Easy Listening

750. ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’ / ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’ / ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Robson & Jerome

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Robson & Jerome return for their third and final number one, and bow out with a 100% chart-topping record. Which is something that can’t be sniffed at. Unlike their records, which can. Because they stink.

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted / Saturday Night at the Movies / You’ll Never Walk Alone, by Robson & Jerome (their 3rd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 3rd – 17th November 1996

It’s more of the same: more granny-baiting covers of sixties classics, more cheap and tacky production, more dodgy vocals… Much more, in fact, because they end things with the first and only triple ‘A’-side to make #1. Three songs, give me strength… (How does a triple ‘A’ even work? It’s simple geometry: discs don’t have three sides! Was this released as a triangle?)

The ‘lead’ single from the three is a cover of Jimmy Ruffin’s ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’. As with last time, and the pair’s take on ‘Up on the Roof’, there is an element of this being a good thing. ‘What Becomes…’ is an all-time classic, and even in this highly diluted version it’s good to see it having a moment on top of the charts. And this isn’t as heinous as some of their other chart-topping moments. The production is quite lush and substantial, and they sensibly rope a gospel choir in to do much of the actual singing.

If only they had left it at that… The Official Charts Company lists just the one song, though maybe they simply don’t have the space to squeeze in three fairly long titles. All other sources have this as a threesome though, and so we’ll have to give the other two a spin. Starting with a case of GBH on The Drifters’ ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’. The synthesisers are set for ‘jaunty’, as Jerome Flynn does his best Johnny Moore high-notes… The less said the better. (I will admit that the video is quite fun…)

We end with a song that’s already been #1 twice and that really didn’t need to return, especially not in a version as lightweight as this. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is a technically demanding song and, although the producers try very hard to drown out Robson & Jerome’s reedy vocals with lots of bombast, we can sadly still hear them. You can see why the OCC has been tempted to erase it from history. Elsewhere on their second album, ‘Take Two’, lurk covers of ‘Oh Pretty Woman’, ‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ and – presumably because Christmas was just around the corner – ‘Silent Night’.

We can perhaps be glad, then, that they decided to end their music careers rather than release any further singles. They had, after all, been reluctant to do it in the first place, and not even the offer of three million pounds from Simon Cowell could persuade them to do a third album. I can forgive them almost everything, music-wise, knowing how much that must have annoyed Cowell. Unfortunately, he discovered an even more lucrative way of unleashing terrible music on the masses. More on that soon…

To be honest, it’s easy to forgive Robson and Jerome most things, as they both seem like decent blokes. Green has been a fixture on British TV ever since, both in acting and in presenting travel and fishing documentaries. Flynn laid-low for a few years, before returning to the spotlight with a scene-stealing turn as Bronn in ‘Game of Thrones’. The pair are, you’ll be very glad to hear, still firm friends.

Up next, a recap. And I have a feeling that this pair may well be up for an award…

722. ‘Unchained Melody’ / ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, by Robson & Jerome

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Serious question: who were the worst musical duo of 1995? In any other year, the moronic Outhere Brothers would have taken the prize hands down. And yet… We also have to reckon with another, potentially even more heinous, pair…

Unchained Melody / White Cliffs of Dover, by Robson & Jerome (their 1st of three #1s)

7 weeks, from 14th May – 2nd July 1995

Robson Green and Jerome Flynn were two actors and television personalities – still are, in fact. They had risen to prominence in the ITV series ‘Soldier Soldier’, in which they played, yes, soldiers. In one episode, they sang an impromptu version of ‘Unchained Melody’ at a wedding, going by the name the Unrighteous Brothers… And the rest was history.

This record suffers from two major problems. First off, it’s terrible. Secondly, the incomparably superior version of ‘Unchained Melody’ that this cover was based on is still fresh in the memory, having topped the charts barely four years ago. Which makes this sound even more like a cheap karaoke cash-in than the tinny backing track and the dodgy vocals might suggest.

