If the Number Ones of 1981 had been scripted, this is where the editors would have stepped in. “Sorry, darling, you’ve gone too far. War Canoe? Great twist. The leather boys doing that old soul tune – brilliant stuff, really edgy. But two prog refugees with an experimental version of a girl group era classic? Nobody will believe it! You’ll lose our credibility. One of them used to be in Gong, for pity’s sake!”
I’m not honestly sure I believe it myself. You see, until a very short time ago I believed – like many others, I’m sure – that the Dave Stewart responsible for this record was, you know, Dave Stewart. Beard. Sweet dreams. Candy Dulfer. Bit of a plonker. And therefore the way I parsed this record was, well, Dave Stewart pissing about and getting lucky. It sounded to me like someone listening to some Flying Lizards records and thinking “yeah, why not?” and doing a self-consciously cracked cover version for a bit of a giggle.
But of course it wasn’t like that at all – it was a pair of progressive musicians with top Canterbury Scene pedigree who’ve continued making “pop music for grown-ups” until this day, and as such it’s in quite a different lineage, to be bracketed with Robert Wyatt’s remarkable series of 1980-81 EPs, perhaps. Hmmmmm. Already I’m backing down from my dislike of the track, see? Reassessing it, according it due respect. Pernicious stuff, context.
At any rate, whichever version of history I believed I thought it was interesting that the public had gone for this awkward little record. But the question I have to ask is, does it work? Do Stewart’s twisted treatment and Gaskin’s lost-girl vocals enhance “It’s My Party” or get in its way? To me the track still sounds like a mess, an update that’s trying to drag the Lesley Gore original into spookier, darker places but also can’t resist adding a dose of mockery – those simpering “ooh woo woo” faux-sobs behind the chorus, for instance, though the none-more-’81 video suggests that the synthpop scene is just as much an object of satire here as innocent pop is. The distortions, drumbeats and time dilations don’t dramatise the song’s abjection at all for me, and the note of emotional violence they introduce just distracts me.
Here’s another bit of context, though: at the time, I liked this. It wasn’t a massive favourite like Adam, but I’d been to enough fraught birthday parties to dig the sentiment at least, and the tune stuck with me. It didn’t sound weird at all – having only just started paying attention, I expected pop records to have odd noises on them; why wouldn’t they? It was only going back and hearing it again that made me think, hold on, what was all that about? My self-consciousness, my accreted understanding of pop’s limits, infected the song. So “It’s My Party” should rightly stand as a testimony to what a kaleidoscopic, fabulously arbitrary year 1981 was for pop music. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a great record.
Score: 4
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yep, until two minutes ago.
It’s hard to like this one when you grew up with the Lesley Gore original, which is a classic of sorts so I don’t very much.
I have, without shame, enjoyed a lot of the stuff that this Dave Stewart did previously and have a very fond memory of an extraordinary gig at Liverpool Uni in which Hatfield & the North supported Stomu Yamash’ta, the Japanese percussionist who seems to have sunk without trace. Popularwise I much preferred the bunny-embargoed fare of the other Dave Stewart but then I would, wouldn’t I?
And in a disturbing departure, the man with the electronic noise-making machine gets himself billed ahead of the singer. A sign of things to come (although I am aware that Ike Turner had pulled this stunt a generation earlier)
I don’t see why the person actually making the music shouldn’t have their name listed first – especially if that’s the stronger part of the work (I’m not sure this applies here tho granted).
the prog lineage is about the only thing of interest about this. I always got a sense that they were slumming it and got lucky – which probably confirmed their sense of superiority to ‘pop music’ without understanding its richness and potential, something that Soft Cell, who were slumming it in a different sense, understood completely.
