24
Jun 10
GLENN MEDEIROS – “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You”
Another summer hearthrob, another forgettable puddle of ice-cream and tears. Harmless Hawaiian himbo Glenn was promoted here as a kind of male Tiffany – same corn-fed origins and good-luck story. Like her, he’s not an especially good singer: unlike her, his plod through a devotional checklist doesn’t have the enthusiasm or lift to make it likeable. Maybe the arrangement can help? Nope: it’s a disaster – a key change that would shame Eurovision, greasy sax, and a session guitarist doing his freewheelin’ best to upstage Medeiros completely. A thoroughly grim experience.
2
I’m prepared to stick up for the song as a piece of Air Supply-like wet rock (the chorus is pretty close to Even The Nights Are Better), but my memory had fogged the production. It really is a demo that got lucky.
I’d give Push It a nine and a half, but what mark would people give to – also denied by NGCMLFY – Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana?
I remember Glenn M looking close to tears rather than sulky on Juke Box Jury. He clearly hadn’t been briefed on what to expect – it falls into the same playground bullying tv category as Clive Anderson vs the Bee Gees (rather than Richard Madeley vs Shakin’ Stevens, which is comparable to the best episodes of Mad Men).
I may have brought this up on the Saving All My Love For You post, but I wonder what medicine Gerry Goffin was on in the late 80s. It seems (and there is sad evidence on the Carole King Songwriters dvd) that he was cabbaged by acid by the late 60s, so it’s understandable how he could have forgotten how to write such literally awesome lyrics as Goin’ Back, Some of Your Lovin’, and Natural Woman. What, then, led him back to the typewriter after a decade-plus period of inactivity to write schmoov radio horrors like this, Miss You Like Crazy and would-be onanist anthem Tonight I Celebrate My Love?
NGCMLFY was probably a freak hit after it had first wormed its way around Europe. It was a minor hit in Belgium at the end of ’87, reached no.1 in Holland in the spring, then did likewise in Belgium, and was a no.2 in Norway by the summer.
hold me now, dutch me now
I’ve kind of developed a curious sort of fascination with how thoroughly and completely terrible this song is, so much so that I’ve been as equally satisfied if Tom had given it a 10 as if he’d given it a 1. This song makes my skin crawl. My mother, loves it.
Yes, correct, “Push It” was kept at number 2 by this, as was “The Twist (Yo Twist)” by the unlikely combination of Chubby Checker and the Fat Boys, the latter thus stalling at 2 twice with abominable versions of fondly-remembered classics.
MikeMCSG #12 – I enjoyed Richard Madeley doing Ali G! In on the joke and he pulled it off really well. No, my top cringing moment on that show was the time Judy Finnigan asked Buzz Aldrin if he’d been tempted to unzip his spacesuit in order to have a wee on the Moon.
FUN GLENN MEDEIROS FACT #2!
Bobby Brown agreed to record “She Ain’t Worth It” on one condition. Namely, that Glenn Medeiros teach him how to surf.*
*I learnt this by watching “the Chart Show” (CGI Pop Music show with no presenters, on Saturday lunchtimes in the late 80s on LWT). It was one of the little fact boxes that popped up during the video from time to time.
the last couple of records might not be any good, but they’re giving me a right old proustian rush. i think i can now date fairly precisely that this particular weekend 22 years ago was when i went to my first proper booze and chaos teenage party and had my first snog with a (more than half ironical, i think) brossette who had earlier impressed me by strutting around with her mate in the summer twig light singing ‘push it’.
i have a pretty strong memory of getting ready for the party while blasting out my newly-purchased ‘the hits of house are here’ album, which was and is an absolutely superb compilation featuring not just yr bomb the bass and s’expresses, but also wonderful stuff like the coldcut ‘paid in full’, nitro deluxe’s ‘let’s get brutal’ and best of all the apparently now forgotten ‘shake’ by gene and jim love sampling – probably the ultimate chuck-it-all-in exuberant party record. and when i got to the party i was inordinately impressed that there were some proper goths playing the mission. none of this was probably quite what glen had in his mind, but a large part of my life started that night.
