The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!
It was the most annoying earworm ever to be inflicted upon the British populace.
A gun to your head, forcing you to have fun – whilst simultaneously making you wonder if you’d ever be able to feel fun again. It was performed by two men in brightly coloured shirts and the tightest of tight pants, singing the stupidest lyrics imaginable.
It was “Agadoo” by Black Lace. And it was a 1.
“Agadoo” was the most irritating song on British radio in 1984 – or at least would have been if Radio One hadn’t refused to play it for lacking credibility. But there was one other song that some have argued gave “Agadoo” a run for its money.
I am of course, talking about Wham! – with, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”
There was a lot about “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” to be annoyed by. It was a song with a silly title. By a band with an even sillier name.
By a band with an exclamation mark in its name!
It was a song that began with the lyric: “you put the boom-boom into my heart.” It was a song in which “go-go” is rhymed with “yo-yo.”
It was so stupid.
George Michael appears to have felt a bit self-conscious about the possibility that people felt the same way about “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” as they did – as he did – about “Agadoo.”
In browsing through old Smash Hits and No.1! and Record Mirror interviews with the Wham! boys, George seems to be constantly dissing Black Lace, considering them to be debased scum, whilst defending “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” as classic pop songwriting.
“A great pop song has something about it that will appeal to millions of people. There are different ways of doing that. You can do it in a crass way like “Agadoo.” Or an uplifting way like the way we do it.”
Okay Georgie, you tell yourself that.
I’m kidding, of course. George is totally right.
“Agadoo” was very clearly a work of pure evil, designed with the sole purpose of making people want to punch themselves in the face.
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” on the other hand, will simply cause you to gape in amazement that anybody could possibly possess so much energy!
Just look at them… jumping around, showing off their perfect teeth, squeezing into the world’s pinkest shirt and the world’s shortest shorts, Andrew smacking Georgie on the bum – a moment that was so enticingly homoerotic that it was given a slow-motion replay!
Georgie may have had another reason for feeling so defensive. After all, “Agadoo” wasn’t a million miles removed from a hit single that Wham! had released a year or so earlier: “Club Tropicana.” An argument could certainly be made that without “Club Tropicana” showing the way, “Agadoo” may never have happened. (“Club Tropicana” is a 7.)
Wham! had a reputation for silly songs with sillier lyrics even before “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” Let us never forget the wonder that was “Wham! Rap.” As in, ‘wonder… what the hell they were thinking.’
The fact that the first lyrics the world heard coming out of the mouth of George Michael were, “Hey, everybody, take a look at me, I’ve got street credibility”, will always be a source of endless mirth for me.
“Wham! Rap (Enjoy What You Do)” was a protest song of sorts; a protest against the mediocrity of everyday life, and a manifesto in favor of quitting your job to spend your life partying on unemployment benefits. As George admitted in interviews, this wasn’t actually a financially viable lifestyle option, but it’s a fun song nonetheless. (“Wham! Rap (Enjoy What You Do)” is a 7).
What “Wham! Rap” had done for gainful employment, “Young Guns (Go For It)” did for marriage – or as George put it “Death. By. Mat-ri-mony” – featuring the timeless rhyme of “if you’re happy with a nappy then you’re in for fun.” Andrew even gets to have his own rap (!) thereby demonstrating that he knew words other than “JITTERBUG.” (“Young Guns (Go For It)” is a 9.)
Those songs – “Wham! Rap”, “Young Guns” and “Club Tropicana” – were huge hits in the UK, but compared to what came next, they were little more than underground club hits.
They weren’t Number Ones. And George Michael was determined to have Number Ones: he told “Smash Hits” that Wham! were going to have Four Number Ones in 1984. He’d already written the songs, so he knew they were smashes. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” had already been designated as the first one.
Wham!’s ambition for 1984 was apparent in their decision to call their album Make It Big – presumedly a dick joke – and their dedication to the cause of taking their fame to a whole new level.
They were absolutely shameless about it. They always had been. During their first tour George would shove shuttlecocks down his shorts before throwing them into the audience. So yeah, Make It Big is definitely a dick joke.
Andrew didn’t go quite that far; he’d just kiss the shuttlecocks and run them down his sweaty bicep. The fans – mostly teenage girls – went wild. Nobody targeted the teenage girl market quite as efficiently as Wham!
