JASON DONOVAN – "Sealed With A Kiss"

Brian Hyland’s famous 1962 recording of the song is a record of bleakness comparable with “Johnny Remember Me” and “Ghost Town.” While Carole King attempted to put a brave, jolly face on the same issue in the same year’s “It Might As Well Rain Until September,” the five-note dies irae of the opening guitar figure, the distant harmonica and the unreachable wraiths of female backing voices all contribute to the singer’s sense of dazed dread that September may never arrive, or that his love is already lost (the sequel to “Sealed With A Kiss” did eventually arrive five years later in the Velvet Underground’s “The Gift,” a warning that unilateral cherish always has its inbuilt limits).

Hyland sings with the chill of death flowing within his teenage veins, since of course to such teenagers even summer holidays from school are a matter of life and death. The most charitable remark I can make about the Jason Donovan reading is that he sings the right notes – well, approximately – but with a complete (verging on detached) lack of attachment to the emotions the song tries meta-clumsily to articulate. It is all done on one, not even especially morose, level. At the song’s climax of “You won’t be there,” and “I don’t wanna say goodbye,” which Hyland sings as though having just slashed his wrists with fragments from his newly-broken mirror, Donovan can’t even get his timing or phrasing right.

His performance is therefore something of an innocent insult. But naturally such concerns failed to register with his fans, most of whom were not old enough to remember Donny Osmond, let alone Brian Hyland, and who ensured that his “Sealed With A Kiss” became the first non-charity single to debut at number one since “Two Tribes.” But even this achievement signals the beginning of the decline and devaluation of the singles chart. In the same week there was also a new entry at number two – “The Best Of Me,” Cliff Richard’s 100th single, and heavily promoted as such, although it was an instantly forgettable routine ballad – and although Cliff’s hundredth single attained the same peak position as his first, thirty-one years previously, both he and Donovan dropped down and out of the charts fairly rapidly, and neither record has survived on oldies radio or endured in any other noticeable way. The ground was therefore laid for the charts to becoming yet another marketing tool as opposed to a genuine representation of the public’s musical likes at any given period (though some would believe, not without reason, that ’twas ever thus); instant results became required, and by the mid-nineties a first week number one entry would become more or less obligatory for any would-be chart-topper. Thus the stage was set for the rotating passing fancies of a few thousand people rather than for genuine future classics; and although the rest of Popular is far from devoid of great number ones, the overall decline begins here.

I liked this one at the time. Being young and unfamiliar with anything outside the charts, its strange mournfulness was quite compelling. I still have nostalgic fondness, but in retrospect no, not great.

I wonder how Kylie would have fared with this? She had her own stab at a standard with ‘Tears On My Pillow’ the following year, which I think she made a decent fist of. But this was probably a bit bleak for her voice.

Fifth form reaction rather supported Marcello’s thesis, the universal consensus being that pop-pickers are so gullible that any old rubbish can get to number one these days.

We weren’t wrong! Open-minded revisionism can only take you so far…

What’s odd about watching the video now is the very conscious attempt to create a 1962 nostalgia -‘Mad Men’ done on the resources of ‘Crossroads’ – an aesthetic surely lost on all of Donovan’s target audience, and one that must have struck anyone old enough to have actually remembered 1962 as entirely bogus.

I dare say that someone like George Michael would sing and arrange the hell out of this song. SAW and Donovan not so much. This is dire, honestly inspiring ‘Why did they bother?’ thoughts. Next.

I associate the Bryan Hyland version with being on holiday in Llandudno in the summer of 1962, when I turned eight. I can also remember it being more than the usual song of loss, without really knowing why, and it sending shivers up my spine even at such a tender age. So that is the definitive version for me, the one against which others must be measured.

Listening to Jason makes me feel he’s in the studio fulfilling his contract, and that’s about it.

Well, at least there’s some mystique in the echoey atmospherics, and some charisma in the slow Latin rhythms. Sort of reminds me of Besame Mucho. Not the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and yes I sort of liked its mystery (to a seven year old) at the time too.

#1 All square on the head there MC. I can’t remember a single note of “The Best Of Me”. Was it all down to marketing though or did falling sales make instant number ones more likely ?

