Now listening to it, it’s closer to the layered and sophisticated approach (but not quite) that Trevor Horn was employing… more New Pop than I thought.

In fact the lyric to “Land Of Make Believe” may prove to be one of the most prominent of all pop Trojan horses; it was penned by ex-King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield, who made no secret of his extreme aversion to Thatcherism and Reaganism and who wrote the lyric as a determined metaphor/denunication of the New Right – Reagan has to be the inspiration for “You’re an outlaw once again/Time to change – Superman/Will be with us while he can…in the land of make believe” (O, Superman!), and its deceptive trinkets are depicted as smiling, patient child catchers, abductors and murderers (“Shadows, tapping at your window,” “Something nasty in your garden’s waiting, patiently”).

Meanwhile writer/producer Andy Hill revealed himself as at least a temporary rival to Trevor Horn; the song changes from its brooding intro into a superficially jolly pop-reggae sprint, but Hill keeps burdening it with extra drums and keyboards, and soon the rhythm tracks systematically become more disjointed and aggressive, the atmosphere slightly harder and less welcoming, until nuclear apocalypse is heralded in: “Into the blue/You and I/To the circus in the sky,” and the title line “in the land of make believe” is loaded with a degree of spite and venom which seems to have eluded the comprehension even of some of those who sang the song (one of Bucks Fizz, Jay Aston, openly spoke of her support for and admiration of Thatcher). As a pop record it is as radical as “Hand Held In Black And White”; as a political polemic it comes from the other end of “Ghost Town” but arrives at far starker conclusions – and there are few starker conclusions to any pop record than the child’s voice who recites, as the music and the world fade to burn, a would-be nursery rhyme about her invisible friend who comes to tea: “He came today/But had to go/To visit you?/You never know.” Spoken as though she has already been murdered.

ie. the (reggae-ish) rhythm and the hammering drumbeats

Any comments?

This was a childhood favourite, but I can’t say I’d heard it for several decades until watching it on YouTube just now. I think Tom does a good job of making it sound more interesting than it is – the lyrics are a bit sinister, but they’re sung in such a cheery way any impact is lost.

Looking at the video, I was struck by three things:

1) The clip on YouTube appears to show it as number 19 on VH1′s 100 worst videos, which seems a bit harsh;
2) Cheryl Baker’s dress looks like a prototype for Liz Hurley’s famous dress;
3) Did the video inspire the cover of Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ocean Rain?

Behind Bucks Fizz were a very strong songwriting and production team and although they still hadn’t thrown away the eurovision image at this point, sadly when they did with much harder hitting songs, their popularity dropped until it went Bang and I’m not talking about the coach crash.

Erithian # 19 – I can’t allow you to liable Doddy. The Ticklish One was, of course, acquitted. Lester Piggott. Now THERE’S a fucking tax dodger, boy!

More 70s model buffed up than future vision, which in retrospect is an aspect of New Pop that I really enjoy without the Tainted Love/ Don’t You Want Me overexposure getting in the way.

I have no thoughts whatsoever on Hair Metal, as I consider it an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. There are almost no genres left which I won’t touch – but that’s one of them.

Hair Metal was massive in Mexico, although so was everything else on the rock/metal continuum. At my school the cool kids (mostly foreign) had no time for it; you either looked back to The Who and Black Sabbath or forward with Talking Heads. I suspect G’n'R would have got a more generous hearing…

#54 Lena if you have spotify access check out Celine Dion’s French version and see if the sinisterness transmits!

That said, I didn’t know this at the time at all…and am not sure what my fourteen-year-old self would have made of it. But there is no doubt that it is a sinister song; there is something uneasy-making about not just the lyrics but also the music – as if something, and I don’t know what, is about to go very, very wrong…even if this was in a language I didn’t know much of, but just enough to get *some* idea, like Italian, I would feel this way. It’s like oil being poured on water, but the water is churning, maybe thisclose to becoming a whirlpool…

If “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” was a proto-punk song (I’ve just read England’s Dreaming so I think I can claim that), then this is the waking nightmare after those people have indeed claimed what is now today; the spooky girl at the end (before Poltergeist, though there are girls like her before in horror film/literature I’m sure) is eerie, naive – what does she know of nuclear war or war in general?

I think most stadium bands were just busy in the studio taking too long to make expensive follow-ups to their previous mega-selling albums during the height of punk. Then they all seemed to be released at the same time, post-punk. I remember the NME review of ‘Tusk’ had a photo of Christine McVie carrying some clothes with the caption “Fleetwood Mac take The Eagles and Led Zeppelin to the cleaners”