CHESNEY HAWKES – "The One And Only"

It’s one of those ‘songs from a film where the song is a big hit in the story’, which is always a hard one to pull off..

Often, everyone is much more excited in the movie about the song(s) from the hit artist than they would actually be in real life. This one got to number one irl, so it clearly passes this test.

More than that? Ches follows it up with the obligatory “I’m not a boy any more, I’m a man obviously” type song, which (oh blimey) Bros also did with more success.

So, the lad Hawkes got to play at being a pop star for a bit, but as often happens when actors get to choose between more acting and maybe being a musician/pop star, the acting wins out.

(obviously, exceptions like Kylie where the hits just keep coming make the decision easier than, say, Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals who gets a part offered in the next Frears/Kureishi film and is off..)

Had the business of creating internet memes been British, rather than American, one would have expected ‘Chesrolling’ to be an internet fad.

Perhaps even more so that ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, this one carries a certain one-hit wonderness, a so called ‘guilty pleasure’ that has managed to be carried on, 20 years later. It’s certainly, for want of a better word, likeable.

If I was trying to be clever, I’d say this was the last 80s smash. Five or six for me.

This kept “Sit Down” from the top? Bah!

Still, an interesting Wikipedia entry for a song I’d never heard. My burning question about the video: is that Chesney Hawkes’s twin on the drums, or just a doppelganger? Either way, it adds an ironic twist to it.

Also a bit ironic that the video was based on the notion that Hawkes was a giant star being mobbed by fans at every turn. Was that filmed before his number one run, or during it? Because that can surely only have been true for five weeks of 1991.

@4

There will be a Popular entry, a few years from now, which should present an opportunity for a critique of Nirvana. Personally, I recommend we leave it until then!

Re 2/7: It wasn’t that acting won out over singing – Ches’s long-term fame (ie beyond one major hit) was fatally damaged by his openness about “snogging” female fans. I dug out the Smash Hits interview that did for him recently – it isn’t as salacious as I remember but it was very foolish.

Like Nik Kershaw’s own records, the delivery has an odd ‘backwards tape’ quality to it, noticeably on the “nnnnnnobody I’d rrrrrather be” line.

Otherwise, I’ve always thought of this as pretty decent, late period Pepsi Generation pop – 4 seems a trifle harsh.

Knowing nothing about the song beforehand, I hadn’t realised this would be an opportunity for Nik Kershaw discussion. Anyone else read Giles Smith’s Lost in Music? It’s the Fever Pitch of Kershaw fandom. I suspect many of our Popular crew would relate to it.

#15 suspect it might be a Levis tune three years hence

Son of Tremeloes lead singer Chip Hawkes, Chesney was the nearest thing Britain had to a teen idol in 1991, and the fact that “The One And Only” was his only major hit demonstrated that we weren’t quite ready for that sort of phenomenon to return.

He appeared in the film Buddy’s Song as an aspiring rocker and the son of a failed rocker (superbly played by Roger Daltrey) who goes through the usual pitfalls and setbacks to become a star, of sorts. “The One And Only,” however, succeeded by virtue of the song’s strength and Hawkes’ sincere delivery, including his marked Home Counties pronunciation of the words “can’t” and “rather” (he was born and grew up in Windsor). The song’s melodic and harmonic ingenuity, with its unexpected modulations and chord changes, sounded strangely familiar, and indeed it was written and co-produced by former snood-wearing eighties idol (of both teenagers and Miles Davis) Nik Kershaw, very much in evidence on backing vocals and lead guitar. Although the song is essentially homegrown soft metal AoR, it’s an ebullient record if not a profound one, and crucially Kershaw sounds far happier and more fulfilled than he did on his own quasi-miserabilist set of hits.

The title was sadly rather prophetic for Hawkes the younger, although he has survived, both touring on the student disco/School Disco/Guilty Pleasures circuit (so redolent of the misguided Guilty Pleasures mindset is “The One And Only” that it could almost count as the last number one of the eighties) and writing hits for boybands (and even, on one bewildering occasion, for Tricky). The record itself, though, from its revving-up/white noise guitar intro to its decisive six-drumbeat ending, is surprisingly not bad at all.

We saw him at my mate’s college ball in Oxford (2001, I think?). He did a half hour set of covers (incl Supergrass’ “Alright”) then played this. Allegedly he was sh4gging one of the ball organising committee.

“superbly played by Roger Daltrey” <— this is a phrase that has tricked me many a time!

this has a strong hook and is reasonably well crafted – I wouldn’t mind it in the background, but it goes on a bit too long to hold my complete attention.
Apart from the Nik Kershaw connection it reminded me of Aha, although that may be because of the ‘girl interacts with image’ video

This song came up in conversation in real life (~!) a few days ago (co-incidentally), and I thought it was by Bryan Adams.

After it was pointed out to me that it was by Chesney Hawkes, I remarked that we had a kid at school who was known as ‘Chesney’. This was supposedly because he looked liked the big Cee Aitch, but I was neither now nor then able to verify this on account of never having seen a picture or video of said Hawker. The picture at the top of this post was emailed to me not long after, and I was able to confirm that (aside from being slightly less pointy of feature) – yes! – the kid in question looked uncannily like that.

