The mood in the Birds That Are Blue camp is still requiring an uplift. So we will continue with our theme of playlists by the decade - this time reaching the 1980s.
As with the previous two Decades playlist, the rules set were for it to be all great tunes (so, not necessarily what we think are the best) - all fairly well known songs, with nothing too obscure or long lost album tracks or B-Sides.
The one difference this time is that the playlist has twenty songs instead of the usual ten. Why? Because that was my decade (when I came of age, musically) and I make the rules......
1. Prince: Raspberry Beret
Perhaps the biggest musical genius of the decade; his rich tapestry of tunes could be marred by the odd eccentric distraction, but overall, Prince put out a solid bunch of bangers right across the decade. I was tempted to go with one of the first two I remember - 1999 or Little Red Corvette - but instead have gone for this great song, one of my personal favourites. There is a story about his hair in the video - his stylist, Earl Jones, recalled that his hair had been so badly damaged prior to shooting the video, "the hairstyle [in the video] was literally all I could do with it."
2. Madonna: Material Girl
Again, there can be no 80s playlist without Madge. And while True Blue is perhaps my favourite of her albums, this song is the one I remember made me a fan. It was the second single, from the second album, Like A Virgin, and along with the title track, is probably the song that truly launched her star globally. The song is quite literal - how to live a lavish lifestyle and find a man to provide that. The video mimics Marilyn Monroe doing Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend, from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
3. The Police: Message In A Bottle
As with all Police tracks, this is a sum of the parts. Somehow, this trio created a quite complex and dynamic sound between them. Stewart Copeland's intricate, jazz influenced drum patterns meshed tightly with Sting's bass lines - Andy Summers use of arpeggios and other intricate guitar patterns helped flesh the songs out. This is truly one of the greatest guitar riffs - of all time - he made it sound so simple (but it isn't). It is such a shame that they imploded when they did, because you always felt there were more great records in there - and also, we might not have had to suffer Sting's solo career!
4. REM: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
I came upon REM as the decade closed, when someone played me their latest album of the time (Green). I was hooked, and in a year or so, I had their entire back catalogue (six studio albums and a couple of odds and ends). This is from album #5, Document - it is be no means my favourite song of theirs - but it is great, and it is catchy and one of the best known from this era of the bands career. The opening snare trill opens up into Michael Stipe's grocery list of lyrics - his homage to Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues.
5. The Specials: Rat Race
The start of this decade would also have been the time I started to digest the BBCs iconic weekly music chart show, Top Of The Pops. It felt like every week in the early part of the decade you would get to see at least on the great bands of the time - which for me at the time, meant The Jam, Blondie, the Police, Madness (more on these elsewhere in the playlist) - and The Specials. I eulogised about their place in my musical heart when we lost Terry Hall last year, and they pumped so much great music in the four years of their original run. They began the new decade with this one, Rat Race, a non-album double A-Side (with Rude Buoys Outta Jail) that got them another top ten UK chart placing.
6. Kirsty MacColl: A New England
One of the great pure pop tunes of the 80s, full of vibrant, jangling guitar, this song was written by Billy Bragg in 1983, before MacColl got a hold of it in 1985. The opening line shows the impact that Simon and Garfunkel had on Bragg, "I was 21 years when I wrote this song, I'm 22 now, but won't be for long" is the same as in Leaves That Are Green, from 1966s Sound Of Silence. Reaching number 7, it became her biggest hit. She thought the two verses of Bragg's original was too short, so he wrote a third verse for her. After her tragic death, every he time he plays the song live, he now always sings that extra verse.
7. Icicle Works: Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)
A band that sadly passed me by at the time, until a university friend was taping something for me in 1991. There was twenty minutes left at the end of the tape, so they added a couple of Icicle Works tunes. What a band! In just four albums they traversed just about every genre of music. But this, the first single from debut album Icicle Works, was a straight up indie pop banger, with a healthy dose of the late 60s, all driven by Chris Sharrock's incredible and incessant drum track (using the ethos of hitting everything in his kit at least twice every second).
