NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK – “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”
The arrival of the modern boy band, as much due to demographics as sound. Though Maurice Starr’s concept – New Edition, but white – dates from the mid-80s, the band were an inititial flop. But by 1988 they were a better fit: this pop-R&B sound seemed like the kind of thing a bunch of street-smart white kids might make – or rather, it could be pitched as such to the younger and less street-smart white kids Starr wanted to buy it. The boys’ looks and moves would do the rest.
In the UK we got New Kids in one great compressed spurt – the promo campaigns for Hangin’ Tough and Step By Step collapsing into each other so the band were suddenly inescapable for most of a year, new hits arriving every second month. This also meant their breakthrough hit here wasn’t the sweet bumfluff soul of “Please Don’t Go Girl” but the far more stripped-down and active “Right Stuff”. And the romantic flourishes here – the “all that I needed was you…” bits – feel like trimmings, with the point of the record being that chunky keyboard riff and beat. Or rather, the dancing the riff enables – motion is as central to this song as to any house hit, but it’s the performers’ movement, not the audience’s, which counts. In the video, the ‘story’ – NKOTB as a teen posse, driving around and goofing around – is separated from the dancing, which becomes an abstracted selling point in its own right. (Easy to do now you’ve severed the group from all that distracting ‘instruments’ nonsense).
But is it a good record? Well, not really. It’s cute, the riff is memorable, but the boys’ singing – cloying but pretty on “Please Don’t Go Girl” – is subdued here. When they have to end each riff with a chanted “The right stuff!” they sound like boys mumbling “Amen” in school assembly, and it deadens the mood not amplifies it. But even without that buzz-harsher, Maurice Starr’s electro-funk production would feel leaden and lumpy. It’s hard to tell whether this is because the style is a couple of years behind the times (the keyboards especially shriek 1986) or just that Starr isn’t especially good with this relatively heavier sound. Either way, it makes for a long four minutes.
4
I love the sleeve, and, hearing this for the first time, I don’t see much wrong with the song either: it does sound as if it should have come much earlier than 1989, and I agree that the “all that I wanted was you…” bits are a bit overplayed, but the “whoa whoa whoa whoa” hook and the drums are good. 6 or 7.
Fair point that it could be shorter. Alright, 6 then.
Comparable to Berry Gordy starting both the Jackson Five and the Osmonds, Maurice Starr, the inventor of New Edition, was keen to start a white equivalent, though it took New Kids On The Block the best part of half a decade and sundry personnel changes to achieve any major success. By that time New Edition’s constituent ingredients of Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant and Bell Biv Divoe were establishing themselves as successful acts in their own right, and Starr, having broken his ties with them some years previously, was probably right to be envious. Nevertheless NKOTB became the most accurate precedent of the general trend of number ones in the nineties; in their diffuse spark can easily be discerned the Take Thats, Boyzones, Backstreet Boys, Westlifes (or Westlives) and the legions of other such boy bands who would ensue.
Eighteen years after the event, and divest of the rather sad attempts to make the group look cool with absurd backwards baseball caps and incontinence pad trousers, it’s surprising to learn that “You Got It” has worn relatively well. A punchy yet spacious rhythm track which would have perfectly suited the Human League or the Jonzun Crew (the latter a project of Maurice Starr’s brother) sets the pace for a reasonable, briskly paced teenpop coming-of-age/coming-of-love song with a genuinely inspired chord change in its middle eight (under the line “Oh girl, you’re so right”).
In fact the only thing which lets the record down are the New Kids themselves; the assorted Wahlbergs and Knights mouth their words hesitantly and with reluctance to achieve workable pitch or emotional control. They sound like thirteen-year-olds roped into a local talent contest and compelled to sing “Word Up” or “Kiss” and it’s arguable whether they ever progressed beyond that; but then, as with so many of their predecessors and successors, “progression” was never really an issue – short-term milking of their market was the aim, and great pop records a mere side-effect. “You Got It” turns out not to be at all bad, but the imagery of boy band as press gang is hard to shake off in its tremulous, and possibly even frightened, delivery, as though not knowing the real reason why they were singing this song.
FYI Tom, you have the parentheses reversed in the title of this post.
I agree that this is far from the best NKOTB track. 4 seems fair and, if anything, generous, given how poorly this particular track has aged. Something like even “I’ll be Loving You Forever” would be preferable.
