“In May 1977, a three-piece rock group from Woking appeared on Top of the Pops. You can see what happened on YouTube: the presenter announcing an ‘effervescent new 45 called In The City, and the 140 seconds of wonderment that followed,” recalls The Jam’s website. “The song fizzed with the energy and sense of purpose that was firing what had been called punk and was now mutating into New Wave, but it had a lot more: a melodic charge – as in the glorious opening riff – that betrayed its makers’ love of classic British pop, and the clear sense that the band’s main creative force was already thinking like an accomplished songwriter. Between 1977 and 1982, the band released an incredible array of music. In the UK, there were five albums and 17 singles, a stack of number 1s, and a journey which encompassed no end of influences, styles, and textures.”
The punk/New Wave/mod revivalist band was best known for hard-edged, uptempo rave-ups like the debut album title track, but also for more reserved, carefully constructed New Wave songsmithing like 1981’s “That’s Entertainment” (listed by BBC 2 radio as the 43rd best song ever released by any artist) and the UK #1 hit “A Town Called Malice.” But its spare acoustic ballad, “English Rose” (1978) shows a different side of the band, with the extra weight of invoking England’s national flower and one of the nation’s most venerated symbols. The tune was written by band member Paul Weller, who later continued his success with the soul-inflected band The Style Council, founded just as The Jam lost steam in 1982.
The track modulates up a half-step at 1:39, propelled by many unexpected inversions along the way. Many thanks to MotD regular Rob Penttinen for identifying this mod in the wild!
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