Specials by The Specials

The Specials' self-titled debut hit the shops on 19 October 1979 on Jerry Dammers' own 2 Tone label, and it makes the strongest case yet that the British ska revival is more than a passing craze. Elvis Costello produced, and he keeps the sound lean and jittery: guitars chopping on the offbeat, a rhythm section that bounces like a sprung dance floor, and a band that sounds ready to start a party or a punch-up depending on who looks at it wrong.

The record mixes the band's own songs with covers of vintage Jamaican ska, and the seams barely show. What gives it teeth is the mood. These songs come out of the concrete jungle, words the band took from Bob Marley's 1973 LP Catch a Fire and aimed here at the bleak, brutal inner cities of '70s Britain, and the disaffection and fury of the kids trapped in them runs through every sneer and every skank. Plenty of people hear it as the moment the whole UK ska scene snapped into focus, and it's not hard to see why.

"A Message to You Rudy" went out as a single, and a live take of "Too Much Too Young" later fronted a live EP named after it, The Special A.K.A. Live!, which climbed all the way to the top of the UK charts. EMI remastered the album in 2002, with the promo videos for "Gangsters" and "Too Much Too Young" tucked in as extras.

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