Modern English – Melt With You

This was a 1983 New Wave song from the band Modern English. I wasn’t a big New Wave fan but I liked this song. I did like some of the songs I heard but music at the time began to miss something. It seemed to be either New Wave, Pop, or Heavy Metal…rock and roll wasn’t heard hardly at all on mainstream radio.

This song is dark but people and advertisers don’t care. The lead singer Robbie Grey said it was about a couple making love as an atom bomb drops and they melt together. At that time in the 80s the Cold War was going on and we would talk about it as teens. The single was released around the same time as other Cold War songs like Nena’s “99 Luftballons,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes,” Time Zone’s “World Destruction,” Men at Work’s “It’s a Mistake,” Prince’s “1999,” and Culture Club’s “The War Song.” As long we are naming songs… let’s name some movies that touched on the subject. War Games, Red Dawn, and the frightening TV movie The Day After. The Day After was the most-viewed TV movie of all time with over 100 million viewers in 1983. It was truly frightening.

It peaked at #78 on the Billboard 100 which surprises me that it didn’t get higher. It recharted again in 1990 at #76. Again, I’m surprised at how low some of the songs of my youth charted. The song was first popularized when it was featured in the 1983 Nicolas Cage teen rom-com Valley Girl.

They were essentially a one-hit wonder in the US but not back in the UK where they had a few top twenty hits. They did have one other song in the Billboard 100 with Hands Across The Sea which peaked at #57 but it’s not remembered like this one.

During Covid, Modern English re-recorded a “From Quarantine” rendition by guitarist Gary McDowell, bassist Michael Conroy, keyboardist Stephen Walker, and drummer Roy Martin—from their respective homes during lockdown. Only drummer Roy Martin is not from the original band. The original drummer was Richard Brown and he couldn’t make it.

They have been reunited since 2010 and did a tour in 2022. Blogger Jim Everett Table Toss suggested checking out Nouvelle Vague’s cover of this song. I really like it…it’s really smooth and sleek.

Robbie Grey: “The amount of times we get told people got married to our song, made love to that song for the first time… whatever, it’s lovely. But literally, the lyrics are about a couple making love as the atom bomb drops and sort of melting together, but that’s quite good. I like the fact that it’s got layers to it — that people can get what they want from it. … I like the fact that it’s like a love song, but with a dark lyric.”

Robbie Grey: “I was definitely stoned when I wrote it, It was during the day, I remember it really well. I sat down on the floor of my flat in London, a cheap place in the housing association, and wrote the verse just straight off in about 10 minutes.”

Robbie Grey: “I’d always been shouting on songs before, I’d never really sung on a song. And there’s not really any singing on this either, it’s more spoken, but Hugh Jones the producer said, ‘Don’t shout into the microphone, just talk into it.’ I’d never done that before – I was a punk rocker. And so, I did. I just kind of stood back and mouthed the words. And I think that’s a lot of the attraction of the verses on ‘I Melt With You’ is that almost spoken quality.”

Nouvelle Vague – Melt With You

Melt With You

Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world crashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

I’ll stop the world and melt with you
You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time
There’s nothing you and I won’t do
I’ll stop the world and melt with you

Dream of better lives the kind which never hates
(You should see why)
Trapped in the state of imaginary grace
(You should know better)
I made a pilgrimage to save this humans race
(You should see why)
Never comprehending the race has long gone bye

I’ll stop the world and melt with you
(Let’s stop the world) You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all
the time
(Let’s stop the world) There’s nothing you and I won’t do
(Let’s stop the world) I’ll stop the world and melt with you

The future’s open wide

**The future’s open wide

I’ll stop the world and melt with you
(Let’s stop the world) I’ve seen some changes but it’s getting better all the
time
(Let’s stop the world) There’s nothing you and I won’t do
(Let’s stop the world) I’ll stop the world and melt with you

The future’s open wide

hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm
hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm

I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)
You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time (Let’s stop the
world)
There’s nothing you and I won’t do (Let’s stop the world)
I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)

I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)
I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)

I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)
I’ll stop the world and melt with you (Let’s stop the world)

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

44 thoughts on “Modern English – Melt With You”

      1. Yeah, it’s a fun one. That kind of music was still considered “weird” by our contemporaries at the time, but I’d bet nowadays an audience (in most venues) would go wild for it! We also played “Don’t Change” by then relatively unknown INXS, and the kids we were playing to didn’t know what to make of us! 10 years later that band was selling out arenas around the world. Funny how some “weird” goes mainstream and some never get a lot of recognition…

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      2. It really does… we covered a few before they made it big but mostly kept to 60s and 70s…so we were an eighties band that rarely played 80s music lol.

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  3. It is surprising that the song didn’t chart better in North America, I’m reminded now they had enough of a following and they performed several times in Canada and the US. You also conjured up a memory of a Modern English sighting at the Toronto Airport. I was based there as a District Manager and was doing a walk through with one of my managers and she excitedly pointed them out to me. This would be late 1980’s.

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  5. Excellent song, always did like it. I never quite clicked in on its meaning though, that’s a bit bleak (guessing Burger King didn’t figure most people would have a clue when they used it in cheeseburger ads!) and the same as Ultravox’s ‘Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’. We grew up in fun times,didn’t we? In Canada the single went gold, but I can’t find how high it charted… a lot better than #76 I’m positive. Personal trivia, they were the first ‘real’ band I saw in concert… by way of opening for Roxy Music in ’83.

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    1. Don’t bet on that chart position…Dave I heard this song constantly…I thought it was top 10! I could not believe that chart position.
      When the cold war hit me was that tv movie The Day After…it’s still frightening to watch.
      This was a cool first band to see.

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  7. Great tune, Max. Listening to the first video I didn’t realize what song it was until she got to the chorus. The music in that one reminds me of a heartbeat. It sounds beautiful slowed down like this. I’m used to full speed and am sure I have this on an album or it’s in a movie I’ve seen a lot. Interesting I never thought of this as a couple melting in a nuclear explosion.

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    1. I do like that cover a lot. It’s so different but very good…it lends it self to be slower.
      When I first heard it would have never thought of the nuclear part until someone told me back in the 80s.

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  11. Again one of those cases where I recognize the name of the group right away but wasn’t sure about the song until I played the clip – of course, I knew “I Melt With You”! It received a good amount of airtime on my favorite pop radio station back in Germany at the time. It’s a pretty bouncy tune, given the lyrics!

    I also vividly remember watching “The Day After” on TV in Germany and agree it left a huge impression!

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    1. It was a really good song…I thought it charted highter than that.
      Oh that movie…I watched it again not long back…it still got to me…what an awful situation.

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  12. One of my all time favorite songs from the 80’s. It stuck with me the first time I heard it. The chorus is so simple and yet so effective and the “dum dum dum” part (or whatever it is he’s saying) is perfectly place right before the chorus which makes the chorus that much bigger. Anyway, great choice to highlight.

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  14. It is a great song, despite its subject matter. Forever Young (Alphaville), Dancing With Tears In My Eyes (Ultravox), Games Without Frontiers, London Calling & Two Minute Warning (Depeche Mode) are pretty good, too. Then, there is The Final Countdown (Europe).

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    1. I didn’t know that was about it…the Final countdown lol…I never paid attention…oh one more…the future is so bright I have to wear shades

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