Urban Hat€monger ?

Queen - I Want To Break Free
Another Now! album, another Queen song.
I think it was the law that every Now! Album had to have a Queen song on it up until about 1995.
Everybody has heard this song, seen the video. I don't think I really need to add much to this.

Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
Still can't think of a bad thing to say about Cyndi.
On paper I should hate everything about this slushy ballad but it's better than 99.9999% of the slushy 80s ballads I've heard. And let's be honest, It's better than anything Madonna ever put out.

Alison Moyet - Love Ressurection
I'm not an Alison Moyet fan but I've always thought she has a great voice, and I really liked Yazoo when they were together.
This is a pretty average song that's punching above it's weight just because of Alison's great voice.

The Bluebells - Young At Heart
This has to be one of the most overplayed songs on local radio ever, and if that's not bad enough it seems to keep popping up in adverts too.
It's actually this song that stops 'Come On Eileen' being my least favourite overplayed pop song with violins in it of all time.
I seem to remember going to the record store with my grandfather and buying this for my mother on the same day I picked up Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Bananarama - Robert De Niro's Waiting
It sounds strange to say but Bananarama weren't a bad pop group at one point. I mean you must have something to work with Terry Hall who had just come out of being with The Specials, one of the coolest bands in the UK in the early 80s.
This is from when they wrote their own material before they joined up with Stock Aitkin & Waterman and it's not that bad.
And Keren Woodward was hot.

Propaganda - Dr. Mabuse
I have a couple of Propaganda albums to listen to in my other journal thing I'm doing so this is the first time I've heard them.
It reminds me much of that kind of po-faced electronic music with a 'message' in it that there seemed to be a lot of in the 80s. 19 by Paul Hardcastle is the king of this stuff. Once you've got that song in your head, imagine a female singer and you've pretty much got this.
Thank God Acid House was around the corner to kill this stuff off and make it fun again.

Tina Turner - What's Love Got To Do With It
Ike Turner may have beaten the sh*t out of you but he never wrote anything this awful.

Flying Pickets - When You're Young & In Love
According to Last FM this is their 3rd most listened to song (Only You was No1 obviously).
Smells Like Teen Spirit was the 2nd.
I wish I was listening to that instead.

Wham - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
There is actually a Wham song I like.
This one isn't it
Bet you can't guess which.
And no it's not Last fucking Christmas.

Thompson Twins - You Take Me Up
THIS IS IT!!
This was the 12 inch single of theirs I bought for 15p
How on earth did I forget this, it's is a pretty good song.
Not very memorable though it seems.

The Weather Girls - It's Raining Men
Let's be honest here.
If the charts had more middle aged fat women in it singing about wanting cock the world would be a much better place.
You know for years I always wanted to go to a pub on a rock/metal night and play this slap bang in the middle of the night just to see what happens.

Gary Glitter - Dance Me Up
The very first line of this is 'Bring on the dancing girls'......
Ahem

The Art Company - Suzanna
I know nothing about this band at all so I had to google them.
Apparently they're a Dutch band called 'VOF de Kunst' who not surprisingly changed their name to 'The Art Company' for English audiences.
If this bland peice of mid 80s europop is anything to go by they shouldn't really have bothered. Imagine Live Is Life by Opus but less catchy.

Madness - One Better Day
The decline of Madness continues.
I still have another 2 years of this crap to sit though before they finally split in 1986.
Amazing that a band with so many great hits should have none of them in this series.

David Sylvian - Red Guitar
Wasn't expecting anything by David Sylvian to show up on these. Ironically there are hardly any guitars in this song, it's mostly piano & bass. Pretty bog standard 80s white boy funk which is improved by the jazzy avant garde piano & David's warbling baritone voice that I loved so much in Japan.
I'm assuming the title is some allusion to communism, I think nearly every pop star in the 80s that wanted to be taken seriously would write at least one song about it.
I think I might keep a record of how many more turn up in the next 6 years of this series.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

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Mojo

Funny you should say that, and funny that it's the first song again.

I can't claim this is absolute fact but my best friend had/has an uncle who worked/works for...EMI? I think it's EMI. And he once told my mate that when they release the rights for Queen to feature on any of these hundreds or thousands of compilation albums they have appeared on, that they do so under the condition that the track is track one, side one.

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Last.FM | Echoes and Dust

Urban Hat€monger ?

I have a feeling you maybe right. I just looked through the first 30 and every Queen song was side one track one.

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Mojo

Yeah, they always are. Same goes for all these awful dad rock comps. Queen always seem to be the 1st track, which makes me think theres some truth to it.

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Last.FM | Echoes and Dust

Urban Hat€monger ?

Random Musical Musings

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Scarlett O'Hara

Hmmm...I wonder why you would feel like listening to that?

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Because I want to dress like this obviously

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Scarlett O'Hara

Stop turning me on, people are watching!

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Urban Hat€monger ?

Stop making my journal soggy

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