BORIS GARDINER – "I Want To Wake Up With You"

I was always faintly disturbed that the woman in the video looked young enough to be his daughter. You can get away with that in the big budget Hollywood style video, where the storyline is clearly fantasy. But in a video set in an ordinary British town, on an ordinary street, it felt creepy and leering. Which would be irrelevant to the quality of the song, were it not for the fact that even the mention of its title immediately rings creep alert bells in my head. While it’s certainly not sexy, I can’t hear it as chaste, either – just grubby. Even the title seems to signify the age gap between the two: Boris has no longer got the stamina to keep it going all night; what he’s looking forward to isn’t what happens before they fall asleep, it’s the feeling refreshed afterwards, when he’s had a good kip and his joints have stopped aching.

Thanks to a bit of entertaining wikipedia vandalism (now fixed), there was a brief period last year where I believed this song was by my current MP, Barry Gardiner.

Nothing to add here but that his surname means “curtains” in Norwegian (and Swedish, I believe — jungman Jansson may be able to confirm).

I drifted off during the video and was irritated to find him still droning on after what seemed like hours later – all I could think about was that he was going to get his white trousers dirty sitting on the ground like that

Is it just me or is that train coming into the tube station more than a little Freudian given that Boris is leering at the young lady at the time?

I usually find that a nice Lovers beat makes even the flimsiest tune listenable but it’s a struggle with this one, especially as it sounds like it’s played on the keyboard I bought my daughter at the Early Learning Centre.

and I’ve realised that this record was number 1 when I began my first real job as an art teacher – starting a career that only just ran into the sand this year….

any news on what was No.2…who was on TOTP etc.?

No chart action in the U.S., and I think we didn’t miss much.

Re 12: accordiing to Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture, he was discovered via top Jamaican talent show the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, first hit big over here (as noted) with Elizabethan Reggae, once sacked a member of his band for having dreads, and played bass for Lee Perry’s Upsetters. But even that tiny bit of information is so much more than the vast majority of people hearing or buying this song knew, I suspect – there was no context for this song other than: summer/reggae.

The video is rubbish but I rather like it as a cheery amble around West London (compare with Lily Allen’s tiresomely snearing LDN video – the second version). Certainly, you’d having to feeling as mellow as Boris to be standing on the platform at Westbourne Park with a smile on your face, living in the most distant hope that a train might be coming down the Hammersmith branch of the Metropolitan line (as was).

Lonepilgrim #11 – nothing to remark at number 2 – in BG’s three weeks at the top the number twos were the previous and subsequent number 1s plus Sinitta back up to 2 after two weeks at 3.

My first year in London and I’d never ventured out to Westbourne Park as yet, but the thrill was there as soon as I did a couple of years later – Boris was here! Of course that phrase doesn’t have quite the same ring to it for Londoners now – unless of course you’re being mugged in town late at night and hoping for a hero to arrive on his bike à la Del and Rodney as Batman and Robin.

I remember this easy listening so-so record being featured on “Our Tune” once, by a mum whose baby had struggled through the first 24 hours of its life. She wanted so desperately for the baby to survive and be there with her when she woke up, that the title seemed appropriate. Just shows the lyrics don’t always count for everything.

I get the feeling this isn’t going to be one of our longer threads.

Another unlikely chart-topper, Boris’s previous hit pre-dated my interest in pop. This is another in a long line of pop-reggae one-off hits in the same lineage as “Everything I Own” “Money In My Pocket” and “Sideshow” and actually inferior to them.

At the time I remember being utterly baffled by the success of this dull record. Twenty three years later I’m still baffled.

Cheesy ol’ Boris ruins his career with this howler. The sentiment of the song is not romantic at all. It’s just as bad as saying: “I hope you don’t mind a little snorin’, honey!”

Rob #14 – Great anecdote. It’s the fact that you were being completely serious which tickles me.

Remember hating this at the time, and it’s still every bit as dreary and gloopy as it was then. This was a particularly bleak period in pop – The Lady In Red, Every Loser Wins, The Chicken Song etc – and for me represents the tipping point from the imaginative, creative first half of the 80s into the more formulaic, bland and risk-averse late 80s and early 90s.

While this was on the top in Britain, across the ocean the more-or-less official tabulators of chart music in America had decided that some record needed to be kept of all the Spanish-language music whose popularity was no longer confined to pockets in the Southwest and urban immigrant communities.

So Billboard’s Hot Latin chart was born, and I’m doing a Popular to it now here. I don’t have any particular expertise in the field; my only real qualifications are that I know Spanish and like pop. Anyone for whom either (or neither!) of those is true is welcome to comment. As someone who counts it an honor being listed in the Comments Crew here, I’m hoping to have a tithe as lively, informed, and enjoyable comments box over in my little corner of the pop playground.

And with that, my advertising budget has run out.

This was a running joke in our house as kids. My mum – who appeared 95% of the time to have no interest in the world of music – would often ask what was number one each week. “Ooh, is it Boris Gardiner”? (This anecdote pales in comparison to the one at #14, admittedly.)

I can’t remember if mum genuinely liked the song or not, but middle-aged housewives who weren’t particularly interested in contemporary tunes certainly seems like its target demographic.