Song of the Day 3/15: The Specials, “Ghost Town”

I don’t know about Wilmington, but Paris is, relatively speaking, a ghost town today, the first day of the ban on bars, cafes, bistros, brasseries and restaurants. The Specials released this single in 1981, during a nasty recession in the UK marked by riots and high unemployment. It reached the top of the British charts but helped cause the breakup of the group, most of whom disliked the spooky-sounding diminished chords and keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers’ insistence that everyone play his part as written; the band was accustomed to jamming and improvising their own parts. Though critics were lukewarm when the record was released in June, by December all three UK music mags proclaimed it “Single of the Year.”