[Brass Lamp]

I have, for a long time, struggled to place this piece in its proper historical development. It straddles the divide between late Disco and early New Wave [edit: it actually contains both purely Disco AND New Wave sounds] and arrived on the scene at the height of the anti-Disco backlash, just in time for the Eighties to sweep out the cultural stables. In fact, the upbeat synth techno part of the performance was routinely played as an isolated track throughout the 1980s as a transition sound for intros, "outros", and bumpers in general.

I used to think that it was a self-aware sort of baton-passing, or perhaps a band demonstrating its flexibility during an evolutionary career "die off" period in music history, but I have lately come to believe that this an early comment on what was starting to change with young women at the time. Think about it; the song starts with an uplifting mellow vibe about a young lady who is excited to begin her new life in the big city (and it uses the new sound to suggest her freshness), but it musically degenerates into a same, old grinding that the previous generation had already long associated with the seedy club scene, suggesting that first fall of the young protagonist was lust. Today it sounds, as the kids call it, "super red-pilled".

[TalBlack]

I used to think that it was a self-aware sort of baton-passing, or perhaps a band demonstrating its flexibility during an evolutionary career “die off” period in music history…”

I know nothing about the songs origins but I’d bet the farm that some musician or more likely by the sound of the song some producer was fooling around with a synth or drum machine and “heard something” and built it up from there.