The first time I heard this I was knocked sideways. I expected experimentation from Brian Eno and David Byrne, but My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts took it to a whole new level.

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Is there a better opening line to a song than Julian Cope’s delighted response to pop stardom: “Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news!”?

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One of the best riffs of all time when Muddy Waters recorded it back in 1955, it somehow sounds even better in the dextrous hands of George Thorogood a quarter of a century later.

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Not many bands slipped through the cracks of my post-punk world in the early 80s but Modern English seem to have passed me by completely.

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Virgin Prunes began life at the same time, at the same social club in Dublin, as U2 – but went in a very different direction, blending avant-garde cabaret with improvisation and experimentation.

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I was never a New Romantic. I never went to Blitz or Billy’s or Le Beat Route. I have never worn make-up. And yet… 

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When Elvis Costello brought out an album of country cover versions in 1981 – remarkably, his sixth album in four years – my music world was turned upside down.

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People were shocked when Grace Jones performed her “One Man Show” at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in October 1981. Including me.

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The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel was not the first hip-hop hit but it was a landmark in the emergence of rap upon its release in 1981 – and the first hit to use scratching.

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This song sounds as strange today as it did when I first heard it on the John Peel Show in 1981. It always does. An a capella song eight and a half minutes long, based on an operatic aria from a century earlier, it was the unlikeliest of hit singles. And yet… Such was its unique appeal that it reached No.2 in the UK charts.

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