The New Cue #374 April 19: Fontaines D.C., Cindy Lee, Amen Dunes, Lucy Rose, Yoshika Colwell, Yannis & The Yaw, Elkka, Broadcast, Belle & Sebastian, D:Ream

"Brian Cox had a terrible sense of direction but he was a great keyboard player"

Good morning,

Do you hear that bell? It’s an imaginary bell. It is ringing because it’s Recommender Friday time. If it is ringing extra loudly it is because you are not a paying subscriber to The New Cue and you will not have full access to this issue. Quieten down that stupid imaginary bell by clicking Subscribe Now below, it costs £5 a month and then you’ll be free to skip this whole part and dive straight in. It’s so much more fun down there, this is the bit we make extra dull for the cheapskates. But we probably shouldn’t insult them. Oh dear, the HR dept is on the line. You crack on whilst I’ll take this call… here’s this week’s playlist:

And here’s a playlist for the Apple Music crew.

Enjoy the edition,

Ted, Niall and Chris

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The Story Behind The Song

How we birthed a classic

Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream (1993)

D:Ream singer and songwriter Peter Cunnah on the creation – and aftermath – of the 90s dance pop hit that became the official anthem for New Labour’s election victory in 1997.

“I have a love hate relationship with that song. It was so big, it was a beast. I always wanted success, my nickname in the office I worked in was ‘Peter Pop Star’, but I didn’t ever think about that level of pop success we had with that song. Three years before we started D:Ream, I was working in an office. The people who worked there were creative types, but it was for this commercial thing and you were working for points and the atmosphere was quite toxic. This girl who worked in there was Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals’ sister and one day she saw these tears welling up in my eyes and she said, ‘Cheer up Pete, you know what they say: Things can only get better!’ I’m Irish, I’d never heard that expression, so I rushed to the toilet and just put this idea down on my Sony Walkman. I worked on it in my then band and at that point it sounded a bit like Sympathy For The Devil.

I met Alan [Mackenzie, D: Ream co-founder] at this place called The Brain club on Wardour Street. You had Rankin and Jefferson Hack in there who had just started up Dazed & Confused taking photos, Paul Oakenfold would do DJ sets, it was this amazing little world. Alan had a residency there and his partner introduced me. The first song we worked on was [debut single] U R The Best Thing. Fast forward and were working on a remix for someone and for some reason Things Can Only Get Better just popped into my head. I sung it to Alan and he went, ‘What the hell was that?!?’ We played an early version at the Brain before we’d finished it and even then, people were going mad for it. We knew that it was going to be big.

We were being tour managed by Brian Cox at the time, who eventually got the sack because he had a terrible sense of direction, but he was a great keyboard player and he looked great so we roped him into being in the band. Brian was driving us back from a gig at three or four in the morning and I was writing some lyrics on a bit of paper trying to do a verse, I wrote the word ‘I…’ then Brian drove through a tunnel, so I had to stop because it was dark, and I thought, ‘Actually, that gap works.’ Once we finished it, it started to rip through clubland and this is where the split happened between me and Alan. He wanted to keep it as this longer thing and for it to stay in clubland, but I had my eyes on the prize. I always wanted a Number One record and I made compromises to do that. We did a radio edit and went on tour with Take That and that got us into the Top 40. In hindsight, we should have stayed doing stadium house music because that’s where we were heading and within a year the teenagers had abandoned us and the clubbers didn’t want to know. I went into a pop bubble and did the second album without Alan.

When the Labour Party got hold of it in 1997, I was managed by Jazz Summers at the time who told me they were going to use it without or without me so I might as well get in on it. I’d voted Green before then, but being at the Festival Hall and playing when they won the election was quite an experience and going to Number 10 and meeting Tony and Cherie was quite a big thing. I didn’t feel great about going back on Top Of the Pops and doing it again, but after they got hold of it, it went off in a whole new direction.

Some people only know it because of the Labour thing, but I’m now OK with that. After all that in ’97, I just walked away from the music industry. I bumped into Alan a few years ago in the park near my house in Ealing, he was drinking red wine on the swings and before I had a chance to say, ‘Can you move along please?’ he stood up and said, ‘Why did you make the second album without me, it was shit.’ So we decided to work together again and we’re now on our third album since that second record.”

Recommender

Ted Kessler

Let me tell you about the best £18 I have spent in a long time.

A little while ago, I interviewed the Californian writer and singer of spectral but majestic song, Jessica Pratt. Many years earlier, Jeff Barrett of Heavenly Recordings told me that the definition of ‘cool’ wasn’t about the way someone dressed or behaved, it was about the information they shared. This has always stuck with me. I was reminded of it while speaking with Pratt, who is by anyone’s definition superficially cool: great personal style. But then she told me to listen to Cindy Lee’s Heavy Metal, a single from 2020’s What’s Tonight To Eternity album - a record I had missed during Covid’s dawning:

When describing Cindy Lee, Pratt said these were “timeless, lonesome melodies through the gloom.” She had that right. She also said that Cindy Lee was her favourite guitarist by far and that nobody was making music like this. Seduced by Heavy Metal’s broken siren’s song I went on a safari through everything I could listen to or read about Cindy Lee.