THE BLUEBELLS – "Young At Heart"

I always seem to hear this in the background in pubs or on the radio where it has always seemed a fairly pleasant noise with a straightforward hook. I can’t imagine wanting to sit down and listen to it but I don’t feel the animosity or irritation expressed by Tom.
I had no idea about its Bananarama provenance but I will now go and investigate.

OK – that’s a bit wan. An incisive telling of the story of the song here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NJBDQYyohs

3? 3? Gosh. At least a 6 for this: brimming over with enthusiasm, it’s true that it’s not really a song so much as it is a collection of hooks (the magnificently dizzy violin, “waaaalk out the door”, “you’re soooooo”) but three-and-a-half minutes doesn’t seem too much for it to ask.

Elsewhere on the CD single: “Cath” sounds, unsurprisingly, a lot more indie, very Aztec Camera, and is less lithe than YAH but still pretty enjoyable. And then for the benefit of Dexy’s-watch, “The Patriot Game” starts “Come all you young rebels”…

I was ready to defend this, but a re-listen shows Tom to be spot-on. The fairly ok Bananarama song is buried beneath the “YOOOOOOUNG AT HEART” and the fiddly-diddly-dee (the half-arsed solo of which must be the song’s low point).
The reason this got to number one was surely that it still sounds pretty good in very short bursts. For a jingle I would give it an 8. For a song, yes, 3 seems fair.

Going to have to side with flahr at #4 on this one, and really I find it hard to understand the antagonism many people feel towards it – maybe it derives from the fact it was only a number one after a bit of corporate whoring, having reached number 8 on its own merits in the summer of 1984? (The seven ahead of it: Frankie, neil, Frankie again, Prince, Tina, Cyndi, Grandmaster.) Fairground Attraction’s “Perfect”, a similarly foppish type of sound which was also used as an advert albeit after being No 1, was also panned by many on here, and looking back at that thread I see someone filed it next to “Young At Heart” as a “horrible song” even then.

I love Bananarama deeply, and always enjoy seeing their girl-gang image forever young and optimistic, but their original was justifiably an album track. The bits weej says bury it are the very strengths of the cover version – the chorus you can bellow along to and the Bobby Valentino hook (and no wonder he pursued a songwriting credit, it wouldn’t have been anything like the hit it was without him). Thanks to lonepilgrim for that One Show clip btw.

Those intervening years between the original hit and the number one produce a telling contrast in my case – in 1984 I’d just finished finals, hadn’t yet got my results and the summer was a bit of a breeze, by 1993 I was dealing with job, mortgage and the illness of someone close to me. I’d only just turned 30 so “Young At Heart” wasn’t exactly a desperate means of clinging on to youth, but still a reminder of a more carefree time! (Anyone remember them going “Shabba!” on TOTP?)

Oh, and it looks like I get to be the first to mention the bass player Lawrence Donegan, whose career path is not quite as bizarre as Professor Brian Cox’s but is still remarkable. From the Bluebells to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, to working as assistant to Brian Wilson (the MP not the Beach Boy of course) and recording an anti-poll tax song with David Hill (later Tony Blair’s press spokesman), then becoming a columnist on the Guardian and now the paper’s golf correspondent. I wonder if Tom and/or the Swede have met him in a professional capacity?

Light Entertainment Watch;

All of The Bluebells’ UK TV appearances on the list date back to their initial period of success;

THE KRANKIES KLUB: with Bobby Davro, Spare Parts, Al Dean, The Bluebells (1984)

THE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST: with The Psychedelic Furs, The Bluebells (1982)

THE TUBE: with Jools Holland, Paula Yates, Mel Smith, Jimmy Nail, Tona De Brett, Richard Strange, Little Richard, Charles White, Balaam and The Angel, The Bluebells (1985)

WEEKEND: with Paul Jones (Presenter), David Jason, Sue Robbie (Presenter), The Bluebells, Ted Robbins (Presenter) (1984)

I’d never heard this before, or the Bananarama original, and find both of them utterly pedestrian. Not hateful, but nothing I’d want to hear again, so 3 sounds about right.

I’m siding with the ‘can’t understand the particular antipathy’ party on this one. Pleasant and jaunty enough; not something I’d buy, but not something I’d switch off in exasperation.

I see the comparison (#8) with Fairground Attraction. Perhaps there is something a bit calculatedly ‘let’s tick the boxes’ about both productions, and I can see that being irritating. But this one, methinks, has a little more soul to it. Higher than a 3 for me.

When correcting it’s helpful to be gracious. But thankyou!

B-b-but that’s what we like about you!

I think it’s got an undeniably strong violin hook, inasmuch as having heard the track it has been going round and round in my head for days and I can’t shift it. There is a skill to that I reckon. Much of what I had to say has been hit though and I’m not going to cover old ground.

Unfortunately, I don’t like it going round and round in my head for days on end and, as such, I’m piling in and calling this pretty irritating. Not as irritating as some of the real clunkers that have been covered here – but still pretty bad. I recognise I am not being all that fair but I don’t think there is much you can do when something just sticks to the point of driving you to distraction. My Dad’s earworm was Fur Elise and as a result, he couldn’t stand that either.

