Classicist pop often sacrifices quality for vibe. Shakin’ Stevens might have had the moves down but if “Oh Julie” had fallen back through time to the 50s it would have simply got lost in a flood of better rock’n’roll. The secret shame of the traditionalist is that they’re parasites on the present: they need time to have changed, or they wouldn’t stand out.
But every now and then something turns up which shrugs this problem away. “Would I Lie To You?” is classicist alright – when I first heard it I knew nothing of soul history, nothing of Philly, doo-wop, 60s pop-soul or anything else it might be nodding to, but I recognised it as something reaching backwards. And it didn’t matter: “Would I Lie To You?” would have been a hit in 1974 too.
No secret why: this is an irresistibly sweet record. Charles and Eddie have no edge whatsoever, they come over as total nice guys, and they don’t even have the “secretly a prick” vibe most “nice guys” end up with. It’s dreaminess all the way down: if anyone’s going to end up hurt it’ll be them, but that’s an unimaginable outcome as long as the record’s playing.
So how do they stop it becoming saccharine? I think the key is that the chorus is such a massive sugar hit that on the verses they can relax, play around, enjoy each other’s company – flirt a little, basically. When they’re trading harmonies, finishing each other’s lines, swooping and sighing at one another the “girl” becomes simply a fictional convenience. It’s all platonic, for sure, but it’s no surprise their origin story (carrying the same record on the subway) was like something out of a music nerd rom-com: few other records demonstrate the joy of mutually loving and making music so prettily.
Score: 8
[Logged in users can award their own score]
I have a very happy memory of playing this in the background during an art lesson I was teaching – and one by one the whole class began to join in so that we were all crooning the chorus by the end.
I always assumed the origin story was a PR cookup? It would be nice if this were not the case.
Lovely record, yes – a well-deserved 8.
A number one straight out of Popular ‘70, but for once none the worse for it; “Would I Lie To You?” was a piece of unashamedly retro blue-eyed soul-pop, and it was that “unashamedly” which made it work; unlike some names which come to mind, Charles Pettigrew and Eddie Chacon, from Philadelphia and Oakland respectively, black and white, sounded as though they were singing the music they loved because they genuinely wanted to, as opposed to being cynically slotted into a preprogrammed machine of “ironic” samples and references.
The record’s architecture is admirable, from its opening boxed drums, pub piano and shakers suddenly punctuated by some Aaron Neville abstract, floating vowels as though rehearsing in their attic, which opens out onto a plain of serene old school strings, enthusiastic but not overpowering backing vocalists and a genuine feel of spontaneous give and take in the music as the two men take turns to pledge and reinforce their fealty to their doubtfully jealous loved ones. Their voices are pleasingly high-register – the tenderer Mick Hucknall meeting the glorious near-androgynous tones of an Al Green – and gently persuasive rather than grittily hectoring; feel the truthfulness flowing out of the point where the music momentarily stops – after the arrangement has progressively narrowed to pure rhythm, as though the lover is approaching the eye of the lover’s never-lying camera – and we hear a never more heartfelt “That’s not the kind of game I play.” The intermittent whoops do not sound rehearsed, and the cumulative experience is one of pure, admiring joy.
The duo continued to record and have hits, but never came anywhere near recapturing the success of “Would I Lie To You?”; as with the more recent parallel example of *spoiler bunny edit*, this was recognisably their moment – but how sublime a moment it was, and for me, as I suspect for them, it documented a period of absolute, unspoilable happiness. The fact that Charles Pettigrew died of cancer, aged 37, in 2001, brings another parallel to mind (don’t bother looking it up; you can’t)…but for now, everything was happy and all was nobly good.
Yes I assume it’s bollocks too – emphasis on “story” here.
What I did not know but have just found out from Wiki is that one of C or E was in a band age 12 with guys from Faith No More and Metallica!
This is one of those songs that no one ever seems to mention but when it comes up everyone seems to like it. Jamie Woon covered it at Glastonbury this year on a sunny Sunday afternoon and most of the field responded and started singing. It was certainly better than most of his own material.
TOTPWatch. Charles & Eddie thrice performed ‘Would I Lie To You’ on Top of the Pops;
12 November 1992. Also in the studio that week were; En Vogue, Michael Bolton, Vanessa Paradis, Undercover, Jason Donovan and Neil Diamond. Mark Franklin was the host. This was the 1500th edition.
