How do we remember Texas? For being dull. Matthew Horton thinks
he wants to speak up for them. Let's see how he gets on.
Texas surfaced in the
popular conscious in 1989, a brief lost weekend in pop. Somewhere between the
oleaginous Thatcherite plastic soul period and the marquee-sized denim wonder
years, there was a landgrab for authenticity. Despite a rather buff sound,
Deacon Blue were a reaction to smug tastefulness, hoping to trade on their
working class R&B to find something real. Del Amitri wanted to be bearded
bluesmen (with a Top 10 hit, please). Late-period Aztec Camera were trying to
recast classic soul tropes as polished, CD-age AOR. Perhaps it was a Scottish
thing. Perhaps those Levi's ads had a profound effect on blue-collar towns
north of the border, nurturing serious youths who found pristine denim and
floppy hair expressed their grit and soulfulness. At any rate, the mood infused
the home nations.
Ready-packed for this earnest new world, Texas turned up on The Chart Show,
shot in weathered black and white with a curious (and floppy-fringed, and
denim-clad) tomboy declaring she didn't want a lover. It had a vague whisper of
catchiness, but was mainly sold as a slice of earthy sophistication. Not a bad
record, hardly inspirational – one for saloon car drivers and teenagers trying
to find something that might prove they'd outgrown Bros. In the end, I Don't
Want A Lover would be Texas's
only hit of substance for some years, their only calling card until a
significant cover of Al Green's Tired Of Being Alone in 1992.
That cover was a Top 20 glitch as albums two and three came and went with few
sales worthy of mention. A band in decline, Texas regrouped in 1997, with single Say
What You Want hitching a glorious ride on that Tired Of Being Alone riff all
the way to the Top 3. De facto leader Johnny McElhone had rediscovered his old
Altered Images/Hipsway mojo, bringing studied cool to the purest pop, and in
Sharleen Spiteri’s, well, altered image he had the sultry, self-assured foil to
bring the new music to life. Authenticity was no longer the watchword – in the
career-mending Say What You Want and ensuing, sterling singles Halo and Black
Eyed Boy, Texas
were cherry-picking Southern soul, power pop and Motown styles – but the
results revealed a confident band surpassing the ersatz. Album White On Blonde
(check the impeccable reference) went platinum six times over, and 1999
follow-up The Hush consolidated the hold, the melody threshold equally high on
singles In Our Lifetime and When We Are Together. Every generation needs a
pop-rock crossover act shifting serious units in the name of quality and
distinction, sidestepping the mundane with songs that bite into the public
psyche.
It’s fair to say Texas
ran out of steam after two No.1 albums, holding their hands up with a third
chart-topper, 2000’s Greatest Hits. A couple of water-treaders followed, along
with a solo turn from Spiteri (including a grumpily received covers set), but
there’s a promise of more Texas
to come next year. No reason to expect much from that, yet – for a few years in
the second half of the 90s – they exploited the music scene’s lack of
post-Britpop focus to become our own Fleetwood Mac. It might lack visceral
thrills, but a commitment to good songs could never be boring.
Ed
Whatley suggests some of urban music's biggest stars might want to lighten up a bit. Seriously, what are they?
Chilean miners?
OK, so everything happens much faster now. Like the smug old Sphinx's riddle,
pop stars’ super-speed lifespans crawl in the morning, walk in the afternoon
and are hobbling by the evening. But this year something odd - and stomach-turning
- happened. The third single from B.o.B’s
debut album is a whinge about the pressures of fame. And it's a HIT. A huge,
huge hit. B.o.B wants to go back to before rap politicking, before the terrible
pressure of, I don't know, wearing nice clothes and being signed and having to
compete in a marketplace - the poor love - brought him so much misery. Misery
only expressable through a vocal delivered by some whinging corp-alt-rocker,
who also seems to unquestioningly agree with B.o.B's need for a "wish
right now". Who in the pop-buying public is relating to this good-looking,
successful 21-year-old unable to tolerate their lot?
Another rapper who will no doubt be trawling through the works of Marx and
Engels to see if an alternative society is possible outside of the trap of
Capital is Drake. Drake tells us
that "He really can't complain/Everything is kosher". But that
doesn't explain why he has written a song - a HIT SONG - whose chorus is an
atonal drawl about how rubbish it is that he has attained the kind of vapid
success he was sure to find in joining a label called Young Money. There are
people in Drake's life who weren't there a year ago! Who the fuck are y'all?
Why don't you ask them, Drake, instead of sitting in your room with a head full
of regret and a heart full of sadness? You enormous nob.
Rihanna might have laid the
groundwork for this trend. As she stumbles uncomprehendingly from tedious tune to
ridiculous outfit, she always does so with a sourpuss face and the voice of a 14-year-old
complaining that she doesn't have the best phone like her mate does. Everything
sung through the nose, joylessly groaning about her lot. Even on Rude Boy,
which should be a paean to big-bits sex, she sounds like she's shouting at her
man to hurry up and finish watching the football because her mother's coming
over and he needs to set the table.
