The Pop Corporation

You can try and be as clever as you want, deep diving on this, that, and the other… but sometimes it’s just worth reminding yourself how great a band were.

From Detroit, America’s greatest music city, Inner City was the brainchild of the great Kevin Saunderson and Paris Grey.

Saunderson of course, was one of the Belleville Three with Derrick May and Juan Atkins, who basically invented techno.

As far as Inner City go, you don’t get many better debut one-two punches than ‘Good Life’ and ‘Big Fun’. Two basically perfect records straight out of the gate. Impossibly great behaviour.

Infectious, uplifting, fantastic, irresistible. Honestly, for the duration of listening to these tracks, it’s hard to think of anything better that’s ever been made.

If you’re not immediately moved by these songs, then maybe you’re not much of a dancer and you prefer your fun whilst seated.

That’s okay. No harm, no foul. But we’ll be over there, losing our minds.

There were other singles too, maybe a little less known to the average listener in 2023, but with ‘Pennies From Heaven’, an utterly glorious slice of gospel house music to make your eyes fill up and your arms stretch out into the sky.

This isn’t a piece that contains a “Oh! And they’re back with a new album!” or anything like that. It’s literally an exercise in listening to some great music for the literal sake of it.

Inner City are still doing the rounds and something of a family business now, and recently did a track with Idris Elba.

While that’s cool, there’s a period way back when that saw us graced with a run of singles. That were impossibly great. Instant classics.

Reacquaint yourselves.