Here at the Playlist of Life we've always been in the vanguard, reviewing those albums that most self-respecting rockers, or even music fans, would find hard to reach with a barge pole exceeding nine feet eleven inches. We've looked at Kylie, Pixie Lott, George Michael --- hell, we've even reviewed the Carpenters and Neil Diamond, for chrissakes! So we're perhaps known for being open to the sort of music one wouldn't normally associate with us, but this is something new.
There are albums I wouldn't listen to personally if you paid me --- what's that?
How much to listen to the new Justin Bieber? Yeah? How much room for negotiation have you? I see. We'll talk... Ah, sorry about that, where was I? Oh yes: albums I wouldn't listen to if... well, you get the idea. I still wouldn't spin these discs for pleasure, but in the interests of being open-minded I'm prepared to give them a fair crack. So in this section we'll be looking at some of the more, er, iconic pop albums of the last three decades, probably mostly concentrating on ones from the late seventies/early eighties, which encompasses my adolescence, and so would be the ones I would have seen floating about at the time, while sneering “No way would I ever listen to
that!”
But are these albums as bad as they're made out to be? Do they deserve the reputations they've earned among “serious” music aficionados? Sure, the kids loved them when they came out, and they scaled the charts. Their singles were all over the radio and their concerts were sell-outs, but when the dust has settled and we can take a more clinical, probing and critical look at these albums, were they the “pop classics” they were feted as, back then, or were they simply appealing to the masses, generic tripe churned out on an assembly line of crowd-pleasing but ultimately empty music?
Fantastic --- Wham! --- 1982 (Innervision)
Yeah, it's that one. Any of us who had a kid sister at the time this came out would have been driven mad by the incessant
bop-bop-bop of tracks like “Bad boys”, “Young guns” and of course “Wham! rap”, possibly one of the first/only times a sentence was composed of two words, the first finished with an exclamation mark, making it really two sentences... Not only that, but that bloody sleeve! The sneering arrogance of the duo on the album cover just made you want to punch them both in the face until your fist was sore!
Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Far from it. Two years later Wham! Would release their second album, which would do even better than the first, inflicting on us such “classics” as “Wake me up before you go-go” and “Everything she wants”, though in fairness it would finally point to the development of the songwriting of one of the duo (guess which one?) in the closer, another number one hit which would in fact be credited only to George Michael, and would signal the beginning of the end for Wham!, as George, emerging as really the only talented one, embarked on a solo career that would lift him to the sort of heights that would make even the big success he had here with Wham! seem paltry and fleeting. Which it sort of was.
But enough of the history of this band. We're concentrating here on their debut, the album that introduced them to the world, set a generation of females all a-quiver and a generation of males sneering that Ridgeley and Michael were gay. Prophetic words, in the end. Well, sort of. “Fantastic” unleashed Wham! on the world, and how the DJs loved them! For a long time, they could do no wrong, and when they broke up in 1986 there weren't quite the scenes of devastation we saw with the demise of Take That, and more recently Westlife, but their poor fans still found it hard to take.
That was all in the future though, and in 1982 this album delivered four hit singles for Wham!, all inside the top ten. Overnight sensation is a hackneyed term, especially these days when stars can be discovered, manufactured, marketed, promoted, broken and forgotten all in the time it takes Simon Cowell to count a thousandth of his vast fortune. But back in '82 there was no X-Factor, no You Tube, no quick route to the top for musicians or pop acts, and for a band to be unknown one day and within a few weeks be a household name was not all that usual. To their credit, Wham! Did not rise to the top on the back of a huge cheque book and cigar style manager's coattails, but promoted themselves, and only accidentally made an appearance on “Top of the pops” when another act pulled out and they had to fill in. Their performance that night earned them overnight success and the Wham! Train was ready to roll.
And roll it did.
