In this series I will be looking back at each year on the charts between 1986 and 1996 and asking the question "When did the Eighties actually end?" The background to this is a research project that focuses on the proliferation of Greatest Hits albums in the early 1990s. The assumption is that the shift from vinyl to CD, the influence of Baby Boomers and the value offered by compilation albums, reframed the way people thought about Pop. In my last two posts we looked at 1986 (the classic rock album versus the novelty pop single) and 1987 (the rise of Stock Aitken Waterman).
Introduction
Nineteen-Eighty Eight is arguably defined by the Pop sound of Stock Aitken Waterman. This formula had been refined the previous year with Rick Astley: lowering the Hi-NRG tempo and incorporating Motown stylisations, to create a polished simulacrum of Pop heritage. Orientated towards pre-teens, SAW reframed the narrative in which Pop was consumed. Unlike teenagers, children were not interested in authenticity and social context. They were also oblivious to the use of technology. For this proto-Millennial audience (the gregarious Gen Y children of Baby Boomers), Stock Aitken Waterman provided a synthetic Pop experience at a defining moment: informing the carnivalesque way in which they would consume music well into adulthood. In levelling the terrain they also, inadvertently perhaps, recreated the Situationist Pop playground of Post Punk. Every flavour was on the menu and no style seemed to clash: Acid House, AOR, Italo, Indie, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, even Goth. That this eclecticism would return in the 21st Century with the proliferation of EDM, and the cultural prerogative of the Millennial, is testimony to both the enduring influence of SAW and the ghosts of Pop past. However, a debt is also owed to Smash Hits.
The combination of SAW and the EMAP music title Smash Hits ( launched in 1978 by Nick Logan) proved to be a particularly winning combination in 1988. SAW provided a roll call of pop stars and hits directly addressed at the Smash Hits market. These stars were focused more on music video and television promotion than live performances and concert tours. Consequently they were much more available than the preceding generation of New Pop stars: Wham!, Eurythmics, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran etc. In turn, Smash Hits framed the Stock Aitken Waterman product with Warholian humour: eliciting character and personality from the interchangeable Hit Factory vocalists. Nineteen Eighty-Eight is significant also for being the first year in which the magazine held its Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. Filmed at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast on the BBC, it featured Rick Astley, Bananarama and Brother Beyond from the SAW stable. Kylie Minogue won Best Solo Artist; and her Australian soap Neighbours, the Best TV Show.
The SAW-dominated Pop landscape of 1988 was certainly a Brave New World. However, it did reprise some of the nostalgia evident on the charts in 1987. This came in the form of two Sixties throwbacks: a cover of "A Groovy Kind of Love” and a rerelease of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother”. Likewise, sentimental offerings from Glenn Medeiros, Whitney Houston and Angry Anderson hit big. However, on both the singles and album chart, the year belonged to Stock Aitken and Waterman and, more specifically, Kylie Minogue. Minogue not only scored the number one album of the year, but also five Top 2 singles (including two numbers ones). Other SAW artists dominating the charts in 1988 included Rick Astley, Jason Donovan, Brother Beyond, Bananarama, Sinitta, Hazell Dean and Mel and Kim. In total they scored 23 Top 40 hits and 12 Top 10: one for every month of the year.
Bananarama “I Can't Help It” #20
Bananarama “I Want You Back” #5
Bananarama “Love, Truth & Honesty” #23
Bananarama “Nathan Jones” #15
Kylie Minogue “I Should Be So Lucky” #1
Kylie Minogue “Got To Be Certain” #2
Kylie Minogue “The Loco-Motion” #2
Kylie Minogue “Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi” #2
Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan “Especially for You” #1
Mel and Kim “That's The Way It Is” #10
Rick Astley “Together Forever” #2
Rick Astley “Take Me To Your Heart” #8
Sinitta “Cross My Broken Heart” #6
Sinitta “I Don't Believe In Miracles” #22
Hazell Dean “Who's Leaving Who” #4
Hazell Dean “Maybe (We Should Call It A Day)” #15
Hazell Dean “Turn It Into Love” #21
Pat & Mick “Let's All Chant” #11
Brother Beyond “The Harder I Try” #2
Brother Beyond “He Ain't No Competition” #6
Jason Donovan “Nothing Can Divide Us” #5
Sabrina “All Of Me (Boy Oh Boy)” #25
Sigue Sigue Sputnik ‘Success” #31
This list is spectacular and marks the beginning of Stock Aitken Waterman's Imperial Phase. However, what is more significant is the consistency of SAW in providing a cogent sound around which the production values of other artists cohered.
