UB40 - My Way Of Thinking

JUL 01 1980 · 12:00

UB40 - My Way Of Thinking (1980) Era: Post-Punk / Early British Reggae Breakthrough (1980) - UK unemployment-era working-class multicultural pop-reggae at its rawer, pre-major-label inception High archival value as a rare surviving visual document of UB40 at the very start of their career on Graduate Records, before the MTV era standardised music video production values. The video's unpolished, low-budget realism is itself a primary cultural document of the British independent reggae scene in 1980, offering researchers direct visual access to the aesthetic conditions of pre-mainstream pop-reggae in the UK. Context: Released in June 1980 as a double A-side with a Randy Newman cover, 'My Way of Thinking' emerged at the precise moment UB40 were establishing themselves as the foremost voice of Birmingham's multicultural working-class reggae scene. The band's name referenced the UK unemployment benefit claim form UB40, and their debut album 'Signing Off' literally replicated a signed dole form on its cover, making unemployment not a metaphor but a lived autobiographical fact. The song and its video exist within the political atmosphere of early Thatcherism, mass youth unemployment, and the Rock Against Racism movement that shaped multicultural bands in Britain's Midlands. The single peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart, confirming immediate mainstream traction from an explicitly independent, grassroots origin. Director notes: The video was produced in 1980 to accompany UB40's second single on Graduate Records, a Dudley-based independent label. No production company, director, or cinematographer credit has been located in any publicly indexed database. The low-budget aesthetic is consistent with Graduate Records' resource constraints at the time.