Come On Eileen

Produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, it was released in the UK on 25 June 1982 and in the US in January 1983, credited to Dexys Midnight Runners and the Emerald Express. It uses no synthesizers: the sound comes from banjo, accordion, fiddle and saxophone. The B-sides were Dubious and, on the 12-inch, a new version of Liars A to E. In the US, Let's Make This Precious was the B-side.

Rowland first said that Eileen was a childhood girlfriend. He later told The Guardian that she was a composite, there to make a point about Catholic repression, and the inspiration was an interviewer he met on the 1981 Projected Passion Revue tour. The writing credit is Rowland, Paterson and Adams. Rowland later said the essence of the song should be credited to Archer, and Archer has said Rowland took the build-up from his song What Does Anybody Ever Think About and later paid royalties. In 2014 Rowland said that the demo he heard from Archer's group the Blue Ox Babes had a Tamla-style beat with violins, and that he took that style and the idea of speeding up and slowing down, but not one note, chord or melody. An early version of the chorus ran James, Stan and me, about James Brown and Stan Morrison, the band's nickname for Van Morrison.

Chart life

It went to number one in the UK, the US Hot 100 (week ending 23 April 1983), Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Belgium, South Africa and Switzerland. It reached number two in Canada and five in France. It was the best-selling single of 1982 in the UK, with 1.33 million sales by June 2013, and it won the Brit Award for Best British Single in 1983. In the US it knocked Billie Jean from the top. Julien Temple directed the 1982 video, filmed around Elephant and Castle, with Maire Fahey as Eileen and footage of Johnnie Ray's 1954 arrival at Heathrow.