Birthday Number 1s: 1989 - You'll Never Stop Me Loving You

 I remember when I first saw the video for

You'll Never Stop Me Loving You - Sonia

and thinking it was some kind of joke. Not a real song, a Saturday morning wheeze. Maybe Trevor and Simon were involved. Rewatching it now, it is funny. It's a funny, disarming video where Sonia and her male co-star do some pretty good physical comedy. I think, at the time, I thought the silliness of the video disqualified the song (which expresses the same sentiment as the Glenn Medeiros song of the previous year, just in a more forceful way). The song is perfectly standard Stock Aitken Waterman stuff. Could be Kylie. Could only be 1989. Could only be Stock Aitken Waterman. In a way, their apotheosis.

Sonia never replicated this chart height, but had a decent career. A few years later, perhaps SAW had had writers' block, as a lot of her singles were covers. Funnily enough, those Sonia covers introduced me to a few very nice songs - You've Got a Friend, End of the World, You to Me are Everything, Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy.

In 1993, she finished second in Eurovision with a song called Better the Devil You Know, which is not as good as the Kylie song of the same name. In an era where the UK pretty much always did fine in Eurovision, it finished second. She has remained somewhat famous. She told David van Day from Dollar he was "a nasty piece of work" and she performed at the most recent Eurovision.

What of Stock Aitken Waterman? I've remembered that I, bizarrely, thought that the name was a pun on Stock, chicken and water ... really ... i don't even get it myself ... i think I thought that Pete Waterman (who was the public face) was the only member of the team who actually existed, and he had invented a moniker which was a pun on a known well phrase ... that well known well known phrase ... stock, chicken and water, which everyone says all the time.

Anyway, Mike Stock and Matt Aitken did, and do, exist. You don't see that much of them, but there's always been a lot of Pete Waterman to go round.

A both admirable and somewhat ridiculous figure, Waterman. He truly committed to and loved what he did, and had a very interesting life along the way, including being a trade union official, a coal miner, working on the railways.

He worked his way up the music business, was clearly incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about uptempo pop and soul. He masterminded one of the most successful eras in British pop music history, full of many, many memorable melodes.

I'll tell you what Pete Waterman didn't like ... indie music. Fuck, no. Every now and then, the NME would gleefully interview him and he'd basically fulfil his brief by saying "All of this is shit. You're all bedwetting losers, this music is depressing, no-talent shit, pop music is everything, I hate you, fuck off" and it was strong content.

History may judge Waterman has been proved right. What a poptimistic age it has been, as turgid, limp, misogynistic indie-rock has supposedly been beaten back into the ground where it belongs. 

Equally, the other side of the tale is ... there was a recent feature in the Guardian on when Belle and Sebastian, in the early days of the internet, organised their fanbase to defeat Steps to Best Newcomer at the 1999 Brits, one of those comically meaningless small victories that warm the cockles of most people.

24 years later, it was clear the cockles of Waterman, H, Claire and the gang from Steps were still not warmed. Still utterly resentful, humourless and furious, like this was one of history's great injustices, their historic recollections had to be seen to be believed. Waterman believed it was a music industry conspiracy to defeat him, the little man. Righto.

Anyway, it just reminded me a little of what I actually think and that the winners, in all contexts, betray themselves when they are ridiculous people. Steps were shite. Of course, Pure shite. Most of the music of SAW was pretty bad. A great deal of the feelgood pop music one is castigated as a snob for not wholeheartedly embracing is just a warming ocean full of sewage and plastic. I mean, really.

You're a nasty piece of work, David ...