The Stock Aitken Waterman "sound" featured a very strong “beat” (generated by a drum machine): an attribute it shared with the Acid House music scene. It was also characterised by melodic sweetness and the prominent use of synth lines, redolent of both Bobby O and Italo Disco. At one extreme, this was a sound that reconciled Pet Shop Boys with Bros; at other extreme, it joined Yazz and Coldcut with Bomb The Bass. Where Rock artists found chart success in 1988, they also embraced synth hooks, strong beats and a more Pop sensibility. In particular the SAW/Kylie influence could be heard in the Girl Group affectations of a number of big hits:
Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven on Earth"
The Primitives’ “Crash"
Kim Wilde's "You Came"
Transvision Vamp’s "I Want Your Love”
Jane Weidlin's "Rush Hour"
Fleetwood Mac’s "Everywhere"
Fairground Attraction’s “Perfect"
Other traditional "bands"/male artists embracing this more melodic sound included Deacon Blue, Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout. That said, when it came to AOR album sales, SAW had not completely shifted the old boy's club mentality . Superficially, heteronormative Rock is embodied in the success of U2's Rattle and Hum in 1988, an album that also contained the band's only Number One single of the Eighties"Desire". However, this is something of an anomaly: 1988 actually produced very few Classic Rock albums. Increasingly, in the Rock idiom, the market for traditional long play records was being infiltrated by Greatest Hits compilations.
Among the compilation albums finding success there was a clear emphasis on middle-aged white men playing guitar: Paul McCartney, Chris Rea, Dire Straits, The Eagles etc. This is ,of course, the beginning of a nostalgic consumer project that would go on for the next five years: linked to the rise of the Compact Disk, the construction of the Pop canon and an Official History of Rock. In a curious way Rattle and Hum encapsulates these sensibilities: a hybrid studio-concert-film soundtrack in a Blues Rock idiom: blending new recordings with live covers and collaborations on tracks by Lennon and McCartney, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and B B King. In short, Rattle and Hum is a carefully constructed pastiche: a simulacrum of hegemonic Rock authenticity.
No less synthetic than Stock Aitken Waterman, Rattle and Hum garnered U2 a critical backlash. It took their next release, Achtung Baby (1991), to reestablish their credibility in an explicitly post-modern Pop landscape: a landscape that Stock Aitken Waterman helped fashion. Far more connected to this moment perhaps are INXS: an Australian rock-dance hybrid, fronted by a bad-boy pin-up who would go on to date Kylie Minogue. Looking back at 1988 is fascinating in this sense, because it seems to embody everything about the Situationist Pop playground of the Post Punk era. It celebrates the plastic, Warholian, Pop-Art aesthetic, that defined so much of the early Eighties, but somehow seemed to go missing after Live Aid. As such, 1988, is a late blooming Pop Classic.
The Album Chart
There are a total of 19 compilation albums reaching the Top 10 over the course of 1988 and a marked shift towards heritage acts from previous eras: Paul McCartney; The Who; Joy Division; The Eagles and Cliff Richard etc. These are augmented by career-resumes of some big- selling Adult-Orientated/FM-Rock artists including Billy Idol, Chris Rea, Dire Straits, Bryan Ferry and Fleetwood Mac. There is also a gender imbalance with only three of the nineteen acts featuring a female musician in leading roles: Pretenders; Bananarama and Fleetwood Mac.
