Comments on: MIDGE URE – “If I Was”

By: The leveller

The leveller — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:18:23 +0000

I think his ‘A certain smile’ – which only scraped the charts a few months later – was a better song too

By: MikeMCSG

MikeMCSG — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:54:49 +0000

#51 I remember that review and took it rather personally. Having said that I’ve applied it myself to the likes of Whitney Houston and most of all Dido !

By: The leveller

The leveller — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:49:45 +0000

Much maligned (only partially unfairly – the handshapes in the video and the sharp japanese designer suits didn’t endear him) -I remember Smash Hits slamming the album this came off as being for people who don’t really like music and also quoting James Last for some reason. Ultravox weren’t a bad band by any stretch -maybe they kept Midge’s more sickly/naff tendencies in line to boot.

and #41 Swanstep – enjoy the pleasuredome

By: Rory

Rory — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:18:43 +0000

Erithian @30 – yes, I’d missed that – wasn’t as scrupulous about checking on every Popular entry before I started commenting.

I’m still a little bemused by the strong reactions here: 4’s I could understand, but 2’s? Oh well. I wasn’t really listening much to the lyrics or the production, but I like the soaring chorus here; been humming it for the past day, in fact. There were so many more offensive 1985 number ones than this.

By: anto

anto — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:43:40 +0000

Thanks for the link to everyhit Izzy. A useful site to check what the competition to the songs on Popular actually were.

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:44:01 +0000

re 46/47 Midge @ 781: “in your face Cocker!”

By: Izzy

Izzy — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:23:50 +0000

Midge in a very creditable joint 781st place, incidentally.

By: Izzy

Izzy — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:59:06 +0000

All your number one stat needs here: http://www.everyhit.com/1000numberones/index.html – it’s the second set of links.

By: Garry

Garry — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:37:09 +0000

I liked it – I’d completely forgotten about it until now, but it was one of those songs I remember from when it came out. I was eight, but the chorus was memorable and the lyrics were about soldiers and sailors and other boys things, even if I didn’t understand what the song actually meant. I still think it holds up as a good piece of pop.
Tom is right though, it is so 1985, but there is nothing wrong with that. Wouldn’t it be harder to be nostalgic if everything sounded ageless…

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:28:05 +0000

Re 42: I think Tom has mentioned this already (?) but there’s a type of number one that happens when an act is ripe – often immediately after a massive record that should have reached no.1 (the Troggs’ With A Girl Like You, an upcoming Norwegian entry) – or overripe. Midge, though in my head Once I Was sounds like a 5, was definitely overripe.

Re 40: Izzy, can you remember where you saw that list? It sounds like a beautiful set of stats.

Anto, Not wanting to be pedantic, half a dozen no.1s in 2003 (pre stand up/crooner effort) were at the top for 4 weeks or more, one of them for 6. But I will say no more as, hey, we’re still in gruesome ’85!

By: TomLane

TomLane — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:51:33 +0000

Ultravox/Midge Ure neither combination charted much in the U.S., and this didn’t either, and after revisiting it I think we got this one right. One of those bands/artists that was big over there but not over here. I have some stray Ultravox singles on 80’s comps, and the only way I remember them is having seen this and the bands songs on MTV back in the day. I keep meaning to buy an Ultravox compilation though.

By: anto

anto — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:06:47 +0000

Izzy if it makes you feel better I also found #1-watching became frustrating around the same time. Even when my beloved Manics conquered the top 10 I don’t recall feeling especially triumphant.
In that case it wasn’t so much hype as it was their ” turn ” to have a number one (Another pet theory I won’t go into tonight).
It’s likely the discussion as to wheter that period took some of the shine off even the acheivment of 7 days at the top is something we will return to.
What reversed the trend? A stand-up comic from Bolton and a crooner from Steel City singing about Amarillo. The movement of the charts got faster but diversions were no less weird?!?!

By: swanstep

swanstep — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:23:05 +0000

@#38. Your observation makes me think about what a very particular construction a #1-record, and #1-watching really is, and how it (deliberately) makes the sort of thought you want us to have rather difficult.

Compare with the movie box-office-watching culture that’s sprung up in the last 15 years or so (before that only movie execs followed this stuff). Although people do have some sense of what, say, the #3 movie in the land is, what they really care about and know most about is how much money’s being made. Something can open as the #1 movie but everyone can know that that was just a slow week, or that the movie in question had a huge budget and that *this* level of performance for *that* film makes it a friggin’ disaster (lots of people *will* now lose their jobs). The upshot is that people (god knows why if they’re not in the biz. really) have their eye on cumulative box office, per-screen averages, that sort of thing. Whether something makes it to #1 on a given day or week is treated as an epiphenomenon of no interest whatsoever. (There will never be a Popular-like review of #1 movies.)

