1982 Top 20 Singles

[11] Rockers Revenge featuring Donnie Calvin, ‘Walking On Sunshine’

“Is this the most 80s record ever?” asked Junior’s mum. That brought me down to earth. I thought it was a pioneering, barnstorming, proto-electrohouse, hip-hop-referencing, technofunk floorburner. Turns out it’s as tinny as Kajagoogoo.

And that’s electro’s big problem. As groundbreaking and exciting as Arthur Baker productions and the like might have sounded back in ‘82/‘83, these days they only seem acceptable with LL Cool J droning and Jennifer Lopez caterwauling over the top. Of course, that’s not true. That record’s a travesty, but we do expect everything beefed up now. Only “zum zum zum zum zum”s seem to bestride the decades.

Contrarily, Junior danced like a maniac.

[12] The Jam, ‘Beat Surrender’

The last Jam single foreshadowed the Style Council again. ‘Speak Like A Child’-style horns, backing vocals sounding suspiciously like Tracie – hell, it was probably Mick Talbot on piano too. But still the purists thought Weller sold out.

This came straight in at No.1 back when that meant something. The Jam had a habit of doing that – four times, I think – and I remember hearing that it was because Polydor released singles at the beginning of the “chart week” for maximum sales exposure. Blimey. Hardly rocket science.

I know you love your chart facts, dear readers, but what of the song? What of Junior’s opinion? I think it’s a life-affirming, foot-stomping, air-punching cracker, but largely overlooked; Junior spent most of its three and a half minutes on her toy phone. Girls.

[13] Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, ‘The Message’

Let’s say hip hop began when Kool Herc took a couple of copies of the Incredible Bongo Band’s ‘Apache’ and played the same bit of breakbeat over and over again. That was around 1973 or something. So how come people still refer to ‘The Message’ as “early” hip hop? I reckon it’s because you’re NUFFINK until you’re on Top Of The Pops. And now TOTP is no longer, nothing will be anything ever again. Bands will be stuck on myspace until they’re yesterday’s news, mum and dad won’t be able to say “Is that a boy or a girl? You can’t even understand what they’re saying,” and Michael Parkinson will shape the mainstream, unchallenged. Is that what you want? IS THIS WHAT MADE BRITAIN GREAT?

The impending apocalypse hasn’t registered with Junior, who stares wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the immaculate black vinyl falling onto the turntable. She knows the medium of great tunes, and grips the coffee table, ready to dance. Seven minutes, this, and the proto-critic loves every second.

It was my first real brush with hip hop – ‘Wham! Rap’ was still a few months away – and I was impressed. Their clothes were madder than Kevin Rowland’s and we could all chant along at boarding school without indulging in girlie singing. That was important.

[14] ABC, ‘The Look Of Love’

ABC drop a couple of places because I couldn’t be bothered looking for a hip hop classic and a proto-house electro barnstormer hidden amongst the 12”s this morning. It’s too hot. They’re also both really long, we were pushed for time, and Junior was in a bad mood. The clarity and power of ABC and Trevor Horn’s dramatic pop vision tore through her impatience just for a minute or two, mind you. She danced to the string-soaked funk and threw shapes to the call-and-response choruses, before bursting into tears at how long Dad was taking to get the milk ready. All things being equal, a hit for yet another load of Sheffield poseurs.

‘All Of My Heart’ and ‘Poison Arrow’ were better songs but this was the icon, innit.

[15] Tears For Fears, ‘Mad World’

Huge reaction from the young popster. Exaggerated rocking from side to side, some clapping and, if I’m not mistaken, bold attempts at singing along. Tears For Fears are not underappreciated here.

They are everywhere else. Remember when the Gary Jules cover came out, and everyone said they’d never realised what a good song this was until then? As if it was somehow legitimised by a sparse arrangement and slower tempo? Pah.

TFF were an oddity, and their otherness was never clear while they were enjoying mammoth hits. You don’t miss your Janovian primal therapy lyrics welded to powerfully chunky yet finely tuned pop songs until your, er, well runs dry.

[16] Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, ‘Maid Of Orleans’

The 31st biggest selling single of the year starts off with some industrial noises, still more tuneful than Japan’s squeaks and whirs, before a kind of military waltz tempo fades in. It’s hypnotic and addictive, but still alienating until the melody comes in. These elements build and build, constructing OMD’s best song. It’s effortless.

