Wednesday 8 June 2011

The Alternative TOTP Canon #13: Laurie Anderson - O Superman

We've already seen on this blog how the dancing was likely to head rapidly freeform when Flick was given a song with no discernible groove. Imagine what her response must have been, then, when given pop's most famous avant-garde beat poem to choreograph Zoo round for the Christmas show, particular as it had a perfectly serviceable video already. Linking out, John Peel, who was of course hammering this at the time (though it's said Noel Edmonds, of all people, was the one to take it to the daytime record buyers) makes a frankly wrong prediction. In introduction, watch for David Van Day's comedy umbrage at Peter Powell, which as anyone who's seen the Bucks Fizz Trouble At The Top will appreciate was probably not far short of actual umbrage.

4 comments:

wilberforce said...

i remember reading one of simon napier-bell's biographies where he boasted his band japan had the oddest and least commercial top 10 hit of the early 80's with "ghosts" - close but no cigar simon! unusual and offbeat it may have been, but compared to "o superman" it sounds like "karma chameleon" ha ha!

Anonymous said...

Just shows how different the charts were in 1982 than they are today with the rise of the 'featurings'...

Simon said...

It does have to be put into the context, though, that the week it reached number 2 above it was a sappy 1950s cover (It's My Party) and one below was The Birdie Song.

Noax said...

I absolutely hated this song. I remember being incredibly annoyed at having to listen to it on the Top 40 and waiting for some decent tunes to come on!

Age hasn't made me like it now either.