“Eternal Flame” is absurdly top-heavy, all the treble in the strings and Susanna Hoffs’ voice teetering like a gyroscope on a single looping point of rhythm. As someone on Twitter said, the triangle on this track is something you can never un-hear once you notice it.
The spindliness of “Eternal Flame”‘s bottom end gives the song a necessary fragility: the singer feels certain this is the real thing, but can’t quite be certain, and even considering the question leaves her exposed: the catch in Hoffs’ voice on “my whole life, so lonely” is the first time the song breaks out of its charming drowsiness and it’s when I really feel there might be something behind the fairly rote sentiments. When the other Bangles come in it’s a reassurance, but in conjunction with the ramped-up arrangement they also overload the track, tipping it into the full-on ballad it’s only flirted with becoming.
Score: 5
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Walk Like An Egyptian and/or Manic Monday would have made much better Bangle Number 1s …
Yeah, love those songs – I know very little about the Bangles actually aside from thinking “yes VG” about those and “hmmm” about this: are their LPs any good.
If I do think of anything else to say about this song, I’ll get another chance of course. Though actually it’s that group’s FIRST number one which the arrangement here reminds me of quite strongly.
Apologies – again – for the delay in posting this, mostly down to illness.
Bit harsh I reckon – the lift towards the end takes this into ‘7’ territory for me. The whole thing is super sweet without turning sickly, and the sound is pleasingly Big without blustering a la Robin Beck.
The Bangles were actually a very good albums band, channeling a 60’s girl group sound that owed a lot to Goffin and King, the Mamas & Papas etc with love and a modern edge. None of their singles is particularly typical of their best work and this verges on the saccharin, but I was glad to see them get a number one.
As well as the famous ones The Bangles did a great rendition of ‘Hazy Shade Of Winter’ and I’ve always been fond of their minor hits from around this time ‘In Your Room’ and ‘Be With You’.
Susannah Hoffs has a wonderfully distinctive voice. This song has been done a great disservice by the dreary Atomic Kitten cover I think. Generic sentiments, perhaps, but a very classy and actually quite restrained (for the 80s) pop ballad.
If She Knew What She wants is pretty good, too (if a bit over-produced)
Yeah, I think I’d prefer it if either there was slightly less going on – just the triangle and the harmonies – or a hell of a lot more, under the control of a Spector or a Steinman. As it is, it feels pleasant enough, but its no ‘Like A Prayer’, that’s for sure.
1989 discourse about this from older people was unedifying praise formulated around it being “classy”, “classic pop”, etc. It was also a bona fide sleeper hit, released to little fanfare or initial enthusiasm, crawling incrementally up the charts each week; 81 – 79 – 72 – 60 – 53 – 52 – 47 – 33 – 13 – 5 – 1!
For us 16-year old boys, however, our chief source of interest was which Bangle we most fancied.
‘In Your Room’ was pretty good, though.
As is their version of Goin’ Down To Liverpool although I do wish it was more shoegazey (and featured Leonard Nimoy on backing vox).
Number two watch: Three whole weeks of Simply Red’s excruciating interpretation of ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’. Now there’s an act that should have been banned from doing cover versions…
Light Entertainment Watch: No Top Of The Pops appearance for ‘Eternal Flame’, but the Bangles were no strangers to Shepherds Bush;
THE TUBE: with Jools Holland, Paula Yates, The Cramps, The Bangles, Brian Eno, Siouxsie, John Taylor, Furniture, Suzanne Vega, Kurtis Blow (1986)
WHISTLE TEST: with Marc Almond, The Bangles, Richard Thompson, Gary Moore, Phil Lynott (1985)
WHISTLE TEST: with Johnathan Richman, Terry Alan, The Bangles, It Bites (1986)
WOGAN: with The Bangles, Frances de la Tour, Joel Grey, Peter Reid, Egon Ronay (1986)
WOGAN: with The Bangles, Kenny Everett, Brian Glover, Derek Jameson, Deborah Owen (1986)
WOGAN: with The Bangles, Ian Hogg, Helen Lederer, Nicky Selwyn, Doctor Martha Welch (1988)
WOGAN: with The Bangles, Julie Goodyear, Tom Wolfe (1988)
WOGAN: with The Bangles, Michael Davis, Gina Lollabrigida, Mandy Smith, Bill Wyman (1989)
The interesting thing about this is that it didn’t – as far as I know – owe its popularity to a film soundtrack. Because that’s what it sounds like, and that’s what made hits of Take My Breath Away and a bunnied-song from a singer from a related scene to the Bangles.
