Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #56 (Part 3): 25.12.1983 – Oh Dear!! A Bat Bit You

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

The Chart Music works do – held after Christmas, because we’re proper mingebags – is kicking right off, and we’re only at the halfway mark of the ’83 Xmas extravaganza. Mike Smith has a wide-on for some Real Aussie Men, Our Sarah uncorks a stupendous slam poetry re-enactment of Bonnie Tyler’s finest five-and-a-bit minutes, Annie Lennox glares at us, Janice Long gets massively full-on, and there’s some rammel Thatcherite American dance-arse.  TUCK IN, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS! Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. is a member of the great big owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language,

which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Oh, fucking hell. What are you like?

If you're gonna do that, draw the fucking curtains at least, please. Hey up, you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to part three of episode 56 of Chalk Music. I'm your host, Al Needham. In my living room, the party's in full effect. Sarah's over there on the decks laying down the dub plate pressure and Simon, Taylor and Neil there's no other way to put it

they're doing the bummer's conga right in front of the windows where the neighbours can see anyway let's stop fannying about because we've got a massive chunk of the 1983 Top of the Pops Christmas episode to get stuck into. So come on, sit down.

Let's have some analysis of you. Neil, you're not holding your mouth right, mate. It is such hard work being a woman, but enough of me, time for some real men. Number one in the early part of 1983, do you remember? Ozrock and Men At Work. On a hippie trailhead full of zombies Smith, after he stops pretending to dance to Comrade Shake Air, tells us that it's hard to be a woman, like his name was Tammy Wynette or something. Don't you think, by the way,

Mike Smith in drag, a dead ringer for Patricia Routledge. You have another look. It's uncanny. I know someone who used to tell people he was Patricia Routledge's son have another look. It's uncanny. I know someone who used to tell people who's Patricia Routledge's son. I don't know why. It was just a lie he used to tell. What, Sheridan? Sheridan!

No, no, no, real life son. I don't know why he did it, but I think it once enabled him to get off with Julie Felix's daughter. Oh, well, fair enough then. Or so she said. But now it's time for some real men as he invites us to remember Oz Rock

and introduces Down Under by Men At Work. Formed in Melbourne in 1979, Men At Work were a pub rock band who self-financed their debut single, Key Punch Operator, and put it out on their own label in 1980. They signed to CBS Australia in early 1981, and their first single for them, Who Can It Be Now, got to number two in Australia, while their debut LP, Business As Usual, got to number one in Australia and New Zealand. LP Business As Usual got to number one in Australia and New Zealand.

In 1982, after a year of CBS Australia nagging their parent company to give them a fair go in North America, both single and LP were put out over there. And after they supported Fleetwood Mac in Canada and the USA, both of them got to number one in America. Meanwhile, Who Can It Be Now was put out in the UK in October of 1982 but it got no higher than number 45 a month later. For the follow-up, the band decided to re-record this which started life as the B-side of their first ever single. They perked it up and got their flautist greg ham to change his bit it entered

the first uk chart of the new year at number 38 then soared 31 places to number seven and two weeks later it battered you can't hurry love by phil collins aside to ascend to number one at the end of january making them the first australian band to get to number one in the UK since the Seekers did it twice in 1965. Helped, I seem to recall, by the picture disc, which was shaped like Australia, but was a bit rubbish because there was no Tasmania on it. I think if I was a Tasmanian Men at Work fan, I would not be happy about that.

Yeah, but that would have gone round and sheared the stylus off it's uh true um i love this i remember i was happy to i was happy to um to see this coming up again and i was kind of like oh it's this from from before and i remember it's very it's it's really stupid and fucking wacky actually now listen to it it's like this is a really solid this is a really solid pop song um yeah it's got it is a bit because i was like oh my god it's basically quirky police it's like a really good police pastiche yes but it's and he does have colin hay does have a little bit of a sting like inflection which you know is is uh yes which is unfortunate but this is it also sounds i mean it has that kind of smith sea sound to it as well we were trying to figure out what specifically which smith song it is a smith song can't figure it out spent ages on it doesn't matter um but it's

got this lovely rich sound it's got quite sort of intimate instrumental performances and it's got and and that sort of arrangement but with like this massive reverb echoey production that is kind of slightly pointing towards you know obviously in a couple years time everything is going to sound like that but you know it's got that nice combination of sort of intimate and expansive sort of like like stadium campfire so it is a little bit wacky it's a little bit novelty, the lyrics are a little bit you know, are a bit daft but there is a very solid base of songwriting craft and songwriting

chops carrying it so it's charming and jolly, it's melancholy and that rhymes and I didn't plan that but it's melancholy there it is, yes and even the fact that it has a line about Vegemite

in it doesn't really taint it for me. Yeah. I never understood that because I wouldn't, not in them in 1983, didn't have too many Australian shops where you could get boomerangs and whatnot. So I just thought it was, he just smiled and gave me a bit of his sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is more or less you know it's it gets over the point across the kindness element yeah yeah so you know it doesn't really matter there's the esoteric um uh the the esoteric food reference you know you get the general idea yeah the thing about this as well is that colin hay is actually uh scottish and so he's sort of a and he moved to australia in his teens so it is a kind of

slightly outside perspective that explains a lot actually yeah yeah the other exotic food product uh in the video is is the woman in the desert who's sat at a breakfast table she's eating vitos e or vitos e sorry australians i don't know toasted muesli. Fucking hell, what's going on there? Blimey! Yeah, it's great. She's great. She does this terrific eye roll that you can see, even though it's like a mid-shot, a mid-distance kind of shot.

Yeah, it's a very, because she looks like she's sort of come in from the Turkish Delight advert of around, maybe around this time, maybe a bit later. Very Isadora Duncan. Also, this is one of many appearances in this episode of some PVC trousers, but they're in the desert, which is real commitment to wearing PVC trousers. Fucking hell, that's going to be clammy when he takes them off. fucking hell that's going to be clammy when he takes them off i tell you what saves this record from being what a lot of people vaguely imagine it to be

it's not just australian as a gimmick right obviously it is australian but it's not just that that everything that's good and bad about this record is a direct consequence of its Australianity. And I've mentioned this before, but most of the good art that comes out of Australia is to some extent representative of the strangeness of the country, right? And to be honest, this sort of is. I mean, for all the Barry McKenzie bollocks in the video, And for all the Barry McKenzie bollocks in the video, there really is a sort of distant spookiness and disorientation to this record somehow.

And I'm not suggesting it's Picnic at Hanging Rock, but it's not a British record. It's not an American record. No. It sounds kind of baked and bleached. In sympathy there, I'm doing that uh australian questioning intonation is this within a sort of a big wide open space and it's got that like unpretentious unseriousness coupled with a sort of unarticulated melancholy which is very

australian and it's got that sort of wacky childish humor and rumbustiousness as well you know like the stuff that annoys people about australia not pleasant semi-civilized you know i don't mean stupid or or animal like just you know a bit bit instinctive running on instinct which is why australian women are usually great fun and Australian men not always. And fair go, this is... Fair go, Mrs Davidson! This is several years before the big Australiana craze of the 80s. In Britain and the States, right,

which took different forms in Britain and the States. Yes. So they're not bandwagoning. They're the first. Come on, man. Don't coat down Joe Dolce's musical theatre. He got there first. But, yeah, you're right, Taylor.

This and the Paul Hogan show being shown on Channel 4 at the end of 1982, that kicked off an interest in Australia that went right through the 80s, didn't it? Yeah, and grew as it went on. in Australia that went right through the 80s, didn't it? Yeah, and grew as it went on. But I mean, but this, right at the start, has already reached the point of satirising cliches rather than treating them as saleable novelties, you know, like Crocodile Dundee and stuff, which is like a step back from this.

