THE DETROIT SPINNERS - “Working My Way Back To You”

This is one of those Number Ones that feels like a long-service medal: certainly you wouldn’t begrudge the band who made “Ghetto Child” and “Mighty Love” a hit this size, but “Working” isn’t quite up to that standard. It is what it is: a song out of time, wrenched out of an earlier era and brushed unsympathetically up to conform to current best practice. … read on …

THE JAM - “Going Underground”/”Dreams Of Children”

Straight in at number one: the public gets what the public wants. “Going Underground”’s arrival at the top is an example of the charts acting justly for once – steady and remarkable improvement from the scrappy punk hand-me-downs of “The Modern World” rewarded. The Jam’s first number one was their best record to date, a distillation of wrath and excitement so potent that it single-handedly justifies the attention paid to Weller ever since. If someone could – even once – produce a record so thrill-powered, it would be irresponsible to take your eye off him, even when his gifts seemed to have calcified forever. … read on …

eDgY!!: “every yuppie’s fantasy”

To celebrate our Popular feature reaching the 80s, here is an exciting NEW SERIES of Freaky Trigger posts where we look back at that decade through the lens of A Decade Of i-Deas: the encyclopaedia of the ’80s, published by i-D magazine in 1990. This is a fascinating book as it’s a great snapshot of a) what seemed to matter at the decade’s end and b) an early historical judgement on same. It gets things right as much as it gets things wrong: but in this FT series we’ll simply be printing excerpts and asking you, our readers, to identify who i-D are talking about. So without further ado, who’s THIS:

“Versed in Shakespeare, morose and obsessed with the past, she is every Yuppie’s fantasy - an intelligent female who can quote Sylvia Plath and appreciate the finer aesthetics of CD sound. Never-smiling and now 20 years old, she looks poised to become as big as her 60s mentors. Whether you like it or not, this is the new face of teenage Britain.”

Obviously if you have the book yourself, NO PEEKIN’.

FERN KINNEY - “Together We Are Beautiful”

After “Atomic”, this is something of a let-down: a record about modesty that succeeds, modestly. I’m fond of “Together”, actually: there’s something refreshing about the candour of “I’ve been with better looking guys / You’ve been with prettier looking women”, and I like its rather tidy, bubbly take on disco. It’s a song that sets out to be sweet, and despite a somewhat cloying chorus it gets there. But ‘sweet’, in the middle of a landmark era for pop, isn’t really enough.

BLONDIE - “Atomic”

At some point in the early 1980s – after this, but not long after - I realised we were all going to die, rather horribly and rather soon. I acquired the conviction before I picked up the geopolitical knowledge to put names to it – Reagan, Afghanistan, Cruise. Maybe I picked up the information at school, or watched the wrong five minutes of the news. Once I became aware of the imminent nuclear doomsday, I avoided fresh information on it, but when some did break through my filter it was like overproof liquor for the imagination. How bad would it be? Infinitely. How would we know the hour of its coming? You wouldn’t. What on Earth would you do when they dropped the bomb? … read on …

KENNY ROGERS - “Coward Of The County”

There’s a term in comics criticism, “Women in Refrigerators Syndrome”. It’s applied when the murder, rape, torture or otherwise abuse of a female supporting character provides the impetus for a male hero’s character development. This being superhero comics, “character development” and “whuppin’ the villain’s ass” are generally synonymous. “Coward Of The County” is women-in-refrigerator pop: the hero may have the best of motivations for being yellow, but yellow is what he is, until his girlfriend is gang-raped and he discovers his inner man. … read on …

THE SPECIALS - The Special AKA Live! (EP)

The Specials are a nexus point in British pop, and it’s easy to see why they were so important to so many. They pick up on the thread of Britain’s love for Jamaican dance music and the skinhead culture of the early 70s. They’re another incarnation of Britpop’s Hamburg Ideal - bright, straight-talking lads honing their pop to an awesome no-bullshit sharpness. Their working model of collective, cross-racial collaboration has been an indirect blueprint for almost every mutation in the UK’s urban music scenes since. And by giving that concept a label - Two Tone - and tying their creativity so closely to the ferment of British street politics, the band moved from blueprint to inspiration. Like all bands, they were a roil of individual egos; like many, they fell apart too soon, but it would be tough to argue that the Specials were anything other than a Good Thing. … read on …

THE PRETENDERS - “Brass In Pocket”

I had a pub conversation once about Radiohead’s “Creep”, where we decided the ideal cover would be one grounded in full-on swagger, simply inverting every “I” and “You” in the song: “I’m so fucking special - you wish you were special…you’re a creep!”. “Brass In Pocket” isn’t quite what we were getting at - there’s no sense that Chrissie Hynde’s target is any weaker than her, even if his capitulation is inevitable - but as an exercise in total confidence it takes some beating. The danger in the song is that its determination could shade into desperation, but when you listen to it you never once doubt that Hynde’s got the moves to back up her words: if anything, the song’s a challenge to her lover-to-be to step up and match her. … read on …

Memories of the future

A nice memoir from the in-staff Psygnosis writer who created the WipeOut Universe. Expect my own memoir of playing WipeOut when Popular gets to the Prodigy’s “Firestarter” (NB I was rubbish at it but I loved it anyway).

(via Infovore)

Popular ‘79

‘79 ends up as one of the best years, according to my marks anyhow - but which of its tracks would you have handed six or higher to? Pick as many as you want, then discuss the year in the comments boxes if you like.

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My highest marks were 9s for Buggles, Dury, Blondie - lowest 2s for Lena M and the Rats.