Stock Aitken and Waterman’s skills were based on simplicity: get a feeling, nail it. Their songs are unapologetically direct, with very little ‘side’ or ambiguity. The acts they worked with were similarly well-defined – the square but adorable one (Rick), the sassy ones (Mel & Kim), the confident everygirls (Sonia, Reynolds Girls), and then of course there was Kylie, sunny and optimistic whatever disappointment love threw at her. So “Especially For You” is Kylie’s happy ending, based very much on her Neighbours’ character’s happy ending.
But the question is, is pop a good vehicle for happy endings? Musicals are, and as a moment in a narrative “Especially For You” does its job. But can a happy ending work as a standalone single? Not in the hands of SAW, whose instinct to directness makes “Especially For You” mercilessly straightforward. No doubts now: all the tension, all the drama here happens offstage and in the past. What has not killed them has made them stronger – hurrah! But non-soap-watchers haven’t seen it try and kill them, so their victory here is unearned, presented as inert fact.
Even then the single would work if there was some sense of relief, or chemistry, or much of anything between the leads. Kylie brings it – she’s not a great singer but she’s likeable and honest and that’s all the record needs. There was a Twitter discussion recently about whether Kylie had “charisma” or “charm” or something else entirely. Certainly at this stage she wasn’t charismatic, but a charismatic singer would have made “Especially For You” unbearable by exposing how flat it is. With Kylie it has a shot at sounding innocent and wholehearted: she isn’t always the best thing about her records, but she almost redeems this one.
Unfortunately she’s paired with one of pop’s all-time plodders, the ever-hapless Jason, whose performance here is so wet that it makes his devoted Kylie seem like a simpleton (he’s comfortably outsung by Kermit The Frog, here). Of course they were an item in real life, so the single was even more of a banker: perhaps too much of one. All the songwriters and performers have to do is steer this record safely home, and so that’s all they do. Nothing on “Especially For You” – except maybe the odd Beach Boys keening right at the start – draws attention to itself, no risks are taken. “Boring” is the most useless of critical adjectives but there’s no getting past it: this record is boring, and to some degree that’s deliberate.
Score: 3
[Logged in users can award their own score]
Actually that Kermit clip exposes the extent to which Kylie’s singing has changed too (& not for the better IMO, but we’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about that)
As a Neighbours fan at the time (not watching Neighbours was Unthinkable – I covered this in the I Should Be So Lucky thread I think) I loved it, and I still think of it very fondly. Another great video (we’re in the middle of a good run of them with Cliff and the next #1) and a very singable melody. Now that we’re togeeeether, TOOOOOGEEEETHER, I wanna SHOOOOOW you my heart is O-SO-TROOO. Classic. Plus ‘especially for POOOOOO’ = playground favourite! At least an 8 from me.
This record was also a hyooooge flashpoint in the (enormously boring and annoying) WHAT DOES INDIE MEAN wars, because it was top of the Indie Chart for ever and caused much harrumphing in the NME and talk of how it was time to create a new chart that would allow the DARLING BUDS to reclaim their rightful #1 spot. Except they’d just signed to a major too, oh bugger. (And went nowhere).
This is the least indie record of all time in everything other than distribution so you can see why people were cross, though.
A key element of this song that you’re not recognising (probably intentionally, as it’s an effect rather than a cause and, of course, by definition doesn’t actually feature the singers) is that it’s a perfect karaoke number. Duets are hard to come by in the karaoke songbook and this one is so familiar, simple but with the occasional soaring and emotive melody, the odd bit of harmonising, that it’s a timeless couples tune.
This was the end – or the temporary end – of my girl crush on Kylie. I was 10, and still swept up in the Neighbours wedding/the fancy Frenchness of Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi (tres posh, I thought), but even I thought this was woeful, even then. And the problem, I agree, was Jason, who I always thought was a pretty rubbish pop star. I actually think Kylie’s a pretty good singer – not technically by any means – but she can really convey optimism and melancholy at the same time, pop’s best qualities all bundled up together. I still like her bits here, although Hand On Your Heart made me love her properly again a few months later.