Yeah. So, you know, just because this is sort of potentially a bit annoying it doesn't mean it's not a great record on its own terms or a good record probably no one in the northern hemisphere would consider this a truly great record but when you think about what a pile of dingoes chunder this could have been yes right so easily it's not at all it's it's it's actually pretty good yeah and and it's also better and more interesting than if it had been a love song yeah um and the only problem for them in is that it does not in any way make you remotely curious to hear any of their other songs which for all i know could be as good as The Go-Betweens or The Birthday Party, you know,

except for the one which I have heard, Overkill, which was the follow-up single. And, yeah, I bet they were surprised where that wasn't another international smash hit. It hasn't even got a chorus. It's almost like they're just pissing in their own Barbie, you know. Like, how are we going to follow Down Under? I tell you what what let's not

yeah who could it be now that's a pretty decent song yeah you must know that one it would have sat really nicely in the charts of the avances right yeah yeah and it did sound dated but only by a couple of years but you know in 1983 a couple of years is fucking, you know, decades. Yeah. Well, they got the music papers about eight months late, didn't they, in Australia? Yeah, they literally did, yeah. Who Can It Be Now reminds me a little bit of Somebody's Watching Me. Who was that by?

Rockwell. Rockwell. No relation to the late George Lincoln. Yes. Or Norman. Yeah, there is really clearly and obviously and close to the surface a certain sort of tendency to be a bit wacky a little bit. Yeah. And with that often comes just annoyance.

You know, it's really hard to dance on the head of that pin. But Overkill ended up in, and Colin Hay himself ended up being this sort of slightly irritating, wandering bard background character in the popular medical sitcom Scrubs. Oh, yes. And there's a bit where he's playing Overkill on. So he sort of soundtracks the goings on and the lives and loves of the doctors and nurses. And there's a bit where he's playing that. And it's quite creepy because he's quite a sort of very,

very ordinary looking, unassuming looking bloke. And he's kind of busking on a bench. And then one of the main characters walks by and he gets up and starts following him and just kind of playing the song. And occasionally he'll notice him. It's just like, can you fuck off? You're being annoying. And it goes all the way through this kind of storyline and the with the song continuing and then he's in a hospital bed and then he's and then he's in and then he dies and he's in the morgue he's in the morgue

with like a kind of this like death face playing as a think about the situation and it's he can't get to sleep. It's quite clever. But yeah, he does work that line pretty well. But there's... I haven't heard a lot of his solo work, of which there is quite a lot. He's had quite a long solo career post Men at Work.

And some of it is kind of verging on the sentimental. But I... And a bit, you know, he does sound a bit like sting unfortunately but the more flattering comparison i think is like randy newman there's that slightly kind of whimsical thing you can really imagine him you know soundtracking a pixar there's a song that he did called i just don't think i'll ever get over you towards the end of the 90s and it goes um i drink good coffee every morning comes

from a place that's far away when i'm done i feel like talking without you here there is less to say and if i live till i were 102 i just don't think i'll ever get over you and it's so it's it's this fucking devastating um kind of emotional it's not just a breakup song it's like there's real grief in it and it's like someone has died. It's like, you know, and then it turns out, so I looked this up and it turns out it's about him giving up booze. It's like this grief stricken sort of gentle acoustic song about how much he misses drinking because he had a problem and it was destroying his career.

So, you know, he got clean but he he has very very mixed feelings about it and that's so interesting to me yeah and it doesn't diminish at all you can absolutely hear it as a breakup song or as a song about someone someone who's died because so then and then later on it's like if i live till i could no longer climb my stairs i just don't think I'll ever get over you oh my god that is better than anything Sting wrote yes fucking hell though that mental image that that evokes I just I'm sorry to do it to you

fucking hell but yeah it's great so he gets his new lease of life from giving up booze and he got a new you know he managed to kind of have a degree of success again but never never what he had before so there's this kind of bit bitter sweetness to it how could you man i mean they were number one for like 15 weeks in america with their album which is insane yeah

i don't know what the americans saw in men at work but i think the british we started looking at australia and going you know what they're having a better life with us and they're all the fucking criminals we got rid of and look at them yeah bastards and this is a time when australia was culturally equidistant between america and britain yeah i mean that's changed now australia seems to be far more americanized than british yeah but can you blame them i've got a very sweet too fat 80s australiana music videos because it seems like they just let anyone have a go at making singles back then so via the video playlist i just want to point the uh the pop craze youngsters towards Girl on the Wall by Jane Clifton, who was Margot Gaffney in Prisoner's Cell Block H.

There's a cameo appearance by Dore, who's massively pregnant. I Only Take What's Mine by Warwick Capper, who was the hodl and wadl of Australian rules football. And in particular, I'm an individual by his nemesis mark jacko jackson who was the entire wimbledon fc squad of aussie rules football right fucking remarkable documents i'll look forward to that i think it's a sentiment i look at i look at things like down under and it reminds me a lot of something else that was going on in 1982 1983 alveda's ain't pet the song sentiments essentially said look if you're australian wherever you go around the world

you'll never be able to get away from other australians but it doesn't matter because we're all fucking mint and skill so you look at it you just feel a bit, you know, a little bit jealous. Mint and skill. Yes. Anything else to say about this? Yeah, let me read out the rest of my notes word for word. Jumbuck, Funnel Web, Upper Gum Tree, Points Based Immigration System, Swagman, Kookaburra seven foot tall barman in london yes uh norman gunston slim dusty top dog wogga wogga missing episodes of doctor who would you want to be australian because in some ways it doesn't look yeah but this is that's this is a british person

asking the fucking question. Yeah, I know, yeah. I'm not saying it's worse. I'm saying, I don't know. I would like the unselfconsciousness and the opportunities to be uncomplicated when you want to be. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe not at this point in time.

I think 1983 in Australia wasn't. I don't know, maybe not at this point in time. I think 1983 in Australia wasn't... I mean, there's a reason why all gay and lesbian Australians were in London in 1983. And I hear it's still a bit like that in places like Queensland, you know. How ironic. And also the latter-day stereotype of Australians being fit and healthy and attractive

doesn't seem to have happened by this point either. I still don't understand why they're so fucking sporty, by the way. It's like 100 degrees in March. Yeah. It's like, when it's that hot in Britain, you can't even get to the fridge and back. Never mind 200 laps around Lasseter's or the Wentworth Detention Centre perimeter fence.

I think if I was in Australia, I wouldn't even go outside with that selection of psychopathic... Yeah. Never mind in shorts. We should walk around in shorts with those leaping spider killers. And what they call thongs, which is not thongs for your arse, it's thongs for your feet, mate. What? I can can't get my head around that thongs flip-flops all right oh they walk around wearing those things with like murderers an inch from their toes you know they

all look like rocks as well they're like things that are not only deadly to you in in like they they will you know the deadliest creatures in the world that also just resemble stones. Yeah. Like there's a type of fish that will fuck you up forever and you'll never know it's there and it's very grumpy and it doesn't want to be stepped on. Yeah. Oh, God.

Have you ever seen that film of the kangaroo trying to break into someone's house through the window? No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on YouTube. It's just an Australian bloke in his house. I'm so glad we chose not to patronise men at work in this conversation.

