Mari Wilson was a protégé of Tot Taylor, who had previously led the late '70s UK power pop band Advertising. Wilson's pop career, which lasted all of two years from early 1982 to early 1984, was a carefully constructed collaboration between herself, Taylor, songwriter Teddy Johns, producer Tony Mansfield (New Musik, etc.) and photographer Richard Ashworth. Tongue in cheek glamour was the rule of the day, with Wilson dressing unfailingly in opera gloves and evening gowns, a foot-tall beehive hairdo completing the picture. Her music was similarly inspired by Julie London, Dionne Warwick and the other middle of the road pop singers of the pre-Sgt. Pepper's era, given a distinctly early-'80s UK synth-pop gloss. Her sole album, 1983's Showpeople, shows how limited the pose really was, but in small doses, it could be hugely enjoyable, as on this brilliantly gimmicky and infuriatingly catchy single. Wilson reappeared in the early '90s as a straight jazz-pop singer. More recently, she sang the old Doris Day tune "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps" as the theme to the highly recommended British sitcom Coupling. (Trivia note: future AAA singer/songwriter Julia Fordham was one of Wilson's backing singers, the Wilsations.)

-Stewart Mason