Bronski Beat’s 'Smalltown Boy' was originally released in 1984 on the album The Age of Consent which in itself was eerily honest and ahead of its time. With the sad passing away of the group’s founder member and keyboard player Larry Steinbachek in December of last year, as well as rumours of Bronski Beat releasing new material in 2017, now is a good time to look back at the impact, both musically and politically, that the record has had in the 33 years since its first release.
The Age of Consent was the debut album from Bronski Beat, who were all openly gay, a brave thing to be, and particularly rare in 1984, at a time when stigma against the LGBT community was incredibly high. The only one to feature Jimmy Sommerville (he left the band shortly after the album’s release), The Age of Consent was seminal in many ways, and the emotion and socio-political points within the lyrics combined with the variety of the music itself, really marked it out. The overall effect is a diverse selection of tracks spanning soul, jazz, dance music and indie-pop, which is also incredibly moving. In fact, the genius of this album is the merging of political and musical significance and freshness in every track, but ‘Smalltown Boy’ is undoubtedly the highlight, and has stood the test of time remarkably well, being played by selectors worldwide to this day.
The track is semi-autobiographical, and depicts experiences of marginalisation and mental health issues within the LGBT community, many of which are still painfully relevant today. As well as becoming a gay anthem, the single came to be a mainstream club classic, reaching number 3 in the charts; has been reissued twice, in 1991 and 2013; and has been frequently re-recorded and sampled - most notably in Supermode’s 2006 ‘Tell Me Why’ (which also samples ‘Why?’ from The Age of Consent)
‘Smalltown Boy’ is somewhat defined by Sommerville’s otherworldly falsetto, which avoids being a reflection of other artists recording similar music at the same time, such as Duran Duran and Wham, because of the haunting, pain tinged quality of his voice, and the honesty of his lyrics such as: “Mother will never understand why you had to leave, but the answers you seek will never be found at home.” However, the magic really comes in the combination of these vocals with the instrumentals, which somehow manage to combine trance-like repetitive synths with thoughtful melodies underpinned by lo-fi, Chicago house-like baselines to create a simultaneously sad and uplifting dance track. ‘Smalltown Boy’ perfectly treads the line between beauty and excitement, without quite spilling into cheesy, and this comes both from the unforced sound of Sommerville’s voice, as well as the under-produced, loose feel of the whole track, which moves from simple one-line melodies into bass-driven electronic choruses in an easy, improvisational way that protects the sound from getting stale or feeling tacky. This is a mood that samples and re-recordings of the track, as well as tracks of a similar genre, haven’t managed to recreate.
Words by Dora T