8. Simple Minds: Waterfront
While Icicle Works were taking their first steps in 1983, Simple Minds were laying out the groundworks for album number seven in five years. While Sparkle In The Rain wouldn't come out until early 1984, Waterfront paved the way the previous November. Well, not so much paved as bulldozered it! Propelled by Derek Forbes's driving bass line and Mel Gaynor's pulverising of his drumkit - what was lost from his previous melodic fluidity, was more than made up for with sheer ferocity. This song has provided a great gig opening on many occasions over the last 40 years (as seen in this version from the Verona live video in 1989)- a great way to get the crowd up and going.
9. Beastie Boys: No Sleep Til Brooklyn
Their better work, for the most part, would come in the following decades, but no one can deny the instant impact the Beastie Boys made on their arrival, with 1986s Licensed To Ill. While (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party was perhaps the big smash - and certainly at our school disco's around that time. But No Sleep provided us with "a raucous, rambunctious blend of rap, smart-ass and heavy metal" (Cash Box) - and with the added bonus of a guitar solo provided by Slayer's Kerry King.
10. Guns N Roses: Welcome To The Jungle
Appetite For Destruction was the album of our teenage years. By 'our' I mean my group of friends. In the late 80s, we all had disparate musical likes - there was the thrash metal guy, the hair metal brigade and even the one who liked Wham. But, the one record we all gravitated towards was this one - Sunday afternoons, kicking a football around on the village green and Jim's ghettoblaster going; 9 times out of 10, with this album playing. So, there had to be a song from it in this playlist. Sweet Child was the obvious choice, but too obvious (what a solo though), most of the rest are a bit too racy for the likes of this list, so it boiled down to a shootout between Paradise City and Welcome To The Jungle....
11. Public Enemy: Don't Believe The Hype
I didn't really get the hip hop scene at the time - at the time that groups like Public Enemy and NWA were coming to the fore, I was still largely listening to more middle of the road fare. But latterly, I realised just how important they were - both musically and socially. The lyrics focus on many of the political issues of the day in the US (this came out in 1988, as the Reagan era ended, to be replaced to by Bush Sr.), and interestingly, Chuck D said they were influenced by noted socio-political philosopher Noam Chomsky. This was the second single from second album, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, which more broadly took inspiration from the social commentary of Marvin Gaye's classic, What's Going On.
12. Blondie: Call Me
The music for this one was written by Giorgio Moroder, with lyrics by Debbie Harry, as it was the theme to the film American Gigolo. It was a bit of a monster, staying on top of the US chart for six weeks, and also hitting top spot in the UK and Canada. While the focus was almost always, inevitably, on Debbie Harry, the band were a more than capable foil. Generally, everyone played a part in their songs - Jimmy Destri would add some swirls of keyboard texture, Gary Valentine would propel them along with his bass lines and Frank Infante / Chris Stein came up with more than their fair share of catchy guitar riffs. This song is no exception, but it was also a showcase (like Dreaming the year before) for the thunderous talent of drummer, Clem Burke. I can imagine a young Chris Sharrock (see number 7) being in awe of Burke, as they both share a penchant for pounding the drums hard and frequently. But, there is something more about Clem - he has incredible power and control - oh, and he is always impeccably turned out!
13. Echo & The Bunnymen: Seven Seas
The Bunnymen's fourth album, 1984s Ocean Rain, produced two of their best singles, this one and the sublime The Killing Moon. The lyrics are somewhat wacky, and so is the video, and I absolutely love this song.
14. Duran Duran: Planet Earth
It possibly wasn't all that common for a young lad in the early 80s to be a fan of Duran Duran (at least out loud), but I was. This was their debut single, way back in 1981, and is perhaps less subtle and produced than their later work. But from the opening eerie whoosh of keyboards, pulsing bass and chiming guitar, to talk of new romantics and a lack of sound (alright, the lyrics aren't the best), this is new romanticism at its best. I think they haven't been given as much credit as they should have - but Duran Duran were a really good band musically, and even by this point, they were a pretty tight unit, having already been around in various forms since 1978.
