FEATURE:
Second Spin
Shakespears Sister - Hormonally Yours
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THERE are some albums that are defined by one song…
and I think people do not look beyond the hit single. I have said this before, but you get these great albums that had a very obvious and successful smash, and the other songs are not quite held in the same regard. To be fair to Shakespears Sister, Stay is a song impossible to ignore or dislike! It was released as the second single from Hormonally Yours on 13th January, 1992, and it was a smash around the world. The combination of Marcella Detroit’s higher-pitched soprano vocals and Siobhan Fahey deeper tones give the song that beautiful blend of emotions and shades – something I had not heard much until that point. Hormonally Yours peaked at number-three on the album charts and was certificated double -platinum by the BPI, where it spent fifty-five weeks on the charts! Of course, Stay was a massive song that aided by an incredible video from Sophie Muller – the video depicts (inspired as it was by the film, Cat-Women of the Moon) Detroit and Fahey fighting over a comatose man (played by Dave Evans). I listen to the song and watch the video now, and there is this immense power that comes from it! Such an unconventional song, I imagine there was scepticism as to whether it would be successful and it was indicative of Shakespears Sister’s sound.
Before moving on, it is worth noting that Shakespears Sister reformed last year after twenty-five years or so since Detroit and Fahey parted ways. They released a new single, All the Queen's Horses, last year and toured - and let’s hope they will release another album soon. There is a new package, Our History, out later this year that is described as follows:
“Shakespears Sister present ‘Our History’ - a deluxe boxset encompassing the complete London Records collection.
The box includes remastered vinyl and 3CD set of both ‘Sacred Heart’ and 'Hormonally Yours', a hard backed photographic book of classic and rare imagery including a foreword from Siobhan. The complete Brighton Dome gig from 2019 and all videos on DVD, a new ‘You Made Me Come To This' 10 inch and Ride Again Ep on vinyl. Plus exclusive merch- a postcard set, 12” print and fabric patch. All housed in a wibalin box with gold embossing”.
I would also recommend people go and buy the E.P. from last year, Ride Again, which includes some new great material All great signs that we will get more from Shakespears Sister down the road. Anyway. After Hormonally Yours, two more albums were released under the Shakespears Sister name - #3 in 2004, and Songs from the Red Room in 2009. It I wonder why Siobhan Fahey continued on under the duo’s moniker and didn’t just release solo albums. In any case, Hormonally Yours is, to me, the finest Shakespears Sister album, and one that boasts so many great tracks. The title of Hormonally Yours, incidentally, derived from both members being pregnant whilst making the album – which might have accounted for some increased tensions, and why the already-precarious relationship suffered severe damage. I love the pairing of Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit, and they work sublimely through the album! Fahey wanted to embark on music that was darker and had more edge than her work with Bananarama, and the Irish-born Fahey and American Detroit’s very different voices compliment each other wonderfully. There are obvious gothic touches and theatrics that was a cut above the Pop of 1992. I remember Hormonally Yours coming out, and it was one of those albums that scored some very memorable and happy days! Whilst singles Stay, and Goodbye Cruel World were big on the radio, I think I Don’t Care was the song that stood out most to me – and it is still my favourite from the album.
Whilst I normally include albums in Second Spin that are underrated, the reason for putting Hormonally Yours here is because it got a lot of focus in the 1990s, but it is not an album many people mention now. I feel it is one of the strongest albums of the 1990s, and there are so many great songs away from the singles – including Emotional Thing, and Let Me Entertain You. I will bring in a review of the album soon, but there is a fascinating feature from Pop Matters that was published in 2017. They remark how the band’s second album (after Sacred Heart, which boasted the marvellous single, You’re History) was a very different sound and style to what fans might have been expecting:
“Hormonally Yours, released in February of 1992, was an utterly unexpected reinvention of the band’s sound. Originally conceived as a concept album written as a sort of soundtrack to a schlocky '50s-era B-film by Arthur Hilton called Cat-Women of the Moon, many of the songs’ lyrical content were derived from the film’s storyline. The band initially sought to secure the rights to the film in order to expand on the album’s concept with planned music videos built directly on actual footage from the film. The idea was shot down by the record company. The influences from the film that do remain on the album have given it a fey, moonlit quality that suggests a host of love songs beamed in from the galaxies of sci-fi.
