YAZZ AND THE PLASTIC POPULATION – "The Only Way Is Up"

It may have come out in time to lord it over the charts during the Second Summer of Love; it may have a production credit for Coldcut – but there’s nothing outrageously radical about “The Only Way Is Up”. It’s the fifth cover version to get to number one in 1988, and nobody who’d heard “Don’t Leave Me This Way” then this would feel the ground of pop had shifted dramatically.

If there’s something new here it’s in the record’s self-assurance, the way it acts like that ground has indeed moved. Even that might be a trick of hindsight – The Communards sound to me more subcultural than they were, because the hi-NRG music they’re drawing from never broke as big as house. Whereas Yazz And The Plastic Population are working within what has turned out to be the basic grammar of dance-pop for most of the next two decades: uplifting lyric, house rhythm, big diva voice up front. So from the moment “Only Way” announces itself – with that glorious express train horn sample – it makes everything else sound like it’s trying too hard. Don’t worry about that stuff, it says, this is what pop music sounds like now – and it’s only going to get better.

This effortless quality meant I soon felt “The Only Way Is Up” had been around forever, and people talked up Yazz as a natural star. Ever since it’s been a record I take for granted rather – I never had to work at liking it and perhaps for that reason I never loved it. This despite its excellent qualities – Yazz herself is a good deal more subtle than a lot of the house divas to come, and her warm, chuckling performance helps the song evolve from one about hope in the middle of desperate poverty to a more generalised having-it-large deal. (You could take this as a criticism, I admit, but Coldcut and Yazz are pragmatists: that chorus is too enormous simply to use on social concern!) What I like most is also what dates the record most: the bustle of the production, that excitable rhythm-and-sample chatter from S’Express still bubbling away under the more structured song.

Score: 7

[Logged in users can award their own score]

GLENN MEDEIROS – "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You"

PHIL COLLINS – "A Groovy Kind Of Love"

Name*

Website

Name*

Website

57 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Billy Smart

1 July 2010 15:42

Cover version? After 22 years, this is news to me!

JLucas

1 July 2010 15:46

I had no idea this was a cover, actually.

You’re right, it’s very much one of those songs that pretty much instantly became a standard, so you do sort of take it for granted. Slightly forgotten or underrated pop classics are much easier to love.

A lot of people assume that it’s a SAW production too, probably more because of the time it was a hit than anything. Kylie took to interpolating it with ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ on her Showgirl tour to quite joyous effect.

As for Yazz, my favourite of her brief run of hits is the moody ballad ‘Fine Time’ which is really quite lovely. She really does have a wonderful voice and great phrasing, but alas never had the material or the ambition to make as much of a mark as, say, Sade. Apparently she’s a born again Christian these days.

Tom

1 July 2010 15:52

I remembered reading – or somehow knowing – it was a cover at the time, but had never heard the Otis Clay version and had to Wiki the song to remember what. The fact of it being a cover is irrelevant TBH (though it explains the verses about being evicted etc.) – just amused me that there had been so many.

pink champale

1 July 2010 16:05

well *i* knew it was a cover! (er, after reading ‘the manual’ last week, anyway).

Tom

1 July 2010 16:17

Ah, that would be how I knew! (Well, “at the time” now meaning “a few years later”).

Mike Atkinson

1 July 2010 17:00

Just very quickly: I cannot recommend the Otis Clay original (first heard on a Coldcut comp CD, appropriately enough) too highly! It is one of my favourite tracks OF ALL TIME! I even danced to it on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square last year! That’s how good it is!

(Thoughts on Yazz to follow, but I had to rep for Otis asap.)

Dan Worsley

1 July 2010 17:11

7 seems about right. My first thought was this would be an 8 or 9 but on listening again it’s like being reunited with a long lost friend who you’re pleased to see but soon after are glad to see the back of them.

lonepilgrim

1 July 2010 17:36

I never thought/think of Yazz as a diva. She doesn’t bring many if any gospel/soul qualities to the performance and at times sounds a little off key. Somehow the slight amateurishness is balanced by her super-positive enthusiasm – all of which seemed/seems in keeping with the euphoric non-hierarchical vibe of the early rave culture – it was a level playing field in several senses of the phrase.

