The Final Pick Of The Pops From 1986 And 1987 - Love Can't Turn Around, Jack Your Body, Animal, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Boy In The Bubble, Get Fresh At The Weekend, Human, Wonderful Life, The Way It Is...

Love Can't Turn Around - Farley Jackmaster Funk with Darryl Pandy on vocals. House music: Year Zero 1983 - the very beginning. 1986 - house music beginning to burst out. This is legendary - the very first house music hit in England.

More House - Jack Your Body - Steve 'Silk' Hurley from 1987 - simply fabulous. Gives me a happy glow even now as I teeter past my mid-fifties... not so bad getting older when you have music like this to bring the memories of youth flooding back.

 1986 and Bruce Hornsby and The Range railing against social injustice - beautifully. The Way It Is.

I'm not really a 'rock' man, but this sublime 1987 hit from Def Leppard pushed my buttons. Somehow rockin' but also dancey... Happy nights.

The wonderful Whitney Houston - with the ultimate feel good pop/dance hit. This was 1987 - and it's as good today as it always was.

Wonderful life - a gorgeous summer hit from 1987. A walk in the sunshine, weighed down by melancholy... Once again, I was having a crisis - the (then) love of my life had just walked out. This song suited me down to the ground.

Boy in the Bubble - Paul Simon, 1986 - from his Graceland album. This song tapped into a feeling I had at the time. There was a sudden onrush of new technology - either things just becoming affordable and widespread - like the VCR and microwave oven - or brand new launches like the mobile phone and the Apple Mac. The world was buzzing - and there were millionaires and billionaires and sophisticated weaponry and lasers in the jungle... Probably.

 It was a vibrant time, but it felt somehow frantic and topsy turvy. A very transient era - rather like my youth. Bright and shiny and fresh with loads of new things happening. But was the sudden onrush of technology going to turn out a good thing? I mean, can you imagine making a phone call while you are walking down the street?

Who was the boy in the bubble? David Vetter, born in 1971, died in 1984, who had to live his life in a highly sterile 'bubble' environment due to severe combined immune deficiency. And the baby with the baboon's heart? Baby Fae born in October 1984. She lived until November.

Get Fresh At The Weekend. Lovely Mel and Kim. I saw these two being interviewed by Andrea Arnold, who played Dawn, on Saturday morning kids' show Number 73 and could have sat down and joined in the chat. Down to earth English girls - cockneys in fact - with a great sense of fun (not like the characters in EastEnders at all!). I really liked them. And the more 1980s music banged and clattered, the more I loved it.

The Human League, Human. When Phil Oakey spotted those two girls dancing at the Crazy Daisy Nightclub in October 1980, a legendary alliance was formed. This song is beautiful - with a great twist at the end.

Coming soon, we trip back to 1985 (the first year of the second half of the 1980s) and 1984 (the last year of the first half of the 1980s) to discover The Man With The Power That Promised You The World...

More Pop Picks from 1987 and 1986... Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent, With Or Without You, I Love To (Listen To Beethoven), Criticize, U Got The Look and Sometimes...

 

Lovely Gwen Guthrie from 1986 with Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent. This is the extended version. Another clattering, clumbering, clanging '80s dance track from the decade's huge stable of brilliance. I adored this. On the surface, it appeared to be a song about a hard-hearted woman looking for a free meal ticket, but watching Gwen on the video made it tremendously likeable to me. Slightly tongue in cheek, I fancy! Sadly, Gwen's no longer with us, but the music - and the happy memories of getting on the dance floor to this - remain.

With Or Without You - U2, 1987. The 1980s were so stuffed full of brilliant music, anything more would have been greedy...

Erasure's breakthrough hit Sometimes from 1986. This is fantabulously wonderful. Vince Clarke was straight and a synth wizard. Having been a founding member of Depeche Mode in 1980, he moved on to form Yazoo with Alison Moyet, and then Erasure with Andy Bell. Andy, gay, outgoing and with a fabulously soaring voice, was the perfect musical partner for Vince. Legends, the pair of 'em.

Gorgeous 80's clattering and clanging soul dance from Alexander O'Neal here. Criticize - oozin' style and big hair video from 1987, and the soundtrack to some fabulous nights out.

