![]() “The album’s opener provides the perfect vibe that sets the rest of the record. Some 80s bands (Prefab Sprout) were masters at this balancing act although Style Council didn’t get it right most of the time, this single is a success.” – Bona Drag, RYM 8. ![]() There’s a very thin, subjective line separating a song from “lame as hell” and “awesomely poignant”, and it’s hard to end up on the right side. “Something I’ve been fascinated with lately is the dichotomy between “cheesy” and “touching”. “Up until the release of You Do Something To Me some 20 years later, You’re The Best Thing was the go-to Weller Wedding song of choice, with its beautiful glissando guitar line and Curtis falsetto it remains one of his most complete all-round songs.” – Paperback Rioter, 9. Oh yeah, and they looked fantastic as well.” – Martin Freeman, GQ Magazine 10. There were songs to uplift, songs to break your heart, and tunes you could hear in a club that only required you dance your ass off. And if politics wasn’t your thing, no matter. They were able to smuggle quite subversive stuff into the Top Of The Pops studio and Smash Hits magazine. ![]() None of these did it as sweetly and commercially as The Style Council. Jerry Dammers, Elvis Costello, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, and a host of British reggae artists such as Aswad, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Steel Pulse were all writing material that overtly touched on social and political issues. Contrary to the subsequent prevailing myth, the 80s were about more than big hair and yachts. Lyrically, they managed to stand out at a time when there were some very good writers around. To go from straight-ahead jazz to sweet soul, impressionistic classical to early UK rap, stripped-down acoustic to house, they covered more ground than your average top ten pop idol. The breadth of their ambition over the course of six-odd years was admirable: no two albums were alike certainly, but the same was true of the singles. Firstly, of course, the content: musically, The Style Council were way ahead of most of the opposition, as far as UK pop was concerned. I guess in the time-honoured tradition of ‘pop’ being about form and content, they sure did bring both. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why they made such an impression on me. Who am I kidding? Yes, and to my adulthood as well. “The Style Council gave so much to my youth. Very few people will have anything like the same top ten. But when I remember one, I make up a playlist for it! These are my favourite Style Council songs, nothing more, nothing less. It turns out that not as many acts meet that criterion as I would have thought. Someone said that you only really like a band if you have real trouble deciding what your top 10 songs of theirs are.
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