A Walk Down Memory Lane with Trollheart

[Trollheart]

Another ported thread...


A Walk Down Memory Lane with Trollheart

Now that I'm hurtling with unstoppable force towards sixty, I've started waxing nostalgic, so here is where I'm going to feature and talk about the music that was, if you will, the soundtrack to my life, or at least, the music that was on the radio, on the telly and in the charts when I was growing up, and also the records I bought once I started earning money. This period covers the late 1970s, when I would have been around twelve or so, up to the mid to late 1980s, with perhaps a little on either side, as some songs/albums from earlier periods were in vogue at the time, music that was in the charts or on the radio, but which had been recorded some time earlier. The only real criterion other than the years will be that it will be music I either liked, hated or at least was to be heard when I was of that age. I'll ramble on about whatever I can pertaining to each track, and generally I will concentrate on one song, either single or album track, in each post. Comment is invited yadda yadda you know the deal by now.

I'll also be taking the opportunity to try, if possible, to look at the tracks with the eyes of age/wisdom, to see if my opinion, good or bad, has changed about it over the course of the intervening years. I find that a lot of the scorn I had for your average pop band or even certain genres has mellowed as I have not, and a sort of defensive posture I maintained in my late teens and early twenties, as I jealously guarded my metal, AOR and prog rock and consigned all other music to the level of crap, has if not vanished at least been challenged, and sometimes grudgingly and sometimes not, it's been possible, even necessary for me to re-evaluate the way I approached much of the music that surrounded me as I grew up into the failure you know today.

So, completely at random, the first song up is this.


From the album

Title: "I've Been In Love Before"
Artist: Cutting Crew
Writer(s): Nick Van Eede
Genre: Pop
Year: 1986
Highest chart position (if applicable) 24 (UK) 9 (USA)
Album: Broadcast
Did I own it? Yes
Album, single or both? Single
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: You might hear it on the radio very occasionally, it may crop up on the odd love songs compilation album, but generally I think it's been forgotten about, which is a pity.

It's perhaps odd that an English band should make a larger impact on the Billboard chart than they did at home, but that's exactly what happened with Cutting Crew's second single from the debut album Broadcast. After scoring a huge hit with their first, "I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight" (a song, FYI, apparently about orgasm: bet the BBC wouldn't have had them on Top of the Pops had they known!) everyone suddenly knew Cutting Crew. Oddly enough, even now I keep thinking they were Australian, don't ask me why. But for their second single, it seems the UK public weren't so interested, which I find really strange, as it's a beautiful ballad (and you know me and ballads!) with a lovely midsection that just builds up into a hell of a release (yeah, I know: memories of the lyrical matter for their first single) and though I liked "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight", I was not as blown away (shut up!) by it as I was by the follow-up.

Nobody seemed to agree, or still does. If you mention Cutting Crew these days, anyone who still remembers them remembers the first hit single - not that surprising really, as it did get to number 4 here, and all the way to the top in the USA - but there are few if any people who can tell you what their second single was, and in fact the larger percentage of people, I would be prepared to bet, probably think Cutting Crew were a one-hit wonder. And yet they wrote a sumptuous ballad which was criminally ignored here (okay, top thirty is not exactly being criminally ignored, fair enough, but it's hardly top five, is it?) and let sink down into the depths of musical history, to be forgotten forever. Meanwhile, "I Just Died" continues to be occasionally played, while DJs no doubt grin and opine "That's Cutting Crew, from 1986, with their only hit single. Wonder what happened to them?"

Well, the answer is that they had four more albums, with over ten years between their third, fourth and final, not a single one of which even touched the charts on either side of the water, and indeed even their "breakthrough" album, the aforementioned debut, barely dented the British top 40 (coming in at 41 and going no further) while it did respectable business in the USA, reaching number 16, going Gold there and Silver in the land of their birth. No more singles were ever released, or if they were, there were certainly no more hits, and I guess in many ways you could say their first Broadcast was their last.

Or, if you want to be really smart (and who doesn't) you could also make the case that in the end, they just died in your arms tonight. None of which takes from the splendour and majesty of their second single, which will forever remain for me the superior of the two, even if it is now completely forgotten and ignored by everyone.

Welcome to my world!

[Trollheart]

DAMN it! I am SICK and Tired of all these Damned threads just sitting around in the lower reaches of the music section DOING NOTHING! Hey, you ! Yeah, you there! You think I went to all the trouble of thinking you up, porting you over from t'other place to just have you SIT AND SCRATCH YER ASS FOR MONTHS! Get UP now! DO something! WAKE UP!

