Soundtracks

653. ‘Unchained Melody’, by The Righteous Brothers

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

And so the slew of random re-releases, that have been peppering the number one slot since the late ‘80s, peaks here, towards the end of 1990. And I mean ‘peaks’ both in the sense that we’ve literally just waved a Steve Miller Band tune from 1973 off top spot, and in the sense that nothing can top this gilt-edged beauty of a love song.

Unchained Melody, by The Righteous Brothers (their 2nd and final #1)

4 weeks, from 28th October – 25th November 1990

That’s not to say that ‘Unchained Melody’, in the hands of the Righteous Brothers, isn’t a preposterous, overblown nonsense of a record. It is completely over-the-top, the sort of display of affection that would put most women off a man were he to belt it out ‘neath her window of an evening. How does a lonely river sigh, exactly…? And yet, it is irresistible.

Irresistible because of the vocal performance of Bobby Hatfield (who won the right to record it in a coin-toss with his Righteous partner Bill Medley). It’s spectacular singing all the way through, a true tour-de-force, that culminates in that outrageous note he hits in the final chorus. The strings swell, the percussion crashes, creating a tempest of emotion that will wash over even the most cynical of listener.

Irresistible, too, because it is so different to what has come before it. I’ve enjoyed the recent transition to dance, more than I thought I might, but it’s interesting to hear a big sixties beast cutting through the drum machines and the samples. And despite coming from long before the era of the power-ballad, ‘Unchained Melody’ can compete with contemporary classics like ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and ‘Show Me Heaven’ in the chest-thumping melodrama stakes. In fact, could the case be made for this being the very first ‘power ballad’?

It found itself back in the charts thanks to its use in the movie ‘Ghost’, in a famous sex scene involving Patrick Swayze and a pottery wheel (I’ve never seen the film, and don’t intend to, so don’t try to persuade me that this isn’t what happens…) The Brothers did a re-record, which charted in the US, but it was their original that took off again in Britain (it had previously made #14 in 1965). It means that the duo have a twenty-five year gap between their two #1s – beating The Hollies’ previous record of twenty-three years – and that ‘Unchained Melody’ itself has a huge thirty five year span since Jimmy Young took his version to the top in 1955.

Young’s version is half the song that this is, though it feels unfair to judge him against what has since become a standard. A standard that, sadly, subsequent singers have felt the need to compare themselves against. ‘Unchained Melody’ has two further, Righteous Brothers aping versions to come atop the charts… And this also increases the irresistibility of this version: the depths that I know the song will be brought down to.

This record cemented itself as the peak of the re-release era by becoming the highest-selling single of the year. Folks lapped it up (‘Ghost’ was, for a spell, the highest-grossing film of all time in the UK), though I’d say it’s now moved into the realms of cliché, thanks no doubt to the subsequent karaoke cover versions, to the point that any use in a movie today would be done with tongue firmly in cheek.

Before I go, I have to give a shout out to the one version that can compete with the Righteous Brothers’: Elvis’s. It was used to great effect in the recent film biopic (that I thought was OK, but nowhere near as good as some said), and when they spliced it with the famous footage of him singing it a few weeks before his death… Well some dust just went and got in my eye, didn’t it?

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651. ‘Show Me Heaven’, by Maria McKee

/ UK #1s blog / 22 Comments

It’s been a while – a whole six months at least. Time for a power ballad!

Show Me Heaven, by Maria McKee (her 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 23rd September – 21st October 1990

I love the opening chords, like a wheezy accordion played by the fireside. I also like Maria McKee’s sultry voice, as if she’s just inhaled a lungful of smoke from said campfire. But most of all I love the bridge, a real gear-shift before the thumping chorus: I’m not denying, We’re flying above it all… I’ve never felt this way!

Then the chorus takes a surprising turn. Yes, the vocals are big and the sentiment overwrought: Show me heaven… Leave me breathless… etc. But under that there’s a folky edge to it, with what sound like banjos being lightly plucked. It’s a post-Enya power ballad, perhaps, with a new-age influence being felt in the background. It’s not much, but might I make the same bold claim I seem to make every couple of chart-years, that guitars are making a comeback…?

