With the first anniversary of their celebrated album Danse Macabre approaching, Duran Duran announce Danse Macabre De Luxe; a revamped version of the original, set for digital release on 11 October with CD and boxset formats on 25 October via Tape Modern under exclusive licence to BMG.

Danse Macabre De Luxe features three new bonus tracks, including an instrumental entitled Masque of the Pink Death, a cover of ELO’s Evil Woman and New Moon (Dark Phase), featuring Andy Taylor. New Moon (Dark Phase) is a reimagined version of their classic song New Moon On Monday from their album Seven And The Ragged Tiger. Listen below:

Just in time for Halloween, Danse Macabre De Luxe also features the original collection of 13 songs, including haunting covers of Billie Eilish’s Bury A Friend, Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer featuring Victoria De Angelis, The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black, and The Specials’ Ghost Town, plus new versions of Duran Duran classics from their own catalogue.

Guest artists include producer, guitarist, and composer Nile Rodgers, Victoria De Angelis of Måneskin , and former Duran Duran band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. Exquisitely packaged, the record features images adapted from a collection of authentic vintage séance photos that band member Nick Rhodes sourced at auction.

Spooky Season

Speaking on the new release, Nick Rhodes says: “When we released our Danse Macabre project last year it was born from a spontaneous decision to pull together a record which celebrated the madness and joy of Halloween. In doing so, we unlocked an unexpected box of curiosity and creativity, which led us to reimagine some of our older songs, record cover versions of some of our favourites, and write several new pieces.

“This year, the inspiration was somehow still lingering, and I loved the idea of expanding the collection, because we could… Why not add some of the songs that we considered initially now that we had the luxury of a little more time? This thought resulted in another new song, a cover of the ELO classic, Evil Woman, and a remake of New Moon on Monday.

“The Danse Macabre De Luxe vinyl boxset also includes several additional tracks which make it even more special. This somehow feels like justice for vinyl collectors!”

The Danse Macabre De Luxe limited-edition vinyl box set includes 3 LPs comprising the original 13-track 2LP Danse Macabre release and a bonus LP featuring seven new tracks, four of which are not available in any other format. The Halloween-inspired box includes a spirit board, metal planchette, bespoke tarot cards, four art prints, and a booklet.

Danse Macabre – De Luxe Tracklist

Masque Of The Pink Death*
Nightboat
Black Moonlight
Love Voudou
Bury A Friend
Supernature
Evil Woman*
Danse Macabre
Secret Oktober 31st
Ghost Town
Paint It Black
Super Lonely Freak
New Moon (Dark Phase)*
Spellbound
Psycho Killer (Feat. Victoria De Angelis)
Confession In The Afterlife
* New Track

2LP (Original Danse Macabre Album)

Nightboat
Black Moonlight
Love Voudou
Bury A Friend
Supernature
Danse Macabre
Secret Oktober 31st
Ghost Town
Paint It Black
Super Lonely Freak
Spellbound
Psycho Killer (Feat. Victoria De Angelis)
Confession In The Afterlife

Bonus LP

A1.Evil Woman*
A2. New Moon (Dark Phase)
A3. Spooky – [Brides Of Duracula Track]*
B1. The Visitor – [Instrumental]*
B2. Instructions For A Séance – [Spoken Word Track From Nick Rhodes]*
B3. Masque Of The Pink Death – [Instrumental]*
B4. Dialogues Of The Dead – [Instrumental]*
* New Track

Pre-order/save Danse Macabre De Luxe here.

The original version of Danse Macabre, Duran Duran’s 16th studio album, is also available to listen or buy here

On Sale Now: Classic Pop Presents – Duran Duran Volume 2

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As part of the 40-year celebrations of The Age of Consent, Bronski Beat’s legacy will be celebrated in a special concert. The Chateau and the Southbank Centre present The Age of Consent as never heard before, in a special concert featuring reimagined versions by groundbreaking queer and trans contemporary artists.

Bronski Beat’s The Age Of Consent 40 Live concert takes place at The Southbank Centre on 19 October. In addition to the 9pm performance, an earlier show has been announced for 6pm.

“We are absolutely thrilled to be welcoming such an incredible line up of diverse, unique artists to reimagine this album live onstage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall,” says event programmer and producer Laurie Belgrave. “This show has always been about Bronski Beat and their legacy. But it’s also about so much more, and the voices of these artists play a crucial role in updating the message of this record and drawing the through line to today.”

The full line-up (in alphabetical order):

BISHI
Luca Manning
PLANNINGTOROCK
Tawiah
Tom Rasmussen
Tony Njoku
The Pink Singers

“The fight for queer and trans liberation continues,” Belgrave continues. “We have come so far since 1984, but the message of this record is still just as important as ever.”

The Age of Consent was a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ cultural history, as Jimmy Somerville, Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek took the charts by storm with era defining hits Smalltown Boy, Why, and their new brand of bold, political synth-pop.

A small portion of low-income tickets are held back for LGBTQ+ community members, these guests can DM @the_chateau_ or email [email protected] for details. Tickets  are strictly limited and will be given on a first come served basis. Book here.

The 40th Anniversary deluxe re-issue of The Age of Consent will be released on 18 October. Pre-order here.

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ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY ➔

Our special issue of Classic Pop Presents Duran Duran Volume 2 has landed!

In the first half of the 80s, Duran Duran were the ultimate poster boys of British pop, taking over the charts and inciting mass hysteria wherever they went. But they’re also a band that has stood firm as the musical climate changed rapidly around them, to stand the test of time and rise again. In 2022, they rightfully took their place in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

In this essential second volume of Classic Pop Presents, we speak exclusively to Nick Rhodes about the band’s exciting plans for 2025 in a brand new interview. Plus, we go deeper into the history of the group – returning to their formative years in the Birmingham scene via intimate extracts and rare early photos – and take a look at their incendiary debut LP and the explosion of Duranmania that followed.

Also in this issue…

︎ Interview: Erol Alkan & the making of Future Past
︎ Album Insights: Duran Duran, Big Thing, Thank You, Pop Trash, Astronaut, Red Carpet Massacre, and All You Need Is Now
︎ Top 40: B-Sides, bonus tracks and curios
︎ Archive Interview: Nick Rhodes reflects on the release of Medazzaland
︎ Top 20: Duran Duran collaborations
︎ Alex Sadkin: We remember the late producer of Seven And The Ragged Tiger
︎ Pop Art: Durandy and the largest collection of Duran posters in the world

All this and much, much more in the second volume of Classic Pop Presents Duran Duran. Order today and choose between two stunning covers – or get both to add to your collection, and enjoy an exclusive discounted rate!

CHOOSE YOUR COLLECTOR’S COVER ➔

You can also find your in store here, or click here to purchase the digital edition.

The post On Sale Now – Duran Duran Volume 2! appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Holly Johnson has announced his Welcome To The Pleasuredome UK Tour celebrating four decades of the groundbreaking debut album by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The six date tour for June 2025 includes shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall and a major homecoming at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena.

Following his critically acclaimed 2023 shows, Holly Johnson returns to the stage with a brand-new production featuring the timeless hits that made Frankie Goes to Hollywood one of the most influential bands of the 80s. Fans can expect to hear iconic anthems like the chart-topping Relax, Two Tribes, and the ethereal The Power of Love.

Following Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s split in 1987, Johnson made his first solo debut, the UK No.1 Blast, in 1989, and scored chart success with the singles Love Train, Americanos and Atomic City.  In 2023 Frankie reunited to open the Eurovision Song Contest.

Holly Johnson – Welcome To The Pleasuredome Tour 2025

Friday 06 June Birmingham Symphony Hall
Monday 09 June London Royal Albert Hall
Thursday 12 June Bath The Forum
Sunday 15 June Newcastle O2 City Hall
Wednesday 18 June Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Saturday 21 June Liverpool M&S Bank Arena

To coincide with the tour, a new exhibition, The Holly Johnson Story, opens at the Museum of Liverpool on 14 September 2024, running until 27 July 2025.

This landmark exhibit explores the life and career of the iconic singer, from his Liverpool roots to international fame. It will feature costumes, memorabilia, personal stories of those impacted by HIV, and Holly’s own artwork. The exhibition promises a journey through his triumphs and struggles, showcasing him as a groundbreaking LGBTQ+ icon. For more information click here.

Tickets for Welcome To The Pleasuredome 40th Anniversary Tour go on sale Friday 13 September at 9.30a. Visit gigsandtours, Ticketmaster or hollyjohnson.com.

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British reggae icons UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell get ‘Up Close and Personal’ for two UK shows to round off 2024.

UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell will play London’s Eventim Apollo on 3 December, and Wolverhampton Civic Hall on 5 December. These shows will be two of the most intimate UK shows the band have performed in many years, following on from several sold out arena tours over the last decade which have cemented their legacy as the UK’s most successful Reggae band of all time.

​On the shows, Ali Campbell says: “We love doing these intimate shows, it’s always such a great atmosphere. This is the perfect way to end the year of fantastic shows we’ve had all around the globe. Big love, Ali x”

UK Reggae Legends

UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell have sold over 70 million records worldwide, including over 50 hits in the UK Singles Charts alone, all propelled by one of the greatest voices in UK music, let alone reggae, Ali Campbell.

​With accolades including an Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement, alongside Grammy and BRIT Award nominations, as well as a recent induction into the Music Walk of Fame on Camden High Street; Ali has been recognised for his incredible mark on bringing reggae music to the masses.

For over 45 years the band’s ubiquitous hits such as Cherry Oh Baby, Many Rivers to Cross, Kingston Town, (I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You, I Got You Babe, and of course, Red Red Wine’ have resonated worldwide, with audiences in all corners of the globe clamouring to see them live.

Pre-sale starts on Wednesday 11 September, at 10am, with venue pre-sales on Thursday 12 September, at 10am.

Tickets for the shows will go on general sale from 10am on Friday 13 September at 10am.

To book click here

Read More: When British reggae was king

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Moseley Folk & Arts Festival, Birmingham, 30 August to 1 September 2024
★★★★☆

Classic Pop heads to a folk festival to find Dexys, Belle And Sebastian, and CMAT all kicking up a storm.

 Nestled in a private park in a Brum suburb, Moseley Folk Festival has long taken a flexible approach to the term ‘folk’. So while there’s the clear tones of such established folk faves as Kate Rusby, the festival’s broad programming ensures Classic Pop’s interest is piqued.

There have been numerous heir apparents to The Pogues’ punk/folk crown, with Friday evening’s Flogging Molly one possible successor. Fizzing with a rock energy, it may come as no surprise to learn that grinning frontman Dave King made his name with forgotten rockers Fastway – a band whose discography includes the soundtrack to Trick Or Treat, one of the ’80s best teen horror flicks.

Spirited and with an infectious glee, the Irish/American combo give headliners The Levellers a run for their money. But Lev’s tracks such as One Way – with it’s loose, almost baggy, groove – get the crowd moving.

Day two sees the site invaded by cowboy hat’n’boot wearing festival-goers, in honour of Irish songwriter CMAT. In ascendant – BRIT Award nomination, Mercury Prize shortlist etc – Ciara is every inch the star, falling to the floor, bursting into dance routines, high-kicking while strumming…

Amusingly referring to herself as a “global celebrity teen pop sensation,” she acknowledges the personal impact of folk music with a beautifully delicate Willy O’ Winsbury. A century’s old trad’ ballad (learnt via Pentangle), the song’s debut makes for a very special moment in an all-too-short set.

Dexys Deliver

CMAT’s a hard act to follow, but headliner Dexys pull out all the stops. With Kevin Rowland’s distinctive powerful voice to the fore, the lithe six-piece have arguably never sounded better. Beginning with The Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody their set combines many of the big hits – Geno, Jackie Wilson – with a smidgen of The Feminine Divine Tour’s theatricality and drama.

For those au fait with Dexys’ extensive oeuvre, their verbal jousting is no surprise. However, when sideman Sean Read directs a trio of insults into the audience, and Kev’ storms off stage swearing, their head-on exploration of toxic masculinity and misogyny leaves pockets of the audience visibly shocked. In front of a festival crowd predominantly here for the hits, and without the context of the full The Feminine Divine production, their astonishment is understandable.

Thankfully, Kev’ and crew swiftly power back with the stomping Celtic soul of Come On Eileen, and it’s time to ‘Too-rye-ay …’.

It’s a flawless performance by one of pop’s true mavericks – just a shame those unaware of the staged nature of the earlier exchange are left reeling.

There’s no such provocations with Sunday’s headliner, Belle and Sebastian.

Once dismissed as ‘twee’, B&S are without question one of the all-time great Scottish pop bands. Their perfectly formed bedsit dramas showing an absolute mastery of the form, with such newer tunes as Do You Follow and Come On Home underlining their continuing maturity. There’s an unpretentiousness about the band, who host a stage invasion during The Boy With The Arab Strap with open arms.

Impossible not to love, they make for a positive and life-affirming conclusion to a surprising and enjoyable Moseley Folk Festival.

David Vincent

For more on Moseley Folk Festival click here.

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Pet Shop Boys release Nonetheless ‘expanded edition’  featuring four bonus tracks and demos of all the album songs.

Following their headline show at BBC Radio 2 in the Park in Preston, Pet Shop Boys have announced the release of a special expanded edition of their latest album, Nonetheless, on Parlophone Records.

Released on 22 November in a variety of formats, Nonetheless ‘expanded edition’ will feature the full Nonetheless album including the singles Loneliness, Dancing star, A new bohemia and Feel plus four new bonus songs and the original demo versions of all the tracks on the album.

