The hovering synths on “The Power Of Love” seem to be coming from somewhere vastly above the listener, like a Star Wars spaceship-overhead shot which goes on and on and on until the scale just defeats you. We’re heading for something – yes, Aldebaran most likely. Or Rigel.
Jennifer Rush stretches her song till it comes at you like granite falling through treacle – the structure of her track is conventional enough but it’s not until three minutes twenty that we even get the middle eight. Previous number ones have been long, but usually because they’ve tried to pack a lot in, ring the changes on the track or go for some kind of cumulative effect. “The Power Of Love” doesn’t really build – it’s big like a whale is big: it just grew that way.
It’s like there’s an edge to the music your ears can’t quite reach, and what you can take in is too diffuse to make any real sense. The bonds of meaning that link line to line – things you take for granted as a listener without ever realising it – become dangerously weak. “Lost is how I’m feeling.” – oh OK, that’s bad, right? – “Lying in your arms.” – no wait, that’s good…isn’t it? “The feeling that I can’t go on.” – uh oh – “Is light years away.” – phew! The cold quaver of Rush’s imperious vocals and the slight European stiltedness of the lyrics amplify the effect.
In a funny way though, it makes the song more effective and memorable than most of the records that would take this monster as a model. “The Power Of Love” is after all a song about how love removes your own sense of scale, makes existence itself unfamiliar, so the disorientating disconnect between it and anything resembling my emotional reality makes a sort of warped sense. It helps that the chorus is so memorable, something to anticipate and cling to as the rest of the song drifts apart. This is a record which exhausts me and exhausts itself, but there’s something fascinating about its reach even so.
Score: 4
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The video version sounds (relatively) more dynamic and I like it quite a lot more, making me wonder if the 6 minute track I’ve been working from is a re-recording or remix. Hmmm.
Celine’s version (#1 in the USA): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee3iuhJaA6A – she starts better but WAY too much instrumental fannydangle, turns it into a much more standard power ballad. I now feel like I’ve underappreciated Jennifer’s more, uh, ‘restrained’ approach
Wearying’s the right word here: I felt bludgeoned by the end of it. Still, the chorus is memorable (inescapable) enough.
The video, though, is baffling: was her boyfriend being shaken down by loansharks? Or was he a spy thinking of defecting? It seemed to have been assembled from leftover footage from a botched American remake of “Smiley’s People.”
I played this in a school concert in about 89 or 90, with 4 or 5 other lads. Strange choice of song really, given that we were an all-male comprehensive. But I got to play SYNTHS, and yes, I really vividly remember those looooooong sustained chords, and the feeling that I just wasn’t actually doing enough, sitting there holding keys down. So instead I ended up improvising around them (which didn’t come to much more than a few arpeggios and a couple of ridiculous trills, in all honesty) and feeling very proud of myself for it.
Despite that fond memory though, I can’t really bring myself to give this more than 3.
Ah, that explains why the Jennifer Rush video sounded familiar but not quite right: as an American I know the Celine Dion version by heart just because I’ve been in supermarkets.
This record plods along for ages, as you note. What almost saves it is the very final couplet – when Jennifer actually goes for a high note on the ‘ready’ and ‘power’ in “sometimes I am frightened but I’m READY to learn, about the POWER of love” at the song’s end; almost promotes it to a five, I would opine. Notably, Ms Dion dodged that challenge. Interesting arm-pit sniffing picture sleeve; a tribute to Patti Smith, no doubt.
And an exhuasting climb to the top spot too, fittingly. This was the 16 weeker – fascinatingly (oh shut up) it spent 11 of those weeks between 41 and 51. That has to be a record for any song let alone an eventual chart-topper. Once it finally crashed the top 40 there was no stopping it but I wonder what did propel it over the edge if not just a general airplay tipping point. Appearance on Wogan perchance?
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this – it manages a difficult tension between power and restraint- teutonic iciness and passionate delivery. The woman sure can sing – but without resorting to the extraneous vocal pyrotechnics that subsequent female singers seem duty bound to use.
The video is quite compelling – she does a strange jerky head movement that makes her look like a malfunctioning replicant.
