THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH – “A Little Time”
“A Little Time” gives us the duet as short story. Dave Hemingway offers some sensitive-dude patter, Briana Corrigan busts it up and shows what’s really been going on. He’s smooth, she’s sharp; she’s sympathetic, he’s not; he’s dumped, she’s happy. It’s a nice idea for a song, but as realised here it’s all too easy, like a badly staged wrestling match where you can’t even cheer as the heel gets his since he was never much of a threat. All the life in the record comes from Corrigan, striding brassily into a self-involved song and giving it a kick-up the arse – even though her verses fizzle into tweeness every time. But Hemingway is a relative cypher. Her confidence rings true, his smarminess seems only there to prove a point.
What we have is more a sketch than a track – a bit of observational comedy, or a scene from a ‘bittersweet’ sitcom. Isn’t it funny how guys say they want a little time….? The music backs that up – discreet punchline flourishes between the lite-pop verses letting on we’re listening to something a bit wry. The problem is, pop song is always multi-layered – you’ve always got the arrangement and the lyrics and the vocal performance reinforcing or trading off against one another. So pop is full of unreliable narrators, conflicted dickheads, people who say one thing and mean another. And while undermining cliches is clever, it’s even more clever if you don’t have to point it out. You can imagine a Beautiful South version of “I’m Not In Love” with Briana Corrigan popping up between verses going “ACTUALLY YOU ARE IN LOVE REALLY!”.
But maybe it’s just that I always hated the Beautiful South. I was hardly alone in that: I can’t think of a band my friends and I despised more. Some of it was snobbery, to be sure: they were the pop choice of the Radio 2 listener, and their neat bundles of song felt inert and self-enclosed, drearily arranged music for bores. An apt sound for the Major Years, we thought, for all that Paul Heaton tried to mix some poison into the weak tea. Was I wrong? Well, I still can’t listen to “Perfect 10″ or “Rotterdam” – and I don’t dare even try “36D”, so spiteful Corrigan quit the group – but with the cushion of hindsight I can see that “A Little Time” is one of their better songs, for all its unsatisfying neatness.
4
a Beautiful South version of “I’m Not In Love” with Brianna Corrigan popping up between verses going “ACTUALLY YOU ARE IN LOVE REALLY!”.
LOLZ
Certain adverts remind me of The Beautiful South. Usually ones where an everyman character does something everyday, possibly involving football, or beer, or a nice cuppa (“ooooh!”), while his Corrigan-esque wife rolls her eyes. Of course this doesn’t explain why people bought their records, but it might explain how songs like A Little Time fitted into so many people’s 90s pop backdrop.
The Beautiful South probably did a musical parody of the Gillette ad.
No, but the FIRST Beautiful South album is fantastic, Tom! Paul Heaton is doing this sort of thing for the first time, the topics are more eccentric and surprising, the tunes are better, and there aren’t any female vocals shoehorned into the thing.
Which is why ‘A Little Time’ was the harbinger of a letdown for my 18-year old self, the point that comes with so many acts you like when you realise that “Oh, so they’re not going to change, then”. The second album isn’t very memorable, more self-consciously wry and has only got one song that I really like, ‘Tonight I Fancy Myself’, about trying to ignore the sound of other people in the next room having sex when attempting to masturbate. Which is a more novel premise than ‘A Little Time’.
Although The Beautiful South didn’t really speak to me much after this point, I was always glad when they re-entered the scene because Paul Heaton is just about my favourite pop interview – always an interesting reflection, rooted in everyday life, but looked at from an odd perspective. A pity that it rarely comes over in the songs.
Good point on their unique perspective (and entertaining interviews). I’d like to think of Paul Heaton’s songs as a 90s version of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s, but they just aren’t even close. Wasn’t Song For Whoever on the first album, Billy? I remember hearing it for the first time and waiting for the punch line. And waiting. Just some kind of twist? Oh, I see.
I’d rather John Shuttleworth had had a string of Top 10 hits. “Eggs and gammon, poor Rhiannon”.
TOTPWatch: The Beautiful South twice performed ‘A Little Time’ on Top Of The Pops;
11 October 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Sisters of Mercy (yes!), The Chimes and Nenah Cherry. Bruno Brookes was the host.
25 October 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Belinda Carlisle and Jason Donovan. Jakki Brambles was the host.
there always seemed to be a touch of bad faith about The Beautiful South’s songs – not being willing to admit their own complicity in the hypocrisies they wanted to condemn. Mick Jagger was far more ambivalent about the perils and attractions of bad behaviour between the sexes.