The bonus tracks include two cover versions: the David Bowie-penned All The Young Dudes and the 1967 soul song The Dark End Of The Street. There are also two tracks originally recorded during the Nonetheless sessions: a version of the classical composition Miserere by Gregorio Allegri and a Pet Shop Boys original titled Adrenaline.

All these new tracks were produced by James Ford and All The Young Dudes and The Dark End Of The Street have orchestral arrangements by Anne Dudley. All The Young Dudes was originally performed live by Pet Shop Boys and the BBC Concert Orchestra in February this year for the BBC Radio 2 ‘Piano Room’ sessions. Afterwards Neil and Chris decided they would like to record a new studio version of the Bowie classic.

The demo versions of the album tracks were originally recorded and produced by Pet Shop Boys from 2020-2022 and mixed by Pete Gleadall.

Nonetheless ‘expanded edition’

LP1 – Nonetheless

1. Loneliness
2. Feel
3. Why am I dancing?
4. New London boy
5. Dancing star
6. A new bohemia
7. The schlager hit parade
8. The secret of happiness
9. Bullet for Narcissus
10. Love is the law

LP2 – Bonus

1. All the young dudes
2. Adrenaline
3. The dark end of the street
4. Miserere

LP3 – Demos

1. Loneliness (Demo version)
2. Feel (Demo version)
3. Why am I dancing? (Demo version)
4. New London boy (Demo version)
5. Dancing star (Demo version)
6. A new bohemia (Demo version)
7. The schlager hit parade (Demo version)
8. The secret of happiness (Demo version)
9. Bullet for Narcissus (Demo version)
10. Love is the law (Demo version)

CD 1 – Nonetheless

1. Loneliness
2. Feel
3. Why am I dancing?
4. New London boy
5. Dancing star
6. A new bohemia
7. The schlager hit parade
8. The secret of happiness
9. Bullet for Narcissus
10. Love is the law

CD 2 – Bonus & Demos

1. All the young dudes
2. Adrenaline
3. The dark end of the street
4. Miserere
5. Loneliness (demo version)
6. Feel (demo version)
7. Why am I dancing? (demo version)
8. New London boy (demo version)
9. Dancing star (demo version)
10. A new bohemia (demo version)
11. The schlager hit parade (demo version)
12. The secret of happiness (demo version)
13. Bullet for Narcissus (demo version)
14. Love is the law (demo version)

Pet Shop Boys released their 15th album, Nonetheless, produced by James Ford, on Parlophone Records in April. The record reached No.2 in the UK album chart in its first week of release – their highest-charting studio album since 1993. In July they concluded the latest UK and European dates of their ‘Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live’ tour with a sold-out residency at London’s Royal Opera House.

Nonetheless ‘expanded edition’ is available to buy in a triple black vinyl set, double CD set and digitally, and can be pre-ordered now. Click here

Read more: Pet Shop Boys – Nonetheless album review

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Sting releases new single, I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart), before headlining Radio 2 In The Park.

I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart), is Sting’s first new song since his 2021 album The Bridge and sees the 17-time Grammy Award winning artist and his three-piece rock combo uncork a variation of  the rhythm that conquered the world… “The Bo Diddley Beat”.

From its West African origins and its “3-2 clave” incarnation in Latin music to its prominent feature in Bo Diddley’s 1955 self-titled single, the legendary beat has fuelled some of the most driving songs in the entire rock music canon.

With formidable, musical contributions from Dominic Miller on guitar, Chris Maas on drums and Martin Kierszenbaum on organ, Sting sings, plays bass and applies his own electric guitar flourishes. The track – in which Sting growls a gritty, blues melody – is a 3-minute and 22-second manifesto for his new “STING 3.0” three-piece configuration.

Watch the video for I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart) below:

STING 3.0

Sting has sold 100 million albums worldwide from his combined work as one of the most distinctive solo artists in the world and former frontman of The Police. A composer, singer-songwriter, actor, author and activist, Sting also has received a Golden Globe, four Oscar nominations, a Tony nomination, Billboard Magazine’s Century Award and Kennedy Center Honors.

Sting’s support for human rights organisations such as the Rainforest Fund, Amnesty International, and Live Aid mirrors his art in its universal outreach.  Along with wife Trudie Styler, Sting founded the Rainforest Fund in 1989 to protect both the world’s rainforests and the indigenous people living there.

STING 3.0 will headline the BBC’s Radio 2 In The Park concert in Preston on Saturday 7 September before launching a North American tour on 17 and 18 September at the Fillmore Theater in Detroit.

For more on Sting and complete US tour information click here

Read our classic album feature on The Police – Synchronicity

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Jamiroquai celebrates the 30th anniversary of The Return Of The Space Cowboy with vinyl reissue.

The second album from the acid jazz and funk collective fronted by vocalist Jay Kay,  will be reissued as a double-LP set in “moon grey” vinyl and includes Michael Gray’s Good Vibe Zone edit of Space Cowboy – which has never been released on a physical product.

The packaging has also been re-designed for this anniversary release including foil enhancement of the original cover design.

Out Of This World

The Return Of The Space Cowboy is the follow up album to the band’s huge 1993 debut, Emergency On Planet Earth. Released just one year later it was met with great critical and public acclaim. Certified Platinum in the UK, Japan and France, it achieved chart success in multiple countries and spawned the single Space Cowboy which remains one of their biggest tracks to date.

Its singles Half the Man and Stillness In Time reached No.15 and No.9, respectively, on the UK Singles Chart, while Space Cowboy and Light Years peaked at No.1 and No.6 on the US Dance Charts

For many, this album is defined by some of the most complex songwriting the band have ever produced and Jay Kay called it “one of our most creative and accomplished albums”.

On this 30th anniversary edition of the album Space Cowboy gets a modern dance makeover courtesy of DJ Michael Gray, shedding new light on the track and emphasising it’s already infectious groove.

Tracklist:

SIDE A
Just Another Story
Stillness in Time
Half the Man
SIDE B
Light Years
Manifest Destiny
The Kids
SIDE C
Mr Moon
Scam
Journey to Arnhemland
SIDE D
Morning Glory
Space Cowboy
Space Cowboy (Michael Gray’s Good Vibe Zone, Edit)

To be released on 18 October, The Return Of The Space Cowboy is available to pre-order here

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Season 2 of Transmissions: The Definitive Story of Joy Division & New Order, comes to streaming sites.

The series, featuring new and exclusive interviews with band members Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert and Peter Hook, picks up where Season 1 ended with the rise of New Order and the release of Blue Monday. 

Narrated by BBC Radio’s Elizabeth Alker, Season 2 finds the band members adjusting to the surprise global success of Blue Monday... Quincy Jones is knocking down their door with offers of a US record deal, John Hughes is hunting them down for soundtrack work, New York’s hippest producers are lining up to get in the studio and huge US success beckons.

But as New Order’s profile grows, so too do the demands and excesses and the band begin to realise just how far they’ve come, and to question how far the road might take them. This series documents arena tours, Ibizan insanity, a behind-the-scenes look at the chaotic peak of the Haçienda, the creation of three more classic albums Brotherhood (1986) Technique (1989) Republic (1993) and a certain timeless soccer World Cup anthem… World In Motion.

Changing Times

Speaking about New Order’s career to date, singer Bernard Sumner says:“If you do it the way everyone else does it, you might have more success. But it’ll be a short burn, whereas with the way New Order did it, it made us more interesting. But it wasn’t intentional though, we just did what we wanted to do and didn’t really listen to anyone.”

Talking about New Order’s 80s success in the US, drummer Stephen Morris, reveals: “America had never heard of Joy Division. In England and Europe at the time there was still this thing where you get people coming to see you, expecting you to play Love Will Tear Us Apart. Whereas in America, they would approach you with an open mind, and the fact that the audiences did get bigger justified our bloody mindedness with not being Joy Division…”

Guest Contributions

Transmissions: The Definitive Story of Joy Division & New Order includes special guest contributors from: Johnny Marr, Billy Corgan, Christine And The Queens, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, Keith Allen, Peter Saville, Andrew O’Hagan, Arthur Baker, Kevin Cummins, DJ Paulette, Megan Louise, The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands, Paul Morley, Jo Whiley, Kevin Saunderson, Tarquin Gotch, Will Sergeant, Virgil Abloh, Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Mike Pickering, Neil Tennant, Daniel Avery, Charlie Gunn and Bez.

Billy Corgan, of the Smashing Pumpkins, recounts standing in a club and hearing Blue Monday for the first time: “I’m standing there and it’s a normal night. And for the first time, here comes the kick drum for Blue Monday. As the kick drum hit, everybody in the club started running to the dance floor. Running. So it instantly went from like 30 people to 300 in seconds. And I’m like, ‘What is happening?’ I’m getting chills even just thinking about the moment. And it was like, Oh my God, I’m hearing a song I will hear for the rest of my life. I saw my generation go, ‘This is the song’.

Tom Rowlands, The Chemical Brothers, says: “I think the key to them is the strength of the individual voices in the band. And each individual voice being so recognisable on the record. It’s insane, really, they get it all to fit into these songs, every single person in that band has a voice that would carry a whole other band.”

Episodes of Transmissions: The Definitive Story of Joy Division & New Order will be released weekly via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Read More: Top 40 synth-pop songs

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New Order announce Brotherhood ‘Definitive’, a new remastered boxset for their fourth studio album.

Available in 2CD, 2DVD and 1LP, Brotherhood is the fourth in the New Order series of limited edition Definitive boxsets which includes Movement (2019), Power, Corruption & Lies (2020) and Low-Life (2023). Also being made available are reissues of the respective 12″ singles Bizarre Love Triangle, State Of The Nation and Touched By The Hand Of God with corresponding B-sides.

Unreleased Tracks & Demos

Written, recorded and produced by New Order, Brotherhood was originally released via Factory Records in September 1986 and peaked at No.9 in the UK Albums Charts.

This new collection for Brotherhood includes the album remastered on vinyl and CD and 2CD which features nine unreleased tracks and demos from a recording session in Japan in 1985 and a 2DVD with live performances from Brixton Academy (1987), G-Mex Manchester (1986), Glastonbury and TV shows from UK and Europe, all previously unavailable on DVD.

Also announced is Season 2 of Transmissions: The Definitive Story of Joy Division & New Order, featuring brand new and exclusive interviews with band members Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert and Peter Hook alongside special guest contributors.

New episodes will be released weekly via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, and wherever you get your podcasts. Read more here

Read more: Album By Album – New Order

 BROTHERHOOD ‘DEFINITIVE’ – TRACKLIST

CD1 Brotherhood (2024 Remaster) 

Paradise
Weirdo
As It Is When It Was
Broken Promise
Way of Life
Bizarre Love Triangle
All Day Long
Angel Dust
Every Little Counts
State of the Nation

Written and produced by New Order. Recorded at Jam Studios, London Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin; Amazon Studios, Liverpool. Engineered by Michael Johnson. 2024 mastering by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios, London.

CD2 Extras

Shellshock (AOR Version) *
State Of The Nation (Japan Demo) *
Paradise (Robert Racic Remix)
As It Is When It Was (Japan Demo) *
Broken Promise (Instrumental) *
Bizarre Love Triangle (Stephen Hague 12” Remix) *
All Day Long (Instrumental) *
Evil Dust
Every Little Counts (Full Length) *
Salvation Theme
Skullcrusher (Full Length) *
Touched By The Hand Of God (Salvation Version)
Let’s Go (Salvation Version)
Sputnik
Blue Monday 1988 (Michael Johnson 12” Remix) *

(* previously unreleased)

Compiled by Stephen Morris, Andrew Robinson and James Zeiter. 2024 mastering by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios, London. Japanese demo session, tracks 2, and 4, Denon Studios, Tokyo. Album session outtakes, tracks 5, 7, 8, and 9, Jam Studios, London, Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin and Amazon Studios Liverpool.

Vinyl LP

Brotherhood (2024 Remaster)
A1 Paradise
A2 Weirdo
A3 As It Is When It Was
A4 Broken Promise
A5 Way of Life
B1 Bizarre Love Triangle
B2 All Day Long
B3 Angel Dust
B4 Every Little Counts

DVD1

Live at the Academy Brixton, 1987
Bizarre Love Triangle
The Perfect Kiss
Ceremony
Dreams Never End
Love Vigilantes
Confusion
Age Of Consent
Temptation
TV Appearances
BBC Northern Ireland – Channel One 1986.
Ceremony
Love Will Tear Us Apart
The Tube 1986.
State Of The Nation
Broken Promise
Top of the Pops 1987.
True Faith
Les Enfants du Rock, Rockline  1987.
Paradise
Bizarre Love Triangle
The Roxy, 1987.   
True Faith
11pm, 1987.
Bizarre Love Triangle
Extra Material
Stephen’s Fly On The Wall Documentary 1985.
Recording As It Is and State Of The Nation at Denon Studios, Tokyo (May 1985).

DVD2

Live at the G-Mex, Manchester, 19/07/86.
Elegia
Shellshock
Paradise
Bizarre Love Triangle
Way Of Life
State Of The Nation
Face Up
The Perfect Kiss
Ceremony
Temptation
Glastonbury, 1987.
True Faith
Sister Ray
San Giovanni, 1986.
Dreams Never End
Pier 84, New York, 1987.  
All Day Long
Angel Dust
Shellshock
Weirdo
Rapido, Paris 1987.
True Faith
G-Mex, Manchester, 1988.
Touched By the Hand of God
Every Little Counts

Brotherhood Associated 12″ Singles

Bizarre Love Triangle b/ Bizarre Dub Triangle
State Of The Nation b/ Shame Of The Nation
Touched By The Hand Of God b/ Touched By The Hand Of

For more information click here.

