LISA STANSFIELD – “All Around The World”
For the second time, Coldcut give a leg-up to a vocalist via the medium of “featuring” – but while Yazz’ music with and without them wasn’t too different, the gap between “People Hold On” and “All Around The World” is far wider. As a house vocalist, Lisa Stansfield was a terrific find: she could play the belter with the best of them, but also provide a calm centre for Coldcut’s gleeful cut-and-mix pyrotechnics and pianos. Best of all, she sounded like she was having a tremendous time. more »
Tom in Popular • 24 Comments
Five weeks of “Swing The Mood” and six of “Ride On Time” were more than enough for Jive Bunny to get a follow-up into the shops, the charts, and back to number one: the creature was now a phenomenon. As one of the commenters on the previous hit mentioned, the wonder is that Jive Bunny had the field to himself: if competitor singles did exist, they surely flopped. The Mastermixers, who’d been in this game a while, had a catalogue of material to work with but more importantly had the Bunny himself. As much as a pop smash, this is a branding success story, and on “That’s What I Like” the voice of Chubby Checker (“I’m gonna sing my song – it won’t take long”) seems to become that of Jive Bunny Incarnate, a cheeky compere of his own hit. 
The controversy around “Ride On Time” now feels like a mixture of typical sharp practise and unusual naivety. Details are murky, but it seems production team Black Box had obtained sample clearance for Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation” from her record label, but they hadn’t asked her about it, they hadn’t credited writer Dan Hartman, and they certainly had no compunction about hiring a model to lip-synch Holloway’s lines. 
Where does one even begin?
A theme we’ll come back to relentlessly when we reach the 00s: people assume reality pop talent shows are (or rather, ought to be) about talent, when in fact they’re about narrative. The records sell initially because we’ve accompanied the singer on a story whose ending requires that they sell: it’s what happens next that’s the problem. Of course, this has always been part of pop’s dynamics – Sonia’s career runs along similar lines, only without that pesky four months of television to sit through. 
What’s remarkable about “Back To Life” is its self-sufficiency: surrounded by records so very eager to please, this is a track which stands out for its restraint. It’s become a ‘classic’ almost to the degree “Like A Prayer” has, but that record makes more sense the more public it is. Caron Wheeler, on the other hand, sounds more private and her song is more self-contained. It’s an ultimatum of sorts, but not a desperate one: this is real life, not fantasy, and integrity is more important than drama, so take your time.
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Digging into the earlier versions of “Sealed With A Kiss”, I discovered two things. First that I really liked the song, second that it’s stretchy enough for nobody to have quite nailed a definitive take on it. It works just as well insincere as sincere, for a start – in the Four Voices’ 1960 recording (the first) the doo-woppers sound bereft and spectral, like parting for Summer is some kind of malign destiny and they’ll be holidaying in the Underworld this year. But by the time Bobby Vinton’s singing it in 1972, he’s got the full early-70s luxury pop treatment: bongos, flutes, wah-wah, strings and reeds in a gluttonous, glorious mix, and it makes him sound utterly insincere, like he’s phoning his abandoned lady while being rubbed down by hula girls. 
I wrote before that The Crowd’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became “a tiny part of a disaster’s wider story, and left no mark on pop’s”. The same holds for “Ferry Cross The Mersey”, but a thousand times more so. Most tragedies drop out of public memory even if the pain of those directly affected never quite scabs over. In this case the bereaved families have tirelessly and publically campaigned for further inquiries into the disaster, but even without that the story of Hillsborough has grown and spread, the tragedy and its aftermath changing other stories. Liverpool FC; recent British football history; The Sun newspaper; Scouse self-identity and the rest of Britain’s attitude to Merseyside – if you wanted to think about any of these you would end up having to think about Hillsborough. And not just as a distant event, bundled up safely inside a word: to tell those stories you’d need to dig into what happened and how it was reported. 
“Hand On Your Heart” lands in similar emotional territory to “Too Many Broken Hearts” – this is it, do you love me or not? But while musically it’s just as cheap the Kylie track has ten times the Jason song’s presence. “Too Many Broken Hearts” verges on the triumphant, with “Hand On Your Heart” you know someone’s cornered but the lyrics and the delivery keep switching sides as to who: this is an ultimatum, but it’s also a final move. “Look me in the eye”, “put your hand on your heart” – from the emotional grammar of soap we know very well that winners in love don’t have to say these kinds of things, they’re the kind of demands you make as a way of hastening the inevitable, for all Kylie’s obvious desperation to avoid it. 