A #1-record by way of contrast (& perhaps especially in the UK) has always been the most mystified state of chart feeling. One can be quite sure if one has it or not, but not of what it is that one has just had. Is it just a fortunate parting of the waves, or is it really a #1? Is it just the ejaculation of particular die-hard supporters and assorted record company low-lifes, or are you #1? Is it just involuntary fan-boy and -girl contractions? Or is one *having* a #1? Thank you, and good-night.

By: Izzy

Izzy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:16:36 +0000

I like that ‘one week at number one’ theory. The 1996-2006 period blew even those meagre achievements out the water, by removing the need to acquire momentum to climb the charts in the first place. I saw a list recently of number ones by longevity, ranked by weeks at no.1, top five, top ten and so on – the bottom of the list totally dominated by that era, it’s remarkable how short a lifespan some of them had*.

We’ve had on a long run where I’ve been familiar with almost every record (Midge being an exception) – but I’ve a feeling it will come to a shuddering halt around then, which ought to have been a time when pop meant most to me. Getting to the top via manipulation and never daring to even try to attract the public, these will be the Gordon Browns of popular.

* I shan’t say too much, but by these measures Blur are likely to forever hold the all-time record for least successful number one

By: Bolanzipgun

Bolanzipgun — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:44:45 +0000

I still remember this song being a big event for a few weeks. After watching the video again I liked the song as much as I did at the time. It’s ok. Strange clobber worn by Midge and that 80s pop style of doing up the top button without a tie. I don’t think I’ve ever met an ‘Ultravox fan’ in my life though (could probably say the same for U2 since about 1993)

By: anto

anto — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:40:26 +0000

On earlier entries there’s been talk about typical January number ones and the like. I think of ” If I Was ” as a typical one-week-at-number-one number one i.e it neither caught the wider imagination nor burgeoned in popularity once it was top of the charts. Rather it was fortunately timed to gain sufficient notice in a week when record-buyers had no particular hobby horse, but had nonetheless lost the taste for whatever was at number one before it. Fern Kinney or ” A Little Time ” by The Beautiful South would be similar instances.
Of course such a theory became redundant between 1996 and 2006 when countless records spent one week at number one, but at this stage I think there were tracks that benefitted from slow weeks on the chart or lulls from one craze to the next.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:33:42 +0000

I’d have thought the worst line in “Your Song” was the one about sitting on the roof and kicking “off some moss” and it making him “quite cross” which forget just in the song but along with Squeeze “Up The Junction”’s “…telly/nappies smelly”, Adrian Gurvitz “gonna write a classic gonna write it in an attic” and the Specials “Too Much Too Young”’s “spread some manure in your bed of roses” (well isn’t that want roses want to make them grow?)must be 4 of the worst lines in the history of pop…

By: MBI

MBI — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:23:18 +0000

I really, really don’t understand the hate for such an innocuous song. It’s like saying you hate Jay Sean’s “Down” — I mean, I guess you can, but WHY? It doesn’t leave enough of an impression to prompt such emotions. You guys confuse the living fuck out of me.

By: Izzy

Izzy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:18:22 +0000

Haha, terrific review – except that I’ll need to go and hear the thing now!

By: anto

anto — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:22:46 +0000

I’m leaping to the defence of this one. I’ve always thought it has rather a handsome melody. Admittedly the tracks flaws stick out. Other posters have been listening to those words closer than I ever did and yes the lyric is gauche. Midge Ure is a limited vocalist probably at the very top of his range here (he certainly seems to be really pushing it on ” se-ven oh-shuns I’d SAEE-L to her “) and as for the production – not only of it’s time, but also heavy-handed.
For all that I like the build and the way the chours swoops and soars. Also I think the restraint of the middle-eight is creditable.
In short a score of 2 seems rather harsh to me.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:11:33 +0000

tanya anticipost in the related articles

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:57:16 +0000

As for Midge Ure, me and a friend when we were 16, said “Midge Ure, with this Ferrero Rocher you are really spoiling us”.

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:38:54 +0000

Oddly I remember the cover of this single more than the really pedestrian dross contained on the song. Those pin-face executive toys (yes the era of the exec toy has arrived) which I coveted for a bit, until a mate got one and almost poked his eye out with it (hint kids, Midge has his eye shut before pushing his face into the pins).

I also always mix it up in my head with XTC’s Dear God, which is actually quite a different song, but feels similarly pompous. But while O have a love/hate relationship with that song (why hasn’t Richard Dawkins covered it?) I think If I Was is pure tat.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:13:48 +0000

Rory – it sounds like you might not be aware of this either:
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/04/slik-forever-and-ever/?cp=0

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:13:02 +0000

He was in the Rich Kids!