1992 pop hits

675. ‘Deeply Dippy’, by Right Said Fred

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

I play the intro to our next number one, and am convinced that I am actually listening to The Proclaimers’ ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’. Listen to the two of them back to back, and you won’t be able to un-hear it. But this is not the brothers Reid (their time will eventually come), but the brothers Fairbrass…

Deeply Dippy, by Right Said Fred (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 12th April – 3rd May 1992

It’s also slightly discombobulating to hear Right Said Fred singing a song that isn’t ‘I’m Too Sexy’, their monster hit from a few months before, which had spent six weeks at #2, prevented from featuring on this blog by the dreaded Bryan Adams. But yes, they had other songs. One of which did make number one. And, in all honesty, it might be the better tune.

I’m finding it hard to write about this record without using horrible words like ‘jaunty’, or ‘ditty’. For this is undeniably a jaunty ditty. From the alliterative title, to the springy acoustic rhythm, to the brass section that comes blasting in mid-way through. And then there’s the nonsense lyrics: Deeply dippy ‘bout the curves you got…

It’s actually just as sex-obsessed as ‘I’m Too Sexy’ – love as a ‘contact sport’ (let the neighbours talk) – but also has a swing at being romantic. Oh my love, Let’s set sail for seas of passion… It’s a song, like Vic Reeve’s ‘Dizzy’ not so long before, that just about manages the balance of being a novelty, and remaining listenable. In fact, if you were in the right mood, the moment where the horns come in could be downright jubilant.

It’s also an odd number one for this moment in time, wedged in among the dance tracks and ballads, one that might have been a hit in any era, that is as likely to get your granny dancing as it is your five-year-old nephew. But there’s little doubt that this wouldn’t have been anywhere near as big a hit without ‘I’m Too Sexy’ laying the groundwork. We can add Right Said Fred to acts like Don McLean, Alvin Stardust, and a-Ha, whose ‘big’ hit isn’t actually their biggest.

Right Said Fred were Richard and Fred Fairbrass, plus guitarist Rob Manzoli, and were named not for that Fred, but after a Bernard Cribbins song from 1962. Richard had already had a fifteen year career as a bassist for Boy George, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, while Fred had played guitar for Bob Dylan. In the late seventies, the pair toured with Joy Division. So, quite the musical chops for a duo often written off as one-hit wonders.

‘Deeply Dippy’ was the third of four Top 10 hits for Right Said Fred, but they continue to record. Fairbrass the elder has had quite the career since his chart-topping days, hosting ‘GayTime TV’ (the first BBC programme to be aimed at an LGBT audience), being targeted and beaten up by Russian ultra-nationalists, and in later years turning into something of a Twitter conspiracy theorist, as well as most recently accusing Beyonce of ripping him off. Deeply dippy, indeed.

674. ‘Stay’, by Shakespears Sister

/ UK #1s blog / 2 Comments

Our next number one follows nicely on from the first chart-topper of the year, Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Goodnight Girl’. At least at first…

Stay, by Shakespears Sister (their 1st and only #1)

8 weeks, from 16th February – 12th April 1992

The opening two minutes are paired-back, moody, and again almost a cappella. If this world is wearing thin, And you’re thinking of escape… The voice is memorably kooky, a slightly higher-pitched Cyndi Lauper, to my ears. It lulls you, draws you in, takes you a moment to realise that the lyrics are pretty dark: When your pride is on the floor, I’ll make you beg for more…

It’s not ‘Stay’ as in ‘please stay, baby’. It’s ‘Stay’ as in ‘stay… or else!’ So, darker than first anticipated. And then things get very dark indeed, when one-third of Bananarama comes crashing through the doors, and the song flips to grungy, industrial rock. You better hope and pray, That you make it safe back to your own world…she crows, relishing her pantomime villain role.

The two contrasts – the soft, gospel opening half against the heavy final two minutes – are complemented by the two very different voices. What could have been a nice but fairly run-of-the-mill ballad (like, say, ‘Goodnight Girl’) becomes something else altogether. Towards the end the first voice takes over again, much more frantic now, begging their lover to stay.

‘Stay’ really has to be listened to in conjunction with its bizarre, award-winning video. One Shakespears Sister – Marcella Detroit, very pale and panda-eyed – sits by a dying man’s bedside while the other, Siobhan Fahey, barges into their hospital room looking like a slimmed-down Ursula from ‘The Little Mermaid’. The two women wrestle over the man, before he finally comes back to life in Detroit’s arms, and Fahey shuffles off with a roll of the eyes. It’s every bit as melodramatic as the song, and very camp.

By the end, this has turned into one of the stranger chart-toppers of recent years. It’s very hard to pin down, and whoever described it as ‘a weird sci-fi ballad of gothic-gospel electronica’ for PopMatters is pretty spot on. It was written by both women (managing to chart higher than Bananarama ever did), alongside Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who was then Fahey’s husband.

Shakespears Sister was Fahey’s post-Bananarama solo project, with Detroit joining a bit later. (This was one of the only songs on which Detroit sang lead, and its success apparently annoyed Fahey.) The duo’s name was a misspelling that stuck, inspired by the Smith’s song of the same name, which had in turn been inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’, which eventually leads us all the way back to William himself. A fittingly literary heritage for a song that packs an epic story into less than four minutes. They’d had one Top 10 hit before this, and would have one more after, but it is for ‘Stay’ that they are to this day best remembered.

673. ‘Goodnight Girl’, by Wet Wet Wet

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Into 1992 we go, then. A year that it won’t take us long to get through, as it only has twelve #1s – the lowest turnover of chart-toppers for thirty years. Why the charts slowed down so much as we move towards the mid-‘90s is something we might chat about in the coming posts…

Goodnight Girl, by Wet Wet Wet (their 2nd of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 19th January – 16th February 1992

We kick off with Clydebank lads Wet Wet Wet, last heard four years ago singing a peppy cover of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ for charity. Since then they’ve grown up: the hair is longer, the mood much more serious… Was this the original boy-band to man-band transition, a path since followed by Take That, Westlife and more…?

It’s a nice enough ballad. Lots of strings, a bit of piano, and an almost a cappella feel to the vocals. Marti Pellow takes the lead of course, but the three others whose names I don’t know weave themselves around him. It could have crumpled into bland, MOR mush; but the chorus is an earworm, with real purpose to it: Caught up in your wishing well, Your hopes inside it…

The video is very 1992, and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Why is there a priest swinging on a pendulum? Why indeed? The same applies to the lyrics, really, but if you allow them to just wash over you then the melodies, and Pellow’s voice, are enough to make this an enjoyable, if low-key, start to the year. It seems that Wet Wet Wet had managed to grow old(er) gracefully. It was also my 6th birthday #1, and perhaps that means I give it extra fondness points.

‘Goodnight Girl’ is a bit of an anomaly in the Wet Wet Wet discography. As well as being their only self-penned number one, it was the only Top 10 hit the band managed between 1989 and 1994. It’s pleasant enough, but I’m not sure I can explain why it so spectacularly broke their slump. Was it as simple as it being released in January, traditionally the quietest time for new singles? Anyway, they’ll come back properly in a couple of years, with an (almost) record-breaking mega-hit that will set them up for the rest of the decade, and beyond.