They switched to the covers because (a) they’d decided to part company with Martin and Coulter who wrote all their ‘74 hits (and “Saturday Night”) and (b) Tam told them to, even though, as their albums demonstrate, they actually wanted to rock or at least power pop and write their own stuff.

I like the “you’re only as good as your last track” theory.

It’s an OK song, recorded really badly/cheaply/poorly.

“It’s a teenage dream to be seventeen”

A bad rhyme? Actually, it’s a point. Old enough to have options and freedoms, young enough to not fear the end of yr teenage dreams, old enough for sex, and to get away with dringing in pubs, etc. Pre-teens dream of being thirteen but then find it’s no different to 12.

The rest of the song is reflective, and in better hands (and some bad line pruning) could have been a “Father and Son” type ‘anthem for the masses’. But the lame realisation by those who thought they didn’t have to try too hard killed it. Oh, it got to number one, but I find that often, the quality (or lack of) in a particular track manifests itself in the success (or lack of) in the next single. (eg Culture Club’s “The War Song” was badness, “The Medal Song” was fine but failed for possibly the same reason)

“Money Honey” was not a great song, but was a great recording/realisation. But by then it was downhill for the band who had lots of fans buying but slowly drifting off, and no-one ‘impartial’ doing the same.

http://www.travelmate.com.au/Images/Things/BigThings/scotsman.jpg

…when playing in Adelaide.

(also a friend recalls crawling around the car park of said establishment at 2am helping a band member find his misplaced supply of illicit substances)

…eventually a song will come up that us North Americans will know…

There was always a question mark over how “normal” boys like the Rollers could sing their light throwaway pop songs, and still look at themselves in the mirror (apart from the obvious “perks” of the screaming girls etc.).

I was always a pop fan, and while I didn’t like them (the Rollers) much, I could see the merit in the likes of “Shang-A-Lang” and “Summer Love Sensation”, and I could understand why they switched to covers like “I Only Wanna Be With You” and “Bye Bye Baby” to avoid “sameness” setting in.

However, my abiding memory of this song is that even the Rollers didn’t seem to be enjoying it much…. as if it was bad enough being forced to perform silly sing-along numbers, but expecting them to do soppy ballads was just one step too far.

Ballads often attract buyers who would not usually buy songs by a particular group or artist, and that factor (IMO) helped this slice of mediocrity to its success.

“Rollermania” was already on the wane in the UK by this time, strangely as this followed their biggest hit, but, in retrospect, the Rollers never really had been much of a force at all, even at their peak.

This, the previous and the next entry make 3 in a row that, as far as I know, never registered at all in the American top 40 — I never heard any of them before (and still haven’t, though I’ll work on it. I guess.)

“These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air”. And I thought I was the nutcase!

Sooo, to the record in hand. Stomach-churning!

This wretched rubbish was surely the nadir for the Rollers as far as any pretence to good pop was concerned. This record was just fucking risible and you didn’t need Johnnie Walker to tell you that. Quite frankly, God only knows why teen girls in the UK idolised these talentless girly boys. Extraordinary.

Bye Bye, Rollers. Rollers, goodbye!

ie if the question is “what was everying thinking?”, the answer “seems to be this, but could have been THIS” is more dynamic and revealing than something cut and dried and fixed…

@66 - Are you sure it outsold everything else? My understanding was that the “problem” was in getting sales awards, since it was on a non-BPI label, rather than any chart appearance. Evidently, it was in the chart.

@15 - Guinness tells me that Aswad’s ‘Give A Little Love’ was a cover version of a Bucks Fizz B-side. The mind boggles. Needless to say, Daniel O’Donnell’s only Top 10 single is yet a third song and apparently there’s a fourth one by The Invisible Man. Yet of all these the Aswad hit is the only one I can remember; I think I mentioned before that for those of us not around at the time the Rollers have very much been reduced to one song.
Of course, I could remedy that, but reading the other posts I don’t think I will.

Good point on the 1980/1 phantom - is it not the case that it was by someone who had a lot of other #s around that time, so we can discuss it in with those I think. I will try and remember though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Indie_Chart

I was thinking of their other falklands song, where they don’t swear on it until the final 20 seconds or so…

.. which was also out of the chart…