Day After Day #134: One Thing Leads to Another

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

One Thing Leads to Another (1983)

Say what you will about MTV and how much it sucks now, but in the early '80s, it helped make stars out of some worthy bands who otherwise may not have made much of a dent. Sure, there were plenty of one-hit wonders, but there were also bands that made the most of their opportunity and parlayed video airplay into a successful career.

Take the Fixx, for example. The London band may have succeeded on its own merits because it certainly had the material, but it didn't hurt to get that additional exposure. Singer Cy Curnin and drummer Adam Woods formed the band in 1979 in college, originally going by the name Portraits. They released a couple of singles before adding guitarist Jamie West-Oram in 1980 and changing their name to the Fix. After getting some radio exposure on the BBC, MCA Records offered the band a contract but wanted them to change their name because of the drug implications; eventually, they added another "x."

Right off the bat, the Fixx had some success, riding the popularity of new wave. Their 1982 debut album Shuttered Room included the hits "Stand or Fall" and "Red Skies," which both had videos on the then-new MTV and also got FM radio airplay in the U.S. The band had a sweeping, cinematic sound with Curnin's soaring vocals and West-Oram's chiming guitars leading the way, and the rail-thin Curnin cut a Bowie-esque figure in the group's videos with his angular dance moves.

Alfie Agius joined the band for the Shuttered Room tour, but he left during the recording of 1983's Reach the Beach; interestingly enough, he joined the metal band Fastway that same year. Reach the Beach was produced by Rupert Hine, whose star was on the rise at that time. His fingerprints are all over '80s music, having worked with the Waterboys, Tina Turner, Howard Jones, Chris DeBurgh, Thompson Twins, Stevie Nicks and Rush (!), to name a few. 

Reach the Beach became the Fixx's biggest album, with two big hits in "Saved By Zero" and "One Thing Leads to Another," which both went top 40 in the U.S. The latter was all over MTV and the radio in the fall of '83, with West-Oram's choppy guitar riff underlying Curnin's diatribe about crooked politicians.

"The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?/You've got a blank face, which irritates/Communicate, pull out your party piece/You see dimensions in two/State your case with black or white/But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth/You run for cover so discreet why don't they/Do what they say, say what you mean, and baby/One thing leads to another/You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long but then/One thing leads to another."

The song was an instant hit, going to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 in Canada, although interestingly enough, it didn't too much in the Fixx's native England, where it only got to #86 on the U.K. Singles chart. The Reach the Beach album went to #8 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 2 million copies in the U.S.

"Then it's easy to believe/Somebody's been lying to me/But when the wrong word goes in the right ear/I know why you've been lying to me/It's getting rough, off the cuff, I've got to say enough's enough/Bigger the harder he falls/But when the wrong antidote is like a bulge in the throat/You run for cover in the heat why don't they/Do what they say, say what they mean/One thing leads to another."

I was in full-on metal mode at this time, but I liked the Fixx right from the first time I heard them the year before with "Stand or Fall." They got a lot of radio play in the Boston area, with another song, "The Sign of Fire" going top 40. Curnin and West-Oram also played two songs from Tina Turner's huge comeback album Private Dancer ("I Might Have Been Queen" and "Better Be Good to Me"). 

The band kept things rolling with 1984's Phantoms, which featured "Are We Ourselves?" (the video for which was the first to have a mobile phone in it), "Sunshine in the Shade" and "Deeper and Deeper." While the songs didn't chart as high as the previous album's singles, they were still radio-friendly and fairly ubiquitous. The Fixx's next three albums, 1986's Walkabout, 1989's Calm Animals and 1991's Ink, all had radio hits but sales dropped with each subsequent release. The band has remained together since then, but has only released five studio albums since 1998, the most recent being 2022's Every Five Seconds. They've continued to tour periodically, and Curnin has released several solo efforts.

Regardless of their current status, the Fixx's '80s output still holds up.