Saturday, May 16, 2015

Top 100 Songs From the 1990s (No. 51)

51. "Atta Girl"
Artist: Heavenly
Year: 1993

Yes, there is a little rule bending here. I stuck with the one song per artist rule, but Amelia Fletcher and her crew were known to tweak the lineup under a new guise from time to time. Thus, we had Marine Research (the band between Heavenly and Tender Trap) at No. 73, and today we have Heavenly (the band between Talulah Gosh and Marine Research). And in case you missed the news, Fletcher and Rob Pursey are performing as the Catenary Wires now. The debut mini-album will be out June 2. I just got a hold of a copy, and I'll have a little something on that next week... but I digress.

I have a great fondness for all of the above Fletcher-led bands, but Heavenly hold a special place in the canon. The early work still has remnants of C86-era Talulah Gosh (far from a bad thing), but just about the time Cathy Rogers joined the group on keyboard and vocals, Heavenly took a great leap artistically, and 'Le Jardin de Heavenly' is one of my favorite albums from the entire decade. Since this list is all about songs, however, I'm going with one of two non-album singles from between 'Le Jardin de Heavenly' and 'The Decline and Fall of Heavenly.' The real beauty of "Atta Girl" (Sarah 082) is it's the first time we hear the great trade-off vocals between Fletcher and Rogers. Now that's what I call heavenly. Thanks to the good folks at K Records, you can still find "Atta Girl" coupled with the "P.U.N.K. Girl" single here.

We all know that Fletcher would continue to make great albums, but you may not know Rogers would become famous for her work in front and behind the camera of reality TV's "Scrapheap Challenge" in the UK and "Junkyard Wars" on this side of the pond.

5 comments:

Scott said...

Worth bending the rules slightly I would say Brian. Love the cover of the single as well.

george said...

They are your rules for the bending, Brian. This is fine song. I didn't watch scrapheap challenge.

Brian said...

Hello Scott and George. Yes, the cover is great. My wife commented on that too. I can't say I have ever seen Scrapheap either. I have never seen a reality television show, for that matter. Glad you fellas liked the song.

The Swede said...

Another one I don't know at all. Very enjoyable it is too. Loved those little, almost accapella, vocal bits. Excellent. It depresses me how much great music I haven't heard.

Brian said...

I know what you mean, Swede. I have big holes in the '90s from living out of the country pre-Internet, followed by being swallowed up by a job. I feel like I ask myself "how did I miss that?" daily through reading all of these fine blogs. Gotta enjoy it, though.