And OK, they may have been going for a ‘cheap and cheerful’ feel, as in the TV programme, but that might be giving them a little too much benefit of the doubt. Allegedly the duo had a little ‘assistance’ in the recording studio (to the point where some claim that it’s not really them singing), but I’m not one to cast aspersions. Robson and Jerome seem like decent blokes, not taking themselves too seriously, enjoying an unexpected change in career direction… So on the one hand we shouldn’t get too annoyed by this silly #1. Yet, on the other, there’s the fact that what should have been a fun scene from a TV show was turned into a seven-week chart-topper, and the best-selling single of 1995 – nay, the best-selling single of the entire decade so far! The British public, once again, showing themselves unfit to be trusted within twenty feet of a record shop.

On the flip side of the disc, there’s something slightly more interesting. ‘(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover’ is a song from the Second World War, made famous by the forces’ sweetheart Vera Lynn. It’s interesting, because it may well have been a tie-in for the 50th anniversary of VE Day, and because it’s a clear indication of who this record was aimed at. Grannies across the land kept this on top of the charts, holding off U2 and, in a travesty far worse than Engelbert or ‘Shaddap You Face’, Pulp’s ‘Common People’.

‘Bluebirds’ itself is every bit as rotten as ‘Unchained Melody’, while the production may be even cheaper and nastier, slathered over twee lines about shepherds watching their flocks and little Jimmy sleeping safe in his room (which I’m sure were powerful in 1942 with the Luftwaffe swarming overhead, but which just sound maudlin here). At least, by the end, the pair have been relieved of their singing duties by a much more competent gospel choir.

Apparently both Robson and Jerome had to be persuaded to do any of this, to the point that Green threatened to sue for harassment. Who, pray tell, could be cynical enough to risk a court appearance in the name of unleashing this crap on the nation…? Oh, right, yep. Simon Cowell. The dark overlord of the charts in the 2000s cut his blood-sucking teeth with this, his first number one record. It was produced by two-thirds of SAW (Stock and Aitken), giving this disc yet another stamp of quality…

If only this was a one-off, for both Robson & Jerome, and for Simon Cowell. But, of course, it wasn’t. Much more is to come. Until then, let’s distract ourselves with some chart trivia. This marks the first time that a song has topped the chart in three different versions (the Righteous Brothers, of course, and the Jimmy Young version from way back in 1955). Meanwhile, ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ became the longest-titled #1 single ever – as long as you include the brackets at the start.

691. ‘Dreams’, by Gabrielle

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It’s a low-key way to kick off the next thirty tunes, a run of chart-toppers that will take us right into the heart of darkness… the mid-nineties.

Dreams, by Gabrielle (her 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 20th June – 11th July 1993

Looking back, Tasmin Archer was the forerunner of this sort of soul-lite, dinner-party-background-music peddling female singer, who will be very popular for the rest of the decade and beyond. Think Heather Small, Des’ree, and the doyenne of the genre: Gabrielle.

It’s light and airy, like a breeze stirring your curtains on a summer’s day – acoustic chords, springy strings, and Gabrielle’s gentle voice. One of the hallmarks of this genre is the uplifting lyrics – its fans don’t much want to linger on the fact that life is a crushing march towards oblivion – and ‘Dreams’ delivers fully on that front…

Dreams can come true… You know you got to have them, You know you got to be strong… (Except, the impossible ‘dream’ that came true is that she’s got a boyfriend, so…) Anyway, I can enjoy it, to a point. The problem is that it remains with you for just as long as the summer’s breeze it resembles. You hear it, think it’s pleasant enough, and then you move on.

It’s too controlled, too tidy. Precision-drilled pop. To me, it’s got #8 hit written all over it. But this record meant Gabrielle’s first ever release went to the top, and in debuting at #2 it became the highest charting debut single ever, so what do I know? It didn’t quite appear out of nowhere, though, as an earlier version had been doing the rounds for a year or two. It featured a sample of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ that the label which signed her couldn’t clear, so a re-record was ordered.

So maybe the earlier version had laid the groundwork for this to become a massive hit. Or maybe there’s something in the chorus that lingers after all (not for nothing does this remain Gabrielle’s signature song)? Or maybe it’s her voice, distinctive but pleasant, husky but warm. Or maybe it was nothing to do with the music… For when I think of Gabrielle the first word that springs to mind is ‘eyepatch’. She wears it due to a condition called ptosis, which causes drooping of the eyelid, and the sparkly model she sports in the video to this song is a real treat.