Tom’s right, of course: to the extent it works it’s because of limits of Susanna Hoffs’s voice. It’s a song I like a bit more now than I did then: at the time, it marked the final passing of interest in a band I had quite enjoyed. For me the tension came in seeing how long the Paisley Underground traces lingered – still there on the second album, gone by this point.
Pre-makeover/fully 60s-styled Bangles from 1983 .
(Youtube also has scratchy footage of them doing Seeds songs etc, from even earlier).
My favourite Bangles song is “James” – wonderfully spiky, and of course also brilliant for playing at people called James (who are far more numerous than people called Roxanne).
“Eternal Flame” is a bit of a letdown, really, although it seems fair the Bangles should have had a #1. It’s all chorus, though there is that “say my name…” break that comes up twice in quick succession. Even the solo sort of languid wanders off rather than ending. Should be interesting to see how such a slight song fares with GLORIA when we reach the Kitten Bunny.
Wikipedia says that Susanna Hoffs was nude when she recorded this, in emulation of an apparent habit of Olivia Newton-John. I believe They Might Be Giants recorded one song on each of their LPs* nude as well; something of an unlikely trinity.
*until they started doing albums for children
I have to say I have access to no objectivity on this, it being one of the first singles I ever bought (or was bought for me), and also being the source of an unreasonable amount of happy and confusedly sublime (at the time) childhood emotions. A 10 from me!
I quite like this and it was the only ’89 number one to feature in my year-end Top 40 (low thirties though).
As Billy says this was one of the last slowburners to reach the top. The Bangles were a strange band in chart terms, three massive hits and a host of others that barely registered. It seemed like they never succeeded in building a fanbase that would consistently buy their records.
Definitely Vicki for me (though Susannah has aged better); that wriggle in the Walk Like An Egyptian video is one of the sexiest moments in pop.
A U.S. #1, and the obvious Big Ballad that turned out to be their 2nd biggest record. Susannah Hoffs’ vocals do indeed sound like they are going to break at every moment, but then she always sounded like that. And that’s why she sounds so perfect for this type of ballad. A big late 80’s Power Ballad 9 from me.
Great song, with a great performance from Susannah Hoffs, but the tacky hallmark-card production really lets it down, and this seems to seep into Hoffs’ vocals in the verses.
Apart from nostalgia I think the song can be defended on a number grounds, though not to the extent that a 10 is justified, I will concede.
The vocal performance, for one, is properly characterful, the song sitting snug in a range apposite to the tenor of the lyrics. There’s not much bloom or heft to her voice, but you go along for the emotional intent more than any special technical prowess. I’m not entirely convinced by the lift into falsetto on the climax (the last ‘is this burning, an eternal flaaame‘), but the strain and crack of her chest voice at the latter ‘am I only dreaming, or is this burning…flame’ and the crucial ‘oh’, are wonderful. I also love her ‘do you feel ‘a’ same?’ same, for ‘do you feel the same?’.
The structure of the song does similar things, being both gauche and charming at various points. The move into the contrasting ‘Say My Name’ Bridge/Middle Eight sections, with a totally convincing and invigorating lift into an emotionally heightened flattened seventh tonality via a twisting, turning major/minor dominant, is wonderful. The shift into a truncated verse for the solo guitar interlude is smart enough in itself but doesn’t feel dynamically in proportion at all. However, it serves its function of setting up a gravitation field for a move back to the surging Say My Name. Heading back to a culminating verse is succinct, and allows the resolving denouement its full force.
The harmonies are competent throughout, and tapered enough that their joining in communion at the end just about works, even if they’re a little too polished, too bland, for my tastes. The production itself is of its time, but I would contend that its thrashing and crashing destiny, out of an intimate beginning, is preferable to the anemic and horribly ‘contemporary’ efforts of those behind the corrosive Atomic Kitten cover. The triangle, admittedly, is upsetting.
So, on reflection, I would say an 8.
I have to say that i dont mind this at all nowadays.Used to be overplayed but now has been a forgotten hit. No big changes.maintains its sound all the way through.
