Billy Joel reschedules upcoming UK live dates due to a medical condition.

Originally scheduled for June 2025, the two exclusive performances – at Edinburgh’s Scottish Gas Murrayfield and Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium – will now take place the following year on Saturday 06 June and Saturday 20 June, respectively.

All purchased tickets will automatically be valid for the rescheduled shows. For those unable to attend, refunds will be available from the point of purchase.

A statement said: Billy Joel’s upcoming concert dates will be rescheduled due to a medical condition. The current tour will be postponed for four months to allow him to recover from recent surgery and to undergo physical therapy under the supervision of his doctors. Joel is expected to make a full recovery. The tour will resume at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh on July 5, 2025.

Billy Joel said: “While I regret postponing any shows, my health must come first. I look forward to getting back on stage and sharing the joy of live music with our amazing fans. Thank you for your understanding.”

Joel is one of the most engaging and best-selling live performers of our time, with a catalogue of hit songs such as Piano Man, Uptown Girl, It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me, Tell Her About It and We Didn’t Start The Fire.

Click here or here for tickets.

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10cc’s Graham Gouldman releases Kevin Godley directed video for Play Me (The Ukulele Song), taken from his latest album, I Have Notes.

Gouldman called upon the legendary Godley & Creme director and former 10cc bandmate to pick up his pens and create a unique time-lapse video.

He recalls the inspiration for the exuberant childish joy of the song: “I know someone that’s got a very nice collection of vintage guitars. They’re worth a lot of money, and he won’t let anybody play them! I said, ‘It’s not right. They’re sitting there all on their own in the cold, in your safe! They need to be played. That’s what they’re for!’

“I wrote Play Me initially as part of a children’s music album a friend of mine was making. As I was writing the song I thought it was quite charming and too good for library music that might never see the light of day! A bit like those vintage guitars.

“It was natural for me to approach Kevin Godley to see if, first of all, he liked the song and, secondly, if he could come up with a great video idea for it, which of course he did.”

Watch the video below:

Visual Simplicity

Godley added: “The charm of Play Me lies in giving humanity and hope to an inanimate object so, once I’d decided that drawings were the way to go, I thought that watching the drawings take shape and becoming the active story could look more interesting than traditional animation, which was way beyond our budget. After a short day with a long roll of paper and about 50 felt tipped – pens I hope we managed to add a visual simplicity and urgency that gets the spirit of GGs song across without being too literal.”

Graham Gouldman’s latest album I Have Notes is out now on Lojinx CD, vinyl LP and digital and his Heart Full of Songs is currently touring the UK:

Heart Full of Songs Tour

10 Mon March – The Gate Arts Centre, Cardiff
11 Tue March – The Hafren, Newtown
13 Thu March – St Luke’s, Glasgow
14 Fri March – Playhouse, Alnwick
15 Sat March – RNCM Manchester
16 Sun March – City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds
17 Mon March – The Stables Theatre, Wavendon
19 Wed March – The Factory Live, Worthing
20 Thu March – Cadogan Hall, London
21 Fri March –  Cheese & Grain, Frome
22 Sat March – Corn Exchange Theatre, Stamford
23 Sun March – Theatre Seven, Shrewsbury

For more information click here

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Cast celebrate 30 years of their renowned debut album, All Change, when they play it in full on tour later this year.

Cast are in the best position they’ve been in for decades. Last year’s Love Is The Call album earned a wave of critical acclaim and achieved the band’s highest chart position in 25 years. And another huge moment followed with the news that they will support Oasis on the UK and Ireland leg of their long-awaited stadium reunion tour.

But now Cast return to where it all began with confirmation of their 30 Years of All Change Tour. Opening in Dublin, with stops including London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the tour will culminate with a homecoming show at the Liverpool Olympia. The band still features three members from the band that recorded the album: John Power (vocals, guitar), Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson (guitar) and Keith O’Neill (drums).

Timeless & Classic

John Power says, “All Change was the debut record that captured the spirit and the energy of the band. It still feels as fresh as the day when we released it. You have to be of a certain time to record something so timeless and classic and I think we achieved that with All Change.”

Press play on All Change and you’re hit with what feels like a ‘Greatest Hits’ collection. There’s the jangly, uplifting melodic rush of their first two singles Alright and Finetime, two Top 10 hits with the moody psychedelia of Sandstorm and the affecting ballad Walkaway, plus deeper cut fan favourites such as Promised Land and Four Walls. The album debuted at No.7 and spent almost a year in the Top 40, leading to Platinum certification in recognition of more than 300,000 domestic sales.

In addition, John Power is also currently embarking upon an intimate tour in which he is performing a mixture of solo material, Cast songs and tracks from his time with The La’s.

Cast All Change Tour

29 Oct – 3Olympia, Dublin
30 Oct – Telegraph Building, Belfast
06 Nov – Rock City, Nottingham
07 Nov – O2 Academy, Oxford
08 Nov – Arena, Torquay
13 Nov – O2 Institute, Birmingham
14 Nov – Uni Y Plas, Cardiff
15 Nov – O2 Academy, Leeds
20 Nov – O2 Academy, Bournemouth
21 Nov – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
22 Nov – Albert Hall, Manchester
27 Nov – Leadmill, Sheffield
28 Nov – NX, Newcastle
29 Nov – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
05 Dec – Olympia, Liverpool

The tour features support from Pastel, the hotly-tipped Manchester band who recently released their debut album Souls In Motion.

Tickets, listed above, go on general sale here from 10am on Friday, March 14.

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Pet Shop Boys remix Primal Scream’s Innocent Money as the Scottish rockers continue their Come Ahead remix project.

Bobby Gillespie said: “When we were discussing possible remixers for the Come Ahead album with our producer David Holmes I had a gut feeling that asking the Pet Shop Boys to remix Innocent Money might be a good idea. I felt that the song’s marriage of a socially conscious lyric sung over an ecstatic, discofied string-laden stomping rhythm track might appeal to Neil and Chris’ sense of pop aesthetics. An added and unexpected fabulous bonus was that Neil sang on it and I get to duet with him – Neil, of course, having one of THE iconic British pop voices. Truly honoured!”

Complete with those unmistakable Neil Tennant vocals, this release follows Ready To Go Home (Tim Goldsworthy Remix), Love Ain’t Enough (Tim Goldsworthy Remix), Love Insurrection (Black Science Orchestra Remix) and UK house legend Terry Farley and Wade Teo’s sold-out white label remix of Ready To Go Home – 35 years after Terry Farley first created the iconic Loaded and Come Together remixes for Primal Scream.

The Primal Scream Come Ahead remix project is set to continue, with more collaborations as part of a full length release soon to be announced.

Listen to Pet Shop Boys Remix of Primal Scream’s Innocent Money below:

Come Ahead

Come Ahead is Primal Scream’s 12th studio album. Released in November 2024 to widespread critical acclaim with Classic Pop saying, “Primal Scream just became important again”.

After launching their The Come Ahead Tour at Corona Capital in Mexico City and performing at Tokyo’s Rockin’on Sonic Festival, Primal Scream kicked off 2025 with headline dates across Australia in January, with their show at Fremantle Prison described as “joyous” by Rolling Stone. The Come Ahead Tour is set to continue through Europe and North America into summer 2025.

On 31 March Primal Scream hit the UK and Ireland with 14 headline concerts into April 2025. Primal Scream will be supported by Baxter Dury at shows in Bristol, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham, and by Fat White Family in London.

UK and Ireland Headline Tour Dates 2025

31 March – Beacon, Bristol
01 April – O2 Guildhall, Southampton
03 April – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
04 April – O2 Academy, Glasgow
05 April – 2 Academy, Glasgow
07 April – O2 Academy, Birmingham
08 April – Mountford Hall, Liverpool
10 April – Eventim Apollo, London
11 April – Aviva Studios, Manchester
12 April – Rock City, Nottingham
14 April – Belfast, Ulster Hall
15 April – 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin
18 April – O2 Academy, Leeds
19 April – O2 City Hall, Newcastle

Tickets are on sale now here.

Read More: The Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Imperial Phase’

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A Prince Purple Rain Dolby Atmos Blu-ray edition is to be released this April.

NPG Records and Paisley Park Enterprises, in partnership with Warner Records, have announced the release of a brand new audiophile Blu-ray featuring 2024’s Dolby Atmos mix of Prince And The Revolution’s iconic 1984 album, Purple Rain.

The release, which also includes Prince’s original 1984 stereo mix, in high-definition 24bit / 96kHz audio, will be available on sale from 25 April.

Prince shattered all expectations and made music history when he released the album Purple Rain, followed by the hit movie of the same name weeks later. The nine-track LP went on to win two Grammy awards, two American Music Awards, a Brit Award, and an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.

In 2012 the Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry, which only accepts sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.”

Purple Rain spent 24 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard album charts, sold over 25 million copies worldwide, and appears on countless ‘Best Of’ polls, most recently achieving the No.4 spot on Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums Of All Time.

Iconic Work

Paisley Park Enterprises  said: “In 2024 we started our year-long celebration of the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain, we are thrilled to present Prince’s masterpiece in ATMOS, providing an immersive, surround auditory experience of Prince’s legendary album.

“This highly crafted release will present Prince’s iconic work with more space and depth while preserving the beautiful songs that have shaped music and popular culture, and touched the lives of countless fans around the world.”

Warner Bros Discovery also reissued a newly restored 4K version of the Purple Rain motion picture on 25 June 2024 with a limited theatrical run. In addition to these Purple Rain reissues, his catalogue is also now available in full on Snapchat and other social media for the next generation of fans to engage, discover and enjoy.

To pre-order click here

Read More: Classic Album – Prince And The Revolution’s Purple Rain

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Samantha Fox announces reissues of first three albums in stunning vinyl and picture disc formats.

Samantha Fox rose to fame as a UK glamour model before making the transition into music, where she quickly became a pop phenomenon selling over 35 million records. She remains the only British female solo artist of the 1980s to achieve three Top 10 hits on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her debut album, Touch Me (1986), catapulted her to international stardom with its title track going to No.1 in 17 countries and Top 10 around the world including the US and UK. She followed this success with Samantha Fox (1987) and I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988), both of which featured a mix of dance-pop anthems and club-ready hits that showcased her distinctive voice and charismatic presence.

Touch Me features four hit singles: the international smash Touch Me (I Want Your Body), Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me), Hold On Tight and I’m All You Need. Immediately establishing Samantha’s signature pop-rock sound, the album hit No.17 in the UK on its original release, going silver, before reaching No.24 in the US with a gold certification.

Pressed on striking black vinyl with white and pink splatters to complement the original aesthetic, this edition boasts rebuilt artwork and a newly designed inner bag featuring full lyrics. A strictly limited-edition picture disc is also available.

International Stardom

Her 1987 self-titled second album Samantha Fox boasts five hit singles: the Stock Aitken Waterman favourite Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now, the memorable Full Force collaboration Naughty Girls, I Surrender (To The Spirit of the Night), I Promise You and True Devotion.

Developing Samantha’s sound with a compelling mix of pop, rock and hip-hop stylings, the album made No.22 in the UK and No.51 in the US, gaining her a second straight gold certification.

Available on striking transparent caramel vinyl with gold and silver splatters to complement the original aesthetic, this edition boasts rebuilt artwork and a newly designed inner bag featuring full lyrics. A strictly limited-edition picture disc is also available.

Global Hits

Samantha’s third album, 1988’s I Wanna Have Some Fun, features Sam’s irresistible Stock Aitken Waterman-produced cover of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Wanna Be With You, the gold-certified, Full Force-helmed title track, and the acid-inflected club favourite Love House. Samantha’s most danceable, transatlantic and eclectic set so far, I Wanna Have Some Fun reached No.46 in the UK and No.37 in the US, giving her a third consecutive gold certification.

Presented on striking transparent red vinyl with black and yellow splatters to complement the original aesthetic, this edition boasts rebuilt artwork and a newly designed inner bag featuring full lyrics.

Tracklistings

Touch Me
Side A
1 Touch Me (I Want Your Body)
2 I’m All You Need
3 Suzie, Don’t Leave Me With Your Boyfriend
4 Wild Kinda Love
5 Hold On Tight
Side B
6 Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)
7 Baby I’m Lost For Words
8 It’s Only Love
9 He’s Got Sex
10 Drop Me A Line

Samantha Fox
Side A
1 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
2 I Surrender (To The Spirit Of The Night)
3 I Promise You
4 Naughty Girls
5 True Devotion
Side B
6 Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now
7 If Music Be The Food Of Love
8 That Sensation
9 Dream Sensation
10 The Best Is Yet To Come

I Wanna Have Some Fun
Side A
1 I Wanna Have Some Fun
2 Love House
3 Your House Or My House
4 Next To Me
5 Ready For This Love
6 Confession
Side B
7 I Only Wanna Be With You
8 You Started Something
9 One In A Million
10 Walking On Air
11 Hot For You
12 Out Of Our Hands

For further information click here

Read More: The Stock Aitken Waterman Story

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Bryan Adams releases new single, Make Up Your Mind, ahead of the UK and Ireland leg of his Roll With The Punches Tour in May. 

The singer said: “The song is about making the decision in a relationship to either move forwards together or finally move on. If you’ve ever questioned the past, yearned for another shot, or felt the bittersweet sting of ‘what if,’ this song is for you.”

Watch the lyric video below:

Released via his own label, Bad Records, Make Up Your Mind follows the release of recent single Roll With The Punches. A high-octane rocker Roll With The Punches is the title track of his forthcoming new studio album, to be released later this year.