26 November 1992. A live performance by satellite from Toronto. In the studio that week were; EMF, Undercover, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, plus a live performance by satellite from Rod Stewart in Los Angeles. Mark Franklin was the host.
25 December 1992. A live performance by satellite from Toronto. In the studio that Christmas were; Wet Wet Wet, Right Said Fred, Shut Up & Dance (!), KWS, Jimmy Nail , Undercover and Tamsin Archer, plus two further live performances by satellite from Philadelphia; Shanice and Boyz II Men. Mark Franklin & Tony Dortie
Light Entertainment Watch: Charles and Eddie visited a few UK TV studios in the wake of ‘Would I Lie To You?’;
LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with Charles and Eddie, Belly, Maldita, The Auteurs (1993)
LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with Suede, Fishbone, Charles and Eddie (1993)
THE O ZONE: with Charles and Eddie, Midge Ure, Take That (1993)
Mind you Tom, that origin story sounds strikingly like Mick and Keef meeting on the platform at Dartford station 50 years ago last Monday, when Keef spotted his primary school passing acquaintance Mick carrying an armful of blues records. Their story would make an interesting rom-com!
Who? What?
scurries off to YouTube
Oh that! Yes, this was lovely. If I hadn’t just moved to the States I would have bought it. An 8 for sure, reminds me a lot of the great blue-eyed souler David Lasley whose ‘Raindance’ album should have been massive in the early 80s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPz8GwYMdbY
With Popular, a lot of the time I hear a song, and I appreciate it and, because it isn’t really my ‘thing’ the most I’d give it is 7 or 8.
“Would I Lie To You”, with it’s sweet soul-pop stylings, most certainly isn’t my thing.
And yet, and yet…
I can’t find anything wrong with it. I really can’t. This song will brighten up my day, any time. The tune, the way the comparatively high-pitched vocals work, the sense of fun, the sense of enjoyment, the sincere-yet-lighthearted way it’s delivered…brilliant, fantastic, superb.
I cannot find anything that detracts from this wonderful song.
It isn’t my thing, but that’s not a problem at all.
10.
Subject matter time:
The comedian Mark Thomas, at the time, discussed this and said “anyone who says “Would I lie to you” IS LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH!”..
A little while later someone interviewed C&E, and asked them directly. At which point both collapsed in giggles and basically nodded a lot.
This completes a hat-trick of number ones from acts making their UK singles chart debut, where the record started half way down [Range 34-50] the chart and worked its way up to the top.
I find myself, suprisingly often, assessing the quality of records on little moments. The small things that make me smile or raise the hairs up on the back of my neck. Often, just one will make me rate a song much more highly than others will do. Two in the same song will probably make it a favourite. I would say this has at least two and if I keep listening I’m probably going to find more. The one that really grabs me though is the build up into the second chorus where there is a “woooo” belted out, missing on the first run into the chorus, which makes it abundantly clear just how much fun these two are having. It never fails to make me smile. The way the instruments drop out just before “it’s not the kind of game I play” is another winner (indeed, the whole song is constructed really well).
All in all, very, very good. i’d push to 9, possibly 10 if you catch me in the right mood.
A song which brings back fond memories for me. I was in an unashamedly retro band myself at the time (albeit the kind of band which rehearses and procrastinates a thousand times more often than it actually gigs or writes new material) and this was something of a van stereo favourite. Up and down the London trunk road we went, dual carriageway lights whizzing past in the dark Autumn afternoons, as Charles and Eddie trilled this tune and somebody sang along.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in my life who hates this single. OK, I know it seldom drops easily into conversations these days, but unlike most number ones it didn’t have a bunch of naysayers mocking it who were all tired of its over-exposure. It wasn’t parodied by comedians or mocked by music journalists.
The video with its peculiar head-and-legs montage shots, however, was a bit naff, and on the blog “Out on Blue Six” the writer Tim Worthington was moved to suggest changing the chorus’s lyrics to “Take a look at my head/ it’s much bigger than my legs/ would I lie to you?” which is what I tend to hear every time it’s played now. But that’s not their fault…
Weren’t they once accused of releasing a woefully inadequate follow-up single in the shape of “NYC”, which chronicled how they (supposedly) met? I’m sure I’ve heard that one described as a career-killer before now, but I can’t remember terribly much about it.