#2 – don’t imagine that my description of him as “a bit of a plonker” doesn’t mean I think the
realother Dave Stewart made worse records!in the swing era and before, danceband leaders actually often got pre-eminence over singers, who were after all generally their employees (and didn’t get to sing on all numbers: instrumentals had not at that time been purged from the top of the “charts”, insofaras they existed) — this isn’t totally cut-and-dried, the heirarchy somewhat dependent on genre, but the switch TO singer-as-top-of-bill had been a departure in its turn
(in classical and light classical, the composer is still placed above the performer: i think this back-and-forth tension is highly interesting, because it really is an acknowledgment of a struggle for control, artistic or box-office-derived — there’s a similar power-tussle in film-making, between the big-name actors you need to get the project made, who are billed in big names as “executive producers”, and the “director”, who may end up not getting final cut, and almost never gets his/her FACE on the billboards, or name in large letters…)
i mean singer-as-top-of-the-billing — and that post is a bit all over the place, sorry; this is a complex evolving story that i have been muddling around in for years and need to write something extensive about…
incidentally: sleevewatch!! eep!! kate bush in “not equivalent to aneka” shenanigans called!
I like her Mystic Meg hairdo & crescent earrings. Otherwise, it’s a bit boring? Not as mental as eg Propaganda, anyway.
Actually, it perks up a bit in the last minute or so. Why didn’t they do that for most of the track?
This is a classic example of a simple song that is better off being kept simple, and doesn’t respond very well to being fannied about with (see also: every version of “Over the Rainbow” since Eva Cassidy’s). The Lesley Gore version says it all about teenage parties (of the 60s at any rate) and the fact that it’s not the end of the world anyhow; this one gives it what we might call the emo treatment and it doesn’t work!
Number 2 Watch – imagine what we would have been saying about pop records with odd noises on them if Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” had gone one place higher. Followed by three weeks at two for the delightful “Happy Birthday” from Altered Images. Two different songs with the same title stopping at 2 inside three months.
‘O Superman’s rise from 18 to 2 in just two weeks – quite a big deal? I’m still struck by it’s success but then I was completely unaware of this record until only a few years ago. It just never seemed to come up anywhere when I was growing up.
I have zero memory of “O Superman” from the time, unlike of this. Or of Black Lace’s “Superman” for that matter.
i recall one of the less edgy radio one djs joking about charabancs full of pensioners in the year 2025 singing along to “o superman” — sadly this prospect has gone the way of the personal jetpack 🙁
O Supermanchiros
You mean this isn’t that Dave Stewart? Well, bang goes 28 years of assumption on my part.
Though at the time the real one was still in The Tourists was he not* so he would hardly have been a “name” then would he?
*I’ve no idea, my mental timelines of third-rate New Wave groups is incomplete.
This is a lot weirder than I remembered and that opening is another contender for the “most atonal #1” slot. Not a patch on The Flying Lizards and I sort of admire its random cut-and-paste quality without actually liking it much.
Looking back at the enthusiastic Brooklands Primary School playground embrace of this single, what it really demonstrates to me is the robust indestructiblity of the original song, which we responded to the narrative and memorability of as must have children in 1963. (I consult my rather splendid Lesley Gore Greatest Hits – Gold, Gluck & Wiener – Who were they? Did they write anything else so good?) We weren’t aware that this was an old tune being torn apart and remodeled.
I find this striking to listen to these days, and it does hold my interest, but I couldn’t really call it very good. For a grand example of this sort of cover being done really well though, I’d recommend John Cale’s disemboweled ‘Heartbreak Hotel’.
Re-evaluating this (released within a year of Robert Wyatt’s exquisite cover of At Last I Am Free) in a Canterbury context is rather like furrowing your brow over late period Freddie Garrity (Little Big Time, anyone?) because he sprung from the same scene as The Beatles.
In any case, weren’t Hatfield & The North lame Wyatt copyists rather than comparable contemporaries?
The Original Dave Stewart, as I like to think of him, had form – his cover of What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted (with Colin Blunstone also receiving second billing, so no sexism at work here) had been Top 20 at the beginning of the year. It was interesting, earnest, and not that good. Whereas It’s My Party was (bracing intro aside) po-mo piffle, spoil-sporty in the way it audibly sticks its tongue out at both electropop and Girl Group melodrama. Most scenes die on their feet when a cash-in/comedy record scores big, and this surely sounded the death knell for New Romantics/Futurists.
