new kids on the block

On This Day… 6th December

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Time for another look back at a date in chart history. What were the songs and the stories at number one on December 6th through the years…

On this day in 1980, ABBA were about to begin their thirty-first and final week on top of the UK singles chart with ‘Super Trouper’. My favourite ABBA chart-topper probably changes on a weekly basis, and I could make a case for all of them (apart from ‘Fernando’, sorry). ‘Super Trouper’ is a late-era classic, with that perfect balance of upbeat melancholoy. Songs about how tiring it is being famous can be, well, tiring; but this is a colossus of the genre. I was sick and tired of everything, When I called you last night from Glasgow… is a quintessential ABBA opening line: slightly odd, poetic, beautifully to the point.

Eleven years earlier, on this day in 1969, the Rolling Stones headlined the infamous Altamont Free Concert in California. Supposed to be the West Coast’s answer to Woodstock, it ended up becoming synonymous with the end of the swinging sixties and the death of the hippy dream. Violence which had been brewing throughout the day erupted during the Stones’ delayed set, and ended in the death of an eighteen year old spectator, Meredith Hunter, stabbed by one of the Hells Angels who had been brought in as security.

The Stones are perhaps the perfect band to encapsulate that loss of ’60s innocence, as they had never been particularly innocent, and had struggled with the psychedelic, hippy side of things. Also, they’re the sixties juggernaut that has lasted, and lasted, and lasted, far beyond the decade that birthed them… Here then is their big hit from earlier that year, their final UK #1, and perhaps the ultimate rock and roll tune, ‘Honky Tonk Women’.

In recent posts I’ve been bemoaning/celebrating the end of the Golden Era of the Boyband, which I think came to an end in late 2002. There are arguments to be had for boybands dating back to the fifties, with the likes of the Teenagers, or to the Monkees in the sixties. New Edition in 1983 and Bros in 1988 could lay claim to being the first modern boyband, but for my money the true holders of that title, and the openers of the floodgates, were New Kids on the Block. Who just so happened to be sitting at #1 on this day in 1989 with ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’. They were the first of twelve boybands (fourteen, if we bend my rules and count Hanson and Blazin’ Squad) to provide forty (or forty-two) #1s over thirteen years…

Let’s go way back now, sixty-seven years to be exact. Number one on this day in 1958 is what I called ‘the Scottish #1’ at the time, and which I still intend to make our national anthem when I become First Minister, replacing the dirge that is ‘Flower of Scotland’. The fifties was at times a musical desert, strewn with overwrought ballads, and the occasional rock ‘n’ roll tune. Then there were the novelties. So many novelties. Of which ‘Hoots Mon’ stands out as one of the finest. It’s got a wonderful rock ‘n’ roll energy, but it’s also a relic of a much earlier music hall era, with its singalong spirit and its Hammond organ. It’s based on an old folk tune, ‘A Hundred Pipers’, and features classic phrases such as ‘och aye’, ‘there’s a moose loose aboot this hoose’ and ‘it’s a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht’, none of which a Scotsperson has ever actually uttered.

Finally, 6th December is perhaps best known as a date in music history for being the anniversary of Roy Orbison’s untimely death. In 1988, Orbison was just getting his career back on track through the success of the Travelling Wilburys, his supergroup alongside George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, whose first album had been released earlier that year. Orbison had also just put the finishing touches to his first solo album in a decade, when he died suddenly, of a heart attack. The album ‘Mystery Girl’, and the lead single ‘You Got It’, posthumously returned him to the Top 10 the following year. But to celebrate his genius, let’s go back to 1960, and enjoy his first of three UK #1s: the hauntingly dramatic ‘Only the Lonely’.

639. ‘Hangin’ Tough’, by New Kids on the Block

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Here we go then. The nineteen nineties. The fifth decade of the UK singles chart. The decade I did half my growing up in. Almost four years old at the start, almost fourteen by the end. I’ll try to keep the personal reminiscences – interesting for nobody but myself – to a minimum as we go. But there’s no escaping the fact that some of  these are the first #1s that I can remember in ‘real time’.

Hangin’ Tough, by New Kids on the Block (their 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 7th – 21st January 1990

Not that three-year-old me, brain filled with Thomas the Tank Engine and dinosaurs, had much interest in 1990’s first number one. NKOTB were back, just a month after ‘The Right Stuff’ had vacated top-spot, to bless the decade with its first of many, many boy-band chart-toppers.

First things first, a question. Did ‘Hangin’ Tough’ ever actually sound tough? I suppose it might have to twelve-year-olds, who were the only audience that mattered. But at a remove of thirty-odd years, the bass chords, the whistles and the oh-oh-ohing all sound incredibly lame. Hangin’ tough… the boys chant, very slowly (this song needs a shot or two of caffeine) Are you tough enough!? they demand, before ending the chorus on a very unconvincing We’re rough!

