Modern English “I Melt with You” released

I Melt with You Modern English

Writer(s): Robbie Grey, Gary McDowell, Richard Brown, Michael Conroy, Stephen Walker (see lyrics here) Released: August 1982 First Charted: March 26, 1983 Peak: 76 US, 7 AR, 1 CO, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, 0.08 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 6.0 radio, 52.5 video, 112.08 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The British new wave band Modern English formed in Colchester, Essex, England, in 1979. They released an independent single that year, followed by two more, before their 1981 debut album, Mesh & Lace. That album showed a Joy Division influence, but the follow-up, 1982’s After the Snow had a keyboard influence more in the vein of Simple Minds or Duran Duran. The album’s second single, “I Melt with You,” proved to be the band’s pinnacle. It took awhile to catch on in the United States, but gathered momentum at radio stations as an import single. It then gained popularity in dance clubs and on MTV. It was also featured in the 1983 teenage rom-com, Valley Girl. While it only reached the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, it was a top-10 album rock hit and ranks amongst the top 500 songs ever played on U.S. radio. WK A Billboard review described te song as a “dreamy, acoustic-edged rocker.” WK The Chicago Tribune’s Chrissie Dickinson cited the song’s “irresistible guitar melody, danceable beat, and heartfelt call and response vocals.” WKAll Music Guide’s Tom Demalon called it “one of the most enduring songs of the new wave era.” WK The lyrics came in just minutes via a stream-of-consciousness style while he sat on the floor of a flat in London. SF While it is a love song, it comes from a bleak place, depicting a couple making love during the dropping of an atomic bomb. The lead singer, Robbie Grey, said, “The last thing we wanted was to write a song where boy meets girl, they go to the cinema and make love, and that’s the end of it.” WK He also explained, “I don’t think many people realized it was about a couple making love as the bomb dropped. As they made love, they become one and melt together.” SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Modern English SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia First posted 9/27/2022.

ZZ Top Eliminator released

Eliminator ZZ Top

Released: March 23, 1983 Peak: 9 US, 3 UK, 2 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 11.0 US, 1.2 UK, 23.4 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Gimme All Your Lovin’ (4/2/83, 37 BB, 43 CB, 36 GR, 2 AR, 10 UK, 39 CN, 87 AU, 8 DF) Got Me Under Pressure (4/16/83, 18 AR, 18 DF) Sharp Dressed Man (7/9/83, 56 BB, 83 CB, 8 AR, 22 UK, 66 AU, 6 DF) I Need You Tonight I Got the Six Legs (4/14/84, 8 BB, 11 CB, 9 GR, 5 RR, 3 AR, 16 UK, 9 CN, 6 AU, 6 DF) Thug TV Dinners (12/10/83, 38 AR, 67 UK, 37 DF) Dirty Dog If I Could Only Flag Her Down Bad Girl Total Running Time: 45:00 The Players: Billy Gibbons (vocals, guitar) Dusty Hill (bass, vocals) Frank Beard (drums)

Rating: 4.185 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings) Quotable: “An electro-boogie masterpiece” – author Robert Dimery Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: ZZ Top formed in the 1960s as a Texas-based blues-rock trio. They made five albums for London Records in the 1970s, including the multi-platinum top-10 Tres Hombes in 1973. They also landed a few classic rock staples with “La Grange” and “Tush.” In 1978, they signed with Warners. Their 1979 platinum-selling Deguello “demonstrated with a series of wry, surreal songs, that ZZ Top were not the simple, rustic trio that most people had taken them for in the past.” TB 1981’s gold-selling El Loco “continued in a similar vein, adding a smutty sense of humor to songs such as ‘Pearl Necklace’ and ‘Tube Snake Boogie.’” TB For their next movie, the trio surprised their fans by embracing the “synths and sequencers” AM while still retaining “the driving blues guitars of previous ZZ Top albums” TB for 1983’s Eliminator. “They plunged in with such aplomb that drummer Frank Beard was suspected of having been drum-machined off the tracks. In truth, his crisp beats and Dusty Hill’s chugging bass are merely supports for the star: guitarist Billy Gibbons – forever wrapping furry likc round the wry lyrics, but never overinduldging like lesser soloists.” RD In trying to keep up with “the sound of the times” AM the band “risked looking like the embarrassing uncles. Instead they conjured an electro-boogie masterpiece” RD that became the biggest-selling album of the band’s career. “It wasn't that they were just popular – they were hip, for God’s sake, since they were one of the only AOR favorites to figure out to harness the stylish, synthesized grooves of new wave, and then figure out how to sell it on MTV.” AM “Even if they didn’t quite look the part, ZZ Top’s songs about fast cars and faster women were suddenly in vogue.” TB making them “rivaled only by Michael Jackson when it came to heavy MTV rotation in 1983.” TB As Beard said, “We decided that the girls were a lot better looking than we were and that the car was even better looking than we were.” RD The videos “established a strong visual image for the band,” TB populated “with scantily clad beauties as well as the obligatory red coupe.” TB The latter image played off one of “the most iconic album covers of the 1980s” TB – the “airbrushed image of a red Ford coupe.” TB Gimme All Your Lovin’ and Legs were MTV staples during the music channel’s formative years” TB but it also helped that the band had crafted “songs that deserved to be hits.” AM Alongside the two aforementioned songs, they also had Sharp Dressed Man. This was the band’s “greatest set of singles since the heady days of Tres Hombres.” AM Even the album cuts, such as “the elegiac I Need You Tonight and the slap-happy bass showcase Thug,” RD were high enough quality that “they would have been singles on El Loco.” AM “The songs alone would have made Eliminator one of ZZ Top’s three greatest albums…Years later, the sound of the times winds up sounding a bit stiff. It’s still an excellent ZZ Top album, one of their best, yet it sounds like a mechanized ZZ Top thanks to the unflaggingly accurate grooves. Then again, that’s part of the album’s charm – this is new wave blues-rock, glossed up for the video, looking as good as the omnipresent convertible on the cover and sounding as irresistible as Reaganomics. Not the sort the old-school fans or blues-rock purists will love, but ZZ Top never sounded as much like a band of its time as they did here.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 511. TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 220. WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/28/2008; last updated 6/25/2025.

