JASON DONOVAN – “Too Many Broken Hearts”
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.
Couldn’t Jason do the same? Maybe: PWL had gone down that route a little with Rick Astley, but his appeal was more the Clark Kent demeanour and Superman voice, and Jason had, so to speak, no vocal spandex in his closet. That comically awkward bit of guitar at the start of “Too Many Broken Hearts” sounds like a gesture to the idea that Jason, being a boy, might have some connection to Boy Music, but it’s a complete bluff: this is business very much as usual. “Too Many Broken Hearts” seems like SAW taking the path of least resistance, giving Jason some solid material and hoping he doesn’t make too much of a bish of it.
As an insurance policy he’s mixed down in the big earworm chorus and the “backing” vocalists track his vocal line to the note. He gets the verses to himself though, giving us plenty of opportunity to appreciate his trundling delivery, tiny range and the strain every time he has to do anything dynamic. The overall vibe is one of karaoke – not in the usual critical sense of someone doing a crap cover, but the unpleasant sensation you get when you’re singing karaoke and realise you’re only actually comfortable on the choruses: the verses become tightropes of potential embarrassment. In this context the pre-chorus climax – “I’ll be HURT I’ll be HURT” – is a triumph, not just because Jason actually nails it but because there’s a huge sense of relief every time he gets there.
And that’s when I realise SAW’s diabolical cleverness. Because by that point in the song I’m on Jason’s side – I want him to get through this, which is exactly where the record needs to be emotionally: “Too Many Broken Hearts” has to seem like a struggle or else the guy singing it will just come over as an overconfident dick. And so we have a record which ought to be awful but somehow isn’t really. Phew! Now, if only they don’t do something really idiotic and give him a ballad to carry…
4
“not very successful attempts to chase critical respect”
is this not the Confide in Me, Indie Kylie, remixes by Massive Attack (or something) era
i was thinking more of the period after ‘confide in me’, which i think was pretty successful all round (though it turns out wasn’t a number one as i’d always assumed)
haha “seen as a good thing by critics in theory with little reference to actual recorded output” also = n.cave’s entire post-birthdayparty career!
at least this would be my (not entirely fair) counterjab here; in the era i think you mean, “in theory” was trumping a LOT of actual-sound-of-actual-recorded-output all round the place…
@17 Oh no, sorry. I hadn’t realized he’d… y’know. Will shut up now on matters JD, and go off to study the next page of the UK Number 1s list more closely.
@25 Her Manics collab was fab! Also, not commercially in the doldrums back home; Kylie Minogue and Impossible Princess both did very well in Australia (the latter a platinum album there).
@27 Number one in Australia!
@20 Filmed in the north-east Victorian town of Beechworth, sez Wikipedia. Ned Kelly country, so your wild-west interpretation wasn’t that far off.
@21 Did Kylie actually date Nick Cave? I thought that was just a working relationship. Being Michael Hutchence’s gf was the turning point in Australian music critics’ eyes. Cave sang at Hutchence’s funeral and is godfather to his daughter, so presumably that’s where the link with Kylie came from.
“Confide in Me” is very much a product of the Sexkylie Hutchence-dating years.
Or not quite – it came just after them. Apparently their relationship was 1989-91.
Just noticed that on the single sleeve pic, Jason’s hat looks like a black halo, medieval-painting style. Too many broken SOULS.
Never mind WHY is he playing the guitar, WHAT is he playing on it?
I can’t play at all, but I can still see the chords have no relation to the song at all. Though he does look like he’s able to play the thing.
This just looks and sounds cheap, but it’s too harmless to hate.
I remember him saying in Smash Hits that he had a guitar and played casually. And Kylie herself could give Bez a run for his maracas money.
Jason’s “I’ll be HURT” is sung with the conviction that it’s not going to happen.
#11 Lex, I think Mike Stock’s worked with enough black artists not to have the r-accusation casually thrown at him. And you’re quoting him a bit out of context; the main thrust of his argument was against premature sexualisation of children with Britney Spears and Lady GaGa as his examples. If he was maoaning about everything in the charts sounding the same then of course he’d be on very thin ice indeed but that wasn’t the argument.
