30 April 1989: The Fun Is Gonna Start with Me 'Cause I'm Bringing It Back

1. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
2. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
3. Simply Red: If You Don't Know Me by Now
4. Transvision Vamp: Baby I Don't Care
5. London Boys: Requiem
6. Holly Johnson: Americanos
7. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
8. The Beatmasters with Merlin: Who's in the House?
9. Midnight Oil: Beds Are Burning
10. Fine Young Cannibals: Good Thing
11. The Cure: Lullaby
12. Morrissey: Interesting Drug
13. Inner City: Ain't Nobody Better
14. Metallica: One
15. Kon Kan: I Beg Your Pardon
16. Poison: Your Mama Don't Dance
17. Yazz: Where Has All the Love Gone?
18. Bon Jovi: I'll Be There for You
19. Cookie Crew: Got to Keep On
20. Paula Abdul: Straight Up
21. Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth
22. De La Soul: Me, Myself and I
23. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
24. Jason Donovan: Too Many Broken Hearts
25. Madonna: Like a Prayer
26. Roxette: The Look
27. U2 with B.B. King: When Love Comes to Town
28. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
29. Donna Summer: This Time I Know It's for Real
30. Swing Out Sister: You on My Mind
31. INXS: Mystify
32. Simple Minds: This Is Your Land
33. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Keep on Movin'
34. Jody Watley: Real Love
35. Duran Duran: Do You Believe in Shame?
36. Coldcut featuring Lisa Stansfield: People Hold On
37. Stevie Nicks: Rooms on Fire
38. Pat & Mick: I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet
39. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
40. Guns 'N Roses: Paradise City

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I like to think that I was growing. From our arrival the previous August, my interest in music was based around pop at its most disposable. Bros, Kylie, a bit of Jason: such was the UK mainstream of the time. At some point, however, the tide began to change. Bros were seemingly always touring but they were no longer releasing singles and the backlash that would prove their undoing was underway. Kylie was still on Neighbours - although we began to hear whispers that she was already off the show back in her native Australia making her something of a lame duck soap star - but she, too, had been on a Top 40 freeze (until this week). Left to his own devices, Jason seemed a bit lost: liked, admired, desired but not quite the star and maybe, we began to wonder, he really couldn't sing. This void began to be filled by more sophisticated artists. I was (thankfully) still a long way from yammering on about authenticity and vaunting those who write their own songs but my tastes were becoming more refined.

It's no wonder, then, that week's such as this one began to make me look askance at the charts. Gone from the listings since February, Kylie was back with a brand new single, though it was hardly something I was eagerly awaiting. When I finally did hear Hand on Your Heart I was ambivalent and surprised to be encountering a number of her's that I wasn't crazy about. I don't think I thought about it at the time but listening to it now it's clearly a case of more of the same - not a terrible record by any means, just far too much like her previous work. It probably didn't help, as well, that her image seemed equally stuck: in the accompanying video, she's doing her typical big-sister-giving-advice shtick all the while being dolled up with the same hairstyle, same make-up and same outfits. Clearly an image change was needed. (Her second album came out in Canada in early 1990 sporting a cover which led me to assume she was heading in a hippie/granola direction; I didn't expect SexKylie)

Hand on Your Heart is far from the nadir of this week's Top 40. Coming in as the lowest new entry is Kylie's Neighbours co-star Stefan Dennis with the moment that the Aussie phenomenon had gone to far. It's one of those tunes that attempts to be tough but ends up sounding feeble as a result. His fellow stars from Ramsay Street had gone in the throwaway pop direction but it was easy to see through Don't It Make You Feel Good. It was probably the first song I tried my best to like but eventually had to face the fact that it sucked. Still, Paul from Neighbours' foray into the charts gave us a so-bad-it's-good moment and a catchphrase from the cringe-worthy chorus that still brings a smile to my face.

We might have laughed at it but at least we were laughing which is more than can be said for Bring Me Edelweiss. Novelty pop songs are seldom much cop but I figured this one might have retained some of its initial charm (assuming it had any to begin with). Far from the delights of Mouldy Old Dough - still the standard for novelty songs as it inches closer to its half-century - or even the light catchiness of Doop, Bring Me Edelweiss is embarrassing, all crass yodelling, over-relying on samples and brazenly ripping off ABBA's S.O.S. Eurotrash before I'd ever considered the existence of such a concept, the fact that it's fully aware of just how naff it is doesn't save it from the rubbish heap of lousy comedy records. A pity, then, that no one told me at the time even though I mainly liked it because I was such a sucker for DJ record scratching.

A duff chart but what did it matter when we were taking such nice trips? Our weekend on Jersey began to wrap up and for the first time since our week up in Edinburgh I felt genuinely sad to be leaving a place we were visiting. It may have been the lovely weather or the pleasant scenery or the hermitage that you could walk to only when the tide was out or the fantastic yellow vanilla ice cream with a Flake bar sticking out of it or the brief glimpse of France from the island's southern tip or the feeling that we were both in Britain and outside of it at the same time but Jersey left its mark on me and I even began fantasizing about one day living there. (I guess I should have gone more towards the route of the offshore banker instead of the good-for-nothing ESL teacher)

Monday was May Day and we spent the bulk of the bank holiday returning to Laindon from the Channel Islands. Our ferry trip once again gave my sister and me the opportunity to see an on-board movie, this time settling for Short Circuit 2. We enjoyed spotting familiar sights of Toronto where it was filmed but little else. Afterwards we met up with Mum and Dad who were amiably chatting with Diane and Graham, an Australian couple also on exchange. I liked them a lot and envied the fact that they were doing a two year tour of duty in Britain. As the eighties wound down and the nineties got going I occasionally thought of them, wistfully imagining what my life would have been like had we had tacked on an extra year.

The following Saturday we headed up to the town of Mansfield to see Bill and Pat, a retired couple we had met during our Christmas in Torquay and who my parents bonded over due to them having a daughter who was practically a neighbour of our's in Laindon. (You may recall from a December entry that Bill was the first person I'd met who sported a tattoo and wasn't a scary thug; he was also inked long before it became such a tired cliché) The town was nice - although I can't recall anything about it now save for the off licence across the street from where we were staying - but being up in Nottinghamshire meant doing the Robin Hood tour and so we inevitably took in Sherwood Forest, which I kept calling Sherwood Planet since my main reference point with the great English folk hero came from watching Rocket Robin Hood.

At one point my dad took a photo of Pat, my mum, my sister and me. I would see this pic for the first time a few weeks or months later and I was excited to discover that it provided proof that I was now the same height as the female members of my family. (Little was I to know that it wouldn't be long before I sprouted past Dad as well) As I said, I was growing.

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young Paul's favourite: Baby I Don't Care
older Paul's retro pick: You on My Mind