it's my party

On This Day… 31st October

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Welcome to another edition of ‘On This Day’, in which we look back at chart-topping hits and stories from a particular date.

While the UK singles charts have had plenty of Christmas hits, and summer-themed hits; other times of year don’t seem to generate as much pop potential. We are still waiting for an Easter #1, for example (Lady Gaga’s ‘Judas’ having been robbed). And, while certain tunes regularly re-enter the charts around 31st October – ‘Thriller’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Monster Mash’ etc. – there has never been a specifically ‘Halloween’ themed number one either.

So, I’m going to cast my eyes back, and choose the most unofficially ‘scary’ number one to have been sitting on top of the charts for Halloween. In ascending order of spookiness…

Qualifying for the serial-killer vibes of the title if nothing else, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ does at least have a woozy, slightly sinister appeal to it. It also has two connections to Halloween, as the Flamingo’s original was recorded on this day in 1958, while Art Garfunkel’s cover was at number one today in 1975. I did name this as one of my most ‘meh’ chart-toppers, sadly, so it has to rank lowest on today’s spook-o-meter. Read my original post here.

Possibly the best number one to have been on top at Halloween, but not quite the scariest. Though this is named after a satellite… which goes into space… alongside UFOs… and aliens are a standard Halloween costume… So there is that. Yes, ‘Telstar’ was at number one in the UK sixty-four years ago today. (It was also famously the first US #1 by a British group, pre-dating the British Invasion by a couple of years.) The eek factor is upped by this being at #1 for the duration of the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably as close as humanity has come to a nuclear wipeout, as well as by being one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite songs. (Original post here.)

‘The Fly’ qualifies as our next, somewhat Halloweenish chart-topper for two reasons. Firstly, The Fly was a character, invented by Bono, and the song is apparently sung from the POV of a man calling home from hell, revealing what he has learned. Secondly, U2’s drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was born on 31st October 1961. For his thirtieth birthday, this track gave his band their second British chart-topper. (Original post here.) ‘The Fly’ was a big departure for the band, but personally I like the experimental direction it heralded for the rest of the 1990s, a period that gave us some of my favourite U2 tracks.

Topping the charts on this day in 1972, we have the third creepiest Halloween number one. I love ‘Mouldy Old Dough’, and the fact that it features a fifty-eight year old lady named Hilda on piano, as my original post detailed. But by God, it needs to be used in a horror movie. Can you imagine a piano coming to life in the middle of the night and playing this drunken, boogie-woogie riff? While the songs only lines (Mouldy old dough… and Dirty old man…) are delivered in the sort of growling, unearthly voice that you’d usually only hear at a seance. A catchy, creepy classic.

Our next chart-topper, sitting on top of the charts for Halloween 1981, is this trippy cover of the sixties classic ‘It’s My Party’. There are covers that sound identical to the original, and there are covers that try something different. And then there’s this… I’m qualifying it as the second creepiest Halloween #1 for the simple fact that Stewart’s production and Gaskin’s vocals transform teenage melodrama into what sounds like it may end up as a mass murder. Tell me that the way she sings the Oh what a birthday surprise, Judy’s wearing his ring… doesn’t suggest she’s slowly reaching for the cake knife. (Original post here.)

What other song could top this list of spooky chart-toppers? What other time of year could this epic have been number one? Thirty-three years ago today, Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ was beginning its third of seven weeks on top. Where to start with this Gothic epic? One of the longest number ones by runtime, with what must surely be one of the most preposterous music videos ever made – levitating chaise longues, anyone? – it remains beloved, and regularly bellowed out at karaoke nights. All this despite people still not being clear on what ‘that’ is… (Original post here.)

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487. ‘It’s My Party’, by Dave Stewart with Barbara Gaskin

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

More evidence that 1981 was a leap-forward for the charts. The year in which the decade truly began. Because this, this next record, it is… truly…

It’s My Party, by Dave Stewart with Barbara Gaskin (their 1st and only #1s)

4 weeks, 11th October – 8th November 1981

…something? It’s a leap-forward, for certain, because we’ve heard nothing like this before at the top of the charts. Whether we ever needed to hear anything like this at the top of the charts is another question. At its most basic level, this is a cover of the Lesley Gore hit, a #9 (and US #1) in 1963. Except the original has been deconstructed, mashed, blended, twisted and fricasseed until what is being served up is almost unrecognisable.

I’m enjoying it, at first. The intro is the best bit: woozy drums, weird far-eastern sound effects, and the Cry if I want to… line chanted like a mantra. But as it goes on, the song veers in one direction then another, then another. I count three complete changes of tone and style. No, make that four. I’m starting to feel dizzy. Can I just hand over my next WTAF award now?

Is this good? Or is it terrible? I can’t think of many records that straddle the line so completely as this. There are flashes – mainly when the charm of the original manages to shine through – where it’s really fun. But there are other times when it feels like this production is being controlled by a five-year-old banging away at the settings on their toy keyboard. Perhaps you could look at this as haute-couture music: just like nobody actually wears the clothes that come down the runway in Milan; probably nobody would listen to this by choice anymore. But the sounds and techniques used here would filter on down through the decade…

Or maybe that’s generous. Acts like The Buggles, and Soft Cell (who literally just took their version of a sixties gem to the top) have shown that you can sound ridiculously modern – emphasis on the ridiculous – and still make a great pop song. This one gets very lost along the way: there’s a moment, after the wedding bell sound effects and a theatrical gasp, when the final chorus clicks, and you can see that Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin had it in them to make this a great pop record. But, hey ho, it doesn’t last. Give me the sassy, swinging original over this any day. (Actually, I’ve just realised the difference between this and Soft Cell. Soft Cell lovingly re-crafted a classic; this sounds, at times, like art school students taking the piss – see the annoying way Gaskin squeals at the end of every ‘you’, for example.)

The Dave Stewart involved in this is not, as I immediately thought, the Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame. This DS was a keyboard player and composer for various prog-rock bands throughout the seventies, before he hooked up with his former backing singer, Barbara Gaskin. Soon afterwards, they scored this huge hit, by far their biggest. They still work with one another, and have released seven albums together. And I do wonder if they chose ‘It’s My Party’ because it is such a typically old-fashioned, bubblegum hit, and the re-imagining is therefore so shocking. A few years later they tried to repeat the trick with a version of ‘The Locomotion’ that only made #70.

I still don’t really know what to make of this one, even after repeat listening. It is certainly something… Is it avant-garde, or just dumb? Impressive, or unlistenable? I can’t help thinking of that quote from ‘Jurassic Park’: they were so preoccupied with whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should…

For the first time in a while… A #1 that is missing from Spotify…