Lord, these two songs are so damn great. David Emmanuel was better known as Smiley Culture and responsible for the pair of classics above; 1984’s “Police Officer” and 1985’s “Cockney Translation”. Both are brilliantly infectious and feature some truly clever and pointed social criticism in their colorful, candy-reggae wrappers. They respectively managed to hit #’s 12 and 71 in the UK charts, but falling short of # 1 is no reflection on their enduring wonderfulness: they are just pop, pop, pop, both of their time and timeless. Smiley died under mysterious circumstances in 2011 ( lots of info around regarding this so encourage you to search the web for more)…but right now, want to just look up and acknowledge these forever amazing confections.
Obsessively devoted to excavating the unjustifiably overlooked, forgotten, hidden in plain sight & truly underappreciated in the musical universe, old and new.
