Cliff Richard – “We Don’t Talk Anymore”

TOP 40 DEBUT: November 17, 1979

PEAK POSITION: #7 (January 19, 1980)

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by common music. Since the birth of rock’n’roll, England and America have volleyed artists back and forth, causing movements as disparate as disco, punk, and hip-hop to catch fire on opposing shores long before the Internet broke down geographical (if not cultural) barriers for good. So I’m always fascinated when a hugely successful genre in one country fails to gain any kind of foothold across the pond. How did Americans overlook the glam stylings of Slade, T.Rex, and early ‘70s Bowie? Why did Brits reject the beer-soaked butt-rock of Creed and Kid Rock (beyond plain ol' good taste)? And who do I blame for The Jam never charting even once on the Billboard Hot 100?

On the other hand, cultural blind spots sometimes work to one’s advantage. Sure, we Yanks missed out on the early genius of Marc Bolan and Paul Weller. But until “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” we were also spared the crushing blandness of Cliff Richard.

In America, the man born Harry Rodger Webb barely merits a footnote. But in Great Britain, Sir Cliff Richard is a full-blown institution: 67 Top 10 singles, 14 chart-toppers, and the only singer to hit #1 in five consecutive decades. Cumulative sales of 21 million place him third on the U.K. Singles Charts, behind only the Beatles and Elvis. His 1958 breakthrough hit, “Move It,” was dubbed England’s first authentic rock song by no less an authority than John Lennon. To put Richard’s career in perspective, imagine the consistent, unbroken success of (Sir) Elton John, from 1970’s “Your Song” up to “Candle In The Wind 1997.” Now imagine extending that success backwards to six years before the Beatles.

“We Don’t Talk Anymore” is a pleasant, nonchalant shrug of a song, yet it somehow achieved what no single before or since could manage: It broke Cliff Richard in America. Prior to its release, the 38-year-old singer had only managed two Top 40 Billboard hits total; after “We Don’t Talk Anymore” peaked at #7, he would chart five more times within two years. Richard had, infamously, failed to capitalize on the British Invasion of the 1960s, and after 1982, he would never trouble the American Top 40 again. But for one brief, twenty-four month stretch, Richard took a chintzy, harmless pop ditty and parlayed it into some modicum of Stateside success. And I’m still not entirely sure how that happened.

Cliff Richard was never cutting-edge. Even by early-rock standards, he lacked the sexual danger of an Elvis or the songwriting savvy of a Buddy Holly. The Beatles cited him as an influence just as they were making his style of music seem woefully outdated. Still, Richard persisted. The British TV show It’s Cliff Richard kept him in the public spotlight throughout the early ‘70s, while also pairing him with younger talent like Olivia Newton-John. (Olivia and Cliff will be appearing together on this site eventually.) A shift to “harder” rock in 1976 prompted a commercial resurgence in England and even gave Richard his biggest—and best—hit in America with the uncharacteristically slinky “Devil Woman.” (“Devil Woman” peaked at #6 in September 1976. It’s an 8.) But that momentum turned out to be short-lived. 1978 would be only the second year of Richard’s career where he failed to chart in his native country.

Enter Alan Tarney. A British native who’d spent his formative years gigging around Australia, Tarney moved back to England in 1969 and eventually wound up playing bass for the Shadows, the former backing band of Richard himself. Like their frontman, The Shadows reside in another cultural blind spot, massively popular in England but a non-entity in the States. From 1958 through 1968, they scored hits both with Richard and with their own surf-rock instrumentals; even today, they remain the fourth biggest singles act in U.K. history. (For comparison, picture the Heartbreakers charting 35 separate times without Tom Petty.) Tarney joined for the group’s first (of many) reunions in 1973, bringing him into the orbit of guitarist and founding Shadow Bruce Welch. When Welch took over production duties for I’m Nearly Famous, the 1976 album that kicked off the “rock” phase of Richard’s career, he tapped his young bandmate to play bass. Both men occupied those same roles over the next four Cliff records, until Tarney wrote a song that changed everything.

Concurrently with his session work for Welch, Tarney was also releasing his own music as half of the Tarney/Spencer Band. Across three underselling albums, he honed his studio skills—Trevor Spencer handling drums, Alan doing everything else—while perfecting a brand of MOR rock wrapped in just enough New Wave sheen to sound current. By 1979, Tarney had established a template. Richard just happened to slot in perfectly. “We Don’t Talk Anymore” uses synthesizers in the most milquetoast way imaginable, but for a massive Cliff Richard audience weaned on decades of pop pabulum, Tarney’s creation must’ve sounded like the future. The track didn’t need to break any actual ground; just the faintest whiff of “groundbreaking” was exotic enough.

Tarney had originally written “We Don’t Talk Anymore” for the next Tarney/Spencer Band album, but both Welch and Richard’s manager Peter Gormley instantly realized its hit potential and begged the younger musician to give his song away. Cliff himself was deep into the final recording stages of Rock ‘n’ Roll Juvenile and needed heavy persuasion before agreeing to tackle a brand-new, unrelated composition. In the end, his vocal was cut in just three takes. Tarney finished the rest of the recording in a single day, handling all instruments (aside from Spencer’s drums, natch) and background vocals, along with the final mixdown. Years later, he claimed Welch ordered the studio engineer to strike his name off the production credits. But Tarney would get the last laugh. The song’s massive success prompted Richard to put its creator in the producer’s chair for his next album.

Most songs recorded in quick, off-the-cuff fashion suffer from lousy production but atone with a loose sort of ramshackle energy. Not “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” Everything in the track feels both small and antiseptic. The synthesizer patch resembles a cheap carousel organ. The live drums function more like a Casio rhythm box. Tarney’s layered background vocals often overwhelm the track to the point of unintentional hilarity. And while I appreciate Richard whipping out his little-used—and surprisingly solid—falsetto, you can hear the disinterest in his voice throughout the rest of the proceedings. Supposedly he enters in the wrong spot at one point (around 3:36); that it’s barely noticeable is telling.

So again: What was in the water in late 1979 that made audiences on both sides of the Atlantic lose their collective minds for Cliff Richard? Because all I hear in “We Don’t Talk Anymore” is a better-than-average chorus melody and a just-competent vocal, wrapped in rinky-dink production with no grit whatsoever. Perhaps there was precedent; in the past, Richard had coaxed far worse efforts up the charts through sheer force of his persona. But “We Don’t Talk Anymore” didn’t come and go like another toss-off. Richard’s seventy-fifth (!!) single in the U.K. became the biggest worldwide hit of his entire career. It topped charts in ten different countries. And it ensured that we will be talking about the future hits of Sir Cliff—along with some far-more-interesting productions from Alan Tarney—for many, many entries to come. God help us all.

GRADE: 3/10

I WANT MY MTV: “We Don’t Talk Anymore” holds the distinction of being the sixth video ever shown on MTV. To state the obvious: MTV didn’t have a deep catalog back in 1981.

12”ERS: We’re still a few years away from savvy remixers like Jellybean Benitez transforming by-the-numbers pop for the dance floor, which is a shame, because this “Extended Version” literally does nothing with its source material beyond… well, extending it.