As for the Lesley Gore version, got no idea on Gold, Gluck and Wiener but a lot of its impact is down to the crisp, punchy arrangement/production by Quincy Jones, who will crop up again in a year or so…
O Superman’s Top 20 stats (18-2-3-15) would explain why people don’t remember it any more than they’d remember most mid-ranking chart hits. I don’t recall ever hearing it on daytime radio (I was at school, I suppose) but Peel and Skinner and/or Jensen played it every night in the splendid autumn of ’81, along with Orange Juice’s LOVE and New Order’s Procession/Everything’s Gone Green. Ahhhh!
#18 My “Hmmmmmm” was meant to telegraph that my re-evaluation wasn’t to be taken entirely seriously!
#17 Yeah, that’s true – the quality in this is almost all the original song’s doing.
It adds insult to injury that this kept ‘O superman’ off the top slot. I think the big jump may have been down to Noel Edmunds (again) who started plugging it on his weekend show – although I believe it was John Peel who initially gave it airplay. It still sounds great (and relevant) today.
Years later I bumped into Laurie Anderson at Tate Modern where she was trying to get a light for her fag before heading off to give a talk. Great looking woman.
Re 19: Sorry, listening to this had worn out my irony antennae!
Great double bills that never were – Hatfield and The North and Kilburn and the High Roads.
Bloody hell, I just about remember “Little Big Time” – I feel ancient.
The Tourists’ “Loneliest Man In The World” shoulda been a monster. Nothing third-rate about that one.
The Bryan Ferry version on ‘These Foolish Things’ is okay, but not exactly the highlight of that album.
I’ve just been listening to Gore’s sequel disc, ‘Judy’s Turn To Cry’. To win back Johnny she kisses another boy at the next party, inflaming the jealousy of a still-infatuated Johnny who steps in to punch the fellow. Cue the gleeful chorus of “Now it’s JUDY’S TURN TO CRY! JUDY’S TURN TO CRY!”. I can’t help but think that the real victim in this situation is the anonymous boy who she uses. It’s a fun song, though.
Was it Noel Edmonds who plugged ‘O Superman’? In my mind it was Dave Lee Travis, but that could be because he did a similar thing with Talking Heads’ ‘Once In A Lifetime’ and liked to take credit for it’s chart success.
‘O Superman’ popped up on my iTunes Party Shuffle yesterday and it sounded wonderful. Better than I liked it at the time.
Re 22: The Tourists – who definitely seemed third-rate at the time – have dated pretty well. So Good To Be Back Home Again sounds simultaneously melancholic and bouncy – had it come out in the mid-90s it would still be on heavy rotation.
K-Tel watch: It’s My Party is the opening track on Chart Hits 81. Side One, the usual magical mix of the sublime and the gorblimey, in full:
It’s My Party – Stewart/Gaskin
Open Your Heart – Human League
Pretend – Alvin Stardust
Lay All Your Love On Me – Abba
You’ll Never Know – Hi Gloss
Si Si Je Suis Un Rock Star – Bill Wyman
Kids In America – Kim Wilde
Prisoner – Sheila B Devotion
Everlasting Love – Rachel Sweet & Rex Smith
Birdie Song – The Tweets
Point of order! Dave Stewart was never really IN Gong. He did a tour with them in 1975, and he played with other Gong members on Steve Hillage’s Fish Rising album, but he never joined the official line-up.
(I knew something would drag me back into the commenting fray – how predictable that it turned out to be a matter of prog pedentary.)
MY GONGBAIT WORKED! Though I thought Mark S would be the one ensnared.
We’ve missed you Mike!