According to wiki she’s due to release a new album of material next year – no doubt riding the crest of the Popular induced revival
This was universally disliked by all of my 13-year old male peers as sappy and noisesome female music. Indeed, I’ve generally carried this response with me over the 24 years since, assuming that there weren’t any men who liked or bought it at all. As I understood it, the point and effect of the love was to place the singer – and the emphathising listener – at the heart of some epochal feeling of predestined courtly love with its preordained roles of “your lady” and “your man”.
I almost like this now. Its trying for stately and vast, and I’m inclined to admire that scale of ambition. But then it just plods on and on, and I wish that I was listening to something else.
Number 2 watch: 3 weeks of A-Ha’s glorious and euphoric ‘Take On Me’ Pity that didn’t get to the top…
I remember a school friend and I being very disgruntled that three songs called “The Power of Love” were released within a year of each other and the best of the three missed out on the number one slot that the other two reached. Still sad for you Huey Lewis.
Everyhit says this was the biggest selling single of 1985.
So this is Jennifer Rush. Right. The song itself is instantly familiar, it’s just that I had no idea who performed it – I assume I was simply too young to bother with that level of detail when it came out. Apparently it hasn’t intrigued me enough to find out who did it either.
Still – to keep a recent trend going – it’s not that bad. Since I was too young to really take notice of artists at the time, I was also too young to understand English, and so the lyrics never really registered. For some reason, that makes it easy for me to ignore them altogether even now and just accept Rush’s vocals as an instrument. I would most likely have despised the whole thing if I had been just a few years older in 1985, but as it is – I kind of like it. Not in a deeply emotional way; it doesn’t evoke any kind of romantic feelings and most certainly isn’t something I would like to hear at, say, my wedding.
But taken as a combination of different sounds, I’d say it’s reasonably enjoyable. Rush’s vibrato isn’t really to my taste, but both vocals and production are melodic enough (more so than the majority of similar power ballads, I think) to keep me at least half-interested. And the combination of airy synths atop a heavy drum undercarriage is a trick that always tends to work on me.
SwedenWatch: A slow burner here as well, gradually inching its way up the charts and ending up at #3 in late January ’86. There’s also a localised cover version called “Ängel i natt” to regale you with, recorded by Swedish-Norwegian singer Elisabeth Andreassen (who, as one half of duo Bobbysocks, won the ESC for Norway in ’85 with “La de swinge”): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHThe3FYtM
That version was, however, not released as a single.
This is the archetypal power ballad. The biggest selling single of 1985 is the daddy of the genre. This has a vaguely european feel to it; like it was constructed in utter secrecy in the densest recesses of the Black Forest and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by the last remnants of The Third Reich. It bombarded the radio and TV like Hitler’s stukas over Warsaw and Krakow. It was a relentless blitzkrieg of a power ballad. There was no escape. Pub jukeboxes, clubs…anywhere where music was being played, this was the song that stunk them all up.
This was played at my Grandfather’s funeral. Now whenever I hear it, I am reminded of him. It was his favourite song. In 1985 it simply felt like hell spun at 45rpm. Thanks Grandad for making this record remind me of you and the happy memories.
I’m intrigued as to your differing reactions to this and “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” Tom – for me they serve the same basic karaoke purpose (uh, an idea of karaoke at least – I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere near either with my voice), all big hair and big emotions and wind machines turned up to 11 million. I love the idea of both but can’t imagine actually willingly clicking play in itunes on either.
If there is a difference in the way they come across I suspect it’s because “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” is ever so slightly more ridiculous, that it’s big because big is funny, while “The Power Of Love” is more weighty, it’s big because the subject matter deserves bigness. But that’s too reductive, there are elements of ridiculousness and seriousness in both.
Fatgit – it is a German song, so maybe that’s not too surprising?
Jennifer Rush was born as Heidi Stern and grew up alternating between Germany and the US. But she was living in Germany in 1985, and “The Power of Love” was written by an array of Germans.
Edit: Upon reading your comment again, I realise you were probably well aware of that.
