NEW POP

Spin, 2006

By Simon Reynolds

You’ve known these videos for as long as you can remember, the tunes and the haircuts are as familiar as your mom’s face or the back of your hand.  Back in the day this stuff got called “New Music” --a flood of telegenic UK bands whose arrival in this country coincided with the birth of MTV. Which was no coincidence--image-conscious and glam-literate, the Brits’ native flair for posing and preening suited the new medium. London had a fledgling video industry, pioneered by theatrical rockers like Bowie, Queen, and Boomtown Rats, way before America did. For just a couple of years in the early Eighties, the new British pop groups exploited the gap between MTV’s launch and the US rock industry waking up to video’s potential. As the Limey haircuts over-ran TV, radio and the Billboard Top Ten,  commentators dubbed it “the Second British Invasion.”

These style-conscious pop groups--Dexys Midnight Runners, ABC, Adam Ant, Soft Cell—are still regarded as vapid one-hit-wonders, enjoyable as a period-evoking nostalgic frisson, but void of substance. Yet believe it or not, nearly all of them were sparked into existence by hearing the Sex Pistols in 1977, and they emerged from the same postpunk scene that produced such currently mega-fashionable reference points as Gang of Four and Wire. Culture Club’s Jon Moss apprenticed in the second-division punk combo London, while Boy George was briefly a protégé of Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren. Duran Duran’s original vision was to fuse The Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” and Chic’s “Le Freak”, and earlier in their career they played the punk venues of the UK Midlands alongside local do-it-yourself legend Swell Maps.

One reason the MTV Brits excelled at video was that most of them went to art school, where they absorbed the late Seventies conceptualist sensibility and radical politics. But by 1981, many of them had come to believe that the postpunk culture of independent labels and experimental noise had became a ghetto. So they adopted a subvert-from-within strategy, embracing sugar hooks and production gloss, dance grooves and futuristic synths.  Wanting to score hits no longer meant you were selling out: it indicated seriousness about reaching the masses with your ideas. The movement was christened “New Pop” in the UK, but by the time the music reached America, the manifestos and masterplans disappeared in the dazzle of pop stardom and preposterous hair. Here’s your chance to find out about the backstories of self-reinvention and oversized ambition lurking behind the “disposable fluff” of the Second British Invasion.

 The Star

Adam Ant

The Hit

“Goody Two Shoes”

The Hook

“You don't drink, don't smoke--what do you do?/Subtle innuendos follow/’Must be something inside’”

The Video

What-the-butler-saw-through-the-keyhole shenanigans in a hotel

The Back Story

Adam Ant--real name, Stuart Goddard--was an original punk rocker. Indeed the Sex Pistols started their performing career opening for Ant’s first band, Bazooka Joe. Fronting Adam and the Antz, the singer’s glammy look and risqué lyrics (bondage ditties like “Whip in My Valise” and “Beat My Guest”) attracted a cult following, many of whom would go on to form Goth bands. Impatient for full-blown stardom, Adam hired his hero, Malcolm McLaren, to give him an extreme make-over. McLaren promptly stole Adam’s band to form Bow Wow Wow (see below) but not before the singer got his money’s worth from McLaren, swapping his pervy image for a swashbucklingly heroic wardrobe inspired by pirates and native American warriors. Adam also came up a whole new sound, using Apache war-chants, African tribal drums, and twangy guitar. With a Navajo-style  white stripe across his exquisitely chiseled nose, Adam stomped and whooped his way to megastardom, becoming a teenybop idol and even performing for Her Majesty. His pro-sex, anti-drink’n’drugs stance led critics to label him as mere squeaky-clean showbiz, prompting the answer song “Goody Two Shoes”.

The Other (UK) Hits

“Dog Eat Dog”, “Ant Music”, “Kings of the Wild Frontier”, “Stand and Deliver,” “Prince Charming”, “Ant Rap”

And now?

