“Rat in Mi Kitchen” by UB40

UB40's "Rat in Mi Kitchen" sits on Rat in the Kitchen, the British reggae band's seventh album, from 1986, and it's a domestic crisis turned into a skanking singalong. Like many of their songs it's credited to all eight members, but Astro wrote it, and he sings the lead too. The spark came from singer Ali Campbell, who had just moved into a new house in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, and found he had rodents for company; when Astro asked him for song ideas, Campbell said the album could wait, there was a rat in his kitchen.

Herb Alpert, of all people, blows the trumpet on it. It came out as a single on 5 January 1987 and climbed to number 12 on the UK chart before the month was out, hanging around for seven weeks.

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