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Song of the day – 70: The Style Council

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I’ve lost my well-documented antipathy towards Paul Weller now. (“If it was any other line of business I’d punch the cunt out,” Paul Weller on Everett True.)

Now I’m just grateful he recorded so many awesome, incredible songs that helped – for better or worse – shape my late teens and early 20s. I bow to no man or woman in my love for The Jam’s third, fourth and fifth albums: I’m pretty much word-perfect on the entire canon. And I know it sounds trite now, but tears of rage really did run down my face when I heard those lines from ‘When You’re Young’ while I was working on the production line at Cundell’s corrugated cardboard factory in Chelmsford, having been turned down by nine universities, and thinking I had no way out, no future. Paul Weller was clearly one of the main points of connection during my brief, tempestuous friendship with Alan McGee.

And I fucking LOVED the early Style Council singles, especially this one. Mick Talbot’s organ is dynamite. Weller’s voice has rarely sounded more on fire. Beautiful brass, and killer dynamics and harmonies too. This is the record that The Redskins (another band I loved) spent their entire career trying – and failing – to make.

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