Shortly after this hit, Earl Brutus claimed in a press release to have met when all six of them boarded the same tube carriage with a copy of Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Tarkus under their arms.
This is a complete delight. The unexpected melancholy of the chords on the chorus, especially after the ecstatic whoop on the bridge, are what makes it for me.
Oh, and I DID meet someone today who doesn’t like it. I was pretty shocked.
It might be one of those songs, if you didn’t know it that well, that could have been a R&B classic. Easily, mistakenly attributed to Sam & Dave’s give and go vocal stylings in the 60’s, or even Sam & Mark in the 00’s. WILTY is not of a particular time. It is fun, innocent, charming and you can feel the joy coming from the speakers.
The subway story is kinda twee isn’t it? Which record did they have in common? A soul classic? Or something more obscure? You could romanticise any famous Rock&Roll meeting eg: Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (fresh in the mind after they announced their separation this week) meet in the record store queue, both clutching Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”, go off and form Sonic Youth together. It’s a PR wet dream! The story writes itself.
The formula that worked so well on WILTY is repeated on “24-7-365” off the Chocolate Milk LP…did they get stuck in a rut? I’ve not heard that whole album to properly tell.
The song has its fans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzZCoe38_hM
IIRC the tale they told was that the record over which they bonded was Marvin Gaye’s soundtrack to Trouble Man.
I can’t remember the specific artist, but even to my less cynical younger self I remember thinking ‘ah – a way to tell the public that these artists x are a bit like that classic artist y’.
The X Factor rendition the other day did demonstrate that the song has genuine legs – it’s not just in the performance. I had no idea that Charles had died that young. Horrible.
I thought the record was What’s Going On, but I could be wrong.
Hah, it might well have been Mark Thomas that I caught it from, but I remember consensus at the time being a) this was a good record but more importantly b) obviously they are lying. Starting with the line “look into my eyes, don’t you see they’re open wide”, is a Darren Brown-esque level of drawing attention to what is supposed to be an involuntary tell.
“Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Tarkus”
It is the people’s Tarkus. ELP were merely its midwives.
I listened to this (on youtube) for the first time about a week ago, as it were, in prep. for this entry, and it made no impact whatsoever. In the light of Tom’s 8 and all the peanut gallery love I’ve listened carefully to a pretty good mp3 of it though headphones twice just now, and still… nothing. I don’t hate it, but I certainly don’t like it.
The vocals are fairly thin and characterless by soul standards I would have thought, the blues chords in the second verse, and the overall lame-o piano kind of combine to kill off any momentum the song would otherwise have, and the less said about the laboring history/mystery lyrics the better. The whole thing in my view, just lies there, like a big yawn. A definite 4 or 5 at best I’d say, but maybe I’m missing something.
(Hah – the next thing on my itunes, playing as I type this, was the Charles Lloyd Quartet’s Dream Weaver. So awesome by comparison. That was followed by the even more monumental Charles Mingus’s Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love. What torture it would be to waste a single second listening to Charles and Eddie again rather than either of these. I won’t do it. Memo to popsters: stay out of the ‘Charles’s.)
Gotta agree with swanstep… just, like, what are you hearing in this boring song? You guys are making me feel tone-deaf ’cause this isn’t working for me at all.
Great chorus. Really insistent. The slightly tinny piano and boxy drums slightly let it down; the verse marks time, but overall a deserved 8
I’m going to stick boringly in the middle here – it’s a decent enough retro soul track, but it’s still not quite up to the standard of the material it draws from. A 7, in other words, and a lower 7 than the more original Sleeping Satellite.
No idea Charles had died, by the way – I was watching the pair of them interviewed on Channel 4’s ‘Top Ten One-Hit Wonders’ just a few months ago – the programme must have gone out in 2000 or earlier. They made a big deal out of the “controversy” of the public finding out that their soulboy subway meet-cute was a record company intention, but I don’t remember any fuss being made at the time.
Not really sure what to say here, my sentiments echo Tom’s in the review pretty exactly. Really nice memories of it. Remember becoming aware that it was “proper” music, contra the Eurodance that was simultaneously taking my fancy, but not in a negative or boring way. 8 or 9.