# 33 Yeah I couldn’t see why so many people found it embarrassing either – it was Channel 4 put it at no 1 not me by the way. Probably just a knee-jerk reaction by comedy snobs who didn’t like the idea that a daytime “square” had the same sense of humour. The same people hate Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic” because she dared to reference something she was supposed to know nothing about.
#20: A moderately duff number one does not equal the end of pop.
Later that year he was at number one for six weeks in France with “Un Roman d’amitié (Friend You Give Me Reason)” a duet with a fifteen year old French childstar/singer named Elsa.
I have never knowingly heard this record – or even heard of it. At least, I hadn’t until now.
Nil point.
@Punctum, 20. Fair enough. But NGCMLFY is such a feeble representative of broad, mainstream-ness (the forthcoming Phil Collins #1 produces the same reaction in me – it really invites contempt or even someone to just push it down the stairs! – and the Bros #1 similarly) that a ‘splintering into mutually uncomprehending sub-cultures’ period in music starts to seem inevitable.
Wichata,31 asked above about MJ’s ‘Dirty Diana’. For me at the time that song/vid and everything else on Bad was further evidence of a kind of decadent (and not in a good way) pop mainstream that nobody really liked. Like a Prayer period Madonna has grown on me over the years, but at the time (1989) it too seemed kind of empty and played-out: Madonna was just the best of a very rotten bunch in the charts. Anyhow, it was all chart-shunning indie/metal/harmelodic jazz for me for the next year or two.
Since we’re all casting our minds back here to 1988/1989, here’s how Spy magazine in the US (a short-lived Private Eye wannabe) saw the real world cup in 1989. Afghanistan currently looking good for 2010, with home advantage again proving decisive. (Vietnam was always only a pretender!)
Not much to be said for this slice of Lymeswold. Kind of sub-Carpenters I think. It’s a crime that the Carpenters never figure in Popular.
The Kensington by-election – the most fun you can have in politics – was held on Bastille Day 1988 during the reign of this ditty at the top. It was, I think, the one day in the campaign that it didn’t rain, it was thought at the time to be the wettest in by-election memory. Labour came within a whisker – 815 votes – of taking the seat and the following day the Sun ran the headline KINNOCK IN BY-ELECTION DISASTER. In Kensington!
The rump of the old SDP were making a last stand and saved its deposit by a handful of votes thanks to the vigilance of [FX: coughing] a certain Labour scrutineer who pointed out a bundle of SDP votes placed in the Conservative pile. I wrote to David Owen afterwards, politely suggesting that he donate the saved deposit to the London Lighthouse. He did, and wrote me a lovely reply.
I and my fellow constituency officers, previously thought to be a bunch of semi-housetrained Trots, were lionised afterwards in the Shadow Cabinet Office and afterwards in the Westminster Arms for our hard work and enthusiasm. It would never happen today.
My dad really liked Lymeswold, and was sad when it was cancelled: Camberzola is actually better and he liked that more, but Lymeswold cracked open the general market for it, I suspect. (Lymeswold was a critical failure, but a popular success: except — like many a one-off hit from a small independent label — the success was so big it became a problem; just as pressing and distribution costs could bankrupt a small company, the pressure of unexpected demand meant that Lymeswold got into the habit of sendoing out unripened cheeses to the supermarkets, jst be be sure something was therre…)
I don’t really like the descriptor “cheese” for music (like “dinosaur”, it uses something popular and beloved as a term of dismissive and poorly reasoned disdain) but I *do* like the idea of being specific and concrete — “if this song is cheese, then it’s PIE DANGLOYS!” and etc. Especially as we can the directly link it into Marna’s monumental FT cheese-review database! (It reminds me of Chuck Eddy’s great proposal to drop useless rock genres — which are after all often misleading and unhelpfullt socially charged — and recatebgorise pop in terms of the technical terms for cloud formations: cirrus, cumulonimbus and so on. “Music that is able to put a ring round the moon”…)
So *is* GM the Lymeswold of cheese? Er, I can’t remember. EVEN THOUGH I OWN TWO GLENN MEDEIROS 12″s AND AN LP (which I can’t currently put my hands on)!!!