My favourite bit, though, is the middle eight: If you know what it’s like, To dream a dream… McKee breathes, before embarking on one of the most impressive ten seconds of singing we’ve ever heard in a number one single. I’m pretty sure she does it all in one breath, unless a more trained ear than mine can hear when she sneaks a gulp of air.

From there this most classy of ballads glides to a finish. As the eighties become the nineties, the power ballads are just going to get glossier. But ‘Show Me Heaven’ melds all the OTT fist clenching that we expect – nay, need – from a power-ballad, with genuine credibility and grit. 1990 has already given us ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, and this provides that record with some proper competition in the ‘ultimate power ballad’ stakes.

It probably helped that Maria McKee was an accomplished songwriter. who refused to record the song unless she could rewrite some of the original version’s ‘appalling’ (her words) lyrics. She already has one writing credit on a number one – Feargal Sharkey’s ‘A Good Heart’ – and had been the lead singer of country rock (or ‘cowpunk’, according to Wiki, which is amazing) band Lone Justice. None of her subsequent hits came anywhere near to matching her only #1; but she seems to be a free spirit, doing whatever she pleases, be it recording music, making short films, or writing fiction.

‘Show Me Heaven’ featured on the soundtrack to the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman, NASCAR racing film ‘Days of Thunder’ (Cruise and Kidman met on set, and were married barely a year later.) This makes it the second song from a Tom Cruise movie to make #1, after ‘Take My Breath Away’ (sadly ‘Kokomo’ couldn’t replicate it’s US success on British shores…) And, lest we forget, Nicky Kidman has her own chart-topping moment in the sun to come…

648. ‘Turtle Power’, by Partners in Kryme

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

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.

640. ‘Tears on My Pillow’, by Kylie Minogue

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Kylie does Grease!

Tears on My Pillow, by Kylie Minogue (her 4th of seven #1s)

1 week, from 21st – 28th January 1990

Well, no. Kylie’s never done ‘Grease’ – though she’d have made a good Sandy – and ‘Tears on My Pillow’ only ever features in the background of the original movie. But this record certainly has that feel about it…

It’s the final UK #1 to be produced by Stock Aitken and Waterman… pause for a moment to cheer/sigh (delete as appropriate)… though you wouldn’t particularly know it. It’s a shame that they don’t bow out with a Hi-NRG banger, but the chart Gods can be cruel. Like Jason Donovan’s stab at the sixties on ‘Sealed With a Kiss’, this is nothing more than karaoke. At least the trio bow out with a big hit for their chief muse, the lovely Ms Minogue. And in the big ‘Jason Vs Kylie Retro Covers Contest’ there can be only one winner: this one, because it’s Kylie.

There has been a bit of a retro wave sweeping the charts over the final year of the ‘80s. There was Jive Bunny, of course, but also those sixties covers from Jason, and Marc Almond with Gene Pitney. ‘Tears on My Pillow’ had originally been a 1958 hit for Little Anthony & The Imperials – one which failed to chart in the UK but had made #4 in the US. (There has of course been a completely unrelated ‘Tears on My Pillow’ at #1 in the UK, for Johnny Nash in 1975. Off the top of my head, I think this is the second time two different songs with the same name have made #1, after ‘The Power of Love’…)

This was from the soundtrack to Kylie’s big-screen debut ‘The Delinquents’, a Romeo and Juliet-ish tale of teenage love in ‘50s Australia. Apparently the movie isn’t great, but it continues a trend of forgettable films accompanied by number one singles (‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, ‘When the Going Gets Tough’…) And it scored Kylie her fourth chart-topper in just under two years. Amazingly, this will be her sole nineties #1. A decade of fading chart fortunes, duets with Nick Cave, and a stab at something more alternative will keep her busy until a spectacular comeback in the early ‘00s. Still, she sneaks in, and in due course will join a select band of artists with #1s in three different decades.

