Rarely Covered looks at who’s mining the darkest, dustiest corners of iconic catalogs.

Simple Minds has existed for close to 50 years, featuring schoolboy friends Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, still the nucleus of the lineup. You have heard their music. At least one of their songs, anyway. In the US they are considered One Hit Wonders (even though “Alive and Kicking” hit #3). Here at Cover Me we have had not one feature on “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” but two, along with the occasional standalone mashup version. Nevertheless, it is atypical of their work. And when I say “work,” I mean that Simple Minds were the most commercially successful Scottish Band of the ’80s, and a version of the band records and continues to fill UK and European arenas each year.

Those decades of effort have had many important stages. It is not worth pretending that punk act Johnny and the Self-Abusers had such a glorious future, but once the band evolved into the electronic, Krautrock-flavored field, their sound began to take its mature form, in the albums Real to Real Cacophony and Empires and Dance, and the song “I Travel.” A switch of record labels led to a stream of single and album successes, hits across the world (but not yet the US). Their classic albums Sparkle in the Rain and Street Fighting Years endure as classics. They developed different, innovative, sounds and hit records with legendary producers like Trevor Horn and Jimmy Iovine. With occasional breaks they have remained active ever since. They have embraced many sounds and line-ups.  Fully 23 of their albums have been hits in the UK, 5 reaching number 1. Their live act remains a strength to this day; they toured extensively, pre-COVID, across the world, with big tours in the US, periodically strengthened by refugees from other Scottish rock bands around Kerr and Burchill. The breadth and vigor of their work is remarkable.
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