Forget moons in June, walks along the beach and holding hands in the back row of the cinema, there’s nothing quite so likely to make for a memorable number one hit than some meaningful lyrics about urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities.
OK, perhaps it’s not going to be the golden staircase to the top every time – but in the case of Ghost Town by The Specials, released in June 1981, the combination was commercial enough to give it three weeks at number one and 10 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK singles chart.
The fact that it was a hit at the same time as riots were occurring in British cities didn’t do sales any harm either.
Behind the headlines internal tensions within the Coventry band were also coming to a head when the single was being recorded, resulting in it being the last one recorded by the original seven members before splitting up.
That didn’t stop the song being hailed as a major piece of popular social commentary and all three of the major UK music magazines of the time awarded Ghost Town the accolade of Single of the Year for 1981.
But things were coming to head. The tour for the group’s More Specials album in autumn 1980 had been a fraught experience. Already tired from a long touring schedule and with several band members at odds with keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers over his decision to incorporate “muzak” keyboard sounds on the album, several of the gigs descended into audience violence.
As they travelled around the UK the band witnessed sights that summed up the depressed mood of a country gripped by recession. In 2002 Dammers told The Guardian: “You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.”
In an interview in 2011, Dammers explained how witnessing this event inspired his composition: “The overall sense I wanted to convey was impending doom. Certain members of the band resented the song and wanted the simple chords they were used to playing on the first album. It’s hard to explain how powerful it sounded. We had almost been written off and then Ghost Town came out of the blue.”
The song’s sparse lyrics address urban decay, unemployment and violence in inner cities. It doesn’t beat about the bush but approaches its subject matter in a much more melancholic manner than its punk predecessors could or would have done:
“This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won’t play no more
Too much fighting on the dance floor.”

Then it briefly takes on a brighter more uptempo approach for a nostalgic nod to the recent past:
“Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown.”

Then back to reality:
“This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can’t go on no more
The people getting angry

This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town.”
Jo-Ann Greene of Allmusic notes that the lyrics: “only brush on the causes for this apocalyptic vision – the closed down clubs, the numerous fights on the dancefloor, the spiraling unemployment, the anger building to explosive levels. But so embedded were these in the British psyche, that Dammers needed only a minimum of words to paint his picture.”
The club referred to in the song was the Locarno a regular haunt of Specials members Neville Staple and Lynval Golding and which is also named as the club in Friday Night Saturday Morning, one of the songs on the B-side. The building which housed the club is now Coventry Central Library.
In March 1981, Jerry Dammers heard the reggae song At the Club by actor/singer Victor Romero Evans. Fascinated by its sound, Dammers telephoned the song’s co-writer and producer John Collins who travelled from London to meet The Specials at their midlands rehearsal studio and agreed to produce their new single.
After becoming overwhelmed with the multitude of choices available in the 24-track studio used during the recording of More Specials, Dammers had decided that he wanted to return a more basic set-up, and after a recommendation from bass player Horace Panter, the band chose the small 8-track studio in the house owned by John Rivers in Woodbine Street in Royal Leamington Spa.
The studio consisted of a recording space in the cellar and a control room in the living room which was too small to accommodate all the band members, so rather than their normal recording method of playing all together, Collins recorded each member playing one at a time and built up the songs track by track.
The three songs for the single were recorded over ten days in April 1981 in two separate sessions at Woodbine Street. Tensions were high during the recording with little communication between the band members
Member Horace Panter remembered: “Everybody was stood in different parts of this room with their equipment, no one talking. Jerry stormed out a couple of times virtually in tears and I went after him. It was hell to be around.”
Dammers said: “People weren’t cooperating. Ghost Town wasn’t a free-for-all jam session. Every little bit was worked out and composed, all the different parts, I’d been working on it for at least a year, trying out every conceivable chord. I can remember walking out of a rehearsal in total despair because Neville Staple would not try the ideas. You know the brass bit is kind of jazzy, it has a dischord? I remember Lynval rushing into the control room while they were doing it going, ‘No, no, no, it sounds wrong! Wrong! Wrong!’”
Collins wanted the song to sound more like a Sly and Robbie roots reggae track, so he brought a copy of a Sly and Robbie-produced single, What a Feeling by Gregory Isaacs, to the studio so that drummer John Bradbury could mimic the drum sound. He also suggested the two-handed shuffle rhythm played by Dammers on the Hammond organ throughout the song. Using just eight tracks limited Collins’ recording possibilities, but as a reggae producer he decided to use the common reggae method of recording everything in mono.
“As we were recording eight-track, I did go with a track plan. I wanted the drums in mono on one track, the bass in mono on another and the rhythm – that shuffle organ and Lynval’s guitar – on another. They’re the backbone of a reggae song. Then there was brass on another track, lead vocals on another, backing vocals on another, and various little bits and pieces dropped in. Ghost Town is basically a mono record with stereo reverb and echo that I added in the mix. The same applied to the brass. Recording simply in mono really helped the instruments balance themselves.”
However, there was a tense moment when Dammers decided at the last minute that he wanted to add a flute to the song, and with no free tracks available Collins was forced to record it directly onto the track containing the previously recorded brass section, with the possibility that any error would have rendered the entire track unusable:
As it had not been decided where exactly the backing vocals would be used, Terry Hall, Staple, Golding and Dammers sang a full backing vocal track throughout the song, which Collins used to his advantage as the lyric “this town is coming like a ghost town” had become like a “hypnotic chant” by the end of the song.
Collins took a recording of the separate tracks back to his home in Tottenham where he spent three weeks mixing the song. Hall, Staple, Golding and Dammers all turned up at the house at various times to add further vocals. Since the song had no proper beginning or ending during recording at Woodbine Street, Collins recreated the idea of fading in over a sound effect, which he had used previously on Lift Off, the B-side of At the Club.
The single had two B-sides, written by two different members of the Specials. Why? is a plea for racial tolerance and was written by guitarist Lynval Golding in response to a violent racist attack he had suffered in July 1980 outside the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead in London, which had left him hospitalised with broken ribs. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was written by lead singer Terry Hall and describes a mundane night out in Coventry.
Contemporary reviews of Ghost Town identified the song’s impact as an “instant musical editorial” on recent events (the 1981 England riots). Although initial reviews of the single in the UK music press were lukewarm, by the end of the year the song had won over the critics to be named Single of the Year in Melody Maker, NME and Sounds, the UK’s top three weekly music magazines at the time.
The summer of 1981 saw riots in over 35 locations around the UK.
Terry Hall said: “When we recorded Ghost Town, we were talking about 1980’s riots in Bristol and Brixton. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence.”
The song actually created resentment in Coventry where residents angrily rejected the characterisation of the city as a town in decline.
At The Specials’ Top of the Pops recording of the song Staples, Hall and Golding announced they were leaving the band.
Golding later said: “We didn’t talk to the rest of the guys. We couldn’t even stay in the same dressing room. We couldn’t even look at each other. We stopped communicating. You only realise what a genius Jerry was years later. At the time, we were on a different planet.”
Shortly afterwards, the three left the band to form Fun Boy Three.
For a while The Specials were nothing but a ghost band.

