121. S'Express - Superfly Guy (Rhythm King)

One week at number one on 13th August 1988

I’m pondering this track while walking the dog and grabbing a drink at the local cafe – something I often do when drafting new blog entries – when, serendipity abound, I realise that the young women on the counter are listening to a seventies disco compilation. Sadly, this isn’t the kind of compilation that reflects a wide spread of the dancefloor hits of the era, but a kind of sanitised, Heart FM “disco super smashes” effort. So while I’m hanging around, I get to hear Boney M’s “Rasputin” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, and marvel at the fact that these were Proper Songs with lyrical stories and momentum. For as much as they were disco, they were also Pop.

Gloria Gaynor gasping and singing “Oh!” before the final chorus of “I Will Survive” means the same thing to everyone. Out there away from the Classic Pop Smash which happened to have a groove, however, lay a bunch of songs which probably meant something different to each of the hundreds of thousands of people who bought them. The creators of Silver Convention’s “Get Up And Boogie”, for example, were deeply proud of the fact that there were only six words used in the entire song (“Get”, “Up”, “And”, “Boogie”, “That’s” and “Right”) all glued on to some chirpy strings and a funky rhythm. “Get Up And Boogie” is only an exhortation to dance, lyrically speaking, but its simplicity means that it takes on a thousand different shapes for all its listeners – it could be about that person they kissed on the dancefloor one night in 1976 then never saw again, that first holiday abroad, that cocktail party they had that barely anyone can remember accurately… it’s celebratory but the memories it carries are up to them. Sometimes imprisoning yourself with only six words gives your listeners a lot of freedom.

Mark Moore of S’Express was a man of few words too. “Superfly Guy” is less manic and less inclined to throw mud at the wall than “Theme From…”, and instead sticks to a clockwork kind of groove, all ticks and gibbers, while liberally dropping the odd sample here and there. The main hook of “Superfly Guy, let me take you higher” is dominant and frequently repeated, but between that are breakdowns, soulful cries, and little bursts of records from the previous decade, teasingly dropped for those in the know (Roy Ayers is the credible chap in the case, BT Express the “tack” – S’Express stuck to the principle of placing the cool next to the plastic for most of their career).

The other key difference is that while “Theme” felt pulsing and heavy at times, sucking your feet downwards on the dancefloor, “Superfly Guy” is pure levity – not only do the vocals soar, but the entire arrangement seems to give you permission to enjoy yourself, to float off towards the club lights and do the breast-stroke in mid-air. It’s only possible connection to heaviness is the way it toys with gangster imagery ever so slightly (particularly in the equally care-free video) but it doesn’t do so with any degree of seriousness. It’s (quite literally) stick-on moustache dicking around, wearing the fancy dress like a kid in a cowboy costume.

Whether you think it’s a better single than its predecessor depends on what you want. For me, it is, because it knows its got a killer groove to offer and realises that budging from it to play into the hands of eighties samplemania will break the thrill; it engages with its key strengths. While doing so, it piles on other embellishments such as string stings and howled soulful proclamations, all adding up to an amazing single about absolutely nothing in particular, a slice of pretty minimalism to which you can attach any mood or memory you want.