Musically you can’t make a case for Jason – all his records are terrible though “I’m Doing Fine” the one he claimed was a Beatles pastiche (presumably with Pete Best on vocals) was quite amusing just for the conceit. I do quite warm to him in interviews nowadays when he’s still moping about Kylie and never seems very happy about the way his career mapped out after “Neighbours”.
You give me one good reason to leave me
I’ll give you ten good reasons to stay
Maybe this is not a new observation for you Brits who actually know this song, but I cannot hear those lines without thinking that Jason is threatening to beat this woman. With both fists, even.
“Jase is ace” as one banner read at a SAW Roadshow in Bristol around this time. I really don’t mind the song at all, though clearly it’s closer to the stunted ambition of Give A Little Love than Gonna Make You A Star – it really reminds me of early 70s Cookaway/Macaulay-McLeod bubblegum. But obv. Jase is not that ace vocally and the production is made of balsa wood. 4 makes sound sense.
During his “alleged” “drugs” “period” he would go into a cafe on Westbourne Grove, rather like the one on the cover, where a friend of mine worked. Jase was always in extremely good spirits, and would stick around for hours, but would usually unsettle my friend by saying things like “Look at this chair! Aren’t chairs AMAZING?”. That’s an actual quote. Bjork could’ve pulled it off, I suppose.
No idea why i put ‘Key To My Life’ for OTV’s single upthread. ‘Sacred Trust’ was its actual title (I nearly typed ‘tritle’ there, which is apt).
Everything about it sounds thin and flimsy.
It’s inoffensive and likeable enough so yes 4 is the fair score.
Have been subjected to this a little too often to like it (last year someone gave my sister a large batch of JD albums) but it is catchy so I’d give it a 3. There could be better bad stuff but there could certainly be worse too.
It seems a little too upbeat to me frankly – I get that he is singing about how he’s going to try to get his girl back, but shouldn’t he be a little sadder about the fact he lost her in the first place?
Of course, if I jump in at this point and say this is actually one of my favourite SAW songs, I’ll be asked to provide some kind of reasonable argument why. And I don’t think I can make much of a case.
Yes, I know Jason’s voice is dire – and I did say so when we were commenting on “Especially For You”. I also know that this is a good record (in my opinion) rather than a great one. But it was a guilty pleasure for me when it first came out, causing me to go rather quiet when my schoolfriends starting spitting fire about what a terrible number one it was.
I think a large part of what clinches it for me is actually that the chorus is ridiculously optimistic and uplifting despite the lyrical subject matter, and at the time of its release it coincided with the arrival of Spring. I can still remember listening to this on the radio during a freakishly warm day and feeling that it just soundtracked the moment perfectly. And beyond that, whilst the cheap brassy synths are intact, the SAW-favoured rinky-dink groove is absent, replaced by something which almost (almost!) sounds similar to a rhythm pattern and arrangement Erasure, New Order or the Pet Shop Boys might have used. So this means I disagree with comment 23, unfortunately.
Ultimately though, it’s much easier to defend things you feel passionately about rather than records you just think are quite good, and this is far too much of a “I like hearing it on the radio” song rather than a “must-own” effort. And actually, this is probably the very last SAW track I actually like – it’s all downhill for me from here.
(As an aside, Tom’s comments about karaoke have reminded me of a night I sometimes go to where the audience actually break into polite applause if the singer manages to hit difficult notes… “Take On Me” is a particular favourite for this treatment).
# 44 You’ve reminded me of my ill-advised assault on Crash Test Dummies’ “Mmm Mmm Mmm” where I found I could not physically emit any sound when it came to the chorus. I’m stood there like a lemon watching my wife flee the room with embarassment.
A couple of years later and he still hadn’t taken heed to the ‘guitar as prop’ criticisms.