Bearing in mind what a serious soul Kevin Rowland was (and doubtless still is) it’s probably a hard enough cross for him to bear that Come On Eileen, his most famous composition with Dexy’s Midnight Runners (actually credited to Dexy’s Midnight Runners and the Emerald Express), will forever be identified as one of the greatest dance floor fillers of all time rather than anything more significant.

Imagine his chagrin then that it is also (amongst other accolades) the opening track of the triple CD collection The Ultimate Cheese Party – alongside such other delights as Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy, Black Lace’s Agadoo and Jive Bunny’s Swing The Mood.

It clearly matters little that the song has been interpreted as riding “a wave of working class nostalgia and youthful pride, with the narrator trying to convince the titular Eileen that by pulling together and embracing music and sex they’ll break out of their crushing hometown and the chains put on them by their parents and the poor economy of the time. In effect, it’s the Celtic soul iteration of Born to Run.”

Why let some wordy analysis get in the way of a song which becomes increasingly attractive the more alcohol you’ve consumed before the dj gets round to playing it on his/her way to the end of the evening/morning smoocher? That’s if they still do that kind of thing of course.

Come On Eileen was released in the UK on 25 June 1982 as a single from the album Too-Rye-Ay. It reached number one in the United States, and was the Dexy’s second number one hit in the UK, following 1980’s fellow floor filler Geno. The song was actually written by Kevin Rowland and band members, Jim Paterson and Billy Adams, and was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. It went on to win Best British Single at the 1983 Brit Awards and in 2015 the song was voted by the British public as the nation’s sixth favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV. It was ranked number 18 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’80s.

Lyrically it’s clearly chalk not cheese despite being doomed to share space with the Fast Food Rockers and Afro Man. Not that it necessarily makes too much sense. What’s this all about then?

“Poor old Johnnie Ray
Sounded sad upon the radio
Moved a million hearts in mono
Our mothers cried
Sang along, who’d blame them?
You’ve grown (You’re grown up!)
So grown (So grown up!)
Now I must say more than ever
(Come on Eileen)
Too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye, ay
And we can sing just like our fathers.”

It’s easier to interpret when the narrator finally admits “You in that dress, my thoughts I confess verge on dirty.” Or put another way: “These people round here
Were beaten down, eyes sunk in smoke-dried face
They’re so resigned to what their fate is
But not us (No never)
But not us (Not ever)
We are far too young and clever
(Remember)
Too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye, ay
And you’ll hum this tune forever, oh

Come on Eileen
Oh, I swear (What he means)
Aah, come on let’s
Take off everything
That pretty red dress
Eileen (Tell him yes)
Aah, come on let’s
Aah, come on Eileen
That pretty red dress
Eileen (Tell him yes)
Aah, come on let’s
Aah, come on Eileen
Please.”

Their only American hit, the song reached number one in the USA on the Billboard Hot 100 charts during the week ending 23 April 1983 and prevented Michael Jackson from having back-to-back number one hits in the US.

Billie Jean was the number one single the previous seven weeks, while Beat It was the number one song the ensuing three.

The Dexy’s were never easy to categorise. They were founded in 1978 in Birmingham by Rowland (vocals, guitar, at the time using the pseudonym Carlo Rolan) and Kevin “Al” Archer (vocals, guitar). Both had been in the short-lived punk band The Killjoys. Rowland had previously written a Northern soul-style song that the two of them sang, Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, which became the first Dexy’s “song”.
The band’s name was derived from Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine used as a recreational drug among Northern Soul fans to give them energy to dance all night. While recruiting members for the new band, Rowland noted that “Anyone joining Dexy’s had to give up their job and rehearse all day long. . . . We had nothing to lose and felt that what we were doing was everything.”
Understandably the band went through went through numerous personnel, style and musical changes over the course of three albums and 13 singles, with only Rowland remaining in the band through all of the transitions and only him and “Big” Jim Paterson (trombone) appearing on all of the albums.

One minute they were zoot suited, the next dustbowl denimed Depression survivors, Irish vagabonds or street corner brawlers straight from New York’s Mean Streets.

Rowland said of the band’s sound and look in January 1980: “we didn’t want to become part of anyone else’s movement. We’d rather be our own movement”.

A unified image became very important to the group, with Rowland commenting “We wanted to be a group that looked like something … a formed group, a project, not just random.”

By 1985, the band consisted only of Rowland and long-standing members Helen O’Hara (violin) and Billy Adams (guitar). The band broke up in 1987, with Rowland becoming a solo artist. After two failed restart attempts, Dexy’s was reformed by Rowland in 2003 with new members, as well as a few returning members from the band’s original line-up (known as Dexy’s Mark I). Dexy’s released their fourth album in 2012 and a fifth followed in 2016.

Although often believed to have been inspired by a childhood friend with whom Rowland had a romantic, and later sexual, relationship in his teens, there was actually no real Eileen. He later said: “In fact she was composite, to make a point about Catholic repression.”

The phrase Come on Eileen, used as the chorus to the song was loosely inspired by A Man Like Me by the 1960s British soul group Jimmy James and the Vagabonds. There are various versions of the song, some in addition to the main section featuring either an intro of a Celtic fiddle solo, or an a cappella coda both based on Thomas Moore’s Irish folk song Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.

In 1997, ska band Save Ferris released a cover of the song as a single from album It Means Everything. In 2004, the band 4-4-2 was formed to cover the song as Come On England with altered lyrics to support the England football team during their appearance in the 2004 European Championships.

On 7 August 2005, the song was used to wake the astronauts of Space Shuttle Discovery on the final day of STS-114 in reference to commander Eileen Collins. The song was used in the films Tommy Boy, Take Me Home Tonight and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Cheese? Eat your heart out Right Said Fred.

If any song had the male half of the world at its feet it must have been Judie Tzuke and Mike Paxman’s 1979 torcher Stay With Me Till Dawn.

It had the street cred of being on Elton John’s Rocket Records label but more importantly it was sung by the sultry and sexy (and blonde) Tzuke in the same “this one is just for you” manner that anyone who has ever been convinced that their favourite performer really is looking straight at them and only them during a concert.

Yes, alright “sultry,” “sexy” and “blonde” are terribly sexist and non pc in a day and age when we should all concentrate on the quality of the song and not the dateable and (further down the fantasy road) beddable quality of the singer – but in 1979 hearing and seeing Tzuke deliver:

“But I need you tonight
(Need you tonight)
Yes, I need you tonight
(Need you tonight)
And I’ll show you a sunset
If you’ll stay with me till dawn”
meant the world to any hot blooded, sickeningly shy and acne ridden teenage male.

With three appearances on Top of the Pops on 12 July, 26 July and 9 August 1979 to promote a song which peaked at number 16 and only actually stayed in the charts for 10 weeks something had obviously also been spotted by tv moguls.