Matthew H

1 July 2010 17:38

I didn’t know this was a cover version until – woo, synergy – I heard the original last week. Couldn’t believe my ears.

Love the cheeky bouncing bass waddle on the Yazz version, but never bought it. Which is rare indeed.

swanstep

1 July 2010 17:41

A seriously dull/blah/lifeless/forgettable/boring record with a competent vocal (she sounds like Donna Summer in a few spots – good for her) makes it (at most) a 5 for me.

Erithian

1 July 2010 17:44

In a word, effervescent! Agree about the intro horn sample, and the “hold on” backing vocals distinguish it further – like a split-second of Gregorian chant at a rave. And Yazz herself is irresistible – sexy for the guys and fun big sister for the girls, with a vocal perfectly suiting the song and giving extra pop zest. No wonder the writers of “I’d Rather Jack” had the Reynolds Girls plump for Yazz as the modern personality they’d rather sing along to than boring old Fleetwood Mac. It does run out of ideas and steam a little, though, and is perhaps just under a minute too long.

“Fine Time” cropped up in last year’s edition of Mike’s “Which Decade?”, and I remarked then that it had gone completely under my radar in ’89, but was a lovely sound. Wiki tells us she’s just turned 50 and is an active member of a Baptist church in Spain – apparently she performed on an edition of Songs of Praise a year or two back. Good luck to her.

wichita lineman

1 July 2010 18:06

After the full on hook-a-second Theme From S’Express, so gleeful it still makes me want to laugh out loud, this sounds disappointingly thin on the chorus, as if someone has left out some big ’88 synth pad.

As for Otis Clay can I also recommend the Live In Japan version of the Spinners’ Love Don’t Love Nobody, about 15 mins long and THEE most intense deep soul record.

23 Daves

1 July 2010 18:11

This is probably one of the very few songs which appears to deal with the topic of the optimism and almost exhiliration which can surround being young, in love and having nothing else left to lose. The Beatles dealt with some of that briefly on “You Never Give Me Your Money” (“See no future/ pay no rent/ all the money’s gone…/ But oh that magic feeling/ nowhere to go”) but that was otherwise soured by some of the pessimism that surrounded it earlier in the song. But “The Only Way Is Up” takes the concept of being flat broke, young, and still having the (possibly misguided) positivity to think the situation can be got through, and knowing that the wheel has fully turned. And how do I know it’s a young couple in the song? Well, they don’t mention having Junior to feed for one thing…

For all that, it remains for me a song which became too over-familiar to truly love. When you’re still at school or college, long-term summer number ones seem as if they’ve been at the top all year (and of course, in the case of “Love Is All Around” some almost were). Whilst I liked this when it was first released, it eventually grew tiresome. In fact, I have an mp3 of it which was ripped from a budget compilation CD, and I can see from Last FM that I’ve never listened to it in the last five years. That’s extremely telling.

What causes it to lack longevity for me where so many other huge hits don’t is the fact that it appears to peak too soon. It starts off in such an excitable, full throttle manner that towards the end it has nowhere left to go. Its unstoppable drive is also its weakness to an extent, and the lack of new ideas in the last minute is noticeable. Even now, it still feels too soon to return to this song for me. I know it far too well.

Still, there’s no question that I liked it a lot at first, and for that reason alone I’d have to give it a 6.

will

1 July 2010 18:47

Agree with everyone about the over-familiarity of this. It’s still a classic though, the exact point when house music and pop became fully conjoined.