U2 released “Sunday Bloody Sunday”

Sunday Bloody Sunday U2

Writer(s): U2 (see lyrics here) Released: March 21, 1983 First Charted: April 16, 1983 Peak: 7 AR, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.2 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 78.9 video, 320.23 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The Irish rock band U2 started building their following in the early ‘80s with songs like “I Will Follow” and “Gloria” from their Boy and October albums respectively. Their third album, War, was “a passionate, politically charged album” SS cemented the band’s place amongst college radio with “New Year’s Day,” “Two Hearts Beat As One,” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The latter was one of the band’s most overtly political songs, shining a light on the horror of the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry, North Ireland where unarmed civil rights protesters were shot and killed by British troops. There was also a Bloody Sunday in 1920 when troops fired into a crowd at a Dublin football match, but this song refers more to the 1972 incident. SF Of the song, drummer Larry Mullen said, “People are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we’re saying why? What’s the point?” WK An early version of the song started with the lyric, “Don’t talk to me about the rights of the IRA, UDA” but was replaced with “I can’t believe the news today.” Bassist Adam Clayton said the band opted to remove the line because it was so politically charged and the “viewpoint became very human and non-sectarian…which is the only responsible position.” WK A video shot at a performance on June 5, 1983, at the Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Colorado helped build the band’s reputation as a live act because of the energy and lead singer Bono’s charisma and stage presence in leading the audience in chanting “no more” and waving a white flag. He opens the song saying, “This song is not a rebel song. This song is ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday.’” All Music Guide’s JT Griffith considers it a strange comment because, “though it does not advocate violence, it is one of the most famous and moving rebel songs ever written.” AMG Time magazine expressed a similar sentiment in naming it one of the top 10 protest songs of all time. WK Bono, however, has explained that he introduced the song that way as a means of emphasizing the band’s non-partisan intentions. WK It has become a staple in U2’s live show and one of their signature tunes. Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for U2 AMG All Music Guide review by JT Griffith SF Songfacts SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 333-4. DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 67. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 8/13/2021; last updated 3/31/2023.

 

Pink Floyd The Final Cut released

The Final Cut Pink Floyd

Released: March 21, 1983 Peak: 6 US, 12 UK, 2 CN, 3 AU Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.1 UK, 7.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. The Post War Dream [3:02] Your Possible Pasts [4:22] (4/2/83, 8 AR) One of the Few [1:23] The Hero’s Return [2:56] (4/30/83, 31 AR) The Gunner’s Dream [5:07] Paranoid Eyes [3:40] Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert [1:19] The Fletcher Memorial Home [4:11] Southampton Dock [2:13] The Final Cut [4:46] Not Now John [5:01] (4/2/83, 7 AR, 30 UK) Two Suns in the Sunset [5:14] All songs written by Roger Waters. Total Running Time: 43:14 The Players: Roger Waters (vocals, bass) David Gilmour (vocals, guitar) Nick Mason (drums, percussion)

Rating: 3.555 out of 5.00 (average of 25 ratings)

About the Album: “The Final Cut extends the autobiography of The Wall, concentrating on Roger Waters’ pain when his father died in World War II. Waters spins this off into a treatise on the futility of war, concentrating on the Falkland Islands, setting his blistering condemnations and scathing anger to impossibly subdued music that demands full attention. This is more like a novel than a record, requiring total concentration since shifts in dynamics, orchestration, and instrumentation are used as effect.” AMG “This means that while this has the texture of classic Pink Floyd, somewhere between the brooding sections of The Wall and the monolithic menace of Animals, there are no songs or hooks to make these radio favorites. The even bent of the arrangements, where the music is used as texture, not music, means that The Final Cut purposely alienates all but the dedicated listener.” AMG “Several of those listeners maintain that this is among Pink Floyd’s finest efforts, and it certainly is an achievement of some kind – there’s not only no other Floyd album quite like it, it has no close comparisons to anybody else’s work (apart from Waters’ own The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, yet that had a stronger musical core). That doesn’t make this easier to embrace, of course, and it’s damn near impenetrable in many respects, but with its anger, emphasis on lyrics, and sonic textures, it’s clear that it's the album that Waters intended it to be.” AMG “It’s equally clear that Pink Floyd couldn’t have continued in this direction – Waters had no interest in a group setting anymore, as this record, which is hardly a Floyd album in many respects, illustrates. Distinctive, to be sure, but not easy to love and, depending on your view, not even that easy to admire.” AMG Notes: The 2004 reissue “added When the Tigers Broke Free – originally heard in the soundtrack to The Wall, but its moody, war-obsessed soundscape is better suited for The Final Cut – as the fourth track, inserted between One of the Few and The Hero’s Return, where it fits nicely into the album’s narrative.” AMG

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Pink Floyd AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/22/2008; last updated 9/1/2021.