1981

[11] Go-Gos, ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’

Go-Gos

28 years on, I still play this song – ooh – at least once every month or two. The bouncing bassline, the harmonies, Belinda Carlisle’s helium gabble, it’s all pure gold. The Go-Gos generally passed this nation by, but Terry Hall noticed them, and he certainly noticed pocket honey Jane Wiedlin. I knew they co-wrote the song and yet I never realised they had a bit of a thing going on behind his girlfriend’s back, something they might want to keep ‘em sealed about.

That’s how the story goes, anyway. It’s a perfectly formed little pop song that doesn’t need any enhancing, but that’s a cheeky bit of colour. Of course, Terry then set about draining all the colour with his morose Fun Boy Three version – not that it’s anything less than corking itself.

‘Our Lips Are Sealed’ is an anti-anthem for Junior, who obediently boings with the bass. She couldn’t seal her lips with UHU, treating every confidence as a tasty bit of news to be relayed to the widest circle. When I drive her to nursery, every bunny-hop, every speed bump taken at a lick, every mild variation in route is a major misdemeanour to be announced to mum at the earliest opportunity. The little grass. Luckily, it still seems cute. Girls, eh?

No one’s listening anyway:

[13] Steve Winwood, ‘While You See A Chance’

steve-winwood

I’m sure I used to be a hip young thing, hardly the sort to slap a Steve Winwood song in the Top 20 of one of new-pop’s formative years, but we all have to face facts when school was half a lifetime ago. On the other hand, who can deny ‘While You See A Chance’’s squirty keyboards and warm melancholy? It tells you to grasp the opportunity while it’s still, erm, hot, so maybe that’s the whole point here. It’s not too late! Is it?

The parping keys of the intro tell you this is going to be special, although it never quite lives up to that promise. Not quite. Still, it’s the warmth that does it for me. Junior’s drawn to the speakers for that overture, then spends the rest of the song pogoing to the sproingy synthness of Winwood’s hymn to the light at the end of the tunnel. She’s a dab hand now, pointing out drums and piano before assuring me that the track “QIs like Rihanna”. Heaven knows what yoof code this is, but I have to smile and nod. Anything else would betray my thirtysomethingness.

[14] Altered Images, ‘I Could Be Happy’

Altered Images

I reckon we’re past finding Clare Grogan’s voice irritating now; we can find it endearing and find the bite within the cute. I should have realised at the time, but I was a primary school boy and everyone was an Ant and we disdained, well, girls. Girl singers, anyway. Girl singers who weren’t Debbie Harry. I wasn’t much of an Ant, come to think, but that will become obliquely clear. Can you have obliquely clear?

Eighteen months later I’d blossomed into a mature pop aesthete and adored ‘Don’t Talk To Me About Love’ – although I didn’t return to ‘I Could Be Happy’, ‘Happy Birthday’, all those earlier charms for another couple of decades. Over those decades, Johnny McElhone – the power behind the Altered Images throne – had formed Texas, first bolstering the Campaign for Real Rock with dull early songs then rediscovering the pristine pure pop of AI’s swansong. But Texas couldn’t trump White On Blonde with any more conviction than Altered Images could follow Bite.

Back to basics then. ‘I Could Be Happy’ is wonderful because its guitars ring and Grogan attempts to rhyme “tree” with “holiday” by singing “holidee”. If that’s not Top 10 Gold, I don’t know what is. We play both this and ‘Happy Birthday’ with Junior declaring she likes them “the same”. She air-drums along, but claims she’s “shaking a sweet jar” – and that’s really the essence of Altered Images, isn’t it?

[15] ESG, ‘You’re No Good’/‘Moody’/‘UFO’

ESG

Three ace tracks? Now that’s what I call a single. Well, I’ve no idea what it was like growing up in the Bronx, but when your mum gets you to form a band just to keep you off the streets, that’s progressive thinking. The story may be apocryphal – I think I read it in Garry Mulholland’s fantastic This Is Uncool labour of singles love – still, who’s going to argue when the results are this fine? Whatever the provenance, Scroggins sisters Marie, Renee and Valerie hooked up with their pals David and Leroy to fashion some seriously danceable, edgy, sparse funk – tribal on ‘You’re No Good’, groovy on ‘Moody’, woozily intergalactic on ‘UFO’ – that catapults easily into 1981’s new pop splintering shards while sounding like the future in a little blue pill.

ESG’s sorority is beguiling to Junior, who wants to know which sister is doing what and how they’re making that “stomping” noise. I suggest she and her little sis might want to form a band too, and that goes down well. “What would you play?” “Guitar and drums.” “And Junior 2?” “Guitar and drums.”

