MARIA McKEE – “Show Me Heaven”
Take my breath away, leave me breathless: the general “Top Gun, only not as good” vibe of Days Of Thunder extended to this single. As stately, as vague, more soporific somehow. One new ingredient is religion – “such amazing grace”, “feels divine” – and yes, this is a post-Madonna power ballad, but in this more conservative form the dance of identity between worshipper and worshipped quite vanishes. It has a slothful, vanillla, lie-back-and-think-of-the-Midwest kind of passion – sex as blockbuster movie, where your role is simply to wait for the ‘wow’ moment the heroic lead will surely provide.
McKee can belt, but she’s most comfortable away from the chorus, giving “Show Me Heaven” a more tender and dynamic performance than it might deserve. With this material, she can’t convince anyone of anything, but thanks to her it sounds for a while like this is a song, not a steamroller, that if it caught you in the right mood you might find something to relate to in it. But a lot of her good work is undone by that mandolin, its folksy, friendly, irritating air undercutting whatever subtleties she’s bringing.
4
A definitive ’5′ record for me. Its not irritating, just about registers in my memory, and is a pretty good showcase for McKee’s voice. But I can’t imagine ever wanting to hear it.
This one was approved of by girls in the sixth form and ignored by boys. I was slightly baffled, having frequently read in the 1980s music press about how heartfelt and interesting Maria McKee and Lone Justice were while never getting to hear them. ‘Show Me Heaven’ didn’t seem to offer much to support this contention.
Once again I apologise for the delay between entries – busy busy busy. Also, in this case, uninspired uninspired uninspired.
I did not remember T Cruise’s character in this film was called Cole Trickle.
#2Watch: A week of Londonbeat – ‘I’ve Been Thinking About You’. I remember liking the guitar line on that one.
Then a week of Bobby Vinton, ‘Blue Velvet’. “The original soundtrack as used by NIVEA lotions” it says on the sleeve. It made more sense in a David Lynch context than in a 1990 one.
Then – Tee hee! – a week for Status Quo’s ‘The Anniversary Waltz Part 1′. Comin’ Atcha like a rockin’ Jive Bunny. The subject of much mirth and derision at the time.
TOTPWatch: Maria McKee twice performed ‘Show Me Heaven’ on Top Of The Pops;
13 September 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Londonbeat, Sonia and Bass-O-Matic. Gary Davies was the host.
27 September 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Monie Love & True Image, The Wedding Present, Status Quo and Bass-O-Matic. Anthea Turner was the host.
Oh, Bass-O-Matic, ‘Fascinating Rhythm’… Now that would have been a wonderful #1.
There was an actual well-known race car driver in the US called Dick Trickle. Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it.
Maria’s a bit of a belter but that doesn’t work as well for me as Madonna’s more subdued approach on the superficially similar ‘Live to tell’ and ‘This used to be our playground’. I don’t mind the song too much, but the production seems to encourage an overblown approach.
The religious imagery is more likely to have come from Maria McKee’s own faith rather than any attempt to ape ‘Like a Prayer’.
I don’t hear a mandolin but more of a twangy Chris Isaak/Twin Peaks style guitar – worth mentioing that ‘Twin Peaks’ was being broadcast for the first time on the BBC at this time.
Light Entertainment Watch: Just three solo UK TV appearances for Maria on the list;
WHISTLE TEST: with Maria McKee, Mick Hucknall (1987)
WOGAN: with Joan Collins, Maria McKee, Dennis Waterman (1990)
THE WORD: with Keith Allen, IF, Kathy Lloyd, Maria McKee, Brooke Shields (1991)
I once wrote about American rock critics’ brief infatuation with Maria McKee’s former band Lone Justice. Her scoring her a #1 English hit is a mordant irony.
Here’s the piece: http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/ways-to-be-unwicked/
Nothing to say about this because I don’t know it and nothing I’ve read so far makes me feel like getting off my backside and finding out.
The first week of Maria’s reign I note I spent in Blackpool at the Labour Party Conference. It was very windy all week. I fell in with the press corps through people I’d got to know via a new fad called the Internet, which I had discovered not long before. You had to dial up through a 2400 baud modem and pay the phone bill for calls to London so apart from the universities who had had it for years it was confined largely to people in the London area, mainly geeks and journalists. I wonder what happened to it, did it ever catch on? Anyway, it got me my free pass to the late night hotel bars and I remember being bought drinks by and having a long chat about jumps racing with one Robin Cook, a man of rare political integrity and fearsome intellect much missed in today’s political climate.
And for Billy @ 3: Blue Velvet was (still is) an absolute belter of a film with Dennis Hopper staking a claim to be one of the all-time great (and most terrifying) screen baddies. The song did wriggle around in the head very pleasantly in 1990 and I can hardly begrudge Bobby Vinton his belated success here.
Unfortunately this has become linked in my head with the ‘Woaaaaah Body-form’ adverts that started appearing around this time.
