Number Ones: #7

• CULTURE CLUB It’s A Miracle (Virgin)
• Week Ending 31st March 1984
• 1 week at #1

 

Ah, if only I’d started compiling my charts in 1983. What a run Culture Club would have enjoyed during their annus mirabilis of Church Of The Poison Mind, Karma Chameleon, Victims and the whole Kissing To Be Clever / Colour By Numbers era.

Instead, all we have to show for how highly I rated their brand of soulful, perfect pop is this solitary week at the summit for its 4th (UK) single. Truth be told their moment was already in the process of passing by the time It’s A Miracle appeared on the Top 40, the demands of global stardom on every conceivable continent leaving them largely estranged from British shores (cf. the Japanese/American imagery and iconography on the single sleeve itself), and about to fatally lose their creative mojo while conjuring up the next opus Waking Up With The House On Fire (a disaster in every sense of the word).

It’s A Miracle (originally It’s America) is probably the very high watermark of the style they nailed on Colour By Numbers, all the elements are in place and its breeziness is quite effortless. In the US they opted for Miss Me Blind, which could easily have been a smash on this side of the Atlantic too, had Virgin hurried along the campaign a little (the last trio of singles were spread across 12 months, when there was surely time and space for one more).

So here it is, the sound of a band at their peak, being overtaken by the pop world around them.