25 June 2009
“There are no second acts in American lives” is an F. Scott Fitzgerald line that gets trotted out in news articles whenever someone does have a second act in their lives, which is quite often. Even within the narrow scope of Irish singers who had an Irish number one single and whose first names begin with ‘D’, Dana was elected as an M.E.P. and ran for the Irish presidency, Dermot O’Brien had already captained Louth to an All-Ireland title in 1957, and a quarter of 2009 chart-topping boy-girl group Industry goes on to become TV chef Donal Skehan.
That bit of celebrity trivia is most of the spice and colour you get from ‘My Baby’s Waiting’. Happily, it’s an agreeable and harmless up-tempo R&B-pop number rather than a Westlife-style ballad, so the wait until the end isn’t as tedious as it might have been. The peculiar video (below) never shows all four members in the same frame: was it edited that way because they have no chemistry together or do they have no chemistry together because of the editing? There’s also a funny edit in the video when Donal gets to sing his only solo lines and it cuts to band-mate Morgan seeming to look away in a ‘who’s yer man?’ expression.
Anyway, it’s not all about Donal. Morgan and Michele have both gone on to careers including TV appearances too. The other guy, Lee, is English so we’re not too pushed about him. And there’s another Industry number one to come! So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
