UK London NANA8
Released: November 1984
UK chart position: 58

The fourth single from Bananarama's second and self-titled album, was Hot Line To Heaven. In its original form on the Bananarama album, the track is over seven minutes long, and was edited down to a more respectable three and a half minutes for single issue. The mood of the singles from the Bananarama album were becoming progressively downbeat - from the bitter but funky Cruel Summer to the cynical Robert de Niro's Waiting, to the sad and mellow Rough Justice grinding to a halt with the downright dark Hot Line To Heaven. As the singles became more serious, sales declined - that inevitably resulted in Bananarama's first single not to break the Top 50 .

"When Hot Line To Heaven didn't make the top 40, we were really taken aback, particularly as until then we'd had an unbroken chain of big hits. We couldn't understand why it had happened although generally people seem to prefer hearing us do more uptempo numbers than ballads, Everything had been so easy up to then, and we'd never had any problems getting hits. It made us realise that we had to start taking our career seriously if we were to continue being successful" (Sarah, 1992)

Hot Line To Heaven was issued in November 1984 as a 12" and 7" and then as a 7" with bonus "jigsaw" sleeve to bolster sales. But the song was ignored by the public and media, and disappeared from the charts after two weeks, peaking at #58 on 24th of November. Thus, the single was only issued in the UK, but the single for The Wild Life was issued as the fourth single in Japan, Australia and USA. A month later Bananarama were invited by Midge Ure (who had directed their Shy Boy video two years earlier) to record a charity record with him and a few friends. So on they turned up in their old car and clothes totally unaware of the press presence outside and the calibre of artistes whom were to contribute to what would eventually become of the the biggest selling singles of all time Band Aid's Do They Know Its Christmas. For the 24 hours spent recording the track - Bananarama spent most of their time forging a long lasting friendship with George Michael. The b-side of the single (feed the world) is an instrumental with christmas wishes from selected artists (which includes Bananarama). Very few female artistes appeared on the original Band Aid single - and none of them sung leads - infact only Bananarama, Jody Watley and Annie Lennox are cited as being the only women artistes on Band Aid. Five years later at Christmas 1989, Bananarama again were invited for the re-recording of Do They Know Its Christmas? with producers Stock, Aitken Waterman - making Keren & Sara the only singers to appear on both versions.

Written by: Sarah Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, Keren Woodward, Steve Jolley, Tony Swain
Produced by: Jolley & Swain
Published by: In A Bunch , J&S Music
Copyright owned by: London Records 1984
Source: Single (1984), Bananarama (1984), Bunch of Hits (1993)
Chart Peak: UK#58