Wham! had every big-shot goodtime band on the run!! But they were also helping the big-shot goodtime bands out.
“We’re helping Duran.” Georgie told Smash Hits. “Compared to us, they look like a serious band.”
Wham! aimed to be like one of the “scream” bands of the 70s. The Osmonds. The Bay City Rollers. Just to be clear, the Bay City Rollers didn’t scream themselves. It was the teenage girl fans who screamed. “We’re the only ones who are totally unashamed about appealing to that market… the basic problem is that we make it look too easy.”
Indeed, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” does not sound like the work of someone who feels one iota of shame appealing to screaming teenage girls. George wouldn’t start to feel embarrassed about that until later.
In 1984 however, he was shakin’ his ass, and they were noticing fast. They were every hungry schoolgirl’s pride and joy. And that was enough for them.
George is also right when he said that they made it look easy.
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” does not sound like work. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” sounds like play.
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” does not sound like something that somebody sat down and wrote. It sounds like something that George simply sang into a hairbrush, instantly aware that millions of teenage girls would soon be doing the same.
The hooks – non-stop hooks, BAM!BAM!BAM! one after another – are simply too much fun. The lyrics – about yo-yos, jitterbugs, little musical jokes like “I wanna hit that hiiiiiiiiiii” – are simply too ridiculous. There’s a saxophone solo you can go “BOW! BOW! BOW-BOW-BOW-BOW!” along to! There’s George singing about being brighter than Doris Day, whilst actually sounding brighter than Doris Day!
Who else would be able to say that? Who else could pull it off?
Not Black Lace, that’s for sure!
Whereas both “Wham! Rap” and “Young Guns” contained zero influences older than a couple of minutes, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was decidedly retro. Go-go, after all, is a style of 60s dancing. Jitterbugging goes back even further.
Depending upon your preferred musical reference points: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” either sounds like a Motown pastiche – as filtered through ABBA, Bucks Fizz and “Some Girls” by Racey.
Or, as Dave Rimmer in Smash Hits thought, “a feeble foray into Shakin’ Stevens’ country.” Wow, Dave. What did you think of “Agadoo” then?
George and Andrew were going around telling people that, not only would “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” go to Number One – which it did, pretty much everywhere – but that it would debut at Number One! You can understand their confidence. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is not the kind of song that you need to listen to a few times before you decide whether you like it.
It’s not the kind of song that gradually sneaks up on you. It’s not a grower.
It’s the kind of song that you will either love or hate, the very first time you hear it. It’s the kind of song that would have teenage girls rushing to the record stores.
In the end, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” didn’t debut at Number One. It had to wait a week to reach the top. And in the end, Georgie fell short of his goal.
Wham! only managed three UK Number Ones in 1984, not four. The fourth potential Number One would reach the top eventually, but not for several decades.
What a loser!
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is a 9.
Meanwhile, in Self-Righteous Rock Land:
“Pride (In The Name Of Love)” by U2
It could have been about Ronald Reagan. Imagine that.
Seriously now: imagine it: Imagine “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” – but it’s about Ronald Reagan.
“One man comes in the name of supply-side economics
One man launches the Strategic Defence Initiative
One man sells arms to Iran to fund anti-Sandinista rebel groups in Nicaragua
One man ignores the AIDS epidemic and escalates the War On Drugs”
Not quite as inspirational, is it? Also, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t rhyme.
Not that “Pride (In The Name Of Love) (Reagan’s Version)” was intended as a cliff-notes dot-point list of all of Reagan’s accomplishments, such as they were. Bono was predominately interested in just one:
Ronnie’s single-minded dedication to increasing government spending on the military.
Or, as Bono put it in the N.M.E. “the sort of pride that won’t back down, that wants to build a nuclear arsenal.”
Presumedly, “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” was not going to come from a place of enthusiastic approval. Presumedly, Bono was not about to come out in support of an expansion of the military industrial complex. Presumedly, Bono was not about to come out in support of Reagan at all! But that is exactly the sort of thing that a song like “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” demands. It was time for Bono to find a new hero.
Or, as he told the N.M.E.:
“I remember a wise old man who said to me, don’t try and fight darkness with light, just make the light shine brighter. I was giving Reagan too much importance. Then I thought Martin Luther King, there’s a man! We build the positive rather than fighting with the finger.”
