Making Your Mind Up
| "Making Your Mind Up" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Single by Bucks Fizz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from the album Bucks Fizz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Don't Stop" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released | 12 March 1981 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Genre | Rock and roll | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length | 2.39 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Label | RCA Records | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Andy Hill / John Danter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Andy Hill | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bucks Fizz singles chronology | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Making Your Mind Up" is a song by British pop group Bucks Fizz. It was the winner of the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest and a UK Number-one single. Released in March 1981, it was Bucks Fizz's debut single, the group having been formed just two months earlier. From 2004 to 2007 the BBC used the name Making Your Mind Up for their Eurovision selection show in honour of the song.
In late 1980, songwriter Andy Hill teamed up with John Danter and composed "Making Your Mind Up" with an eye to entering it into the A Song for Europe finals the following year. Working with his then girlfriend, Nichola Martin, a former singer, they set about recording a demo of the song to enter. This featured the vocals of Hill, Martin and Mike Nolan, a singer Martin had worked with before. Martin then set about gathering a line-up to enter the song with, based around her and Nolan. With the song already entered under the name Bucks Fizz, Martin and future manager, Jill Shirley recruited Cheryl Baker, Bobby G and Jay Aston to the line-up, with Martin herself dropping out. The song secured an entry into the final along with another Hill/Danter composition, "Have You Ever Been in Love", which would be performed by Martin and Hill under the name Gem.
Martin and Shirley secured a recording deal with RCA Records and Hill spent a week at Mayfair Studios in London with the group recording the song and its B-side. Backing vocals on the record were supplied by Alan Carvell, who also went on to be one of two backing singers in the Eurovision performance. The song was published by Paper Music, which was a year-old publishing company owned by Billy Lawrie – himself a songwriter and brother of singer Lulu. Choreographer Chrissie Whickham, a former member of dance troupe Hot Gossip, spent two days with the group working on the dance routine.
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Wikipedia