The singer has battled mental illness in recent years. He was briefly committed following a 2002 incident in a London nightclub (he brandished a starter pistol after being mocked by some of the clientele) and again in 2003, when he removed his pants in a cafe. 

The Star

ABC

The Hit

“The Look of Love”

The Hook

”If you judge a book by the cover/Then you’d judge the look by the lover/I hope you’ll soon recover/Me I go from one extreme to another”

The Video

Mary Poppins-meets-Sgt Pepper’s Edwardian fantasia set in English park, with ABC performing on a bandstand.

The Backstory

ABC started as Sheffield electronic experimentalists Vice Versa. Fanzine writer Martin Fry went to profile them and got on so well the interview turned into a job interview, with Vice Versa inviting him to join the group. When synthpop blew up, they changed both their sound and name, pinning their pop dreams on a concept that fused disco sashay and hyper-literate lyrics, written and sung by Fry. Rebelling against the postpunk gloom of bands like Joy Division and The Cure, ABC issued fizzy “New Pop” manifestos about positivism and striving for your dreams, starting with the single “Tears Are Not Enough”. The great pop producer Trevor Horn whipped up a glittering, spectacular sound to go with their gold lame tuxedos, resulting in the string-swept  “The Look of Love” and the massive-selling LP The Lexicon of Love. Then they went and burst the romantic bubble with Beauty Stab, trading gloss for a guitar-heavy rock sound and politically-conscious lyrics about unemployment.

The Other (UK) Hits

“Poison Arrow”, “All of My Heart”

And Now?

Active on the UK’s  Eighties nostalgia circuit.

The Star

Dexys Midnight Runners

The Hit

“Come On Eileen”

The Hook

“Eileen, in that dress/My thoughts, I confess/Verge on dirty”

The Video

Raggle-taggle roustabouts in denim overalls and gypsy neckerchiefs dance through the streets, their leader flirting with a bonny Irish lass.

The Backstory

Don’t be fooled by the overalls and bare hairy chest: Dexys singer/leader Kevin Rowland is one of the UK’s great pop mavericks, combining the serial self-reinvention of David Bowie with the working-class-hero chip-on-both-shoulders rage of Johnny Rotten. Like the latter, Rowland’s background is Irish Catholic and he originally wanted to be a priest. Instead he fronted Birmingham, England punk band The Killjoys and recorded the single “Johnny Won’t Get To Heaven”. Rowland formed a new band with the intention of starting his own youth movement, “the young soul rebels”. Taking their name from Dexedrine, a brand of amphetamine popular with Sixties mods, Dexys Midnight Runners modeled their sound on the punchy horns and uptempo beats of Stax and Atlantic. They adopted a boxing-inspired look of hoods and training boots that paralleled the band’s regime of exercising together to boost their collective feeling of missionary zeal. Hits followed and converts flocked to witness Dexys electrifying Projected Passion Revue tour. But when journalists questioned the singer’s “new soul vision”, a paranoid Rowland boycotted the media and communicated direct to Dexys fans with communiqués and manifestos in the music papers paid for at the band’s own expense. After a mutiny from the band, Rowland reformulated Dexys Mk 2 around a fiddle-laced Celtic Soul sound. “Come On Eileen” was a #1 hit in the UK, America, and much of the world. But being embraced by housewives, grandmas and little kids played havoc with Rowland’s sense of his own seriousness, and  Dexys followed up with 1985’s deliberate career-suicide album, Don’t Stand Me Down.

The Other (UK) Hits

“Dance Stance,” “Geno”, “There There My Dear”, “Jackie Wilson Said”

And now?

In the late Nineties, Rowland reactivated his career with a startling new image, dressing in women’s clothing (perhaps his “dirty” thoughts about Eileen’s dress didn’t involve taking it off, but putting it on?) but the solo album flopped. Dexys recently reformed for a reunion show. 

The Star

Scritti Politti

The Hit

“Perfect Way”

The Hook

“I got a perfect way to make the girls go crazy”

The Video

Gauzy, black-and-white images of pretty boy Green and pretty girl models.