Yep, even way back then, Bono was already talking like that.
Bono’s capacity for waxing eloquently yet preposterously was already well developed in 1984. Take this, for example, whilst being interviewed in New Zealand, about working with Brian Eno:
“Under A Blood Red Sky” was the full stop at the end of the sentence (of their original three Steve Lilywhite produced albums). Now it was time to begin a new paragraph.”
Then Bono gave a little smirk. He was quite happy with himself and his little metaphor.
By the time they wrote and recorded “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”, U2 were well on their way to becoming the kind of band that might sing about giants without coming across as minnows.
They were on album Number 4, having released an attention-grabbing debut, a disappointing follow-up, and a definitive – although it appears under-appreciated-at-the-time – rock classic.
They had written and recorded “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (it’s a 9) about Bloody Sunday, that time in 1972, when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed protestors in Derry, killing 14 of them.
An Irish band singing about The Troubles was no surprise perhaps, but the political concerns of Bono and the boys extended far across the Irish Sea.
They had written and recorded “New Year’s Day” about Lech Wałęsa and the Polish Solidarity movement, although, like “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”, that song was also originally about somebody else. “New Year’s Day” was originally a love song to Bono’s wife. I think she understood Bono choosing Lech over her.
How important were U2 by 1984?
Taoiseach Garrett FitzGerald – like an Irish Prime Minister – had invited Bono to join a committee to investigate youth unemployment. They’d met each other on a plane from London to Dublin a few years earlier. They got along so well that Bono invited Garrett to visit them in their recording studio, and he actually showed up!
When the leader of your country is personally inviting you to join an advisory committee, then you know that you have made it!
By the time they wrote “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” U2 had also spent a lot of time in the United States. They had seen a lot of the United States. It was time to start singing about Americans: Elvis Presley. Not Ronald Reagan. Martin Luther King Jr.
I have no idea if Ronnie was ever told that “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” was originally written about him, 1or whether he ever knowingly heard the song at all.
He may have suddenly felt significantly less pride if he had. For Ronald Reagan was not the world’s biggest Martin Luther King fan.
Ronnie had initially opposed the legislation making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday, even after Stevie Wonder had written “Happy Birthday” to promote the idea.
Even after Stevie had put forward the convincing argument that you know it doesn’t make much sense, there ought to be a law against, anyone who takes offense at a day in MLK’s celebration. Ronnie, it appears, took offence.
Ronnie also suggested that Dr. King may have been a communist, although to be fair, he probably was. That doesn’t seem like all that much of a big deal now, but the way some Republicans were talking at the time, you’d think that The Reverend was a Soviet spy.
Dr King himself didn’t seem to think much of Reagan, describing him, shortly before he died, as “a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor!” Harsh, but fair.
So, Ronnie and The Reverend didn’t exactly have a lot in common. Except for one thing:
They had both been the victims of assassination attempts; Ronnie having been shot in 1981 by a fan of Jodie Foster’s. Obviously he survived. He was even able to make a joke about it: “sorry honey, I forgot to duck.”
It’s highly unlikely that Bono had all this history in the back of his head when he changed his mind, but we can all feel a sense of relief that he did.
No-one needs Reagan to be reimagined as Rambo. Sure, “Pride (In The Name Of Love) (Reagan’s Version)” would likely have been highly critical of the President and his policies, but it’s equally as unlikely to have sounded as such. A large proportion of listeners would likely have gotten the wrong idea. Nobody needs another “Born In The U.S.A.” situation.
The Reagan Era featured a whole swag of heroic, vainglorious, chest-thumping, dicks-out, all-American rock anthems, but “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” has nothing to do with them.
It is, however, probably the closest that U2 ever got. “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” is an absolute 80s rock masterpiece; filled with great big chiming guitars by The Edge, especially on the instantly recognisable, bristles-on-the-back-of-your-neck intro, Larry Mullen Jr belting out drum roll after drum roll, and Adam Clayton dutifully plodding his way through the changes.
