This list is not a ”best” list. It’s not in any order. The fun here is covering all aspects of 80s songs that have slipped through the cracks. Some are here because they’re underrated, some have great stories, and some are just interesting in a “WTF?” kind of way. I’m wrapping up the first ten songs with one of those WTF songs.
Adam Ant does have a hit that is in the 80s canon, the gloriously screwy “Goody Two Shoes”. After that combination of bossa nova, dance pop, and PG-13 bad boy attitude, Adam Ant spent the 80s generally churning out catchy ditties celebrating being a free spirit, especially if you were the kind of free spirit who likes playing music and having sex. This is not an insignificant area of historic focus in pop music or adolescence, so he had some hits.
“Strip” is an odd song, whose target audience is apparently anyone who was wondering what it would sound like if Adam Ant tried to seduce you with a historic revue of nudity through the ages. In between the half-spoken verses is a catchy little refrain, which offers a rhyming quid pro quo as follows:
“We’re just following ancient history/ If I strip for you, would you strip for me?”
That said, there’s a lot going on here. Do you notice that rather prominent drum sound, with a kind of echo effect? Does it sound familiar? It should, because that’s Phil Collins, who also produced this. The female voice you hear is Anna-Frid Lyngstad, who you know as 25% of ABBA.
And while this isn’t exactly good, it is the kind of cheese to which Adam Ant has fully committed himself. Fully committing to excess has a long tradition of success in pop music, as we can learn from the careers of Air Supply and Jim Steinman, as well as that song where Air Supply covers Jim Steinman. And the outro has its charm, with Ant fully belting “Be generous, I want it all tonight” with the abandon of a Giant Tiger Mick Jagger. As it all swirls into a kind of glory, you realize that this song exists in a world beyond good and bad. “Strip” is not even really about sex. The seduction all seems to aim for an end point wherein the object of Ant’s affection responds “I love strip”, the way Brick Tamblin says “I love lamp”, and then they roll on a four-poster bed and have water fights while fully clothed. “Strip” is ultimately about committing to the bit, however objectively ridiculous, until it’s fun. Like “Boom Boom”, “Tarzan Boy”, and that David S. Pumpkins guy Tom Hanks played on SNL, “Strip” is its own thing. And Adam Ant is part of it.
“Strip” hit the lower reaches of the Top 40 in the US and the UK. It was accompanied by a video that is both high-budget and low-budget, in that it appears that Ant took the record company’s money and dropped $100,000 on costumes and moustache grooming, and approximately $100 on production value. A follow-up single, “Puss N Boots”, went Top 5 throughout Europe. And that Phil Collins guy seems to have done all right in the years that followed.