Check him here at the 1991 Children’s Royal Variet performance singing RSVP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn1qItgkkHE&feature=related
Easy picking for Michael Barrymore to take this piss out of him immediately afterwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ANFra5e37s
@43, Ah, fair enough, the rinky-dink grooves were always one of my favourite things about SAW!
Well, I think for the sake of fairness I should say that I’m fairly sure both Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys used those rinky-dink grooves (or slight variations of them) on some of their tracks as well. But with SAW, it ended up becoming a cliche, causing people to say “Oh, they’re using the same rhythm pattern again!”
There are a few other SAW cliches present on “Too Many Broken Hearts”, of course, but as a single it did sound relatively fresh to me at the time. And like Tom, I think that Jason’s weaknesses as a vocalist may actually help the song slightly, in much the same manner that Bernard Sumner’s vocals seem charming rather than cringeworthy on most New Order tracks.
Savour that comparison while it lasts, Jase :)
#47 Bernard will always sound more comfortable (excepting the first album) because he’s singing his own lyrics on tracks he has helped to sculpt. Jason’s always straining to keep in line with a guide vocal over music that doesn’t really excite him (or anyone else over 12).
I always feel a little bit cheered whenever I hear this one, even at the time when it was greeted by my fifth form peers as an abomination, signifying the depths to which music had sunk, etc. The skwalling guitar leading you into the blind alley of jolly pop, and – in particular – the ace backing vox that lift the second half of the recording up, when its clear that the song itself isn’t going to do anything very surprising.
I have a mental game with this song that I frequently try out and which provides it with a perhaps unearned depth. I like to imagine it as sung by an aged Johnny Cash, ‘American Recordings’ style.
“You give me one good reason to leave me.
I’ll give you TEN good reasons to stay.
You’re the only one I believe in.
I’ll be hurt.
I’ll be hurt.
If you walk away.”
It sounds good, doesn’t it?
TOTPWatch: Jason Donovan eventually performed ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’ on the 1989 Christmas day Top Of The Pops. Of which more later.
#50: The verses would work in that context but I’m not convinced that the chorus would.
It’s true that in the version in my head, he suddenly becomes 25 years younger in the chorus, which is delivered in the lighter, chattier, style of ‘A Thing Called Love’. This is the advantage of imaginary records!
“I like to imagine it as sung by an aged Johnny Cash, ‘American Recordings’ style.”
It is a cracking game to play with songs. Every Rose Has it’s Thorn works a treat.
As does The Locomotion done with Mark E Smith’s voice and intonation…
Best theoretical cover of “Too Many Broken Hearts”; King Sunny Ade, or Diblo Dibala.
#54, a theoretical singe I dreamed once, “Put away” (M.E. Smith) by Jimmy Saville, on Columbia records, 1965 approx.
Speaking angularly on Savile, whatever happened to early eighties reggae toasting duo Laurel and Hardy, they of the classic “Clunk Click” and “You’re Nicked”?
“Ten good reasons to stay” always reminds me of Miar Davies’ girl group heart tugger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iX1FVB3wgc
Re 56: not hard to imagine these words from the mouth of J Saville: “you don’t have to be weird to be wired, uh-UH-uh-UH”.
I guess this was the point at which SAW were on the turn, their hooks and techniques becoming obvious and a mite predictable. But this one is still something of a marketing masterclass. As a companion piece to Kylie on the back of that car swanning around Sydney, here’s Jason in a vest in the outback, portraying the endearing Aussie image to perfection and giving the target audience just what they want.
You can carp about the lack of “hurt” in the “I’ll be hurt” line, but after all this is Neighbours World, where a character’s problems aren’t necessarily all that deep, and anyway there’s always the scenery and the weather. So, the fans would have thought, the song is lively, danceable and fun, and who cares how miserable its protagonist is supposed to be sounding?
Jason’s voice was limited – mind you the chart has heard worse – but he was as hot as hot could be. There was the Jason Donovan board game (admittedly one which many people were to find in charity shops soon afterwards) where players built a full-colour heart-shaped jigsaw of Jason by successfully answering questions about him. And when you’re that hot, an uptempo number like this is a cert. Not pitched at the likes of me by any means, but you can see why it was such a hit.