New to me when I ear-peeked ahead last week on youtube (it barely charted in the US). Already completely forgotten it and I found it hard to get all the way through it that one time. Apparently 22 year old Kidman plays a neurosurgeon wunderkind in the film – brilliant. Next:
2 or 3
#9 It’s a shame that Blue Velvet couldn’t have been a hit at the time of the film in 1986/7 though, when it would have carried a bit more creepy force than on the back of a Nivea commercial four years later.
Vinton’s version is alright, but sounds a bit pallid next to The Clovers’ fantastic 1955 doo-wop interpretation.
Obviously a much better song in any form than ‘Show Me Heaven’, though.
Um, I thought Blue Velvet was a hit on the back of the film. I did think it was earlier than 1990.
I know nowt of any Nivea advertisement. So, as you were, I’ll go back to sleep.
I rarely disagree with popular but I have a real soft spot for this song! It’s not based on anything much though. Just sentimental fluff, but that’s OK now and again.
All I remember of SMH is she blinked a lot in the video, suggesting fake sincerity. And that’s about it.
Found this a bit of a bore at the time. Very competent isn’t it?
Oh 1980s, you may have won this battle but the 1990s are going to win the war.
Days Of Thunder is now principally remembered as the point Where Tom Met Nicole, but if their real-life relationship was anything like as perfunctory as it was in the film then it’s little surprise that the marriage didn’t last; in this rewording of Top Gun (“I’m not denying/We’re flying above it all”), humanity is of decidedly secondary sexual interest to the fast cars and crash helmets which almost make Cronenberg’s subsequent film of Ballard’s Crash unnecessary.
Fittingly “Show Me Heaven” only retains a perilously thin umbilical cord to human emotions and feelings by virtue of McKee’s vocal, which does its beautiful best to make us believe in its rhyming of “spine” and “divine” and its cringeworthy epithets (“You’ve such amazing grace” indeed). Then again McKee’s name is present on the label as co-writer so she must shoulder some of the blame. None of the moderately strange touches to the arrangement – the plucking banjo in the chorus, the Duane Eddy guitar and strings which arise towards song’s end – leads us to think that this is the woman responsible for the record voted NME’s ninth best album of 1989 (her eponymous solo debut which, though rather ordinary to these ears, outranked Paradise, Raw Like Sushi, The Sensual World, Straight Outta Compton, Hats and, um, Freaky Trigger), let alone 1996’s genuinely extraordinary Life Is Sweet, one of the decade’s greatest and most shrewdly adventurous pop albums. No, this was simply a day job to help pay for the art, and it is as nullifyingly bland as any of its hi-tech cinematic kin.
This isn’t one of Maria’s better songs and the 5 mark is about right.
Her work has always been variable but at her best she can move you to tears – try “Dixie Storms” from the second Lone Justice album “Shelter” for instance. “Ways To Be Wicked” is also a top-rate song.
Anyone remember her spaced-out appearance on Juke Box Jury around this time ?
Never seen the film, am still moderately fond of this song, although it’s obviously not her best. Although even her only other top 40 hit, “I’m Gonna Soothe You” is preferable, I’d still happily listen to this.
LEEEEAVE ME BREEEAAKFAST
Ahem. I quite liked smh (ha!) when I was a kid, it was on a CD of advert songs my mum had (due to its use in a dairy milk ad I think?). It ia boring , though, and I think a five is right.
Never seen days of thunder but it can’t be as bad as that faux-Oirish film they were in together, which has far and away the least on-screen chemistry between an irl married couple that I’ve ever seen.
#21 “that faux-Oirish film they were in together, which has far and away the least on-screen chemistry between an irl married couple that I’ve ever seen.”
I see what you’ve done there. Very good.
I must confess, I’ve never heard anything by Maria McKee other than this. A band called Lone Justice with her countryish power ballad vocals (remember, this song is my only exposure to her) on it doesn’t fill me with lots of hope – but then I’ve never been much of a fan of modern country anyway. Maybe I should give them a listen with an open mind.
The song: if we are marking from 1 to 10, then the average point is 5.5 (or I think it should be, I’m having one of those brain fades where I can’t be sure of anything numerical anymore after looking at too many figures over the last week). This is below average to my ears but not utterly offensive, so 4 or 5 seems about right. Given I gave The Joker 5 and I like it slightly more than this, I’d probably go for a 4. Echoing other comments, I just find it a bit dull.
Lone Justice were straightahead cowpunk, and pretty good within that genre: a lot twangier and feistier than this. I am right now listening to the Long Ryders reunion concert of 2006.
I genuinely do really like McKee’s vocal performance on this, which seems to express several different emotions at once in places – lust(well, that’s what the breathless delivery in the chorus suggests to me anyway), longing, love and a bit of despondency. The song itself, on the other hand, is absolutely nothing special at all and lyrically vapid, and it’s an unbelievable achievement she managed to pull that much out of it. She could probably sing the interior message in a budget greetings card and make it sound interesting.
She’s an artist I’ve always meant to investigate in more depth beyond the three or four songs I’ve heard by her, but I’ve never properly done so. I do indeed remember her “Juke Box Jury” appearance with her frantically fanning herself and seeming rather dazed, and she’s always come across as an interesting character… Perhaps I should head off to Spotify soon and look at her other work.