Co-written with Mutt Lange, who has worked with Bryan Adams since Waking Up The Neighbours in 1991, Roll With The Punches is “a song about resilience and the spirit of getting back up no matter how hard you’ve been knocked down.” Adams continued: “It is for everyone who’s ever felt defeated but chose to fight another day.”

Everywhere I Go The Kids Wanna Rock

With global hits such as Summer Of ’69, Can’t Stop This Thing We Started, Run To You, and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Adams remains a beloved figure in rock music and his Roll With The Punches Tour promises to deliver more of his signature high-energy performances and timeless rock anthems.

The tour kicked off with sold out shows in New Zealand and Australia earlier this year. It comes to the UK and Ireland for 12 shows in May, before heading across to Europe throughout the summer.

Adams said: “I’ve been gigging in the UK and Ireland for such a long time now, and each time I play here I remember why I fell in love with the audiences. We’re gonna sing and rock the roof off these arenas!”

UK & Ireland Dates

08 May – Utilita Arena, Newcastle
09 May – AO Arena, Manchester
10 May – First Direct Arena, Leeds
11 May – P&J Live, Aberdeen
13 May – OVO Hydro, Glasgow
15 May – The O2, London
16 May – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool
17 May – Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham
18 May – bp pulse LIVE, Birmingham
20 May – 3Arena, Dublin
21 May – The SSE Arena, Belfast
23 May – 3Arena,Dublin

For Bryan Adams tour dates and tickets click here

Read More: Lost & Found – Bryan Adams Into The Fire

The post Bryan Adams releases new single Make Up Your Mind appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

One of British pop’s finest, Terry Hall helped pioneer a whole new movement with The Specials before utilising his famously deadpan talents in numerous equally intriguing bands, side projects, supergroups and solo releases

The Specials – Specials (1979)

Formerly known as The Coventry Automatics, The Specials turned their West Midlands hometown into an unlikely cultural hub towards the end of the 70s, infusing the music of Jamaica with a distinctly British punk spirit to pioneer the sound that became known as 2 Tone.

Featuring the guitarists Lynval Golding and Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers, bass player Horace Panter and, eventually, drummer John Bradbury, as well as roadie-turned-singer Neville Staple and poker-faced vocalist Terry Hall, the band had been formed by chief songwriter Jerry Dammers with the intention of putting Coventry on the map. And after being discovered by Joe Strummer, leading to a support slot on The Clash’s Out On Parole Tour, the seven-piece soon achieved their goal.

Of course, The Specials didn’t always paint the city in the most flattering light, the majority of their original material reflecting on the hardships of suburban life during the early years of Thatcherite Britain. Concrete Jungle was written by Byers about being chased by the National Front, while It’s Up To You and Doesn’t Make It Alright both further tackle the band’s experiences of racism head on. And Too Much Too Young, a live recording of which would later give the band a controversial No.1, is a kitchen sink vignette in which the band show their blatant disdain towards an adolescent mother.

A Message To You Rudy

Although The Specials were admirably keen to call out society’s prejudices, this rhetoric could sometimes tip over into sexism. Amid the chatter and chinking glasses of Nite Klub, Hall declares “All the girls are slags,” for example. And Little Bitch is downright nasty, berating a young girl for her appearance, bed-wetting tendencies and suicidal cries for attention. It’s little wonder the group soon dropped the track from their set.

While not all of the band’s lyrical themes have aged particularly well, a telling sign of their late teenage years, the music still remains positively thrilling. The Specials were particularly skilful in adapting ska classics for the New Wave crowd, with Stupid Marriage downgrading the murder charges of Prince Buster’s Judge Dread to vengeful vandalism (with a little help from Chrissie Hynde to boot) and Do The Dog turning Rufus Thomas’ original into a commentary on the rising levels of subcultural violence.

Elvis Costello, meanwhile, was the perfect choice of producer, his unfussy approach brilliantly recapturing the raw energy of the band’s live shows. As opening mission statements go, this was pretty special.

The Specials – More Specials (1980)

As its title suggested, The Specials’ second LP initially appeared to be more of the same. Side One was bookended by repurposed covers, with music hall standard Enjoy Yourself turned into a pogo-inducing ska anthem about the increasing likelihood of nuclear attacks and the kitsch Northern Soul of Sock It To ’Em J.B. updating the James Bond references of Rex Garvin’s original.

The gloominess of life under a Tory government was still the default theme. Terry Hall’s first writing credit Man At C&A ramped up the Cold War paranoia further. Hey, Little Rich Girl charted the fortunes of a young woman whose big city dreams are exploited by the porn industry. And in case you still hadn’t twigged that the Coventry outfit weren’t the picture of contentment, Pearl’s Cafe, a collaboration with future The Special AKA member Rhoda Dakar – explicitly declared “It’s all a load of bollocks.”

Enjoy Yourself

However, with Dammers itching to broaden the group’s horizons – “I didn’t want us to end up like Bad Manners,” he told Uncut – Side Two knocked everyone, including his own bandmates, for six. Inspired by the hotel lobby music that became an inadvertent soundtrack of their previous tour, Dammers pursued an intriguing melting pot of easy listening styles worlds apart from the 2 Tone that had gone before.

Stereotype/Stereotypes Pt.2 throws in everything from bossa nova to Bach while depicting how an average man’s life descends into STD-contracting, alcohol-heavy and police-evading chaos. International Jet Set ventures into Middle Eastern psychedelia, concluding with the harrowing final cries from a passenger plane about to crash land. There’s even a calypso instrumental, Holiday Fortnight.

More Specials has been credited with both pioneering trip-hop and foreshadowing the lounge music revival, while it also repeated the Top Five success of its predecessor. Yet it proved the death knell for The Specials’ original incarnation. Frustrated at Dammers’ “my way or the highway” approach and the pressures of the industry treadmill, the band splintered shortly after the era-defining single Ghost Town gave them a second No.1.

Fun Boy Three – The Fun Boy Three (1982)

“The sound of three people sent mental by being in The Specials,” was how Terry Hall described the 1981 offshoot he formed with Golding and Staple to The Guardian in 2009. Fun Boy Three’s self-titled debut album does indeed have a One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest vibe, from the deranged assortment of animal noises and football whistles that pervade Funrama 2 to the fact that its lead single – an attack on either the Thatcher/Reagan special relationship or their new musical foe, Jerry Dammers, depending on your own interpretation – was titled The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum).

But there was also method to their madness, with the trio – now sporting Persil-white singlets rather than two-tone suits – firmly subscribing to the theory that less is more across 11 tracks, eclectic as they were sparse.

Although its musical palette, co-produced with regular Specials cohort Dave Jordan, rarely expands beyond primitive percussion, inexpressive chants and Sprechgesang, The Fun Boy Three still manages to both intrigue and innovate.

Taking Over …

Faith, Hope And Charity finds the boys tiptoeing onto the dancefloor with a rhythmic blend of metallic funk, distinctly British hip-hop, and early minimalist techno. I Don’t Believe It adopts nursery rhyme melodies and paranoia-soaked reggae to rally against the surveillance of Black Britain, while Best Of Luck Mate is a dub poem about a debt-ridden man whose attempts to escape poverty are thwarted by his daily trips to the bookies.

Of course, Fun Boy Three’s most invaluable contribution to the pop culture of the early 80s was its introduction of the era’s biggest girlband. Bananarama, discovered by Hall thanks to an article in The Face, lend their nonchalant tones to four tracks including the haunting Gregorian vibes of opener Sanctuary and world-weary closer, Alone. But it’s on the playful cover of Top Five hit T’aint What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It), a jazz standard recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, where Siobhan, Keren and Sara make their presence known. “Where do we go to from here?/ What kind of sound do we follow?” FB3 ask on Way On Down. Minimalistic, mysterious and mischievous pop appeared to be the answer.

Fun Boy Three – Waiting (1983)

After returning the favour on Bananarama collab Really Saying Something and also covering the George Gershwin standard Summertime, Fun Boy Three dramatically ended their run of five straight Top 20 hits with The More I See (The Less I Believe), a bleak meditation on The Troubles that facetiously finished with the punchline, “Does anyone know any jokes?”

Luckily, the trio’s second album had a few more bankable hits up its sleeve, namely the unexpected tango of The Tunnel Of Love and, most notably, Our Lips Are Sealed. This co-written gem with The Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin, with whom Hall had a short-lived romance, went on to be a hit for her own girlband, too.

Helmed by David Byrne, apparently the group’s second choice of producer after Brian Eno turned them down, Waiting isn’t as big a leap forward as its predecessor.

Murder She Said finds the trio paying homage to the theme from Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple films of the 60s, perhaps a sign Dammers’ penchant for easy listening had rubbed off more than they’d admit. The Pressure Of Life (Takes The Weight Off The Body), meanwhile, harked back to the bouncy ska of The Specials’ debut.

Perhaps mindful they’d run their course, Terry Hall again moved on, leaving Fun Boy Three as one of the decade’s most curious two-album wonders.

The Colourfield – Virgins And Philistines (1985)

Named after a mid-15th century form of abstract artwork, The Colourfield (initially The Colour Field) saw Terry Hall distance himself slightly from the monochromatic persona that had guided his previous two outfits to chart success. He could still rival Morrissey when it came to lyrical bitterness, of course. “But me and the cat own the lease on the flat and nothing you do will ever change that,” he sneers at an ex-girlfriend for having the audacity to leave on Take. And he can hardly contain his resentment on the animal activism of Cruel Circus (“Fur coats on ugly people/ Expensively dressed up to kill/ In a sport that’s legal/ Within the minds of the mentally ill”).

However, joined by guitarist Toby Lyons and bass player Karl Shale, who’d both plied their trade in another Coventry-based ska act, The Swinging Cats, Virgins And Philistinesalso offers some light to go with all the shade. “I don’t detest everything, just most things,” Hall said on Music Box TV, arguably the closest he ever came to expressing a sense of optimism.

Pile On The Agony

Album opener Thinking Of You, which features backing vocals from big fan (and apparently studio cleaner) Katrina Phillips, surrounds its pleas for a lost love with the kind of orchestral pop that made Burt Bacharach and Hal David the most in-demand songwriters of the 60s. Castles In The Air combines open-road soft rock with flourishes of flamenco, while Hammond Song turns folk rock trio The Roches’ original into a lushly harmonised affair that’s reminiscent of vintage Simon And Garfunkel.

Although much of Virgins And Philistines harks back to the sounds of Hall’s youth, there are shades of the jangle-pop movement that just a year later would coalesce on the C86 cassette, perhaps a sign that Hugh Jones had more of an influence than fellow co-producer Jeremy Green.

Appearing to believe this was one musical reinvention too many, a select few Hall fans reacted to The Colourfield’s first live shows with constant heckles. A philistine response, you could say, to an album which painted the eternal miserabilist in refreshingly expressive strokes.

The Colourfield – Deception (1987)

Terry Hall had called it a day with his previous two outfits at a point in which audiences were left wanting more. The fact that The Colourfield’s difficult second album barely scraped the UK’s Top 100 and, in a career first, spawned zero Top 40 singles suggests that the musical wanderer should have pressed the cease-and-desist button even earlier third time around.

The band appeared to have been just as dissatisfied as their fans. Shale left the project midway through recording, while Hall failed to establish a connection with both the session musicians brought in as his replacement and producers Jeffrey Lesser (The Chieftains) and Richard Gottehrer (Blondie).

Deception’s troubled backstory, therefore, suggests that it’s an album of car crash proportions. But while it’s undoubtedly slicker and glossier than anything its frontman did before – and after, too – it also boasts several tracks worthy of gracing a Hall Best Of.

Confession, one of the two tracks on the LP that feature Tears For Fears’ Roland Orzabal, and Heart Of America both echo the well-crafted pop that would turn cult heroes Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout into chart concerns just a year later.

Running Away

Adding to Hall’s list of unlikely cover versions, the emphatic funk of Sly And The Family Stone’s Running Away proved he could still push himself out of his comfort zone. And Miss Texas 1967 is a gorgeously melancholic piece of lounge pop about an old-school beauty queen, which suggests that the great pessimist Hall was an ardent viewer of prime-time television soap opera, Dallas.

There are signs elsewhere, however, that Hall had lost his mojo, and not just the glum front cover portrait, either: the album’s anodyne cover of The Monkees’ She, for example, or the synthetic soul of Digging It Deep which succumbed to all the worst excesses of late-80s productions as well as the ‘moon in June’ approach to lyrics (“Oh how I wish I loved the human race/ Oh how I wish I had a pretty face… I’m glad and lazy/ And you’re sad and crazy”). After six albums in eight years, Hall perhaps wisely took a lengthy break toward the end of the decade that he’d helped to define.

Terry, Blair & Anouchka – Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes (1990)

For “people who can hum a tune whilst hoovering”. That’s how Blair Booth, who, alongside future psychoanalyst and writer Anouchka Grose joined Terry Hall’s most carefree side project, described their sole album Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes.

It’s a fair comment. Bonded by their love of 60s pop – their first single was a cover of Captain & Tennille’s Love Will Keep Us Together – Terry, Blair And Anouchka served up a sound as refreshingly simple as their moniker and often, every bit as catchy as the Shake’n’Vac jingle.