Remember being amazed this finally snuck into the top spot as well, as it was released late in November, I think. Bloody Cliff. And anyone remember the b-side? Jesus H: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXcmgOXypSA
(And hello, I’m new here!)
You could always tell when Stock, Aitken & Waterman were pulling out the stops for something that they wanted to be remembered – a bit more care was put into the instrumentation. This prestige Christmas product is free of the lapses that even aficionados like me tend to find mar their universally excellent songs; rum-ti-tum percussion and blaring synthi-horns. Here we find rather nice flamenco guitar solos and Christmassy bells. And best of all –
Those harmonies that usher in the duet!
Wow they’re divine! There’s a little pause before the listener is swept into the world of the song;
Especially for you
I wanna let you know what I was going through
All the time we were apart I thought of you
You were in my heart
My love never changed
I still feel the same
There’s a directness to the best SAW lyrics that tends to be overlooked, and is a really difficult technique for songwriters to master. You could call it simplicity, but I prefer to hear it as unaugmented expression of feeling and circumstance – objectives and obstacles, as dramatists are encouraged to think.
There is something atavistic about the appeal of this song to the appreciative listener – the search for the missing other… This theme is made yet more direct in the video for Especially for You, and the memorable Top Of The Pops appearance climaxing in Kylie running into Jason’s arms. For good or ill, it is a moment that is remembered by everybody who was even faintly following pop music in Britain in 1988.
A real Billy favourite. 9.
@5 Hey, Jude.
After the dross at the end (and throughout most) of 1988 this sounds marginally better. Still only a 4 though. I can see why it would make a good karaoke choice – that’s pretty much what this is.
Number 2 Watch: Three weeks of Erasure’s Crackers International EP’ (That would be ‘Stop!’ then. And erm… Consults Guinness Book of Hit Singles – ‘The Hardest Part’, ‘Knocking On Your Door’ and ‘She Won’t Be Home’. I don’t remember any of them, even though I bought the thing)
TOTPWatch: Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan performed Especially For You on the Top of the Pops broadcast on December 22 1988. Also in the studio that were; The Four Tops, A-ha, Kim Wilde and Nenah Cherry. Steve Wright & Nicky Campbell were the hosts.
I love Jason Donovan’s “Look what I’ve got guys! ” expression in the video. You think – Hope you enjoyed the moment mate cause Hutch was just around the corner.
I was amused when Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen did their version because he was no worse a singer than Jason and she was much better than Kylie. Must be the only instance where a charity version was musically better than the original.
#8 Don’t fret Billy it is quite hard to recall named Erasure tracks. They’re dreaded by all pop quiz regulars (along with Jamiroquai and Shakatak)
# 5 Hi Jude welcome to the party !
This curtain raiser to 1989 is really a hangover from 88 isn’t it? Rather than something new and “January-ish” to set the tone for the forthcoming year, we have Kylie & Jason. Big whoop.
We’ve become familiar with SAW and I’ve mentioned in the past about their one size fits all approach. Here though, the song feels tailored to highlight Kylie’s strengths and downplay Jason’s obvious weaknesses. I feel Kylie sells it more with her vocal. There are flaws, of course, but this love story is being driven by Kylie. Jason’s the passenger here. The big lunk’s dreams are wings flying to her. She changed his life. She’s gonna bring out all the love inside him. All he has to do is put all the hurt (what hurt? Why was this avenue not examined in another verse?) behind her, simply by being there. Is he anything more than a prettyboy himbo in this relationship?
It was never going to be more than a story of two pretty faces pledging their futures to eachother. No drama + No frisson + No fun = no romance. Basically the Neigbours’ Scott & Charlene plot is doing all the work here, and unfortunately for us, that’s a distant memory.
During the “I Should be So Lucky” thread I decided it was time I got up to speed on Kylie and scooped up all her post-SAW albums on Amazon. Every one a winner, or at least with winning moments, and the contrast with this was staggering. Still, I can appreciate what she brings to the song, and if it were a Kylie track alone I might have gone for a 4. But Donovan is surely the Polyfilla of male vocalists, and he spackles over every interesting wrinkle this might have had. 2.
