I Am The Beat

Album: Full Throttle (1980)
Charted: 6
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Songfacts®:

  • This became a hit in the UK after BBC Radio 1 DJ Simon Bates chose this as single of the week for his morning show and played it daily.
  • Singer/guitarist Jonny Whetstone told Mojo magazine October 2008 that this Motown inspired song wasn't representative of The Look's new wave sound. He explained: "It got popped up. We weren't happy with what happened-live it was a lot rougher. We had a lot of arguments, MCA wanted brass but we loved the Hammond organ. The demos were much rougher and more lively. MCA didn't think it would be a hit, and they didn't put money into promotion. We had no money-we used to get promotional records from the girls at the front desk at MCA and sell them. When the hit came along, bottles of champagne turned up but we had no food to go with them."
  • Having started out as a progressive rock band called The Kreed, the foursome from Ely, Cambridgeshire moved to London and changed their name to The Look, which was a reference to British 1960's model Jean Shrimpton. This song proved to be their only UK Top 40 hit, the band's only other chart entry being its follow-up "Feeding Time," which peaked at #50. The Look continued to work together and in 2005 they recorded an album Pop Yowlin'.
  • The song's single release had a unique feature at the end of the recording. The run-out groove was the song's last line, "I am the beat!… the beat!… the beat!…," being repeated endlessly in perfect time until the needle was removed from the record.

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