Jason’s Jukebox Volume 24

Jason Maloney reviews

JASON’S JUKEBOX
V o l u m e # 2 4 Chart Date: July 4th 1992 Online Date: 8th July 2004

Erasure: Hits (2-disc edition) Hard as it is to imagine now, perhaps, after more than a full decade of ABBA‘s cultural rehabilitation, but in the early summer of 1992 an admiration for the Swedish quartet was still a guilty secret nobody dared talked about. Erasure‘s Abba-esque E.P., enjoying the 5th of its 6 weeks at #1 on the chart of 12 years ago, helped to change all that. To their credit, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke had been covering the Super Troupers’ songs as far back as 1986, when Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) was a staple of their live set; a time when ABBA was still a dirty word in certain musical circles and several years had passed since the band had last enjoyed a decent-sized hit, their last few releases all peaking in the low-20s and mid-30s of the UK listings.

Abba-esque brought together four Erasure interpretations; Take A Chance On Me was generally afforded the greatest exposure and unofficial top-billing, with S.O.S, Lay All Your Love On Me and Voulez-Vous completing the line-up. It was the first #1 of Erasure’s career, and to date remains their only UK chart-topper. The biggest winners of the E.P.’s runaway success were, fittingly, ABBA themselves; shortly afterwards Polydor issued a 19-song compilation entitled Gold: Greatest Hits, and the world started to acknowledge their place in pop history once again. For that, the likes of Mamma Mia: The Musical was but a small price to pay.

Cover versions also took 3 of the other 4 places in the top 5. Mariah Carey‘s grammatically-flawed take on The Jackson Five classic I’ll Be There was at #2, having shot up from its debut position of #11. Recorded for her MTV-Unplugged special, it thus eschewed the slick MOR tendencies of her early studio releases. Trey Lorenz was an uncredited male vocalist on the track. Heartbeat, first charted posthumously by Buddy Holly in 1960, had returned to the Top 40 some 32 years later courtesy of actor Nick Berry, star of ITV’s rural drama of the same name. The single had peaked at #2 and was now in decline, dropping to #4. Meanwhile, at #5 was a more interesting remake; Utah Saints‘ Something Good took a vocal sample from the 1985 #20 hit Cloudbusting by Kate Bush and built a trance anthem around it.

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Richard Marx:
Greatest Hits The sole original composition in the top 5 was Hazard, the unlikely smash by Richard Marx. Despite huge success in his native America, only the 1989 ballad Right Here Waiting had made any impact in Britain. Everything else from his first two albums could be filed under “chart also-ran”, and the introductory single from Rush Street – Marx’s third set from 1991 – went exactly the same way. Step forward the atypical, evocative story-in-a-song Hazard to surprisingly send Richard Marx back into the UK top 3, and turn the quickly forgotten Rush Street into a top 10 album more than 6 months after its release.

Debuting at #6, the highest entry of the week, Disappointed was supergroup Electronic‘s second Top 10 hit and their biggest, beating the #8 peak of 1991’s Get The Message. The track lasted just 4 weeks on the Top 40, the sure sign of a fanbase-only success, and is the only Electronic single that never featured on any of their three albums (1989’s Getting Away With It eventually being added to the CD-reissue of their first LP in the mid-90s). The next-highest arrival at #13 – Rhythm Is A Dancer by Snap! – went on to make a much greater impact, reaching the very top on its 6th week of chart action.

Several climbers in the upper half of the chart were at their peak position; Diana Ross’ One Shining Moment was up 4 to #10, her second major hit in a row (When You Tell Me That You Love Me having been the Xmas 1991 #2), Def Leppard‘s own follow-up to a #2 fared slightly worse, Make Love Like A Man moving #17-#12, while the third single from Tori Amos’ acclaimed Little Earthquakes album – Crucify (up from #19 to #15) – was doing significantly better than either Winter or the initial release of Silent All These Years.

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Cyndi Lauper:
Twelve Deadly Cyns –
And Then Some When the guitarist and main songwriter of quirky American alt.popsters The B-52s died of an AIDS-related illness in the late 1980s, the future for the band must have looked bleak. Yet, 1989’s Cosmic Thing proved to be their greatest success yet, spawning the UK #2 hit Love Shack and the US #3 hit Roam. 1992 saw the release of Cosmic Thing‘s successor Good Stuff, the title track of which became the album’s first single…and only hit, peaking at #21.

Roy Orbison continued to have hit singles despite passing away in 1988. Virgin, heartened by the popularity of 1989’s Mystery Girl (completed before his sudden death, but released posthumously) put together a collection of other recordings from the same period, King Of Hearts. First up from the album was the Big O’s version of I Drove All Night, new at #24 this week in 1992. A #7 hit for Cyndi Lauper in the summer of 1989, Orbison’s recording went on to peak at exactly the same position. Lauper was on the chart herself, falling from #20 to #33 with her former #15 hit The World Is Stone. (DVDfever Dom: Being born on June 22nd 1953, that makes Cyndi Lauper 51. How can Cyndi Lauper be 51??)

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The Best Of
Sophie B. Hawkins Also new, at #34, was Heart Over Mind by Kim Wilde. The second single taken from her album Love Is, it followed the #16 showing for Love Is Holy which put Kim back in the Top 20 after all three releases from 1990’s Love Moves failed to reach the chart altogether. Sadly, Heart Over Mind disappeared from the Top 40 a week later, and the next single Who Do You Think You Are was another near-miss, making #49.

The most noteworthy debutant on the chart, at #27, was Sophie B. Hawkins’ Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover. It should have been the start of a glittering career, the single having made the US Top 5 not long before its UK debut, but despite its respectable #14 high on this side of the Atlantic success was only fleeting and apart from 1994’s sleeper hit Right Beside You, Sophie B. Hawkins found herself cast into the chart wilderness. (DVDfever Dom: coincidentally, Sophie’s new album is called ‘Wilderness’. On the right, though, is her ‘best of’ album, but how can a ‘best of’ album have the *worst* picture?)

Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2004.