Today’s POP RESCUE from an unknown fate, is the 1990 album Gonna Make You Sweat by C+C Music Factory – the pseudonym for David Cole and Robert Clivillés. Will this album make you dance now, or will it bring you out in a fever? Read on…

EVERYBODY. DANCE. NOW!!?

It was the memories of this lead track Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) that lured me to this album. From memory, this was a fantastic track – one a-kin to their contemporary Black Box‘s Ride On Time. This gave C+C a #3 hit in the UK singles chart along with their featured single Freedom Williams.

By the time I’d gotten through the great opening title track, and into Here We Go, Let’s Rock & Roll, i’d begun to feel that C+C Music Factory had lured me into what was essentially a 10-track remix of their two big hit songs.

Here We Go, Let’s Rock & Roll sounds musically like Gonna Make You Sweat (Everbody Dance Now), and includes what must have influenced Jump a couple of years later by Kriss Kross. It also references an un-credited vocal use of Le Freak by Chic. This song was their second UK single, but it stalled, reaching #20.

Thankfully Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…. plays third, and it stood as their third single to chart in the UK. It returned them to their initial success, reaching #4, again with Freedom Williams to hand.

But there’s a problem here with this album:

The songs are too long. Only the title track runs for under 4.5 minutes. The longest track – A Groove Of Love (What’s This Word Called Love?) runs for 10 minutes, and two others run for more than 7 minutes each. Live Happy (a mere 7:23 mins) and Bang That Beat have some good qualities, but with songs that have few lyrics, it could have been much better if they were at most half the length.

Freedom’s raps are essentially boring and rarely seem to differ from track to track.

Where are C+C Music Factory now?

Sadly, David Cole died in 1995. Robert Clivillés has continued to write and produce American artists.

Verdict

…but I’m not going to lie, I really didn’t enjoy this album.

The songs musically sound the same. Lyrically, the superb vocalist Martha Wash (who was already providing uncredited vocals to Black Box) really did the best she could with the material she’d been hired to deliver. Wash’s vocals, as with Black Box, were lip-synched by someone else for the purposes of videos, and in the CD artwork, they’re even credited to Zelma Davis. Wash gets a ‘background and support vocals’ credit. She would later sue both C&C Music Factory and Black Box.

A lot of the titles are too long – helping them to be completely forgettable. I’ve even got bored typing them in this article.

Oddly, when C+C were working on the music of other artists, they were brilliant, yet here on their own album, they’re just boring. Nope.

• POP RESCUE 2014 RATING: 1 / 5.
• 1990 UK CHART POSITION: #8, certified Gold.
• POP RESCUE COST: £1 (wasted in a Poundland)