FEATURE:
Groovelines
Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy
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WHEN we think of classics…
IN THIS PHOTO: Bronski Beat (Steve Bronski; Jimmy Somerville; Larry Steinbachek) in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Watson
from the 1980s, surely Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy comes to mind?! It was released in 1984, the year after I was born. I like the fact that I was in the world when the song came out. I want to get to an interesting article from the Financial Times, who studied and explored the song in 2019 (to mark thirty-five years). The 1980s boasted some of the best Pop ever. Whilst some of it was not great, one cannot deny that Smalltown Boy is a classic. Not only for its hypnotic and instantly recognisable composition. The lyrics and Jimmy Somerville’s vocals are sensational! Here is a little overview about Smalltown Boy from Wikipedia:
“Smalltown Boy" is the debut single by British synth-pop band Bronski Beat, released in June 1984. It is from their debut album, The Age of Consent, released in December 1984.
The song was a big commercial success, reaching number 3 in the band's native UK. It was also a number one hit in the Netherlands and Belgium, and hit the top 10 in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland. The track reached number 48 in the US pop chart and was a number one US dance hit.
The song was released again in December 2013 after featuring in a Christmas advertising campaign for Boots UK. Smalltown Boy was also re-recorded by Jimmy Somerville and released as Smalltown Boy Reprise (2014) for the 30th anniversary of its initial release”.
Although a lot of Pop songs rely on the trope of heartache and loss, there is something significant and groundbreaking about Smalltown Boy. As I said, the Financial Times looked at the significance and impact of Bronski Beat’s best-known track:
“Rejection and heartbreak are recurring staples of pop music, but every now and then a song turns the stuff of sadness into an irresistible dancefloor filler. One such song, mining an upbeat theme of liberation from a downbeat tale of homophobia, is Bronski Beat’s 1984 hit “Smalltown Boy”.
It opens with an electro-pop pulse dipping into ominous, discordant notes — but then shifts gear, setting plaintive lyrics against the high-energy tempo of 1980s gay clubs. A few bars in, Jimmy Somerville’s soaring falsetto belts out an anguished lament, sustaining at length the word “cry”. Then to the nitty-gritty: the story of a young gay man being forced by bullying and ostracism to leave home:
You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case,
Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face
Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy,
You were the one that they’d talk about
Around town as they put you down
Somerville’s remarkable voice was “discovered” by musicians Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek after he sang the lyrics to a short film shown at a 1983 lesbian and gay arts festival. The trio formed Bronski Beat that year, and by summer 1984 “Smalltown Boy” had reached number three in the UK charts — quite a feat, given the attitudes of the time. Its success led to a contract for the band with London Records and their 1984 album The Age of Consent.
The video to “Smalltown Boy” is a near-literal visualisation of the song’s narrative in which Somerville plays the titular “smalltown boy”, culminating in an emotional farewell with his mother — while his father hands him some money but refuses to shake his hand.
This semi-autobiographical song flagged up the need for gay men to flee small-town intolerance and pursue reinvention in the big city. Leaving was a wrench, but a necessary liberation.
The song hit the charts in the summer that saw striking British miners locked in violent conflict with Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government; and Thatcherism forms the political backdrop to a song that foreshadowed Thatcher’s Section 28 legislation (now repealed), aimed at banning any supposed “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and public libraries.
Age of Consent spoke to similar concerns in a community struggling for acceptance and about to be hit by Aids. The album’s title referred to the age at which gay men (the law made no mention of lesbians) could legally engage in consensual sex, then set at 21, rather than 16 for heterosexuals.
Somerville’s rendition remains definitive — yet cover versions of “Smalltown Boy” have proliferated, most of them little known in the Anglophone world. In 1992, Germany’s Plastic Noise Experience churned out something discordant and anarchic, while Canadian outfit The Nylons produced a more upbeat a cappella interpretation in 1996.
In 2007, Vanuatu group The Sunshiners brought a syncopated, reggae-like flavour to the song, while in the same year Argentine-Swedish singer José González delivered a brisker, airier rendition, accompanied only by his guitar. In 2010 Sharon Corr (of The Corrs) sang an Irish folk-inflected version with violin accompaniment.
None of these matched the original. In fact, it was a bearded, shaven-headed Somerville who most successfully reprised the song for a 30th anniversary release in 2014, his falsetto still intact, delivering a soulful interpretation with only a piano backing.
Somerville, who left Bronski Beat in 1985 to form The Communards with instrumentalist Richard Coles (now a clergyman and broadcaster), made a career out of distinctive covers. In 1986 his version with The Communards of the soul classic “Don’t Leave Me This Way” topped the UK charts for four weeks, while in 1989 he had a solo UK hit with “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, a cover of Sylvester’s 1970s disco classic.
Bronski Beat stood out for their heart-on-sleeve declaration of gay desire. This came at a time when singers such as George Michael, Elton John and Freddie Mercury were still plugging away with heterocentric lyrics — and would themselves take years to be more open about their homosexuality”.
I love the Scottish band. Although I cannot relate to the lyrics directly myself, it is a song that resonates and moves me. It is a shame that it did not get to number one. It definitely deserved to! There is another article that I want to bring in before rounding things off. A song with a big message that hits hard, there is that blend of emotional heft, yet there is this warmth that brings the listener in and gets you dancing. There are not many songs that can do that!
In 2013, the BBC’s Stuart Maconie presented The People’s Songs: the epic story of how modern Britain was fashioned and shaped, as told by the music, stories and memories of this nation's people. It was told across fifty episodes. We discover more as to why Smalltown Boy provoked debate:
“While we’d come a long way from the Victorian attitudes which still lingered post-WWII, the establishment’s attitude to homosexuality was holding back any progress. In what was termed the social transition in British society from homosexuality as "illegal-but-discussed", to "legal-but-not-always approved" only in 1967 was it made legal for two adults over 21 to engage in homosexual acts. By 1984 little had changed. Many western countries had reduced the age of consent to 16, but not Britain. Indeed Bronski Beat’s album was called ‘The Age of Consent’ in direct reference to this. And part of this regressive culture was the problem of young men and women feeling stigmatised by the inability of their peers to accept them as they were.
Smalltown Boy’ was a distinctive step in the right direction, with its lyrics about a young man forced to abandon his home town for fear of this disapproval. Not only did it highlight the plight and shared experiences of hundreds of thousands of gay people, but it also provoked serious debate over these issues.
There was still a way to go. The notorious ‘Section 28’ amendment of the local authority bill was introduced in 1988, stating that any local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". It wasn’t repealed in England until 2003.
The single reached number three in the UK charts but, as if in recognition of the song’s liberal and heartfelt message, it actually reached the number one spot in a country where attitudes to sexuality were more relaxed: Holland. In fact, it was a massive worldwide hit, signalling that not only Britain, but the rest of the (western) world was finally waking up to the facts. After ‘Smalltown Boy’, and other acts like The Pet Shop Boys, Marc Almond (who recorded with Bronski Beat) or The Communards, gay pop was finally accepted currency in the charts. Today it all seems like ancient history”.
Whilst Brosnki Beat’s Smalltown Boy is not celebrating an anniversary, I wanted to include it in Groovelines as it is such an important and popular song. I wonder how many younger listeners hear the song and know what it is about? Are they simply entranced by the quality of the music? For so many, the song offers a comforting voice, a sense of belonging and identity. One of the best songs that never reached number one in the U.K., the significance of Smalltown Boy will continue to be felt for years to come. It is an ‘80s classic. Released in a decade that gave us some of the finest Pop music ever, Smalltown Boy is definitely…
UP there with the best.