Ahem...




From the album

Title: "I'm in the Mood for Dancing"
Artist: The Nolan Sisters
Year: 1980
Writer(s): Ben Findon/Mike Myers (presumably not that one!) /Bob Puzey
Genre: Dance/disco
Highest chart position (if applicable) 3 (UK)
Album: The Nolan Sisters
Did I own it? Dear god no I did not!
Album, single or both? Neither
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: You'll hear it from time to time; it was used - partially - when the girls guested on the anarchic British comedy TV series Filthy, Rich and Catflap and it crops up from time to time, having been their biggest hit. I said HIT!

There's absolutely no doubt that every teenage boy who saw the Nolan Sisters, and every one who bought this single, was led by hormones. I mean, for us, this was the first real girl group. The Spice Girls were still ten years away, and though we had the likes of Suzi Quatro (Rowwr!) and Kate Bush to keep us, ahem, engaged, there weren't really any bands at this time consisting only of girls. And young ones at that. And pretty ones too, at the time. Well, to us anyway. Add in the fact that there were Irish and you could see how suddenly every Irish boy of hormonal age had a poster of them on his bedroom wall.

If ever a song sold on sex appeal alone, this was it. I mean, listen to it: it's hardly ground-breaking, is it? But the close harmonies, the dancing, the tight costumes... er, excuse me a moment, would you? This all fed into a media push to raise (sorry) these girls to the status of superstars, and for a while it worked. The song is catchy and dancy, happy and upbeat, and there's nothing wrong with it, but you can't tell me that anyone who remembers it does not see five beautiful females gyrating around in tight spandex, rather than considering the song on its own merits! It's a fun song, but for guys my age (17) in strict Catholic Ireland it was perhaps the first real introduction we had to what you might call raunch on Top of the Pops, though there may have been others - were Girlschool around at this time? Possibly. Nevertheless, the Nolan Sisters remain a part of my early adulthood, and I can't help but smile whenever I hear this song. It just brings back such... pleasant memories.

[Trollheart]

From the album


Title: "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)"
Artist: The New Seekers
Year: 1972
Writer(s): Roger Cook, Roger Greenaway, Billy Davis, Bill Backer
Genre: Pop/Folk
Chart position (if applicable) 1 (UK) 7 (US)
Album: um. We'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive, though slightly angry at its being co-opted by a corporate giant
These days: Only really ever remembered from the bloody advertisement, damn them.

While I retain my righteous anger, of which I will write more in a moment, I read now that this was not in fact the original song, and was itself created from the tune of a commercial radio jingle called "True Love and Apple Pie". It was then rewritten not once, not twice, but (as Monty Burns would say) thrice! Technically, four times. The first time was by the songwriters themselves, the two Rogers, Cook and Greenaway, along with another songwriter, Billy Davis and an advertising executive (of course) with the very appropriate if funny name of Bill Backer. They turned the song into "Buy the World a Coke", and therein lies my long-seated frustration with it, which now turns out to have been misplaced, if still righteous.

The thing is, I had always assumed, having heard the New Seekers song first, that it, being a number one hit here, had been copied and used by Coca-Cola based on its popularity, a song everyone would recognise but which the global conglomerate would shape to their own advertising agenda. Not so: the reverse, in fact. "Buy the World a Coke" was released in 1971, and it was due to its popularity that the New Seekers re-recorded it, taking out any references to Coke, replacing the words "buy the world a Coke" with "teach the world to sing", in my opinion, a far better and more worthy message. I mean, what self-respecting drug dealer wants to buy his clients their merchandise? And buy it for the world? He'd go bankrupt in a week!

But I digress. The New Seekers, now, it would appear, latching onto the coat-tails of Coke, rewrote and recorded the song, which got them a number one hit. In the meantime, the original singers of the song, the ones who had sung "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke", a band called the Hillside Stranglers, sorry that's a movie, Hillside Singers (who had, incidentally and not at all I'm sure coincidentally, sung the song on, well, a hillside) re-recorded it, dropped the Coke references too, and consequently had a hit of their own stateside, though not a number one (it reached number 13). The New Seekers had been approached by Billy Davis to record the original "I'd Like to Shove a Coke Up the World's Ahhhh" sorry it's just getting on my nerves now. But anyway, he wanted them to record the song for Coke but they were too busy. When they saw how popular both the ad and the subsequent version by the Hillside Singers was they realised they had missed the boat and jumped on the bandwagon and yes I know I'm mixing my metaphors and no I don't care.

