Nasty Little Record

It is not unusual for a sports star to flex his or her vocal cords, and over the years it seems that almost anyone who has enjoyed a modicum of fame on the sports field has been coerced into the recording studio. And thank goodness for that, for without singing sporting celebrities this blog would have petered out long ago.

 

Some have produced something listenable – although I really am struggling to think of an example right now – but, and let’s be honest here, most are downright despicable. As is the effort I bring you today, with both sides of the 1987 single by tennis bad boy Ilie ‘Nasty’ Năstase, Globe Trotter Lover, and Pour Être Un Homme (To Be a Man).

 

Born in 1946, in Bucharest, Romania, Năstase was one of the world’s top players during the 1970s, and the World No. 1 1973 and 1974. He is one of only six players in history to win more than 100 ATP professional titles, and has won seven Grand Slam titles, four Masters Grand Prix year-end championship titles, and seven Championship Series titles. In 1991 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 2005, Tennis magazine ranked him as the 28th-best player of the preceding forty years. Pretty impressive. He’s also a major sleaze bag, reprimanded for inappropriate comments towards female tennis players (including the former Mrs. James Bond and World Number Three women’s singles player Pam Shriver), racist remarks towards Serena Williams’ then-unborn baby (at a press conference Năstase was heard to say, ‘Let’s see what colour it has. Chocolate with milk?’), and for calling Johanna Konta and Anne Keothavong ‘fucking bitches’. These last few acts finally led to his suspension from the World tennis Federation. The following year he was arrested twice within a six-hour span for drink-driving, and for driving through a red light.

 

The failed mayoral candidate can’t sing, either. Although in all fairness he doesn’t even attempt to sing on the B-side, simply reeling off the words in a matter of fact (or is it ‘can’t be arsed’) style.

 

The disc was recorded and released specifically for the French market; with both sides co-written by French songwriters Hervé Faure Lacaussade and Mario Santangeli, and produced by French musician Christian Delagrange. Financed at least in part by his sponsors Adidas, I haven’t tried too hard to translate the lyrics, but the A-side seems to have been based on Năstase’s biographer’s claim of his having slept with 2,500 women. The flip side is some tossed-off nonsense about how hard it is to be a man from his hometown. Perhaps. Do you really care? He certainly didn’t, complaining to one interviewer that, ‘They put it together, I said I cannot do this.’

 

Bizarrely, this horrible little disc, which took Năstase two whole weeks to record, reached Number Three in the French pop charts, and ‘Nasty’ was asked to appear on several TV shows to promote the disc. In June 1987 he appeared on the well-known entertainment show Champs Elysee, where he actually performed the song live, accompanied by dancers and a small choir. By the time it became a hit he must have softened to the idea, telling the host of the show that ‘A friend from Adidas asked me to do this. At first, I thought it was weird, then I liked it.’

 

See what you think.

 

Download Globe HERE

Download Pour HERE