I have a theory, or at least I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true, that this was all inspired by the Reagan version of the song. That The Edge’s shards of guitar blare and Larry’s machine gun drum fills were designed with a war-mongering video in mind. Imagine it for a second: U2 playing on a battleship, missiles shooting off in every direction, Bono bellowing from the bow…
Or maybe not. U2 were getting quite big by this stage, but they weren’t music-video-on-a-battleship big.
Still, it would have been a much better video than the one we got, set, as it was, on the dull Dublin docks.
I mean sure, Bono does a great job acting the rock star to a mostly empty room, to a smattering of mostly schoolboys, but… is that really what you think of when you think of The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr? Irish schoolboys loitering around an industrial zone?
I guess we should finish this tribute with another Bono quote, this one from a feature in Newsweek:
“The message, if there is a message in our music, is the hope that it communicates.”
Or, to put it another way, U2’s message is the light that it makes shine brighter!
“Pride (In The Name Of Love)” is a 9.
Meanwhile, in Indie Land:
“How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths
There was a time, during the 80s mostly, when “How Soon Is Now?” was considered The Smith’s definitive song. Their crowning masterpiece.
Their “Billie Jean.”
The Smiths’ song that even Morrissey-haters could at least tolerate. The Smiths’ song that you heard in places where you might not otherwise expect to hear a Smiths’ song.
For whilst other Smiths’ songs were designed specifically for teenagers to play whilst sitting alone in their bedrooms, “How Soon Is Now?” was a banger, and it was being played down at the club.
The kind of club where you might like to go. Where you might meet somebody, who really loves you. But where you’ll most likely go and stand on your own. And leave on your own. And go home. And cry. And want to die.
“How Soon Is Now?” is still rated quite highly; quite an achievement given that it has been covered by fake-teenage-Russian-lesbians t.A.T.u and been the theme song to Charmed for eight years. Also, The Craft.
Also, a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t remember right now. It’s hard for anything to continue to feel like a revelation once it has been overexposed and intertwined into the very fabric of popular culture like that, but somehow “How Soon Is Now?” has survived.
However, it’s no longer THE Smiths song to rule them all.
“How Soon Is Now?” has now been overshadowed by other Smiths’ songs that, well, sound more like The Smiths.
What does a more typical Smiths’ song sound like? More lyrics for a start. Lyrics that are funnier. And more cryptic. Lyrics about which you can argue their true meaning. And guitars that jingle-jangle.
A song such as, “William, It Was Really Nothing”, the A-side to “How Soon Is Now?”
For, even though “How Soon Is Now?” is The Smiths song that most people know, it sounded so little like anything else that The Smiths ever did, that the label was not initially as smitten by it as perhaps they ought to have been. So they hid it on the B-side to “William, It Was Really Nothing.”
“William, It Was Really Nothing” was very much like a typical song by The Smiths. “The rain falls down, on a humdrum town” Morrissey begins, in his typical Morrissey manner.
“This town has dragged you down,” he continues to murmur, before proceeding to warn his fellow men from getting married because it was “real-ly nothing.”
Or, if you’d prefer a slightly more complicated interpretation – and most Smiths’ fans do: It was about a gay man considering getting married to a fat girl in order to hide his true sexuality in a small and closed-minded humdrum town. I mean, maybe…?
Although surely, The Smiths had already covered this ground with “This Charming Man”, only a year or so earlier? Is “William, It Was Really Nothing” just “This Charming Man (Part 2)”? (“William, It Was Really Nothing” is an 8, “This Charming Man” is a 9.)
“How Soon Is Now?” has none of those standard Smiths’ signifiers. Johnny Marr’s guitar doesn’t jingle-jangle. Johnny Marr’s guitar barely sounds like a guitar at all. It sounds like every ugly, self-loathing feeling you’ve ever had dropped into a vat of acid. Meanwhile Morrissey’s lyrics eschew his traditional ambiguity. Morrissey’s lyrics are direct. Economical even. As austere as Margaret Thatcher’s fiscal policies.
Together they achieved the impossible: together they created the perfect club song for people who hate clubbing. For people who don’t enjoy clubbing. For people who don’t really seem to enjoy much at all.
For people, in other words, like Morrissey.
The Smiths had only been around for a year at this stage – they were still quite new – but Morrissey had already gained a reputation for being a bit of a misery guts. He told David Rimmer from Smash Hits that he’d spent his teenage years “reading books and hiding from the human race.”
