1985 - I’m Tired of dancing here all by myself

While I was busily filling tapes with tracks taped off the radio, the year also marked a personal metamorphosis. For the first time in years, I could boast a genuine social life! For that, I had Billericay Rotaract to thank. A club for 18-30 year-olds eager to combine social, sporting and community/charity activities, it also shifted my relationship with music.

I had yet to become educated in the subject of musical theatre, but there were a few disco parties in which I could let my hair down. I recall my first Rotaract event aimed at new members. I may have been the only recruit in that particular drive but that did mean the existing Rotaractors made a fuss of me. It must have worked because I ended up staying for nine years and I’m honoured to count some of those present as my oldest friends three decades later.

On that occasion, I remember dancing to the likes of Mai Tai’s ‘History’ and Prince’s ‘1999’ although I probably sat out the slowies like Foreigner’s ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’. Rotaract also reintroduced me to cinema, beginning with the contemporary hit comedy ‘Beverley Hills Cop’. Besides being won over by young Eddie Murphy’s incredibly energetic performance, the film was also one of the first non-musicals I remember to feature a pop soundtrack. Glenn Frey’s ‘The Heat Is On’ and The Pointer Sisters’ ‘Neutron Dance’ did well in the UK charts, but most memorable of all was Harold Faltermeyer’s synth instrumental ‘Axel F’.

Later in the year, I was to go with friends to see ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, iconic mid-Eighties movies both, with music which captured the flavour of 1985. I never saw ‘The Breakfast Club’. However, apart from making stars of the ‘Brat Pack’ (Estevez, Ringwald, Sheedy et al), it belatedly brought Simple Minds to the attention of the Yanks. ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was probably my favourite song of the year and won them a great spot at Live Aid. I was already a fan, of course, but their music was beginning to acquire an epic kind of sound, which didn’t always work for me. ‘Alive and Kicking’ seemed more designed for the 12” single market. I actually bought it but regretted it soon afterwards. ‘Don’t You’ feels a bit dated now, but back then it was a song which always made me stop what I was doing and listen.

‘Miami Vice’ was the TV cop show if you were into pastel jackets, flash yachts, sports cars and soft rock. Yes, I watched it. Some of the stories were quite good, too. However, the soundtrack became almost as important to its popularity as the super-cool stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. Jan Hammer went to number five with his fast and furious theme tune in 1985. The sublime ‘Crockett’s Theme’ took a further two years to be a big hit, though. 

The programme lost its way a bit when guest stars found their way on to the cast list. In one 1985 episode Phil Collins played – guess what! – a cheeky London con man. But then our Phil was everywhere that year; five Top 20 singles in the UK are testament to that. His ‘No Jacket Required’ album was the second biggest-seller and his ‘Easy Lover’ duet with Philip Bailey topped the singles chart for four weeks in the spring. Then, of course, he appeared on Live Aid not once, but twice! Here he is with 'In the Air Tonight'. Many of us were wishing he’d get back with Genesis to save us from more sickly songs aimed at the American MoR market.

I wasn’t too enamoured of Prince or Bruce Springsteen either. Alost as ubiquitous as Mr Collins, neither hit the spot for me. The whole ‘Purple Rain’ package left me grey, and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ just made me mad. Bruce may be a living legend, but ‘Dancing in the Dark’ was merely boring and ‘Born in the USA’ was just our denim-clad hero shouting on and on. And on and on….. At least the flip side gave us something a bit more to my taste: the softer, subtler ‘I’m On Fire’. I know Bruce engenders adoration like few others but I just feel unable to identify with his tales of blue-collar industrial Americana. There, I’ve said it.

There were great songs from all around the world in ’85. Pop was definitely going global. It wasn’t just the Americans saying ‘We Are the World’. A young Canadian rocker Bryan Adams finally made it over here with the exciting ‘Run To You’. Strangely, his next three releases – arguably amongst his most famous tracks – failed to crack our Top 30. I only heard the exquisite anthem ‘Heaven’ on Radio 1’s US Chart show, while the immortal ‘Summer of 69’ passed me by for several years thanks to its lowly chart peak of 42. Like Phil Collins, I consider his early stuff far superior to his later, massive-selling soft-rock duets. Yuck! 

Holland gave us the aforementioned Mai Tai; Ireland, Feargal Sharkey’s solo number one ‘A Good Heart’; Germany, the dynamic electro-pop ‘Duel’ by Propaganda, and Italy, the rip-roaring summer Euro-dance hit ‘Tarzan Boy’ (a real guilty pleasure if ever there was one).

