Squeeze – Up The Junction (acoustic cover)

Here is one of my favourite songs, EVER!

Around the time I began fully appreciating the rich variety of music that was coming out of the U.K. in that fertile period we now refer to as ‘post punk’ – 1979 onwards I guess, one band that stood out a mile for me were Squeeze. Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are arguably up there with Lennon and McCartney in my view, a partnership that has created some of pop music’s greatest triumphs and the only downside I can see is that I feel they’re underrated and should by rights have been much more successful that they have been.

Their catalogue is rich in songs of heartbreak and normal everyday life shot through with a thoroughly distinctive Englishness that stamps its identity loud and proud without fearing any kind of nationalistic nonsense. They talk of the times and woes of those times in romantic verse clothed in the warm embrace of musicians who are revelling in the sounds of those times.

This song is a career high and still makes as much sense today as it did back then. It’s a timeless look at young love and how simple idealism doesn’t always lead to happy relationships. It’s bitter sweet in all the right ways, it’s ‘knowing’ without being preaching and so illustrative, the images are beautifully conjured before our very ears with quite simply one of the greatest lyrics ever written.