One of the questions I asked myself as I got halfway through Popular is: have the charts got worse? The answer to that question remains “let’s wait and see” but one reason people who grew into pop before 1984 might think they have is that the nature of the charts seems to have changed. I’d guess that for most of those people the ideal of the charts is as a mirror to all of pop music: if something exciting is happening in pop, it should be reflected in the Top 40. If that doesn’t happen, either the charts are broken, or the thing wasn’t so exciting after all.
But there’s another way the charts work, which is as a mirror to anything in mass culture: cinema, TV, the news, gameshows, sport. Band Aid – and associated releases – weren’t the first example of that by any means, and of course they emerged from within a pop establishment that was showily flexing its muscles as such a thing. But the way in which the charts of 1985 seemed quite so full of post Band Aid releases sets the tone for future hijackings and interruptions of the story, which gradually became as normal as a record going straight in at number one. If you want a division between the first and second “halves” of Popular, there it is.
And for me in 1985, aged 12, this was really the final straw, the moment Band Aid and Live Aid lost me: these intolerable old ninnies capering about for four long weeks, roaring some old song I didn’t care about but could tell had been coarsened and worsened, bullying me into joining their party.
Now, as I approach the age Bowie was in 1985, my tolerance for the two of them acting the goat is much increased: “Dancing In The Street” is vastly improved on video, and watching the two stars flirt and battle is three minutes’ solid entertainment. On record, however, it’s still a stinker.
The obvious comparison is “Under Pressure”, but that was a battle of styles, whereas this is celebrity karaoke given a rocked-up Double Whopper production. Lots of fun to do, for sure, and that comes through to put it above Ali and Chrissie at least. Jagger has much the best of things – he knows the territory, and his bellowing at least stands up to the bombast. Bowie just flaps around, not sure whether to stick to his mannerisms or try and rock out. When I did finally hear the Martha and the Vandellas original, expecting not to think much of it, I was floored by how this boorish hustle was once so full of joy and conviction.
Score: 3
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All I remember thinking about this at the time was, “Those two men really seem to like dancing with each other.”
This is the one that nobody seemed to mind at the time, but years later they were ready to throw things at it. As you say, it may well have been because the video was a fun thing.
Oh, and don’t forget the filthy look Bowie gives Jagger towards the end (apparently Mick’s hair had hit him in the eye as they turned round at one point)
Enjoyed the video a LOT at the time…but strange that they were then only two people (dancing) in the video iirc. I hinted a few entries back that JAGOWIE’s respective outfits were probably the low point of 80s “fashion” in music videos.
Another crappy cover for sure but the fun the two seemed to be having in the video is such a strong memory for me that I can’t completely hate it. 4.
“Bullying” is the right word for this awful racket. It reminds me a little of Tina Turner’s caterwauling version of ‘Let’s Stay Together’ in the way it bludgeons a great song into the ground with it’s noisy histrionics.
I know it’s stupid to object too much to a quickie charity record but I hate the way it screams “Look! We’re having fun!” and expects you to join in when all you want to do is phone the police to get the old wankers to turn it down a bit.
OK-AY!
TOW-KEEY-OO!
SAUWTH AMERICAAAAAAAHHH!
AustRAILIA!
FRANCE!
GERMUNY!
YEEEEEW-KAAAY!
AFRICCCCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!OWWOWWWW!!!
…..
PhilaDELPHIA, PA!
Baltimore AND DC NOW!
Don’t forget the MOTOR CITY!
On the STREEETS OF BRAZEEEIIILLL!!!
God I hope I did this one justice. Does this song count in the necessary badness of charity singles? (Has this been fully discussed yet?)
Aw this was the first 7″ I ever commandeered my pocket money on, IIRC. I was seven. I wish I could remember what appealed to me at the time. I really wish I could.
I don’t know, I can kind of appreciate how desperately they’re trying to push their obviously ill-wrought idea, thinking that by smashing it all up to 11 it’ll somehow make it alright while it actually makes it much much worse. In a good way, like bad porn.
