British R&B – like UK hip-hop – has tended to suffer credibility issues*. Back in the 50s and 60s, British groups lifted American sounds, but the American originals weren’t easy to find, and the signal could be scrambled in transmission. Productive mishearings ensued: the result, to a great extent, was the story we’ve been telling on this blog. By the mid-90s, things were different. News travelled faster, and production techniques were more transferable – the globalisation of pop apparent in the 21st century was well under way.
But they were also not so different – the British response to modern American music was still, typically, a slightly lead-footed imitation of it, just as it had been 40 years before. It’s the curse of the borrowing culture: you accept conventions as limits. When Britain did manage something more creative or divergent, the hybrid quickly got packaged up into its own genre – trip-hop, or later grime – and the more standard local product lapsed into general adequacy.
So one extraordinary thing about “Return Of The Mack” is that it seemed to have none of this cultural cringe. It was very good, and very good in exactly the way American R&B could be. There was nothing even slightly apologetic about its utter self-possession: the kind of absolute, to-the-manner-born confidence that stars exude. Which makes the other extraordinary thing about it – how comprehensively Mark Morrison fucked his opportunity up – even odder and sadder. On the strength of this song, we expected a superstar: we got a trivia answer, a panel show joke.
But in the context of the song, all that confidence might be a front – this guy’s been wounded, publically, by his ex, and he’s putting on a comeback show for himself, for his buddies, but especially for her. “All this pain you said I’d never feel – but I do, but I do do do”. And the more you listen the smaller he sounds – “hold on, be strong” Morrison mutters to himself on the outro.
The music certainly has his back – the rubbery basslines cocooning the song, the satisfying crunch of the drums, the light keyboard touches helping Morrison glide along his comeback trail. “Return Of The Mack” is a pleasure to listen to, a well-tailored suit of sound. But what’s it covering up? This is the final, hardest part of a break-up – the point where you have to turn “over it” from private claim to public practise – and it’s no wonder Morrison starts bolshy and ends up brittle. His smooth, high voice trails away at the end of every line, a vulnerable touch to counter the swagger. Perhaps this song is more British than it sounds.
*(in the case of UK hip-hop this was somewhat unfair: Britain produced a lot of enjoyable local hip-hop, which Freaky Trigger pal Tim Hopkins used to turn into excellent compilations. But it was a tight scene, deep-buried and little-respected, with no chance of national success let alone ever travelling.)
Score: 8
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The Mack is back (& so, after a quick conference season break, is Popular) http://t.co/bdSONdf0ZI
May I be the first to say: I’m Mark Morrison! I’m Mark Morrison! Don’t you know who I am?
Britsoul’s Pete Doherty became the first black British male solo artist to have a number one single (even though he was born in Hanover), and almost certainly the first chart-topper since Showaddywaddy to have grown up in Leicester. It is a shame that his subsequent exploits and run-ins with the law – most famously, after being found guilty of firearms offences and sentenced to community service, he sent a lookalike to serve out the time while he jetted off to Barbados – brought his career to a premature and ignominious end since “Return Of The Mack” is one of the great Britsoul records, good enough to keep the Manics’ post-bereavement comeback single “A Design For Life” in second place.
It is an unlikely twin to “Ain’t No Doubt” in its midtempo swagger and its rhetorical address of the double-crossing Other, though Morrison addresses her directly with his repeated, askance “You lied to me” before confidently reasserting his return to the world (“So baby listen carefully/While I sing my comeback song”). In the chorus he exultantly celebrates his triumph against all odds – “here I go!” “oh my God!” “pump up the world!” – against the titular chant. While vocally he appeared to take Cameo’s Larry Blackmon as a role model, the record is an astute celebration of all that was good in the twenty preceding years of British soul and dance music; the easy but insistent rhythm recalls Junior Giscombe, Cutmaster and Joe’s virulent scratching hook it up to the mid-eighties of Coldcut and M/A/R/R/S, the aquatically echoed rhythms place it in the nineties, the vocal arrangements to the late seventies heyday of Hi-Tension. And Morrison handles the voices with deft skill; the (mock?) vulnerability of his “but I do, but I do, do, do” is counterbalanced by the cocksure wink of “wants my pearl.” Another example (thus far thrown up) of great British pop which didn’t quite fit into Britpop.
