They were already school playground stuff of legend and seemed to get better with every single release (of singles). Albums could have had more clout, but there’s still some crackers.
In early 1981 behind them already was, The Prince, One Step Beyond, My Girl, the Night Boat To Cairo E.P, Baggy Trousers, Embarrassment, The Return of the Los Palmas 7, that is some track record.
Then, they released Grey Day, which, has only just occurred to me, has that doom laden tone of Ghost Town, it precedes Ghost Town, and for the first time, as a kid, I knew this was one very special band. For the first time, maybe Embarrassment aside, it seems more mood orientated and less of the light hearted / fun sound. One of the greatest singles artists of a generation.
I suspect like a lot of people around my age, Madness were the first band I was obsessed with - handed down (literally, they taped the albums for me) from my older sisters in my case, but it was clear they had something going on beyond the Driving In My Car/Baggy Trousers Nutty Boy side that made them the kids’ favourites. A lot of the later singles bely not so much seriousness as the fact they’d started out the same top end age as their imperial phase fanbase and were being ground down by the effort of keeping a perma-touring, perma-partying, seven members who all wrote songs going while the country slides deeper into Thatcherism - One Better Day’s hope among ruins, Michael Caine’s atmospheric dread (about IRA informers apparently), Yesterday’s Men trying not to abandon all hope.
And let’s not overlook that their best studio album, at a time when they were getting by on the nostalgia circuit and could have played the same set for the rest of their lives without pushing themselves, came thirty years into their career and its title track is a ten minute multi-part socio-geographic history of east London.
They were golden through my childhood into adolescence. That bar remained for a long time, even the singles where you thought what! had their charm, (Driving In My Car, Wings Of A Dove), they always seemed to redeem themselves and get straight back on track.
The gloom and the uplift of The Sun & The Rain, which I consider to be a late Madness single. Never heard that song you’ve linked. Better singles band than Blur? Oh yes. Can’t think of a better UK singles band with that consistency at all right now.
There’s a point in every Madness show where they play House of Fun, Baggy Trousers and Our House one after the other. You know all three of these songs.
Didn’t fully realise how properly good Madness were until I saw them on a Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury in about 2010, all the hits, soooo many hits, loads of fun.
Anyone else use to watch Suggs’ Channel 5 Saturday night pile of crap Night Fever?
Listened to each track posted so far including these three and still…feel like I only knew one Madness song. Can’t fully deny having ever heard House of Fun and Baggy Trousers, there was a very vague familiarity but it could be attributed to them just being very catchy.
Liked all of the songs except one so far. Need to check out the last 3 posted.
