Of all the catchy songs to come out of the 1980s, Dexys Midnight Runners’ 1982 track “Come on Eileen” is among the earwormiest. Even the mention of the title is enough to get most people singing. “Come on, Eileen, oh, I swear (well, he means) / At this moment, you are everything.” The melody of the hook was just repetitive enough to get stuck in a listener’s brain. Moreover, the declaration of love was universal enough that someone could fill in the blanks with their own Eileen.
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But as is the case with some of the best songs in pop history, the titular Eileen wasn’t a real-life Eileen. In fact, based on songwriter Kevin Rowland’s recollection of writing the song, it wasn’t even about a real human. “For years, I told everyone that Eileen was my childhood girlfriend,” Rowland told The Guardian in 2014. “In fact, she was composite, to make a point about Catholic repression.”
Rowland recalled being interviewed by a “really good-looking” woman who reminded him of “being a teenager, surrounded by Irish Catholic girls you couldn’t touch but at the same time with these overpowering feelings of lust, which you’re not supposed to have.”
The “Come on Eileen” One-Hit Wonders Tried to Recreate “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Kevin Rowland told The Guardian that when he first showed his record label “Come on Eileen”, they didn’t take to it, leading him to tell them to “f*** off.” Ultimately, Dexys Midnight Runners released the track, and it became a massive success. “Come on Eileen” topped the U.S. charts in 1982, giving them their first and only big hit in the States. Three years later, the English new wave group tried to create what Rowland hoped would be the “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for the 1980s.” Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out that way.
“We’d been to America, doing interviews all day long. Meeting the record company. And you’re supposed to do a gig after that,” Rowland said. “It was demeaning. I was dragging the songs out live, trying to find an intensity in them that I never could. And it all seemed a bit empty. I felt we were compromising. Then, I fell in love. I was torn: obsessed with her but not enjoying the band.” The song that fell out of this confusing, split-down-the-middle feeling was the 1985 Dexys track, “I Love You (Listen to This)”.
“I thought this song could be a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for the 1980s. But when the record company wanted to release it as a single, I said no,” Rowland remembered. “I was pretty crazy around then. When the album was a relative failure, I lost myself for a very long time.”
The song appeared on Dexys Midnight Runners’ third album, Don’t Stand Me Down, which didn’t perform well upon its first release. Years later, critics lauded the album as underappreciated. Rowland said that reading people’s changed opinions about Don’t Stand Me Down years later was “really touching and lifted my spirits. It felt great to be understood.”
Photo by David Corio/Redferns
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