Here's the power house of creative talent that was the Eurythmics in 1987. It showcases a bit of Annie Lennox's marvellous acting talent as well as her wonderful voice. Here, we have a discontented English housewife, fancying herself oppressed by her husband, and slowly going crackers as she fantasises about naughty encounters and keeping herself thoroughly in check by not admitting what she REALLY likes - I love to (pause) Listen to (pause) Beethoven. So, she melds together the spoilt child and the masculine within her and goes off on the rampage. Genius. Sadly, Annie is a bit of a Feminist ideologue these days and I can't bear to listen to her one-sided, own-gender-adoring bilge whenever she's interviewed. But back in the 1980s she and Dave Stewart were often simply too brilliant for words.

Ooomph! The mighty Prince meets little Sheena Easton (whose baby took the morning train back in 1980) for a spot of slammin' (oower, missus!) in 1987. U Got The Look. LOVE THIS! 

The fabulous Blow Monkeys - with their very own sophisti-pop sound. To hear this drifting out of an open top car in the yuppie summer of 1986, one might think it was a gorgeously languid and happy song. But the lyrics say otherwise... 

"I just got your message, baby. So sad to see you fade away."

"What in the world is this feeling - catch a breath and leave me reeling." 

"It'll get you in the end it's God's revenge..." (as a vicar had recently said about AIDS). 

Enjoy the music - and listen to those lyrics.

A final visit to the pop charts of 1986 and 1987 will follow soon. I just want to publish this and listen to that music! xxxx

Popping Back To 1986 and 1987 Again... Pump Up The Volume, No More I Love You's, Something Inside So Strong, I Can't Wait And E=MC2...

Wow - 1987 and M/A/R/R/S and Pump Up The Volume. Hugely influential early dance record. And I couldn't get enough. Still thrashing around (although now in my living room) to this brilliance today.

I adored this. Always had an ear for the quirky and the different, not to mention spine tinglingly beautiful... OK, Annie Lennox's cover in the '90s had a far larger cast and her great voice, but the original wins in this case for me, hands down. The Lover Speaks, No More I Love You's, 1986:

'I used to have demons in my room at night. Desire, despair, desire, despair - soooo many monsters...'

House Music had arrived. Year Zero was 1983 and by 1987 it was bursting out. House Nation by Housemaster Boyz and the Rude Boy of House. This sounded so different that at first I hated it. But after my second listen I was hooked. Had it on a compilation cassette and just kept rewinding and replaying it on my personal stereo. Then it was out in the clubs... 

Labi Siffre - 1987 - Something Inside So Strong... Just listen. Enough said. A beautiful and highly meaningful 1980s classic.

 

China in Your Hand - 1987. Wow. Carol Decker's voice is incredible, and watch the sad tale of a yuppie woman who falls in with a bad lad... There are power ballads and then there's this. In a class of its own.

Echoing across the summer of 1986, clonky, clanky and with that all-important '80s stutter. Nu Shooz. I Can't Wait. Dance at its best.

One of the best chart tracks of 1986 - with lyrics which bent my mind into many strange shapes. And made me dance. 'Blood lust, Greek god, go Discovery...' Big Audio Dynamite - E=MC2.

We'll be back in 1986 and 1987 for some more pop picks very soon. I just can't leave that decade alone...

Some Prime Choons From 1986 and 1987... Luka, Making Lots of Money, Corrosion, Boops and Rumours...

Continuing our backwards countdown of some of our ultimate favourite 1980s pop tracks. Incredibly hard to select - so much must be left out!

Anyway, to 1987 and Suzanne Vega's sad and stirring song about child abuse - Luka. 

He lived upstairs from you. 

They only hit until you cry - after that you don't ask why.

A wonderful and moving song. Sadly as relevant today as it was back then.

1987 - Boops - he thinks he's got class, they think he's an ass...

You gotta get here to go...

Boops, my man, listen to the mighty Sly and Robbie.

This was - and is - incredible.

This Corrosion - The Sisters of Mercy from 1987. Rock/dance with a goth atmosphere and a background cast of what appeared to me at the time as New Romantics gone mouldy...

On days like this, in times like these, I feel an animal deep inside...

The Pet Shop Boys tend to be underappreciated - and they were certainly self deprecating - but they did a great deal to advance dance music in the 1980s. In 1986, my neon socks were blown off by this great thrashing, clanging beast of a song, which drew me immediately on to the dance floor every time it was played. This was the era of the remix, and this is the one that was closest to the UK single release - and it's from Top of the Pops.

