"I Heard a Rumour" by Bananarama

Top 10 Alert!

Song#:  3200

Date:  07/18/1987
Debut:  74
Peak:  4
Weeks:  19
Genre:  Dance-Pop, Synthpop, Soundtrack



Pop Bits:  The trio's third album, 1986's True Confessions, would be their best selling studio album in the US reaching #15 and going gold. That was mainly due to their #1 cover tune "Venus," which was their first track produced by the Stock Aitken Waterman team. That success then led Bananarama to hiring on SAW to head up their next album Wow! Both trios would co-write nearly all the songs with SAW producing all tracks. This first single continued in the tradition of the SAW Hi-NRG synthpop formula and it proved to be a good fit for pop radio. It would become the trio's third US Top 10 hit. The track also got to #3 at Dance and #32 AC. Oddly, it didn't really do much for sales of the album, which topped out at #44. In addition to being the first song from the trio's album, the track also served as the second single lifted from the soundtrack to the comedy film Disorderlies.

ReduxReview:  This was one of the trio's catchiest songs and is one of SAW's best productions. The keyboard line at the top of the song was memorable and set up the song well. The instrumental and vocal arrangements were top-notch. The producers were really perfecting their trademark sound with this track, which would then lead to their work with Rick Astley. Their productions would get a bit samey and monotonous by the end of the decade, but this single showed growth and sounded great on the radio.

ReduxRating:  8/10

Trivia:  This song borrowed heavily from the 1986 Eurobeat hit "Give Me Up" performed by Italian music star Michael Fortunati. That song was written by Michel Jean Machtergaele (aka M. De San Antonio), Mario Nigro, and Pierre Nigro, and produced by Machtergaele. While the song did well in a few European countries, it was a major hit in Japan. Several Japanese music artists would later cover the tune. According to a couple of sites, it seems that SAW may have contributed or worked on a remix version of "Give Me Up" and then decided to transfer some of the work they did over to the Bananarama song. However, the original writers were not credited on the Bananarama track. The sites also say that the writers were eventually compensated by SAW.

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