Then there was Norway. A-Ha were certainly way off my radar until about October 1985. Their single ‘Take on Me’ had flopped the previous year but once you’d seen the new video, life would never be the same again. A stunning combination of pencil-sketch animation and live action made the jaw drop. It illustrated a four-minute fantasy romance, in which lead singer Morten Harket pulled a girl into her comic book and into a scary race for her life. Would she survive? Would she get back to the real world? Would she end up with Morten? The story kept us guessing right to the final frame... well, what do you think?! Actually, for all the repeated viewings, for all the technological advances in video production, ‘Take On Me’ still stirs emotions in me. It’s just one of the greatest synth pop records. 

It just failed to top the chart here, but made number one in an incredible 36 countries. Early the next year, ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ did go all the way in the UK, and both ‘Train of Thought’ and the ballad ‘Hunting High and Low’ also pierced our top five. I even bought a copy of the album, signed by the trio at an event at HMV in Oxford Street. It was surprisingly good! What I liked about A-Ha, and Harket in particular, was that they were Anglophiles. Morten often supported local charity runs in Wickford, Essex, and he’s still going strong. I don’t know whether he still possesses that extraordinary vocal range. The chorus of ‘Take On Me’, from lower register winding up to such a shrill falsetto, was impossible to replicate. Believe me, I tried!

For all their Scandinavian heritage, A-Ha weren’t quite the new Abba. The super-Swedes had long been retired, but in 1985, their genius writers, Bjorn and Benny, returned to the spotlight in a different format. Aided by experienced lyricist Tim Rice, they managed to construct a musical around – of all things - a Cold War chess rivalry. Yet their golden touch hadn’t deserted them. The show’s big ballad, ‘I Know Him So Well’, sung by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, was the year’s second biggest-seller, and ‘One Night in Bangkok’ also did well for Murray Head. I enjoyed seeing ‘Chess’ in the West End in 1986, when Paige and Head were still in the cast, but it ran for only three years. At least ‘Mamma Mia’ did rather better in the twenty-first century.

The Paige/Dickson duet wasn’t the top love song of the year, though. They were trumped by Jennifer Rush’s million-selling ‘The Power of Love’, a song I have always hated. In contrast, I loved Phyllis Nelson’s smoochfest ‘Move Closer’. Sadly I never got to slow dance with anybody to this one-hit wonder (sigh!), but its romantic lyrics left little to the imagination.

Many women would have liked to move closer to Bryan Ferry. He had become known as the Face of the Eighties, and with songs like ‘Slave to Love’, his voice and smart fashion sense, he was often on the magazine front pages. Personally I found his smooth persona too cloying – and that was before his right-wing politics placed him beyond the pale. 

There were other, more charming Brits in the charts. I really enjoyed Kirsty McColl’s upbeat version of Billy Bragg’s ‘A New England’ and Marillion’s power ballad ‘Kayleigh’. Singer Fish was often on TOTP that year, even brandishing lyric cards for the follow-up ‘Lavender’ when he had a bad throat. Huh? We all knew he was going to mime anyway. 

Eurythmics released their masterpiece ‘There Must be an Angel’ in the summer. It was, and still sounds so lush, a near-perfect parcel of Annie Lennox’s diamond-studded voice, Dave Stewart’s multi-layered synth production and even a harmonica solo by Stevie Wonder. The Cure were at their poppiest with ‘In Between Days’ and Go West briefly promised to be the next Big Thing on the back of ‘We Close Our Eyes’ but I was becoming more fascinated by the growing cult of The Smiths. 

In February, they appeared on TOTP performing ‘How Soon is Now?’ Its disturbingly deep repetitive tremolo guitar hook and Morrissey’s melancholic opening words: 

“I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular”

were like nothing I’d heard before. The track trundles on a bit too long – probably why it peaked at a mere 24 – but, alongside ‘The Boy With a Thorn in His Side’, it motivated me to buying their compilation of singles, B sides and Radio 1 session tracks, ‘Hatful of Hollow’. Poor Morrissey. He has divided the nation’s critics more than just about anyone else. I am firmly in the ‘pro’ camp. Yes, he always sounds so morose, miserable, mad even. But the UK music world would be so much poorer without his contribution of lyrics and insightful quotes. Johnny Marr’s melodies are, of course, also crucial to The Smiths’ success, but the Mozmeister from Davyhulme takes some beating when it comes to my, and many others’ musical influences.

1985 was also a huge year for two other British bands. Tears For Fears were back with a grander sound, which helped them break America. Roland Orzabal’s rich angst-ridden vocals were to the fore on ‘Shout' and ‘Head Over Heels’ while Curt Smith sang on the number two hit ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ backed by a catchy shuffle beat and some memorable guitar riffs. I liked them all. 

Dire Straits had been around for several years. Some singles I’d liked (‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Sultans of Swing’) while others left me cold or just neutral (‘Private Investigations’, ‘Twisting by the Pool’) In 1985, I became exposed to some of their album material thanks to my friend Phil Polley. The band’s early albums and ‘Alchemy Live’ were often on his car cassette player during Rotaract days out. I even bought the latter myself but probably never played it more than twice. That’s the trouble with live albums. The quality is never as good as on the original recordings and unless you actually saw the act in concert, hearing it on a tape or record player just doesn’t strike an emotional chord.

