Novelty Hits

649. ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’, by Bombalurina

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

As with our last chart-topper, ‘Turtle Power’, I am fully convinced that I will hate this next #1 single…

Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, by Bombalurina (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 19th August – 9th September 1990

But wait. As with the Turtles, I might have misjudged… This starts off like a proper, early-nineties dance track. There’s a looped female vocal – Go on girl-go-go-go on girl – and a fairly shameless cribbing of ‘Theme From S-Express’ in the Spanish countdown. This is not the song I vaguely remember from school discos of yore…

Oh wait. No. It is. In comes Timmy Mallett, with a cover of Brian Hyland’s #8 hit from 1960, all about a racy swimwear item, and suddenly it is novelty trash of the calibre of ‘Agadoo’ and ‘The Chicken Song’. As with the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Mallett was another part of my childhood, although less so, because he was on ITV and my mum kept things strictly BBC whenever she could. (Years later, a former backing singer claimed that the vocals on the record were in fact his, and that Mallett couldn’t hit a single good note…)

Except, even at its cheesiest, it still sounds like someone with a working knowledge of dance music was present in the studio as this was being recorded. It never tips over into truly unlistenable territory, with lots of knowing touches and pastiches. (Imagine my surprise to find that one of said people in the studio was Andrew Lloyd-Webber (!), who produced the record in a bet with his wife. Bombalurina is a character from ‘Cats’…) The video too does a decent, if knowing, impression of a real dance track, with buff dancers cutting shapes on a fake beach. It’s nowhere near as creepy as a video featuring Timmy Mallett and a woman in a bikini could have been…

This is the second cover of a Brian Hyland original to make #1 in just over a year. He’s a fairly unlikely figure to have had a rediscovery, but there you go. And I’m not going to go as far as to claim that this is better than Jason Donovan’s ‘Sealed With a Kiss’, but I have enjoyed it more. Which is ultimately all that matters, I suppose.

This record is more than just a summer novelty, for me at least, as I believe it to have been at number one when I started school. I can’t be sure, and it would be much more fitting for it to have been ‘Turtle Power’, but dates-wise I assume it’s this. The big question is, though: do I hate it as much as I was expecting to…? Well, the last few paragraphs have probably given it away, but no. I don’t. It’s cheese, to be filed alongside the likes of ‘Long Haired Lover from Liverpool’, and Renee and Renato’s ‘Save Your Love’. Pure drivel; but far too silly, and catchy, and most importantly tongue-in-cheek, to deny.

648. ‘Turtle Power’, by Partners in Kryme

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Cowabunga! God, I used to love the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. (Not, note, the Ninja Turtles, as the word ‘ninja’ apparently had too many violent connotations for UK audiences). Strangely, though, I was completely unaware of this song. Maybe because it was from the soundtrack to the Turtle’s first live-action movie, which I’ve never seen, rather than the far superior animated TV series.

Turtle Power, by Partners in Kryme (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 22nd July – 19th August 1990

Still, I was expecting this to be a remake of the classic theme tune (Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle Power!) I was also fully expecting it to be terrible. But… It’s neither of those things. It’s an actually quite funky rap track, with a new jack swing beat and creepy organs. It sounds a little, bear with me, like Dr Dre covering ‘The Monster Mash’.

The verses tell the story of the Turtles, and how they came to be. Splinter’s the teacher, Shredder the bad guy, while April O’Neil’s the reporter. (Partners in Kryme were clearly given a remit to mention every character at least once.) It also has to set up the movie: The crime wave is high with mugging mysterious, All police and detectives are furious, ‘Cause they can’t find the source, Of this lethally evil force… Plus one stanza is given over to ‘believe in yourself kids’ motivation: So when you’re in trouble don’t give in and turn sour, Try to rely on your, Turtle Power…

According to some sources, this is the very first hip-hop track to make #1 in the UK. I’m not sure that New Edition would agree with that, or Snap!, or Soul II Soul, or John Barnes. But I get the point: those acts had elements of it in their hit singles; this is pure hip-hop. Which means that when rap properly debuts atop the British charts, it arrives spitting rhymes like: Pizza’s the food that’s sure to please, These ninjas are into pepperoni and cheese…

I genuinely expected to hate this. But I don’t. The kid in me enjoys the heavily vocodered chorus: T-U-R-T-L-E power…, and then there’s also the nostalgia factor of it being from one of my favourite childhood cartoons. Lyrics aside, I think this might genuinely hold up, in a way that not all early rap does. Partners in Kryme were a duo from New York, made up of DJ Keymaster Snow and MC Golden Voice. I’m not sure if they were formed for this record; but they had no other hits, before or after, making them a classic one-hit wonder. (The ‘Kryme’ in their name stands for Keep Rhythm Your Motivating Element. Which is catchy.)

