TIFFANY – "I Think We're Alone Now"

Low-rent is right. The thing that prevents me from responding to Belinda Carlisle becomes actively irritating here: the clash between the classic pop intention/ source and the new pop styling, lacking the warmth of the first, or the strangeness and bright yellow playfulness of the latter.

My 16-year old reaction wasn’t much better, though I responded more positively to the inherent strength of the song, being less familiar with sixties pop.

The response of my peers was even more unforgiving, seeing this music as inauthentic, with an undertone of misogyny at it being made by girls the same age as us. This viewpoint was best articulated by a Ben Elton routine on ‘Friday Night Live’ complaining, Billy Bragg-style, that every time he switched on the radio he had to listen to “Kylie Taxi Tiffany” rather than proper grown-up music. What a knob.

TOTPWatch: Tiffany twice performed I Think We’re Alone Now on Top Of The Pops;

14 January 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Climie Fisher, Krush, Morris Minor & The Majors and Terence Trent D’arby. Simon Mayo & Gary Davies were the hosts.

28 January 1988. Also in the studio that week were; Debbie Gibson, 2 Men, A Drum Machine & A Trumpet, Jermaine Stewart and T’Pau. Mike Smith & Gary Davies were the hosts.

One particularly telling point of difference between British and American pop culture is their differing attitude to the act of singing in shopping malls. The comic actor and singer Don Estelle, who, as you may recall, had a number one with Windsor Davies in 1975 with “Whispering Grass,” was toward the end of his days reduced to selling his homemade tapes in Arndale shopping centres up and down the country, and worse, singing live to their accompaniment, to the utter bewilderment of teenagers too young to remember It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and pensioners too old to care.

For the young Tiffany, malls were there to be worked, a ladder to be climbed rather than a terminal cellar. The video for “I Think We’re Alone Now” is a cut-and-paste sequence of Tiffany enthusiastically (although it’s supposed to be a song about secrecy, concerning concealed feelings) and energetically belting out the number to uniformly appreciative shoppers. At least she can sing the opening “Children BEHAVE” line with more authority than the approaching-twenty Tommy James did in 1966.

The staccato bass eighths which James added to his original version, cutting out all extraneous guitars and keyboards and hiding the basic Four Tops-derived beat, does have a minor role to play in the road to electropop perfection, but inevitably his “I Think We’re Alone Now” is far more subtle; after the line “The beating of our hearts is the only sound” the band drops out entirely to leave a solitary conga drum and crickets drumming and chirping in the background, whereas in Tiffany’s beat-perfect update all that can be offered is a minor variation on the “Blue Monday” drum program.

However, Tiffany’s vocal performance is indisputably the better one; her despair on the “play” of the phrase “watch how you play” carries an aura of truthfulness and her eager scamping towards the “you put your arms around me and we tumble to the right and then you say” mono-breath passage is decidedly, if dangerously (for her age), libidinous (but then, to complete the mall circle, “the trees don’ t need to know”). It’s just a shame that the backing track sounds neutered with some entirely inappropriate rock guitar drawling towards the end. Of course she couldn’t really go anywhere beyond or after this, and the fact that she was last seen doing full-frontal Playboy centrespreads (in 2002) is a sad confirmation of this. It’s the second of the female bubblegum triumvirate to open Popular‘s 1988 account, but perhaps the least convincing.

Light Entertainment Watch: Only four UK TV appearances on the list;

DES O’CONNOR TONIGHT: with Paul Nicholas, Tiffany, A-Ha (1988)

HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME: with Gloria Gaynor, Howard Jones, The Honeyz, Limahl, Tiffany (2005)

THE ROXY: with 2 Men, A Drum Machine & A Trumpet, Jermaine Stewart, The Christians, Tiffany, Terence Trent D’arby (1988)

WOGAN: with Simon Callow, Pauline Collins, Kit & The Widow, Esther Rantzen, Tiffany, Desmond Wilcox (1988)

Interesting description of it as a low-rent Always On My Mind – I often find myself humming the “Children behaaaaaave” line over the start of Always On My Mind/In My House.

That’s the second time I’ve mentioned AOMM/IMH – I’ll shut up about it now.

This and the aforementioned Bros song were featured on a TOTP2 80s special over the weekend, and Tiffany brought a fond frisson or two. Despite the subject matter, the entire package is as wholesome and unthreatening as Rick Astley, Debbie Gibson and the upcoming person to whom Punctum alluded but got away with it. The shopping mall appearances were canny marketing, depicting Tiff as just like the rest of us, down to her fine but not overly glamorous looks. I remember being vaguely irritated by the phrasing where she hesitates mid-line in “doesn’t seem to be ……. anyone around”. But overall, I knew this was a song for kids younger than myself, although I had plenty of time for it.

Thought the Bros record sucked big-time though.

Come to think of it, this was number one when I first met my future in-laws!!

Last thread I mentioned how this number one is actively failing at what Belinda Carlisle did successfully in the last one. What I was thinking about is the little growls she does in the verses — they sell the whole thing for me.

Meanwhile, Tiffany tries the same — trying to get away into the NIGGHHT — and it just sounds awful. It’s embarrassing and a clear showcase for her failings as a vocalist. She sounds like she’s coughing up a hairball.

