2000 Great Songs #1394: One Step Beyond

Can't say I was much of a Madness fan back in the day; ska music just wasn't my thing. Still, the 1982 "Our House" single was all over the radio and MTV when I was in high school (great song, would probably be covering it here but docking it a few points for oversaturation), and I ended up snagging their 1979 debut at the used record store just to check it out. And I didn't love it, but the opening title track definitely stuck with me. Aside from the periodic pronouncements of the title, it's an instrumental, but it was so distinct and unlike anything else in my collection that it wedged in my head, and remains one of those early 80s new wave era tracks that continues to transport me back to a very specific moment in my life.

It was only years later--damn, life was tough before the internet!--that I learned it was a cover of a 1964 reggae track by Prince Buster. (Not the first time I assumed a song so closely associated with a particular artist was an original until learning otherwise much later.) But the memory of those long Saturday afternoons I spent haunting the used record store once I got my driver's license, peripatetically searching for new musical vibes, will always make this a Madness song for me.

(I later came to enjoy the band much more when they moved into a more melodic pre-Britpop style and left the sky largely behind, and find their more recent albums far more interesting.)

Live 2012:

Prince Buster original:

See the entire Top 2000 to date in a sortable database!