105. Sugarcubes - Birthday (One Little Indian)

Two weeks at number one from 31st October 1987

As a kid, I developed a strange fascination for the furthest flung bits of the globe – the sparse, underpopulated areas which contained people I’d never met, whose beliefs and customs I’d never been exposed to. Living in London, I’d been introduced to all kinds of non-British people, even if they were just being irritating tourists in the street, but some places felt deeply enigmatic. I’d nag my Mum about this, initially in seriousness, then eventually just to be an annoying, repetitive arsehole.

“Mum, can we go to Greenland on holiday?” I asked.

“No. There’s nothing there,” she sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before.”
“There can’t just be nothing there.”
“It’s as close to nothing as you can get, it’s expensive, and we’re not paying all that money to go there and sit surrounded by snow and ice. If you want to go to Greenland, you’re going to have to pay for it when you get older.”

I still haven’t been to Greenland (largely because my wife isn't up for it either). I have, however, been to Iceland a few times, a country which was similarly at the forefront of my childhood obsessions. It’s not a cheap place to visit by anyone’s standards, but it is halfway to Canada, which has on occasion made it a handy stopping off point for those long trips to see my in-laws. You can pause, mood-bathe in the sheer weirdness of eternal daylight or constant nighttime, get scalped by a couple of Arctic Terns, eat some Puffin (or actually, don’t), wander around the wild coastline, or just walk the brightly coloured streets and feel as if you’re somewhere which has still clung on to its own distinct identity; which hasn’t been Big Macced up to its eyeballs. Aside from the hot thermal springs, a Penis Museum and the rugged landscape, there are no huge tourist attractions in Iceland as such, just the comforting sense that you’re somewhere which prides itself on its differences.

When “Birthday” was released, most of the music press seemed to focus on the country of Iceland rather than the group themselves – as if the entire population, rather than a single group, had released a new record. Smash Hits just listed some facts about the country in their “Mutterings” section and The Chart Show’s info boxes barely mentioned the group at all. Strange behaviour indeed, especially as The Sugarcubes weren’t even the first Icelandic group to get exposure in the UK; Mezzoforte had a sizeable jazz funk hit with “Garden Party” some years before (which we’ve covered in passing) and their parent Steinar label even had a British arm for a time, pumping out other Icelandic records to the British public by artists such as Puzzle, You And I and Joe Ericson.

The reason the music press seem to have suddenly become Icelandphiles became apparent when I finally saw One Little Indian’s original press release for “Birthday” - the vast bulk of it was covered in Iceland facts; proof if it were needed that many music journalists are idle buggers who, when faced with an inexplicable and leftfield record, would rather just copy the contents of the press release into their word processors.

Because “Birthday” is, even by the standards of 2026, a deeply strange record. The guitars whine and weep, bells ring as if struck by stray poltergeists, ponderous percussive elements wobble down stairs, then Bjork's echoing, sky-reaching howling seeps in to create something actually really very creepy. The word "beautiful" has been occasionally used to describe the single, but it's not a well sounding record to my ears; it reaches, it surges, it staggers, it collapses like a yearning ballad being played from a vinyl record on a boat at choppy seas. In fact, chances are if you investigated the noise, you would find an empty boat bereft of a crew, and a turntable inexplicably playing this – Bjork’s screech being answered by gulls.

Comparisons were made to the Cocteau Twins at the time, but while that group could stab discords and abrupt handbrake turns into their work, they were, for the most part, following fairly predictable melodic paths. “Birthday” see-saws uncomfortably, not wanting the listener to get too settled.

The video, screened on "The Chart Show" more times than I can sensibly count, adds to the sense of unease. The background picture is Bjork dancing and singing in an empty room with a darkened window. The foreground shot zooms in and out of Bjork's face, and as it zooms in she becomes pixellated like a Crimewatch video of a witness talking about a heinous murder. It's cheap and basic, but it again gives the impression of something slightly more sinister afoot.

Bjork later referred to this as a "tasteless pop song", clarifying: "It’s a story about a love affair between a five year old girl, a secret and a man who lives next door. The song’s called Birthday because it’s his fiftieth birthday... I was always changing my mind about what the lyrics should be about. I had the atmosphere right from the start but not the facts. It finally ended up concentrating on this experience I remembered having as a little girl, among many other little girls’ experiences. It’s like huge men, about fifty or so, affect little girls very erotically but nothing happens . . . nothing is done, just this very strong feeling. I picked on this subject to show that anything can affect you erotically; material, a tree, anything.”