Light Entertainment Watch: The Beautiful South often turned up on UK TV;
FRIDAY NIGHT WITH JONATHAN ROSS: with Martin Scorsese, Cilla Black, Johnny Vegas, The Beautiful South (2004)
LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with Sinéad O’Connor, The Beautiful South (1994)
LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with The Beautiful South, Metallica, Catatonia, Donovan, Horace Andy (1996)
LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: The Beautiful South In Concert (1997)
THE O ZONE: with The Beautiful South, INXS, Damage (1997)
T•F•I• FRIDAY: with Will Macdonald, Andrew the Barman, Baby Bird, The Beautiful South, The Bluetones, Martin Clunes, “Vladimir Horowitz”, Ulrika Jonsson, The Longpigs, Cleo Rocos (1996)
V FESTIVAL 2006: with Dave Berry, Hard-Fi, Faithless, Paul Weller, The Dandy Warhols, The Feeling, James Dean Bradfield, Starsailor, The Charlatans, The Beautiful South (2006)
WOGAN: with The Beautiful South, Jo Ann Dearing, Nigel Planer, Patricia Routledge (1989)
WOGAN: with The Beautiful South, Paul Channon, Joanne & Kathy Gillespie, Gayle Hunnicutt, Daniel O’Donnell (1989)
WOGAN: with David Attenborough, The Beautiful South, Leslie Grantham, Don Henderson (1990)
WOGAN: with Elisabeth Glaser, The Beautiful South, Diana Quick, Patrick Malahide, Little & Large (1991)
WOGAN: with Marjorie & Jeremy Paxman, Ruby Wax, Millicent Martin, The Beautiful South (1991)
THE WORD: with Jennifer Beals, The Beautiful South, Kym Mazelle, Christopher Quinten, Shabba Ranks (1990)
Am oddly fond of The Beautiful South, as are a couple other of my born-in-the-early-to-mid-90s friends. This probably coincides with our comfy Radio 2 parents all going out and buying Carry On Up The Charts and it drifting into our cots (aww).
(of course secretly my theory of everything is that all pop criticism could be replaced with the birthday of the criticiser and hardly lose anything)
The song’s new to me… but it doesn’t sound at all like a #1 – no real melodic hook, indifferent vocals, lyrics just OK (on one of pop and country’s big topics; we all know what good regretful and nasty stuff sounds like and this isn’t it). I quite liked the Housemartins, and ALT wouldn’t have made the cut I believe on any of their main albums. Domestic violence vid. played for laughs is pretty horrific:
2 or 3
The Beautiful South were one of those bands I was conflicted about. Heaton’s songs always sparkled lyrically and, as Billy points out, he was one of pop’s more interesting characters. The videos were usually great too. It’s just a pity that musically they were so lacking in bite.
Occasionally they’d come up with a truly brilliant single. Old Red Eyes Is Back and Bell Bottomed Tear being cases in point – both compassionate, well observed human interest pop songs. Then they’d go and spoil it all by releasing smirking crap like 36D.
In my experience the people who The Beautiful South really register the most with are heavy drinkers with little curiosity about music (i.e. they don’t know that ‘Everybody’s Talking’ is a cover version and don’t recognise it as a dissimilar song to the other South hits).
I think it’s the combination of songs about ordinary but careworn lived experience, undemanding melodies, choruses that you can sing along to (the wretched ’36D’ being a very good example) and above all, a tone that’s aiming for wry but comes over as bitter (“Don’t marry her, fuck me”) that chime with people who drink quite a lot most days, and have heartfelt emotional conversations and encounters that they can’t properly remember.
I always find Paul Heatons songs uneasily balanced between self-satisfaction and self-deprecation. Here on his only original number one he stays on the vocalist subs bench. I don’t miss his voice and his presence is discernable anyway in the did-you-see-what-I-did-there-ness of the lyrics. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I hate The Beautiful South, but I’ve grown to hate Song For Whoever that sneery, curdled little almost-a-number-one mocking the types of schlocky ballads that often go to number one themselves. One reason the irony seems sour is because Dave Hemingways sweetly diffident voice actually sounds as though he really longs to sing a heartfelt love song with a pretty melody and if it has a girls name in the title all the better.
The vocals are the best thing about A Little Time with Hemingway counteracted by Brianna Corrigan whose piquant tones the track would become soporific without.
While I don’t hate The Beautiful South I don’t rate them either.
Their music not only found a comfy niche on Radio 2 I can also confirm it can be piped into Poundstretcher* and not sound even slightly aberrant. A Little Time is typical of them in that it sounds too deliberate. The backing is a tasteful ersatz negotiation between country AOR and soul. Another dicothomy of Heatons music is that for all it’s (Northern) Englishness the actual sources tend to be impeccably American.
Oddly enough I found myself reading this post while halfway through listening to Get Happy. I mention this because of the matter of wordplay in pop songs. Elvis Costello is a long-term musical favourite of mine and it struck me that I usually relish how he manipulates words and phrases whereas when Heaton does likewise I just shrug.
