dexys midnight runners

506. ‘Come On Eileen’, by Dexys Midnight Runners

/ UK #1s blog / 20 Comments

You can imagine, when this next number one started getting airplay on radios up and down the country, people pausing for a moment. What’s this? It’s an intriguing intro, a mix of country and funk. Not something you hear every day…

Come On Eileen, by Dexys Midnight Runners (their 2nd and final #1) & The Emerald Express

4 weeks, 1st – 29th August 1982

And then a glissando. Do glissandos ever lead to anything bad? You need self-confidence to use them – you don’t just go around throwing glissandos around willy-nilly – but they always enhance. Into an Irish jigging, beer sloshing, knees-up of a song. Try not dancing to this. Just try!

Kevin Rowland’s vocals are as hard to make out as they were on ‘Geno’ (probably the only similarity between this and Dexys’ first chart-topper). I think that’s part of the appeal – when you’re drunk and jiving along you can just make them up! Come on Eileen, I swear I’ll be mean, I’ll come on less, Take off on every wing…

The line that I could always make out was the opening one: Poor old Johnnie Ray… Shout out to Mr. Ray, AKA The Prince of Wails, my favourite of the pre-rock chart-toppers. Footage of him also featured in the video. After that, it’s the story of a boy trying to seduce a well brought-up Catholic girl. You in that dress, My thoughts I confess, Verge on dirty…

I like the fact that she means everything to him… at this moment. Don’t do it, Eileen. He’s not to be trusted! And then there’s the best bit – the middle eight, where we slow down to a beer-hall stomp that gradually gets faster and faster. It’s pure music hall. It’s outrageously catchy. It’s one of the eighties’ biggest hits; but one that sounds completely out of place in this, or any, decade.

Do Irish people secretly hate this song? All the too-ra-loo-rahs might get on my nerves if I were from the Emerald Isle. We just need a ‘begorrah’ to cap it all off. Maybe it’s the Irish equivalent of ‘Hoots Mon’ (though I’m Scottish, and I loved that one). And at least Kevin Rowland is of Irish descent. Dexys had only had one further Top 10 hit since ‘Geno’, and this was the lead single from only their 2nd album. The ‘Emerald Express’ featured in the title was just for show – though the band did go through several line-up changes in their short time together.

And I’m going to end on something of a downer. As fun as ‘Come On Eileen’ is – and it is hard to write a song that is such a communal crowd-pleaser – I feel it’s been bestowed with almost mythic qualities. There’s a scene in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ where the cool kids hear the song’s opening bars and act as if they’ve heard the voice of God himself. Is it one of the greatest ever chart-toppers? Is it transcendent? Or is it just the perfect song to throw on towards the end of a wedding disco, so that your drunken uncle can do the can-can?

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457. ‘Geno’, by Dexys Midnight Runners

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

Our next number one starts off with some live chanting, and a short, sharp horn riff, giving the impression that we’re heading off in the same 2-tone, ska direction that The Specials took us… Until it switches tack and suddenly we’ve got a brassy, soulful saxophone line leading the way.

Geno, by Dexys Midnight Runners (their 1st of two #1s)

2 weeks, 27th April – 11th May 1980

And that’s not the only abrupt shift over the course of ‘Geno’ – it’s a song that’s chopped up into lots of little bits. Lots of catchy little chunks. There are the woozy verses… Back in sixty-eight in a sweaty club… with lyrics that need serious Googling thanks to lead-singer Kevin Rowland’s unique delivery… Before Jimmy’s Machine and the Rocksteady Rub…

It’s a potted history of the band, or of Rowland’s formative years, bunking school and sneaking in to clubs to see soul legend Geno Washington step on stage, swinging his towel high… Then the tempo swings again, and there’s an insistent post-punk drive to the middle-eight. Academic inspiration, You gave me none… And then there’s the live chanting, which is actually sampled from a Van Morrison live album.

When writing these posts, I usually jot down my impressions on a song without looking at any other sources. You know, if you read that such-and-such a song is included in the Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 of all time, then it might influence your judgement… But with this record, I’m a bit stumped. The components are catchy, the oh-oh-oh Geno hook is great, but I’m struggling to place it.

It’s another insistent record, yet another chart-topper from ’79-’80 that is brimming with confidence and with ideas. Listening to this era’s chart-toppers is like going to an art school’s open day and being performed at by some very confident young wannabes. It’s all very impressive; but it can get a bit much.

So, do I like this song? Should I be enjoying this? The consensus seems to be that this is a classic… but that’s probably just because the Runners’ next chart-topper is so overplayed and people want to look cool. I think the big negative here is that the song’s topic is quite niche – a description of a gig – and the vocals so unintelligible. Still, it’s not boring, and that is always something.

This was just the second single that Dexys Midnight Runners’ had ever released, after their formation in Birmingham in 1978. Their name is the shortened version of Dexedrine, an amphetamine popular in clubs at the time, and which is referenced in this song: This man was my bomber, My dexys, My high… Oh Geno! It’s also the reason why there’s no apostrophe in the band’s name, which goes against all my English teaching instincts… They will be back, in good time, with one of the decade’s signature hits. One that may be overplayed, but that I will have no problem justifying as a classic!