DEAD OR ALIVE – “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)”
If “Relax” – as Mark Sinker put it during the subsequent discussion – was a non-DJs idea of a club record, “You Spin Me Round” is a DJ’s idea of a Frankie track. In fact, it sounds like Stock, Aitken and Waterman have broken into Trevor Horn’s studio at night, nicked a load of his gear, done a bag of speed and started pressing buttons at close to random. Marvellous, in other words. The hidden force driving the record’s mania is that hyperfast sequenced keyboard run, its chattering bleeps like a player piano installed on the bridge of the Enterprise, adding a note of derangement to a track already lacking in restraint.
Without Pete Burns, of course, “You Spin Me Round” would be considerably shyer. It’s a fine example of a limited performer finding the one perfect record for him: he gets to play the Lion Queen, prowling and roaring his way around the song-stage in his finest panto predator style while the drum machines bang out a strutter’s rhythm. “I WANT YOUR LOVE!”
“You Spin”‘s crude machine-rush wouldn’t be matched on a number one for years but its chassis was already well-travelled: hi-NRG club beats and keyboards in debt to Patrick Cowley, Bobby “O”, and other NYC and European post-disco music. SAW always knew their stuff (and could be somewhat sniffy about the fact when their credentials were mocked). But this is trashier, buzzier, more immediate even than that: there’s a Dionysian kick to it which feels more like a rebuke to New Pop than its barbarous fag-end. Sadly it’s a staging post on its producers’ journey to the centre of the cheap, and without Pete Burns to frame they never achieved this wildness again.
9
Have to admit if I’m in a club and this comes on I find it iresistible despite any reservations about the two Petes.
Pete B is a uniquely talentless individual who seems ever more reluctant to admit how lucky he was – I mean come on even Chesney Hawkes seems to have a neat sense of irony about his position in the fickle world of the top 40.
As for Pete W midas touch and thrust of free enterprise made an awkward combination. By the time his records were dominating the charts 3 or 4 years later he was unseemingly gloating about his ability to make it onto Top of the Pops with any reptitious crap he’d slung together in 20 minutes.
Some things just work however and You Spin me …. works and then some. A spellbinding and lively track that if anything sounds even better now. Far greater than the sum of it’s soon to be self-parodying parts.
A #11 chart peak in the States, but if you were to ask people today, they would think it was at least Top 5, as it has become a staple of 80′s oldies shows and commercials and just one of those 80′s songs that has outlived the artist it came from (e.g. “I Melt With You” or Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”). Also a 9 for me.
#25 You’ve got me thinking there Steve. Any clues ?
Did it get to number one in a series of small steps?
I’m a confirmed hi-nrg fan, so this is pretty perfect for me. Like Relax, it replaces hi-nrg’s usual more soulful post-disco style with something harder-edged and “nastier”. Neither Holly Johnson nor Pete Burns (nor Divine, for that matter) were you typical hi-nrg belters and their voices required some brutal, machine clatter to surround them, and in this case it’s those pulsing synth-lines and electronic hand-claps. Later SAW productions would lose much of this edge and to me that seemed to coincide with the shift in their main-market, from the club to commercial radio. Even when their dancefloor aim wasn’t as spot on as it was here (on a bunny baiting attempt at early house or their take on rare-groove, Roadblock) there was something there that was sorely missing later on.
Plus, they just didn’t seem to try as hard later on. Surely no later period SAW production would contain anything like the “palindromic roundelay of the chorus”? Pete would have binned it off and replaced it with something more immediate that wouldn’t sound too odd on Capital FM.
It had taken the best part of two months to even enter the Top 40 but on entering the business end of the chart ‘rocketed’ up to Number One in four weeks, I seem to recall.
Not sure how I feel about this now. It’s a danceable record but not a particularly lovable one. But then Burns was never a particularly lovable pop star, was he?
#28 I seem to have provided a clue in my previous post without even realising ha
TOTPWatch: Dead Or Alive performed ‘You Spin Me Round’ on Top of the Pops on five occasions (the Xmas edition I’ll come to in the fullness of time);
14 February 1985. Also in the studio that exciting week were; The Colourfield, Killing Joke and The Smiths! Simon Bates & Janice Long were the hosts.
28 February 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Stephen Tin Tin Duffy and The Commodores. Mike Smith & Peter Powell were the hosts.
7 March 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Shakin’ Stevens, Jermaine Jackson and David Cassidy. John Peel and Janice Long were the hosts.
