The 7 best Two-Tone tracks of all time
Two-Tone
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.
Autoplay · All 7 play here · plays through and starts again
Swipe the list left or right to move through the queue
/
The Specials / Ghost Town
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.
The Special AKA / Gangsters
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.
The Specials / A Message to You, Rudy
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.
The Selecter / On My Radio
Pauline Black fronting the scene's sharpest band, complaining that everything sounds the same. Two minutes fifty, no fat on it anywhere.
Madness / One Step Beyond
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.
The Beat / Mirror in the Bathroom
Saxa's saxophone against a bassline that will not sit still. Birmingham's contribution, and the most nervous-sounding record the movement made.
The Specials / Too Much Too Young
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.