Grey Day

"Grey Day" was written by Mike Barson, produced by Langer and Winstanley, and released by Stiff on April 17, 1981 as the first single from 7; its B-side was Foreman's "Memories", and the 12-inch added "Un Paso Adelante!", "Baggy Trousers" and "Take It or Leave It". It was first played in 1978 at Acklam Hall by the North London Invaders, then dropped; it came back during sessions before 7 with a different arrangement. Foreman described the early version as a 60s psychedelic thing with no structure and only a few lyrics. Wikipedia, which calls it a 2 Tone song, treats it as a dark departure from the early ska sound.

Barson said the words came without a clear meaning, comparing the mood he was after to the film Eraserhead: I was just trying to capture that nightmarish feeling. Some listeners hear nuclear holocaust; he said he wished it were, but it wasn't. Both quotes come from Wikipedia and the original interviews were not found. On the chart it reached number 4 in the UK for 10 weeks, number 4 in Ireland, and 25 in the Netherlands, and went silver.

The video and live history

The video was filmed in March 1981, mostly on an open-top bus around London, with the band performing in the window of Bowmans on Camden High Street, scenes on Royal College Street, and dream imagery of flying and falling. Songfacts adds an anecdote, from Suggs in Uncut in 2008, that he took the song to a club where Joe Strummer was the DJ hoping he would play it, and he wouldn't; the album was made in the Bahamas for tax reasons, and Foreman and Winstanley carried the tapes through customs under a sticker reading absolutely no commercial value. Treat these as secondhand.

Setlist.fm has 241 Madness performances, the first on June 8, 1981 at Pinkpop in Geleen, Netherlands, and the most recent in its snapshot on August 22, 2026 at Beautiful Days in Devon. The full Rockpalast concert at the Markthalle in Hamburg on November 29, 1981 includes it. Nouvelle Vague play it live in a clubbed-up version and setlist.fm counts 26 plays, though no studio release was confirmed. The 2010 Salvo reissue includes a 1983 live recording. We could not tell which version our upload is.