GLENN MEDEIROS – "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You"

Good grief, was I in a coma in July 1988? Where did this come from?

The video was like watching Ferris Bueller doing a Demis Roussos impersonation. 2 is very generous.

Aspires to be insipid, but too cack-handed to even achieve that. The video actually made me laugh out loud, so it’s not entirely without value.

FUN GLENN MEDEIROS FACT! He has two children: Lyric and Chord!

Hard to believe that Gerry Goffin co-composed this gloop, but there you go. Oh, and it’s a second Popular entry for Goffin & Michael Masser, after “Saving All My Love For You”.

(Above info sourced from my mate Nick’s new book.)

I’ve never met anybody who actually likes this single in my life, apart from my mother. As a result of her fandom and the very conservative, sterile, last-song-of-the-evening-down-the-supper-club arrangement, I assumed that Glenn was some kind of plastic substitute Barry Manilow/ Julio Igleseas figure for people of that age and disposition, so the information that he was supposed to be a male Tiffany is a weird bit of news for me.

Beyond that, it’s so hard to find anything interesting to say about this, and Tom’s review sums it all up nicely. However, I’m always surprised that Glenn’s appearance on the Jools Holland-backed revival of Juke Box Jury doesn’t get dug out for clip shows at all. In it, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer announce that his new single is “a load of old cobblers” to huge cheers from the audience, and Vic suggests that he could probably have Mr Medeiros in a fight. Naturally, of course, Glenn is the special mystery guest, Vic flinches slightly as he walks out, there’s a lot of moody strutting from the star, and he flounces off unhappily. A journalist claimed that he was later seen next to the River Thames, scowling, angrily throwing stones into the water and doubtless wondering why his present promotional trip to the UK was going so terribly.

Urgghh, that key change is the musical equivalent of a handbrake turn. This would fit into X Factor perfectly, although I doubt Glenn would make it as far as boot camp. Gloopy and pretty horrible. 23Daves #7: apparently it was number 50-something on “100 Greatest TV Moments From Hell”.

#7 – “conservative, sterile, last-song-of-the-evening-down-the-supper-club arrangement” – I’m picturing lonely, numbed-out middle managers, locked in undignified embrace, security passes clanking together, in a half-empty function room, at a Holiday Inn near Gatwick Airport. Or at a Britannia near Canary Wharf.

*shudders at both memories*

Wow, dreadful. This got some play in the States, too. One of those songs seemingly designed to be played on loops in dentist offices (though my dentist is now playing hipper stuff than this drek). And yeah, that key change feels like it was done at gunpoint.

“Greasy”,”gloopy”,”cheesy & schmaltzy”…if I didn’t know any better from reading the comments above, I’d be mistaken for believing this was one of Marna’s Cheesy Lover entries which stumbled onto Popular by mistake.

It is the aural equivalent of toejam though. Thoroughly unpleasant.

I’m not surprised that the recording was two years old in ’88. It fits in best with a certain line of breezy smooth ballads of the early ’80s such as Air Supply’s “Even the Nights Are Better,” Sergio Mendes’ “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and Jeffrey Osborne’s “On the Wings of Love.” Is the term “yacht rock” used in the UK? That’s the territory we’re sailing toward here. The singer’s white beach trousers are a clue to the ambience & the fantasy this music embodies.

hmmm, not sure this one sails into Yachtrock territory.

It’s not really sophisticated enough to be in the Toto/Mr Mister/Journey/Styx bracket.

Far too teenage romance for that and a lot less “Adult Contemporary” than Air Supply and Jeffrey Osbourne.

Or maybe I’m missing some hidden (briny) depths?

“Could this be the sound of a pop chart losing the will to live?”

Haha, yes! Popular has reminded me when me plus scouring the charts parted ways, and it was precisely Brosplusmedeiros. Of course I kept checking but with less enthusiasm. As with Doctor Who some years before and the Channel 4 schedules some years later, it wasn’t a must.

Is it bad that I thought Glenn was Greek? Our GCSE History teacher Ms Marinos was, if that helps. At least I thought she was.

The “greek” thing occurred to me at the time also. Something you’d hear in a Kavos nightclub with your “ouzo ears” and think “that’s not bad, that”.

I remember this well enough – about this time watching ToTP at college after ‘hall’ (half-enforced communal dinner) was a regular thing. I remember Morrisey doing his solo stuff (every day is like sunday?) in the studio when this was #1.

Nobody’s mentioned yet that SaltNPepa were pushing hard like you wished they would, at number 2 for a few weeks at this time too.

“Hold me now
Terch me now?????????”

I haven’t heard this sonic slop in ages and within 37 seconds could feel my spine turning to hair gel.

Why was such a superb pop year so badly represented by certain number ones??