The new medium of compact disc was only just beginning to gain a foothold in the market. Its rapid expansion in 1985-86 probably owed more to Dire Straits than anyone else, and their Brothers in Arms album in particular. Like millions of others, I was powerless to prevent myself from buying the 12” LP, with its sky blue cover framing Mark Knopfler’s vintage silver guitar. Actually, I didn’t like most of the tracks, a strange brew of rock’n’roll, jazz, country and pop. However, their big ’85 hit ‘Money For Nothing’ was unavoidable throughout the summer, but in a good way! Sting’s falsetto ‘I want my MTV’ intro, Knopfler’s fuzzy guitar and the groundbreaking video, complete with state-of-the-art computer-generated animation, proved irresistible.  

The irony of a top rock band raking it in with a song about a working man’s envy of a rock band’s easy lifestyle wasn’t wasted on anyone, and probably not the group themselves. MTV loved it, too, of course, and it was more successful in the US than here. How would they follow Brother in Arms? They couldn’t. They didn’t even try. But it wasn’t a bad way to bow out of the album market. My favourite Dire Straits number was, and remains, the artfully atmospheric anti-war title track which for some ludicrous reason progressed no higher than 16.  

The horrors of war were also highlighted on one of the most extraordinary hits of that or any other decade. You could describe Paul Hardcastle’s ‘19' as a dance single, and you’d be right. But it was so much more. The vocals were simply American news clips strung together, the video a montage of Vietnam images, the music a mishmash of synthesizer hooks, but somehow the various elements came together in a powerful package. It also spawned a divertingly amusing comedy parody ‘N-n-n-Nineteen Not Out’ in which a 21 year-old impressionist Rory Bremner detailed England’s cricketing woes as The Commentators, including John Arlott:- 

                        “It’s a long, slow, lazy delivery. 

    But it's the best I can do…”

Classic!

1985 probably launched the term ‘Stadium Band’. It was intended to hurt, a derogatory term aimed at the likes of Simple Minds, Genesis, Queen et al. Yet it was a cheap jibe. After all, these bands, once the darlings of rock critics, were just as good as they ever were, it’s just that they had grown so popular that they needed to book the biggest venues to give their expanding fanbases more chance to see them perform. Hardly their fault. 

And there were no stadium concerts bigger than the multi-venue Live Aid on 13^th July 1985. After so much preparation, it finally came to fruition on a hot day in both Wembley and Philadelphia. The  mega-gig has been widely slated for its focus on white acts (Stevie Wonder and Jacko refused to be involved) and, quite frankly, a lot of craggy, creaking old rockers like Led Zep, Dylan, Beach Boys, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. However, I was totally exhilarated by the whole extravaganza.

I recall travelling to Romford that morning to collect some car insurance documents on behalf of Dad. I was desperate to return home before the midday start. Armed with a Daily Mirror ‘special’, complete with running order and likely song choices (mostly wrong, as things transpired) I was mightily relieved that the trains behaved and I could set up my cassette ready for recording likely highlights from Radio 1’s broadcast and watching the whole show on BBC1 TV. If Mum or Dad had favoured anything on another channel, they didn’t dare let on. This was one day when I seized control of the remote.

I did contrive to miss a chunk in the afternoon, and I lacked the stamina to stay up beyond about 1am for the final hours of the American leg. Nevertheless, I gorged myself on the ‘global jukebox’, from Richard Skinner’s immortal introduction and Status Quo’s opening rendition of ‘Rocking All Over the World’ to the McCartney-led London finale. Stevie Wonder did have a point about the lack of black artists. Indeed, the Philly gig was a mediocre affair, enlivened only by Madonna, and Phil Collins’ second performance of the day, thanks to the wonder of Concorde. There is a degree of irony in that in an event designed to raise money to fight poverty, I highlighted boring, balding Phil flying on a supersonic toy for millionaires, and the Material Girl, who would become a symbol of Eighties consumerism!

In retrospect, without the benefit of my rose-tinted specs, it’s evident that much of the Wembley pageant was blandly banal. Status Quo were there only because ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ was such an obvious way to start such a global event. The Boomtown Rats were predictably lame, Adam Ant’s single song was a mystery to everybody and the likes of The Style Council, Spandau Ballet and, sadly, Nik Kershaw proved they were totally unsuited to an occasion of this magnitude. 

For others, though it was their opportunity to shine in the summer sunshine and the spotlight of an unprecedented worldwide audience. Sting’s dazzling white ensemble stood out and David Bowie’s stagecraft was effortless. He also earned extra Brownie points for sacrificing one song to allow the screening (in the UK at least) of another heartbreaking film of starving African children, to the soundtrack of The Cars’ ‘Drive’. This short segment, along with Geldof’s exhortation: “Give us your focking money!” nevertheless proved to be the most lucrative in terms of donations. 