15. Depeche Mode: New Life
While we're talking classic new romantics, how a bit of of Depeche Mode before they got darker. This was from the first album, Speak And Spell, and was written by Vince Clarke, which coincidentally is the line in the sand for the band; first album, with Vince, poppy and full of new romanticism; second album onwards, Vince has left and the band get gradually darker in tone. The later, darker stuff is fantastic, but I wanted something a bit poppier for this playlist.
16. Bryan Adams: Run To You
There was a time where I might have referred to Bryan Adams as a 'guilty pleasure', since it wasn't especially cool to like him, but more recently I have grown to realise that this isn't necessary. You either like the music, or you don't, but you shouldn't be embarrassed by what makes you happy (unless it's Coldplay, which is an unforgiveable choice). In the mid-80s, Adams was considered pretty much second only to The Boss is the pecking order of North American rock greats! Cuts Like A Knife had established him in the US, but follow up, Reckless, broke him around the world. If you just want straight up, no nonsense rock and aren't too worried about lyrical content etc. then this is a superb album (except Heaven, which is cringingly awful). Summer Of 69 is the go to track for most people, but I always preferred the slightly subtler Run To You. The video randomly features English actress Lysette Anthony, famous for Krull and British sitcom, Three Up, Two Down - and who was also in the videos for the next two singles, Somebody and Heaven.
17. The Go-Betweens: Bye Bye Pride
This may fall foul of my own 'no obscure' tracks rule - this song didn't chart in the UK, or even in their native Australia. But that us trumped by the rule that it is my list. The Go-Betweens are a band I was aware of in the 80s, but only properly came to in recent years. This particular tune has rapidly become one of my all time favourites. I've never been, but it feels like a sultry summer's evening in Brisbane, with Kristi Coulter writing for AllMusic about the melody, "at once soaring and stately", going onto say, "it's about as close to epic as the band ever got." Steve Kilbey of The Church, when picking his favourite all time Australian songs, said, "This song is so full of longing and regret and naïve hope.... I never could grow sick of this song."
18. The Smiths: This Charming Man
No self respecting 80s playlist could get away without including a Smiths track in it. Again, this might not always be my first choice, but a banger was ordered, and this song delivers. As ever, Johnny Marr displays exactly why he is revered as one of Britain's best guitarists of recent decades (guys, it's not all about really long solos) with the catchiest riff of the decade (no arguments please), while Messrs Rourke and Joyce provide one of the grooviest rhythms the Smiths ever produced - and this foils perfectly against Morrissey's delightfully morose lyrics about a cyclist with a puncture accepting a lift and then flirting with the driver.
19. U2: I Will Follow
Not everyone's cup of tea, I know, but two things about U2 for me, are absolute; The Joshua Tree is one of the best albums of all time; and their first three albums (Boy, October, War) are three fantastic examples of raw, post-punk music that are greatly underappreciated. I Will Follow is the first single from debut album Boy, and is a tribute to Bono's mother, who died when he was 14. It's strident opening guitar ushers in one of their most urgent songs - blistering and yet achingly beautiful ("A boy tries hard to be a man, his mother takes him by his hand, if he stops to think, he starts to cry, oh why?"). All of the early tracks come even more to life when they played them live - there is something about U2 in those early live clips that is so vibrant and wonderful.
20: Big Country: Fields Of Fire
A playlist of big, 80s bangers, needs to end with an anthem. Fields Of Fire is that. I won't say much more, as I could wax lyrical about Stuart Adamson for hours. This New Year's Eve show at the Barrowlands in Glasgow (1983/84) is one of those live shows you wish you could have been at. It's a home crowd, the sweat drips from the ceiling and the song resonates around the hall and across the years.
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