I’m prepared to stick up for the song as a piece of Air Supply-like wet rock (the chorus is pretty close to Even The Nights Are Better), but my memory had fogged the production. It really is a demo that got lucky.

I’d give Push It a nine and a half, but what mark would people give to – also denied by NGCMLFY – Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana?

I remember Glenn M looking close to tears rather than sulky on Juke Box Jury. He clearly hadn’t been briefed on what to expect – it falls into the same playground bullying tv category as Clive Anderson vs the Bee Gees (rather than Richard Madeley vs Shakin’ Stevens, which is comparable to the best episodes of Mad Men).

I may have brought this up on the Saving All My Love For You post, but I wonder what medicine Gerry Goffin was on in the late 80s. It seems (and there is sad evidence on the Carole King Songwriters dvd) that he was cabbaged by acid by the late 60s, so it’s understandable how he could have forgotten how to write such literally awesome lyrics as Goin’ Back, Some of Your Lovin’, and Natural Woman. What, then, led him back to the typewriter after a decade-plus period of inactivity to write schmoov radio horrors like this, Miss You Like Crazy and would-be onanist anthem Tonight I Celebrate My Love?

NGCMLFY was probably a freak hit after it had first wormed its way around Europe. It was a minor hit in Belgium at the end of ’87, reached no.1 in Holland in the spring, then did likewise in Belgium, and was a no.2 in Norway by the summer.

Yes, correct, “Push It” was kept at number 2 by this, as was “The Twist (Yo Twist)” by the unlikely combination of Chubby Checker and the Fat Boys, the latter thus stalling at 2 twice with abominable versions of fondly-remembered classics.

MikeMCSG #12 – I enjoyed Richard Madeley doing Ali G! In on the joke and he pulled it off really well. No, my top cringing moment on that show was the time Judy Finnigan asked Buzz Aldrin if he’d been tempted to unzip his spacesuit in order to have a wee on the Moon.

the last couple of records might not be any good, but they’re giving me a right old proustian rush. i think i can now date fairly precisely that this particular weekend 22 years ago was when i went to my first proper booze and chaos teenage party and had my first snog with a (more than half ironical, i think) brossette who had earlier impressed me by strutting around with her mate in the summer twig light singing ‘push it’.

i have a pretty strong memory of getting ready for the party while blasting out my newly-purchased ‘the hits of house are here’ album, which was and is an absolutely superb compilation featuring not just yr bomb the bass and s’expresses, but also wonderful stuff like the coldcut ‘paid in full’, nitro deluxe’s ‘let’s get brutal’ and best of all the apparently now forgotten ‘shake’ by gene and jim love sampling – probably the ultimate chuck-it-all-in exuberant party record. and when i got to the party i was inordinately impressed that there were some proper goths playing the mission. none of this was probably quite what glen had in his mind, but a large part of my life started that night.

#20: A moderately duff number one does not equal the end of pop.

I have never knowingly heard this record – or even heard of it. At least, I hadn’t until now.

Nil point.

Since we’re all casting our minds back here to 1988/1989, here’s how Spy magazine in the US (a short-lived Private Eye wannabe) saw the real world cup in 1989. Afghanistan currently looking good for 2010, with home advantage again proving decisive. (Vietnam was always only a pretender!)

I too dislike the term ‘cheesy’ as a derogatory term for music, which is why I said ‘Lymeswold’. I love cheese but make a clear distinction between what one might call ‘craft’ cheeses (but I don’t like that term either, whether applied to cheese or beer) and the tasteless stuff churned out of factories to bulk up the supermarket shelves. Once I nibbled a bit of supermarket mousetrap only to find that a) it was a piece of Lush soap and b) that the soap tasted better than supermarket mousetrap.

‘Lymeswold’ was not so much a cheese as a marketing concept, devised in an office block in Thames Ditton. Just as Glenn Medeiros is no more than a marketing concept.

I have some Pie D’Angloys at the moment. It was being sold cheap in Morrisons.

TOTPWatch: Glenn Medeiros performed ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You’ on the Top Of The Pops transmitted on July 7 1988. Also in the studio that week were; The Communards, Everything But The Girl and Eighth Wonder. Simon Mayo & Janice Long were the hosts.

One thing I’ll say for this – and even though at just 16 I was waaaaaay too cool to be interested – is it’s memorable (as long as you’ve heard it, obv, with a nod to some above). I still remember every word of the chorus.

Can’t remember the verse though, so scratch that.

Like Alan at 23, I think I was inching away from the charts; certainly didn’t have the fervour I once had. I think my Prefab Sprout obsession was bedding in. That plus everything that would eventually make up the House Hits 88 cassette. Rok Da House, dudes.