A-Side: That’s Entertainment
B-Side: Down In The Tube Station at Midnight (Live)
Record label: Metronome 0030.364
Producer: Vic Coppersmith-Heaven & The Jam
Released: 06/02/81
Purchased: 13/02/81
“That’s Entertainment” is a 1980 song by British punk-mod revivalist group the Jam from their fifth album, Sound Affects.
Although never released as a domestic single in the UK during the band’s lifetime, “That’s Entertainment” nonetheless charted as an import single (backed by a live version of “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”), peaking at No. 21. The single was given its first full UK release in 1983 and peaked at No. 60. Its second reissue in 1991 also made the top 50.
The song remains one of the two all-time biggest selling import singles in the UK, alongside the Jam’s “Just Who Is the 5 O’Clock Hero?”, which hit the charts at No. 8 as an import in 1982.
Song profile
The song uses an almost entirely acoustic arrangement with only very light percussion. Like much of Sound Affects, the song has strong undercurrents of pop-psychedelia. The only electric guitar part in the song is played backwards over one of the verses, a hallmark of psychedelia.
The minimalist, slice-of-life lyrics list various conditions of British working-class life. The first verse:
“A police car and a screaming siren
Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete
A baby wailing, stray dog howling
The screech of brakes and lamp light blinking.”
culminating in the laconic and ironic refrain of “That’s entertainment, That’s entertainment”
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