9 March 1989
Jason Donovan provides an interesting test case in the modus operandi of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. As a young, good-looking star of Britain’s favourite TV show, he was similar to Kylie in having a ready-made teen fanbase to buy his pop records: less heavy lifting for SAW to do upfront. But what kind of material could they give him? His debut single, ‘Nothing Can Divide Us’, was a gauche, rocky proof-of-concept that made the UK top ten purely off the momentum of his Neighbours profile, and ‘Especially For You’ was a once-off event release duet. He didn’t have Rick Astley’s booming soul voice, so he would never have carried Motown throwbacks like ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. He didn’t have the white-hot pop energy of Kylie, so he would have looked like a dad-dancer on pure hi-NRG cuts like ‘I Should Be So Lucky’. And the cheeky personalities of Mel and Kim or Bananarama weren’t him either.
In the end, ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’, his first single as a going pop concern, was a hybrid affair: Kylie’s hi-NRG as a base layer, romantic ballad lyrics to lean into his teen heart-throb status, and an up-tempo melody that wouldn’t require much vocal virtuosity or any money notes. The end product feels as much a jerry-built contraption as that list of disparate components suggests. The video provides some unintended metaphors for this: the glamorous love interest dressed up to the nines while driving an old tractor along an Australian country road; Jason looking out over picturesque valleys while strumming an unplugged electric guitar (the same sort of red Gibson SG that Bernard Butler later used for Suede’s crunching glam riffs, guitar fans); Jason driving a pick-up truck but then later having to thumb a lift.
Jason Donovan singles are harmless things that really don’t warrant such scrutiny, but it’s interesting to see them as pop artefacts of their time. Also, believe me when I say that, even with its negligible accomplishments, ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’ looks down on many other 1989 number ones from a height. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
