"We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue"

Everyone knows this song! It was a global smash in 1983 for singer, writer and producer Eddy Grant who celebrates his 70th birthday today.

What a great time to reflect on the song!

The song's title refers to Electric Avenue in the south London district of Brixton which was the first market street to be lit by electricity. The area is now known for its high population of Caribbean immigrants and high unemployment. At the beginning of the 1980s, tensions over unemployment, racism and poverty culminated in the street events now known as the 1981 Brixton riot erupted. Grant, horrified and enraged, wrote and composed the song in response; a year afterwards, the song was playing over the airwaves.

Grant initially released it as a single in 1982, and reached #2 on the UK Singles Chart and #2 in Australia. In 1983, CBS decided to launch the single in the U.S., where it spent five weeks at #2 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 charts and hit #1 in Cash Box Magazine. (It was kept out of the top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 by a combination of two songs, "Flashdance... What a Feeling" by Irene Cara and that year's song of the summer, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police.) "Electric Avenue" was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best R&B Song of 1983, but lost to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."

The video was the crucial element for this song to go mainstream in America. The song was already a hit in the UK. When MTV ran music videos on its network, the producers put the song into rotation to add some racial diversity. MTV in their early years played videos by white artists almost exclusively and were criticized, by famous musicians like David Bowie for lack of diversity.