Other observations.

#3: “Score one for the suits”. Given what many of our pop stars wear nowadays, I’d bet “the suits” at the creative agency are more likely to be dressed on the bleeding edge of fashion/in hipster tat – especially if my dealings with ad agencies are any indication.

#5: “I’ve always considered it to be a single that proves that the right tune with the right advert can perform miracles chartwise” – spolier bunnies obviously abound here but I think providing music for ads/jingles for ads is a neglected musical skill. Producing pieces of music that are simple, short, memorable, identifiable, etc, should, you’d think, provide a grounding in producing successful/popular songs. Have there been many artists who have gone from commercial jingle production into successful recording careers? The only one I can think of is Justin Hawkins from The Darkness (who funded the recording of their first record out of his earnings from an Ikea commercial if the internet is to be believed).

#20 as per usul, it depends on what you call a “successful” career. David Dundas had a bunch of hits after “Jeans On” for instance..

I kinda wish they’d modified the car bumper sign on the sleeve so it said “TOP HIT IN ENGLAND”.

The singer himself made more of an unexpected and brighter second day in the sun by dropping words from other hits of the time into the end of YAH performances on TOTP including a brogue-tastic “TECHNO TECHNO…” and “SHABBAA”.

Thus, McCLuskey accrues partial blame for Chris Martin AND George Lamb >:[

With the early 90s charts having been festooned with re-releases from only 10-15 years before (tho they seemed practically medieval to me then – long past vs short past and all that) AND ad-exposed older songs this was an inevitable double whammy. But can you imagine a modern equivalent in which Alien Ant Farm’s ‘Movies’ or Aqualung’s ‘Strange And Beautiful’ or Love Inc’s ‘You’re A Superstar’ tops the charts off the back of a heartstring-yanking ad for being confused about operatic meerkats buying any car? Not quite.

Didn’t that Aqualung song become a hit from being featured in an ad in the first place?

I think the music and the vocal are miles better than the bananarama original, which feels limp by comparison. My mum loved this version (I don’t think we realised it was a cover) when it was first out (84 did someone say, sounds right). She had the album, and may even have been to an gig. I found it enjoyable enough – as much as a 15 yr old could find his mum’s music – and was rather baffled by the ad-based resurrection years later. For some reason I associate it with gay rights – i have no idea why. Maybe it was a mid-80s geordie lefties thing.

Had no idea this was written by all three members of Bananarama PLUS Bobby Bluebell (and, ahem, Bobby Valentino). I remember Edwyn Collins thinking the Bluebells were a bunch of usurpers and the ‘Nanas version does sound reminiscent of Orange Juice’s Holiday Hymn.

As for Glen Ponder-lookalike Valentino, though… it’s a hook, but it’s also the most irritating part of the song. And he was doing session work – have some dignity and roll with the punches, man! Did anyone ask you for their £75 back on all the flops you worked on?

I wonder if anyone ever chased a writing credit after doing remix work? Anyone know?

The verse and bridge of YAH are perfectly pleasant. The chorus is bellowed and awful. The 1983 single Cath, possibly their best song, had a similar, unnecessary terrace chant production on the chorus. As did the less good follow-up Sugar Bridge. I wonder if this was the group’s idea or the producer’s? Who DID produce the Bluebells anyway?

I’m all questions today.

Re 31: It really varies. I know someone, now a Ghost Box artist, who was paid what I thought was a tiny amount from an Orange ad. I had a co-write on a song used in a L’oreal ad, used for a few weeks, which paid my mortgage for the next three years. It depends if it’s shown locally or internationally, and I imagine the YAH VW ad would only have been shown in the UK.

NOW! watch: We’re onto Now! 24 and YAH gets the prime spot. Sub Sub and Snap are both 8 or 9’s for me that fell one place short of Popular. YAH would be the worst song on an otherwise very consistent and entertaining comp if it wasn’t for the dreadful Hue & Cry (anyone remember why THIS was re-issued?):

Now! 24, Disc 1

The Bluebells : “Young at Heart”
Take That : “Could It Be Magic”
Sub Sub feat. Melanie Williams : “Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)”
Snap : “Exterminate!”
Sister Sledge : “We Are Family”
Snow : “Informer”
Shabba Ranks with Chevelle Franklin : “Mr. Loverman”
Shaggy : “Oh Carolina”
East 17 : “Deep”
Stereo MCs : “Step It Up”
Arrested Development : “Tennessee”
Robin S : “Show Me Love”
Lulu : “Independence”
West End featuring Sybil : “The Love I Lost”
2 Unlimited : “No Limit”
Cappella : “U Got 2 Know”
Sunscreem : “Pressure Us”
Monie Love : “Born 2 B.R.E.E.D.”
Hue & Cry : “Labour of Love”

There’s a sense of forced jollity to this song that I absolutely cannot bear.

It’s like one of those godawful pub singalongs where half of the participants are secretly thinking of killing themselves.

