music

[17] Japan, ‘Ghosts’

At the time, I thought this went to Number One. To be honest, until I started taking a keen interest in the chart during the summer of ‘82,I thought everything that appeared on Top Of The Pops was a No.1 single. Happy, uncomplicated days, before my first Guinness Book of British Hit Singles destroyed these reveries. I felt crushed for Sylvian and the lads, and their No.5 hit.

They were probably ecstatic, or as ecstatic as a bunch of in-fighting, studiedly glacial, new romantic poseurs were ever going to get. Maybe they flared a nostril.

‘Ghosts’ is thuddingly pretentious, a glorious mood piece of mannered vocals and blandly eerie effects. It’s certainly no better than ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ and ‘Mirror Man’, but it thinks it is, and that’s half the battle. Like The Jam, Japan were gone by the end of the year, with a frontman indulging his whimsies. He plods along still, still able to bore you to death at a hundred paces, but at least he does it without Ocean Colour Scene.

I bloody loved Japan, really. Junior tried to look enthused herself, dancing with unsuitable vigour to the first few bars of tuneless electronic dabbling. After a couple of minutes she was thinking of forming the Style Council.

[18] The Human League, ‘Mirror Man’

Kicking off with the please-God-make-them-STOP ooo-ooo-ooo-OOO harmonies from The Girls, this is a Sheffield-hued Motownesque synth pop bounder, blessed with one of Phil Oakey’s more soulful vocals. Well, he lets his flat robotone crack in one place. That’s as close as the West Yorks Veronica Lake will ever get to letting rip and breaking down.

And it’s one of those singles that doesn’t appear on an album, so extra points there. The Human League weren’t strangers to that – the next single, ‘Fascination’ was the same. Rather than a sop to the fans, I think they were struggling to follow up the peerless Dare, so would bung out a single whenever a song passed muster. The patchy in the extreme Hysteria was the album that finally rolled up, heralded by the bewildering ‘The Lebanon’. The goose was cooked.

So, is it better than ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’? Junior looked puzzled at first; soon she was clapping along. “A bit derivative,” she said, “but it has a certain Steeltown infectiousness that transcends its reference points.”

[19] Duran Duran, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’

Duran Duran were, of course, the most exciting thing to happen to popular music ever. I was nine, this was the sort of thing I believed. How cool was their massive hair? Their pastel suits? Their headbands? Their location shoots? Their impenetrable lyrics that were more nonsensical than the ones I actually thought Le Bon was singing? This single is magnificent, 1982’s chart a harsh mistress.

Has time been kind?  Will today’s kids “get” Duran Duran? Junior stood up in her playpen from the first note and bopped at the bars. A top five reaction.

God, those LYRICS.

[20] The Jam, ‘The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)’

1982. ‘A Little Peace’ taking the Eurovision crown, The Falklands “Conflict”, a harrowing single term at boarding school, the Kids from Fame, the Goombay Dance Band, the lion sleeps tonight, dropping out of the Cubs to practise being Zico in the back garden, spending £1.25 on my first 7” single. They’re cheaper NOW.

The Jam’s penultimate single, then. I felt the pain of their break-up keenly, I didn’t understand why they’d stop. Perhaps it was some kind of law. A law that should be enforced more often, come to think. ‘The Bitterest Pill’ has a beautifully succinct lyric, a string-soaked, white-boy soul tune and rousing choruses. Hindsight shows us the tension that was pulling Weller towards the more mannered stylings of his Council.

I’m worried that Junior’s dancing doesn’t discriminate. She rocked out to an arrhythmic beat I was tapping on her toy drum at the weekend, unable to help herself. For what it’s worth, she cut some rug to this song like she hasn’t for a while.

She thought it should be higher up this chart, but I said I had to put some space between the Jam singles.

[1] The Flaming Lips, ‘Race For The Prize’

The Flaming Lips

Oh yeah, there was one insanely thrilling song left.

It teeters on the edge of total musical breakdown, seems to have Animal from The Muppets on drums, comes on like unfiltered aural joy and sounds as heroic as its lyric – ladies and gentlemen, it’s the best single of 1999.

Wayne Coyne sings with the usual high-note-grasping wide-eyed wonder, but this time he really is awestruck. He marvels at those gallant scientists racing each other to find the cure for his father’s cancer, the cure for all cancer. The head-spinning madness of the arrangement only makes it more touching. Am I over-selling it? Junior even laughed at the first few bars, so delirious are its delights.

