My Top 1000 Songs #468: Michael Caine

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Madness move beyond the new wave ska of their early singles into more baroque pop (signaling where their future work would be headed--and they're still going, with a great new album just out). "Michael Caine," from 1984's Keep Moving, won me over in a way their earlier work hadn't--it's odd, still unlike much of what was being played on the radio, with a sample of the titular actor introducing himself played throughout; but the chorus is pure gold, a gorgeous, infectious earworm that I still remember hearing for the first time and never getting out of my head. "All I wanted was a word, or photograph to keep." Yep, still stuck there.

Live 1984: