I think We're Alone Now by Tiffany

The B side was No Rules which... I'm just going to post the lyrics. They speak for themselves.

There's no rules in love

Can't you see?

No rules in love

For you and me

No rules in love

Walking through the streets

The echo of our footsteps in time

In between the beats

Tell me that you'll always be mine

So baby can I trust you

Like I'm ready to do?

I've waited so long

And I never refused

All my life, been living the same dreams

Sometimes they seemed so real

All my love I held deep inside me

I wanted to feel

I wanted to feel

Running up that Hill by Kate Bush

The B side - Under the Ivy

It’s very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it’s secret, and it’s something they used to do and that they won’t be able to do again. It’s about a nostalgic, revisited moment. (…) I think it’s sad because it’s about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it’s something that they’re having to sneak away to do privately now as adults.

~ Kate Bush, 1985

The lyrics:

It wouldn’t take me long

To tell you how to find it,

To tell you where we’ll meet

This little girl inside me

Is retreating to her favourite place

Go into the garden.

Go under the ivy,

Under the leaves,

Away from the party

Go right to the rose

Go right to the white rose

(For me.)

I sit here in the thunder,

The green on the grey

I feel it all around me

And it’s not easy for me

To give away a secret

It’s not safe,

But go into the garden

Go under the ivy

Under the leaves

Away from the party

Go right to the rose

Go right to the white rose

(For me)

It wouldn’t take me long

To tell you how to find it

I. Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Since we've been talking so much about the new ST material being not a new series but a reworking or reimagining of the existing series (a B side to what has already gone before), it got me thinking about the big songs from the show and what their B sides were, to see if that can tell us anything.

First up, Should I Stay or Should I Go, Will's iconic S1 anthem, released in Sept 1982 as a double A side in the UK. The second track was Straight to Hell, an anti-colonialist track, but the second verse is interesting to us. It concerns a child of an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, abandoned by his 'papa-san' who tells him, "“Lemme tell you 'bout your blood, bamboo kid, it ain’t Coca-Cola, it’s rice.”

•Papa

•Blood

•Coca-Cola

Oh. The song also has an alternative, longer, version to the album release which was only 5:30, edited down from the original seven minutes.

•Alternative version

•Edited

•Seven

For completeness' sake, I should note that Should I Stay or Should I Go had several other releases in the US. Each with a different B side.

May 1982 Inoculated City

July 1982 First Night Back in London

Feb 1983 Cool Confusion

Inoculated City is a song about the waste and futility of war. The song is infamous for the inclusion of an advert for a toilet cleaner half-way through.

•Consumerism

First Night Back in London is about returning home and immediately remembering why you left. Particular emphasis on heavy handed and prejudiced policing.

•Small town life?

•Governmental control?

Cool Confusion is about a night out to Studio 54 and the way celebrities behaved there. Not included in the final album release and several versions have been released over the years.

•Heroes (from the lyrics)

Important note:

All the songs mentioned in this post originally appeared in the unreleased Clash album Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. The unreleased album eventually became the Clash album Combat Rock but they were all remixed as the band disliked the original production by Mick Jones.