Whether or not this really was the first hip-hop chart-topper, 1990 was certainly the year it went mainstream. Snap!, John Barnes’ rap, as already mentioned, plus this, and a skinny, Queen-sampling white guy coming up very soon. It’s certainly going mainstream, but it’s still largely seen as a novelty. We’ll have to wait a while for a ‘serious’ rap #1, but when the time does come there’ll be no looking back for hip-hop as chart-topping force.

637. ‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Shhh! Be very very quiet. We’re hunting wabbits…

Let’s Party, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th December 1989

Blunderbusses at the ready, for surely you knew it was coming. With a chart-topper in the summer, and one in the autumn, Jive Bunny and his Mastermixers set their sights on the Christmas number one.

And after two rock ‘n’ roll medleys, he’s skipped forward a decade or so, to the glam Christmas classics of the seventies and early eighties. A Noddy Holder soundalike is on C’mon everybody! duties, as well as his classic It’s Chriiiisstmaaaass… line from ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. This version sounds muted by comparison to Slade’s raucous original, but it only lasts for a verse and a chorus, before Wizzard take over.

Yes, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ finally assumes its rightful position atop the charts. It’s just a shame that it took this crap to get it there. Unlike Slade, Roy Wood endorsed this sampling, and even re-recorded his vocals for the occasion. That done, the 3rd song is announced: Ok Gazza, take it away…

And it’s ‘Another Rock and Roll Christmas’, Gary Glitter’s 1984 comeback hit. Given that he was also involved in last year’s ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, it’s easy to forget just how big a part of British popular culture he was before his trip to PC World. Presents hanging from the trees, You’ll never guess what you’ve got from me… (We’d rather not find out, Gary.) Apparently he’s been replaced with Mariah Carey in more recent versions of ‘Let’s Party’, though who exactly has listened to this song at any point in the last thirty years is beyond me.

The thumping beat that holds this whole mess together is called ‘March of the Mods’, which I don’t think has anything to do with Christmas. Why didn’t they try something from ‘The Nutcracker’, at least? And while I complained about some of the mixing on JB’s earlier #1s, at least attempts were made to stitch those songs together. Here the three Christmas songs and the filler beat slam together like dodgems. I found some cheesy, madcap charm in the previous chart-toppers, but here my patience runs out fast. (The sleeve above lists the record as a double-‘A’, alongside a version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Thankfully the Official Charts Company only lists ‘Let’s Party’, so I’ll follow their lead and pretend the Bunny’s desecration of Rabbie Burns never happened…)

What in the hell is going on…? a voice demands towards the end, a sentiment I wholeheartedly echo. J-J-Jive Bunny! someone else replies. Meanwhile the fake Noddy Holder aggressively bellows Let’s Party! It’s a mess, and not a hot one. Yet it entered the chart at #1, and meant that Jive Bunny joined Gerry & The Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood in making top spot with their first three releases (the fact that Jive Bunny did it quickest is another feather in his cap).

He and the Mastermixers still had two Top 10 hits to come, and would continue releasing singles until well into 1991. But, thankfully, they won’t be troubling this blog again. And, despite the clear demand for this single, it was never going to be 1989’s Christmas Number One. We have Bob Geldof to thank for that.

(This is the original video, but with the Gary Glitter verse edited out and replaced with the second verse of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’.)

(This sounds to me like a re-recording – with slightly more modern production values – but with he-who-shall-not-be-named left in…)

634. ‘That’s What I Like’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

He’s back! The biggest chart star of 1989, the hottest medley-maker of the decade, the most successful rabbit in pop history, returns!

That’s What I Like, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 2nd of three #1s)

3 weeks, from 15th October – 5th November 1989

C’mon everybody… Jason Derulo, DJ Khaled, Pitbull: all the biggest morons have their own call-signs by which to announce themselves at the start of a new record, and Jive Bunny is no exception… C-C-C’mon everybody! After that, we’re off on another double-speed tour around some golden oldies: ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Great Balls of Fire’, ‘Runaround Sue’ and more… Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran and Little Richard have the honour of appearing on their second straight Mastermixers’ release. (I’ve just realised something truly upsetting – these are as close as Little Richard ever came to a #1 single…) Though, as in the first Jive Bunny record, a lot of the vocals are clearly performed by impersonators. The theme to ‘Hawaii 5-0’ does the job of ‘In the Mood’ here, and bookends the entire party.

