“Contenders” by Heaven 17

Heaven 17 sent "Contenders" out on 6 October 1986 as the opening shot for Pleasure One, their fourth album, on Virgin, and they needed a hit. Their team-up with Jimmy Ruffin earlier that year, "The Foolish Thing to Do", had stalled at No. 80 in Britain, and this was meant to set things right.

Glenn Gregory wrote the words and shares the music credit with Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware; the three produced it themselves and Brian Tench mixed. Ware explained it as a song about the superpowers forever squaring up, carving up the map while everyone scrambles to be a contender and nobody tends to the real business. British buyers shrugged again, and it too stopped at No. 80, but the clubs listened: in America it rose to No. 6 on Billboard's Dance/Club Play chart.

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