7 December 1989
No surprise that one half of ‘Especially For You’, our first chart-topper of 1989, goes on to be Ireland’s favourite pop star that year; the only surprise was which half. Yes, this is Jason’s fifth Irish number one single in 1989, far more than Kylie or anyone else. ‘When You Come Back To Me’ also has some wintry holiday references, so we can take it as a tilt for the pop year’s greatest prize: UK Christmas number one. Do Jason and Stock, Aitken and Waterman raise their game for the final? Yes and no.
As a song, ‘When You Come Back To Me’ has a lot of positives. It has a pleasantly rolling melody and a bright chorus. More surprisingly, some of the lyrics are actually good, especially in the pre-choruses: the first one has a throwaway line where “the lights all go down over London town” which is unexpectedly evocative for a SAW song; the second one, where Jason keeps “thinking of you / and it keeps pulling me through / Like the song that you sing when you’re lonely”, has an ache of real feeling. Once again we see that SAW were well able to write good songs when they were bothered.
The problem is not so much that Jason is a poor singer, but more that SAW think Jason is a poor singer. By the latter, I mean that their production on his vocal is terrible. They smother it in the usual ’80s studio tricks to beef up a vocal—double tracking, reverb—but then keep him low in the mix, which makes his voice sound like a bag of wind. Then when the backing singers come in for the chorus they virtually drown Jason out. Is this by design, or just the vagaries of ’80s studio production? Either way, it sweeps the leg from under the whole thing. ‘When You Come Back To Me’ is still likeable enough, and certainly Jason’s best solo single, but an opportunity wasted by SAW to give him a durable ’80s classic hit for posterity, if they even cared.