(Note to self: tidy up yr fkn records mark…)
Hah! I very nearly bought some Pie D’angloys today but decided on Coeur De Lion camembert instead. Goes nice with strawberries.
I too dislike the term ‘cheesy’ as a derogatory term for music, which is why I said ‘Lymeswold’. I love cheese but make a clear distinction between what one might call ‘craft’ cheeses (but I don’t like that term either, whether applied to cheese or beer) and the tasteless stuff churned out of factories to bulk up the supermarket shelves. Once I nibbled a bit of supermarket mousetrap only to find that a) it was a piece of Lush soap and b) that the soap tasted better than supermarket mousetrap.
‘Lymeswold’ was not so much a cheese as a marketing concept, devised in an office block in Thames Ditton. Just as Glenn Medeiros is no more than a marketing concept.
I have some Pie D’Angloys at the moment. It was being sold cheap in Morrisons.
Does anyone else remember Medeiros’ appearance on the Smash Hits Poll Winners’ Party of 1989? The would-be-heartthrob’s one-hit wonder status was surely set in stone that day when he collected Worst Song, Worst Singer, Worst Hair, Worst Clothes, etc.
Unlike Bros, I can’t remember anyone at all liking this at the time.
TOTPWatch: Glenn Medeiros performed ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You’ on the Top Of The Pops transmitted on July 7 1988. Also in the studio that week were; The Communards, Everything But The Girl and Eighth Wonder. Simon Mayo & Janice Long were the hosts.
Light Entertainment Watch: Just the one UK TV appearance on the list;
CANNON AND BALL: with Sandra Dickinson, Glenn Medeiros, Nigel Benn (1988)
One thing I’ll say for this – and even though at just 16 I was waaaaaay too cool to be interested – is it’s memorable (as long as you’ve heard it, obv, with a nod to some above). I still remember every word of the chorus.
Can’t remember the verse though, so scratch that.
Like Alan at 23, I think I was inching away from the charts; certainly didn’t have the fervour I once had. I think my Prefab Sprout obsession was bedding in. That plus everything that would eventually make up the House Hits 88 cassette. Rok Da House, dudes.
@41 – Spy magazine was so much more than a “Private Eye wannabe”, it was one of the greatest and most influential magazines ever.
@41/50: agree with lee: Spy at its peak much funnier than the Eye long ago became (though “wannabe” possibly in the sense that PE is now nearly 50 years old, whereas Spy only lasted 12…)
@LondonLee, 50. Fair comment I suppose. Spy certainly seemed immensely important at the time (late ’80’s/early 90s) principally because it introduced British-style satire into the US market, but, you’re right, Spy had its own original, glossy ambitions (which its writers have carried on to other magazines – NY magazine feels a hell of a lot like Spy for example). Still, it never became self-sustaining and folded quickly, perhaps because something about its initial, slightly snobby, vaguely anglo-philic style was a hard sell to Americans? I dunno. At any rate, The Onion was authentically midwesty homegrown and has always been much more successful than Spy ever was.
Glenn Medeiros to Spy magazine… how weird. I’d say @52 is correct about its ultimate failure. You could also say Spy was just too New Yorky. One amusing piece of Spy lives on in perpetuity, however. The index in the back of The Andy Warhol Diaries was written originally as a piece for Spy by its writers and because it was so perfect was incorporated into all future printings of the Diaries. (Hard to believe the original printing of the Diaries had no index – if ever there was a book that demanded one!).
I’ve just had the following email sent to my YouTube account:
“Hi I have a question for you. You don’t have may in your collection for some video recordings with Glenn Medeiros? You know.. I’m looking the performances from the TV, interwievs, etc… Maybe you could find the time and write to me??If you have something with him.. It’s important for me. Thanks and I hope so that you answer
Greet! ”
Is this one of you lot messing around? It is completely beyond me why anybody would ask me this question! (The answer is ‘no’, by the way…)
@48, Re: Light Entertainment Watch. Actually, Billy, Mr Medieirioies made another tellybox appearance a little later in tha ’88!!!! Although, you probably wouldn’t term it “light entertainment”, at least in the intentional sense!!!! That’s because Medearydross was on Janet Street-Porters “yoof” tube melange “Network 17”, presumably with the intention to plug his follow-up gramophone, only to find the show’s theme this week was this new-fangled “acid house” thingy, which was still in the still-underground-hip-before-moral-panic phase!!!!!!!! And, what with the year’s trend of sticking a bontempi rhythm over an old gramophone and releasing it as “[Original Title] 88!!!”, the producers thought it would be a good idea to get in a mobile recording studio, rope in some UK “Acid House” producers, and remix Madeira-Cake’s chune LIVE IN THA STUDIO!!!!!!
