Soft Cell’s Dave Ball died last week.

I never much took to the band mainly because Marc Almond’s posturing annoyed me. But Ball was a different prospect. Like Chris Lowe of The Pet Shop Boys he appeared to prefer staying in the background quietly playing his synths.

However, they had a significant run of hit singles spanning 1981 and 82, with a distinctive sound.

Here’s a Top of the Pops appearance from that second year.

Soft Cell:- Torch

David James (Dave) Ball: 3/5/1959 – 22/10/2025. So it goes.

I’ve posted a song from Blancmange before – 14 years ago! – with their version of ABBA’s The Day Before You Came. Sadly co-founder of the band, Stephen Luscombe, died last week.

They had seven Top 40 hits in the 1980s.

This one got to no. 8 in 1984.

Blancmange: Don’t Tell Me

Stephen Luscombe: 29/10/1954 – 13/9/2025. So it goes.

Carly Simon’s biggest hit, instantly recognisable from that bass line burble at its start and subject to much interpretation over the years. Warren Beatty has been pointed to as the object of Simon’s lyric and Simon has said the second verse is indeed about him but the others aren’t necessarily.

I knew that Mick Jagger had been an uncredited backing singer on this but it wasn’t until one day it was on in the background in a shoe shop in Kirkcaldy that I made out his voice. Now I can’t stop hearing him every time it plays.

Carly Simon: You’re So Vain

One of those quirky singles that occasionally hits a chord with the public. A UK no 16 in 1980.

Jona Lewie: You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties

Mike Peters of Welsh band The Alarm died earlier this week.

As far as I can see the band only hit the top twenty twice, with this song achieving their highest chart placing at no 17.

The Alarm: Sixty Eight Guns

Michael Leslie (Mike) Peters: 25/2/1959 – 28/4/2025. So it goes.

Echo and the Bunnymen were a band from Liverpool who had both critical and (some) commercial success in the 1980s.

In 1983 this single achieved their second highest chart entry, at no 9 (just below the no 8 of both The Cutter and the later Nothing Lasts Forever.)

Echo and the Bunnymen: The Killing Moon

Psychedelia sometimes pops up where you least expect it.

That was true of Porpoise Song and it’s true of this which has hints of Tomorrow Never Knows.

ABBA: The Visitors

Another one down.

Rick Buckler, drummer in The Jam, died this week.

The band were a bit after my time but were undoubtedly important in the evolution of British popular music in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This was the band’s first no 1. I hope its title is not too insensitive.

The Jam: Going Underground

Richard Paul (Rick) Buckler: 6/12/1955 – 17/2/2025. So it goes.

I saw Marianne Faithfull’s death announced last night.

She first came to prominence in 1964 due to her association with The Rolling Stones (Jagger and Richards wrote her first hit.) She had a sweet but almost insubstantial voice suited to soft pop songs but by the mid 60s her singing career had stalled, in part due to a drugs scandal. She took up acting with some success though but mostly fell out of public consciousness.

Here’s Faithfull’s version of a Jackie DeShannon song that gave her her highest UK chart placing (no 4 in 1965 as compared to the no 9 achieved by As Tears Go By the year before.)

Marianne Faithfull: Come and Stay with Me

The song below is from her 1980 “comeback”* album of the same title, which is widely regarded as her best, not least by herself.

*Even if Dreamin’ my Dreams had intervened in 1976

Marianne Faithfull: Broken English

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull: 29/12/1946 – 30/1/2025. So it goes.

For a time in the late 1980s The Housemartins were one of my favourite bands. This is reasonably unusual in their œuvre in having a tune that isn’t jaunty.

From their debut album London 0 Hull 4, it was their first ever single. It didn’t dent the charts.

The Housemartins: Flag Day