Brotherhood ‘Definitive’ is released via Warner Music on 22 November. To pre-order click here.

Read our classic album feature on Brotherhood

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Delving into the Boomslang-era archive, Johnny Marr shares previously unheard recording of The Way That It Was with his band the Healers.

The previously unreleased song, taken from the upcoming special edition release of the Johnny Marr + the Healers’ album Boomslang (Deluxe), follows the release of All Out Attack.

Listen The Way That It Was below:

Exciting Period

First released in 2003, Boomslang will now be available in its entirety for the first time from 20 September.

In addition to the album’s 11 original songs, Boomslang (Deluxe) offers fans more new and unheard music. Seven previously unreleased archive recordings from the Healers era, titled All Out Attack, You Are The Magic (Union Mix), Get Me Wrong, A Woman Like You, a cover of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, plus the extended mix of original album track Get Me Wrong’(Instrumental Version), and The Way That It Was will all feature on the album for the first time.

After becoming a member of The Pretenders, The The, Electronic, Neil Finn’s 7 Worlds Collide, and writing and performing with Pet Shop Boys, Bryan Ferry, Kirsty MacColl, Talking Heads, Beck and countless others, Johnny Marr + the Healers formed by chance.

The guitarist first met drummer Zak Starkey following a Who concert at Madison Square Garden in the summer of 1999. Former Kula Shaker bassist Alonza Bevan joined the pair later. Percussionist Liz Bonney emerged from Byron Bay with Lee Spencer’s synth wizardry in tow. Adam Gray summoned his slide guitar for the ‘Electro-Cosmic-Blues’ and, united by chemistry and cosmic energy, the Healers came into existence.

Cosmic Energy

Boomslang was inspired by the far-reaching sounds of Faust, Boards Of Canada, Neu, Bert Jansch, and literature by Madame Blavatsky, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. The ethos was to create an interesting rock record to space out to. A six piece band seeking an alternative to the 1990s British indie zeitgeist.

Reflecting on Boomslang, Johnny Marr said:  “Everything was about discovery. Twenty years on, I’m pleased we created the music and this new release of Boomslang has given me the opportunity to revisit it and present some songs that we weren’t able to include the first time around. The Healers was something special that happened to me and I’m grateful that it did. A special group of people in a special moment in time.”

Revisit A Special Moment In Time

Boomslang will be released on formats including 2LP 180g vinyl, 2CD and HD streaming/download. The 2LP edition includes five additional tracks, The Way That It Was, All Out Attack, Get Me Wrong, Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right and A Woman Like You.

The 2CD and digital versions also include You Are The Magic (Union Mix) and Get Me Wrong (Instrumental Version). The album is newly mastered by original Boomslang engineer, Frank Arkwright.

To pre-order Boomslang click here

Read more: The Smiths – the complete guide

The post Johnny Marr shares previously unheard recording appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Breathing fresh life into old classics or radically reinventing them, we celebrate 20 of the finest 80s cover versions

The hit cover version is something of a rarity in today’s increasingly irrelevant charts. Why bother settling for a copy when the original is only ever a mouse click away? Back in the 80s, however, pop acts could help breathe new life into a song that wasn’t always readily available elsewhere, and in some cases, even get away with passing them off as their own. Ignoring any carbon copies (hence no Joan Jett & The Blackhearts’ straightforward take on Arrows’ I Love Rock And Roll, for example) and sticking entirely to UK Top 20 hits, here’s a look at the decade’s very best.

20 The Communards – Don’t Leave Me This Way

Jimmy Somerville tackled everything from Porgy And Bess showtune It Ain’t Necessarily So to Françoise Hardy’s Gallic pop classic Comment Te Dire Adieu under various guises. But his most triumphant cover was this Hi-NRG take on Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ Philly soul standard. In fact, Don’t Leave Me This Way was the UK’s biggest-selling single of 1986. While not quite surpassing the original, or indeed Thelma Houston’s rendition, Somerville’s signature falsetto complements Sarah Jane Morris’ much deeper timbre surprisingly well. 

19 The Housemartins – Caravan Of Love

The fourth best band in Hull going a cappella on a squelchy synth spiritual from an Isley Brothers offshoot? Even in Norman Cook’s chameleonic back catalogue, Caravan Of Love still stands out as an oddity. Following in the footsteps of The Flying Pickets, this 1986 hit leaned firmly into The Housemartins’ self-described status as Christian Marxists. But Paul Heaton’s delivery of the subtly-changed lyric, “the place in which we were born/ So neglected and torn apart” suggests he was also sticking two fingers up at the Iron Lady.

18 Run-DMC – Walk This Way

Run-DMC’s take on Walk This Way revitalised Aerosmith, convinced MTV bosses hip-hop was a viable musical form and paved the way for everyone from Beastie Boys to Rage Against The Machine. Less impressively, it also gave us Limp Bizkit and the nadir of both Sugababes and Girls Aloud’s careers. The Adidas enthusiasts hadn’t even heard of Steven Tyler and co. when they started laying down some bars over their 1977 US hit: they were introduced to the track by producer Rick Rubin. But 40 years on its rap/rock fusion still sounds boxfresh. 

17 Kim Wilde – You Keep Me Hangin’ On

Tom Jones, Colourbox and Vanilla Fudge were just a handful of the artists who’d put their own spin on The Supremes’ Motown classic. But only Kim Wilde’s managed to repeat its US No.1 success. Swapping Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Morse Code-inspired guitars and proto-funk beats for shimmering synths and dramatic orchestral stabs, this version appears to have SAW’s fingerprints all over it. Yet its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production is, in fact, guided by the man who recognised You Keep Me Hangin’ On’s club potential, Wilde’s brother Ricky. 

16 Natalie Cole – Pink Cadillac

Bruce Springsteen made Bette Midler a sworn enemy in 1983 when he kiboshed her recording of Pink Cadillac, a Born In The USA outtake later released as Dancing In The Dark’s B-side. The Boss believed its lyrics, in which the titular vehicle becomes a less-than-subtle metaphor for a certain part of the female anatomy, shouldn’t be uttered by the opposite sex. He had no such qualms later that decade, though, allowing Natalie Cole to diva up the original’s twanging blues with some strident dance-pop beats and vocals even sassier than Midler’s.

15 The Art Of Noise – Peter Gunn 

The Art Of Noise went all couch potato for their first album since parting company with Paul Morley. 1986’s In Visible Silence not only featured a collaboration with one of the decade’s quintessential TV creations, Max Headroom, it also covered the coolest theme tune of the 1950s. Spoofing the eponymous private eye drama, its video even gave a starring role to Rik Mayall. Duane Eddy, the twanging guitar hero who first took Henry Mancini’s composition into the charts, also came on board to help the avant-garde collective bag their first and only Grammy. 

14 Tiffany – I Think We’re Alone Now

Had we been ranking the decade’s worst covers, then Tiffany’s massacre of The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There may have grabbed No.1. But her debut single updated a 60s classic for the shopping mall crowd with far more finesse. The teen queen was reluctant to record Tommy James And The Shondells’ tale of hormonal teens, believing its bubblegum pop sound was too old-fashioned. Not that you’d know it. Tiffany attacks I Think We’re Alone Now with pure gusto, while the Hi-NRG-lite production ensured it easily slotted into the pop landscape. 

13 Paul Young – Every time You Go Away

Paul Young had already staked his claim as one of his generation’s finest song interpreters when Every Time You Go Away topped the US charts in 1985. He’d previously made tracks by Ann Peebles, Nicky Thomas and Marvin Gaye his own, of course, also reaching UK No.1 with his version of the latter’s Wherever I Lay My Hat. But he has a fellow blue-eyed soul act, Hall And Oates, to thank for his crowning glory. The soulman draws even more emotion out of the original, while Pino Palladino’s fretless bass magic elevates it to last-dance classic. 

12 David Bowie – China Girl

A by-product of David Bowie and Iggy Pop’s self-imposed rehab years in Berlin, China Girl emerged on the latter’s The Idiot, as a gritty krautrock number recorded using a toy drum kit and piano. Six years later, and with a little spit and polish from Nile Rodgers, its co-writer transformed the track into something more suited to Studio 54. Bowie might have binned the original’s childlike instrumentation but he’s still in playful mode here, from the on-the-nose oriental riff to the crooner-like vocal which suggests that duet with Bing Crosby had quite the effect. 

11 Robert Palmer – I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On

Robert Palmer was in recycling mode on the fourth single taken from Riptide. Its promo brought back the slightly uncoordinated group of mannequin-like models from Addicted To Love, and the song itself had been recorded two years earlier by Cherrelle. But while the original production was steeped in the synths of the Minneapolis sound, Bernard Edwards gave Palmer some much funkier guitars to wrap his tones around. I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On may have been overshadowed by its predecessor yet it’s by far the superior offering.  

10 Bananarama – Venus 

Inspired by the sonic thrills of Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, Bananarama practically railroaded SAW, then a rather modest operation, into repeating their Hi-NRG trick on a Dutch flower power anthem. The result began the trio’s transition from ramshackle new wave renegades to a much glossier set-up dealing in rehearsed choreography and pure unadulterated pop. This reinvention appeared to catch UK fans off-guard, though: Venus could only match the No.8 peak of the Shocking Blue original here but topped the charts in the US.

9 Simply Red – Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)

Simply Red became a critical punching bag for their MOR sound, yet Mick Hucknall came bursting out of the blocks with a defiant protest song he’d claim was “as big an anti-Thatcherite message as you can get in pop music”. A minor US R&B hit for The Valentine Brothers three years earlier, Money’s Too Tight (To Mention) was actually written in objection to Reaganomics (explaining that intriguing “did the Earth move for you Nancy?” ad-lib). But released in a period of mass UK unemployment, it struck a chord closer to home, too.

8 Kirsty MacColl – A New England

“It’s like a busker doing a really good Beatles song,” was how Kirsty MacColl described Billy Bragg’s A New England to Smash Hits. The late singer may have retained the original’s Fab Four-esque melodies with her own charming 1985 cover, but there’s nothing remotely busker-like about its joyous, jangly production from then-husband Steve Lillywhite. Bragg was so enamoured with the idea of MacColl gender-reversing his tale of romantic woes that he penned two extra verses for her to sing. 

7 Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind

Always On My Mind also has a MacColl connection: it denied her duet with The Pogues the coveted Christmas No.1. While those who annually return Fairytale Of New York to the charts may consider this a pop injustice, Pet Shop Boys fans can counterargue it was beaten by one of the all-time great Elvis covers. This 1987 hit was originally intended solely for Love Me Tender, an ITV tribute marking 10 years since Presley’s passing. It was only when viewers demanded a release that PSB committed its bombastic synths and beats to record. 

6 Yazz And The Plastic Population – The Only Way Is Up

What better way to signal the arrivalof an instant house-pop classic than the blaring of a train horn? Virtually unrecognisable from the mid-paced disco-soul of Otis Clay’s 1980 original, The Only Way Is Up triumphantly hurtles towards the four-minute mark, buoyed by its bubbling acid synths, excitable rhythms and a vocal which simply exudes pure positivity. Yazz had already displayed star potential on Doctorin’ The House but her second collaboration with Coldcut fulfilled it.

5 Soft Cell – Tainted Love

Gloria Jones’ Tainted Love had long been a Northern Soul club staple before Marc Almond discovered its joys working as a cloakroom attendant. With producer Mike Thorne concerned that “you could smell the coke” on the frantic Wigan Casino favourite, Soft Cell slowed down the pace, transforming it into an electronic torch song that sounded equally vulnerable and malevolent. A record-breaking Billboard run and four-week UK No.1 stint followed, while its double synth stab remains one of pop’s most triumphant intros.

4 Siouxsie and The Banshees – Dear Prudence

Just five years after covering Helter Skelter, Siouxsie And The Banshees once again doffed their caps to The Beatles, much to the reluctance of their star temporary guitarist. The Cure’s Robert Smith might not have been a particularly big fan of Dear Prudence, the ‘White Album’ cut inspired by Mia Farrow’s meditation-obsessed sister, but subverting all the optimistic talk of sunny skies and daisy chains, this version very nearly sent the nation’s pre-eminent goth rockers all the way to No.1. It’s little wonder many younger fans in 1983 believed this to be a Sioux original. 

3 The Bangles – Hazy Shade Of Winter

One of the few occasions where Simon And Garfunkel came close to rocking out, Hazy Shade Of Winter also allowed The Bangles to replicate the harder-edged sound of their live shows. Produced by Rick Rubin, this 1987 cover was recorded for Less Than Zero, a divisive adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel starring Andrew McCarthy. But like the nihilistic film it came from, the US No.2 hit was something of a departure from the Brat Pack style, immersing the girl group’s glorious four-part harmonies not in bright new wave but menacing garage rock.

2 Chaka Khan – I Feel For You

Like many peerless pop moments, Melle Mel’s stuttering Chaka Khan shout-out on I Feel For You happened purely by accident. However, with Stevie Wonder’s fluttering harmonica solo, the song’s punchy electronic beats and the leading lady’s expressive vocal, the rest of Arif Mardin’s exuberant production was entirely intentional. It takes a lot to out-funk Prince but the Purple One’s falsetto-led 1979 original – first covered by The Pointer Sisters three years later – pales into comparison when heard alongside this four-week chart-topper. 

