SMASH HITS Singles - July 19 to August 1, 1984

http://i.imgur.com/q3SBd1k.png

http://open.spotify.com/playlist/7mj7g9UWGTzSk2dNoJ3Ogd

Playlist is missing the following:

Switchback - Hand On My Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGh6r9LP4iM

Nena - ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LD6_UMe1fE

Jeff Lynne - Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYrbCgDNR1Y

Eartha Kitt - I Love Men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c7nbhueAac

Friends Again - Love On Board
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTbbN4i-ZaE

Jools Holland - Black Beauty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THCCaLtWYJI

"just a touch too American to be completely successful."

Ouch

This made me root for Van Halen (uncharacteristically)

Then I think I would have agreed with Muriel and gone for Shriekback, which i still love, or maybe Vicious Pink? Now I am still torn betweem them but Shriekback might just have the edge.

George will win by a landslide.

I have the APB but don't remember it.

I'm a bit of a Record Shack fan but it's not Eartha's finest.

"I'll Wait" is perhaps the only Van Halen song I like.

I remember the Tim Pope video well, not the song though.

I have beef with The Blue Nile.

Nona Hendryx was wasted on that song.

Gonna go Shriekback.

agree with stirmonster about that nona song, but that single does have 'to the bone' on the b-side which is one of the better songs on that album iirc. the tony humphries dub mix is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3JcNZ7j0Ck

and yeah, i love that vicious pink song, so good!

Sod the poll, what is stirmonster's beef with the Blue Nile?!

oh my! thanks for the heads up on that tony humphries dub. so good.

Sod the poll, what is stirmonster's beef with the Blue Nile?!

ha!

i don't really want to get into it / probably shouldn't have said anything but will say it involves a certain member being next level creepy / sleazy.

contra Muriel, I don't think Jeff Lynne's Video is just a song built around a buzzword, it's a love song about the joy of disconnecting from humanity and sitting alone in a room all night watching videos tapes, it's almost like a Gary Numan song but with the dystopian element left implicit (or maybe not present at all, it's maybe just an unironic celebration?). "I just sit here on my end,
I'll have it all" - I don't know if this is meant as a critique of some kind of retreating from the real world into a childish fantasy of passive omnipotence were you are always in complete control, but I think this really captures something about the appeal of sitting up alone watching youtube videos until 3am, or of being a collector of things more generally (or maybe playing video games as well? idk much about gaming)

it reminds me a bit of 'Films' by Gary Numan song it reminds me of, dystopian version of the same idea, this sinister childlike fantasy of destroying the entire world

Are you for real, it’s so hard to tell from just a magazine

Scathing review of Killing Joke!
Alex in NYC to thread for a beat down...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlUjHu3H_L4

George will win by a landslide.

I think The Blue Nile will. TBN fandom on ILM is greater than the love for CW, I suspect. Time will tell!

Never heard that Shriekback track. Great.

Ditto, perhaps even more so, Vicious Pink.

I'm always getting my Viscious Pinks and my Kissing the Pink's mixed up in my head. This has provided some clarity.

that Eartha interview is a favorite

I think The Blue Nile will.

fancy a wee side bet?

I'm always getting my Viscious Pinks and my Kissing the Pink's mixed up in my head.

Vicious Pink were originally Vicious Pink Phenomena and were backing singers for Soft Cell before becoming an act in their own right. CCCan't You See... was a huge club anthem in their native Leeds and I always loved that fellow Leeds artist, Nightmares On Wax gave a tip of the hat to that on I'm For Real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLV22eGiqCc

Yeah, I bought the Shriekback single. The 12" first, but it didn't have the original version, so I bought the 7" later, which was harder to find.

The only ones I bought at the time were Vicious Pink (LOVE LOVE LOVE it, as much now as then) and Friends Again, which was a crashing disappointment (I'd seen them at The Marquee in the spring, on a brief trip back to the UK, when they were excellent). I'm assuming that the Nena single was an English language rework of "Fragezeichen", which I did like, but with "99 Red Balloons" in mind, I'm fearing the worst. The APB track that I remember from July 1984 was their previous single "Danceability", which had found its way to Berlin by then. Eartha Kitt's "Where Is My Man" was still inescapably ubiquitous and massive in Berlin, and it had been that way since the previous Autumn, so "I Love Men" was always going to be in its shadow.

