GARY BARLOW – "Forever Love"

Ooh a 1! Haven’t had one of those for ages now. Fortunately this piece of ordure never registered with me at the time.

Never having heard this before I played it on Youtube last night, I was expecting to be bored to tears, and I was, uh, not disappointed. 1/10 is a bit harsh, but 2/10 is not, and I’ve already forgotten what it sounds like and have no interest in ever fixing this.

The only interesting thing about this record is its proximity with far more memorable #1’s. Ironies abound of course about who it is that’s still having hits in the 2010’s.

Happy new year. We all know who’s up next 😉

At this point in my life I lived in a provincial town and used to occasionally get sent demo tapes by aspiring local bands and songwriters. The singer-songwriter tapes (or sometimes CDs) usually all took a similar format – four sparsely arranged ballads, usually with hackneyed titles like “I Wish I Could Fly Away”, “If Only Forever”, or “When We Touch Each Other”. They would always be backed by an electronic piano, or a real one if the budget was a good, and have non-existent choruses. They’d just brood and meander away.

So my first thought when hearing this single in 1996 was that maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe all these local Creme Brûlée songwriters I’d been ignoring had actually been tapping into a trend all along. Of course, they hadn’t, and Barlow no more deserved a number one with this than any of the others deserved a publishing contract. It is utter blandness from start to finish.

#3 – I can definitely hear “A Different Corner” here, but I actually enjoy that single. It has a distinct, brilliantly produced eeriness to it that’s captivating. This is just a sparse, meandering ballad which has no distinguishing features at all. Even with Barlow’s name attached to it, it’s quite surprising it got as far as number one.

The only thing I remember about this is turning off The Chart Show after the first few bars so I’m glad to read I didn’t miss anything.

He didn’t take getting knocked off by the next one very well and said if I recall correctly “You can’t compete with shit” which actually sums up his solo career quite well.

Aha, looking forward to this one now I can say what I’d been wanting to say since the days of debating “Baby Jump” as being the most forgotten number one of all time..

That this, this song right here, is the most forgettable song of all time. Not just of the number ones.

I can hear it one time, and as soon as it’s done, I can’t recall anything about it. Apart from that it’s a ballad of some kind. And that Gary Barlow sings it.

I do remember Robbie saying he couldn’t understand why Gary released the songs he did, when he had “Loads” of better ones. I quite liked “Open Road” about as archetypal a Barry Garlow song as ever there was one.

Anyways, happy new year to all the readers and writers of Freaky Trigger, we all love all of youse, yes we do.

A mid-period Elton John B-side, untypically weak single, or cast-off album track; and so very immediately obviously not the future, nor for longer than its duration, the present, of pop.

To damn with faint praise: neither the most forgettable nor most disagreeable single of Barlow’s initial solo career.

(I too have a soft spot for ‘Open Road’, even if it is, frankly, Music for Alan Partridge, with characterless production values, dialled-in preplayed backing music suggesting an unanticipated lack of ambition – or record company support? -, and which so rapidly became unavoidable wallpaper music in charity shops across the land as a loyal fanbase discovered they’d been sold a pup….but I digress…and more of that later).

To damn with even fainter praise: VERY far from being the sappiest or intensely, objectionally forgettable ballad no 1 of 1996.

The case for the defence, however, is brief, mostly concentrating the almost overblown League Two grandeur (albeit one that seems aimed more at Blackpool in the wind and rain, rather than Las Vegas: no long-term performer at any venue of note there would have touched such a half-baked number) of the cadence that closes the chorus of ‘Forever Love’, which, at least, sticks in the mind, even if little else about the composition does.

Although ill-formed sentimental dross….well, seems to fit well with some key aspect of the Cool Britannia-linked political movements on the ascendancy at this time, just awaiting their chance in the following spring…

But in general: I don’t wanna go on with you like that. Think I can stretch to a 3.

