Poll service: Wet Wet Wet singles 87-97

i'm gonna assume this is Sweet Little Mystery even if i don't think i've heard anything after Julia Says

FWIW these are the ones I enjoy quite a lot

Wishing I Was Lucky - right in that faintly ridiculous sophisti-pop teen-pop crossover sweetspot along with Curiosity Killed the Cat's Down to Earth. As 1987 as it gets.

Put the Light On - has that lapping cliched 'ooh Celtic mists' quality that the Cure later used on This Is a Lie. I like when he unexpectedly turns into Elvis Costello (the band's actual best moment was the album-only song Brand New Sunrise which is just like a lovely, understated Costello ballad to me).

Goodnight Girl - used to find it dull but it crept up on me a lot over the years, great unusual chords and baroque strings and what not. The weird harmonies in the intro and outro sound like XTC circa Skylarking or thereafter.

A few others are alright too, from that 87-93 period at least.

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I have a weird soft spot for goodnight girl, otherwise my favourite bit is when he burps at the end of the second line of angel eyes.

It's still "Sweet Little Mystery" for me because Smokey Robinson ripoffs are always good

the Memphis Sessions version of Sweet Little Mystery - produced by Willie Mitchell - is worth a listen

Pretty easy vote for Wishing I was Lucky, despite/because of it feeling like an oddly ersatz or calculated entrant in the mid 80s dole-pop market. Great chorus, v pure sound of the period. Blank on their later singles, will not put myself to studying.

If there's something brilliant on this list I'm going to have to trust to the wisdom of the ILX crowd to point me at it.

fine with the 87 stuff, but everything I've heard post-87 has been against my will

"Wishing I Was Lucky" is the only entry in that list that I would willingly listen to, but I do like it a great deal. It's very well-crafted, and, as Westbury White Horse and Woof noted, a perfect snapshot of where British pop was heading in 1987 before the SAW circus took over. (Other fine exemplars of that particular sound are the aforementioned "Down to Earth", Hue and Cry's "Labour of Love", The Kane Gang's "Motortown", and Love and Money's "Halleluiah Man".)

Love and Money were truly awful. Even worse than Hue & Cry.
Can still see the big coats and pints of Tennants in my nightmares.

The conclusion I get from "Brand New Sunrise" (which in addition to Costello also reminds me a bit of Cafe Bleu-era Style Council) and parts of other lesser-known songs is Pellow is potentially a much more involving singer when he isn't pressing the Soul button so hard.

By now I've heard every Wets album up to '95, and I don't encourage anyone else to bother, but High on the Happy Side (the Goodnight Girl one) is the one with the highest quota of pretty good songs (not that there aren't some rubbishy tracks, but in general it is superior adult pop and I like the very 1992 production). After that is when Chris Difford gets involved in the songwriting on some songs but there is nothing on Picture This to compete with "This Summer".

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