‘I can’t get out a building without singing that song’
BBC
Marti Pellow’s most successful song – as part of Scots band Wet Wet Wet – is 30 years old this year
Singer Marti Pellow has admitted that after 30 years, he doesn’t hate singing the song kept him at the top of the charts for 15 weeks.
Love Is All Around is a member of a very small club of hits that hogged the charts in the 1990s to the point many couldn’t listen to them any more.
The Wet Wet Wet singer admits his relationship with the song could be complicated, but he understands what it means to people.
“Love Is All Around was a freaky wee song in the same way the Bryan Adams song was and the Whitney Houston song was,” he told Afternoons on BBC Radio Scotland.
James Watkins/BBC
Marti Pellow is celebrating 30 years of Love Is All Around with a tour next year
He said: “It was a song that stayed around in the charts for an enormous amount of time.
“Through the passage of time, the pendulum swings with it but when I meet people they say they fell in love to that song, their son was born to that song.
“And that’s great pop music. So for me – I still love it.
“I don’t think I’d get out of a building or a venue without singing that song.”
The songs people loved – and then loved to hate, like Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and Houston’s I Will Always Love You, were attached to hit films at the time.
Wet Wet Wet were approached to record a song for the Richard Curtis rom-com Four Weddings And A Funeral.
They turned down covers of I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor and Can’t Smile Without You by Barry Manilow, opting for the Troggs hit.
Pellow, now 59, remembers the first time he heard the tune.
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Wet Wet Wet got together as teenagers and enjoyed worldwide success
“It was REM’s interpretation of it that I knew,” he said. “Then I found out it was written by Reg Presley from the Troggs, lovely man.
“It just shows you that when a good song is written, everyone can have a shot at it.”
Pellow grew up in Clydebank, near Glasgow, and became a part of Wet Wet Wet when the band were all teenagers.
The band enjoyed massive success, catapulting Pellow into a heartthrob – a status that remains decades on.
Between stints in and out of the band, he has continued making music, branching into West End and Broadway musicals including Chicago, Chess and The Witches of Eastwick.
But it is the Wet Wet Wet hits that keep the fans coming back and he has announced a Love Is All Around celebration tour for 2025.
He said he believed all the old hits would endure.
“The songs aren’t about yesterday, they are about today and tomorrow.” he said.
“My idea is to celebrate the Wet Wet Wet songs – that’s what people most associate me as a singer with – under the umbrella of Love Is All Around.”
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Wet Wet Wet at the London premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 – the film that spawned their greatest hit
Pellow admitted he had discussed the phenomenon of having a history-making chart hit with one of the only other people who would understand.
He said: “I was in Memphis and Bryan Adams was there.
“We were debating our songs.
“He said he had the bar mitzvahs covered but I have the weddings covered with Love is All Around. “
The highlight of the tour will be a homecoming gig next November at the Ovo Hydro in Glasgow.
“I can speak as quickly as I want, and everyone will understand me,” he said.
“A Saturday night for this Banky boy to play at the Hydro in Glasgow – it’s pinch me stuff.
“My shows are about entertaining – it’s all about memories – as much for me as the audience.
“I will never get blase about it.”
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