I returned from my stint at a summer camp in Toledo and subsequent bus tour to assorted United States to find this clogging up the number 1 spot. I guess the instigators of this product selected Bowie and Jagger because of their appeal to a world wide audience – in particular the USA.
I seem to remember a history of backhanded compliments and bitchy remarks between the two singers and that Angie Bowie claimed that she had found the two of them in bed so the video is way more interesting as a duel for cool between the men than the record- a bit like a stop motion dinosaur fight from a Ray Harryhausen movie.
There’s a great video/film clip of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas singing the Nowhere to Run in a Detroit car assembly plant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWl1JFZAjrI
looking at that photo — and trying to only vaguely remember the performance, as opposed to re-acquainting myself with it — i wonder quite deeply about what the two duetting actually think of each other’s respective work: there are stars where you know they’d say of one another, “well, obviously not what i DO, but i like/admire it”; and others where you imagine them saying of each other’s work, “it’s just RUBBISH, why do people buy it!?”
bowie of course had done stones-ish stuff since the start; but that doesn’t mean he’d like where jagger had got to by the mid-80s (as with stones fans everywhere, there’s a distinct fall-off in easy love); and to be honest, i don’t ave the slightest idea what jagger actually likes, as opposed to what he has a mind to use
dirty harryhausen!
I actually like the sleeve quite a lot. Perhaps, inspired by The Search For Spock, Dame David is trying a Vulcan nerve grip on Mick.
Yeah, this is pretty terrible (particularly because the original “Dancing in the Streets” is still, 45 years on, a fantastic, hot record). However, I’ll take it over Jagger’s other duet from the same period, “State of Shock” with the Jacksons, which is something like anti-music in its pure awfulness.
All the Live Aid/Band Aid/Farm Aid business really seemed to revive the fossils. Suddenly the Who were reuniting, Crosby Stills Nash and Young were back, Pink Floyd was back, Steve Winwood was huge, Robbie Robertson made a pseudo-U2 record, George Harrison had hits again (and the Wilburys), even the “classic” Yes got back together. The late ’80s was something like the Indian summer for the Boomer-era musicians…
Must be the longest Indian summer on record then, half those buggers are still at it.
at the time i thought this was an awe inspiring pairing of TWO GIANTS OF ROCK come together to show the whippersnappers how it was done (i very much liked what most of the whippersnappers were up to, you understand, but i also JUST KNEW that they were of lesser importance than the big serious stuff that had gone on in the past. older brothers you see). i knew and loved the song already (that’ll be the “stardust” soundtrack mentioned on another thread) and so it was clear to me that dave and mick were only going to make the brilliant even more brilliant. and they sort of do, if by ‘more brilliant’ you mean “replacing the songs original qualities with barmy prancing, random bellowing, self parodic clowning and general buffoonery’. the absurd campy stella street sides of dave and mick are by far my favourite aspects of their characters and so, awful as this is by any accepted aesthetic standard, i can’t help finding it fairly enjoyable.
Peaked at #7 in the States. The pairing better than the actual result. But I don’t find this awful, and actually think the record is better than the video. But this is 1985 and videos are everything. Without the visuals, this might be remembered better. At this stage neither are at any sort of artistic peak, yet it was still an “event” record.
I’ll admit that the video does have some comedy value but as a song this is terrible. It has to rank as one of the least persuasive invitations to dance ever committed to record, completely failing as it does to convey the notion that the act might be any fun whatsoever. 2/10
8 out of 10 for the video, which is a complete hoot.
2 out of 10 for the record. Awful, just like so much in 1985.
This is, contrary to what was suggested before, not the kind of song that makes me want to stab my eardrums with the nearest pointy object. That would be unnecessary, as the song itself functions as a blunt weapon. Has there ever been a better fit for the word “heavy-handed”? Soulless shouting over a miserably joyless beat.
I don’t remember hearing the song before, and in fairness I don’t really have an opinion on Jagger or the Stones. But I would expect better from Bowie, even if he has had a tendency not to live up to my expectations for… quite a few years.
