Belinda Carlisle - Summer Rain (Official Music Video)

It was only while I was watching this that I realised how badly the video has dated and the way in which it is both quintessentially eighties but also no longer feels like it does justice to the song.

'Summer Rain' is, apparently, one of Carlisle's favourites of her solo career, and I always felt it was the strongest single and song from the Runaway Horses album.

What's interesting hearing it now is the way it seems to hark back to an earlier era, to artists like the Shangri-La's, while mirroring the themes of a contemporary song such as Madonna's 'Pray For Spanish Eyes' (Like A Prayer and Runaway Horses were both released in 1989). It also anticipates a song like Lana Del Rey's 'Blue Jeans'.

In each case, there's that element of slightly vintage melodrama, of harking back to the past, of a sort of 1950's and 1960's hinterland that they all invoke that's very evocative and powerful. It's the kind of theme that will come around in pop culture again and again, but 'Summer Rain' is a particularly great take on it.

Go-Go's - Lust To Love (Totally Go-Go's Live '81)

While, as a child of the 1980s, I was very familiar with Belinda Carlisle's solo work, I didn't actually hear the Go-Go's until their 1995 comeback single 'The Whole World Lost It's Head', and their accompanying appearance on Top Of The Pops. I'd long given up watching Top Of The Pops by then so there must have been a trailer or some hint that they were going to be on it or I really wouldn't have bothered. It basically goes without saying that they were the coolest thing on it.

While the Go-Go's are known less for their roots in the LA punk scene, more for their power pop double platinum debut album Beauty And The Beat, you can clearly hear their evolution from scrappy punk beginnings at the Canterbury to the slick power pop of 'We Got The Beat', 'Good For Gone' and 'Head Over Heels' if you listen to the double CD version of their best of compilation, Return To The Valley Of The Go-Go's.

I purchased Return To The Valley Of The Go-Go's in 2000, after hearing a bootleg of the 1CD UK version courtesy of fanzine pal Amanda Morgan of Splizz fanzine. HMV could only get it for me as a 2CD US import for £32 and, barely thinking twice, I paid up. I remember picking it up because I made the mistake of collecting it on the same day as Stockport Carnival and had to walk all the way to Heaviley in a heatwave in order to get to a point in the route where I could catch a bus home.

'Lust To Love', much like the fantastically titled 'Skidmarks on my heart', captures the missing links between post punk and power pop, as well as showcasing their great songwriting skills.