Kidman and Cruise are indeed bad chemistry personified in all their joint outings (but then with a few exceptions – Magnolia for him, The Others for her – I’ve rarely enjoyed anything they’ve done apart, either).
As for Ms McKee (sister of Bryan MacLean from Love, since I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it), this is a dull but not awful power ballad. Lone Justice’s Ways To Be Wicked, however, is a cracker…
Kidman and Cruise resonate as particular extreme types on screen (rather like old-time movie-stars): once you divide through by beauty, she’s icy and entitled (I have friends who refer to her as ‘cold mountain’ or even as ‘CM’) and he’s needy and hyper (The Actor’s Studio ep./interview w/ Cruise has to be seen to be believed – track it down if you can). Aside from Mark M. ‘s good choices, I’d take To Die For and Birth for her, Risky Business and Tropic Thunder for him.
How did this get to number one? I don’t remember the film being any kind of popular smash like Top Gun. Maybe it was without me noticing.
Cruise is very good in Rain Man, better than Hoffman.
#27 Apparently the song wasn’t a hit at all in the US, so we were clearly a market ripe for exploitation by enormous film tie-in ballads.
As future events would prove, really.
Slightly biased, as this was the first dance at my wedding, but I always quite liked this one, even before “the big day”.
I don’t find it formulaic; I find it a little quirky, and a refreshing change from the majority of the paint-by-numbers movie-related dross infecting the charts around this time.
Re 26: you’re right, especially about Cruise – he’s a proper movie star in that he almost always plays roughly the same role* , and he’s rarely miscast. I just don’t like most of the films I’ve seen him in. The great thing about Magnolia is the way it uses his essential Cruiseness to entirely other ends (Paul Thomas Anderson also did much the same thing with Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love).
To Die For – yes indeed.
*(Tropic Thunder being an obvious exception – but I have to say I didn’t find his turn as funny as most other people did. Liked the film, though.)
Often I see “High Society” and think Grace Kelly plays this part much like Nicole Kidman would have, even without the film having already existed. Does that make sense?
Re 31: Really? I’ve always found Kelly, for all her immaculateness, a much more natural screen presence than Kidman.
zzzz….nothing-special power ballad from a nothing-special film. This is one of those records that I can’t muster up any enthusiasm to like or dislike it. Will youtube “Ways To Be Wicked” out of curiosity though.
Lone Justice’s “Soap, Soup and Salvation” goes through my mind with alarming frequency though I haven’t heard it in over 20 years. Onward to youtube once again…
“Ways to Be Wicked” is a Tom Petty composition (with one of his bandmates).
I could have sworn Blue Velvet was a number one. Certainly more memorable than SMH, of which only the roared title has lodged in my memory. So why was Blue Velvet a hit in 1990? An ad?
I really should remember details of 1990 but I clearly don’t (apart from all-consuming crush on B Boo).
Mainly because of its use in an ad for Nivea cream but also in some part down to general David Lynch interest. It did make number one on the NME chart.
The main difference between the charts then and now is that “Good Day Today” would have gone top ten in 1990.
When did they pack the NME chart? It sort of disappeared from the magazine one day and I never noticed until I dunno, at least a year later.
When I first got NME (Free faces flexi), I thought it somewhat keen that they had “Weeks on chart” and “highest position” as well. You can’t even get that on the Everyhit site now. “Neither Fish Nor Flesh” is as big a hit album (in fact bigger) than “The Stone Roses” by this reckoning…
In truth they packed it in around Sept. ’84, since that was when they started running the Network Chart (as heard on Capital etc.) but our copy of The Complete NME Singles Charts goes up to ’94 (I don’t believe there was another update) and the lists are generally a lot more interesting than the Guinness ones.
The Stone Roses now officially a bigger hit than Neither Bought Nor Sold since it peaked at #5 in the summer of ’09 after retailing for 50p or thereabouts in the HMV sale.
Well, I sold my copy.
That’s right, the 2CD+DVD version was a fiver for a while, yeah.
@12 – And it would have been even sweeter if the incomparably wonderful “In Dreams” had become a hit again on foot of its use in the film (and the related resurgence of interest in the Big O at that time). Quite incredibly, Roy’s re-recording of the song in ’87 actually surpasses the original.
Certainly at its best when she’s not going for the big notes. Bit of a e-fit power ballad, but there’s plenty of character in the verses before she gets to the foothills. Not an experience you’d choose to return to all that quickly though. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, for a better McKee listen give me “If Love Is A Red Dress” from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
Painfully ordinary power ballad. But at least it’s better than the Days of Thunder computer game. God, that was shit. Not sure why Marouane Fellaini’s on the cover.
There’s something rather interesting happening here, in that you’ve got a great singer doing everything she can with a fairly nothingy song – and yet she strangely disappears into the mix a little bit. I don’t think it’s just bad luck that McKee never had another hit (though I realise she remains popular in her world and probably couldn’t care less), this kind of could have been anyone, and even though she does a great job of it, the songs’ ultimate facelessness ends up enveloping her rather than allowing her to rise above it.
Other versions of this song have been done by similarly gifted belters Tina Arena and the late Laura Branigan. They both do about as well with it as McKee does.