first round

(11) Big Country, “In a Big Country”
navigated
(6) Tracey Ullman, “They Don’t Know”
251-112
and will play in the second round

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/10/23.

Just A Phase: Kurt B. Reighley on “They Don’t Know”

Tracey Ullman was a phony, but she gave voice to my truth.
Growing up in a small town, I kept my feelings quiet. Especially the feelings below my belt buckle. Aside from an occasional Saturday night field trip to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the only places I felt safe were my bedroom and in the company of my closest friends. There wasn’t room for boys like me in the real world, and certainly not in the Top 40. When I wanted to enjoy music that mirrored my desires, I sang along with Blondie or the Go-Go’s in private.
In 1983, after a crush on my band’s guitarist had ended in fisticuffs, I told a few of my closest friends I was gay. My parents soon followed. Despite watching me perform entire numbers from West Side Story in the living room as a kid, Mom and Dad didn’t seem to buy it. My father immediately asked if I’d had sex with another man yet. No? Good. Until then this identity was “just a phase,” not to be discussed.
Then one day it happened: a boy. He made me mix tapes full of deep cuts by Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure and OMD. We went on dates to see Laurie Anderson and Liquid Sky. With my first tastes of reciprocal affection and safe, consensual sex, everything turned Technicolor. Where once I’d darted between classes, now I walked the halls calmly, my heart a warm, glowing ember. I still didn’t feel safe, but I had a sense of protection.
Yet while ardor swelled my breast near to bursting that spring of 1984, I maintained strict secrecy about my beau. He was nine years my senior and lived across state lines. Lord Alfred Douglas wasn’t part of the AP English curriculum, but I knew our love dared not speak its name. Allegations of statutory rape were the last thing I needed.
As my courtship flowered, a new name—Tracey Ullman—was climbing the U.S. charts. “They Don’t Know” provided the emotional release I craved. Here was a tale of romance as misunderstood as my own, broadcast in high fidelity and technicolor for all the world to witness. And the world said “yes!” pushing the song to #8 on the Billboard pop charts by May 1984. Confidence surged through me every time I heard “They Don’t Know.” With Tracey as my mouthpiece, my love rang out over the airwaves:

Why should it matter to us if they don't approve?
We should just take our chances while we've got nothing to lose

  Isolated in the suburbs, I thought my connection to “They Don’t Know” was something new and extraordinary. It was an easy enough mistake. Though I’d later seek out the original artists responsible for the songs on Ullman’s debut album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places, the universe of ‘60s girl groups was an unfamiliar one. I lacked context to appreciate that generations of sixteen year-olds and queers before me had trusted records made from the same mold to express secret dreams and desires.
What I did appreciate immediately were the contributions of Kirsty MacColl, composer of “They Don’t Know.” Intrigued by a tiny item in the press a couple years earlier, I’d purchased an import cassette of her album Desperate Character. MacColl’s wit and delivery resonated with my theatrical side, especially on “Teenager In Love,” her send-up of country-adjacent teen weepers in the Skeeter Davis vein.

MacColl’s version of “They Don’t Know” had been issued in 1979 on UK indie label Stiff Records. To my mind, her direct ties to label mates Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and the Damned underscored her bona fides. Unfortunately, the original “They Don’t Know” fell far short of the remake’s lofty heights. Despite considerable airplay, a distribution strike kept MacColl’s 45 out of British stores and the charts.
My adoration for MacColl automatically made Ullman’s interpretation of “They Don’t Know” a personal favorite. But this time Stiff went after a chart hit, wooing mass audiences with an array of tactics (including endless chart show appearances and a charming video) for maximum commercial appeal. It worked. No matter where you lived or what your age, “They Don’t Know” felt like a classic on the first listen.
Ullman was already famous in the UK, where she starred in the hit TV comedy Three of a Kind. Her CV also included West End productions of Grease and The Rocky Horror Show, cult classics born at the intersection of oldies rock and Hollywood. Those experiences teed her up neatly for a segue into pop music, but the opportunity arrived by accident, not design. When the wife of Stiff Records’ co-founder Dave Robinson bumped into the actress at a local hair salon, she asked if Ullman might fancy making a single. She didn’t have to ask twice.
Ullman had a clear idea of how her records should sound: “The only thing that had made any impact on me were singers like Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black and Dusty Springfield.” Despite a modest singing voice, she exuded girl-next-door charm and delivered her lyrics with judicious enthusiasm. Sympathetic production enriched her performances with multi-tracked vocals and layered harmonies (many executed by MacColl). Pitched somewhere between the grandeur of Phil Spector’s “symphonies for the kids” and Quincy Jones’ ebullient Lesley Gore productions, Ullman’s records were unabashed studio concoctions but they didn’t want for heart.
Tracy Ullman, pop sensation, burst on the scene with “Breakaway” in March 1983. While the record’s breakneck tempo left Ullman sounding spindizzy (Robinson was notorious for speeding up vocals because he thought urgency led to airplay), she shone in the video, an explosion of towering wigs, wagging fingers, and hairbrush microphones. Co-written by Jackie DeShannon and originally recorded (as “Break-a-way”) by Irma Thomas for a 1964 flipside, the single’s Northern Soul groove proved irresistible. “Breakaway” shot to #4 in the UK and charted across Western Europe.