Far superior to his work with the Bluetones etc
I remember there was a big hoo-haa about him being in prison for assault/guns/whatever (didn’t realise there were handcuffs on the cover though!) which I guess was played up as much as possible to add to the ‘Americanness’ of it all? In the end I shrugged off the gnawing feeling that I shouldn’t like this song & thus be encouraging this sort of violent dude, and just lapped up the awesome call/response bits (“OH MA GAWD!” “HERR I GAWW”).
At least two singles by himself predate this one, so that’s my opening “first artist to start with a title indicating a comeback” blown..
I do remember about a year after this occasion, looking at the US singles chart and finding this one, which is a mark of respect from the origin, yeah. Actually, it stayed in that chart for a very long time!
This one didn’t translate to the playground in the way Firestarter did, so I can’t claim much contemporary knowledge of this one. Having first heard it a few years back though, it’s a very strong track – as already pointed out, Morrison’s vocal conveys something far more nuanced and emotionally complex and the swaggering comeback the lyrics would have you believe. And personally, I’m in favour of any record that can sneak Genius of Love by Tom Tom Club into the Popular canon…
As a Manics fan though, I do have to note that while this is probably a 7 or 8, A Design For Life would have been an unquestionable 10 for me. A beautiful eulogy to the band’s past and their roots that felt far mor fin de siecle than any bunny I can recall this side of the millenium.
The Leicester connection: if there are any Leicesterites lurking, could you confirm that Mark Morrison is held in as high esteem as Englebert Humperdinck and Showaddywaddy? Or is it all Kasabian, Kasabian, Kasabian these days?
Anyhoo, ROTM swings nicely, and it’s undoubtedly the best of his output. Punctum beat me to the punch with the “sounds like Larry Blackmon” thing, so not a lot to add, really.
There are still some hardcore Joe Orton, Family and bunnied future Popular act (not Kasabian) defenders out there, I reckon.
Also from Leicester: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Dodd_(broadcaster)
(idea PD has a fandom is kind of an in-joke with myself, tho mark morris will possibly get it)
Help me out here, as I think my memory’s playing tricks. Didn’t Chris Evans (claim to) have something to do with this hitting #1? It had already been a top 5 hit for a few weeks until Evans started playing it all the time, possibly as some sort of hilarious joke – I remember him sheepishly apologising for causing it (in his head anyway) to implausibly leapfrog the aforementioned Manics record to the top. But I have a feeling I may have muddled up several different memories there.
(Implausibly because that was against the grain of a singles chart lifespan at the time, not because this isn’t good or anything – I agree with 8)
D’oh! Larry Blackmon – of course.
It sounds like the kind of thing Chris Evans would say (and would fit the Britpop worldview as it started getting less and less ‘pop’ – an R&B record as a silly novelty next to the Important Rock Single) (a dumb attitude even when the rock single WAS great)
Of course in an ideal world this AND A Design For Life would have got to #1, and I’d have the extremely pleasant problem of writing about the latter. But at least I’ll get to read Lena’s piece on it.
#10 Reading that wiki page on Philip Dodd, he’ll sorta kinda feature in just over 1 Popular year from now, as part of a National rebranding exercise, if you know what I mean.
PD looms large in my personal mythology — I certainly owe him a professional debt for hiring me at S&S — but i’d take the claims made on his er haha “behalf” on much of that wikip page with an entire radioactive pillar of salt
meanwhile larry blackmon’s wikip page is distressingly stubform
Marcello @9 – I’ll certainly put in a word for Family, a fine band whose legacy seems not to have stood up to the passage of time.