@5 Hi Jude, great to have some new blood during this lean patch at the top…
@11 As a curtain-raiser on 1989 this couldn’t have been more appropriate, sadly enough.
#5 Hi Jude!
I am really pleased people are defending this one actually – I WANT to like it, giving it 3 felt like poking a puppy in the eye. I can imagine it’s great at karaoke too.
Some puppies you have to poke in the eye to see if they’re alive.
I detect something a bit bossa nova in the instrumentation. I could well be reaching, however, given that I’ve not called anything bossa nova in a while.
First things first – does Beck sample the first bar or so of this for the beginning of Lost Cause (off his come-down album Sea Change)?
Anyhow, this is new to me – I’ve never knowingly heard a Jason Donovan track before, and the next Kylie song I’m sure I recognize is Spinning Around! – but at first hearing I find it a little better than Tom gives it credit for; the nice touches in the first 60 sec or so that Billy Smart mentions are there. It runs out of gas though – Tom’s point about the musicians just ‘steering this one safely home’ seems right to me. So, for me it’s a 4, but I dare say it could have been a 7 or 8 if, say, Prince or Ne-yo or some Nashville crew had been let loose on its second half.
I want to add another voice to the clamour of support; despite Jason’s godawful voice, and despite the deliberateness of the writing and the production, I still absolutely love this. As ever with SA&W the use of tonality is direct, but wonderfully clever at the same time (the indeterminate swaying from major to relative minor is responsible for much of the surging emotion at the heart of the song). I, too, have sung this with lots of friends, and I’m much the better for it.
I also like the guilelessness of Kylie’s original vocal, but the singing on the Kermit version is so much better, mainly thanks to the merciful lack of muddy and awkward production on the voice. I could do without the odd Bryan Ferry vibrato and American inflection, though.
Kylie sounds unsettlingly like Ja’mie from We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High in the spoken bit of the Kermit one.
After Kylie’s success, Stock, Aitken and Waterman wasted no time in signing up her screen – and briefly, and allegedly, her real-life – partner Jason Donovan. He speedily scored a top five hit with “Nothing Can Divide Us,” and with professional perfectionism SAW put the two of them together for a romantic duet to coincide with the broadcast of Scott and Charlene’s wedding in Neighbours, watched by in excess of 20 million Britons. “Especially For You” still had to wait a month at number two behind “Mistletoe And Wine” before ascending to the top, but somehow that was seen as a polite gesture in itself, since the song and performance are so unambiguously nice and wholesome, and it was clear that SAW were setting Kylie and Jason up as the Donny and Marie of their day, without the troublesome subtext of brother and sister singing tender love songs at each other.
The song sees them reunited after an unspecified spell apart, and it is handled with such delicacy; on TV they performed a courtly little dance routine to accompany it, and the overall air is one of a Christmas pantomime duet between the two romantic leads. Kylie clearly takes the lead; her “mmm”s and “ooooh”s leading into the build-up to each chorus are skilful and emotionally connective and there is an audible smile on her face while she is singing. Double tracking and varispeeding disguise Jason’s rather lesser voice, but they drift agreeably enough through the song, constructed as only seasoned professionals could construct it (twenty years previously it might have been a hit for Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch, authors of the Neighbours theme tune) with that question mark of an augmented minor underscoring the eighth bar of each chorus (under “oh so true” as though questioning “how true is this, really?”) which punctumises it to some degree and makes it SAW’s most successful attempt at a ballad to date. “Especially For You” charms so much that it dares you to hate it, and while the next Popular entry demonstrates the chasm between the solid and the inspired, as another SAW production from later in 1989 would put it, I just don’t have the heart.
Mind-changing score-changing shock! I listened to this on headphones last night, and for the first time noticed the bed of oohs and aahs from Kylie throughout, which improved it for me and made my 2 look a little mean. So I’ll nudge it to 3. That includes the -2 Donovan Penalty mentioned previously.
Even I’m now thinking I was too mean. Stop making me like Especially For You you swines!
I’m with you on this one Tom. This has always left me a bit cold. Just a 4 from me.
