“Appetite” by Prefab Sprout

"Appetite" was the third single Kitchenware Records pulled from Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen in 1985. Paddy McAloon wrote it in 1984, one of the first songs he composed on a keyboard, over a drum-machine groove with a hip-hop feel, and the story at its center is a tender one: a mother-to-be who adores the baby she's carrying so much that she'd christen it after everything good she has known, with Robin Hood wandering into the chorus.

Thomas Dolby produced it and mixed it with Mike Shipley, and his fingerprints are everywhere: he plays the synth intro, runs rolling arpeggios through the choruses, shadows Wendy Smith's backing vocals with soft pads and worked out the bass part with Martin McAloon. It stalled at 92 on the UK chart, but it has long been held up as one of the album's high points.

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