Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #70 (Pt 4): 17.4.86 – The Rishi Sunak Of TOTP

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Neil Kulkarni, Sarah Bee and Al Needham finally claw their way up the final furlong on an episode of TOTP that’s been better than any episode set in 1986 has a right to be. Neil issues a come-and-get-me statement to Janet Jackson, It’s Immaterial look knackered and bemused on the big new set, George Michael delivers the weirdest Number One of the entire decade, and then the real ’86 presents itself as Whitney Houston fills the Harlem Apollo with a concentrated blast of mawk. ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS BE YOURSELF, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. It's Thursday evening. It's about 18 minutes past seven.

It's April the 17th, 1986. And Top of the Pops, our beloved, precious, life-affirming top of the pops is being pissed about with. And we, that is to say, Sarah B, Neil Kulcone, and my good self Al Needham, are well-dischuffed. We've already witnessed Gary Davis ripping the powdered wig off Falco and wiping his arse with it. A complete desecration

of the top 40 rundown and we've just been lectured by some youths about drugs and that's all we can stand and we can't stands no more. So, come and join us as we enter the final furlong of the neon-encrusted, success-coated hellscape of 1986. Shut up! Just say no, just say no, no. Just say... Up 21 places to number 16, it's Michael Jackson's sister. She looks like him, she dances like him.

Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately? Your friends seem to think that you're so bitchy, Gene. My friends say neglect is on your mind who's right. Born in Garret, Indiana in 1966, Janet Jackson was the 10th and youngest spawn of Joe and Catherine Jackson. And was three years old when the band her older brothers were in, the Jackson Five suddenly became massive and the family were relocated to Los Angeles. After being allowed to have a piss about in the Motown studio whenever her brothers were on a break during the early 70s, she caught the bug, abandoned her dreams of being a race jockey and made her debut as a performer with her brother Randyanda at the mgm casino in las vegas at the age of seven

in 1976 at the age of 10 she was a regular on the jackson's own tv show on cbs and for a while appeared to be gravitating towards an acting career as she spent the rest of the 70s as a cast member of the sitcoms good times a new New Kind of Family, and spent three series as Willis's girlfriend in different strokes. In 1984, she appeared in the fourth series of fame as Cleo Hewitt, a new student who has a major crush on Leroy, but she packed it in because she felt that her and the rest of the cast were being treated like shit. By this time, she had already established herself as a recording artist, having signed a deal with A&M and put out her debut LP, Janet Jackson, in 1982, which got to number 62 on the Billboard album chart.

But her second LP, Dream Street, which was released in October of 1984 fared worse in the charts despite having a lead-off single featuring Michael Jackson doing his vocal ticks and the track Two to the Power of Love being a duet with the child blood vintner of pop Cliff Richard. That was put out over here but it only got to number 83 in September of that year. Well dischuffed at the way her recording career was going, she severed all management ties with her family in the wake of the failure of Dream Street and turned to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, two original members of the Time, Prince's support band, who had just worked with the SOS band on Just Be Good To Me, but had been sacked from their own band by Prince for being caught up in a blizzard and being unable

to make a gig. They said they'd be happy to work with her on the condition that she relocated to Minneapolis to get away from her interfering dad and she knobbed off the acting career. interfering dad and she knobbed off the acting career. After helping her transition from Michael's nice little sister into an independent artist steeped in the R&B sound of now, the LP Control was in the can. But when Jackson's manager swung by Minneapolis to hear it, he told them it was too short and they needed another song. On their way to a restaurant to finish the haggling, Lewis played a tape of demos they were working on for their own LP and when the third song came on, this one, he was insistent that Janet got to bagsy it. This is the lead-off cut from Control, which had been released in February and is currently number 26 in the Billboard 200 LP

chart. It's a thinly veiled go at her ex-husband James DeBarge, where she tells her paramour that he's not stepping up to the mark, and he's going round thinking he's summat. It's a follow-up to Dream Street, which failed to chart anywhere, and it entered our chart at number 67 four weeks ago it took three weeks to get into the top 40 and she was rewarded with a spot on top of the pops's breakers section last week this week it soared 21 places to number 16 and here she is in the breakers section again, in a video set in a greasy spoon, choreographed by a pre-fame Paula Abdul. In the breakers section for two weeks in a row, what you talking about, Michael Hurl?

Well, well, well, well. I mean, look, before all of us start talking about this record and video, could I just take a moment to add a personal note here? Oh, go ahead, Nick. Okay, right. Everyone be quiet right this is a message purely for janet jackson if she's listening i cling on to the idea that janet's absence her disappearance from public life for the past decade or is down to her just being able to live all of our dreams i.e fucking around on our phones from the moment we wake up

to the moment that we sleep and you know i think she might be aware of every time she's mentioned so so if you're listening janet i just want to explain something i patiently explain to every partner i've ever had it's an elemental thing you have to accept if you're going to be with me um you don't need a gaob but you do need to know that i am in love with janet jackson i would do anything for janet jackson and if janet came a calling i would drop everything literally everything, my home, my kids, my family, my work, to be with her. Even your cat?

Yeah. No, sorry, it's Janet. I love her so much. Janet, I can vouch for you. He's lovely. Oh, yeah, yeah. But now that's out of the way, can we talk about how shit

Gary Davis's introduction is to this? Oh. You know, he just constantly makes reference to Michael um he sings like her he dances like yes he looks like him and that's the way Janet Jackson was perceived by a lot of people just a female jacko to the point where there were rumors going about that Janet Jackson actually was Michael Jackson doing a bit of a Camille like Princeton you read that in interviews at the time you know she's endlessly asked about her brother and her family which is precisely the family she's seeking to step away from.

Yeah. And it's really annoying. I mean, it's also noticeable, by the way, in the contemporary press, how many male journalists, they feel ignores how out here as punters in potland, compared to Michael, Janet's records, Control in particular, sounded modern and thrilling like nothing else. And even though Control wasn't a debut album, it's a record that's so good from the title to the sleeve shot to everything. Yeah, this album, Control bossed my 86 in a big way. And like nothing else apart from Parade by Prince prince i've been in love with her ever since such a ridiculous record the whole thing it's so daring and spare and kind of spiky i came to it after rhythm nation like i got into her through rhythm nation and then went back to control it's like when was this recorded i was into michael jackson at the time as well but that they couldn't be more

different really in most ways it's understandable that people would ask her you know it's just logical but also it was extremely tiresome the way that she was spoken about and to at this point but she obviously was so driven and so talented and had such good judgment in who she worked with that you know she she triumphed in the end and triumphed right from here actually i mean like look how amazing this is you can see that she's still kind of somewhat raw in a lot of ways because she carried on just refining her thing and developing it but it's just so exciting you know especially after the kind of listless whateverness of just say no yeah after what we've had so far this is a much welcome glimpse into the future of what would be known

as r&b you know and her aligning with the founder members of the time it's like an arranged marriage between the two dominant households of modern black music and it's actually come on oh yeah it's an absolute triumph i mean it's amazing control because it successfully repels the objectification of janet either as a sexual figure or just a figure of kind of jackson related curiosity um but also i mean it's because of the sound and janet's words which which of course have impact for women but further i think they just have impact for anyone being pushed around basically yeah it's an absolute fucking masterpiece that album and this single like for many of us was was my first introduction to it and unlike gary davis none of us who were

listening to control were remarking on how like michael jackson exactly at all we were talking about how actually janet seemed better than mj at this time she has been around for a few years now but a little to no attention in the british music press i mean she was first seen over here in 1981 when she was acting as michael jackson's interpreter in an mme interview with danny baker but when her own career started it was given the absolute shortest of shrift but here she is now very much her own woman totally it's a fucking bm off control because it prophesizes so much in black pop and beyond of course you can hear the sort of birth pangs of new jack swing here you can also hear shades of what would become the sound of rap music here too i mean it's no accident that jam and lewis

they use the same i mean to get geeky they use the same and sonic mirage synthesizer that public enemy would use next year on rebel without a pause and really this is a time 86 where when we think about what white imaginings of black music are they're kind of firmly located decades in the past that this kind of dream of soulful warmth and passion whereas what black pop itself is actually taking on is this sort of inhuman almost industrial sound with with control in particular and it's becoming self-sufficiently something that can can be created no longer by sort of funk bands with 20 members but by just production duos and singers it's so prophetic of what happens in

the 90s and it's so ahead of its time in that regard although of course that idea in itself touches back to donna summer and georgia marauder i think this album is just as pivotal as that moment control is a real shift in everything if you can say that black pop has three revolutionary changes from 75 onwards you can say that the first ones i feel love the second one's that first chic album and the last one is this it totally sets the tone for the subsequent decade it's an amazing record yeah you really want to it really compels you to listen to it as well because there's so much space in it and it's so minimal and it just draws you in in that way into the spaces of it and then that you've got this kind of fantastically itsy-bitsy,

but not sort of leaning too hard onto them. She's got quite a soft, sweet voice, but she's using it as a little stabbing weapon, you know. And in the video, she's got this kind of baleful stare. Oh, yes. And this kind of, in the lyrics, this is sort of, it's very confrontational. Totally. So you get this delicious kind of combination of those elements,

those kind of disparate elements, which just makes you go, ooh, ooh, yeah, it's so exciting. It's great. So the video, Janet's sat in a cafe with her mate. With Paula Abdul. Oh, is that Paula Abdul? Yeah, yeah. Fuck.