Of course, this was before that Ableton thingy, so they had to do it bit-by-bit on analogue tape inbetween the usual pre-filmed guff, including the psychologist who interviewed crap pop stars about how often they masturbated, and some really rubbish neo-satanist who thought acid house was the new Devil’s Music!!!!! And between that, we go back to find they’ve done about another 21 seconds of the LIVE ACID HOUSE REMIX LIVE IN THA STUDIO, and oh how’s it going guys?!!?!!? “Oh, it’s cool!!!! We think this bit needs more guitar tho!!!!!” So, by the end of two hours, they’re playing the “finished” result to Medeirieme, who looks looks like a meerkat being shown an Open University coursebook, and his reaction is “Erm, it’s really great?!?!?!?”!!!!! And to top it all, the rubbish neo-satanist from the earlier filmed segment pops up in the studio to give it his thumbs-up!!!!
And that was the last time I ever saw Glenn Medieierieoireiroxx on tha tellyboxx!!!!!!!!!!!! Not that I’m complaining.
Re ‘cheese’ or ‘cheesy’ as derogatory terms: the derivation is surely not from cheese but from the word ‘cheese’ as allegedly used to create a smile for photographs. ‘Cheesy grin’ was surely where it started, and the extension to music represents the kind of variety-show fixed-grin fakery that is being criticised. Therefore it is not an insult to cheese as such!
(Sorry to be so late – I am catching back up on Popular now.)
Does the term ‘cheesy grin’ itself predate photography and the practical use of the word cheese in that context? I’m thinking Cheshire Cat obv. Wikip sa “it has been said that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat that looked as though it was grinning”
Photography predates Alice’s Cheshire Cat character by some 40 years. Not sure the moulded-cat Cheshire cheese story has ever been confirmed: it’s proposed in Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, but quite tentatively. BUT MAYBE PAINTERS USED IT!
Da Vinci: say cheese darlin!
Mona Lisa: i dislike cheese, i shall say olive oil instead
Da Vinci: d’oh!
That same wiki page does mention Cheshire cat references from the v late 18th century tho.
Mona Lisa’s expression is a result of having a gobfull of Saint Marcellin.
The phrase “Grin like a Cheshire Cat” apparently does predate Alice: but it is not known whether the cheese story is the explanation.
This is another one I have no idea about. Can never remember having ever heard it and probably wouldn’t recognise it now…or would I?
But what about this? Look at the picture of this Medeiros lad and then tell me he’s not the spit of the kid who popped up in a couple of Clint’s Spag Westerns – a cheeky piss-taking lookout in “For a Few Dollars More” and then a shameless murder victim of Van Kleef’s in “The Good, The Bad…” If you don’t agree or you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll gladly get me coat.
This is a horrendous record. Please tell me he’s taking the piss?
#33: at the time they were queuing up behind Medeiros, Pepa was engaged to one of the Fat Boys.
Hawaiians in Popular: We are not done yet. The lead singer of a bunnyable group we have yet to encounter hails from that state, but I can reveal no more, dontcha think?
You better stick with that…
…and just stay the way you are, because we are most certainly not done with the Hawaiians.
Oh yes. Missed an obvious one there. Amazing.
I. Hear. That. You. Got. Divorce. From. Your wife. Tammy. Armstrong. Your. Dog .is. gonna. Get. Better. How. Old..is..your.dog. l. Am. Your. Best.friend..from..timothy..renken.
RIP Gerry Goffin. I prefer “I’m Into Something Good”.
Just watching the ad break for Broadchurch and this, of all things, rears its ugly head.
Oh, Thinkbox, up yours!