1988 Fairground Attraction: Perfect

I'm guessing that all of us know someone who sets themselves up as a 'proper' music fan. You know the type, they're the ones who look down their turned up noses at anything 'manufactured or 'fake' with the usual sanctimonious 'they're not playing their instrument's!!!' dismissal. And, hands up, he who is without sin in a glasshouse etc - I was one of these self same people too. Back when my contemporaries were Duran Balleting through the decade, I could be found sat up in my ivory tower studiously listening to 'Brain Salad Surgery' with a furrowed brow. 'Proper' music you see.

'Perfect' could be classed as 'proper' music - a 'proper' band playing their own 'proper' song on 'proper' instruments. As 'proper' as they come in fact. And fair play, 'Perfect' is a song I ought to like because it pushes all of my buttons. A jaunty, jazzy double bass led shuffle and a vocal dripping with a latter day Francophile Patsy Cline air - it's the sort of thing you'd expect to hear being busked outside the Moulin Rouge while pouting girls in berets walk by. In modern times, Madeline Peyroux has released three albums of this kind of thing and I've lapped up each and every one of them like a thirsty Labrador. But I don't like this.

The limp acoustic shuffle of the brushed drum rhythm plays out as rather a clichéd take on the genre rather than the real thing, more of a stock library recording marked 'French Club: Evening Ambience' than a live recording of the same as it has all the substance of smoke once Eddi Reader's strong vocal is factored out. In fact, there's barely a song there at all, and what there is is almost wholly dependent on the repetition of the chorus to drag it into some kind of structure.

And repetition is right - why bother with line and metre when you can stretch out words into as many syllables as you want to get them to fit:

"It's got to be-e-e-e-e-e-e-e
Per-er-er-er-er-er-fect"

The very use of the word 'perfect' calls for the smart context of a full stop, but this bizarre and rather lazy stutter sounds more like something broken or else a stuck needle - it reminds more of a contrived football chant more than anything else, something designed to get people singing along and nothing else. But whatever, it's far from the perfection Reader is looking for. It's smug, and it annoys in its smugness.

To my ears, 'Perfect' has never sounded half as natural and rootsy as it likes to think it is. There's no grit here and no grime, just a flat surface buffed to a high sheen. Sure, up against the majority of it's bedfellows in the 1998 charts it must have sounded as earthy as a Blind Lemon Jefferson field recording, but closer listening reveals a track every bit as contrived as the latest Kylie Minogue single (though aimed at a different audience) and I don't think it's any co-incidence that Fairground Attraction hit paydirt just when CD was becoming the dominant music format. For what could be a better way to listen to 'proper' shiny music than on a shiny silver disc that promised 'perfect sound forever'? A claim, incidentally, that lasted only slightly longer than the band themselves.

1988 S'Express: Theme from S'Express

It's surprising how quickly a new broom can turn into an old hat. Barely months previously, M/A/R/R/S's use of samples on 'Pump Up The Volume' sounded like, if not the future, then certainly the present as it is lived on another planet. It was new, exciting and came with a hint of danger in it's illegality, yet it didn't take long for the whole old lamps for new genre to take on a definite 'ho hum'-ness.

S'Express was basically Mark Moore, a major figure in the early years of UK house/acid house music. 'Theme from S'Express' is based none too loosely on, inter alia, Rose Royce's 'Is It Love You're After' and TZ's "I Got The Hots For You," Rather than play around with and integrate these sources in a creative or imaginative way, whole sections of these (and other) people's music is liberally lifted wholesale and bolted onto other people's music in a way that does not blend the mix like a fine malt but leaves each component part intact and glaringly obvious as to its source.

Both the Rose Royce and TZ track were funky and danceable entities in their own right and their pillaging and re-assembling makes as much sense as cannibalising two walls for bricks to build a third wall to mark the same boundary. Unlike 'Pump Up The Volume', 'Theme from S'Express' repeats its business ad nauseum, meaning that unless you're getting down to it on the dancefloor then there's precious little to keep you listening when you're off it.

And therein lies the rub, dance music always tends to flap aimlessly like a fish out of water when taken in isolation, and what might sound inspirational as part of a three hour DJ set in a sweaty club loses all context when broken down into individual seven inch singles, the same way as a humerus is pretty ineffectual without the radius, ulna and scapula to support and give it its function.

