Alright…
(3:14)

There is a school of thought that believes Patrick Joseph “Paddy” McAloon, the former leader, singer, guitarist and composer of Prefab Sprout, to be the best British songwriter of the Eighties.  Never shy at coming forward, that school was initially cheer-led by Mr. McAloon himself, but the sheer consistency of quality of the music released by the band brought quite a few people around to his way of thinking.

Just one Top 10 single (The King Of Rock’n'Roll, number seven, 1988) and six other minor hits (none making the Top 20) suggests the band underachieved commercially but four of their albums made the album chart top ten.  As the ad men later had it with Crowded House and James – you know more Prefab Sprout songs than you think: their first compilation, 1992′s A Life Of Surprises, hit number three.

Their breakthrough, sophomore album, 1985′s Steve McQueen (released as Two Wheels Good in the States), contained a breathtaking single in the sprawling, lush, romantic panorama created by When Love Breaks Down but it was a minor hit from the band’s fourth set, March 1988′s From Langley Park To Memphis (containing contributions from Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend), an extended diatribe against America’s obsession with superficial celebrity, its very title ripping the piss out of the title of Springsteen’s debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., that contains our sixth SMIP.

McAloon was particularly and rightly applauded for his lyrical style; like Elvis Costello before and Aimee Mann afterwards, McAloon subscribed to Lewis Carroll’s theory, “Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves”.  Ironic, then, that his biggest hit should be a song with the chorus: “Hot dog, jumping frog, Alberquerque.”

But McAloon’s songs usually work, like Cocker’s, just as well as poems or prose.  Cars And Girls is no exception, a vicious assault on Bruce Springsteen and his mid-Eighties AOR peers and their apparent penchants for nothing more than the subjects in the title.

Like all the best satire, Cars And Girls wraps itself in its target’s clothes: the poppy sound that propelled its fellow album track The King Of Rock’n'Roll up the charts would not have sounded entirely out of place on The Boss’s own over-produced offering Born In The U.S.A. (1984) – the prosecution offers up the anaemic Bobby Jean by way of evidence.

Opening with a repeated refrain of “Ba, ba, ba/ Sha do-dah do-dah” (0:00-0:13) by backing vocalist Wendy Smith, it is immediately clear that urine is being extracted.  And then McAloon goes for the jugular.

Brucie dreams life’s a highway.
Too many roads bypass my way
Or they never begin… (0:14-0:25)

Does heaven wait all heavenly over the next horizon?
But look at us now – quit driving – some things hurt more,
Much more than cars and girls… (0:41-0:56)

Life’s a drive through a dust bowl…
Someone stops for directions;
Something responds deep in our engines (1:18-1:39)

These lines squeeze the vice around poor Bruce’s nuts just that little bit harder.  It’s hard to know where Born To Run ends and Cars And Girls starts.

Sprung from cages out on Highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected
And steppin’ out over the line[...] Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands across my engines[...] Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones
Scream down the boulevard.
The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard[...] The highway’s jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive.

But it’s Cars And Girls’ last verse that really twists the knife:

Little boy, got a hot rod -
Thinks it makes him some kind of new God.
Well, this is one race he won’t win
‘Cos life’s no cruise with a cool chick -
Too many folks feelin’ car sick, but it never pulls in.
Brucie’s thoughts – pretty streamers:
Guess this world needs its dreamers -
May they never wake up. (2:35-3:13)

Venom oozing from every line and we’ve still to meet the SMIP.

For all a writer’s lyrical artistry, sometimes a single word can be the most devastating.

Were this a Sublime Moment In Cinema, its equivalent would be Kristin Scott-Thomas dismissively sneering, “Slut,” through the side of her mouth when Hugh Grant first sets eyes on Andie Macdowell in Four Weddings And A Funeral.

But we’re in Popworld.

At 3:14, summoning up every bit of vitriol his skinny frame can muster McAloon  sarcastically mimics the drawl of a hundred soft rockers – “Alright!” – to segue into the final chorus.  A simple, single, humdrum word that features in countless anonymous, meaningless, pointless and soulless AOR recordings employed to say, ‘Have that, Brucie – and let’s see how long you’d last in Langley Park, County Durham on a Saturday night.’

(Seven years later another working class northerner, Jarvis Cocker, would use precisely the same device – twice (at 1:55 and particularly at 3:05) to slice through the fake brotherly love of a million Ecstasy poppers on Sorted For E’s And Wizz.)

Cars And Girls is not Prefab Sprout’s best song; it’s not even McAloon’s best lyric.  But for the forensic accuracy in which it stabs its victim in the heart, it’s damned hard to beat.  It reached only number 44 on the charts, thanks in part to a lack of radio airplay.

Prefab Sprout would go on to release two arguably better albums than From Langley Park… – 1990′s Jordan: The Comeback and 1997′s Andromeda Heights – but would never again skewer a target so effectively.

Never one to take the low road when a high one was available McAloon’s career is scattered with abandoned or unrealised projects (one, Behind The Veil, a double album based on the life of Michael Jackson scared even his most ardent fans), but he achieved a good deal of success as a songwriter – writing major hits for Jimmy Nail and album tracks for the likes of Dame Kylie Minogue – as well as penning a UK Eurovision entry and the theme song for the ITV series Where The Heart Is.

This was achieved against the backdrop of a progressive eye disorder that slowly destroyed McAloon’s retinas, necessitating a series of operations after which he could not see or read for an extended period.  He turned to the radio for company and from that experience emerged in 2003 his first solo album, I Trawl The Megahertz, a mostly instrumental quasi-classical work interspersed with dialogue and narration – a highly distinct and challenging but ultimately rewarding piece of work.

A year later, as McAloon was working on reinterpreting some of the material from Steve McQueen to feature on a remastered re-release, he was struck down by Meniere’s Disease – a disorder of the inner ear – and lost a large part of his hearing.

Although it was reported last year that McAloon’s hearing has been restored to some extent, it is sadly possible that we have heard the last from this idiosyncratic and unmistakably English talent.  We are fortunate, though, to have some lovely memories and at least one SMIP.

Thanks to YouTube’s disregard for intellectual property law, we can see the video for Cars And Girls here: