Lost in the ’80s: ‘Til Tuesday
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 by John C. Hughes
Boston’s ‘Til Tuesday first got noticed after winning WBCN’s Rock & Roll Rumble contest in 1983, which led to the band getting signed to Epic Records. Two years later, their debut album’s title track, “Voices Carry,” hit #8, they won Best New Artist at the MTV Video Awards, and things looked bright indeed for Aimee Mann, Robert Holmes, Joey Pesce, and Michael Hausman. But this is LIT80s you’re reading here, so chances are you know how this story’s going to end come follow-up time.
“Looking Over My Shoulder (Single Version)” was the next single off Voices Carry and, oh, I don’t know … I love this album and all the songs, and I think this was probably the best choice. It’s catchy and more upbeat than “Voices Carry,” showing off a different side of the band. It had an amusingly engaging video that played off the press’s focus on Aimee at the expense of the rest of the band. Yet despite all that, it flopped. Who knows why? These are the things that used to keep me up at night. Epic obviously had high hopes for the single since they commissioned big-shot engineer Bob Clearmountain to remix it (that’s the version featured here).
Back to the video — it cracks me up that the entire setup is that the band is pissed off at Aimee for being the focus of the last video. So how does this video address it? By showcasing Aimee again! Poor li’l princess …
Epic tried to revive the project with a third single, “Love in a Vacuum,” the very song that won the Rock & Roll Rumble for the band years earlier. But the momentum was lost, and the single failed to chart. A year later, ‘Til Tuesday’s second album, Welcome Home, scored the group’s second and final Top 40 hit, “What About Love.” The band, with a reduced lineup focused almost solely on Aimee, soldiered on for an excellent third effort, Everything’s Different Now, but even with the songwriting power of Matthew Sweet, Jules Shear, and Elvis Costello, it was virtually and unjustly ignored.
That’s okay, though, because Aimee got her revenge a few more years and record labels later, when she started her own label and began a string of critically acclaimed and more commercially successful solo albums. See? Sometimes LIT80s tales have happy endings.
Tags: 'til tuesday, Aimee Mann, John C. Hughes, Lost in the '80s
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