Review
Hits! Hits! Hits! was the final Formel Eins compilation of the 1980s and contains many well-loved songs, six of which also featured on Now That’s What I Call Music 16. So that’s Richard Marx’s extremely creepy Right Here Waiting, Living In A Box’s melancholy Room In My Heart and Milli Vanilli going all emotional on Girl I’m Gonna Miss You. There’s also The Sensual World from Kate Bush, a particular favourite of Kenneth Gilmartin. Erasure’s taut Drama and Technotronic’s everlasting Pump Up The Jam featuring the cult Felly.
Just like it was on Formel Eins – Sun ‘N’ Fun, we open with a Queen track. This time it’s the baroque masterpiece Scandal. It’s followed by Black Box’s massive Ride On Time, #1 for six weeks, end of summer. And then Martika’s spacey shaker I Feel The Earth Move. Both of these, along with Cher’s gut-bursting If I Could Turn Back Time, were included on Monster Hits. Inga covers Something Stupid in a uptempo 80s groove while The Jeremy Days’ Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day still retains a haunting quality, another Dave Fanning favourite from those endless hot evenings of 1989. 8.00 – 10pm, then hit the Coach Bar.
The Germans got their hands on Tina Turner’s Steamy Windows three months before the UK and Ireland. The regular version is quite plain but check out the extraordinary 12″ remix courtesy of Justin Strauss on Dance Max 2. Elsewhere One More Dance In Blue is an introspective piece from Howard Carpendale while Roxette’s Listen To Your Heart always causes a powerful nostalgia rush. You have the Mixmaster’s Grand Piano which samples Loletta Holloway and Joe Tex; a neat sum-up of the Balearic sounds of ’89. Finally it’s Erasure’s Wild! leader, the infinitely complex electro classic Drama. Decades.
Favourite tracks
Queen – Scandal
Erasure – Drama
Lest we forget
Living In A Box – Room In Your Heart
A Pop Fan's Dream 