The opening title track, for instance, is a reassuring piece of fatherly advice on the pressures of life which threatens to burst into the theme to Red Dwarf. Lead single Missing is the kind of witty kitchen sink portrait The Beautiful South topped the charts with that same year. And Three Cool Catz is a doo-wop take on Leiber & Stoller’s standard whose title essentially sums up the whole project.

Indeed, so out of the cultural loop, Anouchka initially thought it was Jerry Hall who wanted a guitarist and declined. Blair, who would later form Break From The Old Routine hitmakers Oui 3, was impressed that she didn’t know who Terry was. However, together they appear to be having a blast on a retro flight of fancy which charms and delights in equal measure. And remarkably, so does Terry.

Vegas – Vegas (1992)

Out of all Terry Hall’s many creative endeavours, Vegas appears to be the one lost to time. Only a handful of its 10 tracks have racked up more than a few thousand Spotify streams, and it’s largely been impossible to obtain a physical copy since its 1992 release. That’s a little surprising considering it did spawn his final UK Top 40 hit (Possessed) and was spearheaded by a man who, back in the early 80s, had done for synth-pop what Hall had done for ska.

Vegas was born out of a songwriting session with Dave Stewart for the Ramones, but there’s little in the way of primitive rock’n’roll on an album which is more Caribbean island than CBGBs.

Walk Into The Wind is a hushed reggae number which reunites Hall with Siobhan Fahey to haunting effect. Wise Guy evolves from stately chamber music to beachside dub complete with a chuckling toaster pontificating on the fleeting nature of fame. Whisper it quietly and Take Me For What I Am could even be mistaken for UB40 back in their chart-topping prime.

More in keeping with Stewart’s Eurythmics days, the squelchy electronica of The Thought Of You and a curious rendition of Charles Aznavour’s classic chanson She appear to have wandered in from a different side project altogether. But while hardly Hall’s most essential album, Vegas still strikes it rich.

Terry Hall – Home (1994)

After 15 years and five different group projects, Terry Hall finally decided to go solo in 1994, albeit with a little help from many of his peers. Indeed, Home’s credits read like a who’s who of 1980s guitar pop, with Nick Heyward, The Smiths’ Craig Gannon as well as XTC’s Andy Partridge all joining producer Ian Broudie on songwriting duties and The Icicle Works’ drummer Chris Sharrock and Echo And The Bunnymen’s bassist Les Pattinson lending a hand in the studio.

The Britpop movement, that in the wake of Definitely Maybe and Parklife was fast reaching its commercial zenith, was also keen to get on board, too. Blur’s Damon Albarn guested on Chasing A Rainbow, the soaring indie-pop number added to its special edition a year later, while Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker remixed opening lead single Forever J, a bittersweet paean to Hall’s soon-to-be ex-wife Jeanette which immediately set the classicist pop tone.

Despite its star-studded pedigree, the LP once again saw Hall languishing in the lower reaches of the UK’s Top 100, perhaps the biggest chart injustice of the journeyman’s career considering how effortlessly it aligned with the Cool Britannia era.

The More You Get, The More You Want

Sense, a slightly grittier version of The Lightning Seeds tune he had co-written two years previously, was also robbed of a Top 40 place. But the album’s true highlights are elsewhere: the sweeping cinematic power pop of What’s Wrong With Me, the ode to loneliness of grammatical nightmare I Don’t Got You, the bitter kiss-off I Drew A Lemon in which Hall proves he’s not entirely averse to the odd dad joke (“I thought we’d last forever/ But you drew the curtains/ And pulled yourself together”).

The coquettish female harmonies that permeate No No No and First Attack Of Love bring to mind the vocal interplay of The Human League. While You boasts one of Hall’s finest zingers (“If ifs and ands were pots and pans, you’d be a kitchen”). On paper, Home is only a minor footnote in the restless creative’s career, and yet, as his most consistently strong body of work, it’s arguably something of a lost classic.

Terry Hall – Laugh (1997)

Having waited such a long time to go it alone, Terry Hall struck while the iron was relatively hot by releasing his second solo album just three years after his first. Co-produced with Craig Gannon together with future Rolling Stones cohort Cenzo Townshend, the ironically-titled Laugh is a little more downbeat than its predecessor, no doubt reflecting the fact the star was still recovering from a painful divorce.

Adding The High Llamas frontman Sean O’Hagan to his impressive list of collaborators, Happy Go Lucky is a mournful piece of chamber pop which plays out like a relationship post-mortem. Channelling Pulp in their Britpop prime, Ballad Of A Landlord is a scathing riposte to a former lover who’s discovered that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side (“How I long to taste the secrets/ From your land of phoney tears”). The title of Damon Albarn co-write A Room Full Of Nothing, an unhinged waltz which captures the Britpop comedown as effectively as Blur’s self-titled LP from earlier in the year, says it all.

I Saw The Light

Even the songs which on the surface appear to be full of hope are, in fact, drenched in despair. The Byrds-esque Summer Follows Spring sound is tailor-made for a romantic walk in the park, but is yet another smackdown to a cheating ex. And the similarly jangly Sonny And His Sister, co-penned with long-time fan Stephen Duffy, is about a man left so adrift by a break-up that he seeks advice from a teen magazine’s problems page.

Laugh does end on a slightly more optimistic note, a buoyant cover of Todd Rundgren’s soft rock serenade I Saw The Light which is perfectly in keeping with the album’s classic radio vibes. But failing to find catharsis in such soul-baring (“I thought, ‘Why am I putting myself through this?’” he later told The Guardian. “I mean, I can avoid doing this”), Hall acknowledged that the singer-songwriter approach wasn’t for him. Indeed, although Laugh became his highest-charting LP since The Colourfield’s debut, his solo career met the same two-albums-and-out fate, now his forte.

Hall & Mushtaq – The Hour Of Two Lights (2003)

Perhaps inspired by regular collaborator Damon Albarn’s world music ventures, in 2003 Terry Hall teamed up with Mushtaq of ethno-techno outfit Fun-Da-Mental for an audacious East-meets-West affair released through the Blur frontman’s Honest Jon’s label.

The Hour Of Two Lights also roped in everyone from 12-year-old Lebanese singer Nathalie Barghach and 70-something clarinettist Eddie Mordue to Algerian blind rapper Oujdi and Polish gypsy folkies Romany Rad on 11 eclectic tracks living up to the “contemporary nomad music” promised by the duo.

Hall occasionally takes centrestage, as on A Tale Of Woe, a sardonic oompah band ditty about life under an oppressive regime, and the brooding trip-hop of Stand Together, which exemplifies the pair’s idealistic approach to world politics. But it’s the globe-trotting guest vocals – Abdul Latif Assaly’s haunting cries on The Silent Wail, in particular – as well as Mushtaq’s multi-cultural production that leaves a lasting impression.

Therefore, Hall often finds himself in the rare position of being a supporting player on his own LP, the last to bear his name for 16 years. Still, this daring collision of sounds proved that nearly a quarter-century into his career, he was still anything but predictable.

The Specials – Encore (2019)

After they reunited – without their founding member Jerry Dammers, of course – in 2008, The Specials spent over a decade traversing down memory lane before realising, as Horace Panter succinctly put it to Bass Player magazine, they “were in danger of becoming the Best Specials Tribute Band In The World.”

2019’s Encore was the remedy, a hotchpotch of cover versions, re-recordings and originals which added to their discography for the first time since 2001’s Conquering Ruler.

Only Panter remained from that album’s similarly trimmed-down line-up, with Terry Hall and Lynval Golding replacing Neville Staple and Roddy Byers on 10 tracks which unexpectedly returned Coventry’s finest to the top of the charts. While the public welcomed Encore with open arms, Dammers was far from happy, believing that any fresh material not blessed by his presence would destroy the ska legends’ legacy.

Embarrassed By You

With several new songs that would sit comfortably on any greatest hits collection, that certainly didn’t turn out to be the case. As its name suggests, B.L.M. is a powerful anti-racism anthem which finds Golding reflecting on his father’s experiences as a Windrush immigrant. 10 Commandments answers back to Prince Buster’s same-named display of misogyny with defiant spoken word from Saffiyah Khan, the political activist who famously rallied against an EDL demo sporting a Specials T-shirt.

Meanwhile The Life And Times (Of A Man Called Depression) sees Hall dissect his own mental health on a woozy mix of spoken word and 60s lounge.

Apart from the taut funk of The Equals’ Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys, the more familiar offerings are less inspiring. Renditions of Fun Boy Three’s The Lunatics… and The Valentines’ Blam Blam Fever, the latter already tackled on the band’s previous LP, suggest they were cherrypicking from a limited songbook, too.

Yet there’s nothing here to besmirch The Specials’ name. Indeed, as closer We Sell Hope, a wistful reggae number which essentially summarises their whole ethos (“We’ve gotta take care of each other/ Do what you need to do/ Without making others suffer”) draws to an end, all but their former leader may well be left shouting “Encore”.

The Specials – Encore and Protest Songs 1924–2012 (2021)

After the double whammy of writer’s block and the global pandemic put paid to a planned album of roots reggae, The Specials instead chose to follow their unlikely studio comeback by essentially holding up a collection of musical placards.

Unlike Chumbawamba’s similarly themed 1988 album English Rebel Songs, the trio mostly looked across the pond for protest inspiration: hence campfire spiritual I Don’t Mind Failing In This World sits alongside Bob Marley and The Wailers’ call-to-arms Get Up, Stand Up, Rod McKuen’s anti-Vietnam War tale Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes and The Staple Singers’ gospel classic Freedom Highway.

The Specials’ “urge to rail against what is wrong with the world” also veers into some unlikely places. Quite how Jerry McCain’s My Next Door Neighbor, a prime slice of rockabilly whose only gripes concern the borrowing of household appliances, fits the theme remains anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows, treated to a smoky jazz rendition here by Hall at his most debonair, is only here due to its prominence in an Australian anti-smoking ad.

Ain’t Gonna Let No Hatred, Turn Me ’round

Protest Songs works best when it provides an element of surprise: the band have never sounded as energised as on the straightforward garage rock of Trouble Every Day, Frank Zappa’s dissection of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Bradford vocalist Hannah Hu helps turn the anti-imperialism of Talking Heads’ Listening Wind into a ghostly blues-folk number which evokes PJ Harvey at her most intense.

And the oldest composition here, civil rights favourite Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around, is given the handclap a capella treatment before being skanked up halfway through.

Tragically, this century-spanning affair ended up serving as Terry Hall’s swansong: 14 months on, he died from pancreatic cancer at just 63, leaving behind a remarkable body of work that was continually shifting in scope and sound. “Our beautiful friend, brother and one of the most brilliant singers, songwriters and lyricists this country has ever produced,” remarked Golding and Panter in a tribute that few could protest.

Read More: Celebrating 2 Tone Records with those who made it happen

The post Album By Album – Terry Hall appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

In the two decades since hoovering up Brits and the Mercury Prize with their debut LP, Franz Ferdinand have remained energetic and excitable, in love with the possibilities of what a band should be. Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy join us in Monterrey to explain pop’s holy grail, trying to emulate Black Sabbath and feeling feline. Just don’t mention snakes…

Franz Ferdinand mainstays Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy are so in tune with each other that they even share the same phobia. Over two decades since Take Me Out and The Dark Of The Matinée launched the Glasgow-based literate pop powerhouses, the pair have remained in thrall to the possibilities of music.

But, with their sixth album entitled The Human Fear, it’s natural to get darker and ask what they’re scared of. The pair’s responses reveal the Franz Ferdinand hivemind: they’re both terrified of snakes. Hardy’s most vivid childhood memory is of going to Noah’s Ark, an exhibit on Morecambe beach, aged three. “It was a fake zoo, stuffed with models of animals,” shudders the usually amiable bassist.“The floors and walls were both glass, and one room was full of snakes. I lost it and had to be carried out of there. I can’t stand snakes; I can’t look at them.”

Snake Charmer

Nodding sympathetically at his bandmate’s story, Kapranos takes up the theme: “When I see a snake, I freeze uncontrollably.” Often holidaying with his Greek grandfather on the island of Salamis, near Athens, the young Alex walked down to his grandad’s pistachio trees one morning.

“I paused, flip-flop in mid-air, to see a snake underneath my foot,” he grimaces. “It was one of those moments that lasted seconds but feels like hours, me and the snake looking at each other. It realised I wasn’t going to stand on it and left me alone. My grandfather told me: ‘You would have been dead if it had bitten you.’ That freaked me out even more. So, yeah, I’ve got the same fear as Bob.”

The motivating thrill derived from being scared is a theme of The Human Fear, as Kapranos explains: “Overcoming fears can lead to your greatest achievements, like asking someone out on a date. We search out fear to make us feel alive, but The Human Fear isn’t a doomy goth record to make you feel afraid.”

Propulsive Pop

It certainly isn’t, but it is an album to make you feel alive. Franz Ferdinand’s first LP since Always Ascending in 2018, it’s packed with the propulsive pop that’s been their trademark since debut single Darts Of Pleasure in 2003. It’s also the expanded five-piece’s first album with guitarist Dino Bardot and drummer Audrey Tait, while keyboardist Julian Corrie had joined the band for Always Ascending. It follows the departures of Nick McCarthy in 2016 and Paul Thomson five years later.

“I love the dynamic of the band at the moment,” beams Kapranos. “What I love on a record is the sound of five people in a room playing together. When you get a good performance, you’re playing in a way that’s almost telepathic. Bob and I have played together for over 20 years, but we’ve really developed with the other three.”

