Sardonicus reviews a bunch of old 45s (1 Viewer)

Bananarama’s More Than Physical always annoyed me- that felt like it should have been a much bigger hit, had it gone top 40 and got the exposure from radio and tv that thing brings.

Of course, trivia fans, it actually did have a TOTP performance- which was filmed as an insert into the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too, where the characters are watching TOTP, even though in real life, its chart position ended up precluding that from happening.
 
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Natalie Cole (with Nat King Cole) - Unforgettable b/w Cottage For Sale (1991)

UK chart peak - Number 19

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Another single that felt like it was a much bigger hit than its chart peak suggested. I could have sworn this reached number 1 in America, but it only got to number 14, although the album topped the charts. It also won the Grammy for Album of the Year, & the CUTTING EDGE technology of melding long-dead Nat singing with his daughter was MUCH DISCUSSED at the time. It still sounds well mixed & has stood the test of time pretty well. I did wonder if there'd been some record company pushback against close family members singing a love song to each other, but then Frank & Nancy Sinatra had already done it on "Something Stupid" so I guess we're ALL OK with SLIGHTLY INCESTUOUS father daughter duets.

This slightly PROBLEMATIQUE element aside, there's definitely an AIR OF CLASS to "Unforgettable". They've clearly taken care on the production, the mixing, the interplay between Nat's velvety, timeless vocals & Natalie's delivery of this old standard. I always wondered how she felt about her most successful moment involving her long-dead, more famous father, but you couldn't argue with the sales or the acclaim. It's obviously a lovely, sophisticated & SWANK update of the original, with producer David Foster adding in a few slick touches to bring it a little more in line with 90s trends. It's clearly aimed at the OLDER market though, especially Nat's fanbase who'd heard nothing new since the mid 60s. It's not one I choose to spin as although I appreciate its QUALITY, I do find it a TAD DULL. Natalie Cole isn't an artist I ever think of playing, but if I wanted a ballad I'd choose her 1989 hit "Miss You Like Crazy" or even better, her :disco: 1988 cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac".

B side "Cottage For Sale" is another old standard from the 1920s that missed the cut for the album. Again it's well sung, expertly produced & NICE ENOUGH but it's also the sort of music you hear playing really quietly in the background in wine bars.

This was really Natalie Cole's last popular culture moment of any NOTE. I know she kept on releasing stuff until her untimely death in 2015, but I couldn't name any of it. "Unforgettable" is indeed well remembered, but I've always found it easier to ADMIRE than to LOVE.
 
Sheena said:
Mike Stock says how he feels SAW were cheated out of loads of hits by the way so many of their records stalled at #41. He claims it was foul play, noted by the way things flew up and suddenly stalled out of nowhere.
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I mean I wouldn’t put it past something like that happening in the 80s.

Primary school me was raging that Sam Fox stuck at #41 for two weeks with I’m All You Need making it her first single at the time to miss the top 40. I was a stats geek as a youngster so used to go into my local record store to make a note of and copy the Top 75.

Sandra’s Everlasting Love climbing week by week to stall at 45 also annoyed me.
 
Wasn't that the era of there being quite a small number (100 or so?) of chart return record stores which were then used to extrapolate actual sales? Obviously very exploitable if you knew where to go.

Or was it just someone at Music Week (or wherever) just changing the numbers on the reports?
 
After listening to the podcast I kinda agree with him. I mean they had quite a few magically stop at 41.
 
BoysForSeles said:
I mean I wouldn’t put it past something like that happening in the 80s.

Primary school me was raging that Sam Fox stuck at #41 for two weeks with I’m All You Need making it her first single at the time to miss the top 40. I was a stats geek as a youngster so used to go into my local record store to make a note of and copy the Top 75.