I’m intrigued by the ‘remix’ sticker on the sleeve – anyone know what the original sounds like? Tom, the version I have (which I’m pretty sure was the radio hit) is 4 mins 30, though granite through treacle still applies.
This is a mums record if ever one existed, something to help get you through – gradually, as if wading through wet cement, or super-treacly treacle – the menopause, or a husband’s mid-life crisis. But then my folks were just the right age for things like this and Ashford & Simpson’s Solid to become emotionally relevant.
I always found the intro (or the odd lack of one) arresting. I’ll also add to the general approval of La Rush’s voice; it has an odd quality that suggests she was hard of hearing. I remember someone playing her in the first round of Stars In Their Eyes, singing The Power Of Love, then having to do follow-up Ring Of Ice in the final (she didn’t win).
I thought I thought this was awful. I was wrong… for reasons well stated by others. two more personal reasons why I like it now – this turns out to have been No.1 when I met the layyydeeee I’m still with. And also, the slightly disjointed dancing in the middle of the video, where her arms don’t quite seem synchronised with the rest of her body or the music, reminds me of mary margaret o’hara, which is alwaysw a goodd thing
Jungman….read my comment on Nena’s 99 Red Balloons and all will become clear.
thefatgit
re #16 I was also the right age for ‘Solid’
“The Power Of Love” is after all a song about how love removes your own sense of scale, makes existence itself unfamiliar, so the disorientating disconnect between it and anything resembling my emotional reality makes a sort of warped sense.
Indeed. This is what M. Haneke (Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Cache, Code Unknown, etc.) picked up on when he used half of PoL and a totp/bandstand/solid gold-ish video for it in a memorable scene near the end of his brilliantly disturbing first film, _The Seventh Continent_. (The scene’s easily tracked down on youtube, but it’s best seen first in the context of the film.) That film was the first part of Haneke’s ’emotional glaciation’ trilogy: what a cut-up that guy is.
To me PoL’s the antipode of both ‘Move Closer’ (the find of the year for me in Popular’s review) and ‘Into the Groove’: it’s inhuman and non-specific (unlike MC) and the music invades you in a way that feels truly unpleasant (not in ITG’s good way). PoL makes ‘Total Eclipse’ (both song and vid) seem witty and light on its feet – that itself is quite an achievement.
Note too that David Lynch basically stole the whole song (as ‘Mysteries of love’) for Blue Velvet, but crucially tweaked/humanized it with breathier vocals, e.g. here. (L. Dern for the poodle hair win!)
So PoL’s had quite a large direct and indirect impact on snotty/hipster/art film… and I like it and its doubles in that (basically, heavily ironized) setting. But it’s a grimace of a song to actually imagine choosing to listen to for/by itself (repetition would breach geneva conventions). Hard to know how to score this track – it feels orthogonal to normal pleasure. 3 or 4 perhaps, so long as that’s along the y-axis of the complex plane, and O in the real.
#14 – the big differences are that TEOTH builds whereas POL starts monumental and only incrementally increases, and also that Bonnie Tyler has a throaty rocker’s voice, whereas Jennifer Rush is classically trained and so there’s a kind of frozen undynamic operaticness going on.
Something that’s just occurred to me actually is that with “There Must Be An Angel” and now this we’ve had two kind of stabs at “how can we fit really big voices into modern pop?”, like there’s a question anticipating what turns out (in a few songs’ time) to be its lasting answer….
As far I can remember, the song is continually referenced in David Lodge’s novel Nice Work, which is about the collision between leftish academia and Thatcherite big business – it’s the business bloke who listens to Jennifer Rush. Anyone else remember it more clearly? Suspect that Lodge didn’t have anything particularly perceptive to offer re: pop.
re 20 – good call on the connection to Mysteries of Love. I read somewhere that Lynch had originally wanted to use ‘Song to the siren’ by This Mortal Coil for this scene but wasn’t able to – possibly because he wasn’t as revered then as he is now or more likely because it didn’t fit the teenage party.
I think he finally got to use ‘Song to the siren’ in Lost Highway IIRC.
