At certain points during my journey through the number ones it's sometimes been hard to know exactly what I'm writing about. Like here. Is it about the band? What band? Bucks Fizz were an artificial creation brought together specifically to sing this particular song at Eurovision. The song? Normal reviews are 'about' the band playing the song, but this is a clear case of the song playing the band. Again, the song was written specifically to represent the UK at the contest. 'Making Your Mind Up'
could have been sung by virtually any number of people in a male/female
'remember it worked for Abba' combination and Bucks Fizz hardly stamp
their own seal of identity on it vocally. I can imagine Brotherhood of
Man tackling it and it sounding exactly the same.It won, so job done. Is there anything more that can be said?Maybe; 'Making Your Mind Up' is a disco lite, bubblegum tune that sprints along its busy way with a grin permanently glued to its face. You can't help but think that the whole song was written with one eye on a memorable dance routine to catch the judge's eyes on the night, and the "And try to look as if you don't care less, but if you want to see some more" lines look written solely as cabaret so that 'the boys' could whip the skirts off 'the girls' to reveal an extra bit of flesh in case those judges were wavering and thinking of giving full points to the Germans. And that's this single in a nutshell - four good looking, young blonde people in co-ordinated colour clothes singing a bright, bouncy tune that sacrificed meaning for singalongability (Stock, Aitken and Waterman would go on to make a killing from the same formula later in the decade). It came as a package stamped 'Eurovision Winner', and that's exactly what it did. As I said, job done. Next.
No comments:
Post a Comment