10 Songs That Changed Me – Song 4

Those of you who follow me on twitter or read my blogs will know that I do not care about fashion or ‘credibility’ when it comes to my music choices. If I like something I like something and that’s that. I will review and champion music of any genre. That wasn’t always the case when I was a child and a teenager, because saying you liked the ‘wrong’ band could be socially disastrous! I got a huge amount of stick for my abiding affection for Showaddywaddy, which I didn’t hide, so with groups or artists that were even more socially unacceptable for a boy, I learnt to keep things very quiet. From quite early on, I had a huge affection for the music of artists whose pictures were to be found in Jackie or, occasionally, Look-In. I am talking about the boybands and teen heart throbs that girls used to become obsessed by. If there had been the opportunity to join that obsession I would have done, but that area of fandom was clearly marked as out of bounds for boys! Well, many years later I can finally give full vent to my early music loves and not care whether I am being judged or not!

The Osmonds were a family of talented performers from the United States, whose wholesome appearance and polished ballad singing gave them the key to the hearts of girls across the world. I was a fan of their later songs, especially Love Me For A Reason, but their first hit couldn’t have been more different. It was a loud and uncompromising song of environmental activism that was, I realised in retrospect, one of the chief reasons for my eventual love of rock and metal. In 1972, however, it was an atypical choice of chart entry for me to become excited by, with glam very much on the periphery for me until the following year. When you listen to Crazy Horses, it is the sound of five young men being let off the leash and given creative control, a creative control they were not allowed to exercise again. When I went to see The Osmonds Musical in the theatre last year, which I thoroughly recommend, this was the first song in their encore. Even 50 years on, it raised the roof and pointed to a very different direction for these teen heart throbs to explore if only they had been allowed to.

Moving on to the other huge teen favourites of the decade, we find ourselves draped in tartan as a group of good looking – I was reliably informed by girls I chatted to! – Scottish performers called the Bay City Rollers dominated the conversation of girls from primary school upwards. I was an early fan of theirs, although I only admitted that to girls I could trust not to say anything, from Shang A Lang onwards. That was the name of their own show on ITV which I never missed, because they would have lots of other bands and artists on who I enjoyed listening to. I can’t have been the only boy to fall under their spell either, as worldwide sales of 120 million records would be hard to do on a narrow fanbase of the type they were supposed to appeal to. They were actually an influence on early punk rock in the US – no hear me out! Saturday Night was a US chart topper, originally released in 1973, but sinking without trace everywhere, that featured a chanted chorus with the letters Saturday being shouted out. It was re-released in the US at the end of 1975 before hitting the top in January 1976. The Ramones heard this track and decided to use a similar idea for their first hit, Blitzkrieg Bop. Pop on to YouTube if you don’t believe me, but the similarities are clear, and confirmed by The Ramones themselves. My favourite Rollers track hit the top of the charts in the UK earlier that year. No, it wasn’t Bye Bye Baby, much though I liked the song. It was the follow-up, the frankly quite brilliant Give A Little Love, sung superbly by the excellent Les McKeown and backed up by some top notch musical support from the rest of the band. It remains to this day one of my favourite ballads and the opening lines are simply lovely.

Now, the next entry on my 70s heart throbs list had a much more ambivalent position, because he was a male singer who had a huge appreciative following of male fans as well as female fans. However, those fans were not looking for the same thing in their idol. The artist in question was one of the most famous actors of the time, and a fixture of Saturday night television, but he also wanted to return to his early singing career. The decision of David Soul, aka Ken Hutchinson of legendary police show Starsky and Hutch, to release a series of gorgeous ballads came out of the blue because the only ‘singing’ policeman we had come across previously was Telly Savalas, who played Theo Kojak. His frankly terrible rendition of If was notable for the fact that he spoke all the way through it, because he could not hit a single note! Honestly, he made Lee Marvin, whose tuneless growling version of Wanderin’ Star from the musical Paint Your Wagon was a similarly inexplicable Number 1, sound good! (Both tracks are on YouTube but if you decide to look for them, on your own head be it!) David Soul, by contrast was genuinely talented. His early gimmick was to sing in a ski mask on US TV as The Covered Man because he wanted to be judged on his voice not his looks. When he revisited his music career he did so with the song Don’t Give Up On Us which charted on the week before Christmas 1976 and sped to Number 1 in January where it stayed for four weeks. It was the first of a trio of hits in 1977 with Going In With My Eyes Open making Number 2 and Silver Lady getting to Number 1. A true singing talent he may have been, but his music was seen by most boys as something to be avoided at all costs, because ballads were for girls! Following Starsky and Hutch Soul returned to his career as a regular guest star in US shows before becoming a regular on the West End stage in shows like Blood Brothers. Here is that first hit, the gorgeous Don’t Give Up On Us.

The 1970s came and went, and with it, arguably, the high point of the boy band. Certainly, it was a long time before any other band managed to work its way into the affections of the, largely, female record buying public. The 90s saw that band recreate Osmondmania and Rollermania as five young men grew up on camera from teens who were a little rough round the edges to a polished and supremely successful chart topping act. I refer of course to Take That, who were big enough in 1995 to feature on collectable boxes of cereal! The first track of theirs that made me sit up and take notice was their excellent cover of Could It Be Magic with a first lead vocal for a young Robbie Williams. After that, it was the lovely ballad Babe, which would have been the 1993 Christmas Number 1 if it wasn’t for Mr Blobby! In 1995, after a run of chart toppers, they produced a song that even their detractors had to grudgingly admit was ‘pretty good’. For me, it was perhaps the best single of the entire decade. From the first few bars of Back For Good, it was clear that this was something incredibly special. Gary Barlow’s vocals were on typically good form, but it was the tune that set this track apart. As a ballad, it is absolutely from the top drawer and stands comparison with any of the other great love songs across pop music history. After the inevitable break-up, Robbie Williams matched it with his own classic Angels, and the reformed ‘man band’ as they called themselves pretty much matched it a decade later with the outstanding Rule The World. It’s a trio of tracks that all feature highly in my all time favourites, and it’s incredibly difficult to choose the best of the three, so I’m not going to!

The 1990s finished with one more boyband who became, in chart terms at least, the most successful of all. Westlife were managed by boyband veteran Ronan Keating of Boyzone, and they exploded on to the scene in the era of SMTV Live and CD:UK where Top of the Pops was on its way down and Ant and Dec were on their way up. For the second half of 1999 they seemed to be on Saturday morning television every single week. Their first single, Swear It Again went straight in at Number 1, as did the next 6 releases! There were four chart toppers between May 1999 and December 1999, but it was their third that captured my imagination. The sublime Flying Without Wings is, to this day, one of the songs that will make me stop what I’m doing and just listen. As with all boybands, there was a lead singer, Shane Filan, but in Flying Without Wings, every member of the group took lead vocal duties, and the effect was to give Westlife a unity that a lot of their predecessors didn’t have.

So, there you have it. I am a fan of teen heart throbs, always have been, always will be. I hope that the choices above have proved that each one had songs that stand comparison with any music by any artist you care to mention. You just need to listen without prejudice.