Hardy likens the current line-up’s relationship to role-playing games, reasoning: “Each character has individual traits that help you along the way. Audrey is a huge fan of pop music, Dino loves 70s prog and Julian brings musical theory and production talents. When it comes together, we create something unique, like we’re a strong gang on a quest.”

Mission Statement

Both great enthusiasts who talk at breakneck speed, the pair seem to have lasted so long together by being as excitable as their music. Kapranos believes it goes back to how Franz Ferdinand began: “Most people start bands by jamming together. Bob and I instead started by talking about what a band should be and what we love about bands. As a listener, that’s how we approach music, too. We all want to understand what’s good about our favourite bands.”

“I’m not particularly musical,” admits Hardy. “What excites me about being in a band is the potential of what it can do. The only reason I play bass is so I can be in a band. That was my entry fee to joining the band: ‘I’ve got to learn to play this? Okay, I’ll do my best.’”

Kapranos laughs at his friend’s admission, continuing: “Bob’s role in Franz Ferdinand is way more important than just playing bass. Anyone can play bass – Bob is proof of that! The ideas to make the band great: that’s something only Bob could have done. So many musicians get caught up in stupid shit, like how loud they are in the mix or how fast they can play a keyboard. Bob and I don’t care who’s playing what, so long as it sounds good in the end.”

That it’s taken so long for The Human Fear to arrive is down to a combination of the pandemic, getting the band’s line-up resolved and promoting 2022’s singles compilation, Hits To The Head. Focusing on their singles proved invaluable, as Hardy reveals: “Playing a hits set boiled down what the essence of Franz Ferdinand is for us. Looking back at our body of work made me quite emotional. We’d been writing songs before the compilation, but they didn’t quite sound like Franz Ferdinand. Going back to the new material, it was: ‘What was it about those past singles that we loved?’ and playing them had made me realise: ‘These are all really fun.’”

Sound Identity

The tour saw Kapranos appreciate the similarities between his own band and his heroes, as he considers: “The holy grail for a band is to retain your identity. If you listen to three seconds of a song, you know it’s them: the Ramones, The Clash, The Kinks. But then you want to do something new, too. I was trying to push these songs in new directions, while always sounding like a Franz Ferdinand song.

“On this album, Hooked and especially Black Eyelashes don’t sound like anything we’ve done but, when people hear it, I’d love to think they immediately know it’s us.”

The gonzo robodance of Hooked seems destined to be a live favourite, echoing Justice and electroclash in its frazzled riff. “I was trying to play the dumbest heavy metal riff I possibly could on a guitar, then put it through a synth,” Kapranos discloses. “I love Black Sabbath and wanted some of that. But for three years, it was just a riff.”

The band’s producer, Mark Ralph, helped turn it into a proper song. Ralph had been the engineer on 2013’s Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action album. He’s since produced a battalion of huge names, including Years And Years, Becky Hill, Rag’n’Bone Man and Jess Glynne.

“Mark is a machine,” raves Hardy. “Even talking to him on Right Thoughts…, Mark had worked on hundreds of records. It was no surprise he became a superstar producer soon after.” Kapranos adds: “Some producers get caught up in the recording process and basically love smelling their own farts.

“Mark is instinctive, he can see the goal of what the album should be and he doesn’t have an ego. Some big elements of this album came from the demos, and Mark wasn’t afraid to leave those in there.”

Love Illumination

Joining Classic Pop over Zoom from their hotel rooms in Monterrey before a show supporting The Killers, Kapranos and Hardy are still seemingly enthusiastic about touring. Before the band, Kapranos was a part-time college lecturer. He remembers: “There was a globe in the lecture room. I’d look at it and daydream: ‘Imagine one day going to Tokyo! Or Los Angeles!’ A year later, the band took off, and I’ve been so lucky to see those places for real. I never take this for granted.”

The frontman now lives in Paris with his wife, French singer Clara Luciani. The couple married in May 2023, four months before their son was born. Asking if Luciani inspired Hooked’s ecstatic line: “I thought I knew what love was – and then I met you” causes the usually erudite singer to get flustered. He tries offering a blancmange of an answer that “There’s a lot of love in all the songs,” before confessing: “I’m not very good at talking about my personal life. It’s easier to talk about in the context of lyrics, but very difficult in normal conversation. Songs communicate things that I can’t in normal conversation, which is one reason I write songs in the first place.”

That’s fair enough, and Kapranos later reveals how becoming a father inspired The Human Fear’s explosive finale, The Birds. A fantastic extended cathartic holler, he says: “The Birds is about overcoming the fear of rejection from society. Having a young child, I’m particularly aware how children suffer from being outcast, thanks to social media. It’s easy to become an outcast, and the song hopefully captures the relief and excitement of being anonymous back in the flock.”

Feline Good

The almost languid Cats’ inspiration was more prosaic, as he laughs: “I enjoyed imagining myself feeling like a cat. I wrote it just after my son was born, when there was no opportunity to prowl the city at night on my own. There’s a certain degree of escapism there.”

That the album achieves Franz Ferdinand’s goal of always sounding like Franz Ferdinand is in part thanks to Alex Kapranos’ vocals. His voice is ever more expressive, yet it’s also instantly familiar. That wasn’t always the case, as it took him several years to feel comfortable behind the mic.

“Working out what my voice was, it was a sudden moment,” he recalls. “Throughout my twenties, I was afraid of singing, because I was afraid of being perceived as not cool. Then one night, I was out with Bob and my then-girlfriend, doing karaoke at a club in Glasgow.”

Singing Be-Bop-A-Lula, Kapranos “totally let rip”. He goes on: “It was the first time I’d let go as a singer. I thought: ‘Oh! That’s how you do it!’ From that moment on, I realised I could enjoy it, rather than feeling self-conscious.”

Surprise Factor

Franz Ferdinand worked with one of the great unselfconscious artists in 2015, when they teamed up with Sparks for a self-titled LP as FFS. “They still have an interest in what’s going on around them,” says Hardy. “We still share the occasional email and they’ll get in touch when they’re in Glasgow.” Kapranos adds: “They showed music is a lifelong vocation and Sparks were inspiring in showing how to be completely driven by their work, so far into their career.”

A second FFS record is unlikely, however, as Hardy notes: “FFS was about the surprise factor. Volume two wouldn’t have the same impact or meaning.” Instead, they’d love to make a record with The Cure or Queen. Or both. Hardy laughs: “I’d love to ask Brian May to do a solo for us, mainly just so I could hang out with Brian May.”

The new album’s first single, Audacious, “has definite influences of both Queen and The Cure,” acknowledges Kapranos. “I read an interview with Robert Smith saying how much he hates Queen. So I’d love to do a song with both Robert Smith and Brian May.”

Persuading Robert Smith to overcome his fear of Queen? That really would be an audacious move.

For more on Franz Ferdinand  and The Human Fear, click here

The post Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear Interview appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Heaven 17 announce 13-date Sound With Vision Tour.

Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory will bring their beloved hits to some of the UK’s most iconic venues this November.

The tour, which includes a hometown date at Sheffield’s Octagon, will place its emphasis on fan-favourite tracks. The band’s Martyn Ware says that this tour is all about demonstrating “to our many loyal fans that we take pride in their love of Heaven 17. Our concerts are always an intimate celebration of this special connection.”

A cornerstone of the British post-punk movement, Heaven 17 built a foundation for modern music that continues to bear its influence today. Their musical footprint is monumental, and that is recognised by their loyal audience from those who have been there since the beginning, to those who have joined them throughout their colourful career.

The band’s 13-date tour will kick off at the iconic London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Thursday 06 November.

Sound With Vision Tour Dates

November
Thursday 06 – London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Friday 07 – Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion
Saturday 08 – Norwich Waterfront
Monday 10 – Oxford O2 Academy 1
Wednesday  12 – Leeds O2 Academy
Thursday 13 – Glasgow Barrowland
Friday 14 – Sheffield Octagon
Saturday 15 – Liverpool O2 Academy 1
Monday 17 – Newcastle Boiler Shop
Wednesday 19 – Birmingham O2 Institute 1
Thursday 20 – Bristol O2 Academy 1
Friday 21 – Bournemouth O2 Academy
Saturday 22 – Manchester O2 Ritz

For tickets, which are on sale now,  click here. VIP Packages are available here.

Read More: Classic Album – Penthouse And Pavement

The post Heaven 17 announce 13-date Sound With Vision Tour appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

We look back over the albums of Kylie Minogue, from her very first to her very latest…

Kylie, 1988

Back in 1987, soap stars weren’t exactly renowned purveyors of quality music. Anita Dobson, Nick Berry and, erm, Benny from Crossroads had all scored UK hits but were forever consigned to the novelty single category.

So it’s no surprise that expectations were low for the debut single from Kylie Minogue, an Australian actress in a daytime soap opera.

Back home, the Neighbours star was the toast of Oz TV and on the verge of crossover success after her cover of Little Eva’s The Locomotion unexpectedly became the biggest-selling single of the year off the back of a charity benefit gig.

But with no follow-up prepared, her Australian label Mushroom Records promptly dispatched Kylie to London to record a single with producers du jour Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) during a break from filming.

Kylie’s relationship with SAW got off to a famously rocky start when the pop powerhouses deemed her such a low priority that the trio forgot they were working with her, keeping Minogue waiting for a week before cobbling together a song in an hour as she was preparing to board her flight home.

When that song, I Should Be So Lucky – released on Pete Waterman’s own PWL label due to disinterest from all other record companies – spent five weeks at No.1 in the UK, Mike Stock was forced to make a grovelling emergency dash Down Under with three potential follow-ups for Kylie to record during her breaks from Neighbours – Got To Be Certain, Turn It Into Love and It’s No Secret.

Minogue recorded the remainder of her debut album during subsequent trips back to SAW’s Hit Factory studios when her filming schedule allowed.

Released in July 1988, Kylie was an instant sensation, going on to shift five million copies and becoming the biggest-selling album of 1988. Got To Be Certain and the re-recorded and retitled The Loco-Motion both hit No.2 in the UK. Fans couldn’t get enough of their heroine’s pop confections – however formulaic they may have sounded.

Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi is beautifully melancholic while Love At First Sight captures the giddiness of a new relationship. I’ll Still Be Loving You is a mature ballad and It’s No Secret offers a change of pace to portray first-time heartbreak.

The standout is undoubtedly Turn It Into Love, the most faithful to SAW’s earlier hi-NRG successes. Proud of what they called their production-line pop, SAW compared their business model to Motown. If that was the case, in Kylie they’d found their Diana Ross.

Enjoy Yourself, 1989

Although plans were in place to release more singles from Kylie’s debut LP, the public’s voracious appetite for new material was blatantly obvious with the mammoth success of Especially For You, her duet with Jason Donovan for Christmas 1988.

Stock, Aitken and Waterman instead began writing a follow-up album, treading the thin line of subtly progressing Minogue’s sound while taking care not to alienate her young fanbase.

Although her sales figures and popularity spoke for themselves, the question of whether she would have longevity loomed large. With that in mind, Kylie signed on to star in The Delinquents, a teen love story set in the 1950s, to maintain ties with the acting world should her music career come to an end.

Enjoy Yourself ultimately merged her next two endeavours, delivering an album of two halves – on one hand a succession of the pop hits her fans couldn’t get enough of, and on the other a handful of 50s-inspired songs to tie in with the film.

Though a little dated, even by 1989’s standards, Enjoy Yourself perhaps made sense at the time but in hindsight is a strange beast.

It indicates that no-one, maybe not even Kylie herself, had confidence in her abilities or potential. The wistful, stargazing My Secret Heart and jazzy piano-led ballad Tell Tale Signs seem to be readying her for musical theatre rather than what actually followed.

Of course, having added to the singer’s tally of hit singles, Hand On Your Heart, the Funky Drummer-sampling Wouldn’t Change A Thing and beautifully yearning Never Too Late, the album did its job.

Entering the UK charts at No.1, it spent four months in the Top 10 and was the fifth biggest-selling album of 1989 with pre-sales of over 600,000. It also made the Top 10 in Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. The box office success of The Delinquents, helped Tears On My Pillow to No.1 in January 1990 – Kylie’s only UK chart-topper of that decade.

Of the album tracks, Nothing To Lose is a funky relative of Got To Be Certain while the joyous I’m Over Dreaming (Over You) and uplifting, house-inspired title track are lost Kylie classics, the latter fortunately being the blueprint for her future direction.

• Read more: Step back in time: Kylie on film & TV

Rhythm Of Love, 1990

A hit movie, sold-out arena tour and relationship with INXS’ Michael Hutchence did wonders for Kylie’s self-confidence, prompting her to take a more active role in her career.

Now based in London, Minogue was a regular on the city’s thriving club scene and wanted that reflected in her own material. The resulting album, 1990’s Rhythm Of Love, is a pop masterclass with one of the strongest singles runs in chart history.

Better The Devil You Know, takes its cues from D-Mob’s C’mon And Get My Love (the vocalist of which, Cathy Dennis, would play a pivotal role in Kylie’s career for a second time a decade later), while another big favourite of Minogue’s – Deee-Lite – would inspire the 70s pastiche Step Back In Time.

What Do I Have To Do incorporates Italo house-style piano riffs and thrashing electric guitars vie for prominence on the pounding Shocked.

Album cuts Things Can Only Get Better and Always Find The Time maintain the clubby momentum and a handful of swingbeat tracks represent Kylie’s first musical foray outside the walls of The Hit Factory.

