GABRIELLE – "Dreams"

Gabrielle FACT that I have dredged up from somewhere: I believe that when she entered the chart at #2 the previous week, that was the highest placing for a debut single. A quick wiki confirms this incredibly boring fact – for some reason there was a MASSIVE hoohaa about it at the time for some reason, possibly because dudes were trying their best to talk about something other than URRR SHE’S ONLY GOT ONE EYE (untrue).

I um, yeah.

Oh I am disappointed by this low mark, this song is an all-time favourite of mine – I absolutely loved it at the time and still do. It’s so casual and self-assured and so perfectly summery. I love the tasteful strings!

Gabrielle’s kind of underrated, she had a surprising amount of really great pop singles.

I remember her performing this on TOTP (eyepatch and all), IIRC this set the record at the time for highest new entry position from a debut artist (#2, lol).

I have never really understood Gabrielle’s obsession with her lazy right eye. At the time of her first hit she covered it with a glittery eyepatch; since then she has deployed fringes, left-favouring profiles, and on the cover of her 2001 greatest hits album, a hat defiantly angled to obscure any view of that eye while she smiles knowingly at the camera. We get the impression that she is hiding (from) something, and thus find it difficult to connect with any of the emotions which she attempts to express in her music.

“Dreams”‘ initial popularity was due to the initial white label version which basically had Gabrielle singing the vocal line over a backing of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” – another proto-bootleg, and a telling source, since “Dreams” is, by the singer’s own admission, about her hoped-for career rather than falling for someone (“Look at me, hey, I’m with you”) and she sings it in a careful low contralto as if slightly ashamed of such naked ambition. Whereas “Fast Car” is about escape from living death as a matter of absolute necessity – it could even be the object of “Calling You,” and the line “leave tonight or live and die this way” is an especially chilling line, particularly when sung in Chapman’s ostensibly nonchalant but concerned post-Joan Armatrading voice.

But “Dreams” succeeded and launched Gabrielle on a long and still-thriving career of providing photocopies of real music for people who don’t really like music; the song sounds “authentic” (even though it’s based on another song) and “soulful,” and as several participants in 2007’s Live Earth concerts proved, there is still a substantial audience for this kind of thing; “caring” from a distance but not sharp enough to draw blood or initiate actual passion. The question of what – or whom – exactly she was hiding from (“You know you’ve got to be strong” – why?) will, I guess, be addressed further down the Popular line.

A 4 seems a bit harsh, and surprising – given the 8 for Ace of Base I was expecting a 6 or even 7 here. Now that I say that, though, I’m not sure why, other than having always lumped the two together in my mind as “essence of 1993 pop”. I definitely prefer Ace of Base.

“Dreams” sounds a bit like The Verve meets Insert Girls Aloud Ballad Here, but that’s hardly Gabrielle’s fault; at the time it was a much more fresh sound. In Australia it even ended up as a JJJ alternative-radio staple, bracketed by Yothu Yindi and the Smashing Pumpkins on the first Triple J Hottest 100 CD after placing 42nd in their annual listener poll.

I was going to give it 6, but the lukewarm reaction here may have talked me down to 5. I’ll think about it.

#9. I think you mean “a bit like Richard Ashcroft meets…”. There is very little of Gravity Grave knocking about in this to my ear.

I don’t like this – and the problem is not the tasteful blandness of the arrangement; it’s Gabrielle’s delivery. On the chorus at least, I reckon it’s clipped and nasal. Maybe she is trying to achieve something with this (i.e. it’s an artistic choice) but given she actually does have a pleasant voice, it’s a mighty disappointment for me.

“Out Of Reach” is on permanent Heart FM spin. I expect Blackburn will spin it tomorrow as well as it’s #4 in the 2001 chart he’s doing on POTP. Like most of Gabrielle’s work, it demands the response: “And now here’s a sketch set in a ballbearing factory. Mr Barker plays a man who loses his bearings…”

Bloody hell Rory, those two words “Yothu Yindi” took me back 20 years almost to the day when I saw them live at the Marquee. Fantastic band – that well-loved guitar/bass/drums/keyboard/didgeridoo combination…

Gabrielle is one of that very select category, ex-civil servants to have had a number one single (Lord Chancellor’s Department in her case) – beyond Mick Jones I can’t think of another! Ian Curtis didn’t quite get all the way to the top.

I remember being both impressed and totally mystified when she came straight in at 2 for her first ever week in the chart, an artist I’d never even heard of. It’s a passable song, nice groove but nothing all that special.

Oh – and a quick YouTube search has finally turned up that original mix featurning Fast Car – and a much more noticeable 90s beat too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSwtvMGc3eY

Nothing wrong with this at all. This kind of homegrown pop soul doesn’t seem to fare too well on Popular but I admit to a bit of a weakness for it. I was completely unaware of its connection to Fast Car and certainly wouldn’t have picked up on any resemblance. There is an all-star number one coming up in about 4/5 pop years where I think Gabrielles 7-word contribution is the best thing about it.
All in good time.

Not “wrong” but “have different opinions.”

Apologies to Popular regulars for keeping harping on about this but words are important.

Recently a close relative of mine, who was very much ‘into’ pop and an amateur musician, told me this was his stepping off point for taking an interest in the charts. I had to sympathise – it’s got one (borrowed) hook, and nothing else but the mystery of what raised it beyond mid-chart oblivion. (Answer the original bootleg chapman-sampled ‘underground’ness). meh squared.