As before, the whole thing is completely incongruous, and wholly ridiculous. And yet, I still can’t hate it. In fact, it gives you a new-found respect for what are already classic songs, that they can be dropped from a great height into this hot mess and still shine through. In the Mastermixers’ defence, the transitions between the songs are slightly smoother here than in ‘Swing the Mood’. They were clearly honing their craft.

And let’s be clear: the fact that this topped the charts just six weeks after their first #1 confirms that Jive Bunny fever was clearly sweeping the country in the autumn of 1989. They were just giving the public what they so craved – what they liked, as it were. (The title comes from the Big Bopper’s lascivious Oooh baby that’s what I like… in ‘Chantilly Lace’.)

As with ‘Swing the Mood’, ‘That’s What I Like’ was a huge hit throughout Europe (though returns were slowly diminishing, and the UK was the only territory in which it made #1). Even the US wasn’t immune to the rabbit’s charms, with this making #69 on the back of a very impressive #11 peak for ‘Swing…’ Twas, for a short time, Jive Bunny’s world, and we were just living in it.

632. ‘Swing the Mood’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Welcome to the second half of 1989, the final few months of the decade. We have twenty-three weeks’ worth of chart-toppers left to go. Nine of those will be taken up by a cartoon rabbit, peddling medleys of golden-oldies…

Swing the Mood, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 1st of three #1s)

5 weeks, from 30th July – 3rd September 1989

First thing to establish is that, yes, this did indeed happen. I know April Fool’s is just around the corner but no – it’s real. I’m too young to remember it and I can’t recall the last time I heard Jive Bunny mentioned, in any context, so I imagine that those responsible for buying these records, and contributing to his short period of chart domination, regret it wholeheartedly.

‘Swing the Mood’ is a journey through rock ‘n’ roll history, bookended rather incongruously by Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’, which predates rock ‘n’ roll by a good decade. Still, it’s catchy, a great hook, and has even already featured in a #1 single … Yes, in the fade-out to ‘All You Need Is Love’. Then we’re off, off on a breakneck journey past Bill Haley & The Comets, Elvis, Chubby Checker, Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, and Eddie Cochran.

Three former #1s appear – ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and ‘All Shook Up’ – which is not something happens very often (in fact, the only #1 I can think of that features an earlier chart-topper is, again, ‘All You Need Is Love’, which had a snippet from ‘She Loves You’). The whole shebang was the brainchild of a father and son duo from Rotherham, John and Andrew Pickles, though the original ‘Swing the Mood’ had been created by a Doncaster DJ named Les Hemstock. Either way, it’s a South Yorkshire creation, though I could find no information on who wore the (genuinely quite terrifying) rabbit head for promotional activity.

Listening to the various versions of ‘Swing the Mood’ available to us on Spotify and YouTube, it becomes clear that not every song in the medley features the original vocals. Danny and the Juniors sound legit; but that sure ain’t Elvis. This was a problem that plagued Jive Bunny from the start: even as the record was climbing the charts they had to put out a re-recorded version with impersonators singing the bits they didn’t have the rights for.

I mean, I guess it’s fun. I can’t hate it, because I like all the songs featured in it, and the good thing about medleys is that they jump around so fast that you could never call them boring. (Though, for a much better medley of rock ‘n roll tunes, check out Status Quo’s ‘Anniversary Waltz 1 and 2’, which perhaps rode the Jive Bunny wave to reach #2 a year later.) Some of ‘Swing the Mood’s transitions are very clunky, though; and what they do to The Everly Brothers as they segue into ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ is borderline sacrilege. Calling themselves ‘The Mastermixers’ seems a bit of a stretch…

At the same time, medleys had been a big thing throughout the 1980s, and we were probably overdue one at the top of the charts. ‘Stars on 45’, ‘Hooked on Classics’ and the like, had all been big hits. Once the floodgates opened – and boy did they open, with ‘Swing the Mood’ becoming the second highest-selling hit of the year – the #1 hits kept coming. There’ll be more from Jive Bunny very soon…

610. ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, by The Timelords

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

My first reaction upon seeing the title of our next #1 was: “Oh God, not another song based on a popular sci-fi series!” The scars from having to write about ‘Star Trekkin’’ still cut deep…

Doctorin’ the Tardis, by The Timelords (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th June 1988

But wait… Is that glam classic ‘Block Buster!’ mixed with the ‘Dr. Who’ theme? And is that a refrain based on ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Part II’? Plus lots of obnoxious punk chanting? Is this not actually quite great? Stupidly brilliant? Brilliantly stupid?