As a nine-year-old at the time, with a prepubescent’s fixed ideas of gender roles, I was slightly affronted by what I perceived to be Charles and Eddie’s relaxed androgyny. As such, what must be one of the safest records imaginable had an element of edge for me, not least because in spite of my reservations, I adored it.
Listening to it now, while I’m not quite as crazy about it as some here, it is charming, isn’t it; like a pleasingly un-macho Sam and Dave. Love the gawky, do-woppy lyrics (‘You can read my diary; you’re on every line’) and there’s something hugely admirable about any record, let alone one in the soul tradition, that has the confidence to climax on an acapella whimper.
Hello all, by the way!
Hmm…I’m a bit baffled at the amount of love this record is getting. I remember it as being a fairly nondescript piece of retro fluff. It’s harmless enough, but as 60s soul pastiches go isn’t fit to lace the boots of McAlmont and Butler’s Yes or even Gabrielle’s Give Me A Little More Time.
And that ridiculous story of them meeting on the subway put me off too. Whether it was true or not hardly mattered, it sounded just like a poor PR concoction.
#28 Will – thoroughly in agreement, and what wonderful examples you choose to illustrate how magnificently this kind of thing can work.
More illustration needed! I probably do prefer ‘Give Me A Little More Time’ (and ‘One Goodbye In Ten’) but tho they both sound more faithfully authentic (WILTY has a subtle hip-hop influence in the backing) I can’t think of anything that would really elevate those that much above this.
Further illustration might lead us into unnecessary conflict.
I think it’s quite unkind to pick over the tastes of others for the sake of it, and to invent strong negative opinions merely to counter the positive feelings others have towards a record – as someone on a different Popular thread said, to be the “Dog in the manger”*. Yet to elucidate what makes Yes and GMALMT more enjoyable to me than WILTY, I (for one – remembering they weren’t my choices!) would have to begin to describe what I think are WILTY’s weaknesses – in comparison to the other records at least, if not in absolute terms. The more interesting challenge is to ponder what enjoyment others get from it, and to try to make recommendations along similar lines.
Still though, I feel awkward. I tried the 30 day song challenge on Facebook recently and when one friend stated on my “wall” that they preferred a different version of one of my favourite songs, I couldn’t sleep! I didn’t agree with them, of course, but worse, how could they do that to me? With all of the thought that had gone into making a selection? That melting pot of memory, emotion and reason. I wouldn’t want to do that to anyone else, and I’m struggling to appreciate morally whether there’s a real difference between that situation and this one. I can rationalise it this way and that, but I can’t convince myself. However, I am glad someone said pretty much exactly what I feel, because then I can take the coward’s way out and simply agree.
*Though this is obviously quite separate from voicing a well-formed negative opinion or negative association.
Clearly very popular so I don’t want to dampen that.
It’s not a song I’ve ever latched onto but it is well crafted.
One of my initial thoughts is that it has a hint of seventies to it.
Actually it seems to hint at how music tastes move back and forth.
It could have been a number 1 in 1972 or 2012 or 1992.
It would have been a top 5 hit in 1982 or 2002 because it’s catchy enough but the actual sound would seem out of step.
The ‘oh yeah!’ in the middle of the chorus is embodied in Charles’ and Eddie’s postures on the sleeve! (even though only sung by Eddie). Very evocative. It’s also a singstar classic, the repeated chorus at the end goes on much longer than you remember. What a great song: 9
Hmm, I’d say that “One Goodbye In Ten” is a sublime, stunning, superior work of art (and I think such terminology is not out of place here) to “Would I Lie To You”, which, while aiming less high, succeeds admirably at what it does – On OGIT the anguish sounds heartfelt, so palpably, painfully, sincere; the arrangement is powerful, and it is in all a thing of wonder. What it is not, however – because of this intensity and tautness – is a likely or potential no 1 record (as they were before the new release straight-in-at-the-top fever made such distinctions not meaningful: 1992 is still just on the right side of that line). What is great – and it is wonderful – about WILTY is its easy-going beauty and charm, combined with at least a good degree of technical proficiency. It’s radio-friendly, but, damn, it’s quality. So yes, I’d say that OGIT is the better song, and the better record – but when it comes to pop music you’d gladly hear on the radio, Charles and Eddie have the edge. Gabrielle, meanwhile, and while I am also fond of that song, really isn’t in the same league as either, at least not with GMALMT. “If You Really Cared”, though, hmm, maybe.