Which doesn't really clarify anything concretely, except to say that from the foundations up (the premise, the overall sound, the delivery) "Birthday" is consciously awkward, naive and confused, reaching for past emotions it can't get to or properly explain, and seems to want to unnerve the listener with its ideas.

104. M|A|R|R|S - Pump Up The Volume (4AD)

Six weeks at number one from 19th September 1987

It’s a summer evening in 1987 and I’m stood on the doorstep to my parent’s garden. I'm gazing towards the fir trees at the rear, taking in the sun’s last rays and idly listening to Radio One burbling away. My Mum’s kitchen radio was a cheap and nasty thing, all treble and top-end, seemingly designed to emphasise the hiss and static of poorly tuned radio frequencies over and above any bass whatsover.

Not the best bit of kit on which to hear “Pump Up The Volume” for the first time, then, which chose that moment to leak out of an evening Radio One Dance programme. Every so often I heard the half-hearted, buried, almost robotic declaration “Pump up the volume”, followed by a series of disjointed slow wooshes, interjecting samples, and the noise of what sounded like electric guitars being scraped face-down along gravel. It’s not that I didn’t like the track, it’s just it sounded like a strange, half-hearted dub. I shrugged and played with the dog for a bit, no longer really paying much attention to the single. No point in getting too invested in something which was number 47 in the Record Mirror club play chart (or wherever). These records, these weirdly credited white labels – they came, they went. There was no reason to suppose this one would be any different.

The next time I heard the track it was through some proper speakers, and then I got it – by God, I got it. It felt breathtaking. Had I been old enough to be a clubber, I might have had some sense of where “Pump Up The Volume” came from, and why it had to happen, but I was thirteen years old and many years away from such delights. As such, the depth, the bass, the vast, almost overwhelming space to the single felt strange. The way sounds panned from the extreme right to the left hand side of the stereo, as if almost to place you as an insignificant, microscopic speck among the enormousness of the tune, felt like a new universe opening up; no wonder the promo video director made outer space the central theme.

The structure of “Pump Up The Volume” also felt interesting and novel at the time. The track’s main hook is the prowling bassline and rattling drum beats which underpin it, and that is a constant presence, along with that doomy, dramatic, reverberating piano note. It therefore feels as if you’re being driven along a brightly lit motorway, riding along the spine of that groove, but every so often, for whatever reason, the driver takes a slip road off to some strange town with different noises. You can still hear the thunder of the motorway close by, or feel its vibration, but in the meantime you’re stuck in tiny, tinpot towns along its verge, hearing weird interjections from the natives, before your driver corrects his course and lands back on the motorway again.

Samples are a huge part of the record, but they’re treated as brief visitors, strange interruptions to the transmission rather than equal partners. Ofra Haza visits, as do The Criminal Element Orchestra, James Brown (of course), Coldcut and Trouble Funk. None of these samples feels essential to the record, and none of them “sold it” as such; at first you felt you could potentially cut fast and loose and create your own version of “Pump Up The Volume” with different elements. The more you listened to it, though, and the more you absorbed, the more baked in it all became, each interruption feeling essential to the whole, an important landmark in the overall journey. Listening now, I wouldn’t want to lose any of these people, anymore than I’d want to get rid of the iron bridge across the river near my house. And despite the fact they’re nudges and strange interjections, its odd how fluid and natural they seem – even James Brown feels as if he’s always been nothing but a bit-part player in the magic.

The single finally ends on someone scratch-mixing over (what I’ve always assumed is) a record of someone whistling, like audio graffiti scribbled around someone’s strolling expression of idle happiness. The record is almost jazzy by that point, riffing on so many different grooves and elements that it feels busier than ever, but never quite losing its vastness. It’s truly fucking amazing and I never tire of listening to it.

102b. New Order - True Faith/ 103b. The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma

 

New Order: One more week at number one on 5th September 1987

The Smiths: One more week at number one on 12th September 1987

Here the record buyers go again, ruining the natural cut and flow of my blog with their historical purchasing decisions. 

As we've seen before, rebound number ones are very common in the NME Indie Chart - sometimes because a record doesn't immediately realise its full potential and has a second or even third wave of mainstream support ("Blue Monday"), sometimes because a limited edition single only offers a short-term threat to the top spot and allows its predecessor to take back the prize, and occasionally just because two extremely competitive singles are out at the same time. And that's essentially what happened here - "True Faith" and "Girlfriend In A Coma" were two huge alternative singles in September 1987, and while in most indie charts "True Faith" held the top spot confidently, that wasn't the case in the NME.

