3 April 1982
Okay, I get that in 1982 there was a market for schlager-friendly, disco-fied Caribbean-sounding pop. At least with Boney M you could get your gladrags on, bop around the place, and still learn about Russia’s greatest love machine. But this is dreadful.
I guess the pitch for this was Boney M meets ABBA – but it’s ‘Fernando’ ABBA (i.e. Bad ABBA) and they’re meeting them at a funeral. So, ‘Seven Tears’ is a dirge from the off, but it goes in for a key change worryingly early: only a minute and a half down, still two and a half remaining. Clearly there’ll have to be another key change—but when? This was on my mind even during the bit where our lead singer repeats the second verse in SPOKEN WORD, because it’s IMPORTANT and POIGNANT; gotta really sell those good bits, y’know?
At last, with just thirty seconds left on the clock, the other shoe drops and we get our even higher key change. The funeral, by the way, was for the death of dignity.
