This year BBC4 has arrived at 1981 in terms of showing repeats of Top of the Pops.

In a Guardian article over Christmas Bob Stanley argued 1981 was a key, influential year for music: “Forget 1966, because 1981 was pop’s year of revolution.” Bob expounded: “I’d go for 1981 as a post-60s pinnacle. BBC4’s Top of the Pops repeats next year will lay 1981 out on a marble slab and give me the chance to work out whether I’m just biased or whether it was a true golden age – I was 16, after all, and the world was a peach.”

The Record Press author agrees with Bob that 1981 was one of the best years for music in the last 50 years. I was 18 in ’81, which has a certain symmetry!! I also wonder whether like Bob Stanley I am biased as 1981 was the year I finally adam & the ants stand & deliverescaped school, replacing it with the relative freedom of university life. Like Bob I too felt the world was my oyster in 1981 and maybe this has coloured my judgement now I am languishing in my mid 50s!!

However I don’t believe this is the case. I still have some perspective and am happy to cite other years before and since as brilliant and influential years for music: 1967, 1974, 1975, 1979 & 1995.

Let’s paraphrase some of Bob Stanley’s persuasive argument for 1981: “Adam & the Ants went straight in at No 1 in May with Stand and Deliver, a wildly busy single – one of the year’s – which had a dense but laugh-out-loud funny lyric and ended with a chorus of diddly-qua-qua’s. Adam Ant was an English eccentric whom Edith Sitwell would have recognised, and Adam & the Ants were the most experimental pin-up act since the Beatles. No one has come close since. They saw out the year with Prince Charming, featuring an intro that sounded like a Venusian death chant, and Ant Rap, which didn’t quite predict Public Enemy, but still found room for a three-second harpsichord break.”

“In Sheffield, the Human League split in two, one half forming Heaven 17 and debuting with the single (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, which was witty, timely, and way too fast to actually dance to. The rump League members released the album Dare, featuring the No 1 single, Don’t You Want Me, and briefly became superstars. Everybody human league don't you want mewon.”

“With the Human League and Soft Cell at No 1 (the latter with Tainted Love), it was the first huge year for synthpop. Gary Numan had been a friendly forebear, but 1981’s spirit of optimism saw him in second place to a group who had supported him on tour in 1980. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released the multi million-selling album Architecture and Morality in 1981 which included three top five singles (Souvenir, Joan of Arc – Maid of Orleans) and could probably have spawned three more. They took Kraftwerk’s notion of instrumental chorus hooks and grafted them onto melancholic melodies that sounded simultaneously industrial and suburban.”

Bob concludes: “Have I forgotten anything? Of course I have: New Order’s first two singles, Ceremony and Procession; Imagination’s proto-trip hop Body Talk; Kate Bush’s voyage into utter oddness, The Dreaming; Ghost Town by the Specials; even Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight … 1981 was a rich and remarkable year for pop, and it would need a 600-page book to do it justice. Anyone fancy having a go?”

I don’t think I could manage to run to a 600 page thesis Bob – this 600 word blog will have to suffice!! But I totally agree that 1981 was a truly rich and colourful  year in the UK pop charts. It was a watershed year, endorsed and illustrated by this Record Press Top 10 Best Songs of 1981 –

Top 10 Best Songs of 1981

  1. The Specials – Ghost Town ( UK No1 )
  2. Hazel O’Connor – Will You? ( UK No8 )specials ghost town.png
  3. Human League – Sound of the Crowd ( UK No12  )
  4. Ultravox – Vienna ( UK No2 )
  5. Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight ( UK No2 )
  6. Queen & David Bowie – Under Pressure ( UK No1 )
  7. Toyah Wilcox – It’s A Mystery ( UK No4 )
  8. Teardrop Explodes – Treason ( UK No18 )
  9. The Specials – Do Nothing ( UK No4 )
  10. Madness – Embarrassment ( UK No4 )

 

What are your recollections and favourite songs from 1981? Let us know in the Reply Box below.

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