If it feels like I’ve been padding this post out, blethering on about everything but the actual, largely forgettable, music then you’d be right. Let me pad it out a little more before finishing, then. Though I don’t remember this particular record, Kylie (and Jason) are pop ground zero for my generation: the first singers we remember from TV, from the playground, the first CDs we bought (more on that later…) The music may not have always been great, but this is nostalgic stuff for us older millennials. This rundown is suddenly getting quite real!

614. ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, by Phil Collins

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Just when I’d made such a big point about us being past the gloopiest years of the decade…

A Groovy Kind of Love, by Phil Collins (his 3rd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 4th – 18th September 1988

It’s Phil, a keyboard, some subtle background strings and percussion, all drenched in glossy, echoey reverb. Only three and a half years have passed since his last #1 – ‘Easy Lover’ – but already Phil Collins feels old-fashioned and left behind by this dancey, sample-heavy era. This feels very 1985… And the use of ‘groovy’ in the title is worth suing for false advertising!

Not that it’s terrible. There’s always space in the musical landscape for a smoochy ballad. It’s just fairly dull, and the lyrics are delivered so slowly that their clunky rhymes stand out even more: When I kiss your lips, Oooh I start to shiver, Can’t control the quiver, -ing inside… When you think of Collins’s hits that didn’t make the top – ‘In the Air Tonight’ and ‘Against All Odds’ both peaked at #2 – you might wonder why this unremarkable one made it.

But then Phil Collins isn’t the only artist to be unfairly represented by his chart-toppers. Sometimes there’s a lull at the top, and something understated and gentle can take over for a couple of weeks. It was also on the soundtrack to the movie ‘Buster’, which I’m guessing helped as well.

For something more interesting we must delve into the history of ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, which I had never realised dated back two decades, to a #2 hit in 1966 for The Mindbenders. (The use of a term like ‘groovy’ makes much more sense in the mid-sixties…) It was their first release after Wayne Fontana had left the band, and I prefer that version, also a ballad, purely because it sounds like it’s from the 1960s (snappy and guitar-led) and not the 1980s, and I’m biased. Sorry! Meanwhile, the melody is based on a piece by 18th century Italian composer Muzio Clementi, instantly propelling this innocuous ballad into the top two or three oldest #1s, ever. Who knew?

Phil Collins won’t be topping the charts again, but his career will keep ticking away throughout the ‘90s and 00’s, despite him becoming a bye-word for ‘uncool’. It probably didn’t help that he always looked, to me at least, like one of my dad’s old school friends. However, he regained some respect from the hip-hop community, of all places, and still tours despite various health problems. Nowadays his influence is much more recognised, and rightly so. For what it’s worth, he’s the world’s 2nd richest drummer, behind Ringo Starr.

595. ‘La Bamba’, by Los Lobos

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

We’re hitting a bit of a latin groove in the summer of ’87. After Madonna’s two ‘¿hablas español?’ chart-toppers, here are some actual Mexicans…

La Bamba, by Los Lobos (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 26th July – 9th August 1987

OK. Los Lobos (The Wolves) are from California, but they’re of Mexican heritage, and sound to these untrained ears like the real deal. This is a nice, insanely catchy, interlude at the top of the charts – not just because it’s something a little different, but also because actual guitar-led number one singles were rarer than hens’ teeth in the mid-1980s.

It’s also not often that we get a fully foreign-language record at the top, either. In my initial notes on this, I wrote that it was only the 3rd of the decade. Now I’m struggling to think what the other two were… There’s Julio Iglesias’s similarly Spanish smoothy ‘Begin the Beguine’ (which, to be fair, has a couple of lines of English). Oh yes, and how could I forget Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ which, title aside, was fully auf Deutsch.

