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“Caravan Of Love” — The Housemartins
For reasons lost in the mists of time, the 1980s was an unusually busy time for a cappella hit records.
A cappella is the musical term for a performance which doesn’t use any instruments. The singers’ voices are all you hear, strictly speaking, although for pop records a few hand claps or finger clicks are also generally permitted.
The 1980s was the decade of self-indulgence, so perhaps the popularity of a simple, stripped-back art form was something of an antidote to those hedonistic times. This was the era of “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” and “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, after all…none of which were exactly examples of restraint in the recording studio.
Whereas the chart-topping a cappella hits of the 1980s could have been performed pretty much the same way since the dawn of time.
During the 1980s there were three major a cappella hit records in the UK. The Flying Pickets kicked the whole thing off with “Only You” in 1983…that year’s Christmas Number One. Bobby McFerrin came along in 1988 with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”…a UK Number Two and a Billboard Number One.
And sandwiched in the middle was The Housemartins with “Caravan Of Love”, which reached Number One in December 1986.