There's nothing more to say beyond that, so let's look at the new entries lower down those charts.

Week One

5. The Soup Dragons - Soft As Your Face (Raw TV)

Peak position: 4

The Soups return with a soft chunk of sixties inspired pop; there had been signs of this proclivity before,  most notably in the Byrdsian chimes of the wonderful "Head Gone Astray", but never had they been so directly expressed. These aren't touches or hints of an influence so much as a full-blown homage.

Despite this, the single was popular with fans and only just missed matching the Official Chart peak of its predecessor "Can't Take No More" (it peaked at number 66 versus that effort's number 65 placing). Its fey, summery paisley tones are pretty, merry, and unlike a lot of other groups from this period, not remotely snide or condescending towards late sixties pop - until I started writing this blog, I'd totally forgotten how many eighties indie acts suffered from the Austin Powers Tendency. Despite this, it feels like a weaker effort when placed up against the sheer power of their previous four singles, and as time went on, the group began to lean into this side of things increasingly often, sacrificing abrasion and firepower for slower, brighter harmonies. 

Meanwhile, we should obviously be grateful to Sean Dickson for the YouTube upload, but it's a shame his copy of the video has suffered a bit of damage over the years.

Week Two

8.  Big Black - He's A Whore / The Model (Blast First)

Peak position: 2

Steve Albini's gang return with two sonic blasts, neither of which are quite as uncompromising as I remember. "He's A Whore" sounded difficult for 1987 but wouldn't have been remotely out of place in 1993, thanks to his continued cultural spell-casting through the American alternative scene. In truth, it's beginning to sound strangely tepid these days, with those solid, steady beats making it seem almost (but not quite) as ordinary as a rough Beatles Cavern bootleg. 

A lot of people bought this for the cover Kraftwerk's "The Model" on the other side, which replaces basic electronica with guitars which sound like insects stuck on flypaper. On the general spectrum of punk cover versions, it's closer to Devo than The Dickies in its stylings, but once again doesn't sound as impressive or as mighty as I remember. Or maybe I've reached the point in my life where genre-bending covers no longer seem that interesting.

9. Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Mute)

Peak position: 3

This was taken from "Music For The Masses", the LP which turned the suburban Essex boys into a stadium band, and created so much of the trouble and confusion that lay ahead for them. "Never Let Me Down" is a beast worthy of any arena, though, an absolute juggernaut of a single which oscillates between slapping industrial rhythms and an almost symphonic sounding chorus. At this point, Anton Corbijn had also got fully on board to produce all their videos, grainy Super 8 affairs laced with dream-like imagery which worked with the music almost perfectly. Everything was gelling.

"Music For The Masses" came in a sleeve featuring a glossy photograph of a huge red megaphone, presumably broadcasting the album to an abandoned piece of twilight countryside, a string of lights from a road in the distance being the only sign of life. Internal sleeve shots showed the megaphone up mountains or by lakes and canals - in my mind, the bash and clatter of "Never Let Me Down Again" was coming out of all of them. What else would be? The track sounds like a proclamation, an announcement worthy of instant attention. It's a truly great single, the sound of all the best and most interesting elements of the eighties rolled into one ball.

At the time, it didn't really command the attention it warranted in the UK, slipping out as a cult single in common with all their other recent shots. Over time, though, it became the high point of their live set to fans, their hands waving in the air like fields of barley. It might seldom be heard on Radio Two, but it's as important to the clan as "Enjoy The Silence". 

26. Poison - Cry Tough (Music For Nations)

Peak position: 26

Meanwhile, here was the "true" sound of the stadiums and concert halls of America, operating in tandem with Depeche's ongoing threat. Poison's glam metal feels strangely cushioned and polished by our modern day standards and expectations of rock, closer to One Direction on one of their glam tips than any of the current pretenders. Nonetheless, something about that gloss and sheen obviously appealed just slightly to the Manic Street Preachers, whose first album "Generation Terrorists" occasionally has a little bit of that cushioned blow to its production.

It's also surprisingly enjoyable, its daftness and flamboyance seeming as breezy and daffy as a Dick Emery sketch these days. 

28. The Three Johns - Never And Always (Abstract)

Peak position: 7

In which the Johns link up with Adrian Sherwood to explosive effect, causing them to sound more challenging and current than any of the other new entries in the chart this week - those rattlesnake drum machine rolls and jackhammer beats suddenly give the group a modern but also deeply threatening foil to react against. It's nasty but strangely compelling, not Indie Dance in any conventional sense of the phrase, but persuasive nonetheless. Probably their most astonishing single.

