Special Beat Service

Certain Songs #428: The English Beat – “Save it For Later”

January 22, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Special Beat Service
Year: 1982

Saving the best Beat song for last. And not just the best Beat song, but one of the very very very greatest songs of the 1980s, and a song that feels like a miracle every single time it comes on.

It’s so simple. It’s so complex. It’s so straightforward. It’s so transcendent. It’s pretty much everything a great pop song should be wrapped up into a single package. Riffs, harmonies, hooks, beats, words. It’s all there.

Certain Songs #427: The English Beat – “I Confess”

January 21, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Special Beat Service
Year: 1983

And a couple of months after I bought Wha’appen, I completed my purchases of The Beat’s three initial albums with Special Beat Service, which found them continuing to expand their music outwards, mixing songs from every conceivable genre with skill and glee.

That Special Beat Service would pull no punches was defined by the opening salvo, the incandescent soul burner, “I Confess.”