However, the acts who emerged as stadium superstars were U2 and Queen. The former only performed two tracks, including ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’ (which I’d never heard) and a seemingly endless ‘Bad’, featuring an extravagantly-mulleted Bono slow-dancing with a girl from the audience who he’d observed suffering in the crush.

Queen’s set an hour later, between Dire Straits and Bowie, was to go down in rock folklore. This was Freddie Mercury’s stage, strutting up and down, brandishing the mic stand in ever-more risqué poses. And then there was his imperious voice, belting out the biggest hits. For all that, I’d say the band were at their rockiest best for ‘Hammer to Fall’.

How could anything follow Live Aid? I know it was mostly middle-class music by the middle-aged for the middle-aged but nevertheless I wasn’t buying the ‘Death of rock’n’roll’ epithet – and still aren’t. It was more a case of how would the record-buying public react? Other charity mega-gigs have followed and on each occasion it’s undeniably a win-win situation. Participants boost their sales and the organisers raise millions for the nominated charities.

Before the days of instant downloads, the charts weren’t so sensitive. If you were blown away by Neil Young or Hall and Oates, and headed straight for Woolworth’s, there was no guarantee there would be a copy of ‘Helpless’ or ‘Maneater’ on the racks. In terms of the UK charts, it took several weeks before the re-release of ‘Drive’ zoomed up to the top five again. Similarly it was not until September when the bawdily bumptious cover of ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Bowie and Mick Jagger, shown during Live Aid as a video, reached number one. David looked a bit distracted but fortunately Mick seemed to inject some energy into it all.

That August, we went on holiday to Ibiza. Not for us the bright lights and hedonistic haunts of San Antonio; we were based in the more family-friendly resort of Portinatx. One evening, we ventured to a fish restaurant overlooking the picturesque bay. Music played from a speaker and I recognised music I’d heard on a TV show a few months earlier. Was it by Talk Talk? I liked it enough to follow it up on our return home, identifying the track I’d heard as ‘It’s My Life’. I ended up buying the album, which served as my favourite for months to follow. The single had bombed but did at least enjoy a more successful revival in the Nineties. 

‘Life’s What You Make It’ made the top 20 early the next year, and I made it two Talk Talk purchases with the ‘Colour of Spring’ album. It, too, contained some really good pop tunes and longer-form ballads. Two years later, I didn’t wait for singles releases before shelling out my £6.99 (or whatever) on the follow-up, Spirit of Eden. Just as well, as I’d have been waiting a long time! It proved to be a dreaded ‘experimental’ record. Critically acclaimed, perhaps, but to me one long yawnathon. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of Mark Hollis’ band and their mid-Eighties New Wave pop, sparked by a random listen on a quiet corner of the Balearics. 

While away in the Med, Madonna was sweeping all before her in the UK. She’d already made a substantial impression on the singles charts, but ‘Into the Groove' was her first number one, dominating August. A cracking dance number driven by a booming bass synth line, this was a record which practically defined what a 1985 pop song should sound like. That month, Ms Ciccone also occupied the number two position with the re-released ‘Holiday’. Another ideal track for the heady days of summer.

Yet these were just two of eight (yes, EIGHT) singles which peppered the top five in 1985, mostly culled from her Nile Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin album. The slowie ‘Crazy For You’ had peaked at two in the spring but wasn’t on the LP. ‘Material Girl’, ‘Angel’, ‘Gambler’, ‘Dress You Up’, the list went on and on. Madonna was sassy, sexy, outspoken and highly marketable. Buoyed further by her Live Aid performance, she was undoubtedly the star of ’85, and of course this was just the start. The Age of Madonna was upon us!

1984 - Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new Gods?

1984 was not one of those personal milestone years but in my opinion was a vintage one where pop was concerned. I think there were no fewer than six million-sellers. Quite extraordinary! However, it was the supporting cast of singles that made it so memorable. That, and my long delayed entrance into the dodgy world of recording tracks from the radio. Well, everybody else was doing it, so why couldn’t I? Over the next few years, I amassed at least sixty C60 or C90 TDK cassettes of random songs taped from Radio 1, Capital, Essex FM and even the terrible Medium Wave pirate station Laser 558.

I’m not sure whether I was still listening to the Jimmy Savile show but now I wasn’t just listening to past hits; I realised I could save them for posterity without – er- paying for them. I do recall being racked with guilt on hearing Steve Wright on a Brit Awards broadcast admonish illegal tapers. Guilt, but not so much that I stopped doing it. However, I did start buying a few greatest hits tapes or 12” albums, or borrow some from the library to – um- record at home. As Steve said at the time, wagging his finger: “Naughty, naughty!”