Actually, why am I blaming Rihanna? This is Eminem's fault. All Eminem's fault. Album on album, the swing from
'acceptable whining from a fucked-up genius' to 'Good God, man, put some proper
trousers on and stop bleating' got ever more pronounced. Never more so than on
the empty drone of Rehab, where he was sad about having got addicted to
over-the-counter pills. Christ, Em, at least get hooked on something enjoyable.
One of the most gifted rappers in the world now spends his encroaching middle
age having a right old moan about everything, making him much, much worse than
any of the celebs he sent up in his old role as pop's court jester. Well, not
as bad as MJ. We all used to laugh with Eminem. Listen to Not Afraid, and test
yourself to see how long you can go without laughing at him.
Black pop has always had two pretty powerful drivers: expressing sadness and
boasting of success. Even on Syl Johnson's mind-blowing lament Is It Because
I'm Black, in the pleading coda, having asked over and over whether his
oppression is down to his colour, he still finds time to say that he "wants
diamond rings and things - like you do". But straight-up whining hasn't
entered the picture until this year. Maybe there's been a black middle class
long enough that unfounded complaint has an audience. But I think it's
something bigger. I think celebrity is so obviously publicly abased and
depressing that people can hear Rihanna's whine-and-groan voice and believe
she's got something to be unhappy about. You might be going to Tesco in your
PJs to eke out your dole for the week, but at least you're not papped on the
way there. You might have spent your last tenner on a pack of lagers to drink
yourself into numb oblivion, but at least you don't have to do a meet'n'greet
with a weeping competition winner afterwards.
Where does this get us, the pop-buying public? Will there be a whining arms-race,
where artists compete to make the most unjustified complaint the earliest? Will
the X Factor winner's first single go something like "I'll only lose to a
Facebook campaign/With my lonely face in the rain/Feeling an unspecified
pain"? Will Will.I.Am build a sad emoticon into his already unutterably
cuntish name, so he becomes Will.I.Am.Sad? Will mogadon be the next hip drug,
and Robert Smith the next hip producer? It's a slippery slope, and we're
already on it.
I would take some advice from The Eagles' Joe
Walsh. Enjoy it first, make half a bill or so, then get all your whinging
out in one epic, reggae-tinged rock opera and call it Life's Been Good To Me So
Far. "My Maserati does 185/I lost my licence/Now I can't drive." Good
on you, Joe.
Released today, OMD's new single If You Want It is
accompanied by a fantastically 80s interpretive dance video - try and fathom
the story below. The song is electronica-hewn stadium balladry, glossily
unrepresentative of the rather more austere (and excellent) new album History
Of Modern - in the shops on 20 September for all you dwindling record buyers
out there - but still pretty sweet. While you're here, check out the remixes in
the link boxes.
In 1989, Terence Trent D'Arby decided to follow the
million-selling, 18-month chart mainstay Introducing The Hardline... with the
crazy psychedelic soul brainstorm of Neither Fish Nor Flesh. The rest is...
pointing and laughing.
It was
clear from the start that TTD was all idiosyncrasy. Interviews reveal a man who
thought deeply about his craft, and expressed it in gnomic gobbledigook. His
act was James Brown, Prince, Smokey Robinson rolled into a bug-eyed erstwhile
soldier who knew he was God's gift and had the singles – If You Let Me Stay,
Wishing Well, Dance Little Sister – to prove it. The year was 1987 and appetite
for airbrushed soulful authenticity was keen; look at the established Simply
Red, the emerging Hue & Cry, the wannabes Wet Wet Wet. TTD's rasp, however,
hinted at an even realer deal. Following the top 10 singles, Introducing The
Hardline... charted high in summer 1987 and hung around, taking the occasional
boost from each single release, but it was the canny tease of Sign Your Name –
not a 45 until early 1988 – that finally pushed Introducing... to Number 1. And
there it hunkered down for two whole months.
Now that's the sort of success that happens once in a generation, and
commonsense suggests a number of options for a follow-up: dish out more of the
same, safe in the knowledge the horses won't be scared even if there's a mild
risk status will decline; grind out an album over half a decade, glossing it
with drugs, sweat and lazy grandiosity; or, alienate every man jack of your
fans with a jarring volte-face. Guess what appealed to our Terence?
The big comeback single, in autumn 1989, was This Side Of Love, its brutal Bo
Diddley swamp-groove as Top 10-friendly as a Gary Glitter comeback. Wheezing to
a Number 93 chart peak, the wheels were never even on. Neither Fish Nor Flesh
followed soon after, and its chart career was not simply the polar opposite of
Introducing...'s; it took a seat with the dark matter in the coldest corner of
the universe. Entering at an initially worrying (but, in the light of ensuing
events, absolutely golden) Number 12, it was gone altogether within a month,
never to return. The Trout was flat out on the bank, gasping.
Obviously something went awry with promotion, or can one thorny single piss
away all that goodwill? Reviews of the album weren't even that bad: Q magazine
treated it with bemused good grace, while Record Mirror stuck its neck out to
proclaim it the best soul album in five years. Mind you, in a decade where the
over-glossed R&B of Anita Baker and Freddie Jackson was the benchmark of
new soul quality, that might not have been the most ringing endorsement.
