Penned by Christine McVie about new husband Eddie Quintela, it was McVie doing what she did best a simple song about the joys of new love. From the squall of 1977’s ‘White Riot’ to this 1982 parting shot. Mixing a punk sneer with rockabilly aggression, this track strutted into the mainstream, following the blast of ‘Rock The Casbah’ and managing to show what a diverse and eclectic bunch the quartet had grown into. Poised between staying or leaving both The Clash and girlfriend Ellen Foley, Mick Jones’s lyrics were appropriately propulsive. And until Cher came along with ‘Believe’, it made co-vocalist Grace Slick the oldest female singer to ever have a Number One hit. Written for the film Mannequin by Albert Hammond Jr’s dad (really!) after a messy break up, this was a soft rock anthem which remained atop of the UK singles charts for weeks and weeks. Chet Baker’s mournful trumpet solo – thought to be his last recorded performance – also added gravitas to the track. Penned from the perspective of ship workers in Britain at the time of the 1982 war, it was a bold message of non-compliance.
This brilliant, stately number was written by Elvis Costello as a much needed protest track against the Falklands war. Alongside Depeche Mode, OMD helped fly the flag for forward-looking British electro pop in the 80s. Named after the American plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, ‘Enola Gay’ married Andy McClusky’s brilliantly quizzical vocal and placed OMD’s unstoppable mesh of synths and programmed beats front and centre to create a pop classic. Both of which allowed Frank Black to emote over the top, going batshit in the vocal department. Written by Frank Black after he went scuba diving, the track landed in the middle of ‘Surfer Rosa’ in all its wild, wind swept glory, anchored by Kim Deal’s ‘ Ooh-Woo’’s and a simple guitar riff. It would be Dead Or Alive’s only real hit, but the influence of the disco/pop hybrid would cast a shadow over the late 80s charts in the form of S/A/W’s work with Jason/Kylie/Rick Astley etc. Produced by Stock, Aitken And Waterman, ‘You Spin Me Round’ spun a new disco web around Pete Burns’ catty vocal style. It was a musical tour de force too, combining ska, lovers rock and more into a cyclone of musical genre splicing – another example of The Clash mixing it all up to create something brilliant and new. Here the punk poet tackled Vietnam, immigration and gentrification. One could only imagine who the “ human trampoline” was though.Īlways a brilliant lyric writer, Joe Strummer’s narrative thrust on ‘Straight To Hell’ was multi-dimensional. Contemplating his life post- divorce from Carrie Fisher, the song meshed afro-pop with his wonderfully literate, singer/songwriter songwriting style and the results were typically unforgettable. Simon was in rare form on the title track on his pivotal 86 album.
Words: Ben Hewitt, Matthew Horton, Priya Elan. Here, however, we whittle down a decade of societal decadence and political decay into the 100 tracks that defined it.
We had New Order and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, U2, Prince and Cyndi Lauper, Springsteen, INXS, Bananarama, Duran Duran and the list goes on.
Whether you were donning your finest spandex and getting tiddly on Cinzano or putting on the leathers and devil-fingering to Guns’n’Roses, it’ll still go down as the most diverse, eclectic and extravagant decade in recent cultural history.