Number 10: Matt Bianco - Whose Side Are You On

Somehow I feel the need to explain myself with this one...

Way back when I was in my teens, liking certain sorts of music entailed not liking others - at least if you wanted to avoid having your friends mock your record collection and stop being your friends. So it was not OK to like The Clash and Yes, or indeed REM and Matt Bianco.

Both at the time and subsequently, the latter were often cited as the epitome of 80s Uncool. I remember reading an article by Paul Morley where he expressed this view as a fixed truth, requiring no further explanation. Which is a bit rich given that when he was in Art of Noise he tried to recruit Thereza Bazar from Dollar as lead singer. 

For myself, not being a musician or even knowing about music per se, I like songs, pretty much regardless of style and never had a problem liking prog and punk or alternative rock and lounge music, provided the tune was memorable, the words at least interesting and the arrangement pleasing to the ear. But I was conformist enough to hide my copy of the Matt Bianco single
Get Out of Your Lazy Bed at the back of my record collection along with my Jethro Tull and Al Stewart records just in case anyone spotted them and mocked.

Now, though, I am 58 and don't have to account to my peers for my musical tastes. Since back in 1984 as a poor student, I hadn't the budget actually to buy Matt Bianco's debut album and sensed anyway that this was a step too far into loss of such street cred as I might have had. 

Anyway, this year I have downloaded and listened to it and the whole thing is rather fun, admittedly more in the mode of background music than something to concentrate on. In the process I puzzled over why Matt Bianco were so despised and decided to look this up on the internet. One, essentially positive, blog post described it thusly 'It’s not overtly offensive, it’s not thrilling, it’s…nice. Whether that’s what Robert Johnson flogged his soul for is a moot point.'

The thing is, though, not all music has to shake the establishment or protest against authority. Matt Bianco's music can be enjoyable even if Get Out of Your Lazy Bed isn't a satire of ruthless capitalism or More Than I Can Bear a call to revolutionary consciousness. It could also be argued that just a few years after punk, using musical styles dating from the pre rock and roll era was at least a little daring. And worth remembering that even REM and the whole Paisley Underground had a jingle-jangle element that drew on the 1960s. I'll even push it so far as to say that Whose Side Are You On, as a wry comment on the murky and mercenary world of espionage, was quite topical for 1984 and also that it is now uncontroversial for artists to follow a range of influences including Latin and lounge music. Perhaps Matt Bianco were pioneers

Whichever way, it's enjoyable song and the video, which I never saw at the time, is rather fun too. I feel no shame in liking it.