Sandra’s Everlasting Love climbing week by week to stall at 45 also annoyed me.
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Sandra's ill fated UK launch had me baffled as a naive Netherlands living kid. I'd never heard anything better :D
 
Was that wonderful Lonnie Gordon song that I covered in my 90s thread one of the #41 songs? I remember reading about it flopping and reading on Wiki that Stock said it was the best song they ever wrote and should never have flopped.

I don’t know if it was the best but it was certainly very very good
 
funky said:
Was that wonderful Lonnie Gordon song that I covered in my 90s thread one of the #41 songs? I remember reading about it flopping and reading on Wiki that Stock said it was the best song they ever wrote and should never have flopped.

I don’t know if it was the best but it was certainly very very good
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Lonnie's version reached number 48, but Sybil's cover of it in 1993 again stalled at the frustrating #41.
 
Sardonicus said:
Lonnie's version reached number 48, but Sybil's cover of it in 1993 again stalled at the frustrating #41.
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Indeed and actually Sybil’s next single after that ‘Stronger Together’ also reached #41 and the one after that a couple of months later #48.
 
Cher - Love & Understanding b/w Trail Of Broken Hearts (1991)

UK chart peak - Number 10

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I'm not sure if it's SACRILEGE to say it around THESE PARTS but I've always preferred Cher's late 80s & early 90s COCK ROCK years to the later dancey stuff. This Diane Warren penned track is an absolutely TYPICAL example of the sort of music she was releasing at the time. It got regular spins, along with the "Love Hurts" album on cassette, at the SARD HOUSE circa 1991 & although I don't think it's dated very well, I still have an affection for it.

I'm pretty sure Cher is on record vocalising her dislike for "If I Could Turn Back Time" & "Just Like Jesse James" (she's wrong, they're both :disco: ) so I can imagine she's not TOO FUSSED on this one either as it strikes most of the same notes with an equally BELTING CHORUS as the other 2. Cher might have had to be dragged KICKING & SCREAMING to the vocal booth by Di to record these, but Di's been proven right every time - she has a good ear for what suits Cher's voice. And to be fair to CHEZZA, she does sell the song, even if it is through GRITTED TEETH - the lyrics are a bit ludicrous really, so she needs to get through it with FULL CONVICTION, & she does, with her powerful voice giving things a bit of an additional edge. I don't think Cher has ever been given her dues for her voice, she's able to blast stuff like this out that would sound quite SECOND RATE in the hands of other singers.

The B side is from the "Days Of Thunder" soundtrack, where it was overshadowed by Maria McKee's chart topping "Show Me Heaven" - it was written by Ritchie Sambora, & it's obviously a Bon Jovi track sung by Cher from the WORD GO - not my cup of tea but her singing it is an improvement on JBJ at least. Although I've only just found out RIGHT NOW that she was with Sambora at this time. AGOG :o

The "Love Hurts" album topped the UK charts for 6 straight weeks, helped by "The Shoop Shoop Song" also hitting number 1 here. Rather like Belinda Carlisle & Tina Turner, I think Cher was considerably more successful in the UK & Europe than in the USA around this time. This single just snuck into the top 20 there, & after a covers album in 1995 (which contained the INCREDIBLE "One By One"), Cher wisely realised that this sound had had its day & it was time to go in another direction. We all know what happened next, of course, but this era remains the Cher era I look back on with the most fondness.
 
Cher likes that one, or at least she did back when she told her instructor to shut the fuck up at 9:25 of this exercise video

 
I think Cher likes If I Could Turn Back Time but famously hates Just Like Jesse James, true.

Love and Understanding is magnificent, and 80s hair rock Cher is amongst her very best work, so no sacrilege here. It was big chorus after big chorus on those three imperial era albums- Cher, Heart of Stone and Love Hurts.

See also the glory of this, oft forgotten UK flop single:

 
Cher’s soft rock era is magnificent. I greatly enjoy The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, Oh No Not My Baby and especially Save Up All Your Tears from that period. All covers but doesn’t she just make them her own.
 