He's filming it on his phone. And this kangaroo comes right up to the window and it looks like fucking Satan. It's like a medieval woodcutter. They are terrifying. It's like if you got a devil's head and stuck it on the torso of a UFC fighter and then put that on some incredibly powerful piston-like legs

with razor-sharp claws on the end. And this Aussie bloke, he's filming it on his phone, he just goes, Oi, you, don't scratch my window fucking weirdo unrufflable cunts that's what i am that's what i envy just you know yeah and then and then although the kangaroo does undermine its own fear factor when it sees its own reflection in the glass and tries to chest barge it and just bounces back off the

window and does like a a perfect norman wisdom comedy stumble backwards uh but yeah put it on the video i'll tell you what something else to put on the video playlist an australian of our acquaintance uh andrew muller oh yes is obsessed with the this australian tv ad for mick humphries yes the driving school you know this right that should have been a fucking number one in this obsessed with this Australian TV ad for Mick Humphries. Yes. HGV driving school. You know this, right? That should have been a fucking number one in this country. Yeah.

It should have been the B-side, hasn't it? Yes. Mick Humphries will teach you to drive a big truck. Big truck. And a cherry picker. Cherry picker. So Down Under would spend three weeks at number one before giving way to too shy by kajagoogoo our british manliness dealt with it in the end the follow-up overkill would get to number 21 in may and they'd have two more hits in the lower 30s in 1983 with It's a Mistake and Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive, but they'd never trouble the UK top 40 again and split up in 1986.

In 2009, an Australian music quiz show called Spicks and Specks suggested that the bits that Greg Hammond added to the remake of Down Under bore a similarity to a nursery rhyme written in 1932 called Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, which encouraged the owners of the publishing rights to sue the band for plagiarism. After a judge ruled in favour of the publishing company, they demanded between 40 and 60% of all royalties from the song backdated to 1981 which a court case knocked down to five percent of all royalties backdated to 2002 which was still estimated to be a six-figure sum and led to lead singer colin hay claiming that the stress from

the case were linked to the deaths of his father and Greg Hamm, who died from a heart attack in 2012. Fucking hell. That's horrendous. Yeah. We used to sing that at school. I hadn't realised that was the same one, but it is. Cook a burro sits in an old gum tree.

Something, something else, something else since he. I would not have put those two together, but there you go, the lawyers did. No. Hmm. Hmm. Now then, back with those number ones. Bonnie Tyler, number one in this country and in the United States too

with a superb song, Total Eclipse of the Heart. Peebles, in absolute no-nonsense mode, tells us about a superb song that bestradled the Atlantic, like that album covered by the bloke everyone used to compare the singer to, Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. Can I just point something out about Andy Peebles? Yeah, go ahead. Probably not going to mean a whole lot to the listeners,

but I was trying to figure out who it is that he reminds me of, other than a gangster impersonator who's fallen on hard times, or someone who'd be arrested for running a brothel in an early episode of The Bill. And it is erstwhile Melody Maker editor Mark Sutherland.

Taylor, I guess this was sort of after your time, wasn't it? He was kind of giving me a bit of a shiver and it's because I was expecting him to go, write people, editorial meeting. Like, I don't expect him to introduce something that I'm actually going to enjoy. It's not strictly after my time.

It's more that that was a cue for my time to end, I decided. Born in Skewen nearansea in 1951 gayna hopkins began her career when she came second place in a talent contest at the age of 18 and supplemented her income as an assistant at a grocery shop by becoming a backing singer for the local band bobby wayne and the dies, and then forming her own soul band called Imagination. Or can you imagine if Bonnie Tully was in Imagination? That'd be interesting. There's an alternate universe where that happened, and it's probably better than this one.

She'd be called Bonnie. Extra exciting, I stead. Not wanting to be confused with Mary Hopkins, she changed her name again to Shireen Davis. In 1975, she was spotted at a gig in the Townsman's Club in Swansea by a talent scout who invited her to London to record a demo. And a few months later, she was signed up to RCA on the condition that she get rid of that shit name and have a new one.

And this time she went for Bonnie Tyler. Her debut single My My Honeycomb failed to chart, but the follow-up Lost in France put her over the top, getting to number nine for two weeks in November of 1976. for two weeks in November of 1976. The single after Next, It's A Heartache, did even better, getting to number four for two weeks in 1978. But after the title track to the Jackie Collins grot fest, The World Is Full Of Married Men got to number 35 in July of 1979, she dropped off the radar after notching up six flop singles on the bounce. However, in 1982, when her deal with RCA ran out, she was picked up by CBS and invited to pick out the producer of her choice for her forthcoming LP.

She was offered Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne and Cliff's producer Alan Tarnay, but knocked them all back for her first choice, Jim Steinman, who was looking for someone to work with after falling out with Meatloaf. Whilst not wanting to work with Tyler at first, who up to that point was seen as a country rock singer, he changed his mind after hearing her new demos of rockier material and invited her over to New York to bulldoze her Welsh rasp over a few songs, including this one, which she had originally written for Meatloaf, but was going spare when Meatloaf's label refused to pay for them.

It was put out in February of this year, her first single in the UK since Sayonara Tokyo in 1981, which failed to chart, and after coming in at number 49, it soared 35 places to number 14, then soared again to number 2, and then shoved Billie Jean out of the way to roar triumphantly at number 1 in March of this year.

Here's the video, which was shot in Holloway, Santorium, by Russell Mukahi, who's done the video for I'm Stranded by the Saints. Video killed the radio star for The Buggles. Making plans for Nigel for XTC. Vienna for Ultravox. And all of Duran Duran and Spandar Bali's videos so far. Oh, and what a video it is too.

Man alive. It's... You just want to hug yourself with glee, don't you? I mean, there's so much here. We could do an entire... Just where even to start with it, really? Well, it's essentially Bonnie Tyler's boarding school for men who appear in this sort of video, isn't it?

Yes, yes, it is. It's... Fucking hell. It's so perfect. Like, how perfect is the video for the song and vice versa? Yes, yes, it is. It's fucking hell. It's so perfect. Like, how perfect is the video for the song and vice versa? It's just amazing. The thing is that it kind of has, it's like a pastiche of a perfume ad,

but delivered with that same absolute deadly seriousness that makes it hilarious. Yeah. There is not a wink anywhere there's not like a hint of irony and it's just glorious and you know russ russ and who is uh australian and um so that that gives you an idea of his his um where his head is at um and yeah before this he did um his first feature he did Highlander, was a feature of his in the 80s. But before that, he did Derek and Clive Get the Horn. Oh, right.

So there's not much of that in here, but it's maybe sort of peeping around, lewdly around the edges. But so people complain about this, always somebody complaining at this time of year about fragrance ads, and they are preposterous. but I don't know what people expect of them, I love them there is a thing about them and I love how daft they are, I lament actually that some of them actually now are quite boring and quite standard and sexy and

kind of not very imaginative but they're supposed to be perfume adverts are like very heightened, disconnected flashes of fantasy which I'm assuming is supposed to be a perfume adverts are like very heightened disconnected flashes of fantasy which i'm assuming is supposed to like evoke the storm of pheromones that is meant to rage in your brain when you smell an expensive designer whiff you know they are meant to be sort of weird little audio visual sexy dream sequences like like just a sort of gorgeous jumble of fleeting images that are like faintly recognizable but just out of reach and that's that's basically what this is

so the video for for title eclipse of the heart it feels wrong i don't feel like you can really talk you can't really express it in full sentences it's an extremely expensive, kind of surreal stream of consciousness, immersive theatre production without structure or thesis at all. Basically, the treatment for it must have looked like this. Window. Fan. Candle. Moon.

