As is my wont, I've added one or two videos where appropriate and availible. This is, as they say, in no particular order...
Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him? (live version from the Beat Crazy Tour of 1980): With "Sentimental Thing" from Blaze Of Glory a very close runner-up. What moves me so much about this performance of one of JJ's best-known hits is not so much the lyrical content (though god knows I've identified with that in my time) as the emotion of the performance.
It was recorded at the last gig Joe would play with his original lineup until the reunion Volume 4 album of 2003. As he repeats the last line of the chorus-"Something going wrong around here"-it builds into a final emotional screech, a yelp-"Something going wrong AROUND...."
...before the band takes off into a final vamp that becomes chaotic when Jackson climbs "over the drum kit and accidentally pulling a few wires out of their sockets in the process," according to his liner notes to the Live 1980/86 album.
Level 42 - Something About You: Specifically, an unfortunately uncredited remix that I have on one of my '80s new wave compilations. I like the single version, which is featured in the video below, but I love the remix. Whoever did it actually took some parts out of the song and I've never missed them, in fact the opposite.
There is a moment in this song where I can absolutely see my characters Annabel and Keitha dancing together. I won't tell you just what it is because, again, that moment's not really connected to the lyric of the song and it doesn't matter.
But it gets me almost every time-even just now thinking about it. It represents every hope and dream I have of where I want to take them-which sometimes seems so far away...
For the record, it has nothing to do with the fact that a scene in the video features a painter, which another of my characters, Colley, is. I only just discovered that myself.
Tears for Fears - Year Of The Knife: This album track from The Seeds of Love is for my All That Jazz moment, if you remember the big musical number before Joe Gideon dies.
They say his famous final words
Came from the heart of the man
I made my bed on love denied
Now I ain't gonna sleep tonight
Too late for the young gun
To lead a simple life
(The sun and the moon, the wind and the rain...)
Fixx - Secret Separation: This is the second-best single the Fixx ever recorded (it'd be the best if not for that instantly-dated drum sound) and their most emotionally and lyrically coherent.
Like all their records it benefits immeasurably from production by Rupert Hine, who knew how to do vocal and instrumental arrangements and overdubs that showed the band to their best possible effect. Herein the simple strummed guitar that leads to the last lines of the song.
This consists in part of the first line of the first verse and the last line of the chourus, repeated over and over in different voices:
I'll bear one precious scar that only you will know
Passengers in time
Free me...
Eurythmics - Shame: First things first: The person who posted the video for this to YouTube doesn't want it embedded, but if you go here you can see it. I would suggest you do, not only to hear the song but to see, IMO, the best video the two ever made (I believe Dave was the director).
As for the song, it's a beautiful rebuke to the idea of "the glamourous life." Now, normally I get prickly about the notion that it's always multi-billionaire rock stars like Sting and John Lennon who are telling us to "live here and be happy with less" or "Imagine no possessions."
So why do Dave and Annie get away with saying
Shame
In the dancehalls and the cinema
On the TV and the media
-for promoting a lifestyle which, they say, "don't exist?" Well, maybe it's because they don't leave the bromides and bands upon which they were raised out of their finger-pointing.
Shame
And they said all need is love...
With the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
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