I do love that Detroit and Fahey had these brilliant images that were so captivating and cool. Again, Shakespears Sister differed so much to what was around them. Pop Matters nod to the way Fahey and Detroit were cast, and some of the challenges with Stay:
In true rock ‘n’roll fashion, Detroit and Fahey played their respective roles in the band up to the hilt, each woman embodying a dressed-up, glitzed-over soubrette of vociferous demeanour. Hormonally Yours presented Detroit as a sleek, coifed Art Nouveau mistress, awakened from her post-mortem sleep, and Fahey as an unruly (and still dead) gothic scapegrace, with coiled black tresses and pancaked white makeup, her eyes racooned with the black of Victorian death. Like their name suggested, it was high Shakespearean drama, a strange detour into a pop music hinterland that owed much to dramaturgy as it did punk-rock.
In a bid to push a hit song, London Records, the band’s parent label, insisted on “Stay”, reportedly intended as the first single off the album but a suggestion adamantly shot down by Fahey, who felt strongly that the song wasn’t representative of the band as a whole. The label won out this time and “Stay” was released to a gobsmacking reception that led the single to the number one position on the UK Charts (and later a top five spot in the US and Canada).
Unlike the other tracks on Hormonally Yours, “Stay” featured Detroit, primarily the secondary vocalist of the band, on lead. Playing the angelic songbird to Fahey’s Faustian demon, Detroit’s whistle register sirens over the shimmering layers of gospel-tinged dirge-pop. Her vocal is dramatically circumvented by the Elizabethan horror of Fahey’s green-oceaned tremor: a lustful, throaty croon transmitting from another universe. It was precisely this clashing of extremes that appealed to an audience that wasn’t exactly sure what they were hearing.
I do think that some see Hormonally Yours as a one-single album, or that there is not a lot else on there that is worth listening to. Maybe in 1992, there was this bid to get the singles heard, but reviewers were keen to observe the depths of the album and how many terrific tracks there are on it. Now, in 2020, one does not really hear Hormonally Yours talked about a huge amount, and I have not heard many of the album tracks played on the radio lately – one might hear Stay every now and then. The final passage from Pop Matters I want to source mentions my favourite song from Hormonally Yours, I Don’t Care:
The most affecting numbers, however, remain the ones which focus on the storms of conflict. Released as a third single, “I Don’t Care” (a UK Top 10) was another betrayal of the band’s contentious personal affairs, a back and forth of bickering and reasoning that resulted in an even stronger delineation between the two women’s personalities (“Mark the spot you hate with an ‘X’, then shoot your bow and arrow / Do your worst, get it all off your chest...”). Pitched somewhere between the jaunty pop-irony of The Cure and the sultry clamour of Throwing Muses, “I Don’t Care” is a pop marvel of seductive iridescence, a danceable gait flowing with lush harmonies beneath the diamond-encrusted textures of the goth-rock glamour. Shoe-horned into its middle section is Fahey’s deadpanned reading of Dame Edith Sitwell’s “Hornpipe”, a poem delivered, somewhat anomalously, like a sardonic aside in a Commedia dell'arte show. Such creative shifts like these on the album are employed diplomatically yet with stylish irreverence; precisely the kind of exploits which distinguished the band from their considerably anodyne contemporaries at the time”.
I would urge people to listen to Hormonally Yours, as it is an album that has been revived with a lot of affection, yet it is not discussed and revisited all too often. In their review of 2009, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“In keeping with the album's title, inspired by the pregnant state of the duo, Shakespear's Sister's second album is prone to mood swings and a flair for the dramatic. It's a vibe that benefits from the contrast between the throaty vocals of Siobahn Fahey and the falsetto flutter of Marcella Detroit. Hormonally Yours is a wonderful, charming album marred only by a few weak lyrics. Still, there is hardly a song that isn't engaging from the first listen. "Goodbye Cruel World" is infectious alternative pop. "I Don't Care" is bouncy and resilient, and "Let Me Entertain You" has a new wave feel and sardonic lyrics. "Catwoman" has a T. Rex swagger to it and "Hello (Turn Your Radio On)" is a stellar glam-tinged ballad with a dreamy chorus. They edge closer to dance on the disco ball funk of "Are We in Love Yet?" and the sultry, R&B-laced "Emotional Thing." Everything was lost in the wake of the lovely, dramatic "Stay," a global smash. It all adds up to make Hormonally Yours a beautifully quirky, emotionally rich, and nearly flawless pop record”.
You may be aware of Shakespears Sister, and you will definitely have heard of Stay. If you think that track lacks pop and punch, then Hormonally Yours offers diversity and relief in that sense. There is a great breadth of sounds through the album, and Fahey and Detroit sound committed and transfixing throughout – even if it would be very soon until they split. Do yourself a favour and give the supreme Hormonally Yours…
A second spin!