Decanter. Ship. Doors. Doves. Lads. Throne. Wings. Swimmers. Goggles. Church. Lads. Throne. Wings. Swimmers.

Goggles. Church. Ninjas. Wind. Wine. Tops. Door. Close.

Eyes. Fences. Shadow. Greases. Stairs. Doors. Light. Hair.

Cleavage. Ship on, leaping, NFL, balcony, tablecloth, running, plaza, thighs, Rambo. And then... Flying choir boy of the corn,, Goth Bugsy Malone, Sumo Pants, Feather Arms Man, Fata Black. And then... Then, after all of that,

there is a daylight coda, which is not shown on this episode, but I had to do my due diligence and do the entire thing. It's only right and proper. Yeah. There's a sort of graduation ceremony at the end, after all of that. my due diligence and do the entire thing um it's it's only it's only right and proper yeah there's a sort of graduation ceremony at the end after all of that um and bonnie is there in a suit she looks great um she sort of looks like a cross between princess di and alice and goldfrapp

right in this video which is which is an excellent look um and obviously with the requisite enormous hair so and then she's kind of presenting, there's a sort of graduation ceremony for this sort of public school sex cult that has just been exposed. And yeah, it turns out that it wasn't just a dream and the boys are actually weird. And then that's somehow the end of it.

And it's just the greatest fucking thing. When we start doing live shows for Chart Music, you're performing that as slam poetry. I wish I loved this video as much as I loved that. I wish I loved this video as much as I loved the record. Because, look, to me, as well as being a karaoke classic for yes ladies with more prosecco than sense most of the time this is a genuinely magnificent pop record and in part because of its monumental grossness and lack of good taste but people are weird about any kind of wit or self-awareness in otherwise

serious pop songs right like you have to be either wholly solemn or simply comic or else somehow it's like mixing curry and custard you know and often it is but not necessarily that just happens to often be the case but it it's perfectly possible to set up an effective and convincing contrast between a heavy effect and a lightness of touch. It's just hard to do. And if you do do it, just remember you're not going to top Jim Steinman. No. I don't think there's a songwriter on earth who could

have written a song about aging and memory and impermanence and time speeding up as you get older and then call it objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are so what this record does is create something epic and emotional and genuinely moving and then it presents it in a way that says explicitly this is not art right whatever this is it's not fucking art all right just enjoy it and that sounds quite conceptual like to the point you think maybe people wouldn't quite know what to make of that approach but in fact they do they love it because you get the power of you know serious work without that tang of elitism yeah and i mean clearly this record scores lower than the ring cycle you know for complexity and musical sophistication but it's not far off in terms of gut response you know and some people

some people work very hard and they they don't have a lot of time um but what i'm not keen about with the video is i think it gets the balance wrong between camp and genuine feeling you know it's like it's it's like jim steinman's great talent is for writing and producing these songs which are funny without being a joke and which are huge and bombastic without just coming across like a 2p beethoven you know i mean like thunder faced and clenching his fist in a storm. But what I don't like here, it's almost like Bonnie Tyler came in and gave a perfect performance,

like Meatloaf always did. Self-consciously bombastic, but not smugly bombastic. And with real feeling. And I just feel like this video reduces it all to a bit of a joke. I mean, it's entertaining to watch in itself, but what it does to the record I don't think is a favour.

Do you know what I mean? But what's the alternative? If it's just Bonnie Tyler standing in some dry ice, you know what I mean? No, okay, this is better than that. Yeah, it's a bit full on for our past three on Christmas afternoon, isn't it? Yeah.

When you're non-als trying to get to sleep. I remember the, I do actually remember from this time, I remember the song better than the video. Like the video was, you know, watching the video afresh, it was just like, what? Yeah, I've totally forgotten about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How could I forget this?

No, it is amazing. But yes, no, it is really obviously like the the song is is is uh i i do think they they go together brilliantly in a certain way but um but also it's the the song kind of out you know does outclass the video obviously um it's but i mean the song is mad obviously because it's jim zineman who is a man who threw his last fuck that he had to give into a volcano many years before. Like all of his stuff, it should not work at all. I mean, it's relatively tight for him at only five and a half minutes. But it kind of, you think it's finished

and then it just carries on and on and on. It's like it reaches a crescendo and then it just carries on crescendoing over and over. There's a middle eight, but it it's not it's a middle nine and that's the bridge yeah and then the actual middle eight is a middle 16 and sounds like fucking procol harum or something it's yeah it's mad what the fuck is he doing and it's it's wonderful it's very very odd but there is a sense of romance. And it's more in the sound of it than it is in the words themselves. That note that she's, and we're lonely. That bit.

If you don't sing along with that bit, then you are fucking sober and you need to have a drink. Because it's a really powerful and exalting moment in pop music. Her voice that... It was basically Bonnie Tyler's voice came about because she had to have throat surgery and then she was supposed to shut the fuck up for, like, three days and just couldn't do it.

And so she just had too much to say for herself. And, yeah, I respect that. I really do. What a profitable mistake. But she talks like that. It's always like, let me see her interview. She's just got, you know,

she sounds like a bear. Yes. A cartoon bear, but in a really good way. The history of this song is also absolutely wild. It's wild. So basically,

Jim Steinman kind of dusted this off for Bonnie Tyler, having written it for a vampire musical. So it was originally called Vampires in Love. It was written for Steinman's Nosferatu musical, Dance of the Vampires. There's this entire insane story about this musical, about this Broadway musical. It cost an immense amount of money and it was a huge flop. It was based on a musical that was based on Roman Polanski's sort of cheeky vampire movie.

It went ahead in 2002. It went on Broadway in 2002. It lasted six weeks and lost $12 million and destroyed Michael Crawford's career. No. There's a whole load of people who never even saw it, but they're giant fans of it anyway. It's like a whole internet thing. And the internet was partly responsible for destroying it in the first place

because apparently it just ballooned into this giant kind of too many cooks nightmare. Michael Crawford had so many weird fucking ideas and would not be told no. He was... So Michael Crawford was fucking impossible. Turned the main character, the main vampire Dracula guy, into a sort of Italian clown, like a pyro.

And he insisted on dying on stage, even though that would make the whole story not work. It was just a total shit to everyone. Yeah, what also didn't work is the bit where he insisted that vampires should be dragged along behind a bus on roller skates. But there's this entire, there's like a long read on Vulture, which details, they did this thing, Five Days of Flops, where they just did deep dives into what went wrong with these massive expensive shows. And it just says how it failed. massive expensive shows and it just says how it how it failed um so it's clashing egos and disintegrating relationships and competing visions and ballooning budgets and a ruined script um it

had it's it's incredible you can just pick any sentence out of it it had electric boots a rocket coffin hordes of robot rats an animatronic bat that costs more than a Mercedes, and a flying graveyard. What? So that's the thing. Okay, the thing that I love about this video... Yeah, by those standards, this is quite a normal, sober interpretation, isn't it?

