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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.
Apology out of the way here’s todays whimsical offering – John Kettley is a Weatherman, by A Tribe Of Toffs. This little ditty was released in 1988 and although many people will remember it even now it only actually made its way to number 21 in the UK charts. The chorus lyrics were simple and straight to the point:-
John Kettley is a weatherman, a weatherman, a weatherman.
John Kettley is a weatherman, and so is Michael Fish.
The main verses went through a series of well known people at the time and a little something about them, such as Johnathan Ross collects moss (possible I guess?), Andy Crane has no brain and Simon Parkin is always larking. Amusingly enough whilst Simon Parkin was a childrens TV presenter at the time of the record he is now, wait for it, a weatherman on ITV!
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.
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.
