1982 Eddy Grant: I Don't Wanna Dance

If 1982 had been a bumper year a German presence in the UK charts, then reggae wasn't doing too badly either; 'I Don't Wanna Dance' completes a hat trick of number ones of British artists recording within the genre. Guyana born Grant had been here before in 1968 with The Equals and 'Baby Come Back', and in the true style of that other great eighties phenomena 'Transformers' it's fair to say that it would not take too many replaced or modified parts to transform that earlier song into the current one; 'I Don't Wanna Dance' runs on a similarly solid four on the floor backbeat that owes more to Chuck Berry than Lee Perry with an underlying tune that is almost interchangeable.

Though saying that, unlike 'Baby Come Back' where the verses aimed to build to a tension relieving chorus, here Grant latches on to his tune from the off and hangs on 'till the end, ploughing the same furrow throughout with a tunnel vision that gives the overall impression of being dropped into the middle of something that is either one long series of verses without a chorus, or simply just one long chorus. Whatever, it soon grates and even an uncharacteristically (for reggae anyway) zippy guitar solo does nothing to raise the interest bar. The pissed off looking girl in the accompanying video provides the perfect response to Eddy's serenading and her bored and pained expressions review this better than a thousand words.