67. Waterfront - Simple Minds

They were so dramatic, once upon a time. All that bombast, those angular guitars and drums like bombs - Up On The Catwalk, Speed Your Love To Me, Love Song, the immortal Theme For Great Cities – all that eyeliner and hair product, with Skinny Jim prowling round out front, the perpetual motion machine, trying to hold a grand rock star pose but unable to stop moving for long enough.

They became cuddly and American thanks to John Hughes and Don’t You, the song that made their fortune but wasn’t their own, but I loved them back in the monochromatic 80s, in their pomp, when they looked at bands like U2 and said “I don’t think so.”

And the best of them all was Waterfront, their paean to Glasgow and Marlon Brando and everything they left behind and everything they carried along with them, propelled by that immense bass synth riff and Jim’s best vocal ever. I bought the 12” of this back in the day, back when 12” were basically the same song looped over and over, so it was the same song but even more so. Most of those ‘mixes’ were just an excuse to make a bit more money ($4.99 for a single, are you kidding?), but I could listen to this looped all day long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXfu-Kbtbc