MARIA McKEE – "Show Me Heaven"

TOTPWatch: Maria McKee twice performed ‘Show Me Heaven’ on Top Of The Pops;

13 September 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Londonbeat, Sonia and Bass-O-Matic. Gary Davies was the host.

27 September 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Monie Love & True Image, The Wedding Present, Status Quo and Bass-O-Matic. Anthea Turner was the host.

Oh, Bass-O-Matic, ‘Fascinating Rhythm’… Now that would have been a wonderful #1.

Maria’s a bit of a belter but that doesn’t work as well for me as Madonna’s more subdued approach on the superficially similar ‘Live to tell’ and ‘This used to be our playground’. I don’t mind the song too much, but the production seems to encourage an overblown approach.
The religious imagery is more likely to have come from Maria McKee’s own faith rather than any attempt to ape ‘Like a Prayer’.
I don’t hear a mandolin but more of a twangy Chris Isaak/Twin Peaks style guitar – worth mentioing that ‘Twin Peaks’ was being broadcast for the first time on the BBC at this time.

I once wrote about American rock critics’ brief infatuation with Maria McKee’s former band Lone Justice. Her scoring her a #1 English hit is a mordant irony.

Here’s the piece: http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/ways-to-be-unwicked/

Unfortunately this has become linked in my head with the ‘Woaaaaah Body-form’ adverts that started appearing around this time.

#9 It’s a shame that Blue Velvet couldn’t have been a hit at the time of the film in 1986/7 though, when it would have carried a bit more creepy force than on the back of a Nivea commercial four years later.

Vinton’s version is alright, but sounds a bit pallid next to The Clovers’ fantastic 1955 doo-wop interpretation.

Obviously a much better song in any form than ‘Show Me Heaven’, though.

I rarely disagree with popular but I have a real soft spot for this song! It’s not based on anything much though. Just sentimental fluff, but that’s OK now and again.

Found this a bit of a bore at the time. Very competent isn’t it?

Days Of Thunder is now principally remembered as the point Where Tom Met Nicole, but if their real-life relationship was anything like as perfunctory as it was in the film then it’s little surprise that the marriage didn’t last; in this rewording of Top Gun (“I’m not denying/We’re flying above it all”), humanity is of decidedly secondary sexual interest to the fast cars and crash helmets which almost make Cronenberg’s subsequent film of Ballard’s Crash unnecessary.

Fittingly “Show Me Heaven” only retains a perilously thin umbilical cord to human emotions and feelings by virtue of McKee’s vocal, which does its beautiful best to make us believe in its rhyming of “spine” and “divine” and its cringeworthy epithets (“You’ve such amazing grace” indeed). Then again McKee’s name is present on the label as co-writer so she must shoulder some of the blame. None of the moderately strange touches to the arrangement – the plucking banjo in the chorus, the Duane Eddy guitar and strings which arise towards song’s end – leads us to think that this is the woman responsible for the record voted NME’s ninth best album of 1989 (her eponymous solo debut which, though rather ordinary to these ears, outranked Paradise, Raw Like Sushi, The Sensual World, Straight Outta Compton, Hats and, um, Freaky Trigger), let alone 1996’s genuinely extraordinary Life Is Sweet, one of the decade’s greatest and most shrewdly adventurous pop albums. No, this was simply a day job to help pay for the art, and it is as nullifyingly bland as any of its hi-tech cinematic kin.

Never seen the film, am still moderately fond of this song, although it’s obviously not her best. Although even her only other top 40 hit, “I’m Gonna Soothe You” is preferable, I’d still happily listen to this.

#21 “that faux-Oirish film they were in together, which has far and away the least on-screen chemistry between an irl married couple that I’ve ever seen.”

I see what you’ve done there. Very good.

I must confess, I’ve never heard anything by Maria McKee other than this. A band called Lone Justice with her countryish power ballad vocals (remember, this song is my only exposure to her) on it doesn’t fill me with lots of hope – but then I’ve never been much of a fan of modern country anyway. Maybe I should give them a listen with an open mind.

The song: if we are marking from 1 to 10, then the average point is 5.5 (or I think it should be, I’m having one of those brain fades where I can’t be sure of anything numerical anymore after looking at too many figures over the last week). This is below average to my ears but not utterly offensive, so 4 or 5 seems about right. Given I gave The Joker 5 and I like it slightly more than this, I’d probably go for a 4. Echoing other comments, I just find it a bit dull.