He told another interviewer, that once, as a teenager, he didn’t leave his bedroom – or hardly left his bedroom – for an entire three-month period!
When he was then understandably asked if he had been a depressive adolescent he replied: “I can’t remember ever actually smiling.”
Morrissey was also known for his obsession with other misunderstood and mumbling misanthropes. Amongst the vast collection of trivial information that your typical Smiths fan had memorized about Morrissey, was the fact that he was in possession of a large James Dean poster.
And that he owned a tape of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest – not a live recording of Oscar himself course – which he listened to every day.
He was also very clearly a fan of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, since, “I am the son and the heir of nothing in particular” was kinda sorta plagiarized from the line “to be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular,” and I honestly can’t imagine how anybody ever picked it,
Middlemarch is an extremely long book, and it’s not as though “son and heir” is the opening line or anything.
It’s in Chapter 12. And it’s not even at the beginning of Chapter 12. It’s towards the end. It’s part of a long paragraph. And not even at the beginning of that long paragraph. It’s lost somewhere in the middle.
It’s one line, in the middle of a paragraph, in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of an extraordinary long book! How did anyone pick it? Unless maybe Morrissey bragged about it himself to show how well-read he was. You know what? He probably did.
George probably wasn’t too upset herself, since she had died in 1880.
Were you aware that George Elliot was a woman? Well, there you go! You’ve learned something today!
“How Soon Is Now?” was cobbled together out of a whole bunch of lines scribbled into Morrissey’s notebook. Lyrics that belonged to no-songs in particular. Maybe this explains why “How Soon Is Now?” comes across as less of a song, and more as a bunch of slogans celebrating the misery of Smiths fandom. Which is perhaps why, despite sounding like nothing else The Smiths ever did, “How Soon Is Now?” is the perfect Smiths gateway drug.
Morrissey’s narrator on “How Soon Is Now?” sounds like a monster. Or at least like The Elephant Man:
“I am hu-man and I need to be lo-o-oved” Morrissey pleads “just… like… everybody else does,” even if the only thing “criminally vulgar” about him is his shyness.
As far the vulgar-sounding music goes – and I mean that as a compliment – it was the result of an experimental jam session. Now, musical experimentation may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about The Smiths, but “How Soon Is Now?” is different. Johnny wanted to play the whole thing with one chord.
Ever since The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, one-chord songs have been a favourite go-to for any band hoping to make a weird sounding record.
There’s also this long and convoluted story about the band having to manually keep the tapes at the same tempo that I’m not even going to pretend to understand.
They also got stoned, another go-to strategy for bands hoping to make a weird sounding record. It should be noted that Morrissey was not in attendance at these sessions – he was probably too busy sitting in his bedroom all alone – as he would have likely not approved of such clichéd-rock’n’roll shenanigans. For in addition to his Oscar Wilde infatuation, Morrissey was a famed teetotaler.
So, The Smiths vamped and jammed in a drug-fueled haze – made even more hazy by replacing all the light bulbs in the studio with red ones – stuck all the best bits together, and somehow ended up with a lurching zombie groove that sounded good in the club.
There was another reason why “How Soon Is Now?” sounded good in the club: One of the many interlocking guitar riffs that Johnny dashed off during the extended vamp session was lifted from a song that had been big in the club about a year earlier: Lovebug Starski’s “You’ve Gotta Believe,” a far more positive sounding song.
“How Soon Is Now?” was a one-off in the Smiths discography, and virtually a one-off in 80s indie circles. In terms of sound, it’s difficult to think of any other record that sounds quite like it.
But in terms of lyrical themes, “How Soon Is Now?” cemented the reputation of indie kids as a tribe of anti-social loners dancing in the disco, dancing on their own.
The scene had already produced Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” leading to a generation of Goths dancing to lyrics about cold bedrooms.
Without “How Soon Is Now?” however, indie dancefloors across the planet would never have become dominated by tales of social and romantic disfunction, the polar opposite of virtually every other scene, in which the best party songs are those in which the protagonists are already getting it on before they even get off the dancefloor.
Without “How Soon Is Now?” we don’t get “Mr. Brightside.”
Without “How Soon Is Now?” we don’t get Alex Kapranos – despite secreting indie-sleaze charm from his every pore – sadly concluding that he won’t be leaving here, with you, on Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.”