It might be stretching it a bit to claim that Gabrielle’s debut success is the start of a line of British female singers that stretches past Dido, Amy Winehouse, all the way to Adele. A stretch not least because ladies like the aforementioned Tasmin Archer, not to mention Lisa Stansfield, have already scored big soul-lite #1s. But this was certainly a type of singer that came of age in the 1990s, and none were bigger back then than Gabrielle. ‘Dreams’ set her up for a decade of consistent Top 10s, including one further chart-topper that we’ll meet in the early weeks of the new millennium.

622. ‘Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart’, by Marc Almond ft. Gene Pitney

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Up next, a contender for the least-expected chart-topping duet of the decade…?

Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart, by Marc Almond ft. Gene Pitney (their 1st and only solo #1s)

4 weeks, from 22nd January – 19th February 1989

Take one Marc Almond, last heard on Soft Cell’s electro-pop classic ‘Tainted Love’, and his cover of a sixties classic. With the original singer of said classic in tow. Was there a back-story? I can’t imagine Almond and Pitney running in the same social circles… Apparently it’s as simple as Pitney hearing Almond’s solo version, which featured on his album ‘The Stars We Are’, and offering to re-record it as a duet.

Back-story covered, then. What of the song? Well, for someone associated with synth-pop androgyny – Marc Almond, that is, not Gene Pitney – it’s a pretty faithful, respectful cover. Might we have expected something a little more ‘out there’ from him? Maybe… But when you’ve got such good source material you don’t need to go too crazy. You certainly don’t want to scare the oldies off, as I’m sure they made up a big percentage of the people who bought this one, having remembered it from its first time around as a hit.

Both singers ham it up on their verses (if I were being catty, I might suggest that Almond had had singing lessons since his first #1…) which is one of the best things about a duet with two lead singers: neither wants to be outdone. But this doesn’t ruin it, not at all. It’s beautifully performed, peaking in the I’ve got to know if this is the real thing… I’ve got to know what’s making my heart sing… middle-eight. You couldn’t really date the production either, apart from the eighties ™ drums in the background.

‘Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart’ had been a #5 hit for Pitney in 1967. It had originally been recorded by David & Jonathon, though it wasn’t a hit for them. It gave Pitney the 10th Top 10 of his career (I covered his ‘I’m Gonna Be Strong’ as a Random Runner-Up a while back), and was his last visit to the uppermost reaches of the UK charts, until this record gave him his long-awaited #1. He was only forty-eight when this made the top – the same age as Cliff a few weeks earlier – reminding me that 1989 is much closer to the sixties than it is to the present day…

This was the #1 single on my 3rd birthday, meaning that I’ve so far had three pop birthday chart-toppers (this, Tiffany, and A-ha) and some hardcore house (‘Jack Your Body’). It’s only going to get more eclectic from here, which is one good thing about having a January birthday. (It’s otherwise quite rubbish having a birthday in the cold, dark weeks post-Christmas, when nobody’s got the money or the inclination to celebrate, but that’s very much a story for elsewhere…)

Marc Almond continues to write, record and tour, and recently received an OBE shortly after turning sixty. His 2nd biggest solo hit was a cover of another ‘60s classic: ‘The Days of Pearly Spencer’. For Gene Pitney, meanwhile, this was his last visit to the UK singles chart. But what a glorious swansong! He sadly died of a heart-attack while on tour in 2006, aged just sixty-six.

500. ‘A Little Peace’, by Nicole

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For the third year in row, the song that won the Eurovision Song Contest also tops the UK singles chart. Unlike Bucks Fizz in 1981, though, the winner is not British. Nor Irish, as Johnny Logan was in 1980. Enter Nicole Hohloch, a seventeen-year-old German.

