Tuesday Tunes 46: Winning

Three weeks ago I took my theme of Wheels from my football team’s recent performances, described by one pundit as ‘the wheels have fallen off.’ After two successive 4-0 wins I’m hopeful that those wheels are now back on the team bus, and have decided to do a counterpoint as this week’s theme. Readers, I give you: Winning.

Thinking about this, a number of songs with win/winning/winner in their title came to mind, as well as a couple of others that take this as their theme. Spoilt for choice, I managed to shrink them down to seven songs but couldn’t go beyond that, so here goes. The first is a longtime favourite of mine, from a singer-songwriter who has, I think, been largely underrated for much of his career:

That was the closing track on Chris Rea’s 1984 album Wired To The Moon, which reached #35 on the UK albums chart. Chris has had two #1 albums here, a #2, plus three more in the top ten, from a total of 25 album releases. Only three have had any US chart success, the best being his very first album, Whatever Happened To Benny Santini? which got to #49. With singles, 42 of his 72 records have reached the UK top 100, but only one, The Road To Hell, has got as high as #10. In the US, only 6 have made the top 100. I think you’d call that steady, rather than spectacular, and is why I think he has been underrated. To me, that is a real shame, as he has made some great albums. If you want to hear more, check out his Shamrock Diaries album, and especially the song Stainsby Girls – you won’t be disappointed.

In terms of chart success I’m going from one extreme to the other, with my next choice:

It may come as a surprise to see me include ABBA, but it isn’t the first time I’ve done so. Whilst my taste tends to veer away from the mainstream pop charts, there can be no denying the brilliance of their songwriting and performances, and this is no exception. It is a break up song, so is a little more downbeat than my reaction to my team winning a couple of games, but I just had to include it! What is there left for me to say about them, after all that has been written over the nearly forty years since they began? The basic facts are that this was from their Super Trouper album, which was released on 3 November 1980, and became the best selling album of 1980 in the UK – in eight weeks! The album was, of course, #1 here and in Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. It also made the top ten in a further seven countries, and reached #17 in the US. This song was released ahead of the album, in July 1980, and was #1 in the UK and #8 in the US. It is, simply, perfect pop music.

Bryan Adams has a couple of songs with ‘win’ in their title. One of them, We’re Gonna Win, is much used in the sports world as a motivational song, and there are several versions on YouTube, including one by a sporting superstars band including John McEnroe and Damon Hill. It is the obvious choice for this post – so I went for the other one:

Call me perverse if you like, but of the two songs I prefer this one. As you can probably tell from it being an ‘audio only’ video, it is very much out of the Adams mainstream: as far as I can see it has only featured as a bonus track on the 30th anniversary re-release of his Reckless album – the one which made him a big star, reaching #1 in the US and his native Canada, and #7 here in the UK. If you’re in need of sporting motivation, there are always the videos for the other song I mentioned – maybe that’s what has been playing for the Spurs team before recent games, just to remind them of the objective of the game?

As well as the Chris Rea song that I began with, I also know and like another with Winning as its title:

This was a track on Carlos Santana’s twelfth album, Zebop, released in 1981, which peaked at #9 in the US and #33 here in the UK. It was also a #17 single in the US. The song was written by Russ Ballard, who you may know from his days in the band Argent. The lead vocal is by a Scottish singer/guitarist/drummer by the name of Alex Ligertwood, who has many appearances on others’ records to his credit but doesn’t appear to have released anything under his own name. He was vocalist for Santana in five different spells between 1979 and 1994, so Carlos obviously rated him a lot to keep inviting him back!

I know of three songs with You Win Again as their title, so the problem was which one to choose. I quickly discounted the Bee Gees (of course), and another is by Hank Williams. There are so many cover versions of that song, by a Who’s Who of country artists, and the choice was very hard. So what did I do? I avoided that decision and went for the third song instead:

As you may have noticed if you’ve seen any of my posts before, I am a huge fan of Mary Chapin Carpenter, so this really wasn’t a difficult choice to make, if I’m being honest. This was a track on MCC’s third album, Shooting Straight In The Dark, which reached #70 on the main US albums chart, and #11 on the country chart, but didn’t do anything here. This was the first single released from the album, and it got to #16 on the US country singles chart. Sadly, it was to be a further couple of years before the British record-buying public noticed her, but her albums have since then consistently achieved respectable appearances in our album charts, though she has only ever reached our top 100 singles twice. She deservedly has a loyal following here, though: during the pandemic she has been releasing a video each week from her home, and the comments on these show that her appeal stretches far beyond her homeland.

The two final songs this week don’t have any version of the word ‘win’ in their title, but are nevertheless very appropriate for inclusion. This is about someone who never gave up, even when everything seemed to be against him, and is to my mind one of the best songs ever written:

A magical performance of a truly wonderful song. You get a sense from that of how much it means to both of them, from the facial expressions and the lovely moment when Art puts a comforting hand on Paul’s back. This was a track on the classic album Bridge Over Troubled Water, which was released in January 1970. It was #1 in 11 countries, including both the US and the UK, and was the bestselling album of 1970 in both countries too. The song was released as a single in March 1969, whilst they were recording further tracks for the album, and reached #7 in the US and #6 here, as well as making the top ten in ten other countries. It has been covered many times, but no one has ever got close to the original – how could they?

This week’s final song has a message for us all, whether that be in a sporting context or in the wider scope of life in general:

This was a track on Journey’s seventh album, Escape, released in July 1981. It was a US #1 that year and made #32 here in the UK in 1982. This was also a hit single in the US, where it got to #9, but only made #62 here on its original release. It has, however, had an extended lifespan here, as it has also been a chart single in 2007 (#97), 2008 (#93), 2009 (#71), 2010 (#6, after a copy by the Glee cast was a hit), 2011 (#74), 2012 (#88), and 2013 (#44). Odd, or what? I think the reason I’m including it is fairly apparent, though: if we don’t have belief in ourself, what chance do we have at success? Unless, of course, we are a certain ex-President who has so much misplaced self-belief that he can’t avoid ‘winning,’ as he sees it.

Spurs are playing again on Thursday. Is a third successive win too much to hope for? Come on, Clive, don’t stop believing…

That’s all for this extended edition of Tunes. Stay strong, keep believing, and we will get through everything that life is throwing at us right now. Take care.