"Electric Avenue" is a song written, recorded and produced by Guyanese-British singer and songwriter Eddy Grant, who released it on his 1982 album Killer on the Rampage. In the United States, with the help of the MTV video he shot for it, it was one of the biggest hits of 1983. The song refers to Electric Avenue in London, and to the 1981 Brixton riot in the Brixton district of the city.
Composition
The title of the song refers to Electric Avenue in the south London district of Brixton, the first market street to be lit by electricity. According to Grant he first became aware of the existence of the street during a stint acting at the Black Theatre of Brixton.[1] The area is now known for its high population of Caribbean immigrants. At the beginning of the 1980s, as identified by the Scarman Report, tensions over unemployment, racism and poverty exacerbated by racist policing culminated in the street events now known as the 1981 Brixton riot. Grant, horrified and enraged, wrote and composed a song in response to these events. Shortly after, Grant left the UK to live in Barbados, and his most recent batch of songs was lost during baggage transit. "Electric Avenue" was one of the songs he wrote immediately afterwards to make up for the lost material.[1]
Music video
Filmed in Barbados,[1] the song's music video helped it to gain popularity in the United States. In the early years of MTV, the network ran music videos almost exclusively by white artists and was criticized by famous musicians, such as David Bowie, for not having black artists on the network.[6] After Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" aired and was highly successful, MTV scrambled to get other black artists into their rotation. Once "Electric Avenue"'s video aired, it did not take long for the song to climb up to the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.[7]
Other release information
The original B-side to this song was a non-LP track titled "Time Warp," itself a stripped-down instrumental of "Nobody's Got Time," originally released in 1977. The 45 sold more than one million copies in the United States, earning a platinum certification. It was later re-issued with "I Don't Want to Dance" as the flip side. The "Time Warp" track is hailed as pre-dating the house genre by at least seven years, and has become a sought after track by DJs as a "lost" historic track.[citation needed]
In 2001, Peter Black remixed "Electric Avenue" as the "Ringbang Remix", which was released on 28 May 2001.[8][9] The single featured and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart in June 2001,[10] as well as number 16 on the US Dance Chart.[11]
Reception
Grant initially released it as a single in 1983, and it reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1983, Portrait/CBS decided to launch the single in the US, where it spent five weeks at number two on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart[12] and hit number one on Cash Box magazine's chart. (It was kept out of the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 by two different songs: first by "Flashdance... What a Feeling" by Irene Cara and then by that year's song of the summer, "Every Breath You Take" by the Police.) "Electric Avenue" was a hit on two other US charts: on the soul/R&B chart it went to No. 18,[13] and on the dance charts, it peaked at No. 6.[14] It was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best R&B Song of 1983,[15] but lost to "Billie Jean".
The song was used in adverts for UK electrical brand Currys from 2007 to 2009.[citation needed]
The premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, Doug Ford, declared "Electric Avenue" to be Ontario's new "theme song" and then danced to the song during a visit to Oshawa on May 12, 2023, following a conference where he announced the creation of two new electric GO Transit buses for Oshawa and the Greater Toronto Area.[68] The new buses opened for passengers to ride as of the following Monday.[69]
US President Donald Trump, while running for re-election in 2020, Tweeted out a 55 second commercial which used the song as background. Grant sued for copyright infringement as a result. As of 2023, the lawsuit is still active.[70][71]
Like most Grant songs, "Electric Avenue" was not available on music streaming platforms until January 2024, as Grant refused to allow his music onto streaming sites because of his dislike of how the platforms pay artists. The only streaming versions of the song available were cover versions.[72]
^"Le Détail par Artiste" (in French). InfoDisc. Select "Eddy Grant" from the artist drop-down menu. Archived from the original on 13 May 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