Didn’t SAW admit at the time that this was consciously based on Peaches And Herb’s Reunited?
Did Jason have voice coaching inbetween his SAW days and when he relaunched his career on the West End stage with Joseph and Rocky Horror?
Bye bye Chris & Neil. I was supposed to change the pic to Kylie after I Should Be So Lucky but completely forgot, so now Jason gets an oar in too. Maybe an animated GIF could show him being yanked off and replaced by Michael Hutchence, or indeed a certain dastardly Leporid…
A bad record, but a brilliant one all the same (and not in an any way ironic way either). Like it or not, it’s a big moment in pop – Kylie jumping into Jason’s arms at the start of the instrumental break on TOTP is pretty much era-defining for the nine-year-old me. And I wasn’t even allowed to watch Neighbours.
This would be about the time an oleaginous chap of Mediterranean appearance oozed down our area steps and attempted to persuade us to sell half of our garden in Notting Hill. Since private gardens in Notting Hill are a precious commodity we gave him the brush off. The blank wall at the end of the garden belonged to a then semi-derelict mews cottage and shortly afterwards a planning application turned up to put a window in the wall looking directly on our garden. Despite our objections the application was granted and as soon as the hole was knocked through and the glazing was in we uprooted a laurel bush and replanted it right in front of the window.
There were frequent weekend parties once the mews cottage was inhabited, but we weren’t invited to any of them. It was only several years later after I was no longer living there that I learned that it was set up as Jason Donovan’s London pad, but Jason himself didn’t live there in the beginning. Instead he had a famous tenant, a well-known Pakistani author living undercover while under a well-publicised death threat from a religious-zealot autocrat.
You heard it here first!
Rosie, I got as far as Saladin Chamcha’s pork binge and read no further. Did it get any better after that?
My critical judgement may have been clouded by being utterly in love with Kylie at the time (and yeah, now too, a bit), but I thought this was charming. Felt a bit chunkier too, oddly, than some contemporary SAW productions and the ‘catch’ under “You changed my life” is a killer. Jason’s horribly strained vocal anchors it around 6 for me.
Terrible shame about ‘Stop!’ though, as I think I said last time. That’s an absolute blast, in fun-times and sonics.
# 5 – Hello, Jude. Welcome along.
I remember many moons ago joining Marcello in agreeing how wrong it was that Donnie and Marie used to sing love duets to eachother. EFY is precisely the sort of thing they would have leapt at. Instead the song was gifted to a pair of tv actors, which for me drops it into the same basket as “Whispering Grass”. In other words, it would have sunk without trace without the telly link. Inoffensive teen fun. But not of my period, really.
I’m another whose sticking up for this one. In Ramsey St lingo fair dinkum mate it’s bonzar.
@5 Hello Jude.
thefatgit @27:
I enjoyed it actually. I’d read it twice before I realised it was controversial.
Because I don’t know where else to say so….
Another brilliant Poptimist column, Tom. I’ve been working my hardest to bust apart the idea of genre for a while now, but your simple and elegant reflection does so much more than all my little scribblings put together will ever manage.
Your Pitchfork column is easily my most eagerly anticipated reading on the web — not that it would look like it, given that I’ve only just worked out it’s a four-weekly piece and not a monthly one…
So thanks, and keep up the intelligent intervention.
Cheers
This song is so sugary, you can almost feel your teeth rotting as you listen to it.
Come to think of it, it reminds me a little of Daniel the Blue Peter Baby. By which I mean… Blue Peter had its own pets, garden and even a baby so that kids who had pets, a garden or a baby sibling could identify with the programme’s features on them, and those who didn’t could have the ones on TV as surrogates. This was Kylie and Jason the Blue Peter Relationship – two such beautiful people that the Neighbours audience could watch them, emotionally adopt them as their own and get through the tissues on their wedding day. I’m not saying this scornfully, but recognising that the pair of them played a valid role in the adolescent (or younger) days of a lot of people – just look at the comments on the YouTube page on Tom’s link for examples of how fondly people look back on this. And like many a SAW song it’s hugely effective at what it sets out to do – with the harmonies Billy enthuses over and the drum track holding it together while stopping just short of plodding.
