24. Yazoo - Don't Go (Mute)

Eight weeks at number one from 24th July 1982

When we bumped into Yazoo’s last single “Only You”, there was a sense the new duo were just settling into their working relationship. For whatever its strengths and commerciality, “Only You” was a track Vince Clarke had lying around before Yazoo came into being, and had initially considered hawking around to other groups. At the point of writing it, his working relationship with Alison Moyet hadn’t really been instigated, so what the public were left to buy was Moyet interpreting a track which at one point could just as easily have been handed to Depeche Mode.

“Don’t Go” is the first example of a Yazoo single where the fork in the road, the divergence between Mode and Clarke, is obvious. If Clarke’s earliest work with Depeche Mode fizzes and bops, “Don’t Go” bops and slams. The drum machine is approximating an R&B/gospel rhythm, the central synth riff – in all other respects close enough to something Clarke might have tried circa “Just Can’t Get Enough” – has more dancefloor friendly shades to it, not least the aspects where the familar high-end squeakiness is replaced by digital bubbling or low, bassy grumbles.

It’s actually less ambitious melodically than a lot of Depeche Mode’s earliest work. “New Life” was busy and surprisingly ambitious, always introducing new twists, while “Don’t Go” finds its groove by the twentieth second and sticks rigidily to it, only offering slight variations.

Unlike “New Life”, though, Clarke has a singer who can be ambitious on his behalf. While Dave Gahan is a strong vocalist, his performances from 1981 right through to the present day have tended to stick doggedly to a mournful mid-range. You could argue that it forced Depeche Mode to become more dramatic, more symphonic around him; his vocals have generally acted as the central anchor, requiring the splashes of colour to occur elsewhere in the songs. Moyet, on the other hand, veers from threatening low growls here right up to desperate shrieks. She supplies the dramatic flourishes while Clarke is free, for the first time, to let the central hooks hit a steady dancefloor friendly groove without worrying too much about frilly embellishments.

With it, the pair also managed to take early eighties synth pop to slightly different places from their peers. If you were being charitable, you could argue that it was fresh and new, and that it signalled that Clarke knew synths were about more than just aloofness and futurism, but in truth they weren’t the first to realise this. Giorgio Moroder picked up the new technology and discovered that it could represent sex, desire, vulnerability and danceability in the previous decade. All Clarke and Moyet were really doing was picking up the baton and understanding that they didn’t need permission to take electronics into these areas. Their approach here, a kind of gospel tinged New Romanticism, did however slowly nose away at the boundaries of what was possible, impressing critics without frightening either the school disco dancefloor or Clarke’s earliest fans.

“Don’t Go” is one of those rare examples of two stylistically very different individuals realising the qualities they have in tandem, and working them through with maximum effectiveness. It peaked at number 3 in the national charts.

Away From The Number One Spot

Key New Entries In Week One


9. Peter & The Test Tube Babies – “Run Like Hell” (No Future)

Major Punk Pathetique movers Peter and Company issued this cult single about the problems created by copping off with another man’s girlfriend by mistake. It’s a rumbling, desperate little number which is at least realistic – they manage to summarise a drunken experience of mine at the Reading Festival with tremendous accuracy. Yes, readers, I did run like hell.

This eventually peaked at number three.



11. Weekend - “Past Meets Present” (Rough Trade)

“Past Meets Present” is a strange and unsettling piece of indie-pop, almost helped in its eeriness by its lo-fi production values. Listening to it feels like stumbling across a lost seventies demo tape with strange markings on the label, the billowing, ambitious arrangements occasionally being pushed underwater by peculiar minor keys and floating sax sounds.

Nearly twenty years on from this, groups like Broadcast would pick up on similar atmospheres and take them to more unsettling places – but this single is both modest sounding and astonishingly ahead of its time. It would eventually reach the number 4 spot.



18. Cravats – “Rub Me Out” (Crass)

Stumbling, staggering anarcho-punk here collides unexpectedly with a wall of discordant saxophones, then seems to recover itself again, then doesn’t. At its most intense, this sounds like the soundtrack to a disturbing Hungarian animation on early eighties Channel 4. At its most relaxed, it’s like a hesitant bedroom demo of a Stiff Little Fingers record. Proof, if proof were needed, that the line between 00s anti-folk and punk can often be somewhat blurred.

“Rub Me Out” slowly crawled to the number 16 position before sinking.

24. Lords Of The New Church – “Open Your Eyes” (Illegal)

“Video games train the kids for war”, warn the Lords on this single, while backed by icy, sterile synths and a restrained rock tempo. “Open your eyes/ see the lies right in front of ya!”