I didn’t know until now that the song sample ‘Genius of Love’ but that helps to (partially) explain why the song has such an engaging, propulsive shuffle. MM gives a confident performance that balances bravado with vulnerability, qualities that are echoed by the other instruments and voices rising and falling from the foreground to the background.
I went to university with someone who had a very minor ‘run-in’ with Mark Morrison before he was famous back in her native Leicester. I got to hear the run-of-the-mill details of this every single time his name was mentioned (he pushed her out of the way in a local nightclub or something – I doubt the tabloid press would have been interested in her story then, never mind now) so whenever I hear “Return of the Mack” it always comes with an internalised commentary of “Eh! He’s a bloody ‘orrible man!” This probably undercuts its intended American R&B sophistication a little bit for me.
I don’t think this is purely to blame for “Return of the Mack” failing to grab my attention, though. It was a huge single and seemed to be everywhere for awhile, but its mid-tempo swagger did nothing for me. I was neither irritated nor thrilled by it, and its a track I tend to completely forget about until someone else brings it up in conversation.
I also distinctly remember getting a promo CD for “Only God Can Judge Me” in the post, sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the large titlefont on the sleeve and wondering if it was a genius marketing move or a very, very stupid one.
[Goes to YouTube to find this hitherto unfamiliar track]
[Turns youTube off again smartish]
[Finds some Wilson Pickett to listen to]
#18 The defiance in ‘Only God Can Judge Me’ is, as Kat points out, very American – incarceration (or community service) as a scar inflicted on the star by the system, whose authority he rejects. In the US it’s still risky, but backed up with a certain amount of cultural power, and a wide audience primed to stand by their stars, and a general acceptance among that audience that the system IS unforgiveably skewed. I don’t think Britain had those elements at the time. I also think you would need to be a REALLY hot star to use defiance as an excuse to cover up only recording 3 actual tracks on a 9-‘song’ mini-LP.
Well, this is brilliant. No two ways about it. Probably my favourite Number One of ’96.
But Mark Morrison the person? What a curious individual he was. All that handcuffs-jangling, self-conscious adoption of US gangsta imagery, and eventually, behaviour. Why?
Low comments box turnout on the latest Popular entry http://t.co/bdSONdf0ZI I fear this is no way to treat The Mack
Marky Mack’s two previous (and also quite tickable) hits sounded more American than this to me (‘Let’s Get Down’ may actually have had the best prominent bassline in an R&B or hip hop hit since ‘The Humpty Dance’) and I was really surprised how well ROTM did in the US. But the success seemed to go to his head in a bad way – nothing he released after this seemed any good at all.
On the Chris Evans connection I do recall he was whisked into the TFI Friday studios immediately upon his release from prison in order to perform this song.
Maybe the US gangsta imagery might of worked more if he was from London or Birmingham rather than a provincial city like Leicester. Great song though might be better without the spoken ‘Mark, stop worrying about your big break’ bit
But they do, but they do do do
RT @tomewing Low comments box turnout… http://t.co/482wHtJBLa I fear this is no way to treat The Mack 
Sample watch: as well as the Tom Tom Club sample, there are also samples of “Games” by Chukii Booker, “Rocket in the Pocket” by Cerrone, “Feel the Heartbeat” by the Treacherous Three, “UFO” by ESG, and “Peter Piper” by Run DMC. Most samples so far?
Hm – another piece of self-promotion masquerading as a song. Not as bad as I’d feared, but as enitharmon implies, this kind of thing has already been done before, and better. It’s pleasant enough, and quite well sung, but the repetitive backing gets tiresome, and it’s ultimately all rather forgettable. FIVE.
btw this currently has the same ‘number’ and date as Firestarter – if this gets changed perhaps this comment could be deleted
Certainly the best collections of sampled tracks so far! Those are all bona-fide classics.
