Graham Parker & The Shot — “Wake Up (Next To You)”

Entered Top 40: June 15, 1985
3 weeks 
Peaked at: 39

For all of Graham Parker’s critical acclaim, his only US Top 40 hit is one I’d not heard at all before. Parker came up in the ’70s British pub-rock scene, and international music press lumped him in with Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson as ”Britain’s angry young musicians.” He was first of those three to release records, but Parker ended up with the least commercial success in the US, and was the last of them to break through on the singles chart.

Parker’s recording career has involved a lot of label-hopping and at least one outright feud with a record company. In 1979 he recorded the bitter, hilarious “Mercury Poisoning” about his last label (guess who), but the new suits at Arista balked at making it a single because they didn’t want to make those sort of waves. Parker was a critical darling; in 1976 his Heat Treatment and Howlin’ Wind LPs were in the Top 5 in the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll of music critics (behind Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life). In 1979 Parker’s Squeezing Out Sparks topped the poll. He’d made enough videos in the late ’70s to get some early MTV airplay, but it seems like the most mainstream attention he got in the US was when “You Hit the Spot” made it onto the K-Tel compilation The Beat, which is now a solid time capsule of 1981-82 New Wave.

By 1985 The Rumour, Parker’s backing band, was long defunct; only guitarist Brinsley Schwarz stuck with Parker as part of The Shot. Steady Nerves, featuring “Wake Up,” was Parker’s first (and last) album with Elektra.

From here, Graham Parker continued to be a cult artist, releasing some 17 studio albums, and about as many live records. Because of all the label moves, he’s also got a ton of compilations out there. He also played himself in a very knowing role in Judd Apatow’s This is 40 (which coincided with a reunion & new album with The Rumour).

This may include some deleted scenes