Smurfie
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 18, 2007 22:33:45 GMT 1
I thought I'd turn this into a new thread, as the Kim Appleby "G.L.A.D." thread was very much off the subject topic and now onto Stock Aitken and Waterman and PWL in general..... I just gave my copy of Lov'ed Up away the other day.The version of How could he do this to me is horrible,not a patch on Lonnie Gordon. i've always liked Sky High as a song,i even bought the single of Newton when it came out in 1995(rereleased).i then bought the Newton full cd. the vocals on the album version of Sky High sounded horrible!i found out afterwards that the original vocals of Des Dyer(Jigsaw) was used on the single version of "Newton".The 12" Stock Aitken Waterman remix (1989) of Jigsaw is the best mix i.m.o. Stock Aitken as a team was never as good as SAW. The Newton album was not much cop as a whole, I think Sometimes When We Touched was the only one I really liked. Thanks for clearing up Sky High. I wondered why the vocals were different. I haven't heard the 89 remix of SH, but liked the original Jigsaw version and the 95 Newton single version. When it was Stock/Aitken, it always really sounded like something lacked in the singles (apart from the obvious), so I am interested to see how The Sheilas and any new stuff will sound now all three are back producing. I'm just too worried that they will end up going down the novelty route where they left off before going their different ways.
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Stewie
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Post by Stewie on Jun 21, 2007 16:55:05 GMT 1
I love PWL, it's why I love music so much
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 21, 2007 19:09:53 GMT 1
I love PWL, it's why I love music so much I think it was PWL and SAW that really got me properly interested into music and the charts. Favourite PWL/SAW artists?
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Jan
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Post by Jan on Jun 24, 2007 19:48:06 GMT 1
most of "their" artists had at least one song that stood out. For me it's, in order of MOST songs produced by SAW/PWL i've liked : 1.Hazell Dean 2.Rick Astley 3.Kylie Minogue 4.Bananarama 5.Donna Summer i would've included Cliff Richard but two PWL produced singles doesn't qualify him to be a SAW artist imo.Sonia , Dead or Alive and Sinitta were also great,probably no.6 , 7 and 8..
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Smurfie
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 24, 2007 22:47:33 GMT 1
I personally would have gone for:
1) Bananarama 2) Sonia 3) Donna Summer 4) Sinitta 5) Rick Astley
But yes, there are lots of one offs that were very good indeed. Nothings Gonna Stop Me Now is one of my favourite SAW produced tracks, just in front of I Heard A Rumour. Just Don't Have The Heart is also a great track. I think for me, Kylie would be 6, then Lonnie Gordon 7.
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Stewie
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Post by Stewie on Jun 25, 2007 12:37:33 GMT 1
1. Kylie 2. Sonia 3. Jason Donovan 4. Rick Astley 5. Donna Summer Not forgetting Mel & Kim, Big Fun, Princess etc.....
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 25, 2007 12:41:45 GMT 1
Ah phooey, I forgot about M&K. They would be high up my list as well. I may need to re-edit the post!
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Jan
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Post by Jan on Jun 25, 2007 15:33:30 GMT 1
oops, i just made the same mistake, forgetting about Mel&Kim I liked all their singles, esp.That's the way it is!It's actually difficult to choose favourate PWL acts, they were all great except maybe for Pat & Mick ,Shooting Party (apart from Let's hang on)(imho).Even Jason had some fab moments with RSVP,Hang on to your love and When you come back to me. I'm so happy, finally got hold of Hot Tracks,Razormaid and Disconet remixes of some Hazell Dean tracks i've been after for so long.Ain't it great to track down songs you were always looking for?
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Smurfie
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 25, 2007 18:07:30 GMT 1
Always had a soft spot for S/A/W stuff. Takes me back to my teenage years. lol. There's a forum request over at buzzjack for a S/A/W forum which was put up last night. I think I might leave it a bit before I pitch the idea for one here! I'm not sure how many SAW and PWL followers we have!
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 25, 2007 18:11:08 GMT 1
oops, i just made the same mistake, forgetting about Mel&Kim I liked all their singles, esp.That's the way it is!It's actually difficult to choose favourate PWL acts, they were all great except maybe for Pat & Mick ,Shooting Party (apart from Let's hang on)(imho).Even Jason had some fab moments with RSVP,Hang on to your love and When you come back to me. I'm so happy, finally got hold of Hot Tracks,Razormaid and Disconet remixes of some Hazell Dean tracks i've been after for so long.Ain't it great to track down songs you were always looking for? Oh, I was not a Pat and Mick fan at all, I still have them on 7 inch anyway just to be a completist on the singles. I think I am still missing about seven or eight on vinyl, and really should start on trying to find them CD single at some point again. I wasn't overly keen on the band Brilliant either. The singles Love Is War and Somebody were "ok".
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Stewie
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Post by Stewie on Jun 26, 2007 13:00:20 GMT 1
I used to love Pat & Mick lol. I used to have all their singles and I used to work with them too for a while at Capital lo.