I put Perfect in the same bracket.

Nice that it keeps Bananarama in red wine expensive dinners with Janet Street-Porter and the Pet Shop Boys, but beyond that it’s a no from me.

Rec 35: Yes, Independence was pretty flat, but I still prefer it to “Winthrop, my bay-beh!” as a friend of mine thought Hue & Cry were singing.

No particular at-the-time memories of this, I’m afraid – it shows up in my memory as one of those tracks which didn’t seem to need inventing, just an elemental fact.

Which is not to say that is either good or essential, just that I can’t quite imagine a pop universe in which the words “Young at Heart” would not make me instantly think of that chorus.

I’m not sure if that ability to claim ownership of a phrase counts as a skill or not. I mean, a terrible record can still become inextricably linked to a word or phrase, but whether there’s a certain genius in spotting these linguistic latch points and exploiting them for maximum brain colonization.

Come to think, what short idiomatic phrases or cliches aren’t also instantly recognizable as linked to some pop song? I mean, the whole of English phraseology is a broad field so there must be some, but what are some of the obviously uncolonized gaps?

#34: I have to say that track listing is virtually a standard Radio 1 playlist for the time. I think there was a Hue & Cry best of to promote but I’m saying nothing against the Coatbridge pre-post-modernist brothers.

The McCluskey brothers, a.k.a. Ken on vocals and Dave on drums, I knew as “Stan” and “Aber” respectively from their time in Raw Deal, Bothwell’s number one punk band (well, where was the competition, some cruel people might ask but I retort GAH!). They used to do things like “Bothwell’s Burning” (i.e. the Clash’s “London’s Burning” with altered lyrics) and “I’m Gonna Pogo All Over Your Head,” which began life as an improvisation on Emerson Lake & Palmer’s cover of “Nut Rocker.” Many’s the time I witnessed their fulsome rehearsals in “Storky’s Garage” and I even joined in on a couple of numbers, e.g. “White Riot” and “Mongoloid” (a lot of spectators were impressed by the fact that I knew the lyrics of “White Riot”!). Then everything and everyone moved on as things and people do but the McCluskey boys eventually hooked up with Bobby Bluebell and the rest you know (a fertile period, the early eighties; Friends Again were also from Bothwell and a year above me at school – they eventually bisected into the Bathers [Chris Thomson] and Love & Money [everybody else plus James Grant]. “Honey At The Core” – what a record).

“Young At Heart” was a bit too eighties for me, production-wise (I probably did prefer the Bananarama variant), but I begrudged them none of their success and was very pleased and proud when it eventually went to number one, allowing Ken to go on TOTP in white tuxedo and chant “TECHNO TECHNO TECHNO TECHNO!” during the fiddle break. Magnificent stuff.

Also Ken and Dave were still saying hello to me in the street in ’84 while “I’m Falling” was climbing the charts – that has stuck with me and I’ll always stand by them. Their subsequent militant folk-indie work as the McCluskey Brothers is feverishly underrated.

N.B.: the other two members of Raw Deal were Dixie Deans on bass and Leon Trotsky on guitar.

(It occurred to me that this was roughly parallel with the East Kilbride movement – Reid bros, B Gillespie, Roddy Frame – but since I didn’t grow up in EK I can’t comment on the parallels.)

@40 – but for an earlier generation/those not up on 90s chart pop/those outside the UK and if it makes them think of any song at all it would probably be the ‘Young At Heart’ made famous by Frank Sinatra and covered by many others (Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Barry Manilow, The Cure (!) etc).

I thought you might like to know that Bobby Valentino received very little in the way of royalties. Both the publishers and PRS (Performing Right Society) claim that they failed to collect any royalties and there is less than 10% of the expected performance royalties for “Young at Heart”on the statements.

Amazingly, there are quite a lot of documents contradicting the claims of PRS and some people have begun calling them the Publisher’s Rip-off Society.

Regarding PRS… I read an interview with Dave Clarke in which he was asked how much influence John Peel’s patronage was worth and he replied to the effect that Peel sorted out his PRS for him, in that PRS claimed he wasn’t played on the radio but Peel provided data on when Clarke’s songs were played and passed it to PRS who then had to start paying him. Sorry to digress.

Always preferred “Cath”. Was it about being seduced by a teacher?

Hmm, having just tracked down their version of “The Patriot Game”…I really can’t be polite about it. They certainly watered down the lyrics – very much so – and apart from one reference to the IRA (“old” rather than “bold”, too) – did their best to remove anything contentious at all elsewhere, changing “Quislings” to “rebels” and omitting entirely more controversial verses…..in which case, I say, why bother? Complete mismash, musically not inoffensive, yeah yeah, somewhere between Orange Juice, Lloyd Cole, Friends Again, but really….why start performing such a song if you are going to almost completely remove its meaning? They didn’t have to mean it, but they could have sounded like they did…

I see the first comment on one of the Youtube postings of “Cath” is “Bay City Rollers of the 80s”….. harsh, but not that unfair….