The Number Fortys: Real Life - "Catch Me I'm Falling"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

Jesus. When we started this column a couple of months ago, it didn't occur to us that we might encounter the same artists over and over again. But here we are not even halfway through 1984 (in the column--that wasn't meant to be some kind of Orwell reference about our current surveillance state existence) and we've bumped into Billy Joel and Huey Lewis twice already. Which I guess makes sense. They were two of the bigger acts around this time. But what are the odds of Real Life entering the charts at #40 twice? They only had two songs reach the US Top 40, and if you're following this column, congratulations. You've now heard both of them (a remix of "Send Me an Angel" called "Send Me an Angel '89"hit #26 in 1989, but that's still the same song--not fooling me Real Life). Anyway, here's the song.

Cool intro. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, Real Life were an Australian synthpop band. And if their mimed performance in this video is anything to go by, they put a lot more energy into their synthpop than, say, Depeche Mode. If I had to pick one synthpop band to win a fight, or a game of Australian Rules Football, it would definitely be Real Life.

This song has slowly grown on me. I can always appreciate a song that holds one chord throughout the verse, building up tension, and then releases it with a perfect change to the next chord. The song also has a nice wistful, ephemeral, ethereal, empirical?, no not empirical?, that was probably too many adjectives anyway. What I was talking about? Oh yeah, the chorus. Nice chorus. Probably a little too airy to go rampaging up the charts in 1984. In fact, the following week it left the Top 40, never to return. As we've said before, a lot of strong stuff up there. I mean, this song was at #11 that week (after having gone as high as #8). It's Tracey Ullman. Written by Kirsty Maccoll (Morrissey suggested she go to Mexico and she got hit by a boat and died--one more reason to hate Morrissey I guess), with that guitar solo, that moment of silence broken by that cry of Baby, it's a 10

As for Real Life. "Catch Me I'm Falling" is a 4. If this column makes it into 1987, we may get to hear another song called "Catch Me I'm Falling." If you needed a reason to keep living, what Poison, at their most emotionally desperate, referred to as "Something to Believe In."


THE NUMBER ONE

 Phil me once, shame on you. Phil me twice.... Anyway, three weeks at #1 for Phil is enough. Bye-bye Phil.