I think this record is quite horrible: unlistenable and unmusical in something like the way that 1986’s Every Loser Wins is. Of course, the underlying song here has lots of personality, so even a genuinely bad version of ITWAN is, on one level, not *that* bad. Still, this is the worst version of ITWAN I’ve ever heard, and I think that if you commissioned 100 new versions of the song tomorrow, at least 90 of them would be better than this. Tiff’s diction is shocking (including on the ‘Children behave’ – she could be singing ‘Children explain’), and she’s *late* (and not in any interesting way – although maybe it helps at drunken parties judging by one nice comment above!) on a bunch of lines. It’s hard to believe that a competent producer would allow this stuff to slide by. I’m guessing that this was, at bottom, a demo that escaped into the wild somehow in some local market and then took off, went surprisingly national, then international. Makes Kylie’s 1987 (pretty awful, utterly redundant) Locomotion look polished! Unwanted cssty watch: TomScore(Tiff’s ITWAN) = TS(Message in a Bottle) = TS(Brass in Pocket) > TS(Hey Jude) > TS(Sailing).

I’m with weej in reckoning this a (low) 2.

We’re wading through the stonewash denim end of the pop wardrobe, looking for Narnia and Mr Tumnus in the flat-packed MFI creation with the missing bag of screws.

Punctum rightly joins the dots between Belinda, Tiffany and … (we all know what’s coming next). The transition from AOR/Pop to Pop-rock bubblegum to mmmmfff hhhmmm* is almost seamless. What I remember most about this song (even before the timely TOTP2 reminder the other night (interesting choice of knitwear)) is that rubbery bassline that propels the song along. What I’m reminded of from that TOTP2 is those shrill synths. Tiffany’s voice is almost an afterthought except for that “tryin’ to get away/into the night” where she must be instinctively wrinkling her nose to extract maximum tweeness, at the very point where it should take off into bounce-along rockiness, but instead we’re left with this awkward moment that indicates innocence is about to be lost, but isn’t. Innocence is reinforced if anything. That’s the point of the whole song. The urge to give into temptation challenged by convention, peer pressure, society…all kinds of factors. So it becomes, in the world of Tiffany, incredibly chaste. Is heaven a place on earth? You should be so lucky, young lady!

*bunny’s paws over mouth!

@22, Tom. That’s the spirit! I should add that I liked and largely agreed with your *essay* on ITWAN. It felt like you were leading up to a 3 tho’…

No comments thus far on the Girls Aloud version? I thought it was rather jolly.

The strangest thing about this is that when looking for it on Spotify to remind myself, I see that the accompanying album featured a cover of Panic by The Smiths…

The song is well crafted with a strong melody and a memorable hook and I don’t mind Tiffany’s rendition – even if the production sounds a little dated.
There’s something quite unpretentious about the performance and I was surprised watching her on TOTP2 the other night just how unconcerned she seemed about presenting a glamorous image – with a big baggy jumper and scruffy hair. I found myself very irritated by Mark Radcliffe’s snide comments throughout the programme.
I can see this song fitting in quite well to a Glee scenario – if it hasn’t already

I’m sure it can’t have helped Debbie that they launched her here with ‘Shake Your Love’, one of the most repetitive pop songs ever – and listening to it just now, I’d much rather listen to Tiffany. (Only in my dreams is ace though)

I can’t bear this song. I don’t actually remember it from the time, but when decade nostalgia (I heart the 19#0s and so on) properly gripped the country about ten years ago it suddenly was played at every crappy disco I attended (there were a lot of those). What the hell was wrong with everyone? There are so many good equally-cheesy tunes from the 80s – what is it about Tiffany that makes girls my age scream along at the top of their lungs? It’s not even a comedy Rick Astley thing. My best guess is that the chorus is so basic (easy to sing, easy to learn) that it feels achievable for my generation. I was brought up in the 90s with far lower technical expectations of girls singing teenpop music*, though this argument falls down a bit when you take into account more AOR-targeted US diva pop (Mariah/Whitney) that ended up also being v popular with young girls despite not being aimed at them. Disproving my own argument there, marvellous.

A better point: perhaps the age gap between myself and my sister meant that in 1988 she was busy listening Street Sounds compilations instead of bratty teenpop, so I missed out on all the hairbrush karaoke action. So when I hear Tiffany I am basically annoyed that other people are having fun listening to shit music and I can’t join in. Selfish and snobby and uncomfortably true.

*By this I mean a) it’s much harder to sing Bonnie Tyler than Aqua b) more sampled dance music meant repetitive lyrics that were easier to learn c) everyone had to start singing live on the telly so simplified their vocal lines accordingly.**

**Almost certainly not true but hey I like making points in threes.

I wanted to give this a seven out of some kind of odd residual affection I don’t quite understand (I’m too young at this point to actually remember it the first time out, but I nonetheless feel warm nostalgia about it).

However the cheapness of that backing really cut into me on re-listening, so a six it is. I get the feeling something similar is going to lop a point or two off a lot of my early 90s nostalgia…

I still rather like the way her voice completely changes for the “I CAN CHANGE YOUR HEART BEAT” nit, which manages to sound slightly threatening.

“Danny,” my favorite Tiffany track.

I first knew this song from the Weird Al parody of it (“I Think I’m A Clone Now,” natch), so the backing and phrasing sounds right but the words don’t!

But yes, my favorite real version is the Tommy James one too.

man actually watching the vid again the amateurishness is stunning (and charming in a way – she seems almost as much secretly indie 1987 as taylor swift was not so secretly indie 2009), esp in comparison to ‘only in my dreams’ (which holds up nicely). watching both vids reminded me of another phenomenon (maybe this ties in to the next #1 also) – late 80s white girl dancing. JAZZ HANDS!

The Debbie Gibson to know and love is “Out of the Blue,” whose static verses and guitar synthesizer evoke My Bloody Valentine of all things; the news that “you” loves her surprises her so much that she sounds motionless with awe.

She’s managed to tilt her head at just the right angle on that sleeve to make it look like bad photoshopping, years ahead of its time.