1) Erasure - S.O.S.; 2) Was (Not Was) - Shake Your Head; 3) Dr. Alban - It's My Life; 4) Shakespear's Sister - I Don't Care; 5) Elton John - The One; 6) Felix - Don't You Want Me; 7) Kim Wilde - Who Do You Think You Are?; 8) Chyp-Notic - Still in Love with You; 9) Take That - I Found Heaven; 10) U96 - Das Boot; 11) Ringo Starr - Weight of the World; 12) Indra - Misery; 13) Del Amitri - Always the Last to Know; 14) Glenn Frey - I've Got Mine; 15) Blue System - I Will Survive
One from the personal archives, a childhood favourite compilation from the years before the music nerd instincts truly kicked in. Erratic at places but some of this music is timelessly great.
Key tracks: Erasure - "S.O.S.", Was (Not Was) - "Shake Your Head", Indra - "Misery"
I grew up on V/A hit compilations before I started getting into music on a more artist-focused basis, and prior to the start of my own collection of more contemporary collections I would borrow my sister's old CDs that she had left lying around. I didn't really know anything about any of the artists or 90% of the songs on Smash 11 when I first heard it, but this was one of my most played albums when I was much, much younger.
I was also a lot more skip-happy as a child than I am now and
in fact, the pre-pubescent version of myself has kindly marked the
tracks officially decreed as worthy of listening in the liner notes with a ballpoint
pen. There's not too many of them, and revisiting this collection a decades later it becomes clear why, i.e. because this is a rather random selection of songs. The bulk of the tracklist is very heavily based on early 1990s dance and pop -
lots of classic looped beats, gorgeous house pianos, nascent eurodance
synths - but then there's also a sappy Elton John MOR ballad? Del
Amitri's cowboy rocking? Kim Wilde kicking it like it's still the 1980s (shocked to find out "Who Do You Think You Are" was in fact released in 1992)? Ringo
freaking Starr!? Smash 11 takes a direction and then throws in wild curveballs when you least expect it. Even some of the songs more in line with the general
theme stand out, with choices like U96's techno remix of the
Das Boot theme (apparently a top 10 hit in Finland and a massive German smash?) or songs like Indra's "Misery" or Blue System's "I Will
Survive" (not the cover you'd expect) which I don't think ever were actual hits. This feels more like someone's personal mixtape rather than a various
artists compilation of chart-toppers that I'd expect to see in store shelves, though for what it's
worth I have no idea what the actual lineage or concept behind the Smash series is - the cover says "familiar from TV" but I've no idea what the program was?
Whatever the idea behind this was it's full of classics big and small, and I'm happy to say that the past version of myself already had a great taste because of each of those marked tracks are still top tier. "It's My Life" and "Baby Got Back" are of course iconic and evergreen, the former one of the finest anthems of eurodance and the latter a true refuge in audacity that wins over by embracing its own over-the-top horniness. Of the lesser known cuts, Shakespear's Sister's rollicking "I Don't Care" comes with that excellent early 90s rock energy and has a real unique flair to it with its ethereal high pitch vocal hooks, a bizarre spoken word interlude and some fantastically corny MIDI horns. The "Das Boot" techno remix is also a hoot - sometimes a way to make a famous film theme even better is to run it through a 1990s club filter and marvel at how perfectly the melody works within a dark, claustrophobic groove full of orchestral hits and robotic vocals. The most significant unearthing of the old favourites is Indra's "Misery", a song I had no recollection of but which reveals itself to be a stellar early 90s dance pop jam full of rad attitude and neon colour cool. It doesn't look like it was ever anything more than a minor regional hit, but it's one of those songs I wish would have a stronger legacy or a bigger name attached to it, because it's got such a good groove to it. As I said, I clearly already knew what's good when I was young.
There are two very big personal favourites though, right there at the start. Erasure's version of ABBA's "S.O.S." was the first version I heard of the song and to me it's the definitive one, with no disrespect to the original creators. The cold and dreamy synth pop production and Andy Bell's emotionally distant vocals work so flawlessly with that killer melody and the lyrical tone, to the extent that the warmth in the original version now sounds jarring to my ears. This is my "S.O.S.", and it's one of the finest synth pop songs of the 1990s. The "Walk the Dinosaur"-hitmaker Was (Not Was)' "Shake Your Head" on the other hand is a fever dream which I can't believe exists but I'm sure glad it does. Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne trade non-sequiturs with increasing surreality, somehow escalating into "let's go to bed", under a near seven-minute dance production (thanks to the extended mix featured here) with an off-kilter vocal loop hook. It's mad but very specifically it's mad genius - it's one of the most off-kilter chart cuts of the 1990s through its star power alone. I already respect how off the rails it is, but it's just a killer in general, a gem of a pop song with the most infectious hooks in the entire collection.
Beyond the classic favourites, this is definitely a mixed bag but maybe not in the way you'd expect. This is a really solid collection of both classics and lesser known examples of early-mid 1990s pop/dance sound, if you are into that at all - which I absolutely am, even without the nostalgia filter - and e.g. the tracks in the middle from the likes of Felix, Chyp-Notic et all work excellently as part of that stylistic suite. It just also comes with a caveat because of its more awkward side tracts. Not all the non-dance cuts are by no means bad (I've already attested my love for "I Don't Care" and the Kim Wilde cut also slaps) but like all hits compilations it could do without anything close to a ballad (hi Elton), and the classic rock dinosaurs certainly don't have a place here (again, hi Elton here too). The album also starts running out of steam towards the final third when it starts pouring the MOR superstars from Ringo to Del Amitri to Glenn Frey's poor man's "Another Day in Paradise", with only Indra there in the middle to save the day and Blue System's euphoric "Go West" -esque "I Will Survive" closing the record off with a bang; though as a mea culpa I don't actually think they are bad tracks per se, I appreciate their warmly dated vibe to some extent, but they're in the wrong company. I also have this irrational aversion towards Take That that I've never been able to cure myself of, and so they still go on the skip pile. Some of the strays aside though, a good amount of this set is simply excellent pop music that time has gilded. I'm not going to say this random chart compilation is a lost classic, but it's a footnote in my own musical history and so it comes with a lot of personal weight. That said, the best rediscovery ever since I brought this album back in my collection is that solid gold jams are timeless regardless of any nostalgia.
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