The Private Canon: The Specials' Midnight

This post is part of a series; for an explanation go here.

Though I grew into my teens in the 1980s, I mostly slept on the ska revival. I had friends who swore by the English Beat and the Specials, but where British bands were concerned I was more of a guitar rock/pop fan (Squeeze, the Jam, Elvis Costello).

The exception was 1984's In the Studio, the epic, eccentric swan song by what was left of the Specials, by then called the Special A.K.A. This extraordinary record hits heights of idealism ("Free Nelson Mandela") and outrage ("War Crimes") as well as depths of despair ("Housebound") and disorientation ("Bright Lights") you don't usually hear together on one collection. It’s a rich meal of a record, no question, and with a chaser—honestly, by the time it gets to the woozy penultimate song, "Alcohol," you are liable to feel a bit trashed, like you've been up all night. What has always set it apart, I think, is its heady blend of infectious tunefulness spiked with dissonance, and its often unapologetically aggressive lyrics (check out "Racist Friend")—this is pop music, no question, but pop that throbs and weaves rather than grooves, for what Alexis Petridis aptly pegged as a "party-killing record."

The real keeper from the album wouldn’t ruin a party unless you listened closely to the words. "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend" is on the surface a simple, mostly-two-chord bop whose title gives its whole jokey premise away. But the fact that those two chords are C and C# (or Db), and that the cynical pitch of the narrator is delivered in a sickly-sweet angelic soprano, makes all the difference. It’s Specials founder and keyboardist Jerry Dammers on vocals, amazingly in one of his only appearances in the role. His melody leans hard into the chromatic intervals suggested by the chords, but the song’s most seductive hook is used both under the faintly leering lyric, "Her love must be sweeter than candy/Stronger than brandy" etc., and as the basis of a haunting horn chart:

It’s bonkers to me that Elvis Costello would bother to cover this song but skip that part altogether:

The only tricky section that deviates from the two-chord groove comes around 3:25 in the video at the top of this post, with the turnaround "Your girlfriend has only got one fault...that’s you." When I arranged it for my old L.A. band Millhouse (in a version that never made it out of the rehearsal studio), I perhaps over-complicated it thus (it’s at 2:18 in the video):

 

That works? But I don’t think it’s quite right. If you can figure it out, let me know!

Speaking of the official Specials video at the top of the post, how creepy is that? Dammers looks like a vampire Cole Porter. Strangely enough, "Girlfriend" was not only the Specials' last song; In the Studio was also Dammers’s last complete studio album (he’s still going strong). Quit while he was ahead, I guess.