Up to this point, one of the recurring themes of Make It New has been bands that have some urgency in their sound. The Vapors sang about The Cold War, The English Beat about Thatcher-Era politics. There was something essential and even subversive about the type of music they made, and most importantly they did so while making you dance and have a good time. It reflected the complicated emotions of humanity in a three-minute song, and there’s no denying that it’s among the most clever output that Top 40 has likely ever produced. New Wave, for better or worse, feels like it has more substance than your average genre.
Then there’s Bow Wow Wow…
I was looking forward to finally crossing “I Want Candy” off of the list. I had only heard four or five songs from them, but they were all incredible. I loved “C-30, C-60, C-90 Go!” for how it mixed Burundi drums with surf guitars and girl group vocals. Add in the familiar patter of a 50s doo-wop group and you had someone that really sounded like they were reinventing music. Even their cover of “I Want Candy” had something timeless about it. They had an exuberance that made you believe they were the eternal teenagers, capable of never losing that spunk on a Friday night.
Given that this album was sold as their greatest hits, at least of their first two years, it would be a good chance to determine not only if I thought that they were great, but also why they never quite had permanence in the zeitgeist. They had some great songs, but I had to know… why were they a one hit wonder?
To be completely transparent, I listened to a playlist that featured the majority of the tracks, but they also featured songs from their debut EP “Your Cassette Pet.” As a result, this isn’t going to be a direct commentary on the one album but Bow Wow Wow in general. Speaking as “I Want Candy” was a compilation anyway, I don’t think this is too unmanageable.
What I’ve concluded is that there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to Bow Wow Wow. Anyone who knows the history of their producer Malcolm McLaren will already know this specific trajectory. In The Late-70s, he managed The Sex Pistols which were a commercialized version of punk music that embedded the idea of “Anarchy in the U.K.” There’s no denying that he was creating an image of chaos, and he thrived on raising eyebrows. It perfectly explains what he intended to do with Bow Wow Wow, who slowly become problematic the further that you dive into their early career.
I don’t doubt that this was intentional. McLaren loved exploiting emotionally vulnerable people for profit (See: Sid Vicious). So was his choice to hire Annabella Lwin. McLaren found her singing ABBA songs at a laundromat and hired her for the band, which also once featured Boy George (himself hired due to his androgynous wardrobe). From there he created a subversive girl group, not unlike The Runaways, where Lwin sang often sexually charged lyrics with such reckless glee. On the cover of multiple albums, most notably “See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!” she even posed naked. This caused controversy for a handful of reasons, notably that she was 13 when McLaren originally hired her for the band.
Which opens everything else up for skepticism. On the one hand, they had an impeccable sound that made you want to dance. Remove any exterior elements, and the music just played as a more explicit parody of girl groups, where Lwin was more upfront about wanting sex. Even that is questionable, as songs like “Sun Sea and Piracy” featured lyrics that were borderline baby talk while “I Want a Baby on Mars” featured her singing about wanting to be pregnant and giving birth on Mars. Was this exploitation of a minor? Was McLaren appropriating Burundi culture, not to mention Lwin’s Burmese heritage? While not all of these questions are necessarily deal-breakers or even terribly problematic, it’s a sign of McLaren’s attention-grabbing antics at work.
There’s plenty that could be forgivable if these were Lwin’s idea. However, writing credit largely goes to McLaren, David Barbarossa, Leigh Gorman, and Matthew Ashman for the band’s early catalog. It’s the type of detail that makes the more explicit songs confusing, notably “Louis Quatorze.” In the song Lwin sings of Louis busting into her home forcefully, pointing a gun at her, and leading her to undress and have sex. The song ends with “Louis Quatorze, I love you.” Given that she even explicitly states that she’s 14 and willingly gives in, it really makes one question what the ultimate goal of this band was.
Again, there’s a strange infantilization of Lwin throughout many songs that may seem fun out of greater context. Sometimes it’s only Lwin’s age that makes the songs hard to process while others it’s the approach that is downright childlike. “Uomo Sex Al Apache” and “Sexy Eiffel Tower” are prime examples of this, where innuendos get placed alongside less-than-subtle cues that these songs are about what you think. The latter in particular recounts a bizarre decision to have sex atop the French monument before jumping and yelling “I’m coming!” There’s playful moaning. Sure, it’s a painfully dumb song on its own, but again… given that McLaren was a 34-year-old writing songs for a 14-year-old about downright nymphomaniac behavior, it gets a little bit creepy.