I’m with the other surprisees on the Dave Stewart point. Wouldn’t this song have been more interesting if the much more likely Mari Wilson had covered it? I quite like this anyway, it’s interesting even if it isn’t wonderful, and that’s no bad thing.
ha! REAL gongheads know their pixies from their trolls
Re 23: Yes, Ferry’s version is a bit Austin Powers (ie killing the thing you supposedly love), and could be a dry run for Gaskin/Stewart. River Of Salt was my favourite track on These Foolish Things, mainly because I was unfamiliar with Ketty Lester’s original at the time.
Judy’s Turn To Cry was a distaff Hats Off To Larry. Nasty!
I think that this was not so much “an awkward little record” as a complete cut and paste train wreck. Lesley Gore’s original is so much better and more approriate, as it simply features a petulant teen whining about being dumped at her own party. As if THAT’S never happened before or since! Barbara Gaskin, meanwhile, whoever she is, attempts to cast her net for fish which simply weren’t there. I think that it’s annoying that this was praised as a “concept record” and that it did so well, especially since it thwarted “Oh Superman”, a bolder much more deserving project, which I loved even if I never understood it.
I have a vivid memory of O Superman coming on the radio in the early hours of a morning in early ’91. As I lay there in the dark, reaquainting myself with its strangeness (I hadn’t heard it in a decade) it seemed eerily prescient of the Gulf War that was unsettling me on a daily basis back then (I had a tiny but niggling feeling I was going to be drafted). All those lines about petrochemical arms and justice and force and “American planes, made in America.” I was even convinced she said “George” at one point. And I remember listening to it ending, hearing those urgent, mechanical breaths, and suddenly thinking how much they reminded me of a life support machine, and how much I didn’t want them to stop…
I’ve always thought she sings “George” as well!
O Superman is one of the few pop records that can honestly reduce me to tears. I remember hearing it on Peel for the first time circa Spring ’81 and just being utterly astounded that a single so long and so audacious even existed. Initially it scared the living daylights out of me and yet its beauty would eventually seduce me to the point that I parted hard earned pocket money for the 7 inch when it reached the charts six months later.
I remember hearing “O Superman” being played at a Radio One roadshow – after which the DJ asked everyone in the crowd who liked it to raise their hands. Few did. “That’s very interesting”, said the DJ.
O Superman is wonderful but it’s hardly “pop” though, is it? Come on – it’s a chart aberration!
Anything at #2 in the charts is – at the very least – asking to be considered as pop! It might be that the answer is “NO”, but if that’s the case with “O Superman” it’s interesting to me that the system designed to reward pop records can also reward a record like that.
Vivid memory from the Christmas school disco, 1981: me and my friends dancing to this and all aware that if we sang, “Nobody knows where my JOHNNY!!! has gone,” en masse, with extreme, loud, puerile emphasis (as indicated) we probably wouldn’t get into trouble. Because we were “just singing along, sir.”
Re 15, 22, 25: It’s heartwarming to see some love for The Tourists. So Good To Be Back Home and Loneliest Man In The World were both great – and Blind Among The Flowers and Don’t Say I Told You So confirm them in my mind (alongside Skids) as one of the great underrated singles bands of the era. Of course, back then Dave and Annie were an untapped songwriting force, as Peet Coombes (no longer with us) wrote all The Tourists stuff. His Wikipedia page suggests that his post-Tourists years were a little luckless and tragic.
Re 3: Surely the ultimate case of downgrading the singer has to be Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow? It seems very harsh not to credit Maggie Reilly at all – although, might I add, I think she learned a few lessons from the whole episode. A couple of years ago, I found myself at some fairly dull publishing awards bash (v. smug-looking Gary Kemp at my table) and Maggie Reilly picked up an award for some huge Euro-dance hit she had helped pen. Ker-ching!
Back to It’s My Party. This version seems strangely arbitrary to me, the sort of thing they might have been commissioned put together at an Music Expo in Utrecht to exhibit the benefits of some new electronic hardware. UNLIKE… DS and BG’s version of Thomas Dolby’s Leipzig! Which takes TD’s moderately pleasant Kraftwerk pastiche and makes it sound both futuristic and beatifically maternal! You’d almost consider moving to Leipzig if you heard it.