Whilst the lyrics more than hint at something deeper than chatter (“Is this a game you’re playin’?
I don’t understand what’s goin’ on
I can’t see through your frown
First you’re up
Then you’re down
You’re keepin’ me from someone
I want to know”) Tzuke has insisted the song is about a good friend of hers with whom she often used to stay up till dawn chatting.
So how does that explain: “Is this a game you’re playin’?
Playin’ with my heart
(Need you tonight)
Ooh, stop playin’ with my heart
(Need you tonight)
And I’ll show you a sunset
If you’ll stay with me till dawn.”
Still, if she says it’s just a friendly chat it would be rude to argue.

Judie Tzuke didn’t materialize from nowhere. She was born Judie Myers on 3 April 1956. Her family had relocated from Poland to England in the 1920s, and changed their surname from Tzuke to Myers. Her mother, Jean Silverside, was a television actress who appeared in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, The Marty Feldman Show and The Goodies, and her father, Sefton Myers, was a successful property developer who also managed artists and singers — most notably Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice during the writing of Jesus Christ Superstar.

When she embarked on her singing career, she decided to reclaim the family’s Jewish-Polish name as her stage name. Educated in the visual and performing arts (and music), she performed in folk clubs from the age of 15. Her meeting with Mike Paxman in 1975 was a turning point and they began to collaborate. Under the name Tzuke & Paxo, they eventually secured a recording contract and the duo released a single, These Are the Laws produced by Tony Visconti for his Good Earth label.

Her solo career began in 1977, when she signed to Elton John’s label after meeting David Croker from Rocket and playing him a few songs including Stay With Me Till Dawn. The pair proceeded to spend around six months or so recording her début album at Air Studios in London and Stay With Me Till Dawn’s John Punter-produced parent album Welcome to the Cruise.
Her first single on the Rocket label, For You, was released in 1978 – and bombed.

In fact her only notable singles success was Stay With Me Till Dawn in 1979. The song became a Top 20 hit in the UK in the summer and a Top 10 hit in Australia and was featured on Tzuke’s 1979 debut album, Welcome to the Cruise, which was also a Top 20 hit.
In 2002, the song was ranked 39 in a Radio 2 poll of the 50 Best British Songs 1952–2002. It was also sampled by Scottish dance musician Mylo in the song Need You Tonite on his 2004 album Destroy Rock & Roll.

On the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the single peaked at 47, spending 6 weeks on the chart. It also peaked at number one on the Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart. After Stay With Me her four subsequent UK releases failed to peak higher than number 92 on the UK Singles Chart, rendering her a one-hit wonder.

Judie’s daughter, Bailey Tzuke is a British singer/songwriter whose vocals were featured on the Freemasons cover of the Alanis Morissette track Uninvited, which reached number 8 in the UK charts in 2007.

Plans for the 40th anniversary of Welcome To the Cruise and planned tour have been postponed until early 2020. Tzuke has begun working in 2019 on a new album with the working title of The Wolf Moon Sessions.

There’s always at least one song that’s suitable for just about every special occasion.
It can be the fairly general joy bringer of Cliff Richard with Congratulations, or the more time specific Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade, the anthemic Have a Nice Day by Stereophonics or the tissue soaking Anniversary Waltz and The Wedding by Anita Harris and Julie Rogers.

Even Tammy Wynette’s (or Billy Connolly if you prefer) D.I.V.O.R.C.E has been gifted with a celebratory life of its own since everything in life is these days considered a good excuse for a “paaaaarty.”
But top of the crop of celebration songs must be the joyful near chart topping Happy Birthday by Altered Images from 1981which has thankfully eclipsed the almost dirge like tones of its traditional predecessor – except in Italian restaurants when the lights are dimmed and the embarrassed staff are forced into song.

Clearly Altered Images’ Happy Birthday is a song to be sung (or danced to) at, well birthdays actually. Hence the opening lyrics:
“Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy, happy birthday.”

And then there’s the closing words:
“Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday.
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday, happy birthday.”

Get the picture?
As for the rest of the song it doesn’t make a lot of sense – even for those of us who find it hard to forget the not so altered image of Altered Images front person Clare Grogan bubbling and bouncing along on Top of the Pops.

Try these lyrics for size:
“Happy, happy birthday in a hot bath
To those nice, nice nights
I remember always, always
I got such a fright
Seeing them in my dark cupboard
With my great big cake

If they were me, if they were me
And I was you, and I was you
If they were me, if they were me
And I was you, and I was you
If they were me and I was you
Would you’ve liked a present too?

Happy, happy birthday in a hot bath
To those nice, nice nights
I remember always, always
I got such a fright
Seeing them in my dark cupboard
With my great big cake

If they were me, if they were me
And I was you and I was you –
If they were me, if they were me
And I was you and I was you –
If they were me and I was you
Would you’ve liked a present too?”

Rubbish really aren’t they? Well, they were Scottish after all.
Happy Birthday was released from Altered Images’ 1981 album of the same name. The song entered the UK charts in September 1981, and peaked at number two in October, holding that position for three weeks. It has been certified Silver by the BPI for sales in excess of 250,000 copies.

It is the only song on the album that was produced by Martin Rushent, who had already scored major success that year producing for The Human League and would win the Producer of the Year award for 1981 at the BPI Awards. Accordingly, the band chose Rushent to produce their next album, Pinky Blue (1982), in its entirety.

The song appeared in the 1984 John Hughes movie Sixteen Candles and was covered by The Ting Tings for the children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba! in 2008, and by The Wedding Present, for their 1993 compilation album John Peel Sessions 1987-1990, as well as by Thomas Fagerlund (The Kissaway Trail) with Christian Hjelm (Figurines) in 2010.

Altered Images were an early 1980s Scottish new wave/post-punk band. Fronted by singer Clare Grogan, the band branched into mainstream pop music, scoring six UK top 40 hit singles and three top 30 albums between 1981 and 1983.

Their other hits included I Could Be Happy, See Those Eyes, and Don’t Talk to Me About Love.

Former schoolmates with a shared interest in the UK post-punk scene, Clare Grogan (vocals), Gerard “Caesar” McNulty (guitar), Michael “Tich” Anderson (drums), Tony McDaid (guitar), and Johnny McElhone (bass guitar), sent a demo tape to Siouxsie and the Banshees, who gave the band a support slot on their Kaleidoscope tour of 1980.

The band’s name referred to a sleeve design on the Buzzcocks’ single Promises, and was inspired by Buzzcocks vocalist Pete Shelley’s constant interfering with the initial sleeve designs.

After being championed by DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded a radio session in October 1980, they garnered enough attention to be offered a recording contract with Epic Records, but mainstream success was not immediate; their debut single, Dead Pop Stars, only reached number 67 in the UK Singles Chart, while its successor, A Day’s Wait stalled outside the top 100..
Dead Pop Stars was particularly controversial at the time, sung from the viewpoint of a “has-been” icon with irony, but badly timed in its release the day of John Lennon’s death, even though it was recorded earlier. A dance remix of it with different lyrics was recorded and released as the 1982 single Disco Pop Stars. After these singles and their first two sessions for John Peel, Caesar left and formed The Wake.

