Electric Avenue (song)
| "Electric Avenue" | ||||||||
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UK cover
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| Single by Eddy Grant | ||||||||
| from the album Killer on the Rampage | ||||||||
| Released | 1982 1983 (US) |
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| Genre | Funk | |||||||
| Length | 3:48 | |||||||
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| Writer(s) | Eddy Grant | |||||||
| Producer(s) | Eddy Grant | |||||||
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“Electric Avenue” is a song written, recorded and produced by Eddy Grant, who released it from his 1982 album Killer on the Rampage. In the United States, with the help of the MTV video he shot for it, it was one of 1983's biggest hits of the year. The song's title refers to an area historically known as Electric Avenue; this is a reference to the first place electricity lit the streets in the area of Brixton, South of London. This is an area known in the modern times for its high population of Caribbean immigrants and high unemployment. As the 1980s were beginning, tensions grew in the area until the street violence 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 No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1983, CBS decided to launch the single in the U.S., where it spent five weeks at No. 2 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 charts and hit No. 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 a hit on two other US charts: On the soul chart it went to No. 18, and on the dance charts, it peaked at No. 6. It was nominated for a Grammy Award as Best R&B Song of 1983, but lost to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."
The song is featured in the films Valley Girl, Pineapple Express, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, and Jackass 3D. It is also featured in Season 1, Episode 14 of the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun, the twentieth season premiere of The Simpsons: "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes," and the popular sports podcast Pardon My Take.
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