Teamed with a new image dubbed ‘SexKylie’ in the press, Rhythm Of Love wasn’t just an awakening, it was one for the world to see what Minogue was truly capable of.

• Read more: Top 40 Stock Aitken Waterman songs

Let’s Get To It, 1991

As the music scene changed beyond recognition at the start of the 1990s with the prominence of dance, hip-hop and New Jack Swing, SAW found their stranglehold on the charts lessening significantly and were subject to an intense backlash.

Rick Astley, Jason Donovan and Bananarama (albeit temporarily) had all moved on, as had writer-producer Matt Aitken. It was highly expected that Kylie would be next, particularly as she’d fulfilled her three-album contract with PWL courtesy of Rhythm Of Love.

Finding herself in such a strong negotiating position, Kylie agreed to record another album for PWL on the condition that she be involved in the songwriting process, penning six tracks with Mike Stock and Pete Waterman.

With the classic SAW sound regarded as outdated, Let’s Get To It saw a seismic shift in direction from upbeat pop tracks in favour of swingbeat, rave, R&B and acoustic balladry, with varying degrees of success.

When first single Word Is Out stalled at UK No.16 – Kylie’s first to miss the Top 10 – the public made it known that swingbeat was not what they wanted from the singer. Meanwhile, the album’s chart position was similarly disappointing, peaking at No.15 in the UK when released in October 1991.

But despite its underwhelming performance in the charts, Let’s Get To It does have its moments – including its seductive bossa nova-style title track. Right Here, Right Now incorporates elements of Chicago house, Too Much
Of A Good Thing borrows from Chic (with a cheeky snippet of Janet Jackson also included) while Live And Learn is an uplifting mid-tempo tune.

Orchestral ballad If You Were With Me Now and a cover of Chairmen Of The Board’s Give Me Just A Little More Time were both major hits, but neither were indicative of the music Kylie really wanted to make – that was revealed with an epic makeover of sensual ballad Finer Feelings for its release as a single courtesy of Brothers In Rhythm.

Although it missed the Top 10 in the UK, that collaboration signposted where Kylie was headed next.

• Read more: Top 40 Kylie Minogue songs

Kylie Minogue, 1994

Having checked out of the Hit Factory for a final time with a greatest hits collection, Kylie migrated to cooler climes, namely trendy dance label Deconstruction, which was home to M People, Bassheads and Robert Miles among others.

Minogue’s transition from pop icon to dance diva was gradual – from the clubby flavour of the Rhythm Of Love album to the rave tracks that she recorded under the moniker of Angel K in 1991, Do You Dare? and Closer, which were serviced to club DJs as white labels and later appeared as B-sides to the Let’s Get To It singles.

I Guess I Like It Like That, also from that album was later remixed and released as Keep On Pumpin’ It by the Vision Masters and Tony King featuring Kylie. Signing to a dance label was the logical next step.

While many expected a deeply personal set of tracks from the newly-emancipated club diva-in-waiting, a hectic filming schedule for Streetfighter with Jean-Claude Van Damme limited Kylie’s time, meaning she wound up with only one co-writer credit on the LP.

The epic grandeur of opener Confide In Me, written and produced by Brothers In Rhythm and to this day a career highlight, perfectly sets the scene for the sophisticated pop-soul which reveals itself over nine more tracks. Surrender and Automatic Love are luxurious grooves underpinning sensual vocals from Kylie.

In fine voice throughout, she’s rarely sounded better than on the brooding second single Put Yourself In My Place and dramatic string-laden ballad Dangerous Game, on which her deep, rich tone veers effortlessly between soaring melodrama and subtle restraint.

If I Was Your Lover looks to the US R&B scene, evoking Janet Jackson both stylistically and titularly, and the bouncy house of Where Is The Feeling? evolves into an acid-jazz workout replete with impressive ad-libs.

The sprawling deep house of Where Has The Love Gone? and Pet Shop Boys-penned Falling suffer from being overlong, while a cover of Northern Soul classic Time Will Pass You By, which closes the album, is let down by M People’s tinny production.

Released in September 1994, the album peaked at No.4 in the UK and sold 120,000 copies. Though much lower than her PWL heyday, Kylie Minogue was a triumph in rebranding its creator.

Impossible Princess, 1997

Road trips across the US as well as jaunts around the Far East were the physical manifestation of a voyage of self-discovery for Kylie in the mid-90s and both played an integral role in her sixth studio album.

Her exposure to myriad cultures informed its sonic breadth, while Minogue’s internal struggles presented her with lyrical gold, resulting in the most adventurous and personal album of her back catalogue.

1997’s Impossible Princess sees Kylie strip back her pop star veneer, inviting fans to get to know her in a way they never had. Lazily labelled ‘IndieKylie’ based on the Manics’ James Dean Bradfield collaboration Some Kind Of Bliss, it’s much more than that.

Incorporating trip-hop, rock, techno and drum‘n’bass, Impossible Princess’ eclectic soundscapes encapsulate the late 90s.

Standouts are the slow-burning synth-pop of Breathe, co-written and produced with Soft Cell’s Dave Ball, and Dreams, a majestic ballad which marries dramatic strings with Eastern influences and features the lyric which gives the album its title.

The album received mixed reviews and was a commercial disappointment, but a vinyl reissue in 2022 saw it crack the Top 5 for the first time and undergo reappraisal, finally achieving the success and credit it so richly deserved.

Light Years, 2000

As bold, daring and enlightening as Impossible Princess was, dark and experimental was not what the public sought from Kylie, they looked to her for uplifting feelgood songs they could dance to – Light Years delivered that in spades. “Traded my sorrow for some joy that I borrowed from back in the day” could not have been a more fitting opening line.

Far from being a calculated move just to boost record sales, the fun, carefree flavour of the album was, as the lyric suggested, how Kylie felt in her own life.

A mutual parting of ways with Deconstruction in 1999 led to discussions with various labels regarding her future and, after guesting on the Pet Shop Boys’ Nightlife album, Kylie found Parlophone to be on the same page with regards to her next musical direction – pop.

Working with Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers, Biffco and Steve Anderson among others, Kylie co-wrote 10 of the album’s 14 songs to a brief that included keywords such as “beach”, “poolside” and “cocktails” with a sonic template that evokes ABBA, Donna Summer, Village People, Love Unlimited and Giorgio Moroder.

From the career-rejuvenating Spinning Around (her first UK No.1 single in a decade) and Balearic bliss of On A Night Like This to the pounding Eurodance of Butterfly, the (literal) bells and whistles of Disco Down and bubbling Moroder-esque synths of the title track is a non-stop tour-de-force of meticulously crafted pop songs.

Although intended as compliments, some reviews tended to focus on the album’s frothy and camp elements – and with tracks such as the Copacabana-theatrics of Loveboat and rallying anthem Your Disco Needs You, they were perhaps justified – but such a narrative was in danger of pushing Kylie towards becoming a niche act, something that Parlophone were keen to avoid.

When it came to choosing a fifth UK single from Light Years, the record label vetoed the latter option despite Minogue’s protestations, compensating her with a brand new track which would go on to alter the trajectory of her career forever.

Fever, 2001

Whilst reflecting on her career during an interview, Kylie once revealed that she did not appreciate the achievements of her PWL years until her tenure at Deconstruction when she wasn’t landing those record sales and chart positions anymore and realised how impressive those accolades were.

Armed with that invaluable benefit of hindsight, Light Years’ career rebirth was a second chance she was not going to pass up and Minogue began instantly working on its follow-up.

Ignited by Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, a Rob Davis and Cathy Dennis-penned dark ode to obsessive love despite its la-la-la refrain, the track became the foundation for the album.

Manoeuvring Kylie away from the perceived campiness of her previous LP, Parlophone’s directive was something sleeker, more polished and cool with Can’t Get You Out Of My Head the ideal starting point.

Released in September 2001, it topped the charts in over 40 countries, sold over one million in the UK and gave Minogue her first US success since The Loco-Motion in 1988.

While that track dominates the tracklisting of Fever, the album offers up plenty more dancefloor delights. The glacial flirtatiousness of second single In Your Eyes prolonged Kylie’s grip on the charts as did the giddy Daft Punk-meets-Donna Summer euphoria of fan favourite Love At First Sight. Come Into My World, another Davis-Dennis banger, completes a singles run which rivals that of Rhythm Of Love.

The title track, with its medical innuendos is Carry On Kylie, while closer Burning Up is a manic mash-up of acoustic verses and a disco chorus.

The remainder of Fever sticks largely to the Eurodance template with More More More, Your Love and Fragile the pick of the bunch, exemplifying an ability to elevate what could be substandard fare in the hands of a lesser singer (as proved by the myriad of Fever knock-offs that would bother the charts in subsequent years).

The disco-influenced Dancefloor could easily have appeared on Light Years, with Give It To Me the album’s only real disappointment.

A global sensation, Fever remains the apex of Kylie’s career thus far, topping the charts around the world with sales of more than six million copies.

• Read more: Classic Album: Fever – Kylie Minogue

Body Language, 2003

Riding the wave of the most successful period of her career with Fever, it would have been easy for Minogue to churn out more of the same.

However, as a cavalcade of Kylie clones, each replete with their robotic routines, futuristic fashions and electro-infused dance tracks began filling the charts, the singer made a conscious decision to step away from Eurodance in favour of a more laidback collection that encompassed synth-pop, R&B, 80s soul, funk and even hip-hop.

From hypnotic opener Slow – a brave choice of lead single and personal favourite of Kylie’s (and her last UK No.1 single to date) – Body Language boasts some absolute gems. Sweet Music is a nod to Control-era Janet Jackson, the Kurtis Mantronik-produced Promises could be a lost S.O.S.

Band track and the revved-up rap of Secret (Take You Home) even borrows a hook from Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s classic I Wonder If I Take You Home. The poppy R&B of Red Blooded Woman mirrors Justin Timberlake’s work with Timbaland, Chocolate is a silky-smooth delight and Loving Days oozes with sensuality.

Unfairly compared to sales of its once-in-a-lifetime predecessor, Body Language was nowhere near as successful but as a varied and competent collection of sleek, modern pop, it more than fulfilled its sonic brief.

x, 2007

Emerging from the darkest period of her life – a battle with breast cancer – Kylie returned in 2007 with her 10th studio album, a project she said she wanted to be both upbeat and fun.

Having just endured her toughest times, music was medicine for the singer and, rather than dwell on what had happened, the optimistic star wanted to have fun in the studio and produce material she’d enjoy performing live.

An eclectic mish-mash of styles, X’s genre-hopping tracklist jumps around from the frothy throwback to her SAW days, Wow, to the Gwen Stefani-esque cheerleader chants of Heart Beat Rock.

The clashing synth stabs of Calvin Harris co-write In My Arms are euphoric bliss as are the brooding beats-and-bass of the New Order-inspired The One. Like A Drug evokes Visage’s Fade To Grey and the vocodered Speakerphone is a many-sided masterpiece. It’s only the shimmering William Orbit-esque No More Rain that alludes to her illness.

Fun, impersonal and varied – just as intended – X marks the spot.

• Read more: Kylie Minogue Interview

Aphrodite, 2010

By 2010, a common criticism of Kylie’s albums was their lack of cohesion. Both Body Language and X had covered countless styles with the only common denominator being Minogue herself.

Halfway through the making of Aphrodite, recording having been completed with Jake Shears, Calvin Harris, The Nervo Twins and Kish Mauve among others, a writing session with Stuart Price sparked the idea that he come onboard in the role of executive producer, overseeing all of the tracks and mixing them to create a body of work as opposed to a collection of songs.

The decision paid off – Aphrodite hangs together as a consistent set, encompassing the soaring lead single All The Lovers, the feisty Get Outta My Way and clubby Put Your Hands Up, with the slightly sinister Closer also a highpoint.

Can’t Beat The Feeling, very much a part two of Love At First Sight, is a rousing finale. Topping the chart 22 years after her debut, Aphrodite was Kylie’s first UK No.1 studio album since Fever.

Kiss Me Once, 2014

Following a year-long celebration of Kylie’s 25th anniversary in music which culminated in the singer revisiting some of her biggest hits in orchestral or acoustic rearrangements on The Abbey Road Sessions, 2014’s Kiss Me Once, appeared to be a manoeuvre to steer herself away from the ‘legacy artist’ tag and affirm herself as a contemporary one, a conclusion seemingly confirmed by a parting of ways with long-time manager Terry Blamey and signing to Jay-Z’s management company, Roc Nation.

The shimmering title track, co-written and produced by Sia, is a superb throwback to the late 80s while Les Sex is a campy romp with its tongue placed firmly in its cheek. The ethereal If Only is a stunning ballad based around a tribal drum pattern and Feels So Good evokes Disclosure.

Despite the dodgy title, Sexercise, an overtly sexual dubstep number, proved Kylie could hold her own against the likes of Britney and Rihanna and lead single, Into The Blue, was a perfect example of the upbeat melancholic tracks that Kylie does so well.

A mixed bag with a lifeless Enrique Iglesias duet the only real dud.

Kylie Christmas, 2015

Positioning herself as a serious contender to Mariah Carey’s ‘Queen Of Christmas’ title, Minogue’s seasonal gift to her fans collated traditional standards, original material and previously released covers of Santa Baby and Let It Snow.

While Kylie proves herself a fantastic interpreter of the classics, particularly Judy Garland’s Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, on which she delivers an astounding performance that immaculately conveys the sadness of the song, the choice to focus on the covers while promoting the album did it a disservice as it failed to give her originals their chance to shine as they deserved to.

