“Kiss Me” by Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy

"Kiss Me" took three tries to stick. Stephen Duffy first cut it in 1982 with his band Tin Tin, supposedly dashing it off within a day of signing to WEA, and the debut single went nowhere at home, though a 1983 Sire release scraped onto Billboard's dance chart in America. Going it alone as Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy, he tried again with a version sold only around the West Midlands in 1984, then recorded it once more late that year.

That third take, issued in February 1985, is the charmer: bright, bouncing pop with a chorus Duffy lifted from the Song of Songs, of all places. It climbed to number 4 that March and sold more than 250,000 copies in three weeks. It also holds an odd distinction: in 1994 it was the last song Radio 1 played on medium wave before the station went FM-only.

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