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JOHN LENNON – "(Just Like) Starting Over"
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I don’t remember John Lennon being killed. It would be more accurate to say I don’t remember John Lennon being alive. His murder is the first thing I knew about him, a founding fact of pop music: John Lennon is dead. For me he has been dead longe[…]

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ABBA – "Super Trouper"
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The mockery of pop stars who write songs about how tough their lives are is as routinised as any of the tour grind they complain about: a reliable cue to take a celebrity down a peg. “Super Trouper” seems to have escaped this, maybe because ridic[…]

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BLONDIE – "The Tide Is High"
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Horns pitched to sound like strings; strings played low and swinging like horns; a pot-pourri of roughly Caribbean percussion – instrumentally, “The Tide Is High” is delightful escapism. Even so it’s a little bit of a let-down. Debbie Harry g[…]

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BARBRA STREISAND – "Woman In Love"
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Barbra Streisand won her fame as a musical star – in other words an interpretative singer. And so “Woman In Love” raises a thorny question: what happens to such a singer when what she has to interpret is gibberish? The brothers Gibb[…]

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THE POLICE – "Don't Stand So Close To Me"
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A cold, claustrophobic record, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” picks meticulously over a grim situation – the interest of a young teacher in a much younger pupil. Sting’s director’s eye takes in staffroom dynamics, te[…]

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KELLY MARIE – "Feels Like I'm In Love"
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One of the things that gives 1980’s number ones a queer, lopsided aspect is the way there’s not much of a middleground between hits which emerged more or less direct from youth subcultures and those shepherded into popularity by the likes of Noel[…]

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THE JAM – "Start!"
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Not everyone in 1980 wanted to break from the past, but “Start!” is more than just recycling – in fact it’s one of Weller’s more experimental hits. The “Taxman” riff holds the track together, taking the place of a chorus, lending beat a[…]

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DAVID BOWIE – "Ashes To Ashes"
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One metatextual break-up record succeeds another: but here David Bowie is breaking up with himself, and pop is breaking up around him, its structures fragmenting and sickening as the track lurches on. The music is a patchwork – snips and echoes of […]

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ABBA – "The Winner Takes It All"
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“The Winner Takes It All” is pure theatre. In the sense that it’s a showstopper – Andersson and Ulvaeus had been getting itchy with the singles-albums routine and thinking towards the stage for a while, and this song by itself[…]

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ODYSSEY – "Use It Up And Wear It Out"
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“Use It Up” steamed to number one on the back of its chant-friendly refrain: “one, two, three – shake your body down!”. But, effective though the surging chorus is, there’s a lot more going on here. The band are mi[…]

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Latest comments on Popular

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  2. Yeah but. It was of it’s time, we loved it at the time, and perhaps most key of all, they’ve…

  3. Thankfully one of the quite-a-few records of 20+ years ago that I have yet to hear on any of the…

  4. I doubt Noel was stockpiling the "best" songs for his solo career, the last two albums had a record low…