It’s also their second single about Joan of Arc. What was the fascination? I know Jane Wiedlin looked quite cute in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but this was years earlier. Junior and I have no answers. We prefer to stand rooted to the spot by the metronomic rhythm, musing on OMD’s position in the hierarchy of great synth duos.

6th, we reckon.

[17] Japan, ‘Ghosts’

At the time, I thought this went to Number One. To be honest, until I started taking a keen interest in the chart during the summer of ‘82,I thought everything that appeared on Top Of The Pops was a No.1 single. Happy, uncomplicated days, before my first Guinness Book of British Hit Singles destroyed these reveries. I felt crushed for Sylvian and the lads, and their No.5 hit.

They were probably ecstatic, or as ecstatic as a bunch of in-fighting, studiedly glacial, new romantic poseurs were ever going to get. Maybe they flared a nostril.

‘Ghosts’ is thuddingly pretentious, a glorious mood piece of mannered vocals and blandly eerie effects. It’s certainly no better than ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ and ‘Mirror Man’, but it thinks it is, and that’s half the battle. Like The Jam, Japan were gone by the end of the year, with a frontman indulging his whimsies. He plods along still, still able to bore you to death at a hundred paces, but at least he does it without Ocean Colour Scene.

I bloody loved Japan, really. Junior tried to look enthused herself, dancing with unsuitable vigour to the first few bars of tuneless electronic dabbling. After a couple of minutes she was thinking of forming the Style Council.

[18] The Human League, ‘Mirror Man’

Kicking off with the please-God-make-them-STOP ooo-ooo-ooo-OOO harmonies from The Girls, this is a Sheffield-hued Motownesque synth pop bounder, blessed with one of Phil Oakey’s more soulful vocals. Well, he lets his flat robotone crack in one place. That’s as close as the West Yorks Veronica Lake will ever get to letting rip and breaking down.

And it’s one of those singles that doesn’t appear on an album, so extra points there. The Human League weren’t strangers to that – the next single, ‘Fascination’ was the same. Rather than a sop to the fans, I think they were struggling to follow up the peerless Dare, so would bung out a single whenever a song passed muster. The patchy in the extreme Hysteria was the album that finally rolled up, heralded by the bewildering ‘The Lebanon’. The goose was cooked.

So, is it better than ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’? Junior looked puzzled at first; soon she was clapping along. “A bit derivative,” she said, “but it has a certain Steeltown infectiousness that transcends its reference points.”

[19] Duran Duran, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’

Duran Duran were, of course, the most exciting thing to happen to popular music ever. I was nine, this was the sort of thing I believed. How cool was their massive hair? Their pastel suits? Their headbands? Their location shoots? Their impenetrable lyrics that were more nonsensical than the ones I actually thought Le Bon was singing? This single is magnificent, 1982’s chart a harsh mistress.

Has time been kind?  Will today’s kids “get” Duran Duran? Junior stood up in her playpen from the first note and bopped at the bars. A top five reaction.

God, those LYRICS.

[20] The Jam, ‘The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)’

1982. ‘A Little Peace’ taking the Eurovision crown, The Falklands “Conflict”, a harrowing single term at boarding school, the Kids from Fame, the Goombay Dance Band, the lion sleeps tonight, dropping out of the Cubs to practise being Zico in the back garden, spending £1.25 on my first 7” single. They’re cheaper NOW.

The Jam’s penultimate single, then. I felt the pain of their break-up keenly, I didn’t understand why they’d stop. Perhaps it was some kind of law. A law that should be enforced more often, come to think. ‘The Bitterest Pill’ has a beautifully succinct lyric, a string-soaked, white-boy soul tune and rousing choruses. Hindsight shows us the tension that was pulling Weller towards the more mannered stylings of his Council.

I’m worried that Junior’s dancing doesn’t discriminate. She rocked out to an arrhythmic beat I was tapping on her toy drum at the weekend, unable to help herself. For what it’s worth, she cut some rug to this song like she hasn’t for a while.

She thought it should be higher up this chart, but I said I had to put some space between the Jam singles.