A Little Peace, by Nicole (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, 9th – 23rd May 1982

Just like a flower when winter begins… It’s jaunty, it’s cute, it’s pure Eurovision… Just like a candle blown out in the wind… And, oh no, I’m getting flashbacks… Just like a bird that can no longer fly… Dana flashbacks! Twelve years ago, another teenager won with a similarly saccharine slice of Eurocheese. ‘A Little Peace’ isn’t that bad – very few records are – but it still sticks in your throat.

The world is hard but, deep in her young heart, Nicole has a dream. A little loving, A little giving… For our tomorrow, A little peace… Straight on from ‘Ebony and Ivory’, it’s more happy-clappy ‘peace’ nonsense at the top of the charts. (Though I can tolerate this crap from naive schoolgirls far more than I could from Misters McCartney and Wonder, who should have known better…)

The nicest thing about this record is its gentle country lilt. It’s been a good while since we had a #1 that we could class as ‘country’. And I’d also like to mention Nicole’s excellent English. You’d think she was singing in her native tongue. (There is also a German version.) But, overall, this is a pretty forgettable record. And forgotten it pretty much has been – it’s nowhere to be seen on Spotify, for example.

At the time, though, this was huge. A first ever German Eurovision winner (perhaps the definitive sign that Europe had forgiven them for you-know-what?) and the biggest winning margin until 1997. Nicole continues to record and perform, she’s still only fifty-seven, though chart success outside of Germany has been limited. Plus, Nicole is already the 3rd German act to top the charts in 1982, after Kraftwerk and The Goombay Dance Band, and it’s only May!

Most significantly for us, ‘A Little Peace’ marks the 500th number one. Hurray! We are actually well over two-thirds of the way through our never-ending countdown! If only it were a slightly more auspicious song to mark the occasion. I’ll do a special post to celebrate this milestone in a couple of days, alongside some cover-versions of past chart-toppers, then it will be back to normal service. Thankfully, after two #1s and five weeks of preaching, the next number one is about, oh yes, randy schoolboys buying condoms…

499. ‘Ebony and Ivory’, by Paul McCartney with Stevie Wonder

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We’re almost at the five-hundredth number one single. Thirty years since the very first chart, twenty years since Stevie Wonder released his first singles, well over ten years since The Beatles disbanded… It’s amazing that we had to wait this long to meet a solo McCartney, or any kind of Wonder, chart-topper.

Ebony and Ivory, by Paul McCartney (his 1st of three solo #1s) with Stevie Wonder (his 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, 18th April – 9th May 1982

I’d have happily waited a bit longer, to be honest. The best you can say about this anthem of love and acceptance is that it’s well-intentioned. Ebony and ivory, Live together in perfect harmony, Side by side on my piano keyboard… If piano keys, inanimate slices of elephant tusk and timber, can sit happily together then Oh Lord, why don’t we…? (To be fair, the metaphor of ebony and ivory as black and white people wasn’t invented by McCartney and Wonder. It had been around since the 1840s.)

Did this song sound clumsy at the time? It’s not as if the early ‘80s were a racial utopia; but given the events of the past few years this definitely sounds clumsy. Yet you can’t judge the past by the standards of today. You also shouldn’t judge a song by the artists involved but, come on, how can you listen to this and not compare it to what you know both McCartney and Stevie Wonder were actually capable of?

Away from the lyrics, the music does little to save this record: soft-rock guitars, horns, and a cheesy-sounding sitar mean that the song coasts along fairly forgettably. And yet, beating at the heart of this record is a good pop song. No way were two of the century’s best songwriters going to get together and write something completely irredeemable. It’s not awful – though I can see why it would be tempting to kick this record more than it deserves – and of course it was a ginormous hit around the globe. (Apart from South Africa, where it was banned after Wonder dedicated it to Nelson Mandela.)

It’s tempting to imagine what John Lennon would have had to say, had he been alive. Is it a coincidence that McCartney started churning out crap like this not long after his one-time partner died? Probably. But compare Lennon’s great protest songs – ‘Working Class Hero’, ‘Give Peace a Chance’, ‘Imagine’ and ‘Happy Xmas’ – to this. Even at his most idealistic (and I gave ‘Imagine’ some stick when it topped the charts) he was hectoring us, berating us, making us confront uneasy truths, rather than simply singing about how nice it would be if we were all chums. Lennon often sang those songs like he knew he’d be disappointed: listen to his sneering It’s easy… on ‘All You Need Is Love’. McCartney sings this like he believes every word.