A diamond in the rough that was 1989.7
a solid seven from me. i really like the quavering, slightly too intimate atmosphere of this – it’s got a kind of devotional quality that, to me, places it somewhere between ‘pet sounds’ and ‘the man with the child in his eyes’ (in intent, if not quite quality) rather than in robin beck territory. i’ll second their version of ‘hazy shade of winter’ too – fierce! and will note that the bangles cover of ‘september girls’ remains the closest i’ve ever got to hearing a record by big star.
finally, (#10) wogan, with guests julie goodyear and tom wolfe!!!!
My chum at primary school LOVED this and would sing it at me all the time, off-key, on purpose. I preferred ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ then and now!
First Bangles album ‘All Over the Place’ is great in a new wave/60s revival style, though better than that sounds. Think of a slightly spikier Go-Gos. ‘Different Light’ has the big hits but is spottier. Never got around to the last album.
This is one of those songs which I dismiss when it starts but sucks you in with Susanna Hoffs earnestness, 7/10.
I saw The Bangles play live around 1986 at the Town & Country Club in Kentish Town and they were a lot of fun.
I quite like this song. It feels slightly underdeveloped but that may add to its charm along with Susanna Hoffs fragile voice.
I suspect that the lyric may speak more to/for women than to men – it seems to me to capture a particularly feminine sensibility but I’m prepared to be corrected. Interestingly the song is co-written (with Hoffs) by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg who also wrote ‘Like a Virgin’, ‘True Colors’ and (with Chrissie Hynde) ‘I’ll stand by you’ – so perhaps it’s what men imagine a particular feminine sensibility to be.
The performance here is quite delicate but I sometimes can’t help imagine it being howled along to in the wee small hours by a divorcee with running mascara clutching a half empty bottle of Bailey’s
I remember seeing this being panned on the video vote on “Saturday Superstore” (or was it “Going Live”)? One of the panel argued that it had a video you wouldn’t be able to actually see if the sun was shining on the TV screen – something I was later able to vouch for.
It was also roundly disliked by Bangles fans at the time for being their giant “sell out” disc. In retrospect it’s not appalling, but it is lacking ambition – I agree with Billy Smart’s comment that it either needed a lot more going on, or considerably less.
I also once got it into my head that Demis Roussos could easily do a version of this, and once that idea struck, I could never quite shake it off. It does have a definite summer holiday Euro-ballad vibe to it (right down to the big key change at the end) when I’m sure what they were actually trying to channel was the spirit of the Mamas and the Papas. Not that there’s anything wrong with the odd Euro-ballad, mind you, but it was a bizarre kind of thing for the Bangles to handle.
I like this a lot, an example of a ballad that Gets It Right, largely because the surging emotion is only in the melody and not the production or the performance. But I never listen to it, so maybe I only like the memory of it.
I always thought this was a stodgy syrupy single, and disliked it at the time. My opinion of it hasn’t changed much in the intervening twenty-one years. I’d give it 4 out of 10.
I bought this aged 13 on a French exchange to a god-forsaken town on the edge of the Massif Central. 21 years on…..it’s OK, but not as good as the single I bought alongside it ( IIRC a much bigger hit in France than in the Uk, “Do you Believe in Shame?” by Duranduran, as I think they were styling themselves then).
And nowhere near as good as “If She Knew What She Wants” let alone “Manic Monday”. I really loved the follow up “Be With You”, even if the bassline appeared to have been nicked straight from Hall & Oates’s “Maneater”.
Still, if you want something really truly dire, there is always the cover version by Atomic Kitten (who really should have called themselves Nuclear Pussy and made mid-80s style dirgy SubPop stuff)
From the sacred to the profane. I find it difficult not to think of the saucy playground re-write of Eternal Flame. Putting aside such scatalogical recollections this really is ponderous tosh. Susannah Hoffs voice is too weedy and nasal for a song this size. The main hook is repeated once, twice too often as if the writers are a bit too pleased with it. Add to this the scatter cushion arrangement and the horlicks flavoured production and the effect is to my ears soporific.
At least I now have a clearer indication of who was actually listening to the Bangles. They’ve always struck me as a band not quite hip enough for those in the know but also too grown up (or specifically too twenty-something) for younger pop fans. I guess they were one of those bands who got popular without any so-called demographic.