I love this. First off, the sound is gorgeous, slighty reminiscent of Creep, I think. And there’s a great tension and release thing going on, with the verses circling and returning obsessively to the same paranoid thoughts – like a bloke pacing in his cell, innit – and then the chorus surging forward triumphantly, but all the time with Mark’s obsessive babble alternately reassuring and undercutting himself. A triumph.
i remember having a big row with a girl I was seeing about MM’s Brits performance – basically sexy WPCs on his case – with me arguing in vain that it was pop genius and her having precisely none of it for Chris Evans type reasons. It didn’t last and it happened that my feelings changed before hers…
This is pretty great, far better than anyone had any reason to expect it to be (his other singles prior to this one, and of those I can recall later were a bit meh, as we didn’t say then). Sure-fire dancefloor classic, no more, no less. Not obviously of its time: could have been made 10 years or 20 years earlier (ah: hello next bunny. you too? ah.) , and would still sound good, and indeed, a few minor technical points (and yes, samples) aside, pretty much identical.
7 I think.
Very good record. I hated it at the time of course – indie orthodoxy – but Mark’s utter ridiculosity has left many fond feelings for the guy. Better than being a regular one-hit wonder, but no substitute for a proper career.
I stumbled on a pleasing a capella when searching for this. The vocal sounds far more processed than I’d’ve thought – lots of echo, very tight double-tracking, the lead vocal sounds autotuned throughout. It may just be for this version I guess, I’m not conscious of it at all on the full version (on relistening it is processed, though it doesn’t sound to be quite to the same extent). The ad libs are left natural, and sound great.
Made me try to isolate the backing track, actually. It does a good job of sounding like a chilled party; I’m not sure whether that’s actual background chatter or a found sound. It all sounds very sweet and relaxed; no hint that Mark’s going to burst in with loads of guns or anything.
In summary it’s no *2003 bunny*, but it’d make a decent substitute. (8)
http://t.co/zgJisLQvyL
I have good reasons not to love this, but I do. My issue with it was purely personal: for years and years afterwards, I’d give my name on the phone to someone at a utility company or the council, and they’d say, ‘Oh, like the Return of the Mack guy?’ and I’d have to go, ‘Almost, but I’m Morris, not Morrison.’ Still, rather him than Mr Morriss from Britpop bores The Bluetones.
Anyway, but so, I think Tom and Marcello have done a good job with the song itself. Although I’m not that sure that British R&B has had the same issues that British hip-hop has, and funnily enough, Dizzee Rascal was saying pretty much the same thing on in an entertaining Radio 4 interview this evening. Singing is singing, but rapping is, I guess, less natural and for a long time it was felt that the right way to do it was not just the American way, but the New York way (‘can British people rap?’ was a debate first heard around the same time that ‘can guys from LA rap?’ was still considered a question worth asking).
What I would say is that Morrison might have come from Leicester, but the song sounded well at home in South London, where it was boomed out of superbass car speakers a lot that spring and early summer. And rightly so.
“it was felt that the right way to do it was not just the American way, but the New York way (‘can British people rap?’)”
REBEL MC TO THREAD
(oh, and an almost entirely uninformed 6)
My mum is actually from Leicester.I spent a week in late November 96 over there visiting relatives but no one had anything to say about Mark Morrison.Then again the intial ROTM-buzz had passed by a good 5/6 months at that stage.The talk of everyone in the area was Leicester City’s very good start to the 96/97 premiership campaign when relegation was being tipped beforehand.Also you had tabloid expectations for the forthcoming Only Fools and Horses Christmas specials and the changing of the guard in Pop Music.Ye’ll find out who soon enough!
ROTM baffled me slightly at first.Why was a singer who I can only remember from a TOTP rundown showing he had a top 20 chart entry during some other music video in 1995 be writing about his own comeback.
ROTM was also quite a slow burner if I can remember.Not a favourite at first listen but very radio friendly and gaining momentum all the time.An unmistakably British R+B vibe to it and none the worse for it.Leicester isnt the type of city you’d associate ROTM with but there was a strong Black population around the place back then.Around arcades and cars IIRC.
