Bananarama: Pop Life vs Please Yourself

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Interested to hear what Moopy's preference is of the 'Nanas two immediate post-Siobhan studio albums.

Pop Life
Their only full studio album with the iconic JACQUIE, and a pointed attempt to MATURE as ARTISTS :disco: . Stock Aitken and Waterman only contributed two tracks as the girls favoured a more on-trend 90s sound. The album stiffed at #42, but the singles Only Your Love, Preacher Man and Long Train Running all made the top 30.




Please Yourself
In which they went crawling back to SAW (well, SW) following the failure of Pop Life. Pete Waterman infamously had a vision of reinventing them as ABBA BANANA, a cringeworthy concept on paper, but the result was some quite banging pop tunes. Movin' On and a cover of More, More, More both reached the top 40, but it was disastrous #71 flop Last Thing On My Mind which would go on to have the longest shelf life thanks to a little band called Steps...

Sadly the album also tanked, and the girls apparently hate it, but it has its fans...

 
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Pop Life Singles

Only Your Love (#27)


Preacher Man (#20)


Long Train Running (#30)


Please Yourself Singles

Movin' On (#24)



Last Thing On My Mind (#71)


More, More More (#24)
 
Pop Life is their best album in any incarnation. I hated Please Yourself back in the day but oddly like it now.
 
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Both are great but Please Yourself probably just edges it for me. Pop Life has a bit more filler, whereas Please Yourself is pretty much all killer bar, oddly, Last Thing On My Mind, which still annoys me that it was ever released as a single all these years later.

In Preacher Man and Movin On they have two of their very best singles and both covers are top notch too…
 
And it still makes me HOWL to this day at the sheer nerve of claiming four writing credits between the pair of them and Stock/ Waterman on More More More for the additional second verse they tossed in that can’t have taken more than 20 seconds to write:

“And if you want to know
What it means to me
Just hear the rhythm grooving
Get your body moving
Baby you know my love for you is true
Any time you want to
Do what you gotta do…”

CHANGE A WORD… :D
 
I like Please Yourself (the wretched Let Me Love You One More Time aside) but Pop Life is one of my favourites. The album version of Megalomaniac is too bloody long, everything else I love.
 
Definitely Pop Life for me, "Preacher Man", "Only Your Love" (NA NA NA NA NAH NAH :disco:) and "Ain't No Cure" are amongst my very favourite tracks from the band.

Neither would be up there with my favourite albums overall, nothing is getting in the way of WOW!, Drama or True Confessions (!) :D
 
1 Pop Life
2 Wow
3 True Confessions
4 Drama
5 In Stereo
6 Bananarama
7 Please Yourself
8 Deep Sea Skiving
9 Viva
10 Ultraviolet
11 Exotica
 
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1. Wow
2. True Confessions
3. Drama
4. Please Yourself
5. Bananarama
6. Pop Life
7. Viva
8. In Stereo
9. Deep Sea Skiving
10.Ultraviolet
11.Exotica
 
And it still makes me HOWL to this day at the sheer nerve of claiming four writing credits between the pair of them and Stock/ Waterman on More More More for the additional second verse they tossed in that can’t have taken more than 20 seconds to write:

“And if you want to know
What it means to me
Just hear the rhythm grooving
Get your body moving
Baby you know my love for you is true
Any time you want to
Do what you gotta do…”

CHANGE A WORD… :D

That is ART :disco:

I know the ABBA Banana thing was apparently the Waterman VISION, but wheeling out what was in their hands a dowdy version of Movin On as second single was never going to improve their chart fortunes. They should have just gone straight to More, More, More.
 
Last Thing On My Mind really is rubbish. It should never have been a single- it completely baffles me as to why it was, in that form at least.

I listened to the Clare Richards episode of the Steve Anderson podcast Such a Good Feeling in the car last week and interestingly, Steps thought it was awful as well and that Waterman was mad for suggesting it.
 
After playing Pop Life this morning for the first time in ages I can confirm that I Can't Let You Go is also too long but otherwise it is glorious.

Only Your Love got played twice and the video again just now for the full single experience. Such an undeserved flop.
 
Do they dislike Only Your Love? I seem to recall it gets left off most of the hits collections, and its streams are much lower than the other two singles.
 
Do they dislike Only Your Love? I seem to recall it gets left off most of the hits collections, and its streams are much lower than the other two singles.

I haven't seen anything to suggest they dislike it but I am sure they were disappointed in its performance as lead single. They haven't ever done it live as far as I know, but it is a song with a lot going on I suppose.

Preacher Man was the bigger hit and Long Train Running is a familiar song so guess it makes sense they do better on streaming.
 
They’ve no documented dislike of Only Your Love, Sara in particular is a fan of it and is very proud of that particular album. She named it as one of her three fave albums of theirs on an insta live.
 