Inevitably 1984 was greeted by a welter of articles about Orwell and gratitude that we weren’t living in a world of constant war and surveillance. Ahem.  Weren’t we? The Cold War was playing out in all its grim glory, but a man called Mikael Gorbachev was approaching the supreme Soviet stage from which he could finally bring down the Iron Curtain by the end of the decade. At home, we didn’t have Big Brother, but Big Sister Margaret Thatcher pushed the UK darned close to a police state during the 12-month miners’ strike.

The long-standing USA-USSR stand-off was the inspiration behind Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes’, which topped the charts for nine weeks in the summer. Yet that wasn’t even the group’s biggest hit of the year. Re-wind to January, and that new song languishing in the thirties. A lot of post-Christmas airplay and a TOTP performance advanced it to number six, at which point R1 breakfast show presenter Mike Read observed the record sleeve and, suddenly horrified at the explicit lyrics and fetishist imagery, priggishly imposed a ban on the song. The network fell in behind him and ‘Relax’ duly leapt to the top. When ‘Two Tribes’ was released, it crept back up the chart to the point where Frankie occupied the top two berths around the time of my birthday.

It wasn’t just their music which was everywhere. The ‘Frankie say RELAX’ T-shirts were commonplace, and the establishment was in uproar. Here was an obvious hymn to gay sex, just as AIDS was reaching pandemic status around the world. The video even provocatively portrayed an S&M orgy, yet civilisation didn’t collapse. Indeed, Holly Johnson and his mates proceeded to release one of the most beautiful songs of all time, ‘The Power of Love’. With its sumptuous Nativity video (angels, shepherds, Magi on camels…!), it was tailor-made for a Christmas number one, only to be tossed aside when Band Aid and Wham delivered their charity fund-raising double-whammy. However, it did touch the top for one week, thus elevating the band to the elite few to have made number one with their first three releases. The following year, ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome’ came within a whisker of making it four in a row, but within two years the band imploded and in any case the Frankie flame had already burnt itself out.

Two chart veterans were also enjoying a new purple patch. Elton John’s ‘Sad Songs’ and ‘Passengers’ continued a good run of top ten singles while Queen were back to their best on their album The Works. I couldn’t help liking Roger Taylor’s paeon to the wireless, ‘Radio Gaga’ and Eric Deacon’s ‘I Wanna Break Free’, featuring the infamous but undoubtedly entertaining cross-dressing opening to the video. I wasn’t so fussed on Freddie Mercury’s solo material like ‘Love Kills’. The Queen magic was missing.

Two sassy Americans with close associations with New York burst onto the K music scene. You really believed Cyndi Lauper when she shrilled ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’. The official video was deliberately cheap but I mainly remember her miming the song leading a sort of conga around the TOTP studio! The far more subtle ‘Time After Time’ also did well in July. And then there was Madonna Louisa Ciccone.

‘Holiday’ had done OK in February, but surely it should have been released during the summer. Never mind; it would have another day in the sun. Instead it was the arrival of ‘Like A Virgin’ just before Christmas which really brought Madonna to our attention. While you couldn’t really believe the sexy singer-dancer was a virgin, that wasn’t the point. It was a great record which offered something I hadn’t heard before. There would be plenty more where that came from…..

This side of the Atlantic, we had a few promising young female vocalists, too. Alison Moyet lent her big soulful voice to songs like ‘Love Resurrection’ and ‘All Cried Out’ while another product of Essex, Sade, won critical acclaim here and in the States with her album 'Diamond Life’. I hated her breathy ‘Your Love is King’ but ‘Smooth Operator’ was more up-tempo and– well – super smooth. She may have been born in Nigeria but I loved the fact that she we went to school in Clacton.

It wasn’t just Sade wowing them Stateside. The big Brit bands were coining it in, too. Duran Duran were starting to go a bit over the top for me. ‘The Reflex’ was a reasonable number one (their last) but ‘Wild Boys’ was pompous rubbish, with an even stupider video and Simon Le Bon’s wince-inducing attempts at the high notes. The Human League didn’t soar to the heights in the UK but I enjoyed the rocky ‘The Lebanon’ and, in particular, ‘Louise’. It’s such a simple romantic story with a gentle, low-key synth production that I was entranced. Still am. I didn’t realise at the time that Phil Oakey wrote it as a follow-up to the characters in ‘Don’t You Want Me’, but that made no difference. It also transpired that she still didn’t want him.

Melle Mel’s deep rap voice was often on the radio. His anti-drugs song ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’ stayed in the charts for several months and he cropped up again in the intro to Chaka Khan’s chart-topping ‘I Feel For You’. I quickly tired of the video on TOTP and the song wasn’t my cup of tea. It turned out that it had been written by Prince, whose ‘When Doves Cry’ went to number four in the summer. I know I may be in a minority here, but his follow-up, ‘Purple Rain’ is one of my most hated songs of the ‘80s.  

