1984: A Pop Odyssey

Writing his famous novel 1984 in 1949, George Orwell took the idea of a versificator, normally a person who writes verse; a poet, and reinvented them as a machine, one that composed songs with little or no human intervention and for the consumption of the working class masses. The machine could also produce literature and film and its function was to relieve the ruling class of having to engage in any creative thought themselves.

1984 also happened to be the year machines and music happened to me. Aged 9, I started watching Top of the Pops (as opposed to reading Orwell) and started spending my pocket money (I wasn’t yet working class) on records, pop music, which in 1984 was very much the synthesized sounds of machines, even if the machines cheated a little and had to be assisted by humans.

2001: A Space Odyssey is just the title of a hugely acclaimed sci-fi film made in 1968 – another work, like 1984, set in an imagined future world. A tenuous set of connections was forming in my brain. You might not call it as great a creative thought as any of these, but I had an idea for my first music post – 1984: A Pop Odyssey. When one begins, one is usually at the beginning. This is mine, not in 2001. Or 1949. Or 1968….

It’s 1984, it’s Top of the Pops! (cue canned applause) But instead of the Top 40 rundown, it’s a Top 4 from me, the first 4 records that inspired me to buy them and not another toy tractor, or a dung-spreader. From my musical beginnings, I give you Status Quo, Nik Kershaw, A Flock of Seagulls, and Julian Lennon! The very performances I remember watching as a kid, right there on YouTube. I know: at this point you’re thinking, should’ve gone with the dung-spreader.

Nostalgia aside, 1984 is a long time ago now and popular culture has changed exponentially. If you consider that 1984 sits bang in the middle between the end of World War 2 and 2023, you get some perspective. It’s that long ago. If you also consider that our culture is about to be altered forever by Artificial Intelligence, you get even more. AI can be programmed to write new Beatles songs. Were Orwell’s premonitions correctly predicted, but he just got the date wrong?

Anyway, Status Quo. How much intelligence, artificial or otherwise, would it take to write one of their songs? Are they culturally significant? Not really, but they were my very first musical love and maybe that’s the main reason they have never left me. Going Down Town Tonight is a much-maligned track of theirs because it split not only the fan-base with its synthesized drums, bass guitar, and keyboards, but also the band members, most of whom didn’t play on it at all. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were in the process of disbanding (they reformed with a new line-up two years later) and this record seemed to hasten that process. It’s an unusual choice of single for The Quo though, written by an outside songwriter, it’s full of minor chords and they’ve abandoned their 70’s roots; that earthy, organic rock (though worse was still to come). They say that much of your adult preferences stem from early influence when your brain is at its most malleable. My fondness of minor chords might just originate with these guys then, or do we form these subtler preferences more subconsciously? There was always classical and jazz music played in our family home long before I was old enough to save up the 79 pence this record cost. It’s fun to try and trace your influences right back though, memories too. I was in P4 at primary school and dressed up in a wig and jeans, mimed along to this record with a makeshift, homemade guitar in front of my class and teacher, like I was on Top of the Pops myself. Ten years ago I was driving to Glasgow in the middle of winter (to see The Quo, funnily enough) when I skidded and ended up stationary in the middle of a dual-carriageway. As I watched two lanes of traffic approaching whilst frantically attempting to start the car, it was this song playing on the car stereo as my life flashed before me. I love it, but the general public didn’t, and it performed poorly in the UK singles chart before fading into obscurity.