Also, I thought I’d take it on myself to keep a Sweden Watch (™) from here on, mainly for my own personal enjoyment. This one peaked at #4, with the top spot occupied by German Italo-disco singer Sandra’s (Cretu, nee Lauer) “(I’ll Never Be) Maria Magdalena” – which was a huge hit in continental Europe and Scandinavia, but just barely graced the UK chart at #91. The fact that the entire Italo thing never really caught on in Britain, with a few exceptions like Baltimora, is something that I’d like to see a proper explanation on. It seems there just might be something behind the idea that Britain isn’t “just another European country” anyway.
It was inevitable from the moment it was shown during Live Aid that this would end up in the number one spot. It typified the move towards “event” number ones where people bought a single almost as a souvenir rather than for the intrinsic merits of the record itself.
Jagger came out better because he had no “cool” to lose at this point. One near miss in 86 with a severely over-hyped film theme aside, Bowie’s sales dropped off a cliff after this and one wonders how much of it was due to the mental picture of him mincing around in that yellow raincoat his name subsequently evoked.
Maria Magdalena would have got a decent score, that’s for sure. Sweden Watch – great idea!
I’d much rather have this than UB40 & Chrissie – desecration being a more interesting artistic tactic than ennervation. I certainly wouldn’t want to dance at their street party. It’s certainly compelling, though a bit less so without the video.
Nicholas Pegg’s David Bowie Encyclopedia gives an interesting account of the making of this single. Bowie and Jagger spent a day in the studio recording and mixing it, and then immediately went to film the video on a night shoot. Once you know this, its easy to read their capering about as being the result of fatigue and second wind. They both claim that they only ever intended the video to be screened once at Live Aid and for that to be that.
It took me years to listen to the Vandellas without thinking of this first. I must confess that to my 12-year old ears musty old Motown records sounded tinny and trebly when compared with the might and sheen of contemporary pop, especially when it was the an important superhero team-up to end famine. I kind of had to educate myself to understand the old stuff.
the thing i wonder about bowie is: does he have really really REALLY low cultural self-esteem? it’s like there’s no one he would’t say yes to, if they said “let’s do duet” — i know jagger wasn’t especially on-side with the other stones at this point, but i can sort of imagine them all hooting with laughter together as mick describes the cruel joke he played: “and everything i suggested — to make it sound worse and more awful, but telling him it would be awesome — he just said YES OK to!”
#2 watch. Three weeks for Bonnie Tyler’s similarly gargantuan ‘Holding Out For A Hero’.
If you also get the message that “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions” here’s an alternative clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATw7HIJCuLY
Not long after this the Stones reconvened with a wretched version of “Harlem Shuffle.” Mick seemed curiously fascinated with recreating the hits of 1969.
Here are some others he’s still got time to cover:
Please Don’t Go by Donald Peers
The Deal by Pat Campbell
Wet Dream by Max Romeo
Nobody’s Child by Karen Young
Hare Krishna Mantra by the Radha Krishna Temple
Jesus God, a Jagger version of ‘Wet Dream’ with video of the aged Lothario enacting the lyrics with 19-year old supermodel. No! No! No! ‘Wet Nightmare’!
#23 hah this TOTALLY explains why I really hated DITS so much. “Holding Out For A Hero” was a huge favourite, because it sounded a bit like the covers of White Dwarf magazine looked. Dare I go back and see if it’s any good?
Re#18 – two other Italo-type hits that did OK in the UK, Taffy’s majestic I Love My Radio and Ryan Paris’ less-majestic Dolce Vita. I put our resistance down to a prejudice against ‘non English-language’ pop, certainly European music seemed to be regarding as slightly comical and not in the same league as that from the home of the Beatles (cue, sniggering references to Johnny Halliday and Plastique Bertrand). It took the tidal wave of dance records in the early 90s from Europe (at both ends of the spectrum of credibility) to start wearing us down.
I did like the Taffy. Also big on a vaguely Italo-inspired tip was Maria Vidal’s ‘Body Rock’.
1:10-1:20 in the video is weird to me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen David Bowie trying for “really actually enjoying himself” other than this.
