45. PRINCE – “Alphabet St” (1988)
In the pop polls, Prince was nominated well over 30 times, something no other artist came near. He won one poll – LP closers, with “Purple Rain” – and came second in Soundtracks (“When Doves Cry”) and Duets (“U Got The Look”). That last set the terms of engagement: as a duet, it’s not exactly exceptional. As a banger, it’s hard to deny.
Prince did so well in our polls because he’s a staggeringly consistent singles artist for over a decade: well into the 90s, when nobody’s calling the LPs classic, he’s putting out funk hits of punishing effectiveness alongside slinky sex jams and psychedelic oddities like “7”. Lots to pick from for a challenge like this, and I had a devil of a time narrowing it down to a handful.
There’s always some back and forth on the challenge hashtag about the merits of picking one song per artist, which explicitly isn’t a rule, but which a lot of players do anyway. The strong argument against doing it is that it subjects people like Prince, with a shit-ton of great singles, to vote splitting which damages his standings in the final countdown. The argument for doing it is that 50 songs is, frankly, nothing, and diversity makes the listing process more interesting and allows a broader spread of artists.
Both points make a lot of sense. It’s down to how an individual relates to the idea of ranking songs, really. If you feel in your heart you have a definite set of 50 eligible songs you prefer to any others, then you should probably not put extra constraints on them. If things are more fluid, and you have say 100 or 200 or 500 songs which might, on the right day, find themselves on the list – well, you’re already doing triage on your taste, so why not make it easier by limiting artists?
I landed on the “one per artist” side, which left me with a tricky Prince choice. Honestly, I haven’t listened to a Prince record for fun in a while – that’s the downside of him showing up in every poll and challenge. But I couldn’t leave him out: with other acts, I let fatigue sway me, but Prince had a slot reserved.
Apologies for this endless faffing around. Why “Alphabet St”? It was a moment of inspiration. I was shopping in Sainsbury’s, and into my head came a voice, and the voice was of Prince, and he was saying “Cat! We need you to rap!”. And my decision was made. I played the song to check I was right, and I was. Googling, I found a bit of news that had passed me by: Cat Glover died last month.
There’s a lot going on in “Alphabet St”, but Cat’s rap is the centre of it – on the album version, at least. The song otherwise feels almost like Prince by numbers – no, that’s the wrong metaphor – Prince doing what he does better than anyone else, but it’s what we know he can do, it’s audibly a relation to “Kiss”, “U Got The Look”, “1999”, and all the funkier side of Prince’s work. Except it has Cat Glover there, in the middle, shaking it like a horny pony would.
It’s a captivating moment because it’s Prince incorporating rap into his work and it sounds self-conscious, a novelty – the greatest practitioner of Black pop music in the 1980s trying to work out what to do about the most important development in Black pop music in the 1980s… and he doesn’t quite know. Prince can seem so perfect, even at his strangest, such a sealed bubble of talent and proficiency, and when you hear him trying stuff out there’s an electricity to it that lets me back in. It had to be my Prince pick because it’s a song that makes me want to play more Prince again.
44. DEAD OR ALIVE – “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” (1984)
I performed triage on my list in a bunch of different ways but one of them was this. My brother messaged me to let me know he was doing one of his irregular club nights. I decided to go. My selections were down to about 120 at that point, and I made a sacred vow. If any of the DJs played one of the remaining tracks, in it went. This was the only song played that night still under consideration, and so I had to include it.
I don’t dance much these days, and I was never a ‘dancer’ in the sense of someone who knows what moves to make when, or how to follow a beat and ride out a night on the floor. I bounce around to the songs I know and wander off for a beer at times. But dancing – in the widest possible sense of being put in motion by music – is still central to my idea of pop. It’s one of the things that only music can do. Lots of other arts can make me feel or think, but they can’t make me move. So that physical element is the heart of music, even if it isn’t the heart of how I practice listening to it.
“You Spin Me Round” is about motion as metaphor; the literal movement of a 7” single as the intoxication revolution of desire. It’s also, because it’s Pete Burns doing it, about the specific motion of performance – existing in the world in a particular way, as a particular being, an apparition in eyepatch and purple robes and a tower of frizzy dark hair. The record sounds like machines being driven too fast, sequencers like maddened horses pulling Burns’ chariot out of control. It’s a spectacular piece of pop; I’m glad my secret promise landed it here.
43. TEARS FOR FEARS – “Head Over Heels” (1985)
Pete Burns’ contemporaries, though this couldn’t be further from Dead Or Alive’s giddy abandon. “Head Over Heels” sounds like a giant moving slowly, trying not to break anything as he maneouvres himself into place (the Big Chair!) and the song can start. Synthpop in 1982 – the time of Tears For Fears’ first album – seemed skinny and tentative in comparison to what the band were making in 1985; great architectural masses of machine-built sound still arranged to let in light and space, with Roland Orzabal’s knotted-up anxieties and hopes grown huge to fit their environment.
How big can this get? How large a stage can we fill? What do we do when we fill it? In 1985 these were urgent questions, with pop thrust into a social role, and into physical spaces, that rewarded ambition and hubris. Tears For Fears move through those spaces with a sound that says they’re born to it and with a vulnerability that says they know how treacherous the job is. No “big music” has ever worn its size with such discomfort, which is a reason Songs From The Big Chair fascinates me while comparable albums bore.