With additional guitarist Jim McKinven (formerly of Berlin Blondes), they recorded their debut album, Happy Birthday (1981), largely produced by Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. But it was Martin Rushent’s title track which became the band’s third single and their biggest hit.

They quickly became established as one of the biggest new wave acts and were subsequently voted Best New Group at the NME Awards and Most Promising New Act in the 1981 Smash Hits readers poll.

After a successful headlining tour, the band retained Rushent as their producer and released their second album, Pinky Blue, in May 1982. It reached the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart and provided three more top 40 hit singles but was perceived as a disappointment by the British press.

I Could Be Happy was the group’s only foray onto the US charts, with the single peaking at number 45 on the Billboard Dance Chart.
Later that year, after McKinven and Anderson left to be replaced by multi-instrumentalist Steve Lironi (formerly of Restricted Code), the band began working on their third album and saw another Top 10 hit, Don’t Talk to Me About Love, in spring 1983 with the subsequent album, Bite, released in June. Half of it produced by Mike Chapman and half by Tony Visconti.

Although it reached the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart, it sold less than the band’s two previous offerings. Before breaking up later that year, Altered Images went on another concert tour that included the band’s American debut at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California, on Thursday, 11 August 1983.

After the break-up Grogan attempted a solo career, signing to London Records in 1987 and releasing a single, Love Bomb. She was also included on a London Records compilation album titled Giant, contributing the track Reason Is the Slave but after Love Bomb failed, plans for a follow-up single and an album were shelved.
Grogan also became a film and television actress. Prior to finding fame with Altered Images, she appeared in the 1981 film Gregory’s Girl. Afterwards she appeared in Red Dwarf (in which she originated the role of Kristine Kochanski), EastEnders, Father Ted, and Skins.
In recent years she has also become a presenter on UK television, as well as a children’s novelist.

She and Steve Lironi (who eventually married) formed Universal Love School in the mid-1980s, performing together but never releasing any recordings. Johnny McElhone went on to perform with Hipsway and eventually Texas. Grogan sang live under the name Altered Images in 2002 for the Here and Now Tour, showcasing a revival of popular bands of their era alongside The Human League, ABC, and T’Pau,[ and again for some separate shows in 2004.

She performed again in 2012 under the name Altered Images at Butlins Holiday Resort in Minehead on 11 May and at The Assembly in Leamington Spa on 12 May 2012. Also in 2012, Grogan put together a new all-female version of Altered Images and performed at Blackpool’s Rebellion Festival.

You would think that having somewhere in the region of 150 fellow artistes record their version of one of your songs would give you a fighting chance of fame ever after.

You would think that impressing Elton John enough for him to have you join him on his version of that song – Love Song – would mean more people would remember you even nine years after your death aged 66 from cerebrovascular disease following an extended illness.

But fame is fickle and it doesn’t help your chances when you suffer from crippling stage fright.

Lesley Duncan (married name Lesley Cox; 12 August 1943 – 12 March 2010) is best known for her work during the 1970s. She received plenty of airplay on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 but never achieved great commercial success, in part because of her unwillingness to chase stardom and also that crippling stage fright.

She was born in Stockton-on-Tees and left school while only 14 years old. At 19, while working in a London coffee bar, she and her brother Jimmy (soon to become manager of the Pretty Things) took some songs to a leading Tin Pan Alley music publisher. Jimmy was signed with a weekly retainer of £10, and Lesley with £7, on the grounds that she had fewer songs, no guitar and was a girl. Within a year, she had an EMI recording contract and had appeared in the film What a Crazy World (1963), with Joe Brown, Marty Wilde and Susan Maughan.

Her early recordings were predictably pop (and equally predictably flops – eg I Want A Steady Guy (as Lesley Duncan and the Jokers, You Kissed Me Boy, Just for the Boy and Hey Boy (notice a theme here?).

But in addition to writing and singing her own material, Duncan was in wide demand as a session singer in the mid to late 1960s, most notably working with Dusty Springfield from 1964 to 1972, a favour Springfield returned by performing backing vocals for several Duncan recordings.

She can be seen on many of the performances featured in the BBC DVD Dusty at the BBC.
B

y the late 60s, Lesley’s songwriting was changing in style from girl-pop to more reflective writing – perfect for her distinctive voice. Her first album, Sing Children Sing (1971), was produced by Jimmy Horowitz, whom Lesley married in 1970 (they later divorced). It was followed by Earth Mother (1972); the title track, dedicated to Friends of the Earth, is one of the first, and finest, eco-songs.
She had one of the most under-rated voices in pop/rock history and Love Song remains one of the loveliest songs never to make a mark for its writer.

Small wonder it impressed Elton John so much he covered it for his Tumbleweed Connection album with her singing harmony.
John described Love Song as “one of the very few” songs he did not co-author but included on an album. Listen to the lyrics (and to some degree the melody) and it doesn’t take long to spot the similarity to his own Your Song:

“The words I have to say
May well be simple but they’re true
Until you give your love
There’s nothing more that we can do

Love is the opening door
Love is what we came here for
No-one could offer you more
Do you know what I mean?”

Duncan again joined Elton John at his request to provide vocals for his 1971 album Madman Across the Water, and in exchange John played piano on her first solo album Sing Children Sing. She also co-wrote three songs with Scott Walker for The Walker Brothers in addition to providing backing vocals for them. She can also be heard on the studio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.
She appeared onstage with John in a 1974 concert at the Royal Festival Hall to perform the duet once again, and the live recording of Love Song was included on John’s Here and There album.

Love Song went on to be covered by more than 150 other artists including Olivia Newton-John, David Bowie and Barry White. In 1977, Topol and Najah Salam recorded it in Hebrew and Arabic to commemorate the peace meeting between Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, and Israel’s, Menachem Begin.

Duncan famously contributed backing vocals to one of the top selling albums of all time, Pink Floyd’s 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon, which was engineered by Alan Parsons. Later, in 1979, she again worked with Parsons, singing lead vocals on the song If I Could Change Your Mind for the Alan Parsons Project album Eve, in her final album appearance

This success notwithstanding, and despite her own albums receiving critical acclaim, Duncan’s multiple solo efforts failed to achieve commercial success and led to her retiring from the business.

She moved to Cornwall and, in 1978, married her second husband, the record producer Tony Cox; they later moved to Oxfordshire and, in 1996, to Mull, in the Inner Hebrides. She contributed both her time and her music to causes she believed in, including releasing a new version of her song Sing Children Sing for the Year of the Child in 1978.

Most of her Mull neighbours came to know her as a cheerful gardener and knew nothing of her previous life in the music industry.

