Day 14 – The 30 Day Song Challenge – A Song that no-one would expect you to love...

Song  14 – A song that no-one would expect you to love...  – ‘Back For Good’ – Take That

Take That

The first version of Take That, the one than ran in the early 1990’s, were responsible for some really terrible records.  My evidence for this is their records.  I recommend you take my word for it and don’t go playing them again.  They’re not as good as you remember and your ears will owe me a debt of gratitude.  Their version of ‘Relight my Fire’ was tolerable and did get some serious play in my ‘Green Machine’ DJ days, but of course it was a cover and they had assistance from the mighty Lulu.  Ironically, it was only by the time they were splitting up that they seemed to find their song writing feet.  ‘Back for Good’ is a really good pop song, as was ‘Never Forget’ (which also had a pretty savvy video as I recall) and I don’t think any of the Robbie Williams solo material came close to being as good as either of these two songs.

Someone signed me up to the Take That mailing list sometime in 1994.  And oh how I laughed as I received full colour A5 postcard after postcard from Gary, Mark, Howard, Jason and Robbie through the post.  I never did find out which joker was responsible for this.  Someone also bought me ‘Back For Good’ as a CD single for my birthday that year as a continuation of the joke of the decade.  I actually didn’t mind as I rated the song and felt justified when it was the NME’s single of the year that Christmas.

Of course Take That’s singles since re-forming have been really good.  I’m not sure what’s changed over the years but I don’t think it’s coincidence that they upped their game once they had to start appealing to an older demographic and had to start competing against the likes of Coldplay, Snowpatrol and a host of other ‘proper bands’.  I’ve always thought that ‘girl bands’ singles have been much much better than those of boy bands.  I don’t think Westlife or Boyzone managed a single decent song between them (and if they did I expect it’d be a cover) whereas The Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, Sugababes have all produced some really great pop.  My theory is that teenage girls (probably younger than that these days) will buy any old rubbish if they fancy the singers, but they’ll only buy girl bands if they’re any good.  Likewise, when Take That reappeared, they were aiming at their old fans who’d grown up and would need more from their albums than just an excuse to buy calendars and tickets of 30 something men posing moodily.

So, teenage girls will buy any old rubbish and girl bands have better songs that boy bands because they have to.  Balanced sexism.

David Millington

14^th April 2011

Nottingham