Just consider Pop Essays as your portal for the kind of niche music cuts that you just don’t see discussed in anywhere near as much depth elsewhere on the Internet. Case in point: the forgotten solo single from a man at the height of the 00s indie scene…
- Artist: Preston
- Song: Dressed To Kill
- Released: 23/08/2009
- Writers / Producers: Samuel Preston / Mark Taylor / Siouxie Sioux / Steven Severin
- Highest UK Chart Position: DNC (Did Not Chart)
- Chart Run: N/A
After a rollercoaster career as lead singer and songwriter of feted 00s indie band The Ordinary Boys, Preston found himself reborn in a most unprecedented way – but which ultimately bought him the last laugh over his detractors.
Alas, the path from caterpillar to butterfly was a difficult and messy one. Everyone is fully aware of the story by now, but as a precis: after their first two critically acclaimed albums – 2004’s Over The Counter Culture and 2005’s Brassbound, offering a beguiling mix of indie, rock, 2-tone and ska – Preston found himself as a housemate in the 2006 series of Celebrity Big Brother.
A nation watched on tenterhooks as he got close to and developed a relationship with fellow housemate, model Chantelle Houghton, who had successfully passed her mission as a “non-celebrity” housemate on that series, with him finishing fourth in the final and her winning the entire thing.
What then happened after that was to the immediate benefit and equal parts detriment of the band; it sent them soaring up the charts with a string of top 10 hits, including a reactivated “Boys Will Be Boys”, “Nine2Five” (with Lady Sovereign), “Lonely At The Top” and “I Luv U”. All the while, his whirlwind romance with Chantelle saw them engaged and married within the space of a few months, with their every move documented by the gossip magazines.
There was a grim sense of inevitability, therefore, when the trendy indie press immediately dropped The Ordinary Boys like a hot potato with the release of their actually brilliant third album, How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted In Ten Easy Steps, and started savaging their every move – but mostly Preston’s – the culmination of which was the infamous episode of comedy music quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks in January 2007, when he walked off set after then host Simon Amstell started mockingly reading aloud extracts from his then wife’s autobiography.
Just six months later, their marriage ended, and so too did The Ordinary Boys. Holding dual citizenship on his mum’s side of his family, he thus retreated to America, marking the beginning of an 18 month period when he dipped out the glare of the media spotlight and recorded his debut solo album, titled Whatever Forever. He was still signed to B-Unique, the indie offshoot of Polydor Records where the band had been signed.
When he finally re-emerged in the summer of 2009 with its first single, “Dressed To Kill”, it was less a warmly received comeback and more one that was a vertiginous steep uphill climb that, on paper, meant the odds were not in his favour on summiting successfully. Even some of his press interviews at the time seemed to almost concede defeat on this before he’d even got going.
Whilst it’s true to say that the British media was an unforgiving beast, fleeting in sustained support and hungry for fair game at all costs in the 00s, this was especially true for the likes of NME, who, in their relentless and oftentimes desperate pursuit of the next best thing, in a shrinking printed music magazine landscape post-MySpace and pre-Twitter, were instead making themselves look like – and we won’t mince our words here – insufferable, navel gazing fickle twats, who were in many ways digging their own graves they’d fall into come the spring of 2018.
Preston was undoubtedly at the very sharp end of this, rubbing them up the wrong way by embracing the very outlets that weren’t supposedly “alternative” or – Jesu – “cool” enough. For every possible answer back he had with his music, they had their cutting riposte ready to fire back with. Lest we forget his crime was going on a reality TV show and his band enjoying some success off the back of it, and finding love, however temporary it was.
It is easy to overlook, therefore, that at the centre of all this, was a pop song. And not just that, but a bloody good one too. Utilising a sample from “Happy House”, a 1980 hit for post-punk icons Siouxie and the Banshees, “Dressed To Kill” is a dark, moody yet melodic electropop banger. In a time where MGMT and Metronomy were emerging as forces to be reckoned with at indie discos the land over, it was perfectly on trend for that time.
His vocals are a revelation as well; it recalls Simon Le Bon at peak 80s imperial phase Duran Duran at times, with a hook of a chorus: “You’re dressed to kill and you know that you will / You’re dancing in the dark with you hands around my heart / Oh heads will roll and blood will spill / But how can I resist / When baby you are dressed to kill, to kill, to kill, to kill, to kill”.
The video almost reflects back the dark lyrics of the song, all blue strobe lighting and smoke machines, making a knowing stylistic nod in the direction of late 80s vampire flick The Lost Boys – although, truth be told, the fangs he sports at one point in the video are less Corey Haim and more comedy joke shop at the last minute on Halloween.
The failure of “Dressed To Kill” to attract any airplay or promo bar a few TV performances and interviews, most of which took the bizarre route of introducing him as “fresh from his divorce”, made it seem as if it was dead on arrival, with its failure to chart at all just an exercise in going through the motions to reach a foregone conclusion from the media narrative.
However, although the Whatever Forever album subsequently never saw the light of day, Preston instead pivoted into a successful songwriting career; one of his first cuts, co-written with Kish Mauve’s Alex Smith, “Heart Skips A Beat“, was a massive number one hit for Olly Murs and Rizzle Kicks in 2011. He has since gone onto write or co-write tracks for artists as varied as Kylie Minogue, Enrique Iglesias and Sum 41.
But perhaps the most intriguing twist in the tale was how “Dressed To Kill” would, in 2013, find the most unlikely of homes, when none other than superstar icon Cher re-recorded and released it for her most recent studio album of original material, Closer To The Truth.
One thing is certain, is that this proves that Preston’s talent for writing and making great music was never really in doubt to those who could see past the public whirlwind he was at the epicentre of in the mid 00s; it was just a case of finding the right artists to bring them to the world.
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The Niche Reference 