ADAM AND THE ANTS – “Prince Charming”
“Prince Charming” is the ultimate Adam Ant record, but also weirdly redundant. It’s his manifesto – a series of commandments building up to a credo that’s come to envelop Adam’s whole era: ridicule is nothing to be scared of. But almost every one of Adam’s hit singles had worked like this: the man was a walking manifesto, in slogans and looks and actions and sheer presence. There’s something too harsh, too stark about “Prince Charming”, this undiluted concentrate of Ant-iness. In the midst of Adam’s total pop triumph his punky instincts resurfaced, and the song’s forward-march insistence verges on the didactic – the crossed arms of the Prince Charming dance a pre-echo of the straight edge X.
But, as another 1981 hit put it, “there’s always force”, and force is what gets “Prince Charming” through. It’s a deeply weird, abstract pop song, its climaxes hitting not on the “ridicule” chant but on those ecstatic interlocking whoops and war cries – “Aaah-HAH-oh-ehhh-HAH!”. This is the feral, playful side of Antmusic, an implied bacchanalia quite at odds with “Respect yourself, and all of those around you.” The music is startling too – beyond the simple acoustic chords there’s little but full, doomy drumbeats and a roiling grind of guitar that’s resolved into pop by Adam’s sheer willpower as much as anything. And why not? At this moment, he IS pop, and more: the flicker of mirror-Adams at the end of the video – Clint, Alice, Peter O’Toole, then himself – shows him stake his claim as the heir of pretence and storytelling across all pop culture. Prince Charming indeed! At some point, hubris would overtake him, and ridicule would have her revenge – but this is Adam Ant in the hour before the clock strikes twelve, the master of revels.
8
With a detached view (no doubt hugely skewed by nostalgia, so semi-detached say!) I am a much bigger fan of “Prince Charming” today than I was in 1981. As Lineman picks up in #2, there was a distinct sense that Adam had lost any semblance of cool – at least among my fellow 14 year olds – by the time “Prince Charming” was released.
A summer away seemed an awfully long time in the fast moving world of the pop charts. The new Prince Charming image came in for some fearsome stick in the music press as I recall, even “Smash Hits” which was never afraid to criticise the bands its reader loved (Duran Duran spent 1981 being positively slated in every Smash Hits review).
Today, it sounds like a bold move – a rollicking good tune with memorable lyrics. Completely over the top in a good way.
Lyrically very much a sequel to S&D, isn’t it – a rallying cry to stay the course to those who have thrown their safety overboard and joined the insect nation. ‘Respect yourself and all of those around you’, quite a noble sentiment.
Those who find it slight or ephemeral are probably the sort of people Adam was singing about/to at the start of Stand and Deliver :-b
#22 that is very much so – but I would say that I think a lot of my entries on the 60s stuff were quite “un-detached” too.
It’s also possible that my writing’s got worse or better, of course! One of the reasons I started Popular was to address a lack of direction and confidence in my writing – that’s now largely sorted, so now I’m happier to write in a rather different style here.
This is the last comment about me I’ll make on this thread, unless goaded :)
Also in the Top 10 this week: “Love Action” – say no more.
And Alvin Stardust?? WTF?
also ELO’s ‘Hold On Tight’ – a not so guilty pleasure of mine. Aneka and maybe Alvin aside, a great top 10!
Altho ‘The Birdie Song’ LOOMS menacingly like a Hitchcock flock. Adam may have gone on to want to save the gorillas but right now he was keeping these fearsome winged beasts at bay. Actually I still can’t be entirely sure if ‘The Birdie Song’ was the first song I HATED but I definitely remember it from the time.
#25 – I think it becomes interesting when your childhood was (relatively) detached and introspective and your 20s are musically frivolous! This is a thing I have tried and mostly failed to discuss in Blog 92.
Re 24: Good call. Not a no.1 but it was Germany’s best selling single of ’82 – clearly electronic whirs and drones with no perceptible tune are bread and butter to the Germans (as long as they’re followed after 30 seconds or so by a bagpipe keyboard sound).