It's almost like a sketch for the most absurd musical of all time. And it's more, I would say, it's more of an artistic success at a fraction of the price. But also this musical was was kind of um it's a terrible example of of what is a real problem now which is the corrosive effect of internet opinion on art in real time because while they were making it and they were desperate to figure out what had gone wrong with it because people just didn't like it and there were meetings where they printed out pages from online forums

where people had slagged it off. And we're reading out the criticisms in rehearsals. It's a nightmare, but it's one of those really enjoyable nightmares. Oh, but if you had to think of the worst thing anyone could possibly do in terms of creative development and working out what was actually wrong with something. I'll tell you what. Why don't we read millions of people we don't know some of whom don't even care what they're saying yeah just saying that we're that's gonna be great that's gonna help us a lot i mean read that to michael crawford obviously

because sounds like he really was a massive cunt just like if if someone else did a line and it worked he would ask for it to be cut out no what a fucker so yeah real team so i'm glad that out of that wreckage we got you know we got total eclipse of the heart and we got yes that article which i really encourage you to look up it's a wild ride I was surprised that I got relatively little to say about this record considering how much I love it but it's almost like this isn't

a record to talk about or discuss it's like a magic trick you can talk about it if you want but it sort of spoils it because I can see as we've been talking about I can see about it if you want, but it sort of spoils it. Because I can see, as we've been talking about, I can see how it's done and why it works so well.

But, you know, who cares? It's still total eclipse of the heart. And it sounds great all the time. And it sounds 100 times better if you're drunk you know it's just it's it's total eclipse of the heart and we've got to give a shout out to rory dodd as well who's the the turnaround man ah yes he never gets any credit he does he was jim steinman's go-to voice he did loads i thought you were going to say jim steinman's. Like, Jim Steinman, bring out the gimp, Jim. He did loads of backing singers for all Meatlo stuff, but he was best known to the pop craze youngsters as singing the jingle on the advert for Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Oh, bless him. Does he appear in the video? Who knows? I mean, he might be one of the Fences or one of the Ninjas or one of the NFL guys. There's a lot of guys in this i mean there's a lot of i'm really i mean pound for pound there's a lot of professional dancers in this i know that um you know the the era of zoo is now over but there's so many professional dancers in

massive numbers in this uh massive troops okay imagine if zoo wankers were in this video? Fucking hell. Smiling and brassy stepping. Yeah, doing calisthenics on the spot. Yeah. With a big fixed grin. It's good to see the Bullingdon Club on it as well. Yeah. I know, I feel like there's a warning buried in there somewhere.

Yeah. You know the sort of like, there are stories about pop stars that are like, that makes me think better of them all, that's not what I would have thought. And then there's the other ones which like yeah that's completely in line with what i would imagine um my bloke again doing uh backstage shenanigans was at a free council festival on plymouth hoe in in the late 90s and bonnie tyler was one of the turns and um this is before backstage became like you know the kind of ridiculous thing that it is now. And Bonnie Tyler was there with a very brow-beaten PA who is sort of a Lynn, sort of a younger Lynn.

Right. And she had her own port-a-loo, you know, reserved for Miss, or I don't know if it was Miss or Ms. Tyler. Divas, it's always Miss, isn't it? Yeah. This one here is reserved for Ms. Tyler. Of course she should have her own port-a-loo. but also but not just that but she would send her pa in beforehand um to sort of tyler proof it right and um which may or may not um have involved warming

the seat no after the manner of a public school fag it's pretty nippy plymouth hoe at night is is uh is a slightly unforgiving place so you know right go have a one bum before you go on after you come off imagine if they hired you to do that and you were also the bloke who used to blow cocaine up stevie nix's arm so total eclipse of the heart spent two weeks at number one before giving way to a single we're going to be seeing very soon the follow-up faster than the speed of night would only get to number 43 in may and the follow-up to that have you ever seen the rain only got to number 47 in july but as we've already pointed out she has signed the pact of coal with comrade shaker and we'll be back in the top 10 very soon

this is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. It's an S-Pod thing. The podcast revisiting S Club 7's insane TV show. I can't imagine anyone's going to watch this.

Anyone who's not on drugs. Thank you for bringing this into my life. It was honestly truly appalling. Guests helped me analyze the show in more detail than anyone ever asked for. It feels weird to me to say the phrase sex object in a show that was aimed at six-year-olds. Do you think one of the problems with this show is that seven is too much? It's an S-pod thing from Great Big Owl.

Number one for three weeks in this country. And then Bonnie Tyler took the song over to the States along with that video and she did really well because she got to number one in America as well. On a Christmas afternoon with Top of the Pops, here's the Eurythmics. And sweet dreams to David. David.

Bait! Wearing his usual supply teacher rig out, but complimented with a tinsel lay And a bit of tinsel peeping out of his breast pocket Reminds us that it's Christmas afternoon And pivots to the next song Sweet dreams are made of this By the Eurythmics

Formed in a hotel room in Wagga Wagga, NSW in 1980 Eurythmics consisted of Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox The then guitarist and vocalist of The Tourists, who had scored two top 10 hits with I Only Want To Be With You and So Good To Be Back Home Again in the Aventis, and were touring Australia, but were clearly on their last legs. After naming themselves after a musical education method developed by the Swiss composer Emile Jacques Delcroze at the turn of the century, they immediately signed to RCA and recorded their first LP, In the Garden, in Cologne, with the assistance of Holger Zucke and Jackie Liebside of Cannes,

Clem Burke of Blondie and Robert Gaul of Deutsch-Americanisch Freundschaft. Their debut single, Never Gonna Cry Again, got to number 63 for two weeks in July of 1981, but Top 40 success would continue to elude them until they put out their second LP, Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, in January of this year. This is the title track and their sixth single. The duo were insistent they'd be put out

as a follow-up to Love Is A Stranger, which got to number 54 in December of 1982, but RCA were having none of it as it didn't have a proper chorus or anything until it was picked up and played to death by a radio station in Cleveland in America, not in the Northeast. It slipped into the top 10 at number 38 in February,

then soared 17 places to number 21, and then soared another 16 places to number 5. And two weeks later, it made it to number 2, kept off the summit of Mount Pop by Total Eclipse of the Heart. And here they are in the studio. And one of the kids goes absolutely fucking mental for this, doesn't it? As soon as Bates announces what he is, you can hear him going, I'm not going to lie to you.

Ever since we started Chart Music, there's been one or two bands I've been dreading to cover simply because i just think and i go i can't think of anything to say about them and new rhythmics are one of those i've it feels like i've got zero opinion on them they were they were just there so i immediately dismiss them out of under then i go oh hang on though who's that girl here comes the rain again and you know i don't know whether i like them or not i tell you what they really are a band where you only need the singles right right trust me on that because i've tried you know so yeah stuff like beethoven i need a man i i'd even stand up for there must

be an angel here comes the rain again would i lie to you um and i i absolutely love the single before and after sweet dreams i.e love is a stranger um which i think is just just sublime um yeah how the fuck did that not get into the top 40 on its first go that's mad well eurythmics took their time they had a flop album out before you know that um anything happened for them um i i actually did like the tourists um i remember really enjoying their version of um i only want to be with you and also um so good to be back home again uh yeah that single by them uh recently um i went on a bit of a mad cheap vinyl buying spree and i picked up um uh all three of the albums by the tourists and i can tell you again they're a band where you only need the singles to be honest um so yeah it took them a while and it's interesting because the template of

the synth duo was pretty well established by the time yeah it came along um and what it usually involved whether it was sparks or or Soft Cell or Yazoo, was you'd have this kind of enigmatic deadpan keyboardist and quite emotional, very human-sounding front man or woman. They sort of do fit that and they don't because Annie Lennox's voice leaves me cold, as perhaps it is meant to, perhaps it's intended to, I'm not sure. But her vocal mannerisms have the shape of soul music,

but not the texture of it. She does all these trills that she's obviously learned from listening to God knows how many, I don't know, Minnie Ripperton or uh anne peebles records whatever it may have been um yeah but but it's it's very much almost as if she's um trilling the notes from sheet music rather than and i don't want to be when these people says oh you've got to feel it man you've got to feel it from the heart but it sort of is like that it's it's it's very much going through the motions of that and that's something i i always found a bit off-putting

about about you with mitch to be honest um i think she's an important figure in 80s pop uh in that she was taking the reverse road of androgyny to most of the rest of the decade we tended to applaud people in 80s pop for being androgynous in a male to female direction um and she i guess the only other one would have been grace jones was taking things the other way i guess in a previous era you had patty smith but that's a slightly different thing and she was kind of long gone by that point. And Grace Jones didn't really start having big hits until a little bit later. So really, she was a bit of a lone figure, Annie Lennox. I think an important one.

