People like awful music and there’s nothing you or I can do about it
I feel like, up until this point, I’d had an affable relationship with the UK Top 40.
I liked the charts, enjoyed tuning in shame-free and wide-eared, waiting to hear what Bruno Brookes (christ I’m old) or Mark Goodier had to say. Some songs I liked, some I didn’t like, some entertained with their power to provoke the ‘what’s this bloody awful racket’ response in various parents. All was fair in love and pop.
Robson & Jerome were a paradigm shift. A pair of actors with no formal music CV, singing boring old songs I had literally no desire to hear, which were then received with baffling rapture by all my mates’ mums. This was a beast I had never encountered. What was happening? Could music be successful for reasons other than pure merit?
The bones of the marketing machine started to make themselves apparent. I caught my first glimpse behind the curtain of Oz.
I was 14 that summer. My mate’s mum (whose house I went to before and after school every day) went nuts for this song. She played it round and round and up and down until the album came out, then she played that on an incessant loop until I started to pine for her Chris DeBurgh records.
WTF was going on? Hadn’t ‘Some Might Say’ been number one just weeks before? Was this some almighty normcore backlash from the record buying public?
Being an adolescent is a confusing and transitional time for lots of reasons, but this record represents my true loss of innocence. A two-handed slap in the face from the reality of impending adulthood.
PEOPLE LIKE SHIT. They really, really like it.
There is nothing you can do but begin to hone your own musical discernment, step forth into that really fucking scary record shop in town and FIND YOUR OWN TRUE PATH.
‘Unchained Melody’ was a split A-side with ‘White Cliffs Of Dover’. The release was masterminded by Simon Cowell following the success of TV’s ‘Soldier, Soldier’. Cowell spent four months convincing actors Green and Flynn to record the cover, to the extent they threatened legal action to stop him harassing them. It went on to be the best-selling single of 1995 in the UK.
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I’m Penny, a freelance writer and content strategist. If you’re interested reading more of my bullshit, the best place to follow me is on Instagram.