Chris Martin co-write Every Day’s Like Christmas is as soothing as a roaring open fire on a cold winter night and White December, like Mariah’s perennial chart-topper, harks back to the glorious Phil Spector 60s classics and could have enjoyed a similar legacy had it been pushed.

Long-time fans of the Minogue sisters had their yuletide wish granted with 100 Degrees, a glitzy disco duet with sister Dannii.

Elsewhere, a cover of The Pretenders’ 2000 Miles holds up well next to Chrissie Hynde’s beautiful original and a duet with Iggy Pop on Christmas Wrapping is as bizarre as you’d expect. A Christmas cracker that not even an appearance from James Corden can dampen.

Golden, 2018

Signing a new recording deal with BMG after leaving Parlophone in 2016 became the impetus for a career reset, offering up the chance to explore new territory.

With initial sessions failing to wield suitable results, Kylie’s arrival in the music city of Nashville – a trip originally planned only for writing not direction – had a profound effect, sparking creativity and informing the style of her next studio album.

Looking to her heroine Dolly Parton for divine intervention, the pairing of the country legend’s aesthetic with Kylie’s pop sensibility was a great match. While the concept at first appeared gimmicky,  the resulting material spoke for itself.

Broken-hearted by the end of an engagement and facing her landmark 50th birthday (the reason for Golden’s title), Kylie had plenty to say and co-wrote every song on the album. It was by far her most revealing statement since Impossible Princess.

A personal and professional triumph on which she wears her art on her sleeve, Golden’s commercial success affirmed the public’s adoration for Minogue, culminating in her drawing Glastonbury’s largest ever crowd to her performance in the prestigious legends slot.

Disco, 2020

Of the many sonic detours that Kylie has taken us on over the course of the past 35 years, it’s always her return to the dancefloor which seems to suit her best.

She’s spoken of singing into hairbrushes as a teenager to ABBA, Donna Summer and Olivia Newton-John records, thus revealing her musical pedigree. Therefore, disco being a touchstone she returns to is no surprise.

Triggered by audience reactions to a Studio 54-themed segment of her Golden Tour, Minogue, along with personnel including long-standing collaborator Richard ‘Biff’ Stannard, plus newer cohorts such as Ash Howes and Sky Adams, began drafting fresh music in the autumn of 2019.

However, as the world came to an abrupt halt in March 2020, work took on a different form, with sessions conducted over Zoom forcing Kylie to navigate a home studio set-up for the first time. Logistics aside, Minogue questioned whether people would want an album so entrenched in celebrating music’s unification and the dancefloor.

It was decided to carry on in the hope its positivity would be uplifting. (it became the unofficial soundtrack to kitchen discos).

One of the earliest cuts, Say Something, with its prophetic lyric pertaining to how we would all feel when separated from our loved ones in 2020, draws more from early-80s synth-pop than disco and is an anomaly on an album which otherwise revels in its references to Baccara (Miss A Thing) and Tina Charles (Magic) via Shalamar (Dance Floor Darling).

Where Does The DJ Go?’s effervescence evokes her own disco opus Light Years while Real Groove and Supernova are superb throwbacks to the funky dance tracks of the early 80s.

Met with widespread critical acclaim and entering the UK albums chart at No.1, Kylie could not have been happier with Disco’s reception, particularly given that it landed her in the record books as the first female artist to achieve No.1 albums in five consecutive decades.

Tension, 2023

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The post Album By Album – Kylie Minogue appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Review: Simple Minds – Sparkle In The Rain Reissue  ★★★★

A transitional bridge between the ambient art-rock of New Gold Dream and stadium pomp of Once Upon A Time, you can see why, for some purists, Sparkle In The Rain signalled the beginning of the end for Simple Minds’ imperial phase.

Fresh from his work on U2’s War, producer Steve Lillywhite leaned into the extra muscle that new drummer Mel Gaynor had brought to the band, while Derek Forbes’ bass is so powerful – most famously on the concrete-loosening throb of Waterfront – it’s no surprise he burst his thumb open in the studio.

Bombastic? A little, perhaps. But come on: is there a more thrilling opening trilogy in rock than Up On The Catwalk – with its impossibly glamorous, free-associating nonsense about Nastassja Kinski, friends of Kim Philby and 1,000 postcards from Montevideo – Book Of Brilliant Things and Speed Your Love To Me? And Side Two runs out of steam slightly, but a misconceived cover of Lou Reed’s Street Hassle is the only out-and-out dud.

Band In Transition

This 4CD 40th anniversary set (a no-frills unexpanded vinyl version is also available) is basically a repackage of the album’s previous birthday release from 10 years ago, now embellished with new Dolby Atmos mixes from Bob Clearmountain. Along with the remastered album (overseen by Charlie Burchill), there’s a disc of B-sides and extended mixes, a recording of the band’s 1984 homecoming show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands and a BBC Radio One session.

All of which is fine, as far as it goes, but it feels like a missed opportunity not to include the album’s early instrumental demos, which captured the band mid-transformation, minus the crash-wallop. Not that the crash-wallop isn’t magnificent in its own way, you understand.

To order the 40th anniversary of Sparkle In The Rain click here

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Billy Idol announces new album, Dream Into It, his first full-length release of new music in over a decade.

Out on 25 April through Dark Horse Records, Dream Into It features guest appearances from Avril Lavigne, Joan Jett and Alison Mosshart of The Kills.

In anticipation of the forthcoming record, Billy Idol is debuting the new single Still Dancing alongside a video directed by Steven Sebring. Watch below:

Still Dancing

“Still Dancing is really a reflection of my whole journey,” explains Idol. “From the punk rock period through to now. And I’m still looking towards the future, still living the life I set out to live. At the start of the song I’m recalling the early times in London, when I was living in squats or at friends’ apartments, all my belongings in a plastic bag. Everybody at home or work told you what you were doing was never going to happen.

“But punk rock gave me an opening. I was surrounded by people who loved the music as deeply as I did and you were going to throw caution to the wind, believe in what you were doing and grab on for dear life.

“As the song says, there have been many moments along the way where I’ve been self-destructive. But what’s seen me through is that unflinching belief in the music that started all those years ago. That’s been the greatest gift of all.”

Dream Into It Tracklisting

Dream Into It
77 (featuring Avril Lavigne)
Too Much Fun
John Wayne (featuring Alison Mosshart)
Wildside (featuring Joan Jett)
People I Love
Gimme The Weight
I’m Your Hero
Still Dancing

To celebrate the release of Dream Into It, Idol is also returning to the road for It’s A Nice Day To… Tour Again! Produced by Live Nation, the run of arenas and amphitheatres kicks off at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre in Phoenix on 30 April and will see him return to the UK for a very special date at the OVO Wembley Arena on Tuesday 24 June.

This show comes two days after Billy’s appearance at the Forever Now Festival at The National Bowl, Milton Keynes. These will be his only UK appearances in 2025.

UK & Europe Dates

18 June – Waldbuhne, Northeim, Germany
20 June – Copenhell, Copenhagen, Denmark
22 June – Forever Now Festival, Milton Keynes, UK
24 June – Wembley Arena, London, UK
27 June – Koenigsplatz, Munich, Germany
29 June – Kunstrasen, Bonn, Germany
02 July – Brita-Arena, Wiesbaden, Germany
04 July – Clam Rock, Klam, Austria
05 July – Lovely Days, Eisenstadt, Austria
08 July – Budapest Park, Budapest, Hungary
09 July – Kalemegdan Park, Belgrade, Serbia

For tickets click here and to pre-order Dream Into It click here

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The post Billy Idol announces new album and UK headline show appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

The latest Haircut One Hundred reunion is “a gift from the universe”, frontman Nick Heyward and bassist Les Nemes tell Classic Pop – and they’re loving every single second of it…

“I’ve just been arrested!” says Nick Heyward, by way of an opening gambit, as he arrives for his date with Classic Pop in a Soho bar. “I had my rights read to me and everything,” explains the Haircut One Hundred frontman, his trademark full-beam grin undimmed by his brush with the law. “My Senior Railcard had expired. I didn’t know you had to renew it. I didn’t even know you had to apply for one – I thought the government just gave you it. But it turns out Sara [his wife and manager] had got it for me. And it had run out.”

How the powers-that-be could think so dimly of The Nicest Man in Pop is a mystery. But even more baffling is the idea of the eternally boyish Nick Heyward qualifying for such a concession in the first place – he’s 63 but looks 20 years younger. Could he ever have imagined, as a fresh-faced teen launching Haircut One Hundred’s idiosyncratic brand of carnival funk-pop on an unsuspecting world, that he might one day be a pop star with a Senior Railcard?

“I hoped it might happen – because it’s something to aim for,” says Nick. “And now that we are this age, we want it to go on longer and longer. Because we’ve got our friendship back.”

This last comment is addressed to the man sitting next to him, bassist Les Nemes, who nods his agreement. “He sent me a WhatsApp just this morning, saying, ‘Isn’t it lovely to be friends again, and doing what we love?’” smiles Les.

“It’s a really intense friendship that the three of us had back in the late 1970s and early 80s, when we were just kids with a dream,” says Heyward, folding the band’s other full-time member, guitarist Graham Jones, into the circle of love.

“If you’d asked me a year ago, ‘Would this ever happen?’ I’d have said, ‘absolutely never’,” admits Nemes. “We hadn’t spoken for 10 years. But we’ve picked it up like it was yesterday.”

“That’s a real friendship thing, though, isn’t it?” says Nick. “Time doesn’t exist when you’re real mates.”

Love Plus Three

For a long time, Nick, Les and Graham were not mates. Struggling with the pressure to follow up their acclaimed debut album, 1982’s Pelican West, Heyward found himself ejected from the band, who themselves called it a day following 1984’s belly-flopping Paint And Paint.

In the decades since, there have been occasional reunions but, as Nick told Classic Pop in 2017, the onstage truce didn’t translate to an offstage relationship. So what changed? “Well, there’s still a couple of members stuck in the past – that’s the reason,” says Heyward, pointedly. Saxophonist Phil Smith and percussionist Marc Fox haven’t rejoined the party, though drummer Blair Cunningham is on board as an affiliate member. “They’ve got issues they didn’t want to talk about. But the rest of us have moved on.”

“I told Nick, ‘I don’t care what happened in the past’,” says Les. “That’s gone, and the future isn’t here. So the only thing that matters is right now.”

“It all evaporated, didn’t it?” says Nick. “All the things we thought we needed to talk about, they evaporated pretty much immediately. And every day since has been a bonus.”

No-one is more surprised than Heyward and Nemes to find Haircut One Hundred back onboard the pop carousel full-time. Initially reuniting for a show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire to mark the 40th anniversary reissue of Pelican West, they’ve since toured the UK and the US, played Glastonbury, released their first single together in 42 years, and are currently working on a new studio album.

“We thought the reunion show would be emotional, but it’s been getting more emotional as we go along,” explains Nick. “It’s like a dynamo, like a bike – it’s picking up speed and energy as it goes on.”

“The mad thing was, we didn’t arrange any of it – it all came to us,” says Les. “It was like the universe said, ‘Alright, I’m going to arrange everything, and all you need to do is turn up’. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since – turning up.”

“The universe is a great arranger,” nods Heyward. “I’ve asked it to start looking after my funeral…”

The universe got a helping hand, though, from the late music promoter Melvyn Taub, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in September. “If it wasn’t for Melvyn, none of this would have happened,” says Nemes. “He organised everything, pushed for everything.”

“He was a lifelong fan of power pop and pop-funk, who I’d met when I was younger, and it was his dream for us to be back,” says Nick, eyes moistening. “A lovely guy. He is the universe, really.”

American Dreams

Returning to the States as special guests of ABC and Howard Jones, more than four decades after their last US shows, was an emotional experience for the band – and, it turned out, their audience. “Some people had flown hundreds of miles, or done a road trip from Texas to Utah, or wherever,” says Heyward. “And they brought all these memories with them – of finding their partner or losing them, or going through chemo… I remember one night watching a woman standing with her husband, and within the first couple of bars of Love Plus One, she had started crying. And you thought, ‘My god, what does that song mean to her?’ By the end of the tour, we were all losing it.

“The shows also went to another level of authenticity. As young indie aspirants from south London, we could only dream of being so authentically Latin American, but on theseshows we had our Venezuelan drummer, Izzy, and Felipe Fournier, who’s a Grammy-winning percussionist from Costa Rica. These guys were just on fire, aiming for the hips. It was such a powerhouse of energy – we only played six songs, but there were standing ovations every night.”

Was there a natural esprit de corps between the 80s survivors on the bill? “We’ve all been through similar things, but having not done it for 42 years, we were probably processing it at a different level to the other two,” reflects Nick. “The shows were so charged; I think it kind of ignited Martin Fry’s competitive side. But Howard was much more chilled. He was just like, ‘I love this, let’s do more.’”

Back home, Haircut One Hundred crossed off another bucket list item when they made their Glastonbury Festival debut on the Avalon Stage. “It was amazing,” smiles Les. “It was another thing I’d given up on,” admits Heyward. “I thought, ‘That’s never going to happen’. But it did.”

Filtered Funk

Their summer of love now over, the band are now knuckling down to the business of making a new album. Late last August, they shared the first – ahem – fruits of those sessions with effervescent single The Unloving Plum – a jubilant, summery earworm (and Radio 2 Record of the Week, to boot).

