One week at number one on w/e 6th October 1985
From about 1983 until the end of the decade, it felt as if every Christmas came accompanied with a Big Present; the desirable item that someone in my family (not always my parents) decided to treat me to that year. One year I hit the jackpot and got a home computer, a treasured Commodore 64 which kept me company until the space bar literally fell off it. Other years I was given brilliant gifts whose value I didn’t always appreciate at first sight – as with 1985, when I unwrapped an unpromisingly small parcel and a dolby equipped Sony Walkman fell out.
“Wow, that’s nice!” I said, before quickly moving on.
“But it’s a Sony Walkman!” my brother said. “Aren’t you excited?” (luckily the present buyer was not in the room at this point).
“Yeah, like I said, it’s nice!”
“It’s more than nice, that’s a fantastic Walkman!” he continued to protest, almost offended by my mild enthusiasm. “I’d love one like that!”
My casual enthusiasm was due to the fact that I already had a radio/cassette player upstairs and couldn’t understand the difference. I soon came round. Also among my presents were two albums I’d wanted for months – Art Of Noise’s “Who’s Afraid Of…?” and Depeche Mode’s “Singles 81-85”. I pushed the button down on my new Walkman and pressed play, straight into “Dreaming Of Me”… and BANG. The pulse and throb of the drum machine hammered around my head in pristine, shiny audio. Every deep bass note and synthetic twitter, breath and pulse felt as if it was plugging right into my heartbeat, blocking out the rest of the world and creating a slick, digital soundtrack for my daydreams.
Both the tapes and the Walkman barely left my side for weeks afterwards, and I familiarised myself with Depeche Mode’s singles like a scholarly monk, sometimes eating breakfast and lunch in the kitchen while they played, deaf to the humdrum family world (this period of my life was excellent heavy advance research for this blog, you could say). “Singles 81-85” is structured chronologically, which with a lesser group could be a mistake and might involve frontloading their flops and fumbles first, causing the listener to lose interest after the fifteenth minute. As Depeche emerged surprisingly well-formed and carefully produced for an indie group, what you got instead was a band slowly morphing before your ears as they go through adolescence (literally and metaphorically) and decide who they really are.
When Vince Clarke leaves after “Just Can’t Get Enough”, there’s no jarring change, but a noticeable shift in priorities as the digital bops and squeaks get slowly replaced by more lingering ambient textures. Then industrial sampling emerges by the point of “Everything Counts”, then suddenly they become a harsher, noisier group in 1984 – in common with many others at the time – before landing on “Shake The Disease” and finding a way of making all their influences cohere with beautifully and admirably intricate production and songwriting.
That wasn’t all, though. “Shake The Disease” was only the first out of two non-studio album tracks on the compilation. The second one, and the final track overall, was this single, which slowly drifted into my ears doing a spitting, hissing and huffing synthetic impersonation of a groovy stream train; how very disco of them. Then the bass burps emerged, the rhythms twitched, the song sprang into life, Dave Gahan sang “There’s something beating here inside my body and it’s called a heart!” and I found myself thinking… oh. Is that it? Is this the finale, the curtain closer on the first act of your great career?
When put up against the last two years of the group’s work, which under these circumstances you’re given no choice but to consider, “It’s Called A Heart” is a perplexing backwards shift. It’s lyrically coy and unbelievably simple; there’s no questioning of God or pondering the complexities of human relationships here, it’s all about putting your trust in someone romantically, just like so many other pop songs before it. “Hearts can never be owned/ hearts only come on loan” sings Gahan, like a speak-your-Clintons-Valentines-Card machine. The group jitter and bug in the background, sprightly and peppy, and they do a good job of approximating the adrenalin rush of fresh romance, but there’s nothing truly impressive going on here. We’ve all been led to believe that pop music is never “just” pop music, but there will always be middling moments where it ends up being little more than a happy jingle to make the day go by faster. While a top-of-the-range Sony Walkman isn’t merely “nice”, sometimes that’s all the singles you play on it are – competently delivered slices of mild catchiness.
If “It’s Called A Heart” feels like a surprisingly retrograde step, some hints were present in the interviews the group did to promote it at the time. Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore talked about the process in “One Two Testing” magazine in October 1985, and a sense of under-investment and uncertainty shines through. Each band member and producer Daniel Miller got a vote on what should be the next single from a demo tape Martin Gore provided them with.
“Martin had written about six or seven songs, and as he's a good songwriter they were all good,” begins Fletcher confidently. “So it was a difficult decision. Each person had their own favourite. Which was awkward. The demo of 'It's Called A Heart' was almost a pastiche… [it] won the demo race principally for its pace: the group felt that they've recently had a number of slow-ish singles, so it was time for a faster 45.”
They also revealed that, having disliked the protracted production and mixing process for the amazing “Shake The Disease”, they decided to get the single recorded and mixed within a more compressed timeframe.