Anyway. ‘Ebony and Ivory’ has nothing to do with John Lennon. It’s hard on Macca that his late bandmate gets brought up. Hard, but inevitable. The saddest thing here is that this is probably neither McCartney nor Stevie Wonder’s worst musical crime of the decade. There is more to come from both of them as we forage towards the heart of the 1980s. Up next, we hit 500! *Applause* With another song about peace and love! *Groans*

497. ‘Seven Tears’, by The Goombay Dance Band

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Like Marcel Proust biting into his madeleine, the intro of this next #1 brings the memories flooding back. Hints of Boney M, wafts of ABBA at their cheesiest, ‘Mull of Kintyre’, even a base note of ‘Auld Lang Syne’…

Seven Tears, by The Goombay Dance Band (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, 21st March – 11th April 1982

I have never heard ‘Seven Tears’ before, I am pretty much positive of that. But it sounds so familiar, so damn sentimental, that it comes through like a folk standard. Seven tears have run into the river, Seven tears have run into the sea… The singer stands at home, pining and crying for his love, his tears mingling with the river, then the sea… (To me, it sounds like a bit of a subtle dig: just the seven tears…?)

It’s a nice enough tune, I’ll admit. There’s something relaxing in its calypso-plod. Yes there are myriad key changes, and a spoken-word section, but somehow ‘Seven Tears’ stays just the right side of annoying, unlike Tight Fit before them. Cheesy, yes. Cloying, yep. Complete and utter Eurotrash. But something about it appeals to me.

I was convinced that this, like ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, must have been an old song, remixed and repackaged for the early-eighties. But nope. It was written by two Germans, in 1981. In fact, the similarities between The Goombay Dance Band and Boney M are pretty blatant: they were created in 1979 by Oliver Bendt – who takes lead vocals on this record – a German who had lived in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. ‘Goombay’ is a beach on the island.

They weren’t as successful as Boney M, though. This was their only sizeable hit in the UK (though their breakthrough, ‘Sun of Jamaica’ topped the German charts for nine weeks). And for a few weeks in the spring of 1982, it seems the UK charts were looking farther afield. Not just to Germany (though this does make them already the second German chart-toppers of the year) but to the jungles of Africa, and then to the beaches of the Caribbean.

The charts were also, you have to admit, sounding a lot tackier than even just a year earlier. I don’t want to sound like a guitar-snob, because I’m really not – and there have been some very high-quality electronic #1s recently – but it is much easier to use computers to make music. I’d wouldn’t bet against ‘Seven Tears’ having been thrown together in an afternoon… I’d also bet that it’s been completely forgotten by the general public (I meant it when I said I’d never ever heard it before). Today, though it’s back, at least for the time it takes you to read this post. A toast, please, for The Goombays, and their ‘Seven Tears’… May we not leave it another forty years before listening to this again. Thirty-nine will be plenty.

398. ‘When a Child Is Born (Soleado)’, by Johnny Mathis

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For the third time this decade, and for the fifth time in all, the Christmas number one is an actual Christmas song. The previous two, from Slade and Mud, were very seventies, very glam. This one, though, could have been #1 at any point in chart history.

When a Child Is Born (Soleado), by Johnny Mathis (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 19th December 1976 – 9th January 1977

Let’s split this record in two, and start with the good half. It’s got that ‘classic standard’ feel to it, a sweeping melody of the kind that you think you must have always known. When the backing singers come in with the ah-ah-ah-aaahhs it’s quite sweet. Plus, Johnny Mathis sings it like the professional crooner that he is. A ray of hope, Flickers in the sky…

On to the bad bits… And let’s start with those lyrics. It’s all winds of change, silent wishes, brand new morns and rosy hews. It feels churlish to complain about soppy lyrics in a religious, Christmas-themed song. What kind of lyrics is it supposed to have? Except, I’m not religious, and it’s April. So there.

