The song that ruined the career of Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners were flying high following the success of their second album, Too-Rye-Ay, thanks in no small part to their hit single, ‘Come On Eileen’. However, they carefully deliberated before making their next move, and three years later, in 1985, it was finally time to mark their return.
The process of making their third album, Don’t Stand Me Down, was a long road full of speedbumps. In truth, it was a different band to the one who made the predecessor, and there were only four members of Dexys left, compared to their classic line-up of ten, which had been vastly depleted due to the animosity in the camp.
The public appetite for another Dexys record was initially there, but the album’s lead single, ‘This Is What She’s Like’, dampened expectations and single-handedly ruined the Birmingham band’s career. Bizarrely, it was 12-minutes long, which stopped the track from receiving radio play, and it only reached 78 on the UK Singles Chart.
Not only were the fans unreceptive to the new material, but the music press was also chomping at the bit to bring them down. In 1985, fans hung onto their every word and had to trust their judgement before buying records, which hurt Dexys.
A review in the NME read: “You’d think three years silence might have dimmed the man’s burning rage, but no, Kevin Rowland is back with a resharpened axe to grind. Chapter three of the Dexys story unfolds with Rowland as self-obsessed, as unapologetically out to lunch as ever. If the quest for the Young Soul Rebels was a Stax-induced dream from a burgeoning obsessive and the follow-up a mish-mash of Celtic gypsy romance dressed up in rags and tatters, what should we make of this weird, wilfully obscure landscape?”
The song came to frontman Kevin Rowland in a dream. He later remembered (via SongFacts): “Those words – “What’s she like? Tell me what’s she like” – and melodies just came. It didn’t sound like anything.”
Rowland admitted in the liner notes of the compilation album, Let’s Make This Precious: The Best of Dexys Midnight Runners: “My biggest regret is that ‘This Is What She’s Like’ wasn’t a 10-minute single. I think it might have done for Dexys what ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ did for Queen.”
Meanwhile, in a webchat with The Guardian in 2016, Rowland spoke about his pride in ‘This Is What She’s Like’. He told readers: “‘This is What’s She’s Like’ is one of the best songs we’ve written.”
After the release of Don’t Stand Me Down, Dexys began to drift apart from each other further, and their split became inevitable. Furthermore, it was also an expensive commercial failure, and understandably, Rowland succumbed to substance abuse which marked the end of the band for 17 years.
