Popular
23 August 2010
#625, 25th March 1989
A wonderfully simple, wonderfully dense record. “When you call my name / It’s like a little prayer / I’m down on my knees / I want to take you there”. That’s just the chorus: 21 words, and what’s happening in them? A pun on Madonna’s name, setting up her dual role as divinity and supplicant, receiving a prayer while on her knees, drawing a parallel between the (apparently) fixed relationship of worship and the mutual shifts of self and role in sex. Which is all “Like A Prayer” is, even before you look at the video: sex and religion, entwined like lovers all through the song, their identities melting. more »
Tom in FT /Popular • 134 Comments
11 August 2010
#624, 11th March 1989
As a pop star, Jason Donovan had two big problems. The first was his singing, which we’ll get to, but the second was that Stock Aitken And Waterman didn’t seem to have much idea what to do with him. Kylie couldn’t sing terribly well either, but she immediately turned out to be a missing piece in the PWL puzzle: a girl who could be ordinary without being boring. It helped that she’d had a few years experience as an actress doing exactly that, too. more »
Tom in Popular • 70 Comments
9 August 2010
#623, 25th February 1989
The facts: “Belfast Child” is a song written by Jim Kerr in grief and anger after the atrocity of the 1987 Enniskillen bombing, built on a traditional Irish folk tune. “I’m not saying I have any pearls of wisdom,” he’s quoted on Wikipedia as saying, “But I have a few questions to ask.”
Noble intentions rarely translate into effective outcomes. There are an awful lot of cynical and rude things one could say about “Belfast Child”. They might involve words like “stupefying”, “leaden”, and “is that the time”. Or indeed, “desperate”, “wannabe” and “Bono”. more »
Tom in Popular • 130 Comments
5 August 2010
#622, 28th January 1989
Reaction amongst friends at the time was a sort of bemused approval: it was a Good Thing for this kind of record to get to number one, but nobody really seemed to love it, and the Pitney/Almond team up was faintly baffling. Of course, that was the odd-couple appeal of it: a gentleman from some ancient past allied to a leathered perv from a more recent one. And even though I remembered “Tainted Love”, in the bright world of Kylie and Jason both pasts seemed equally lost, both sides of this revenant alliance surprising. more »
Tom in Popular • 77 Comments
29 July 2010
#621, 7th January 1989, video
Stock Aitken and Waterman’s skills were based on simplicity: get a feeling, nail it. Their songs are unapologetically direct, with very little ‘side’ or ambiguity. The acts they worked with were similarly well-defined – the square but adorable one (Rick), the sassy ones (Mel & Kim), the confident everygirls (Sonia, Reynolds Girls), and then of course there was Kylie, sunny and optimistic whatever disappointment love threw at her. So “Especially For You” is Kylie’s happy ending, based very much on her Neighbours’ character’s happy ending. more »
Tom in Popular • 40 Comments
27 July 2010
WELL DONE EVERYONE! We’ve made it through 1988. But the 80s still have more to throw at us. Let’s regroup and take stock of the year – use the poll to indicate which tracks YOU would have given 6 or more out of 10 to.
And use the comments to discuss the year in general – which, as has often been mentioned in the regular comments boxes, was actually pretty damn good.
Which of these Number One Singles of 1988 Would You Have Given 6 Or More To?
- PET SHOP BOYS - "Heart" (60%, 179 Votes)
- S'EXPRESS - "Theme From S'Express" (60%, 177 Votes)
- BELINDA CARLISLE - "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" (59%, 175 Votes)
- VOTED: THE TIMELORDS - "Doctorin' The TARDIS" (52%, 155 Votes)
- YAZZ AND THE PLASTIC POPULATION - "The Only Way Is Up" (47%, 140 Votes)
- VOTED: ENYA - "Orinoco Flow" (38%, 112 Votes)
- KYLIE MINOGUE - "I Should Be So Lucky" (37%, 109 Votes)
- TIFFANY - "I Think We're Alone Now" (33%, 97 Votes)
- U2 - "Desire" (27%, 79 Votes)
- THE HOLLIES - "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" (23%, 69 Votes)
- FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION - "Perfect" (22%, 65 Votes)
- ASWAD - "Don't Turn Around" (16%, 47 Votes)
- BROS - "I Owe You Nothing" (10%, 30 Votes)
- WHITNEY HOUSTON - "One Moment In Time" (6%, 18 Votes)
- PHIL COLLINS - "A Groovy Kind Of Love" (6%, 17 Votes)
- WET WET WET - "With A Little Help From My Friends"/BILLY BRAGG - "She's Leaving Home" (6%, 17 Votes)
- None Of Them! (5%, 14 Votes)
- GLENN MEDEIROS - "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You" (4%, 12 Votes)
- CLIFF RICHARD - "Mistletoe And Wine" (4%, 11 Votes)
- ROBIN BECK - "First Time" (3%, 9 Votes)
Total Voters: 296
Poll closes: No Expiry

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Tom in Popular • 96 Comments
26 July 2010
#620, 10th December 1988, video
Squeaking into the Christmas canon just as the gates were closing, “Mistletoe And Wine” is a hard song to listen to charitably in late July. Mind you, it was a hard song to listen to charitably in late December 1988. Good Christmas songs since Slade’s 1973 breakthrough have been an extension of pop – aimed at the same buyers, performed in the same style, with only the seasonal trimmings and sleigh bell presets to mark them out from what else was going on. “Mistletoe And Wine”, on the other hand, is in the tradition of “When A Child Is Born” – it has nothing to do with any of the currents of pop in 1988. It’s the first Christmas hit since “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” to be aimed squarely at people who only buy singles at this time of year. more »
Tom in Popular • 56 Comments
23 July 2010
#619, 19th November 1988, video
Minor Popular milestone alert! This is the very latest song that I had no recollection of whatsoever before starting this project. Never saw the advert, never heard the record. So I’d have been really happy if this had been an unexpected delight, or even a minor pleasure. As it is the only unexpected thing about “The First Time” is its attempted fake-out: you think it’s going to be one kind of bad song (vaguely motivational ballad) and instead it’s another (vaguely agonised power ballad). more »
Tom in Popular • 50 Comments
21 July 2010
#618, 29th October 1988
Brian Eno famously used to write his lyrics – or claim he did, at any rate – on the basis of sound rather than meaning: if the phonemes danced in service to the song, that was good enough for him and what they actually said could go hang. I get something of that vibe from “Orinoco Flow” – the arrangement’s pert staccatos bubbling up into Enya’s cute, clpped phrasing. But she corrals her syllables into something that does make sense: a hymn to travel and motion for their own sake. more »
Tom in FT /Popular • 92 Comments
14 July 2010
#617, 15th October 1988
Written for the Seoul Olympics, “One Moment In Time” makes an age-old connection between sport and character – if you want to win, you have to suffer, be more than you thought you could be, and so on. Do this, and you might be rewarded with your moment when you’re “racing with destiny” – only caring about the Track And Field is a classic US Olympic-watching stereotype, of course, though I guess all your dreams are a heartbeat away in the dressage or synchro too. more »
Tom in FT /Popular • 63 Comments
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