No.2 watch: One week of the Police’s Invisible Sun, which had no perceptible tune for four minutes, and, gallingly at the other end of the spectrum, one of the Tweets’ aforementioned Birdie Song.
I always found the rival Top 30 version, the phlegmatically named Original Bird Dance by the Electronicas, amusing. As starkly factual and unintentionally funny as Sainsbury’s lo-budget breakfast cereals Whole Wheat Bisk and Puffed Wheat.
Mmmm… bisk.
classic case of “I’m a star and can release anything and it will get to number one”
The video is fantastic but the song is not. The only mercy was that it prevented the abysmal, tuneless Sting from registering another totally undeserved number one record.
Fans of “The Birdie Song” can buy an EMI single from 1974 “Tchip Tchip” by “Cash and Carry” as it’s the original version.
Rolf’s “War Canoe” was in the bubbling under for a few weeks and some say Adam had heard a few lines of “Sun arise” before “Friend or foe”
Shame Adam never tried a subtle re-write of Two Little Boys. Did he ever record anything that could be described as a ballad?
Re 33: Tchip Tchip, bloody hell! I’ve seen that around and wondered what it sounded like… now I know to avoid it like the elektronik bird flu.
having watched the video again on youtube I’m pretty sure that he’s supposed to be Rudolph Valentino as the Sheikh at the end – not O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia although I can see why your 8 year old self would identify the latter rather than the former
Haha that was my 35 year old self getting it wrong – my 8 year old self just saw generic sheikh. But good spot and of course you’re right.
not quite on topic, but I’d like to question the apparent consensus upthread that Ghost Town is inescapably, even quintessentially ‘of’ 1981. Lyrically what I hear now in GT is a sense of resignation/defeat/anger turned inwards that reminds me more of shane meadows’ films than the explosiveness of its times – bits of England/UK that were left to rot & not much has changed…. And sonically, how can a record that simultaneously evokes joe meek and dubstep fail to transcend its temporal context?
As an afterthought to the “detachment” debate, I’m wondering how those who responded so positively to Stuart Goddard in their early adolescence would have responded to Glad All Over had they been a generation older. And how that response might have coloured their response to this.
Incidentally, twenty-seven year old Rosie thought that Invisible Sun was magnificent. It just goes to show that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, etc…
Great B Side too
x
Re 38: Indeed. I still can’t see why it’s hard for posters to detach themselves enough to be a little objective on these entries. Not that everybody should, because I think the mixture of styles and approaches is what brings me back to these threads on a more or less daily basis.
Historical context and back stories always help (see Tom’s entry for the Dreamweavers’ It’s Almost Tomorrow). Or, in the cases of Glad All Over and Prince Charming, just keeping an open channel in your mind for noizzzze – both have spectacular intros.
I’d like to think this channel will be open in my mind when we reach the tail end of the 90s… I’m training myself by listening to every no.1 from this decade, in sequence, one a day. Quite revelatory!
Whilst a not wholly literal child I had a problem with Invisible Sun in as much as i couldn’t understand how it would work. Whilst I was probably still a bit to young to understand the chemistry and physics of our celestial bodies, I was well aware that if something emitted light, I’d probably be able to see it (though only obliquely and never with a telescope – I knew that would burn a hole in the back of my head).
I finding it difficult to grasp why I don’t think I liked Prince Charming as much as a kid as Stand And Deliver. Because it has got that great intro, and that lovely strummy bit, and an awesome key change and the chanting. But maybe it just that – unless you do THE DANCE – its quite hard to dance to. It has a deceptively slow tempo which means it never really popped up at school discos next to the sublimely jaunty Stand & Deliver.
Oh and on Whole Wheat Bisk tack – I spent most of the eighties believing that Mornflake Oats was some high concept gag on cricket and football hoardings and certainly NOT a real breakfast cereal. Not in Borehamwood Sainsbury’s. Why would you have a Oats which reminded you of the far superior Corn Flakes in its name?