Supposedly the other Bangles hated this song. The Bangles episode of the American music bio program “Behind the Music” lacked the drugs and orgies that enlivened so many other episodes, so instead the central plot was the evil record company plot to make Hoffs the frontwoman, for which this was a key piece of evidence.
Re 28: Certainly in the early footage, Hoffs seemed to do very little of the singing. Then again, she did the lead vocals on Hero Takes A Fall, Manic Monday and If She Knew What She Wants – their best singles I reckon, with her reediness again working well against the swelling Californian harmonies of the others. Plus, of course, there was her sideways glance thing…
@anto. Sorry, is the obvious, saucy playground rewrite, “Burning (like an STI) an eternal shame”? Haw haw if so.
@MikeMCSG. Vicki for me too (esp. in the Hazy vid. Phwoar.). Suzannah has clearly done some deal with the devil to allow her to be, if anything, significantly better-looking now than she was 20 years ago.
Sleeve watch: they’re really being mugged by their hair aren’t they? To Jane Wiedlin’s dungeon with the lot of ’em.
I’m finding this track interesting to compare with ‘Like a Prayer’. I didn’t like either EF or LAP much at the time, both seemed v. overdone, kitchen sink-y – triangles, gospel choirs… – and also to have vids that were just too too much – flaming crosses, fireworks on the beach…it’s in there baby. Suspicion in both cases: the fireworks (both literal and metaphorical) are there to distract us from thin underlying songs with stooopid lyrics.
Fast forward 20 years, and LAP sounds better than ever, and is well on the way to becoming a standard (and what originally felt like arrangement excesses now just sound like self-assurance). EF hasn’t had anything like that trajectory, notwithstanding, as robotsdancingalone observes, some pretty nifty chords and changes in the middle eights. I think that the song’s problems are twofold: (i) its central ‘eternal flame’ lyric is just dopey in a way that makes explicit the foolishness of a lot of over-the-top, romantic sentiments: eternal flames are for cemeteries, and serve communal rather than individual purposes (since individuals, let alone their sentiments are anything but eternal). (ii) EF’s opening draws a *lot* from the opening of Aerosmith’s Dream On. So much so that, at least when I’m in a certain mood, when EF pops up I almost instantly divert to Dream On.
Lastly, I was impressed that Tom managed to get through his review without mentioning that his favorite ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ drums come in at the end of EF. That’s a bad comparison for EF to invite too in my view (Tom of course rates EF and BOTW the same so I gather that this wouldn’t be a problem for him!). Anyhow, if one comes to (or came to) EF with completely fresh ears and a credulous mindset about dippy romantic sentiment then EF is probably at least a 7, but for my black heart and jaded palate this is a:
5
I loved this at the time but find it unlistenable now, despite the girls’ as usual shrewd harmonies. In the U.S. the Bangles’ chart success was bigger but just as erratic: their #2’s were much better than the #1’s (“Manic Monday” and “Hazy Shade of Winter,” the latter being one of the most radical covers ever essayed, surpassing the original in emotional and sonic punch), and their middling hits just as interesting (“In Your Room” and their magical take on Jules Shear’s “If She Knew What She Wants”).
swanstep, i can’t remember a playground version but yours sounds too sophisticated to me – replacing “burning” with “bumming” is probably more like it. (cf the playground version of ashford and simpson’s “solid as a rock”)
swanstep, i can’t remember a playground version but your attempt sounds too sophisticated to me – replacing “burning” with “bumming” is probably more like it. (cf the playground version of ashford and simpson’s “solid as a rock”)
oops! not sure it was worth one post, let alone two!
@pink champale. I like your suggestion above that EF draws on Pet Sounds (You still believe in me and Caroline No especially I guess, listening to bits of PS again now). It makes me think that maybe my assessment above was a bit harsh. Actually, reflecting that I did once own a Bangles All around the place t-shirt convinces me of that too.
@alfred, 31. Yeah, that Hazy Shade cover is amazing – most covers are quite redundant, but this one’s essential.
I like the triangle. Though the song is a bit thin and, as was said above, the production should either be more minimalist or grander as it’s sort of stuck just being rather generically pleasant. The Bangles had a lot of charm though and Hoffs’ fragile voice makes me like it more than I would if it had a bigger and more assured vocal.