1 Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes

File this under ‘covers you never knew were covers.’ Well, not unless you’re familiar with the lesser-known recording output of Brill Building songwriter Jackie DeShannon. Even then you’d struggle to equate the old-fashioned country-rock of her 1975 track with the majestic synth-led treatment given by Kim Carnes six years later. Rod Stewart’s main challenger for pop’s raspiest voice had actually worked with DeShannon as an actress on late 60s folk-rock movie C’Mon, Let’s Live A Little. But it was Bette Davis Eyes’ co-writer Donna Weiss who introduced her to the song that would spend nine weeks atop the US charts (us Brits only sent it to No.10).

Carnes’ version removed all the original’s dusty barroom vibes and instead brought it into the new wave era with a deliciously glacial synth hook and emphatic beats apparently programmed on the cheapest drum machine producer Val Garay could find. Even the famously difficult and cantankerous Bette Davis herself approved. The silver screen icon wrote thank-yous to all those involved for making her relevant again and sent flowers after the 1982 Grammys where Bette Davis Eyes deservedly picked up both Song and Record of the Year. 

Enjoy this article? Check out our Top 40 80s pop artists

The post Top 20 cover versions of the 80s appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Marc Almond tells Classic Pop how his move from London to Portugal has reignited his passion for music and led to the new covers album, I’m Not Anyone…

Although Marc Almond and Dave Ball grew up in Southport and Blackpool respectively before meeting at Leeds Polytechnic in 1977, Soft Cell are arguably a London band: both men moved to the capital as soon as they could and remained there for decades after wards.

While their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret isn’t exactly a London concept record, it captures the sound of pre-gentrification Soho better than anyone else. Seamy songs like Youth, Sex Dwarf and Seedy Films drip with the danger and illicit sex of the city in the 1980s.

For the remainder of Soft Cell’s first incarnation, and his even murkier 80s alter-ego in Marc And The Mambas, Almond lived opposite infamous Soho strip club Raymond Revuebar. For Soft Cell, success only meant finding nicer homes in London, rather than suburban retreats or country mansions. Indeed, their second split, after Cruelty Without Beauty in the early Noughties, was precipitated by a row after bumping into each other in the streets of central London.

Wave Goodbye

Classic Pop meets Almond to discuss his adventurous new covers album I’m Not Anyone at Soho Hotel. It’s a five-star hangout that’s exactly as luxurious as anyone would imagine successful 80s pop stars would conduct all their inter views, but it’s also just two minutes’ walk from the site of Raymond Revuebar. For gentrification in action, have a look at the prices of Soho Hotel’s cocktail menu.

So far, so London. But Marc Almond lives nowhere near here anymore. Shortly after recovering from Covid, which he contracted at the start of lockdown, the seemingly lifetime Londoner moved to Portugal.

“When I came out of Covid, I felt so drained and exhausted,” begins Marc of his European adventure. “I felt aged, and I just felt ill. Of course, so many people felt that way who have been through Covid, but it maybe didn’t hit me until later. I realised that I was mentally and physically exhausted. And I don’t love London like I used to.”

While Marc has always been attentive in person, keen to ensure any interviewer has all the drinks and hotel nibbles he can offer, he’s never looked happier than he does now – he really does seem revived by the Portuguese countryside. By contrast, the cleaned-up, pricier London just isn’t the city to offer the adventure it did in 1981. “I’m sure I’ll fall in love with London again,” considers Almond. “Right now, though, it feels like an ex-lover. It’s going through a weird patch.”

London You Were My Lover

Marc’s feelings toward the capital were made clear in London You Were My Lover from the singer’s joint album in 2018 with Jools Holland, A Lovely Life To Live: “I’m willing to give you another chance/ If you dress just like you did before.” “That’s how I feel about London and the UK in general at the moment,” laughs Almond. “London needs to get its party dress on again. I needed an adventure. I’m getting older and I thought: ‘This can’t be it, can it?’”

Post-Brexit, Portugal was the only EU country to offer an escape, with a special visa on offer for British artists and musicians to live there. It’s since been withdrawn, after pressure from the rest of the EU, as Marc admits: “I got to Portugal just in time. The only other country to offer a similar deal was Dubai.” He looks faintly appalled. “I couldn’t think of anything worse than Dubai. I don’t like the heat much. It’s hard enough in Portugal, but Dubai is literally a cultural desert, whereas Portugal interested me. I like fado music, so that was a plus straight away.”

After so long surrounded by people in London, Almond’s new home is a solitary contrast, as he reveals: “I bought a plot of unloved rural land, with an unloved wreck of a house. I wanted a project. In Portugal I can plant orange and lemon trees, then retreat there when the apocalypse comes. I love getting back to nature, and my new place is in the middle of nowhere, with solar panels.”

Cultural Animal

A decade ago, Marc made his love of nature explicit on the environmentally themed The Tyburn Tree, his album with composer John Harle. He also spoke to Classic Pop in 2019 about studying to be a druid. “Exactly,” he grins, when reminded of his studies. “I’m living a rural life as a pagan druid. It’s good for my soul, as well as somewhere I can be when the world goes to hell.”

The pagan life doesn’t mean Almond has entirely abandoned his old pursuits. “I do get homesick,” he admits. “I’m a cultural animal. My itinerary in London for the 10 days I’m back here is packed, seeing this show and that exhibition. It’s a trip full of stuff. When I get back to Portugal, I will probably just plant trees, then sit in front of YouTube going down rabbit holes.”

Emotional Connection

Those YouTube rabbit holes, coupled with the tranquillity of Portugal, helped inspire Marc to revisit his record collection for his first covers set since 2017’s Shadows And Reflections. “My rural life in Portugal is why this album has so many elemental references,” he ponders. “I wanted to get back to a spiritual feeling in my music. It sounds corny to say it, but there’s a spirituality to this album.”

Having been so busy since Soft Cell unexpectedly made a new album with *Happiness Not Included returning them to the Top 10 two years ago, Almond was exhausted with music, too. “I have to reconnect with music from time to time,” he smiles. “I had time to do that at home, and my favourite way to reconnect is to rediscover songs I liked from years ago. When I am getting back into them, watching their old videos on YouTube sends me down rabbit holes of info about other songs to explore. This time, I wanted songs that hit me emotionally.”

The title track, originally a duet by Paul Anka with Sammy Davis Jr written in 1973, was the first song to be chosen. “I love the title of the song – and my album as a result – because it can mean ‘I’m a nobody’ or ‘I’m not just anyone’,” smiles Marc. “It’s not until the second line, ‘I’m not just anyone’, that you get your answer. It’s a great title and such a big song.”

Anyone’s Game

Almond had intended to recreate the original’s duet feel with his regular backing singer, Brian Chambers, but album producer Mike Stevens pushed Marc to record it solo instead. “I thought I could hide behind Brian,” he confesses. “Mike told me: ‘There’s no hiding, this is one to do on your own’ and he was absolutely right. I’m Not Anyone is a song that very much says how I feel. I find it hard to get to the end of it without feeling choked up. It’s about defiance, and I’ve always been defiant.”

Since emerging into the mainstream with Tainted Love 43 years ago, Almond has always presented his music the way he wants, whether wearing riotously gay costumes on Top Of The Pops, veering off into music that’s not so much underground as subterranean with Genesis P-Orridge, Coil and assorted other avant-garde experimentalists, or happily chatting away to Gloria Hunniford or Lorraine Kelly. Marc is surely our only pop star equally at home with Psychic TV or daytime TV.

“I have a way of seeing things and how to do them,” he shrugs. “No one can tell me what to do or try to manipulate me. At times, that’s got me a reputation: ‘Marc Almond is difficult.’ People who work with me know I’m not difficult. But you can’t manufacture me, and it’s one reason why I’m Not Anyone is such an important song for me.”

Adventures In Paradise

The variety of Marc’s music is testament to how he’s happy to get involved in so many different spheres, rather than having any rigid formula he insists on being followed. But there are limits. “I like everything I do to be an adventure,” he states. “That’s why I do lots of different things. Whether it’s singing Brecht & Weill songs or working with some esoteric artist, so long as it fits in my world somewhere then I’ll do it. If I can get inside a project, I’ll do it. I never think: ‘This isn’t commercial enough.’ I never worry if it’ll make me any money.”

Asked if he’s ever thought about the financial implications for his career, Almond laughs delightedly, as if asked if he’s ever considered being a cage fighter. “If I was to think in those terms, I’d take one of the huge offers I get from The Masked Singer.” Oh, really? The Saturday night show has been one of ITV’s biggest entertainment hits since Britain’s Got Talent, with Gabrielle and Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson among its previous singers. But it’s not one for Almond. “The sums are life-changing: very, very nice offers,” he shares. “It’s a s-load of money.”

That’s Entertainment

He really does self-censor saying “shit”, which is adorable for anyone who’s heard Marc And The Mambas’ Torment And Toreros album. “It’s just not for me. I’m not rich, but my records have let me be able to live the life I want to live, so I don’t need to do The Masked Singer. I’m not putting the show down. It’s always flattering to be asked, I’m just not very good at being that kind of entertainer.”

It’s a demonstration of how Marc is happy to do almost anything, so long as it’s on his terms. “I’m not disparaging of how people view me in different ways,” he insists. “I can be entertaining in my own world, in my own way – whatever that is. But I’m not a goodtime, jazz hands entertainer.” Almond offers his best showtunes jazz hands impression. Readers, it is endearingly rubbish.

A Song Is A Song

Something else Marc doesn’t necessarily think he’s expert at is writing songs. I’m Not Anyone is his eighth covers album since he branched out into interpreting others’ material on Jacques Brel tribute record Jacques in 1989. He can obviously tackle a variety of others’ work, but is disarmingly frank about his reasons for doing so.

“I’ve never thought of myself as a songwriter,” says Almond, as CP looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Of course I’ve written loads of songs, but I’ve never looked at myself in that way. I’ve tried writing songs for other people. Every time I’ve tried, it’s been a disaster. I can only write songs that work for me.”

Of course, both of Marc’s No.1 singles, Tainted Love and Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart, were covers. Does it matter that none of his own songs have reached the top? “Not at all,” he responds convincingly. “I’ve been lucky to have had any No.1 singles, let alone two. The fact that they’re covers, who cares? A song is a song.” He laughs at the memory of Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart’s unexpected success in 1988: “I rang my marketing manager and told him: ‘You have to stop letting this record be at No.1. I can’t go out! Can you do something so that it drops down the chart?’” Another laugh. “I’m aware of how that sounds – an artist requesting his record company to drop down the charts, just so he can live a life.”

Covered In Glory

Of the artists to cover Almond’s songs, David Gray’s version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye is the most successful. Despite being the fifth single from his multi-platinum 1998 album White Ladder, it still reached the Top 30. “Even though it’s just David and an acoustic guitar, his version is completely epic,” raves Marc. “He somehow turned it into a nine-minute anthem. I was very grateful to David, and I’ve happily sung it onstage with him a few times. But my favourite version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye is by a-ha. I love their music and Morten Harket is such a fantastic singer. A-ha only did their version for a radio session, but I was thrilled they did it at all.”

Asked which other of his songs he’d like covered, Marc immediately plumps for Torch – “Probably my favourite Soft Cell single” – and Brilliant Creatures, from 1996’s recently reissued Fantastic Star: “That could make for a really nice version by someone.”

Low Profile

If Almond is uncertain of his songwriting talents, he’s more confident about his singing ability, but in the studio he needs a producer he can feel comfortable with. Marc’s near-fatal motorcycle crash 20 years ago has left him partially deaf in his right ear. “My eardrum was pierced in the accident,” recalls Almond. “It healed, but it’s never been the same again. I can’t hear high sounds anymore, only bass sounds, so onstage everything has to be bass sounds.

“In the studio, there’s nothing worse than when someone can’t get the mics to sound right. If I have to stop because I can’t hear myself or I can’t get the right pitch, I just can’t do it. That’s stressful, and it means there are only a certain few people that I like to work with.”

Harmony And Me

As well as Mike Stevens, Marc names Trevor Horn and recent solo producer Chris Braide as his favourites. Mike, who has also worked with Take That and Annie Lennox, is good at making him feel relaxed. “Mike pushes me, but he doesn’t bully or intimidate me,” says Almond. “I like someone I can have a laugh with. We’ll spend half the session gossiping and talking about what records we like, then it’s: ‘Oh, we’d better do some music.’”

Their only regular difference of opinion is that Mike sometimes attempts to get Marc to do vocal harmonies: “I try to do harmonies, but I just can’t figure them out. I’m useless at harmonies. I tried doing them in early Soft Cell and they’re the worst harmonies in the world, all over the place. I listen back to them now and think: ‘What was I doing?’ That was the sound of the time, I guess.”

Collectors Market

Soft Cell’s past was recently expanded with last year’s deluxe 6CD boxset of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Further boxsets of The Art Of Falling Apart and This Last Night In Sodom have been teased on the duo’s social media – but Almond won’t be getting involved directly. He understands that fans love them but, again, it’s just not for Marc. “I don’t get involved in that side,” he admits. “I know the fans want to hear all our demos that have been under the bed from 40 years ago. That’s fine, but I don’t listen to them.

“Going back to listen to those early versions with a half-finished vocal would do my head in. When someone says there’s a boxset with five different versions of Say Hello Wave Goodbye, it drives me crazy. I totally understand collectors want that, but it’s not for me.”