Lineman do you mean you’re listening to all the 90s #1s? How many have you forgotten (if any)?
I’m not sure if this has already been mentioned, but 4Music (formerly Hits!TV) have a semi-regular ‘all the no.1s of decade x’ slot where Mark Goodier does a smarmy voiceover in between six or seven tracks at a time…
Re 43: I meant no.1s from the “noughties”, even though I’m sure there are a bunch of late 90s entries that I’m not overly familiar with. It was a (slightly late) new year’s resolution, along with seeing one new film a week. So far I have only encountered one of which I have no recollection whatsoever. I’d give it a 3. It’s dreadful. But I reeealllly don’t think this is the time or place to go into more detail. Not my gaffe and not my rules!
(Whispers) ok… it was the eighth no.1 of this century.
Back to the matter in hand: the harpsichord “break” on Ant Rap strikes me as a move as bold as the jerky interjection after the second chorus of God Only Knows. Not as good, necessarily, but compared to the teen idols we’ll be facing down for the rest of the eighties it is genuine, high wire, derring do.
Surely the defining harpsichord moment in 80s pop has to be Golden Brown? Decades later I met more than one grown-up, who had imagined the word “manchirons” into existence – after mishearing Hugh Cornwell sing, “Lays me down/With my manchirons.” I imagined them to be a kind of castanet, which he put back in their place on being “laid down” by this mysterious golden brown lady. Hmm.
Anyway, back to Prince Charming. Echoing WL’s perception of Dors* , I’ve a rather ominous feeling that if I take a look at that video, I might, being 39, find her looking way younger than I thought she did at the time. Only one way to find out…
*sorry
…Um, not that much actually. Phew.
Welll… Prince Charming was 32 years after she played a catfighting barmaid in Diamond City and two-and-a-bit years before she died. But I understand your fear. Lulu looks about 21 in the Ant Rap vid. Gawdelpus.
I assumed Manchirons were some “oriental” warrior race, something to do with Genghis Khan (not the Eurovision act). But, of course, Golden Brown was all about drugs!! Just like Being With You!!
“AGAP” = about space
“There She Goes” = about a special lady
“Golden Brown” = about toast
“Being With You” = science has not yet established the subject or meaning of this song.
“Ant Rap” is one of the most bizzare (Stevo spelling) singles of the year. The harpsicord break is a moment of insane brilliance.
It also fades out far too early – the additional percussion over the main drum break transforms the last 30 seconds or so into a monstrous proto-hip hop groove.
There’s also a very hip-hop style break on “Scorpios” (I think) on the “Prince Charming” album, which I’m surprised hasn’t been sampled yet (perhaps it has and I haven’t heard it).
#50 I agree, except it’s not really “proto” hip-hop any more on a single called “[x] Rap” in 1981! :)
I’ve never been comfortable with the word “proto” and you’ve just seen why!
#45 having looked it up, 3 shows admirable charity!
Like many of those above, I found this pedestrian compared to their previous records – the principle being recommended is perfectly valid, but there’s not that much on offer beyond the sloganising, and it gets very repetitive very quickly. And besides, I have an aversion to anything that stresses the wrong syllable in a lyric – the word is CHAR-ming, not char-MING!
What this brings back to me is my one foray into student politics, such as it was – taking part in a demo in central London against threatened grant cuts (what we’d all have made of student loans, God only knows). A chance to fulfil your preconceptions of being a student (before The Young Ones revised them all) and walk around the streets being subversive. And our section of the demo invented a chant that was taken up by all, addressed to the then Education Secretary – “KEITH JOSEPH! KEITH JOSEPH! DON’T YOU EVER CUT OUR EDUCATION!”