I seem to recall Gabrielle, at the time of this single, being marketed as something like “the new Crystal Waters”- which (given that HER career had effectively petered out after two singles and countless remixes thereof), if that was so, is really a rather underwhelming way to introduce anyone… And there’s another really ghastly female dance singer (whose big hit had a silly dance to go with it) we’ll encounter soon who seemed to be presented in a similar way (down bunny).

None of which is quite fair. As Gabrielle can sing reasonably well, if not outstandingly, and just a few of her singles (especially “If You Really Cared” and “Give Me A Little More Time” were pretty top drawer of their genre and time – yes looking backwards a little too blatantly perhaps, but well-crafted pieces still).

But on the basis of “Dreams” – and indeed the three follow-up singles to it, all inferior to the debut – we wouldn’t have known that she would produce some singles of more than passing interest.

This is alright, but a little insipid. Must have over-hyped to make no 1. Just checking, I’m surprised to see that “Give Me Just A Little More Time” wasn’t a number 1. That was of a different class to “Dreams”- which is basically pleasant but unremarkable. Probably a 5/10 for me.

I remember this ridiculously well for a song that came out when I was 4…like ‘No Limit’ it must have had countless airplay. I’ve never really got into it though…it just bores me, whereas I’m really happy to see fellow love for ‘Give Me A Little More Time’ which, agreed, is awesome and seems like a massive forgotten classic, #5 was as high as it got in 1996.

Out Of Reach on Radio 2 rrrright now, on Pick Of The Pops 2001 (very enjoyable double bill with 1958 in case anyone fancies the ‘listen again’ option).

First time I heard it, on a car radio if that’s an excuse, I was convinced it was called Calorie.

TOTPWatch: Gabrielle performed ‘Dreams’ on Top of the Pops on five occasions. Details of the Christmas edition shall be provided anon;

17 Jun 1993. Also in the studio that week were; Time Frequency, Haddaway, Terence Trent D’arby & Des’ree and Deborah Harry, plus a live performance by satellite from Sting in Pittsburgh. Tony Dortie was the host.

24 Jun 1993. Also in the studio that week were; M People, East 17, Bryan May & Cozy Powell, Gloria Gaynor and Alexander O’Neal, plus a live performance by satellite from Chake Demus & Pliers in New York. Mark Franklin was the host.

1 Jul 1993. Also in the studio that week were; Joey Lawrence, New Order, Evolution, 4 Non Blondes and Take That, plus a live performance by satellite from Jade in Los Angeles. Tony Dortie was the host.

8 Jul 1993. Also in the studio that week were; Haddaway, Taylor Dayne, Kim Wilde and M People. Mark Franklin was the host.

I must confess that as a 12-y.o. boy I found the eye-patch rather sexy.

# 25 re: Crystal Waters. The references to Gabrielle becoming Crystal Waters’ successor abounded, for sure. As far as I recall, though, the chief reason was that Crystal Waters previously held the record for “highest entry for a debut single” (#3, 1991). (excluding assemblies which included any previous hitmakers (which, were they to be included, would deprive Gabrielle of the record anyway)).

@36, intothefireuk. Thom Yorke is *the* lazy-eyed rocker of his generation.

For me, the song is epitomised by its use in the film ‘Magnolia’. William H. Macy plays a washed-up child quiz star, who listens to the song on his car’s tape deck every day, psyching himself up for the mundane, routine, day ahead. In the same film, Tom Cruise plays a motivational speaker who teaches lonely single men how to pick up women in bars using sleazy techniques. If you haven’t seen the film, you really, really should

That’s what this song is – a motivational speaker for the mundane, drab, don’t buy records, don’t really follow music, crowd. Where the Sex Pistols in the past, or a soon-to-come bunnyable moral panic hit from a few years in the future inspired one group of music listeners to turn up their radio, this inspired a different group to maybe speak to Sandra in accounts, or to apply for that promotion in the typing pool, or to take up jogging for a week.

It isn’t: ‘Work Really Hard’, or ‘Who Cares, It’ll Never Happen’, it’s ‘Dreams Can Come True’, the battle cry for those who only have dreams, not those who actually have success.

However, I defy you not to be singing it to yourself for the next few days! 3/10

@39, hectorthebat. Ha! I’d forgotten about that. And, by golly, I own and have played that soundtrack album a lot, but I never noticed Dreams at the end of it. Effectively I’ve always just listened to the first 9 tracks – the Aimee Mann stuff – and ignored what I thought of as the ‘Supertramp’ end of the record.

I guess that all this means that Dreams *does* in practice tip over into the sort of empowerment anthem/Oprah-pop that (in the US at least) was typified at the time by Des’ree’s You Gotta Be.

And there’s Ray Sawyer of Dr Hook of course, although his was no gimmick.

Dangermouse had an eye-patch in the early, animated, stage of his career but doesn’t seem to use it much nowadays. Or even be a mouse anymore.

I read that opening sentence as ‘today has fallen prey to a bout of Meeting tits’. I had just watched the honest trailer for Titanic, mind…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6mMvBeEPT4

None of the abovementioned had any eye issues at all when one considers (as perhaps only the Swede could) the even greater problems endured by Mssrs Charles, Peters and Wonder. And even these lads are soundly trumped by Mssrs Holly, Reeves and Hendrix. Presley doesn’t count as unlike the others he had already had number ones before becoming fatally challenged.

Oh, and wasn’t the triangle player in the Simon Park Orchestra also the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy?

I know I should have taken my medication today…