All the Rage by General Public

All the Rage, the debut album from English new wave outfit General Public, landed on I.R.S. Records in January 1984, and it's a bright, bouncy, big-hearted record that feels like a party thrown in a rainstorm. It was recorded digitally, which gives it a clean, crisp shine, and it had an unexpected guest in the lineup: Mick Jones, fresh from being thrown out of the Clash, was a founding member. He left partway through the sessions and Kevin White took his place (White's face is on the back cover, Jones' isn't), but Jones still played guitar on plenty of the album, "Tenderness" included.

"Tenderness" is the one that stuck: a skipping pop song with a heart on its sleeve and a beat you can't stand still to. It reached 27 in the US and 11 in Canada, helped along by its spot in the John Hughes films Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, and it later turned up again in Clueless and the horror film Devil's Due. The title track, the first single, only got to 60 in the UK, and "Hot You're Cool" and "Never You Done That" keep the dancefloor warm.

Funny thing: the album never charted at home. It was America that took to it, keeping it on the Billboard 200 for 39 weeks and peaking at 26 in February 1985.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.