Kingdom of Rain

Mostly known as an incisive, polemical rabble-rouser who constituted an annoying thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory regime of the 1980s, one-man band The The, also known as Matt Johnson, was also an keen observer of the human condition, detailing all the peculiarities unique to men and women. One of Johnson’s more engaging, non-political numbers is 1989’s ‘Kingdom of Rain’, a haunting duet with Irish rebel poet Sinéad O'Connor that became a minor independent-chart hit. This regret-ridden, tension-tight ode to a deceased relationship gets an appropriately edgy, noirish video-clip treatment, complete with all manner of non-sequitur images and bleak-cityscape views. Oddly enough, O’Connor herself didn’t appear in the promo, instead being replaced by a ghostly, blank-faced, blue-lit avatar that adds to the overall sense of surreal disconnection.