Ghost Town--Review by Jessica

Ghost Town is a 1981 song by the British ska band The Specials. The song spent three weeks at number one and ten weeks in the top 40of the UK Singgles Chart. Addressing thems of urban decay, deindustrialsation,unemployment and violencein inner cities, the song is remembered for being a hit at the same time as riots were occuring in British cities. As such, it is remenmbered as a major piece of popular social commentary.

The melody of Ghost Town indeed is like the OST of ghost film. When I only listen to the melody itself of this music, I don’t know what the band wanted to express. Why they used music to build a strange and mystsrious atmosphere? This makes me think of Tim Burton’s gothic films. But after I listened to the lyrics of the music, I got that the band express their complain of a town. The town is inanimate and no entertainment, no hope and happiness. They miss the life in previous time in the town. The important point to understand this music is that it express government had a bad attitude to youth. This is a clear and strong attitude of the band to the country. This is very different from current popular music with love topics. In China some rock bands express their attitude to the society, however, these kind of music is often not popular. I’m curious about the impact of this music in the UK. And it is amazing that the song spent three weeks at number one and 10 weeks in the top 40 of theUK Singles Chart.I think it must give listeners of UK a strong sense of identity. Indeed, it records of the event of 1981 riots!

The club setting the for the B-side song, “Friday Night, Saturday Morning” is now Coventry Central Library.

The song’s sparse lyrics address urban decay, unemployment and violence in inner cities. On 2nd April, 1980, less than a year into Margaret Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister, public anger about police racism and rising unemployment led to a riot in the St Paul's district of Bristol that resulted in 130 arrests and 25 people ending up in hospital. Then, in the Autumn of that same year, while Coventry-based ska band the Specials were in the middle of a UK tour, keyboardist Jerry Dammers was so appalled to see old women trying to make ends meet by selling household possessions on the streets of Glasgow that, with the Bristol riot and rising neo-Nazism serving as the backdrop, he began penning lyrics about a sense of impending disaster that surrounded such scenes of civil unrest and urban decay.

Once the song reached number 1, Chrysalis Records produced a video to accompany the song. The video consisted of the band driving a Vauxhall Cresta around empty streets in London, particularly the financial district in the City of London, and Southwark.

Lyrics of Ghost Town:

This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won't play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor

Do you remember the good old days
Before the ghost town?
We danced and sang,
And the music played inna de boomtown

This town, is coming like a ghost town
Why must the youth fight against themselves?
Government leaving the youth on the shelf
This place, is coming like a ghost town
No job to be found in this country
Can't go on no more
The people getting angry

This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town
This town, is coming like a ghost town