What is a ‘Bamba’, I’m wondering? It’s not a thing, as such… More of a dance. There’s no direct translation, but the verb bombolear means to shake, or wobble, and so a derivative dance would presumably have a bit of hip wiggling. Put the rest of the Spanish lyrics through a translator, and it turns out to be a bit of a nonsense tune: To dance ‘La Bamba’, You need a bit of grace… I’m not a sailor, I’m a captain… Bam-ba, Bamba…

‘La Bamba’ was originally a hit for Ritchie Valens, and the Los Lobos version featured in a biopic released at the same time as the hit record. Which taps into another emerging theme of 1987: soundtrack hits. ‘Stand by Me’, ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, ‘Who’s That Girl’, now this, have all made top-spot at least in part thanks to movies. The Valens film told the story of the first Latino rock ‘n’ roll star, whose rise to fame ended in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper when he was just seventeen.

‘La Bamba’ has a much longer history, though. It’s a Mexican folk song, of the son jarocho school, meaning that its roots stretch back centuries and that this is actually a pretty unique and culturally significant chart-topper. The earliest recording of ‘La Bamba’ is from the ‘30s. Valens took a song he presumably knew from childhood and gave it a rock ‘n’ roll twist… And it eventually ended up on top of the British charts some thirty years later, sandwiched between Madonna and Michael Jackson. The instrumental fade-out in particular sounds very authentically Mexican, though I think that was cut from the single edit.

Los Lobos had been around since the 1970s, and remain around today – having just released an album last year. This cover was by far their biggest hit, though, and what a hit: a #1 from the USA to New Zealand, via the UK, France and seemingly everywhere in-between. And, like I said in the intro, it’s been a refreshing change of pace. Up next, though, we’re back with the eighties big-hitters. The biggest of hitters: MJ himself.

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594. ‘Who’s That Girl’, by Madonna

/ UK #1s blog / 20 Comments

Madonna scores her 4th chart-topper within twelve months, joining a very exclusive club…

Who’s That Girl, by Madonna (her 5th of thirteen #1s)

1 week, from 19th – 26th July 1987

The ‘4-in-a-year club’ are The Beatles, Elvis, The Shadows, Slade and, um, Frank Ifield (do shout at me if I’ve forgotten anyone else!) and one thing you might notice about those five acts are their… well, their manhoods. Yes, Madonna is now officially (probably) the most successful female in chart history!

The sad thing is that, for such a ‘big’ #1, ‘Who’s That Girl’ is a bit of a non-event. It is ‘La Isla Bonita’ Part II, a watered down and remixed version of her previous chart-topper. The intro in particular, with its drum riff, is nigh on identical; while the subsequent latin-funk synths are, if not identical, then heavily influenced by their predecessor.

Plus, there’s even more Spanish thrown in this time. Quién es esa niña…? Señorita, más fina… Who’s that girl? I wasn’t a huge fan of ‘La Isla Bonita’, and it’s therefore inevitable that I’m even less a fan of this diluted version. There’s nothing wrong with it, blandness and lack of originality aside, but it’s well overshadowed by the bolder moments in Madonna’s back-catalogue. And out of her thirteen chart-toppers, it’s the one I’m least familiar with (I could probably have attempted the title line from memory, but that’s it…)

It’s from the soundtrack to a film of the same name. A ‘screwball comedy’, as Wikipedia puts it, that presumably nobody has watched since 1987. And that’s about all there is to write on this most slight and forgettable of #1s. To be fair, in order to achieve four chart-toppers in a year you need a combination of massive popularity and a winning formula. Nobody would deny that at least one of Elvis’s, or The Shadows’, or Slade’s four #1s was a re-tread… ‘Surrender’, ‘Dance On’, ‘Skweeze Me Pleeze Me’… While the sound of 1962-3 was Frank Ifield’s yodel popping up, time and again. The one act who managed to sound new and fresh with every single song was The Beatles, but there’s no point in competing with them…

Perhaps Madonna knew she was treading water at this point, because she took 1988 off and drew a line under what we’ll call Madge MK I. In two years’ time, when she scores her next chart-topper, she’ll be a different beast altogether!

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590. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, by Starship

/ UK #1s blog / 30 Comments

Question: has a song ever been written specifically with karaoke in mind? Songs are written for movie themes, for radio play, for their stream-ability… So what about a song for karaoke bars?

