We’re going where the sun shines brightly,
We’re going where the sea is blue…
1986 really was very Cliff. He had celebrated his first No1 of the 80s with the cast of The Young Ones, featured in some devastating billboard action in the (rerun) finale of the aforementioned BBC comedy show, been covered by the TVam rat and gerbil, and even had one of his most famous songs feature on a rather unique (and quite frankly ghastly) novelty Euro hit. And in July of the very same year, this very prominent track (it’s Summer Holiday folks!), Cliff’s ubiquitous seasonal anthem to double decker buses and Una Stubbs, was sitting proudly as track 1 side 2 on the latest NOW, That’s What I Call Music album.
But wait!
The gloriously designed blue sky and beach umbrella that housed the latest variously compiled pop selection was not to feature such 1986 chart toppers as Wham!, Dr and the Medics and Chris De Burgh(!). This wasn’t the impending 7th volume of the (rapidly becoming) world famous series of compilations, this was NOW - The Summer Album, and it was…well, different.
Just as the wonderful team had done in November 1985 with NOW - The Christmas Album, here was the brand’s second venture into a ‘theme’. And what a theme it was! Four decades of summer anthems, summer hits, sizzling memories - phew what a scorcher!
But as it transpires, with guest Tim Worthington, we discover that the album announced from the pages of Smash Hits in July 1986 (featuring the most summery of acts, The Jesus and Mary Chain!) was much more than that just sun loungers and factor 30. Because growing up in the 70s/80s in the UK summer was often quite different indeed!
What NOW - The Summer Album perhaps did do, was provide a template of summers we all wished we’d known; a sixties summer of love, a fifties summer of rock n roll, a seventies summer of…cricket (?) and of course an eighties summer of Radio One roadshows, and quite probably, traffic jams.
It was an album that also provided a range of genres, new bands from the past to discover and a template for all summer soundtracks to come.
So, dive back into an iconic chapter in the NOW series. Find out how some VERY big pop names appeared (TWICE!), why sound effects always make summer songs better, how some songs were longer (and shorter!) than others and why John Menzies probably didn’t anticipate how well this summer set would sell.
And importantly, remember your Plymouth dealer is, indeed, a dealing man.
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