14 March 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Go West, Alison Moyet and Paul Young. Mike Smith & Gary Davies were the hosts.
absolutely a nine. i’d never really thought about it being SAW doing frankie before, but that’s clearly what it is. there’s more than a touch of soft cell too, and it’s this slightly menacing seediness, along with the the way the SAW machine here seems set to ‘out of control’, that gives ysmr an edge over a lot of their other stuff. i will put in an early vote for ‘love in the third degree’ as being the second best of the non-embargoed ones though.
we’ll have and wait to see whether this is the greatest celebrity big brother-related no.1 (competition is reasonably stiff) but on the evidence of cbb it seems very likely indeed that pete burns is vilest individual ever to have hit the top spot. the look of almost sexual pleasure on his face as george galloway started taunting barrymore about his alcoholism will stay with me to my grave.
sorry about “hit the top spot” btw, momentarily turned into peter powell. i meant of course “be the toppermost of the poppermost”.
to bring up the ‘slowest climb to #1′ thing again, i’m sure i mentioned this before but Nickelback’s ‘Rock Star’ so nearly set what would probably have been a new record for this – 17 weeks before stalling at #2 (mercifully). That any song could do this as recently as two years ago is interesting tho.
addendum: in fact yes i mentioned both this and the aforementioned 16th week chart-topper in the comments for Aneka’s ‘Japanese Boy’, so adding insult to injury in repetetive chart geek tedium terms there or wot…
#36 I think I’ve got it – a real chin-stroker that one !
I’ve found one that took 15 weeks to hit the top according to Polyhex…
And I’ve found another that took 16 weeks…coming up this very year! Probably a bunch of these really, its just that the one I mentioned first is the one I’ve always remembered ‘witnessing’, listening to the chart each week and groaning as it refused to be defeated. There seems to be a tendency among them all to be coming from artists who weren’t yet fully established which makes sense. Still, the challenge to come up with a 17 weeker goes on.
i am an enthusiastic SAW supporter, especially when i’ve had a few ales, and i feel this is the pinnacle of their achievement. they used to fill their records with effects that would make lights at discotheques go mental. i’m all for it. pete burns was, for me, the second most perfect* 1985 popstar: an over-made up gobshite. 9, all the way.
* most perfect, morrissey
Morrissey & Burns together in Smash Hits;
http://foreverill.com/interviews/1985/pete.htm
#34 While I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with your verdict on Pete Burns’s character I’d be very wary of buying into Endemol’s self-serving crap about “social experiments” and “revealing true selves”.
CBB shows you how an already troubled (usually through diminished status) celebrity copes (or fails to) with extreme psychological pressure (if not outright torture) in an unforgiving artificial environment. It might tell you something about their strength of character but not their real personalities.
I expect to be making the same point on four occasions when we get to 1999-2001.
41, enjoyed that interview. I wonder if Pete and Mozzer are still phoning each other up.
The Morrissey/Burns article is a camp classic, but what an odd pairing – Mancunian/Liverpudlian
Indie Prince/Pop Tart
Militant Vegetarian/Outspoken wearer of fur
The most reserved man in music/The least reserved man
in Britain.
Still they seemed to find common ground over some tea and biscuits.
By the way Conrad (43) from what I hear neither men are especially reliable at returning calls in general.
One other thing that strikes me about You Spin Me….. Burns’ voice is not so different from Andrew Eldritch or Ian Astbury. Like those two his vocals offer command over flexibility so perhaps this is what the goth stars of 1985 might have sounded like if they had a few extra dance moves.
forgot to mention previously that SAW were also responsible for this rather camp classic (one of my favourite records ever): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0nOb5h0JU8
“The most reserved man in music” <— is this morrissey? it seems imprecise!
Hhmmm I suppose next to Pete Burns the Rio Carnival would seem “reserved “.
Light Entertainment Watch: Not many UK TV appearances on the list, but I suspect that there may be more than these;
THE MONTREUX ROCK FESTIVAL: with Boy George, Talk Talk, Philip Bailey, Culture Club, Dead Or Alive, Elton John, Millie Jackson, Howard Jones, Kenn Loggins, Shakatak (1985)
THE MONTREUX ROCK FESTIVAL: with Philip Bailey, Culture Club, Dead Or Alive, Elton John & Millie Jackson, Howard Jones, Kenny Loggins, Shakatak, Talk Talk, Paul Young (1985)
WHISTLE TEST: with Cabaret Voltaire, Godley & Creme, Dead Or Alive, The Alarm (1985)
WOGAN: with Pamela Bellwood, Dead Or Alive, Aled Jones, Ken Livingstone, John & Chris Lloyd (1985)
WOGAN: with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Dead Or Alive, Sheila Gish (1986)
#4 and others.
I seem to recall reading a piece somewhere that Kraftwerks “the model” took almost a year from its first release to reach No 1! I certainly recall dancing to it at my local club around th summer of 1981 – 6 months before it made the No 1 spot.
‘The Model/Computer Love’ is also on 15 weeks (within the top 75) before #1 but not consecutively, according to polyhex chartruns search. No idea how long it spent bubbling under 75 tho.
It’s a very dull record, it just goes round and round and round… hang on, don’t they all?