Musical Monday - Red Red Wine by UB40

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: The week of October 15, 1988.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of October 15, 1988.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: September 3, 1983 through September 17, 1983.

This version of Red Red Wine is a cover version of a cover version of a 1967 Neil Diamond song that was rereleased in the U.S. five years after it was a top hit in the U.K. That's a pretty long and winding road for a song to take.

This song is actually an example of something that probably can't really happen any more. The song was a big hit in the U.K. in 1983, but went almost entirely unnoticed in the U.S. Five years later, it was promoted by some interested music industry folks following a performence of the song at Nelson Mandela's birthday celebration, and it became a top hit in the United States. This sort of delayed flow through the cultural psyche just doesn't happen in the modern interconnected world where pop culutre flashes around the globe so quickly that if you blonk you miss it.

The delay in the song reaching popularity in the U.S. did create a kind of oddly jarring circumstance in which a song made during the ennui of the economic malaise of the early 1980s in the U.K. became a big hit in the U.S. in 1988, when the country was kind of riding high. The song and the video that goes with it depict a kind of depressing existence in which drinking is the only respite from a life of underemployment and disappointment, which fit perfectly with the zeitgeist of the recessionary economy of the early-1980s. It also fit perfectly with a band whose name was a reference to a government form used for claiming unemployment benefits. By 1988 though, the song felt kind of weirdly out of place.

Previous Musical Monday: Give It Up by KC and the Sunshine Band

Subsequent Musical Monday: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Love Bites by Def Leppard

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: A Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Love Bites by Def Leppard

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: A Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Give It Up by KC and the Sunshine Band

Subsequent #1 on the U.K. Chart: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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