There’s a symposium on Lynch featuring an interview with Angelo Badalamenti (plus screenings of Blue Velvet and Inland Empire) at Tate Modern on the last weekend of October.
re 22 I vaguely recall the song featuring in the TV adaptation of ‘Nice work’ featuring Warren Clarke and Haydn Gwynne
This went to #57 in the States, but while I remember this version, most people here never heard this song until Celine Dion took it to #1 for 4 weeks in 1993. I like Dion’s version slightly better, but still can live without both versions.
@#24 TomLane. I just looked up the list of US #1’s for 1985, and it’s pretty fabulous (so many UK-acts with US #1’s that year – it *must* be a record). The UK list seems very eccentric by comparison.
#25swanstep- You’re right about the difference between the UK and US list. That’s why I find this #1 countdown so interesting. I’m seeing a lot of UK hits that I remember seeing on MTV, yet never charted much in the US.
Celine’s version is better, mostly because it doesn’t sound like she’s singing over Ultravox’s Vienna. Celine didn’t have an enormous red walkman, though.
Also covered by Laura Branigan (totally unrestrained and over-the-top and surprisingly good, though it has a key change) and Air Supply (unbearable).
Checking the Jennifer Rush versions on MySpace: most are six minutes, and are from her hits albums, though there’s a 4:30 edit that’s also on a hits album. Wikipedia gives the single’s length as 5:44.
Also covered by Laura Branigan (totally unrestrained and over-the-top and rather good, though it has a key change) and Air Supply (unbearable).
Most of the Jennifer Rush versions on MySpace are six minutes, from her hits albums, though there’s a 4:30 edit, also on a hits album. Wikipedia times her single at 5:44.
Mark @22: ‘Nice Work’good book and the dramatisation from about 1989/90 on Channel 4 wasn’t bad too. David Lodge IMO is one of the best English novelists of the past 40 years.
Very good observations on class too the middle class attitudes of the leftish female academic versus those of the unreconstructed nouveux riche but still working class in his outlook(despite him now running his own toolmaking(?)business) male protagonist.
IIRC the leftish academic was more pissed off with him listening to Randy Crawford – didn’t she see he had Randy’s tapes in his car.
I don’t think we got to know what her own tastes ran to but being mid-late 80s youngish trendyish academia I’d guess at possibly the Smiths or something?
Ironic that this dislodged Midge Ure; if you take her vocal off the track you’ve got “Vienna”.
This was the last Europop number one before the Italian house guys rendered the concept redundant.
#10 Billy, as an A-Ha fan I’ve an ambivalent attitude to “Take On Me” as it’s so unrepresentative of the band’s main material and Pal Waaktar’s Ridgeley-esque posing with a guitar when there isn’t one on the track still prejudices serious music fans against them. You can see that when they play it in concert; most of the audience go mental but others (and perhaps the band) are glad to get it over with.
There was a time – and that time need not concern anyone else here – when I wouldn’t have expected to give this karaoke staple especially high consideration. But, as I have repeatedly been taught in the course of this exercise, just because I think I know a record on a long-term intimate basis doesn’t necessarily mean I know it. So at the moment I feel that the biggest-selling single of 1985 – the only single to exceed a million sales in Britain that year – is entirely justified in holding that title.
“The Power Of Love” was truly a word-of-mouth record; unlike most autumn Europop hits, it was a ballad and that summer’s clear last-dance favourite. The holidaymakers returned and the record began its slow, organic ascent to mass popularity. Over July and August the single, A-listed on local commercial radio stations, was already selling strongly in Scotland and the North and crept into the lower half of the national Top 75. Then as autumn set in, Radio 2 belatedly picked up on the single, helping it break the Top 40 barrier; three weeks later, it was at number one.
Although Rush is an American artist, the single’s performance in her homeland was surprisingly modest; it reached only #57 on Billboard, and the song did not do well there until Celine Dion’s cover (and also her international breakthrough hit) a decade hence. The feeling appears to have been that was Rush’s reading was somewhat too European, in both production and delivery, for transatlantic tastes, whereas Celine’s version very cleverly makes the song slightly more American (including Michael Thompson’s sometimes intrusive guitars) and therefore more palatable.