I liked ROTM at the time and many of the friends did too.Never was heard at school discos though.One of those songs that seemed to get better with every listen.
It’s surprisingly good to liten to after a long long time.Bouncy and well performed.A 7 from me.
Morrison’s subsequent shoddy material worked against ROTM in the long run.Its not really remembered as well as it should be now.The fall from favour was not far removed from Vanilla Ice.The number 1 records of this time for many reasons had more longevity too.
The video is a bit odd.Easy to see it as now as an early indicator of the garage scene that would break around 2000.A bunnied artist from that year must surely have been influenced by Morrison’s success (bo!)
This was a decent-sized hit in America – it eventually peaked at #2 in 1997. I couldn’t remember what blocked it, but according to Wikipedia it was [bunny]. And I agree with the general consensus – it’s actually pretty good, even though I usually don’t like R&B much. 7/10.
Too bad he turned out to be such a jerk…
This one’s new to me. Hate the guy’s lack of diction (Luther Vandross with marbles in his mouth) but the slow groove’s sweet (Ha! ‘Genius of Love being pillaged for its bottom end and drums here just as Mariah pillaged it for its top end keyboard hook – I guess a jam’s a jam and I assume Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth got paid both times), and the vowels at least are nice. The best hook for me is that just-audible, high, whining swell-synth that emerges every 8, sometimes every 16 bars. Nice.
Anyhow, I gave Soul II Soul’s ‘Back To Life’ a (high) 8 so this one has to go significantly below that, so for me a:
7
For those who weren’t around at the time, or weren’t listening to much stuff in this genre, this is probably the US yardstick Morrison was working against.
A very dapper single. One of the best productions on any of the number ones from this time. I didn’t really go for it but it made sense at the top of the charts.
It was also very timely. At the beginning of 1996 British cinema seemed to be in it’s best shape for several years with the releases almost concurrently of ‘Trainspotting’,’Sense & Sensibility’ and ‘Secrets & Lies’. All three were good films with an apppeal across age ranges and tastes and a wealth of British talent involved. These films were also sucessful at the box office and did pretty well internationally. Around this time, it might have been at one of the film festivals or maybe a press event, but I recall there was a special reception for the people involved with this mini-renaissance. Just about everyone who worked on the films was there, but there was one notable absentee – Marianne-Jean Babtiste the black actress who played Hortense, the optomitrist who goes in search of the birth mother who gave her up for adoption in ‘Secrets & Lies’. As her character is at the centre of the films story you would have thought Babtiste would be one of the first names on the list for this reception, but no the organisers had simply forgotten to invite her, or maybe forgot she was British.
At near enough the same time a British singer swept the board at the Grammy Awards when Seal enjoyed considerable success with ‘Kiss From A Rose’. Surely there would be a lot of coverage in the UK press about this London-born singer winning a clutch of awards for his song? As it turned out there was virtually nothing about it and far more interest in the obnoxious way Oasis were presenting themselves to the USA – Liam spitting on stage, the brothers rowing again and some embarrassing ‘we’ll-show-these-yanks’type talk all of which insured that America would understandably lose interest.
I don’t know if it was early ’96 or a bit later that we started hearing the phrase ‘Cool Brittania’ being used, but it seemed for some people British acheivments and Britishness were not so much a black-and-white as a white-and-white matter. In this context ‘The Return of the Mack’ was a much-needed nudge.
#40 I also wonder how much of an influence Bobby Brown might’ve been on Mark Morrison? Some of the same belligerence and defensiveness that you find in something like ‘My Prerogative’ seems to be present here, and they seem quite similar stylistically (to a non R&B afficianado like me, anyway).
#41: As I recall, Seal got a bit of coverage, roughly in line with what one would expect when someone from here makes it big over there without actually being big over here at the same time. Bush or Dido spring to mind – a little attention, but nothing to bite on.