And in some ways, being into her, being a fan of her, became almost a sort of badge of honour among some people. People seemed to be making a point if they were into her, being a fan of her, became almost a sort of badge of honour among some people. People seemed to be making a point if they were into her. Do you know what I mean? People would say, oh, well, I think Annie Lennox is beautiful. And if you didn't agree or showed any kind of scepticism, oh, well, you know, not really my type.

Well, you know, they'd almost treat you as if you're some kind of medallion wearing 1970s unreconstructed sexist pig yeah yeah i'm just not into pegging what's you know what can i tell you don't non-kink shame me but i mean because at the time not her possibly a label but definitely the tabloids were saying oh she's boy george with different bits right and there was all these news stories like in america that you know that she got done benny hill style for going into a women's toilet and pulled out and all this kind of stuff you just think that well no because number one she's obviously a woman and number two she's she's that woman out of Tourist.

Yeah, do you know what? I didn't recognise her as being from the Tourist. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just thought they were a new thing. I had no idea. I didn't recognise him either, you know, even though he's quite...

When you were reading Smash It at the time, Simon? I guess I must have found out pretty quickly. But certainly when I first heard this song, saw the video or whatever, I didn't twig instantly, put it that way. Yeah. See, what bothers me, really, from an artistic and spiritual point of view,

Eurythmics are like the early 80s garbage. Do you know what I mean? The group garbage, right? Old hands. It's that same feel of people building pop music rather than just creating it. You know, like old prose once removed, you know. And it's a bit annoying even when the music is okay

and it's enraging when the music's shit. So at least a song like this, which is good and makes a virtue of its origins in a kind of musical laboratory yeah you know it works it survives that but once you get to there must be an angel playing with my heart which to me is a an unstoppable billowing cloud of poison gas it's seeping out of alie lennox's mouth um And you can't even write it off as an accident, you know. They become one of the least likeable bands of the 80s for me. Not one of the most hateable bands, just one of the least likeable.

Yeah. And it's only in retrospect that we see Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart for what they really were. Because looking at this appearance, if this was all new to you and you'd managed to forget the tourists, you would at least be intrigued. Because this doesn't really sound fresh or bright or spontaneous, but it sounds like old prose, but it sounds like old prose trying to do something different and succeeding for now.

And I think Annie Lennox's problem is that she was sold as this icy, powerful Grace Jones type icon. Yeah. When in fact, the coldness that she projects is not really that same kind of glamorous, natural, authentically impressive strength like Grace Jones, you know, with power, power to sway. It's more like a sourness and a smugness and just a lack of humanity or no, a lack of humor and self-awareness. awareness yeah um but at this point it's not a huge problem because not enough of her actual personality is visible and she's still singing on a good record and you can see the smugness but it looks like part of the act yeah do you know what i mean um yeah whereas as her real personality started to come out she became less convincing in that role i remember reading in smash it's about a festival that um like a one-day festival in ireland that eurythmics played it might have

been a u2 gig or something um and in the middle of their set the drunken crowd started chanting english bastards at them which you know is inaccurate obviously but annie lennox stopped the music went up to the microphone and delivered what sounds like a hilariously pompous emotional speech about quote i cannot play to faces full of hate yeah um i mean you know talk about bullseye for the trolls you know and apparently this tirade went on until dave stewart walked over to her and said loud enough to be picked up on the microphone let's just play um and the what a scene what a scene to make. And the other thing that stuck in my mind as an example of Eurythmics Lennox shit is also in Smash Hits when they did one of those surveys of pop star opinion

that they would do periodically. And this one was about the royal family. And I remember Annie Lennox saying, I'm British and I love my queen uh as though that followed naturally yeah as though the second followed naturally and you know as if that were not already a fairly charged remark for a scottish person to make um and i've never forgiven dave stewart for his media mogul bullshit and uh you know what he tried one of the few things i wrote your melody maker that still makes me laugh when i remember it was um some record he'd done with someone and uh when

he was trying to be all cool and i said if he really wants to to reinvent himself as some kind of hip elder statesman of pop why has he still got a beard my money's on an i am an old and sad man chin tattoo that he desperately wants to keep covered up um that media mogul bullshit of course satirized brilliantly in nathan barley oh yeah he's the leader of the very phonics um yeah i can't remember his character's name in that but yeah it's transparently Dave Stewart and I purely by accident managed to puncture a bit of that pomposity once

have I told you the story about when I met him? I met Dave Stewart in the late 80s but didn't realise I'd met him until afterwards what it was I was going out with a girl who uh lived in crouch end so you can see where this is going already um because uh his his studio the church

was was there in crouch and it was only a few doors down from uh um where my girlfriend was was living and uh i remember just walking down the shops one day and this guy comes out of the door of the church and he's walking almost sort of side by side. And he's got this incredibly cool Prince T-shirt on. It's like this sort of very kind of arty, sort of abstract impression of Prince's face that was like a whole print over the whole thing. I just, I really coveted it.

And I had to ask him, I said, where'd you get that from? He said, New York, I think and i thought okay all right this this guy's sort of a bit of international traveler okay fair enough and uh uh we were sort of heading the same direction just talked about prince uh for for a minute or so uh and uh as we went our separate ways i I said, because I was thinking, I recognise this guy, like long hair, beard, a bit rock and roll. As we were partying, I said, are you Peter Hook from New Order? And he goes, no, no, I'm not. And it was only afterwards I thought, oh, fuck, that's who it was.

Yeah. And I was kind of pleased, you know. Yeah. At least you didn't have a go at him for It's My Party with Barbara Gaskin. Yeah, no, he would have hated that. I'll tell you what else I don't understand about Eurythmics. Is their name a play on the word eugenics? And if so, how?

No, there actually is a thing called eurythmics i should have looked it up but it is some kind of esoteric discipline um i can't remember what it involves exactly although i think they they spell it differently involves ripping off your zoo but with a clothing budget because to me this is the un-weirdification of synth duos. Yeah, and they only just got in under the wire. I suppose Pet Shop Boys were the... I suppose, yeah, you could still get away with it because then Erasure came along as well.

But Erasure was basically the continuity yazoo. So they'd been knocking around a while, the Eurythmics, and only just sort of made it before people got fed up with synth duos. you know yeah um i mean this this is a good record there's there's no getting around it that the underlying riff is powerful it's kinetic it's done in straight lines it's very blocky in the way that um synth records kind of have to be you can with with with a sort of with a soul record or something made organically you can have you can have curves to it things can um rise and fall and it can be just just a bit more fluent

um but this it's you you could almost uh uh just sort of grab grab a paintbrush and just go up down up down with it and you'd have drawn the riff of this song like rolf harris yeah yeah yeah uh yeah exactly like rolf harris in fact now you mention it dave stewart does look a little bit but yeah it's it's it's a it's a really it's it's one of those good records that's kind of it you you have to acknowledge its place in history just like you know the way i i feel about heart of glass by blondie much to the derision of you guys, I've never been shouted down about this, but yeah, I acknowledge it's a good and important record, but I find it

hard to love, and it's the same with this really, if I'm DJing, and it's you know, sort of 80s theme or something like that, and you stick this on, people love it there's a great mashup with Just Dance by Lady Gaga which really meshes well together with this.