Being a bit younger than Rosie I associate the song with its reissue in 1975 when coincidentally it was in the charts at the same time as Pete Waterman’s first marker, Susan Cadogan’s “Hurts So Good”.

# 16 I’m struggling for a rhyme for Donovan but maybe :

The critics love to honour Van
But kids buy Jason Donovan

Perhaps not.

i’d rather van morrison/
than jason donovan

Re 15: Seeing as SWAK was Hyland’s follow-up to Ginny Come Lately (“I only met you just a couple of days ago, and I want your loving so… my love for you has no more room to grow”) you might well be right to doubt his sincerity. The hound.

Brian Hyland’s other UK hit of 1962 “Ginny Come Lately” is for me a perfect evocation of teenage longing (and when was that ever chaste?) – the song is simple but effective. He also had an earlier novelty hit in 1960 with “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” which perhaps reveals the truely unchaste Brian.

Agree he doesn’t do too bad a job with it, and the video of course gives the people what they want. But the Brian Hyland arrangement knocks it into a cocked hat, the wistful harmonica and everything.

There’s a nice version of this song by Agnetha Faltskog on the youtube page too, albeit featuring a rather inappropriate guitar break and a bloke looking like he could be her stalker.

Just searched out the Four Voices version, and wow – sorry, but I reckon faced with that mournful delivery, the girl would be saying goodbye for good to the miserable git, not just until September.

I too associate Bryan Hyland’s version pretty vividly with 1975 – despite it apparently peaking at no.7 in June, I connect it with late August and the end of the school holidays, which came about a month after my mother’s death. Consequently, I suppose, I’ve been carrying the line in my head for 30-odd years as ‘Its gonna be a cold lonely winter’ and am slightly startled now to realise the trick memory has played on me. Rosie’s comment – ‘more than the usual song of loss’ – maybe explains why the specifics of the lyrics passed me by at the time. (As did Jason’s version in its entirety, to be honest.)

As lonepilgrim has mentioned Agnetha’s cover from 2004’s My Colouring Book, I have nothing to add apart from a video of Brian Hyland actually performing the song in 1962. Check those dancers in the background, and the girl on the floor at 1:30.

As for Jase, what got me about his video was the Kylie-lookalike who walks past with her back to the camera at 0:50. A bit painful given that he was still recovering from Michael Hutchence’s seduction of Kyles the previous year.

Do you remember Nick Lowe?
He was a minor pop star, don’t you know?

He sang a song about breaking glass.
Which I personally thought was a load of old arse.

He also said it’s cruel to be kind,
So I can call him a c**t ’cause I know he won”t mind!

Late to this…all I can add is that Mr Donovan is really quite poor here and does not deserve it’s straight to the top status. Nice song, poorly exeuted, which sums up SAW’s output around this time.

#1; a beautiful third paragraph. When this made number one, it sure did “signal the beginning of the decline and devaluation of the singles chart.” As well as being “an instantly forgettable routine ballad”, it was the first single to enter at number on having been lifted from a pre-existing album. The album did not sell poorly, it was the year’s number 1 and had, by the time of the single’s release, already topped the chart. When people raced out to get this, it was to keep up with Jason Donovan’s release schedule – not because it was any good.

Groundbreaking.

I think for me the penny dropped around the late summer of ’91 when even singles by fairly mainstream acts like REM and Dire Straits were falling the week after their initial entry. Two years previously this sort of thing was only happening to ‘cult’ artists (Morrissey singles, for example).

Stock Aitken Waterman were too lazy to dig his vocal. This is an example, his duet with Kim Wilde http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmUd-i8ygV8. He could do more than cheesy songs.
I think Polydor found that he could do better, eventhough his fans were too shocked to see the changes. Oxygen (written by Nik Kershaw) was better than his old version of Sealed with The Kiss (he re record Sealed with a kiss on Let it be me album). All Around The World was better than Too Many Broken Hearts.
I agree that SAW had no idea what to do with him, they just had some ideas about how to make more money out of him. And Polydor thought making money out of him was a good idea by attaching his old songs that annoyed him.

I’ll stretch to a 4/10 for Jase.