Tag Archives: candistaton

The Curse Of 1986?

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The critical consensus: 1986 was the worst music year of the decade, perhaps of any decade. But is that true?

There was certainly a vacuum between the end of New Pop/New Romanticism and the Rock Revival of ’87, exploited by one-hit-wonder merchants, TV soap actors, Europop poseurs, musical-theatre prima donnas, jazz puritans and Stock Aitken & Waterman puppets.

Also most pop records just didn’t sound good. The drums were too loud, the synths were garish, ‘slickness’ was the order of the day.

Perhaps nothing emphasised these factors as much as The Police’s disastrous comeback version of ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’.

But listen a little harder and 1986 seems like a watershed year for soul, house, go-go, art-metal, John Peel-endorsed indie and hip-hop. Synth-pop duos were back on the map, the NME C86 compilation was a lo-fi classic and there were a handful of groundbreaking jazz/rock albums too.

So here’s a case for the opposition: a selection of classic singles and albums from 1986. Not a bad old year after all.

Paul Simon: Graceland

Stump: Quirk Out

David Bowie: ‘Absolute Beginners’

Mantronix: Music Madness

PiL: Album

Rosie Vela: ‘Magic Smile’

George Michael: ‘A Different Corner’

Eurythmics: ‘Thorn In My Side’

Al Jarreau: L Is For Lover

XTC: Skylarking

Duran Duran: ‘Skin Trade’

George Benson: ‘Shiver’

Erasure: ‘Sometimes’

Cameo: ‘Candy’

Chris Rea: On The Beach

Europe: ‘The Final Countdown’

David Sylvian: Gone To Earth

OMD: ‘Forever Live And Die’

The Real Roxanne: ‘Bang Zoom’

The The: Infected

Half Man Half Biscuit: ‘Dickie Davies Eyes’

Anita Baker: Rapture

Michael McDonald: ‘Sweet Freedom’

Prince: Parade

Talk Talk: The Colour Of Spring

Luther Vandross: Give Me The Reason

Pet Shop Boys: ‘Suburbia’

Chaka Khan: ‘Love Of A Lifetime’

Gabriel Yared: Betty Blue Original Soundtrack

The Pretenders: ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’

Janet Jackson: Control

Run DMC: Raising Hell

Beastie Boys: Licensed To Ill

Miles Davis: Tutu

Iggy Pop: Blah Blah Blah

Courtney Pine: Journey To The Urge Within

George Clinton: ‘Do Fries Go With That Shake’

Talking Heads: ‘Wild Wild Life’

Kurtis Blow/Trouble Funk: ‘I’m Chillin”

The Source ft. Candi Staton: ‘You Got The Love’

Gwen Guthrie: ‘Ain’t Nothing Going On But The Rent’

The Housemartins: ‘Happy Hour’

Peter Gabriel: So

Mike Stern: Upside Downside

Steps Ahead: Magnetic

It Bites: The Big Lad In The Windmill

‘Tis The Season For Crap Cover Versions

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An ’80s music scribe whose name escapes me once wrote that Paul Young didn’t just murder Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, he dismembered it and burnt its house down.

I’m paraphrasing of course, but, listening to the current crop of seasonal offerings, I can sympathise.

Readers in the UK will have recently been – or will shortly be – inundated with Christmas TV ads half-inching ‘classic’ songs.

Years gone by have seen hugely successful ‘pop’ takes on ‘indie’ standards such as Lily Allen’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, and probably a few more too.

Love ’em or hate ’em, at least there’s some kind of stylistic consistency there. More disturbing is the recent appropriation of soul and funk classics.

There’s a beyond-anodyne, twee, puny take on Rufus & Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ knocking about, sung by a vocalist/arranged by an arranger who have meticulously removed every vestige of emotion, feel and syncopation from the original.

You could say the same about the version of Camille Yarbrough’s ‘Take Yo’ Praise’ currently all over the telly. Thank you, some bright spark in adland. High-fives all round. (Of course Fatboy Slim was first out of the blocks with this one).

And we won’t even get into the cover of Chic’s ‘Good Times’ that has recently reared its ugly head.

When did all of this start? I blame Foghorn Florence’s annihilation of Candi Staton’s ‘You Got The Love’. (She even had the audacity to rename it ‘You’ve Got The Love’.)

On the plus side, the original writers are getting a decent wedge from the publishing. Yarbrough apparently takes 60% of the Fatboy royalties. So at least the pioneers won’t have any problem buying Christmas presents this year, or any other for that matter.

But money isn’t everything. So I’ll be hunkering down and attempting to avoid Elbow’s cover of ‘Golden Slumbers’ for as long as humanly possible. In the meantime, feel free to nominate your worst-ever cover versions below.