It takes two very separate strands of music – the sample-heavy house scene that has already given us a classic #1 (‘Theme from S’Express’) and a couple of others (‘Pump Up the Volume’ and ‘Jack Your Body’) and the glam scene of fifteen years previous – while throwing a TV theme into the mix. It shouldn’t work, they shouldn’t be able to meld, but it does. In fact, it sounds incredibly like Muse. Genuinely – and I say this as someone who loves Muse – as if Matt Bellamy has based his band’s entire recent output around this novelty song.

The Daleks are a bit much, mind (I say that as someone with next to no interest in ‘Dr. Who’) but I suppose they’re the most identifiable thing from the programme, and so we need an Exterminate! or two. Oh, and we haven’t mentioned the fact that the You what? chant is from Harry Enfield’s ‘Loadsamoney’ character, and so we have an added undercurrent of Thatcher-era social commentary thrown in too: Loadsamoney presumably being as cheap and as vacuous as this song is meant to be. (Enfield had also taken a single based on the Loadsamoney character to #4 just a few weeks before ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’ made #1. ‘Enjoy’ that here…)

And then… ho boy, this is a real cluster bomb of a record… Gary Glitter jumped on the bandwagon and helped record a new version, called ‘Gary in the Tardis’ with chants from his big glam hits: He’s the leader, Of the gang… Do you want to touch me…? and so on. That version featured on some of the various 12” mixes, but he wasn’t officially credited. He performed it live though, I’m guessing on TOTP. (And I’ve just realised the twisted irony in Gary Glitter deposing a record that had been raising money for Childline…)

This has so many strands running through it that we haven’t yet mentioned the Timelords themselves. This was their first and only hit under that name, but we’ll meet Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty again shortly, as The KLF. They had released a few underground sample-heavy hits before, as The JAMs, but this was the big time. The song’s title was presumably a nod to Coldcut’s recent sample-tastic hit ‘Doctorin’ the House’. Drummond called their first big hit ‘nauseating’, and then released a book based on making the song called ‘The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way’.

But hey, never has a cynical grab for chart glory sounded so catchy. Glam is back! For one week only, Britain’s pop past and future – glam, punk and house – mix in a riotous mess of a chart-topper. And I love it! If nothing else, it’s flushed the last remnants of ‘Star Trekkin’’ out of my system…

592. ‘Star Trekkin”, by The Firm

/ UK #1s blog / 26 Comments

Oh. Oh no. Oh God, no…

(Just in case you missed that: Oh. No.)

Star Trekkin’, by The Firm (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 14th – 28th June 1987

I’m an open-minded type. When it comes to this blog, I try my best to find something to appreciate in every song we meet. I managed to tolerate ‘Shaddap You Face’, and I made my peace with ‘Save Your Love’. There are very few #1s that I’ve found utterly irredeemable…

To the ‘Irredeemable Club’, though, we can add this truly heinous number. Just…why? Why take a bunch of lines from ‘Star Trek’ and stitch them into an irritating playground chant? Why the ever-increasing tempo? Why the funny voices? Why the potatoes?? WHY??

I suppose the fact that I’m asking ‘why’ means the joke is lost on me. I’m not a Trekkie; but then again I’m not sure many Trekkies would find this particularly funny. (And, apparently, not all the lines from the song ever featured in the show. It’s life Jim, But not as we know it… for example was invented just for this moment.)

The Firm were a novelty act, helmed by a man called John O’Connor. They’d had minor hits before, but every label they approached was, unsurprisingly, reluctant to release ‘Star Trekkin’. So they went it alone, pressed five-hundred copies, and before they knew it their song was getting pushed by Radio 1. The animated video was rush-released, as the band didn’t want to appear live and lose their mystique…

So on the one hand, I want to applaud this home-made, go-it-alone attitude. Some classic chart-toppers have been made in bedrooms and garages. This, however, is not a classic chart-topper. It’s truly rotten. Not funny. Unlistenable. The end.