Well, she's sat in the cafe with Paula Abdul, who provides quite possibly the first bit of sass the people of Britain have ever encountered when she coats down Janet's bloke. And suffice to say, there is a lot of snake-necky gesture. What has he done for you lately? Oh, the video's fucking ace, isn't it? Like all Janet videos.

No one's talking to any hands just yet but you know that's imminent i love the set because there's no pretense at realism it's like a stage series sort of musical type set but there's a total realism to the attitude of janet and that face that sarah met you know that unbroken fierce face She never smiles in this video. No. So when she does smile later in the When I Think of You video, it's a big moment when we see Janet smile later. She does a little smirk in the video for Nasty. She's sat in a car and just does a little... So close the door if you want me to respond.

Smirk. She just does this little... She sort of rolls her eyes to the side and does a tiny tiny smirk and it's it's uh because these these gestures are so little and like you just lean in to kind of take them in you know and like the little murmurs in this as well it's kind of little tiny you know as well as the um in between sort of way lower in the mix you know just i swear it's like oh my god this dude So then we actually see the bloke poncing his way past the window. And he absolutely thinks he's someone, doesn't he? He's dressed up like the Fonz.

This is pre-run DMC sportswear and big trainers, which would have happened in six months' time. But, you know, he's just walking along as if to say, yeah, I am going out with Janet Jackson, actually. Aren't I brilliant? And you just know what's going to happen next because if pop videos have taught us anything chaps it's the pop stars and particularly black american pop stars they don't just sit down and talk out a relationship dispute there has to be a lot of dancing and staring at each other doesn't they backed up by their racially diverse mates

videos that set up an adversarial situation are always great i mean me and sarah talked about the meatloaf and share video a while back and i think this is possibly the greatest video like that since that one i think serious by donna allen is the gold standard and the granddaddy of them all of course is america in the film version of west side story that's the origin point isn't it of all this more people should settle their relationship disputes with a bit of a dance with the mates and what fucking dancing yeah oh yes it's almost a disappointment that it seems to work in the end yeah i kind of wanted to they sit down and he buys her a donut and stuff and it's like oh, it's like the bar is still pretty low here.

Like, you know, I wanted her to just, you know, stomp out of there and take everyone with her, including the chef. So he couldn't get anything to eat at the diner. Yeah, the chef's the right fucking Trump, isn't he? He's got lank hair and we see him picking at the icing on one of the cakes. Yeah, he's the comic relief. It's a whole little story told in in shoulder movements yes unblinking straight into camera stares yeah it's nice that it works out at the end well for now you know you can tell he's on his last warning it works out but

there's no softening to janet no and that's because of the dance moves yeah of course sort of rigid lines in dance movement had existed before in terms of doing a moves. Of course, sort of rigid lines in dance movement had existed before in terms of doing a robot and all of that sort of stuff. But nothing is fluid in these dance moves. Everything's straight lines. But that rigidity uncovers the funkiness in the arrangement of the song. So it's just a perfect combination between dance moves and the sound of the music. Dance moves that have actually been choreographed with a care for the sound of the record yeah it's interesting that um you know in a couple of years

time when um you know as you've already referenced now nothing going on but the rent becomes a hit you know that side of r&b no money no yeah that that side of r&b argument that side of r&b domestic argument you know no money no fan air that doesn't apply here because it's janet jackson she's got enough money yeah because step up to the mark or we're going to jeremy kyle if only jeremy kyle had dance routines it'd be still on today. The Jeremy Kyle dancers. Jesus Christ. Lie detector and co. It's more about the kind of emotional involvement, isn't it?

It's more about, like, are you going to show up in the larger sense in this relationship or not? Which is a recurrent theme in pop, but it's rarely done with this kind of reasonable aggression yeah and it stems from crucially jam and lewis being the first people to actually ask janet what she wanted to do yes and what she wanted to sing about and what she wanted to write so they gave her songs and they worked with her on songs that she wanted to do that had never happened before in her career yeah she wasn't going to be little janet jackson no and consequently you know control is obviously an important title for all kinds of reasons and i've said that it prophesizes the future but starts a lineage of black female artists who have just stayed uncompromised slightly isolated who

live off their hits and whose sporadicness just amplifies the myth around them so i you know i think so much comes from this like i mean tlc and stuff like that obviously but missy lauren hill mary j blige erica padu it all kind of starts with control i think and she's still only 20 at this point which is no age at all when you think about it no i just can't believe i met her you shook her hand didn't you yeah went to see him in rotterdam oh my god what a show i remember that review holy shit somewhat hysterical yeah no there was a meet and greet afterwards and i never normally do those things not not because i'm above that kind of thing it's just like they scare me but my god you don't get many chances to

meet janet jackson and it wasn't like you, we had a big effusive conversation. I was on the conveyor, you know, going past Janet, very small, obviously. And I just sort of leaned over and shook her hand and said, thank you, that show was amazing. And she just said, thank you very much. And that was that. But yeah, this hand has touched Janet Jackson's hand.

Oh my God. Ooh, how long before you washed it, Neil? I didn't go crazy about it, but, oh my God, what a moment. It was a levitating moment, that. It was every now and then in this shitty business of writing about pop music, you just have these moments that are just like,

fuck me, I can't believe that happened. And that was one of the pinnacles for me. But a year after this episode, when she's in London, she gets the privilege of sitting down with none other than rock expert david stubbs in an interview for melody maker oh neil you must have been right jealous of that i'd be i mean stubbs was my hero at this time anyway 86 87 so you know it was a meeting of minds there but i remember david unlike virtually everyone

else who spoke to janet in this period but just didn't condescend and didn't you know do those didn't ask loads of questions about fucking michael maybe that's because the first words out of her mouth to david were are you from the sky oh yeah and he immediately assumed that she was just barking mad or something but then she said that she meant sky magazine and then david immediately distinguishes himself by asking her if he could nick a grape off the table only to be told by her that it was actually an olive i remember that now then he asked her what she's up to and uh she says oh I've just got myself a pet bear. As you do. Sadly, or luckily, wasn't sat on her lap at the time staring at David.

And yeah, she just said that her time bunkered away in Minneapolis was a proper woodshedding period that dragged her right out of the showbiz bubble and helped her to become her own person. And David thought that was nice. I don't know if he shook her hand. I'm sure he did, but you know, the miraculous thing about Janet, I mean, Sarah mentioned the Rhythm Nation album. The more you listen to that album,

it's actually better than Control a little bit. It's an astonishing album, that. But she's managed to keep her mystique intact, Janet, completely intact in all the years since. You know, wardrobe malfunctions notwithstanding she's oh yes she's done that it's great that um since she has read every mention of her ever she will now know that you believe her to be the first human who evolved to actually have sex with herself yes i believe i did

such a great line. But you know, that's the thing about writing live reviews. If you do them on the night or like in the morning because you're on a weekly deadline or whatever, you can't keep out the frothy excitement that you're in. It was just astonishing seeing Janet Jackson live. She was amazing and shaking her hand and all of that. I'll never forget that.

I'll also never forget that that was the review where I first had a run-in with uh mark shittle and regarding his ideas about you know making references because because i said in the review i think i said uh yeah we're not in kansas anymore because her show was amazing and all sorts of costume changes and it came out and it said something like um and just like Dorothy in the classic film, we said, well, we're not in Kansas anymore. Fucking with my rhythm, man. But anyway, yeah.

So the following week, what have you done for me lately? Soared another 10 places to number six and a week later got to number three, its highest position. The follow-up, Nasty, got to number 19 for two weeks in June and she completed her 1986 run of singles with When I Think of You getting to number 10 in September and Control stalling at

number 42 in November. She went on to rack up 35 more top 40 singles including 15 top tenors and she got one of her nips out at the Super Bowl and made American religious bellends throw a proper mod on, which was skill. I wonder what event she's saving to get the other one out. That's Janet Jackson. Right now,

here's my favourite of the new entrants this week. Straight in at 28, making their debut on Top of the Pops tonight. We welcome It's Immaterial with Driving Away From Home. Hey. Now just get in. And close the door. And put your foot down. And close the door.

And put your foot down. We don't even get the benefit of seeing Davis back in the studio because there's so much to fit in. So while Janet and her bloke do the dance of reconciliation, he prepares us for what he reckons is the pick of this week's new entries. Driving away from home, Jim'sune by It's Immaterial. Formed in Liverpool in the mid-70s, Albert Dock and the Cod Warriors were an art rock group led by John Campbell, who were the in-house band at Eric's,

the spawning ground for Liverpoolian bands of the 80s, and supported the Sex Pistols there in October of 1976. In April of 1977, they changed their name to Yachts and supported Elvis Costello at Eric's, which led to a one single deal with Stiff Records. But soon afterwards, Campbell left the band to return to his art school course. However, he soon plunged back into the music scene, and in 1980, he formed It's Immaterial,

so-called because they didn't give a toss what the band was called, along with assorted members of Yachts, who were floundering by this time despite supporting The Who on their 1979 tour, and would eventually split up in 1981. A year later, they tacked on Jarvis Whitehead, who Campbell had first met at that Sex Pistols gig and started picking up John Peel sessions and occasional appearances in the independent charts. But after a while, assorted members started to drift away, including Henry Priestman, who went on to form the Christians, and they were

reduced to a two-piece. This single, the follow-up to Ed's Funky Diner, which failed to chart, was recorded in Milwaukee under the supervision of Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, but they didn't like the country and western feel he'd decided to drape it in or the rhythm section he'd got in so they went behind his back and got the engineer to record their own version however they did keep in the harmonica bit which was recorded by a local musician called Jim Lieber who did regular session work in Nashville hence the Jim's tune part of the song title. To their astonishment, it entered the charts at number 96 a fortnight ago. To their even greater astonishment, it was picked up on by Daytime Radio 1, who played the shit out of it, which caused it to soar 38 places to number 58.

