Robbed Hit of the Week 1/27/14 - Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy"..

Bronski Beat - "Smalltown Boy"
from the album Age Of Consent (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48

This week's "robbed hit" was a landmark single for gay and lesbian-themed pop music, from the electronic-pop trio of Bronski Beat. Named for member Steve Bronski, the group came together in London and released their debut album Age Of Consent in 1984. With defiant politics in the lyrics and a listing of actual "ages of consent" on the album cover, the set was jubilant as well as edgy, and scored a surprising hit in the still-Thatcherized Britain. The first single from the record, "Smalltown Boy", was a mournful story of a kid ostracized for who he was, and the video matched the message...

"Smalltown Boy" was big in England, going all the way to #3 on the singles charts, and crossed over to the States, were the video managed to get some play on MTV, and peaked right under the top-40 at #48, though it topped the Dance Club Play chart in Billboard.  But its influence on my generation was immeasurable. Nothing so straightforward about the young LGBT experience had been on the radio like this, and in the pre-internet "Dark Ages" of the world, Jimmy Somerville's haunting falsetto rang like a beacon that there were others that felt the same.

The single would be their only time in the pop chart in America, but their follow-up single "Why" , a top-ten hit in the UK, went to #27 on the dance chart.  After a remix EP called Hundred and Thousands, Somerville left the group, to be replaced by singer Jon Foster, and scored their third #3 hit in the UK with "Hit That Perfect Beat", which also climbed to #7 on the American dance chart. Their last hurrah on the chart in the U.S. came that same year with "C'mon C'mon" (#20). Meanwhile, Jimmy would go on to have success both as part of the Communards ("Don't Leave Me This Way") and as a solo artist ("You Make Me Feel Mighty Real").  In 1989, the duo of Bronski and Steinbachek backed up Eartha Kitt on her #32 UK hit "Cha Cha Heels"...

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Here's a live television appearance by the trio in Germany..

And their appearance on England's Top of The Pops...

In 1991, a remix of "Smalltown Boy" went back to the top-40 in Britain at #32...