Plus, the production is very floaty, glossy, mid-seventies MOR goop. And there’s a stinker of a spoken section: The world is waiting, Waiting for one child… Black, white… yellow? No-one knows… It is what it is. I’m not going to knock it any more. Mathis means well, and I have fond memories of my late grandmother singing this by the tree after a sherry or three.

I had assumed that ‘When a Child Is Born’ would have been an old, old tune from the mists of time. But the melody, ‘Soleado’, was written for an Italian singer in 1972, while the English lyrics followed a few years later. It’s a skill, I guess, to write a song that sounds so timeless. Johnny Mathis had been around for a lot longer, releasing his first singles in the mid-fifties. He followed this up with ‘Too Much, Too Little, Too Late’, his first US #1 for almost twenty years. Some impressive longevity there. He’s still with us, aged eighty-five, having released his most recent album in 2017.

You will all be thrilled to hear that the 1970s, the decade of the Christmas #1, is not done with the festive tunes just yet. But that is some way off. Up next, we launch head-first into 1977, which marks the singles chart’s quarter century!

Listen to all the #1s from 1976, and from every year before, with this playlist:

395. ‘Mississippi’, by Pussycat

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Following on from ‘Dancing Queen’ is a daunting task, but someone had to do it. In the autumn of 1976, that task fell to Pussycat, and their sole #1 record, ‘Mississippi’.

Mississippi, by Pussycat (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 10th October – 7th November 1976

It’s a gentle intro, a slice of soft country rock, that puts me in mind of the Eagles at their blandest, or Matthews Southern Comfort’s ‘Woodstock’ from earlier in the decade. In the past year or so, country and western has become something of an established presence at the top of the charts, from Tammy Wynette to J.J. Barrie to this…

But when the vocals come in, we move from country to schmaltzy. Well you can hear a country song from far, When someone plays a honky-tonk guitar… It’s a tribute to country music, an ode to the genre, and a love-letter to the USA’s most famous river. Mississippi, I remember you… Whenever I should go away, I’ll be longing for the day…

It’s the sort of song that you start to forget before it’s even finished. It’s very gentle, a pleasant enough stroll down the middle of the road, but it’s a bit dull. It makes you yearn for ABBA… But that’s not fair. We can’t go comparing songs to what went before! It is too long, though. I’ll state that with conviction. Times were four and a half minutes was record-breaking; now it seems to be the standard.

By the end, the band are bemoaning the fact that rock ‘n’ roll took over from C&W. The country song forever lost its soul, When the guitar player turned to rock and roll… Except, that’s patently not true. Rock ‘n’ roll was born from country (and jazz and the blues) – rock ‘n’ roll is country – plus here we are, with a country song at number one… So it can’t be that dead. We flutter to a finish, and I remain underwhelmed.

Pussycat were a Dutch band – which perhaps explains the schlager-heavy feel that this record has (they also, perhaps inevitably, recorded a version in German.) They were a seven piece, with what looks like three girls and four boys… (To be fair, they all have long hair and frills in the pictures I can find!) The best way I can describe them is like looking at a picture of ABBA after you’ve had a blow to the head. Still, they officially make 1976 the year of the mixed-gender pop group, after Brotherhood of Man and our aforementioned Swedes.

‘Mississippi’ was written by the band with the Bee Gees ‘Massachusetts’ in mind, and you can really hear the influence. Plus, it gives us our second #1 single named after a US State (and I’m happy to hear suggestions of others to come/that I’ve missed). They scored one more minor hit in the UK following this, but remained big in the Netherlands well into the ‘80s.