For the most part it’s simply a matter that I think Costello is more ingenious about it. He can use wordplay to build an atmosphere
(Watching The Detectives), as a form of word association poetry (New Amsterdam) or as a performance in itself (Pump it Up). He doesn’t always pull it off – I think Pills And Soap for one was a misfire,
but I find his words as compelling as the songs. It might also have to do with his voice. The Costello squawk is not for everyone but it does convey the intensity behind all these clever words. There is no Costello song devoid of neurosis.
With Paul Heaton however the wordplay is as tidy and plodding as the music behind it.
* Poundstretcher in Southport to be specific.
Re 11: I think you’ve nailed it.
If you imagine Nancy & Lee or Johnny & June Carter Cash singing ‘A Little Time’ you realise just how flimsy a song it is.
I was about to post an indignant comment here about how much I like The Beautiful South whilst not being an alcoholic or a Radio Two listener, but having given it further thought there are really only a clutch of Beautiful South songs I think are better than average, and this isn’t one of them (if you’re interested, the singles of theirs I do rate are “I’ll Sail This Ship Alone”, “My Book”, “Old Red Eyes Is Back”, “Bell Bottomed Tear”, and “Blackbird on the Wire” – most of these are on “Carry On Up The Charts” which I own along with millions of others, although I picked my copy up cheap from Music and Video Exchange).
Tom underlines the problems with the lyrics of “A Little Time” well – to me, it always sounded like a soap opera scene set to music, which is probably exactly what they were aiming for, but it’s all drama and no feeling (or at least all spite and no tenderness). Corrigan’s voice also grates way more on this single than on most other BS tracks, as she seethes, yelps and spits through the lines to really hammer the point home. I’ve just checked Chartstats and observed that this was a one-week wonder at the top, and I have to say I’m not terribly surprised – it certainly feels like a stop-gap chart-topper from a band with a strong fanbase. It’s just a shame they couldn’t have had their moment in the sun with one of their better singles.
A lot of the comments above also seem to be defining their fanbase quite rigidly, which I think is a mistake. Plenty of studenty Housemartins fans stuck around for at least the first few albums (and beyond), they had a middle-aged audience through Radio Two, and even a certain degree of support from the corner of the market we would probably refer to as “Asda CD buyers” these days. At university I even knew quite a few indie kids who liked them, and I’ve always thought of them as being one of those rare bands who managed to cross over to a wide spectrum of the record buying public, as the bafflingly huge sales of “Carry On Up The Charts” eventually proved. Was there not a story in the NME at the time which revealed that Phonogram were so bemused by the demand for the album that they actually carried out market research to find out how they were shifting so many units, just to note for future reference? Of course, Oasis repeated the “cross over potential” trick to an even greater effect with “Morning Glory” a year later.
The one 90s Beautiful South song that I really respond to is ‘One Last Love Song’ for its mingled sense of finality and resignation, made more expansive by the accordion that gives the song a boozy warmth.
It was the one-off single from ‘Carry On Up The Charts’. I always thought that if Heaton had stopped it there, it would have been one of the best ways for a band to end in pop history.
Yeah the Beautiful South could be a bit Radio 2-bland (which is what they ultimately, seemingly permanently ended up as), or too clever-clever lyrically (I think “Song For Whoever” and “My Book” both failed on this latter point – “Back to bed, back to reality”, indeed. And “36D” was almost unlistenable). Or, sometimes, just unbearably smug, or irritating (“Don’t Marry Her”)
But..when it all fitted together, and when they were hiding that they were trying too hard, they could put together some damn fine music. Which I think they did, on numerous occasions, certainly in the earlier part of their time together as a group. By no means really challenging, avant-garde stuff, but…well, that wasn’t the point, was it?
I think about half the tracks on “Miaow” (1993/94ish) are really fine bits of whatever genre of music you categorise this stuff as… – “Worthless Lie”, “Hidden Jukebox”, “Hooligans Don’t Fall In Love”, “Mini-Correct” and “Poppy” (I think I’ve remembered the titles correctly) – are all…miniature gems, almost. “A double arsenic for Mr Le Pen…”
(I remember listening to that album a lot in my incense-laden, windswept, seaside, room in my first year at university)
And I also join my praise to that of others for “Bell Bottomed Tear”. Which is tender and fragile and a lovely thing.
And “A Little Time” – I think it DOES work as a song, rather than simply an episodic story. I’m still fond of it, and was glad to see it make number 1 at the time.
And in halfway defence of Ms Corrigan, well… Lorraine Macintosh could be far more irritating on Deacon Blue singles around this time than Corrigan was here. Although, right around this time, I think, “Love And Regret” – - how gorgeous – and almost overlooked and then forgotten – a single was that. Kelvingrove Park in the autumn. Ahhh). Corrigan’s vocals almost go in the direction of Kirsty Maccoll at some points….what can be wrong with that?
Good call on One Last Love Song.
