More Songs To Learn And Sing #10

Double figures for this cavalcade of criterion, and the fortieth recommendation in total comes on behalf of Ian from Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?:

Poppy Factory - 7x7

I was going to do My Life Story's Angel. But Doug did that band last time around, and even though it deserves it, and it's seven minutes long which gives me a good amount of source material, that's not what we're doing today.

Having ruled out making a decision about which was One Dove's finest moment (they were, for the uninitiated, a band that that bird who used to go out with Pete Doherty was in), or whether Eurovision is really suitable, we come to Poppy Factory.

Bradford's Poppy Factory kicked around at the start of the 1990s, signed to Chrysalis, and after a 12" promo of Drug House, 7x7 was their debut single. Obviously, you all know that it took the charts by storm, and the rest is rock and roll history, stadium gigs, and supermodels.

Well, not quite.

All good songs contain an essential truth of one kind or another. In Poppy Factory's case, that truth is that "forty-nine is only seven times seven." You can't argue with that, really.

Much like probably a thousand or so St Etienne songs, the chief refrain is about a 1960s film - in this case, "Call me Charlie Bubbles" is a reference to an Albert Finney film, but the rest of it... let's just say I think you can overanalyse lyrics. "It's a matter of great indifference to me how your greatest lie came true"?

So what happened to Poppy Factory? 3 singles but debut album "Good Time" failed to appear, and then they vanished. I have the vague idea that two of them ended up in Embrace, but I may have made that up. They'd never have fulfilled their early promise. No-one ever does.


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