Having successfully launched Ullman with “Breakaway,” Stiff Records needed a follow-up, pronto. They got it from the artist they’d failed four years before. MacColl had left Stiff after just two 45s, signing on to a larger label that now lacked a clear vision for her path forward. At the encouragement of friend Pete Waterman (who’d craft mega-hits for Kylie Minogue, Bananarama, and Dead or Alive as one-third of Stock-Aitken-Waterman), MacColl pitched “They Don’t Know” as possible material for Ullman.
The name above the title was Tracey Ullman, but MacColl’s essence permeates “They Don’t Know” Mach Two, including the record’s thrilling climax. It is MacColl, not Ullman, who belts out a piercing “BAY-BEE” between the bridge and second verse. After the two-note exclamation proved too high for the actor’s vocal register, producer Pete Collins just dropped in MacColl’s original, altering the pitch to match the rest of Ullman’s performance.
The video for “They Don’t Know” rounded out the package, offsetting its modest production values with high camp. The clip opens with a whoosh of organ and symphony hall percussion, as a cute dude in gold lame briefs (shades of Rocky Horror again!) bangs a gong. Cut to Ullman’s bedroom. Pictures of pop stars (and one in particular, wink-wink) adorn her boudoir walls, but this heroine isn’t the hyperactive teen sensation of “Breakaway.” Blotting her lipstick in her dressing table mirror, the singer projects sophistication and self-assurance. Adolescence has matured into young adulthood… or at least a starry-eyed teenager’s approximation.
As a date night scenario at the bowling alley unfolds on screen, Ullman plays directly to the camera. Her boyfriend, a slender chap with a creepy mustache, remains oblivious throughout the entire clip. The veil between Ullman’s imagination and everyday life seems slight but securely fastened. Then the third act opens on a grim note. Face unmade and hair a mess, Ullman plucks items off the grocery shelves as she pushes a little girl in a shopping cart, her lifeforce dimmed by unkind overhead lighting.
That plucky young woman in the bedroom mirror seems a lifetime away. But creepy mustache boyfriend is still hanging around, working as a clerk in the store where Ullman shops. Clueless as ever to the wonder swirling around him, he pinches Ulllman’s bum as she scurries past. We’re miles away from a fairytale ending, yet Ullman’s resolve persists:

No I don't listen to their wasted lines
Got my eyes wide open and I see the signs

