As is the story with many a pop artist, often their chart-topping single isn't their best song. Case in point: early '90s Irish dance outfit, D:Ream, whose foxy lead singer Peter Cunnah (above left...not the guy with the jacked-up teeth) used to give me that D'luvvin' feeling back in the day!With only two albums released, D:Ream cranked out some of the best dance pop during the act's active period of 1992 to 1997, and to me Cunnah proved to be one of the genre's most creative songwriting and vocally-talented forces.
Technically, D:Ream only had nine singles, but my personal fave, "U R The Best Thing," got about 57 re-re-re-releases alone and eventually reached its peak of #4 in the U.K. in 1994. And though D:Ream's "Things Can Only Get Better" hit #1 on both the U.K. pop and U.S. dance charts in '94, history stepped in to ensure it would forever be the band's magnum opus when Tony Blair chose it as his campaign song in 1997.D:Ream's first album, 1993's D:Rream On, Vol. 1, is available on iTunes. Warning: the edits of many of the singles are remixed versions that differ from the original album versions, though all are good.
Here are the "U R The Best Thing" and "Things Can Only Get Better" vids:
God, I love that "U R The Best Thing" clip! With its sunny blue skies, the dancing on steel beams and uplifting chorus, it really seemed to capture all urban dreams and optimism of the time.
Unfortunately, as D:Ream started having hits after the original singles received re-releases with Brothers In Rhythm and Perfecto mixes, Peter Cunnah seemed to gain a reputation as a bit of an egotistical pain in the blarney stone.
James LeBon, the director of the "Things Can Only Get Better" video, wrote the following when he posted it on YouTube: "It was a huge hit, unfortunately due to a misunderstanding Peter and I fell out in the edit!" More famously, Cunnah got the tar kicked out of him by the Bananarama gals during a run-in at London's Gay Pride in 1994.Check out this classiness from an interview with Keren Woodward of the 'rams:
"We'd be sitting there and he was saying some really, really odd things to us, and I think he'd had a few drinks. Then it all got a bit bitter and we'd just about had enough of him. He just turned round and said 'come and talk to me when you've written a hit song.' He'd had the one and we'd had quite a lot at that point. I think Sarah just gave him a push off of his seat and I gave him a dead leg on the way down really... Thanks for the memory, though I wouldn't want you to think that we were violent girls. I haven't done anything like that before or since in my life. But yes, he was a strange one and it's amazing how many people seem to have heard about that."Sigh. With an attitude like that, mister... even Al Mackenzie, the other main member of the act, left after the release of the first album.
World, D:Ream's second album, yielded only one U.K. Top 10 hit, "Shoot Me With Your Love." I used to see the U.S. version of the single in record stores a lot in 1995, but I never bought it for some reason. Later I picked it up off eBay. There's a pretty rad Loveland radio edit!After doing vocals on Chicane's groovy "Love On The Run" in 2000 (also on iTunes), Peter Cunnah "returned to his roots" and started writing jangly guitar music. And this seems like a good place to end the story!
Here's a Top Of The Pops live clip of "Shoot Me With Your Love," and the Chicane "Love On The Run" video Peter sings vocals on:
If you're interested, there's a sparse, official D:Ream website, but it hasn't been updated in two-and-a-half years. You can also find Peter Cunnah on MySpace, but his pictures are all set to private. Difficult!