It was on this demo that I met the worst girlfriend I ever had. She was a bit self-consciously wacky – looked up the Riot Act of 1715 in the college library just so she could say she’d read the Riot Act, that sort of thing. When we had The Breaking Up Conversation, she made it clear I’d rung her while she was watching a good film on TV, then at the end said not to worry ‘cos she’d managed to keep up with the plot of the film anyway. No great loss…
I see your chant kept the wrong syllable stress too! Do we know if Keith Joseph was part of the Insect Nation?
(Sorry, as with Soft Cell I’ve come in a bit late here) The one thing that I can add is that the way that the chants and rhythm builds and then stops dead still has quite an interesting emotional as well as spatial effect. It’s like Adam has phsyched himself up for some incredible reaction – a kiss or a punch – but no-one’s noticing.
I can remember a letter in Melody Maker at the time that Romomania was conspicuously failing to sweep the nation in 1995 that observed “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of – Well, obviously, but neither is it something to be actively courted”
Loved by my nine-year old self, like most of my peers here, I think that the sheer conviction of Adam’s silly philosophy still has the almost same thrilling effect on my adult self.
re 55 – I always assumed that Keith Joseph was related to the Mekon.
46: Thank god I wasn’t alone. I always imagined “manchirons” to be a kind of exotic boot.
re: Popular, I have been baffled by the scores over the last many entries but have sort of resigned myself to it, and accepted that, had I been a pop-loving youth, my scores on various things from the turn of the 90s would probably be similarly inflated. (I didn’t really get into contemporary music until I was maybe 15 or 16, so we’ll have to wait for the mid-90s for all that.)
What’s nice is that the score, as always, is a bit peripheral – I enjoy the essays for attempting to draw me into Tom’s world and his readings of the songs. Sometimes I think there’s not nearly the stuff there that he dreams up, but that’s okay – I would generally rather like songs than dislike them, so if I can adopt the reasoning, I can live a happier life.
Prince CharmING, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to warm up to. I can’t think of what I’d change – it’s certainly slow but the whole ambience would be wrecked by speeding it up. I think it’s the repetitiousness of the song as a whole – any given stretch of it sounds GREAT but by the time it’s 2/3 over you kind of want it to be done. Obviously the structure of it requires the long lumber, but I wish there were a few more surprises along the way.
The atonal screeching, on the other hand, is pure genius!
The 8 year old me loved this but I think I like it even more now. It’s rather and unusual song with that echoey lurching drum pattern and the yelps etc. I’m impressed more with the overall sound of it these days. It has a catchy simple melody and is repetitive enough that it lodges in your head easily without getting annoying (for me anyway).
It’s impossible for me to hear this without thinking back to school discos where you’d take a few of your own singles (with your name scrawled on the sleeve) and hoped that the teacher would play one. This is one of those that would always get played and I even participated in a mass Prince Charming dance line during one – I never ever dance these days. I also a big Adam & The Ants patch sewn on the back of the tracksuit top that I wore when playing for my Cub Scout football team – “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of” indeed!
Also worth noting the B-side ‘Christian D’or’ with Adam shouting the name of bass player “Tibbs!” at one point and my parents thinking he said “Tits!”. God knows what they thought hearing songs like ‘Beat My Guest’ and ‘Lady’ emanating from my bedroom stereo.
8/10 is spot on as far as I’m concerned.
Great Quotes Coined While This Was Number One:
“Go back to your constituencies and prepare for Government”
– David Steel speaking to the Liberal Party conference at a time when the SDP/Liberal alliance looked like it could sweep to power. Didn’t quite happen though.
Re 53: I gave it a bonus point for having the ugliest title of any no.1. Is it about taking Rover round the block?
This month in 1981 also gave the world Only Fools and Horses. According to the Radio Times, scriptwriter John Sullivan… “in pursuit of his campaign to bring situation comedy into the 80’s is going to sidestep some familiar clichés. ‘I won’t make Gunga Din jokes about Indian characters. In the kind of pubs where I drink, there are people of all races and they’re not at each others throats. If there’s a fight, it’s between two drunks, not between racial antagonists’.”
