This is a very close match up. I like both Eurythmics and Fine Young Cannibals, two fantastically underated bands, if either of these bands had come 10 years later they could have been huge(or even bigger in Eurythmics case).
This statement confuses me, because Fine Young Cannibals were INSANELY popular in the UK and were only slightly less popular in the US when their second album
The Raw and the Cooked came out. And to be honest, if either band had presented their 80s hits to the world in the 90s, they would've failed miserably. New Wave and synth-pop were well dead by the time the 90s came around.
However I'm voting for Eurythmics even though they werent really a rock band based on the fact the made new wave popular again, and the the commercial sucess they had. No discredit to the Cannibals though, they were a great band which had a few great hits who had lots of potential it's just a pity they came at the the time they did.
Dude, the Eurythmics didn't make New Wave popular again. New Wave was still all the rage when their biggest hit "Sweet Dreams" came out in 1983. And while the Eurthymics were huge in their own right, they never had an album that was as popular as FYC's second album.
Now, on to the actual music.
Not a big Eurythmics fan. I know what you're thinking, "But xfear, you endlessly tout new wave and punk bands all the time!", and this is true. But the Eurthymics and Annie Lennox in particuliar just doesn't do it for me. Maybe partly it's because my mother was a HUGE Annie Lennox fan and would play her stuff ad nauseam when I was a child. But either way, just not a big fan. Granted,
Sweet Dreams was an excellent album, and I won't deny I enjoy it, but after that they seemed to branch out into too many directions and just began sounding unfocused IMO. I don't deny their influence and their critical acclaim, they do deserve it, but they're similiar to Pantera for me in that I'm
supposed to like them, but I just don't. I still respect 'em though.
That being said, I voted for Fine Young Cannibals here. Great band, one of the two record-selling powerhouses that arose out of the ashes of the legendary band the English Beat (or just The Beat to you Brits). While the two most talented musicians in the band (Ranking Roger & Dave Wakeling) moved on to form the band General Public (they had a huge hit in the 80s with the song "Tenderness"), the rest of the band branched out and formed Fine Young Cannibals with talented vocalist Roland Gift and scored an even bigger hit then their counterparts with the classic "She Drives Me Crazy", one of the most easily recognized songs probably ever.
But they were more then that. They truly branched out into directions in pop music that nobody was willing to at that time (aside from maybe Tears For Fears'
The Seeds of Love which, ironically, came out the same year as "She Drives Me Crazy") fusing elements of jazz, soul, 60s merseybeat and the Two-Tone ska movement from which the band originally arose.
FYC's second album,
The Raw and the Cooked is simply a classic by any standard. You don't need to enjoy any particuliar genre of music to enjoy this album, as it dabbles in them all. Not to mention how incredibly successful of an album it was, scoring 2 number one hits in "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing", as well as 2 tracks in the top ten and two tracks in the top 100. They could've probably released every track on the album as a single (and almost did) and still been hugely successful.
So, FYC takes this for me. Partially out of my deep love of the English Beat, and partially out of my distaste for Annie Lennox.