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, by Starship (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 3rd – 31st May 1987

For if ever a song were written for drunk people who shouldn’t be let anywhere near a microphone, ‘tis this one. It’s a duet, for a start, and one that’s pretty easy to sing. It’s got a steady, thumping, drum-led pace. It’s got moments for wannabe rock stars to let loose – woah-oahs and heys, that sort of thing – and a solo that begs to be air-guitared along to. Above all, it’s got the sort of message that appeals to people on their third cocktail of the evening. We can build this thing together, Standing strong forever, Nothing’s gonna stop us now…

I’d say that this record is a bit of a bellwether hit: a test of how much you can tolerate the worst excesses of the 1980s. If you can stomach it, this is a classic of its kind. Yes it’s cheesy, ridiculous, over the top… the little break between the bridge and the solo is perhaps the precise moment the ‘80s peaked (these moments keep coming along, and the decade keeps outdoing itself)… but it’s great fun. And it’s from one of the archetypal eighties movies, ‘Mannequin’, in which Kim Cattrall plays a store-front dummy that comes to life. Hi-jinks ensue, presumably (I’ve never seen it…) On the other hand, if you see the eighties as a decade of style (and hair) over substance, in which true musicianship got lost behind synthesisers and shoulder pads, then ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ is presumably high on your list of worst offenders.

A lot of the hate probably stems from what the band Starship once was. Few acts have had a longer journey from their original incarnation to their most successful line-up. Jefferson Airplane, ground-breaking ‘60s psychedelic act, with two tracks on Rolling Stone’s 500 Best Songs Ever, split in two. One half became Jefferson Starship, a more commercial sounding, but still well-respected rock band. Due to legal threats from the other members of Airplane, they had to drop the ‘Jefferson’ in 1984. By the time this happened, none of the original members remained, apart from the female lead on this song, Grace Slick, who had recently returned to the fold. So far, so Sugababes… (Though the three bands chopped and changed members so much I may be mistaken on this, and am happy to be proven wrong…)

So, even though Starship no longer shared a name, and barely any band members, with their predecessors, they seem to have been a shorthand for the way popular music had degenerated since the late sixties. Coming at this as someone who neither lived through it, nor has listened to much (OK, any) Jefferson Airplane, I can kind of get the hate. (Sugababes MK III had some decent songs, but they weren’t a patch on MK I.) But at the same time: it is snobbery.

Where people’s ire should be directed is the truly horrific ‘We Built This City’, Starship’s debut #12 hit, from 1985. That is a song that I cannot abide, one that takes every truly hideous ‘80s production technique in the book and turns them all up to eleven. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, though…? I’ve belted this out at karaoke nights, and would do so again, happily. In the UK, this was Starship’s only Top 10 hit, though they had more success in the States. When the hits finally dried up in the early nineties, there was one final regeneration for this most Dr Who of rock groups… Into ‘Starship featuring Mickey Thomas’ (the lead male vocalist on ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us’), which they still tour under today.

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585. ‘Stand by Me’, by Ben E. King

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

From a sixties legend, to a legendary song from the sixties. Who’d have imagined, as we ticked over from 1986 to ’87, that three of the past four #1s would have featured Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, and now Ben E. King…?

Stand by Me, by Ben E. King (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 15th February – 8th March 1987

Let’s be quite honest, the world doesn’t need to know what I think of ‘Stand By Me’. It doesn’t need me to prattle on about the instantly recognisable bass line, and the passion in King’s voice; about the soaring strings and the gospel influence. What more can you say about it…? It’s a good song. Very good. Amazing. One of the best ever. It’s simple – a basic chord progression, accessible lyrics, fairly limited production – yet it proves the notion that writing a good simple song must be fiendishly difficult.

I usually roll the eyes when someone claims of a song that ‘they don’t make ‘em like that anymore’, but when it comes to ‘Stand by Me’ then it’s hard to argue. It was written by King, alongside Lieber and Stoller, and was based on a spiritual song, which in turn had been based on Psalm 46: “will not we fear, though the Earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea”.