I wonder what Coldcut think about it these days? By the mid 90s they had become very sniffy about the pop dance mainstream this had played a part in creating.

thefatgit

1 July 2010 18:57

No complaints with the song or the score. I can only echo Wichita Lineman’s assertion that it’s a bit thin chorus-wise, possibly because Yazz is pushing her vocal envelope somewhat. I remember TOWIU being a proper hands-in-the-air floorfiller at the time, but overfamiliarity with the song turned me off it for a while. I have not come across Otis Clay’s original before today, but thanks for the chance to discover it. Such a warm and soulful voice.

“Fine Time” was a lovely lover’s rock track and I still have a great deal of fondness for it. I don’t seem to remember her hitting the top ten after then.

Andrew F

1 July 2010 20:26

I didn’t know it was a cover either, but it’s still a cracker.

Also am I right in thinking that Yazz’s previous entry on the chart (Doctorin’ The House, properly ‘with’ Coldcut) is the source of the pun in Doctorin’ The Tardis, or is there something else they’re both playing off?

And to fully invoke the rule of three (with the mention of the Manual above) – is that a KLF record that’s being spun in the video, 10 seconds in? I thought it went DtT -> The Manual -> the rename?

Alan Connor

1 July 2010 21:04

Three passing thoughts:

I just went upstairs to see if I could find the printed score of TOWIU, which I bought from Russell Acott (piano/radio shop mentioned in Larkin’s Kim!) in 1993 so that my band could do an acoustic cover (hopefully would not have been whacky but)… but all I found on that part of the bookshelves was The Manual (ha!) and the sheet music for “19”.

I suppose I did know from ownership and rereading of The Manual that this was a cover, but I have no memory of any other version and look forward to them.

“I can see from Last FM that I’ve never listened to it in the last five years. That’s extremely telling.”

My God, my last.fm data tells me NOTHING about what I’ve actually listened to or heard!

anto

1 July 2010 21:05

Agree with the review on this one.
You would struggle to dislike such a catchy optimistic tune, but it’s a bit too showroom kitchen bright to really love.
Yazz gives the track it’s charm where Coldcut give it savvy polish. By the mid-90s there had been too many slices of generalised glee in the charts and not just from the dance scene. Oasis,Cast and Dodgy were culprits of this kind of thing too.
For the time being I’m sure the GBP were just glad to see the back of Glenda MacDormouse.

tonya

1 July 2010 21:20

This may be the first cassingle I ever purchased. I hadn’t heard it, but I’d read it was a huge hit in Britain and I was expecting something more monumental and less pop. Agree with commenters above that Yazz isn’t a traditional R&B/gospel diva, that’s where Donna Summer is an interesting comparison. I wonder how well the same record would have done in America (where it peaked at 96!) with a “blacker” sounding singer, but it was probably still a year too early.

Conrad

1 July 2010 21:44

There has always been something very unappetising about the sound of this record. None of the parts seem to mesh – the fat bass sound isn’t right for the dull, too busy, bass line. The drums and horn samples sound so plasticky that the whole thing sounds like a big gimmick.

I’d give it a 4.

Rory

1 July 2010 22:07

Andrew F @16: Doctor in the House.

flahr

1 July 2010 22:08

Never heard it before. It is quite good, isn’t it? But I was thinking at the time that it was a bit thin and a 7 is what I would say too. And it is certainly a pop we have seen before rather than something particularly new. Still good stuff.

@16: “Doctorin’ the Tardis” is a pun on “Doctorin’ the House” is a pun on “Doctor in the House”.

23 Daves

1 July 2010 22:35

#16 – Blimey, you’re right! I’d never noticed that before.

The KLF were using the KLF Communications record label whilst they were still called the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu – in fact The Timelords single was released on the KLF label – so the use of the name wasn’t completely new at the time of their Trance rebirth.

lockedintheattic

1 July 2010 23:36

How on earth did so many people miss out that this was a cover? I remember it being quite widely discussed on the radio at the time, and sorry Mike, but having heard tis version first I do still prefer it to the Otis Clay version (good as it is).