[16] The Jam, ‘That’s Entertainment’

The Jam

By now firmly settled in the pantheon of Britain’s great sub-/urban chroniclers – a line stretching from Ray Davies through Tilbrook, Le Bon, Ryder and Doherty (in his Arcadian dreams), right down to Lily Allen – Paul Weller was knocking out the sure-eyed classics with spittled ease. ‘That’s Entertainment’ makes you feel awfully jolly about your lot as you watch the telly and think about your holidays, as it pisses down with rain on a boring Wednesday, as you decide – Jesus – let’s get right out of Dodge. Controlled aggression slips its moorings and soon a ditty turns into an anthem.

Junior strums her imaginary acoustic, bearing a look of fierce Wellerian concentration. She tells me that she doesn’t like it, but that’s difficult to believe and soon she breaks into a smile: “I was only joking!” Just like our Paul? Some chance.

[18] Duran Duran, ‘Girls On Film’

Duran Duran

You could hear this coming a mile off: must have been Simon Le Bon’s room-clearing tones, or John Taylor’s sinuous bass, or Nick Rhodes’ brassy synth stabs – or the glaring fact I’ve mentioned them twice in as many posts.

Andy Taylor’s guitar is very new-wave choppy, but the setting is pure New Romantic, quintessential ‘80s. While they may be callow youths straight outta Birmingham, nothing’s going to stop Duran Duran imagining themselves swamped with cash and supermodels – they’ve seen the future and it’s all “See ya later, impossibly unattainable glamorous lady”. And, by golly, that’s exactly what the future was.

It’s a bit gauche, what with Le Bon’s trademark nonsense – “The diving man’s coming up for air ‘cos the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair” – and the schoolboy’s holy grail that is the Night Version video, but ‘Girls On Film’ is bold, punchy and fuelled by staying power. The world was being tastefully arranged on a plate for this band, and it was time, perhaps, for their own “gear” vocab like some Fab teen faves before them. Junior is here to oblige: she smartly declares the song “faiaiayson”, “wacks” and “coloration” while sporting an expression that dares me to tell her she’s coining new adjectives. Well, she is – and maybe they’re apt.

[19] Japan, ‘Quiet Life’

Japan

Quiet Life was the first LP I bought. Sure, there were a couple of cassette albums before that – both by Duran Duran, naturally – but this was my first 12” vinyl breakout, along with Dexys Midnight Runners’ Searching For The Young Soul Rebels in the WH Smith bargain racks. It was March 1983, four years after its release, nicely in keeping with Japan’s own idiosyncratic chronology. You see, I bought it on the strength of their superb cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, which has just come out as a single – also four years after the event. And then there’s this, into the singles chart with a bullet, two years after its first appearance. They can’t have known if they were coming or going. In 1983 they were going.

Straddling Japan’s lurch from glam to Orient-obsessed electro-artpop, ‘Quiet Life’ veers in to the sound of helicopter blades – at least it sounds that way to me, and Junior agrees – and David Sylvian moans about – what? The break-up of the band, years before it happened? The changing state of the nation? His transitional football team? He was to take the quiet life to extremes afterwards, pootling around in the margins, crafting barely penetrable avant-pop, but still he carries on. So Junior identifies the blades, spots the handclaps, and sways to the slides, clips and ticks in the back of the car.

[20] Tom Tom Club, ‘Genius Of Love’

Tom Tom Club

This is a hindsight Top 20, taking place a year before I started buying my own records and making my own tapes and obsessing over Duran Duran and the Top 40. 1981 was the year my sister began to record the chart rundown, introducing me to the wild sounds of Landscape and, erm, Alvin Stardust. Up to this point, all I knew were Beatles and Boney Ms, ABBAs and Brotherhoods Of Man. Now we had a dead Beatle and a declining, rended ABBA.

Partners in rhythm Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz were no longer satisfied with merely pushing the very corners of rock’s envelopes in Talking Heads’ engine room – or perhaps David Byrne and Brian Eno left no elbow room – and Tom Tom Club was the joyous diversion. Mixing funk, bags of funk, with pop, rap and world music, they revealed a sunnier side nowhere brighter than on the glorious ‘Genius Of Love’. It’s a tribute to a spiffing boyfriend wrapped up in loyal dedication to their funky forebears, and in a nice piece of symmetry has become one of the most sampled records – seized upon by trailblazers from Grandmaster Flash to, yes, Mariah Carey.

‘Genius Of Love’ locks into a groove, but Junior ain’t for dancin’. Apparently her baby sister “doesn’t want me to,” which is an impressive bit of inter-sibling communication – and we thought all they did was laugh at each other. But what does she think of the song? “I don’t like it; it makes me sad.” I’ve got it all wrong.