Personal chart, July 20th:

01 (01) Self Control - Laura Branigan
02 (04) Two Tribes - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
03 (02) Self Control - Raff
04 (05) Who's Your Boyfriend? - Eric
05 (03) You Think You're A Man - Divine
06 (07) Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
07 (17) I Wanna Make You Feel Good - The System
08 (11) Perfect Skin - Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
09 (08) White Lines - Grandmaster & Melle Mel
10 (22) Beat Street Breakdown - Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five
11 (18) Change Of Heart - Change
12 (28) Beat Street - original soundtrack album
13 (NE) When Doves Cry - Prince
14 (19) Life On Your Own - The Human League
15 (06) Hip Hop Bommi Bop - The Incredible T.H. Scratchers starring Freddy Love
16 (10) Smalltown Boy - Bronski Beat
17 (13) Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
18 (12) Doin' It In A Haunted House - Yvonne Gage
19 (15) Let's Hear It For The Boy - Deniece Williams
20 (14) The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight - Dominatrix
21 (21) Mr. Groove - One Way
22 (16) Jump (For My Love) - Pointer Sisters
23 (re) Stuck On You - Trevor Walters
24 (re) Waiting In Vain - Bob Marley
25 (re) Absolute - Scritti Politti
26 (29) Automatic - Pointer Sisters
27 (24) Land Of Hunger - Earons
28 (re) This Time - Funk Deluxe
29 (20) Heartbeat - Psychedelic Furs
30 (09) Dr. Mabuse - Propaganda

(IIRC, Laura Branigan and Raff were at #1 and #2 in the German pop charts that week.)

The Vicious Pink B-side, '8:15 To Nowhere', was re-released in Belgium in 1988, when it was played by New Beat DJs at the customary 33⅓rpm +8%.

Tim Pope isn't on Spotify either, so here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukM5A8GwKE

Thanks, I think...

Who was the primary audience for this magazine?

Kids who liked pop music.

dudes in their forties who never listened to most of these songs before and are enjoying surprising their gfs ime

the only song in this batch (on the spotify list at least) that i don't like so far is the lennon track.
gonna try the youtubes now.

I bought Smash Hits regularly from 1979 to 1983, by which time I was 21. I bought it occasionally in 1984-85, then not at all.

I bought it from about 1982 to 1986, when I was 15 then very occasionally after that. By that point it had lost its identity, specifically its comic Britishness, and was all stuff like Debbi Gibson and Tiffany and Kylie on the cover all the time. No Jimmy The Hoover or Hollywood Beyond by then! In 1985-6 Aha were on the cover every other issue.

I've been told that late Eighties Smash Hits was actually hilarious, particularly for its irreverence, even though its musical field narrowed. I bought a one-off copy in 1988 or 1989, and remember the singles reviews page rendering me helpless with laughter.

I bought Smash Hits every week from about 1983 to 85 so between the ages of 13 and 15 (was living in Munich at the time so took the u-bahn to the central train station every Sunday so I could buy it from the news kiosk there. Was my lifeline to UK culture really. That, Radio Luxemburg and the occasional episode of TOTP that had miraculously managed to find its way on to one of the months-old vhs tapes of auf wiedersehen pet/minder/fools & horses circulating at my dad's work. I did used to watch German music shows too, but there was only so much heino/udo lindenburg/spider murphy gang etc I could take. German music mags were really weird though, just endless articles on Nena and teen photostories with a lot of naked breasts in them)

I had a subscription to both NME and Smash Hits from 1984-1987, when I was 14-17. Feel like SAW (after Bananarama's 'I heard a rumour') was the end of SH, for me at least - felt like the writers' hearts weren't in it anymore.

I actually read one of the later review pages and it was funny actually. They had so many catchphrases - ‘nuff said, fact fans ( I think they started both) also the letters pages were hilarious too. The editor for the letters page was called BLACK TYPE and would interject silly comments on readers letters. The editor would do the same on the reviews page too and sometimes it would be extremely frequent.

Like, so frequent it was ludicrous.

"nuff said" dates at the least to smilin' stan lee in 62
https://www.cbr.com/marvel-comics-stan-lee-fantastic-four-nuff-said/

“Nuff Said” dates at least to the 1890s with Michael “Nuff Ced” McGreavey of the Third Base Saloon. He was called “Nuff Ced” because he was the last word in all barroom disputes.

Kids who liked pop music.

The reviews from this series don't really seem to me like they were written for the average 12yo Michael Jackson/Madonna listener (but maybe the UK was like this in the 80s?), which is why I asked. Was just curious; it's interesting to hear about people's memories and experiences. They definitely have a distinct aesthetic pov, albeit one I don't share at all.

I was surprised by how much I like the Killing Joke track from this list. Not sure I've heard them before. I gather the pitch-bending was coming from a loose bridge more than a whammy bar?

