"Baggy Trousers" | ||||
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Single by Madness | ||||
from the album Absolutely | ||||
Released | September 5, 1980 | |||
Format | 7" | |||
Recorded | 1980 | |||
Genre | Ska, 2-tone, pop | |||
Length | 2:46 | |||
Label | Stiff Records | |||
Songwriter(s) |
Graham McPherson Chris Foreman |
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Producer(s) |
Clive Langer Alan Winstanley |
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Madness singles chronology | ||||
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Audio sample | ||||
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Absolutely track listing | ||||
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"Baggy Trousers" is a song by English ska/pop band Madness from their 1980 album Absolutely. It was written by lead singer Graham "Suggs" McPherson and guitarist Chris Foreman, and reminisces about school days. (Mike Barson also received a writing credit in error, the correct McPherson/Foreman credit being used for subsequent releases). The band first began performing the song at live shows in April 1980.
It was released as a single on September 5, 1980 and spent 20 weeks in UK charts, reaching a high of #3. It was the 11th best-selling single of 1980 in the UK.
Suggs later recalled in an interview that "I was very specifically trying to write a song in the style of Ian Dury, especially the songs he was writing then, which [were] often sort of catalogues of phrases in a constant stream." He contrasted "Baggy Trousers" with Pink Floyd's hit Another Brick in the Wall: "I was writing about my time at school. Pink Floyd had that big hit with 'teacher, leave those kids alone'. It didn't really relate to me, because I hadn't been to a public school where I was bossed about and told to sing 'Rule Britannia!' and all that", having instead attended a comprehensive school with much less strictly enforced discipline.
The music video of this song was shot in a school (Islip Street School) and park of Kentish Town. The band's saxophone player, Lee Thompson decided he wanted to fly through the air for his solo, with the use of wires hanging from a crane. The resulting shot is one of the most popular of any Madness music videos. Thompson recreated the moment live at the band's reunion concert in 1992, , during the band's 2007 Christmas tour, the 2009 Glastonbury Festival as well as at a 2011 TV advert for Kronenbourg 1664 in which Madness plays a slow version of "Baggy Trousers". The slow version was later released on the box set compilation A Guided Tour of Madness with the song title Le Grand Pantalon.