Here’s a pub quiz question guaranteed to baffle even the speediest of mobile phone Google cheats.
What have Sheffield, leather stage gear, cross dressing, the New Vaudeville Band, the Troubles and film director Neil Jordan got in common?
The answer, pop pickers, is The Crying Game. Written by Geoff Stephens, the song was first released by Dave Berry in July 1964 and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart.

The legendary late session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan played lead guitar on it and soon to be Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page supported.

The song was then recorded by Brenda Lee in 1965 and was subsequently covered by the likes of The Associates, Chris Connor, Kylie Minogue, Percy Sledge, Barbara Dickson, Chris Spedding, Jimmy Scott and crooner Alex Moore.

But to a generation who maybe missed out on Berry’s original version it’s probably Boy George’s 1992 revival which is best remembered.

Both his and the original rendition were used as the themes to the 1992 Neil Jordan movie The Crying Game. Boy George’s version of the song was produced by the Pet Shop Boys and reached 22 on the UK Singles Chart, 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the USA and topped the charts in Canada the following year becoming his biggest solo hit across the Atlantic.

His version was also featured in the Jim Carrey comedy film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a joke reference to the Jordan film, with which it shared a plot point.

But it’s Berry’s original version which still stands out as a pop classic.

Born David Holgate Grundy, in February 1941, in Woodhouse, Sheffield he made his name performing a mix of familiar rock and r&b with untypical slower pop ballads which saw him a regular chart star in in Britain, and in Continental Europe – especially Belgium and the Netherlands – whilst pretty much missing out in the USA where he is best known for versions of Ray Davies’ This Strange Effect and Graham Gouldman’s I’m Going To Take You There.

Unusually in the era of Mop Tops and extrovert stage antics he preferred to appear on television completely hidden by a prop.
In his own words, to “not appear, to stay behind something and not come out”. He often hid behind the upturned collar of his leather jacket, or wrapped himself around, and effectively behind, the microphone lead. His stage presence was almost a slow motion performance.

His leather clad image drew on the early work of Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent and later provided an inspiration for Alvin Stardust.

Having borrowed his recording surname from rock/blues legend Chuck Berry he then had his first hit with that singer’s Memphis Tennessee – charting a month before the original in September 1963 and peaking at 19. Lesser hits My Baby Left Me and Baby It’s You slowed the tempo down in preparation for The Crying Game which like his two other biggest hits (a cover version of Bobby Goldsboro’s poppy American hit Little Things and BJ Thomas’s maudlin Mama) peaked at number 5.

This Strange Effect (UK number 37 in mid 1965), became a number one hit in the Netherlands and Belgium, countries where he still enjoys celebrity status.

It’s unlikely the modest performer ever anticipated the spotlight would shine again in 1992 with the cinema success of The Crying Game, a British thriller written and directed by Neil Jordan which explores themes of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality against the backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

A critical and commercial success, The Crying Game won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, alongside Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Film Editing. In 1999, the British Film Institute named it the 26th greatest British film of all time.

Whilst Dave Berry’s chart days in the UK lasted just three years, The Crying Game’s composer Geoff Stephens’ successes spanned several decades and even included forming The New Vaudeville Band whose song Winchester Cathedral won him the 1966 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary (R&R) Recording.

His songs were often collaborations with other British songwriters including Tony Macaulay, John Carter, Roger Greenaway, Peter Callander, Barry Mason, Ken Howard, Alan Blaikley, Don Black, Mitch Murray, and Les Reed.

He began his career in amateur theatricals, when he wrote songs and sketches for musical revues presented by his own company, the Four Arts Society, while working as a school teacher, air traffic controller and silk screen printer. This led to BBC Radio accepting some of his satirical sketches for their Monday Night at Home programme.

Subsequently, becoming involved with music early in 1964 he had his first hit Tell Me When, co-written with Les Reed, a Top 10 hit for The Applejacks.

That year, in addition to his chart success with Berry he and Peter Eden discovered and managed Donovan, producing his first hit single and debut album, What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid.

In 1966 he formed The New Vaudeville Band, writing and recording songs in a 1920s musical style. Their debut single Winchester Cathedral was a number 1 hit in the USA and number 4 in the UK Singles Chart and covered by others including Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra. It was followed by further hits for the band, Peek A Boo, Finchley Central and Green Street Green.

With John Carter, Stephens wrote Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James for Manfred Mann and, with Les Reed, There’s a Kind of Hush for The New Vaudeville Band. A year later, a cover version of the song was a hit for Herman’s Hermits, and it was also later a hit for The Carpenters. Over the next few years he wrote, or co-wrote, hits for The Hollies (Sorry Suzanne), Ken Dodd (Tears Won’t Wash Away These Heartaches), Cliff Richard (Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha), Tom Jones (Daughter of Darkness), Mary Hopkin (Knock, Knock Who’s There? – the 1970 UK entry in the Eurovision Song Contest), Scott Walker (Lights of Cincinnati), Dana (It’s Gonna Be a Cold Cold Christmas), The Drifters (Like Sister And Brother), Crystal Gayle (It’s Like We Never Said Goodbye), Hot Chocolate (I’ll Put You Together Again), Sue and Sunny and Carol Douglas (Doctor’s Orders) and, most successfully of all, UK number one hits for David Soul (Silver Lady) and The New Seekers (the Ivor Novello Award-winning, You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me).

In 1972, his joint composition with Peter Callander of Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast, was recorded by Wayne Newton. It sold over a million copies. In 1983, Stephens and Don Black composed the songs for the West End musical Dear Anyone, followed a year later by The Magic Castle with Les Reed. He has also been awarded the Gold Badge of Merit by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors in 1995, and the Jimmy Kennedy Ivor Novello Award for Services to British Songwriting in 2000.

More recently he wrote To All My Loved Ones, featured as a centrepiece of the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.
In 2005, Stephens worked with Peter Callander and David Cosgrove on the musical production of Bonnie & Clyde. Most recently Stephens has worked with Don Black on a planned stage revival of Dear Anyone.

As a nation we’ve always had a soft spot for a novelty song. Who could resist the cheeky lyrics of George Formby’s Little Stick of Blackpool Rock (and pretty much everything else he strummed his uke to)?

Arthur Askey didn’t do too badly with his little tea pot and his buzzy bees either. And later who could forget (try though we did) Benny Hill’s 1971 chart topping Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In the West) which at least was much better than 1961’s forgettable Gather In the Mushrooms.

We’ve also tended to be rather fond of the underdog and the one hit wonder so it’s hardly surprising that in the punkish year of 1978 Jilted John should win the nation’s heart with his eponymous anthem to doomed nerds ticking every box.

As with the 1950s, nobody worth their salt sang under their real name – then it was the era of Tommy Steel and Billy Fury. By the late 70s it was Jonny Rotten and Sid Vicious playing havoc with filling in tax declarations.

Jilted John was, in fact, Sheffield-born Graham David Fellows, a drama student at Manchester Polytechnic who after his initial success as the embittered teenager whose girlfriend Julie had left him for another man named Gordon, later morphed into the equally comic (and much longer lasting) character John Shuttleworth.