I heard The Bangles Hazy Shade cover (from the movie of ‘Less Than Zero’) before the original so the latter always sounds weedy and stilted in comparison.
#13 nails it. i too remember loving this song at the age of 9, but being confused by the feelings of melancholy it brought out. i’d loved pop music practically since i was born, but no song had ever made me feel that way before (besides maybe “girl” by the beatles). it was extremely confusing, but i can still feel that melancholy when i hear this song today.
the bangles were as solid a hit-writing group as it got in the mid-80s. anyone interested in exploring deeper would do well to check out their debut album, All Over the Place. cheeful rollicking pop songs, as well as a great cover of the classic “Live”, by another oft-overlooked LA band, the Merry-Go-Round.
I was disappointed in a Bangles ballad; it sounded to me like acceptance of a place in rock royalty, when I liked them for being more quirky than that. I wrote a piece about Manic Monday earlier this year for a book (clang!), played it over and over but still loved it – Eternal Flame palls over a couple of listens. Saying that, Tom picks up on its loveliest bit, that catch in “my whole life, so lonely”. I can hear it in my head and shiver.
Heard the Atomic Kitten version in a supermarket this morning.God it is desperate.Easily a contender for one of the worst cover versions in history.
Enough said.
No Atomic Kitten chat till the right time please. I reckon they made a couple of good records – was the Eternal Flame cover one of them? Wait and see!
I respect the laws of bunnyville as much as the next man tom but it was always unavoidable here.
Anyway i dont think personally anyone will be too bothered about Atomic Kitten by the time we get round to them but your the boss.
Not mentioned yet and maybe relevant: Todd Terje’s rework of Walk Like An Egyptian. Saves the lovely vocal melody from the original’s slight arrangement, dapples in in this luscious dubby echo effect, adds a slo-mo house beat and voila! Right as rain.
Going back to that ‘Behind The Music’ documentary on The Bangles, it was one of the band members who wasn’t Susannah Hoffs who remarked on it that EF was (to paraphrase)..” a lovely song, something Whitney Houston should have recorded.. not us!”. I’ve always liked it and still do so it’s a solid 7 for me with an honorary point added on for keeping Hucknall’s wretched cover of a fine song off the top (shame nobody could have done the same same in the US). 8 in total.
Given that we had only four number ones in common in 1989 and this was one of them, I’d better mention that this was reportedly Australia’s biggest-selling single of that year, despite spending only a week at the top in June. We also had two weeks of “Walk Like an Egyptian” at number one in February 1987, a more interesting song to me, but “Eternal Flame” is better than I’d remembered; the imperfections of Hoffs’ delivery do help rather than hinder it, I think. I wouldn’t go over the top for it, but could go a 5 or 6. Five, maybe, because I suspect it will soon outwear its welcome again, as it did for me back in the day.
Re:30 Haha yeah it was in that style.
We made our own fun in them days.
I’m a little late into this one and much has been said already, but I’d just like to add that as ballads go, EF is a pleasant enough listen.
So a 7 from me.
7 from me too. Though I preferred their other singles (Hero Takes A Fall is probably my favourite) I’ll always have a soft spot for Eternal Flame, for personal reasons mainly.
It was Number One when I embarked on my first ‘proper’ relationship. So yes, to this day I’m a sucker for the ‘say my name/ sun shines through the rain’ section because that’s how 1989 felt for me – a huge shaft of romantic sunlight after years of teenage gloom and despondency.
I’m a little puzzled by the ambivalence aimed a this one. A lovely song and a lovely girl singing it.
As Bunny is from my seed, I wouldn’t dream of winding the little guy up, but in any case, I had no idea that someone else had covered this and taken it to number one. I don’t know whether I should be proud or ashamed of that.
This has got me to dust off my old copy of All Over The Place, the first Bangles album, which sounds terrific in a rather unremarkable way these days . It does all the things a lightweight, throwaway power pop record should do, its just short of a couple of big time hits (though as mentioned many times above, Hero Takes A Fall is really very good). I think I found Eternal Flame intensely moving at fifteen, now its just good karaoke fodder, but All Over The Place is anything but.
Now dare I listen to their reformed in 2003 album? Any guidance?
That sleeve looks like a display ad for a line of hair dyes.