At my high school these dweebs would have been laughed all the way behind the bike sheds, before having their lunch money nicked. And I think the Kids knew it, because the vocals – especially the oh-oh-ohs – feel half-arsed compared to ‘The Right Stuff’. Elsewhere, the chords in the chorus remind me of ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’, and it’s never a good idea to rip-off a classic song to make a bang-average one like this. A remixed version of the record, the one that presumably got airplay at the time, beefs things up a bit; but not enough.

In fact, the rockier mix takes away one of the few really interesting things about this song. In the album version, a good minute or so is given over to a fiddly, noodly synth-organ solo. I’m not claiming it’s very good, just that few teen-pop songs are allowed moments of such self-indulgence. (The rockier mix switches the organs for a pretty forgettable guitar solo.) By the end though, the Kids are beat-boxing and freestyling, and the song really loses its way. You know it ain’t over till the fat lady sings… one of them announces, and you wish she’d started singing earlier.

The one thing to be thankful for is that, once again, it’s not a syrupy ballad. NKOTB had plenty of them among their ten British Top 10 hits, but none of them troubled the top. The band split in the mid-nineties, with Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre attempting solo careers. They reformed in 2008, then teamed up for a tour and an album with Backstreet Boys (NKOTBSB anyone?)

Whatever their merits (or lack thereof), New Kids on the Block hit two chart milestones with ‘Hangin’ Tough’. They joined Al Martino, Michael Holliday, Edison Lighthouse and The Pretenders in scoring the first #1 of a new decade (a big deal for chart geeks like me!) The second was less illustrious: in the record’s first week on top of the charts, it posted the lowest sales ever for a number one single…

636. ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’, by New Kids on the Block

/ UK #1s blog / 15 Comments

The 1990s, the decade that we are on the verge of entering, will mean many musical delights. Grunge, Britpop, blockbuster movie soundtracks, Girl Power, the Vengaboys… But you could argue that, ahead of everything, it will be the decade of the Boy Band ™

You Got It (The Right Stuff), by New Kids on the Block (their 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 19th November – 10th December 1989

From beginning to end – literally, as the first and last #1s of the decade will be by a boyband – groups of three to five handsome young men in baggy jeans and backward-facing caps will dominate. Boyz II Men, Take That, Boyzone, Hanson, 5ive to name but a few. And all kicked off by five boys from Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Let’s take a moment, before we start dissecting this record properly, to thank the stars that it’s not a ballad. Wherever boybands go, a drippy love song is never far behind. But no, ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’ is a classic serving of late-80s R&B fused with hints of new jack swing. The drums ratatat, the synths swoosh, the bassline is actually pretty cool… It all sounds wonderfully dated. And, in true boyband fashion, the lyrics amount to some pretty nothings and some half-hearted innuendo. First kiss was a sweet was a kiss, Second kiss had a twist… What the ‘twist’ is, or indeed the ‘right stuff’ of the title, is never specified. It’s all dates and kisses, with one mildly risqué mention of being ‘turned on’.

The bridge is the most modern part of the record, a soaring template to be followed by every boyband to come. All that I needed was you, Oh girl, You’re so right… You can just picture the clenched fists as the Kids meet that line. And then there’s the hook in the chorus, the oh-oh-ohohohs that’s as catchy as it is annoying. The video – again, as was traditional for ‘90s boybands – sees them dressed like idiots, dancing like idiots, having a great time in a deserted bar. They then chase some girls around a graveyard, for reasons best left mysterious…

To suggest that New Kids on the Block (NKOTB if you’re in the know) were the first boyband is wrong. At the same time, defining a ‘boyband’ is like catching mist in a jar. If you go by the literal definition – boys in a band – then we’re going to go back to the Crickets, at least. If you insist on the manufactured aspect of it, then we start at the Monkees. But what of the Jacksons and the Osmonds? What of New Edition? Bros? (And I was only mentioning acts we’ve met earlier in this blog.)

Let’s say NKOTB are the first ‘modern’ boyband, then. They were managed by Maurice Starr (also the mastermind behind New Edition) and composed of four school friends led by Donnie Wahlberg (brother of actor Mark) and a younger boy, Joey McIntyre. Unlike some boybands, the path to success hadn’t been smooth for NKOTB: they’d been together since 1984 and were on the verge of being dropped by their label before ‘Please Don’t Go Girl’ made #10 in the US. ‘You Got It’ was the second single from their second album, and their first chart hit in the UK. They’d go on to have nine more Top 10 singles between 1989 and 1992, including one further #1 coming up very soon.

And so we enter the era of the (modern) boyband. And for a taster, ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’ is neither a classic of the genre, nor terrible. There are much better boyband chart-toppers to come, and much worse.