Some songs are just there, like staircases and steering wheels and stainless steel sinks, as much a part of the fabric of life as to be ubiquitous and ever-present, unnoticed or unthought of and maybe even taken for granted. Blue Monday might be one. Come On Eileen certainly is. To this list I’d add The Bluebells’ Young At Heart.
The Bluebells – Young At Heart
You’ve heard Young At Heart, what, a hundred and seventeen times? A thousand and twenty four times? Seventeen million times in your life already? It’s just always been there, playing on an endless 40 year loop across the airwaves, a ‘hits station’ producer’s golden gift from the musical gods. Show in a slump and needing a toe-tapping lift? Reach for Young At Heart and its melancholic countrified hoedown will retain the listenership and have them baking tin bashing or dashboard beating all the way to the news and travel.
Young At Heart might seem overplayed to you. Or even stale. And you, yeah you, ya cloth-eared weirdo, you might never have liked it in the first place. You might never want to hear it ever again. But trust me though. You do.
I’ve been floating since Sunday night when, at St Luke’s in Glasgow, The Bluebells encored their album launch show with it. Well, of course they did. We may all have been there to hear the bulk of The Bluebells In The 21st Century played out live, with an extended Bluebells featuring the cream of Scottish musicianship – Mick Slaven! Douglas McIntyre! Campbell Owens! John McCusker! – but there was no way Bobby or the McLuskey brothers were going to deny their audience an airing of Young At Heart. Or I’m Falling. Or Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Or a soul-stirring Cath. That ‘Cath/You led me up the garden path‘ line has thrilled me since it first leapt from the grooves of the well-thumbed copy of Sisters I borrowed from Irvine library sometime in the mid ’80s and I was waiting expectantly for it to be delivered on Sunday night. It didn’t disappoint.
Young At Heart though. Ken, David and Bobby acknowledge its place in their history. With the band’s name spoken on the airwaves with every passing play and still in the collective conscience of an increasingly attention-span ravaged nation, it’s perhaps the reason The Bluebells are even still making records.
Young At Heart is a song that’s been very kind to its writers. Maybe not ‘Sting owns a vineyard in Italy’-levels of kindness, but I’d wager that Bobby Bluebell and Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey, London Records’ golden couple at the time of its writing (and latterly Bobby Valentino, the player who provides the song’s signature violin motif and whose session fee was substantially upgraded years later to a writing credit) have done fairly well from it’s continual presence.
Bananarama – Young At Heart
Bananarama’s version was the first to be released, a deep cut in the parlance of nowadays, and one that you’ll find on their debut album Deep Sea Skiving. It follows the blueprint of the original Bluebells’ demo; slightly reserved chorus, one dimensional verse, a bit flatly produced even, but whereas Bananarama half-heartedly do their best Supremes’ impression and don’t really know where to go with it, The Bluebells original version is a totally realised slice of pop/soul – and, as it turns out, a bit of an undiscovered beauty.
The Bluebells – Young At Heart (demo)
It’s got that talc-dusted northern backbeat. Soaking wet slapback funk guitars. There are squelches of Rip It Up electro-synth woven between the words. Live, it was sometimes performed (like many bands of the time) with a stabbing brassy rash of Jam Trans Global Express horns. The whole thing is speed-freak Dexys hacked into the Wigan Casino’s electrical circuit and spat out in Glasgow’s West End. Essential listening, it goes without saying, and almost as thrilling as the masterpiece they eventually released.
Imagine writing a song that still resonates with anyone who hears it over 40 years later. Imagine! There’s not a songwriter on the planet who wouldn’t kill for a song like Young At Heart. Cherish it.
Plain Or Pan 