One Hit No More, No. 117: Thomas Dolby & More "Science" Than You'd Expect

The sensibility was always complicated.

Pretty sure this one never fully checked out of the Western zeitgeist, but you tell me.

The Hit
For whatever reason the aside, “Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you’re beautiful” remains one of my main memories of Thomas Dolby’s, “She Blinded Me with Science.” As people of a certain age know, that song was all over the place in the early 1980s (circa 1982), so I always thought of Dolby as a big star. He did better in the UK – and wasn’t too shabby on U.S. album sales at his peak – but that single was his only U.S. hit. It topped out a No. 5...but, swear to God, MTV had that on whatever’s denser than heavy rotation for a solid year.

Here's where I admit I didn’t mind it. It’s nicely busy, the tones perky, the rhythm bouncy and kind of fun; better, the whole thing feels a bit campy. And, if you ever thought Dolby came up with the video/concept before the song...ding, ding ding!

“Yeah, I came up with a storyboard for a video. I'd recently seen a Japanese magazine awarding a Young Scientist of the Year in 1981. I took that as kind of amusing. If I was going to be a scientist, I'd need a hot Japanese lab assistant and I'd need a cool vintage motorcycle hat, kind of an homage to deranged scientists. I phoned up this famous TV scientist for the BBC, Dr. Magnus Pike [to appear in the video]."

"The record execs liked the idea of the video, but said, ‘Where's the song?’ I said, ‘Oh, how about I bring it in on Monday morning?’ and went home over the weekend and did the first bit of the song.”

Fuck it. It’s fun. Moreover, it prefaced things to come in Thomas Dolby’s career.

The Rest of the Story
“I'm not a very proficient keyboard player, so the computer became my musical instrument ... None of the equipment is essential, though. In a way, I was happier when I just had one monophonic synthesizer and a two-track tape deck.”
- Wikipedia

One Hit No More, No. 100(!): The Itinerant Zelig Behind M and "Pop Muzik"

A Persona.

The Hit
The biggest surprise I found in researching M’s 1979 hit, “Pop Muzik,” was that the man behind, Robin Scott, first tried to record it as either R&B or funk. That detail comes from Stereogum's entry in on M in its (and very good) series on No. 1 hits. As noted in the same piece, Scott cleared out the analog instruments and started working with keyboards to create “an otherworldly synthetic take on the song that was inspired…by Donna Summer.” It also contains an old quote on the inspiration for the single:

“Scott later said that he envisioned himself speaking as a disco DJ, floating above the crowd and making ridiculous voice-of-God statements. Talking to Melody Maker at the time, he explained, ‘I get the feeling that people want to know that someone is in control. I see everybody in the disco like being in an enormous army which is waiting to be told what to do. They’ve all rallied under this call, and now they’re sweating out their hang-ups there.’”

For anyone wanting to dive…pretty damn deep into Scott’s life, influences and process, a site called Discog Info mined all sorts of old quotes that get into all that, but the Stereogum piece does the best work both placing “Pop Muzik” in time and breaking it down. It calls it the first true new wave song to hit No. 1- a fair call based on the competition, Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” (more on Blondie here) and The Knack’s “My Sharona” (more on The Knack here) - and it makes a strong case for the future-forward originality of the song’s style and structure:

“A mechanistic drum pounds out a steady, basic thump. Keyboards make noises — blips, pings, squirts, hums — that sound strange and spartan and alien while still somehow resolving into catchy melodies. A British man deadpans absurdist non-sequiturs, sounding bored but also excited by his own boredom.”

That sums it up better than I ever will. And now…

The Rest of the Story
Robin Scott never lacked for interesting associations. Born in Croydon, Surrey, UK, in 1947, he attended Croydon Art College where he started a long friendship with the future Svengali of English punk, Malcolm McLaren, and another collaborator, Vivienne Westwood. Though he did do some work with McLaren - e.g., he told Music Hit Box in a circa-2017interview that he helped them develop ideas for the “Let It Rock” boutique, though Wikipedia’s entry says he passed on the chance to work with them at the Chelsea fashion shop SEX - Scott committed to music early, and in one form after another.