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The 100 Greatest Songs of 1981 #1 Super Freak (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter timschochet
- Start date
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
zamboni
Footballguy
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timschochet
Footballguy
65. Tommy Tutone “867-5309/Jenny” (from Tommy Tutone 2)
https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo
One of the all time classic one hit wonders (this list has a few of those) and not a bad little rocker. If you attended high school in the early 80s then you know this song by heart.
https://youtu.be/6WTdTwcmxyo
One of the all time classic one hit wonders (this list has a few of those) and not a bad little rocker. If you attended high school in the early 80s then you know this song by heart.
zamboni
Footballguy
Depends how one defines a one-hit wonder, but they did a have a top 40 hit (albeit barely at #38) one year earlier with “Angel Say No”
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Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
Ghost Rider
Footballguy
Speaking of songs I hope I never hear again...
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
Those of us who were in elementary school in 1981 dialed 867-5309 to see if Jenny was there.
Presumably almost everyone who had that number changed it.
Presumably almost everyone who had that number changed it.
Encyclopedia Brown
Footballguy
In the video, I wonder how the lead singer and guitar player can be so chummy on stage when the guitar player betrayed the lead singer in every aspect regarding Jenny.
timschochet
Footballguy
FairWarning
Footballguy
I didn’t realize it was a cover. All I know is it’s a song I can’t change the channel fast enough on.
there, I said it. I’ll show myself out now.
timschochet
Footballguy
64. The Specials “Ghost Town” (from Ghost Town)
https://youtu.be/RZ2oXzrnti4
One of the last singles by The Specials before they shrank their numbers down to become Fun Boy Three, “Ghost Town” is regarded as a classic of the Ska genre. At least partly due to its political subject matter (the lyrics are a commentary on the 1981 riots in central England) the song won the NME award for Single of the Year (sort of the British Grammies).
I can’t quite go that far. It’s a memorable, catchy tune though a bit repetitive. I’ve heard it several times used recently as an anthem for the pandemic.
https://youtu.be/RZ2oXzrnti4
One of the last singles by The Specials before they shrank their numbers down to become Fun Boy Three, “Ghost Town” is regarded as a classic of the Ska genre. At least partly due to its political subject matter (the lyrics are a commentary on the 1981 riots in central England) the song won the NME award for Single of the Year (sort of the British Grammies).
I can’t quite go that far. It’s a memorable, catchy tune though a bit repetitive. I’ve heard it several times used recently as an anthem for the pandemic.
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
El Floppo
Footballguy
I assume @HellToupee is crying because he expected this to be a lot higher.
I visited the uk in 1981- this song was everywhere. Loved it right away and one of the songs from that year that to me sounds just as current now as then.
zamboni
Footballguy
Great song. I expected this to be much higher, but it's here and that's what matters.
Doug B
Footballguy
One of the rare times that Tim tabs a song I've never heard before. It doesn't speak to me, either.
Oddly ... SiriusXM's First Ware channel -- which would normally play a song of this era and provenance a ton -- seems to ignore "Ghost Town" entirely. Or else I just consistently miss it.
El Floppo
Footballguy
That's how I feel about all of that classic rock stuff above. 
Osaurus
Footballguy
I realize I state this a lot, but it's a good song (not great), but no way near one of my favorite Specials' songs.
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HellToupee
Footballguy
Culturally it’s a monster song
Last year it came in at #2 on the Guardian’s 100 greatest UK #1 songs
Great video - long version
2017 article about Ghost Town
“It’s an odd, eerie song, nodding to pop convention and sitting wilfully outside of it. It’s included, in passing, in Dorian Lynskey’s beautifully written book on protest songs, “33 Revolutions Per Minute”, but unlike the band’s “Free Nelson Mandela” does not merit its own chapter.
Perhaps because “Ghost Town” cannot be “placed”. It’s not explicitly against any one event. It does not exhort its listeners into any one particular political view. It is not part of any one social movement for change. It is, rather, a stealth protest song.
Starting with a Hammond organ’s six ascending notes before a mournful flute solo, it paints a bleak aural and lyrical landscape. Written in E♭, more attuned to “mood music”, with nods to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition, it reflects and engenders anxiety.
The whispered chorus of “This Town/ is coming like a Ghost town” is then heard, followed by front man Terry Hall’s deadpan vocals lamenting how “all the clubs have been closed down” because there is “too much fighting on the dance floor”.
