“Life's What You Make It” by Talk Talk

"Life's What You Make It" led the way for Talk Talk's third album, The Colour of Spring, and it exists only because the band's management fretted that the new songs lacked an obvious single. Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, who wrote most of the band's material, didn't want the job but took it on as a dare, building the track from a drum pattern loosely modelled on Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" with "Green Onions"-style organ vamping over the top.

The result is stark and hypnotic: Lee Harris's drums stamping out one unbending beat, Hollis hammering a stubborn piano figure and singing in that cracked, searching voice, Friese-Greene's organ and Mellotron shading the edges, Martin Ditcham's percussion and Paul Webb's backing vocals filling the gaps. Friese-Greene produced. It became a UK hit in 1986 and charted all over again on its 1990 reissue.

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