I started this project of re-counting down my top 100 favourite eighties tunes just over a year ago and yet, I’m only at song #91!*
Pop Will Eat Itself’s track, “Wise up! sucker”, just snuck itself into the eighties, and subsequently, my list, being released in 1989. PWEI came out of the same Grebo music scene as another Stourbridge, England band, The Wonder Stuff (see track #96). In fact, both bands have their roots in a short-lived project from the early eighties, called From Eden and Miles Hunt and Clint Mansell remain friends today. PWEI very quickly moved on from their original pop punk influenced sound to the dark, drum machine- and sample-heavy music heard on “Wise up! sucker”.
This song comes from what many consider to be PWEI’s second album, “This is the day!… This is the hour!… This is this!” (I guess many don’t consider “Now for a feast” a proper album?) “Wise up! sucker” is a cacophony of the aforementioned drum machines and samples, along with drilling guitars and half-sung, half-rapped vocals and is instantly recognizable for its “She loves me… She loves me not” chorus. And yes, that is Miles Hunt singing back up.
I think I first came to realize that I liked these guys after dancing to this very song and drunkenly screaming the chorus on a Saturday night at a now defunct alternative music club in Oshawa called the Moon Room and meeting a girl on the dance floor that I would spend the rest of that summer courting. I never got the girl (I have since found a better one) but still love the tune.
Original Eighties best 100 position: #92
Favourite lyric: “You give me sixteen different flavours of hell” Have you ever been in a relationship like that?
Where are they now?: The band went on to many different projects after their breakup in 1996. Original member Clint Mansell has had a successful career scoring films, such as “Requiem for a dream” and “The wrestler”. In 2011, Graham Crabb resurrected the PWEI name and released a new album, though he was the only original member that performed on it. Since then, original members Richard March, Fuzz Townshend, and Adam Mole** have rejoined the group and a couple other records have followed.
*Though I have been making up ground of late…
**Clint Mansell is the only original member that is not currently with the band.
For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 