Nik Kershaw’s I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me was originally his debut single in 1983, and it performed so poorly the first time around, it was re-released in 1984, this time just held off the top of the charts by Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes. Not co-incidentally, both songs were inspired by the Cold War between the USA and Soviet Union. Kershaw himself admitted that his message about political protest isn’t obvious within the medium of a jaunty little pop tune, and he was right. I remember another primary school moment, being asked by the teacher to describe pop music. One of my classmates replied, "can't understand what they're saying." That stuck with me. But if the music is uplifting, does it matter? Look at the audience in the Top of the Pops studio, smiling and actually enjoying themselves. The 80’s, from a child's perspective, was fun, that’s not revisionism or seen through rose-tinted glasses. Artists were still enjoying creative freedom, pop wasn’t yet mass-produced as it became in the latter years of the decade – the quality was still there. Looking back, I’m glad to have grown up amongst the innocence of it all. But we must bleed everything dry, we must take it too far. Nearly forty years later, pop has been reduced to a plastic, bland nothingness, singers auto-tuned beyond recognition and being gradually replaced by more technology. It makes Orwell's vision seem not so radical. I fear for the kids. Relatively speaking, there’s little quality and fun now. Narcissism has taken over, all style and zero content. The pop of the day seems dreary and oppressive by comparison, and I can’t help wondering if it's all calculated in order to maintain an unthinking, unquestioning society, hooked up to devices, unable to see or care about what's really going on? Maybe it's the result of our insatiable appetite for commercialisation instead? I imagine this was how the children of the 60’s felt in 1984! But how will it all end, and where is it going in the meantime? Who will remember this song in 2084? I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me is about the futility of protesting against oppressive ruling forces, but doing it anyway.

And A Flock of Seagulls? Four Liverpool lads. It’d be suprising if anyone from 1984 remembers The More You Live The More You Love, so obscure it is, and they were hardly one of the decade’s big-hitters. But what a catchy song – that sweet major to minor chord progression creating light and shade throughout the verses, the yearning melody, the simple, honest instrumentation – all combined to create perfect pop. It’s a mournful song without sounding depressing. It sounds like a rock song but without the hysterical guitars and other theatrics. New wave? New romantic? No matter. Apart from their haircuts, it’s all tastefully understated and to this day, the more I listen the more I like.

Julian Lennon was 21 in October 1984 and that Top of the Pops performance was his first ever TV appearance. He insists Too Late For Goodbyes is about the end of a relationship with a girl and not about the death of John Lennon, his father, less than four years prior. Wanting to achieve success on his own merits, he landed a record deal by sending out anonymous demo tapes. This was jointly his biggest hit, together with Saltwater 7 years later. The inspiration for Hey Jude has since diversified into philanthropy, film and TV production, photography, and as a writer, and voiceover artist. Here, he looks endearingly wide-eyed and nervous, perhaps self-conscious about the similarity of his own voice to his father’s? It’s a lovely bouncy tune, propelled by a synthesized sequence, but with tasteful flourishes of 50’s rockabilly guitar, and a harmonica solo (mimed by, but not originally played by him). It’s the sort of track Shakin’ Stevens would have murdered in his prime, with his comedy-Elvis routine and 50’s rock 'n' roll pastiche, but this is more refined, almost naïve in its simplicity, a sort of 50’s/80’s hybrid, echoing the past but not slavishly dependent on it. You can hear the Lennon voice, it’s unavoidable, and maybe there’s some pleasure in thinking this is maybe what John’s music would have sounded like in 1984. To my ears it still sounds fresh today, nothing like what passes as pop music in 2023, sadly. And what a nice chap he seems too. I vividly remember watching this performance in the common room of a youth hostel in Melrose in the Scottish Borders, the highlight of a wet, October cycling holiday.

This was my very own 1984 of course. For others it might have been Wham!, Culture Club, Duran Duran, or Eurythmics. U2 and Madonna were becoming huge, and even The Smiths had a top ten single in 1984. It all culminated spectacularly in Live Aid the following summer, the very mid-point of the 1980’s, and I don’t think it was ever the same again after that. All of the above four were past their peaks, or had disappeared completely. Insipid blue-eyed soul and Stock, Aitken & Waterman's cheap, tacky pop began to creep in. Maybe after those initial, youthful bursts of innocent joy, all we’re doing is trying to recapture those pre-adolescent feelings, to which music can be the most wonderful accompaniment. I wonder what the nostalgia of kids today will be? What would they put in their time capsules? In another 39 years’ time, and in the unlikely event my 10-year-old is reading this in 2062, maybe she can answer!