Mind you, the build-up to the chorus seems as long as a Tour de France mountain climb and almost as exhausting.
I had a mate who looked like Jason Donovan (tall, blonde, good-looking – the bastard) and one afternoon back then we were in this clothes shop in Soho and the assistant kept following us around, making flattering comments whenever my mate pulled out an item of clothing to look at. It was only when we were leaving and he said “I love your records!” that we realized why he’d been acting like that.
Like many of the people above, I actually had a downer on this record purely because it kept Erasure’s “Stop!” off the number one spot – although not on the ITV Chart Show chart, where the positions were reversed.
Although Jason Donovan is responsible for one of my favourite SAW tracks, it’s hard to justify his performance on this one. This is supposed to be a frivolous, romantic tune, and yet his vocals are akin to listening to a groaning cow with its neck caught on some barbed wire. I know love can sometimes end in a similarly bloody and unpleasant way, but the noise hardly seems appropriate in this instance. Call a vet sharpish, there’s something horrible going on at Pete Waterman’s farm.
The common criticism hurled at SAW at the time was that with their magic studio gadgets, they could make even a terrible vocalist sound competent. Jason Donovan is living proof that, for the most part, this wasn’t an accusation which held much water.
Apropos the Blue Peter Baby (#33), I remember Daniel clearly, the cute curly-haired little tyke! But, wait! The Swede remembers something else. The child became a scrote. I was sure this was true. Bloody certain, in fact. So I googled him and dagnabbit I was right:
SHAME OF THE BLUE PETER BABY
WHEN the parents of 14-week-old Daniel Scott called Blue Peter in 1968 suggesting they “adopt” him and chart his progress, bosses loved the idea.
Up until the age of two, cute little Daniel made several appearances to teach viewers how a baby develops and how to care for one.
Sadly, BP’s chubby-chopped adopted son turned into something of a black sheep. Daniel’s parents split up and he became a teenage tearaway. After pulling himself out of a life of drugs and petty crime, he admitted: “I was a look-out man in a burglary and I was caught. I got a minor fine and two years’ probation.”
Auntie Val would have been disgusted. Mind, you, Daniel’s not the only Blue Peter personality to have fallen from grace. Remember, for example, what they used to grow in the Blue Peter garden one time?
I’m part of that generation of Neighbours fans, was 11 when this hit number one, had a crush on Kylie (and felt a bit embarrassed about that) and though I would have denied it at the time I liked this single, just because as Tom says, it played an important part in a greater narrative. I understand the criticisms levelled at it here, but I STILL can’t but like it. I’d give it a 6.
I really can’t understand the generosity shown towards the vapid anonymous anti-music manufactured by SAW and their ever-bewildering array of talentless vocalists. I cannot imagine anything less attractive or exciting in pop. Clean, crisp generic synth sounds, obvious melodies, shockingly poor lyrics. Nothing SAW produced was original or inspirational or anything I would look for in pop. It was an exercise in marketing which killed off my interest in the charts for some time -if not for good. This is just a turgid ballad with naff lyrics sung by two very average singers – nothing even vaguely romantic about it. Is this really what it had come to? Do people really sing this at karaoke? Thank God for E’s, Baggy & Raves. Tom, stick to your guns here – it’s awful – no ABBA-style revisionism is ever going to persuade me otherwise.
Re: comment #5
Years since I’ve heard that b-side and cripes it’s terrible; rinky-dink forced jollity, only the merest whiff of a tune and so non-descript and un-rock it calls to mind some of the weaker number ones from the early days of Popular – it’s like something from 1958, not ’88.
This was probably the record that sealed the move for SAW from dance floor to bubblegum for good, despite the best efforts of Donna later in the year. Their output gets patchier for me from here, though I still loved them at the time.
I had a serious boy crush when this was out, so it was pretty much perfect for me; thus all critical faculties have been chucked out the window! Even though it’s not something I’d listen to by choice now, I can’t help but get goose bumps when I hear it, especially when accompanied by the video.