The Backstory

A folk music fan and member of the Young Communist League, Green Gartside saw the Sex Pistols in 1977 and immediately forgot about playing jigs on his acoustic guitar. Scritti Politti, the group he formed at art school with two friends, moved into a communal squatted house in London and swelled into a 20-strong collective, the three musicians out-numbered by non-musical friends who contributed by thrashing out the crucial ideological issues of the era. The theory-commune thrived initially, becoming a slightly smelly hotbed of activity and generating three brilliant EPs of fractured do-it-yourself art-pop, a style Gartside dubbed “messthetics”. But the all-night think-tank sessions and amphetamine diet wore the group out, climaxing with Green’s collapse after a gig supporting Gang of Four. The singer recuperated for 9 months in a cottage in rural Wales and returned with a “new pop” vision of infiltrating the mainstream with luscious melody and deconstructing “the love song” from the inside out. Steeped in funk, soul, and soft lover’s reggae, Scritti tunes like the gorgeous “The ‘Sweetest Girl’” (later covered by Madness) earned critical raves, but stalled outside the Top 40. Possibly that was because of the lyrics’ allusions to Nietzche, Wittegenstein and other philosophers (Scritti even did a song called “Jacques Derrida”), or simply that the group’s  indie label, Rough Trade, lacked the clout to crack the charts. Green eventually decided to shed his old comrades and signed to a major label for the album Cupid & Psyche 85, which spawned a series of crisp, taut, ultra-glossy UK hits and a single US  smash, “Perfect Way”. Miles Davis dug it enough to cover “Perfect Way”, but most Americans, hearing it on the radio and unaware of Green’s Commie past and intellectual leanings, thought he was just another British pretty boy peddling falsetto faux-soul.

The Other (UK) Hits

“Wood Beez”, “Absolute”, “The Word Girl”

And now?

Green Gartside recently played his first gig in 25 years under the alias Double G and the Treacherous Three, and will release his first album since 2000’s Anomie and Bonhomie later this year.

The Star

The Human League

The Hit

“Don’t You Want Me Baby”

The Hook

“I was working in a waitress in a cocktail bar/When I met you”

The Video

Video-within-a-video: the band on set making their own promo, watching the rushes, etc

The Backstory

Sheffield, 1977: two synth nerds (Ian Craig Marsh, Martyn Ware) and a glam rock obsessed science fiction fan with a lopsided haircut (Phil Oakey) progressed from 97  minute long electronic soundscapes to catchy ditties about silkworms and Buddha. Along the way they dropped their original name (The Future), recruited a fourth, non-musical member (art student Adrian Wright) whose job was to project wacky images behind the band onstage, picked up an endorsement from David Bowie, and signed to Virgin. But their science-geek songs like “The Black Hit of Space” (about a record so bland it sucks up about the entire Top 40), failed to propel the League into the actual UK charts. The band split in half, with Oakey and Wright keeping the name and the other two forming Heaven 17 (of  “Temptation” and “Let Me Go” early MTV fame). Staring oblivion in the face, Oakey discovered two Sheffield girls, Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, dancing at a nightclub and recruited them as backing singers. Further salvation came with the arrival of genius producer Martin Rushent, whose grasp of state-of-the-art technology turned the League into a remorseless hit-making machine. Worldwide #1 “Don’t You Want Me” touched hearts on both sides of the Atlatnic thanks to the “girl next door” charm of Sulley’s ever-so-slightly offkey vocals and the witty, poignant lyrics, which rewrote the story of Oakey’s discovery of the girls and project into a future where he’s been abandoned by his ungrateful protégés. In fact Oakey and the two women are still together as sole remaining members of the League 25 years later!

The Other (UK) Hits

“Sound of the Crowd”, “Love Action”, “Mirror Man,” “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”, “The Lebanon”

And now?

Performing on the UK’s 80s nostalgia circuit; Oakey also deejays synthpop.

