This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Midge Ure's "If I Was"

Though far more of a pop music fixture in the U.K. than he was across the Pond, Midge Ure played a highly significant role in the development of '80s music. Expanding from his initial foray into punk rock as a member of Glen Matlock's post-Sex Pistols project the Rich Kids, Ure ultimately became one of new wave's most distinctive artists, particularly when it came to the use of the synthesizer. Always eclectic, Ure collaborated with Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott even as he began to move toward the synth pop emphasis through which he gained his greatest fame as leader of the bands Visage and Ultravox.

As a solo artist, Ure enjoyed the bulk of his success with "If I Was", a 1985 U.K. chart-topper unduly ignored stateside and which should have been even more influential on synth pop's evolution than it was. Great late-'80s tunes like When in Rome's "The Promise" clearly drew from Ure's fluid mastery of sweeping, epic keyboards, and as a singer he continues still today to receive due praise too sparingly. At a dangerous, occasionally divisive time in music history in which the use of guitar and synth together seemed headed for extinction, Ure served as a voice of reason that asserted powerfully that a variety of approaches could and should win out over mechanized specialization.