20 Landmark Songs Of The 80s

6. The Specials - Ghost Town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WhhSBgd3KI A perfect reaction to the disillusionment bred under Margaret Thatcher€™s Tory government, The Specials were a multi-cultural, wonderfully outspoken gang of street urchins who told the stories of the working class brilliantly. €˜Too much, too young€™, was a concise narrative on the rising teenage pregnancy happening in the UK, but €˜Ghost Town€™ was their masterpiece which had the confidence to move away from their frenetic 100 miles a second Ska signature to something slower, more considered and infinitely more chilling and persuasive. Using a range of different voices, it uses multiple narrators to tell the same story, the UK was becoming a land of haves and have nots and the working class weren€™t only losing their industries, but their communities. Towns were literally being closed down and social tribes were being split up as a result. The upbeat nostalgia of the middle eighth €˜Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We laughed and sang as the music played in a de boom town?€™ is a brilliantly mocking commentary on all that precedes and follows. Personifying the working class communities as a ghost town was a masterstroke, adding a vampire presence to the country, sucking the life blood out of the working class. And listen to how sophisticated the music is, using slow-burning Hammond organs and brass to ramp up the menace. The fact that this went to number one in the charts during the miners€™ strike at a time when the charts meant something tells its own story; €˜Ghost town€™ is a remarkable sign of the times.