It’s good to have integrity about your music and the direction you want it to take. But when you get stubborn about it, to the point that it might actually work against folks hearing your music, it can become damaging to your career. Simple Minds almost made that mistake at a crucial point in their journey. Luckily, they swallowed their collective pride and made the best out of the situation. Without that decision, many might have missed out on “Alive And Kicking”, a No. 3 pop hit in the US in 1985.
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Hughes Comes Calling
By their own admission, Simple Minds, formed in Scotland in 1977, took a while to find their groove. With each of their early albums, they made adjustments to the post-punk sound that they’d cultivated out of the gate. Eventually, they came into their own with fearlessly anthemic material.
The 1982 album New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) gave them a breakthrough in the United Kingdom. They solidified their ascent with the 1984 album Sparkle In The Rain, their first-ever chart-topping album in the UK. But the US was a bit slow to catch on to what Simple Minds was doing.
The fault lay mostly with the band’s record company reps in America, who didn’t realize what they had. These label employees longed to rectify the situation, doing so by offering Simple Minds what seemed like a plum assignment. They would record a song for the next John Hughes movie. But the band wasn’t ready to jump at this assignment.
Feeling “Alive”
Simple Minds didn’t like the fact that others wrote “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. But they were eventually convinced to do it. To their credit, they put their spin on it in the studio, with lead singer Jim Kerr adding the iconic “la-la-la” chorus. The song, a crucial component of the hit movie The Breakfast Club, went to No. 1 in America.
Now, Simple Minds had everyone’s attention. For their next album, Once Upon A Time, they worked with top American producers Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain. Kerr and fellow band members Charlie Burchill and Mick MacNeil had already worked up some material for it, including “Alive And Kicking”, a song reflecting Kerr’s feelings about the band’s burgeoning success.
Maybe the song would have done well regardless. But the US audience was waiting for more Simple Minds following “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”. “Alive And Kicking” proved to be a juggernaut as well. It hit No. 3 and cleared the way for multiple hit singles from the Once Upon A Time album.
Behind the Lyrics of “Alive And Kicking”
“Alive And Kicking” starts out as a testimonial to a special person. “You turn me on,” Kerr sings. “You lift me up/Like the sweetest cup I’d share with you.” “You follow me and, I, I, I follow you,” he testifies. But the song takes a turn in the form of a series of questions designed to shake anyone’s faith.
Backup singer Robin Clark comes to the fore in these moments, playing the devil’s advocate to Kerr’s optimist. “What you gonna do when the love burns down?” she asks as an example. “What you gonna do when the flames go up?” Kerr suggests that persistence is the answer to all those questions. “Stay ‘til your love is/Alive and kicking,” he sings.
Maybe “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” didn’t quite perfectly represent Simple Minds. But it did grease the wheels so that their quintessential sound could find its biggest audience on “Alive And Kicking”.
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
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