On a day like this, people like me who blog about music are liable to be honouring a man who made lots of great records: Errol Brown, lead singer of Hot Chocolate, who sadly passed today. Much as I loved the guy, we were on different sides politically, so I'm hoping the title So You Win Again is not a foretaste of what lies in store tomorrow for the Tories he very publicly supported.
[Tomorrow, May 07 2015, is General Election day in the UK. Below is a repeat of an item I posted on Dec 09 2014.]
Things that Were Better Than They Needed To Be #2: Hot Chocolate - So You Win Again
The pop charts are a bit like the Premier League. You can only beat what’s put in front of you - if everyone else is rubbish this season, you only have to be half decent to rule. But in the 60s and 70s pop music was brilliant, because almost everyone that was any good was making singles that lots of people actually liked. Yes there were stupid novelty records and kids’ choirs - so what? There was room and time for everyone on Top Of The Pops.
Hot Chocolate were around for much longer than you probably think and churned out far more hits than you could name, but they also made far more great singles than people give them credit for. We took people like this for granted in the 70s because there was so much to choose from. They had a sleek but distinctive, bass-heavy sound.
This poignant beauty, So You Win Again, was written by Russ Ballard, who wrote lots of great pop records, and you could easily imagine Abba singing it. It sat serenely at No1 for 3 weeks in 1977 while punk raged all around it.