New to me… and, wow, The Phantom Song! FL feels like a bunch of the sort of early noodlings one does en route to something that can be taken to the rest of a band, not close to any sort of finished product. And how odd it must be to (at least for a short time) have literally anything you excrete go to #1.

I remember this song being released, but I have no memory at all of what it sounds like, other than it’s very dull.

I’ve got a soft spot for Open Road too, for its comedy value, its clumsy Partridge-esque take on Man In The Mirror – “the man is me.” More of this blatant punchline stuff to come with Britney’s non-Popular The Girl In The Mirror in a few years.

I always thought the first line of Open Road was “My life is extraordinarily plain”, which would make sense as it not only rhymes with the next line but explains the black holes in Forever Love which would have been filled by a songwriter with anything of import to say.

At one GB gig in ’97, reviewed by the Guardian, someone’s bum in denim shorts appeared on the screen behind him. Gary turned around, saw this, and said “I like a bit of that… maybe later”. Around this time, I also took to doing impressions of Gary Barlow, saying this line but giving him the voice of Greengrass from Heartbeat. I realise none of this makes much sense written down.

Tom Ewing’s Popular blog reaches one of the most forgotten/forgettable no.1s, the Baby Jump of the 90s: http://t.co/1LAAdj6w5F

As far as I can tell he’s in some casting exercise where he’s on the panel while couples try to look interesting and engaging for him. A strange echo of what he ended up doing a decade and a half later, and much the most interesting thing about the whole exercise. For some reason the song I had going round my head a few seconds after listening to this was “All Out Of Love” by Air Supply – maybe a little piano trill did it.

Gary of course also had the plum slot of the lead in to the bells yesterday – we avoided all before but stuck around to see him sing a couple (go on, guess) of the Take That tunes. He is slowly turning into Robbie.

#25 (self-correct): Two of my three 1s are by the same act. The third one I thought about for a moment before deciding “nope, it’s a 1.”

I can fully understand the temptation to look ahead, when faced with such unmitigated turgidity from Barlow. Happy New Year, btw. Lest we forget, by 2014 Barlow has already overtaken Cliff and is miles ahead of our next Popular entry with his tally of #1 singles (11 with TT, this and 2 other solo bunnyables). Robbie isn’t very far behind. The tally of #1 singles is of course no indicator of quality (ask Macca. Of course you’ll need a clairvoyant to ask Elvis, but even his tally is disputable depending on whose chart you follow) but it does tell us that he’s a very marketable artist. Perhaps the UK’s most marketable artist of the modern era*. And singles like “Forever Love” are little more than a tally-mark. I’m not really trying to defend Barlow for FL. It’s almost as if the song was constructed by focus group. If FL were a car, it would be a VW Golf. Nothing exciting, but you’ll find staunch defenders of this song on the video’s YouTube comments thread, like a bunch of proud Golf owners. And that’s perfectly OK for them. Speaking of the video, was this tossed off by Richard Curtis, by any chance? It seems like a rejected montage from Notting Hill, Actually, or something.

“Baby Jump”? Yeah, I guess so. But after a few listens, “Baby Jump” can charm you, where this lacks any charm whatsoever. Unless this was your and your significant other’s theme tune, or you were a TT fan pining away for some output – any output from Robbie or Barlow, I can’t imagine ever wanting to go to all that effort of taking a trip into town specifically to buy the CD single or the cassingle from Woolworths. I think I could state with some confidence that Barlow never picked up any new fans with FL. Next.

*If you count the modern era beginning in 1990.

With regard to the guessing game there is one record coming up that I suspect is heading for a low mark – and I’m quite looking forward to defending it.

#31: The puzzlement is why the BBC allowed GB an hour’s worth of free advertising for his new album on NYE.

