Eurythmics -- Missionary Man

 

I can't quite believe that it's almost two years since I first up a Eurythmics single on Reminiscings of Youth. Of course, it had to be "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", one of the anthems for 80s New Wave.

Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart concocted a lot of hits since that first memorable hit in the form of their 2nd single back in 1983. They've come from a whole bunch of angles, but one that also smacked me hard was "Missionary Man", their July 1986 single from the "Revenge" album. For me anyways, if there were ever a song that could get up to the levels of Tomoyasu Hotei's（布袋寅泰）"Battle Without Honor or Humanity" as a power walk song, "Missionary Man" could be the one. 

It's just too cool with Jimmy Zavala on the harmonica in an intro suggesting something rather epic is going to happen and then all of the rocking out. Lennox sings out the lyrics as if she were describing the missionary man as this otherworldly Thanos-level superbeing ready to sow justice or destruction while Joniece Jamison is the backup vocalist who sounds like a herald for Galactus. Any spy, assassin or hero/villain with that particular name would be proud to have this as a theme song before all hell breaks loose.

Additionally, the music video is a combination of Frankenstein's castle and Southern Gothic. Compared with Lennox's corporate dominatrix look on "Sweet Dreams", she looks to be more of a conventional dominatrix (not that I'm complaining at all). I'm not surprised that the video got heavy rotation on channels like MTV, especially with that stop-animation technique that became the popular thing following Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer". When I first saw those affected scenes, I was going "WOW!".

"Missionary Man" went up to No. 13 on Canada's RPM charts while Stateside, it peaked at No. 14. So, what was also coming out in the month of July in 1986?

Kahoru Kohiruimaki -- Ryote Ippai no Johnny （両手いっぱいのジョニー）

KUWATA BAND -- Merry X'mas in Summer

Kyoko Koizumi -- Yoake no MEW （夜明けのMEW）