Chart entered : 8 March 1986
Chart peak : 2 ( on re-entry after originally peaking at 47 )
Number of hits : 12
A dark day for any historian of the charts as the Prince of Darkness starts making his presence felt here.
These biographical notes on Sinitta should be treated with caution as the various accounts of her background and rise to fame don't always add up. She was one of twin sisters born to aspiring Canadian singer and actress Miquel Brown in 1963. Besides Brown her surname has been given as Malone and Renet at various times but Sinitta is apparently her real Christian name. Her mother had small roles in Rollerball and Superman but found most work in London's West End so the family relocated to the UK where the young Sinitta attended ballet and drama schools.
No doubt with her mother's help, she started finding work in 1981 appearing in productions of The Wiz and Hair and had a small role in the film Shock Treatment , Richard O Brien's little-regarded follow-up to The Rocky Horror Show . In 1982 she appeared as a dancer with Imagination on The Tube though she did little more than wrap herself around singers Leee and Ashley in a skimpy dress.
The following year she appeared in the video for Forrest's Rock The Boat although she hadn't been involved in the recording. She got her own first recording chance with Magnet offshoot Midas Records who released "Never Too Late" a leaden, forgettable disco number in September that year. Sinitta then took the Eurovision route with "Imagination" written by veterans Tony Hiller and Paul Curtis. The song is all blustery production and no tune , made worse by Sinitta's live vocal when she performed it too energetically on Wogan for the British heats . It came fourth.
Sinitta then joined racy dance troupe Hot Gossip after persistent pestering of choreographer Arlene Phillips. This broke the previous demarcation in the group between black men and white women. Phillips may have thought what the heck as they were clearly on the slide by then, lacking a regular TV slot since Kenny Everett's switch to the BBC and consistently failing to score a follow-up hit to 1978's ( I Lost My Heart To A ) Starship Trooper .
They did have one last card to play though. One of their former dancers Ian Burton had gone into talent management and gave them a leg up by signing them to Fanfare, a new label he'd set up with his friend, a young record company hack by the name of Simon Cowell. Neither of the two singles they recorded for Fanfare "Don't Beat Around The Bush" and "Break Me Into Little Pieces" - both run of the mill dated synth pop - made any impression but their newest recruit had caught the eye of Mr Cowell.
Forget any rubbish you might have read about Cowell being a potential sex offender for dating a 14 year old. That all springs from Sinitta's persistent dishonesty about her age ; she was either 19 or 20 when they met. Hot Gossip were clearly the deadest of horses but he felt she had solo potential particularly as she was attracting attention for her topless appearances in Mutiny with David Essex with whom she had an affair ( at least she says she did ).
Her mother had just scored a couple of minor hits working with producer Ian Levine for the Hi-NRG scene so that seemed the obvious route to take. Cowell turned to writer producer George Hargreaves who wrote and co-produced her first single for the label "Cruising" in February 1985 with its obvious reference back to the Al Pacino film of the same name where he's an undercover cop in the gay club scene. It's a top class Hi-NRG record along the lines of Hazell Dean's Searchin' , although Sinitta's not as strong a singer as Hazell, with a killer song atop the pounding electronics.
It made an impression in the gay clubs but did not chart. It was released again a year later with "So Macho " on the flip. I've trusted Guinness that at some point it was made a double A-side but the sleeve and initial pressings clearly indicate "Cruising" was only a B-side when the record was first released. "So Macho" was written by the same guy and even putting aside the dubious lyrical conceit of having a black girl singing of needing an Aryan lover - "he;s got to have big blue eyes ", it's not as well-crafted a song as "Cruising" nor does the backing track have the same attack. "So Macho" is aimed at the pop charts rather than the clubs but it worked in both. It originally peaked at 47 but after a few weeks out of the chart . club play got it back in and this time it shot to number 2 though what clubbers made of Sinitta giving the limp wrist gesture while performing it on Top of the Pops isn't difficult to imagine.
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