The complete ska-lovers guide to Madness
What is it about Madness’s ska pop songbook that demands such unanimous affection across the UK?
While a keen feature of London’s musical tapestry, Madness seem to have bottled whatever the British spirit is, unmistakably moulded by the nation’s working class households, terraced streets, and enthusiastic embrace of Caribbean cultural import in keeping with the rest of the Two-tone generation. There’s an infectious invite to Madness at their best, which has assured pop ubiquity ever since, any spin of their hits letting you in on the Nutty gang’s weird world.
Fundamentally, Madness are fantastic popsmiths. Burnished in ska, it didn’t take Camden’s musical ambassadors long to spread their wings, sailing past The Specials’ demise and the surrounding Bad Manners clichés as an outfit with a deeper song grab bag than the prior Nutty shenanigans would have you otherwise.
The depth is what’s often missing from the immediate impression of Madness’ legacy. While buckets of silliness are to be found, the lads wielded a strange ability to report on the lay of the land, even with the grey bits left in. It’s the difference between Suggs and Buster Bloodvessel. Aside from the sumo physique, but Madness can often pull the rug up while still larking about in fezzes, a bouncy ska number can easily jump into a peek at urban malaise, poverty-induced crime, or racial tensions via their tattered, Beano lyrical lens.
With Suggs having turned 65, what better time is there than to offer a gateway entry to Madness’ glittering pop oeuvre.
The complete Ska-lovers guide to Madness:
The nuttiest album – ‘One Step Beyond…’
Release Date: October 1979 | Producer: Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley | Label: Stiff
The Specials’ debut dropped the very same month, may peak in the consensus of chin-stroking, muso, opinion, but no album orbiting the Two-tone ska revival catapulted itself straight into the nation’s musical affections like Madness’ One Step Beyond…
Even the album cover marks clearly the infectiously bouncy energy captured on the Camden six-piece’s LP introduction, the lads breaking their backs performing the signature ‘Nutty Train’ on One Step Beyond…’s stylishly comic cover.
From the moment trumpeter Chas Smash announces the arrival of the “heavy heavy monster sound” on the title track opener, Madness race through a fun house race track of rocksteady japery, wry R&B, and an odd detour into Tchaikovsky skank, all cementing One Step Beyond…’s frenzied character. A perennial feature of UK pub jukeboxes henceforth, Madness’ first album offers the most potent swig of their uniquely nutty brand
Defining track: ‘My Girl’
The transitional album – ‘The Rise & Fall’
Release Date: November 1982 | Producer: Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley | Label: Stiff
Three records and a smatter of stand-alone singles in, and Madness were finally beginning to shake off the Nutty image. Not that they’d slump into po-faced earnestness, they never would, but the lads began to look further afield from the street-level dramas and band chicanery colouring previous LP efforts for a wider sonic and thematic statement.
What resulted was the career high, The Rise & Fall. Expanding their ska canvass with a fiercer pop hook and ambitious coatings of knees-up vaudeville and jazzy flourish, Madness never sounded so confident, their buoyant new sound in turn encouraging further inspired songcraft, including a step into the political with ‘Blue Skinned Beast’s attack on the Falklands War.
Featuring the immortal ‘Our House’, The Rise & Fall sits among its lyrical suburban terraces as a staunchly British creature, celebrating and exploring the UK’s Anglo-eccentricity well before Britpop’s Union Jackery over ten years later.
Defining track: ‘Tomorrow’s (Just Another Day)’
The greatest hits package worth your while – ‘Complete Madness’
Release Date: April 1982 | Producer: Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley | Label: Stiff
Madness’ classic tenure is split between two excellent best ofs, the later Utter Madness compilation scooping up the singles from ‘Driving in My Car’, including the excellent ‘Wings of a Dove’ and ‘(Waiting For) The Ghost Train’, a kind of bookend to Madness before their first hiatus.
But 1982’s Classic Madness nudges it as the finest gateway to Madness’ ska pop songbook. As well as covering key cuts from their first three albums, Classic Madness was promoted by ‘House of Fun’s deliriously good cheer as the single exclusive, plus gathering their defining cover of Labi Siffre’s ‘It Must Be Love’, Madness’ finest hour in the eyes of many fans.
Classic Madness’ secret weapon, however, is the gloriously hectic ‘In the City’, a madcap jingle initially penned for the Japanese Honda City cars, also featuring the band themselves in the TV commercials, but standing as a buried gem amid their early output.
Defining track: ‘House of Fun’
The unfairly maligned album – ‘Mad Not Mad’
Release Date: September 1985 | Producer: Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley | Label: Zarjazz
As the 1980s rolled by, so did the studio toys. While never completely losing themselves in the decade’s production trends and digital gadgets, a little of that sophistipop gloss trickled into Madness’ sounds, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley were enamoured with the new world of keyboards, and even drummer Daniel Woodgate played around with the LinnDrum machine.
Perhaps “maligned” isn’t entirely fair, but Mad Not Mad indeed has suffered from some soggy production and dated hues as befell many an album in the mid-1980s, prompting Suggs’ lambast of Madness’ sixth album as “a polished turd” to BBC Radio 1 in 1993.
Once the synthy dollops have been forgiven, there’s plenty to enjoy from Mad Not Mad’s vivacious offering. While numbers like ‘Uncle Sam’ flash the old satirical mirth, Madness dwell in a deeper introspective realm than fans were used to, rustling up the moving ‘Yesterday’s Men’ and making Scritti Politti’s ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’ their own.
Defining track: ‘Yesterday’s Men’
One from their recent records – ‘Theatre of the Absurd Presents C’est la Vie’
Release Date: November 2023 | Producer: Matt Glasbey, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley | Label: BMG
It wasn’t without ambition. After seven years away, Madness sought to soak up the mania in the air wrought from political upend and the Pandemic’s global topsy-turvy and found that, well, madness was exactly their element.
Dreaming up as hefty baroque pop work, 2023’s Theatre of the Absurd Presents C’est la Vie delivered a perfect slice of violins on the Titanic smirking doom, a kaleidoscopic toybox of pop charm that still fizzed with potent energy even over 40 years since their debut.
As illustrated by the apocalyptic front cover, Theatre of the Absurd Presents C’est la Vie charts a myriad collage of pop stylings, from ‘If I Go Mad’s organ skulk, ‘C’est la Vie’s amusement park twang, and ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’s shifty R&B, Madness’ 12th studio imagining marked a band not just resting on their national treasure laurels, but still gifted with enough pop maverick to score their first ever UK album number one.
Defining track: ‘If I Go Mad’