For the complete charts, please go to the UKMix Forums

Number One In The Official Charts

Rick Astley - "Never Gonna Give You Up" (RCA)

103. The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma (Rough Trade)

One week at number one on 29th August 1987

Sometimes, amidst a string of often more noble efforts, one particular single becomes a catchphrase in a band’s career. It’s not necessarily their best single, or the most advanced, or even their biggest hit; it’s the one that seems, rightly or wrongly, to define their whole ethic to the Mums, Dads and "squares".

While watching “The Chart Show” in the summer of 1987, the video for “Girlfriend In A Coma” came on and my parents immediately began spluttering in disbelief. “Oh, come on. Is this a joke?” they roared; a question that probably needed to be asked, since Morrissey was, as ever, playing his role dryly. “Well, I’ve heard everything now”, my Dad muttered, and from that day forth, whenever Morrissey appeared on television, “Girlfriend In A Coma” would be brought up. To my parents, Morrissey was no longer the man with some flowers up his bum – his previous identifying factor in my house - but the bloke who had a partner in intensive care.

“Is this his new one, then?” my Dad would ask. “Is it about his girlfriend again? Is she out of hospital now? Well, at least he’s got that going for him, anyway”.

And it didn’t stop with my parents. Smash Hits listed the single as having one of 1987’s very many “rum” song titles. It also later became the name of a reasonably good novel by Smiths fan Douglas Copeland, and I’ve also seen poetry events named after it (“Girlfriend In A Comma”) and reviews of curry houses referring to it (“Girlfriend In A Korma”, even though that doesn’t really work unless the eatery involves cannibalism). On and on the track’s influence churns, despite the fact that it’s not exactly a radio favourite – and is obviously banned from every hospital radio playlist in the land – and wasn’t really regarded as much more than a quirky glitch in the Smiths catalogue at the time. It was reviewed favourably enough and sold healthily, but it hardly sat alongside “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” or “This Charming Man” as being their most respected work.

Firstly, as to the completely fair question about whether this is a joke – I would argue (as I did with my parents at the time) that it’s really more of a cheeky homage. “Girlfriend In A Coma” feels spectacularly indebted to the sixties death disc, although instead of The Shangri-Las “Leader Of The Pack”, it appears to be taking its cue from Twinkle’s much more mournful, understated motorcycle crash 45 “Terry”.

Twinkle was supposed to have been a superstar in the sixties, a prodigious teenage singer-songwriter whose pop songs seeped with vulnerability and introversion. Instead, the music business pulled her in then spat her out with distaste after her attempts to follow up her big hit faltered. Her second single “Golden Lights” was a mournful study of the downside of being a famous person’s other half, and was actually written while she was dating Dec Cluskey of The Bachelors. The public only cared enough to take it to number 21, and it would be her second and final hit.

The Smiths covered it in 1986 and placed it as the extra track on the 12” single of “Ask”, so they had already doffed a cap to her work. “Girlfriend In A Coma” appears to be looking more in the direction of “Terry”, noting its strangely hushed and understated delivery of a deeply controversial subject matter (it was effectively banned by the BBC for its morbidity). If the subject matter of the leathered-up motorcycle tragedy of “Terry” is vaguely rock and roll – even though its shuffling rhythms and delicately plucked instruments barely qualify – “Girlfriend” erases every last final drop of teenage rebellion from its likely influence and is lyrically stark and almost weirdly understated.

Marr’s simple, unambitious but pretty acoustic guitar lines combine with Morrissey’s softly sung pleas of “I know, I know it’s serious”, “No I don’t want to see her” and, contradicting himself in his mental muddle, “Would you please let me see her”, to create what can only be described as a sombre lullaby of panic. The string section adds some drama to the mix, but it’s ultimately an exhausted collection of thoughts, positive and negative, guilty and concerned (“There are times when I could have strangled her/ but you know, I would hate anything to happen to her”).

There’s an alternative reading to the above, of course. Just as you might listen to Cliff Richard’s “Carrie” and suspect the man at Carrie’s old address had murdered her, I’ve often had a slight feeling of unease that Morrissey is hinting that he is in some way responsible for the coma. His lines about murdering or strangling her followed with “you know, I would hate anything to happen to her” feel almost as if he’s protesting too much, playing a role; yes, of course we regularly bickered, your honour, but it wasn’t me in the greenhouse with the quiff and the cricket bat.

