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Coulda…shoulda…woulda been massive hits but somehow weren’t

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Always remember this picking up a lot of plays on Kenny Everett sometime in the early-.mid-70s, but while it was a huge hit in NZ, didn’t seem to gain any traction in the UK or US

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  1. Another terrific near miss by the Leyton Buzzards which, despite getting played a lot on Peel, only reached something like number 50 on the UK charts –

    Sadly, failure of said single caused the band to mutate into the utterly irredeemable Modern Romance

  2. The now execrable Mike Read played this a lot, and there’s a kind of double whammy aspect to it not being a hit. It’s Jim Lea of Slade, who was fed up with his band not getting played on the radio (this was pre their comeback at Reading Festival) and so formed The Dummies with brother Frank. It’s a Holder/Lea song.

  6. How about this jangle pop tune from 1989? It managed to get to No 51.

    Dunno why, but I love the alliteration in the phrase “Not now never again.

    The River Detectives – Chains

  8. Had cause to share this elsewhere today and it fits this thread too. The whole of “What Is Love For” contains songs that today’s chart warblers would give their autotuner for. This song is brilliant and this performance perfect
    ..

  9. This song was actually a hit here in NZ but I can imagine this in the hands of Robbie Williams or whoever 2021’s equivalent might be. I’m pulling up my Simon Cowell pop Svengali pants here rather than saying I would personally buy it – but I think it’s a very good song in that Angels or She’s the One mould.

    One Day – Opshop

  11. And then there are the songs which you would have sworn were huge hits but weren’t. I read a contemporary review of Lone Justice’s Ways to be Wicked on Twitter just now (posted by Lenny Law, late of this parish, as it happens).

    We all know Ways to be Wicked. I’m pretty certain almost all of us think it’s brilliant. I’m sure many of us remember the impact it made when Lone Justice played it to an unsuspecting UK public on a music show who’s name I forget, though I do remember me and my mates all raving about it at a barbecue the day after.

    A massive hit surely? It got to number 77 in the UK chart.

    • Not sure when I chanced upon Lone Justice but it was certainly at least 3 years after WTBW was released, possibly playing catch-up after McKee’s eponymous solo album. Story of my life……

      • Haven’t heard anything from MM in donkey’s years. Is she still making albums?

        From critics’ darling status and in-your-face full page reviews for her first couple of albums in the late 80s/early 90s, you’d have to struggle to find her releases in mags’ 100-word capsule review graveyards a couple of years later.

        This fall off seems to happen a lot more with female singer/songwriters than it does with their male counterpart. Michelle Shocked, Tracy Chapman, Syd Straw were a few of those who were touted as going to be massive at one point and then just seemed to disappear.

        In some (most?) cases, it’s presumably because they take the eminently sensible decision of putting their families ahead of attempting to satisfy fickle tastes.

  14. This slice of pop perfection got to number 131 in the charts, but I wouldn’t want it any other way, as I’ve spent 35 years as a Duffy fanatic and much prefer being in an audience of a dozen people listening to him play in a Nottingham record shop or a St Helen’s arts centre or being one of a packed pub of fellow Duffy fanatics in Camden Town, all of us knowing that we know something nobody else does, we know who the greatest British songwriter of the past 35 years is.

    If you bought the single at number 131 that week you got this as the A side…

    …and this as the B side. An embarrassment of riches.

      • There have been rumours that they were planning to release Cocksure, which was the original version of the album that became Because We Love You. It’s a great album anyway, but crazily has never been released on CD over here. I have a Japanese version. I asked Duffy about it at the aforementioned record shop in Nottingham, but he wasn’t sure. Funnily enough, I saw Pete Paphides in a record shop in Soho not long before the first lockdown, so I should have badgered him. It’s just crazy that some of Duffy’s best songs have never been reissued since they came out on vinyl 30 odd years ago, although a couple were on the They Called Him TinTin compilation, including the majestic Julie Christie, which I asked Duffy to play in Nottingham. He teased me by playing half the first line and saying he couldn’t remember the rest!

        The songs are available on YouTube though, so maybe I’m out of touch wanting them released on physical media?

  15. This is a terrific bit of catchy post-punk Scouse portentousness dating from 1981 by Modern Eon. Probably getting lost amongst all the Teardrop Explodes / Icicle Works / Wah Heat stuff at the time, the single didn’t chart at all and the album it was on spent a solitary week at number 65 before disappearing. The guitarist went on to make it big with Dead or Alive, poor bloke.

    • I loved and love this album. Perhaps the breathy vocals meant they were never destined for the top 10, but it’s a lost post-punk gem. If I remember the record company heavily discounted the album on release -perhaps a sign of a lack of belief in the act.

  16. Yachts – made the move from Stiff to Radar along with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. Exalted company, but no breakthrough happened.
    It’s Immaterial and The Christians suggests it was a case of “wrong time, wrong place” for Yachts
    Pick just about any one of their perfect new wave pop singles

    Box 202:

  19. I’ve a penchant for much of Terry Hall’s post Specials and Funboy Three offerings, but in terms of chart placings he barely tended to reach base camp. This is well lush…

    • That’s one of my very favourite songs. I much prefer his solo albums to the Specials’ albums. A big disappointment for me, around that time, was when I was supposed to be seeing him in Portsmouth, but the show (tour?) got cancelled. The only time I managed to see him live was when Ian Broudie wheeled him out to sing Sense at a Lightning Seeds concert at the Concorde in Brighton.

      This is the kind of music I was mostly into in the late 80s/early 90s. Sort of grown up pop music, for want of a better term. People like Stephen Duffy (always my number one), Danny Wilson, Frazier Chorus, Pet Shop Boys, Bill Pritchard, The Big Dish, Andy Pawlak (so sad that the record company screwed him over, leading to him destroying the tapes for his second album and pretty much walking away from the music business, although odd bits and pieces have since appeared – his first album was ace though and he should have had some success with it – a song posted below), The Blow Monkeys, The Beloved, The Dream Academy, Prefab Sprout, Eg & Alice, Nick Heyward, etc. Although the music that took over from this as my modern music of choice had started creeping in with the appearance of The Charlatans, Suede, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, etc.

      The Prefab Sproutesque Eskimo Kissing by Andy Pawlak, that should have been a number 1…

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