They subsequently reproduced, and in fact exceeded the chart performance of the American band, and the song enjoyed success both here and there, reaching number 7 in the USA, one year after the Hillside Singers had already taken their version into the chart. Got to wonder how people were prepared to buy two versions of what was pretty much the same song? It is a popular and cheerful theme though; all the world living as one, as some guy from Liverpool had once imagined (!) might happen, and you know, credit where credit is due: rather than dig their heels in about it being their property, it seems Coca-Cola actually waived the royalties to the song (about USD 80,000 at the time, equating to over half a million today), and gave the proceeds to UNICEF. Even I can't argue with that. And I would love to. But I can't.

I guess it's because the Coca-Cola ad was only seen on this side of the water after the New Seekers had had their hit that I jumped to the conclusion that the global conglomerate had robbed the idea from them. Well, I suppose it's never too late to say you were wrong, even if it is fifty years later.

You were wrong.

Oh, all right: so was I. Happy? Now gimme a Coke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWKznrEjJK4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASe7ioPis6I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VM2eLhvsSM

[Trollheart]

From the album


Title: "Mad World"
Artist: Tears For Fears
Year: 1982
Writer(s): Roland Orzabal/Curt Smith
Genre: Synthpop/New Wave
Highest chart position (if applicable) 1 (UK) 30 (US)
Album: The Hurting
Did I own it? No
Album, single or both? Neither
Opinion then: Negative
Opinion now: More positive
These days: Remembered more for the slower, more morose version by Michael Andrews and Garry Jule for the movie Donnie Darko, also for its use in the videogame Gears of War, and later for the version sung by Adam Lambert on American Idol. Yeah.

Now these guys were on my hate list when I were a lad. I had no time for synthpop, new wave or what a workmate used laconically term "puff bands". I was a rocker, and those that did not rock could, quite frankly, fuck off. I saw no merit in songs like "Pale Shelter" or "Change", which is slightly ironic, as my attitude towards not just Tears for Fears, but the whole genre of music lumped in as new wave but which was mostly a mixture of that and synthpop, has undergone a radical change. This kind of happened reasonably quickly though, at least with this band, with the release of Tears for Fears' second and indeed breakthrough album, Songs from the Big Chair, with singles which have now become iconic rising from it, such as "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", "Head over Heels" and "Shout" forcing me to take another look at the band.

Of course, they too had somewhat changed their sound, moving into a more rock idea and away from the synthpop, but that's another story. Back then, I found their music cold and unemotional (which is pretty silly when you consider both the title of their debut album and its now-iconic and disturbing cover) and had no time for them. When I listened to Andrews and Jule's cover, I found myself surprised to realise I was defending the TFF version, snorting that it was not a slow, boring, depressing song (well depressing yes, as it does tackle the basic senselessness of the world) but a fast, boppy, synth-driven anthem. Of course, by now I had already been seduced by the glory that is The Seeds of Love and had bought their greatest hits compilation Tears Roll Down, so it was really a different Trollheart than the 1982 version who has scorned the original who now defended it.

But listening back to it now, it is a pretty excellent slice of synthpop and the lyric does mean something. I feel personally the cover version deprived it of its immediacy and its punch, and reduced it to a kind of moan at the world, but I guess everyone has their opinion. For me, this was a song I sneered at and hated when it was released, but have learned to see the good points of since then.

[Trollheart]

From the album


Title: "Suddenly"
Artist: Angry Anderson
Year: 1989
Writer(s): Angry Anderson
Genre: Pop/Power ballad
Highest chart position (if applicable) 3 (UK) 2 (Australia)
Album: Beats from a Single Drum
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Meh
These days: I would imagine completely forgotten about, except maybe the odd time for novelty value.

If there was one person I would have expected least to have a hit with a love song, it was Angry Anderson. Born Gary Stephen Anderson, he had been the vocalist for Australian hard rock band Rose Tattoo for, at this point in time, thirteen years. Rose Tattoo had put out four albums by then, and Anderson had also had a part in the Mel Gibson movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, making it one of the  few movies to have two singers acting, with Tina Turner having of course a more starring role. The unexpected success of this song was apparently due to a connection with Australian soap Neighbours, where it was used as the theme to the marriage between Jason Donovan and Kylie (or their characters, at least) on its release. Although there are rumours it was written for the show, Anderson had written it long before.