Some of you may look at “Fantastic” and say, why bother reviewing it? It's only just over half an hour long in total, with eight tracks, half of which we know as they were big, big hit singles. Yes, well normally I would treat such hits with my usual you-know-these-so-I-won't-go-deeply-into-them philosophy, but because I'm putting the entire album under my microscope, I actually will be looking at even the well-known tracks deeply, trying to figure out why they were hits, if they deserved to be, or if they were just lucky to catch the record-buyer's imagination and frame of mind at the time they were released.
Wish me luck: I'm goin' in!
It's typical eighties disco beats as “Bad boys” opens the album, with some trumpet and brass that was becoming more popular around that time on disco and pop records, especially thanks to the solo career of Phil Collins, with a certain flavour of Earth, Wind and Fire though without of course their innate class. From the off though you can hear George Michael's confident and powerful vocal delivery, and his presence is all over this album, whereas Andrew Ridgeley is immediately reduced to the status of a session man, playing the guitar and adding backing vocals, but really, there's no reason why George wouldn't have had great success with this album had he released it solo. Then again, there is the image, which was one of the defining factors of Wham!'s success, so perhaps he might not have been such a big hit on his own at that early time, but this certainly sets the scene for the future. His voice is a little more falsetto than we became later used to, but as Waits once remarked (not about him), he sure can sing, that sonofabitch!
But the song itself is throwaway, certainly caught the spirit of the time though and became a big hit for them. It's followed by another disco styled piece, a little funkier in “A ray of sunshine”, another Micheal-penned track, with some cleverly-sped-up backing vocals, more brass and it must be said a nicely smooth bassline. Another “good time” song, it hasn't got much to say, although others on this album would, surprisingly perhaps, pose some hard questions for the “yoof” of that era. Some biggish names in the plethora of backing vocalists, too, with D.C. Lee, who would go on to work with Paul Weller in the Style Council, and Katie Kissoon, known for her work with Meat Loaf.
Next up is a cover of the Miracles' “Love machine”, which gives the album a certain amount of street-cred, and was a good decision by the guys, or the label. I'm not that familiar with the song, though I do know it, but I think Wham! do a fairly okay job with it, although nothing special. If nothing else it hopefully introduced the work of Smokey Robinson's band and the sound of motown to a generation of kids, who let's be honest probably didn't care. Still, if this turned on just one percent of those who bought or heard the album to motown, it was a good move. I do have to say though that so far I really haven't heard anything remarkable from Ridgeley on the guitar, and his contribution seems workmanlike rather than indispensable or definitive.
Everything changes though with the next track, one of their bigger hit singles. One of the first rap songs by a British band, and the first on which Andrew Ridgeley contributed to the writing, “Wham! rap (Enjoy what you do)” took them into the top ten, and it must be said that at least here Andrew's jangling guitar takes command, coming far more to the fore, though as ever it's Michael's vocal, which alternates between low baritone and high falsetto, that draws the attention. The horns play their part, and the guitar is at times low down and dirty enough to almost qualify as rock. Well, not really, but nearly. The song contains a message, perhaps the first on the album, but not a great one really, as it glorifies the delights of not having a job and being on the dole:
”The benefit gang are gonna pay” and
”Having fun with the boys/ Down the (welfare) line” and therefore encouraged youngsters not to look for a job, as George cries
”Do you want to work/ Are you gonna have fun/Do you want to be a jerk/ Are you gonna have fun?” Great piano work on this I must say, very funky, and some pretty good instrumentation all round. A far cry though from George's later, more pensive and deep work, such as “Mother's pride”...
Another big hit for the boys, even bigger than the last one above, and the only other song on the album to feature writing by Ridgeley, “Club Tropicana” is a dig at the “Club 18-30” package tour crowd, and is played in a sort of “Copacabana” style, with more happy brass and some nice sprinkly piano, and a more level vocal by George, more in a bar/club vein. With four hit singles on “Fantastic”, that was probably enough, but even so, it's surprising that the only slower song on the album wasn't released as a single, as it surely would have made an impact on the charts, if only for its difference in tempo. “Nothing looks the same in the light” is a slow, moody, brooding piece (well, for Wham!, that is) and provides a nice respite from all the disco and dancing and mostly empty-headed songs, and could indeed be seen as the morning-after-the-night-before, when the clearer head prevails and reality asserts itself. Another fine George Michael composition, it's again indicative of the sort of classics he would later write when he pushed ahead on his own, jettisoning Ridgeley and forging his own mega-successful solo career.