Despite Almond’s reticence over his own catalogue, he cheerfully admits that he’s a hypocrite over the collecting mindset as he reveals: “Oh, I’ll buy anything Marc Bolan ever did. Me and Chris Braide are both obsessive about Marc. I’ll listen to him strumming away in the studio, stopping halfway through to ask: ‘Can I have a cup of tea, please?’ Chris and I buy all the Bolan boxsets, and we’ve bought T-Rex singles we already own just for a different cover. I know Soft Cell fans are like that, too.”

Non-Stop Operation

Following the success of *Happiness Not Included, Almond is much cheerier about Soft Cell’s current status: “That album kept the spirit of Soft Cell alive and was us being true to ourselves. It was a very Soft Cell record – unlike Cruelty Without Beauty, which never really felt like a Soft Cell album.”

The concern over Soft Cell’s future is Dave Ball’s health. The keyboardist is confined to a wheelchair after breaking his back in an accident at home just before *Happiness Not Included was released. The album’s co-producer, Philip Larsen, deputises for Ball at live shows when the keyboardist is unable to travel.

“Dave is extremely ill,” frets Marc. “He can’t always be part of our live show. We’re only doing one UK show this year, at Blenheim Palace on 14 June, and as it stands Dave will be there. I feel I can do Soft Cell’s music live without Dave. Very few bands now, especially from the 80s, have all their original members. It’s become just a brand name for them. But I do worry people will be so disappointed if Dave isn’t there. Most of the time, I think they’re not, as it’s a very good show visually, and Philip is a good stand-in.”

Soft Return

A new LP is a different matter. Marc is reluctant to completely commit himself to saying there will definitely be a sixth Soft Cell album, but he confirms: “There are whisperings about doing another one. But a new album would have to go in a completely different direction.”

Considering the three 1980s Soft Cell albums are totally separate from each other, that shouldn’t be a problem. Marc’s face lights up when this is put to him. “I absolutely agree with that,” he beams. “So long as Dave is heavily involved, then whatever we do will be Soft Cell. Dave is at the heart of Soft Cell, and I’ll only do Soft Cell if Dave is involved in a major way. If Dave isn’t involved in our music, it’s not Soft Cell.”

There’s an intriguing clue as to what could be next when Almond is asked what a new LP could sound like. “You’re right that those first three records give us licence to take Soft Cell somewhere else,” Marc reflects. “We’ve twice gone 17 years without doing an album. With those big gaps, you are conscious of not letting the fans down when you return, while also not being a parody of yourself – and I know the fans always want more Bedsitter or Tainted Love.

Soul Provider

“But Soft Cell originally came from Black music: Tainted Love, obviously, while Memorabilia was based on a James Brown riff. We loved Northern Soul and Motown, and I’d like to do something that’s more obviously in that world. I’d maybe like to work with an R&B producer, someone who has an understanding of that heritage. That would be something interesting to work into Soft Cell.”

Quite when Almond could find the time for Soft Cell 6 is another matter. He hints at a couple of projects he can’t yet talk about, while confirming he wants to make another solo album of new songs with Chris Braide, stating: “When I do a record like I’m Not Anyone, it inspires me to start writing again. I’ve written lots of various bits of lyrics. I’m sure there’ll be another album with Chris, and I love collaborating, as that takes me out of my bubble. I can get lost in my own universe – I need to get out of that.”

Showstopper!

Marc semi-jokes that he’d love to have a cameo in a musical – “I’d like to do a show in a few years where I can hobble on, do one show-stealing song then hobble off home again” – but ultimately he hopes to emulate one of his heroes, Charles Aznavour, whose songs What Makes A Man and I Have Lived are among Almond’s covers.

“Charles Aznavour was still performing when he was 93,” smiles Marc. “I have an image of seeing him onstage, looking at 10 different teleprompters, so he could sing in Spanish, English, French, Armenian… He’d hobble on but, within 10 minutes, he looked young. That’s what music did to him. I’d love to retreat into the countryside, coming out to make the occasional appearance in half-shadow before giving up again. If I can be onstage at 93, the old age melting away once I start singing… wouldn’t that be great?”

For more on Marc Almond click here

Read our I’m Not Anyone review

The post Marc Almond – I’m Not Anyone interview appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

The Story Of 1984: It was a year of decisive statements and feeding the world, of technological advances and solo beginnings. Amidst political tension, the Olympic Games and the LGBTQ+ community gaining a voice came a giant 12 months for pop…

On 8 January Paul McCartney’s Pipes Of Peace became the year’s first new chart-topper, replacing The Flying Pickets as the nation’s pop bibles flew off shelves. Howard Jones grinned on Number One’s cover, with clenched fist and a caption: “1984 comes out fighting”. Inside, pop stars predicted what 2020 would be like. On Smash Hits’ back, Paul Weller read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: the future, it seemed, was already here.

Boy George and Annie Lennox confirmed it on US Newsweek’s cover – glamorous, androgynous, alien avatars of the second British Invasion. By February, Karma Chameleon sat atop the Billboard Hot 100, while Eurythmics’ Touch was Britain’s best-selling album.

Grammy audiences gasped at an Elvis-like Lennox, while George, receiving Culture Club’s Best New Artist award via satellite, told America they “knew a good drag queen when they saw one”. Amid the UK-supplied shock and awe, Michael Jackson snatched the most trophies, largely for ’82’s Thriller, still a US No.1, remaining there until mid-April.

Tomorrow’s World

1984’s kaleidoscopic soundtrack would come from a pop explosion that was transatlantic, already flickering through the early UK Top 10. Here Comes The Rain Again, Fiction Factory’s (Feels Like) Heaven and China Crisis’ Wishful Thinking rubbed shoulders with Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun and Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me, Jacko-assisted paranoia in the year of Big Brother.

Talk Talk’s It’s My Life languished outside the Top 40, a harbinger of ’84’s injustice. But the title of Re-Flex’s The Politics Of Dancing, lurking in the Top 30, hinted at the serious fun ahead. Frankie Goes To Hollywood oozed it, obvious from the BBC-banned ‘obscene’ Relax, No.1 for five weeks, with added sonic orgasm from synth wizard Andy Richards’ Jupiter 8. Liverpool’s bad boys were unstoppable. Two Tribes held the top spot for nine weeks. Cinemascope heartstring-tugger The Power Of Love managed just a week in early December, before Band Aid captured the nation. Welcome To The Pleasuredome (No.1) sold at record-breaking speed and remained in the charts for over a year.

Frankie were a lethal combination – gay/straight northern chutzpah, punk provocation and disco liberation, the Pistols meets Boys Town Gang in Trevor Horn’s hi-tech world. Their future funk had prog-like heft especially on the multiple mixes that were drip-fed to record buyers, keeping sales high. Paul Morley stoked the hype machine, the NME journo-turned-ZTT arch-conceptualist emblazoning T-shirts with ‘Frankie Says’ slogans, while ads and record sleeves were pure post-punk pop art. Videos courted outrage. Relax was a genuine jaw-dropper, Fellini-esque decadence, gay sex club sauciness, and a tiger. Two Tribes featured Reagan vs Chernenko wrestle-mania and the end of the world. “It’s 1984, people can handle it,” Paul Rutherford told Number One, adding that Frankie’s label ZTT also “like to play the game dangerously.”

Frankie Say Relax

Armed with Morley’s ideas, Jill Sinclair’s business acumen and husband Horn’s maximal productions, ZTT balanced hits with innovation. Released in February, Propaganda’s Dr Mabuse was, Number One gushed, “pure drama… simply monstrous… ABBA in hell.” Horn arrayed himself with a stellar team, including the Art Of Noise collective: engineer Gary Langan, composer Anne Dudley and programmer J.J. Jeczalik. June’s Who’s Afraid…? was a cut-and-paste collage of classical, hip-hop, industrial and electronic sound, a mid-80s Kraftwerk with Fairlight samplers, sequencers and drum machines. October’s Close (To The Edit) took musique concrète onto the dancefloor and into the Top 10.

All involved were in-demand. Horn topped the Billboard Hot 100 with Yes’ Owner Of A Lonely Heart, and was eyeballed by Sylvester and Madonna. Jeczalik sprinkled Fairlight fairy dust all over Billy Idol’s Flesh For Fantasy and Scritti Politti’s Absolute. The Fairlight ruled ’84, its magically ‘vocal’ ARR1 setting gliding through Art Of Noise’s Moments In Love and the ZTT-less Shout by Tears For Fears. Dudley composed for Five Star and added electric piano-like sparkle on a Yamaha DX7 to George Michael’s Careless Whisper (ZTT’s Andy Richards supplied choral caress, sampling Michael’s voice on a PPG Waveform A).

You Should Be Dancing

Pop was pushing itself to extremes, possibilities seemed endless, and often chart-bound. Nile Rodgers’ manically hip-hop-stuttering remix of Duran Duran’s The Reflex was a transatlantic No.1. Paul Young’s I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down came with industrial-strength overload, further intensified on the 12″. Malcolm McLaren’s Madame Butterfly, a UK No.13, blended Puccini with ultra-modern R&B. 1984’s pop was forever moulding itself into new forms (see Eurythmics and Howard Jones’ remix albums). Number One readers were too, creating new posters from existing ones: Suggs’ hair, Boy George’s face, George Michael’s body.

Relax’s mechanised throb echoed sounds spilling out from gay dancefloors into ’84’s charts, inspiring High Energy’s titular anthem, a No.5 summer smash for Evelyn Thomas. This was disco’s adrenalised machine-made update (DJ-producer Ian Levine’s nods to Village People). Sweaty, gay nightclub drama also fuelled Hazell Dean’s Searchin’ (No.6), recreated on May’s TOTP performance, lights frantically flashing to bum-bouncing bass and Dean hollering: “I gotta find me a man!” Follow-up Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go) came from Stock Aitken Waterman, who’d produced You Think You’re A Man (No.15) for drag queen Divine. Dead Or Alive’s Pete Burns took notice, called SAW and by November, You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) was out.

Reclaiming The Pink Triangle

From The Weather Girls’ No.2-charting It’s Raining Men to Gloria Gaynor’s I Am What I Am to Laura Branigan’s Self Control (No.5), the charts had never seemed gayer. Holly Johnson made No.1s from homo-desire’s two extremes (The Power Of Love’s religious romance, Relax’s priapic lust). “Cheap, disgusting and very childish,” said Boy George in Record Mirror, secretly threatened as Frankie flaunted what he’d kept coyly contained in a tea-drinking doll persona.

Bronski Beat made George feel lightweight too, they’re out, loud and proud political edge served in dressed-down normality (gays “pay rates and go to the cinema,” said Jimmy Somerville). Smalltown Boy, it sleeve brandishing a pink triangle, took gay adolescent escape to No.3, Somerville’s falsetto “whistling like a train” to wistful hi-NRG. The moral fury was relentless – Why? (No.6) was “fighting for our love”, The Age of Consent (UK No.4) addressed gay sex law inequality.

Let’s Get Political

Meanwhile, Soft Cell imploded heroically with March’s This Last Night In Sodom: sonically dense, recorded partly in mono, a multi-tracked vortex of murder songs and madness. Marc Almond returned, solo and Scott Walker-style, for You Have, The Boy Who Came Back and Tenderness Is A Weakness; pure strings-soaked melodrama. There were more grim lives under bright lights on the original West End Girls by Pet Shop Boys.

Still at Smash Hits, Neil Tennant rave reviewed Sylvester’s Rock The Box, fierce electro from a disco veteran (for more gay America ’84 style see Jermaine Stewart’s The Word Is Out and David Lasley’s Raindance). In Number One, Sylvester mentioned AIDS, the disease annihilating the gay community in increasingly large numbers. Fear, anger and denial swept through US cities as the UK moved to a hedonistic gay beat. Bleakly prophetic, Freddie Mercury’s debut solo 45 that year was called Love Kills.

In June, as Smalltown Boy appeared, the LGSM (Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners) was formed. Unlikely alliances were forged in politically charged times, as Thatcher’s government clashed with communities facing pit closures. “Perverts Support The Pits” screamed one headline, repurposed as ‘Pits And Perverts’ for Bronski Beat’s miners’ benefit that December, following New Order’s in May and an all-star September fundraiser featuring Wham! and The Style Council. Others were more sceptical, reflecting a conflict within British pop between personal ambition and social awareness.

As Thatcher’s ’83 victory sank in, big issues hit the charts, from anti-apartheid (Special AKA’s Free Nelson Mandela) to the Irish Troubles (Bananarama’s Rough Justice). Post-Falklands, a cold war looming, apocalypse was a hot topic, Two Tribes and Nena’s 99 Red Balloons took the threat of nuclear annihilation to No.1, Strawberry Switchblade’s Since Yesterday took it to No.5.

Shout To The Top!

1984’s topicality was matched by deep silliness. The Young Ones toppled TOTP as Smash Hits readers’ favourite show, Neil’s Hole In My Shoe went Top 10.

Then there was Black Lace’s Agadoo, a No.2 knees-up for inebriated, horny holidaymakers everywhere (Duty Free debuted on TV that February). Misty-eyed pop nostalgists note, their Party Party outsold Spandau’s Parade. While some wore their politics lightly (Tracey Ullman’s comic My Guy video co-starred Neil Kinnock), Boy George thought Paul Weller’s idealism needed glam-coating (“fake fur and politics do mix!”). But The Style Council’s Shout To The Top! (No.7) proved how life-affirming and uplifting resistance could be.

Café Bleu, released in March, was impeccably hip; from its vintage Euro-cool cover to its largely retro soul-jazz tracks. Top 10s My Ever Changing Moods and You’re The Best Thing, joined The Paris Match, sung by Tracey Thorn. That summer Everything But The Girl’s Eden arrived with bossa nova heartbreak classic Each And Every One, which like Carmel’s The Drum Is Everything harked back with evocative fidelity to a bygone era.

