Oh! I have just realised that Mr D'Luv said at the end of one his more recent posts "Now if only we could get rid of Take That..." The sheer gall of it! The absolute nerve. The unmitigated audacity ;) Still, everyone is entitled to their opinion :) It remains to be seen as to whether their current success is due to a wave of nostalgia or that the future of boyband pop lies in appealing to the moms rather than the daughters (as westlife seem to have been most successful with this route). I'm hoping it's a longer return than one album for the boys, as it is rather a good album, but only time will tell. Now if you checked out my favourite boybands post over at the Spinoff Blog, you will know that actually I am quite fond of Take That. And was obsessed with them for most of the first half of the 90s. This "retrospecticus" is designed to look back at their career which all kicked off in 1991 when the five boys, persuaded by their gay manager, got all homoerotic in some jelly on the set of their video for Do What You Like. For a fit young stud like me it was all i needed to tip me from bi-curious to fully fledged raging homo and i minced out to buy the single, expecting it to chart at number one. It didn't. It didn't even get within a poppers sniff of the top 40. But i was already smitten (mainly with Robbie) and really liked their music. Two more Gary Barlow compositions flopped and the record company, getting understandably antsy (they SO would have been dropped in this day and age) forced a cover version on them, and another writers song. It worked. It Only Takes A Minute went top ten and I Found Heaven made 15. The boys had arrived. Yet strangely, the dance pop of the first album didn't give them the huge success that was to follow with their sophomore set. Typical Gary ballad A Million Love Songs pushed them back into the top ten and a great remix of Barry Manilow song Could It Be Magic was all over the Christmas charts like a rash (a ploy that did well for acts like Steps years later when covering 70s and 80s songs like Tragedy and Chain Reaction) and stayed top five for several weeks. I get the impression that the record company looked at IOTAM as the "first single proper" from the debut album Take That and Party, which is why yet another single was chosen - my least favourite TT song, Why Can't I Wake Up With You given a disappointing r'n'b tinged remix. However, the boys star was in ascendancy and it became their biggest hit to date. With a janet jackson challenging mammoth 8 singles off the debut, you'd be forgiven for thinking there wasn't that much left on the album to be that excited about. And to be honest, you'd be half right. Most of the good tracks had flown into the charts and seeped their way into public consciousness. And the boys hadn't quite perfected the polished pop that came on their next album. But this album is nonetheless essential to an understanding of the band and their place in popular culture. It was nice to be alive in 1992, and there's a case for arguing that this album was the rebirth of pop music that wasn't S/A/W, and that most of the singles in the charts circa mid-2001 are there because of this...
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LINK: Buy Take That And Party Expanded Edition CD
MP3: Take That – It Only Takes A Minute
MP3: Take That – Could It Be Magic