Morrissey’s dance moves however did not inspire multiple generations of flouncy dancers.
Nobody has ever watched Morrissey dance and thought, “I’m gonna bust those moves on Friday night!”
“How Soon Is Now?” is a 10.
Meanwhile, in Smooth Land:
“Smooth Operator” by Sade
Let’s play a quick, single round, game of word association. Simply say, without a filter, the first word that comes to your mind, when I say:
Sade.
Without a single second’s hesitation, I’m sure you replied “smooth.” I’m positive about this fact. There was no need to ask.
That’s not only because Sade’s biggest hit was titled “Smooth Operator.” It’s because Sade presented, in everything she did, the epitome of smooth. And this was in the 80s, a decade in which, what with its sultry saxophone solos and shoulder pads in pantsuits, was not exactly lacking in smooth signifiers.
British pop had been moving in a sultry direction for a while at this point. Both Boy George and Annie Lennox wanted you to believe they were soul singers.
Paul Weller had dumped his mod-punk band The Jam for mod-soul band The Style Council.
Spandau Ballet were so adamant that this was the sound of their soul in “True” that they listened to Marvin all night long. And George Michael was about to drop “Careless Whisper” onto a dancefloor of rhythmically-challenged guilty feet. But from the moment that “Smooth Operator” dropped, Sade – full name Helen Folasade Adu – was in a field of her own.
Sade is one of those situations where it’s both the name of the singer and the name of the band. But, not wanting to dismiss the contribution of the boys, and their ability to make it feel as though you are sitting inside of a smoky jazz bar even when listening to your Walkman on a crowded bus, when I say Sade, I’m going to be referring to the girl. Nobody cares about you boys.
It’s not impossible that you’ve never thought of Sade as a British artist. At least not until you hear her speak.
Sade was born in Nigeria.
On a university campus, where her father was an Economics lecturer. It’s probably not helpful to put too much emphasis on that, since her parents broke up and she consequently lived in Essex since she was four.
The town she ended up in, living with her grandmother, may have been a resort town, but it was a working class, retiree-filled resort town. It was, as she described it in an interview with Spin, a town “full of poodles and no poodle parlors.” It was nothing like Key Largo.
Sade was stylish. I guess there was an outside chance you replied “stylish” to my little word association game above. A tiny chance perhaps that you answered “elegant.” Those are both entirely valid responses.
Sade was a woman who moved in “space with minimum waste and maximum joy”, which is a very elegant thing to be.
Sade knew all about style. Before she started singing, she had been a model. She also designed menswear. She had a thirst for knowledge and studied fashion at St. Martin’s College. That appears to be where Spandau Ballet, caught her eye, and in 30 seconds time, she said,” “I want to design outfits for New Romantic pop groups like you.”
This also this appears to be during their earlier, less stylish, period, when their outfits seemed to be aiming for medieval pirate leprechauns.
When it was Sade’s turn to become a pop star, she had a far better look: an extensive collection of hoop earrings, her hair always tied tightly back into a braid.
If “Smooth Operator” sounds like a fantasy of travelling gigolos, western males flying coast to coast, diamond lives and ruby nights, if it reads like a cheesy romance novel set on the French Riviera, if you feel underdressed if you listen to it whilst not wearing a tuxedo, feel reassured by the likelihood that Sade wrote the thing whilst squatting in an abandoned factory. For that is where Sade was living, before she transformed into the sultry pop star goddess that we know as Sade.
It is thus, one of the fundamental ironies of 80s pop: that Sade, a band seemingly invented to cater to the whims of yuppies more than any other artists – with the possible exceptions of Dire Straits and solo-Sting – wrote those songs whilst effectively homeless.
Sade did not identify with the yuppies. She more identified with the service workers living off tips.
Of course, soon Sade would become a pop star, and her life would resemble a Sade song.
Which is a wonderful thing for your life to resemble.
“Smooth Operator” is a 10.
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I’ve never heard “Agadoo” so, um, thanks?
Black Lace made a whole career out of crimes against humanity.
I give you Gangbang. The performance is from the 80s classic; Rita, Sue and Bob Too. For anyone that succumbs to the vision of Britain as all Hogwarts and Downton Abbey they should give it a go and have their minds warped.
https://youtu.be/mShoL4DEWto?feature=shared
Where’s Mr. Blobby when you need him?
