26 March 1988
Bros-mania was now in full swing and, as Stock, Aitken and Waterman have shown us, fans will buy anything in a frenzy. I remember Bros in Smash Hits interviews being uncomplimentary about Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s songs and stars, but ‘Drop The Boy’ is almost wilfully horrible and certainly poorer than anything by SAW. Its main feature is a showy, flailing hard rock swingbeat rhythm, which I suppose is the kind of thing that happens when your band’s main musician is the drummer and they’re suddenly expected to be prominent on your singles.
So, you can’t dance to ‘Drop The Boy’, nor, as Matt Goss demonstrates, can you sing to it. His money note here is a flourish in the chorus: the “aruuu-ohhhh!” of a rusty fire engine siren. Otherwise, his half-swallowed words and shallow, nasally voice turn a flimsy song into heavy going. The main takeaway from ‘Drop The Boy’ is that there are worse things than Stock, Aitken and Waterman records.
