Inarguable Pop Classics #18: Talk Talk - It's My Life 2

Inarguable Pop Classics #18: Talk Talk – It’s My Life

Although not achieving the commercial success they deserved at the time Talk Talk produced some quite astounding pop epiphanies throughout the 1980s. One of them ‘It’s My Life’ is one of a handful of their great pop moments, that has perhaps only grown in impact over the intervening years since its release. Turning evocative production into a virtue, each instrumental part and note given a sense of space and breath that was uncommon in an era of glossy pop. Thus ‘It’s My Life’ is built upon a bed of clicking drum machines, snaking baselines and synths that swirl and squawk gradually enveloping the listener. “One-half won’t do,” sings Mark Hollis in the pre-chorus, before the song lets flight into glorious, life affirming crescendos lifted aloft by firing drum machines, warm tumbling synths, while Hollis’s imperious tone shivers with a wistful impregnable power, ripe with existential yearning. Each note gives voice to a quivering vulnerability and a clinging to hope, embodying the contradictions of life’s constant struggle, alone and part of the crowd all at once (‘caught in the trap it never ends’).
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Originally written by the band’s creative hub of Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, it was the title track on the band’s second album and released as its first single in January 1984. Surprisingly It only just scraped into the top 50 in the UK charts that year, but was a hit throughout Europe. Talk Talk would go on to chart more left-field sounds with exquisite long players like ‘Spirit of Eden’ and ‘Laughing Stock’ earning more critical acclaim in retrospect, but the existential pop brilliance of ‘It’s My Life’ left an indelible mark and even from the vantage point of 2017, it still sounds timeless, towering and quite frankly marvellous.

  1. I’d argue that “Inarguable Pop Classic” is correct… but it’s poor compared to the best 80s pop. What a decade, probably the best ever for music (both pop and alternative). I’d go 70s second, probably 90s 3rd.

    What I would love someone (especially someone under 25) to try to explain is how they view the sound of this compared so so much modern pop. Am I just echoing what my parents did when I say “this modern music is unlistenable”…. or am I (as I hope) turning away from something not simply because I find it hard to listen to, but also because it is hard to listen to in a bland and auto-tuned way, not a challenging and interesting way.

    1. I guess you could write a whole thesis on why modern pop is, too many ears, unlistenable. The focus-group nature of its creation, the wholesale kitchen-sink appropriation of whatever sounds are fashionable underground regardless of whether it’s relevant to the song or not, the blandness of most of the actual performers – the latter probably the thing that puts me off the most. No room for mavericks or art school weirdos like Adam Ant, Kevin Rowland, Boy George, Marc Almond, Martin Fry, Phil Oakey, Mark Hollis etc etc. I’d better stop now or I’ll sound like one of those old farts who go on about how much better music was back in their day blah blah, and I hate people like that. But the charts in the 80s were fucking brilliant, even the bad stuff.

      1. I think alot of it is driven by the shifts in the industry, the appropriation of EDM, the multiple songwriter’s who write for multiple acts, there’s still good pop out there but sometimes you have to look a bit harder. I agree the 80s was probably the peak era for pop, I agree about the mavericks that’s part of the corporatised nature of pop now the most interesting individuals and artists are sidelined or not pushed or not given the huge platform they once were. But maybe the 80s was a hangover from punk the idea of music as social change, colliding with an attempts at mass appeal, that fine balance between the two New Order and The Cure are other examples. Music is seemingly no longer that force for social change it once was digitisation and social media pretend to fill the gap. Thus the mavericks largely aren’t interested in or given space to challenge the art form that coupled with a lack of money in music for emerging or mid level acts and a myopic focus on a handful of ‘mega’ MOR acts (reinforced by platforms like Spotify) designed for background streaming, closing down of the opportunity for a indelendent act to gatecrash the mainstream(via Totp or Peel),all perpetuated by three major labels has largely blandified the top end to a ridiculous extent.

  2. ‘’I’d argue that “Inarguable Pop Classic” is correct… but it’s poor compared to the best 80s pop. ‘ Such as?Its inarguable in the opinion of the author.

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