Patience - Take That (Single) > Reviews (2)

There are some things you shouldn’t really admit to doing, particularly once you, ahem, reach middle age. Reading Enid Blyton for your own pleasure...biting your nails....stamping your foot in a temper...waxing lyrical over boy bands....

So it’s just as well that Take That, each of whom are now in their late 30s and early 40s, can no longer really be called a boy band.

When they disbanded in 1996, a considerable section of their fan base went into deep shock and the rest of us just shrugged our shoulders, although some of us grudgingly admitted that any group who could come up with something as strong as ‘Back For Good’ perhaps did have something going for them after all. They reformed ten years later, and there must have been many a sceptic who wondered if they could ever top their original success, or would they just be written off as a bunch of has-beens searching desperately for their old fan base who were by then probably too old and too cool to admit they ever liked them in the first place.

The first single from their second coming, ‘Patience’, released late in 2006 and No. 1 for four weeks, proved they did not need to live on past glories. Let’s pull no punches – it is an astonishingly well-crafted song that really pulls at the heartstrings. Like many a slow number, it was one I had to hear several times before it really hit me properly.

The lyrics are straightforward enough. A guy has been badly hurt in love once already, and is asking his new amour for a little patience. Most of us can identify with having been in that situation. ‘Still hurting from the love I lost....My heart is so numb, has no feeling....The scars run so deep, it’s been hard but I have to believe.’

It opens softly with just an acoustic guitar being plucked, before Gary Barlow’s vocal comes in on the first verse, with subtle strings in the background. The chorus – ‘Cause I-I-I-I-I need time’ – has one of those utterly irresistible hooks that will lodge itself firmly in your brain after you’ve heard it a few times, I promise. If you listen on headphones, you can appreciate the full force of the strings on one channel, and the backing vocals on the other, particularly behind the bridge. Then after that all the instruments cut out, apart from the one acoustic guitar that we heard on the intro, and a few soft staccato notes, presumably some electronic instrument, before the drums lead gently but surely into the final choruses. And then they have the audacity – or sense of adventure – to end the whole song on a minor chord.

I know what some of you are saying. Take That are a finely-choreographed, manufactured group with a limited amount of input into the song itself, and are probably more in evidence in that video shot in Iceland, the place not the discount food store (see Youtube, as ever) than on the recorded music itself. You’re probably right. It is credited to Take That and John Shanks as writers, Shanks (guitar, bass, keyboards) being the group’s arranger and producer. Barlow, lead vocalist, is also credited with piano on the song, presumably the only member to play an instrument on it.

But that hardly matters. Moreover, when talking about manufactured groups - aren't they all, in some way? Don't we still revere the Beatles and the Monkees, two of the most manufactured bands of all in their early days?

Much of my favourite music, as you may have gathered from some of my previous reviews, comes from the 60s and 70s. Since the millennium, there have been very few new songs that have really moved me. If anyone was to ask me to compile a list of my favourite songs from the 21st century, this will be very close to the top. And if you’ve ever been tempted, as I was for a long time, to dismiss Take That as a marketing exercise designed to appeal to teenage girls and last for a couple of years before the bubble bursts, take a careful listen to this song with an open mind, as well as ears. And think again. As the lyrics say, just have a little patience.

I’m not totally alone. I recently had a glossy newsletter from my old school in which the headmaster (whom I suspect is about my age) said he loved all sorts of music from opera to Led Zeppelin, and was slightly disconcerted at confessing that he rather liked ‘Patience’ as well. The other members in the local group I play with, who are all similarly in their 40s and 50s (and two of whom are semi-professional musicians and teachers) freely admit that by any standards it is a marvellous piece of work.