Nineteen Eighty-Eight is also the first year to feature a compilation album in the End of Year Top 10: Cliff Richard’s Private Collection 1979-1988 (#2). Top 20 performers reflect this non-Rock orientation: with placings for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Premier Collection (#16) and Bananarama’s The Greatest Hits Collection (#19). Other Top 30 performers include: OMD’s The Best of (#26); Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits (#27); Billy Idol’s Idol Song: 11 of the Best (#28); and Chris Rea’s New Light Through Old Windows (#29). Overall this represents a jump of 10% over the preceding year, with 23% of the end of year Top 30 composing of compilations.
Hits compilations also remain big sellers in 1988, Various Artist chart resumes include: Now 13 (#5); Now 12 (#12) and Now 11 (#13). The Now series seemingly having deposed of the Hits series: Hits 8 (#44) and Hit 9 (#41) being relegated to lower end of the chart. There is also a definite shift towards chart pop influencing album sales:
Kylie Minogue Kylie (#1) Michael Jackson Bad (#3) Bros Push (#4) Wet Wet Wet Popped In Souled Out (#6) Trent D'Arby Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby (#8) Whitney Houston Whitney (#17) The ChristiansThe Christians (#18) Erasure The Innocents (#21) Johnny Hates Jazz Turn Back the Clock(#23) Pet Shop Boys Introspective (#24) T’Pau Bridge of Spies (#35)
Big sellers in the modern rock idiom included Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night (#9); U2’s Rattle and Hum (#10); INXS’s Kick (#15); and Belinda Carlise’s Heaven on Earth (#20). However, these seem relatively peripheral.The tide was turning: away from the kind of naturalised use of 80s rock production technology, towards something altogether more explicitly synthetic.
Transposing the template for success established with Rick Astley’s 1987 release Whenever You Need Somebody (#7), Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s production for Australian soap actress Kylie Minogue propelled her self-titled debut album to the top of the End of Year Chart. It also generated four singles in the end of Year Top Thirty: "I Should Be So Lucky" (#3); "The Locomotion" (#11);"Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi"(#20); and"Got to Be Certain"(#21). Out of these four, the three composed by SAW adhere to the formula pioneered in 1987: 116-117 BPM and a 4/4 time signature. A Goffin-King composition "The Locomotion" (a cover of a Sixties hit by Little Eva) differed: 137BPM, but still 4/4. In addition to this, Minogue secured a second Number 1 with her seasonal duet with Jason Donovan "Especially For You": a ballad, coming in at a much slower 80BPM.
Arguably this represented a liminal moment of departure: the arrival of very different Pop aesthetic. A sound which would shift the production template in the UK away from the American AOR sound that had characterised post-Live Aid era. It also indicated an imminent fracture between the Pop orientated singles chart and a more Rock orientated album chart. In it Stock Aitken Waterman may well have sown the seeds of their own demise: as we shall go onto discuss, this opened the door for more Dance orientated Pop, influenced by Acid House and Rave. Moreover, the proto-Millennial children of the Baby-Boomers would grow out of SAW's saccharine output and go onto explore the ecstatic drug fuelled sounds of Generation X.