To finish, I think I have to crown ‘Pussycat’ as the worst band name to feature on this blog. It’s just… a ‘no’ from me. And Spotify seems to agree, as they have erroneously grouped this group’s back-catalogue with a trip-hop group of the same name, who’s last album was titled ‘Sexy Bondage Domination’…

392. ‘The Roussos Phenomenon EP’, by Demis Roussos

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*Cue David Attenborough voice* And so we spy one of the rarest of chart-topping species. The EP. The Extended Play. More than a single; not quite an album… One of only four to ever top the UK charts…

The Roussos Phenomenon (EP), by Demis Roussos (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 11th – 18th July 1976

I’m not sure how to approach this record. With a normal single I always ignore the ‘B’-side. With double ‘A’-sides I do both songs. Should I do all four tracks from ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’?? Best get cracking! The lead single from this EP, the one that went to radio, was ‘Forever and Ever’. A cover, I wonder, of the Slik hit from the start of the year…? No, but Lord how I wish it was…

Demis Roussos has a distinctive voice. High-pitched yet husky, and very strained. It is a spectacular voice; but it doesn’t make for a relaxing listen. Ever and ever, Forever and ever, You’ll be the one… he wails as a Muzak backing-track waltzes along. That shines in me, Like the morning sun… It’s lush, it fills the speakers… It’s a bit much; but at the same time it’s bland mulch. It’s a very strange juxtaposition: a song that’s so in your face and yet so forgettable.

You can really tell that English isn’t Roussos’s first language as he reaches for the line: Take me from beyond imagination… and his voice trembles under its own mighty power. ABBA’s slight mispronunciations are endearing; here they jar. Then in comes a bouzouki (?) and suddenly it sounds like the soundtrack to a first date in a Greek restaurant. Knowing that I have four songs to get through, I’m tempted to press skip before the first listen is over…

Next up, ‘Sing an Ode to Love’, which as a title doesn’t promise anything different to what went before. But it is different. ‘Forever and Ever’ was bland… This is God-awful. Organs, and a marching beat. His voice grates even more, trembling and straining as if he has a terrible case of indigestion. See the children playing, Hear the sounds of virgin minds… He’s going for an epic statement here, when the choir comes in, but it’s so bad I think most countries would reject this even for Eurovision. Sing a song so clearly, Make the words rise up above…

The song it reminds me of – and I really am embarrassed to drag Roy Orbison into this, forgive me – is ‘Running Scared’. But whereas that classic builds to a perfect, dramatic conclusion; this builds to a horrible of crescendo of Demis’s grasping and some tacky synths. And so ends Side A.

For the sake of completion, here are my thoughts on Side B of our debut chart-topping EP. I have to search for ‘So Dreamy’ on YouTube, and am glad that I did, because it meant I could discover the video attached below, in which our Greek God belts it out by a harbour front. The cheap synths are still there, as are the over-bearing backing singers, but I’m enjoying this a lot more, with its bossanova rhythm… How was I to know, That from our very first ‘hello’, I’d feel so dreamy… I can begin to see why he’s been described as an ‘unlikely kaftan-wearing sex symbol’…

And then we end this, um, experience with ‘My Friend the Wind’, and any goodwill I was beginning to feel for Demis Roussos is dashed. It feels like a hymn. My friend the wind, Will come from the hills… All the by now classic Roussos elements are present: strained vocals, ropey synths, an over-reliance on backing singers… But at least the middle-eight is interesting, as the bouzouki returns and we are back in the Greek taverna. You can almost hear the plates smashing with each beat. It ends in a Greek knees-up. La-la-la-leyleyleyley…

Goodness, that was a slog. And the scary thing is, these four songs were handpicked as excerpts from ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’ LP. I shudder to think what they decided wasn’t good enough. Still, for whatever reason, this disc delivered him his only UK chart-topper. He had been a big solo star in Europe since the early seventies, with #1s in France, Holland, Switzerland and Germany, among others. The final push he had needed to breakthrough in the UK came from a documentary, also called ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’, that inspired this E.P., and the fact that more and more Brits were holidaying in places like Greece, and getting a taste for the music there.

But it didn’t last. His last charting single in Britain came just one year later. Roussos had been, however, part of influential prog-rock band Aphrodite’s Child, who had had a Top 30 hit back in 1968 and whose fellow member Vangelis would go on to win an Oscar for the ‘Chariots of Fire’ soundtrack. So, actually, there’s a lot more going on in this one-week wonder than the turgid music. Our first (our only?) Greek chart-topper, our first EP, the first time two songs with the same name have made #1 in the same year… But to be honest I’m well over this entry, and ready to move on to the next two, humongously famous, number one singles…