Easy Minds‘ Jim Kerr on Following ‘Don’t You (Overlook About Me) – Billboard

It was 1985 and Easy Minds had been within the recording studio with famed producer Jimmy Iovine making an attempt to comply with an surprising hit after lastly breaking by way of within the U.S. “Don’t You (Overlook About Me)” was featured within the film and soundtrack to The Breakfast Membership and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart in Might of that 12 months. 

Iovine, whose resume on the time already included Tom Petty’s Rattling the Torpedos and Stevie Nicks’ debut solo album, Bella Donna, was introduced aboard for the periods for the band’s eighth and most profitable album, As soon as Upon a Time. He was pushing the band laborious to create one thing particular, singer Jim Kerr tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from his dwelling in Sicily whereas the band was on break from touring following the discharge of its twenty first studio album, Route of the Coronary heart, on Oct. 21 by way of BMG. 

“We had been already feeling the strain,” remembers Kerr, “however Jimmy was relentless. ‘You’ve bought to give you one thing particular,’” Iovine instructed the band. “’You must give you one thing. Now we have to have one thing particular.’ 

One end result from these periods with Iovine was the music “Alive and Kicking,” which turned the group’s second-biggest U.S. hit and peaked at No. 3 on the Scorching 100 in Dec. 1985. Like its predecessor, “Alive and Kicking” ends in a sing-along Kerr says was borrowed from The Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” “It’s virtually like a hymn firstly. And simply while you suppose you’ve heard all of it, the ‘la la la’ is available in on the finish — which, coincidentally, ‘Don’t You’ had, too.” 

In current live shows, Easy Minds strategically paired “Don’t You” with “Alive and Kicking” within the encore. Not solely are the songs the band’s largest hits and from the identical period, “they’re the sing-along moments,” says Kerr, a chance for the viewers to take part. “That’s when the entire place sings in tune and the place we simply stand again and the evening belongs to them. It’s a beautiful factor to behold.”

In reality, says Kerr, the genius of these songs is their lyrical simplicity. “The beauty of these choruses is anybody on the earth can sing ‘la la la.’ You’ll be able to sing it in Japan, you possibly can sing it in Oslo. That’s essentially the most clever lyric we ever wrote,” says Kerr with a chuckle. “Give it some thought. The entire world can sing that.” 

Hearken to your entire interview with Easy Minds’ Jim Kerr at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, iHeart or Audible.