Wouldn't It Be Good

Nik Kershaw might belong solidly in that long-extinct community of 1980s new-wave mainstays, but a few qualities did distinguish the chap from Bristol from the rest of the bunch: eminently radio-friendly melodies, impeccable, burnished production values, and optimistic, if sometimes puzzlingly cryptic lyrics. Kershaw's works, while hardly adventurous in any strict sense of the word, holds tremendous commercial appeal, perennially making the upper rungs of the charts. Not just that, but his songs have oftentimes been cited as ideal archetypes of well-crafted mainstream pop-rock, refreshingly free of any self-conscious affectations or highbrow experimentalism churned out by other acts in the 1980s. Check out Kershaw's immortal signature song, the drivingly insistent 'Wouldn't It Be Good', which gets an energetic live airing here during a 1984 gig at the venerable Hammersmith odeon.