Lyrically speaking, “Open Your Eyes” could have belonged to any number of the Oi or second wave punk bands littering the chart, but rather than rushing forward with teeth gnashing, the group restrain themselves, opting for atmospheric washes. In the process they produce something that sounds like a 21st Century Lostwave kid’s idea of an eighties rock record – ideal to be heard while surrounded by plastic plants in an abandoned shopping mall food court.

“Open Your Eyes” yo-yoed up and down the chart listlessly, eventually peaking at number 10.



27. Lydia Lunch & Rowland S Howard – “Some Velvet Morning” (4AD)

The ubiquity of Lee Hazelwood’s “Some Velvet Morning” in the last few decades has started to make covering it feel like a hokey idea – God almighty, even Bobby Gillespie and Kate Moss got their claws into it during the early 00s.

Credit to Lunch and Howard, though, they picked up on the song’s subversion and creepiness way before. Depending on your mood, this is either an unbearable, out-of-tune din or knifes right into the heart of the song’s intent.

The track eventually climbed to number 19.



29. The Gist – “Love At First Sight” (Rough Trade)

Half of Young Marble Giants sounding surprisingly fluid and funky, “Love at First Sight” offers only marginal progression from its mellow, laidback beginnings, yet also feels strangely shorter than its 3:44 playing time.

The track was covered by the French artist Etienne Daho as “Paris Le Flore”, resulting in it becoming a huge hit in that country despite offering very few additional commercial flourishes. Sometimes the French just know. The British obviously don’t, though – this only got to number 17 in the NME indie chart.




Week Two


7. Scritti Politti – “Asylums In Jerusalem” (Rough Trade)

While it’s curious to revisit Scritti’s earliest moments and hear the tension of Green Gartside’s ambition pushing against the boundaries of a rough production, it also makes it immediately obvious that they were only ever going to be temporary residents of indieland.

Launched mere weeks before their debut album “Songs To Remember” hit the national top twenty, “Asylums In Jerusalem” got everyone hot under the collar enough to eventually peak at number two in the indie charts, where it remained for several weeks.




16. A Certain Ratio – “Guess Who?” (Factory)

While ACR’s records may have been described as avant-funk by some in the early eighties, time has caught up with them and some now sound surprisingly conventional. The skittering rhythms and spiking slap bass here ensure there’s always enough going on to keep your feet twitching, but there are moments where the vocal exhortations to dance sound closer to a doped up Steve Walsh than some hip Manc things. “Work that body!” they exclaim, not entirely convincingly.

Still, they manage to sound like everything that might have been happening on a dancefloor in 1982 (and beyond) thrown into a cement mixer and swirled around for seven minutes. There are even unexpected sparkles of cocktail party piano amidst the clutter of ideas.

The single would eventually reach number 12.




24. The Straps – “Brixton” (Donut)

Scratchy old punk racket about life at the bottom end of the Victoria line, which seemed to both celebrate and demonise living there at the same time. “Too much trouble on the streets/ but I’m not gonna leave/ if I go anywhere else/ I`ve got nothing to achieve!” the squat dwellers bark, and you believe them. “Brixton” sounds like a one-take rush of garage drama.

26. Pale Fountains – “Something On My Mind” (Operation Twilight)

Michael Head is one of the few indie chart presences of 1982 whose ongoing work still managed to attract press swooning towards the end of the 90s and even early 00s as well. He eventually relaunched his career with Shack, but Pale Fountains were the first vehicle for his ideas.

“Something On My Mind” is a restless single which owes as much to Scott Walker and Love as it does its immediate indie chart neighbours – gentle, bossa-nova infused neo-psychedelia you could lean back in your art deco chair to, if only it weren’t for the continuing, uneasy sense that something is not quite right at the heart of its world.

The track eventually climbed to number 15.




Week Three

26. Bad Brains – “I Love I Jah” (Alternative Tentacles)

The Clash and Public Image Limited tried to nod and wink in the direction of reggae and dub to hint to other punk artists that their template didn’t have be based on a tantrum in a dustbin. It’s surprising that so few took the lead, and of the groups who did, one of the most enduring exponents happened to be from the USA.

Bad Brains were unpredictable, absorbing a number of seemingly disparate genres to powerful effect, but “I Love I Jah” managed to stay on the mellow side of the dub tracks.

27. Raincoats – “No One’s Little Girl” (Rough Trade)

Both low key threatening and strangely twee, “No One’s Little Girl” proves how much The Raincoats had an impact and influence far beyond their initial recordings. While the group were endlessly trumpeted by Kurt Cobain, the effect on Riot Grrl and indiepop is noticeable here too. This achieves a lot without once seeming as if its stretching itself, swirling in a world of its own, toytown without actually sounding infantile.