And this week, after an appearance on Wogan, it soared another 30 places to number 28 and here they are on the top of the pop stage making their debut performance well what a meteoric rise chaps but oh dear the limitations of top of the pops as new neon set reveals itself in full doesn't it it does because the top of the pop stage is kind of like reveals itself in full, doesn't it? It does, because the Top of the Pops stage is kind of like a stage in a very busy nightclub or venue. Yes. And it really does not work for essentially sort of dismalists like this band are.

Yeah. There's a real incongruity between their appearance and what they look like and the song that they're singing and the kind of buzzy flounciness of the stage. Yeah, I mean, on that stage are a couple of understated post-punk veterans with an old-school radio mic and an acoustic guitar, and they're backed by a woman on a keyboard and a bloke on a stool with a harmonica. Underneath a glowing, pulsing pyramid, looking for all the world,

as if they've been accidentally booked to play Barry Noble's Astoria on Miss on miss wet t-shirt night or an advert for terry's pyramid it's a clash isn't it i remember seeing this and i seem to recall on chart music i talked about tears for fears and how disappointed i was with what they look like um and how they dance no doubt, yeah. Because I remember all that radio play, and it did get a lot of radio play. Catchy chorus. So I kind of liked it. And I didn't know anything about them or where they were from. And, you know, seeing them actually in the flesh,

I just got this crushing sense of disappointment. What were you expecting, Neil? Well, I mean, the record is quite a suggestive record. And I just thought they were americans or something or at least americans were involved i don't know i thought they they'd look cooler than they did i think i'd seen the video but what was the video for this because i know they they did one for the tube and then there was one later that turned up the videos are far more sort of collaged indetermerminate Affair,

where you can kind of ignore the Google Maps has had a point too many nature of the lyrics, because the visuals were kind of cool, the sound was kind of American. It almost convinced me they were American. But here in the studio, in the Top of the Pop studio, you get what its material actually are. You know, a few drippy Liverpudlians who happen to have stumbled on a great chorus. Why do you think radio one played this to death i mean radio one would do that every now and again but it'd be stuff like the oldest swinger in town or captain beaker i mean to radio one this is an absolute novelty isn't it i think the novelty aspects are the the verses yeah those chatty verses

spoken word kind of about the m62 and and other things that that kind of makes it oh i know those places i know those roads and then the chorus is undeniably catchy it's funny i've seen some heated arguments about this record among music journos and other nerds oh really yeah yeah there's a big love hate divide and i'd completely get it because i was like i don't know how i feel about this i remember it from the time where i remember the chorus because it was everywhere i guess i would have just heard it on the radio um i don't remember seeing this performance so i had no notion of what they looked like until now really and then i was like oh yeah no that makes sense yeah that the chorus seems to come out of nowhere but the verse is definitely of that guy who's a sort of floppy student fop you know um but i winced a little bit because

he doesn't really have the driving voice if you will for that sort of sprecker zhang talking over music in the first but it totally works i am fully on board with this now having listened to it and looked at it several times and right it's so clever and it's so sweet yeah it sounds american mostly where that comes from i think is that bass line yeah which is a very classic country and western kind of bass that's what it reminded me of. It reminded you of what? How? It made me want to make a tank out of a cotton reel and some matchsticks. Oh, how?

How? Yes, I blanked that out completely, yeah. Oh, Sarah. Terrifying. It was terrifying. Anywho, it's the sound of country and western. Also, it's the sound of going in a car across america isn't it doesn't that just ping that neuron in your head it's like that's it sounds like a road

trip there's just something about that that evokes such an experience yeah so you know that's obviously not an accident but then you get the lyrics which are very kind of self-consciously like oh teehee we're in this funny little country and we're pretending like we're in america yeah and going on a massive road trip oh it's only 30 miles to manchester down the ice and i first winced at that really hard and just went oh my god and then i was like no no this is really charming because the way that the chorus then sweeps that away and is so evocative and it's really brilliant, I think. There's...

Oh, it's also, it's a lot like, not to suggest that they ripped this off at all, but Prefab Sprout had their album Steve McQueen out last year. Right. And there's a track on that called Farron Young. Right, yeah, yeah. Which is a lot like this. It's very Stan Ridgeway as well, isn't it?

Do you think? Oh, yeah, there's a bit of that. And it's kind of Chris Isaac-ish as well. The production's lovely. I'd love to know what Simon thinks about this, because it really does lean deep into I lost my bag at Newport Pagnol territory. But, you know, I remember hearing this as a 17-year-old lad

who had failed his one and only driving test. The idea that you could leave your house, get into a car and go to another city did my head in and the idea of having mates who lived in manchester or newcastle or or even glasgow that was a mind blast you know right about this time i got to know someone who lived in surrey a up hall i'll be all right doc and you know i crashed around his ass one weekend it was like being abroad like all the chain shops were in different places to each other that was insane yeah when cities look different yeah yeah i mean i'm sure we've all had that sense of like claustrophobia that this song evokes of like how small it is here and especially now i think there's this sort of suffocating sense

of shrinkage where it's like harder to do anything here it's harder to even exist at all and it's harder than it's ever been to go and live anywhere else and you that's that's an unpleasant fucking feeling and you know that it's been driven by malign forces but it's easy to forget like even before the pandemic like we just went on holidays here because it's like well there's a place we haven't been we haven't been there either it's lovely you know it's just like oh yeah you haven't been to this that you know it's an island there's loads and loads of places on the coast that you can go to and they're all so so different from each other yeah and it's not that's what especially if you don't drive you know it's it's not that small you wouldn't want to fucking drive across it in a day would you well maybe

across it but not not not the whole length of it and um you know it's from an american perspective obviously they drive five hours to like buy a nice coffee mug which is not necessarily good no you you're sort of trying to think is there like a bit of smugness in in this uh because he does he does have a slightly smug sound to his voice but i think it's just it's awkwardness and i think there's this lovely combination of things going on in this and it's partly there's a kind of expression of that yearning to be elsewhere just somewhere else you go down the motorway for 30 miles and it's somewhere completely different with different people with different everything yeah and that's such a part of the human experience and specifically

the kind of yearning of some of the English for America, like that largeness of self and that uninhibitedness that a lot of people, I think, feel. I have definitely felt that in my life, just gone, you know, I was going to go and live there, I've got family there and stuff, and I never did, which is probably for the best. But just the sensibility, I think, of just going, I'm frustrated by the constraints of this culture

and the smallness of it and I want to go somewhere else. But if you can't, you make the best of it where you are. And that's all in there. And it's just the vocal line of the chorus that does this for me. It does sound like trundling down a motorway at night in a Ford Fiesta with the heaters on full blast. And there's like a comforting little metallic rattle and it can't be identified, but it's not getting any worse. worse and it's that thing there's this lovely melancholy to it and also just a sense of

like defiantly romanticizing where you live why not do that do that yes but the thing is i agree it has this yearning to it but my relationship with the record has completely changed over the years because you know i'm not a passenger anymore i'm the driver now i'm dad cabs i have to drive everywhere um if you're in the back seat oh here we go if you're in the back seat right of a car you can entertain these kind of dreams um and that record this record really did speak to me as a frequent passenger you know down the motor way it has got that yearning to it but these chatty verses um with the lead blokes kind of increasingly annoying thoughts about the view out of the window they just annoy me now um as a driver there's a midnight run sense in which if this guy was your kidnap victim, you'd pull over on the hard shoulder of Snake Pass and just abandon him there

because he just will not shut up with his rambling. Oh, wow, well, little chef, perhaps we could go for breakfast or if you'd rather I've made some sandwiches, would you like cheese? I've made them all. Do you want a United or a club or a trade? Just get out, man. You know know I mean oh man he's brought all his stuff from home and he cut the sandwiches like diagonally instead

it's got to be a mint for me orange yeah orange I'm with you Sarah and look if you're not in a car with this cunt fairly rapidly you would just be really angry with him i realize it's a kind of you know all the world's our oyster you know vague song but i mean look if i'm in the driving seat i want to know where are we going you know manchester newcastle glasgow there's no mention of stopping at services either as a dad no likes to plan journeys like this i can feel my dadly rage rising at his kerouac style. You know, let's just hit the road and see where it takes us. Imprecision.

That's kind of like in television, you generally don't see anyone go to the loo. Because you know that that's going to happen at some point, but you don't need to see it. You know, it's like going to the services is a really functional part of travelling that you don't need in your sort of romantic little song about the m62 i mean for me going to the services is romantic because my dad he never stopped at services oh he always just kept going i mean unless we needed a way that was a different thing but that would be pulling over the hard shoulder and having a slash in a bush or something i mean i remember these long journeys mainly because whenever we pulled into a petrol station and my dad had this weird thing um of writing down the mileage and how much he'd paid for the fuel and right all of this in a little red book that was in the glove

compartment oh like keith pratt i reckon it's a post op-ed crisis thing i don't know what it is but um yeah i mean that was the only break that we had canal but yeah the annoyance of this song now is probably because i'm a driver and it is not helped by the the top of the pop stage um no really doesn't do them any favors um i think there would have been much better off yeah just playing the video for this i mean this is their moment in the sun after years of toil don't seem to be enjoying it do they it's sort of in character kind of it would be weird if they came out smiling. They have done a lot of driving away from home of late because in tomorrow's Liverpool Echo,

John Campbell talks about how it feels to have made the big time after so many years of near misses and knockbacks and doesn't sound like he's having a laugh at all. Quote, Ask him if he really wants to be a star and the silence is deafening before he says yes. If there is a reluctance, it is only because he wants it, on his terms. Already the pace of having hit the charts in one of the fastest-selling singles of the year has taken its toll.