7 seems really harsh to my ears – for me, this is one of the most exhilarating, uplifting, joyous number ones ever. Yeah, there’s not all that much to it, but it feels like she’s enjoying every second, and she carries you with her all the way. Easily a 9 for me.

MikeMCSG

2 July 2010 09:12

Good of its kind but just not my thing. I wasn’t happy at the time so this fell on stony ground.

Actually nothing dates the Reynolds Girls song (which I was sneakily quite fond of) more than the reference to Yazz.

mark sinker

2 July 2010 09:28

much too close to this to have an opinion that isn’t direct friendly fondness: i was in a band w.matt of coldcut at college, and saw him evolve from anxiously smart PPE student and t.heads fan to speedy computer whizzkid (his first job after college) to pirate DJ and dance-music expert, to laidback label producer and boss

Mike Atkinson

2 July 2010 09:50

I’m surprised that so many people are lukewarm about this; what’s not to love? Yazz turned out to have her limitations as a vocalist, as (unlike Erithian at #11) I thought “Fine Time” exposed, but here she’s the perfect singer for the job: a beaming, slightly gawky, inclusive presence on Coldcut’s propulsive, rough-edged, DIY-ish re-contextualisation of Otis Clay’s masterful original. The squelchy acid synth was bang on for the summer of ’88 – an instant pop assimilation of the dance revolution, and soooo much better than D-Mob’s bloody awful (and, in my experience, floor-clearing) cash-in. I also like the way that the soaring, Al Green-style string counterpoints from Clay’s original are retained in Coldcut’s chorus arrangement. This was my biggest floor-filler of the summer (until Inner City’s “Big Fun” deposed it), and I can’t hear it without visualising dozens of fists punching the air (“the only way is UP – POW!“) on my dancefloor, week after week after week. A nine from me.

Rory

2 July 2010 10:16

Never got its hooks into me the way it did most of you, so I’ll give it a 6. I like the lazy trumpets. Number 2 in Australia, and number 1 next door in NZ.

punctum

2 July 2010 11:47

Cor blimey, what a dreary old bunch of grumbling, fun-hating hippies you lot sometimes are! I bet you were all listening to Fields of the Nephilim and à;GRUMH at the time.* No offence…

As it happens I have quite a lot to say about this – 1,354 words, I make it – but like “Wuthering Heights” it’s far too personal to go on here. Anyone wanting to read my take on the record, email me at marcellocarlin at hotmail dot com and I’ll send you a copy.

*look, so was I, but hey I was digging pop also as well (© Gary Crowley) and along with Ornette’s Virgin Beauty this was top sunshine listening in ’88 London.

Paytes

2 July 2010 11:59

Interesting comparison with Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me’. Yazz & The PP’s update of Otis Clay is sooo much more adventurous in terms of where the song was taken.

Burbling acid b-line, vocal cut-ups, wailing house horns compared with Jimmy C and Co’s flat xeroxing of Themla Houston’s definitive version of DLMTW…

A 9

punctum

2 July 2010 12:04

The great thing is that when first I heard this on the radio it sounded like a bootleg, whereas “DLMTW” has all the life produced out of it.

Is “Doctorin’ The House” the only top five hit to feature the (sampled) voice of Simon Bates (“THE MUSIC MAKER”)?

Erithian

2 July 2010 12:11

Surely not, Marcello, as the (actual) voice of Simon Bates is buried deep in the mix of the Ferry Aid record!

Paytes

2 July 2010 12:22

PS. is this the first Popular No1 record cover to be from the CD single?

mike

2 July 2010 13:02

Which reminds me – we bought our first CD player in the summer of 88, and I bought my first two CD singles: EBTG’s cover of I Don’t Want To Talk About It, and Leonard Cohen’s First We Take Manhattan. But I wouldn’t make the full switch to CD singles for another four years.

Billy Smart

2 July 2010 13:36

Number 2 Watch: More SAW: A whole four weeks of Kylie Minogue’s The Locomotion – I knew that *that* was a cover version! – and then two weeks of Brother Beyond’s ‘The Harder I Try’.

