This 1984 hit for Alison Moyet was written by Lamont Dozier.

A great talent, sadly missed.

Alison Moyet: Invisible

Everybody’s favourite girl-next-door at least until she released Physical in 1981,) Olivia Newton John, has died.

Her earliest hits were in the country and western style but she was a relatively minor star until she got the part as Sandy in the film Grease, with which she will forever be associated. I confess I found that film to be not as good as the hype surrounding it. (It did have its moments – the wink from Stockard Channing at the lyric “did he have a car” was priceless – but its ending seemed to imply that the only way to win a boy’s heart is to dress more than a little ‘obviously.’)

Not that that can be held against Newton John.

This title song from a later film which was not such a success is reputed to be writer Jeff Lynne’s favourite of all the ones he wrote.

Olivia Newton John: Xanadu

Olivia Newton-John: 26/9/ 1948 – 8/8/ 2022. So it goes.

In 1989 a by now Fishless Marillion got themselves a new lead singer, Steve Hogarth, and a much less Prog-Rocky sound. This was the first single and the first sight of Hogarth on Top of the Pops. No sign of Prog at all.

Marillion: Hooks in You

I read in the Guardian on Friday of the death of Andy Fletcher, keyboardist with Depeche Mode.

The band were a bit after my time and so I hadn’t realised they had had no fewer than 54 hits in the UK. Nevertheless, I knew they were one of the foremost proponents of the electronic music revolution.

Depeche Mode: Everything Counts

Andrew John Leonard Fletcher (Fletch:) 8/7/1961 – 26/5/2022. So it goes.

I heard on the news today that Vangelis has died. I first heard his music when he was a member of the band Aphrodite’s Child. Their psychedelia tinged It’s Five O’Clock I featured here along with their biggest hit, Rain and Tears.

Vangelis will probably be most associated with the theme tune for the film Chariots of Fire, see here.

He collaborated with Yes singer Jon Anderson for four albums and the pair had a couple of hits, this one from 1981.

Jon and Vangelis: I’ll Find My Way Home

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou (Vangelis:) 29/3/1943 – 17/5/2022. So it goes.

I came to this a bit late as I only really noticed the Housemartins when they had a hit with Caravan of Love. That made me look at their back catalogue (the LP London 0 Hull 4 of which this is the first track.

In what would become a trademark of Paul Heaton’s songwriting the jaunty tune is matched with a much less cheerful lyric.

The Housemartins: Happy Hour

One of Ray Davies’s more understated compositions. A no 12 for The Kinks in 1968 and also a no 12 for Kirsty MacColl in 1989.

The Kinks:- Days

Kirsty MacColl: Days

In 1988, this became Deacon Blue’s first top ten hit, a status that what is probably the band’s best known song, Dignity, never achieved.

In the next few years Real Gone Kid was played so often on Radio Forth (which I used to listen to in the mornings to get traffic reports and such when I was working) that I joked with the good lady they must have shares in each other. “It’s share time,” I’d say whenever I heard its first bars.

And yes I know I should mislike it for the ungrammatical use of ‘took’ for ‘taken,’ and the similarly grating rhyming of ‘kid’ with ‘did.’ Writer and singer Ricky Ross was once a teacher so ought to have known better. Mind you he did, as at the coda fellow singer Lorraine McIntosh sings “do what I should have done.”

Deacon Blue: Real Gone Kid

This only just creeps in here. A hit in 1980, famously kept off the number one spot by Joe Dolce (but the week previously also by the recently deceased John Lennon’s Woman.)

It gets better with age.

Ultravox: Vienna

Care was one of the bands Ian Broudie was in before The Lightning Seeds.

You can hear the (ahem) seeds of his later incarnation in this recording.

Care: Flaming Sword