Authors are finding ever-more ingenious ways to explore 1980s music.
Perhaps due to the democratisation of the era via streaming services – and those services’ general lack of decent credits/info – and advent of YouTube reaction videos, there seems an increasing appetite for behind-the-scenes info.
All of which makes Richard West’s new book ‘Every UK Hit Single: 1980’ very welcome. It goes the whole hog, exploring the stories behind every charting single of 1980 in the chronological order that they entered the UK top 40.
Of course 1980 is a great place to start, a year when heavy metal was thriving and punk was morphing into the nascent Goth, synth pop and New Romantic scenes.
Disco, reggae, ska and funk were regular visitors to the charts, there was a weird doo-wop/rock’n’roll revival and ‘70s icons like Kate Bush, Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel and David Bowie were bringing fresh ideas to the table.
West is very well placed to write the book, an author and respected musician, and it’s a great read, a joyful hit of nostalgia. This writer devoured it in a few days.
A good example of his modus operandi is the entry on The Vapors’ memorable one-hit wonder ‘Turning Japanese’ which entered the chart on 1 March 1980. Though skirting the issue of what the song’s actually about (ugly rumours abound…), he gives a neat potted history of the band and their somewhat unlucky chart history.
He’s also excellent on 1980’s many oddities such as the doo-wop revivalists Showaddywaddy and DIY popster Jona Lewie.
It’s destined to be a useful reference book, with an index on each artist mentioned and information on artists’ singles which didn’t make the top 40 during the 1980s. And West does particularly well to avoid repetition – it’s not easy to say something new about each of, say, Bowie’s singles of 1980, but West manages it.
Of course there are pitfalls to his approach. For example, on page one, West fails to identify the songwriter of The Nolans’ ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’, the first question your correspondent wanted to know about that annoyingly catchy song (it’s Bob Puzey, who went on to write Hoddle and Waddle’s ‘Diamond Lights’… Ed.)
And a little more musical analysis would have been welcome now and again. And there no getting away from the fact that the book has a no-frills design, with no photos.
But it doesn’t stop ‘Every Hit Single’ from being a fun, snappy read, a great excuse to geek out on the charts of 1980. West is promising more books in the series – good news, especially as 1981 is arguably pop’s greatest ever year…
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