Like many people, we assumed that Mick Hucknall was the only real member of Simply Red – so now Simply Red are splitting up we, like many people, are assuming that Mick Hucknall plans to throw himself into an industrial mincer soon.
Anyway, apparently that's not the case at all. Mick Hucknall has announced that he is splitting up Simply Red after 25 years of the band existing in one form or another, a good 10 years after most people thought Simply Red had split up in the first place. But there's bad news here, too – Simply Red aren't going to split up for another two years, meaning that we'll have to suffer through another 730 days of hearing a smug ginger pie-faced idiot singing all those songs that you never really liked in the first place. And then, after that, Mick Hucknall is going to go solo because he wants to "invent a new form of music." Fingers crossed that it'll be a very quiet new form of music that only Mick Hucknall can hear, then.
The pool of smug middle-aged sphere-faced ginger egomaniacs has never been especially large, but Mick Hucknall from Simply Red has always done his best to give that particular community a bad name. For 25 years now, Mick Hucknall has been the band leader of Simply Red, the pop group responsible for hits like Holding Back The Years, Stars, Fairground and the factually-incorrect The Sky Is A Gypsy, but now thanks to musical differences – presumably with the entire population of the rest of the world – Mick Hucknall has decided to put Simply Red out of its misery.
"Simply Red are splitting up?" you're probably asking yourself, "how can that be? Didn't Simply Red split up long, long ago?" And the answer is no they didn't, you silly people. Simply Red only stopped being popular a long, long time ago, which is slightly different. "OK, that's a fairly good point," you're now probably responding "but in 2001 didn't Mick Hucknall say that Simply Red was 'essentially a solo project'? How does that work?" And this time you'd be right. Over the last 25 years, Simply Red has had 28 different members, the only constant being Mick Hucknall. So if Simply Red is a solo project, how does Mick Hucknall plan to split himself up? Lord knows, but hopefully it involves lasers.
But we won't find out for two more years because, as Mick Hucknall announced to Gold radio, Simply Red aren't actually splitting up immediately. The Times reports:
Simply Red is splitting up after a quarter of a century together, the band’s singer Mick Hucknall announced today. Hucknall, 47, who founded the pop and soul group in 1984, said that 25 years was "long enough for anybody". "There will be an end to Simply Red. I've kind of decided that the 25 years is going to be enough, so I intend that the 2009 will be the last Simply Red tour." "I've just recorded an album that is a tribute to Bobby Bland, a blues and R'n'B artist. It's a solo project and I've really enjoyed it so much that I feel the time has come now to just put a book-end to the story and the album Stay will be the last Simply Red studio album."
In actual fact, Mick Hucknall wants to split up Simply Red so he can move away from the treacly wine-bar funk-lite which the band is famous for and start to "be more influenced by R’n’B of the Sixties and try my slant on it, and try to invent a new form of music." So you heard it here first – Mick Hucknall wants to sound more like Dodgy.
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Gilbert Wham says
Simply Red is splitting up after a quarter of a century together, the band’s singer Mick Hucknall announced today. Hucknall, 47, who founded the pop and soul group in 1984, said that 25 years was “long enough for anybody”
Either some fucker can’t count, or this is news from the future! Apropos Hucknall, when Michael Hutchence died, my girlfriend got confused about the name and informed me that Mick Hucknell had karked it. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was merely the tedious oaf from INXS. Still a bonus like, but a letdown nonetheless.
JBollocks says
Ah, I think you hit the nail on the head there GW, this is indeed news from the future as Hucknall merely “intends” to split up in 2009.
He should live so long…
Lynell Franklin says
From the comments/article, Stuart Heritage has written, it becomes obvious that he has not a clue about GOOD music and BAD music (would love to know what he thinks is GOOD music). With the additional remarks made by GW and JB, to complete this weird, wicked circle of “idiots” who, I would venture to say, could not sing jingle bells on key if their lives depened on it, AND you’ve never been in a recording studio or wouldn’t even know what a sound board is/was. It’s easy to be a critic, and sadly there are too many who are CLUELESS. You are so off on Mick Hucknall, it makes me think you MUST have him confused with some other “smug ginger pie-faced idiot”, Idiot!