The scene cuts back to Date Night Tracey, now snuggling in the front seat of the car with… oh my heavens, it’s Paul McCartney! This reverie dissolves in an instant but the point’s been made: keep the fire burning inside. As the last notes of “They Don’t Know” ring out, Ullman spins her shopping cart, kicks up a fluffy pink slipper, and throws her free arm skyward. Freeze and fade to black.
Though I refused to acknowledge it at the time, this denouement cemented my devotion to “They Don’t Know.” As a gay teenager starved for positive role models, those frames of contented domesticity felt as far-fetched as the life I imagined awaited me one day in the Big City. Being content as a grownup? In the suburbs? It seemed impossible, but I’d learned early to appreciate stretch goals.
Boosted by heavy rotation on MTV and its Canadian counterpart, Much Music, “They Don’t Know” kept going and going and going.  Today, YouTube hosts a slew of TV appearances promoting “They Don’t Know,” from Top of the Pops on the BBC in September 1983 to Solid Gold in the United States seven months later. They’re practically interchangeable: same pink lurex dress, same hand gestures, same two dancers. Tracey hit her marks every time. 
Even as Ullman was glad-handing Johnny Carson and David Letterman in America, covers of Doris Day’s “Move Over Darling” and a gender-flipped rendition of Madness’ “My Girl” (“My Guy”) extended her chart run overseas. But Ullman showed no interest in becoming a long-running franchise. As each new single and video generated a little less excitement than the last, her recording career quietly came to a stop.
Ullman soon returned to British television, alongside Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, in the 1985 sitcom Girls On Top. A couple years later she relocated permanently to the United States, and launched The Tracey Ullman Show, a new showcase for her versatility (as well as a crudely drawn cartoon family called The Simpsons… but that’s another story) on the fledgling Fox network. 
MacColl did okay, too. She went on to issue four critically lauded albums between 1989 and 2000. She sang backing vocals for the Rolling Stones, Simple Minds, and Happy Mondays. Every December, her Christmas duet with the Pogues (“Fairytale of New York”) goes back into heavy rotation. According to Second Hand Songs, more than 40 different artists have recorded “They Don’t Know.” When MacColl died suddenly in 2000, the victim of a boating accident, she left behind an expansive catalog and an army of lifelong fans.
Not long ago, I heard “They Don’t Know” at the grocery store. From the first notes, that golden glow of youth and first love surged through me once more. I didn’t spin my cart, but I smiled as the camera in my mind’s eye pulled back to reveal a middle-aged man living happily ever after, after all. I’ve ridden in cars alongside a few rock stars, married a guy with a creepy mustache, and lived as my authentic self for nearly 40 years. Tracey Ullman’s music career was “just a phase” but the spirit of “They Don’t Know” sustains me to this day.

Kurt B. Reighley (aka DJ El Toro) resides and creates in Tucson, AZ with his husband, artist Mark Mitchell. He hosts the weekly LGBTQ+ music program "Inside/Out" on KXCI Tucson every Friday evening.

adam o. davis on “in a big country”

I’M NOT EXPECTING TO GROW FLOWERS IN THE DESERT

This may be true. A long time ago, a group of intrepid Scots, fed up with Viking pillaging and English incursion, built a boat and sailed west into parts unknown. After months of seafaring, the unknown part they encountered was what would come to be called Florida. Paradisical as it may be to the contemporary European tourist, it was not then to those wanderlusting Scots. This was before Miami, before DEET, before Epcot. The weather was too hot and the alligators too dragon-like. So said Scots got back into their boat and headed north where they found a craggy outpost of frigid rock and, finding it so much like home, named it Nova Scotia. New Scotland. And there they remained for centuries in a familiar cold far, far away from the prospect of vacation rentals and fan boats.

I CAN LIVE AND BREATHE AND SEE THE SUN IN WINTERTIME

The title of Big Country’s biggest hit, “In a Big Country,” achieves the rare feat of namechecking the band that performs it without sounding trite (consider how poorly U2 might have fared with “With or Without U2” or Queen with “Queen Will Rock You” or Def Leppard with “Pour Some Sugar on Joe Elliot”). It creates a kind of aural Droste effect: Big Country plays a song about being in a big country which may be Big Country. Or, the land is the band is the land. And the band is of the land. Formed in 1981 between the Firth of Tay and Firth of Fourth—right where the upper teeth would be in the anthropomorphic mouth of the old Walker’s crisps adverts—Big Country sounds Scottish. Deeply Scottish. But it ain’t because of the bagpipes. Namely because there are none.

IN A BIG COUNTRY DREAMS STAY WITH YOU

Scotland is an iconoclastic country. Idiosyncratic and proud. Where Cola-Cola comes in second to the national soda of choice, Irn-Bru, whose famously rusty hue (“Made in Scotland from girders”)—the result of two colorants that require a warning label about the potential for causing ADHD in children—is so potent at staining carpets (and everything else) that it has, according to The Scotsman, “become the liquid of choice among unscrupulous individuals looking to fool their insurance firms.” This mixture of national pride and stubborn defiance is something of a Scottish hallmark. The kind of polarity that makes for potent mixture of myth and commerce, particularly when applied to the more unique aspects of Scottish culture. Say Scotch. Or bagpipes. Or tartans. Or Nessie, haggis, Robert Burns, shortbread, Irvine Welsh novels, the proper maintenance of dilithium crystals, and the best James Bond ever. In this, there’s something indisputably tangible about the idea of Scotland in the things of Scotland—or, at least, the ideas foreigners have about Scotland (particularly those foreigners who, like me, claim Scottish ancestry). An idea that has something to do with longing. Longing for old places. And for new ones.