Gavin Wright

2 July 2010 13:41

I’m pretty sure I’ve never once listened to this song of my own accord but I do quite like it – this is mainly down to the fond memories I have of it being played at childhhod birthday parties alongside Belinda Carlisle and the entire SAW catalogue. I also think that the big, booming, mid/late-’80s production is really effective – it’s not a style I’m normally a fan of but it occasionally works brilliantly in Hi-NRG pop (‘Always On My Mind’ is probably the best example). A 7/10 seems about right.

Billy Smart

2 July 2010 13:44

Hm. I know that its good, I knew so at the time, but its so overfamiliar as to hold few surprises for me. Like ‘Perfect’ a few entries ago, it has a chorus that’s easily extractable for TV clips and I find it hard to reconnect with its original pop single context.

My old landlady saw Yazz perform at her Surrey church last year! ‘An Evening With Yazz’, £5. She talked a lot about the people who she had worked with in euphemistic terms – “I could tell that UB40 were in a troubled place when I met them”, etc

punctum

2 July 2010 13:57

“The Harder I Try”: the closest the Isley Brothers ever came to a UK number two hit (it samples the drum intro from “This Old Heart Of Mine”). Follow-up “He Ain’t No Competition” very underrated; the sitar FX make it sound like SAW are tackling the theme to Sir Prancealot (one for the teenagers there).

Mike Atkinson

2 July 2010 14:24

FUN FACT: According to my mate Nick’s new book 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, the first chapter of which is dedicated to “The Harder I Try”, Pete Waterman described “He Ain’t No Competition” as their “message to Matt Goss”.

mark sinker

2 July 2010 14:29

“I could tell that UB40 were in a troubled place when I met them”

This euphemism means: “Their records are unutterably whiny facepalm but my faith teaches me to turn the other cheek, UNFORTUNATELY”

punctum

2 July 2010 14:36

Hiiiii, it’s Daaaaale, and we’re going back forty-one years, all the way to 1988, and at number 15 it was UB40 with the nineteenth of their seventeen consecutive number nineteen hits. Here they are with the LOVE-ly Chrissie Hynde and “Breakfast In Bedfordshire”…

Mike Atkinson

2 July 2010 14:58

FUN FACT (2): Yazz ended up marrying the head of her record label. His name was Jazz. Too cute!

Steve Mannion

2 July 2010 15:01

Had three beautiful boys – Gaz, Baz and Daz

Mike Atkinson

2 July 2010 15:33

I should also mention the very servicable Bam Bam remix of TOWIU, which came out as a separate 12″ a few weeks later and extended the track’s dancefloor life for a couple more weeks.

As for the fabled Summer Of Love, the full force of the revolution rather passed us by in Nottingham, but a few acid tracks worked well at my club nights: Mr Lee’s “Pump Up London” (complete with Nottingham name check), Baby Ford’s one-sided “Oochy Koochy (F.U. Baby Yeh Yeh), Jolly Roger’s “Acid Man” and Dave Dorrell’s Afro Acid mix of Mory Kante’s “Ye Ke Ye Ke”. We had just moved our night to a bigger club, and had upgraded from fortnightly to weekly events, with a good core crowd of regulars. And oh joy, the new club had a SMOKE MACHINE and a STROBE… except that it was a rather shonky strobe, which you had to switch off for about half an hour between uses.