Why is it uncharacteristic of the man? Well, you only have to see Angry Anderson (that's him above, in the middle)  to believe that this is hardly a man who would be singing, and indeed writing, a mushy power ballad. Anderson, the shaven-headed, tough-looking, tough-talking frontman of one of Australia's premier hard rock bands, was more used to singing about "Sydney Girls" and "Revenge" than songs about "Suddenly" finding his softer side. I will admit I don't think the song was that great; I don't personally think he has or had the voice for a ballad, and no matter what I did I could not get out of my head the image of him driving a post-apocalyptic buggy with a skull on a pole on his back, screaming for Mel Gibson's blood. It just didn't easily translate for me. For my money, it sounds forced, and I always thought maybe he had been pushed into it by his record company, demanding a hit single. Guess I was wrong.

I still prefer Billy Ocean's song though.

[Trollheart]

From the album


Title: "How Deep is Your Love"
Artist: The Bee Gees
Year: 1978
Writer(s): Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb
Genre: Pop ballad
Highest chart position (if applicable) 3 (UK) 1 (US)
Album: Saturday Night Fever OST
Did I own it? No, I don't think so
Album, single, both or neither? Definitely not the album, and I don't think I had the single
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Still a classic, still widely played on radio, appears on love compilation albums, a timeless song

Hands up anyone who has not seen Saturday Night Fever! Well, you're not alone: I did see it, but not in the cinema and not when it was released. It just wasn't my sort of thing. I've already alluded to how I gave genres like synthpop, soul, reggae and punk short shrift when I was younger, and another that got the finger from me was disco. Never thought it was worth bothering with. While I was listening to deep progressive rock lyrics or metal anthems, these guys and girls were only concerned with dancing. As, indeed, is the movie: concentrated, I should say, on dancing, as anyone who has seen the film which made a star out of John Travolta will know.

Another thing, though, that it did was significantly raise the profile of three lads from Birmingham. The Bee Gees - brothers Robin, Maurice and Barry Gibb - had been going since the late sixties, and had already scored some great hits, but as Barry himself noted as they wrote songs for the movie, "You've got to remember, we were fairly dead in the water at that point, 1975, somewhere in that zone—the Bee Gees' sound was basically tired. We needed something new. We hadn't had a hit record in about three years. So we felt, Oh Jeez, that's it. That's our life span, like most groups in the late '60s. So, we had to find something. We didn't know what was going to happen."

What happened, of course, was that the Bee Gees immediately became synonymous with the movie and its music, and changed their style to the emerging white disco sound, and managed to not only revitalise a flagging career, but jump-start and turbocharge it. Some of their greatest and best known and most successful hits came after 1977, with the release of the movie, and up until the deaths of two of the three, the Bee Gees were as popular thirty years on as they had been when Saturday Night Fever hit.

What I love about this song is the deep, stirring opening with the organ and then the close vocal harmonies that the Bee Gees were famous for, and the simple idea in the lyric, so deep (sorry) and meaningful and yet so uncomplicated. In ways, I find the opening mirrors somewhat that of 10CC's super hit "I'm Not in Love", both songs now total classic love songs. It's needless to say this has been covered many times, most notably perhaps by English boyband Take That in 1996, as well as Luther Vandross three years earlier,  but the original remains people's favourite, as it is mine.

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Love Cats"
Artist: The Cure
Year: 1982
Writer(s): Robert Smith
Genre: Post-punk
Highest chart position (if applicable) 7 (UK) 52 (US)
Album: None; standalone single
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither, though Karen may have had the single. Meh, she didn't buy many: probably taped it off the radio.
Opinion then: Mildly negative
Opinion now: Mildly negative
These days: I don't hear it any more

I was never, and probably never will be, a fan of The Cure. I wasn't a goth - as their following was seen to be, whether this is correct or not - but my sister was. She wore all the gear, from black clothes to black lipstick and powdered face, and she loved The Cure. I didn't get it. I kind of still don't. I did enjoy their album Seventeen Seconds but was not impressed with Pornography, which I'm led to believe is the more highly regarded in their catalogue. Over the years my impression of The Cure has been mostly videos of their Edward Scissorhands-like lead singer and frontman Robert Smith looking enigmatic on stage, and some odd videos, including the one for this movie, which featured, if I remember correctly, people dressed in cat costumes dancing about. There was also a video involving Smith as a huge spider, though that may have been one of my nightmares.

I do remember liking "Friday I'm in Love" and "In Between Days", but generally speaking I was not a fan. And I was not a fan of this song either. It had a kind of whimsical, almost cabaret feel to it that did nothing for me. I remember Karen loved it because of her love of cats, but it meant and means nothing to me. I'm sure it's a great song and all their fans love it, but for me it was just one to shrug at and pass by if I came across it, and I doubt time has changed that attitude.