Which is pertinent to various posts on Japanese Boy, I suppose.
I think this is the first music video I can remember from the time it came out. It’s a great video and worth the 8 mark. The song itself doesn’t really live up the video – like Dr Casino says, it’s too repetitive and goes on too long (I have a very low repetition threshold). A 6 at best.
OK, if I’d been 9 years old at the time, I’d probably have loved this. But I was 19 years old, and I had all the early singles – yea, even unto “Zerox” and “Car Trouble” – and I’d been massively excited by Adam’s pop breakthrough in late 1980/early 1981… so this just felt like an overblown, flaccid, galumphing, juvenile, neutered, sexless sell-out, and hence a continuation of the rot that had set in with “Stand And Deliver”.
“Ant Rap” was great, though!
The harpsichord break in the Ant Rap vid…is it me or does Marco Perroni (I think it’s him…memory not 100%) look like ‘Orrible Harry Grout from Porridge in a pompadour wig?
Love this. First video I recall seeing on Top of the Pops. This one was the moment he divided the fans for good (Stand and Deliver had started it). After this it was a slow slide; Ant Rap was a hit but not a # 1 (too weird for the kids!) The Prince Charming album got a lukewarm reception at best, and was seen as a letdown. Then he dumped the Ants. Oh Adam! How did you lose your grip so fast?! Still, while this single sat at the top of the charts (its # 2 debut caused by the massive selling ‘Tainted Love’) Adam was still the leader of the pack, and this was just one of the great tracks that meant – among fierce competition – the undisputed king of 1981 was the right royal… Adam Ant.
The One Week One Band blog should be good this week!
I second tfg’s comment above. You can follow the blog here.
Re #67/#68 – I’ve been reading each entry and am finding it a bit distressing. The writing is fantastic, but Jubilee / DWWS era Ants is one of my favourite things ever, and having it dismissed so eloquently feels like a bit like an unexpected slap in the face. I may be taking the internet too seriously, usually the solution is to stop reading, but it’s too good for that.
I’m left in no doubt that Mark is itching to get on to Imperial Phase Ants as quickly as possible. What I have read so far has been a real treat, as well as linking to the full-length Jubilee on YT (albeit with Spanish subtitles). Watching Jubilee reminded me it’s such a shame Wayne County isn’t around anymore.
Jayne County, still going strong as far as I know?
apologies weej, I know DWWS-era A&tA has its passionate fans and I’m not taking a pop at them at all (and am in fact expecting pushback). Part of the point I’ll be making, if I don’t get lost in the detail, is that all of us (from adam right down to little teenage me) were caught up in drawing lines, and this was very much part of the energy and excitement and value — it’s where we learnt and tested our sensibilities — but it also had a distinctly arbitrary path-dependent element, largely determined by previously selected affinities and projections. Adam’s outsiderness was and is unfair — whether imposed by Julie Burchill* or Paul Morley or me! — but this makes it a key to who he was and what he did and went on to do. I also wanted to get across the sense of barred-in** fed-upness he was surely increasingly feeling***, in 1979 especially. Morley’s attack got under Adam’s skin because he half-agrees with it (I think).
*Though I was and am pissed off by the song “Puerto Rican”, which is pretty inexcusable, and tackling that properly soured my take a bit on the Peel stuff.
**Or barred-out! Which is it? <– important
***And not just him. Post-punk was a good thing! But it didn’t bring out the full Adam, in fact I think it shuts down some of the best of him, and I’m glad he punched his way up out of it.
It’s certainly true that much of what makes Adam a ‘special’ artist wasn’t allowed to emerge until he was free of the genre he’d found himself part of – but it’s still for me by far his strongest period. Bit of a contradiction, yes, and makes me feel like a bit of a party pooper when we get to the hits, but there we go.
#71…ha! My bad. A misheard anecdote led me to believe County was deceased. Glad to be corrected.