I played 80’s Heardle yesterday, and my reaction to the answer was: “What the f**** is an Agadoo?”
Now I know. And knowing is half the battle. But I feel like I lost the war.
Good video though.
I heard it so much as a kid in Australia – forced to sing it at school, always been sung on kid’s talent show “Young Talent Time” – that I’m amazed to find it didn’t go to Number One down here. Not even close.
Maybe I was confusing it with the very different, but equally annoying, “Shaddap You Face”, which, incredibly, was a Number One! And not only in Australia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFacWGBJ_cs
That was painful. But thank you.
We just had a Music League category on Songs from 1984. As I mentioned in the comments last week, I chose “Joanna” by Kool and the Gang, but others I was considering include:
“Your Love is King” – Sade (no Sade songs were submitted)
“How Soon is Now?” – The Smiths (surprisingly nobody nominated a Smiths song)
“Head Over Heels” – The Go-Gos (” “)
“Nightshift” – The Commodores (unsurprisingly, ” “)
“The Plateau” – Meat Puppets (someone did select a different MP song)
“The Glory of Man” – The Minutemen (again, someone nominated a different Minutemen song)
I couldn’t stand Wham! at the time but they’ve kind of grown on me.
As for Morrissey the opposite is true. I was a bit too young to appreciate The Smiths but Morrissey going solo came at just the right time. I worked backwards getting into The Smiths as well.
These days I struggle to find the words to satisfactorily express what a self mythologising abhorrent piece of crap Morrissey is. A man whose life in his mind is a never ending tragedy for which he takes no responsibility. I can’t listen to his solo stuff now but at least with The Smiths Johnny Marr is still a paragon of virtue in comparison. I can see why he split the band up.
How Soon Is Now is stunning. All the more so because it is so different to anything else they did. And Morrissey is of secondary importance to it. For once he keeps his mouth shut for most of it and leaves Johnny to do his thing.
Then you give us another iconic guitar sound backing up a divisive frontman. Bono can be an annoying gobshite but I could tolerate being stuck in an elevator with him whereas I’d be clawing at the doors and screaming down the emergency phone to get me away from Morrissey.
I did know that George Eliot was a woman, but I didn’t know that Pride was originally supposed to be about Ronald Reagan. I can only be grateful that didn’t happen.
I love the chiming effect of The Edge’s guitar. Somehow, I picture the young David, as he was still known, hearing Chuck Berry singing about playing guitar “like ringing a bell” and thinking. “I could do that!”
As always, another gem.
o Surprised you did not mention the goof in “In The Name Of Love” – MLK was not shot in the early morning, he was shot in the early evening. I’ve heard versions of the song performed where Bono changes the lyrics to acknowledge his mistake.
o The only other Smiths song that (I think) sounds anything like “How Soon Is Now” is “The Queen Is Dead”, and you still have to squint a bit to make that work.
o I always thought Moz was singing “I am the sun and air of nothing in particular”, which still kind of works.
o Wham mostly sucks, but I really like a lot of George Michael’s solo stuff
o Sade is a glorious queen that we humans do not deserve.
I will add myself (and there are probably many others) who initially heard Sun rather than Son and Air rather than Heir. Darned homonyms.
I think of it as a pun pan.
Reading this column, all I could think of was this tweet, a funny cross generational analogy after the tweet from the former President tweeting:”I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT”:
https://twitter.com/champnella/status/1835435327101771864/photo/1
Thoughts:
—>So Andrew actually sang the word Jitterbug? I never knew. Or had forgotten.
—>Can you imagine “New Year’s Day” being a love song? What a miserable song. That one and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” made me not pay attention to what a great, great song “Pride…” was for too many years.
—>”How Soon Is Now”. Fantastic despite Morrisey. That tremolo guitar is my kryptonite.
—>Sade has some great songs. She’s a weird artist that you would expect me to like way more than I do. Little by little over time I am finding gems by her that I love. “Smooth Operator” is good, but not a favorite.
Now I’m wondering if I actually knew that Andrew sang “Jitterbug” or just assumed that he did, since he must’ve done something right?
At the very least he mimed the word “jitterbug” on “Top Of The Pops”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h75mqUm0lIo