CULTURE CLUB
Waking Up With The House On Fire (remastered)
This remastered version of Culture Club's third album (originally released in 1984) sadly heralded the beginning of the end for their Glory Days. It has been widely regarded as a flop, although it sold over 4 million copies worldwide. But compared the sales of the album that launched the group to '80's superstars' status, 1983's superb 'Colour By Numbers', sales were disappointing and the group were not to record together again for another 15 years.
1984 saw the band regularly being pit against Wham! in the media, for one of the 80's equivalents of the 90's Britpop Blur v. Oasis chart 'battles'. Both bands had albums and singles released at similar times, but Culture Club were beaten by Wham! quite convincingly this year; 'The War Song' lost out to 'Freedom', and 'The Medal Song' (their first flop single) only limped to no. 32 while 'Last Christmas' broke the million sales mark. 'The Medal Song' chorus' lyric 'Life will never be the same as it was again' turned out to be quite prophetic.
Taking aside comparisons and seeing the music for what it is, 20 years later, it wasn't really the unmitigated disaster that Virgin records eventually believed it to be. Yes it is their weakest album but when you are comparing it to the now seminal 'Kissing to be clever' and the worldwide smash 'Colour by Numbers' they gave themselves very hard acts to follow.
Boy George always had a knack for writing instantly classic pop songs, which have stood the test of time very well, thanks mainly to the arrangements and the bands competant playing, and the avoidance of any 'current fad' synthesizer sounds adopted by many of their contemporaries. However George's creative spark appears to have eluded him on this album and overall the songs come across as fairly lack-lustre.
There are highlights though - apart from the two singles another standout track is the ballad 'Mistake No. 3' which was a big hit in the States. 'The Dream' is a strong song, and was also featured on the 'Electric Dreams' soundtrack.
The opening track, 'Dangerous Man' is also very listenable, but some songs such as 'Mannequin' and 'Hello Goodbye' do sound like fillers, that would probably have not made it onto their previous albums.
The four additional tracks on this remastered version are interesting; they include 'La Cancion De Guerra' which is basically 'The War Song' with spanish lyrics in the chorus, that actually sound very obviously like overdubs that were added to the song afterwards. The most noteworthy extra track is the gorgeous ballad 'Love is Love' which was a bit hit outside the UK, and in my opinion is the best track on the whole cd, although still not up to the standard of their classic ballads 'Time (clock of the heart)' and 'Victims'. The final track 'Dont go down that street' was a Japanese single and it is very obvious as it even features George singing in Japanese!
This album will probably appeal mostly to completist fans but does still deserve attention. A fitting 80's swansong from a band that has stood the test of time with dignity.
1984 saw the band regularly being pit against Wham! in the media, for one of the 80's equivalents of the 90's Britpop Blur v. Oasis chart 'battles'. Both bands had albums and singles released at similar times, but Culture Club were beaten by Wham! quite convincingly this year; 'The War Song' lost out to 'Freedom', and 'The Medal Song' (their first flop single) only limped to no. 32 while 'Last Christmas' broke the million sales mark. 'The Medal Song' chorus' lyric 'Life will never be the same as it was again' turned out to be quite prophetic.
Taking aside comparisons and seeing the music for what it is, 20 years later, it wasn't really the unmitigated disaster that Virgin records eventually believed it to be. Yes it is their weakest album but when you are comparing it to the now seminal 'Kissing to be clever' and the worldwide smash 'Colour by Numbers' they gave themselves very hard acts to follow.
Boy George always had a knack for writing instantly classic pop songs, which have stood the test of time very well, thanks mainly to the arrangements and the bands competant playing, and the avoidance of any 'current fad' synthesizer sounds adopted by many of their contemporaries. However George's creative spark appears to have eluded him on this album and overall the songs come across as fairly lack-lustre.
There are highlights though - apart from the two singles another standout track is the ballad 'Mistake No. 3' which was a big hit in the States. 'The Dream' is a strong song, and was also featured on the 'Electric Dreams' soundtrack.
The opening track, 'Dangerous Man' is also very listenable, but some songs such as 'Mannequin' and 'Hello Goodbye' do sound like fillers, that would probably have not made it onto their previous albums.
The four additional tracks on this remastered version are interesting; they include 'La Cancion De Guerra' which is basically 'The War Song' with spanish lyrics in the chorus, that actually sound very obviously like overdubs that were added to the song afterwards. The most noteworthy extra track is the gorgeous ballad 'Love is Love' which was a bit hit outside the UK, and in my opinion is the best track on the whole cd, although still not up to the standard of their classic ballads 'Time (clock of the heart)' and 'Victims'. The final track 'Dont go down that street' was a Japanese single and it is very obvious as it even features George singing in Japanese!
This album will probably appeal mostly to completist fans but does still deserve attention. A fitting 80's swansong from a band that has stood the test of time with dignity.
Support RememberTheEighties.com and Buy Online At
