UK, July 1981 Charles and Diana are about to get married, riots broke out in Britain, Special offers waiting backstage for Top of the Pops.

In a few minutes the Coventry band will play their latest hit The “Ghost town”. A track that has for many years been regarded as one of the best British singles ever recorded and charted. divisions, racial tensions and social divisions that the UK has experienced this summer.

They were preceded in April by episodes in Brixton for famous “Operation Swamp”, essentially a law that allowed police officers in Britain to go out and make arrests if someone looked suspicious. In the same time, black community from London he became a target of the authorities.

OUR Terry Hall he may have sung about the disharmony with the Specials, but at the same time he experienced it in the ranks of his band, which was constantly stressed and exhausted from touring and pursuing success.

As the Specials frontman said in an interview in 2019, it took 8 months to record the track, since there were never more than two people in the studio at the same time. The countdown to the special has begun.

The work could have been written Jerry Dammers, but it’s Terry Hall’s trademark that everyone recognizes his voice.

AT July 7, 1981 in BBC Radio 1 announced that this part was found in #1 on the charts knocking out Michael Jackson’s “One Day In Your Life” from number one.

On the same day, the front pages of British newspapers started talking about using CS gas grenades British police to stop incidents in Toxteth from Liverpool.

By the end of the week, incidents had occurred in 20 more cities, including London, Nottingham and Leeds.

As for the soundtrack, it belonged Specialist.

There has been debate for years about whether the track is dedicated to Coventry, the Specials’ hometown. In a documentary “2 Tone: Sounds of Coventry” Jerry Dammers said, “I wrote their lyrics while we were on tour seeing what was going on in the country. They have been linked to recession and unemployment benefits. Police harassment and unemployment. It really looked like a normal storm.”

Of course, the most well-aimed comment about Ghost Town came from her. Gurinder Chanda, director of Do It Like Beckham and big fan of the specials in the aforementioned documentary: “If there is one song that Margaret Thatcher wishes she never released, it would probably be Ghost Town.

According to the BBC.