A jazz revival was in full swing with a photogenic superstar, Nigerian-born, Essex-raised Sade Adu. Diamond Life, one of ‘84’s top sellers, added contemporary, style-bible polish. Others were more danceable (Animal Nightlife’s Mr Solitaire) or poppy (Matt Bianco), even gothic (Swans Way’s Top 20 Soul Train). Cynics scoffed that Sade was ersatz jazz for wine-bar yuppies. But Your Love Is King and Smooth Operator breezed luxuriantly through a troubled year, full of sensuous, romantic promise. The Blow Monkeys’ Atomic Lullaby played with that tension – sax-soaked swoon interrupted by a nuclear explosion.

Tribal Gatherings

In October, the paranoid, unstable mood deepened with the IRA’s Brighton bombing, and a ferocious new Duran Duran 45, The Wild Boys (No.2) co-produced by Nile Rodgers. Simon Le Bon told Number One, it was about society breaking apart: “I don’t want people eating each other.”

Another release was the Eurythmics’ Sexcrime; more high-voltage and high tension. In the year of Orwell’s dystopia, their music for the film adaptation was dark, electronic, experimental. Something atavistic was charging through ’84’s hi-tech pop, full of giant, chanting, tribal battle cries (Adam Ant returned with the No.13-charting Apollo 9). There were rebel yells and warrior women. Kim Wilde was remade as a Barbarella vamp, Duran as Mad Maxes – Olympic ambition in an Olympic year.

Rock was sharpening pop’s edges – The Wild Boys, The Human League’s anti-war The Lebanon and Bucks Fizz’s No.15 Talking In Your Sleep (Le Bon’s ’84 pick was The Psychedelic Furs’ Mirror Moves). January’s Learning To Crawl by The Pretenders set the tone for a tough, muscular ’84, heard on three No.1 albums, Big Country’s Steeltown, U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and Simple Minds’ Sparkle In The Rain.

What We Do In The Shadows

Alternative music offered a smart antidote to aspirational blockbuster pop, with The Smiths and Lloyd Cole And The Commotions’ Rattlesnakes in the UK and R.E.M’s Reckoning in the US. A modern psychedelia was afoot, hugely popular on Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ocean Rain, exotically goth on The Cure’s The Top and Siouxsie And The Banshees’ Hyæna. Cocteau Twins’ Treasure similarly retreated into saturated textures and netherworlds, away from the 80s moment.

For most, though, it was inescapable. A perfect sign of the inter-connected times was the dawn of MIDI; sync’d up, digital machine-tooled precision. Pop was now operating in an expansive, hyper-visual universe, where tech blended with real instruments, mingling with genres, crossing racial boundaries and generations. Britain’s 1984 motley crew sprang from this synergy, from Nik Kershaw (muso-made star with snood, synthesizers and FX-heavy videos) to Thompson Twins (post-punk also-rans turned transatlantic MTV-friendly sensation).

This synergy defined ’84’s US pop explosion too. Prince’s mega-selling Purple Rain came with a movie and synthesized futuristic funk/soul, New Wave pop and rock. Reviewing Prince’s When Doves Cry, 1984’s biggest US 45, John Taylor commented on how heavy pop was getting. Cyndi Lauper seamlessly wove styles (and a Prince cover) into She’s So Unusual. UK punk-turned-US star Billy Idol shifted Prince-like gears on Eyes Without A Face, from soft-core synth-pop to nut-nodding rock.

Video Killed The Radio Star

Older stars adapted, embracing synths, remixes and videos, from Springsteen’s Born In The USA to Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. British legacy acts Queen (The Works) and Rod Stewart (Camouflage) did likewise. Everything was pop-powered, synth-propelled and video-ready, including hard rock – British record buyers made ’83’s Eliminator by ZZ Top a bestseller, while Van Halen’s Oberheim-powered Jump was an MTV Award-winning US No.1.

Held on 14 September, the MTV Video Music Awards reflected how post-Thriller America had been deploying the British Invasion’s tactics. Madonna stole the show at Radio City Music Hall, baring her knickers in a wedding dress. At August’s New Music Seminar, John Oates questioned video’s increasing power, as Madonna defended it.

By December, Like A Virgin, with its Venice-shot, Mary Lambert-directed promo, was a US No.1, dislodging Hall And Oates’ Out Of Touch. In the UK, where hits from ’83’s Madonna (Holiday, Lucky Star, Borderline) trickled into ’84’s charts, it hit No.3. Brit-friendly poses were struck, radiating C&A Clockhouse model energy in Smash Hits, cavorting across TOTP’s stage in a pink wig, positioning her for ’85’s takeover.

Rise Of The Machines

Amid this transatlantic, muscular hybridisation, many synth-pop pioneers struggled. The Human League’s Hysteria was, 45s aside, a major disappointment, while classy reinventions (Associates, Thomas Leer, DAF’s Robert Görl) and new acts (Messengers) evaded record buyers. Others thrived – Howard Jones (Human’s Lib) and Blancmange (Mange Tout), while OMD bounced back with Junk Culture and Top 10 earworm, Locomotion.

As Mute’s Fad Gadget released swansong masterpiece Gag, labelmates Depeche Mode emerged as synth-pop stalwarts, adding anti-bigotry anthems (People Are People) and perv-pop (Master And Servant) to the sample-heavy experimentation. Equally bold was Gore’s kinky clobber, centre-stage on Smash Hits’ November cover.

Some Great Reward was recorded in Germany where People Are People hit No.1. Synths, like jazz, were used, to varying degrees on the year’s exquisite art pop; Talk Talk’s It’s My Life, David Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth and The Blue Nile’s A Walk Across The Rooftops.

Everything Must Change

On the giddy carousel of ’84 pop, Madness held on with Keep Moving (No.6), boasting cheeky samples of the titular actor on Michael Caine (No.11). But grown-up melancholy characterised one of the year’s finest, tackling homelessness on One Better Day; Kinks-style social commentary with ’84-style sax. However, anyone could get lost in ‘84’s frenzy. “I don’t fit in,” sang Kim Wilde on Teases & Dares, sporadic gems obscured by Kim’s ‘supervixen’ makeover. Bananarama, remained ‘flatmates next door’ – relatable, and Robert De Niro’s Waiting, another ace ode to a cult actor, hit No.3.

Their producers Jolley/Swain helped make Alison Moyet the non-Sade female voice of ’84. Alf dialled down Yazoo’s future shock, synths delicately placed on All Cried Out and Love Resurrection’s blue-eyed Top 10 soul (Motown legend Lamont Dozier penned the No.21-charting Invisible). The soulful, sophisticated pop of the 80s’ second half was moving closer, also hinted at on Paul Young’s Everything Must Change and The Kane Gang’s Closest Thing To Heaven.

British Invasion

Pop’s premier league ruled ’84 with a mix of imperial pomp and unease. Duran Duran’s transatlantic supremacy reached Beatles-esque proportions. Hot on their heels were Wham! Mega-selling, Motown updates (Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom) were offset by Everything She Wants’ deep-electro-soul. The dynamic duo seemed inseparable but ’84 teased George Michael’s solo future. Number One called him a “one-man girl group”. Careless Whisper tipped the balance further, outselling Wham!’s mega-45s. Male self–lacerating soul-baring was big in ’84, from Jim Diamond’s No.1 I Should Have Known Better to Phil Collins’ Against All Odds (US 1, UK 2) to John Waite’s Missing You.

The sax-packed smooch factor was high on Spandau Ballet’s Parade too, with added rock swagger, Gary Kemp’s guitar cruising like a Jaguar. Videos came with slick confidence – Only When You Leave nodded to Hitchcock, I’ll Fly For You took them to New Orleans, Highly Strung to Hong Kong. These jet-setting sagas were pure 80s bombast, with hovering helicopters and Martin Kemp rolling around naked with a model. Martin appeared in Smash Hits, suited with shoes sans socks, like Crockett in Miami Vice, 1984’s new US show, MTV-indebted with its constant pop soundtrack and rapid fire editing.

Glitz & Gloss

Culture Club seemed trapped in a glitzy soap opera, one oscillating between triumph and catastrophe. Boy George was inescapable – in magazines, Wogan, Letterman, Johnny Carson. Feuds were constant – Holly Johnson, Princess Margaret, Pete Burns, his secret lover Jon Moss, and seemingly all of Fleet Street. Emotions were mixed, costumes ever-changing. He was ‘done’ with Marilyn; then they were pictured in Number One magazine, holidaying together in Jamaica.

September’s The War Song was an anti-war protest from someone seemingly fighting with everyone. Midway through, the incongruous Caribbean-style singalong was engulfed by haunting horror – furious chants, Clare Torry’s anguished wailing, a ‘bereaved bride’, updating her star turn on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig In The Sky, while George hovered, spooky as a soldier’s ghost. From social concern leapt personal crisis – “Won’t somebody help me?” Both silly and profound, it could be 1984’s key single, dramatising conflict inside and out.

Such thrilling tension was scarce on Waking Up With The House On Fire, cobbled together in three weeks, the garish sleeve and George’s new red hairdo covering a multitude of pop sins (Mistake No.3 aside). Culture Club, like The Human League, weren’t alone in delivering duds. The Jacksons’ Victory was more filler than Thriller, David Bowie’s Tonight promised much: a Tretchikoff meets Gilbert & George sleeve, rollicking lead single, Blue Jean, and wondrous opener Loving The Alien. But beyond Tumble And Twirl, it was covers-heavy padding. The grand 80s folly had arrived, lavishly packaged, recorded in luxury studios, mediocrity lurking amid hits and high-gloss.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

In a fiercely competitive world, Boy George wasn’t the only scrapper; claws were out in ’84 – George Michael had beef with Alphaville’s Big In Japan and Nena (“‘99 red ballons my arse’”). In Smash Hits, Midge Ure trashed Duran’s The Wild Boys (“pathetic!”), Wham! (“debauched!”), even U2 (“boring!”). Soon he’d be in Sarm West with all of them, and more, recording Do They Know It’s Christmas?, co-written with Bob Geldof, who’d masterminded the event, horrified by an Ethiopian famine news report he’d seen that October, herding pop stars like cats, the common cause calming egos.

The Yuletide competition also overflowed with community spirit: Paul McCartney’s The Frog Chorus, Slade’s All Join Hands, Paul Weller’s Council Collective, with Soul Deep’s proceeds going to miners’ families. However, Band Aid beat them all, the festive chart-topper seeing off Wham!’s Last Christmas, too. Geldof had begun ’84 as Wally Of The Week in January’s Melody Maker. He ended it a national hero in a divided nation. Boy George, January’s darling, found himself over-exposed, voted ‘prat’ (Smash Hits) and ‘wally’ (Number One) of ’84 by readers.

Bigger The Better

Despite many fine albums, 1984’s glories really spun at 45rpm, not 33rpm, gathered on mega-selling compilations, Now… and The Hits Album, recorded onto those blank tapes, heavily advertised in the pop mags. Cassette sales eclipsed vinyl’s that year, while CDs were an ever-growing threat. Some even saw the digital future. Vince Clarke predicted music’s 2020 format would be the micro-chip, Quincy Jones saw it coming from “a vast catalogue in the sky”. Simple Minds told us the New Gold Dream was 81-82-83-84. But what then?

Throughout 84’s blockbuster racket, there’s instant nostalgia, as if Steve Gregory’s sax on Careless Whisper, Since Yesterday and Life On Your Own knew a door was forever closing on the 80s’ magical first half. But ’85 was already forming on record shelves in 1984 – Prefab Sprout’s When Love Breaks Down, Scritti Politti’s immaculate singles.

1984 really was a peak. Everything came supersized – mullets, Tony Hadley’s leather jacket, the suit on Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, visual shorthand for stockbrokers. Or, as Holly Johnson put it, “Yuppies. Which is what we are. People trying to make it on a bigger level.” 1984’s pop was full of those – big egos, big ideas and a big, beating heart.

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The post Make It Big: The Story Of 1984 appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

PSB were in full Latin flow for their sixth studio album… while it might not have spawned the poppiest music, Pet Shop Boys’ Bilingual certainly gave us some fantastic pop culture moments…

1996’s Bilingual was the first Pet Shop Boys album not to reach the Top 3 in the UK Album Chart, and its four proper single releases fared even worse in the chart stakes, with none reaching the Top 5. But there’s a lot to like about the album, not least its slick sound, helped in no small part by producer Chris Porter – at the time, George Michael’s right hand studio man – who was drafted in for many tracks. And then there was the album’s promotion, which saw the duo appear on some legendary 90s UK TV shows to push the record, including a debut appearance on Chris Evans’ Friday night show TFI Friday – during which Chris Lowe was as vocal as we’ve ever seen him – and then a classic episode of This Morning, which was as awkward as you might expect (more of that later).

As well as those TV shows, the 90s was also about Britpop and dance music, of course, and while previous album Very had perhaps trodden the latter path, the duo were in need of another direction for album number six. Bilingual, then, became the band’s first to embrace the sound of south America.

South American Sound

“It’s very different from our previous albums in terms of the musical style – it’s got a lot of Latin influenced music on it,” Neil Tennant said of the theme, although, in truth, the album could be seen as a standard Pet Shop Boys album with Latin beats on top, mostly provided by the Glasgow-based group SheBoom.

