Song of the Day 5/9: Fine Young Cannibals, “Don’t Look Back”
Fine Young Cannibals burned brightly but briefly. Their year was 1989, when their second album, “The Raw & the Cooked,” went double platinum and spawned two No. 1 singles. Their overnight success, five years in the making, ended a lot quicker than that — though there was no acrimonious breakup, they never recorded another LP.
The band formed in 1984 when guitarist Andy Cox and bassist David Steele, former members of the English Beat, auditioned scores of singers before settling on Roland Gift, an actor-model with a distinctive voice and an arresting look. Their R&B-influenced first album produced a couple of UK hits in 1985. In 1987 they landed three original songs in Barry Levinson’s comedy “Tin Men,” even receiving some screen time as a Baltimore bar band.
Those tunes appeared on “The Raw & the Cooked” two years later, but by then FYC’s style had changed. The “cooked” side of the album was done in a dance-pop style highlighted by “She Drives Me Crazy,” one of Billboard’s most popular singles of 1989 (Milli Vanilli was big that year). The LP’s other No. 1 was one of the “Tin Men” songs, “Good Thing,” which sounds nothing like it. The album was sort of scattershot that way.
This song, written by Steele and Gift, was the third single. It only reached No. 11 in the US, but I appreciate its Beatlesque jangle-pop sound and the simple but visually interesting video, directed by Kevin Godley of 10cc fame.