I don't like the Marilyn Manson cover very much, but then I don't really like any of Marilyn Manson's covers. I just think they're pointless. But yeah, it's in that category for me as a sort of... I should probably shoot myself in the head for using this word, an iconic record of the era. But it's not one that I feel any warmth for at all. Do you remember when they got all leathered up

and tried to get all raunchy and rocky? What an embarrassment that was. I mean, at heart, they are embarrassing cunts. I mean, no disrespect, but they are. The thing, listening to a Eurythmics record, it's one of those things I can't understand. Like, listening to any Eurythmics record that isn't this one or Love is a Stranger, basically,

it's like a three-hour car journey on a bank holiday to go and see the world's largest pencil. I mean, it's not the worst thing you could ever do, but why would you? What sums them up, right? I was reading the Christmas 1983 TV Times in preparation for this. Good lad.

Well done. But there's a pop section, which is all written in that creepy old-fashioned prose, with a reading age of seven, like the TV Times used to do. And there's a brief bit about, quote, that spectacular pop duo, Eurythmics, who have recently converted a disused church in North London

into a 24-track recording studio. And Annie Lennox is quoted as saying, we have a resident ghost, but I think he likes music. And that's an illustration of why i dislike and distrust eurythmics they're precisely the kind of band that would buy a church in north london convert it into a 24 track recording studio then lie to the tv times that there was a ghost in it or worse actually believe that themselves because they're all business but with a sort of side order of unexamined bullshit that they think makes them seem interesting in lieu of anything

genuinely peculiar about the music or about their personalities yeah yeah so in the video for this where she's in a field yeah wearing a business suit there's a cow in a field and she's uh and i'm not making i'm not making a joke here there is literally a cow and then there's annie lennox i think in in leather gloves um wearing a business suit that's how i remember it yeah that that whole corporate thing that corporate look it it wasn't a i mean you know it wasn't a subversion of corporate culture. It was just straight up, yeah, this is what we are, I suppose. Yeah.

And then the cow goes and sees them in the office and pisses all over the carpet, apparently. The cow's like, at least Pink Floyd gave me royalties. Yes. Yeah, that's my fucking mate you're wearing on your hands, you bitch. Speaking of ghosts, by the way in their studio i was thinking the other day right how brilliant would it be if ghosts did actually exist and finally for the first time ever someone captured actual convincing evidence of a of a

supernatural manifestation but it was on their homemade sex tape so they couldn't show it to anyone and they're going no honestly i promise you take my word for it there's some hideous fat old bloke getting moshed off like by well by not his hideous fat old wife hence why he can't show anyone and he's got the telly on really loud, like you often get, like mystifying in those videos. And suddenly, through the bare wall behind them, walks a ghostly phalanx of Roman centurions. Or the disapproving spirit of the house's previous occupant, who was John Holmes.

You guys are a disgrace. Or Timothy Claypole. Yeah. How frustrating would that be, though? What a loss to the scientific community. And a spoiled wank. Yeah. You could put it out and call it Ghost Crotch.

The performance of this interests me because obviously it's a very stern record. And if they've shown the video obviously it's a very stern record. And if they've shown the video, it's a very stern video. But here we are. It's the Christmas Top of the Pops. The band themselves, well, the duo themselves, in the little space that they're afforded, are sort of ankle deep in dry ice, fair enough,

to create a bit of mystique around themselves. But all around the back of them, there are the, you know, Top of the Pops kids with balloons swaying from side to side, waving their balloons. And Annie Lennox, rather than trying to sort of outstern them and think, I'm not having any part in this, she starts dancing and she's a really, I'm sorry, but she's a really bad dancer. Yes.

It's just this kind of unseemly lukewarm thing between, you know, the Christmas cheer, the kind of mulled wine of the audience and the kind of icy vodka of what the Eurythmics are trying to put across. Yeah, yeah. She's a headmistress, basically, isn't she? Sort of stern, powerful facade is that of a headmistress. Yeah. So the follow-up, a re-release of Love is a Stranger,

got to number six in April, and they'd have two more top ten hits this year with Who's That Girl and Right By Your Side. Sweet Dreams Are Made of this would get to number one for one week in america in september finishing the foul eight-week reign of every breath you take by the police before giving way to maniac by michael sembello every breath you take is not on this episode. Yes! Yes! Great stuff, Eurythmics. Dancing's been in in a really big way this year.

In fact, there's been loads and loads of movies about dancing. Do you and me fancy breaking? Yeah, you bet. Right, we'll do it to Ari and Cara and Flashdance. Woo! Janice, on the balcony, tells us that we've all been dancing fools this year with loads of films about it and then turns right into the face of a zoo wanker with a red rubber top

and asks if he wants to break with her. You bet, he replies, and she says they're going to do it. To Flashdance, What a feeling by irene cara born in the bronx in 1959 irene escalera appeared on the american kids educational show the electric company at the age of 12 after spending her early teens appearing in assorted on and off broadway shows and TV movies and miniseries, she was cast as a dancer called Coco Hernandez in the 1980 Alan Parker movie Fame. But when the producers heard her sing, they rewrote the role and bumped her up to star billing, giving her the title track and the song Out Here On My Own Tonight. Both songs were nominated for the Best Song Oscar in 1981, making her the first

person ever to sing two songs at the Oscars, and fame won. When the film was turned into a TV show, she was re-offered the role of Coco, but turned it down to concentrate on her singing career. But when the show became a massive success in the UK, her version was re-released, getting to number one for three weeks. This song, the title track from the Jennifer Beale leotard exploitation film Flashdance, is the follow-up to Out Here on My Own Tonight, which got to number 58 in September of 1982. It was originally an instrumental written by Giorgio Moroder and was originally knocked back by Cara who didn't want to work with Giorgio as she was worried about people drawing comparisons with her and Donna Summer but she relented when she was invited to co-write the lyrics with Moroder's in-house drummer, Keith Forsey, which the two of them knocked out during a car journey to the studio. After Flashdance became a surprise hit,

the single entered the charts at number 30, then soared 21 places to number 9, then took four weeks to slither up the charts until it got to number 2 in July, kept off the top spot by Baby Jane by Rod Stewart. And here's an advert for the film. Oops, sorry, I mean the video. Neil, back you come in, mate.

This is a film I've not seen, so first question, is the film as shit as it looks on the video? Because it appears to be about a woman who bombs about on a bike then does some welding then does some ice skating and then dances for a bit but mainly runs about and runs about and runs about and the only time the woman has a sit down is so she can tip a bucket of water over herself well that synopsis and be all sensual that synopsis should go on IMDb really right now. I mean, that is pretty much what it is. It's not a great film. I mean, I remember when me and Taylor were last on Shark Music

and we were talking about Saturday Night Fever and the influence that exerted in as much as, you know, the following decade saw a lot of danceicles, as we called them. But Flashdance here marks something different in that trend in a sense. Even as late as a film like, I don't know, All That Jazz, danceicles could be messy films. They could be complex films. They could be adult films.

And they could be about luck and chance and cruelty. But things like Flashdance, they really owe more to that, to fame, basically. Fame is the behemoth that affects a film like Flashdance. And that idea that, you know, simply working hard, paying with sweat, you know, will get you places. And the only possible barriers to you achieving anything are your own limitations. It's a very Thatcherite, Reaganite, Tebbit-like view of creativity that's cemented in the film. She gets on a bike here, doesn't she? Quite literally.