The original record was conceived and recorded in Germany, and indeed originally boasted German lyrics. A new English lyric was composed by Rush in conjunction with one Mary Applegate, but co-writer Gunther Mench acted as arranger and producer. There is heavy irony about Rush displacing Midge Ure at the top of the charts, since Mench’s arrangement is almost entirely indebted to “Vienna” – but then the latter was equally indebted to Walker’s “The Electrician” so we see the filtering process hard at work here. The general atmosphere is one of a displaced Euroamerican trying to emulate the template of the Anglo-American power ballad and not quite getting there but in the process accidentally inventing something else.
It begins quietly if imperiously with Rush’s sonorous, vulnerable “The whispers in the morning” and builds up from there with patience infinite (the single lasts a full six minutes). As with the spiral staircase of the first movement of Gorecki’s Third, Mench’s music and Rush’s voice methodically add on extra layers of depth and meaning as the song’s ambition climbs higher. The song is about sexual uncertainty and latent fear (“Sometimes I am frightened but I’m ready to learn”). Gradually the singer’s timidity matures into confidence, and on towards the apex of bold revelation; Rush’s turning point is when she peaks with the “can’t” of “The feeling that I can’t go on” and follows that line with the liberating “is light years away.”
The song’s central tenet of “‘Cause I am your lady/And you are my man” was what essentially sold it – as a Scot I could sense naturally how such sentiments, expressed in such a way, would appeal to a very central yearning. There has been some criticism that Rush’s vocal is perhaps too dispassionate, pitch-perfect at the expense of emotion, even slightly congested. But I think her performance just about perfect for the emotions which the song demands. Celine’s delivery is technically flawless, and in the first verse in particular she demonstrates her ability to melt and twist her soul around the song’s emotional corners, but ultimately she sounds a little too sure of herself. The song, however, is supposed to be sung by someone who doesn’t necessarily know what love is, is deeply scared by it, so Rush’s reading is a nerve conduction study, concerned with doing the right thing and learning the language rather than long having mastered it.
And finally she frees herself with that tremendous and not entirely expected high C “love” at the end – she has literally come to the top, is triumphant and humble, and so the song ends on a long, sustained choral-synth chord…as though the hurt of Joy Division’s “Decades” had somehow been remedied.
As a pop record, this “Power Of Love” is very nearly perfect, and perhaps a little too perfect, since FGTH’s “Power Of Love” – not to mention “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” – does finally go that extra, ambiguous and tormented mile in order to attain greatness. But twenty-four years after its success, it now reveals itself as an intricate wonder, with one of the finest and – yes – noblest female vocal performances of its era at its trembling core.
A quick aside from my rocking chair:
I’m glad somebody mentioned Nice Work. A fine novel indeed – vied with The Satanic Verses for the 1988 Booker, which went to Peter Carey in the end. It’s many years since I read it and I don’t have a copy to hand, so comments I make are from an increasingly unreliable memory.
As a professor of Eng Lit, whose unusually lucid and readable academic essays must have opened doors in the murky labyrinths of literary theory for many more than just me, David Lodge quite deliberately spreads the semiology (and insider jokes) thickly in his novels. Nice Work is full of references to the nineteenth-century industrial novel (Hard Times, Shirley, Adam Bede, North and South and, mischievously, Sybil, or The Two Nations). His protagonists names are carefully chosen and pointed – Victor Willcox: all power, bluster and machismo, and Robyn Penrose: gender-ambiguous, literary and romantically impractical. Willcox isn’t the representative of Thatcherism, he stands for old-school conservatism and the small skilled manufacturing businesses that were being stifled. The Thatcher element comes from within his own business, the rival undermining him by promoting his own de-skilled service enterprise selling, if I remember correctly, sunbeds.
As for the matter in hand: this song is a leitmotif in the book. It’s associated with Willcox, who plays it loud in his car, and it stands, I think, for the kind of industrialised, well-crafted but artistically-limited pop-song that goes with Willcox’s line of work and character. I can’t remember what music Robyn Penrose espoused, but she does talk to Willcox about The Power of Love as a text to be deconstructed. I have a sneaking suspicion that she favoured the classical repertoire, which would fit with her bourgeois betrayal of her radical ideals.