The Latin theme was inspired by a trip the duo made to a bar in New York called the Sound Factory, an experience that not only shaped the album, but the PSB live show. “They had all these guys playing samba drums, this incredible noise,” Neil told Paul Du Noyer for Q magazine’s tenth anniversary issue. “They had these guys dancing on leaves, wearing only flags to cover their modesty. We took the whole idea for our show. A few months later we saw this Glaswegian group SheBoom, these women who make their own samba drums in a huge council estate. They were brilliant. So all these things came together. We just like the energy and the noise.”

Producer Chris Porter’s involvement came by chance – and as a result of George Michael’s new-found independence. Porter had been working as Michael’s engineer since the Wham! days, and had also worked with boybands including Take That. But as studio technology improved and George became more proficient in the studio, Chris found himself literally sitting outside the recording sessions – in this case at Sarm West studios – waiting for George to finish so he could get more involved.

Latin Rhythms

“I’d go outside and I’d be watching daytime TV,” Chris told recordproduction.com of his time working with George. “I was thinking, ‘I’m getting paid handsomely for doing this’, but I was getting so bored. It was during [the George Michael album] Older and I’m thinking, ‘I’m too old for this’, so I said to George, ‘I’m going mad out here’ so went off to do something else for a bit.”

That ‘something else’ turned out to be a chance meeting with PSB at the same studio and so Chris started working with the duo on Bilingual.

“I don’t think we were cut out musically to work with one another,” Chris said of getting the Bilingual gig. “But I think it was because I’d produced [Take That’s] Back For Good and Neil thought it was a lovely record. They [PSB] really do open themselves out and Neil is such an interesting person to work with, one of the most incisive minds that I have come across in the music business.”

Being Boring

In the studio was engineer Pete Gleadall, who offered a fascinating insight into Bilingual’s recording and the duo’s writing process in a 1996 Sound On Sound interview.

“I get sounds for them, record what they do and manipulate it,” Pete revealed. “Chris [Lowe] will give a specific list of things he wants: a French horn, a Russian choir, an exploding boiler. Then, if we’re starting with a rhythm loop, I sit there recording everything he does. He’ll play stuff in over the top – percussion, drums, bassline and chords – until he’s finished a section. Neil will listen, and maybe ask to hear the chords in a different order. That might then inspire Neil to write another new section – their songwriting partnership is very collaborative.”

The album came together at the end of 1995 and start of 1996 at Sarm West, with some tracks recorded at Axis and Bass Hit in New York. For its promotion, the duo decided to push the boat out, making appearances on some of the biggest TV shows of the time, including a quite incredible – in hindsight – appearance on Chris Evans’ TFI Friday, during which Neil revealed how the duo had met in the first place.

“It was in a record shop, right?” its bespectacled host asked. “Yes, in 1981,” Neil replied. “Yeah it’s still there, Chelsea Records. He [Chris Lowe] was buying something at the counter and I came in. I’d just bought a synthesizer and I wanted to play it through my record player and they made a lead for me. While I was hanging around, he was there and we started talking about synthesizers. I think he [Chris] made a joke or something. Afterwards we wrote West End Girls.”

That’s The Way Life Is

Neil also revealed that Bilingual very nearly wasn’t the title of the new album: “We nearly called it ‘That’s The Way Life Is’, but there was such an outcry from people who knew us that we were going to break this line of one word [album] titles, that we decided to call it Bilingual.”

Chris Lowe was also surprisingly vocal during the TFI interview, professing his love – with no trace of irony – for watching daytime television, and wanting to appear on the chat show This Morning, hosted by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. With such a public wish, there was almost no doubt that it would come to pass and, sure enough, a few weeks later the duo found themselves facing a barrage of banal and often cringe-worthy questions from UK TV’s finest chat show couple to promote the single Red Letter Day from Bilingual.

Riding The Big One

After discussing going to watch a Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno boxing match and visiting a gay club in Moscow, Judy turned to Neil and asked: “You’re very different you two, do you do all the talking?” to which Neil replied, “Only in interviews, if you’d recorded us in the dressing room, I wasn’t really saying anything and Chris was.”

Judy’s line of questioning then got even more ‘direct’: “What is it about you two? He [Neil] sounds really learned and educated and artistic while you [Chris] sound…” But before she could directly insult Chris, Neil interjected with, “Well he [Chris] is the one with all the exams, not me.”

Judy was then quite shocked to find out that Chris was indeed ‘educated’ (Chris: “I’ve got a degree in Architecture”), but they then discussed Chris’ home town of Blackpool where he was bought up near the Pleasure Beach, resulting in some Richard Madeley/Alan Partridge-style brilliance…

Richard: “Have you been on The Big One?” (A fairground ride at Blackpool.)
Chris: “Yeah.”
Richard: “Have you?”
Chris: “Yeah, they’ve changed it to make the first drop, they’ve changed it…
Richard: “What to make it less frightening?”
Chris: “I don’t know why they’ve changed it, to make the curve different on the initial drop. I haven’t been on that yet as the queues were massive.”
Richard: “Yes, we still haven’t been on it. It’s that long trek up and that very first drop, that’s the one isn’t it. You can’t even see the track it’s so steep.”

The interview was then ended by the producers because it had overrun, but it’s well worth a watch, if only to see Chris actually loving being there.

Red Letter Day

Bilingual came out in September 1996 and had generally favourable reviews, and while it continued a general decline in PSB record sales, Neil maintained in the ‘making of’ documentary for the Single-Bilingual video that, “We’ve had fantastic reviews which actually we weren’t expecting on this album because it’s very different from our previous albums in terms of the musical style.”

Bilingual might not have been the highest point for PSB, but it is fascinating in retrospect. A lot of 80s bands struggled with the music climate of the 90s, feeling at odds with the Britpop fashions and trends, but Bilingual’s high points show that PSB always score well when they ignore their surroundings and do their own thing. Inconsistent, then, but some lovely moments of sheer and SheBoom brilliance.

The Songs

Discoteca

Discoteca opens Bilingual with sounds and strings straight from Please, but slips effortlessly into the 90s with some Spanish guitar and beats that could only be from that decade. Then SheBoom kick in and the album template is in place. You can understand why the Glaswegian drum collective were drafted in, such is their power and presence, greatly complementing what is a very decent and melodramatic PSB intro.

Single

The duo were so successful at coming up with parts for Discoteca that they produced second track Single at the same time, so they became a song of two halves. “They kept writing new sections,” Pete Gleadall told SOS, “and Neil wrote a new song over the end.” Indeed Single beautifully segues in thanks to those drums. “They got SheBoom in and they made a splendid racket.”

Metamorphosis

Third track Metamorphosis initially pushes too many 90s productions buttons for us, and when Neil’s unique UK rapping starts to grate, it could be the recipe for disaster. But actually with its over-the-top-brass kitsch, forthright backing vocals and disco tempo, it becomes the highest point of PSB camp on the album.

Electricity

And because Metamorphosis is so high in energy, next track Electricity suffers by dropping the tempo and mood, using just about as many samples as your average 90s sampler could throw at a track along the way.

Se a Vida é (That’s the Way Life Is)

This is another Latin flier, a Chris Porter-produced track that features the best chorus on the album and, to our mind, the best Neil vocal. He’s singing beautifully in his happy range, and helps make it one of the most joyful PSB tracks ever.

It Always Comes as a Surprise

Apparently the odd chord at the start was a happy accident, something that Chris Lowe did when he hit some notes trying to play as many as he could at random. So happy was Neil with it, that he rewrote the chords in the song so they flowed together. Works for us, as the result is a kind of ‘PSB does spy thriller theme’. Get them in to do a Bond theme, we say.

A Red Letter Day

PSB travelled to Moscow to record the Moscow Choral Academy for this as Neil tried to explain to Richard and Judy during ‘that’ interview: “I like the sound of big Russian choirs – there’s a very emotional quality to them and you can’t really get that kind of sound in Britain.”

Up Against It

Pete Gleadall explained that this was a Chris Lowe-penned idea that Neil “massaged” into a full track to fit his lyrics into – a great description of the duo’s songwriting process. It features ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, and some of the best flowing hooks on Bilingual – a late and much needed injection of pace and melody.

The Survivors

It’s a slick Chris Porter-produced track and it’s definitely classic Pet Shop Boys, but sadly The Survivors has ‘track nine’ written all over it. If PSB had made Bilingual a stronger 10-track album rather than a weaker 12, this might have been one left in the Logic Audio bin.

Before

The lead single from Bilingual is arguably PSB leaning a little too much on the then current trends, so nearly 30-years on feels like the most dated track on the album. That said, Before hit the UK Top 10 and did well in the States.

To Step Aside

Classic PSB recipe this: glorious Tennant vocals, swirling strings, quirky samples, electro beats and bass and an uplifting chorus. And you know what, for a ‘track 11’ this is a fine high point. It really should have made an earlier appearance, or closed the album…

Saturday Night Fever

…as that would have been a high point to end Bilingual on, but instead we have a largely forgettable disco closer. With Danny Tenaglia behind the controls, there are classic 90s rolling snares and an almost SAW-like production, which doesn’t do it any favours in the longevity stakes. A disappointing end to a very decent but ‘should have been shorter’ PSB album.

For more on Pet Shop Boys click here

Read More: Pet Shop Boys singles – The Top 40

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It’s the ultimate face-off as we count down our favourite 80s pop artists…

It is, of course, the impossible task: distil music’s most creative and varied decade down to a mere 40 artists. The Classic Pop team has only just finished wiping the blood away caused by the fights creating such a list entails, but we reckon we’ve got the 1980s covered here. 

Everyone has favourite artists that we couldn’t find room for. What do you mean, no Orange Juice, Nick Heyward or Kajagoogoo? But who from this selection could you possibly ignore? Our criteria was simple but strict: if you essentially broke through in the 70s – like Blondie, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello – you were out.

However, we’ve briefly alluded to some established artists whose careers got a much-needed shot in the arm during the 80s thanks to some landmark albums. Acts more suited to a rockist publication are also out, so no Def Leppard or Guns N’ Roses. There are other magazines for that sort of thing. Instead, let’s celebrate the colourful, eccentric and varied world of the finest pop of the 80s. What an incredible playlist it makes…

40 KIM WILDE

Marty’s eldest daughter is such a friendly staple of daytime TV and (thanks to her other passion) gardening shows, it’s easy to overlook just how huge she was, with 19 Top 40 singles. Massive in America, too, Kim supported Michael Jackson on the Bad tour, while her Top 30 album Here Come The Aliens proved Kim is still no slouch at energetic power-pop.

Read our Kim Wilde – Album By Album feature

39 DIRE STRAITS

When they weren’t popularising CDs thanks to the pristine sheen of Brothers In Arms, at the time Dire Straits seemed an austere and somewhat workmanlike presence among the 80s riot of colour. But their imperious yacht rock has aged better than many contemporaries. Of all the bands yet to reform, they’d probably sound the most dignified if they did.

38 A-HA

Morten Harket’s lethally sharp cheekbones and the glossy Take On Me video meant a-ha should have been as disposable as any boyband. Instead, they’re still creating stadium-sized melancholia over 30 years later. A precursor to 90s Scandipop, they’re still not given the credit their luxurious pop deserves – possibly because Morten is still so distressingly handsome, the swine.

Read our interview with a-ha here

37 JANET JACKSON

Janet could easily have been written off as Michael’s annoying kid sister, one Jackson too many. But if you’re fronting industrially-tooled R&B and promoting the deliciously filthy side of pop her brother was seemingly too asexual to convince with, who cares who your siblings are? Pretty much Britney Spears’ whole career was taken from the robofunk of Nasty.

Check out our complete Janet Jackson album guide

36 JAPAN

David Sylvian’s refusal to engage with his past means Japan’s legend has faded. It shouldn’t: even now, it’s still impossible to fully grasp the real meanings of their complex, grandiose material. Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were so in awe of the music the Catford-birthed band smuggled into the Top 40 that they threw parties to celebrate their rival splitting up.

Read our complete guide to the albums of Japan and David Sylvian here

35 GENESIS/PHIL COLLINS/PETER GABRIEL

Genesis going from their prog period to Invisible Touch in a decade was the equivalent of Radiohead getting DJ Khaled to produce their next album. Phil Collins somehow found time to pioneer the blokey confessional album with Face Value, while Peter Gabriel went poppier than his old mates on the day-glo world of Sledgehammer.

Read our The Lowdown – Peter Gabriel

34 R.E.M.

As prolific as their friends in The Smiths, the difference was that R.E.M. carried on being magnificent for ages. Arriving fully-formed with the mysterious Murmur, by the end of the 80s R.E.M. were a fully-fledged arena powerhouse thanks to Green. Only Arcade Fire and The National have come close to rivalling them as North American college rock kings.

33 U2

You’d have got pretty long odds on U2 being the biggest band in the world at the start of the 80s. Seemingly through the sheer scope of their ambition, they knuckled down and realised exactly what the world demanded – and promptly served up indestructible anthems by the yard. Having got stellar, they went Year Zero on their career, but that’s for another decade…

32 LUTHER VANDROSS

Soul music generally went mad in the 80s, waylaid by the rise of hip-hop and feeling the effects of the decade’s anything-but-soulful synthetic production techniques. Some talents were able to rise above. Learning his craft as a backing singer for David Bowie and Diana Ross, once he was allowed the spotlight, Luther’s seductive voice truly shone.

31 TEARS FOR FEARS

Precious few bands are capable of drawing on Jungian philosophy while creating stone-cold bangers, but precious few bands managed to distil the differing volatile temperaments of Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal long enough for them to be so cohesive. There are too few Tears For Fears songs out there, but what we’re gifted with is usually sublime.

