The Style Council

Following the break up of The Jam Paul Weller embarked on a new direction and met up with ex-Dexy's Midnight Runners keyboardist Mick Talbot to form the Style Council. There musical style showed plenty of diversity from funk, soul, avant-garde, Jazz to pop.

There first releases of 'Speak like a child' and 'long hot summer' but it was the single 'ever changing moods' that gained success not only in the UK but also in America.

The group started to reach it's commercial success in 1985 with the release of the 'Our Favourite shop' album. The album had a more political attack on certain agenda's such as Margaret Thatcher and middle England with songs like 'Walls come tumbling down', 'the lodgers' and 'come to Milton Keynes'. Such was Weller interest in politics and engaging young people in this that he teamed up singer activist Billy Bragg to form Red Wedge an organisation based on Labour policies to bring down the Conservative party who were in power at the time.

Taking a break from the political arena they released a live album 'Home and Abroad' and a studio album followed with the release of 'the cost of living' which had a more R&B sound with Curtis Mayfield mixing a lot of the tracks.

There last studio album 'confessions of a pop group' was commercially a negative and limped into the top 20 UK album charts. At the time the album was in many critics eyes very weak but as the years progress it has now been regarded as some of Wellers finest work as the album embarked on a concept theme that many probably did not understand.

The poor sales led to the final album 'Modernism: A new decade' being dropped by Polydor and subsequently the band split after the release of a greatest hits album. The album was eventually released in 1998! the reason for not releasing that the album was going down a more house music route and the label felt that too much change would not be good.

Along with Weller and Talbot, there were two other part time members of the band with Weller's wife Dee C Lee and drummer Steve White. Lee was famously backing singer for Wham and White who went on to drum for Oasis and The Who.

The band called it a day in 1989 but they were very prolific in there output during there short existence. They did release 5 studio album with 3 going top two with Our Favourite shop reaching number one in the UK. They release 21 singles in the UK with seven top 10 entries to there name. There first in 1983 was 'Speak like a child' reaching number 4. there highest entry was number 3 in 1983 with 'Long hot summer'. There last top 10 was in 1987 with 'it didn't matter'.