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.
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