US Number one at the time: Milli Vanilli – “Blame It On the Rain”, much better than this one.
#3 corrected w/thanks!
Thirty seconds of “oh, I remember this, not that bad actually”, then two minutes of “Oh, actually it’s not that good”, then what seems like about 15 minutes of waiting for it to finish. Not great.
The NKOTB song I remember liking at the time was ‘Tonight’ because it sounded like The Beatles. Listening to it again, it’s still sort of good, in an awful, bizzare, cobbled-together way. It actually manages to sound less well-stiched together than Jive Bunny.
Yeah ‘Tonight’ is quite an odd record for a boyband – got a Beach Boys as much as Beatles vibe from it.
“Tonight” IIRC has the unintentionally revealing line, “Remember when we went all round the world / We met a lot of people – and girls”
For bizarro NKOTB structures just wait until… *stifled by bunny*
Oh, also my abiding memory of the NKOTB marketing campaign was an excited live satellite-link interview with Sarah Greene on Going Live. One of the boys had a stuffed toy, Sarah asked what is was and he came out with the immortal lines “It’s Winnie The Pooh. Do you have Winnie The Pooh in England?”
Yet another number 1 looking very much towards the new decade, and similar to all the above, there’s good bits but really isn’t one of their best.
Ten minutes before Woolworths closed forever, in January 2009, I went into the Camden Town branch and literally was given all the remaining CDs they had, entire chart albums selling for the princely sum of 20p(!) each. Amongst a selection including Rhydian, The View, and random CD singles from five years ago, the manager thrust a copy of their 2008 comeback album “The Block” in my hands. “Get this for your girlfriend” he said.
I’ve yet to play it. I sincerly doubt I ever will.
re#8 “but here we call him Losie The Pooh”
I like ‘Tonight’, too! And the masturbatory ‘Cover Girl’ may have been okay, too, not though I’ve heard it for 20 years… Unlike this unmemorable thing, universally derided by my sixth-form peers as little sister music.
Number two watch: Two weeks of Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville, ‘Don’t Know Much’. That was an unexpected hit.
Light Entertainment Watch: UK TV appearances were considered generally unnecessary for global superstars of the New Kids’ standing;
AL MURRAY’S HAPPY HOUR: with Phil Collins, Fiona Phillips, New Kids On The Block, Philip Glenister (2008)
THE SMASH HITS POLL WINNERS PARTY: with Phillip Schofield, New Kids On The Block, Cathy Dennis, Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch, Colour Me Badd, Dannii Minogue, Extreme (1991)
WOGAN: with New Kids On The Block, Charles M Schulz (1990)
my main thought about this is the same as my main thought in 1989. what, exactly, is with big jaw’s bauhaus t-shirt? “subversive” stylist getting his/her yuks? ahead of its time de-contextualised retro cool? committee designed suggestion of a hinterland of mysterious cool? accident? he was a goth? we may never know.
Tonight is hilarious for the way they reference the titles of all their previous hits as if they’re dimly remembered missives from yesteryear. In the UK Tonight was released just 10 months after NKOTB’s first hit.
# 8 Was it Jordan Knight by any chance. I remember him on “Trust Me I’m A Holiday Rep” (must get out more) being a complete airhead. I expected to see Syd Little tying his laces for him.
I think their records are uniformly terrible; the only enjoyment was seeing big-jawed Danny, the Nicola Roberts of his day, strutting his stuff. You could almost believe he was subverting the whole concept from within.
By the way Joey Knight is the youngest 80s chart topper mentioned in an earlier thread. He will be 40 in 2012.
“compelled to sing “Word Up” or “Kiss””
“it’s still sort of good, in an awful, bizzare, cobbled-together way”
marcello + weej OTM
EDIT: Which makes me wonder: are there any good remixes of this?
EDIT 2: and ohmigosh JEFF WAYNE at #3
EDIT 3: and naturally even more excitingly, during NKOTB’s last week Cathy Dennis’s debut single “Just Another Dream” enters at #93.
#11 I find ‘Don’t Know Much’ excruciating, esp. the performance of it on TOTP.
I find this one extremely naff yet listenable in equal measure.
Sort of a follow on from candy girl only sung by white kids.Beat isnt all that bad but the singing is lazy and has an attitude of lets get this over with so i can play chase HQ down the arcade.a 5 would be as high as i could go.