THAT’S A DESPERATE WAY TO LOOK FOR SOMEONE WHO IS STILL A CHILD

My middle initial stands for Ogilvie. The name of the Scottish clan my ancestors belonged to. They had a castle (in ruins), a tartan (quite tasteful), and a motto (“a fin,” Latin for “to the end”). They were, I’ve been told, horse thieves and priests. The horse thieves were hanged. It’s upon this past that I hang my hedging ways—he who’d love to be a bankrobber if only he could handle the guilt. But there’s another version of this story. One without piety and executions and in their place a bit of social climbing, a man looking to move up in the world by adopting his wife’s name as his own. A tale of aspiration rather than expiration. Less fun that the first but more honest. How a person finds their way out of one life and into another. What they give up to get somewhere better.

YOU CAN’T STAY HERE WITH EVERY SINGLE HOPE YOU HAD SHATTERED

Big Country is a tale of two bands. The first—the Skids—begat the second—the aforementioned B.C. Despite commercial success and opening for The Clash, Stuart Adamson was frustrated by the lack of creative control he had in the Skids, so he gave it up and found new bandmates—guitarist Bruce Watson, bassist Tony Butler, and drummer Mark Brzezicki—and named his new band Big Country. In doing so, he named the sound and the weight of his ambition. Something epic, something Scottish, something that would redeem the dreams he held for the sonic landscape in his head. Knowing this, in “In a Big Country,” I believe Adamson’s singing to Adamson, exhorting himself Mickey Goldmill-style to rise up from off the floor screaming and fulfill his musical promise. To keep striving against the odds. To succeed. The plea is equal parts desperation, defiance, and hope. And it worked. And then it didn’t.

SO TAKE THAT LOOK OUT OF HERE IT DOESN’T FIT YOU

If there was a shadow over Big Country, it was U2 though, ironically, U2 had initially been in their shadow—or at least debt. If Adamson’s first band was an inspiration to U2 (who covered their song, “The Saints Are Coming,” with Green Day in 2006), his second band was their doppelgänger. Outside of the Edge’s jangling atmospherics there’s no more iconic guitar sound from the 1980s than that of Stuart Adamson’s Fender Stratocaster filtered through many a foot pedal. And in the beginning it seemed that the scales of success were tipped in Big Country’s favor. John Peel, the legendary British musical kingmaker, rejected U2’s advances but praised Adamson as “a new Jimi Hendrix.” Even the Edge went on to claim at Adamson’s funeral that Big Country wrote the songs U2 wished they had written. Both bands even the same producer—Steve Lillywhite—who in 1983 produced U2’s War, Simple Mind’s Sparkle in the Rain, and Big Country’s The Crossing. There was no doubt this band could deliver. And they did. And then, somehow, it wasn’t enough. Part of it was timing. Burnt out by the band’s success and drinking too much, Adamson threatened to quit Big Country in 1985. Though he may not have been serious, gossip turned it definitive and Bob Geldof, believing they’d broken up, didn’t invite them to perform at Live Aid where U2 played to tremendous results. Their star ascendant while Big Country’s faltered, perhaps also thanks to the flexibility they had that Big Country didn’t. Though deeply Irish, U2 never sounded Irish in the way Big Country sounded Scottish. They slipped musical skins while Big Country proudly grew further into theirs. They were the country and the country was them.

CRY OUT FOR EVERYTHING YOU EVER MIGHT HAVE WANTED

How to create a hit Scottish single:

Exhibit A: The Proclaimer’s “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”

Exhibit B: Travis’ “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?”

Exhibit C: Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out”

Exhibit D: Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”

Each song is a stone-cold Caledonian classic whose beat is that of a military tattoo (sometimes lilting, sometimes lashing) and whose chorus is that of a Hibs match. But none of them surpass the anthemic beauty of “In a Big Country.” None can touch its ecstatic folk harmonies whose ear-blistering guitarwork threatens—but never falls into—anarchy. Though the aforementioned songs pack plenty of punch—The Proclaimer’s charmingly irreverent ambulatory romance, Travis’ rousing faux-miserable ode to precipitation, Franz Ferdinand’s stomping kata-like plea for love or assassination, and Chumbawamba’s deathless near-cyborgian promise of resurrection despite all manner of drink (be it whiskey, vodka, lager, or cider)—none can hold a candle to Big Country’s barbaric yawp delivered by way of an MXR Pitch Transposer (I repeat: There are no bagpipes in this song) that’s the musical equivalent of, God help me, William Wallace yelling alba gu bràth for four straight minutes. The song is pure rabblerousing joy. A cathartic scream against insignificance, against despair. A demented highland jig (see: the jaunty fling two be-denimed lads conduct onstage during a live performance by the band on The Tube) blasted out of a cannon as soon as the drums—rat-tat-tata-tat! rat-tat-tata-tat!—kick in. And that twin guitar attack. It’s like eagles. Like how eagles would shriek. If they were electronic and joyfully aflame.