Nice Work appeared in 1988 and presumably was being written even as the pillars of Thatcherism collapsed in the market crash and subsequent stagnation in October 1987.
Incidentally, I find it odd that this might be seen as a ‘girly’ record. Perhaps I’m influenced by the book, but I think it has “male menopause” stamped all over it. Odd, too, that 1980s pop seems to be a lad’s thing, whereas pop in the early-to-mid 60s was definitely aimed at girls.
I’ve been guilty of commenting on recent number 1s on memory, something I could easily do up until late 84/early 85, but I realise I don’t know the recent chart toppers anywhere near as well.
So, after a couple of listens to “Power of Love” this morning, some observations:
“The song, however, is supposed to be sung by someone who doesn’t necessarily know what love is”. Interesting you should say that, as this is both sonically and in its glacial construction, closer in feel to Foreigner’s “I Don’t Want to Know What Love Is” than BT’s “Total Eclipse”.
It also has the stately feel of “Move Closer”.
But, the comparison with Nelson does it no favours.
I am going to have to go against the grain here, because I found this thoroughly hard work. As a composition, and as a recording, it is sorely lacking in dynamics. JR’s vocal, while admirably restrained, leaves me cold.
The Phil Collins fill into the second chorus grates.
And the verse melody is wearing.
There simply is not enough going on musically for this to sustain over 3 and a half minutes, let alone the bloated six it runs to.
I don’t hate it, I don’t doubt the sincereity of the artist and writers, I just wouldn’t ever want to hear it again.
This spent two weeks at number one in Australia, and did nothing for my 17-year-old ears; I imagine I saw it as another sign of a duff chart year. But my reaction today is surprisingly positive. There’s an earnestness about Rush’s performance that disarms my default dislike of power ballads; the jerky upper-body dance moves on the video only add to that. The European underpinnings may have turned off the American market, but endear it to me: I hadn’t realised that this could be considered part of a mid-’80s mini-invasion of German-related acts, but musically it makes sense.
Tom questions the lyrics, but those also make sense to me: feeling “lost … lying in your arms” is feeling lost in happiness, losing herself in the moment; and “the feeling that I can’t go on is light years away” is surely unambiguously good, because that’s a long way away indeed. (“Kilometres” presumably didn’t scan.) Taken as a whole, the lyrics capture that falling-in-love feeling of blissful security tinged with apprehension, and the apprehensive aspect makes for an unusual and effective hook.
It’s never going to end up on my iPod, but I can see the appeal. 5.
NB I’m not saying the lyrics don’t make sense – I’m saying the song is so stretched-out that the gaps between the phrases can create a disconnect between one half of a line and another.
(It’s a technique that reminds me a lot of Smog records, oddly!)
Ah, gotcha. I was wondering if the “light years” was confusing matters; my first reaction to that phrase is always to think “time-no-wait-distance”, and that line feels very different when you read “time” into it (“it’ll all end eventually, but for now we’re good”).
Maybe that disconnect is part of what sold the song? It keeps you focussed on the words, trying to make sense of them – and when you succeed you feel rewarded, like after completing a crossword. I enjoyed that puzzle… I enjoyed that song.
TOTPWatch: Jennifer Rush performed The Power Of Love on Top Of The Pops on three occasions;
26 September 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Depeche Mode, The Style Council and Bonnie Tyler. Janice Long and Dixie Peach were the hosts.
10 October 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Red Box, The Smiths and The Cult. Steve Wright and Mike Smith were the hosts.
17 October 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Shakin’ Stevens, Elton John and Colonel Abrams. Peter Powell and Mike Read were the hosts.
