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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 1 2 Week Commencing: 26th April 1982 Online Date: 28th April 2005
Tug of War
The decade began well for the former Beatle, his first “proper” solo set for a decade, McCartney II having topped the charts on release in 1980. Tug Of War repeated the trick, and was hailed in many quarters as his finest set of songs since Band On The Run in 1973.
The album marked the return to the fold of Fab Four producer George Martin, the more experimental McCartney II having been self-produced and largely self-performed. A duet with Stevie Wonder on the transatlantic #1 Ebony & Ivory gave the record its big hit single, and ushered in a brief period of high-profile Macca collaborations that reached its zenith on the Michael Jackson-aided Say Say Say the following year.
Take It Away provided a jaunty Top 20 hit soon after, but the title track undeservedly stiffed at #53.
Are You Ready?
The winners of the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest were already onto their second album, Are You Ready? appearing less than 12 months after their eponymous debut.
Despite making an immediate impact by hitting #1 with the song that won the competition, Making Your Mind Up, subsequent singles during the remainder of 1981 failed to hit the same heights. The turn of the year proved a pivotal moment in their still-fledgling career, as Are You Ready?’s first single The Land Of Make Believe transformed itself from a respectable Top 20 entry at the tail end of 1981 into a New Year #1. Another chart-topper swiftly followed in the shape of My Camera Never Lies and suddenly Bucks Fizz were no longer a Eurovision-only novelty.
Are You Ready? itself reached the Top 10, an improvement on the chart placing of the group’s debut, but they always remained more popular as a singles act.
(DVDfever Dom adds: “Two words – Jay Aston!!”)
New Zealand’s most famous musical export of the early 80s had made their UK breakthrough with the single I Got You and accompanying album True Colours in the summer of 1980, but their next effort two years later failed to yield another hit.
The quirky Six Months In A Leaky Boat became a live favourite, still performed to this day by former Enz members Neil And Tim Finn, but it wasn’t long before the band went their separate ways; Neil Finn formed the hugely successful Crowded House, which intermittenly included older brother Tim, before the siblings branched out on their own full-time in 1995 (as Finn) and again in 2004 (as The Finn Brothers).
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.