WHERE’S THE COUGAR, MATEY?

Listening to this today, there’s something utterly compelling about it — whereas with most of the 60s No.1s so far, where I can listen to the first half, think ‘oh yes, I remember that,’ and move on, with this one I have to listen to it all the way through to the last chords, every time. It builds a momentum that captivates and addicts, which is exactly what the lyrical content is trying to express. In that sense, it’s a perfect fusion of content and form — commenting about addiction whilst also drawing the listener into that addiction, explaining it while also decrying it, sharing its attraction but at the same time warning you not to be attracted. And it never gives its secret away: is ‘the House’ a brothel, or a gambling den, or a prison cell, or just a bar? It’s up to each listener to identify their own addiction.

It also seems to me to be a watershed, a touchstone of the music of the 60s. There’s a big difference between the Merseybeat/Beatlemania 60s that came before it and the psychedelic 60s that came after, and this is the single that stands at the crossroads, with elements of both –it’s the first No.1 that crossed the bridge.

I can’t think of a more deserving 10 than this, almost to the extent of finding your score of 6 insulting. I’d be interested to know if you still hold with that rating.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik had a career?! When did this happen?!

In the interests of pop accuracy, I have to point out that when people jump from this to ‘Get Outta My Dreams’ in terms of Billy’s big hits, they are inadvertently jumping over the US # 1 ballad (UK # 13) ‘There’ll be Sad Songs to Make You Cry’. This stalled at # 2 in the US, but ‘Sad Songs’ went 1 better. I believe there may have been a US top 10 hit after that, too, though I can’t remember the name.

Mags Furuholmen was only “ok looking”? Blimey, tough crowd. I’d have said a-ha’s 2:1 ratio compared very favourably to Duran’s.

Having now caught up on a-ha’s later output, I have to question the comparison with Duran on that score too. The band sound rather bitter in interviews about their record company forcing them to keep working with their original producer and sound for that third album when they were keen to move on.

A-ha at this point were the group gaining all the new girly fans, many of them were ex-Durannies jumping ship. You could practically feel the posters of LeBon et al being torn down from the bedroom walls as their extended absence gained these new Euro pretty-boys much needed space to advance unhindered. Spandau too were losing fans. Wham! timed their breakup just right, as they were the only remaining members of the teenybopper three to strike back in late ’85 / early ’86, and by announcing their split, they set a closing date for their fans to cling to which worked like a charm. As a result, there was no loss of face or ‘fans moving on’ for them.

A-ha were certainly more consistent (and better IMHO) than the other ‘big’ new groups of the year – ‘Five Star’ and ‘Curiosity Killed the Cat’. Both of whom would have short survival rates and little enduring fan appeal. But saying that, A-ha never really convinced in their position as popstars the way Duran did, there was very little seductive glamour. And they were easily as patchy a singles band as Duran (they were no Wham! in this regard). So even after a strong 1-2 punch, they tapered off, never again bothering the top 3 of the charts. Their follow-ups were good, with ‘Hunting High and Low’ and ‘Cry Wolf’ as standouts, but things like ‘Train of Thought’, ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ and ‘Manhattan Skyline’ were never going to bother the top 3. Also, Duran always managed to add something new every now and then to show that they were attentive to what was going on, and at least somewhat progressive. A-ha never managed that (‘Living Daylights’, while a fine song, lacks the punch of ‘View to a Kill’ and owes more than a little to that songs ‘orchestra crash’). Their third album, while containing some good tunes (‘Stay On These Roads’) was no more advanced than their first, and by then SAW were moving many units, so A-ha’s time was done.

Also worth pointing out; while Duran had at the very least three worthy pin-up members, it seems that A-ha really only had one – Morten. Yes, the other two were ok looking, but as a band, they really only graced the bedroom walls because of Morten, unlike Duran and Wham! where the as-good-looking-as-a-model ratio was higher.

Perhaps further proof is the fact that there are virtually NO good Madonna covers – for example:

The original of Open Your Heart in Spanish – vocally hammy, production generic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kC5SwKycM4

Alizee’s bored-to-tears take on La Isla Bonita, an inexplicable number-two hit in France: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZlgNj-rIxw

Hardly comprehensive, but in comparison Madonna’s skill becomes much more obvious.

Lindsay: her leggings are cause for weary sighs exactly because she is NOT being nonchalant about her clothes (she has her own fashion line!) and it still looks like she’s just flung on whatever didn’t smell of socks in the laundry basket. I never said GFY was a political project, it’s more of an antidote to the barrage of abuse that famous women who diverge from the norm get from Heat magazine/Perez Hilton etc.

Re: closing line – I mainly wanted to make the Pink Panzer joke!

In sum, according to you, women who don’t linger in non-visual, relative obscurity (i.e., be only marginally successful) get written off as mindless bimbos insofar as they are v. pretty, or mocked as dogs insofar as they aren’t. According to you, it’s as if there’s something like the following, sexist scoring mechanism: sucessful women in show biz get scored x (/10) for looks and y (/10) for talent but, ha ha, the game is rigged so that y≤(10-.9x) [go here for the simple graph].

So, how are Gaga, Rihanna et al. bending those alleged rules according to you? Well, who knows really? Apparently it’s supposed to be something about the clothes they wear. But god help them if one day they cross over that crucial, crucial boundary between ‘wonderfully batshit’ and ‘DERE GOD NO HOW AWFUL’. And if they end up being as nonchalant about their clothes as, I dunno, Thom Yorke is? Well, that’s the Lindsay Lohan ’same pair of ratty leggings’ contempt pile isn’t it? [A bit close to the pretty -> mindless bimbo sub-rule, no?]

I spent about 30 minutes at the FUG website and, honestly, its whole focus is on the very beautiful who have clothes budgets greater than Haiti’s GNP, their triumphs, their follies and flops – talent is hardly in the picture. That’s a perfectly fine focus to have, I guess, but claiming its got anything to do with a significant political project, seems to me to be deluded.

You close with:
One day I hope that the ideal image of a female pop star is one triumphantly wearing giant Mickey Mouse ears astride a pink Panzer.
It’s a fairly striking image, but I don’t see that it deserves to be permanently enshrined above everything else. Seriously, why this over Lesley Feist in the 1234 vid. (my nieces’ first big pop song – they know her as the ‘blue sparkle lady’) if there *has* to be one image to rule them all? (Siouxsie and Aimee might have something useful to say about the whole idea of one such image.)

re17 As a Prince fan I went to see ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ at the cinema when it came out but I suspect that even WTG would have more merit.