Pop icons of the 1980s making a comeback

This is Shakin’ Stevens – the naff guy in double denim who sang fake 1950s rock ’n’ roll songs in the early 1980s, much to the horror of teens like me (well, I was a teenager then) whose pop idols were New Romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

He was the kind of pop star we teens thought shouldn’t be allowed to clog up the charts with their awful dated rubbish and, as the biggest selling artist of the decade, keep “proper” pop songs off the No1 spot.

My dad loved his stuff, especially Green Door, because the 1950s was the era of his youth, and so there was no way my sister and I could ever have confessed to liking Shakin’ Stevens, even if we did.

I think the worst of his songs was the 1985 No 1 Merry Christmas Everyone, my loathing compounded by his appearance on Top of the Pops wearing an appalling Christmas jumper even Mark Darcy wouldn’t be seen dead in. Even now, I loathe hearing the song in shops every Christmas, and it’s always shown on TOTP2 when all you want to see are 1980s icons.

In the Noughties, Shaky was largely confined to pop history. But now, at the age of 68, he has brought out Echoes Of Our Times, and it has been getting four and five star reviews. 

Why? He has changed his tune, making a “raw, vibrant blues-based album that’s as earthy as its theme”, according to Will Hodgkinson, who reviewed it in The Times, giving it four stars. That earthy theme is the miners, soldiers and temperance campaigners Shaky discovered were among his

ancestors when he took part in Coming Home, a BBC Wales TV show similar to Who Do You Think You Are?

“I have never before written a song that is so personal,” Shaky said, adding that he had “gone back to the roots of his music”. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting facts to emerge from the renewed interest in Shaky is that he was once a communist. A communist! Shaky? The one who sang Oh Julie! What a shock! For us 50 somethings, it’s fascinating to see old 1980s pop stars having a revival. Rick Astley, the James Blunt of his day, who was mocked for his naff image despite his huge No 1 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up, released a new album in June and it reached No 1. 

I loved the single Keep Singing from the album, called 50, after hearing it on BBC Radio 2, popular with people of my age because of its fondness for 1980s hits. As faded pop stars remain at the age they were in their heyday in our minds, it was a surprise to realise that Rick Astley had aged, like all of us, and was now 50, just like it’s a bit of a shock to know that Shaky’s now in his late 60s, but a bigger surprise still to realise that Rick has finally grown into his deep voice.

Back in the 1980s you couldn’t take him seriously because he always looked like a little boy with a grown-up’s voice but, boy, has he now reached peak performance.

I haven’t heard Shaky’s new music but the reviewers tell us his voice is more gravelly with greater depth. Who knew Shaky could do deep?

I’m all for ancient popsters coming out of a decades-long wilderness in their dotage. It gives us a break from old rockers like Paul McCartney and Elton John who seem to have been around since the era of the dinosaurs and still can’t get out of the limelight.

I might launch a campaign to bring back other forgotten naff 1980s stars – Joe Dolce, for example (remember Shaddup You Face?), or Alvin Stardust or Toni Basil or Captain Sensible. Actually, no, perhaps not. Novelty acts should stick to panto – or obscurity.

Children learn more when they use pen and paper than on computers, according to research published in the Times Educational Supplement. And not just by a small margin – it was a 50 per cent improvement. That is a highly significant proportion and shows computers are not the answer to everything.

Tracking 2,200 pupils in 51 primary schools, the research mirrors the findings of the study The Pen Is Mightier Than the Laptop, carried out two years ago by Princeton University and published in Psychological Science.

It found that if a teacher had half their pupils take notes on a laptop and the other half with a pen and paper, it was the second group that blew away the other in a comprehension test on how much they learnt. Old-fashioned is not always old hat, and when it comes to the education of our children, we should sit up and take note – preferably with a pen and paper.