Mind you, there was some serious competition in 1984. Black Lace’s version of an old French ditty sold shedloads in the second half of the year but ‘Agadoo’ has become a by-word for irritating pop ever since. OK, so it’s not The Birdie Song, but when you factor in the bleach-blond spiky hairstyles and cheesy grins of the duo, the result is truly terrible. I wouldn’t ordinarily associate Stevie Wonder with crap compositions but when he brought out ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’, his reputation took a massive jolt. Not so, his bank balance! Like most awful pop, it was extraordinarily catchy in melody and lyrics and – horrors of horrors! – proceeded to sell more than two million in this country alone.

At Christmas, another giant of twentieth-century music also blotted his copybook in terms of quality. Paul McCartney had started the year at the top with one of his trademark mediocre ‘let’s all love one another’ songs: ‘Pipes of Peace’.  He then partnered Michael Jackson on ‘The Girl Is Mine’ and reached two with his ‘No More Lonely Nights’. But when he was joined by Rupert Bear and a cartoon Frog Chorus in December, the depths were well and truly plumbed. Yet, of course, it was aimed at the seasonal family market and Macca struck gold.

Sixteen years earlier he had written one of the greatest Beatles songs, ‘Hey Jude’, inspired by Julian, the son of John Lennon.  1984 proved to be the time when Julian emerged briefly from his late dad’s lengthy shadows to have a hit of his own. Despite being an odd blend of pseudo-ska, Country and pop, I quite liked ‘Too Late for Goodbyes’. The face and voice was uncannily similar to John’s but probably the family connection was more burden than boon; this single was his only top 10 hit in the UK. 

Two great British bands were at opposite ends of their major principal chart careers. Madness delivered one of my favourites in ‘Michael Caine’ a rarity in that it was Chas Smash and not Suggs on lead vocals. The golden age of humorous videos had passed, and they were entering a more reflective phase before their first break from the business.

On the other hand, The Smiths were garnering rave reviews for their rather different rock sound. They had four top 20 singles in 1984, although one, ‘Hand in Glove’ was officially credited to guest vocalist Sandie Shaw. Read Morrissey’s remarkably candid and eccentric autobiography – no phoney phantom ghost writer here - for his less than enthusiastic opinions on that issue. Of the four, the one appealing to me most was ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’. Yes, I know the singer-writer practically invented pop ‘miserabilism’, but wouldn’t you feel under the weather if you had a bunch of gladioli stuffed down your trousers? 

There were some cracking ballads peppering the pop scene in ’84. Lionel Richie not only had the year’s biggest-selling album (Can’t Slow Down) but also his only UK chart-topper in ‘Hello’. That video of the beautiful blind girl sculpting teacher Lionel’s head in clay by touch alone became rather annoying on TOTP after six weeks at the top but it was a winning combination of sentimentality, tunes and Richie’s peerless voice. He even kept from the top perhaps Phil Collins’ second finest moment as a solo artist. ‘In The Air Tonight’ had been an impressive debut but ‘Against All Odds’ was an above-par movie theme song. The film itself was pretty crap, even if it did star Rachel Ward, one of the most gorgeous stars back then. It also set in train a second, parallel career path for Collins, who seemed to be ever-present in the Eighties singles charts either with Genesis or another soporific solo or duet Hollywood hit. I found it hard to hate him, for all his success, but nevertheless the run of boring ballads severely tested our artist-listener relationship!

The Yanks couldn’t get enough of the chirpy London accent or his lucrative line in cinema lullabies but then there were quite a few American artists I enjoyed hearing, too. I’ve mentioned a few already but in addition Kool and the Gang were doing well. ‘Joanna’ represented a shift towards the Phil Collins market (as was ‘Cherish a few years later) but ‘Fresh’ was more like their old disco thang, and all the better for it. Sister Sledge sang ‘Thinking of You’, both Van Halen and The Pointer Sisters were in the top ten with very different songs boasting the same title, ‘Jump’.  

I also enjoyed ZZ Top’s debut record ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’. It wasn’t just about the Gibbons brothers’ mighty beards; it was the whole blend of Rhythm and Blues (in its true sense) and those growled vocals by Billy Gibbons. The videos had a visual brand all of their own, too: long-legged blondes, scruffy blokes in denim and vehicles with ludicrously over-sized wheels. It was a winning formula, but the first single was their best. 

In 1984, there were a mere four channels on British television. However, the infant Channel 4 had expanded the opportunities many-fold to watch pop music. I rarely watched The Tube, largely because it was too early in the evening but also as it clashed with the News. However, what made it stand out was the exposure it offered to many new bands, and that many of them performed live. Barring the occasional three-minute gem on TOTP, the BBC featured very little live contemporary music. Which is why, one summer evening in 1984, I managed to get my way with the TV remote and watch BBC1’s broadcast direct from, I think, Wembley. 