As a sidebar Fellows appeared in Coronation Street as Les Charlton, a young biker chasing the affections of married Gail Platt (then Tilsley). During his fame as Jilted John, Fellows had first appeared on Coronation Street in a very brief cameo role in which he meets Gail, single at the time, on the street in Manchester.

In 2007 he appeared in an episode of ITV’s Heartbeat.

But who couldn’t feel sorry for John (the jilted one) when he opens his ode with:
“I’ve been going out with a girl
Her name is Julie
But last night she said to me
When we were watching telly

(This is what she said)

She said listen John, I love you
But there’s this bloke, I fancy
I don’t want to two time you
So it’s the end for you and me.”
The song is presented almost as a monologue and has all the matter of factness of Squeeze or The Kinks at their best. But a little more pointed:
“Who’s this bloke I asked her
Goooooordon, she replied
Not THAT puff, I said dismayed
Yes but he’s no puff she cried
(He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be)”

Then there’s the real punk/oi moment of “Here we go, two three four” and one of the most telling lines in pop history:
“I was so upset that I cried
All the way to the chip shop.”

No wonder John is upset. He’s been dumped “just ’cause he’s better lookin’ than me, just ’cause he’s cool and trendy.”

And then comes the punchline which has haunted anyone who shares the forename ever since, the oft repeated refrain “Gordon is a moron.”
There were other punk novelty moments (or maybe punk was just one big comedy moment?) – such as Banana Splits (Tra-La-La) and Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Please but none caught the fusion of teen angst, rejection, helplessness and confrontation, in the same way.

As with so many of music’s classics there was an element of right time right place luck about it all.

Fellows later said: “I’d written a couple of songs and I wanted to record them. So I went into a local record shop and asked if they knew any indie or punk labels. They said there were two, Stiff in London and Rabid just down the road. So I phoned Rabid up, and they told me to send in a demo. We did the demos with the late Colin Goddard – of Walter & the Softies – on guitar, and the drummer and bass player of The Smirks. I took it along to Rabid, who loved it … so we re-recorded it a few days later with John Scott playing guitar and bass and Martin Zero (aka Martin Hannett) producing.”

The single, released by Rabid in April 1978 actually featured Going Steady as the A-side and Jilted John as the B-side. Jilted John was first played on national radio by BBC Radio One’s John Peel who apparently commented that if it was promoted by a major record label he could see it becoming a huge hit. It was subsequenty picked up by EMI and introduced by Kid Jensen on Top of the Pops as “one of the most bizarre singles of the decade”. It reached number 4.

Two follow-up singles were released the same year.A pseudo concept-album also produced by Hannett followed, entitled True Love Stories, charting John’s love-life – and two further singles, neither of which was a hit. No other recordings followed these, making Jilted John a classic one-hit wonder. Strangely a cash-in single by Julie and Gordon sold moderately well, as did lapel badges bearing the legends “Gordon is a moron” and “Gordon is not a moron”.

Fellows revived the Jilted John character at the 2008 Big Chill festival premiering a new song about Keira Knightley’s ultra-thin figure. In December 2014 Jilted John won the One Hit Wonder World Cup feature on the BBC Radio 6 Music Steve Lamacq show. In late 2015 it was announced that Fellows would once again revive Jilted John for Rebellion Festival 2016 at the Winter Gardens in, Blackpool.

In 1986 Fellows created John Shuttleworth, a middle-aged, aspiring singer-songwriter from Sheffield with a quiet manner, slightly nerdish tendencies a Yamaha PSS680 portable keyboard, and a repertoire including such songs as Pigeons in Flight – which

Shuttleworth attempted to have selected for the Eurovision Song Contest. A spoof documentary about it, called Europigeon, featured such past Eurovision stars as Clodagh Rodgers, Lynsey de Paul, Bruce Welch, Katrina Leskanich (from Katrina and the Waves), Johnny Logan, Cheryl Baker and Brotherhood of Man.

He has released a number of albums and singles as John Shuttleworth

Fellows only played a handful of gigs as his Jilted John alter-ego: “I think we only did about six or seven… all in Manchester. Although to be totally honest, I only really did those to get an Equity card!”

By all accounts they were shambolic if fairly amusing — affairs.

Maybe a final word should be left to rock journalist Paul Morley who penned a typically OTT piece in the NME on the Manchester scene, homing in on Rabid and Jilted John in particular:

“This is an everyday, ordinary tale of everyday adolescent infatuation, and yet it is conceived and performed definitively: a Pop drama, no less. Ultimately, absurdly, there is too much intense accessibility for it to be a commercial success, even if it had the backing of a major label.”

Thankfully he was as wrong as he was wordy!

However, by the time his follow-up single was out, Fellows was back at drama college, his Jilted John persona already behind him. Consequently, with no artiste available to promote them, both the excellent debut album and the single stiffed (the LP ended up selling around 15,000 units).

Later Fellows admitted: “There was a big inspiration and that was John Otway. He had this hit called Really Free in 1977 and I just loved that kind of spoken delivery and the way he half sings during the chorus. There was an everyday quality to the lyrics, it was just throwaway and had a quirkiness that I wanted to copy. I’d always thought there were so many love songs that spoke in generalities, ’If you leave me it will break my heart,’ ‘I can’t go on without you,’ all that shit that I never believed. I like songs with detail. I was also aware of Squeeze and the lyrics of Chris Difford who shares a love of the minutia and detail and rhyme.

“There wasn’t a real Gordon but it was one of those trendy names, like Gary or Colin. They were working class names but were guys with cool hairdos and leather jackets and the shirts with the big collars. And ‘Gordon’ happens to almost rhyme with ‘Moron.’ But my childhood sweetheart was a girl called Julie, so that’s that.”

Although Personal Jesus could well be the song that Depeche Mode fans will class as one of the band’s finest moments (well, it’s not every synth pop tune that inspired the legendary Johnny Cash to revive in great style), it’s more likely that Just Can’t Get Enough will be the one that the long established outfit is long remembered for.

Alright, they probably won’t be too pleased about it – they have, after all, progressed from froth to feeling as the years have passed. And what’s more, it’s unlikely they ever saw the song as anything more than simply their third hit (it peaked at number 8 in 1981) – and the last contribution that founder member Vince Clarke would make to their catalogue.

But like or loathe it, somehow they’d created a footballing anthem almost up there with Three Lions – and one which, in part at least, could be chanted every week in every stadium just as long as your team was scoring goals and as long as you didn’t ask too many of the football fans just where the magic words “I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough” actually came from (despite the fact that they are repeated going on for 50 times during the course of the song).

There’s not much else in the song pointing to a kop classic. Not too many fans will feel inclined to sing the opening refrain of “When I’m with you baby I go out of my head” even to their favourite centre forward” and as for the first chorus “We slip and slide as we fall in love and I just can’t seem to get enough” it’s probably time for a cold shower. But somewhere along the line Just Can’t Get Enough was adopted wholesale by football fans across the land.

