Child Of The 1980's

If there’s one thing the 1980s had that seems to have been lost in more recent times its the really cheesey song, and they don’t come much cheesier than Save Your Love, the 1982 Christmas UK number one hit from classy duo Renee and Renato.  I’m not sure whether to be thankful or not that songs of this calibre no longer seem to be released.

As mentioned Save Your Love hit the top of the charts at Christmas, but it was actually released back in October of 1982 entering the charts at a less than auspicious 54 in the charts.  Somehow the song got discovered however and it rose up the charts both in the UK and The Netherlands and Norway, staying at the top of the British charts for no less than four weeks.

Renée (real name Hilary Lester) and Renato (full name Renato Pagliari) did release two other songs, Just One More Kiss and Jesus Loves Us All, but neither repeated their initial success and so Renée (sorry, Hilary) went back to her private life whilst Renato still sings aboard cruise ships and at his brothers Italian restaurant in Tamworth, Staffordshire, apparently.

The song was written by creator and voice of 1980’s TV robot Metal Mickey, Johnny Edward, with his wife Sue.  Perhaps the song would have been funnier still had Renato been replaced by Mickey…  Perhaps more surprising is that the song has even been covered several times, including most recently by Daniel O’Donnell and Mary Duff.

Another surprising fact about this song was that Renée didn’t actually appear in the video for the song, which having watched it back for the purposes of researching this post (the things I have to do for you people :-)) is now blatantly obvious, as the girl accompanying Renato clearly doesn’t sing anything and is always handily facing away from the camera when the female singing starts.

One thing I do remember from seeing the video on Top of the Pops as a kid is that even then I thought that the on screen Renée and Renato didn’t look like a very likely couple – a pretty young blonde and a slightly portly, middle aged looking man with a dodgy moustache.  Anyway, I’ve had to watch the video again so now I’m going to make you do so as well, but I do apologise for the quality of it.  And I don’t just mean the fact that the picture is a bit wobbly and grainy! 😉

A couple of funny moments to look out for are the incredibly quick peck of a kiss when they are walking through a garden, and the serenade which suddenly goes into Italian.  The throwing of a rose accompanied with a swanee whistle sound is also hilarious.

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This entry is filed under Music - Songs and was posted on September 30th, 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.