This week in 1981
1 Ghost Town The Specials 2 One Day In Your Life Michael Jackson 3 Can Can Bad Manners 4 Stars on 45 (Volume 2) Starsound 5 Going Back To My Roots Odyssey 6 Body Talk Imagination 7 Memory Elaine Paige 8 Being With You Smokey Robinson 9 No Woman No Cry Bob Marley & The Wailers 10 Wordy Rappinghood Tom Tom Club Ghost Town, The Specials’ haunting depiction of social breakdown, appeared to capture the mood of a nation in the summer of 1981 as Britain reeled under social unrest. As the song climbed to the top of the charts, there was serious rioting across the country – in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, London and other major cities. The song and its iconic video, in which the band, crammed into a Vauxhall Cresta, drive through empty, crumbling streets, was conceived as a reaction to the riots of the previous year in Brixton and Bristol, but served as a backdrop to what was happening on the streets in July of 1981. If the country appeared to be coming apart at the seams, The Specials certainly were. There was considerable conflict over the direction the music was taking, and Ghost Town was the last single recorded by the original seven members before their split. It spent three weeks at number one in the UK and was voted Single of the Year by the UK’s three main music magazines at the time.