It was released in September 1981 as the third single from the band’s debut album, Speak and Spell. It was recorded during the summer of that year and was the band’s first single to be released in the United States, on 18 February 1982. It was the final single to be written by founding member Vince Clarke, who left the band in November 1981.
It was inspired he said by To Cut a Long Story Short by Spandau Ballet, which was released earlier in 1980.
Clarke had just turned 20 when he wrote it. He left the band after the Speak and Spell album was released, later joining chart success stories Yaz (with Alison Moyet) and Erasure.

According to Depeche Mode vocalist Dave Gahan, the song was written as the punk scene was winding down and London club kids were looking for music they could dance to that wasn’t so aggressive.

In an interview with Q magazine February 2008, he recalled recording Depeche Mode’s debut album and their early days as a band: “Vince (Clarke) was the leader at that point. By the time we got into the studio, Vince had got bored with it. He didn’t like the idea of having to deal with other personalities. He wanted to be in control. That’s the only album where the songs had already been performed for a year and a half beforehand, and we went into the studio and recorded them as we would live. I think Daniel (Miller, their Mute record label boss) saw us as a cross between the Ramones and the Beach Boys, in an electronic way – fast and short with really simple riffs. We were courted by major labels and were very suspicious of signing a deal that meant five albums. We’d come from that punk ethic: we just wanted to make a single. Daniel came along and that’s all he really had the money to do, so it kind of worked. We wanted to keep in control. We never thought much beyond the next single and playing some gigs. That time was brilliant.”

The single reached number 8 on the UK singles chart and number 26 on the US Hot Dance Club chart, making it their highest-charting single at the time on both counts. It also became the band’s first (and biggest) hit in Australia, reaching number 4.
Not everyone appreciated the Speak and Spell album. Rolling Stone magazine called it “PG-rated fluff.”
Apart from its footballing adoption the song was used in ads for The Gap, which featured young people miming in front of a white background. They were selling a line of leather. Vince Clarke was also known to sing it with an acoustic guitar at Erasure concert dates. (Clarke formed Erasure with Andy Bell a few years after leaving Depeche Mode).

It became the first Depeche Mode song used in a film when it was featured in 1982’s Summer Lovers. It was also used in The Wedding Singer in 1998.

But it’s unlikely Vince Clarke ever kicked a football in his life.

Here’s a pop quiz chicken and egg question. Well two actually.
Part one. Whose version of the classic power pop song Hearts In Her Eyes was released first? Was it The Records – whose members Will Birch and John Wicks wrote it – or The Searchers who, with their harmonies and jingle jangle guitar sound, it was clearly written for?
Part two. Which of those two bands had the bigger hit with it?

Well, first out of the traps with the song were The Searchers, one the first wave of Merseybeat bands in the early 60s. Founded as a skiffle group in Liverpool in 1959 by John McNally and Mike Pender, the band took their name from the 1956 John Ford western film The Searchers. and with a penchant for dusting down American songs such as The Drifters’ 1961 hit Sweets For My Sweet, remakes of Jackie De Shannon’s Needles and Pins and When You Walk in the Room, a cover of The Orlons’ Don’t Throw Your Love Away, and a revival of The Clovers’ Love Potion No. 9, they had kept slogging away (and still do!) playing both the expected old hits as well as contemporary songs including Neil Young’s Southern Man.

They were rewarded for their efforts in 1979 when the street cred Sire Records signed them to a multi-record deal. Two albums were released: The Searchers and Play for Today. Both records garnered critical acclaim and featured some original tracks, as well as covers of songs including Alex Chilton’s cult classic September Gurls and John Fogerty’s Almost Saturday Night. But with scant promotion and little if any radio airplay, they did not break into the charts

The albums did, however, revive the group’s career, because concerts from then on alternated classic hits with the newer songs and were well received. Sire released Hearts In Her Eyes, which successfully updated the band’s distinctive 12-string guitars/vocal harmonies sound, and picked up some radio airplay. With more promotion it might even have charted.

According to frontman John McNally, the band was ready to head into the studio to record a third album for Sire when they were informed that, due to label reorganisation, their contract had been dropped.

Likewise The Records version of their own song released later didn’t chart either, making it possibly the most commercial tune ever to have not charted with either of two excellent versions.

Perhaps it sounded too American? Lyrically it certainly borrowed a line or two from across the Atlantic and its bouncy style owed more to the sunshine of America’s West Coast than Britain’s South Coast.

The Records had emerged out of the ashes of the Kursaal Flyers, a pub rock group featuring drummer Will Birch formed in Southend-on-Sea in 1973. They are most famous for their 1976 top 20 single Little Does She Know and were the subject of a BBC documentary following them on tour in 1975.

In 1977, John Wicks joined the band as a rhythm guitarist, and he and Birch quickly started writing songs together, Wicks as composer, Birch as lyricist. The Kursaal Flyers dissolved three months after Wicks joined, but he and Birch continued to write songs together with the hopes of starting a new four-piece group with Birch on drums and Wicks on lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Birch soon came up with a name for the formative band: The Records. The new group was heavily influenced both by bands like The Beatles and The Kinks as well as early power pop groups such as Badfinger, Big Star, and The Raspberries. At the time power pop was experiencing a renaissance on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hence getting away with the lotta/gonna lyrics:
“Some girls have a whole lotta
Trouble finding one boy
Others want a lover and some
They just want a fun boy
My girl, she’s smart
She’s never ever
Gonna give give her heart
And she’s wise

She’s got hearts in her eyes
She’s got hearts in her eyes
Like a kid in a toy shop
She can’t stop
She wants all the boys
She’s got hearts in her eyes

Some girls want a boy
To give ’em all the action
Others in a hurry
To find a little satisfaction
This girl, she’s tough
She gets going
When the going gets rough
And she cries

She’s got hearts in her eyes
She’s got hearts in her eyes
Like a kid in a toy shop
She can’t stop
She wants all the boys
She’s got hearts in her eyes

When she’s at a party
She will flit from boy to boy
And she’ll never settle
Til her heart is filled with joy
My girl, she’s smart
She’s never ever
Gonna give her heart
And she’s wise

She’s got hearts in her eyes
She’s got hearts in her eyes
Like a kid in a toy shop
She can’t stop
She wants all the boys
She’s got
She’s got hearts in her eyes
She’s got hearts in her eyes
Like a kid in a toy shop
She can’t stop
She wants all the boys
She’s got hearts in her eyes.”

Despite the catchiness of Hearts In Her Eyes, The Records are best remembered for the minor hit single (it got nowhere in the UK but made the mid 50s in the USA) and cult favourite Starry Eyes which Allmusic called “a near-perfect song that defined British power pop in the ’70s.” But had they heard Hearts?