Read our feature on the making of Tears For Fears’ The Hurting

30 THE POLICE

Sting has been a caricature for so long, it’s easy to forget just how inventive The Police were. Swallowing up stadiums via songs as downright sinister as Every Breath You Take is impressive, as is the way they graduated to stardom without losing the intensity of three people who plainly hated each other. Like The Jam, they knew exactly the right moment to split.

Check out our Lowdown on The Police

29 BANANARAMA

They might not have quite been the original girlband, but they certainly set the template on how the Spice Girls to Little Mix operate: make being in a pop group look the most fun imaginable, while ensuring you’ve got the best tunes on the block. The fervour surrounding Siobhan Fahey rejoining showed how much Bananarama still matter
to people.

Read our Bananarama album guide

28 THE ASSOCIATES

An operatically-voiced gay guy singing defiantly abstract disco about social anxiety? Only in the 1980s could The Associates have become crossover stars. With Billy Mackenzie’s stratospheric voice, their songs could have coasted. Instead, via the gloriously strange Party Fears Two and Club Country, Alan Rankine crafted drama worthy of his bandmate. 

Read more: Alan Rankine, Mike Hedges, Michael Dempsey and Martyn Ware on 1982’s Sulk

27 ABC

Yes, Trevor Horn’s production on The Lexicon Of Love was wonderful. But it would have been nothing without songs injected with Oscar-worthy drama. The rest of ABC’s decade – the rockist Beauty Stab, back to silky soul and still finding time for proto-house – badly needs reassessing, too. And Poison Arrow has the best spoken-word section of any pop song.

Read more: Making The Lexicon Of Love

26 EURYTHMICS

Eurythmics were determined to make memorable videos, and their various images are so iconic it’s almost overshadowed how consistent the music was. Annie Lennox simply had to be a star, while Dave Stewart is one of the best grafters in music. That’s not an insult: it’s harder to write a hit single than a freeform jazz odyssey. Together, they were unstoppable.

Read more: Eurythmics – Album By Album

25 DEPECHE MODE

Set to be pure-pop titans with Vince Clarke, once he left Martin Gore ensured Depeche Mode became a far more deviant proposition. Uniting misfits with an outsiders’ worldview and doomy anthems, they weren’t a band so much as a way of life: it’s been that way ever since. Even without Depeche’s dark carapace, you’re left with an arsenal of bangers.

Read more: Top 40 Depeche Mode songs

24 YAZOO/ALISON MOYET/ERASURE

Like a non-evil Simon Cowell, Vince Clarke knows how to spot a star: first, he kickstarted Alison Moyet’s career with Yazoo and then did it all over again with Andy Bell. Alison thrived on her own, while Erasure are still a force for good. Why hasn’t anyone erected a statue in his honour?

Read more: Top 40 Vince Clarke Songs

23 CULTURE CLUB

As Boy George told Classic Pop recently, just the sight of Culture Club – a mixed-race band fronted by a flamboyantly-dressed gay singer – was a statement in itself. Their music was just as important: classic soul tales of forbidden love with an added pop twist which sent them stellar. Too intense to last at the time, it’s impossible not to cheer on their comeback.

Read more: Boy George interview

22 THE CURE

They happened to thrive in the 1980s, but The Cure would be fantastically other no matter when their music was created. The Cure are The Cure: it’s one of the great unwritten rules of pop music. And, let’s be clear, they make pop music, not rock music: Robert Smith is too in love with melody and experimentation to be anything as dull as a rock singer.

Read more: The Lowdown – The Cure

21 FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

Two of the decade’s biggest singles had videos involving watersports and nuclear war. Hurray! What the band bought was insouciant cool (Paul Rutherford), a belief that pop could be about anything (Holly Johnson) and a devilment that they were getting away with it (the other three, aka The Lads). It didn’t last, but good lord, what a debut album.

Read more: Making Welcome To The Pleasuredome

20 TALK TALK

Were Talk Talk ever actually real? No, honestly: their fourth album, 1988’s Spirit Of Eden is such an out-there masterpiece that it couldn’t have been made by regular people. The myth of Talk Talk is the most enigmatic in pop, primarily because their music lives up to the mystery. 

Read more: Talk Talk – Album By Album

19 MADNESS

It’s true that Madness’ albums weren’t generally as strong as their hits, but labelling them “a singles band” shouldn’t be an insult. You try writing era-defining songs as joyful as Our House, Driving In My Car and House Of Fun and then you can carp about filler tracks. Moreover, since their return, the albums have been fantastic, too. You didn’t make Baggy Trousers. Madness did. They win.

Read more: Top Madness songs

18 KYLIE MINOGUE

The ultimate Stock, Aitken Waterman creation and so much more, Kylie should have had one album and scarpered like every other soap star. Instead, here she is, more than 30 years later, still perfectly poptangular. Nobody else developed from the SAW factory went on to be bigger: some singers really are just born to be pop stars.

Read more: Top 40 Kylie tracks

17 SOFT CELL

Even in a decade of deviants, Soft Cell are the ultimate example of smuggling a dark heart into the mainstream. Marc Almond is right that he and Dave Ball should have written more pop songs, but The Art Of Falling Apart and This Last Night In Sodom are perfect outsider art. Dave is right to claim Depeche Mode essentially stole their career when Soft Cell split.

Read more: Soft Cell interview

16 THE STONE ROSES

The Stone Roses weren’t the purest example of rave culture, but the scene saved them from getting stuck as the unpromising goths they started out as in 1985. Three years on, they had one of the all-time great rhythm sections, a spectacular guitarist and a messianic singer holding it together. When their eponymous debut album arrived in 1989, the 1990s began.

Read more: Top Stone Roses songs

15 THE HUMAN LEAGUE

Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh quit after The Human League’s first two albums flopped. Heaven 17 were great, and everyone assumed Phil Oakey was a spent force, especially when his big idea was recruiting two singers he’d seen dancing in a club. The result? The Dare album and its passably successful single Don’t You Want Me. That’s how you get revenge.

Read more: Top Human League songs

14 KATE BUSH

Like Robert Smith, Kate Bush would be the same in 1920 or 2020 as when she happened to float into existence with Wuthering Heights. Never has someone taken such a languorously perfectionist approach to their music, while simultaneously plainly not giving a stuff what anyone else thinks of it. It makes her an incredibly powerful presence, and her music utterly timeless.

Read more: Top 40 Kate Bush songs

13 THE SPECIALS

2019 album Encore was one of the all-time great comebacks, but that shouldn’t be a surprise: everything The Specials do is a sign of total commitment and integrity. Their role as one of the UK’s first crossover multiracial bands was politically important; songs as intense and provocative as Ghost Town and Too Much Too Young more than lived up to that pioneering status.

Check out our Essential Guide To The Best Of 2 Tone

12 SPANDAU BALLET

From the forefront of club culture on Journeys To Glory to timeless stadium ballads with Through The Barricades in just five years, Spandau Ballet’s heartthrob image overshadowed what a varied songwriter Gary Kemp is. Immense multi-genre anthems, and such a sharp fashion sense that even David Bowie copied their look: what else do you want from a band?

Read more: Making Spandau’s Journeys To Glory

11 THE SMITHS

Far more than mining misery, Morrissey’s scabrous wit was matched every step by Johnny Marr’s melodic powers. Their dignity in refusing to reform means the brutal power of The Smiths’ live shows has been largely forgotten.
That Morrissey has been so serially unpleasant over the past few years means that many fans no longer want a reunion. That’s heartbreaking.

Read more: The complete guide to The Smiths

10 PUBLIC ENEMY

Their riotously powerful music would have been enough to earn their place here. That they were a genuine cultural phenomenon, too, means Public Enemy’s influence has lasted longer than any other peer. Mainstream USA was right to be scared of them: after Public Enemy, sectors of American society’s downtrodden finally had a voice. And what a voice.

Take a look at our Top 20 hip-hop singles of the 80s

9 PET SHOP BOYS

One of the most distinctive voices in music, unrivalled attention to detail, endless array of killer lyrics, subsuming club culture into titanic pop songs when they’re not crafting heart-stopping ballads… Ever since West End Girls introduced them to the world, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have shown the importance of pop, without ever overstating the fact.

Read more: Top Pet Shop Boys singles

8 NEW ORDER

Overcoming the tragedy of Ian Curtis’ death, Joy Division emerged just as strong with their new identity. A proper band, four strong personalities were reflected in mixing dance music with a melancholic undertow. The best-selling 12″ of all-time in Blue Monday, one of the greatest videos in True Faith and possibly the best ever B-side with the majestic 1963: they made it all look a blast, too.

Read more: New Order albums – the complete guide

7 DURAN DURAN

In a decade that ultimately saw the rise of the solo singer, Duran Duran were the ultimate 80s band. They didn’t become its biggest stars just because John Taylor was always Smash Hits’ Most Fanciable Male (though it helped). For a band so ginormous, Rio and Seven And The Ragged Tiger were, at their core, both immensely poppy and powerfully strange albums.

Read more: Top 40 Duran Duran songs

6 WHITNEY HOUSTON

Whitney Houston’s skyscraping voice gave birth to an over-singing am-dram vocal style that’s still distressingly prevalent. It wasn’t Whitney’s fault that her successors entirely missed the point: Whitney could properly sing, and nobody since her has been able to capture the sheer joy present in every note of I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) and How Will I Know.

Read more: The Lowdown – Whitney Houston

5 ADAM ANT

“Ridicule is nothing to be scared of” summed up the message of 80s music: no matter how strange you are, you too could be a huge pop star. That was typified by Adam Ant’s own rise: a seemingly washed-up punk at the start of the decade, within 18 months he was Britain’s biggest pop star. He did it with colour, style and songs that sounded
like hurricanes.

Read more: Adam Ant Albums – The Complete Guide

4 MICHAEL JACKSON

With just two albums, Michael Jackson was the decade’s biggest personality. Fifteen of his 19 album tracks in the 80s were singles, every one of them massive – beat that for quality control. Every aspect of his image was worthy of university degree courses, while his tours remain the standard for stadium theatrics. For a decade, Michael knew exactly how to use his golden voice.

Read more: Michael Jackson – The Lowdown

3 GEORGE MICHAEL/WHAM!

As shuttlecocks-down-the-shorts cheesy as Wham! looked, it was soon obvious that their music was sturdier than boyband fodder, with George Michael’s songs full of fun and lust. Wham! had a yearning, too, which George developed once he couldn’t go any further creatively with Andrew Ridgeley. Put all of that together, and Faith was the perfect debut solo album.

Read more: 40 best George Michael songs

2 MADONNA

Far from the greatest singer or songwriter, Madonna exemplified control: putting the right team in place to deliver an endless stream of fantastic singles. Madonna always looked fantastic, and her live shows helped reinvent what was possible in stadium pop’s first era. You could say Madonna invented Girl Power before the Spice Girls, but Madonna wasn’t so limiting: hers was simply Power.

Read more: The complete guide to Madonna

1 PRINCE

Prince is possibly the only bona fide genius in 1980s music. How else to explain just how gifted he was as a singer, guitarist, songwriter, performer and style icon? He was certainly the most prolific songwriter, releasing his own albums at such a prodigious rate that Warner could barely keep up with him, while finding time to donate songs to others which would have been the best in many artists’ whole careers: I Feel For You, Manic Monday, Nothing Compares 2 U… and that’s before examining the mythical piles of unreleased songs Prince insisted remain in his vaults which are only now beginning to surface.

So, sure, Prince could write – and there couldn’t have been anyone better to perform his songs than Prince And The Revolution either. Nobody better captured raw, crackling sex better, whether he was being explicit or seemingly playful like Kiss. He transcended genres, because while he excelled at pop, rock, R&B and soul, he was always Prince, superior to any boundaries. Prince’s career had the occasional misfire, like his Graffiti Bridge film, but that was irrelevant because something brilliant would follow before you knew it. 

Prince was locked in a space race with Madonna, David Bowie and Michael Jackson in the 80s to see who would have the greatest live show. For performance, Prince won: it was in concert that fans were reminded that here was possibly the greatest guitarist of his generation as well as its finest songwriter. No wonder Prince rarely spoke: decades on, us mere mortals are still trying to fathom out how he managed it all.

Read more: Top 10 Prince songs

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The post Top 40 80s pop artists appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Manic Street Preachers have released new single, Decline & Fall, the band’s first new music since The Ultra Vivid Lament in September 2021.

The lead track from their forthcoming 15th studio album, the Manics said: “Musically with Decline & Fall we tried to create forward motion – a song which harnesses the past to propel it into the future – the lyric is one of realisation and understanding – of celebrating the tiny miracles that still exist whilst accepting and embracing managed decline.”

Listen to Decline & Fall below:

Utterly Euphoric

Taking musical inspiration from The Skids, Gran Turismo era The Cardigans, alongside the driving pulse of The War On Drugs, Decline & Fall is fully energised and utterly euphoric, a joyous anthem for an era of self-hatred.

Recorded at the band’s Door To The River studio in Newport and Rockfield Studios, Monmouth, it was produced by regular collaborators Dave Eringa and Loz Williams and mixed by Caesar Edmunds (Beach House/Suede/Wet Leg).

The band have just completed a sold out UK co-headline tour with Suede which received incredible reviews across the board. Their next live show will be Radio 2 In The Park at Moor Park in Preston on 8 September.

For more information click here

Read More: Into The Valleys – The Sounds Of Wales

The post Manic Street Preachers share new single, Decline & Fall appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.