Sorry for lack of updates by the way – Jason doesn’t really deserve a whole week in the spotlight, I know.
A friend gave me the Jason Donovan board game as a ‘joke’ birthday present one year. I’ve still got it.
It’s not very entertaining. Nor were many of his records.
His best record by far. Not saying much, but it’s head and shoulders above all the other dreck that was released. I couldn’t believe that previous debut single “Nothing Can Divide Us” actually became a hit.
Indeed, SAW’s output in 1989 was so bad, that this along with Donna Summer and Sonia was actually one of the best offerings, before they would hit a nadir with their band of 3 Jason clones Big Fun.
As for his singing, it was hilarious when he had his much touted singing lessons for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and still sounded the same.
#37 The flaw in Stock’s argument is in taking those examples as indicative of the entirety of modern pop music. That ’99% of 99%’ claim isn’t even remotely accurate but then this is a man who also seems to think that pre-school children play Grand Theft Auto…
#62 – I agree, “Nothing Can Divide Us” was dire. The record itself sounded like little more than a rough demo, and from memory (I’m at work, so can’t easily check through YouTube) the video was little more than Jason singing with a sickly grin around his chops while some lights flashed in the background. Not only was I surprised it was a hit, it also looked as if nobody really wanted it to be one.
Did the single come with a free poster or something? I realise that’s a bit of a cliched argument, but I really can’t think of any other explanation for its success.
I dream of Jason getting singing lessons from Dorothy Squires:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUmwVURIzXQ
Dorothy’s definitive version was number 40 on the Top 40 this week 40 years ago. Apart from the nice round numbers, I had to post this somewhere. It’s truly astonishing!
Heh, just realized what the next #1 is… Really looking forward to reading Tom’s and everyone else’s thoughts about that one! :)
#65: And here are my meditations on the same record – and yes, this is going to be in the book.
Enjoyed that Marcello, thanks. Looking forward to the book.
And Witchita – not sure ‘enjoyed’ is the word for the You Tube clip. But it’s certainly unforgettable.
One of my earliest memories was asking, “Who is that sad woman on the telly, Mummy?”
I was then told that was Dorothy Squires, who’s not a patch on Shirley Bassey. I even remember Mum uttering her name with suppressed venom, like she had been forced to remember an unpleasant memory. I never did find out what her actual beef with her was, even when the occasional “I can’t stand that woman” was heard when she appeared on the telly or on the radio.
So I never sought to look into Dorothy’s history or back catalogue. Looking at Wichita’s link, I’m not overly enamoured with her performance. Uncomfortable to watch and listen.
However, having read Marcello’s piece, I can fully understand why her fans love her so much. Emotionally naked and unapologetic, she must have been the inspiration for a thousand drag acts (not least, Danny La Rue).
And dubbed a “vexatious litigant” by the High Court for her regular legal actions.
Jason Donovan was the subject of a particularly good edition of “Who Do You Think You Are?” last night – his mother was descended on her mother’s side from a popular soprano who worked with the Australian equivalent of Cameron Mackintosh circa 1900, and further back from a Port Arthur convict; and on her father’s side from Captain William Cox, a soldier who settled in the penal colony around 1800 and went on to build the first road from Sydney across the Blue Mountains, a vitally important link for the new colony.
Why nobody checked his album from Polydor? Donovan admitted himself that his songs (PWL, not Polydor), are like sausage and mash (maybe means nothing special?). If you criticize his songs from Polydor (written by Nik Kershaw, Martin Page and so on), then you will do justice to his singing styles.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I LOVE sausage and mash.
Can you give any comment about any song from 3rd album? All Around the world and Oxygen by Nik Kershaw, or Give a Good Heart by Martin Page? I don’t like his 1st and 2nd album and singles except some of them, especially the cover version like I’m Doing Fine, Rhythm of The Rain, I think he did fine with that versions. I mean sausage and mash are cheap. So Jason referred to cheap songs maybe?