Billy Ray Cyrus - Achy Breaky Heart b/w I'm So Miserable (1992)

UK chart peak - Number 3

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@Sheena, BRING ME THE AXE! So we can all take turns TWATTING BILLY RAY CYRUS IN THE FACE WITH IT as punishment for inflicting this CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY on the world in 1992. This one kicked off a whole line dancing craze & became one of a very small handful of country songs to become a genuine hit in the UK after the mid 80s, but it's surely one of the most REVILED songs in the genre EVER. It's like all the worst & most clichéd aspects of country wrapped in in one awful, but stupidly catchy, package.

I seem to remember Billy had a real HEARTTHROB status at this time, but although he looks ALRIGHT on the sleeve, that's only because you can't see his STUPID STRAGGLY MULLET, which ruins any SEX APPEAL he might have had. He parlayed this one song into INSANE success though - the accompanying album spent a LUDICROUS 17 weeks straight at number 1 in the USA, which is completely MIND BOGGLING. I guess the closest act we have to Billy these days is Morgan Wallen, but whereas Morgan's biggest success "Last Night" had crossover appeal to several different genres, "Achy Breaky Heart" has NOVELTY stamped all through it like a STICK OF ROCK. I just don't get why it inspired people to buy the album in such DROVES, even in a stagnant chart year like 1992.

B side "I'm So Miserable" is another typically lumbering country song, with yet another COMEDIC ELEMENT. Old Bill is missing his woman so much he almost feels as bad as he did when she was around! What LARKS, EH? :manson: It's about as funny as GENOCIDE, but I'd still rather listen to it than "Achy Breaky Heart".

By the end of 1992 Billy was putting out a novelty cover of the song with Alvin & The Chipmunks, a real CAREER LOW POINT (for The Chipmunks, that is. Also their version is better) & he could never shake off its BURDEN over the years, until he guested on "Old Town Road" with Lil Nas X & again settled in for a long run at Number 1. Unfortunately he seems to have gone down the MAGA route since & daughter Miley has long since overtaken him in terms of both pop cultural IMPACT & actually GOOD SONGS.
 
That song was EVERYWHERE but I honestly can’t recall any other song he released from that album but I think they all did well chart wise.

He was also pretty popular over here for the TV show Doc he was the star of.
 
Joseph said:
That song was EVERYWHERE but I honestly can’t recall any other song he released from that album but I think they all did well chart wise.

He was also pretty popular over here for the TV show Doc he was the star of.
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You're remaining SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET on whether you found him attractive at the time though... :basil:
 
Sardonicus said:
You're remaining SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET on whether you found him attractive at the time though... :basil:
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Well the thing is, I’m from Arkansas so ALL the guys looked like this down here so he wasn’t special :D I mean he was a good looking guy but a dime a dozen here
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That hair :D he looks like he's off to the Exotic Animal Park to feed some tigers for Joe.
 
The Beautiful South - Rotterdam b/w A Minute's Silence (1996)

UK chart peak - Number 5

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The decline of the vinyl format in the 1990s in microcosm: this final single leaps on to 1996 as CDs & cassettes take over almost entirely. This one was bought as a SNAZZY numbered limited edition, as the very few vinyl singles being released all seemed to be by 1996. This is the last 45 from this old collection, but I also have some replacements for my old cassettes long since thrown out (including some :disco: MOOPY FAVOURITES) in another pile, along with a bunch of old 80s 45s my record collecting friend gave me. I've no idea what EVILS MAY BE LURKING amongst them but can't wait to find out, because I'm having fun doing this even if nobody else is :basil:

