Bananarama - Shy Boy (London)

A brand new song crisply written and produced by Imagination's production team. Sunny and singalong - when you hear it blaring from hordes of transistor radios on a hot day at your favourite seaside resort you'll forget about the sand in your sandwiches. (Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, June 24, 1982)

Bananarama - Cruel Summer (London)

It must be said, the quality of Bananarama records seems to depend a lot on who's working with them. Here they're back with Swain and Jolley, the chaps who made "Shy Boy" the great single it was, and this is certainly their best single since then. Includes a great dub version and, for some inscrutable reason, lots of jokes about trucking and CB radio with the girls all dressed up in scruffy overalls and toting monkey wrenches. Can't see it catching on, somehow. (Dave Rimmer, Smash Hits, July 7, 1983)

It won't bother them a jot but I've always found them to have the flattest, dullest, least committed voices of anyone currently parading pop. "Cruel Summer" thuds unconvincingly away with a variety of some five notes to choose from and if they were singing for their lives, they'd never have been around to make the pesky record. (Paul Sexton, Record Mirror, July 2, 1983)

Bananarama - Rough Justice (London)

"Rough Justice" succeeds in establishing a longer-lasting appeal than the bright poppy disposability of "Robert De Niro". What they lose in immediacy, they gain in endurance. Should be interesting to see how you pop-pickers respond to change. (Pedro, Record Mirror, May 19, 1984)