Dexys Midnight Runners – ‘Come On Eileen’ (original) (raw)
14 August 1982
If ‘Fame’ was huge in 1982, ‘Come On Eileen’ was stratospheric. It was everywhere then and, unlike any other non-Christmas ’80s record, it still is. At any family gathering or celebration you know the DJ will play it, and this is probably how people have experienced it most.
At the time, being a small child, I didn’t understand why this English band wanted to sound Irish. Our national self-esteem was at rock bottom in the early ’80s anyway, but towards England we were forever having to excuse and distance ourselves from IRA atrocities. Also, every summer lots of English kids came over here, and I thought they must have seen us in rural Ireland especially as backward and underdeveloped. I dreaded hearing their accents, a Pavlovian bell that signalled: time to cringe.
Of course, I was too young to know or grasp that Kevin Rowland’s parents were Irish, as were those of the kids who came over every summer, and that Irishness or any identity is not a singular experience. I had no interest in traditional Irish music, but it was still our shared cultural hinterland. (Later in life I did share an Irish interest with Rowland: the Irish authors he lists in Dexys’ fantastic debut single ‘Dance Stance’, retitled ‘Burn It Down’ for the album Searching For The Young Soul Rebels.)
What’s intriguing about ‘Come On Eileen’—one of the many intriguing things about this fabulous record—is that it may sound like a nod to that Irish heritage but is actually about his parents’ other cultural hinterland: the ’50s pop of their youth. Rowland’s vocal style—the ‘cry’ he added to his voice—makes the lyrics almost unintelligible save for two names, but it’s a song about the potency of music and its electrifying ability to connect us: the trad Irish that confers his identity, the old hits that greased the wheels of his parents’ courtship, and of course the music he is now creating. One reason you hear ‘Come On Eileen’ at virtually every gathering is because that’s what the song is about.
The other reason is because it’s jam packed with sensational hooks. Consider how it starts: a pulse of bass sets up a gorgeous, swooning fiddle part that we never hear again in the song, thrown away almost before we realise it. Next, introduced this time by a sparkling ‘Dancing Queen’-style piano glissando, is the rousing fiddle for the verses, and then in comes Rowland with that memorable and intriguing first line: who’s Johnnie Ray, and what’s his problem? And the chorus is still ages away. That chorus, the football-terrace-chant backing vocals and the slow-down-speed-up trick are all unashamedly people-pleasing; again, that’s what the song is about.
I love ‘Come On Eileen’. I’m sure I’ve heard it hundreds of times, always enjoyed it, and I hope to hear it hundreds of times more. To call it the best number one of the ’80s feels like reducing it to nostalgia or novelty; it will be a magnificent record forever.
Published January 15, 2022August 17, 2024