"Rotterdam", following a similar PATH to "A Little Time", wraps up snarky spite in a friendly package of chilled out, radio friendly MOR. I always wondered what inspired Paul Heaton to write this & apparently he wrote it when he felt unwelcome in a bar in Rotterdam after a bit of a ROUGH NIGHT. It's a song people tend to mindlessly hum along to, but taking proper note of the lyrics, it does spill over with CONTEMPT. Jacqueline Abbot's WARM VOCALS hide this, sounding affable & welcoming - she was a very good foil to Heaton's sarky style & an excellent replacement for Briana Corrigan. Taken from a career best album, "Blue Is The Colour", which followed on from their mega successful Best Of, it struck me that despite maintaining a chart presence over many years in the UK, the South were often an overlooked band who were always just THERE. This is probably the peak of their popular culture impact as this & follow up "Don't Marry Her" garnered considerable press interest, much more than usual, & was certainly their most commercially successful point.

The depressing & pessimistic lyrics Heaton was churning out at the time, though, suggests a time of considerable personal turmoil despite career successes. B side "A Minute's Silence" is a piano led, dark & desolate rumination on death which put me on a RIGHT DOWNER. It didn't make the cut for the album as it wasn't top drawer just like the other B side from The South earlier. They've clearly got a good idea what would & wouldn't work on an album, & are pretty GENEROUS to the fanbase by consistently putting the ALSO RANS on the flip side.

Paul & Jacqueline are, I believe, releasing albums together again, years after The South's demise when the inspiration ran out alongside the sales. My main interest though, as per the prior post, is finding out if Paul did actually write 1994's "One Last Love Song" for/about Briana Corrigan - ANY IDEAS?
 
Rotterdam I also like but I think it’s an element of nostalgia as it was everywhere when I started my Woolies job. It was on one of the NOW albums that was constantly on rotation.

I genuinely love their version of Everybody’s Talkin’ though.
 
Cathy Dennis - Touch Me (All Night Long) (Radio Edit b/w Rhodesapella Mix) (1991)

UK chart peak - Number 5

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A replacement for one of the first 3 singles I ever bought myself on the LONG DEAD cassette format - which I don't see ever having a vinyl-esque resurgence. The other 2 are COMING UP NEXT :disco: Sadly the A side of this copy was jumpy enough to be rendered UNLISTENABLE. Thank goodness for YouTube & a :angry: to the E-Bay seller for sending this out in such POOR CONDITION.

This one was Cathy's first hit single in her own right after a couple of guest spots with D-Mob in 1989. I was surprised to read in Funky's thread that her solo stuff actually hit big in the USA before here, & overall, the singles from her debut album were all more successful over there than in the UK, continually landing in the top 10, with "Touch Me" getting within one place of topping the charts. It's really one of the first examples I can think of a style of music that helped define the early 90s MUSICAL LANDSCAPE - the pop/dance/house infusion of a catchy BOP with a female lead singer. The likes of CeCe Peniston would soon follow where OUR CATH led. This probably is a DATED DITTY to the younger generations, but to my 90s music obsessed ears it still sounds FRESH AS A DAISY. Cathy is a competent, if not particularly strong, singer & she made wise choices with the hits to ensure they all suited her voice. I love all the singles from the debut & I'm surprised that this was the only one to hit top 10 in the UK - she felt like a bigger star in 1991 here than the chart positions suggest.

The B side is disappointingly just an acapella rendition. It's the sort of song that's crying out for a few CLUBBY MAKEOVERS & I'm not sure if there was a 12 inch (:ken:) at the time that offered up a few more HOUSEY EDITS.

Cathy Dennis showed here that she's always been a pop star with a FANTASTIC EAR for what's about to hit as a CURRENT TREND & make a quality hit. After a wave of other female singers followed "Touch Me" up the HIT PARADE, she worked with Shep Pettibone on album number 2, at the same time Marge was working on the "Erotica" album with him, but it wasn't as successful as expected. The singles certainly sounded like hits so I'm not sure what happened. She reappeared in 1996 & again, showing a willingness to listen & adapt herself to different musical STYLINGS, reinvented herself as a bit of an indie-pop chick in line with the then-current Britpop trend. The "Am I The Kinda Girl" album contained lots of fab potential hits in this VEIN with the likes of "West End Pad" & "The Date" but again, it didn't really take off. I suspect this was a mix of the record company not knowing how to market it, & the general public struggling to accept the change in direction having previously known Cathy as a dance diva. She got one final top 20 hit in 1997 with a pointless cover of "Waterloo Sunset" & after the appropriately titled follow up "When Dreams Turn To Dust" missed the top 40, the dumper appeared to BECKON.