Re: 35. Like many others here I’ve always regarded pop as a broad church and as O Superman is catchy, instantly memorable and for a short while was extremely popular I reckon it qualifies, doesn’t it?
Thanks to thevisitor at #37 for pointing me to Peet Coombes’s wiki page. Sounds like a sad story, but also my mind is boggling at the news that veteran, sometimes amazing, feral UKHH dudes Task Force are the sons of Pete Coombes.
Either ‘O Superman’ is pop (if not Pop) or it’s beyond any kind of meaningful classification.
Am intrigued by this ‘Lepizig’ thing now tho!
it’s superpop
Great Quotes Coined While This Was Number One:
“My father didn’t riot – he got on his bike and looked for work”
– Norman Tebbit at the Conservative Party conference reminding us why we all loved him so much.
TOTP Watch: Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin twice performed ‘It’s My Party on Top of the Pops;
24 September 1981. Also in the studio that tremendous week were; Slade, Depeche Mode, Japan, Heaven 17 and Imagination, plus a unique Legs & Co interpretation of ‘Endless Love’ with guest male dancer. Simon Bates was the host.
15 October 1981. Also in the studio that remarkable week were; Gary Glitter, BA Robertson & Maggie Bell, The Exploited, Squeeze, The Creatures and Bad Manners, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘The Birdie Dance’. David ‘Kid’ Jensen was the host.
Rosie at No2 as someone has since touched on there’s a history of the musician/musicians taking the main credit on recordings going back at least as far as the 30s/early 40s. For instance the very first American No1 in 1940 gave Frank Sinatra a far smaller credit than the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and this was standard practice in the big band era.
At least in this case Barbara Gaskin gets more or less equal billing.
Far more glaring in its complete and utter lack of crediting, of who to the vast majority of record buyers would have been the primary reason for buying the record was ‘Street Life’ by the Crusaders where Randy Crawford isn’t credited at all. And without wanting to break the rules there was a No 1 in 1989/90 where again only the producer/keyboardist got any billing at all. AS it turned out in both these cases however their presence on the discs helped launch the respective singers’ subsequently much bigger solo careers.
This practice happened as a matter of routine on many disco/funk tracks with just the producer, saxophonist or trumpeter being credited (eg Tom Browne on ‘Funkin for Jamaica (NY)’).
And obviously post 1987 onwards although often there is a ‘featuring’ it it was generally accepted (see the unnamed No1 above) that the producer/dj was the ‘important’ one and the singers were often interchangeable (often literally, with them just being paid for the session and a model or someone doing the PA’s and Top of the Pops appearances etc)
I loved the original and was just pleased that a version of the song got to number one. Barbara deserved a hit after her fantastic ventures in the 70s with “ecstasy passion and pain”.
This seemed good at the time but not so good now. I love their version of “Johnny Rocco” which followed this.
I was rather surprised when I finally heard mod club hit Hear Me A Drummer Man by Phil Wainman. I’d always assumed it was an instrumental. You can hear Phil loud and clear on drums, but time appears to have completely erased the identity of the female singer (unless anyone knows different?).
Maybe it was a young Maggie Reilly.
Good disco/funk spots Andy. I’m assuming Quincy Jones didn’t sing Ai No Corrida, either.
I don’t believe Quincy Jones did sing Ai No Corrida (I think it was James Ingram and Patti Austin). Funnily enough, he didn’t write it either!
But he saw the film!
@43: It seems a bit of a cheat that Legs & Co. interpreted the Birdie Song, choreographer on holiday then? I tried to find a youtube of it, with no joy, but did discover that (bar dancing behind Haircut 100) it was their last performance on Top Of The Pops. One wonders if the BBC thought they were being as lazy as I do.
In celebration of Legs & Co, this is my very favourite performance: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BhpCfl6pfPg
Charles May sung the vocal for “Ai no corrida” though Chas Jankel wrote it and recorded it himself on the same label a bit earlier.