The Records were hired to back Stiff Records singer Rachel Sweet on the Be Stiff Tour ’78 opening the shows with a set of their own. Birch and Wicks also wrote a song for Sweet’s debut album entitled Pin a Medal On Mary.

Their own debut album peaked on the Billboard American chart at 41. That was the pinnacle of their success.
Birch reverted to tour managing, running Rock Tours, a sightseeing London Bus venture, producing and writing. Wicks relocated to the USA in 1994 and was writing, recording and performing both solo and with a new incarnation of the band up until 2018. He died on October 7, 2018 in Burbank, California.

Hearts In Her Eyes has yet to chart.

There are one hit wonders who really only have one hit – and then there are one hit wonders who we really only remember for one hit even though they’ve had quite a few others which we don’t remember too much about.

Take Chumbawamba (generally pronounced “wumba” because they are/were from the North).

They reached 56 and 59 with Enough Is Enough and Timebomb in the 1993 singles charts and 10 and 21 with Amnesia and Top of the World (Ole, Ole, Ole) in 1998. But it’s their global chanter Tubthumping (a solid number 2 in 1997) which saved and probably broke them.

It took them a while to “get there.” The song was from their eighth studio album, Tubthumper (1997) and also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and hit number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 (although it topped the US Modern Rock and Mainstream Top 40 charts). At the 1998 Brit Awards, Tubthumping was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Single. As of April 2017, the song had sold 880,000 copies in the UK alone.

Chumbawamba had formed in Burnley 1982 and they ended in 2012. The band constantly shifted in musical style, drawing on genres such as punk rock, pop, and folk. Far more anarchist than pop puppets the Sex Pistols their “libertarian socialist” stances on issues including animal rights and pacifism (early in their career) and later regarding class struggle, feminism, gay liberation, pop culture, and anti-fascism was always going to leave them isolated.

They weren’t messing about – and accusations that they’d sold out cut deep. Tubthumping had humble beginnings. The legendary Leeds pub the Fforde Grene (now an apartment block) served as the group’s inspiration for writing the song (they’d lived in a squat in nearby Armley in Leeds). Guitarist Boff Whaley told the Guardian that it was written about “the resilience of ordinary people.”

In the late 1990s, the band turned down $1.5 million from Nike to use the song in a World Cup commercial. According to the band, the decision took approximately “30 seconds” to make. In 2002, General Motors paid them somewhere between $70,000 to $100,000, to use the song Pass It Along for a Pontiac Vibe television advertisement. Chumbawamba gave the money to anti-corporate activist groups Indymedia and CorpWatch who used the money to launch an information and environmental campaign against GM.

But as they had predicted in 1993 with Enough Is Enough and in July 2012, they announced they were splitting up after 30 years. On its website the members stated “That’s it then, it’s the end. With neither a whimper, a bang, or a reunion.”

No golden greats tour, no cabaret circuit. The band was joined by former members and collaborators for three final shows between 31 October and 3 November 2012, one of which was filmed at Leeds City Varieties and released as a live DVD. And that was it.

As for Tubthumping, it could have been written by Charles Baudelaire, who concluded in 1866: “It is essential to be drunk all the time. That’s all: there’s no other problem. If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground, get drunk, and drunk again. What with? Wine, poetry, or being good, please yourself. But get drunk. And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to, your drunken state abated or dissolved, ask the wind, ask the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask all that runs away, all that groans, all that wheels, all that sings, all that speaks, what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you: ‘It is time to get drunk!’ If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk! With wine, with poetry or with being good. As you please.”

Or as the Chumbas put it: “We’ll be singin’ when we’re winnin’ – we’ll be singin’” before getting to the nitty gritty of:
“I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down”
Then finally one of the killer drinking verses of all time:

“Pissin’ the night away, pissin’ the night away
He drinks a Whiskey drink, he drinks a Vodka drink
He drinks a Lager drink, he drinks a Cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him of the better times
Oh, Danny Boy, Danny Boy, Danny Boy.”
Like a lyrical Aunt Kelly Doll (or a drunkard’s pub monologue or an Irish rebel yell) it repeats its chorus/verses merging the two into a triumphant and seemingly endless chant:
“I get knocked down, (we’ll be singin’) but I get up again (pissin’ the night away)
You’re never gonna keep me down (when we’re winnin’)
I get knocked down, (we’ll be singin’) but I get up again (pissin’ the night away)
You’re never gonna keep me down (oh, oh)
I get knocked down, (we’ll be singin’) but I get up again (pissin’ the night away)
You’re never gonna keep me down (when we’re winnin’)
I get knocked down, (we’ll be singin’) but I get up again (pissin’ the night away)
You’re never gonna keep me down (oh, oh)
I get knocked down, (we’ll be singin’) but I get up again (pissin’ the night away)
You’re never gonna keep me down.”

Rather like what happened to The Strawbs’ 1973 near chart topper Part of the Union much of its meaning has been lost under decades of inebriated mob shouting and wobbly conga lines.

Vocalist Dunstan Bruce retrospectively observed that, before the group wrote it, they “were in a mess: we had become directionless and disparate”. He credited Tubthumping with changing that, telling the Guardian that “It’s not our most political or best song, but it brought us back together. The song is about us – as a class and as a band. The beauty of it was we had no idea how big it would be.”
It spent three consecutive weeks at number 2, held off the top spot by Will Smith’s Men In Black. The song spent a total of 11 consecutive weeks in the top 10, and 20 consecutive weeks on the top 100.

It was ranked as the year’s seventh most-popular single while it placed at number 3 on Australia’s top 100 songs of the year. The single also got in the top 20 of year-end charts in Sweden and Italy, and in the top 100 of 1997 in Belgium, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the USA the song placed at number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100’s year-end ranking for 1998.
Ironically it was also placed at number 12 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 20 Most Annoying Songs.

Despite fame and, some would say, fortune Chumbawamba gained additional notoriety over several controversial incidents, starting in August 1997 when vocalist and percussionist Alice Nutter was quoted in Melody Maker as saying, “Nothing can change the fact that we like it when cops get killed.”

The comment was met with outrage in Britain’s tabloid press and was condemned by the Police Federation of England and Wales. The band resisted pressure from EMI to issue an apology and Nutter only clarified her comment by stating, “If you’re working class they won’t protect you. When you hear about them, it’s in the context of them abusing people, y’know, miscarriages of justice. We don’t have a party when cops die, you know we don’t.”

In January 1998 Nutter appeared on the American political talk show Politically Incorrect and advised fans of their music who could not afford to buy their CDs to steal them from large chains such as HMV and Virgin, which prompted Virgin to remove the album from the shelves and start selling it from behind the counter.

A few weeks later, provoked by the Labour government’s refusal to support the Liverpool Dockworkers’ Strike, the band performed Tubthumping at the 1998 BRIT Awards with the lyric changed to include “New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they’ll sell out the rest of us”, and vocalist Danbert Nobacon later poured a jug of water over UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was in the audience.

In September 2011, past and present band members protested when the UK Independence Party used Tubthumping at their annual conference.