Imagine my shock and surprise to see it here, now, only a few days subsequently. Fundamental interconnectedness of all things, or suchlike.

I can only remember the chorus, anyway.

@27 So did I…although I’m absolutely buggered if I can remember what it was actually about.

This is a real red letter number one for me as it was up there that week in April when Record Mirror (and Sounds too) bit the dust. My knowledge and awareness of the charts declines sharply from this point, went on life support from my marriage in 1997 until the end of TOTP and has been effectively zero since then. Now I buy LPs by the likes of Interpol and don’t even know which tracks were singles let alone where they charted.

This record re-proves the old truism that you need youth to sell pure pop ( a few top quality acts like Abba and the Bee Gees are the exceptions ). If Nik Kershaw had released this himself it would have fizzled out in the 60s; with fresh-faced Chesney at the helm it soared to the top unlike the film it was supposed to be selling. “Buddy’s Song” must be the most obscure film ever to spawn a number one single, only notable for a topless appearance by Liza Walker (whatever happened to her ?)

Chesney nowadays takes the reality TV shilling, looks exactly the same and comes across as a thoroughly nice bloke.

I very much doubt:

“Buddy’s Song” must be the most obscure film ever to spawn a number one single

But would the bunny prevent this discussion?

The last of my run of four contemporary purchases and I have to confess to being a little surprised at it getting the highest score. Re: #29 I could almost certainly sing the whole song if asked to. It’s probably this overfamiliarity that’s made me so sick of it. The production sounds like a bunch of bbc session musicians making a k-tel soundalike soft rock album, everything is so careful and safe that it ends up grating. The lyrics are worse though – especially the bit at the end about “though others may be true / you are the one and only you”. Is there a worse example of the ‘everyone is special / believe in your dreams / because you’re worth it’ 1990s self-help jargon seeping into popular culture out there? Whenever I hear it I just think ‘yeah, but so was Fred West, he really followed his dreams’.

Re:#14 yes, I read Lost In Music several years ago, good book, probably fits most people’s experience of the rock world better than most memoirs.

I wouldn’t go as far as most folks here to call this “likeable” as it seems way too generic for me to summon up even that level of mild enthusiasm but I suppose I don’t not like it.

It sounds like the Platonic Ideal of an 80s pop record (especially of the American radio variety) so it’s strange that it came out in the following decade, even stranger that it got to number one.

Re 30: Unchained has spawned THREE number ones – anyone seen it? But I’ll agree on most obscure movie that spawned a number one and included a topless appearance by Liza Walker.

@37 Time to snap up a 1p copy on Amazon. A very entertaining read, as I remember (it’s a decade or more since I read it, though).

“To thine own self be true” is Polonius’s dictum, said to his son Laertes, in Hamlet. As P is a pompous twerp who comes to a bad end, it may well not be Shakespeare’s own position. Laertes doesn’t exactly thrive either.

@43: Interesting – I am now imagining David Brent doing this at a karaoke evening.

A #10 single in the U.S., although I don’t know if it ever got airplay.

I absolutely despised this at the time. For me this was as bad as Every Loser Wins, and even now, the clunkiness of both lyrics still grate equally as much. I never saw Buddy’s Song, and never felt inclined to visit it later, just to confirm in my own mind how good or bad the film was, but I’ll blame my hatred towards the song for that.

What I am willing to concede is that my attitude has softened somewhat now. Chesney’s only hit has an innocence about it, in a “Hey! I can’t help being me” kind of way, and I’m sure Chesney is a regular bloke, whose shot at fame didn’t damage him all that much.

I found myself watching Buddys Song one of the few times it’s been shown on tv. One of those plodding low-budget homegrown efforts with productions values similar to a Milk Marketing Board advert and various faces familiar from tv including Sharon Duce (“ooh Jim aren’t Valeries implants lovely?”)and the under-rated Lee Ross aka Kenny from Press Gang/Owen from EastEnders who as a co-member of the band The Wild Ones completely upstages Chesneys rather wooden performance with a low-key humour. The disagreements between Chesney as Buddy and Roger Daltery as his teddy boy Dad conclude with the former dispensing dialogue of the “These songs mean nothing to you, but they mean a lot to us” type.
I don’t think it’s difficult to figure out why The One And Only hit so big. That title hook was just made for daytime radio and it’s certainly a case of a limited singer finding the ideal song – even when he’s tested on the uniform bit there’s an endearing boyishness about it. Compared to some of the other dreary efforts at the top in the first quarter of ’91 this is at least bright and bouncy. The production is somewhat blaring but it’s bubblegum after a lot of oatmeal and blancmange. Chesneys initial career reminds me of the Saturday morning kids shows where he was a regular guest in particular Going Live and the 8:15 from Manchester (the one with the Inspiral Carpets theme song). Certainly one for the youngsters.