The suggestion that he ought to have been on a par with the rolling maul surrounding Oasis isn’t how the gossip media works, I don’t think. Seal’s is essentially a one-off curio which doesn’t really translate – who here really pays attention to the Grammies? – whereas the Oasis fiasco was basically the same running story that had long been filling tabloids, only on a different stage.
mark m otm bringing up montell! for years i’d get the two confused, until finally the reminders (in the song itself) that ‘this is how we do it’ was part of a def jam resurgence helped remind me that the other one was the british dude. re: british acts having success in american r&b staying very strictly within its limitations or lifting out of the genre completely if they move beyond them, i think it might be somewhat true here (why this is a 6 or maybe a 7 for me) but not entirely sure it is for lisa stansfield and definitely not the case w/ sade, who was and still is a giant in this market. interesting to me that seal never made much headway on r&b radio, he was always an adult contemporary artist whose music owed a little something to r&b (not uncommon in the 90s: des’ree, dionne faris), while sade was an r&b artist whose musice owed a little something to adult contemporary. babyface managed to stride the two like a colossus and ruled the 90s until timbaland came and shifted the ground. r kelly spent much of the later 90s attempting to stride the two – first w/ great success (commercially at least) w/ ‘i believe i can fly’ (from the same soundtrack that features seal doing a steve miller cover), then diminishing returns w/ ‘gotham city’ and the celine collaboration. there was a moment in the very early 00s i thought that grime might manage to have an impact stateside (and not just pfork kids knowing who dizzee rascal is), i can remember hearing signifiers in various tracks i took to reading as fingerprints, that there was some cross atlantic gene flow. turned out not to be the case and any brit influence on r&b came thru a predictable vector, adult contemporary once again. enter coldplay.
This is, taken out of context, a perfectly pleasant, groovy, well-sung and amiably ridiculous song about a bloke who wants to stick two fingers up to his ex. You could, quite easily, see it as Britsoul version of ‘Out Of Time’ and would, in and of itself, get a seven or even an eight from me.
Since, however, we are talking about the song in context, and that context being that it was a number one. And this is one of those cases where the number two is an unimpeachable classic.
A Design For Life is a glorious statement, an anthem which – although somewhat unbeknownst to me – would finally make me realise that it was OK to be an intelligent Welsh boy in my backwater, hick, borderline westcountry town. Forget the cack that masquerades as the latest album, ADFL is truly elegiac and properly anthemic. It’s a real comeback, a real return (and what happened to the Manics was far worse than getting dumped), and rather than bang on in detail about what happened, its existence alone says ‘We Are Back’. I have said before that when a great song gets kept off number one, but the act in question either had, or would have, number ones, it isn’t really a Great Chart Injustice (D’you really think The Beatles record was diminished by Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever losing out to Please Release Me?), but this feels like one, that’s for sure. Even though I’m not sure if it’d make my top five, or (sometimes) my top ten Manics singles (trust me, I will have an absolute fuckton of things to say about ’em in the fullness of time, and I hope that you’ll tolerate this post, and the bunny won’t be next), A Design For Life is a 10.
Which, to paraphrase Billy Hicks, makes me wonder why the hell the British Public chose some bloke from Leicester singing about how is ex is a slag instead.
Three.
#41 I’m pretty sure that the event from which Marianne Jean-Baptiste was omitted was an event to celebrate British Actresses at the Cannes Film Festival – when ‘Secrets and Lies’ won the Palme D’Or there was much (deserved) embarrassment that she had been ‘overlooked’ and she was hurriedly flown out.
#40 Which, of course, is practically a remix of “Children’s Story”, produced by the London-born Slick Rick!
#41 The MOBO Awards began in 1996 didn’t they? Not hard to see why, when some talented and successful black performers of the day were being considered an afterthought.
#45 Except it wasn’t a ‘choice’ for the public. Certainly not for me anyway, because I bought both of them!
Great song and highly recommended for karaoke.
I used to love the way that every time he went on Top of the Pops, he would keep dropping in lines from other songs of his.