Perhaps that song was considered too “mature” for Wham!'s mostly teenage audience and fanbase, but “Come on” gets the party restarted with another dancy, uptempo and ultimately empty and vacuous number, redolent of just about every boyband that has ever existed, or probably ever will. A funky disco beat, more falsetto vocals, handclap percussion, chunky bass, but in the end there's very little meat on them bones, and the album ends on their biggest hit single at the time, “Young guns (Go for it!)” which took them to the number three slot and catapulted them to international stardom from a position of mostly obscurity. A little more cerebral than “Wham! rap”, this song concerns the dangers of settling down too early and losing the chance to sow your wild oats, and so was of course popular with the younger set, probably the lads, though I think you'll find few who would ever admit it --- particularly those who are now happily (or otherwise) married!
It has a big, bouncing synth beat, backed with slappy bass and almost Bee Gees style vocal harmonies, and also contains a rap from George Michael, making this perhaps the first pop album to have two raps on it, both released as singles, both exceptionally successful. The brass section again helps to drive the song along, definitely imbuing a sense of soul into it, and there are elements of Kid Creole and the Coconuts in there too, particularly “Stool pigeon” and “Annie I'm not your daddy”. It's also the first to properly feature contributions from the female backing singers, one of them taking an active vocal role as the main protagonist's (what is this, a novel??) fiance, though whether it's D.C. Lee or Sherrie Holliman I don't know. The song is followed by a short snippet of pianola music, god only know why.
I suppose the main draw this album had --- other than the “two good-looking guys” on the cover --- was its sense of rebellion and giving the fingers to authority, in songs like “Wham! rap” and “Young guns”, allowing “the kids” to think/believe they could get by on a tough attitude and a dole payment. Ultimately of course, George Michael would remedy this by basically growing up as a musician and putting out some very thought-provoking music, even if it wasn't always to my taste. Ridgeley would quit the music business after Wham! broke up, following one pretty disastrous solo album, and concentrate on motor racing and acting.
The Wham! phenomenon lasted barely four years, but was enough to establish them as top-selling pop artists and pave the way for George Michael to conquer the world as a solo artist. No doubt some Wham! fans followed George's first few albums, and no doubt many remain fans of his to this day, but similarly, it has to be expected that many lost interest when he stopped doing the “pop” thing and became a more “serious” artist. I'm sure he doesn't exactly bemoan their loss though, having picked up millions more fans along the way and made his fortune. Perhaps in a way Wham! paved the way for the later boybands of the eighties and nineties, and today, but really, looking back there were no other acts like them. Perhaps the Pet Shop Boys, though they worked in a different sphere. You can say Wham! milked the formula and the success it brought them, but what artiste doesn't, and who could blame them for that?
As for the album? I still see nothing special in it. The music is pretty mediocre: high-energy sure, danceable and with the odd proper message, but on the face of it fairly banal, and its format would be repeated by other bands, boy and otherwise, down through the decades. I think what worked for these guys was the image: if Wham! had not been two “pretty boys”, or if one of them (or both) had been a girl, then I wonder would they have had the success that they did? In the end, I have to conclude that for a short album with only eight tracks, one of which was a cover, “Fantastic” was a prime example of style triumphing over substance.
TRACKLISTING
1. Bad boys
2. A ray of sunshine
3. Love machine
4. Wham! Rap (Enjoy what you do)
5. Club Tropicana
6. Nothing looks the same in the light
7. Come on
8. Young guns (Go for it!)