Popping Back To 1986 and 1987 Again... Pump Up The Volume, No More I Love You's, Something Inside So Strong, I Can't Wait And E=MC2...

Wow - 1987 and M/A/R/R/S and Pump Up The Volume. Hugely influential early dance record. And I couldn't get enough. Still thrashing around (although now in my living room) to this brilliance today.

I adored this. Always had an ear for the quirky and the different, not to mention spine tinglingly beautiful... OK, Annie Lennox's cover in the '90s had a far larger cast and her great voice, but the original wins in this case for me, hands down. The Lover Speaks, No More I Love You's, 1986:

'I used to have demons in my room at night. Desire, despair, desire, despair - soooo many monsters...'

House Music had arrived. Year Zero was 1983 and by 1987 it was bursting out. House Nation by Housemaster Boyz and the Rude Boy of House. This sounded so different that at first I hated it. But after my second listen I was hooked. Had it on a compilation cassette and just kept rewinding and replaying it on my personal stereo. Then it was out in the clubs... 

Labi Siffre - 1987 - Something Inside So Strong... Just listen. Enough said. A beautiful and highly meaningful 1980s classic.

 

China in Your Hand - 1987. Wow. Carol Decker's voice is incredible, and watch the sad tale of a yuppie woman who falls in with a bad lad... There are power ballads and then there's this. In a class of its own.

Echoing across the summer of 1986, clonky, clanky and with that all-important '80s stutter. Nu Shooz. I Can't Wait. Dance at its best.

One of the best chart tracks of 1986 - with lyrics which bent my mind into many strange shapes. And made me dance. 'Blood lust, Greek god, go Discovery...' Big Audio Dynamite - E=MC2.

We'll be back in 1986 and 1987 for some more pop picks very soon. I just can't leave that decade alone...