“The song is about that first relationship that makes you feel like anyone – and the first that broke my soul into a million pieces,” says Nick. “The unloving plum is a bit like the Lotus flower – where does it come from? It comes from the mud. But there’s that light that comes from tasting it for the first time. So it was just built around wordplay from that.”

The opening line, ‘Cover me in diet pop’ was, adds Nick, originally more brand-specific. “It was, ‘Cover me in Diet Coke’. But Radio 2 and other stations said, ‘Sorry, no product placement’. Though I note that Addison Rae can get away with [recent hit] Diet Pepsi, so it’s obviously different rules for her.”

The single arrived with a playful, Frankenstein-riffing video, directed by Tom Bailey (no, not that one). “Everyone told us videos aren’t a thing anymore,” says Nick. “But it’s part of the creative process. We’re not going to stop making them, just because they’ve gone out of favour.”

So how much else is in the can?

“We’ve got eight songs that are kicking around,” says Nemes. “And then we’ll look for another two or three.”

Speaking to Classic Pop last year, Les favoured a return to the band’s early post-punk, Talking Heads-influenced days. “That is where I’d have liked it to go,” he says today. “I saw it with no brass – just kicking back to the three of us and keeping it very raw. But it hasn’t gone as far that way as I’d envisaged. There’s still brass, there’s still percussion…”

“There are still funky ones,” Nick assures us. “There’s one called Vanishing Point, which sounds a bit like the theme to [70s TV show] The Streets Of San Francisco meets James Brown. It’s like a getaway car song. And Dynamite is a big, funky disco song, kind of like Earth, Wind and Fire.”

Another track that’s currently in contention, Mudlarks, returns to the geographical location of Pelican West. “It’s about the Pelican Stairs [in East London], where they used to hang people,” explains Heyward. “It’s a very significant area for the band. But it’s also a social commentary on how far we are regressing, as a culture. Are we going back to Dickensian times? Are we all going to be mudlarking?”

Mixing New Wave guitars with jazz funk and Brazilian rhythms, Pelican West remains a very singular creation: the missing link between Postcard Records and Nile Rodgers (via 1960s Tropicália and Bruce Lee movie soundtracks), it held a brace of Top 10 singles – Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl), Love Plus One, Fantastic Day and Nobody’s Fool – and sounds box-fresh today. So are they feeling the pressure to bottle lightning all over again and avoid what could (drawing a discreet veil over Paint And Paint) turn out to be the world’s most delayed case of difficult second album syndrome?

“Who wouldn’t feel the pressure?” says Nemes. Nick takes a more phlegmatic view: “You just do what you do. You can’t let that stuff get to you. I’ve got way over that point. You just have to turn up and be as creative as you can. It doesn’t work if you’re consciously trying to be Haircut One Hundred. You’ve got to let one thing lead to another.

“We’ve found a way of working that suits us, which is to play live. We’ll start doing one thing, and it will evolve into something else. Sometimes you have to allow it to come through you. Then Les is my first port of call – if Les doesn’t get a bassline for it, it isn’t a Haircut song. And then Graham has his filter, because Graham’s a Clash fan ’til the end of his days. So that’s the process the songs get filtered through.”

Priceless Friendship

With the days of record company largesse now a distant memory, it’s also a question of logistics. “The trick is to keep turning up and rehearsing and recording, because we’re not minted,” says Heyward. “There’s no budget – we’ve just worked a whole year for hardly anything. We’re doing it out of pure love.”

Nick takes out his phone and scrolls through the scores of song sketches he’s recorded as voice notes. He plays one, in which he sings: “If I haven’t got a friend, I haven’t got anything”. “That’s what it’s been lately,” he says, beaming at Les again. “We love our friendship being back. It’s even better than it used to be. A powerful thing.”

Cards on the table: do they wish they’d done all this sooner?

“A few months ago, Nick said, ‘Why have we not been doing this for 42 years? This is so amazing, why did we stop?’” says Les. “I think regret is too strong a word. But there’ssome disappointment, maybe.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” shrugs Heyward. “And part of me wonders whether we’d have this brilliant friendship we have now, if we’d kept going.”

“There’s also the fact that putting it off another 10 years wasn’t really an option,” admits Nemes, who recently turned 64. “You have stages of life – we’re in autumn.”

To add to that, Nick isn’t sure they’d have been greeted as such conquering heroes if they’d done it earlier. “Bands go through life cycles,” he suggests. “And for 10 or maybe 20 years after your first success, you’re not very cool.

“There’ve been times when, if you didn’t get a record contract, then you didn’t exist. Also, if we’d done this 20 years ago, we might have been a bit arsey about it. But when you get older, the egocentric side of you tends to evaporate. As you disappear from public relevance, you actually feel more alive.

“Sometimes, you have to let go of the thing you want, in order to get it. And now we’ve got it, we’re loving it. It hasn’t been easy to get here, but now we’re here, it’s just… Wow.”

For the latest Haircut One Hundred reunion news click here

Read More: Nick Heyward Albums: The Complete Guide

The post Haircut One Hundred Reunion Interview appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks share new single from upcoming album, MAD!, set for release in May.

JanSport Backpack, is the second track from the new album, which will be released on 23 May via Transgressive Records.

Ever the masters of the musical vignette, JanSport Backpack is a bittersweet pop song that portrays a fading love in Sparks’ inimitable fashion, with the backpack existing as a sad reminder of a relationship on the rocks.

Listen below:

Modern Record

MAD!, the band’s 28th studio album, finds the art-pop duo examining cultural phenomena such as branded backpacks, tattoos, performative devotion (whether to a God, a lover, a celebrity or a sports team), the hegemony of banter, and the rise of influencers. The satire is never on-the-nose, always retaining enough ambiguity for the listener to fill in the blanks. And the exquisitely unusual lexicon and cultural references leap out on every listen.

Musically there are nods to New Wave, Synth-pop, Art Rock and Electronic Opera – all genres Sparks had hands in pioneering, or straight-up invented. Ultimately, however, MAD! is a modern record, which belongs in, and speaks to, the modern world.

The album opens with the song Do Things My Own Way, a piece of typically forward-facing progressive pop which was the album’s lead single. But it also functions as something of a manifesto for the Maels themselves. Because Sparks are a band who have always, always done things their own way.

MAD! Tracklisting

Do Things My Own Way
JanSport Backpack
Hit Me, Baby
Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab
My Devotion
Don’t Dog It
In Daylight
I-405 Rules
A Long Red Light
Drowned In A Sea Of Tears
A Little Bit Of Light Banter
Lord Have Mercy

MAD! physical formats include: CD, Cassette, Black vinyl LP, Lenticular gatefold sleeve with blue vinyl LP and Deluxe triple gatefold edition with red vinyl LP and CD (exclusive to store.allsparks.com)

After seven decades making music together Sparks continue to break new ground. On their 2025 tour, the first leg will begin on 8 June in Japan and end on 8 July in Italy.

Although Russell performed in Italy once as part of a Sgt Pepper anniversary concert and both brothers played there with FFS, this will be the first-ever Italian Sparks gig. The tour is already the band’s fastest selling to date – with more international dates to be announced soon due to demand.

SPARKS MAD! UK TOUR DATES:

June 2025
18 – Eventim Apollo, London
19 – Eventim Apollo, London
21 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
22 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
24 – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

A full list of dates and tickets are available here.

MAD! is released on 23 May and is available for preorder now, click here.

Read More: Top 20 Comeback Singles

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The most successful duo in UK music history, Pet Shop Boys, announce huge summer shows.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe will bring their groundbreaking, Pet Shop Boys: Dreamworld – The Greatest Hits Live to Cardiff on Thursday 31 July.

They are the latest act revealed to headline this year’s TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle. The series of events will also see The Human League, with support from Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey and Blancmange, appear on 6 July, as well as headline shows from Sting (28 June), James (10 July), UB40 Ft. Ali Campbell (20 July) and Faithless (1 August).

The Pet Shop Boys will also bring their euphoric pop spectacle to Hardwick Festival in Durham (on 16 August) and Warwick Castle (30 August).

Pop Spectacle

Pet Shop Boys recently announced the release of the Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live At The Royal Arena Copenhagen concert film on Blu-ray/CD. Available on 2 May 2025, the film captures the spectacular show featuring classic hits like: West End Girls, Suburbia, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money), Left To My Own Devices, Rent, Domino Dancing, Always On My Mind and It’s A Sin.

In their live shows Pet Shop Boys have created an original style of pop musical theatre, collaborating with a multitude of directors, designers and artists, including Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Es Devlin and Tom Scutt.

Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live kicked off in Milan in May 2022 touring arenas and festivals across Europe and the UK to great acclaim. Last year Dreamworld played a sold-out five-night residency at the Royal Opera House, as well as headline performances at the Isle of Wight Festival and Radio 2 In The Park, in Lancashire.

Iconic Sound

The headlining show for TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle is presented by promoters DEPOT Live and Cuffe and Taylor.

Nick Saunders from DEPOT Live said: “We’re beyond excited to welcome the legendary Pet Shop Boys to Cardiff Castle for what promises to be an unforgettable night. Their music has shaped generations, and this show will be a true celebration of their iconic sound in the heart of the city.”

Cuffe and Taylor promoter Julian Murray added: “Pet Shop Boys are the epitome of the British music icon. With 40 years of hits behind them this is sure to be one of the highlights of TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle. I cannot wait for this show!”

Pre-sale tickets for the Pet Shop Boys at Cardiff Castle will be available, from 9am on Thursday, here. Tickets go on general sale at 9am on Friday from depotlive and ticketmaster

For more information on Durham and Warwick tickets visit petshopboys.co.uk.

Read More: Pet Shop Boys singles – The Top 40

The post Pet Shop Boys announce huge summer shows appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

The most successful duo in UK music history, Pet Shop Boys, announce huge Cardiff show.

 Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe will bring their groundbreaking, euphoric pop spectacle Pet Shop Boys – Dreamworld – The Greatest Hits Live to the Welsh capital on Thursday 31 July.

The Pet Shop Boys announcement is the latest reveal for TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle. The series of events will also see The Human League with support from Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey and Blancmange appear on 6 July, as well as headline acts Sting (28 June), James (10 July), UB40 Ft. Ali Campbell (20 July) and Faithless (1 August).

Pop Spectacle

Pet Shop Boys recently announced the release of the Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live At The Royal Arena Copenhagen concert film on Blu-ray/CD. Available on 2 May 2025, the film captures the spectacular stage show of the tour with dazzling visuals and a bumper set list packed with classic hits, including West End Girls, Suburbia, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money), Left To My Own Devices, Rent, Domino Dancing, Always On My Mind and It’s A Sin.

In their live shows Pet Shop Boys have created an original style of pop musical theatre, collaborating with a multitude of directors, designers and artists, including Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Es Devlin and Tom Scutt.

Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live kicked off in Milan in May 2022 touring arenas and festivals across Europe and the UK to great acclaim. Last year Dreamworld played a sold-out five-night residency at the Royal Opera House, as well as headline performances at the Isle of Wight Festival and Radio 2 In The Park, in Lancashire.

Iconic Sound

The headlining show for TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle is presented by promoters DEPOT Live and Cuffe and Taylor.

 Nick Saunders from DEPOT Live said: “We’re beyond excited to welcome the legendary Pet Shop Boys to Cardiff Castle for what promises to be an unforgettable night. Their music has shaped generations, and this show will be a true celebration of their iconic sound in the heart of the city.”

Cuffe and Taylor promoter Julian Murray added: “Pet Shop Boys are the epitome of the British music icon. With 40 years of hits behind them this is sure to be one of the highlights of TK Maxx presents Depot Live at Cardiff Castle. I cannot wait for this show!”

Rag’n’Bone Man, Faithless, Snow Patrol, The Human League, James, Fontaines DC, Alanis Morissette, Elbow, Sting, The Script, Jess Glynne and UB40 featuring Ali Campbell all headline the iconic Welsh venue with more announcements to come.

Pre-sale tickets the the Pet Shop Boys at Cardiff Castle will be available from 9am Thursday here. Tickets go on general sale at 9am Friday from depotlive and ticketmaster

The duo will also be appearing at Hardwick Festival in Durham on (16 August) and Warwick Castle (30 August). For more information on tickets for the new 2025 tour dates please visit petshopboys.co.uk.

Read More: Pet Shop Boys singles – The Top 40

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Singles have traditionally been used to preview and promote new studio albums but, as our latest countdown reveals, many hit records in the 80s were self-contained pieces of art – here’s our Top 20 Standalone Singles of the 80s

The standalone single wasn’t a phenomenon birthed in the 80s, it was pioneered in the 60s by the likes of The Beatles and The Kinks, whose writing and recording prolificacy was matched by their paymasters’ insatiable appetite for new product. In the punk era and beyond, many acts duly followed in their stead, offering fans material exclusive to the single, a practice that in a notoriously fickle marketplace was often necessary to keep them in the public eye in between their album releases. Our countdown includes singles that weren’t included on the vinyl versions of the period-relevant studio LPs. We have also discounted tracks written to order for soundtracks, and singles used to promote hits compilations.
Words by Barry Page

20 DEPECHE MODE – GET THE BALANCE RIGHT! (1983)

It may not appear in critics’ lists of Depeche Mode’s greatest tracks, but this transitional hit certainly marked a year zero moment following the recruitment of Alan Wilder. Previously restricted to touring and miming duties, the classically trained boffin finally had a chance to cut loose in the studio, working his magic on Martin Gore’s latest world-weary composition. “I think it’s a lot harder, more powerful and more direct,” Gore told Record Mirror,“topics that everyone can relate to”.