28. Monochrome Set – “The Mating Game” (Cherry Red)


The Monochrome Set’s tight, dorky approximations of a sixties Beat past infuriated as many people as they delighted, and admittedly “The Mating Game” veers dangerously close to Thamesmen-esque pastiche in places.

The early eighties offered opportunities for this kind of cutesy retro-leaning pop, but the Set were too knowing and insincere to mop up any Mari Wilson fans or second wave mods, and were left to wink and “la la la” to their own small dedicated fanbase in the corner. 

Week Four


8. Subhumans – “Religious Wars” (Spiderleg)

More buzzsaw punk, this time from Wiltshire’s market town anarchos Subhumans, who were no more shy about tackling the topics of war, religious violence and intolerance than any of their urban brothers and sisters.

“Religious Wars” does what its says on the tin, kicking up an atheistic racket. It’s hard to hear why it was better than any number of other punk singles doing the rounds at the time, but a distinct number of second wave fans clearly had it on their shopping lists, causing it to peak at number 5.

25. Riot Squad – “Fuck The Tories” (Rondolet)

This one begs the question – while people may have been muttering “Fuck The Tories” under their breath for aeons, were Riot Squad the first to use it as a commercial slogan? These days you can buy elaborate “Fuck The Tories” jewellery, T-shirts and probably beanbags for all I know, but the group spat it out on 45 way before all that aggressive craft shop hoopla started.

It sounds exactly as you’d expect, angry and demanding. “We don’t want no more of this!” bark the band regularly, but they’d have a seriously long wait before any change of government emerged.

This would eventually peak at number 21.

27. March Violets – “Religious As Hell” (Red Rhino)

Backed by a twitching dance beat New Order wouldn’t have been shy about demoing at this point, “Religious As Hell” otherwise doesn’t take too many risks, sticking to its stabbing post-punk template groove rather than making too many concessions to disco.



Week Five

7. Dead Kennedys – “Bleed For Me” (Statik)

Although Dead Kennedys never quite cut into the skin of the British mainstream again following the “Too Drunk To Fuck” controversy of 1981, they remained a huge force in the punk scene. “Bleed For Me” shows most of the pretenders in the UK indie chart how it’s really done, with blunt and effective immediacy. Like many of their fellow travellers, the Kennedys cared little about production flourishes or experimentation, but their force of attack is so astonishing that even the most jaded middle aged ears can feel throttled.

“Bleed For Me” eventually reached number 3.




16. Blitz – “Warriors” (No Future)

Listening to “Warriors” immediately after “Bleed For Me” is a cruel exercise – here we have two groups cut from a not dissimilar cloth, one containing a frontman who was among the most charismatic and borderline terrifying individuals of his era, the other sounding like a hoarse chant leader at a political rally.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a rally leader; in many periods of history, taking the rabble on a journey with you rather than terrifying them into awed submission has been the most noble and effective tactic. Blitz didn’t have a hope in hell of changing the world, though, and in “Warriors” it’s not even really clear how they would do it, though they bark “Send our regards to a nation on fire/ And with love a bouquet of barbed wire”. It’s one to pump your fist to when you’ve become too drunk to remember what made you so angry earlier in the day. Evidently enough people felt that way to enable this single to get to the number 3 position.

27. UK Decay – “Rising From The Dread” (Corpus Christi)

During a number of early episodes of “Only Fools and Horses”, Rodney Trotter can be seen wearing a UK Decay t-shirt, a creative decision which was probably utterly meaningless to 99% of the viewers watching the programme, but showed how much thought went into the series. A lesser sit-com would probably have bundled young Rodney into a Jam t-shirt and had done with it, picking a much easier cultural signifier.

UK Decay, however, were one of the era’s ultimate cult post-punk bands, beloved by skint council estate plonkers and cutting edge students alike. “Rising From The Dread” was the sixth and final single prior to their 21st Century reformation, put out by Penny Rimbaud of Crass on the Corpus Christi label as the band’s A&R situation became complicated. It’s occasionally gothic, frequently simplistic, but constantly restless. If you wanted to get into a group with anarcho leanings, who were also post-punk and occasionally slightly macabre, they ticked absolutely all the boxes. 

Week Six


11. Disrupters: “Shelter For The Rich” (Radical Change)

Chugging along like a knackered diesel train, “Shelter For The Rich” was a budget-priced single slipped out by the Norwich punks, who were operating in an entirely different corner of the city’s scene to The Higsons and The Farmer’s Boys.

The only real surprise “Shelters From The Rich” offers is its surprisingly straightforward sixties beat riffage, which leaves the track sounding like somebody being very angry indeed over the top of some discarded Animals demos.