Opportunities - Lets Make Lots Of Money has become a bit of a 1980s anthem. Can't think why...

The Timex Social Club - Rumors - from 1986. I loved this song so much I bought the twelve inch version - and it was even better! Listen to this and then seek it out. Fabulous. 

The incredible New Order. Substance 1987 is rarely far from my ears. Brilliant song. Brilliant video

I used to think that the day would never come when my life would depend on the morning sun...

We'll delve back into 1987 and 1986 again soon, as we became a H-H-H-H-House Nation... Jack it up out there!

Satellite, The Hooters, 1987.

For me, this is the best song about corrupt televangelists of America. It came out in England not long before Christmas 1987, and as we didn't have satellite telly then, I had no idea what it was about really. A con in the name of religion, it seemed. I was right of course. Great, great song. Knocks Genesis's '90s effort, Jesus He Knows Me, into a cocked hat in my opinion.

And, somehow, to this day, it gives me a festive feel.

I hope you enjoy it.

The fabulous Hooters in 1985.

1987: Then Jericho - The Motive... The Business Will Just Steal Your Soul...

"The business will just steal your soul, and that's what I believe.

But where's there truth there's poetry

It happens naturally..."

There's no getting over the riches that the 1980s gave... I'm still blown away by this song. And transported back to that youthful summer of 1987 - with its hair gel and slick dressing...

Well, the 1980s idea of slick dressing.

And the following year would be so different...

Acciiieed! Accciiieed!

There'll never be another 1980s.

New Order - Blue Monday... "Really Weird, That Is!"

  
New Order, of course, formed after Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, committed suicide in 1980. In 1983, I had never even heard of New Order. I had heard of Joy Division when they'd had some chart success with Love Will Tear Us Apart in 1980, but the follow-on band had slipped underneath my radar. I was dead common, you see. Chart music was everything to me and if a band hadn't charted, I didn't know 'em.

Then, along came Blue Monday in 1983. Now, at that point my favourite kind of music was synth pop, and Blue Monday had synths. It also had a jangling guitar. It also had a staccato beat. And it had a lack of structure I had never encountered before. The song simply didn't conform to the rules I was used to, and I rejected it: "That's really weird, that is!" I squawked.

But within a week this now legendary long player was on my record player non-stop. It was groundbreaking. It was brilliant. It was staggeringly original, it began to move us away from synth pop and towards the dance music era of the late 1980s and early 1990s - that's what I now say.

1987... schizoid year which saw the '80s destroying the yuppie dream it had created with the stock market crash - and a huge gale wreaking death and destruction across the south of England. The dance scene was getting well and truly underway. This track, from New Order's SUBSTANCE 1987 compilation album, is an absolute peach. Just listen to Bernard Summner:

"I stood there beside myself
Thinking hard about the weather
Then came by a friend of mine

Suggested we go out together
Then I knew it from the start
This friend of mine would fall apart
Pretending not to see his guilt
I said 'let's go out and have some fun'..."

1987: Eurythmics - Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)

Eurythmics - Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox - formed in 1980 and were one of the most fascinating and innovative contributors to the pop charts throughout the decade. 

Remember Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)? Remember Who's That Girl? Remember Here Comes The Rain Again? Of course you do! But do you remember Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)? You probably don't! Take a look at the brilliant video above and listen to the compelling story of an upper-middle class English woman, brilliantly portrayed by the very Scottish Annie Lennox, as she tries to meld the girl, the masculine side and the vamp within her and break away from her repressed state. Or simply goes off her rocker! 

Love this.

1987: Star Trekkin' Across The Universe - On The Starship Enterprise Under Captain Kirk...

  

Look-In, 18 July, 1987: Lt Uhura - "There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape 'em off, Jim!"
-

Ah, the glories of pop chart music in 1987! One of my favourite years ever. No, I'm not thinking about H..H...H..House Nation, Pump Up The Volume or even the mighty It's A Sin, although I loved all three. Nope, this post is dedicated to Star Trekkin' by The Firm. Yep, there are definitely Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow...

 Mr Spock: "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it, it's life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain."

This brilliant novelty song made Number 1 in the UK pop charts and was simply a great larf. Sorry, I mean laugh.
 