19 BIG COUNTRY – WONDERLAND (1984)

Announced by Bruce Watson’s chiming guitar and a thunderous drum roll from Mark Brzezicki, this standalone single stemmed from a request from Big Country’s label to cut a new track before they jetted off to the US on tour. Though not used to recording to such tight time constraints, the Scottish band somehow managed to conjure up a piece of magic, using the refrain from one of Watson’s demos as a starting point. Continuing their impressive run of UK Top 20 hits, the future fan favourite peaked at No.8.

18 TEARS FOR FEARS – THE WAY YOU ARE (1983)

Arguably the most divisive item in the Tears For Fears back catalogue, this underrated gem found the primal screamers in a state of artistic flux following the success of debut album The Hurting and its singles. Traversing Japan-esque art-rock terrain, The Way You Are became a minor hit and bought the duo valuable time before their next album release, but it’s since been disowned by its makers. “We went down the rabbit hole of the intricate and clever production, but forgot about the song,” rued Curt Smith to Vulture in 2022.

17 HOWARD JONES – LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU WELL (1984)

With four UK Top 20 hits already under his belt, eternal optimist Howard Jones kept up the chart momentum with this memorable single, recorded during a gap in his hefty touring schedule in 1984. Released to coincide with the Summer Olympics, this reggae-tinged paean to global citizenship found Jones ruminating on the original spirit of the Games, and how such a huge multicultural event could be used to break down barriers. Rising up the UK charts, it spent three weeks at No.4.

16 TOYAH – THUNDER IN THE MOUNTAINS (1981)

In a year that saw 12 million tune in to BBC2 to watch them play at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Toyah kept up their impressive chart run with this spirited hit, written in a summer that saw a heatwave suddenly give rise to violent thunderstorms. Recorded during Toyah Willcox’s Boadicea phase, Thunder In The Mountains found the flame-haired singer ruminating on the inner-city violence and simmering tensions of the period, although its calls for rebellion were straight out of the punk rulebook.

15 THE CURE – THE LOVE CATS (1983)

Reinvented as a synth-pop duo following Simon Gallup’s exit, The Cure found themselves in the upper reaches of the charts with what Robert Smith would later dub “stupid pop songs”. An antidote to the doom-mongery of the  Pornography album, the diversion alienated the fanbase, but the goth rockers picked up plenty of new admirers, and this feline favourite hit the Top 10. The jollity would be short-lived. “This is the last ‘fun’ single that we’ll make,” Smith told No.1. “From now on we’ll be heading back into the abyss.”

14 SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES – DEAR PRUDENCE (1983)

Fans of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’, the Banshees had previously recorded a version of heavy metal prototype Helter Skelter, before turning their attention to a song John Lennon had penned during the Fab Four’s spiritual sojourn to India in 1968. The first single to feature moonlighting Cure guitarist Robert Smith, the band’s goth-pop treatment of Dear Prudence arguably outclassed the original and became their biggest hit since 1977 debut Hong Kong Garden.

13 THE SMITHS – WILLIAM, IT WAS REALLY NOTHING (1984)

Incredibly, the music for this ephemeral hit and its classic B-sides – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want and How Soon Is Now? – were all written by Johnny Marr during a productive four days at his Earls Court flat in June 1984. Speculation was rife that the protagonist was Associate Billy Mackenzie, but what’s certain is it marked an attempt to craft a single redolent of the band’s musical heroes. “The two-minute-10-second single was power,” Morrissey told Rolling Stone.

12 GEORGE MICHAEL – A DIFFERENT CORNER (1986)

Released mere weeks after George Michael had announced his intentions to leave the Trojan Horse that was Wham!, this ballad found him at his most vulnerable. His sexuality still a thinly veiled secret, the heartfelt No.1 was penned in the aftermath of a brief relationship, the tension heightened by its threadbare arrangement. As if to emphasise the singer’s feelings of emotional imprisonment, the video was devoid of colour, its illusory celestial setting more akin to a mental health facility.

11 WHAM! – I’M YOUR MAN (1985)

Wham! spent much of 1985 touring the world, including a historic visit to China. New song The Edge Of Heaven was premiered during the US leg, but it was a track George Michael had written on an internal flight that would become their penultimate single and third UK chart-topper. According to George, I’m Your Man took its inspiration from “wildly good sex”, and its racy lyrics were evidence of a new, adult-focused direction. It was the final song played at their farewell concert at Wembley in June 1986.

10 SOFT CELL – TORCH (1982)

An impassioned tale of obsession and unrequited love, this non-LP cut was inspired by a trip to New York in which Marc Almond had been moved to tears by a bar-room singer. With John Gatchell’s flugelhorn authenticating its smoky jazz club ambience, and guest vocalist Cindy Ecstasy stepping up to the plate in the torch singer role, impressed record buyers sent it to No.2, although Dave Ball later alleged chart compilers Gallup had miscounted, and that Torch had outsold Adam Ant’s No.1 Goody Two Shoes by three-to-one. 

9 GARY NUMAN – WE ARE GLASS (1980)

8 PET SHOP BOYS – ALWAYS ON MY MIND (1987)

Commissioned to perform an Elvis Presley track of their choosing on an ITV show marking 10 years since the King’s death, Pet Shop Boys gave this country classic a hi-NRG makeover. Although the Actually album campaign was in full swing, the duo bowed to pressure to release it, issuing it in between the singles Rent and Heart, and were rewarded with a Christmas No.1. The sleeve amusingly stated, “not from the album, actually”, but a vastly different nine-minute version did appear on Introspective.

7 THE JAM – GOING UNDERGROUND / THE DREAMS OF CHILDREN (1980)

Never ones to short-change fans, half of The Jam’s 18 UK singles were standalones, including this double-header gem. Built around Paul Weller’s fondness for 60s psychedelia, The Dreams Of Children was the intended A-side, until a factory cock-up meant the radio-friendly Going Underground got top billing. Written in the early throes of Margaret Thatcher’s term, it chimed with the disaffected youth, going straight to UK No.1, the first to do so since Slade’s heyday.

6 THE STONE ROSES – FOOLS GOLD /
WHAT THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR (1989)

Released in a good year for The Stone Roses, this double A appeared in the slipstream of their debut album, and gave them their breakthrough after a series of under-performing 45s. Boasting a title befitting of their hubris, What The World Is Waiting For was formulaic jangly fare, but most ears were tuned to Fools Gold, whose mesmerising drum loop had been sourced from an LP of breakbeats. Conceived as an experimental B-side, it’s earned a place at baggy’s top table.

5 THE HUMAN LEAGUE – MIRROR MAN (1982)

How do you follow a series of smash hits and a multi-platinum album? In the case of Sheffield’s finest, the answer was to keep calm and carry on touring. A re-release of The Human League’s Being Boiled kept them in the mix, as did remix LP Love And Dancing, which had been painstakingly fashioned from Dare’s multi-tracks. Left off difficult fourth album Hysteria but included on US EP Fascination!, Mirror Man found the band in Motown territory, with the girls’ “oohs” and “ahhs” authenticating the retro-pop sound.

4 DURAN DURAN – IS THERE SOMETHING I SHOULD KNOW? (1983)

Capitalising on the Duranmania that was now sweeping the globe, the band at the forefront of the Second British Invasion went straight to No.1 with this smash. “It was a fantastic result,” wrote John Taylor in his memoir, “although our level of cocksureness was so high, it didn’t come as a complete surprise.” Built on an irresistible guitar riff from Andy Taylor, this arrived in between the Rio and Seven And The Ragged Tiger albums, but in the US was included on a reshaped version of Duran Duran’s eponymous debut.

3 KRAFTWERK – TOUR DE FRANCE (1983)

By the early 80s the musical world had caught up with Kraftwerk, and the original electronic trailblazers were now sharing chart space with the people they’d influenced. But although they would fail to capitalise on the success of The Model and spend much of the decade obsessing over new tech, there would be one further classic from the enigmatic Germans. Evolving from sessions for the aborted Techno Pop LP, Tour De France manifested their cycling obsession with samples of bicycle chains and Herr Hütter’s heavy breathing.

2 JOY DIVISION – LOVE WILL TEAR US APART (1980)

An eerily prophetic and devastating insight into Ian Curtis’ fragile emotional state, Love Will Tear Us Apart was developed in the drab environs of Joy Division’s Manchester rehearsal space and debuted on tour in October 1979. Scheduled as a non-LP single and forerunner to second album Closer, the band’s signature song originally employed a faster tempo – heard on the punkier Peel session mix and the Pennine version – until Factory Records’ Tony Wilson persuaded Curtis to adopt more of a Sinatra-like croon. Issued posthumously, it peaked at No.13.

1 NEW ORDER – BLUE MONDAY (1983)

Originally conceived as a keyboard-based track in which New Order would be spared the apparent indignity of encoring by pressing down a special key that played a little melody in their absence, Blue Monday would morph into what Stephen Morris would later describe as a Frankenstein’s monster of a song, and one whose clever distillation of influences as disparate as Ennio Morricone, Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder would not only make them the envy of their synth-pop contemporaries, but also prick the ears of a certain Stock Aitken Waterman. But true to Factory Records’ unconventional methods and the band’s own sheer bloody-mindedness, its path to musical greatness was littered with obstacles.

This was, of course, a band whose lyrics didn’t appear in their song titles, and who wouldn’t start lifting singles from albums until 1985’s Low-Life. In the case of Blue Monday – which at the time only appeared on the US cassette version of Power, Corruption And Lies – the band refused to edit it down from its seven-minute playing time for radio, and wouldn’t mime on Top Of The Pops. But Blue Monday’s quality and popularity in the clubs would endure, and the record unwittingly became the biggest-selling 12″ of all time. And, for two happy weeks in 1983, it even appeared in the same Top 40 rundown as Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Read More: Top 40 New Order songs

The post Top 20 Standalone Singles of the 80s appeared first on Classic Pop Magazine.

Mariah Carey announces special UK show at the Royal Sandringham Estate. It will be her second UK performance this summer, following the confirmation that she will also headline the Brighton Pride Festival.

Taking place on Friday 15 August 2025, the best-selling female artist of all time will be joined by special guests including Nile Rodgers & CHIC and Eternal at Royal Sandringham.

Giles Cooper of Heritage Live Festivals: “We’re absolutely thrilled to bring one of the greatest pop artists of all-time to the Royal Sandringham Estate for an exclusive UK headline show. Mariah Carey is an award-winner, a record-breaker, and an absolute global icon – this show will be historic.

“Mariah’s live show is second to none and with such a catalogue of huge hit singles, it’s going to be an incredible occasion. It will most definitely be an ‘I was there’ event that will live in all of our memories forever.”

Songbird Supreme

Mariah Carey became an immediate sensation with her 1990 self-titled debut album thanks to her five-octave range and popular love ballads. By the end of the decade, Carey had released the diamond-certified albums Music Box and Daydream and eclipsed Michael Jackson’s record for most chart-topping singles by an individual.

Her 2005 album, The Emancipation of Mimi, became that year’s best-selling record, and the five-time GRAMMY Award winner now stands as one of the most commercially successful artists of all time with more than 200 million albums sold worldwide. Her hit songs include Vision of Love, Fantasy, Hero, One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men, We Belong Together, and the seasonal, record-breaking classic All I Want For Christmas Is You.

In 2020, she released her memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey, which became a New York Times Best Seller, and in 2023 she was recognised by Rolling Stone as the fifth greatest singer of all-time. Mariah Carey is also a multiple Guinness World Record-holder, and in 1998 she was recognised by the organisation for her incredible vocal range, gaining the title ‘Songbird Supreme’.

Fantastic Festival

Nile Rodgers, who also supports Duran Duran this summer, is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee and a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement awardee.

As a composer, producer, arranger, and guitarist, Rodgers pioneered a musical language with CHIC on hits like Le Freak and sparked the advent of hip-hop with Good Times and Rapper’s Delight. His work with The CHIC Organisation includes collaborations with Sister Sledge (We Are Family) and Diana Ross (I’m Coming Out), as well as his own productions for David Bowie (Let’s Dance) and Madonna (Like A Virgin).

Nile has sold more than 500 million albums, while his GRAMMY Award-winning collaborations with Daft Punk (Random Access Memories) and Beyoncé (Renaissance) reflect the vanguard of contemporary hits.

British R&B Group Eternal originally formed in 1992. The group became an international success, selling around 10 million records worldwide. The group disbanded in 2000, and now the all-new Eternal line up consists of Easther Bennett, Vernie Bennett and Christel Lakhdar.

Heritage Live

The event is the third show to be revealed for next year’s series of large-scale outdoor music concerts on the Estate, presented by Heritage Live Festivals, which will run from 14 to 17 August. This follows the announcement of Stereophonics who will perform on Saturday 16 August, and an exclusive show by Michael Bublé on Sunday 17 August.

The Royal Sandringham Estate show will be the second UK show for the singer this summer, as she will be one of the headline acts at the Brighton Pride Festival on 2 August. She was originally scheduled to perform at the 2020 event, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For Brighton Pride On The Park tickets and information click  here

To secure Mariah Carey tickets for the Royal Sandringham Estate show, fans must pre-register here. Pre-sale access for registered customers begins at 9am on Wednesday 5 March. For venue information and VIP packages, click here

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