There ends today’s sermon, go forth and prosper (you can perhaps tell I’m not a regular at church…) So, ‘Stand by Me’ is technically a religious song, but whereas other holy #1s have preached – I’m looking at you, Lena Martell and Charlene – Ben E. King’s is a humble profession of faith, as long as someone, be it God or his lover, stands with him. Just a few chart-toppers ago, The Housemartins were being similarly low-key religious, and scoring an equally palatable hit.

When originally released, in 1961, ‘Stand by Me’ made a lowly #27 in the British charts. (Number one that week was ‘Well I Ask You’ by Eden Kane – perfectly pleasant, but somewhat lacking in ‘classic’ status.) Ben E. King wasn’t very well served in the UK: this being his only Top 20, though he did make #2 with The Drifters. And I’d always assumed that ‘Stand by Me’ was a 1987 hit thanks to the Rob Reiner movie – another classic. A tie-in video was made, featuring a young Ben E. King morphing into an older Ben E. King, who is then joined on stage by River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton (a sight which takes on a very bittersweet edge knowing the fate that would befall Phoenix just a few years later).

But it turns out that ‘Stand by Me’ was actually given a final push to the top of the charts by an advert for Levi’s jeans, which takes the wholesome gloss off it slightly. Filthy lucre was ultimately behind this beautiful song claiming its rightful chart position. Still, it feels only right that a song of its stature made #1, and it’s interesting to see how generation-defining classics that missed out first time around – ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Imagine’, this – seem to eventually find a way to the top. Class will shine through in the end…

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579. ‘Take My Breath Away’, by Berlin

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

Serious question: is this the 1980s’ most iconic riff? It’s not a decade known for its riffs, not like the sixties and the seventies anyway. ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, ‘Money for Nothing’, Van Halen’s ‘Jump’, this…?

Take My Breath Away, by Berlin (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 2nd – 30th November 1986

Of course, purists will argue that any riff not played on a guitar ain’t worth mentioning. But the fact that this is played on a squelchy, echoey synth simply makes it even more representative of the era. Add the drums, the backing melody, the video, the fact that it’s from the soundtrack to one of the decade’s biggest movies, and you’ve got yourself an eighties classic: ‘Take My Breath Away’. Or to give it its full title: ‘Love Theme from ‘Top Gun’’.

Watching every motion in my foolish lover’s game… The lyrics are pure power-ballad tosh: profound, until you actually sit down and listen to them. On this endless ocean, Finally lovers know no shame… I was going to let them off as I assumed the band were German and not writing in their first language… But no, Berlin were from Los Angeles. Yet you’re not here for the lyrics; you’re here for the drama, for the fist-clenching, head-shaking silliness of it all. You’re here for the key change, one of the very best of all time.

Even if you’ve never seen it, you’d put a lot of money on the video for this song featuring dry-ice and a wind machine. And it does, as well as lots of bombed out aircraft shells, interspersed with movie footage of Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. If there is a story to it, it seems to be that the band are scavengers, returned to the Top Gun Academy following a nuclear apocalypse. It makes as much sense as the lyrics…

It’s a triumph of style over substance – further cementing it as one of the 1980’s defining tunes – but I love it. This could have been quite slow and plodding – it is not a fast song – but Berlin, and lead singer Teri Nunn, give it a ridiculous energy. Also helping is the fact that none other than Giorgio Moroder was on production duty. He adds this to his credits on ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Call Me’ to complete a hattrick of electro-classics (as well as the very first electronic #1 being a cover of his ‘Son of My Father’.) Lady Gaga clearly took ‘Take My Breath Away’ as inspiration for her song on the Top Gun 2 soundtrack but, as much as I love her, she didn’t quite manage to match the original…

‘Top Gun’ has one of the most famous, and successful, movie soundtracks of all time, although this song was the only big UK hit to come from it. This was also the only big UK hit for Berlin, a new-wave band who had been around since the start of the decade. It returned them to the Top 3 in 1990, too, when re-released. And look! It’s only Part I of a quintessential eighties double-header at the top of the charts. Get the hairspray ready for our next #1…

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