'Can someone please explain the reason for this strange behaviour'

Posted 31st May (3.57 am)

Excuse the waffle, just trying to stay awake. That banging Friday Playlist from 2007 has now finished - played it twice - and Spotify being Spotify has decided to kick into a new playlist determined by songs previously played. That explains why Duran Duran's 'Skin Trade' immediately popped up.

I've always loved 'Skin Trade'. This isn't me Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I always thought it was one of their best singles. In fact, I remember at the time being surprised by how good it was. By 1987 they'd been on the creative dip for a few years. I always thought their material from Seven and the Ragged Tiger onwards was decidedly sub-par. Laughable lyrics coupled with ponderous, plodding pop music so beloved from the mid-80s when 'New Pop' had bolted and all that was left was ever increasingly bloated music videos, big hair and post-Live Aid save the world messiah complexes. 

The weird thing is that I have another distinct memory of 'Skin Trade' from 1987 itself. Sitting in the back row of a General Studies lesson at Longdean School, wishing I was somewhere else, and I hear James Adkin (I think that's the spelling of his surname) from the other side of the classroom expressing the opinion that it's a great single. Why would I remember something so passing, and seemingly so inconsequential, from someone I hardly interacted with at the time forty years on? I can only attribute it to the fact that by 1987 Duran Duran were seen as passe, something from yesteryear. They'd had their moment in the sun, and now it was the turn of  . . . who, exactly? I can't actually remember. Had SAW taken over our musical world at that point or was it six months later? Those bastards were definitely on the horizon. In that moment, James Adkin was someone I recognised as a fellow pop kid, someone who could spot a brilliant tune . . . even when it came from the 'wrong place', He definitely went up in my opinion on that day, and that why I think I still remember his pronouncement after all these years.

I should be sleeping.

76/50