ANOTHER PROMISE FALLEN THROUGH ANOTHER SEASON PASSES BY YOU

On December 29th, 1993, Big Country played a show at Glasgow’s Barrowlands. After thanking the audience and before launching into “In a Big Country,” Stuart Adamson says “I’ve got just one more thing to say. Stay alive.”

LIKE A LOVER’S VOICE FIRES THE MOUNTAINSIDE

Not shot in the Big Country itself but Dorset, the music video plays like a low-budget The Goonies. The band is on a treasure hunt. The treasure: a box marked BIG COUNTRY. But keeping Big Country from finding Big Country is a suitably emo PVC-clad woman who spends three-minutes-and-forty-five seconds committing robbery, setting houses on fire, punching the lead singer in the face for no reason, and totally smoking the band on their Zodiac raft as she blasts by on a Sea-Doo (have I mentioned how vehicle-heavy this video is?). But then she finds herself stranded in a cove where Adamson rescues her by abseiling (that’s rappelling to you Yanks) down a cliff for which he receives a chaste hug and some handholding. But! The drummer discovers the stolen box in a kelp bed. The band has found the treasure. The treasure of themselves. In the background of all this, the band performs in the kind of smoky, laser-lit netherworld all Thatcher-era bands were contractually obliged to film videos in. They play on as the song fades in that classic 1980’s way that suggests the song never ends. Which, in the case of this song, it never does. No matter where you might find yourself in the world, it’s on the radio somewhere. 

I THOUGHT PAIN AND TRUTH WERE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTERED

When considering the suicide of an artist the question inevitably arises: Did their work point to their end? Such thinking often provides for a kind of grieving hagiography whose emphasis on a throughline from art to death isn’t for the artist’s benefit but the audience’s. Ah, we say, now it all makes sense. Now we can move on. But “In a Big Country” isn’t a song you can move on from. There’s something tidal about it, the way it ebbs and flows between joy and despair—a tension that, when balanced right, makes for timeless tunes. How the propulsive, arpeggiated drive of the melody nearly overwhelms the lyrical darkness whose growing pleas to cry out for everything you might have ever wanted become more triumphant the more desperate they grow. A song that’s as much war cry as cry for help. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. As the band’s drummer, Mark Brzezicki told Classic Rock, “Only in hindsight I’ve started looking at the lyrics and I’m starting to go, ‘Hang on a minute—the writing’s there. This guy was saying it all along.’ Or was he? I don’t know.”

I NEVER TOOK THE SMILE AWAY FROM ANYBODY’S FACE

Roughly 300 million years ago, Scotland was a volcanic vacation spot slowly making way for the incoming Atlantic Ocean. Where once it had been fused to America and Europe, it would eventually head north where its tropical temperament would be cooled by ice sheets. Both Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat sit on extinct volcanoes so Oahu must have looked strangely familiar to the boy who had grown up in Dunfermline near the Lomond Hills. So far from home and yet home, this Scotsman seeking paradise. This Scotsman who, suffering increasingly from alcoholism, found the sun in wintertime. On December 16th, 2001, nearly a month after being reported missing, Adamson would be found dead in his Honolulu hotel room.

BECAUSE IT’S HAPPENED DOESN’T MEAN YOU’VE BEEN DISCARDED

Countries are ideas we give bodies to. Those bodies ideas we call home. Songs, too, are like countries. They speak to who we were before we became who we are and who we hope we might still become. Ambition and reality filtered through the alchemy of a name. “In a Big Country” is a country unto itself. A great country, this song-shaped country. That it was Big Country’s only top 20 American hit doesn’t diminish it—it makes it all the more precious. We have to hold tight to such miracles, such songs that demand, like Rilke demanded, that we change our lives. That we get up screaming. That we stay alive.

Adam O. Davis learned to read and write in Scotland. He’d also drink an Irn-Bru over a Coke any day of the week. He’s the author of Index of Haunted Houses (Sarabande, 2020), the recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Award and the 2016 George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his work has appeared in The Believer, The Best American Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. More at www.adamodavis.com.