The Fine Young Cannibals - "Don't Look Back"

(Debuted August 12, 1989, Peaked #11, 12 Weeks on the Chart)

Those who pay attention to this blog on a regular basis might have picked up on the way the songs are set up. Each week, I feature songs that peaked in a specific year in the U.S. And the next week, I feature the following year. When a week featuring songs from 1989 (as this one does) winds down, the wheel starts rolling again at 1980. Since today is Friday, we're once again to the end of the decade and it's time to reset...which makes today's song title ironic.

Actually, "Don't Look Back" is an ironic title to feature in a retrospective blog anyway. Where the earlier hits off The Fine Young Cannibals' The Raw & the Cooked LP ("She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing") had their roots in R&B, "Don't Look Back" was a guitar-driven song. Specifically, the guitar sound of the 1960s by groups like The Beatles and The Byrds was the main influence, keeping with the band's style of updating sounds of the past for a modern synthesis. The lyrics were purely modern, though, reflecting a more negative and downbeat point of view than those 1960s bands had.

And somehow, it's that pessimism that makes "Don't Look Back" more interesting to my ears.