As an individual single, 'Theme from S'Express' lacks the spark of individuality that made other early house tracks so arresting. It's busy and it's funky, but then again you can say that about almost any James Brown B side and it's construction slips a collar and leash on the genre, ultimately begging the question as to why anybody would want to be messing around with a Frankenstein's monster of a tune when they can have Adam proper.

1988 Pet Shop Boys: Heart

For the fourth single from their 'Actually' album, the Pet Shop Boys took a few steps back from the overloaded bombast of 'It's A Sin' and instead retreated to a more mechanically basic sound with only some Kelly Marie type 'boop boops' for embellishment.

'Heart' comes with the ever forward drive of a mid-eighties New Order but minus the nagging hooks and counter melodies that gave their sound it's third dimension; what you hear really is what you get, and what you get is a song that would sound more at home at the start of the decade rather than its end. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it was a little early to go retro and it kind of goes against the rub of what the Pet Shop Boys were supposed to be all 'about'. Rather than pushing any envelopes, 'Heart' sounds like someone experimenting with their first synthesiser on Christmas morning.

As a song too it's pretty standard stuff. 'My heart starts missing a beat' sings Tennant on the chorus, but not in a way that you believe him and neither in a way that satisfactorily resolves the held back tension that the verses create, meaning that you're constantly waiting for something special to happen like a dramatic change of key or an unexpected eruption of counter melody. Waiting, waiting, and then when it never does come the disappointment is palpable.

'Heart' is strictly one way traffic heading to Formulaicville. It's by no means a 'bad' song, it's just the rather dull sound of a barrel being scraped, and dull isn't something you'd normally associate with Tennant and Lowe. They had, and would continue to do, much better than this.

1988 Aswad: Don't Turn Around

I'm feeling a certain sense of deja vu with this release. Like UB40 before them, Aswad started life as a hardcore roots reggae band with a fine line in observational lyrics that detailed the experience of Caribbean immigrants in the UK of the seventies, but their greatest success came in the eighties with a series of cover versions. 'Don't Turn Around' was another Albert Hammond/Diane Warren creation, originally found on a Tina Turner B side. In Turner's hands, it's exactly the sort of overwrought power ballad you'd expect from Warren, but Aswad shake it up with a bright and funky makeover that leans more toward pop than reggae.

And therein lies my main beef with this. Whatever you think of Warren's output, one thing it's always good for is to have the guts sung out of it in pantomime style. If it gets you on your knees with your clenched fists pounding the floor with every syllable then so much the better. 'Don't Turn Around' is a classic example off the peg angst she majored in, an 'I Will Survive' veneer of defiance in the face of a lover who no longer loves that in turn masks true feelings:

"Don't turn around
'Cause you're gonna see my heart breaking
Don't turn around
I don't want you seeing me cry"

Reggae struggles to do heartbreak at the best of times, but Brinsley Forde's incredibly upbeat vocal on this couldn't care less. More like a double bluff, it sounds like he's trying to convince his ex that he really is hurting inside when in truth he can't wait to see the back of her. It inadvertently adds a faux layer to the song that does not sit well with what is in actuality a direct message that's best handled straight. Though they hijacked Aswad's groove, even Ace Of Base were savvy enough to retain the heartbreak, albeit frozen beyond hypothermia, in their icy version.

Yes it's a hit, and a number one at that, but how fondly is it remembered now? 'Don't Turn Around' is too good natured to dislike, but very easy to be disappointed by. By being pound foolish, Aswad won the battle but lost the war with their credibility irrevocably tarnished amongst the fans who'd been there since day one. Going on to perform with Cliff Richard didn't help their cause either, but that, as ever, is another story.

1988 Kylie Minogue: I Should Be So Lucky

In 1988, Kylie 'Charlene' Minogue and Jason 'Scott' Donovan ruled the UK's teatimes in 'The Sullivans as directed by the Farelly Brothers' Australian import 'Neighbours' like the ancient gods of Valhalla made flesh. They were everywhere. Everywhere. And with an salivating audience ranging from excitable pre-schoolers to dotty pensioners fixated on their every move, a trip to a recording studio by our favourite stars was as inevitable as night following day. All of which means 'I Should Be So Lucky' is almost an irrelevance in itself; it's the concept that's important. Not so much the song on the disc but the fact that there's a disc in the first place. Kylie could have sung anything on her debut and it would have mattered not one iota. It's product, and as long as Kylie's name and face was on the cover of a single in the shops then any other consideration was minor.

