IMAGINATION AND REALITY
THE STORY OF 1981
1981 UNFOLDED WITH AN EXPLOSION OF CREATIVITY. SYNTHS TOOK OVER THE HIT PARADE, THE NEW ROMANTICS ENJOYED THEIR LAST HURRAH, FUNK, RAP AND RETRO OPENED NEW TERRITORY. WAS THIS THE GREATEST YEAR IN POP?
MATTHEW LINDSAY
Pop music had faced 1980 brandishing both awe and terror. Synths blared out as a fanfare for futurism via such releases as John Foxx’s Metamatic and with OMD and The Human League making startling appearances on Top Of The Pops. In these hyped-up times catastrophe always seemed to be lurking just around the corner, and nuclear-themed hits (Kate Bush’s Breathing, UB40’s Earth Dies Screaming) all warned of impending apocalypse. Meanwhile a dressy, artistic innovation shone through with Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes video, co-starring Blitz grand poo-bah Steve Strange, tapping into New Romanticism. Oracles from it came via Strange’s Visage (Fade To Grey) and Spandau Ballet’s To Cut A Long Story Short. Another flash of colour came from Adam and the Ants, telegenic raiders of the dressing-up box. New heroes emerged, old ones were lost: Lennon’s December assassination rocked a music world already shaken by Ian Curtis’ May suicide. Lennon-related releases haunted the charts in early 1981. Nostalgia was in the air.
But so too was the shock of the synthetic new. Ultravox’s Vienna – melancholic, electronic Euro-drama – was only kept off the top spot by Joe Dolce’s Shaddap Your Face. Vienna came with a Russell Mulcahydirected mini-movie depicting a decadent upper class on the brink of decay (Brideshead Revisited reached TV screens in ’81). Dressing up and having elegant fun while a tarantula crawled across your face seemed to sum up the year in a nutshell.
As Vienna soundtracked 1981’s chilly early months, three debut records showed how synths would shape much of the year ahead. January’s Kids In America by Kim Wilde, upholstered her father Marty’s vintage pop sensibility in brother Ricky’s nods to Numan and OMD. Clad in Oxfam chic, Wilde, aka the ‘Bardot of rock’, followed it up with Chequered Love, Water On Glass and November’s grown-up story-song soundscape, Cambodia.
Duran Duran‘s Planet Earth, made by a band that was committed to style and success and hot-housed on the dancefloor, was released in February, demonstrating how electronics could be subsumed within a perfectly-balanced pop package. The same month, Spandau’s Journeys To Glory hit the shelves, while Duran’s own album followed in June. Video was seized upon. Girls On Film, directed by Godley and Crème, exposed them to America’s MTV, launched that August (minus sauciness).
POWER IN THE POCKET
Depeche Mode’s Dreaming Of Me, also out in February, hailed the arrival of purely electronic teen dreams via an independent label, Daniel Miller’s Mute. Synth-pop boomed as the instrument swiftly became cheaper and more portable, enabling the infamous episode where Depeche Mode carried theirs on the train to TOTP from Basildon once New Life hit that summer.
September’s Just Can’t Get Enough went Top 10, as did debut album Speak & Spell.
Synth-pop carried some strange cargo into the charts in ’81– just listen once more to Landscape’s macabre hit Einstein-A-Go- Go. OMD went Top 5 with the ethereal Souvenir and the arcane Joan Of Arc, while Architecture & Morality – saturated in Eno-soundscapes and proggy Mellotrons – became a No.1 album. OMD’s heroes Kraftwerk reissued The Model, slowly ascending to an ’82 No.1, paired with ’81’s Computer Love. On Computer World, the Düsseldorf pioneers tapped away at their Texas and Casio calculators and into the tech zeitgeist as computers (US’s IBM, UK’s Sinclair ZX81) entered the home. Less commercial electronic music came via Mute’s Fad Gadget, the shadow to Depeche Mode’s light, with Frank Tovey as Mr Punch adorning Incontinent’s cover.
Inside lurked a scary carnival ride of electro-nightmares and bad behaviour.
When DAF weren’t on Eurythmics’ Conny Plank-produced In The Garden, they were getting NME’s Paul Morley all hot and bothered with Alles Ist Gut (“slimy, steamy sex music”). Equally murky and ominous were Cabaret Voltaire’s Red Mecca and Byrne/Eno’s My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, babbling with evangelical voices as conservatism rose, east and west.