#35 I, too, am unconvinced of the man’s track record as a songwriter (a few, mostly well-known, standouts, aside -although a quick run through his back catalogue inspired by this post has persuaded me that the second and, intended but then cancelled third singles from his flop second album are pretty, surprisingly, strong too)

I wonder if Barlow’s rise towards becoming almost The Younger Paul McCartney, Unimpeachable National Treasure, is more to do with his quasi-managerial-organisational-networking skills (certainly his role in the recreation and renovation of Take That demonstrates great competence here), rather than the songwriting stuff, which has been inconsistent. And, I guess (?), being a Bloody Nice Bloke and being able to get things done (and not being waylaid by an overly artistic temperament) is not to be sniffed at….

Either that, or he has some really juicy insider information about senior figures in the BBC and/or the Royal Family/etc , which give him great powers of blackmail….his rise to impeachability, while, to be fair, neither rapid nor handed on a plate, has been so meteoric that one almost, just almost, wonders….

I think we’ve already discussed Gary-as-songwriter a number of times on Popular. My view is that he’s always been pretty mediocre and was very lucky that when TT pushed that angle, it stuck. He can write a verse, but Back For Good is the only worthwhile chorus he’s ever managed, maybe Sure at a push – not iirc the consensus round here, as Never Forget got a surprisingly good reception even though I can’t imagine it’s a song anyone’s ever caught themselves singing. If he was genuinely good their key records wouldn’t largely be covers.

Anyway, for hooks Robbie beats Gary out of sight (who’s responsible for those I guess we’ll come on to). Angels alone does this pretty much. As does Tony Mortimer, but then songs are only part of what a band’s about ultimately.

Popular keeps its scoring bell-curve fleshed out with a hard line on dreadful ballads http://t.co/txpgBLIRi7

That was ‘Boyz Unlimited’, still quite funny a couple of decades on – http://www.channel4.com/programmes/boyz-unlimited/4od

Wonder which planet that was.

Planet Redtop

I’ll start with a tortuous* fact. Gary Barlow was the first act whose first week of UK singles chart action** was at number one AND whose second week wasn’t. Put more punchily, this didn’t win him any new fans, did it?

And I’m not blinking surprised. A friend of mine and I used to disappointedly enquire “all that, for that?” whenever we saw an expensively created comedy sketch on TV, wherein the punchline was poor or obvious or both. All that expense and time invested in such a poor output. It might seem like an incredibly specific set of circumstances, but in the heyday of Little and Large, Russ Abbot etc, it happened quite a lot. I think we got the disdainful catchphrase from his Dad – we approved of the way he expressed disapproval.*** Over the years, the phrase became a little more versatile. I tread carefully here, because I recognise now the esteem in which Jesus To A Child is held, but I vividly remember my friend and I both reacted to JTAC with “All that, for that?” Meaning all that time, all that anticipation, for such a slow, hook-free record, and one which seemed to remain so firmly within the boundaries that the artist had achieved before (had either of us known what the record was about, we may have reacted differently). When Forever Love emerged, I got the impression Gary Barlow had been thinking that JTAC was a near-perfect comeback single**** – and decided to follow suit with some kind of competitive gamble. “I see your drawn-out, downbeat, ponderous, sombre***** balladry – I can be far more of all of those things.” And boy did he succeed. At the time I used to think the song would break into something like “Hard Habit To Break” – not glorious, not exciting, but maybe appreciable, tolerable. But it doesn’t, does it? It just goes on and on and on. 1 is right.

And by now you may well be thinking “All that, for that?”

Happy New Year everyone!

*Or should that be torturous.
**As the main credited artist
***Apologies, friend, if you read this and I’ve misremembered that bit.
**** Even if this were true, GB may still have understood what JTAC was about, in a way that I didn’t.
*****re edited to include “sombre” because I like Patrick Mexico’s “fake-sombre” description at 47

#48 That’s interesting; first act whose first week was at number one but whose second wasn’t. It had me skirting on ahead to see who was the second – technically it was Dunblane but the next artist in the conventional sense was White Town early in 97. Of course such a distinction is far from uncommon now.

#41 I remember Boyz Unlimited (although didn’t realise it was James Corden) and the digs at Gary Barlow were the only thing I found particularly funny; the show’s other good laugh was incidental and this blog will reach it in due course …