'I Should Be So Lucky' comes piped down both barrels of the Minogue nose in a flat and strangled staccato whine with a diction that suggests she's reciting the lyrics phonetically. It's a horrible vocal, truly horrible and a more self conscious recording you couldn't imagine. But again, it didn't matter. It was Kylie, and that was enough. What more did you want and what more did you expect?

The Stock, Aitken and Waterman 'hit factory' was in full production by now and, true to form, the relentless music churns factory-like behind her throughout, though it's the one key musical box noise you'd expect to hear from the Chigley biscuit factory rather than any heavy industry producing something substantial and lasting. And that about sums up the song in total, from the tune to the lyrics ("I should be so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. I should be so lucky in love") to the vocal; it's a flimsy, lacklustre effort that annoys and grates more in it's three minutes than would a primary school assembly singing down 'One Thousand Green Bottles' to zero.

But as SAW apparently knocked this up in forty minutes while Kylie waited in the next room then you can't expect a lot more, and now in summing up I shall show the song the same contempt it showed it's listeners by not bothering to draw my own conclusions and instead quote the 'Efficiency Song' from Chigley that described a typical day in that biscuit factory:

"Nicely precisely and all untouched by hand.
Efficiency our motto, by which we proudly stand.
Cooked, cartoned, checked and crated, labelled and dispatched.
Efficiency efficiency at which we can't be matched".

A far better set of lyrics than SAW managed here and one that nicely sums up everything about 'I Should Be So Lucky' from start to finish.

1988 Tiffany: I Think We're Alone Now

Though largely forgotten now, the late eighties briefly played host to the great Tiffany v Debbie Gibson rivalry where both ploughed similar synth-pop furrows to similarly forgettable effect. It was Britney v Christina ten years early, except neither of them were dressed up as a paedophile's wet dream by people who should know better simply to shift more units.

Indeed, what's most interesting now is the fact that Tiffany is presented for what she is i.e. a plain looking seventeen year old with puppy fat and a proto grunge outfit that made her look like she'd been dressed by her mother (something you could never accuse Britney of). There's no attempt to sex her up into some teen vamp and she's left to fend for herself with only her voice and the song as ammunition. Quite refreshing. Or dated. It depends on your viewpoint.

And how well do they fend? Well, Tiffany's scratchy teenage voice is what it is. Scratchy. She can carry a tune, but she can't do conviction, but that's probably apt given that 'I Think We're Alone Now' is 1960's bubblegum updated to 1980's bubblegum. But not updated by much - the original by Tommy James and the Shondells was a plucked and juddery affair and Tiffany's update simply replaces the guitar and bass lines with the same thing but played on synthesisers.

There's no radical overhaul and the original lines are mirrored faithfully meaning that whilst the song remains the same and retains its poppy bounce, it takes more from the past than it adds to the present and when it's over it induces nothing more than a shoulder shrug of 'what's the point'? And if there's an answer to that question, then Tiffany ain't saying.

1988 Belinda Carlisle: Heaven Is A Place On Earth

Out of all the former Go Go's, you wouldn't have pegged Belinda Carlisle as the 'girl most likely to' in the solo career stakes (that would have been Jane Wiedlin). And yet here we are.

A pop/rock hybrid with added clout, 'Heaven Is A Place on Earth' is aspirational, good time music. A song to soundtrack driving a fast two seat, low slung car along a wide highway at night, roof down and the girl (or boy) of your dreams in the passenger seat. It matters not if all this only exists in your head; with this on the radio, even the M25 on a wet Monday can be transformed into the Pacific Coast Highway in high summer, albeit temporarily. Who cares if it was only January, Belinda brings the sun with her as soon as she starts singing:

"When the night falls down
I wait for you
And you come around
And the world's alive
With the sound of kids
On the street outside"

The pauses after each line generate a tense anticipation with Carlisle's vocal always seeming to climb the register to hyper aware euphoria over the low guitar based rumble of the verses even when it isn't, and by the time she gets to the barbed hook chorus she sounds so happy she could burst. Belinda is in love, she wants to tell the world and that's it. There's no irony, no sarcasm, no hidden meanings, no agenda, no metaphor, no depth and nothing bittersweet - as direct as a punch in the face, the song is what it is, and that's the best song about falling in love since XTC's 'Senses Working Overtime'.

"Baby I was afraid before, but I'm not afraid anymore" - you tell them girl.