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It was the mid eighties when the BBC launched their soap opera EastEnders with much fanfare, causing my Mum and mothers across the land to tune in eagerly for a dose of market trading folk from a small London suburb. Such was the popularity of the show back then that the characters who made up the original cast are still fondly remembered today.
The programme has a very memorable theme tune, but it came as quite a surprise to most people when Anita Dobson, aka Angie Watts, the Queen Vic landlady, released a record which put lyrics to the theme song.
The lyrics may well be considered cheesey now (and probably was back in 1986 when it was released) but it has to be said that Anita Dobson didn’t actually have a bad singing voice, so whilst it was most likely the popularity of EastEnders that saw the record reach number 4 in the UK charts, at least there was some talent involved in the production of the record.
The EastEnders theme tune was originally composed by Simon May, with the lyrics added afterwards by Don Black. It was produced by Dobson’s husband Brian May. That’s right, the big haired Brian May from Queen! Well, it’s nice that he supported his wife, isn’t it?
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If you take a perusal of the songs I’ve featured in the Music – Songs category of this site you’ll soon realise that most, if not all, are novelty songs of some kind or another. Part of the reason for this is that as a kid I was never really into music in a big way, and certainly wasn’t a fan of any one band in particular, so the songs which I tend to remember most vividly, perhaps regrettably, are the rather less serious ones.
Stutter Rap was the only hit for comedy rap group Morris Minor and the Majors, a British parody of the Beastie Boys. Where the Beastie Boys were famous for wearing the Volkswagen logo, unsurprising the singers of Stutter Rap favoured the rather more old fashioned (but quintisentially British) Morris Minor.
“19″ by Paul Hardcastle is a track that everybody who was around in the 1980’s must surely recognise and remember. It was released in 1985 and took the UK chart by storm, staying at number one for 5 weeks. It also enjoyed a stint at the top of the charts in many other countries including Austria, Germany, Italy and New Zealand, and more besides.
The late eighties saw many pop records starting to use more electronic methods of music production over the more traditional methods of playing a musical instrument into a microphone. Synthesisers, drum machines and music sequencers became common place and meant that people could now create music more easily, without having to spend years learning to play piano or guitar first.
In 1984 during the run up to the Christmas period one of the big stories on the TV news was that of the terrible famine that was taking place in Ethiopia. All the pictures of starving children were seen by Bob Geldof who was so moved and angered about the situation that he decided to do something about it.
Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood is the first song I can remember being banned, although as I’ve now found out it wasn’t quite as big as a ban as I thought it was, but more on that later.
Whilst idly channel hopping the other night I stopped for a while on VH1 because they had one of their themed compilation shows on, in this case it was a Top 40 Party Songs from the 1980s, or some such wording anyway. Early on in the listing came one of those songs that everybody will instantly remember, Word Up, by Cameo.