On reflection, it’s a stupid record. But it doesn’t care.

[2] New Radicals, ‘You Get What You Give’

New Radicals

So here was Gregg (stupid spelling, owns a chain of high street bakers) Alexander to lift the gloom of last night’s footballing INJUSTICE. Junior and I sat on the rug, still fretting over Thierry’s future, and nodded along to this power pop marvel, relieved that we couldn’t see the sunhatted twerp of a singer.

I suppose you either love this or hate it. Or everyone hates it but me. As infectious as the germs Junior brings home from nursery each day, it’s a beefy, hooky monster and it offers out Beck, Hanson, Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson at the end. What’s not to love?

[3] Lemon Jelly, ‘The Yellow EP’

Lemon Jelly

We’re not supposed to know much about Lemon Jelly, no photos are meant to exist, just the occasional cartoon image. But seriously, who cares? Their brand of largely instrumental studio boffinry doesn’t need a face, and certainly not the face of some sallow overgrown computer whizzkid. As a band, they walk the tightrope of euphoric pop beauty between the chasms of dinner party techno-jazz and downright zanery. They often fall, but sometimes they stay put. On ‘The Yellow EP’ they kept their balance.

‘His Majesty King Raam’ is a pretty piece of fairytale, and ‘Homage To Patagonia’ is a bossa nova work-out that veers dangerously close to Groove Armada territory, but it’s ‘The Staunton Lick’ that makes the EP. The soundtrack to any advert that promises a brighter tomorrow, it builds slowly adding layer upon layer until your spine can tingle no more.

There’s a new playpen in our living room. Junior had expressed an interest in re-enacting channel Five’s Prison Break, having tattooed the blueprints on her torso with Hipp Organic spaghetti bolognese, so we’ve built the set. She eyed it suspiciously for most of the EP, before allowing a bit of nappy shaking, and then making a dive for the pretty lights on the mixer.

No bars will ever hold her back.

The Staunton Lick:

[4] Whitney Houston, ‘It’s Not Right But It’s Okay’

Whitney Houston

I’d bought one Whitney Houston single before – ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ – but I don’t even remember liking it. I must have bought it to impress some fresh-faced girl co-starring with me in the local amateur dramatics show. Dear me, too many confessions.

Anyway, after that ‘I Will Always Love You’ musical crime, I certainly didn’t expect to hurtle out to the shops for more Whitney goods. But this redeemed her mortal soul. A razor-sharp, calm look at infidelity, set to an unusually syncopated r&b rhythm, it found a new cutting edge beyond the cutting edge. La Houston was vital again. She cleared a little space for ‘Get Ur Freak On’.

Ignoring Dad’s suggestion that the title sounded like Roy Walker letting a Catchphrase contestant down easily, Junior did some appreciative shoulder shakes and crawled around the room like a ninja arachnid. She gives Whitney a clean slate.

[5] Moloko, ‘Sing It Back’

Moloko

Moloko were mad annoying for at least an album. Horribly mannered, stop-start trip-hop stuff with the quirks carefully left in and the tunes beaten until they slunk out. Hmm. ‘Sing It Back’ isn’t all that different, but it was remixed to within an inch of its pretension and found some space and sex and flow. And with the oddly delightful Roisin Murphy done up as a human glitterball in the video, the icing was on the disco cake.

Junior and her mum showed their dance chops and whipped up a storm on the fluffy rug. I could only watch in shock and awe. The Boris Dlugosch mix is over nine minutes of shimmering Latino guitar strobe-lit four-to-the-floor heaven, and it passed in a moment.

[6] TLC, ‘No Scrubs’

TLC

As if ‘scrubs’ wasn’t a bewildering enough term over here, this was one of those rare records that inspire an ‘answer song’ – in this case, ‘No Pigeons’. What? TLC’s take is straightforward enough with the “hangin’ out your best friend’s ride, tryin’ to holler at me”; we know all this. Come on, we’ve all been there. Sifting through the lyrics to ‘No Pigeons’, it seems to be about golddiggaz and doesn’t have an ounce of the girls’ wit. Home win.

There was a school of thought at the turn of the century that the only area of pop music really looking ahead was female r&b. This is space age soul, crystal clear, buffed-up and sassy.

Junior connects with its electronic, cool, cyber-futurism by sticking her hand in the video.