So there we have it. The track became their closing single for the first half of the eighties purely because everyone felt it was time to get the kids’ feet tapping again, and not – so far as we can tell – due to any greater artistic advantages it may have had. As such, it’s their equivalent of The Beach Boys doing it again or The Beatles getting back, except it’s really not as effective as either of those tracks; ironically enough, nobody’s heart sounds sufficiently in it.
Nestling on the B-side was something else entirely, a wonderful song which seemed to be rising up on the balls of its feet out of a steaming jacuzzi screaming “Look at what you could have won!” “Fly On The Windscreen”, shortly to be remixed and represented on 1986’s “Black Celebration” album, is a scaling, rainy epic about finding romance and lust in the urban nuclear age, and even at this early rush-recorded stage it sounds special.
The journalist Pete Paphides went to interview Benny Andersson at his studio in Sweden in 2022, and couldn’t help but take a picture of the juke box while he was there. The photo shows that this single was loaded into slot number 20, but proves that Benny (or a member of his staff) is either a clumsy man or a very critical soul who likes to impose his corrections on the work of the others. “Fly on The Windscreen” is slotted in the A-side position, as selection number 120. “It’s Called A Heart” is face down as the B-side, selection number 220. I strongly suspect his opinion on this matter is the same as my own. Sometimes, obviously, you can make a critical point to the world without writing a 1,500 word blog entry.
Back in 1985, the twelve year old me who had just started to become a fan of Depeche Mode didn’t have such strong opinions on these matters. I was puzzled by the slightness of “It’s Called A Heart”, and faintly irritated by the repetitive “bzzzzz” noise that emerged throughout it, which made it sound as if the Walkman’s batteries were running out. When it finished fading out, though (with Gahan only part way through his final line – a clumsy bit of production) and the reverse play function clicked into life, playing side one again and the intro to “Dreaming of Me”, it almost made sense; a joyous little bop to loop me back effectively to where the group came in. It wouldn’t have been the same if we’d stopped cold on “Shake The Disease”. It did its job. In many ways it still does, but unlike the single that came before it, it really doesn’t deserve to be fished out and reappraised in any great depth.
New Entries Elsewhere In The Chart
18. The Bodines - God Bless (Creation)
Peak position: 12
The debut single for The Bodines, whose increasing appeal seemed to take Alan McGee by surprise – while he was pushing and hyping various disaffected youths with cheap guitars making ear-splitting feedback drenched pop, The Bodines were more conservative, producing taut melodies and sprightly guitar jangles, and slowly took the spotlight away from other acts on Creation.
“God Bless” is a very modest show opener, though, sounding like a simple DIY scramble without a clear destination in mind. Passable, but you do wonder if it would have charted at all had Creation not been involved in producing it.
22. Inca Babies - Surfin’ in Locustland' EP (Black Lagoon)
Peak position: 22
25. Great Outdoors - World At My Shoes (Upright)
Peak position: 25
A strangely neglected mid-80s Brum band who, despite being produced by Pat Collier (who seemed to turn everything in the Midlands into indie chart gold during this era) never quite fulfilled their obvious potential. “World At My Shoes” has hard punk hooks but also a rainy psychedelia in its bones, which on occasion makes them sound close to Pete Wylie on a stoned, contemplative Autumn morning.
As birds of this particular feather go, it’s a better example than almost anything on Creation at this point, but glum Brummies on obscure and somewhat unfashionable indie labels just weren’t getting their dues at this point. The group would only manage to release one album that decade (1986’s “Making Allowances For The Jargon”) before taking a very long break.
26. The Wedding Present - Go Out And Get 'Em Boy (City Slang)
Peak position: 17
With both The Bodines and The Weddoes in the charts on this particular week, it’s possible to smell the wind of change. We might not be firmly in 1986 yet, but the scaffolding is entirely in place.
“Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy” was originally released on the group’s own Reception Records earlier in 1985, but reissued by City Slang later in the year to ensure public demand was fully satisfied (though given that only a thousand extra copies were pressed up, there obviously wasn’t an excess of optimism about the level of interest in David Gedge’s lovelife at this point).
It is, of course, bloody marvellous and easily the best new entry this week, equal parts cheap jingle-jangle, agitated thrash, steady but violent backbeats and Gedge roaring his angst into the unsympathetic hurricane. “You never even called!” he spits, before shrugging it off with “Didn’t expect you to”.
This is old-fashioned youthful romantic frustration expressed through men gouging away at their instruments, and even – at the end – seemingly chucking them around in blatant disregard. The final lines “Another wasted day/ yes I can hear you say/ But I’m afraid/ this means much more to me than that” are followed up with a guitar crashing and a howl of feedback. Like the best 60s garage punk bands, you get the sense that the Wedding Present’s hormones were doing them damage at this point, but you also can’t help but pity their love interests.
The group would never sound quite as loose, meandering and agitated as this again, and that’s a pity. This is probably one of my favourite Wedding Present singles, and the world could have used a few more stroppy, rush-recorded tantrums from them before they wised up and discovered their true identity.
Number One In The Official Charts
Jennifer Rush: "The Power Of Love" (CBS)
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