The only thing that scuppers the above is the track’s genuine sense of kitchen sink distress, the repetition and disorder. Where Twinkle sang “Don’t do it, don’t do it!” Morrissey also repeats himself and circles slowly around the truth, arriving thereas the reality of his situation cements itself (“Let me whisper my last goodbyes”).

Of course, I have no doubt that the single probably isn’t intended as an entirely serious artistic statement – it’s The Smiths attempting sixties baroque pop but amping the tragedy and the melodrama to the max, taking the ideas as far as they’ll go before the balloon bursts and the idea becomes too ridiculous to contemplate. It walks a very fine line between homage and parody, and in its own way is as attention seeking as “Panic” or “Shoplifters Of The World Unite” – only the idea seems to have had much more durability and continued shock value than either of those, the thought of quiet ballads to comatose lovers being too ludicrous for some to handle.

102. New Order - True Faith (Factory)

Three weeks at number one from 8th August 1987

In the eighties, New Order never really seemed like the kind of group to embrace the idea of a "Greatest Hits" album. Snapping all their 45rpm moments into one neat, consumer-friendly brochure for casual shoppers seemed a strange idea for a group (and record label) who were against the idea of even advertising their new releases. Nonetheless, 1987 saw the arrival of "Substance", one of the best "Best Ofs" the entire decade had to offer; beautifully packaged (especially the cassette) and near-perfect in its contents. 

It also resulted in New Order being given a tight, pressing deadline by their label boss Tony Wilson – to record two new tracks in London with producer Stephen Hague, one of which would be used on the compilation. Studio time was booked for ten days with Hague, a producer the band hadn’t worked with before, but whose reputation had begun to spike due to his recent work with the Pet Shop Boys. Perhaps somewhat foolishly, the band entered the studio with just a handful of ideas.

While Tony Wilson made several nervous phone calls to check things were progressing well, the band toyed and tinkered away and began to forge the basis of two songs which would become “True Faith” and “1963”. Problematically though, Bernard Sumner hadn’t written lyrics for either, and Hague began to grow impatient, stating that he found it extremely hard to understand what direction the song should be taking without a clear lyrical map to follow. Sumner ummed and ahhed, then welched on his promise to come up with something to an agreed deadline, until he was “accidentally” locked inside the West London flat the band were renting and left without food for an entire day (history does not record who was responsible for this, or indeed whether it was deliberate).

Left without anything to do apart from stew in his own hunger and misfortune, Sumner turned out possibly the finest set of lyrics of his career for one of the tracks (and some of the most baffling ones ever for the B-side). “True Faith” is overwhelmingly about drug addiction, though the band ultimately backtracked on the original draft for one of the verses, the much more explicit “When I was a very small boy/ very small boys talked to me/ now that we’ve grown up together/ they’re all taking drugs with me”. Doing so, and changing the final line to “They’re afraid of what they see”, has probably given the song an ambiguity and mystique it may otherwise not have had, besides ensuring larger amounts of radio airplay.

The end result is a track which sounds both euphoric and troubled, fresh and exotic and yet disintegrating. It skips and bounces, and has a chorus which could almost be heard as celebratory, but never once sounds truly triumphant, and always feels giddy and unstable. The chimes fall and despond, those bizarre panpipe sounds, which seem as if they would ordinarily belong on a New Age gift shop CD, hum in the background like the soundtrack to a yogic daze, and Sumner delivers lines which are appropriately contradictory – the reserved joy of “A certain sense of liberty” sits alongside the despair of “I don’t care if I’m here tomorrow”, while the line “I used to think that the day would never come” could sit in either camp. Are you delighted that you’re finally here, bathed in sunlight, watching yourself from the outside, or horrified? Or both?

Sumner utterly nails it with the simple line “the childhood I lost replaced by fear” too; making the way addicts self-medicate their way out of their own prisons a central focal point of the song. The song is not glorifying the use of heroin, or indeed any other drug, but instead trying to understand why it became such a huge issue in the mid-eighties. In doing so, it’s more empathetic than any number of grainy, gritty Government adverts where a narrator whispered, in a voice somewhere between Gary Lineker and David Attenborough, that if you took it, you’d start to look “tired… and spotty” (we all looked a bit tired and spotty in those days, whether we were on or off The Horse). Musically and lyrically, it’s a hazy, faded, pastel shaded sketch of a situation which is portrayed as a frustrated, fragile and finite kind of luke-warm happiness, one where the sharp hooks of reality are capable of penetrating the bliss. Even if New Order hadn’t changed the original lyrics, it’s hard to hear how anybody would have thought the song was written in an approving way.