The reviews from this series don't really seem to me like they were written for the average 12yo Michael Jackson/Madonna listener

They were written for 12 yo'lds. As a 12 yo reader I can vouch for that. It wasn't really a michael jackson/madonna thing at this point. British culture was mercifully not American music centred yet, we had our own thing going on. America was not the centre of the Smash Hits universe, thank god. what a blessing.

It was actually when American pop music came to the fore when Smash Hits went to shit, I think.

It's actually incredible what Smash Hits was, in hindsight. Cabaret Voltaire, Bauhaus and PIL being discussed on the same page as Wham! and Duran Duran to people who were 12-14 years old. Mindblowing, really!

i bought every issue of smash hits from mid 1979 - 81 and then sporadically until around '83/ '84.

i was introduced to some very non pop music through reading it. Off the top of my head, i reckon my subsequent life long love of Grace Jones, Nurse With Wound, TG, Lemon Kittens, and The Slits was thanks to Smash Hits. it was also responsible for introducing me to tons of (then obscure, but now regarded as classic, non hit) disco records too.

I've been told that late Eighties Smash Hits was actually hilarious, particularly for its irreverence, even though its musical field narrowed

Can confirm as a pre-teen of the time and that this in turn led to an easy progression from it to the similarly amusing but more pro-indie pro-dance Record Mirror at the end of the 80s.

"It also contains the most beautiful piece of saxophone playing since 'Baker Street'..."

Prescient of memes to come! Like Nick Lowe working a rickroll into his 1990 single.

I don't know most of these songs, and the ones I do know don't strike me as especially great

Having listened to all of the tracks at least three times, I can now rank them thusly:

9.8 Vicious Pink - CCCan't You See...
As long as it's well done, I'm such a sucker for Northern art school types going full-on Hi-NRG, and this raises the bar nicely for Pete Burns in a few months' time.

8.3 The Blue Nile - Tinseltown in the Rain
A band that I always felt I was supposed to like, in a proto-algorithmic way, but which somehow always passed me by. In hindsight, I can finally see why I was supposed to like it.

7.4 Eartha Kitt - I Love Men
Nowt wrong with being camp as knickers in my book.

7.3 Shriekback - Hand On My Heart
Agreeable Talking Heads/Cabaret Voltaire slipstream stuff, tastefully done.

7.1 Friends Again - Lullaby No.2 (Love on Board)
Much better than I recall, but I couldn't get past the sudden and jarring post-major-signing slathering of glossy 80s production. That doesn't bother me now; it's cute.

6.9 Jeff Lynne - Video
Ludicrous but effective.

6.8 APB - What Kind of Girl?
Derivative but effective.

6.7 Styx - Music Time
My first ever encounter with New Wave Styx, so initially quite a shock (and over-long; they hadn't mastered the art of New Wave concision), but I've become quite fond.

6.6 Bruce Foxton - S.O.S My Imagination
Like Styx, a bit of a grower.

6.5 George Michael - Careless Whisper
I realise that I'm pretty much on my own here with my antipathy towards 1984 George Michael, but beyond a measure of respect for its craft (and some almost affecting heightened emotion towards the end), this will forever leave me cold. The tuneless dirgey verses don't help, either.

6.4 Patti Austin - Rhythm of the Street
Just about OK-ish crossover rock-soul, if we absolutely have to have such a thing.

5.8 Kid Creole and the Coconuts - My Male Curiosity
Oor Mu OTM.

5.0 Killing Joke - A New Day
A perfect 5, if ever there was one.

4.9 Jools Holland - Black Beauty
Workmanlike but pointless.

4.7 Nena - ?
Not nearly as good as I'd remembered, and the online lack of the English language version is a merciful one.

4.6 AC/DC - Nervous Shakedown
4.5 Van Halen - I'll Wait
I'd have given both zero in 1984. The blinkers have since slipped, but I don't think these are very strong examples of what either band can do.

3.5 John Lennon - I'm Stepping Out
I'm assuming this is a posthumous barrel-scraping exhumation of something not intended for release? He sounds happy, and that's fine.

3.2 Tracey Ullman - Sunglasses
I was probably 10 years too old to find her vapidly cutesy pastiches entertaining in any way.

3.0 Tim Pope - I Want to Be a Tree
Lo-fi eccentric whimsy has its place, but this screams Vanity Project.

2.0 Nona Hendryx - Heart of a Woman
The unacceptable face of what Patti Austin just about got away with. Just about every US soul/funk album at the time has one of these post-"Beat It" stabs at crossover success, but Nona Hendryx did more than most, and never well.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Thank god I didn't take that side-bet from stirmonster.

;-)