← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Modern English: A Love Song For the Nuclear Age
00:13:40
Join Janda for a dive into this classic 80's tune!
Loading summary
Transcript4 lines
- [00:00]
Janda
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda it's just one.
- [00:13]
Robbie Gray
Of those songs that never gets old. In fact, since its release in 1982, Modern English's trademark tune I Melt with youh has been re recorded by the band themselves multiple times and over 40 years after its release, it has never left the airwaves. It still gets about a million Spotify streams every month, and who could forget it? In the movie Valley Girl, in the love scene between Nicolas Cage's character Randy and Deborah Foreman's Julie, the song just seemed tailor made for the movie that became a classic 80s story with a SoCal twist about a pair of lovers from different sides of the social spectrum, every bit as unlikely a match as the star crossed Romeo and Juliet that the movie was based on. It's all part of the long history of this peculiar, jangly love song, which was written during the height of the Cold War by a group of post punk kids from England about mutually self destructing during a nuclear apocalypse. Let's get into it in this episode of the behind the Song podcast and if you like it, give it a thumbs up and hit subscribe. Let us know in the comments.
- [01:20]
Christian Lane
Flex your business with an American Express Business Gold Card. You'll earn four times Membership Rewards points on your top two eligible spending categories like transit and electronics each month on up to 150k in combined purchases per year. Plus you can you now earn 3 times Membership Rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on amextravel.com terms and points cap apply learn more@americanexpress.com business gold AmEx business Gold Built for Business by American Express For Modern English, having one.
- [01:52]
Robbie Gray
Of the most enduring songs to come out of the 80s was certainly not something they counted on or even dreamed could happen to them. This was a group that grew up loving artists like David Bowie, but as singer Robbie Gray has said many times over the years, they didn't. They would quite ever get to that level of musicianship. But then punk bands like the Sex Pistols crashed onto the scene in the late 70s, which gave young folks hungry to make music of their own a kind of entree into doing it. If Sid Vicious could manage to be in a band, then maybe they could too. It was that punk spirit, plus the energy of the new wave sound that was bubbling up in the uk, in Europe and in the US that made Modern English and many other bands decide to throw their hat in the ring the lineup of gray, guitarist Gary McDowell, bassist Mick Conroy, keyboardist Stephen Walker and drummer Richard Brown formed in Essex about an hour outside of London in the late 70s. The band got signed off of a couple of singles to 4ad records and released their debut album Mesh and lace in 1981. Yes, that album title would be recalled in the lyrics to I Melt with youh, which would be released as the second single on their second album after the Snow. This sophomore effort would sound a lot different than their first foray into the music bins, which was self produced and heavy on sonic moodiness but light on hits, a change that they credit to producer Hugh Jones. Jones, who had previously worked as an engineer on albums from Simple Minds and Adam and the Ants, was able to guide the band into a new direction for the songs that they had written, and Gray credits him with how he actually sang I Melt with youh. Gray was shouting the verses and Jones suggested that he just speak them into the microphone instead, a hugely important shift that no doubt helped to make the song sound so personal to the ear of the listener. Robbie Gray wrote the lyrics of I Meld with youh in what he recalls was about three minutes on a scrap of paper, sitting stoned on the floor of his flat in Shepherd's Bush. It's a dark song hidden underneath all that high energy, jangly effervescence. Gray told American Songwriter that the real meaning got missed for years until somebod asked what it was about, he said that it was almost like a metaphor for that time, which in the early 80s was a time when the threat of nuclear war loomed on every headline. Because of the raging Cold War, England was also in the throes of a real economic downturn. The global recession impacted employment pretty hard there, so times were in general tough. Using a love affair as something good while the rest of the world crashes down, Gray wrote one of the defining songs of the 80s. In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, co founder Gary McDowell, who by the way was one of the most provocatively dressed and coiffed artists of the entire decade, said that the song fits perfectly the time of when it was written. He explained that the Falklands War was beginning and so for days from their flats in London, they saw a stream of army traffic heading out to Dover to fight it. In the context of the time, writing a love song about a nuclear bomb going off seemed perfectly reasonable to the band and everyone else. The lyrics start like moving forwards using all my breath Making love to you was never second best I saw the world thrashing all around your face, never really knowing. It was always mesh and lace. There's that callback to their first album title, a little inside joke wrapped up in the idea that the narrator, in the wake of an apocalypse, is going to enjoy his final moments on earth with the person he loves, no matter what. Heading into the unforgettable chorus I'll stop the world and melt with you. You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time. There's nothing you and I won't do. I'll stop the world and melt with you. Then it's on to the next part with a call and response that lifts the song from this point on. Dream of better lives, the kind which never hate. You should see why. Trapped in the state of imaginary grace, you should know better. I made a pilgrimage to save this human's race. You should see why never comprehending the race had long gone by. Here he realizes that life and the world they're living in, all the hopes and dreams amount to nothing because the world is actually ending. But there's a victory in the song, in the chorus that is repeated throughout the rest of it, including when he hums a few bars and sings the oddly optimistic line, the futures open wide. The characters could be literally melting because of a nuclear bomb, or it could have a meaning more rooted in the heat of passion. Either way, if you're humming while the world is ending, you're definitely going out on a high note. I Melt with youh went to number seven on the rock chart in the US and the video, which featured the band performing in a club while one couple danced on the dance floor, went into heavy rotation on mtv. And of course, it got on the radio. And that's how it got into the movie. Valley Girl. While driving around Los Angeles, Valley Girl director Martha Coolidge heard a song come on the legendary kroq. She had no idea who the artist was, so she called the radio station and sang what she'd just heard to the dj, who told her that it was Modern English, a band from England with their new hit I Melt with youh. Coolidge, who would later become the first female president of the Directors Guild of America, knew that the song would perfectly reflect the vibe of her movie. So she put the song and the film in two strategic places in the love scene between Randy and Julie and over the ending credits. And as a result, the song would end up being firmly entrenched in 80s pop culture forever. And when the movie came out in 1983, modern English found themselves with even more fans here in the us I Melt with youh didn't actually do that well in England, but it was a big hit here in America, which was a surprise to Modern English. They've said that all they knew about the US up to that point was from watching western movies. Even more alien to them was the whole Southern California Valley Girl culture with a rad new language all its own. So when they were shown the movie Valley Girl on a VHS tape on their bus while on tour in America, they couldn't believe it or even really understand it. But obviously they were quite happy that the song made it into the film not once but twice. I Melt with youh has been spinning steady on the airwaves for decades now. Modern English have re recorded it multiple times at different points since its original release, including during the COVID pandemic when the lyrics again seemed perfectly reasonable for what was going on in the world during that time. Its use in movies beyond Valley Girl and in commercials keeps garnering the band new fans. By this point. It's one of the songs that has held up the best and longest from the New Wave era. So what other songs from this totally tubular part of the rock timeline continue to strike a chord like this as the years roll on? Something to think about. Until next time, I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. If you like this episode, give it a like and subscribe to the channel. And check it out on TikTok too. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. You can find me on the air at 9701 FM the Drive in Chicago and at wdrv.com and on the way, much more classic rock and roll.