[Trollheart]

From the album

Title: "Rock Me Baby"
Artist: David Cassidy
Year: 1972
Writer(s): Johnny Cymbal/ Peggy Clinger
Genre: Pop
Highest chart position (if applicable) 11 (UK) 38 (US)
Album: Rock Me Baby
Did I own it? No way!
Album, single, both or neither? Neither, but I reckon my elder sister did: she was a huge David Cassidy fan
Opinion then: Don't remember it
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Completely forgotten about, as is he

If you were to walk up to any teenage girl in the early 1970s and ask who their favourite singer/pop artist was, you would probably find yourself cooling your heels in the local nick. But after you explained it was all a terrible misunderstanding and they let you go with the traditional kick in the nuts you could expect from the constabulary in the seventies, the answer would have been likely to have been David Cassidy. Although he is hardly known today, back then you couldn't move without his smiling face and good-looking, girlish curls adorning every girl's bedroom (what you would be doing in any girl's bedroom might be a question the police would be eager to have an answer for, of course, complete with another complimentary kicking) looking at you. Cassidy was the epitome of the "safe" pop star, the nice young boy who was the very antithesis of people like Hendrix, Bowie, Marc Bolan and other rock stars whom mothers frowned on their daughters following.

Cassidy's fame began in the very popular TV series The Partridge Family, which was a quasi-soap about a musical family, spawning albums as the eponymous family released their recordings to great acclaim, providing a springboard for David to launch his own solo music career and become not only a TV heart-throb but a pop one too. His first solo album gave him a number 2 single in the UK while his second, from which this single is taken, pushed him all the way to the top spot, though not with this song. Still making a respectable showing just outside the top ten, it was a mere blip on Cassidy's chart career as he went on to have another number one hit and no less than six top twenty singles over the next five years.

Of course, to all things there is a season, as they say, and to all pop stars there is very much a lifespan, and Cassidy's more or less ran out after 1975, when he had his last hit. He did engineer an unlikely comeback (somewhat like Donnie Osmond, who had also enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the early 1970s) in 1985, when his "The Last Kiss" reached number 6 in the UK, but that was a real blip, and since then, though he continued to release albums, the charts ignored them and nobody cared. The world had moved on, and there was no longer any room in it for David Cassidy.

I'm kind of gratified to see that, despite his clean-cut image, Cassidy was already rebelling in 1972, at the height of his fame, by posing naked on the cover of Playb - uh Rolling Stone (?) and taking drugs and drinking. In fact, sadly it turned out he had a serious alcohol problem, which, combined with the onset of hereditary dementia, led to his retirement from music in 2017, hospitalisation and eventually his death. He passed away in 2017, at the age of only sixty-seven.

As for the song (yes, I'm not forgetting!) I was of course mixing it up with George MacRae's "Rock Your Baby", a splendiferous song, but not his one. So what was his like? Well to be completely fair, it's not what I had expected, a sort of bluesy rock tune with some sweet piano, and I think I remember it now. Definitely more in the rock than pop arena. Melody reminds me of something, can't quite place it.

[Trollheart]

From the album


Title: "State of Independence"
Artist: Donna Summer
Year: 1981
Writer(s): Jon Anderson/Vangelis
Genre: Pop
Highest chart position (if applicable) 14 (UK) 41 (US)
Album: Donna Summer
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Seldom heard; Donna is more remembered for disco hits such as "I Feel Love" and "She Works Hard for the Money" and "On the Radio"

I can't be one hundred percent certain, but I feel when I heard Donna's version I was unaware of the Vangelis/Anderson connection. The two wrote it and included it on their album The Friends of Mr. Cairo, and released it as a single, but it bombed, although "I'll Find My Way Home" did far better, getting to number six. A year later Donna recorded it for inclusion on her tenth album (self-titled for some reason) and had a bigger hit with it. It's again one of those uplifting songs, somewhat in the vein, I feel, of Labi Siffre's "Something Inside (So Strong)", the kind of song that makes you want to contribute to good causes and start waving African flags.

I would say Donna perhaps puts on too much of the black African voice (yes I know she was black, but she didn't sing like that) but I suppose you can't blame her. I guess it's better to hear a black woman sing about a state of independence than a white man. Maybe. Anyway it's a great song and a real sort of slowburner, kind of makes you wonder how it became a hit, as it is over six minutes long. I suppose they shortened it for the chart single? Very Andersonesque lyrical material, and the synths used here on Donna's version do have that Vangelis feel, that makes you wonder if he added his expertise to the song, but I see that no, he did not. The African chant chorus at the end is particularly moving.

