- Jason Donovan: Too Many Broken Hearts
- Madonna: Like a Prayer
- Bananarama/Lananeeneenoonoo: Help!
- Donna Summer: This Time I Know It's for Real
- Sam Brown: Stop!
- Paula Abdul: Straight Up
- Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: Can't Stay Away from You
- Michael Ball: Love Changes Everything
- S'Express: Hey Music Lover
- Living in a Box: Blow the House Down
- Michael Jackson: Leave Me Alone
- The Reynolds Girls: I'd Rather Jack
- Simple Minds: Belfast Child
- Texas: I Don't Want a Lover
- Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Keep On Movin'
- Tyree featuring Kool Rock Steady: Turn Up the Bass
- Dusty Springfield: Nothing Has Been Proved
- Poison: Every Rose Has Its Thorn
- Womack & Womack: Celebrate the World
- Deacon Blue: Wages Day
- Guns N' Roses: Paradise City
- New Order: Round and Round
- Fuzzbox: International Rescue
- Depeche Mode: Everything Counts [live]
- Chanelle: One Man
- Bobby Brown: My Prerogative
- WASP: Mean Man
- Alyson Williams: Sleep Talk
- The Wonder Stuff: Who Wants to Be the Disco King?
- Vixen: Cryin'
- Elvis Costello: Veronica
- Kon Kan: I Beg Your Pardon
- Rick Astley: Hold Me in Your Arms
- Hue & Cry: Looking for Linda
- Tone Loc: Wild Thing / Loc'ed After Dark
- Kim Wilde: Love in the Natural Way
- New Model Army: Vagabonds
- The Four Tops: Indestructible
- Marc Almond featuring Gene Pitney: Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
- Holly Johnson: Love Train
~~~~~
An Aussie soap heartthrob, a girl group and their comedic doppelgängers, a faded disco-era legend and a pair of hopeless sisters: the Stock Aitken Waterman stable in all its glory. The songwriting/production trio had racked up an awful lot of hits over the previous half decade but by 1989 represented their commercial apogee. It also just so happened to be when the wheels were beginning to unhinge off their enterprise.
I've written previously that I admired Jason Donovan at the time and, judging by some footage on youtube, it's not exactly difficult to see why. He looked great, seemed like a friendly and genuine chap and the ladies simply worshiped him. Crucially, though few discussed this element at the time, he didn't encourage young males to resent his popularity with the fair sex the way we would with the likes of Bros and New Kids on the Block. Smug teen idols of yesterday and today all give off vibes that only they can score the choice womenfolk; Jason, by contrast, made guys feel like they too could get the girl. All he lacked was decent singing and good material but, lacking in those ingredients though it was, Too Many Broken Hearts was still insanely catchy. The thrill of its first week on the top spot, however, had worn off by week two and it was beginning to look like a lame duck number one. We all knew that Madonna would not be denied.
Red Nose Day had come gone and Bananarama's rendition of The Beatles' Help! was the Comic Relief single. They do a passable job of it but, in truth, that's largely down to the efforts of Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Kathy Burke as wannabe Bananas Lananeeneenoonoo. Their comedic interjections ("round, round, round" "daaaa-aaa-aownnn" - I've never been able to hear the original without adding ) and sassy yet apathetic attitude in the video make it memorable. Minus the French & Saunders touches, however, it comes across as Karen, Sarah and the other one just going through the motions, which is something they'd grown accustomed to as the eighties began drawing to a close. While it wasn't obvious at the time, Bananarama were pretty much done as far as their significance was concerned while their comedic cohorts would only become more successful into the nineties. Bananarama would be aspiring to be more like Lananeeneenoonoo before long.
Donna Summer's This Time I Know It's for Real is yet another SAW number that had climbed its way into the Top 5. It would soon be a big favourite of mine as I began to tire of Too Many Broken Hearts but it's slighter than I remember it being back in the day. It was great that a legend of the disco age could have a renaissance but those old enough to remember her early work must have known that this just couldn't compare to Hot Stuff and I Feel Love.
And, finally, we come to the nadir of Stock Aitken Waterman, the moment that their empire began to crumble. I'd Rather Jack by Merseyside sister act The Reynolds Girls was conceived as an attack on DJ's and critics spurning their records but the results merely come across as cheap and whiny. The tune nicks some squelching from the once burgeoning, now faltering acid house scene which made it seem almost as dated as Pink Floyd and the Stones who are lampooned in the lyrics. If it didn't manage to alienate those who dug their Dire Straits just as much their Yazz then the naff presentation and amateurish dancing on the part of the Reynolds Girls proved a further turn off. Ironically, a year later SAW were having Kylie remind people to "remember the old days, remember The O'Jays" in the much better single Step Back in Time.
Happily, there was an antidote to the SAW shitshow. Unfortunately, The Wonder Stuff's Who Wants to Be the Disco King? only hit the chart's lower end and wasn't something I was aware of at the time. It wouldn't be until I was an awkward, frequently cheesed off fourteen-year-old that I had the opportunity to get into loudmouth laureate Miles Hunt and his fellow Stourbridge urchins but while Caught in My Shadow and The Size of a Cow were perfect tunes for my angsty teens (I always felt that because I had The Wonder Stuff I had no room in my life for grunge), I might have done well to hear someone rail against all this phony, manufactured pop at a younger age.
Still, I could very well have been fodder for one of Miles Hunt's blisteringly snide attacks for I was off to hob-nob with royalty this week. The 13th being Commonwealth Day, my dad took any excuse possible to get out of work - and get Julie and me out of class - by signing us up to attend a service at Westminster Abbey along with very special guest HM Elizabeth II, ver Queen. The itinerary for the day in London didn't seem especially promising but the chance to get out of an afternoon of making peppermint creams in home economics and composing my own private creed in religious studies really made me see the bright side of dressing up to see a royal. Not that I went all out with dolling myself up for the occasion: I wore my school uniform with my green and black sweater in place of the blazer and, judging by the photo taken either right before or just after the ceremony, it was yet another day in which I'd neglected to drag a comb through my hair.
The service was neither short nor long. We sat in our alloted seats for a little while but not so long that I got fidgety. Suddenly, everyone stood up and a procession began to, uh, proceed past us. In the middle of a group of very important looking people I spotted the Queen. She seemed appropriately regal but had the look of ever-present boredom that doubtless comes with having attended a lifetime's worth of Commonwealth Day ceremonies. Though impressive in its own way, it was still one of those things that really isn't such a big deal at the time and in retrospect. It's something I typically forget to even tell people and, having just typed the the first half of this sentence, I'm not sure why I've bothered telling it to anyone.
The service over, we then ventured over to Covent Garden to visit The Maple Leaf Pub, London's Canadian tavern of choice - though that's probably due to it being the only game in town in that regard. It was the kind of place that can only attract the rabidly homesick so, naturally, we were smitten. I enjoyed my Montreal smoked meat sandwich so much that I vowed then and there to return. In subsequent years I've been to a few equivalent joints - pre-fab Irish pubs in Bangkok, Singapore and even on the tiny Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan, dive sports bars in Jakarta's Blok M and Seoul's Itaewon - and am now resigned to both their functionality and just how depressing they can be. The ham and cheese baguette might be decent, it might be a cool novelty to see a hockey game for the first time in months or years and there's always a good chance you can strike up an agreeable conversation with a fellow expat. But the beer is no better than anywhere else in the area, the prices are astronomical, the atmosphere isn't really all that Canadian or Irish and that expat will soon get on your nerves. Even if that expat you were chatting with was me.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: Too Many Broken Hearts
older Paul's retro pick: Who Wants to Be the Disco King?
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