One of the clubs referred to in the song was The Locarno in Coventry, the Midlands UK city where the 2 Tone record label started in the late 1970s.
2 Tone had emerged stylistically from the Mod and Punk subcultures and its musical roots and the people in it, audiences and bands, were both black and white. Ska and the related Jamaican Rocksteady were its musical foundations, sharpened further by punk attitude and anger. It was this anger that Dammers articulated in “Ghost Town”, galvanised both what he had seen on tour around the UK in 1981 and what was happening in the band, which was riven by internal tensions.
England was hit by recession and away from rural Skinhead nights, riots were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted. In these neglected parts of London, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool the young, the unemployed, and the disaffected fought pitch battles with the police.
“Ghost Town” was the mournful sound of these riots, a poetic protest. It articulates anger at a state structure, an economic system and an entrenched animosity towards the young, black, white and poor. It asks,
why must the youth fight against themselves.
In his book Lynskey argues that “like all great records about social collapse, it seems to both fear and relish calamity” and its ambiguity allows it to soundtrack more than the riots about which it was written. It is an angry elegy for lost opportunity, lost youth, an acid flavoured lament for what was and what could be.
The streets that The Specials conjure up in “Ghost Town” are inhabited by ghosts; dancing is a memory, silence reigns. The sounds of life, community, creativity are no longer, “bands don’t play no more”. In the song’s short bridge section in the bright key of G♭ major, Hall asks us to,
remember the good old days/before the ghost town/ when we danced and sang/ and the music played ina de boom town".
And as Charles Dickens wrote in his “A Christmas Carol”, ghosts are spectres not only of the past, but of the present and future too, traces of what was, is and might have been. “Ghost Town” is the haunting track of thousands of lost futures. And in 2011, when England erupted again and the cities burnt, “Ghost Town” was remembered and replayed.
Strange music video
Its audio-visual manifestation was also strange. The music video was directed by Barney Bubbles and filmed in the East End of London, Blackwell Tunnel and a before-hours City of London. Opening with upshots of brutalist grey tower blocks to the sound of those Hammond organ chords and flute, it seems as though there is no one in town but The Specials, who are all crowded into a 1962 Vauxhall Cresta, careering through the empty streets and lip syncing.
This in itself constitutes “eerie” if we use cultural critic Mark Fisher’s work, “The Weird And The Eerie”, to understand it. He wrote how,
The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something.
Here, in a major capital city, where the streets should be teeming, there is no-one but The Specials, a group of young black and white men, from a depressed and demoralised Midlands town. They are in charge.
As if to further underline this, the camera was placed on the car bonnet so we see The Specials as if they are crashing into us. And when they all sing “yah, ya ya, ya, yaah, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya…”, they seem like an insane Greek chorus, before Lynval Golding, the band’s rhythm guitarist and vocalist, murmurs the last line “the people getting angry”. The song fades out in dub reggae tradition, inconclusive, echoing.
Not a dance track
So what did those fight-ready Skinheads do in those small town discos when “Ghost Town” came on? Not moonstomping, not smooching. This was not a dance track. It wasn’t the “romantic” one the DJ played at the end of the night.
When “Ghost Town” played, the Skinheads sang along with Terry Hall, smiled manically and screeched. They joined into to the “ghastly chorus” and became, for a few minutes, part of that army of spectres. Because protest sometimes has no words.
It’s just a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up and robbed the young, the poor, the white and black of their songs and their dancing, their futures. Drive round an empty city at dawn. Look at the empty flats.
See the streets before the bankers get there and after the cleaning ladies have gone. And put young, poor, disadvantaged people in that car. See how “Ghost Town” makes sense. Now.“
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wikkidpissah
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
FairWarning
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
63. The Greg Kihn Band “The Break Up Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)” (from RocKihnRoll)
https://youtu.be/VLFfSDEA26o
I’m, er, proud to say that the Greg Kihn Band played at my high school Grad Nite party at Disneyland, along with Berlin.
I like this song, I’m guessing some around here will hate it. Oh well. I also think there should be a special award given for the worst album titles of all time, and the Greg Kihn Band should win this award:
RocKihnRoll
Kihntagious
Kihnspiracy
https://youtu.be/VLFfSDEA26o
I’m, er, proud to say that the Greg Kihn Band played at my high school Grad Nite party at Disneyland, along with Berlin.