[Trollheart]

From the album

Title: "Runaround Sue"
Artist: Racey
Year: 1981
Writer(s): Dion DiMucci/Ernie Maresca
Genre: Rock and roll
Highest chart position (if applicable) 13 (UK)
Album: Smash and Grab
Did I own it? Jesus Christ I did not!
Album, single, both or neither? Not guilty
Opinion then: Negative
Opinion now: Negative
These days: Tumbleweed: Racey? Never 'eard of 'em, mate! (Consider yourself lucky)

Oh dear lord in Heaven! For some reason around the seventies and early eighties bands that aped the style of fifties rock and roll bands became popular. Mud, Showaddywaddy, The Bay City Rollers - kids couldn't get enough of them. The three mentioned had what you could reasonably refer to as distinguished careers, with hits and albums, and in general, are still thought of fondly. Then you have people like Alvin Stardust (the screens, the screens!), Shakin' bleedin' Stevens (aaaarrrgghh! My eyes!) and these guys. I mean, I do not understand how a band can release a single album, then break up and have no less than SIX compilations, greatest hits, best of collections in the following years? What do they put on these things? Never mind: I don't want to know.

This lot didn't even write their own songs, not that that was unusual back then, or even is so now. But I mean, what was the point of them? This one, as it happens, is not even an original - most of their material was either written by the lads from Smokie or the songwriting Midases Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who were behind hits for artists such as Suzi Quatro, The Sweet, Blondie, Smokie and The Knack - but is a cover of the old fifties Dion tune. Why did they bother? And yet, the UK record-buying public dragged it all the way into the top ten, almost. American audiences had at least a little more pride, and the decency to completely ignore it. Racey broke up in 1985, and I doubt anyone shed a tear. I know I didn't.

[Trollheart]

From the album

Title: "We've Only Just Begun"
Artist: The Carpenters
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Paul Williams/Richard Nichols
Genre: Easy-listening ballad
Highest chart position (if applicable) 28 (UK) 2 (US)
Album: Close to You
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither, but I had a few greatest hits albums.
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Still one of the classic Carpenters tunes that gets played all the time and pops up on both their own compilations and love song collections

Ah, from the ridiculous to the sublime! Laugh all you want (oh, you are) but I love The Carpenters. Part of this has to do with the fact that my mam was a real fan of them, another has to do with my sister being named after Karen Carpenter, and then there's just the pure joy of listening to songs perfectly crafted and written. Though I see they did not write this one. But the story behind it is interesting. Seems it was originally written as a commercial for a bank, but when it didn't quite work the bank dropped it. Richard then bumped into Paul Williams and the two of them decided to create a full song (there was originally only a verse and chorus) and for The Carpenters to record it. This led to the duo's second hit, and was a huge boon to Williams, to whom the doors to songwriting with the stars were opened.

It's the story of a young couple, just married, starting out on their life together, and all the things they envisage going through. Hell, you surely know it, and if not you should feel appropriately ashamed of yourself. Very naive, of course, but then isn't that what McCartney called "silly love songs"? Anyway it's a lovely song with a delightfully fragile vocal from Karen, and while there may be those who raised eyebrows at the idea of a brother and sister singing about being married, what can I say but fuck them. Such thoughts are beneath this group. Just listen to the song and maybe remember how you felt the first time you saw that special someone. I can't: I'm still waiting for them to come along. And they had better not leave it much later or I'm going.

[Trollheart]

Warning! Major Trollheart diatribe ahead! Continue at your own risk! Trollheart Enterprises and its subsidiaries and affiliates accept no responsibility for any boredom or frustration you may encounter. Your statutory rights are not effective, or something.

From the album

Title: "Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue"
Artist: Crystal Gayle
Year: 1978
Writer(s): Richard Leigh
Genre: Country
Highest chart position (if applicable) 5 (UK) 2 (US) 1 (US Country)
Album: We Must Believe in Magic
Did I own it? Yes
Album, single, both or neither? Single
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Still positive, but see rant below
These days: It's still the most recognised of Gayle's hits, having been her first to make the crossover to the pop chart, and is regarded as her signature song. Probably plays all day every day on country music radio stations.

