of her vocal means I've never been sure if she's singing from the point of view of the living or the dead. Which means 'My Heart Will Go On' never settles into something beefy I can identify with.
That's not to lay all the blame at Dion's feet; 'My Heart Will Go On' by itself is less a song and more a sketchbook of mood pieces and motifs stitched together by a whiny Irish whistle (to help sell it to the American market that lapped up The Corrs and The Cranberries) in a piece with a terrific middle, but no discernable beginning or end. Neither is any of it particularly nautically related and, without the accompanying visuals of Kate and Leo or some rolling waves to illustrate and punctuate the orchestral and vocal swells, then 'My Heart Will Go On' struggles to solidify or find resonance in isolation and slowly flatlines into forgettable inconsequence.
Second number one from a band that seem to come stamped with a 'One Hit Wonder' hallmark, 'Dr Jones' doesn't have the (admittedly tenuous) virtue of satire of 'Barbie Girl', but then it has little of the irritation either, save for René Dif's deadpan vocal interruptions (that always give Aqua the feel of a pre-school Sugarcubes).* But it's all part of the fun eh? Which is what Aqua were all about. There's an inbuilt good humour to 'Dr Jones' that steers it away from the shores of annoyance and puts a smile on my face. Because for all it's simplicity, there's a keen eyed craft at work here no less than there was on (for example) 'Sugar Sugar'. Oh yes, I'm well aware that it's easy enough to dismiss both with one wave of the same hand, but I'm happy to accept 'Dr Jones' for what it is; good pop.
* Though the video did try to get another gimmick going by tying in the titular 'Dr' with Indiana Jones. Which gave new meaning to the word 'tenuous'.
First number one from another self styled 'King of R&B', 'You Make Me Wanna' is not the usual generic groove of urban smoothness but is instead driven by a sparser hiss of hi hat percussion and clipped rhythm that's a constant finger poke in the ribs to keep your attention. So far, so different, and yet in common with modern R&B as a whole, there's a robotic building block structure to the song suggestive of something constructed in layers at a mixing desk instead of organically grown from a jam session. That's not a criticism per se, but while there's not a rough edge in sight, there's not a lot of soul either. To be fair, maybe that's my 'fault'; Usher isn't 'speaking' to me either within the genre (which I'm not too fussed on anyway) or within the context of the song itself - 'You Make Me Wanna' sees our man telling a third party that she's the sort of gal he'd consider leaving his woman for. Which isn't the best chat up line I've ever heard and it chucks a bucket of dirty water over the waxed gloss of the whole to leave rather cheap and tacky sheen. Wonder if it worked?
Back on 'D'You Know What I Mean?' I passed comment on Oasis resorting to re-heating their own ideas in a stewed song that rambled on far longer than it needed to. I think I might have been a bit premature though and I've been tempted to go back and re-write that entry in the same way (I suppose) the person who said World War One was 'the war to end all wars' must have wished he'd kept his mouth shut too; 'All Around The World' takes the flaws of that former song and trumps them by the power of ....ooh….about ten.
Although apparently pre-dating both, 'All Around The World' lifts and recycles the least interesting bits from 'Wonderwall' and (in particular) 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and then overloads them with the zeal of an over-enthusiastic kid slotting too many tools and non standard extras onto the Buckaroo mule just to see what the happens. The end result? Instead of bucking them off with a deft kick, the poor beast collapses under their weight and lies waiting for the bullet in the head to put it out of its misery.
'All Around The World' could use one of those bullets between the eyes too; at almost ten minutes long, it simply does not know when to stop. And it doesn't stop because it doesn't have to - with Oasis in their pomp and gorging on their own majesty then why should it? Never mind that two thirds of flab could easily be lopped from that running time with no discernible loss of anything, this was the 'greatest songwriter of his generation' at his peak and so I'm guessing that nobody was too minded to give a 'Wooah there cowboy' pull on the reins to curtail the director's cut of one louder, multi-key change march of sound that relentlessly climbs an Escher staircase to nowhere. What did I say? 'Prog rock without the progression'? Right.
It doesn't help that Oasis measure their own progression by referencing an all too obvious inspiration - 'All Around The World' wears its Beatles (circa 'Magical Mystery Tour' era) influences not on its sleeve but on foot square, day-glo inked placards hammered crudely onto its face and chest with six inch nails. I mean, what have we got? A 'la la la' 'Hey Jude' coda, backwards masked guitar drones, an orchestra doing bits of business here, there and everywhere while Liam shouts it all down with his best 'I Am The Walrus' Lennon impression. In case that wasn't enough, it came with a 'Yellow Submarine' aping video that even featured a yellow submarine. These boys were shameless.
But each component part of the song is not there to round the song out to completeness with some George Martin-like magic filling but because 'All Around The World' abhors a vacuum and every space had to have something/anything shoehorned in from the stack 'em high bargain basement of noise. Shits, however, are clearly not being given to quality control and the surface aura of experimentation becomes the one eyed obsession of the boy racer adding spot lamps, rear spoilers sports exhaust and full body kit to a one litre Ford Fiesta, blissfully unaware that he’s building a four wheeled dog's dinner of taste free ridiculousness. I feel the same about 'All Around The World'. I can't fault its ambition, but in execution the band are pushy parents co-ercing an unwilling B side into a career as an anthem when all it wants to do is be clapped along to around a campfire. In their efforts, they only create a louder, longer, less interesting and lumpen song that pisses all over any spark of fire that early Oasis crackled with.
An older, more streetwise, camouflage clad girl band, All Saints offered wide appeal to not only the Spice Girls' fans bigger sisters, but their old enough to know better father's as well. The maturity was reflected in the music too; 'Never Ever' opens with a spoken word intro that drips with all the melodrama of the Shangri Las' 'Past, Present And Future'. The girls clearly know their heritage and it sets us up for a ride of intensity, but then it blows its potential by settling into a stock R&B groove that's little more than 'Too Much' with flexed muscles and a better production. All of which makes 'Never Ever' a victory of style over substance; like the 'adult cover' versions of Harry Potter books designed to spare the blushes of grown up readers on trains, 'Never Ever' has the sheen of dramatic sophistication on top, but underneath it's just another glass of frothy pop (albeit Coca Cola proper rather than a cheap supermarket brand).
Though a fixture on these pages during the eighties, it's been quiet on the Madonna front of late. Top ten singles have been plentiful in the meantime, but it's been eight years since her last number one, a long time between hits for any dance/pop act. Why? Well any number of reasons could be offered up for debate, but I'm happy to put it down to a series of weak singles and weaker albums where an eye off the ball Madonna moved away from what she does best (i.e. dance music) to firstly flog a more overtly sexual image in seemingly a Cnut type attempt to deny the passing of time before a handbrake turn into the much coveted lead role in the 1997 film version of 'Evita'. Either way, there wasn't a lot of fun to be had for the average fan.