NKOTB must be the primary example of get rich quick scheme come good.
given the monster that this created it must feel like an elvis/sex pistols/marrs popular moment for popular in a way.
one thing is that 1989 and beyond it seems as though we will be repeating ourselves more and more with these sort of chart toppers.dreary thought.
Hmm. Mediocre. And, like Tom, I’d noticed that “not leaving even two whole months between single releases” thing, from Sept. 89 thru to the end of 90. Perhaps their record company could see all along that it would never last?
Fave single, if I have to have one, of theirs, probably “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind (This Time)”, even if they were barely even adolescents when they sang it. “Step By Step”, otherwise, I guess. “Tonight” is entertaining, if occasionally painful (I think: can’t say I’ve heard it for years), but perhaps less painful than many of their other singles, which IIRC tended to be either ultra-sappy unconvincing ballads or laddish back-slapping things. (Maybe it was not strictly backs that were being slapped in “Cover Girl”, but, well, nevermind).
Horribly suburban, in a really naff way, too.
There are two good points about this song, and the only two good points IMHO
1) It’s better than their single that preceded it release-wise, and then, on re-release succeeded it, fairly rapidly afterwards, to no 1. (I will not hold in my disdain for the Kids when we get there)
2) Imagine how bad it would have been had this been, say, a medley of “You Got It” by Roy Orbison and “The Right Stuff” by Bryan Ferry (or even the inferior song of that name by Vanessa Williams). Yukketty yuk yuk yuk yuk.
The other thing I will say in the groups favour is that (unlike Westlife, unlike UB40), they didn’t try to drag out their career by becoming an idiot jukebox doing bland cover versions. (Reinventing themselves as hard rappers…much funnier…if unconvincing…ah but that is almost true of their next no 1 so maybe one should wait before saying any more)
As it is. Just yuk yuk yuk. I suppose. Tired and tedious in the extreme.
A number 2. In all senses.
For the young teenies, the dance moves were the way into fanboy/girl obsession. For the rest of us, bemusement. Yeah, they had that fresh-faced clean-cut look, but the vocals were nothing special and the funk-lite beats and synth stabs were crude compared to Soul II Soul for instance. Almost too simplistic. They had precious litte charisma. Only Knight and Wahlberg stick in the memory. The rest appeared to be interchangeable. But in 1989, I was already outside Maurice Starr’s target demographic, so I was never likely to “get” NKOTB. What I do get, however is “Happy Meal” pop. It’s cheap, it’s filling a hole and although there’s no free toy, you have some cool dance moves to impress your friends with.
Listening to this for the first time, I’m realizing how close this could’ve been to avant-garde pop, or at least grime. The mix is sparse already and, with better lyrics and a slightly sparser mix, this could’ve been an interesting song.
I can only remember how the chorus to this went and yet that chorus is burned onto my brain. If you were in primary school at the time then this was essentially the biggest record in the history of pop music and even Michael Jackson paled into insignificance. Obviously I didn’t like it, it was for girls.
It’s surprising looking back how little interest there seemed to be in the boyband (who “just” sing and dance) concept within the industry before NKOTB. With MJ and Madonna so ‘out of reach’ with their megastardom and New Edition having failed to set the charts alight, surely the huge gap in the market could’ve been seen before this point (and given the success of Wham and Bros here)? Presumably, Stateside at least, hair metal and rap were seen to have eaten away at the market for a less threatening clean cut act?
the rhythm and synth sound remind me of Janet Jackson’s ‘Control’ – but the production isn’t as good, sounding a bit weedy.
by late ’89 House was now established and splintering into subsets, Soul II Soul (and associates) were introducing a more loping rhythm that would be picked up by others, including Primal Scream and Madchester – so this remnant of New Jack Swing sounded dated even then
The song goes on too long – at half the length it would be better – or if remixed it might better at twice the length
I like the way the video places the boys in a recognisable urban context rather than some bland set – and their amateurish yet enthusiastic gurning is appealing, even if the song is not.
Something that I’ve never seen recorded, and have always wanted to know is who were the Smash Hits pollwinning best bands for each year. My hunch is that the 1980s lineage probably goes Duran – Wham! – A-Ha – Bros – NKOTB, but there seem to be some fallow periods within the duration of that time.
FWIW, the NME best band pollwinners of the 1980s were 1979-82 The Jam, 1983 New Order, 1984-7 The Smiths, 1988 The Wedding Present, 1989 The Stone Roses.