She gets on a bike here, doesn't she? Quite literally. But I mean, it's one of those, the first of those types of films, I think, to show a massive MTV influence, really. You know, if MTV had come on air in August 81, by late 83, I mean, it's already having massive impacts on the charts, but I think it's also having impacts on cinema.

Flashdance is basically, it's Rocky with better leg warmers and more thongs was rocky with dancing instead of hitting people basically yeah i think i'd rather watch the irish rm but yeah the cinematic style of it of flash dance yeah it's pure cocaine dust it's all dry ice big hair shown in backlit silhouette and the editing of the film is totally dominated by the soundtrack half the movie is just musical montages and the look and feel of it is very very brat pack it's very close really to 80s action cinema no coincidence you know that don simpson and jerry brookheimer are the producers of the film. And it's a monster hit, though.

That's the thing with Flashdance. I think it cost $7 million and it made $200 million. Yeah. Behind only Return of the Jedi and Turns of Endearment in 83. It makes the careers of people like Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and the director Adrian Lin, who goes from, you know, doing adverts back in the 70s to doing this, his first feature film, makes him... It's mad who was offered this film first, though.

I mean, Simpson and Bruckheimer were thinking of David Cronenberg at first. Imagine that. Well, I can't imagine that. Brian De Palma turned it down as well. Flashdance really made Adrian Lin a star, and he spends the next few years essentially making crap erotic thrillers, as they used to be called. But it's huge. I mean, that soundtrack album to Flashdance,

it knocks Thriller off the top spot in the US for one week. You know, but the thing is, the singers of all of this stuff, it doesn't launch their careers in any way. Irene Cara, who's not, she's not the star of the film, Jennifer Beals is, but, you know, this song is the star of the film in a sense. It plays in the opening. It plays, you know, in this montage

that sets up Jennifer Beals' character. And when she dances at the snooty Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance later on, which is also featured in the film. Those stuffed shirts. Yeah, the snotty bastards. fathers as it were but but because the movie's whole aesthetic is so close to music videos already that's why we get this kind of video which features no irene car at all it's just nothing but but cut together scenes from the movie which could play just fine on mtv and help promote flash dance yeah it's really a marauder record and it's very akin to his soundtrack work for scarface actually

this is kind of where in a sense disco ends up you've got you know you've got a keyboardist from silver convention on this and you've got people who have worked with donna summer and stuff um co-writing it but crucially this, what happens to disco in records like this is that it just stops having anything to do with black pop. This doesn't really come from soul or R&B. It comes from Broadway, this record. It's one of those types of records. Lyrically, Cara sells it, stuff like, you know,

take your passion and make it happen. It's kind of self-help type shit. She sells it pretty well. The lyrics are mainly that kind of self-help gibberish like you know take your passion and make it happen it's quite a self-help type shit she sells it pretty well the lyrics are mainly that kind of self-help gibberish you know all alone i have cried silent tears made of pride right okay in a world made of steel made of stone the only other person who could have done it really probably was donna summer i thought this was donna summer when it first came out yeah that. That's like a strapline for the film in it, like, in a world made of steel, dot, dot, dot. And then at the bottom it says, dot, dot, dot,

she was dancing for her life. Yes. Christ. Yeah, it's that kind of film. There's a sense of ensemble in dance-icles before the films like this, but films like this are very, yeah, it's pure Reaganomics. It is.

Get up off your bootstraps, go get yourself the stardom that is only denied to you because you've not been working hard enough. But it's the whole, like, aesthetically, sonically, you know, visually and philosophically, the mid-eighties is here already. I mean, you listen to this record and it's, yeah, it's descended from disco records, but really it's all pumped up. It's got, like, synth stabs and a load of hot air and vocal melismas and the big loping drum fills

that go right along all 15 mounted toms, you know, and talk of passion and feeling. You know, it's begun and this isn't the worst because it still sounds quite sort of thin and tooty in a way you know in more than one sense but it's it's not good for you this sort of thing and the other thing that comes across really strongly which is very mid-eighties is this obsession with health and fitness almost for its own sake. Like, I mean, I keep myself fit, but that's because at my age it's kind of necessary. Yeah.

You know, to not just sit around smoking and eating cronuts and seizing up if you try and get anything out of life. Taylor, you take your passion and you make it happen yeah but it's a moral imperative you know it's training literally it's training for not dying yeah for life and and sex and late nights out and still being able to drink and be a mess and just not having to be an old man. Basically, I don't enjoy it. I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to. When I was 22, you couldn't have got me near a fucking gym.

But now I have to do it because the alternative is too grim for me to face. What I've always hated about this kind of stuff is the celebration of soul-destroying fitness work. Because it is, right right that's endlessly repeated physical drills which could actually drive you insane but just for its own sake once every five or ten years i take a gym membership out because i just think oh you're a fat cunt do something about it i can only last two weeks at most because it comes upon where i go hang on a minute this is like being in a factory but i'm not getting paid for it yeah all the drudgery of factory work none of the money to

piss up the wall afterwards right it's because it's all about what's on your headphones yeah whether you can get through it or not yeah but i can listen to that stuff at home while i'm eating crisps well yeah this is true yeah you know what i mean i take my passion i'll fucking lob it in the bed but this stuff it goes beyond that it goes beyond being able to put up with the the the factory like misery of exercise these are people who wear their their gray stretch cotton singlet with sport written on the front like when they're grey stretch cotton singlet with sport written on the front, like when they're not working out, just because they think it looks good. And the point is the song talks about a purpose at the end of all this,

like the hit, right, like the magical feeling when you are transported by the dance, right, you know, the transcendent moment. But really, it's just like fame, in the way that fame is about fame, but it's not about, like, a reward or a recognition for doing something that you do well. It's about fame as a condition to aspire to,

which will lend some meaning to your life, even as you clutter up other people's you know wait till we get stuck into the kids from fame oh god wait this is similar in that it's really it's not really about dancing it's about the sort of the narcissism and the the the clutter around the topic you know yeah and they disguised it in both cases they're giving it this sort of blue collar thing yeah it's about people fighting their way out of the ghetto you know what i mean and it's it's not it's just another toothy one climbing on the bus you know to coca-cola advert dream what it's it's mourning in america yeah you know all that shit you know the underlying message of

both of those films i mean it is kind of because of, because like Jennifer Beals' character in Flashdance, she works in a steel mill, you know, she's got a pretty horrendous working life. But the message is, yeah, oh, you're not getting what you want out of life, that's because, yeah, you need another job. And not change job. You've got to keep both jobs

and work doubly hard at both of them. It's so fucking Thatcherite. The unbelievable thing is that this got to number three and this is shit i fucking hate this song it's a bag of wank but this got to number two and maniac by michael sembello which was a massive hit in america only got to number 43 for two weeks that is insane it's also on the soundtrack isn't it yeah yes i still hear that song all the time it's one of those singles that you hear nowadays and it's treated like it was a massive hit.

And it wasn't. Yeah. It was a flop over here. Maniac. Maniac. This is one of the few oases of daddisfaction in this Christmas Top of the Pops, isn't it? Yeah, but I would have preferred weird satisfaction

if Cronenberg had directed it, man. I can't stop thinking about it. So, Flashdance, what a feeling, would spend six weeks at number one in America and would win the best song Oscar the following year. However, the follow-up, Why Me, would only get to number 86 in December and Irene Cara never troubled the chart again. All right, pop crazed youngsters, we're going to leave it there and have a bit of trifle and whatnot.

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