I can't be entirely certain now, but I believe it's possible that either this, or  "Talking in Your Sleep" were my very first introduction to country music, certainly as sung by a female. Well I guess I probably heard "Stand By Your Man" somewhere, didn't I? But it would certainly have been the first ever country record I bought. It's a lovely bittersweet ballad, and the mid-paced honky-tonk piano makes it. It became, as noted above, Gayle's biggest hit and her first crossover hit, but shove over there please, mind your feet. I'm moving my soapbox in and here I go, standing on it.

I understand how, in a traditionally male-dominated genre - notwithstanding the legendary Carter Family of course - it must have been extremely difficult for women to break into country music. Not many made it in the early days. You have Crystal and Emmylou, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, and of course Dolly, but here's the thing: they weren't exactly using their music to empower women were they? Gayle's song here - written by a man - puts her in the unenviable position of a woman who is ready to forgive her philandering man for anything, and take the blame upon herself: "I didn't mean to treat you bad/ Didn't know just what I had". It's basically an admission that no matter what he's done, it's her fault for not being a good wife/girlfriend, and it is, I'm sorry to say, typical of the songs women in country were singing around this time.

Look at the other one I mentioned. "Talking in Your Sleep", written a full six years after this, has her fretting over what her man is dreaming about. Is it her? Is it another woman? What has she done to turn him to another? How can she know for sure? Jesus ****ing Christ! And again written by a man, or in this case, two men. Emmylou, meanwhile, was recording a Bob Dylan song for her first single, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," while in 1975 she was pining "If I Could Only Win Your Love" - another song written by men - and even as far on as 1982 it was "I Lost His Love (On the Last Date)" - can't confirm who wrote that, but well into the 1990s she was still whining "Never Be Anyone But You", yet another male-penned song.

As for Tammy, well, what can you say about "Stand By Your Man"? A classic it may be, but doesn't it carry the message that no matter what he does a woman should be faithful, true and support her man, even if he is far from faithful or true? Okay, in fairness, she wrote this herself, or co-wrote it anyway, but it's hardly girl power now is it? For that, you have to look to the rebel, Loretta Lynn, with song titles such as "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)" and "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man from Me)". Go, Loretta! And she wrote those herself! But she's very much a lone voice for a long time: even Dolly is singing "Dumb Blonde", "I'm Not Worth the Tears" and of course "Jolene", followed by her aching ballad "I WIll Always Love You", which I'm not entirely sure if it's a song dismissing a lover or crying about having to leave. Either way, it's a while before we get "Nine to Five", isn't it?

Look, there are definitely problems with early country music for women. As I noted, other than the Carter Family, the only real women in country at the start are your Bessie Smiths and your Ida Coxes, who all went more the blues road, even if they contributed to country music: they are not considered country artists. So women come late to country, and kind of understandably, when they do, they're not exactly ready to kick over the tables and dance on them, but it's sad that one of the biggest icons of country music at the time had to choose such wimpy songs whose lyrics unilaterally and unequivocally excused every man for everything he had ever done if he would only stay with her. You have to say, with some justification, shame on you, Crystal.

[Trollheart]

From the album

Title: "Moonlight and Muzak"
Artist: M
Year: 1980
Writer(s): Robin Scott
Genre: Synthpop
Highest chart position (if applicable) 33 (UK)
Album: New York - London- Paris - Munich
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Negative
Opinion now: Negative
These days: Completely forgotten about. If anyone remembers them it's for "that song"

I never got the attraction of M. Apart from the somewhat interesting gimmick of naming your band after the middle letter of the alphabet, nobody cared for them after the initial buzz of their one and only hit single, "Pop Muzik", and even that was, I don't know: there really wasn't anything great about it, and yet it was a chart hit. I think the combination of Robin Scott's deep voice and the clever(ish) rhymes helped secure it a place in the memory and made it catchy, but it was very definitely a flash in a very empty pan. This was their attempt to capitalise on that success, and it fell flat on its face. I mean, it's not much of a song, and despite the obvious attempt to somehow link it to the hit by using a Z for music (yes I know muzak is a real word) it did not work.

It's kind of a cross between the Human League at their not very best and in terms of melody, reminds me of another one-hit wonder, Landscape's "Einstein a Go-Go". It's got none of the sharp wit of "Pop Muzik", the beat is meh, the backing vocals are watery, and I think you can hear in Scott's voice that he realised this one trick pony was headed to the glue factory. Gimmicks and one-hit-wonders are all very well, but if you don't have any meat on the bones, then you're going to end up with an album nobody wants once they've bought the single. And nobody did. It never even made it into the charts here, and barely scraped into the Billboard Hot 100  at a poor 79, and their next three albums were as unremarked, their career seeming to fizzle out in 1984.

