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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 0 8 Week Commencing: 31st March 1986 Online Date: 01st April 2005
From Luxury To Heartache
The fourth studio album from Boy George, Jon Moss, Roy Hay and Mikey Craig was more than aptly titled, Culture Club having alarmingly surrendered a virtually unassailable position as the biggest pop act on the planet with 1984’s lightweight Waking Up With The House On Fire.
Such was the commercial slide – that album’s 2nd and final single The Medal Song tanked at #32 while America fell out of love with them overnight once Mistake No.3 came to a halt at #33 over there – simply the fact that there was another record at all seemed remarkable. When its introductory 45 Move Away actually hit #7, it was hailed as a major comeback.
Sadly for all concerned, the renaissance was shortlived. From Luxury To Heartache just sneaked into the Top 10 on its debut week, but dropped like a stone thereafter and disappeared completely after a month on the Top 100. A second single, God Thank You Woman, went the way of The Medal Song (although it was in fairness a superior track) and that, bar a brief second wind at the end of the 1990s courtesy of a much-hyped reunion, was that.
Under The Cherry Moon
The diminuitive genius from Minneapolis was still on a roll, his second post-Purple Rain opus arriving a little under 12 months on from Around The World In A Day. That album had just about kept the momentum going, Rasberry Beret and Paisley Park providing modest returns on the singles chart, but artistically it had fallen some way short of both Purple Rain and its predecessor, the double set, 1999.
Parade, the soundtrack to Prince second motion picture Under The Cherry Moon, did similar business to Around The World In A Day in the UK (#4 and 26 weeks-on-chart compared to #5 and 20 weeks), but American audiences were beginning to waver; classic opening single Kiss duly topped the Billboard Hot 100, but nothing else from Parade troubled the US Top 20 and the album failed to emulate the #1 peaks of Purple Rain and Around The World In A Day.
In Britain, the whimsical nature of the Under The Cherry Moon film itself (a black-and-white romantic comedy set in the 1920s) and its soundtrack in general was less of an obstacle to continued success. Girls & Boys, a centrepiece of the movie, narrowly missed the Top 10, and Anotherloverholenyohead (the longest one-word title for a hit single) reached #36.
Spare a thought for the awesome Mountains, however – Parade’s crowning moment didn’t even make the UK Top 40.
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.