I’ve always liked Ryan Paris ‘Dolce Vita’ at least I think I have (I can’t definitely remember what i thought of it when it was out) -it may be just nostalgia for the great summer of 1983 – anyway it’s got to be better than that dire Taffy record which all the tackiest Radio 1 djs enjoyed playing back then just because it was about radio and its djs.
#27 Tom Yes! – holding out’s video was like a live action Chris Achilleos picture from WD
The song (DITS) was just a pompous unloved event single – like food at some shoddy corporate buffet people ate it because it was there
I recall my siblings reckoned Bowie looked ridiculous in the clip, and well doesn’t he just? I’d never heard of David Bowie before. This was my first sighting of this strange man. Just goes to show first impressions are not always right. Mind you my second impression was
” Labyrinth “.
Was it really nessecary for the two of them to shove their bony rear ends in our face at the end?
This went straight in at number one, didn’t it? It was the first time I can remember that happening, and it felt to nine-year-old me like a historical event. Straight-in-at-number-ones had their own little section in my Guinness Book of Records. I remember poring over the names from ancient history – The Beatles, Slade, a big gap to the equally-ancient The Jam and Duran Duran. Frankie Goes To Hollywood also seemed as if from another time in the ‘biggest selling ever’ list opposite.
When this hit I thought it was great, that our age finally had its turn! I liked it and thought Bowie looked really cool, long coats being about everything I wanted out of life. But I never could, and still can’t, figure out why Jagger has to act so manic all the time. It’s only got more grotesque as time passes, ‘Shine A Light’ made at times very uncomfortable viewing.
Jagger and Bowie cover Martha and the Vandellas. The global roll-call at the beginning. The over-polished horn section. The rhythm section drowning in the mix. The excruciating video. The faux-pallyness of the two protagonists. The Miami Vice clothes. The Live-Aid compassion fatigue.
IT ALL COMES FLOODING BACK!
I hated it then and I still hate it now. 1
Probably analogous to the UK charts, but 1985 was the year in the U.S. charts where dinosaurs from the previous decades crashed the party and embarrassed themselves and everyone around them, ruining a reputation for the 80s deemed unrepairable until, well, THIS decade!
This single was the signal.
I was 15 in 1985 and I just want to echo Tom’s apt observation that there was something irritatingly exclusionary about this song. It felt like boomers [indulging in masturbation, in saltier language, to/with] each other. Us kids didn’t know the original, and we didn’t really care about Mick or David that much, and as Tom says, you could just tell it was lame without knowing the backstory.
Bowie seems to have invented ridiculous big-trouser dances five years before Mister Hammer. The hands in pockets at the top of the stairs wasn’t a good look.
As over-the-top as this was, it did at least have the saving grace of alerting those of us too young to remember it to the original. (“I Got You, Babe” had never really gone away, at least where the AM radio hits ‘n’ memories format was concerned.) But as the final number one for two once-great performers, this was a tawdry swansong. I’m relieved to learn that they considered it a one-off for Live Aid – if it had been, it might today have a kind of kitsch charm – but why did they agree to extend its life? Charity is all well and good, but when you’re a millionaire it’s got to be better to write a fat cheque than to don a silly costume and go out shaking a bucket. If you saw someone boogyin’ up to you in those outfits, you’d be dancing around them in the street. 3.
#19 Good point about “event” no. 1s – a somewhat baneful development around this time as increasingly record-buyers purchased a single because they felt they ought to. At least with bad chart-toppers the previous 30 years there was the knowledge that awful records were at number one due to a sort of deranged attraction rather than guilt or indulgence. I suppose it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it especially welcome.
I don’t suppose a reverential cover of ” Dancing in the Streets ” would have been any better even so there is a rank, starry bluster about Bowie and Jaggers version – a post Live-Aid smugness.
” Surely everyone is amazed at the sight of two superstars together!!!! ” It’s an attitude we still come across all too frequently. A rather mundane example being those M&S adverts with all-star casts that are shown around Christmas – ” Look at all these famous faces together. Isn’t it impressive? ”
#29 Thanks for mentioning ” Body Rock “. In an ideal world Maria Vidal would have raced past these two has-beens.
