Fairground Attraction on making Perfect: ‘By the third chorus, everyone was singing along’

Mark Nevin, songwriter, guitarist

The song came before Fairground Attraction formed. I was living in a damp bedsit in Cricklewood, London. I had a girlfriend but it wasn’t going anywhere. One morning I sat in the kitchen and wrote the words: “I don’t want half-hearted love affairs / I need someone who really cares.” I soon had the first two verses and maybe even the title, Perfect. But it was a different song, more downbeat and reggae-ish. I just left it there in a book.

A year or two later, I was living in Akron, Ohio, working as a gardener. I had a similar situation: girlfriend, but nah, it wasn’t happening. I sat on the bed in my flat and decided to revisit this old song. This time, when I got to where the chorus should have been, I blurted out: “It’s got to be perfect!” It was like it had always been there.

When I moved back to London, I started doing stuff with Eddi Reader in between her going off on tour providing backing vocals for people like Alison Moyet. We’d go downtown with our guitars and play in what was then called the alternative cabaret scene. In the back of a pub, there’d be, say, a comedian, a juggler and a singer. Eddi was really into Edith Piaf and Patsy Cline, so a lot of her songs were dramatic and diva-ish. I didn’t think she would like Perfect because it was so cheerful, but I made a little tape of it and played it for her anyway. To my surprise she said: “Hold on, we should do that.”

The first time we ever did it live was, I think, at the Duke of Wellington pub in Dalston. By the time we got to the third chorus, everyone in the audience was singing along – the reaction was instant. Someone came up to me afterwards and said: “That song is going to be No 1!” Months later it was, which was surreal.

We won two Brit awards at that terrible ceremony with Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood – the worst programme in TV history. They announced our name and we were nowhere near the stage. We won best single and best album that night, the first band ever to do so. Only Adele, Coldplay and Blur have done it since.

Perfect was a real genuine organic hit and it took us all by surprise. All these years later, it’s become almost like Happy Birthday or Auld Lang Syne – so many people know the song without knowing who made it.

Eddi Reader, singer

By the mid-80s I was already quite successful as a backing singer. I’d been on The Old Grey Whistle Test with Gang of Four, on Top of the Pops with Eurythmics and Alison Moyet. I’d done my apprenticeship and got a measure of the backside of the music industry. I saw the fickleness.

I was living in a squat somebody gave me because I had sung backing vocals on their record. I had to siphon rainwater off the roof with a hose. I was a bit bored and needed my own way of expressing myself. I met Mark and we started working on some of his songs.

We wanted to be authentic among all the robotic musicians of the 80s. I was in love with Edith Piaf – that heartbreak and emotional commitment. I wanted to write songs about finding love in the junk shop of life, as Tom Waits described it. When Mark brought in Perfect, I remember thinking: “That’s going to cheer everybody up after all this other miserable stuff!” It’s got that rockabilly thing, that Elvis thing. It’s fantastic. My mum and dad were massive Elvis fans.

There’s such a joy and authenticity about Perfect. It’s a song that says: “Fuck it, this is what I want.” The human condition is always wanting, wanting, wanting. When people hear Perfect, they feel happy.

When the record label decided it would be our first single, there was a bit of trepidation, because it’s not really like our other work. I wasn’t charmed by the glitter of success. I loved meeting Paul McCartney. I loved drinking all the free champagne and stealing all the records. I loved using the record company phones to call my aunts in America and Canada. But I knew that we’d be paying for it all in the end.

I think the biggest cheque we ever got for Perfect was £14,000. I used it as a deposit on a mortgage. Perfect didn’t change my life, it just enhanced a part of it.

• Fairground Attraction’s new album Beautiful Happening is released on 20 September on Raresong Recordings; the band tour the UK from 28 September to 18 October