The Singles Chart
Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine” (#1) is the top selling single of 1988. And this sentimentality is echoed in a number of big selling ballads: Glenn Medeiros’s "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You” (#6); Robin Beck’s Coca-Cola advert theme “First Time” (#12); Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time” (#14); and Angry Anderson’s “Suddenly” (#16). Nostalgia for the Sixties remains a dominant chart feature: Phil Collins’ minimalist reworking of the Mindbenders 1966 hit "A Groovy Kind of Love” (#6) from the film Buster; and a re-release of The Hollies "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother” (#8). Additionally there is a double A-side Beatles tribute from Wet Wet Wet, Billy Bragg and Cara Tivey : ‘With a Little Help from My Friends"/"She's Leaving Home” (#9). However, overall the singles chart in 1988 mirrors very much what is going on in the album chart with a return to innovative contemporary pop production values:
Yazz and the Plastic Population’s "The Only Way Is Up" (#2)
Kylie Minogue "I Should Be So Lucky" (#3)
Tiffany "I Think We're Alone Now" (#5)
Womack & Womack "Teardrops" (#10)
Kylie Minogue "The Loco-Motion" (#11)
Fairground Attraction "Perfect" (#13)
Salt-n-Pepa "Push It"/"Tramp" (#15)
Belinda Carlisle "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" (#17)
Enya "Orinoco Flow" (#18)
S-Express "Theme From S-Express" (#19)
Kylie Minogue "Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi" (#20)
Kylie Minogue "Got to Be Certain" (#21)
Brother Beyond "The Harder I Try" (#22)
Taylor Dayne "Tell It to My Heart" (#23)
Erasure "Crackers International" (EP) (#24)
Bros "I Owe You Nothing" (#25)
Pet Shop Boys "Heart" (#26)
Billy Ocean "Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car” (#27)
Aswad "Don't Turn Around" (#28)
Jason Donovan "Nothing Can Divide Us” (#29)
Bomb the Bass "Beat Dis” (#30)
PWL artists dominate: Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Brother Beyond. Other top ten hits written by Stock Aitken and Waterman in 1988 include: Mel and Kim’s “That's The Way It Is “(#10); Rick Astley “Together Forever” (#2) and “Take Me To Your Heart” (#8); Sinitta’s “Cross My Broken Heart” (#6), Hazell Dean “Who's Leaving Who” (#4); Bananarama "I Want You Back” (#5); and Brother Beyond’s “He Ain't No Competition” (#6). However, they also create a cogent sound around which the production values of other artists cohere. This influence can be heard on a whole raft of Top 10 hits from 1988:
Bros’s “Drop the Boy” (#2), "I Owe You Nothing” (#1), “I Quit” (#4) and "Cat Among the Pigeons" / "Silent Night” (#2)
Terence Trent D'arby's "Sign Your Name” (#2);
Dollar’s "O L’amour" (#7);
Vanessa Paradis’ "Joe le taxi” (#3);
Erasure’s "Ship of Fools” (#6) and "A Little Respect” (#4);
Billy Ocean "Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car” (#3);
Taja Sevelle's "Love Is Contagious” (#7);
Eighth Wonder’s "I'm Not Scared” (#7);
Taylor Dayne’s "Prove Your Love” (#8);
Debbie Gibson’s "Shake Your Love” (#7) and "Foolish Beat” (#9)
New Order’s "Blue Monday 1988" (#3);
Desireless "Voyage, voyage" (#5);
Sabrina "Boys (Summertime Love)” (#3);
Kim Wilde "You Came” (#3) and "Never Trust a Stranger” (#7);
Pet Shop Boys’s “Heart” (#1), "Domino Dancing “ (#7) and "Left to My Own Devices” (#4);
Milli Vanilli "Girl You Know It's True” (#3);
Yazz "Stand Up for Your Love Rights” (#2;)
Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine “1-2-3" (#9).
Specifically the sound of Stock Aitken Waterman combines a prominent “beat” generated by a drum machine. A technique they borrowed from Bobby O, Trevor Horn and executed on Dead or Alive’s 1985 chart topper "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)". Seemingly of secondary importance is the “middle layer” of the texture. Vocals are also less prominent in the mix, with a clear focus rhythmic drive and a catchy bass line. Where their later sound is different from earlier Hi-NRG productions for Hazel Dean is in the slowing down of the rhythm and melodic sweetness: akin to Motown and the Girl Groups of the Sixties. Moreover, the cleanliness of the sound afforded by digital production process gives a brightness to the tone.