Seven television appearances in eight days. No sleep for three nights while they work in the studio on a debut album, interviews, appearances, more interviews, photo sessions, and so it goes. I'm knackered, he says. It really has gone crazy. The single has come from nowhere and we really didn't expect it to be like this. I can see how some people just get blown away from it all. I never want us to be in the position where our music suffers because of all the razzmatazz. It worries me a bit because at the moment it hasn't really sunk in. You spend all your life wanting to be successful and then when it happens it seems like it's happening to someone else

you watch top of the pops and wogan and suddenly you were on it i was standing there on wogan miming along they won't let you sing live on it and thinking there's 11 million people watching me standing here miming and my bottle nearly went it was so weird. I wanted to get back home for a pint. You don't know what it's going to be like until it happens. No. And then you still don't know what it's like because it's this weird machine that is working without you and you're just sort of in it.

I totally get that. This is a foreshadowing of all those other indie-ish bands who suddenly become massively successful, isn't it? Yeah, but when does that start happening? Those who suddenly become massively successful isn't it yeah but when does that start happening those indie bands becoming massively successful i would argue that after 86 that doesn't happen for a while and and you know what we're about to see in 87 is static and a walkman coming in and these kind of one-off little hits that would weirdly get a load of radio play i mean like it's immaterial like you said they've got these long routes back in liverpool's kind of indie past um you know they're almost like the

last knockings of that liverpool scene from the avengers very much so i mean i think the christians do have hits don't they or a hit at least but that kind of thing of a band with a history getting a hit like this that's going to stop for a few years until kind of Manchester and Britpop come along. And that starts happening again. So this is a kind of last hurrah for that. Because, you know, in 87, Stoic and Waterman are just going to take over. Anything else to say about this? I always hated the name.

I think it's a silly, smug name. It's that very sort of, oh, we're above, of pop bands with their silly names, you know. And I thought, I bet this is, you know, this is one of those proper one-hit wonders where that's all they had. So I actually listened to the album. It's really good. Right.

It's a really gorgeous sound and very interesting songwriting, all restrained just the right amount because you can tell that they've figured out that they don't want to be you know too self-consciously quirky which is what you get a bit of in this single there's a mass of ideas but it's all really thoughtfully arranged that nothing is too crammed in so it's really dense but lots of space there's a bit of it sounds a bit teardrop explodes a bit tears for

fears a bit scott walker right and um a Talk Talk. Like, I read an interview with John Campbell saying that they were the band that they had the most sort of kinship with when they were around at the time. It's, you know, and there's almost a bit of Crowded House in there, just that sort of softness. Right.

Yeah, it's really good. I really recommend it. I'm fully on board with this band now, and I think they didn't get their due at all. No. There's loads of, like, lost bands who you sort of think, you know, well, in another universe they're

as big as you know they're as big as tears for fears or whatever yeah but it's like it's partly there's loads of stuff that went wrong they just were sort of doing oh yes bands like this i i have sympathy with because they don't fit in immediately and you're a bit unusual you end up nowhere because labels and publishers don't have the imagination to promote these things on their own terms that's something that that is never going to change i think yeah sarah b persuades me to listen to it's a material was not something i predicted for 2023 maybe they should have put them in a vintage car like the mixtures back in the early 70s or got them to dress up as um paett and Dave Lee Travis doing Convoy UK. So the following week,

driving away from home leapt another 10 places to number 18, but a combination of the label not having pressed enough copies of the single, the band burning themselves out from making so many TV appearances, no available promo video to fall back on at the time, apart from one recorded by the Tube which appeared only once and they weren't going to let out to the BBC,

and their label Siren moving on to other bands as they assumed their work was done, leading to the single dropping four places the week after, and it's slipping down the charts with a rushed out official video doing nothing to turn the tide the follow-up a re-release of ed's funky diner only made it to number 65 in august their debut lp life's hard and then you die got to number 62 in the lp chart in september and this remains their one and only appearance on top of the pops. They're still active today putting out their third LP House for Sale in 2020, 27 years after they first started work on it. I'm flying home 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 not fair he's got a bigger microphone than me it's immaterial right now let's have a look at this week's top 10 and going up eight places to number ten, Big Country, Look Away. Up six to nine, Simple Minds, All The Things She Said. Aha, and Train of Thought, they're at one place to number eight. The Real Thing, You To Me Are Everything, are down one to seven.

And down three to six, Sam Cooke with Wonderful World. Down one to five, Samantha Fox, Touch Me, I Want Your Body. Up three to four, Queen, A Kind of Magic. Falco, Rock Me Amadeus is up two places to number three. And after three weeks at the top, Cliff Richard and the Young Ones are down to number two, which means Britain has a brand new number one. Here in the studio, George Michael at a different corner. After displaying severe microphone envy, Davis breaks down the top ten.

Oh, two re-releases in the top ten, chaps. You to me are everything by The Real Thing and Wonderful World by Sam Cooke. Why, it's almost as if the nation is starting to give up on the 80s music wise at least anyway yeah a lot of us were a lot of us were before we move on um i've got to point out that i am no judge of the female gaze and i'm speaking as someone who isn't even a child's finger painting let alone an oil one but i must say that i've seen very little in gary davis's performance tonight that would make the housewives of britain cut themselves in a special place especially when compared to the next act so why are these sex

workers throwing themselves through glass to get to him now it's in the eyes, man. It's in the eyes. He's got Gary Davis eyes. But they are. It's got fairly big eyes. They're kind of, yeah, wet with longing. And perhaps the hair as well. Yeah. I've got to say,

he's an extraordinarily good Nick nowadays. Fucking hell. He looks better now than he did then. Much like all of us, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. nick nowadays fucking out he looks better now than he did then much like all of us i think oh yeah yeah yeah definitely finally davis introduces the number one single a different corner by george michael we've covered george michael in his debut solo single careless whisper a couple of times on chart music and this is the follow-up he's still a member of Wham but not for much longer

because seven weeks ago he announced that he was not only splitting with the duo's management company after they were bought out by another company that was 40% owned by a South African investments group that also owns Sun City but he's splitting the duo up. Even though there's a farewell single, LP and Wembley Stadium gig to come this summer, the solo career has already started. And this single, which was written and recorded from gun to tape in 14 hours, was released three weeks ago. And when Simon Bates played it for the first time on Radio 1, he was so taken by it that he lifted the needle, dropped it at the beginning,

and played it again because he's Simon Bates and he does what the fuck he likes. It smashed into the chart as the highest new entry at number four a fortnight ago, nipped up to number two last week, and this week it's pushed the double-decker bus containing cliff richard and the young ones off the summit of mount pop and here he is actually in the studio like he was a real life human being doing his stubbly mullity thing and it's clear by now chaps that george michael has won the 80s hands down isn't it yeah i mean practically all his contemporaries from the early 80s have either fallen off or

become the things they were railing against when they first started and it is he and he alone that stands at the top of the summit with his future mapped out seemingly for the rest of the century. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he looks like fucking Lion-O from Thumbnail. Great. In a way. Amazing boots, jeans, big hair, fresh stubble. He still looks like a pop star, and the audience are looking at him like he is. Yeah.

And they're not chucking balloons about. No. Well, they'd just burst on his stubble, wouldn't they? His peers, or his new tier of peers, are falling over themselves to shower plays upon the man, the musician, and yes, the business model. He's already recorded with Elton John and David Cassidy. Just been announced today that he's going to be working

on a single in Los Angeles with Stevie Wonder. According to John Blake's White Hot Club in the Mirror, it's a ballad in the same vein as Careless Whisper, but somehow it's more adult. It's very electric and possibly the best thing he has ever done. Well, it probably wasn't because nothing ever comes of it, but he's very much in demand by the giants of pop. I mean, Elton john himself said along with perhaps blank george michael is the greatest

songwriter of his generation who do you think blank is who do we think elton john thinks blank is uh yeah um i don't know we'll come to that later then shall we i've got to say this is a fucking weird number one isn't it probably one of the weirdest number ones of the 80s. Yeah, it's so strange to be number one. Yeah. Do you think this would have been number one if anybody else but George Michael had recorded it? No, probably not.

That's the thing, isn't it, is that it's George... I mean, it's partly all these people have fallen over themselves to work with him because sometimes talent will out and sometimes you recognise that someone is on track to join the great you know it's this very sparse deeply weird chorus-less song and the fact that he only he could infuse it with this sort of billowing emotion and that's why that's why it's

number one it's because it's fucking heartbreaking and it does stuff i mean the thing is i don't experience synesthesia you know the thing where like colors taste of things and stuff um but this song has always done explodey things to my brain and like this song is obviously very bright white isn't it yes it's white it's a huge white empty song. And it's like, and it tastes of crushed ice. There's a clip, a little tiny clip in the middle of the video, which is indeed George sitting around a massive white room. And that's what it had to be because that's what this song is, is a huge white room. And there's this amazing contrast between like the deep, familiar, roasty warmth of George Michael's voice and this kind of ice palace around it. You keep waiting for some strings or something that never arrived.

Something because there's this sort of drone and you expect some sort of flourish or something to hold on to. And all you get is this kind of there's a sort of sympathetic spanish guitar which i think they could have left out because it adds a sort of note of comforting sorrow which is not really what this song is about yeah it's almost like yeah oh you know maybe you start looking through airbnbs in minorca maybe i can start to heal gone a nice holiday maybe even have a little holiday romance no no you have to sit in that corner with your pain as if it will never end. That's, you know, and there's a kind of shattered tremulous piano. It sounds like it's playing way down the hall somewhere.

All you have to cling on to is this kind of light synth bass, which is kind of round and friendly. Bom, bom, bim. And it kind of bounces, but also establishes this sense of hollowness. It's almost like the prisoner ball coming towards you well how bad can it be it's just a big white ball no no it's misery forever that's what it is yeah i mean it's almost like the music you do when channel four ad ad breaks with no adverts a few years previous no this is not something you could ever put i'm really glad it's never been licensed to my knowledge like there are so many things where you know you hear an advert and and you go how has that been allowed is there not some sort of council

where i know it doesn't matter but it's like sometimes you'll hear like nina simone i think you go how what why is this on a car advert you know fuck fuck the now but i was just gonna say oh i wonder what happens when george michael. What music will they use in the adverts? And then I go, he's dead. He died fucking years ago. It still doesn't compute that George Michael isn't on the living side of the world. He is one of those. It is like an error in reality.

Indeed. I mean, it was Christmas Day and the news came through and I got it. This is how I always end up hearing the news of big people dying is somebody that assumes that i already know going oh isn't it sad about amy winehouse isn't it at a festival what isn't it sad about george michael what what the fuck and i was with you know all my favorite people and we were all quite quite merry and stuff and just like oh and it was you know it was so sad well i i think um the the word sorry is was sparse and that's exactly it it's so weird for me to see this in its original context because i remember when this song came out i simply did not get it because i was young and

this is an intensely adult song in a lot of oh yes it's got no drums i mean i hated all records without drums pretty much and and as a young person it just seemed like this got to number one because it was george yeah because he's a big enough star to just generate this instant sort of buy before you try thing he has this commercial momentum that can't be stopped i mean i still think that actually but the older i've got the more this song gets to me and the more this song rises in the george pantheon to the point i'd put it only second to to fast love i think right it's like it's one of his finest moments and it is such a sparse number one yeah um barely there at all you know just two verses really and the first George Michael record I think where rather than going somewhere or doing something he's paralyzed

in this record it's all wispy and cloudy because the protagonist of the record George is confused and despairing and just kind of wandering around his his own paralysis yeah he's not going for anything at the moment is a no and he's crucially it's one of his first records to not mimic anything to not sound like club music on it it's completely unique on the back of the sleeve to this record it says dedicated to a memory yeah and on the front there's just this black and white shot of a guy with his back to the camera, some distance away, walking into a park, kind of totally alone. It looks like the cover to Joy Division's Atmosphere. Right.

Now, although George was still officially one half of Wham!, it's hard not to read this song as a kind of farewell to all that. And it really is a true solo record, you know, entirely composed, sung, played and produced by the same person. And we won't get that again until sort of White Town. And it's the first one of those since Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You. The sound of this record, though, it's more like sort of Eno or ambient music. And I kind of wonder a lot about what was influencing George at this time. Yeah.

about what was influencing george at this time yeah he has recently appeared on a at this point on a bbc2 arts documentary where he reviews mark johnson's um an ideal for living book about joy division and on that he speaks really warmly about joy division's music yes he does yeah yeah i wonder is that the one with morrissey in it as well yeah i think tony blackburn yeah yeah yeah a meeting of minds yeah but but i mean beyond beyond the farewell to one thing there's also a subtext here that perhaps couldn't be discussed at the time um the song seems to be about a friend he can't bring himself to tell he's in love with you know i would promise you all of my life but to lose you would cut like a knife so i don't dare yeah because i've never come close in all of these years you're the only one to stop my tears i'm so scared this paralyzing fear of rejection that prevents him from getting close

to his desired other but also stops him from moving away it's this torture of a kind of lifelong compromise and all of this amazing lyrics is conducted in perhaps the first... Yeah, George Michael Ray, it doesn't feel like a pastiche of other music. Wham! Records picked off genres and whammed them up. Yes. You know, whether that's rap or 60s Motown or disco. This one really doesn't. And in a weird way, it's almost like it's a very indie song in a way it's like

a homage to jimmy webb or carl wilson type songwriting the beach boys at their most strung out yeah i mean it was startling to hear a song like this from george at this point it's about disillusionment and broken hopes but there's a dissonance in this performance because yeah it's a song coming from this small cramped space but he yeah he looks like fucking lion oh he still looks like a pop star all the neon's gone replaced by a burst of white light presumably in an attempt to ape the video and a background of huge perspex test tubes with george in a dark leather jacket with all manner of fringing on it over a white shirt with jeans and brown cowboy boots it's got to be said he looks fucking awful man he looks like he's just joined a cowboy club

up the road okay my argument uh my counter to that al is who gives a shit right it's different yeah and and also kind of chucking it was 1986 in the top of the pops a week before brian ferry pitches up doing his latest single he's got a fucking awful blue jacket on with all the fringing it's like he's wearing every single one of roger daltrey's jackets from the early 70s and fucking out in 1986 even made brian ferry look shit i think i i do think Brian Ferry is slightly overrated as a style icon because he did wear some ludicrous shit in his time. But yes, it was 1986. What are you going to do?

Deliberately ludicrous. In 1986, this is the look he's going for and it's, oh, it's dreadful. Video playlist, pop craze youngsters. Are we talking about Brian Ferry now or can we get back to talking about George Michael? Talk about George Michael, Doc. Poor poor poor yog he deserves better than this i mean i just i think he was he was a great pop star and that doesn't mean that he wasn't sometimes slightly i mean

obviously he was uncomfortable in his own skin because for obvious reasons and i think sometimes that went all the way to the clothes but sarah in the video he looks mint he's almost white pajama isn't it yeah it's the kind of very expensive like linen white flowing kind of garb that's sort of aesthetic maybe i'll just go and become a monk kind of way yes you could i suppose imagine george doing a different corner in his video garb but that wouldn't have been significantly better i don't think i mean it is weird to see him singing this bright white song of desolation that is literally like being inside a cloud that is filled with your own tears but um i and so it's weird that

he's wearing jeans and a and a fringed cowboy jacket and cowboy boots like it you know like a normal man who wasn't aching through to his soul but he had to wear something you know it's like but also the thing is i think that as you mentioned the audience you can't even sway no all you can do is stand still and that's because the music is is evoking this sense of frustrated movement. What you experience is total stasis and paralysis. And that's what the audience do. There's a couple of them that are having a go at swaying, but it doesn't really work. And then there's two of them that I noticed,

there's one long shot just over a girl's shoulder, and you just see her big fluffy hair to the left of the screen. And she's completely still as if she's wrapped with attention. And, you know, obviously he's miming. He's not even, you know. But that's what the record does to you. It freezes you. Yeah, yeah.

And there's a boy with bleach blonde hair down on the right. And he's so still, he looks like a mannequin. When I spotted him, I was like, oh, man. It's so fucking emotional. But it's like a liminal state in song form. So putting that, I mean, it's incredible that it's number one and it's incredible that it's on top of the pops top of the pops can't really contain this song the performance and the song and the reaction to it it reminded me of four years previous on top of the pops ghosts by japan

right just this really sparse song that the kids just go pat it's a fucking weird record this and i think definitely the weirdest number one of the eight is if george michael was was more hip in a sense at this time this would have been rightly hailed as a total masterpiece you know one of the most important records of the decade but what stops the record being a hip indie record is the vocal because at key moments that choked vocal he's kind of doing becomes a full-on the michael roar if you like not to force the lion over stereo too far but but tellingly in the arrangement what happens the louder george gets is that he feels further away yeah the production gives the record that kind of fisheye lens feel and this is george's

decision because he's done this himself yeah um you know that fisheye lens feel that at the point he's trying to come across as strong it's actually the point in which he recedes into his his own bubble of loneliness even more i mean of course none of this would have registered with me at the time at all and at this point in the episode i'd have just thought no drums and walked out but some things i just think you have to grow into and this is definitely one of them it's become one of my favorite records and it points towards listen without prejudice massively i think yeah um but and what's odd is how it's become an almost forgotten george michael track yes you know because you never hear

it on the radio or anything but it's one of his absolute best yeah you can understand really why it doesn't get played and stuff because it's just so affecting you know i mean like you said that echo of his voice at the end it is like he has left the room and like his soul has left his body and is offering itself to any entity that could promise him a return to being lonely and confused because that is better than this fuck you know that's not that no i mean it is like this sort of suspended waltz it's kind of hanging there in the air and it's kind of not a pleasant listen in some ways because it's really it's so full of pain and so it aches every line of it just aches and i i remember feeling this at the time it was one of those little inklings that you

get as a kid of what adult life is like and i was like woof yeah this doesn't sound good like it was just it was there was this great mystery about it that really drew me in and you couldn't help but feel something it was just like i don't know what's going on here, but I feel it, you know. This is the other thing that this made me think of. I haven't thought of for ages. I went to an Anthony Gormley show about 15 years ago, and there was an actual artificial cloud that was created by humidifiers in a big glass box. It's called blind light.

And you could go in, like 20 people at a time could go in. And it was like a cool, when you went in, it's like, oh, it's cool. It's this fine white mist. and you could go in like a few people like 20 people at a time could go in and it was like a cool when you went it's like oh it's cool it's this fine white mist and you could breathe perfectly normally but you couldn't see anything like so you have to blunder around with your arms out and suddenly there would be another person like a stranger right there on your face and so there was much bumping and giggling but there is no bumping in a different corner and certainly no giggling nor nor may there ever be again. You're in this room of mist all alone and if you reach out for the touch of another human being all you find is a cold wall of glass.

I mean, he's still a member of Wham! but this is the most unwam single ever, isn't it? Very much so. And a bizarre choice as a single, really. I mean, they could be sure it would be a hit it's george do you think anyone would be seeing this as a new one single because after all it's not like andrew's contribution to this is any less than it was in last christmas or i'm your man it's just not in the video this time well as one dissolved and

george started his solo career there was a sort of confusion about, you know, the status of the band. That's what's odd really thinking about this performance. He's made this song. And if you make a song like this, it changes everything in terms of what you realize that you're capable of. And it must've been so odd for George to go from this,

you know, back to singing, wake me up before you go, go. Yeah. I mean, he had, he had range, you know? Yeah. I mean, it is go go yeah well he had he had range you know yeah i mean it is a one-off but like you say it points towards what he's going to produce in the future and i think he was very sure of his own ability and his own vision and what he wanted to do and so he did it but there's a mystery to this record that i think was possibly

also mysterious to george himself you know sometimes artists they just make something that i'm not saying is beyond their capabilities and certainly he he was responsible for all of this but there's a magic and a mystery to this that that goes beyond even his authorship of it it's it's a really odd record yeah i'm so glad we got to cover it because it really is remarkable this one yeah if you if you make art at all sometimes you will have that experience where you go shit where did that come from and you see why is that people just go oh you know it's it's uh it's god working through me or whatnot but if you you know if you don't believe in that way there's still something where you go

that's beyond me i how am i capable of that because work comes through people and it is of them but it's not necessarily it's it is it's a mysterious process and so yeah of course if if you are in tune with if you're if you're good and you're sort of in tune with your own instrument and you are sincere and you're not trying to make it all about yourself and you want to reach other people and connect somehow with... I mean, God, this song is so, so desolate, but it is reaching for contact with someone else. And, hey, that could be you, because you're listening to it.

And that's why he was one of the greats, because he could do that. And, yeah, it is transcendent. Do you think there's a comparison to be drawn between George Michael in 1986 and Paul Weller in 1982? You know, because he is splitting his band at their absolute peak. No, I just don't think George Michael needs to disown

his past quite as much as Paul Weller does. I'm not saying Paul Weller's disowning the jam, but he's going in a deliberately un-Rocky direction. George Michael post-WAM, I think as a songwriter, he's just realising, fuck me,

I can actually talk about the reality of my situations and I don't have to plaster on the perfect smile anymore. But he's actually, he's gone beyond that in terms of, it could have been awful, man. He could have made deliberately dark music, which this isn't. It's something else.

And he's realising the variety of stuff that he's capable of i think this is a record beyond all of us but also beyond george a little bit and that's what's so special about it because people tend to forget that one were the only teeny group of their era that also had a sizable chunk of male fans you know there were loads of lads in my year when i was at secondary school just went mental with the hairspray and the fake tan and the feeler tops if only to look like something that girls of the time fancied and i can't see them lads being into this preview of softer solo george because it's even more of a departure than careless whisper yeah yeah completely um but i mean you

know it is at number one yeah someone must have bought it well yeah completely um but i mean you know it is at number one yeah someone must have bought it well yeah someone's but i think partly yeah there is that automatic it's george buy it yeah but partly you know i mean imagine hearing this coming out of the radio there's going to be some people who are grown up enough to accept it and it was just going to be stopped in their tracks by this record well you won't see this record in the end of year enemy or melody maker polls as a great single but it it pisses from a great height on virtually every other thing um that probably was getting lauded this year but you can't lord it in the inkeys because it's george michael but like that anthony gormley exhibition sarah there are clouds on the horizon in an interview with the

enemy a couple of months from now, on the verge of Wham's last gig, Matt Snow brings up the rumour that the News of the World have a George Michael scandal story that they're not going to run until they feel it's safe to. And he asked George about it and he says, people do keep telling me there's going to be a story, but I can't think what it would be.

The News of the world's angle would have to be if it's big enough that they're sitting on it some kind of gay story either that or a pregnant girl it's unnerving to think that they're only waiting because they think the public likes me enough at the moment hopefully they'll have a long wait and then, I'll sue the arse off them laughs. I mean, we're 12 years away from George finally coming out, or at least being frog-marched out by the LAPD. But it's been an open secret in the pop world right from the off, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, that's so depressing to hear that. Yeah, yeah. It's so depressing. I mean, it's just incredibly tough to be gay and be yourself and be a pop star in the 80s. You can't do it because of these cunts at the News of the World and the rest of it. That's heartbreaking to hear, man.

Round about this time, Kelvin McKenzie's got fully on board with the who's gay and who's not, to the point of having a fucking whiteboard in the Sun officers with a list of who they know is gay, who they think is gay, and who they know isn't gay. And he's top of the list, isn't he? There's been rumours going around the club scenes in New York that he's had a dirty weekend with a fashion photographer.

But the tabloids held out for a very long time throughout the 80s, and it was only on the last day of 1985 that the Sun came out with a headline, It's a hit, gender bender DJ thumps Wham George, about an altercation in a club where a drag DJ played I'm your man and sang lyrics about a fake relationship they were having and George went up and had it out with him. And since then, the poor sod's been walking about with a sword of murder cleese hanging over him. Yeah, I mean, there was that documentary recently which just recapped the whole fucking gruesome circus around his outage

and how he, you know, it was like a truckload of lemons fell on his head and he made the hardest, gayest, glitteriest lemonade out of it and put it outside. The most wonderful fuck you there has ever been. But yeah, it's disgusting disgusting i didn't feel good watching it because it is just people now who who really haven't done any reflecting you know basically blaming him for like well that's what happens when you try to keep a secret and it's a betrayal of your fans and this is kind of horrible punitive thing that they've used to justify the

monstering that they're doing of another fucking human being and it made me really glad that i never got into news in that way like i i did a little bit of news and i could not have done it i just couldn't and i understand yes people are just doing their jobs etc but fucking hell yeah but what what a shit job yeah what a shit job what the fuck are you doing at what point do you realize like you're tearing around going to brazil to like door stop the grieving mother of george's dead boyfriend and stuff you know just like what are you doing i never get that to be honest with you sarah from from fellow journalists who are like you know oh it's work you know he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled biblical but you know yeah i mean that's the thing is like a few hours after

he got outed he went on you know he went on cnn and was like yeah i am not going to apologize for this yes i am gay yeah of course i couldn't say anything before because look what's happened yeah and i'm not ashamed and it was incredible and he must have you know he knew that one day it was going to happen and all of these fucking vile vultures going you knew this would happen you knew this would happen it's like yeah yeah i did and now it's happened so get over it you know well that's what's heartbreaking about him not still being here yeah that's what's so horrible about this era fuckers like calvin mckenzie it's abuse and and they're keeping this kind of info on their files and exerting all the power over this and and it's just grotesque to say yeah so yeah this is why it's so heartbreaking that

george isn't here now i never got to see him live man and i would love to fucking watch george michael sing this precise song yeah because i suspect this precise song is something that george could have kept on singing for the rest of his life because it speaks of a feeling um that's just you know immense and universal even though even though it's so private and so personal, everyone has at some point felt this kind of paralysis of grief or whatever sadness you're going through. Yeah, it's just heartbreaking. Imagine his voice now singing this.

It would have been fucking amazing. Anything else to say about this? No, I need to dab at my eyes a little. Oh. Anything else to say about this? No, I need to dab at my eyes a little. Oh. So a different corner would spend three weeks at number one,

eventually giving way to Rock Me Amadeus. It made George Michael the first solo artist to score two number ones with his first two releases, the first person in the UK to score a number one hit that he wrote, sang and produced. But most importantly, it got to number seven in the UK to score a number one hit that he wrote, sang and produced, but most importantly, it got to number seven in the Billboard chart, which forced his American label to get their thumbs out their arses and prepare

for a massive push when his solo career began in earnest. Oh, and the other greatest songwriter of his generation, according to Elton John... It's not Morrissey, is it? Nick Kershaw.

Hey! Hey! George Michael, A Different Corner. Watch out for the big WAM concerts as well coming up this summer. Janice Long, Dixie Peach doing Top of the Pops next week. We'll leave you with a chart entry at 33 from Whitney Houston. Good night. I believe in you, I believe in you

Teach them well and let them lead the way Davis, aside the Top of the pop's logo of shame, reminds us of the big Wham concert at Wembley he'll be comparing soon. By the way, Chaps, do you know who the support acts were for Wham the final? Um, no. Nick Kershaw? I don't know.

Uh-huh. They started by screening the documentary Wham in China, Foreign Skies for the first time, breaking the record for the biggest audience for a film premiere by the way and then it was Nick Haywood and Gary Glitter I know

why Gary Glitter that is bizarre he then tells us that Janice Long and Dixie Peach will be in the chair next week and signs off with The Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston born in Newark New Jersey in 1963 Whitney Houston was the daughter of Sissy Houston who started the Drinkard sisters with her sisters in 1938 and was later joined by Sissy's niece Dionne Warwick in 1963 when Warwick. In 1963 when Warwick embarked on a solo career, Whitney's mum formed sweet

inspirations with Doris Troy and Dionne's sister Dee Dee who signed to Atlantic Records and spent the rest of the 60s backing practically every Stax artist as well as Van Morrison on Brown Eyed Girl and the Jimi Hendrix experience on Burning of the Midnight Lamp before backing Elvis when he returned to the stage at Las Vegas. By the age of 11, Whitney was soloing in a local gospel choir, but had also started to dabble with secular music, making her debut appearance at Manhattan Town Hall singing Tomorrow from Annie. By the late 70s, she was dividing her time between backing her mam, who had gone solo, and starting her career as a fashion model, appearing in Cosmo, Glamour, an advert for Canada Dry, and singing an advertising jingle for the restaurant chain

Steak and Ale. And while the likes of Michael Zager and Luther Vandross came a knocking offering record deals they were politely knocked back by her mam who wanted her to finish school first in February of 1983 an A&R from Arista Records saw her singing with her mam in a club in Manhattan and immediately begged his gaffer Clive Davis to sign her up. But there will be two years of woodshedding before she put out her first LP, Whitney Houston, on Valentine's Day of 1985. The first single from the LP, You Give Good Love, only got to number 93 in August of 1985 over here, but the follow-up, Saving All My Love For You,

did miles better, getting to number one for two weeks in December of that year, and would have been the Christmas number one, were it not for Comrade Shaker delaying Merry Christmas Everyone for a year to magnanimously allow Do They Know It's Christmas to have its little moment in 1984. This single, the follow-up to How Will I Know, which got to number five in February, is the seventh and final cut from her debut LP,

and was originally co-written in 1976 by Michael Massa, who wrote Touch Me In The Morning for Diana Ross, who was approached by Columbia Records to write a theme song for their Muhammad Ali biopic, The Greatest, and had actually relocated to Jerusalem to write the song because he felt just drawn there all summer. I don't know. It was originally recorded by George Benson, got to number 27 over here in October of 1977, and became part of Houston's early 80s repertoire. And although Clive Davis thought it

was too syrupy to put on a young new artist's first album, Houston, backed up by Massa, who she'd become mates with, threatened to scream and scream and scream until she was sick because she could if it wasn't put on the album. It entered the charts last week at number 46, and this week it's jumped 13 places to number 33. So here's a bit of video filmed at the actual Apollo in Harlem under some credits. And fucking hell, chaps, who would have thought that this song was about Muhammad Ali

and we can lump this in with Cash is Clay by Dennis Al Capone, Ali Shuffle by Alvin Cash, Rumble in the Jungle by The Fugies, and The Black Superman and In Zaire by Johnny Wakelin. Fucking hell. Yeah, that's a pub quiz question, isn't it? I mean, you do not expect that at all.

And I like the George Benson version of the... Yeah. Oh, poor Whitney. We're ending on two stars and we're no longer with her I prefer the Whitney who's allowed to dance with somebody with anybody

I still contend that It's Not Right is such a fucking amazing record because of that voice I think because of the success of this exact record, The Greatest Love Of All she's going to be firmly shoved from here on in, into this thing of doing ballads, which kind of inevitably ends with the Dolly Parton cover.

Yeah. And she's encouraged to just let her juggernaut voice do these big schmaltzy numbers. The trouble is, none of her producers or arrangers are smart enough to realise, with that kind of voice that Whitney's got, that melismatic, gymnastic voice, it's best to keep the arrangements kind of sparse.

The trouble is with this record is they try and match it. And consequently, we keep getting these records, as a listener, you feel kind of bullied and frog-marched into emotion. These kind of indistinguishably bombastic backing tracks always with that nescafe gold blend sax oh yes it kind of hammers the songs home but it also hammers all possible emotion out of the experience of listening to them so this left me a bit cold yeah it's too fucking much isn't it really like i i do i i think this is horrible and i um i loved whitney and i didn't

realize this actually until i was like when george michael died there was this pure sorrow that i could have known was coming and with whitney i was taken aback actually how upset i was when she died because i wasn't like a fan you know but some of them just get to you and for whatever reason it had something to do with how she had this great purity about her in some ways not to fetishize it as a lot of people did but this great incredible voice and she just ended up dead in a hotel bath like any number of you know rock and roll assholes and it's just there's something so grim about it yeah you know it's like we may coat down your favorite pop stars but they're human beings who hurt you know and there's something so grim about it yeah you know it's like we may coat down your favorite pop stars but they're human beings who hurt you know and there's this incredible as horrible dissonance

between you know the way that she was there to kind of spread joy and bring excitement to the people and then there was this horrible pain behind it which is you know tale as old as time isn't it well i mean the thing you realize of course, is that actually these records, like The Greatest Love of All, although they're selling themselves on soul, on exposing Whitney's inner being and emotions, they're sort of actually a front and that they're hiding real torment and despair that she can't bring to the surface,

whether she won't allow herself or probably more likely, she's not allowed to, you know. And her journey to this record greatest love of all i think starts with saving all my love for you in 85 and it ends up through one moment in time in 88 with that winter in 92 where she just stays number one for like what feels like 300 ever yeah i mean the first female artist to do 10 weeks at number one since doris day in the 50s you know right so commercially you could argue that this is a very, very smart record. But I think for us as listeners, it leaves us kind of sad and cold, really.

I do have a soft spot for Saving All My Love For You. And what was the other one you said? One Moment In Time, which is like this. And it's like someone singing it as they're leaping from a tower, just going, ah! It's ridiculous, but in a good way. It is interesting and tragic in some ways the way that her career went. I think she knew what she wanted to do,

but yes, I'm not sure that she ever really got to do it. You can just feel there's kind of a chafing, you know, because part of it was that, I mean, she got really slammed for going too white and too commercial and too pop. Al Sharpton called her whitey Houston, which is just painful. This is not something that I'm qualified to speak about but there's, oh God, I heard that and went

ah, you know. Well, I mean, contrast this with Janet. Well, exactly, yes. There is no way either of them are going to fail, but, oh man, who would you sooner listen to a compilation of well yeah i mean it's fundamentally the difference between an exertion of control which is exactly what janet's doing whitney always felt buffeted about by her her pay masters if you like um i

know she fought to get this record on but this is the thing with whitney there's a slight confusion about her motivations for me and that's why i've never really bonded with her if you like as an artist because there seems to be a really steely commercial sense but the trouble is it's not right that record she ends up making really late in her career that really suggested like fuck me you could have been amazing if perhaps you'd have exerted some of this control back then but you know i'm not judging whitney on that it's it's a shitty business you know and you've got to get along but oh man it's lots of wasted years of this big big pompous bombastic ballad oh i mean i fucking hate this song it's it's like being pinned down by the bad 80s and having it fart on your head for four minutes.

It's fucking awful. It's for karaoke cunts and future X Factor contestants who are waiting for simply the best to be made. It is so kind of gloopy. It is like being in a theatre and it's suddenly being flooded with the slime out of Ghostbusters 2. Oh, Sarah, you said Ghostbusters 2,

which makes me just think of me and Sarah's favourite line from that film, which I want to apply to this record now everything you are doing is bad everything you are doing is bad i want you to know i mean it's not right but it's okay it's almost like a proto destiny's child track isn't it everybody loves that i mean you know i'm your baby tonight is a bit slept on um which was uh by L.A. Reid and Babyface to challenge her like they wrote it to be unsingable. And she said, hold my beer and nailed it inside an hour because she was brilliant at these big bellowing runs, but also the little precise ones, you know. And it's horrible when you when you remember that, you know, she lost it to drugs, you know, and just had this... That was all kind of destroyed.

Yeah. I mean, she was, you know, by the time she died, she was getting better again. This is what always happens. They get better and then they fucking die in the bath. If only she'd watched Drug Watch. Sorry, that's... Yes. Fucking hell.

But, I mean, there's, for me, like, my favourite... Like I said, I don't... I definitely don't hate all of her output. This is the thing that I feel like is most closely associated with her until you remember that she did I Want To Dance With Somebody and then you go, oh, yes, fucking hell. Which is just pure joy, isn't it? You can't resist that, really.

I mean, the problem I have with Whitney Houston is that, to my mind, she was born in the wrong time. If she'd been about in the 60s, she'd been competing with Auntie Dion for the choicest cuts from the Bacharach David Kitchen. In the 70s, she would have been working with Gamble and Huff or Rogers and Edwards, but it's the mid-80s, so she gets a few decent peppy tunes,

but she also gets a ton of mawkish shit like this. Yeah, it is mawkish. Oh, it's awful. I mean, my favourite performance of hers probably is that um i don't know if you've ever seen this she sang the star spangled banner at the super bowl in 1991 fucking up and if you can there's this horrible kind of military shadow over it quite literally there's like a flypast at the end if you can separate it from that which is you know it's a bit tricky but it's mind-blowing and she's so giddy to be so... She just rocks up there in a track suit,

and she's so giddy to be so in control of her instrument and to get the response in real time to what a staggering force she could just casually unleash upon all the thousands of people there. You can't deny the power of, you know, a black woman singing the American National Anthem, for one thing, but it's her, and she's having so much fun. I can't think of a clip that better communicates to we mortals what it's like to be able to really sing like a goddess on a mountaintop

and hear thousands of people respond to going, That's the problem, though. We know how good she is. And in the end, it's just like listening to fucking Eddie Van Halen or someone like that. Yes, mate, I know you can play the guitar. So why are you fucking over-whittling everything? Yeah, that's the thing about that performance, though.

