Simply Red
Here he stands, a frizz of curly, ginger hair; pale, freckled skin; looking (let's face it) nothing like a pop star and even less like a soul singer…
Here he stands, a frizz of curly, ginger hair; pale, freckled skin; looking (let's face it) nothing like a pop star and even less like a soul singer. Yet for over twenty years, Mick Hucknall (and his floating band of musical cohorts and collaborators known collectively as Simply Red) has imprinted himself on the musical consciousness of the world, a triumph of will and sheer talent.
Never mind his critics (and there have been a few), on the incontrovertible evidence of the tracks on the definitive Greatest Hits album of a band whose shimmering pop soul and elegantly heartworn balladry provided a glistening, emotional soundtrack to our turbulent times, Mick Hucknall is certainly one of the greatest singers of modern popular music, and arguably the greatest British soul singer of all time.
While Britain has produced many roaring rockers, idiosyncratic stylists and sweet timbred crooners, rarely has a British vocalist touched the blend of impeccable technique and emotional resonance that characterises the legendary American soul stars. Perhaps it is the absence of a church gospel tradition to root vocal training in, or the way our fast moving hurly burly small island pop scene tends to emphasise concept and charisma over training and dues paying. But then how do you explain the emergence of an authentic and original soul voice from a working class art school and punk rock background in the industrial midland city of Manchester?
Hucknall has a Celtic rasp that lends an edge to even the sweetest note, allied to a kind of easy flowing, croon control that winds delicately around a melody, creating a sense of ebb and flow with the music (where so many lesser singers just rip and roar). It is as if he has been touched by the spirit of Frank Sinatra as much as Otis Redding. You can hear the influence of Marvin Gaye in there, you can hear a shade of Sam Cooke, but the mark of Hucknall's real soul is that he doesn't actually sound like any of his vocal heroes.
He is not a transatlantic imitator, he has found a way to channel the pain of maternal abandonment in his childhood and the anger of growing up at the sharp end of the class divide into something authentically English, where his roots are in his football team (the red jerseyed Manchester United) and his political allegiances (the red flag waving Labour) rather than some imaginary gospel church. The name Simply Red, after all, is not just a reference to Hucknall's hair. Red is the colour of passion.
Has any other soul singer emerged from the burning fires of punk rock? It is such an unlikely story it is almost laughable. Hucknall was one of only 42 people present at the Sex Pistols legendary Manchester Free Trade Hall gig in 1976, other audience members going on to form such seminal bands as Joy Division, the Buzzcocks, The Fall and The Smiths.
Hucknall's first band The Frantic Elevators put out their own indie records of scratchy, shouty new wave for seven years. And while the format could hardly be said to have brought the best out of his vocal chords, Hucknall was learning how to express himself, how to be a frontman, and how to write a song, so that when his childhood love of soul and R&B began to reassert itself in the eighties, he was ready to take it to the next level. A radical re-recording of The Frantic Elevators 'Holding Back The Years' gave Hucknall his first US number one in 1986.
And that's another thing. Hucknall has the kind of voice of which it is traditional to suggest he could sing the phone book and it would sound fantastic. Fortunately it hasn't come to that because Hucknall is also an enormously gifted songwriter. Frankly, most popular composers would be happy just to have come up with one song of the perfect dimensions of 'Holding Back The Years' but Hucknall has done it time and time again, adding enormously to the classic pop canon. You will find them all here, the kind of tune you start humming as soon as you hear the title: the righteous strut of 'The Right Thing', the exuberant infatuation of 'A New Flame', the tender admiration of 'You've Got It', the amorous flight of 'Stars'.
A music fan through and through, Hucknall has also proved an excellent judge of a cover version. Simply Red announced themselves with the gritty reworking of The Valentine Brothers blue collar attack on the economic injustices of Reagonomics, 'Money's Too Tight To Mention' and have crafted hits from songs as diverse as Harold Melvin's beautiful ballad 'If You Don't Know Me By Now', reggae legend Gregory Isaac's lilting 'Night Nurse', the Hollies' pop epic 'The Air That I Breathe' and The Stylistics sweetly sentimental 'You Make Me Feel Brand New.' Like any great singer, Hucknall always makes the song his own.
There is a musical progression to be heard in these tracks, and a spiritual progression too, a maturity of both lyric, vocal delivery, tone, timbre and arrangement. From the relatively simplicity of those early 80s britfunk arrangements the sound becomes more sinuous and amorphous, Hucknall and producer Stewart Levine weaving together their outstanding musicians until by 'Stars' Hucknall's vocal is sailing through a joyous dance tapestry with an elegance and smoothness that is sensationally uplifting. In some blurred, organic, freefalling sense, early nineties 'Stars' was the biggest selling album in the UK for two years in a row, 1991 and 92 and in some odd way Simply Red almost seemed like fellow travellers to the then emerging Acid house scene.
The follow up 'Life' made this connection even more explicit with the gorgeous 'Fairground', a wistful, strange and affecting piano driven dance song. This smooth synthesis of interweaved instrumentation, where the individual ingredients become a blurred confection supporting Hucknall's gliding vocal is perhaps what most listeners would define as the classic Simply Red sound, but there have been other sonic digressions and investigations, with jazz, reggae and deep soul coming into the mix. But all these shifts and changes are unified by Hucknall's utterly distinctive voice. When he sings, there is no mistaking Simply Red for anyone else.
He may have sold over fifty million albums to admiring fans around the world but Hucknall has had more than his share of critics. Sometimes he has been his own worst enemy, spiky, combative, over confident and notoriously immodest, but these, perhaps, are the very qualities that helped lift him up from his background and drive him on to becoming one of the all time greats. He has been accused of retreating into middle of the road blandness, embracing cocktail lounge jazz and other musical sins, but this collection puts such accusations to the sword.
While a lot of music from the eighties and early nineties has become quickly dated through synthesiser excesses, an over sequenced search for some kind of plastic studio perfection, it is impressive how well Simply Red stand up, perhaps because the unadorned but hugely expressive human voice is always firmly to the fore, supported by the sound of real musicians playing their instruments to the best of their abilities. He's got the songs. He's got the vocal chops. He delivers the goods time and time again. What more do we really want from our pop stars?
So this is it. The best of Simply Red. After this, there will be no more. The band are not exactly splitting up, because, as Hucknall has pointed out: "How can I split up with myself?" But he has decided to bring this passage of his musical journey to a close, and embark on pastures new. But these songs remain to be played, time and time again, and each time that voice delivers straight to the heart. Because whatever else is said about Mick Hucknall and Simply Red, the guy sure as hell can sing. - Neil McCormick. Journalist: The Daily Telegraph (UK)
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