So what's wrong with Neither Fish Nor Flesh? On a purely commercial level, the
modern sheen of Introducing... is out, in its place roughed-up arrangements and
quirky instrumentation – witness the tablas and percussive itch of I Have Faith
In These Desolate Times, the unnerving cut-up funk of You Will Pay Tomorrow and
backwards beats of Roly Poly. These aren't easy sells, but they ooze toughed-up
authenticity, and only a closed mind would object. It would have been the work
of a moment to pastiche the salad days of 70s soul. TTD dug deep to bring it on
to the eclectic hedonism of the 80s/90s cusp.
He played the simple game on the almost-face-saving To Know Someone Deeply Is
To Know Someone Softly, splicing pop and jazz in voguish style to create a
minor, later hit, and even kept a potential chart-stormer in reserve with the
“love you, mate, but not like that, sorry” tale of Billy Don't Fall, but when
you're damned you're damned. The lucky few who bought and listened found a
tastily sequenced record that grew from the stately Eastern mysticism of It
Feels So Good To Love Someone Like You to the swaggering big band soul of I'll
Be Alright, coming to rest with dizzy a cappella on And I Need To Be With
Someone Tonight; the guffawing remainder missed out and still don't care.
Amazingly, he came back. As if nothing had happened, TTD reappeared in 1993,
racking up hits with the howling, thrilling funk of Do You Love Me Like You
Say? and Delicate's polite duet with Des'ree. But it couldn't last. Within a
couple of years he was making ordinary records with extraordinary blond hair,
then changing his name and taking leave of the radar. Back when he was a big
star he lost momentum. Perhaps he was ahead of the game, or just not playing it
at all. Either way, no one understood.
We are blighted this week at Shabby. Sick. Sick in our creaking bones. Flu
followed by a wretching, wrecking lung infection has laid waste to our plans -
a couple of airdrops into Rwanda, 40,000 press-ups before bed, and then
tomorrow popping over to help Sisyphus with some DIY he hasn't got finished.
It's not 'man-flu', either, ladies. You can't fake phlegm this dense.
There's only three things to get rid of a cold. Chicken Soup, sleep and lots of
lovely somnambulant tunes. So here are Shabby's Musical Panaceas. (No Placebos,
don't worry.)
The Advisory Circle/Mind How You Go Just the sort of platitude you want when you're under the weather. "You
look after yourself." "Don't come back until you're ready."
"We'll do it when you're better." "I'll clean up that sick, you
rest." "Oooh, you look tired. Go back to bed." This is nostalgia
music, deliberately meant to evoke a memory of kid's electronic TV music from a
childhood a little bit before mine. Better an evocation of a science programme
from 1976 than a split second of Jeremy Kyle baiting working class bears. If
you listen to this at around 4pm, you will start to crave fish fingers and
hoops.
Neutral Milk Hotel/In The Aeroplane Over
The Sea Why not let someone else have your fever dream for you? This record is viral in
so many ways - you can't shake it off, you pass it on to your friends and they
can't shake it off either - and it makes you feel odd and exhausted and wrapped
up and you don't know why it's quite so strange. Like a sweaty, drugged-up
dream, a sequence of strange people and shapes roll past you - The King Of
Carrot Flowers, The Two Headed Boy - and you know it's happening, and you know
you're younger than you are but you're not sure why or how. Bands from Athens who deal in
R.E.M.? Fine by me.
Peggy Lee/Melancholy Lullaby Past a certain age, you're not going to get a lullaby to get you by, even when
it's all you're wanting. What you can do is have Peggy Lee sing you off to your
fourth sleep of the day. You can also know that no matter how bad you're
feeling, Peggy Lee has felt worse. Love of her life was an alcoholic. She was a
diabetic. Her stepmother used to beat her with a frying pan. And you think YOU
don't feel well! Pull yourself together.
Spiritualized/Ladies And Gentlemen We
Are Floating In Space Whatever Bear Grylls or Andy McNab might tell you, toughing it out is for
fools. Self-medicate. Pop anything that will make you feel even slightly
better. Antipyretics, Analgesics, Antibiotics, Antiseptics. Pills, Powders, Potions
and Prayers. And pop open the ultimate paean to letting the drugs work - Ladies
And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. The pack even looks like it's from
Boots. Jason was self-medicating to remove the pain of lost love, and he was
doing so with heroin, but you don't need to do anything so radical.
Hot Chip And Bonnie "Prince"
Billy/I Feel Bonnie It might not feel like it, but you are going to get better. That flu will pass.
That tear will heal. Your areas will improve BUT ONLY IF YOU STOP FIDDLING WITH
THEM. Honestly, it's not a toy. The temptation will be to head right back into
the behaviour that made you sick in the first place - the boozing, the late
nights, working too hard and resting too little. But listen to the weary
sadness in Will Oldham's voice as he and Hot Chip claim to "feel better".
It's telling you one thing - you better look after yourself, or you'll be bent
double retching a lung again before you can spell bronchial
hyperresponsiveness.
What do you like to listen to when
you're under the weather or hungover to all heck, readers?
