Squeeze - Up The Junction

While they may never gain the notoriety of other songwriting teams such as Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller or the legendary pairing of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook certainly deserve entry into that remarkable club.

As the songwriting team and musical partners that fronted the band Squeeze, Difford and Tilbrook wrote some memorable songs, and for a time in the early 1980's they often were compared to Lennon and McCartney. But they didn't quite manage to gain the popular mass appeal that The Beatles enjoyed, and they were mostly overlooked here in the States, A shame, since the combination of Difford's smart, often witty and nicely literate lyrics combined with Tilbrook's masterful melodies made for music that would have been perfect for American radio.

Squeeze has gone through three incarnations as a band: 1973 to 1984, 1985 to 1999 and finally, 2007 to the present day. During those off times, Difford and Tilbrook continued to write, record and perform together as a duo while they pursued solo careers.

It's hard to find only one song to feature in this post. Take Me I'm Yours is a great track from their 1978 self-titled debut album. It also was the first and only time they would have a different band name: U.K. Squeeze. Apparently, there existed somewhere another band with the name Squeeze. I never heard them, myself.

The following year, with their name shortened back to its proper original form, Cool For Cats was released, and the band was settling into a somewhat more musically-evolved sound. The title track features Chris Difford on a relatively rare lead vocal, his oh-so-British baritone gliding over a somewhat funkified backing track.

There are so many terrific songs on their 1980 release Argybargy it almost sounds like a greatest hits album. Indeed, with tunes like Pulling Mussels (From the Shell), Another Nail From My Heart and If I Didn't Love You, the mistake is understandable.

East Side Story is another wonderful collection from 1981 that yielded the band's first big hit in America, Tempted. The lead vocal was split between Tilbrook and Paul Carrack, the keyboard player and vocalist who came in to replace the amazing Jools Holland. Carrack would eventually become known as the lead vocalist for Mike + The Mechanics, a side project of Genesis founding member, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Mike Rutherford.

There are a lot more. Trust me. But for this post, I decided that Up the Junction from Cool For Cats would be the one to showcase. It's a lovely (and ultimately heartbreaking) song that describes a relationship from beginning to end in one beautifully-told story.

The world is a better place because of bands like Squeeze, and because of the world-class songcraft of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook.