However, despite reaching the Top Ten in some markets including Detroit and Miami Shaw's version failed to best the US showing of the Lou Johnson original the Hot 100 peak of Shaw's version was No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, spending three weeks at the top of that listing in November 1964, and that same month it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100. The first week after its release, the single sold 65,000 copies. Rush-released in September 1964, the song was premiered by Shaw with a performance on Ready Steady Go!, the pop music TV program. " (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me"īritish impresario Eve Taylor heard Johnson's version while on a US visit scouting for material for her recent discovery Sandie Shaw, who consequently covered the song for the UK market. Sandie Shaw version "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" 4 Tin Tin Out featuring Espiritu version.So apparently, I’m not the only one to think this. * After writing this, I discovered via IMDB that The Ladybirds actually sang on one of Shaw’s later hits. If he had a sense of humor, Fisher would bill himself as “Naked Eye” even though people might mistake him for a Luscious Jackson cover band. Naked Eyes would revisit parenthetical titles with its single “(What) In The Name of Love” off its second, and last, album though Byrne is apparently still making noise about a third, even though keyboardist Rob Fisher died in 1999. So all that having been said, it rightly stands as the definitive version of the song, even if the drum intro always makes me picture Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. God, no wonder everyone I went to junior high with still loves this song. All this over someone with whom he didn’t even get to first base (note the lack of kissing or holding tight at the cafe with the nighttime dancing). He “will never be free” from thoughts of her. Everywhere he goes, he’s reminded of this woman he was “born to love,” as he pines for her while walking the streets. Though what Fisher’s intoning is really depressing, heartbreak never sounded so happy. Outside of a few Elvis Costello songs, “Always” might be the best example of a song whose music is in direct conflict with its lyrics. The sounds of those faux hammers in the second verse make me think of that one Simpsons episode where the steel mill turns into a gay disco called The Anvil, and I’m pretty sure this song breaks the record for “most drum fills.” Oddly enough, that church must be on the industrial end of town. Each verse after an instrumental break is preceded by more (synthesized) pealing bells than your average Easter celebration in Rome. To capture the proper amount of bombast, the song sounds as if it was recorded in a studio on the same block as a Catholic church.
In any case, much like key parties, the Fairlight CMI’s time has come and gone though I bet it was secretly used on that one Andrew WK album that’s only available as a Japanese-import. If you didn’t know it was used primarily in the 80s, you’d have only to have heard the words “light pen interface” to get a clue.
This is one of the things I love about Wikipedia: no fact is not fungible. Wikipedia says Naked Eyes was “the very first band to make significant use of the Fairlight CMI on a pop recording,” before contradicting itself by saying Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel used it a couple years before. It’s almost as if you can hear him creating the template for Colin Meloy’s timorous mewling about sailor’s wives crying about their husbands being eaten by sea monsters or whatever. Pete Byrne isn’t quite the crooner the song needs here, but what he lacks in phrasing, he makes up for in longing. Plus, the background vocalists make Benny Hill’s Ladybirds* sound like classically-trained vocalists, by comparison. She sings as if she’s in a hurry, and her voice reminds me a bit too much of Michael Jackson’s early works. Frankly, Sadie Shaw’s original version in 1964 did the song only rough justice. It clocks in at 3:40, which is about the same length as “Too Shy” but unlike that opus, it somehow manages to leave the listener wanting more.īacharach said he preferred to write for female voices, so the duo of Naked Eyes is good enough in a pinch. Burt Bacharach, who’s written some of the greatest pop standards of the last fifty years. While not the greatest song in the Naked Eyes canon (that honor goes to “ Promises, Promises”), “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” still impresses thanks to quality source material courtesy of Mr. Lyrics – “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes MP3 – “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes This is the second in a series of musings on the first two volumes of the now out-of-print 80s music collection, Living in Oblivion, which will proceed in track order.