The dumper hadn't reckoned without Cathy's ability to adapt, though, nor with her ear for a CRACKING POP TUNE. Her subsequent songwriting career has seen her pen tons of enduring classics, with Kylie's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" & Britney Spears' "Toxic" amongst the best known. I don't think Cathy gets her dues for her ability to spot a trend, write a great tune around it & keep in line with what's working with the public. The only recent public appearance I remember from her was a brief guest spot on Drag Race, but RuPaul clearly loves "Touch Me", singing along to EVERY WORD when it was used on a lip sync on DRUK season 2 - it remains, of course, A BANGER.
 
Touch Me is TOP NOTCH, though I sometimes think I prefer the original:

 
As for remixes, I was always partial to the CLUB MIX, which is much of the same but at what you can imagine was the original length...

 
Now this is a classic - I still hear it played anywhere there is overhead music playing.
 
Fonda Rae has featured on some STONKING house tracks and one in particular whose name escapes me but I will go INVESTIGATE
 
Dannii Minogue - Success (UK Mix b/w Instrumental)

UK chart peak - Number 11

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Danielle Jane's 2nd single release after a brief - & :disco: - stint as Emma Jackson on "Home & Away" brought her to wider international ATTENTION. Although the inevitable Kylie comparisons started from the GET GO, Dannii actually wrote this one herself in New York with producers Alvin Moody & Vincent Bell, & although the version released in Australia wasn't particularly STRONG, it was mixed again for a UK release & came within a whisker of giving her a second top 10, staying at #11 for a few frustrating weeks.

I was far too young to care about such TRIFLES as MUSICAL CREDIBILITY in 1991 (& now I'm far too old) but I always got the feeling that this song got quite unfairly MALIGNED. It might be very OF ITS TIME, but that's no bad thing & I've always loved it & thought it deserved to be a much bigger hit. The house influenced, darkly chugging synth sound throughout gives a nod to the current clubby trends & I've always thought had the potential to be mixed or sampled into a proper DANCE TRACK. I'm not sure what the opinions of the DAN STANS is on "Success" but I've never tired of it & that says a lot. The instrumental B side gives a tad EXTRA VALUE with an extended intro & outro, & although you'd obviously NEVER catch me trying to do a Dannii impression, proves out that "Success" is a lot harder to sing than you might THINK.

Dannii has a bit of similarity to Cathy Dennis in that I don't think she gets given any credit for her ability to spot a trend & jump on it ahead of time - in Dannii's case, she's struggled with the public perception that she's always following in Kylie's footsteps. But she was working with Xenomania before anyone in 1997, & the "Neon Nights" album in 2003 showed someone with an ear for adapting up-to-date club trends into fantastic pop music. I will never forgive Christina twatting Aguilera for ROBBING Dannii's "I Begin To Wonder" of a deserving number 1 with the REPUGNANT "Beautiful". I like almost all her single releases, I've even got a lot of time for the charting LOW POINT of "Get Into You" from 1994.

Sadly her music career has seemingly been in MOTHBALLS for years as she's concentrated on TV presenting gigs & talent show judging. I don't know if it's due to a lack of INSPIRATION or she just got sick of being compared to Kylie or what, although I imagine if she did ever get another album out, then Moopy, at least, would be OVER IT LIKE A FAT RAT.
 
I really liked Success. It would have been better with a dirtier production but one can't have everything.
 
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