Looking back, the obvious comparison to make is with ‘The Chicken Song’, which made #1 a year before this. I gave that a pass as, while it was also annoying crap, it was meant to be annoying crap. Perhaps The Firm also knew ‘Star Trekkin’ was terrible, and released it as a joke, as a prank on an unsuspecting nation. But maybe, just maybe, they thought it was good…

When I was twelve, my brother bought me ‘Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh’ as a Christmas present. Not because he liked the song, or because he thought I liked the song, but because he knew it would annoy me. As a joke. He bought the song, and helped it to #1, with malicious intent. I think the same sentiment probably explains ‘Star Trekkin’s success. People bought it to annoy siblings, flatmates, friends… Nobody bought it with the intention of ever actually enjoying it as a piece of music. Post-‘Star Trekkin’, The Firm had one further song chart at #99: ‘Superheroes’. It follows an ‘if it ain’t broke’ approach and may be – which is a huge achievement, if you think about it – even worse than their sole chart-topper.

570. ‘The Chicken Song’, by Spitting Image

/ UK #1s blog / 26 Comments

In my last post, I wondered if ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ was intended as a novelty song, a train of thought that took me down an existential route, asking if our native English bias leads us to treat all foreign language songs as novelties, regardless of the artists’ original intentions… Thankfully, this next #1 will not be inspiring any such deep philosophical debate. Ladies and Gentlemen: ‘The Chicken Song’…

The Chicken Song, by Spitting Image (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 11th May – 1st June 1986

Nor do we need to ask if this is a novelty hit. This is the ultimate novelty hit: a novelty hit about novelty hits. A meta-novelty hit. It apes mindless summer smashes like ‘Agadoo’ (the ‘wet gits’ in the lyrics are supposed to be Black Lace) and ‘The Birdy Song’, with their inane lyrics and/or their simplistic dance moves: Hold a chicken in the air, Stick a deckchair up your nose…

My first instinct is to groan and press stop. But then I remember: this is done knowingly. It’s meant to be annoying. My second instinct is still to groan and press stop. Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but that doesn’t make it any more listenable. I get the point they’re making, but… Now you’ve heard this song, Your brain will spring a leak, And though you hate this song, You’ll be singing it for weeks… Well, quite.

‘The Chicken Song’ doesn’t appear to be on streaming service because, let’s be honest, who would ever want to listen to it? After a promising start, 1986 is quickly hitting the skids. I’m starting to cast my eye towards the upcoming recap, and the ‘Very Worst Chart Topper’ award. But then, is it worth getting annoyed about a song that has set its stall out so clearly to be annoying? Aren’t you just giving them what they want…? Let’s move quickly on then, and not give them the attention they crave…

Except, ‘Spitting Image’ was a satirical TV show – ‘The Chicken Song’ had featured heavily in the programme’s third series – and you could maybe have expected something with a little more bite. There’s a video of their ‘Top of the Pops’ performance, featuring Margaret Thatcher on keys and Ronald Reagan on drums. Imagine if those world leaders had featured in the lyrics… Sadly, they went for dumb rather than edgy. The ‘B’-side was a ditty called ‘I’ve Never Met a Nice South African’, which mocked the attitudes of apartheid era, white South Africans. That would have made for an interesting number one; though it wouldn’t have been likely to make it there in the first place…

So, there we go. ‘The Chicken Song’. You might have wondered if, with this being the ultimate novelty song – the novelty song’s novelty song – people might have given up on making them after this topped the charts. Why bother? Sadly, people still did bother. There are plenty more to come. Up next, though, a recap…

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567. ‘Living Doll’, by Cliff Richard & The Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

The newest addition to our chart-topping roster – the charity record – returns. But it has shapeshifted. Morphed into a form that will terrorise the charts from here until the end of time… The comedy charity record…

Living Doll, by Cliff Richard (his 11th of  fourteen #1s) & the Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

3 weeks, from 23rd March – 13th April 1986

As with most charity records – which tend to be very rooted in their particular time and place – this needs a bit of explaining. ‘The Young Ones’ was a sitcom, about a group of flat-sharing undergraduate students of Scumbag College: Rick, an anarchist; Vyvyan, a psychopathic metalhead; Neil, a hippie; and Mike, the ‘cool’ one. The show’s theme tune was Cliff Richard & The Shadows’ 1962 #1 ‘The Young Ones’ and Rick, played by Rik Mayall, was a proud Cliff fan, despite his anarchist leanings. In-jokes on top of in-jokes…

This one isn’t on Spotify, which actually ends up being in the record’s favour – it works better as a video. As a song, it’s fairly unlistenable. Cliff does a straight, very soporific cover of his 1959 #1, while the four actors prat about over the top. Meanwhile, Hank Marvin emerges from behind a door to perform the solo.

