The English Beat "I Just Can't Stop It" [1980]

Somebody traced the Specials and came out with a lame, sterilized approximation of two-tone ska. Some revival. Whatever fun ska music had to offer in the first place was always laced with the bitter pain felt by its artists, who were forced to live as second- and third-class citizens, at least until the Caribbean turned into a tourist trap. The Beat merely gives British white kids a reason to spill their pints while jumping around like jerkoffs as they're being spared the brawling dickheadedness of the punk movement. So it's just a re-hashing of pub rock with sax solos and guitar up-strumming on the "one-and." Which would have been fine as a minor curiosity, but not taken as a serious movement, unless by movement you mean "defecation." Even the dub-reggae passages here are weak tea; Lee "Scratch" Perry could've swatted these poseurs down with a simple flick of one of his dreadlocks. But this isn't Jamaica, it's England -- nobody chooses to visit there for the weather. Not only that, but if you suck in front of a black crowd, it'll likely be rudely suggested you leave the stage immediately. But white kids never seem to learn their lesson, generation after generation. England is, after all, where all new, legitimate forms of African American music go to die.