Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 11

The Dream Academy - "Life in a Northern Town"



(Album & Single Release: 1985)
The story goes that Nick Laird-Clowes was being given guitar lessons by Paul Simon. Paul apparently told Nick that "The Morning Lasted All Day," the title for an airy dream-pop song he had written as a tribute to Nick Drake, was a terrible name for a song. Thus, "The Morning Lasted All Day" became "Life in a Northern Town." Like some of Simon's own tunes, there are disparate elements that coalesce together into a seamless composition. The Drake-inspired folk guitar, the African chant in the chorus, the classical feel of the woodwind, the more eighties feel of the synthesizer combined with the nostalgic reverie of a long past particular time and place all become elements of one great balladesque pop song. I recently heard the beautiful and hilarious Kate Micucci describe a song as making her nostalgic for the present, that everything around her suddenly had more cachet. This is how "Life in a Northern Town" made me feel back in 1985, and as testament to the solid songwriting, that is how it makes me feel even today. I had only found out recently that it had been covered by a collaboration of country bands. I don't even know where to start with how inapropos that choice turned out to be.