Get Even

Get Even is the debut album of British boy band/pop group Brother Beyond, released on EMI/Parlophone label, in two different editions, both in 1988, generally referred to as Get Even I and Get Even II. The second edition of the album saw two tracks written by the band replaced with ones produced by Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW).

The album's songs were composed between 1986, when their very first single "I Should Have Lied" - the only one Brother Beyond single not to make the UK Top 75 - was issued, and 1988, the year of the album's release. The two SAW tracks, "The Harder I Try" and "He Ain't No Competition", were added to the album after EMI won the production team's services at a charity auction and became the band's only UK Top 10 hits.

Like many British bands at the time (such as Patsy Kensit's Eighth Wonder during their earlier period), Brother Beyond enjoyed more success in continental Europe than at home, especially in Italy where their second single "How Many Times" (which only made it to Number 62 in the UK) was a big hit in 1987. In their native Great Britain it would take until the Summer of the following year and the release of the Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman produced track "The Harder I Try" for the band to score a hit. The song reached Number 2 in the UK Singles Chart, held from the top spot by Phil Collins' multi-million seller "A Groovy Kind of Love". "The Harder I Try" famously samples the drum intro from The Isley Brothers' "This Old Heart of Mine", and indeed the song has a distinct Motown feel. The same can be said of its successor "He Ain't No Competition", which reached Number 6 in November 1988. The 12" version of the song had already topped the Hi-NRG charts in October, knocked off by the Samantha Fox cover of "I Only Wanna Be with You", again produced by SAW.

Brother Beyond's final significant hits were two remixed versions of self-penned Get Even II album tracks: "Be My Twin", which got to Number 14 in January 1989, and "Can You Keep a Secret?", which got to Number 22 in April (the first version of the song had been released as the band's fourth single, reaching Number 56 in 1987). The latter would be the last significantly successful single for the group in the UK ("Drive On", the first single from their second and last album Trust would only reach Number 39 and the title-track "Trust" Number 53).

Get Even also spawned a 57-minute live video concert, entitled Brother Beyond - The Get Even Tour - Live 1989, issued in VHS format, in 1991, the same year of release of the band's final single, "The Girl I Used to Know", which bombed in Great Britain (Number 48), but was a minor hit in the USA. The group broke up shortly after its release.