Perhaps most interesting, however, is the influence of SAW on other genres. Where Rock artists found chart success in 1988, they have clearly embraced this Pop sensibility:
The Primitives’ “Crash" (#5)
The Stranglers’ cover of The Kinks’ "All Day and All of the Night” (#7)
Prefab Sprout’s "The King of Rock 'n' Roll” (#7)
Aztec Camera’s "Somewhere in My Heart” (#3)
Belinda Carlisle’s "I Get Weak" (#10) and "Circle in the Sand” (#4)
A-ha’s "Stay on These Roads" (#5)
Deacon Blue’s "Real Gone Kid” (#8)
INXS’s "Need You Tonight" (#2)
T’Pau’s “Valentine" (#9)
Transvision Vamp’s "I Want Your Love” (#5)
Cher’s "I Found Someone” (#5)
Climie Fisher’s "Love Changes (Everything)” (#2) and "Rise to the Occasion” (#10)
Fleetwood Mac’s "Everywhere" (#4)
Danny Wilson’s “Mary's Prayer” (#3)
U2’s "Desire" (#1)
George Michael’s "One More Try” (#8)
Fairground Attraction’s “Perfect" (#1) "Find My Love” (#7)
Anomalous in this sense are Iron Maiden’s "Can I Play with Madness” (#3) and "The Evil That Men Do” (#5). Likewise Morrisey’s “Suedehead" (#5) and “Everyday Is Like Sunday” (#9). However, that is perhaps all part of the contradiction of 1988. For the first time since Post Punk, every flavour was on the menu and no style seemed to clash. Surprising entries in the Top 40 include hits for Siouxsie and Banshees, Iggy Pop, The Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode.
In this sense, where the legacy of Stock Aitken Waterman is greatest is not in their own music or the rehabilitation of Pop per se, but in the space it created for new music: specifically House and Hip Hop. In part this is attributable to the use of the drum machine, but also the rejection of traditional notions of instrumentation and authorship. In the same way that Punk levelled the playing field in 1977, SAW helped flatten the Pop landscape in 1988 concurrent to the Second Summer of Love and the proliferation of Acid House. This is evidenced in the number of sample-based dance tracks in the Top 10.
Krush "House Arrest” (#3);
Beatmasters featuring Cookie Crew "Rok da House” (#5);
Jack 'N' Chill “The House That House Built” (#6);
Coldcut featuring Yazz & The Plastic Population "Doctorin' the House” (#6);
L.A. Mix "Check This Out” (#6);
The Timelords "Doctorin' the Tardis" (#1);
S-Express "Superfly Guy” (#5);
B.V.S.M.P. "I Need You” (#3);
Bomb the Bass "Megablast"/"Don't Make Me Wait” (#6);
Inner City "Big Fun” (#8);
Wee Papa Girl Rappers "Wee Rule” (#6);
D Mob featuring Gary Haisman "We Call It Acieed” (#3);
Salt-n-Pepa "Twist and Shout” (#4);
Pet Shop Boys "Left to My Own Devices” (#4);
Bomb the Bass featuring Maureen "Say a Little Prayer” (#10);
Inner City "Good Life" (#4);
Neneh Cherry "Buffalo Stance" (#3).
Ironically Stock Aitken and Waterman helped create the circumstances that ultimately lead to their demise. Although they are very much in their Imperial Phase in 1988, their success facilitated a major shift in audience tastes. Hip Hop, House and Rave would soon eclipse the halcyon sounds and innocent aesthetics of 1988. However, looking back on it thirty years later and it seems to be an unexpected classic. But is it the last gasp of the Eighties?
Nineteen Eighty-Eight is a classic year for Pop. Stock Aitken Waterman dominated the charts: however, there is a sound that is even bigger than their own preeminent ambition. That sound is a blend of House Music, Italo and Rock. For their own part, SAW foregrounded the use of drum machines and an emphasis on "the beat". However, this rhythmic prominence is also a feature of a number of album artists working within the Rock idiom: both Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night and INXS's Kick, for example, deploy teutonic rhythms. Likewise, away from the Top 10, the influence can be heard in more avant-garde offerings from original drum machine pioneers including Sisters of Mercy, Eurythmics and Depeche Mode.
The Pet Shop Boys are also instrumental in naturalising the Italo-sound common to the Euro Pop hits "Boys (Summertime Love)" by Sabrina and Desireless's "Voyage, Voyage". It is interesting to note that a remixed version of New Order's "Blue Monday"from 1983 reached number 3: SAW were not the only cipher for the Hi-NRG sounds of Bobby O. Another group in this camp, whose profile was eclipsed by the dominance of SAW is Erasure: scoring three Top 10 hits in 1988 with "Ship of Fools” (#6) and "A Little Respect” (#4) and "Stop"(#2). Likewise, 1988 is the denouement of Kim Wilde's story as a major pop force, with her final three Top 10 placings: You Came (#3), Never Trust a Stranger (#7) and Four Letter Word (#8).