The Star

The Thompson Twins

The Hit

“Hold Me Now”

The Hook

“Hold me now/Warm my heart/Stay with me/Let loving start”

The Video

Uncharacteristically simple, non-cartoony effort with the trio performing the song on a vividly colored soundstage.

The Backstory

Before they became maestros of contagious hooks and clever-clever videos, The Thompson Twins were postpunk radicals. They formed in Sheffield in 1977, then moved to London, where they lived in squats and recruited Alannah Currie (the one with shaved eyebrows and an explosion of albino-blond curls). She’d been squawking her saxophone in an all-girl punky-reggae group, The Unfuckables, who engaged in anti-sexist street protests like throwing paintbombs at offensive billboards. Percussionist Joe Leeway (the black one, also with shaved eyebrows) arrived, swelling the Twins into a seven-piece collective of earnest politicos who liked to shatter the performer/spectactor barrier by inviting the audience to play percussion. But as their role models Scritti Politti shifted direction, The Thompson Twins dropped postpunk’s dour dissent for new pop irony. Where once singer Tom Bailey (the cute frontman, eyebrows intact) railed onstage against the sexist murals at one rock venue, now he talked about being proud to make disposable music. Success on America’s New Wave dancefloors with “In the Name of Love” swiftly escalated into MTV dominion with “Hold Me Now”, “We Are Detective,”, et al. Once PC to a fault, Thompson Twins became a mega-grossing music corporation (the album Into the Gap sold five million worldwide) and hammered the final nail into the coffin of their left-wing idealism with a cover version of The Beatles’ “Revolution”. After appearing at Live Aid in Philadelphia, though, their career began a long slide.

The Other (UK) Hits

“Love On Your Side,” “You Take Me Up”, “Doctor! Doctor!”, ''Sister Of Mercy''

And now?

Currie and Bailey moved to New Zealand, where they made ambient music as Babble. Currie also started a glass-casting business and the charity MADGE ("Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment"). Now divorced, they’ve both moved back to the UK. Bailey still makes music as International Observer.  Leeway teaches in LA.

The Star

Bow Wow Wow

The Hit

“I Want Candy”

The Hook

“One day soon I’ll make you mine/Then we’ll have candy all the time”

The Video

Nymphet with Mohawk and tiny tattered dress gambols amid surf and sand.

The Backstory

After McLaren stole the Antz from Adam, he needed a new lead singer, and found Annabella Lwin, a 14 year old Anglo-Burmese cutie, working in a London drycleaners. McLaren wanted Bow Wow Wow to be the next Sex Pistols and hitched a cartload of subversive concepts--underage teen-sex, home taping (then the record industry’s boogieman) and unemployment-as-jolly-good-fun--to their captivating blend of African rhythms and dashing guitar licks. “C-30, C-60, C-90 Go!” didn’t create “God Save The Queen” shockwaves, though, and McLaren’s increasingly exploitative ploys (the kiddy-porn eroticism of songs like “Sexy Eiffel Tower,”  an attempt to launch a “junior Playboy” around the band, and an album cover featuring a nude Lwin) all backfired. After a conceptual makeover with the back-to-nature album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy, Bow Wow Wow finally broke through in the UK with “Go Wild In the Country”.  But by the time “I Want Candy” (a remake of The Strangeloves 1965 hit ) was romping up the Billboard charts McLaren had lost interest in the band, instead becoming a pop star in his own right with the bizarre hillybilly hip hop of “Buffalo Gals”.

The Other (UK) Hits

“C-30, C-60, C-90 Go!,” “Go Wild in the Country”

And now?

Lwin pursues a solo career, writes songs for movies and commercials, does charity performances, and explores Buddhist spirituality. She and bassist Leigh Gorman (now a producer in LA) reformed BWW for a late 90s tour and continue to perform live. Guitarist Matthew Ashman died from diabetes in 1995; drummer Dave Barbarossa plays in Chicane.