As I recall they only consented to finally release this as a single when it became clear there was a mounting demand for it. I think ‘Woo’ Gary Davies actually made a special announcement to that effect on his lunchtime show (I’ll confess I was euphoric – Bowie meant everything to me at that point). There was even a tacky tie-in poster mag to commemorate the release.
Dudes saying they weren’t aware of the original at the time: I can confirm there was a tipping point later on when Martha & Co reclaimed theirs as the canonical version for the next generation – I certainly didn’t realise Bowie and Jagger had done this one until much later on (possibly when they re-ran all the Live Aid stuff on telly about ten years later).
Utterly dreadful cover that really butchers and caterwauls over its original, whereas the awful ‘I got you Babe’ cover merely flattens its original: 1
Wow, this record is sure provoking a lot of bitterness. I hardly remember it, actually. We did have a discussion two years later in my fanzine regarding the proper treatment of aging stars, or, as the question was posed by Phil Milstein, “Isn’t it time they put Johnny Carson out to pasture? And the Rolling Stones too, for that matter?” Byron Coley answered, sensibly, that “if you mean, is it time that we take these persons to a field & then fuck them from behind, then I must say ‘No.'” But Patty Stirling had a different view: “No No No! That’s a cruel thing to say. Would you put your dear grandma or mom (dad, grandpa, etc….) in a convalescent home just cuz they get old? For shame!”
In any event, here’s a weird little single that I retain a fondness for.
(And here’s another version of that single that’s interesting in context.)
Re 43: Jon Savage just told me how impressed he was with your name dropping.
Re 33: Yes it was necessary. They are baboons; they are presenting.
The video would have been much more effective than Just say No/’Heroin screws you up’ as anti drugs propaganda. Bowie looks inches from death (he was edging closer to Never Let Me Down which was more or less the same thing).
@#43 Koganbot. The audio on that first youtube clip is *amazing*. Just, wow. Beyond that, though, I don’t think anyone’s complaint here about DITS is age-ist, as such. It’s definitely hard to sustain a vital pop/rock career for multiple decades of course, but everyone here agrees that both Bowie and Jagger had plenty of life left in them at this point. This particular song just seems like a wretched mistake (madonna’s saturday night live appearance with lady gaga a few days ago struck me as a possibly analogous wretched mistake… lame and beneath her in something like the way that this song and vid was for two preternaturally cool/stylish guys).
I guess even the biggest stars make bad career moves – even Jagger, who is probably more controlling, and more in control of, his career as artist/pop star than anyone bar Madonna.
The Stones last single (or at least last hit) before this was “Undercover of the Night”, a pretty credible stab at updating their trademark sound for the 80s – certainly a big step forward from Start Me Up’s anachronisms.
Bowie in 83 had probably the most successful year of his career.
As a one off for the Live Aid concert it’s hard to be too critical about the intention. On purely artistic grounds, they really shouldn’t have consented to its release, though perhaps they felt they would look uncharitable if they didn’t.
I don’t suppose either of them rate the recording now – it never features, as far as I am aware, on any best-ofs or anthologies.
As a Bowie fanatic at the time – the Berlin Bowie, the lad insane Bowie, the Bowie who drops Nietzche and Kafka quotes into his songs – this one really pained me back then. It was like the final cut in his hari-kiri artistic suicide. I still do think it represents the utter nadir of his musical career: ‘Tonight’ at least had a couple of halfway decent singles, and Never Let Me Down, despite being awful, is at least some sort of stab at originality. The difference between ‘Dancing’ and Bowie’s earlier superstars-having-fun-in-the-studio duo with Freddie Mercury is really quite striking.
#47 “Bowie in 83 had probably the most successful year of his career.”
Commercially yes but I’ve never heard anyone make the case that “Let’s Dance” is one of his best albums.
The hero-worship of the New Romantics elevated both Bowie and Ferry to superstar status but ironically neither produced much essential music afterwards.
16 years between ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and ‘Dancing In The Street’ – Is this the longest gap between number ones that we’ve had in Popular?