31. ERIC B AND RAKIM – “Paid In Full” (1987)
It’s been heartening to see a lot of people picking this, though opinion has been fairly evenly split as to whether the original album cut or the Coldcut “7 Minutes Of Madness” remix is the one to go for. There’s little doubt the Coldcut version is a landmark, and I love a lot of the records which borrowed from it… but I also find myself wishing they’d worked their wacky magic on something else: “Paid In Full”, in its original form, is a perfect miniature, Eric B’s rambling intro and drawn out scratching at the end padding out a track which is one verse long and also exactly as long as it needs to be. A train of thought captured in rhymes and beats – there’s something so primally right about that when it’s done well, and it was rarely done better.
30. DEXYS’ MIDNIGHT RUNNERS – “Come On Eileen” (1982)
Each of Dexy’s three 1980-1985 albums produced one perfect single that sums up its era of the band. For their first LP it was “There, There My Dear” – Kevin Rowland spitting, clucking and yelping his fury out, drawing lines against the people who didn’t get it, reinforced by brassy muscle. For their third it was the 12” folly of “This Is What She’s Like”, the ineffable captured in strange sketch comedy, vocal babble, a tighter rocking band – oh, and he’s still not suffering any fools, even as he starts to admit he might be one. In between, though comes Too-Rye-Ay, their most sentimental and generous record, and it’s summed up by their biggest, best and corniest hit. I’ve written plenty in the past about “Come On Eileen” and its inclusiveness – the way it calls back to mums and dads at the same time as it puts a stake down for hungry youth. I’m at the stage now where it might as well be a Christmas song or a hymn, which is why it’s down this low in my ranking – there’s no surprises left in it, just the glow of good fellowship.
29. FANIA ALL-STARS – “Ella Fue (She Was The One)” (1977)
This is the first song from my original, chronological, Uncool50 – faced with the choice of punk or disco to represent 1977, I choose… salsa! This was a pick Jonathan Bogart made in the 1977 pop poll I ran, and perhaps my favourite ever poll discovery, a doorway into a world of music I’ve still only tentatively stepped into (it took me until this year to listen to Fania All-Stars’ excellent parent album, Rhythm Machine). “Ella Fue”, as its subtitle tells you, is a lovers’ song, a romantic song, one of many attempts musicians have made to capture human perfection in the language of rhythm and sound. It gets closer than most.
28. SOFT CELL – “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” (1982)
From probably the most generous, open-hearted track on the list, to almost certainly the most spiteful, the closing kiss-off to Soft Cell’s masterpiece first LP Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, and one of the most petty, cruel, and desperate break-up songs I’ve ever heard. Only Dylan’s “Idiot Wind” courses with as much self-hating bile, and “Idiot Wind” isn’t as good, or as abased, as this: it can’t help achieve a kind of paranoid epic quality, which is what the narrator of “Say Hello” thinks he’s getting to, when in fact he’s making the kind of public scene onlookers gasp at in embarrassed horror. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s heartbreaking because it’s so delusional – “a nice little housewife who’ll give me a steady life”, yeah right. Dave Ball, stoic in his pervert moustache, is the unsung hero here, coaxing more melodrama out of a 1981 synth than anyone else ever managed.