12012014 - Paul Young "No Parlez"

What happened here, you say? Well, all of a sudden and completely out of nowhere I wanted to hear "Come Back and Stay" - as you do - and so I thought what the heck? In for a penny, etcetera... After all, the man did have a golden voice (and probably still does), so it couldn't be all that bad? An indeed, what I got was more or less exactly what's to be expected from an album released in 1983; dated production, cheesy synths and some positively cringeworthy "dramatic" backing vocals. Some of the songs still work today though, and I discovered that Noah and the Whale stole their song "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N." from one of the singles here. That aside, Young's cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is totally redundant (you really need something special to get away with doing that song), and calling a song "Ku Ku Kurama" is as ridiculous as trying to be edgy with the song "Sex" (sample line: "Sex - that's where we all come from"), that even dares to sample James Brown! "Come Back and Stay" is still brilliant, though. Listened to that song five times in a row...