So to the Top Five. The year my music taste changed. With the times. Orange Juice's second album was generally considered a disappointment when it came out on Polydor in 1983. Without particular good reason. It was a good record. But it was Orange Juice. So much expectation had built up with them, following those blistering Postcard singles, which invented a sub-genre single handedly that endures to this day. No band could possibly live up to that level of expectation. Not even Orange Juice.
Still, they had their hit. With the superlative Rip it up. The one that got them in the charts, on Top of the Pops and on the cover of Smash Hits where they belonged. I remember buying that issue of the magazine, something I rarely did, (leaving that chore to my younger sister and reading hers). I read it on the platform at Twickenham Train Station, on the way back from college one day. Funny how some memories stick.
Being ever contrary and quite aware of how incredible Rip it up is, I've always preferred the other two songs off the album Flesh of My Flesh and .I Can't Help Myself. Neither of them were hits. They both lodged in that eternal graveyard for singles in those days. The high forties. Not enough daytime radio play, despite the efforts of the heroic likes of Richard Skinner, sitting in for Simon Bates while he was on holiday. Bates would never have dreamed of playing either of them. Or Rip it up for that matter, until he was obliged to do so. All three should have graced the Top Forty but didn't. A worrying sign of the times. The best music was going underground for the most part after that year for a while.
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