I think that I actually prefer the stripped-down original demo version of One Goodbye in Ten Shara Nelson recorded with St. Etienne that was on the b-side. Perhaps the Showaddywaddy-style backing vocals that go “Ba ba bow bow bow!” would strike many listeners as too silly, though.
#34 Interesting idea re beautiful songs being too taut and intense to appeal to the masses. In Shara Nelson’s particular case perhaps she was too associated with romantic resignation and broody mystique to have been able to take a song all the way. OGIT/SN may have been too tasteful in that respect but ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ came closer and even a Nelson ‘Nothing Compares 2’ (thus by a Nelson for a Nelson!) is just about imaginable (but a version more proud than passionate). I can’t quite hear her doing ‘Sleeping Satellite’ tho.
Certainly nothing going on here for me. A sugary ineffectual record and one that I will quite happily switch off whenever I bump into it on the radio or TV. The overly repeated chorus grates and irritates. Not quite sure where all the love here for it comes from. Had it been released in the 60s or 70s or whatever period they are alluding to, I doubt it would have had any impact at all. 4 at best.
I had no idea what this was until I watched the video and realised I’d heard it before. A great hook, but for me this goes on about a minute and a half too long; I would have preferred the briefer treatment it would have got in the 1960s. Nevertheless: 7.
This was a song I was aware of at the time, because it was all over the radio, I guess? But I can’t say I paid it very much attention whatsoever – it was just one of those songs that was there in the environment, that were pleasant enough but didn’t strike you one way or another. But I do now find myself with mild nostalgic emotional attachments to Australian alternative pop music from the mid-to-late 1990s which, at the time, I wasn’t really that fussed over, and listening to Charles and Eddie here I feel similarly.
The interesting thing to me about that nobody else has commented on is the sadness of it; the chorus uses the same I IIIm chord progression that plenty of sad sack alt country types have made a career out of, and between that and the emotional tone of the vocals, it has a rather melancholic feel to me. I listen to it and wonder whether the sadness is because they’re unjustly being accused of cheating, or whether they now regret the consequences of the cheating they’re justly accused of. I feel it’s more like the latter? After all, my mum always told me, ‘don’t trust anybody who says “trust me” to you’.
Retro but not in the fascimile way of something like Diana Ross ‘Chain Reaction’ and played on the then still pretty ‘street’ Kiss FM at the time without jarringly sticking out. Nice tune but not really where my attention was being focussed at the time that being firmly occupied with what I saw as the sounds of 1992/the future.
Surprised there’s been no mention of The Eurythmics yet. Their WILTY from ’85 is also a nod to past R&B triumphs, as much Charles and Eddie’s is.
A song I will always love. You can’t beat it.
I was going to reread this thread while walking through Barnsbury but realised that I would only be in York Way.
Yep, I agree with (pretty much) all of you – this is lovely – so I’ll take a moment to speak up for NYC.
It’s another effortless piece of sweet pop-soul, this time built around the Buffalo Springfield For What It’s Worth riff. Oddly I think the Oui3 cover came out around the same period. Anyway, the (apocryphal?) C&E meeting is brought up in the lyrics; something like “I ran into C on the A-train/He had a brand new copy of Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man…” I could look it up but I like trying to remember it. If the story isn’t true they were certainly keen to keep hammering it.
Unfortunately, they both knew it wasn’t what we, we needed.
(sorry entered here by accident)
When I was going through U.K. #1’s, I was surprised to hear this, I hadn’t heard it in years. Was a decent charting hit in the U.S., but my mind blended it together with Simply Red’s “Stars,” which I heard more often throughout the years. Not a favorite of mine, but I appreciate the ‘nice guy’ write up…though visually they looked like half of Color Me Badd.
I’m sorry I don’t much like this. Charles and Eddie’s performances are fine, but I just find the song a tad boring and repetitive. 4/10 from me.
I think Danh (#48) makes a great point regarding Color Me Badd. I’ll go with a 4/10 for Charles and Eddie.