From the album
Title: “Moonlight and Muzak”
Artist: M
Year: 1980
Writer(s): Robin Scott
Genre: Synthpop
Highest chart position (if applicable) 33 (UK)
Album: New York - London- Paris - Munich
Did I own it? No
Album, single, both or neither? Neither
Opinion then: Negative
Opinion now: Negative
These days: Completely forgotten about. If anyone remembers them it’s for “that song”
I never got the attraction of M. Apart from the somewhat interesting gimmick of naming your band after the middle letter of the alphabet, nobody cared for them after the initial buzz of their one and only hit single, “Pop Muzik”, and even that was, I don’t know: there really wasn’t anything great about it, and yet it was a chart hit. I think the combination of Robin Scott’s deep voice and the clever(ish) rhymes helped secure it a place in the memory and made it catchy, but it was very definitely a flash in a very empty pan. This was their attempt to capitalise on that success, and it fell flat on its face. I mean, it’s not much of a song, and despite the obvious attempt to somehow link it to the hit by using a Z for music (yes I know muzak is a real word) it did not work.
It’s kind of a cross between the Human League at their not very best and in terms of melody, reminds me of another one-hit wonder, Landscape’s “Einstein a Go-Go”. It’s got none of the sharp wit of “Pop Muzik”, the beat is meh, the backing vocals are watery, and I think you can hear in Scott’s voice that he realised this one trick pony was headed to the glue factory. Gimmicks and one-hit-wonders are all very well, but if you don’t have any meat on the bones, then you’re going to end up with an album nobody wants once they’ve bought the single. And nobody did. It never even made it into the charts here, and barely scraped into the Billboard Hot 100 at a poor 79, and their next three albums were as unremarked, their career seeming to fizzle out in 1984.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSqfW-1e7oQ