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 26, 2007 18:12:47 GMT 1
I used to love Pat & Mick lol. I used to have all their singles and I used to work with them too for a while at Capital lo. I keep forgetting you may have worked with them at Capitol. I used to see Pat Sharpe a bit knocking around Stanmore when I lived there. Did you get just the singles or the full album? I never quite got around to getting it, just kept to the singles.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jun 27, 2007 0:08:01 GMT 1
I HATED Stock Aitken Waterman. Actually I quite liked them at first - I quite liked the "camp disco" of 1984 which in some ways was kicked off by the success of Frankie Goes To Hollywood plus that Weather Girls hit. So then there was Divine and Dead Or Alive (they particularly struck me as a FGTH bandwagon-jumper to me) and that Hazell Dean hit Whatever I Do Wherever I Go which reached NM #2, and even as far as "Steppin' Out" by Mel & Kim I didn't mind but come 1987 I really didn't like Respectable and although Rick Astley was ok, the rest was just too much for me.
They then went on to totally destroy "real music" and their silly pop hits denied the true Princess of Pop at the time, i.e. Debbie Gibson the success that she deserved over here.
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Jan
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Post by Jan on Jun 27, 2007 7:26:26 GMT 1
I never really liked Debbie Gibson's songs, except for Electric Youth . Sorry, but how do you define "real" music? Tiffany was terrible. 'I think were alone now's production sounded like a SAW b-side of a Sabrina song(and that excludes All of me), in my very humble opinion I suppose it just proves the fact that we all have a different taste in what music we like or not and i respect that!
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 27, 2007 7:55:17 GMT 1
I quite liked Debbie Gibson. Only In My Dreams was a number one for me and my chart, and I concur with Jannie, I liked Electric Youth as well.
I started to get into Stock Aitken Waterman a lot more around end of 1987/early 1988, but had already got albums by Dead Or Alive (Mad Bad and Dangerous To Know, I didn't get Youthquake till later), Mel and Kim, Rick Astley, and Bananarama, I didn't start listening to the 1984/85 stuff until later on. So yes, by this time they had already were into their production line of hits, but then again, this was what I wanted to hear.
I can appreciate however, that if you were not a fan, you couldn't get a way from them as they were in charts so much, and can see how they received the stigma that they did.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jun 27, 2007 21:11:04 GMT 1
By real music I am usually referring to artists who write their own music, which Debbie Gibson did even though she would be on the pop genre. Other pop acts who have written or co-written their own songs include Robbie Williams and Busted and McFly (most of their songs) and even if you don't like their songs, you at least have some respect for them.
As for Debbie Gibson though, it seemed that after releasing Electric Youth, which was a great album, I always got the feeling she wasn't particularly contented with it, as Janet Jackson released Rhythm Nation 1814 the same year and I think Debbie wished she had recorded that. As a result she started heading down the R&B path and lost most of her fans who liked her the way she was.
As for S/A/W, in 1990 they actually started getting a bit better again - I think they decided that Kylie would chart anyway even if they didn't write really "poppy" stuff for her, so they went a bit more diverse. At this point there was a bit of a pop backlash and they stopped having #1s, still I don't think pop was ever the same even with the britpop era than it had been before the S/A/W era.
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 28, 2007 18:54:47 GMT 1
I would certainly agree with the Debbie Gibson and JJ point. After Electric Youth her sales and chart positions certainly took a nosedive, but then again for us in the UK, Rhythm Nation's chart stats were not as great as the US.
As far SAW, yes the later Kylie material improved, Better The Devil You Know and What Do I Have To Do were much better songs than some of earlier stuff, but then I think at the end they clinged too much onto the fact that Kylie was the star, and the rest could just do with what they have left over, hence why Lonnie and the later Hazell Dean material was purely just reused songs from earlier artists.
1992 as a whole I felt was a kind of limbo year (for me), to me there was a big gaping hole of no SAW before the something new to be interested in, then 1993 brought Suede. That was when I switched from more a pop orientated person to an indie orientated music fan. But then again, that was when I entered my late teens, so my opinion is biased.
Anyway, post more personal than critique.
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 28, 2007 18:57:29 GMT 1
Irregardless, Donna Summers "Another Place And Time" from 1989 is probably the most played album I have.
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Post by ManicKangaroo on Jun 28, 2007 20:13:04 GMT 1
Fantastic album - love it
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Post by Smurfie on Jun 28, 2007 20:31:56 GMT 1
Oh, its a GREAT album. Even in my 30-dom, this was my first interest to Donna Summer, but had previously liked Dinner With Gershwin. Even now i am still of the opinion the singles were better in the original album version than the remixed single version (I Don't Wanna Get Hurt and Loves About To Change...) maybe the exception to this was the Breakaway remix for her Best Of a couple of years on. But again they reused some of the songs on there for other SAW artists, as I'm sure Whatever Your Heart Desires was a Mandy Smith b-side?
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