There’s no doubt that the Disrupters wouldn’t have cared about such capitalist fripperies as chart positions, but this managed to climb one notch higher to number 10.

17. UB40 – “So Here I Am” (DEP International)

The final single from the group’s third album “UB44”, “So Here I Am”’s busy arrangement scribbles hastily all over the group’s typically mellow approach, jazzier than Ali Campbell’s angst-ridden lyrics arguably need.

It’s a slightly daring record for a successful group to slide out, and despite everything still managed to get to number 25 in the national charts. It got to number 4 in the indies.

27. Modern English – “I Melt With You” (4AD)

Another example of a single which had only a marginal impact in the UK but managed to burst through in another country, “I Melt With You” climbed to number 78 in the USA Billboard charts.

Its failure in the UK is perplexing; more than most of the tracks littering the indie top 30, there’s an obvious pop hit bursting to reach a bigger audience here. Against a simplistic indie backbeat, “I Melt With You” chimes a timeless melody, a celebratory fanfare of romance. It’s the kind of track critics would applaud as being art-pop at the time, but this side of the ocean it could only achieve a number 18 indie chart placing.

While it’s parent album “After The Snow” sold half a million copies in the USA, back home in the UK the group would remain slightly unfashionable Essex lads without the same critical clout as other romantic janglers on the scene.



Week Seven

14. Meteors – “Mutant Rock” (WXYZ)

Psychobilly has had a strangely marginal presence in the indie chart so far, despite being a huge cult movement at the time. In The UK, The Meteors were key exponents, and “Mutant Rock” is typical of their work, showing that the early, unfussy roots of rock and roll and the sneer of punk could meet without any difficulty at all.

Where most punk rock fizzes with anger and fills every single millisecond of a record with noise, “Mutant Rock” isn’t afraid to sound hollow in places, never losing its cool if it can help it. Like their elders The Comets, they knew that sometimes you had to step back and let the bass twang and the grooves breathe.

It eventually peaked at number 7.



21. GBH – “Sick Boy” (Clay)

The other end of the spectrum. More frantic hardcore from GBH, thundering and thrashing for two and a half minutes without the slightest sign of rest. It’s almost exhausting.



28. Nico – “Procession” (1/2)

Nico may have been part of sixties lore by 1982, but “Procession”, produced by Martin Hannett, sounds more uncompromising than almost all of the singles around it, never mind the work of her decade’s peers. A mournful, windblown melody emerges behind monotonous tribal drums which sounds both primitive and alien at the same time; way before Scott Walker decided to get truly experimental, Nico was taking us to uncomfortable places where we weren’t altogether sure we wanted to be.

Enough people got over the shock to get this to number 18 in the indie chart, though.




Week Eight


11. The Ejected – “Have You Got 10p” (Riot City)

A minute-and-a-half of punk strumming and plonking which sounds almost close to skiffle in places – apt enough given the slogan that winds its way through this record, I suppose. It’s brief, to the point and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and enough people appeared to have enough 10 pence pieces to get it to number 8 in the NME indies.



14. Dead Or Alive – “The Stranger” (Black Eye)

Dead or Alive’s pre-dancefloor days may have become relatively forgotten in the years since. Had the marvellous “Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” never happened, there’s little doubt that some of their earliest singles would be getting love from the millennials and Gen Y kids desperate to get a fix of moody gothwave.

“The Stranger” sounds mysterious and alluring even in Pete Burns’s dramatic hands, winding around a weary but cautioning melody. “Something tells me something’s terribly wrong,” Burns sings towards the end, perhaps guilty of telling where he should be showing. Not that this was enough to prevent the track from climbing to number 5.




29. Nightingales – “Peel Session” (Cherry Red)

It’s curious that The Nightingales would be the first group to issue a Peel Session as an actual single. While only labelled as “Peel Session” on the NME chart (Cherry Red opted for the more straightforward “Nightingales EP”), this was nonetheless the group’s March 1982 radio session immortalised on vinyl.

Clive Selwood’s Strange Fruit label, dedicated solely to Auntie’s archive, wouldn’t emerge until 1986, but in the meantime Robert Lloyd and the boys obviously saw a benefit to issuing a Beeb recording rather than something cheap and scratchy sounding of their own. Nonetheless, the tracks maintain the jaggedness you’d expect, affording the group a valuable early indie chart entry.

Number Ones In The National Charts

Irene Care: "Fame" (RSO)

Dexy's Midnight Runners: "Come On Eileen" (Mercury)
Survivor: "Eye Of The Tiger" (Scotti Brothers)