3 August 1985
Where I am normally quite indulgent towards all ’80s chart pop, I make an exception for the Eurythmics, who were irredeemably awful and on seemingly constant airplay throughout my otherwise happy childhood. ‘There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)’ is yet another of their contrived, mannered, soulless hits. If the Cambridge Footlights made pop records they would sound like this.
Just as in ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’, Annie Lennox has her bizarre and pointless affectation of pronouncing ‘this’ as “theees”, here rhyming it with ‘bliss’ rendered as a polysyllabic “bleeeeeees”. Lennox persists with this showy melisma throughout, though it has the minor saving grace of making the track less lumpen than most other Dave Stewart productions. Meanwhile, it takes a special strain of uselessness to hear Chaka Khan’s ‘I Feel For You’ and consider its main takeaway to be Stevie Wonder’s jaded harmonica, the one weak link in that otherwise electrifying track, but that’s what Dave n’ Annie have ordered out of the catalogue anyway.
I’ve checked ahead, and this is the only Eurythmics number one single in Ireland or the UK, thank Chreeeeest.
