It's always particularly galling when you hear a song and think “Wow I'm gonna buy that album if the rest of it is like that!” and then it, all too frequently, isn't. More liable to happen, of course, if you go for an album by an artiste you haven't previously heard of. Case in point:
Fur --- Jane Wiedlin --- 1988 (EMI)
Late of the Go-Gos, Jane Wiedlin had a far less successful musical solo career than fellow member Belinda Carlisle, and in fact moved into acting, where she had some roles but never broke particularly big. I bought this, her second album, on the strength of the single “Rush hour”, which I really liked (plus the album was cheap at the time so I took a chance, an ill-fated one as it turned out), but I was to be disappointed if I thought there were songs of similar quality on this record.
It opens very disappointingly with the bland, by-the-numbers “Inside a dream”, which despite its genericity was a single
but nothing like the far superior “Rush hour”. Strangely enough, this song, despite being in a totally different league to most if not all of the rest of the album, is not penned by any songwriting powerhouse like Diane Warren or Desmond Child, though it has their type of hallmark. The more disappointing, then, that the rest of the writing is so poor.
Particularly this sub-disco turkey, “Homeboy”
There's some relief in the tender ballad “The end of love”
then despite its serious and important subject matter, and the fact that it's a stand I agree with, the title track is a boring funk/dance drone that just feels like it was cobbled together in five minutes...
and though not without its charm, “Give” just comes across as her trying to be Madonna (and failing)
while “Song of the factory” sounds like she's listened to too much Depeche Mode, with an underlying riff not very far removed from Donna Summer's “I feel love” (which I don't)
and though an okay ballad, “Whatever it takes” feels sort of tacked on, and nowhere near as good as the other slow song, “The end of love”.
What you're left with is an album that has about two decent tracks, with the rest struggling to even qualify as filler. The mediocrity is borne out as, after “Rush hour” hit the top ten as the first single, there was only one other, and it pretty much bombed, not even breaking the top forty. Perhaps more tellingly, her third and fourth albums, released two years and twelve years later respectively, charted in neither the UK nor the US, and in fact her first album had also sold badly, leaving us to surely conclude that “Rush hour” was one of those flash-in-the-pan moments, a one-hit-wonder, and that “Fur”, despite its laudable theme and the cute bunny on the front (human or animal, take your pick!) was never going to be the album to break her commercially like her fellow Go-Go.
After what can only be termed her failure to make it in the music biz, Wiedlin moved on to acting, and though she didn't exactly shine at that either from what I read, at least we didn't have to put up with her boring, soulless, dreadful music any more. Sorry, but to quote “Rush hour”, it sent me, but after that, sent me right out the door.
Oh, and by the way, don't wear fur ladies. You know the catchphrase: fur is worn by beautiful animals and ugly people. And it's expensive.