I used to save my smoke-and-strobe moments for Patrick Cowley’s remix of “I Feel Love” (which suddenly sounded contemporary all over again), running Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech over one of the extended instrumental sections. It was hardly Shoom or Spectrum, but we tried to keep up, in our own sweet provincial way…

punctum

2 July 2010 16:30

WHY OH WHY HAS THERE NEVER BEEN A GROUP CALLED SHONKY STROBE

LondonLee

2 July 2010 18:07

This is an 8 or 9 easy, full of the joys of summer and pretty much my idea of perfect club music (though I agree that Yazz’s voice can’t quite handle the chorus) of which there started to be a steady stream of at this point (like ‘Big Fun’ as mentioned above)

Chris Gilmour

3 July 2010 16:17

The sound of the summer holidays twixt middle and high school, love the pseudo-acieeed bass squelches and popping percussion track. Funnily enough, I had known this was a cover at the time, unlike many others, but for years I had it in my head that it was by Otis Redding, not Clay. I was no doubt misled by Bruno Brookes or one of his ilk.
I get the feeling that if Coldcut had carried on in this vein (also evidenced by the marvellous ‘People Hold On’) then the post acid-house pop landscape would have looked quite different. As it is, the Beatmasters produced the follow up, ‘Stand Up For Your Love Rights’ which now sounds a lot better than I remember it.

Billy Smart

4 July 2010 22:19

TOTPWatch: Yazz & The Plastic Population thrice performed ‘The Only Way Is Up’ on Top Of The Pops (we’ll come to the Christmas edition in the fullness of time);

28 July 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Shakin’ Stevens and Siouxsie & The Banshees. Gary Davies & Nicky Campbell were the hosts.

18 August 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Aztec Camera, Chris Rea, Fairground Attraction and Julio Iglesias. Mike Read & Simon Mayo were the hosts.

intothefireuk

7 July 2010 15:17

Have to disagree with the majority here.. disliked this intensely then and still do. The train horn is the first irritation and it speeds downhill quickly after that. Every sound on the record irks but mostly it’s Yazz’s over-reaching, souless voice combined with the obvious easy sentimentality of the lyric which sink the whole affair for me. It does sound exactly like a SAW abomination and is all the worse for it. It gets a 1 just because it isn’t. Now ..where’s my Fields of the Nephilim 12″ ?

vinylscot

7 July 2010 15:52

I definitely did not like this one little bit. All that “punching-the-air” every time the title was sung really did my nut in. (OK, so I have no sense of rhythm whatsoever, and could never time my punch right, resulting in me looking like an even bigger tw*t than I actually was/am)

Aside from that I really didn’t think it amounted to much then, and I haven’t changed my mind now – it does sound rather sub-SAW to me (was the train-horn supposed to be “wacky”?) – not my thing at all.

…and did no-one else just think that Yazz was just a bit, well, scary?

wpDiscuz

Latest comments on Popular

Steve Mannion on NELLY ft TIM McGRAW – “Over And Over”15 April 2024
*hums 'Baby Jump*
Weej on MR OIZO – "Flat Beat"10 April 2024
Re-reading the comments here and James Masterson's is typically (unintentionally) hilarious - just the sheer inability to imagine any experience…
Andrew F on ELVIS PRESLEY – “One Night” / “I Got Stung”1 April 2024
And with video (of the strap part)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShuA9UPRFd8
David Howell on JENNIFER LOPEZ – “Get Right”28 March 2024
I do hope we get to that one - it has the potential to be one of the longest and…
Cheeky Tracks on CELINE DION – "My Heart Will Go On"28 March 2024
Romeo & Juliet is far better than Titanic.
Number1sblogguy on JOHNNIE RAY – "Just Walking In The Rain"28 March 2024
Overwrought, but Johnnie sells it. The Nabob of Sob, indeed. I can't think of an instance where whistling has enhanced…
Number1sblogguy on FRANKIE LAINE – "A Woman In Love"28 March 2024
Another one I enjoy a little better than Tom's review. It does already sound old-fashioned - after one or two…
Foreign Kicker on WESTLIFE – "Flying Without Wings"26 March 2024
I wish them all the best flying without wings, but only if it is immediately post being launched from a…

Pages

Tags

YAZZ AND THE PLASTIC POPULATION – "The Only Way Is Up"

GLENN MEDEIROS – "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You"

PHIL COLLINS – "A Groovy Kind Of Love"

Latest comments on Popular