It was the work of The Firm - Grahame Lister, John O'Connor and Rory Kehoe, who had brought us the sublime Arthur Daley ('E's Alright) in 1982. The group turned their attention spacewards in '87 and the result was a whole lot of fun.

 

 Starship Captain James T Kirk: "We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, we come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, men!"

No record producers were interested in the song, so The Firm released it themselves on O'Connor's Bark Records label. Ya cannae change the laws of physics, and the song shot into the stratosphere, spending two weeks at No 1 in the UK and selling over a million copies worldwide.

  

Dr "Bones" McCoy - "It's worse than that he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead, Jim, it's worse than that he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead."

A lovely summer and a great novelty song contributes to making 1987 (which would later send a terrible gale across part of England and a stock market crash which caused reverberations worldwide) now seem such a sweet memory...

Incidentally, Star Trek itself was going great guns at this time. The film series (which had begun so dismally in my humble opinion) had matured into a thrilling blend of must-watch adventures and droll humour, mixed with a few topical messages. My favourite, The Voyage Home, released in 1986, featured a strong environmental theme. Just as exciting for Trekkies, in America in 1987, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (so English-seeming with his cups of tea and played by English actor Patrick Stewart although the character was apparently - and I thought very puzzlingly - French!) was setting out on his first adventures with the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series.

The Firm really "cleaned up" with Star Trekkin'...  And by the miracle of YouTube take a perilous voyage back to 1987 below - BRIDGE TO ENGINE ROOM, WARP FACTOR NINE!  ("I cannae give it any more, Captain! She'll blow!")

Sheena Easton: "My Baby Takes The Morning Train..."

We were all hoping for good things for singer Sheena Easton, who hailed from north of the border, and first came to our attention on Esther Rantzen's The Big Time show.

And good things she got - quickly scoring several hits here. It didn't matter if she was a Modern Girl or a traditional stay-at-home, waiting for her hubby to arrive back from his 9 to 5, Sheena could do no wrong...

"All day I think of him - dreaming of him constantly..."

The audience was so thrilled that a balloon was let fly.

Sheena later left us far behind, hitting the USA for a brief (fictional) marriage to Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice and a duet with pop genius Prince.

Who would have believed it back in 1980? In fact, I'd never even heard of The Purple One back then, and Miami Vice was still a twinkle in a scriptwriter's eye...

Fast forward... From a boiler suited 1980 to a shoulder padded 1987... Sheena with Prince in the video for "U Got The Look".

The Slightest Touch and Down To Earth... Pop Heaven In 1987...

This is great 1980s pop - courtesy of the Pearson siblings, AKA Five Star.


June 1987 - and Curiosity Killed The Cat, who first charted with Down To Earth in January, were on the cover of Smash Hits. "You ain't no bird, and so for what it's worth, gonna bring you straight back down to earth..." Perhaps the lyrics were prophetic - 1987 was the height of the mid-to-late 80s yuppie era, but also ripped the rug out from under the upwardly mobile set...

"You Don't Know What You Might Have Set Upon Yourself..."

The 80s pop group T'Pau was named after Mr Spock's mother, apparently. As the "Pau" part of the name is pronounced "pow" and singer Carol Decker was mightily adept at socking it to us, it seemed an inspired choice of name.

My favourite T'Pau hit, China In Your Hand, had a brilliant video to accompany it, which told the story of a woman's downfall in a world of stylish appartments, shoulder pads, shaggy perms and mullets.

Powerful vocals, luscious music - including a saxophone... shivers up and down my spine... perfect pop.

"Don't Wait Up For Us Tonight..."

Stock, Aitken and Waterman don't get the best press, but life's too short to get all snooty and sniffy. Their music was often terrific to dance to. Mel and Kim, seen here on the Respectable picture disc, are the soundtrack to many fond memories for me.

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"Pump Up The Volume..."

Sampling was the coming thing, but it could land you in trouble! Still, some records using samples were pure genius (at least back in the late 1980s) and here's a treat from M/A/R/R/S, which helped nudge us on into the dance era.

Innovative and great to move to - I love it!

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80s Style...

Part of a lovely mid-to-late 1980s dinner service. These went very well with black furniture. I remember having dinner with some acquaintances who fancied themselves as being "upwardly mobile". We ate from black plates, on a black tablecloth, with black candles, sitting on black chairs. I'm shortsighted, and had trouble actually seeing my plate against the cloth.

Weird.