I like this song, I’m guessing some around here will hate it. Oh well. I also think there should be a special award given for the worst album titles of all time, and the Greg Kihn Band should win this award:
RocKihnRoll
Kihntagious
Kihnspiracy
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
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massraider
Footballguy
2 Tone was a very cool little sub genre, and if you aren't familiar, there's a little treasure chest of very cool music waiting for you to discover it, made when guys in perms and mint green onesies were making millions.
FairWarning
Footballguy
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HellToupee
Footballguy
Nice thread tim , please don’t ruin it with Yoko Ono
They are so bad it’s almost genius but not quite
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Bracie Smathers
Footballguy
Screw anyone who hates this song. It is quintessential 1981 music.
Year I graduated high school and moved out to Colorado.
Music was 90% high school crusin' and this song along with Lover Boy Turn Me Loose was the constant backdrop to hot summer nights, crusin' in my friends first car chasing girls to all hours.
Not great but has to be included in any top-100 of 81 tunes.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
Osaurus
Footballguy
zamboni
Footballguy
northern exposure
Footballguy
You are just asking to get chewed out, aren't you?
ETA - the song was released in December of 1980, so you may have dodged a bullet. Uh oh, the album was released in 1980, this song was released as a single in 1981. T&P.
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rockaction
Footballguy
"Ghost Town," as Osaurus notes, is nowhere near among The Specials' best songs aurally, but was a monster hit in the U.K. due to its topicality. That it sits at #64 here is more of an across the pond thing than a Tim thing. Most U.S. charts wouldn't even have it as a top 100 song.
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
zamboni
Footballguy
Tim is going by the earlier of the album or song, so that would be a 1980 event here.
rockaction
Footballguy
Because it's second wave, maybe. That's probably why you've missed it. I think first wave is Jamaican ska from the late sixties/early '70s and second wave is that 2 Tone ska of The Specials, Madness, The English Beat, and so on. Third wave is generally American '90s ska like the Bosstones (early Bosstones) and the West Coast bands like that.
rockaction
Footballguy
Our education system has really failed us. I have never read MacBeth nor Romeo and Juliet but I know the waves of both the feminist movement and ska bands.
Totally ####### useless information. What light from yonder window breaks? It is the East and ska/feminism is the sun...
Totally ####### useless information. What light from yonder window breaks? It is the East and ska/feminism is the sun...
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
Unh, unh, unh, unh unh unh unh unh
Sea Duck
Footballguy
I always thought that Kihn was channeling Tom Petty here, and then Petty returned the favor by channeling Kihn on "Jammin' Me."
timschochet
Footballguy
62. Rick Springfield “Jessie’s Girl” (from Working Class Dog)
https://youtu.be/qYkbTyHXwbs
If you weren’t pining for Jenny in 1981, perhaps you were looking for Jessie’s girl- though who knows? Maybe it was the same girl (who later became Stacy’s mom?) Rick really isn’t much of a good friend to Jessie here. In fact he’s kind of a jerk. Should have stayed on General Hospital.
https://youtu.be/qYkbTyHXwbs
If you weren’t pining for Jenny in 1981, perhaps you were looking for Jessie’s girl- though who knows? Maybe it was the same girl (who later became Stacy’s mom?) Rick really isn’t much of a good friend to Jessie here. In fact he’s kind of a jerk. Should have stayed on General Hospital.
Doug B
Footballguy
zamboni
Footballguy
That mirror in the video never stood a chance with wifebeater-clad Rick and his guitar.
zamboni
Footballguy
I knew that Giraldo played on the album, but wasn’t sure if it was he or Rick on the solo. Rick’s a pretty damn good guitar player in his own right. Oh Well coverNeil Giraldo strikes again
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HellToupee
Footballguy
This was a song I liked them, although couldn’t publicly admit it, and like now
Doug B
Footballguy
It’s Giraldo on the studio track. I would bet Springfield has soloed on “Jessie’s Girl” live from time to time.
Encyclopedia Brown
Footballguy
A woman I work with went to a concert where a seventy year old Rick blasted out Jessie's Girl and a few weeks later she went and saw a seventy-five year old Peter Cetera belt out Glory of Love.
She said both guys brought the house down, that the crowd went absolutely nuts each time.
She said both guys brought the house down, that the crowd went absolutely nuts each time.
HellToupee
Footballguy
I don’t know about anyone else but whenever I hear Jessie’s Girl I think of Boogie Nights.
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