Light entertainment watch: Only a handful of UK TV appearances for Jennifer;
DES O’CONNOR TONIGHT: with Spike Milligan, Status Quo, Jennifer Rush (1988)
LIVE FROM THE PALLADIUM: with Tom Jones, Bob Carolgees, Jennifer Rush, Brian Conley (1987)
TARBY AND FRIENDS: with Max Bygraves, Jennifer Rush, Karen Kay (1986)
WOGAN: with Jimmy Jewel, Nigel Kennedy, Sophia Loren, Jimmy Ruffin, Jennifer Rush (1986)
WOGAN: with Rick ‘Grizzy’ Brown, Elton John, Liz Robertson, Jennifer Rush, Steven Wright (1987)
WOGAN: with Peggy Ashcroft, Richard Briers, Placido Domingo, James Fox, Paula & Ann Lewis, Sarah Miles, Jennifer Rush (1989)
#31, abs.
This comes back to where a song may be something you ‘do not like’, purely because it’s ‘not meant for you’. I can applaud the performance and the subject, and the ‘journey’ taken, and even rate it highly, without ever wanting to hear it again.
(This comment written before #33 came in. Blimey, don’t these comments come in fast!)
This spent two weeks at number one in Australia…I imagine I saw it as another sign of a duff chart year.
It doesn’t seem quite so duff when you look at the US 1985 #1s which included:
Crazy for You
Don’t You (Forget About Me)
Shout
Everything She Wants
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
A View to a Kill
Every Time You Go Away
Money for Nothing
Take on Me
Miami Vice Theme
Power of Love (Huey Lewis)
That lot feels very representative of the whirl of pop music in 1985 IIRC, moreover all the connections to movies and tv (Breakfast Club, Back to Future, MTV itself, Miami Vice) make it a real time-capsule of much of the era. (1985 was also notably the year of Brazil, Out of Africa, Blood Simple, and Purple Rose of Cairo at the movies, and of Edge of Darkness on tv.)
Swanstep, you’re right, I’m probably just applying the selective memory of our number-ones focus. Lots of good stuff that year. (I’m holding my “Take on Me” comments in reserve until we get to its partner…)
This reminds me of school discos – all that 15 year-old angst/lust pent up in the four walls of the school gym. I think there is a good song in there, but can’t tell whether it would need the arrangements, the lyrics, the singer taken out of the equation…
30 – MikeMCSG – that would explain why they played The Sun Always Shines on TV as their ‘nod to the past’ on Jonathan Ross recently?
# 45 You’re sailing close to the bunny wind there Leveller but yes that’s a more representative song.
Compared to Celine Dion it’s very restrained, then again two planets colliding would seem understated next to the power of her lungs. But that light-operatic wailing never did it for me, nor that bloody awful drum sound. If you’re going to do that at least make them BIGGER. So while I admire it’s ‘good taste’ that only shows up all the things I don’t like about it.
more on Vic and Robyn’s musical tastes in ‘Nice Work’: as mentioned previously Jennifer Rush features heavily not just TPOL but it quotes heavily from other tracks on the album too…and he tries to pull Robyn with their help!
Vic’s other favourite Randy Crawford gets the right pasting from Robyn though eg “don’t you think she’s a little bland?….sentimental?”
All we get to know about Robyn’s own tastes are that she’s seen at home listening to a Haydn harpsichord concerto and she and her brother used to go to punk gigs above pubs.
Watching the linked video and re-reading the above comments, I found myself nodding vigorously at lonepilgrim’s comments at #8. I guess it addresses the question of whether you need to strain or put conspicuous effort into a vocal in order to convey passion and emotion. Lots of singers these days do the opposite – strain and wander all over the scale without convincing you it’s anything other than a vocal exercise – but Rush sings with clarity and control and totally gets the message across.
As Conrad commented, it has the stately feel of “Move Closer”, and as I said in that thread, this is another one like “Paris, Texas” that demands that you take it on its own terms and at its own pace. The voice – unearthly in the opening lines, soaring as the music reaches the climax – keeps your attention (OK, mine at least), and her look is pretty compelling in the video too. Overall it’s a really class act, warm without being as cloying as Foreigner. It’s the 37th best-selling single of all time in the UK, and the biggest selling single in the period between Band Aid and that Robin Hood film we’ll be discussing in a few Popular-years’ time.