“Those bloody great ballads we hated at first
Well I bought them all, now I’m writing worse”
I wish Paul Heaton had been in this self-aware mode more often. I’m sure I love pubs and booze as much as he does, but writing a drunken cynical lyric, demo-ing the song, making the record… there are plenty of opportunities to stop and, umm, think for a minute.
I don’t know the Beautiful South very well (though I remember reading their first big interview in the NME just before ‘song for whoever’ was released, on a coach on Friday 19th May 1989 I think, and thinking gosh, they’ll be lucky to be popular), but I feel a bit of a discrepancy somewhere in it all (in the way critics et al don’t like them? in the way they are considered bland and harmless?) due to the fact that I always associated them with the political Left, perhaps just because I am sure that The Housemartins were strongly associated with the political Left and I find it hard to believe that this successor band would entirely have abandoned such an affiliation.
NOW! watch: The Beautiful South took up the position usually reserved for Queen – disc one, track one – on Now! 18. A motley collection. Who’d have guessed that the track closest to the definitive sound of the next few years would be There She Goes?
1. The Beautiful South : “A Little Time”
2. Steve Miller Band : “The Joker”
3. Elton John : “Sacrifice”
4. Roxette : “It Must Have Been Love”
5. Phil Collins : “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven”
6. Wilson Phillips : “Hold On”
7. Sinéad O’Connor : “Nothing Compares 2 U”
8. (bunny embargoed)
9. Belinda Carlisle : “(We Want) the Same Thing”
10. Status Quo : “Anniversary Waltz (Part One)”
11. INXS : “Suicide Blonde”
12. Public Image Ltd. : “Don’t Ask Me”
13. Talk Talk : “It’s My Life”
14. The La’s : “There She Goes”
15. Tina Turner : “Be Tender With Me Baby”
16. Robert Palmer & UB40 : “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”
#19 Paul Heaton was, and as far as I know remains, a staunch socialist and I’m sure as much of the Beautiful South millions went to good left-wing causes as went to the breweries of Britain. But they weren’t really an act of the Left in the way Billy Bragg was (or even the Housemartins) – and certainly I doubt they had a particularly politicised fanbase. If anything their views show up in the songs they (mostly) DON’T sing – for a band so occasionally dyspeptic and boozy there’s a general lack of saloon bar politics.
#17 But while we’re talking Briana C, and we have the Pinefox here, time to mention Tim Hopkins’ pet theory (gleefully borrowed by me) which is that this single’s big pop legacy is that Belle And Sebastian were inspired by it to stick Monica Queen on “Lazy Line Painter Jane”
Well, I am neither a raging alcoholic nor an avid Radio 2 listener (though I much prefer it to the non-stop drivel that passes for Radio 1 these days), but I am not ashamed to admit that I like quite a lot of their work. “Choke” was the second proper album I ever bought with my own money having left school and started a proper (if extremely low-paid) job and I was impressed with enough to go back and buy their first album.
I can appreciate why they’re such a Marmite band, but for me anyway the mostly ever-present bile canceled out their inherent twee-ness and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all their album up-to-and-including “Quench”. Things begin to change when Paul Heaton became a bit too fond of the hard-stuff – the edge to his lyrics was often lost to be replaced by self-pity and unfortunately this led them to truly become as bland and twee as they were often labelled. “Painting It Red” was where they first started to jump the shark for me – it’s a double album that could do with losing more than half the songs in it. But worse was to come, “Gaze” and everything afterward were mostly tune-free monotony.
I notice a lot of hate for “36D” – I dread to think what any of you thought of “Size”. 36D is not one of their best I admit, but I wouldn’t call it unlistenable. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that “Mini-Correct” from “Miaow” was a driving force behind Briana Corrigan’s decision to leave the band as well as 36D, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that she was very reluctant to sing the female parts in that song.
As for “A Little Time” it’s a good little song, but even I was surprised that it got to No.1 (I think the video may have helped). But if I had to pick a song from Choke it would have to be “Let Love Speak Up Itself” which certainly deserved higher than it’s No.51 placing and probably should have been the second single release instead of the too-clever-by-half “My Book”.
I quite like the idea of a song where a couple interrupt each other, but it seems like an idea which would require some skill and effort to pull off without it being grating – skill and effort which don’t seem to have been in effect here. Can anyone think of a song that’s made it work? Not Fairytale Of New York, they don’t really interrupt each-other there.
Re: #15 – It really does seem like a bit of a stopgap in between two bigger number ones, yes – one of those minority interests that gets a moment in the sunlight because there’s nothing else around.
Re #23: A fantastic interruption – well, contradiction, at least – song;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sISWPzEqHLQ
@22 re “Mini-correct”, that would be the “They say `always use a condom’, I say `always use a whip’” number. Hmmm.
Agreed re “Let Love Speak Up Itself”.