CLIFF RICHARD – "Saviour's Day"

I’d certainly rather listen to Savior’s Day than All Together Now by The Farm, the ‘credible’ baggy Christmas hit amongst undemanding ‘proper geezer music’-types that year. What a plodding whine of a song.

“Not as bad as ‘Mistletoe & Wine'” doesn’t exactly sound like an endorsement, but this was a genuinely relief in it’s inoffensiveness, apart from that horrible synth-pan-pipe solo of course. Still only gets a 3 from me though.

“Saviour’s Day” was the third consecutive Christmas number one to involve Cliff, and the fortuitous coincidence of its release coming in the same year as his 50th birthday ensured that he became the first artist to hit number one in all five decades of the singles chart’s existence, despite there being far worthier and more valuable contenders in 1990 – the Farm’s “All Together Now” with its mix of Scouse baggy, Pachelbel canon, WWI truces and Pete Wylie on backing vocals, and “Justify My Love,” one of Madonna’s greatest singles and certainly the best record in which Lenny Kravitz has ever been involved, being but two of them (they peaked at four and two respectively). But there was a cosy consensus on the comfortable hearth of Cliff At Christmas, and “Saviour’s Day” comes across as a more rockist variant on “Mistletoe And Wine,” another hearty waltz of blessings (“Raise your glasses and drink to the King!”) set against expensive, slightly portentous New Age synths, crashing drums and jaunty flute (the latter played by Jamie Talbot, the fine jazz saxophonist who once soloed on Scritti’s “A Slow Soul”), the whole sounding like a pre-emptive template for the Corrs, including the rather irritating military drum tattoo at the end. Once again, it’s not my world, but it’s not really possible to loathe.

The last Christmas #1 to date to actually have some kind of reference to the festive season, bar a charity release 14 years later that covered an old song. It also gives Cliff the rare honour of appearing on three consecutive Xmas #1s, including MAW and his guest vocal on Band Aid II.

As ‘cool’ as it is these days to knock the guy, there’s something very nice and quaint about the basic production used, sounding like it was done on a Casio keyboard. There was a time when all television theme tunes and advert music used to sound like that. To go from Vanilla Ice to this is a pretty huge jump back, even the video seems to throw back to ‘Mull of Kintyre’ yet seems even more out of its time. And Cliff singing on the edge of a…yep, cliff, is a nice touch.

So yeah, it’s ok, but again tells me nothing about 1990 and makes me wonder what’s happened to those exciting sounds of Adamski and Snap we had earlier in the year. Sick of the ballads, we need something upbeat at #1!

I have to cuncur with the rest and say it’s not bad if you like that sort of thing. There’s still a slight sense of Wicker Man-ness in the arrangement, but less so than MAW.

Despite DJP’s claims for The Farm and Madonna (people were buying the album instead) I think Cliff took this one by default, the competition being unusually weak for Christmas.

I think “inoffensive” is the key word here. Being old school RC I’m not really in tune with Cliff’s evangelism but unlike that awful thing with Van Morrison it’s toned down here.

Of course the most memorable thing about this chart-topper is what dethroned it ….

no way is this better than ‘ice ice baby’! that aside, i agree with the general mood of ‘not nearly as bad as you’d expect’. if i wasn’t such a cretin in technical matters i’d do some blue writing to link to something on the most glorious of all made-up celebrations – festivus.

@21 KillWhitneyDead’s “Jingle Hell” uses some Festivus quotes among the Bad Santa, Home Alone and South Park samples.

@14 – There was, of course, a bit of a folk-Christian music crossover for some time (and it may still be going on for all I know – I don’t really get out much these days). Parchment were the absolute Gods of Christian folkiness in the seventies, and actually issued some very pleasant, Incredible String Band-esque tracks in their day, which all sound soothingly mystic and rustic if you ignore the fact that the contents of their lyrics are almost entirely Jesus propaganda (try “Love Is Come Again” for size if you can track it down). “Saviour’s Day” isn’t as authentic as that, but it does seem to be taking that kind of Christian music as the foundation for its sound.

It does seem to me that however diverse his influences are or whatever Cliff tries, however, he always remains stuck within his general Cliffness. There are a few choice exceptions in his catalogue, but the thing which turns me off any single of his tends to be his voice first and foremost, which seems incapable of expressing joy, distress, love or hope in anything other than that half-arsed gentle tone with those exaggerated, highly rounded vowels. It seems hesitant, polite and considered. It’s the audio equivalent of being smothered by a hundred wool cardigans, or being forced to lick velvet.

I know that people like Bob Stanley have tried to persuade us in recent years that Cliff has been unreasonably written off by critics, and I’d be inclined to agree that anyone who has had as long a career as him usually deserves to be given some kind of reassessment. However, whenever I do try and delve into his catalogue, I just can’t find a way to appreciate most of his output. There are eccentric oddities here and there (the environmental ditty “The Joy of Living” is an unlikely single) but his performance is always the same. It’s mostly for that reason alone that I can’t be bothered to give this more than a 3. Oh, that and the fact that those panpipe presets are a nastily bone idle piece of arrangement.

The Beast Within Mix for Xmas #1, what an opportunity missed…

Better than Mistletoe and Wine in almost every respect.
The arrangement has some lift to it where Mistletoe.. just plods.
The verses are inclusive rather than sanctimonious and the swaying chours is good-natured and catchy rather than just instilling itself through repetition. Only the production lets it down.
The video is reminiscent of Highway the 1980s Sunday tv series where
another 50s ” subversive ” turned cuddly family entertainer Mr. Harry Secombe would travel the UK looking for places of interest to sing hymns in front of.

