Electric Avenue

About Electric Avenue

"Electric Avenue" is a song written, recorded and produced by Eddy Grant, who released it from 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's title refers to Electric Avenue in the south London district of Brixton which was the first market street to be lit by electricity. According to Grant, he first became aware of the street's existence during a stint acting at the Black Theatre of Brixton. The area is now known for its high population of Caribbean immigrants. At the beginning of the 1980s, tensions over unemployment, racism and poverty culminated in the street events now known as the 1981 Brixton riot. Grant, horrified and enraged, wrote and composed the song in response; a year afterwards, the song was playing over the airwaves. Grant had left the UK shortly after the riots to live in Barbados: his most recent batch of songs had been lost in baggage transit, and "Electric Avenue" was one of the songs he wrote immediately afterwards to make up for the lost material. Grant initially released it as a single in 1983, and reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1983, CBS decided to launch the single in the U. S., where it spent five weeks at No. 2 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 charts and hit No. 1 in Cash Box Magazine. (It was kept out of the top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 by a combination of two songs, "Flashdance... What a Feeling" by Irene Cara and 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 chart it went to No. 18, and on the dance charts, it peaked at No. 6. It was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best R&B Song of 1983, but lost to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". more »