[Trollheart]

From the album

Title: "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie"
Artist: Baccara
Year: 1977
Writer(s): Frank Dostal/Rolf Soja
Genre: Pop/Disco
Highest chart position (if applicable) 1
Album: Baccara
Did I own it? Oh no I did not.
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Has remained in the public eye since it was adopted by the Scottish national football theme for Euro 2020 (played in 2021 thanks to a little disease you probably never heard of) and was in fact re-recorded for them by Baccara. Also used in a H&M clothing store advert, so in a sense it's never really gone away.

From the opening female moan that introduces the song to the boppy Latin beat, this song was known and loved by just about everyone when it was released, taking it to the top not only in the UK but most of Europe. Mayte Mateos and Maria Mendiola were Spanish flamenco dancers discovered by an executive of RCA Records in the Canary Islands, and invited to the UK to record the song, which then shot to number one just about everywhere. In essence, it's an empty disco song about two girls going on about how well they can dance, however a very simple look below the surface shows you an actual empowerment song, wherein the girls rebuff the man's advances, wanting only to dance: "No sir, I don't feel very much like talking/ No, neither walking: you wanna know if I can dance." Ooh yeah! Sing it, sisters!

The whole idea of a Latin-style disco song, while not exactly new, was fresh and innovative enough and interesting enough to make people buy the single, and the fact that the two ladies looked fine probably didn't hurt either. Again though my jaw drops as I see that for a group with a total of four albums, there are no less than THIRTEEN compilation albums! Madre de dos dios! Or something. Great song though, even if, like me, you certainly cannot even perform anything coming close to a boogie.

[Trollheart]

Title: "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo"
Artist: Tony Christie
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield
Genre: Pop
Highest chart position (if applicable) 18 (UK) 121 (US)
Album: n/a
Did I own it? No but my sister did (the older one)
Album, single, both or neither? Single only
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: Remembered for the horrible, stupid Peter Kay version, damn his heart

One of the very first songs I ever heard played in our house, or at least one of the first pop songs, this single was owned by my older sister, who would at the time jealousy guard her suitcase Hi-Fi and singles collection by locking herself in her bedroom, leaving us to listen outside. I remember being impressed and interested by the, to me at the time, description of foreign lands I had only seen in movies like The Magnificent Seven and Stagecoach, places with exotic names like El Paso, San Antonio and Rio Grande (come on: I was at this stage eight years old!) and the idea of a man travelling across the broad expanse of the American west to find his sweetheart in the eponymous town - which at the time I assumed to be in Mexico but is of course in Texas - really fired my imagination.

Tony Christie had a real strident, powerful voice which would remind you of Tom Jones at his peak, a man who elucidated all his words, and lent the song a gravitas that perhaps Neil Sedaka's own version might not have had. Of course, the whole thing was ruined for me when, for some reason, in 2005 (oh I see, for charity: well that makes it all right, doesn't it? Bah) so-called comedian Peter Kay decided to do a version (with the collaboration, I'm sad to say, of Christie) and burned all my good memories of the song down. It's like when someone re-recorded Smokie's classic "Living Next Door to Alice" and threw in the annoying if slightly amusing refrain "Alice! Alice! Who the fuck is Alice?" Just ruined it. Bastard.

An interesting postscript to this (hey! Where are you all going? It's a good story! Honest!) is that on the B-side of the single I found "I Did What I Did For Maria". Why is that interesting? Well, two reasons. One, it was the tale of a man to be hanged for murder, which at the time fed into my hunger for war and western movies (again, I repeat, I was FUCKING EIGHT YEARS OLD!) - What? No I did NOT say I was fucking eight-year-olds! What is wrong with you? Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: two. What was two? Oh, right. Maria. Well, the song tells the tale of our Tony gunning down the man who raped and killed the named lady, and when you consider that on the A-side, he's heading to Amarillo where "Sweet Marie, she waits for me", it's not too big a logical leap to assume that once he found that elusive Texan town (you can imagine everyone he stopped to ask the way grinning "Amarillo? Nah, nah, senor!Ees that way! You need to take ze right at ze sixth cactus and...") he found his Marie/Maria was not quite as virgo intacto as he had hoped/thought/expected. Nor indeed, anywhere near as alive as he had hoped. So then he goes on a rampage, killing the man who done in his girl. It's nice to think the two songs can be seen as part of one story, even if it has hardly a happy ending. Now, Peter Kay being hanged, that would be an ending worth waiting for!