Over the next twelve months there would be a changing of the guard. The gulf would widen between album artists recording in the Rock idiom and the mainstream of Radio 1 and the singles chart. As SAW gestured in their 1989 retort to critics of the Hit Factory "I'd Rather Jack" by the Reynolds Girls: "No heavy metal rock and roll, music from the past, I'd rather jack, than Fleetwood Mac". Nineteen Eighty-Eight is significant then because it sees the final in a triptych of big hits from Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night when Christine McVie's "Everywhere" reached number 4. Like Kim Wilde they too would become strangers to the singles Top 40.
Conclusion
Fast forward thirty years and the excitement that surrounded Christine McVie rejoining Fleetwood Mac as they headlined festivals around the world in 2015, speaks volumes about the revisionist nature of Pop history. What SAW perhaps did not fully understand about the proto-Millennial children they were selling records to, is that their fondness for nostalgia would extend beyond Kylie and Rick Astley, to their parents own record collections. Just as SAW records invoked elements of Classic Pop, Motown and Disco familiar to these children, their allegiance to the original stars of the 60s and 70 had not yet been tested.
Many late 20th Century recording artists would go onto become headline acts at festivals in the 21st Century: Fleetwood Mac, Dolly Parton, Rolling Stones, Madness, Duran Duran, Blondie, Nile Rogers, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, ELO, Diana Ross etc. Very often their own tribute acts, but testimony none-the-less to the continuing allure of the catalogue to Millennials and the enduring influence of their Baby Boomer parents. For those born after Rumours (1977), contrary to the message of the Reynolds Girls, there was a very palpable desire amongst Generation Y to have Fleetwood Mac back.
That said, PWL's dominance of the chart in 1988 raised the game of other labels finding comparably hook-laden records, often in some surprising genres: the Power Pop of Jane Weidlin, The Primitives and Transvision Vamp, being a particularly unexpected reprise. They also shifted the public's appetite for simple-sounding melodies redolent of an earlier era (Fairground Attraction's "Perfect"; Proclaimers' "500 Miles"). At the same time, the technological advancement of digital recording processes (and the normalisation of the drum machine) manifest itself in some very avant-garde sounding big hits for non SAW artists: Yazz, Coldcut and Bomb da Bass. And, in this sense, 1988 is extremely conflicted. But it is this conflict that makes it interesting.
The duality of 1988 is most manifest in the tension between House music and Heritage artists. On the one hand records by Coldcut and Inner City pave the way for dynamic developments ahead in the Dance and Rave scenes: most notably The Timelords with "Doctorin' the Tardis" (#1), who would go on to become the KLF. On other hand, as the appropriation of the Doctor Who theme is testimony, even at its most cutting edge, Pop was still looking backwards. This is, however, arguably the eternal paradox of sample-based Dance music, and is perhaps why EDM found such an enthusiastic 21st Century audience in Millennials.
Heightening the tension in 1988 is the retrospective sensibility on the album chart and increasing influence of compilation albums. In part this is the cultural prerogative of Baby Boomer parents. But also their financial leverage and fiscal expedience: though more expensive, the CD anthology laden with hits represented a better investment. The corollary of this being that the Greatest Hits CD would become the central point around which the Pop music canon would cohere itself.
That this history would largely be white, guitar-based, male artists (in the Rock idiom) speaks of its own narrative: perhaps of the kind of Baby Boomers asserting their cultural privilege. That the canon remains very static, however, is also worth considering: possibly reflecting the kind of Millennial children who do not question it? And also, where does the power in popular music culture lie: in the hands of artists, record companies or educated white middle class audiences? It is, after all, the ability to control the narrative that determines reality and our subjective account of its histories...
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