Madness: “We were under immense pressure to write hits”

After their meteoric rise with songs like ‘Our House,’ ‘Baggy Trousers,’ and ‘House of Fun,” British ska band Madness felt an increasing pressure to keep the success going well into the mid 80s. “They said that if we stopped, we’d never work again,” says frontman Graham “Suggs” McPherson. The constant pressure, augmented by a desire to keep evolving, eventually culminated in the band struggling with its identity and splitting up around 1988. “In our head we needed to shed this Happiness. That became one-dimensional then because we wanted to be too serious. It was all warped, because you can have both, serious and Happy. That was the whole point of the band in the beginning.