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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 1 6 Week Commencing: 30th May 1983 Online Date: 02nd June 2005
Too Low For Zero
The album which brought Elton John commercial fortunes back on track was also the record which once again teamed him up with longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin on a full-time basis. Since 1975’s Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, the lyricist had contributed only intermittently on albums such as 1980’s 21 At 33 and Jump Up from 1982. Between 1979 and Too Low For Zero‘s release in the late Spring of 1983, Elton John’s popularity had experienced its first wobble; Victim Of Love had proved a disaster, while his first three releases of the ’80s had all achieved only moderate Top 20 success and no singles chart activity whatsoever bar the atypical Blue Eyes in 1982.
All that changed with Too Low For Zero, which went on to spend 73 weeks on the album listings and spawned back-to-back UK Top 5 hits I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues and I’m Still Standing. Two further singles were issued in the UK (Kiss The Bride and Cold As Christmas), reaching #20 and #33 respectively, while Crystal hit #2 in Australia and the atmospheric title track found an audience in Europe. The album also resurrected his career in America, which had fallen into sharp decline during the late ’70s and never quite recoevered; I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues reached the Billboard Top 5 at the end of 1983.
The sound was very commercial, the material was uniformly strong, and an image makeover that included colourful videos shot in the South of France added to the overall effect. Its winning formula was repeated on 1984’s follow-up Breaking Hearts, with only slightly less reward.
In Your Eyes
A jazz artist of some repute in the 1970s, George Benson had moved into the MOR/Soul crossover market beloved of Lionel Richie by the follwing decade. A succession of Pop and Club hits at the dawn of the 80s had created a substantial British fanbase, which In Your Eyes emphatically appealed to.
Its first single, Lady Love Me (One More Time), rose as high as #11, the title track became a Top 10 smash in September and the album itself clocked up a year on the UK charts. Benson continued in the same vein for two further albums (1985’s 20/20 and While The City Sleeps in 1986), the mix of silky smooth croonsome ballads and glossy uptempo numbers staying in fashion until Twice The Love in 1988 found itself out of step with the times.
Once the vocalist with rock legends Rainbow, Ronnie James Dio broke away to form his own band in the early ’80s. Dio were, for a brief time, regulars on the UK album chart – Holy Diver was the first of four releases to achieve Top 20 status between 1983 and 1987.
Your Arms Around Me
Less than 12 months on from ABBA’s demise, Agnetha Faltskog (the blone one) launched a bid for solo stardom. Her first single The Heat Is On (not the same as Glenn Frey song two years later) made a brief acquaintence with the lower half of the UK Top 40, repeating the pattern set by ABBA’s final few hits.
Wrap Your Arms Around Me debuted at #18, still the highest position of any ex-ABBA members’ solo efforts in this country, but subsequent albums in 1985 and 1988 fared less well and she wouldn’t return to the UK Top 20 until 2004 with her comeback covers album My Colouring Book.
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.