27 June 1991
What’s this, an ’80s revival already? Well, actually Jason was still having hits at the start of the ’90s – in fact, up to this point in mid-1991 he has more Irish top ten singles than Kylie (six versus five) plus now he has a ’90s number one in Ireland and she hasn’t. Also, ‘Any Dream Will Do’ shows that Jason was thriving after Stock, Aitken and Waterman: this is from his high-profile lead role in the West End production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, with no SAW writing or production involvement, whereas Kylie was still a SAW asset. So, who’s the Neighbours pop idol sticking around into the ’90s and beyond, eh? As it turns out, not Jason, who only has one more UK and Ireland top ten single after this.
How does Jason Donovan blow it? We’ll see a major factor shortly, but another reason is captured in ‘Any Dream Will Do’. Regardless of singer, it’s a terrible song: bland, wishy-washy, corny. The thing is, you can use the same words to describe Jason, never a singer with sparkiness or personality anyway, who simply gets swallowed up by the song’s innate tweeness. This stunningly insipid and conservative record shows that Jason Donovan simply wasn’t capable of pushing beyond the worst cliches of SAW’s plastic-moulded pap. By comparison, Kylie had wrangled the sensationally brilliant ‘Better The Devil You Know’ out of SAW and was pivoting to a more grown-up and diverse sound. Even just by measure of songs, it was already clear which long-haul-flight Aussie pop star would be in this for the long-haul pop career. However, Jason still had one more dum-dum bullet to shoot into his foot.
That other major factor in the crashing downfall of Jason Donovan comes the following year with his monumentally stupid decision to sue The Face magazine for libel for saying he was secretly gay. He won the case, arguing that he was portrayed as a liar and insisting he was not homophobic, but I remember that even in the less enlightened times of 1992 the media coverage of the case was one of gaping incredulity. How could he not see that his action looked homophobic? Was being called gay really that appalling to him? The guy had no credibility as a pop star (see above) so he had no goodwill to draw on for any benefit of the doubt. A crash of drums; a flash of light: Jason Donovan’s ’90s pop career flew out of sight.