In some respects, it makes plenty of sense from his standpoint. The whole idea was to get attention, and there was difficulty in achieving that after something like The Sex Pistols. However, where that band has lasting mythos, Bow Wow Wow is largely an obscure band now. Sure Lwin still performs and has a great time, but outside of the “I Want Candy” cover, there isn’t much that has become an essential part of pop culture. Sure, her sound inspired bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and No Doubt, but it felt like controversy overwhelmed quality, at least in the early run.
What’s funny is that there are points throughout “I Want Candy” where I find myself enjoying the music. It’s lively and full of energy. However, it also reminds me of a band that used a similar approach with a much different result. The yelling and jumping around feels reminiscent of X-Ray Spex, whose “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” features the same fury and even kinkiness, but with different intent. Bow Wow Wow was more designed for Top 40, giving vapid songs about kids being horny whereas X-Ray Spex used sexualizing of women to comment on societal issues. Both have very fun songs, but I think that one has more substance than the other.
I don’t entirely blame Bow Wow Wow for this read of their work. Again, McLaren felt very much in control of the image he wanted to put out. When Lwin wasn’t singing about hooking up, the songs were rather simple in nature. There was “W.O.R.K. (N.O. Nah No! No! My Daddy Don’t)” which was mostly about clever wordplay as she sang about how the idea of employment was changing. Given that it was designed to be sung by a 14-year-old whose sole interest was sold as boys, it makes sense that these songs don’t have nearly the same ring.
All of this is interesting in relation to the fact that “C-30, C-60, C-90, Go!” is still my favorite song that they’ve released. It could just be because I believed for a few minutes that Bow Wow Wow was more symbolic about rambunctious teenagers, playing into their interests with such creative frenzy that it’s hard not to find infectious. After all, the title makes for a fun tongue-tying chorus, making you cross your eyes as you try to keep up with whatever sense Lwin is trying to make. The drums have rarely sounded more intense, the guitars running with the best of them. Lwin has rarely sounded more alive.
It could be that it feels the most like what I imagine Bow Wow Wow as a New Wave band should sound like. The bridge to the chorus grows ever-more chaotic as Lwin makes complaining about record shops not carrying her records into a delightful sonic experience. The fact she throws in ridiculous imagery like bazookas and various pieces of slang only makes the song more of a novelty. When she yells “I’m Top of the Pops!” you can’t help but believe her. For this moment in time, she really does have the potential, the youthful naivety that makes anything seem possible.
I want to be clear that all of this criticism is towards songs that were released during or before the release of “I Want Candy” in 1982. The band had only two years’ worth of releases and it’s clear that they were a rough blueprint for whatever they could become. Given that they would reunite in different forms throughout the years, there’s clearly something there that is addictive, worth celebrating. Taken by themselves, some of the songs have a kitschy appeal that benefits from youthful innocence and a desire to explore the world. Then you get songs like “Giant Sized Baby Thing” and realize that, yep, they had adult men writing suggestive songs for an underage Burmese girl.
So why weren’t they more of an institution compared to other bands that I’ve covered so far? I honestly think it’s more because of how limiting they were with their sound. It was fresh when it was new, but over the course of the 16 songs I listened to, there are moments where it wears thin, where the subject matter leaves you feeling too gross to dance. It’s maybe too explicit at times, which makes the success of “I Want Candy” more ironic. The song was essentially a lengthy euphemism (“But I like Candy when he’s wrapped in a sweater”), but it was the winking nature of it that made it delightful. There’s nothing fun about “Louis Quatorze.”
So far this may be the first disappointing record on the list, presenting one of the more dated aspects of New Wave. It was clearly driven by visceral energy and without further thought, orchestrated to sell records and not engage with any deeper thought. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially since the formula feels brilliant for an updated take on girl group culture. It’s just that so many other factors keep this from being a home run. Maybe they were improved upon on later records, but for now, it’s clear that Lwin needsed to hire better songwriters.
Up Next: Soft Boys – “Underwater Moonlight” (1980)
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