In attempting to listen objectively, still a very strong song, held back considerably by clunky old JD, bless him. Something I’m looking forward to discussing in more detail in the near future!
@22, SAW definitely said they were influenced by Peaches & Herb for this, and that the original demo was more reggae-flavoured, if you can imagine such a thing. ‘All I Wanna Do’ on the flip seems to be them channelling ‘You’re The One That I Want’, so Ciarans comment about it sounding late 50’s seems about right.
14 year old me would give it a 10, now I’d give it a five, but that would seem churlish. I’ll settle on seven.
vive jason et kylie voix superbes et supers souvenirs aujourd’hui je les adore toujours et qui ne se rappel pas d’eux ils ont marqués les années 80 et font encore parler d’eux je leur souhaite une bonne continuation
Re #3, was there more than one Indie Chart? The Cherry Red book (or at least the Cherry Red website’s reproduction of the contents of the Cherry Red book…) has this peaking at #2*, presumably behind the Crackers International EP.
(Yes, yes, not only pedantry but out-of-date pedantry and not only that but out-of-date pedantry regarding the ’80s indie chart. Impressive work.)
*I’m not sure how this works given that it reached at #1 in the actual chart…
Oh, there were loads of ‘indie’ charts, some ‘truly independant distributed record label’ based, and some based on ‘indie music styles’ only. So, K&J would feature in one chart, and multiple Bauhaus singles would be in the other.
Like all S/A/W productions, the sleeve to this single sported the legend “vocals recorded on a CalRec Soundfield Microphone”. It had never occurred to me to wonder what that meant until now but a quick Google turns up this article by Hit Factory engineer Les Sharma:
http://www.lessharma.com/recording-with-saw-stock-aitken-waterman.html
There, I learned two things.
1) Pete Waterman, the Arthur Daley of 1980s synthpop, had done a deal for free microphones in exchange for the credit.
2) Kylie was deemed a “good” singer, while Jason’s vocals were regularly ghosted by Mike Stock (in the early days, at least).
It makes you wonder why there isn’t more written about PWL and the glory days of the Hit Factory. The process is fascinating.
Anyway, to the song in question. I hated it at the time, but have become more fond of its goofy charm over the years. The singers’ lack of skill makes it more believable than the more showy love ballads – like they’d just wandered in, love hearts in their eyes, and asked S/A/W to record a song they’d written in their school jotters. The line that sells it for me is the simple sincerity of “now that I’m next to you”.
A five, I think.
Re: 42, 43, I’m guessing that as well as there being different definitions of an indie record, the charts may have employed different retail outfits. Presumably places like Rough Trade shifted very few/any of this, whereas other, less specialist, stores would have sold more of this over Erasure.
Hm… an analysis of the influence of SAW on early 90s family sitcom theme songs would be fun. I can’t shake the association.
Re. #44: The Calrec Soundfield microphone was designed for surround sound recording, e.g. of orchestras. PWL/SAW never used it that way… It is puzzling if Calrec gave them a free microphone in exchange for the acknowledgement on all records, as that wasn’t their intended market!
It was one of the very best microphones available (and expensive.) Hence PWL still have them and IIRC Mike Stock’s own studio has one too; it was designed to be very accurate and not to have a “sound” of its own.
PWL was well equipped–Fairlight III, SSL mixing consoles, Sony 48 track digital recorders, etc… (no magic time machine to transport auto-tune into the 1980s, though!)
Vocals sessions were almost all done by Mike Stock and always double (or more) tracked. Top quality backing vocalists (Miriam Stockley, Mae McKenna, etc… and Mike Stock himself) were on all the records.
There is actually quite a lot out there on their “glory days”–Mike Stock’s autobiography, Phil Harding’s book, Pete “Mixmaster” Hammond’s recently published book, interviews, and, as you mentioned, Les Sharma’s site/forum.
That said, Mike Stock’s songs are worthy of a more extended musicological analysis, often being far more complex and developed than most pop songs (“Especially for You” is an example of this…)–if you listen past the production.
I can’t totally hate this one. A very charitable 4/10 from me.