It is undoubtedly hard to write a song that is as funny as it is catchy. And this is not how you do it… ‘The Young Ones’ is a funny programme, and Cliff is Cliff. But they’ve had to paint their anarchic humour in very broad strokes here. There are funny(ish) bits… At one point Vyvyan calls Cliff ‘Shaky’. And they call out the creepy ‘gonna lock her up in a trunk’ line: I still feel that locking girls in trunks is politically unsound… Well I feel sorry for the elephant… (groan)

It reminds me – and I’m not sure how I even remember this song – of ‘I See the Moon’, The Stargazers’ 1954 chart-topper. That also featured voice actors pratting about – in a very proper, pre-rock ‘n’ roll kind of way – over a well-known tune. It also reminds me of just about every other ‘comedy’ record to come: ‘Spirit in the Sky’, ‘Islands in the Stream’, ‘500 Miles’ will all be subjected to the same treatment in the years to come, and that’s just off the top of my head.

This was recorded for the very first Comic Relief (AKA Red Nose Day), a BBC charity telethon. Like Band Aid, it was set up in response to the famine in Ethiopia and has since gone on to raise 1.4 billion pounds for charity over the last thirty years. For all the musical chaos it has unleashed, it has undoubtedly done a lot of good for the world. Four minutes of Cliff, and Adrian Edmondson bashing everyone on the head with a mallet, is perhaps a small price to pay…

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556. ‘Dancing in the Street’, by David Bowie & Mick Jagger

/ UK #1s blog / 45 Comments

At the end of my last post I promised you an all-star duet at #1. Well, has there ever been a more all-star duet atop the charts than this? It’s only David Bowie and Mick Jagger…

Dancing in the Street, by David Bowie (his 5th and final #1) & Mick Jagger (his only solo #1)

4 weeks, from 1st – 29th September 1985

I also promised that this wouldn’t be underwhelming. And this record may be many things, but underwhelming it is not. It starts with a giant whistle, the sort shepherds use to summon their dogs from three fields away, and a rollcall of cities and continents. OK! Toky-oh…! Jagger bellows. South Ameriiiiicaaaa…! Bowie replies.

It sets the tone for the entire song. Every dial here is set to eleven: the horns, the handclaps, the riff… But nothing more so than its two stars. This should have been listed as David Bowie Vs Mick Jagger, as they spend the entire three and a half minutes trying to outdo one another for sheer ridiculousness. It makes for a tremendously fun listen.

Bowie does his best, sounding all white soul on the they’ll be swinging, swaying, records playing line, and doing his best Noel Coward with on the streets of Brazil…  But Bowie, even David Bowie, cannot compete with Mick Jagger when he’s in the mood. The way he soars through just as long as you are there…, the way he makes Philadelphia PA sound like a sexual position, and the piece de resistance: his ridiculously aggressive Back! In! The! USSR! It’s good to hear his voice again, sixteen years on from the Stones’ last chart-topper. It’s great to hear him on such fine form.

The video is even more extra. The two middle aged men (Jagger was forty-two, Bowie thirty-eight) prance and flounce around like the campest of pantomime dames. At one point they appear on the verge of a proper smoochy kiss. Again Bowie tries his best, again he is blown away by the force of nature that is Sir Michael of Jagger. The boy was unplayable, as they say on Match of the Day. On YouTube some wag has made a music-less version of the video, and it is as hilarious/terrifying as you’d imagine. It is a completely random, and yet somehow perfect, way for both of these stars to bow out from the top of the charts. And this curio, this borderline novelty single, ends up being one of the biggest hits either man ever had…

But why? I hear you asking. Why now? Why ‘Dancing in the Street?’, which was originally a #4 for Martha Reeves & the Vandellas in 1969. Well, why did most records make #1 in 1985…? For charity, of course. It was for Live Aid, and therefore for those affected by famine in Africa, like Band Aid and USA for Africa before it. The pair were originally meant to perform the song via video-link during the Live Aid concerts, but that would have involved one of them miming to a backing track. Neither was willing to do that, so they went to Abbey Road studios and recorded it instead.

In many way this is the template for how to do a charity record. Don’t bother writing some overblown twaddle about how we’re all God’s children, don’t bother getting everyone from Bobby Davro to Engelbert Humperdinck in the same room… Just get two genuine icons of popular music singing along to a well-loved classic, having the time of their lives. Sadly, very few future charity records will actually take this advice. This is a decent pop record, but I think it might actually be the pinnacle of its particular genre: the greatest charity single of all time…

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