Wants – Ghost Town (The Specials Cover)

Dark embers in neon light

Wants - Ghost Town (The Specials Cover) (Cover artwork)When I heard ‘Ghost Town’ by Wants for the first time, I knew imme­di­ately: some­thing is hap­pen­ing here that appeals to me pre­cisely where synth pop becomes excit­ing for me. To be hon­est, I don't know the ori­gin­al at all – Ska has nev­er really appealed to me music­ally, so I delib­er­ately chose not to listen to it. This means I can listen to this ver­sion com­pletely impar­tially – as a song in its own right.

What imme­di­ately impresses me is the power, crisp­ness and fresh energy with which Wants charges this piece. The synth sounds seem famil­i­ar, as if they came from a treas­ure chest full of clas­sics, and yet everything sounds new and dance­able. For me, ‘Ghost Town’ is not a cobbled-togeth­er mash-up of genre set pieces, but rather a lov­ing homage to the big names and defin­ing sounds of synth pop.

The bleak mood of the lyr­ics – the image of a city whose clubs have fallen silent and whose dance floors have been replaced by chaos – unfolds here with a dif­fer­ent, mod­ern drama. Wants com­bines dark, pulsat­ing synth lines with edgy post-punk gui­tars and strong, emo­tion­al vocals.

Listen to "Wants – Ghost Town (The Specials Cover)" on Spotify

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Lyrics of "Ghost Town" originally by The Specials

This town, is com­ing on a ghost town
All the clubs, have been closed down
The bands won't play no more,
There's too much fight­ing on the dance floor
Do you remem­ber the good old days before the ghost town?
We danced we sang, and the music played in the boomtown

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