Album · The Jam
Sound Affects by The Jam
Sound Affects is an album by The Jam, released in 1980. 2 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 69 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “That's Entertainment”, on 46 lists with a best position of #4.
Sound Affects, the Jam's fifth album, came out on Polydor on 28 November 1980, and it's the band stretching out: punk bite and mod sharpness bent toward something moodier and more experimental, full of taut, wiry grooves and odd little sonic corners. For the first and only time, the Jam co-produced one of their albums themselves, and it also holds the only album track the whole band wrote together, "Music for the Last Couple".
"That's Entertainment" is the one that stayed, a spare, strummed and quietly biting song. "Start" goes the other way, a clipped, wiry single that never lets up.
Even the sleeve has a wink to it, a send-up of the BBC's Sound Effects records from the 1970s. Frontman Paul Weller has said it's the best album the Jam ever made.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Sound Affects on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | That's Entertainment | 46 | #4 | – | 1988–2023 | |
| 2 | Start | 23 | #231 | – | 1999–2025 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.