Song#: 2949
Date: 11/29/1986
Debut: 92
Peak: 15
Weeks: 22
Genre: Synthpop, Dance-Pop, Hi-NRG
Pop Bits: This UK band headed up by Pete Burns grabbed a #4 Dance/#11 Pop hit with their single "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)." It was the first single lifted from their second album, the gold selling Youthquake. For their third album, the band stayed with the production team of Stock Aitken Waterman and recorded Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. This lead single got things started and it became their first to reach #1 on the Dance chart. Pop responded well and sent the song into the Top 20. Despite having similar results to "You Spin Me," the single didn't do as well promoting the album. It stopped at #52 and failed to go gold.
ReduxReview: This was another urgent track from the band and basically cut from the same vein as "You Spin Me." While that song was a more memorable hit, I actually think this song was better written. It had nice, warm chord changes and good melodies. It's a song you could easily transfer to an acoustic setting. I had hopes that it would go Top 10, but like their previous hit it stopped short. SAW's production was big and bangin' with Burns' voice cutting right through. Since "You Spin Me" became an indelible 80s track, this one got left along the wayside and hardly gets attention anymore. That's too bad as it is just as good of a song.
ReduxRating: 8/10
Trivia: "You Spin Me" was the first UK #1 for the Stock Aitken Waterman production team. While this song wouldn't do as well there (#31), the team was beginning to stack up more and more hits. In 1986 they would have three of their productions reach the Top 10 in the UK. The results were certainly turning heads and more artists began to request their services. The hits would increase over the next few years. They would score ten Top 10s (four of them #1) in 1987 and twelve Top 10s in 1988 (one #1). That would lead to their peak year of 1989 when they garnered eighteen Top 10s with five of them hitting #1. Of all those hits, thirty-one of them were also written by the team. It made the trio one of the most successful writing/productions teams of the decade. Their success started to decline as the 90s started and later in 1991 Matt Aitken decided to depart. Stock and Waterman continued on, but success was spotty. The pair ended their partnership later in 1994 after a decade of hits. The final Top 10 for the SAW team was Kylie Minogue's 1991 #6 hit "Shocked." Stock and Waterman's last Top 10 came in 1993 with Sybil's "When I'm Good and Ready" (#5). SAW's work was less popular in the US where they only scored six Top 10 hits between '86 and '89. They were mostly know for their work with Rick Astley, Bananarama, and Donna Summer, who gave them their final Top 10 in the US with 1989's "This Time I Know It's for Real" (#7).
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Pete Burns was HOTTTT AF!!! He brought a hard, masculine edge to the sexual ambiguity movement that was beginning to catch notice thanks to Boy George. But while Boy-G was a wonderful singer and a fantastic personality, he just didn't push any buttons. But Pete made it so sexual and exotic. It helped that their songs were so urgent, as you said, and exciting. Another gem in that mid '80's emergence of kick ass gay club dance.
ReplyDeleteBurns was awesome. He really should have had a bigger career outside of the dance clubs, but at least he scored a string of club hits over the years.
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