She does not over-whittle at all. You know, and it's like, and it's in like 4-4 as well. It's this weird sort of march arrangement. So it's very strange. Yeah, I mean, the Star Spangled Banner is the parallel bars of singing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make it your own and she really she really did marvin gaye is a good example uh cole lewis is a very bad example i think crusty the clown did

it best really yes obviously the the king was leslie nielsen in oh god yeah the frank bruno mike tyson fight where d'angelo sang uh the star spangled banner and um some bloke out the pub sang god save the queen for us and it was just like you just watch it you go oh god we're so shit but anyway the video fucking hell i wish i'd have known at the time this video was set in the fucking apollo because round about this time i had bought and was absolutely rinsing the original live at the apollo by james brown and would just spend all my time lying on my bed listening to it just imagining how skill it would be to be inside that building yeah and here it is correct me if i'm wrong,

but I think it's Whitney's mum, isn't it? Yes. Starring in it, helping a little girl out, who's obviously going to turn into Whitney Houston. So the video's not bad. What's weird though, of course,

is that in the top of the pop studio, we see the people not doing a lot. And then the video becomes a screen almost, that they're all looking up at. But they're not really. And it's that same old confusion about the production values that seems to seems to go throughout this episode really yeah i've had bad feelings watching this video because a couple years ago i had terrible cramps and i just took as much codeine as i was safely allowed to and for some reason watch both

of the whitney documentaries back to back There's like two feature-length ones. Oh, mate. It's okay if you've had coding. It really takes the edge off. But, I mean, they're both very good. They're extremely grim, obviously. And one goes further than the other in suggesting how bad her childhood was. And also both contain a wealth of evidence that Bobby Brown is a thoroughly useless piece of shit who, to be charitable about it, did not help.

Anyway, there's a moment where she takes her daughter bobby christina a tiny like three or four year old bobby christina on stage and kind of prods her to sing and the kid obviously doesn't want to be there and it really reminded me of that because whitney like meets her own younger self on stage and it's like oh bobby also who died exactly the same way as her a year and a half later and it's just so if i could have enjoyed this video at all before I definitely couldn't have done after that poor Whitney so the following week

the greatest love of all so 17 places to number 16 that didn't go as well as I thought it might and then spent two weeks at number 10 and finally made it to number 8. The follow-up, the lead-off cut from her second LP, Witna, I Wanna Dance With Somebody,

smashed into the charts at number 10 and would spend two weeks at number 1 as the meat in a nothing's gonnagonna-stop-us-now slash star-trekking sandwich. And she'd go on to rack up two more number ones, ten more top ten hits, and 29 more top 40 entries before she died in 2012

after an accidental drug overdose. It's not just Zamo. And that, Pop craze youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with more cockney misery in EastEnders, where Loftair asks Lou Beale for Michelle Fowler's Andy marriage. Then Tomorrow's World looks at all the nuclear waste Britain reprocesses and asks, why do we bother?

Charlie Speddin, Michael Robinson, Willie Thorne and Susan Devoy join Bill Beaumont, Emlyn Hughes and David Coleman for a question of sport. Then it's the nine o'clock news. I woke up one morning, the Carla Lane sitcom that everyone's forgotten about. Then it's Question Time, the documentary series Brazil, Brazil, the weather, and they close down at 5 to midnight.

BBC Two is currently halfway through Best of Brass, where Yorkshire and the South Midlands throw down in a semi-final brass clash at the Assembly Room's Darby. Then it's a Saturday Review special where Russell Davies interviews the German director Edgar Wright about his 15-hour film Heimat, which is to be broadcast over 11 consecutive nights on BBC Two from Saturday. I fucking loved Heimat. Great show.

The documentary series brass tax wonders if a chemical leak of the type that happened in bhopal a couple of years ago could happen over here and pinpoints over 200 communities who don't know that they could be at risk and then it's the last in the present series of 40 minutes which follows a knackered old coaster boat captained by Edward Heath's former buckler as it delivers unglamorous cargos around the North Sea. Then it's the grand final and last ever episode of Pop Black with Jimmy White beating Kirk Stevens, presented by David Icke. That's followed by Newsnight, The Weather,

an open university preview of all the weekend's pulsating programmes, and they finish off with an Open University show about St Lucia, closing down at 20 past midnight. ITV bangs out a repeat of The A-Team, followed by the sitcom The Brothers McGregor, then Robert Carradine stars as a cop killer in the reboot of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, then TVI looks at the life of Kurt Valdheim, currently running for the presidency of Austria, and asks whether he was a nazi or not. After news at 10 and regional news in your area, it's a repeat of Kojak, followed by a repeat of Six Centuries of Verse, then That's Hollywood, a clip

show of theme songs from the likes of Star Wars and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, then it's Night Thoughts and Close Down at Half Twelve. Channel 4 continues with worldwide reports who have a good tut about acid rain and wonders if a new

power station in Ireland is directly responsible for dead trees and river pollution in Wales. Then it's the first in the new series of the music show Club Mix featuring Janet Jackson, Paul Blake and the Fire Posse and Trevor McDonald. Then it's real kids issues in the drama series What Now? where some youths in Liverpool have a shit time of it on the dole. Then it's Fellow Travellers, the 1983 film where an Israeli pop singer

raises money for a Palestinian university unaware that his mates are funneling the money towards terrorist groups and Mossad is on his arse. Then it's the discussion programme Voices which talks about the failures of revolutionary socialism and scientific reason and the modern world's loss of shared

values. Then it's more of their lordship's house and they close down at midnight. Fucking hell, there's a fun evening on the fourth channel, eh? So, me dears, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Probably,

I mean, Falco, because he's got to be talked about. Oh, yes. The Janet video, how shit the Grange Hill video is. And probably at the time, oh, what the fuck was that George Michael song all about? Because I just did not understand it. God, there's been

so much in this episode really i mean like some really next level singers like morton harkett suzanne vega george michael whitney houston what the fuck you know i mean so maybe if i had my head about me i'd be talking about what a selection that is but yeah i probably end up talking about just say no at length as i have done i don't know because, because that's the standout for all the wrong reasons, isn't it? What are we buying on Saturday? George if I was feeling melancholy,

Janet if I was feeling nasty. Polko Aha, probably Vega as well. And yeah, not George because I didn't understand it, but yeah, Janet was already bagged by then. And what does this episode tell us about April of 1986? Yeah, not George because I didn't understand it, but yeah, Janet was already bagged by then. And what does this episode tell us about April of 1986? It tells us a bit of a lie. It tells us, you know, things aren't that bad.

I know. I mean, I think 86 was pretty bad. For me, it was like about a couple of albums. It was about parade and control. So I was listening less perhaps because there was so much dross out there but this had this is not a bad episode for 86 not a bad episode at all it's almost as if top of the pops knew that it was going to be a landlord inspection and they've had a bit of a tidy up yeah i think it suggests that british eccentricity is always going to endure and evolve kind of beyond itself and into interesting new shapes.

But we should still not try to do what Americans do unless we really know what we're doing and have a full tank of premium unleaded. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music. All I've got to do now is trot out the usual promotional flange. Website, chart-music.co.uk. Facebook.com slash Chart Music Podcast.

Reach out to us on Twitter at Chart Music T-O-T-P. Money down the G-string. Patreon.com slash Chart Music. Thank you, Sarah B. Thank you. God bless you, Neil Kulkarni. No worries. My name's Al Needham. I fuck

everybody. I fuck you all. Chart music. music I get angry just thinking about it makes me mad little kids doing drugs it turns my stomach that stuff hurts to stop you from living up to your potential it holds you back it hurts the user it hurts his family and it hurts his friends i just want to shake some sense into you kids that are using drugs and think about using so remember don't or else okay i always feel very sorry for people and in fact from my own personal point of view i take a great deal of pleasure in beating people who i think are on drugs just because it just gives me that you know added satisfaction

well third attempt at 490 and he's clear the master is clear the ultimate advice i could probably give you and that is just say no i can't really imagine any drugs helping a sportsman i think the whole thing is a question of being fit the question of being mentally alert and i can't believe there any drugs helping a sportsman. I think the whole thing is a question of being fit, a question of being mentally alert, and I can't believe there are too many drugs that really help that. Six of all, glorious. Well, I suppose the simple advice is to say no.

I can't really see any point of taking any sort of drug whatsoever. If any kids think that drugs are going to help them a get a job b be much more relaxed in company uh they've got another thing coming if you're with your friends and one of your friends offers you even though it's going to be hard just say no because otherwise you'll be at the end of the queue pray no one ever listens to what you say but you'll be mocked they take drugs drugs just help you fade away drugs just hurt you friends desert, the people you love have to watch you play

So get your hands there, drugs can't match imagination It's the clothes you wear and your hair It's the things that you say in conversation It's the things you do, it's up to you You don't have to wait a minute It's your life, let's choose life I say drugs aren't in life Say drugs aren't in it Drugs aren't in it

Feel your candy, choose life, not drugs