I genuinely do really like McKee’s vocal performance on this, which seems to express several different emotions at once in places – lust(well, that’s what the breathless delivery in the chorus suggests to me anyway), longing, love and a bit of despondency. The song itself, on the other hand, is absolutely nothing special at all and lyrically vapid, and it’s an unbelievable achievement she managed to pull that much out of it. She could probably sing the interior message in a budget greetings card and make it sound interesting.

She’s an artist I’ve always meant to investigate in more depth beyond the three or four songs I’ve heard by her, but I’ve never properly done so. I do indeed remember her “Juke Box Jury” appearance with her frantically fanning herself and seeming rather dazed, and she’s always come across as an interesting character… Perhaps I should head off to Spotify soon and look at her other work.

Kidman and Cruise resonate as particular extreme types on screen (rather like old-time movie-stars): once you divide through by beauty, she’s icy and entitled (I have friends who refer to her as ‘cold mountain’ or even as ‘CM’) and he’s needy and hyper (The Actor’s Studio ep./interview w/ Cruise has to be seen to be believed – track it down if you can). Aside from Mark M. ‘s good choices, I’d take To Die For and Birth for her, Risky Business and Tropic Thunder for him.

#27 Apparently the song wasn’t a hit at all in the US, so we were clearly a market ripe for exploitation by enormous film tie-in ballads.

As future events would prove, really.

Re 26: you’re right, especially about Cruise – he’s a proper movie star in that he almost always plays roughly the same role* , and he’s rarely miscast. I just don’t like most of the films I’ve seen him in. The great thing about Magnolia is the way it uses his essential Cruiseness to entirely other ends (Paul Thomas Anderson also did much the same thing with Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love).

To Die For – yes indeed.

*(Tropic Thunder being an obvious exception – but I have to say I didn’t find his turn as funny as most other people did. Liked the film, though.)

Re 31: Really? I’ve always found Kelly, for all her immaculateness, a much more natural screen presence than Kidman.

Lone Justice’s “Soap, Soup and Salvation” goes through my mind with alarming frequency though I haven’t heard it in over 20 years. Onward to youtube once again…

“Ways to Be Wicked” is a Tom Petty composition (with one of his bandmates).

Mainly because of its use in an ad for Nivea cream but also in some part down to general David Lynch interest. It did make number one on the NME chart.

The main difference between the charts then and now is that “Good Day Today” would have gone top ten in 1990.

In truth they packed it in around Sept. ’84, since that was when they started running the Network Chart (as heard on Capital etc.) but our copy of The Complete NME Singles Charts goes up to ’94 (I don’t believe there was another update) and the lists are generally a lot more interesting than the Guinness ones.

The Stone Roses now officially a bigger hit than Neither Bought Nor Sold since it peaked at #5 in the summer of ’09 after retailing for 50p or thereabouts in the HMV sale.

That’s right, the 2CD+DVD version was a fiver for a while, yeah.

Certainly at its best when she’s not going for the big notes. Bit of a e-fit power ballad, but there’s plenty of character in the verses before she gets to the foothills. Not an experience you’d choose to return to all that quickly though. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, for a better McKee listen give me “If Love Is A Red Dress” from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

There’s something rather interesting happening here, in that you’ve got a great singer doing everything she can with a fairly nothingy song – and yet she strangely disappears into the mix a little bit. I don’t think it’s just bad luck that McKee never had another hit (though I realise she remains popular in her world and probably couldn’t care less), this kind of could have been anyone, and even though she does a great job of it, the songs’ ultimate facelessness ends up enveloping her rather than allowing her to rise above it.

Other versions of this song have been done by similarly gifted belters Tina Arena and the late Laura Branigan. They both do about as well with it as McKee does.

That’s a picture of Tom Cruise – as this was on the Days of Thunder soundtrack. I can’t say whether he does or does not look like Jaz Coleman in it though. He probably looks more like him in Magnolia.

I always thought this song had more to it than a simple movie cash-in. Always sounded more like a song about two people who are in love with each other about to, er, make love. Anyway, the line “You’ve such amazing grace, I’ve never felt this way” gets me every time and I’m not ashamed to say so 😉

Would have preferred Londonbeat’s I’ve Been Thinking About You to have made it to #1, instead of this.