The concert was by Billy Joel, whose An Innocent Man album had yielded a few decent singles including ‘Uptown Girl’. I’d been aware of several of Joel’s songs without generating much in the way of devotion, but this hour or so won him at least one new fan! Even Dad watched with me, but I don’t think Mum was present; must have been her bath night! I think only the first half was transmitted live, with part two recorded for the following night. Put together, the programme not only included some familiar hits but also introduced me to longer tracks like ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’ and ‘Goodnight Saigon’ which made a huge impression on me. Joel’s piano-playing, gift for melody and observations on social issues and vignettes of ordinary New York lives were outstanding and I embraced the live experience, albeit from the small screen in the corner of our lounge.  When his Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2 came out the next year, I actually sought it out to catch up with the songs I’d heard in that TV simulcast or just missed over the previous decade. In 1990, I grabbed the chance to witness him live for myself at the Wembley Arena. And a fab show it was, too.

It wasn’t just the Americans invading our charts. Even Germany supplied some pop songs which appealed to me. Nena was a kind of brunette Kim Wilde who achieved something that our Kim never did: a UK number one single.  '99 Red Balloons’ toppled the mighty ‘Relax’ with a jaunty synth-heavy song inspired by Cold War paranoia. In 2016’s German TV spy thriller Deutschland 83, centred on the same theme, the original hit ‘Neunandneunzig Luftballons’ was a perfect choice to set the cultural and political scene for the drama, which turned out to be extremely watchable, even with subtitles. As for Nena in Grossbritannien 84 I remember at the time the tabloids focussing crassly on the singer’s armpit hair (!) but that was just their way of ridiculing anything foreign.

I also enjoyed a record by New Wave band, Alphaville. Unbeknowns to me at the time, ‘Big In Japan’ was apparently about heroin-addicted lovers longing for a drug-free future but to my naïve ears, it was simply an addictive four-minute slice of mid-tempo electro-pop It sold zillions across Europe but unsurprisingly peaked only at eight this side of the Channel. Only in doing some research on the band have I discovered that Alphaville were the composers of the classic power ballad ‘Forever Young’, a track I’d always associated with Laura Branigan. Surprisingly the original barely made a scratch on our Top 100.

Other random songs that floated my boat that year included Blancmange’s ‘Don’t Tell Me’. Perhaps best known for ‘Living on the Ceiling’, their Indian-influenced sound transferred quite well to mid-80s electropop. So did Bronski Beat’s. They made a stunning arrival with the dreamy but sad ‘Smalltown Boy’. A serious tale about homophobia and bullying (“Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face”) its memorable synth riff, minor chords, lovely tune, dance beat and Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto were irresistible. It was far more than a gay anthem, and took Europe by storm.

Paul Weller has made a career of being a miserable git but even he has his romantic side. This came to the fore with ‘You’re the Best Thing’, a top five hit with Mick Talbot as The Style Council. They made quite a few chart appearances around that time but, just ahead of ‘Shout to the Top’, this soulful ballad has to be the highlight. Much as I like ‘Long Hot Summer’, I wish he’d chosen to perform instead this 1984 love song in his Cardiff show I attended in 2015.

Whilst ‘Smalltown Boy’ and The Style Council were necessarily short of laughs, there were some conspicuously shameless comedy records in 1984. To such a degree that the 1985 Brit Awards, forerunners of today’s Brits, featured a Best Comedy Song award. Surely the first and only time that happened. Weird Al Jankovic’s Michael Jackson parody, ‘Eat It’ and Alexei Sayle’s manic ‘Ullo John, Got a New Motor?’ (best line: “What’s that button there for? What’s that button there for? Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”) were nominated, but the deserved winner was Neil’s very funny version of hippy anthem ‘Hole in My Shoe’. Nigel Planer’s character from BBC’s cult comedy The Young Ones let rip, and even John Peel seemed to like the subversive performance on TOTP. Neil/Nigel was thwarted by ‘Two Tribes’ but he did eventually top the chart, along with the rest of the Young Ones – plus Cliff Richard – two years later. Heavyyyy!

Paul Young may have won the Brit Award for Best British Male, but in my mind Nik Kershaw was robbed! A talented writer and multi-instrumentalist, his look of a teenage boy rabbit caught in the headlights may have held him back. Early releases flopped but when the wonderful ‘Wouldn’t it Be Good’ soared to four, the re-releases made him one of the most successful artists of 1984.

‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’, a jaunty appeal against nuclear war (“forefinger on the button” was a genuinely scary and real prospect in ’84) went to number two, although his haunting ballad ‘Human Racing’, written as a teenager, was less successful. Stupendous chord changes and vibrant vocals clearly weren’t enough for the wider public. Their loss! Nik proceeded to finish the year on another high, releasing an even better song, but what was it about? Contemporary commentary had it that it was about the Northern Ireland Troubles. I couldn’t fathom that interpretation, but the lyrics seemed to mean nothing. I guess that’s why Kershaw called it ‘The Riddle’. Who cares? It’s a brilliant song. A few more hits followed, my favourite being the little-remembered ‘Elizabeth’s Eyes’. I was delighted to find him supporting Elton John several years later at Wembley Arena. The venue was mostly empty at the time but I preferred Nik’s set to Elton’s.

Much as I loved Nik Kershaw’s material, 1984 gave me what was, and remains one of the tracks I most enjoy hearing. I mentioned U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’ contribution to 1983 but when ‘Pride(In the Name of Love)’ entered the chart at eight in mid-September, the Irish band ascended to an altogether higher plane. From The Edge’s chiming guitar intro to the anthemic “Oh oh-oh oh” chorus for the fade-out, via Bono’s impassioned vocals, Larry Mullen Jnr’s heavy drums and Adam Clayton’s insistent bass, everything I could ask for in a rock classic is there. And then there’s the subject itself. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ had been a memorable appeal for Martin Luther King’s birthday to be commemorated as a national holiday. And with ‘Pride’ on his side, there was no doubting MLK’s elevation to true world icon, not just a troublesome US civil rights leader of the Sixties.

I bought the album The Unforgettable Fire off the back of the single. The title track and ‘Bad’ also worked for me, and of course there was plenty more from U2. Their Live Aid performance transformed them into stadium superstars and also into my new favourite band.

Nobody I knew could possibly admit to loving Wham. Nevertheless, George Michael and Andrew Ridgley (plus backing singers Pepsi and Shirlie) were just as part of the 1984 pop scene as Frankie Goes to Hollywood. They topped the chart twice with ‘Wake me Up Before You Go-Go’ and ‘Freedom’ and came close with the perennial Christmas weepie ‘Last Christmas’. That wasn’t enough for George. Even hearty heterosexuals like me couldn’t fail to be impressed by his solo effort, ‘Careless Whisper’, and then he took one of the most important segments of Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. Given that he wrote most of these hits, Mr Michael was becoming a very rich young man indeed, as well as a sizzling sex symbol amongst teenage girls….  More than that, his 1984 soundtrack singles combined to encapsulate everything that pop is supposed to be about: two up-tempo, apparently throwaway dance numbers, a mature ballad, consummate Christmas perfection and perhaps the most politically and financially successful humanitarian musical venture in history.

Of course, George didn’t write ‘Do They Know….?’. That accomplishment belongs to Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. Their respective bands had been experiencing different career arcs. The Boomtown Rats were no longer the force they had been in the late Seventies, but Ultravox were still selling singles, including ‘Dancing With Tears in My Eyes’ and – a guilty pleasure of mine – ‘Love’s Great Adventure’. Band Aid was certainly the most inspiring collective – and song – I can remember. Geldof’s anger at the injustice of the Ethiopian famine resulted in the roping in not only the Ultravox front man but also dozens of the biggest names in UK contemporary pop.

Bob’s job was to harangue the names in his contacts book and rattle cages throughout the industry, not to mention the incumbents of the House of Commons. However much she tried, Prime Minister Thatcher could not sweep this scruffy, potty-mouthed Irish rock star under her luxurious deep pile Conservative carpet. The last thing she wanted to do was encourage giving money to millions of poor black people. Third World poverty merely helped support military dictatorships friendly to her own regime. But she under-estimated Geldof. Meanwhile Midge was left to handle the back-room musical roles, and his contribution to the Band Aid enterprise should never be forgotten.

After all, it was actually quite a good song – a million times better than the Jacko-Richie composition that followed the next year, which just sounded cheap and exploitative. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so critical. Anything that gets Yanks to spare even a solitary thought for people beyond their own borders, let alone raise $63 million, deserves some credit.  The era of the charity single had begun. There have been many feeble, yet well-intentioned imitators. The initiators and humanitarian pop campaigners like Bono and Geldof have been pilloried in the Press. Why? I have no problem with musicians using their fame and influence to support worthy causes. Better that than lazy journos and politicians trying to ignore or belittle issues we should be angry about! If the music itself merits repeated listening, it becomes even more powerful.

With so much free publicity and promotion on every radio station, TV channel (all four of them!) and in all kinds of retail outlet, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ could easily have become tedious, turning such a force for good into a negative. Yet it made us feel good about ourselves and, as a musical soundtrack to December ’84 will linger for ever. What could Geldof and Ure do to top that? Surely they couldn’t develop the theme from a three-minute single into a massive, multi-artist concert? It could never be done! Such negativity was simply a red rag to the stubborn bull that was Mr Geldof. The seeds were already sown for the extraordinary extravaganza that was to be Live Aid.