Only Your Love was a major disappointment for them- it was very hyped at the time and actually well reviewed but just didn’t take off. The video was (fairly) lavish by their standards and it was expected to be a really big hit but relatively stiffed. I bought my copy of the 7” for 10p in Woolies bargain bin at the time and I remember there being SO many copies in there for weeks.
 
I got my Only Your Love seven inch from a seaside shop (no doubt cheap). The random places that used to sell music...

The Pop Life campaign would have been even more of a mess if they had stuck with the original plan of Tripping On Your Love as second single.
 
'Pop Life' for me every time. I did love 'Please Yourself' at the time it came out though. My flatmate at the time, who in all other respects was a big butch skinhead of a brute of a man, also became obsessed with it and kept asking to borrow it. It was always slightly jarring (but pleasant) to hear him switch from his hardcore techno stuff to repeated plays of 'Give It All Up For Love', which was his absolute favourite.
 
I believe all forms of One In a Million/Love Generation/Wake Up and Love Me were recorded for the GHC (and rejected in favour of revisiting Nathan Jones) rather than for a new album. None of them are any cop.

The subsequent handful songs they did at PWL for a potential album are all at least somewhat of an improvement. I think that both Pop Life and Please Yourself are better albums than an earlier PWL album would likely have been.
 
'Love Generation' is at least slightly easier on these old ears of mine than 'One In A Million', which is one of the worst things I have ever heard by any artist.
 
Oh dear! Having now listened to all of those demo tracks for the first time (and thank you @Calico Moonchild for sharing them here), I can see why the project was shelved. I'm also quite relieved, which I find somewhat surprising as 'Wow!' is a permanent fixture in my top two Nana albums and alternates with 'True Confessions' as my favourite. All the demo tracks do sound very 1989 SAW - they all reminded me of Kylie's 'Enjoy Yourself' except nowhere near as good or as catchy. Stock, Aitken & Waterman themselves were still capable of churning out solid gold pop classics as Kylie's 'Rhythm of Love' album would amply demonstrate (I'm also thinking of Donna Summer's work with them and even Lonnie Gordon's 'Happening All Over Again'), but their spark with the Nana's had seemingly left with Siobhan - which I personally find interesting.
 
I think in 1989 it was partially a case of them getting the scraps with SAW having other priorities. Ain't No Cure was a massive step up from the other tracks recorded/demoed - the only one that was truly single-worthy, though I Don't Care was very easily the best of the remaining bunch (the first more classic-sounding PWL, the second demo is close to the released version from the Pop Life reissue).
 
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I think in 1989 it was partially a case of them getting the scraps with SAW having other priorities.

I think that's absolutely the case. Bananarama weren't easy to work with, Waterman said it himself, and The Hit Factory was very much in the "We wrote I Should Be So Lucky in 15 minutes" phase. It's also why the likes of OUR SIN got palmed off with the B-Team of Hammond/ Harding/ Curnow etc.
 
They binned off Sinitta to focus on Cliff Richard. I could never quite forgive them for that.
 
If two (formerly three) women being one of the only acts in the entire history of the hit factory to fight and win a negotiation to assert their right (as artists) to get their name on the publishing and attain a percentage cut of the writer’s royalties makes them “difficult to work with” then so be it..

They have gone on record as saying Waterman (on occasion) said things like “You don’t like it? We’ll give it to Sinitta then” and the reveal Siobhan made during the reunion tour promo of being allegedly told by Mike Stock, via the ‘talk back’ button (whilst she was recording her vocals in the vocal booth), that he could see the outline of her nipples, does not by 2022 standards suggest the supposed ‘difficulty’ they presented was in any way down to them.

.. In contrast, the recorded reactions to downright filthy banter you sporadically hear Mel & Kim react to on their music (where they incidentally never got a % cut) was not a carefree attitude the more business like (and experienced) Bananarama ever possessed and that’s just fine.

Stop being so defensive all the time. No one is disputing whether it's "right or wrong", but the fact remains that it wasn't as easy to work with Bananarama as, say, Sonia/ Sinitta who they just threw things at. Collaboration would have taken longer, hence my point above, that's all.
 
Oh, and Stock told Keren he could see her "tits wobble" rather than it being about Siobhan's nipples, JUST FOR CLARIFICATION.
 
Whilst the ladies were absolutely right to stand up for themselves and have their contribution recognised and rewarded they have freely said they were difficult to work with at times as they’d just announce that they wouldn’t be writing or singing songs with the word ‘love’ in it that day for example just to cause a ruffle. Love In The First Degree was a fighting point, particularly with Siobhan.
 
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Hello, I'm a new member.
Does anyone know where I can listen to the demo tracks?
 

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