Two-Tone
The 7 Best Two-Tone
Tracks of All Time
Coventry, 1979: Jamaican ska played at punk speed by deliberately mixed-race bands on a label with a black-and-white chequerboard logo, at a moment when the National Front was recruiting outside British venues.
- Origin
- Coventry, England, 1979
- Tempo
- 140–180 BPM
- Also known as
- 2 tone, ska revival, coventry sound
- Tracks
- 7
- Updated
- 2026-08-31
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Number 1: The Specials / Ghost Town
1981 · 2 Tone
Number one while English cities were actually burning, and the band split the week it topped the chart. A haunted-house organ, a wailing horn, and the most precisely timed record in British pop.
Number 2: The Special AKA / Gangsters
1979 · 2 Tone
A rewrite of Prince Buster's Al Capone, self-released, and the first record on the label. The whole movement is announced in the opening skid.
Number 3: The Specials / A Message to You, Rudy
1979 · 2 Tone
Dandy Livingstone's rocksteady original, with Rico Rodriguez — who had played on the Jamaican sessions of the sixties — brought in on trombone. Continuity made audible.
Number 4: The Selecter / On My Radio
1979 · 2 Tone
Pauline Black fronting the scene's sharpest band, complaining that everything sounds the same. Two minutes fifty, no fat on it anywhere.
Number 5: Madness / One Step Beyond
1979 · Stiff
Another Prince Buster reworking, and the one that made the nutty sound a national pastime. Madness were the funny end and much cleverer than they let on.
Number 6: The Beat / Mirror in the Bathroom
1980 · Go-Feet
Saxa's saxophone against a bassline that will not sit still. Birmingham's contribution, and the most nervous-sounding record the movement made.
Number 7: The Specials / Too Much Too Young
1980 · 2 Tone
A live EP about teenage pregnancy that went to number one, and got banned in places for a lyric about contraception. Very funny and not remotely kind.