A lot of appreciation for Justify My Love in the last two threads.
I’m gonna have to dissent I’m afraid. I find it as oily and flimsy as just about any other thing Lenny Kravitz has had a hand in.
The exuberance of Lucky Star or Like a Virgin are a dozen times sexier.

Re 25: Cliff’s voice is undoubtedly creamy, some might say smarmy, and this is a potentially insurmountable stumbling block. But I can think of plenty of Proper Pop Stars whose emotional reach is limited – Kylie springs to mind – and it doesn’t stop me enjoying their work, or being able to differentiate between their good and their mediocre efforts. If I had to name one song in his defence I’d say Cliff makes a pretty good fist of Miss You Nights, given its very uncomfortable mid-life breakdown lyric.

I see a lot of albums on the Myrrh label in charity shops and always think “maybe…? Nah…” Parchment records, too. Am I missing out? I know there are some impressively oddball Christian US psych albums, but I haven’t heard them either. I can’t even get into gospel. The church is a real stumbling block for me.

#32. That sounds like such an obvious anachronism – that a record released after the World Cup would be used in a film about it. I needn’t ask “Did it work?” as you’ve answered that by saying the music spoilt the film.

@14, 25, 31: Why can’t we “do religion” in pop any more? There was a time when great popular music could be unashamedly religious: Al Green, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane, Johnny Cash, Van Morrison. The tension between the spirit and the flesh generates the intensity for many of the most thrilling songs of the 20th Century. But these days – since the 1970s, as Tom says – it has been impossible for great pop to be religious, or for religious music to be great, or even passable, pop.

I wonder why that is. Western societies were already pretty secular by the seventies, the US maybe even more so than it is today. But the ability to draw on the churches’ wells of passion and inspiration, which was still alive 40 years ago, appears to have completely disappeared.

U2 I guess was the last real outbreak of religious fervour in mainstream pop or rock. I loved their early God-bothering as a teenager, and I am still fond of it. Achtung Baby is probably the last great rock album about (loss of) faith. But none of their successors have picked up on that earnest spirituality.

The last great religious songs that I can think of have are on ‘The College Dropout’. ‘Jesus Walks’ and ‘Never Let Me Down’ are both sincere and rapturous. But Kanye decided to take another route pretty quickly. The “Christian in Christian Dior” line always makes me cringe.

It doesn’t seem to just be Christianity, either. Youssou N’Dour’s religious album is nice enough, but it’s a whole lot less fun than his pop stuff.

re 35 & 36 I have a fondness for Gillian Welch’s faith infused songs on ‘Revival’

#35 i think one issue isn’t so much that pop got more secular but that many of the specific emotions religious music dealt with – questions of self-doubt, self-transcendence, a yearning for authentic experience – got so effectively secularised as part of rock.

Am I allowed to point out the Sid Vicious sample on “All Together Now” ?

Re 34: I’m a bit taken aback by that myself. I know The Farm were never considered cool but I had assumed there was some goodwill
towards All Together Now which I agree is a pleasent tune with a
thoughtful anti-war message.

The Farm’s Greatest Hits is as omnipresent on the CD racks at motorway service stations up and down the land as ‘No Parlez’ is in the charity shops.

@37: Good point. Welch is wonderful, and even her ostensibly secular music is full of Christian imagery and sensibility. Exhibit A here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo-xdqz4ryc

It is a bit different for her, though, because she is working in and around the only popular music tradition where overt religiosity is still allowed, and indeed encouraged, sometimes sublimely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gyqjSn-q34

and sometimes ridiculously:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lydBPm2KRaU

House, actually, is sometimes an exception to my rule, as well. Like this, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=453ReMKcWsA

And ‘It’s Alright’ is a hymn, isn’t it, where “the music”=God.

Also, I don’t know much about Jamaican music, but am I right in thinking that recently there has been a bit of a revival of “conscious” reggae and Rastafarian themes?

@38: I was already looking forward to it keenly. Now I am even more intrigued…

@9, @44, etc: Surely the crucial thing about “All together now” was its timing. Released in November 1990, it accompanied the huge build-up of US-led coalition forces preparing to invade Kuwait. 43,000 British personnel were among the troops massing in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

At the time, no-one could be sure that the Iraqis would capitulate so quickly – the war lasted only about six weeks, from the launch of the first air strikes on January 17 – and there were predictions of a huge catastrophe. There was a real mood of impending dread in the air, of a kind we had probably not felt since the seventies.

Just because the war was short, of course, does not mean those predictions of horrific consequences were unrealised. 20,000-plus Iraqis were killed, and no-one who has seen the pictures of the road to Basra will ever forget them. The war also inaugurated a new phase in the West’s imperial involvement in the Middle East, which we are still mired in today.

In that context, ‘All Together Now’ seems much more potent than the sort of baggy/sentimental, loved-up lads’ footie anthem that many people remember.

It explains Cliff’s more sombre mood, too. This year, of all years, he needs to make sure we understand that the spirit of Christmas is about more than booze and snogging.

It also explains why my cassette version of ‘Blue Lines’ is by a group called Massive, their real name being judged too insensitively topical at the time of release.

Also – groping here – wasn’t ‘All Together Now’ an old Farm song, from their pre-baggy days, that they dusted off and re-tooled as a comment on the impending war? If so, it might not be anachronistic to have used it in a film about Italia ’90.