Featured In
ALBUMA Message To You Rudy (Re-Recorded) (Sped Up) - SingleThe Specials & Neville Staple
Albums by The Specials
ALBUMProtest Songs 1924 – 2012The Specials
ALBUMEncore (Deluxe Edition)The Specials
ALBUMGuilty 'Til Proved Innocent! (Expanded Edition)The Specials
ALBUMKing of KingsThe Specials & Desmond Dekker
ALBUMIn the Studio (Deluxe Version)The Specials
ALBUMMore Specials (Deluxe Version)The Specials
ALBUMThe Specials (Deluxe Version)The Specials
The Specials's Popular Music Videos
Vote For Me
The Specials
Get Up, Stand Up
The Specials
Nelson Mandela
The Specials
Artist Playlists
The Specials Essentials
The U.K.'s greatest ska revivalists.
The Specials: Influences
Hear how Jamaican ska and American R&B inspired their sound.
Inspired by The Specials
Their ska revivalism influenced far more than just England.
Artist Biography
While The Specials are deservedly credited with kick-starting the two-tone ska revival of the '70s and '80s—which also included Madness and The English Beat—the group’s legacy goes much further. Not only did the UK band light the match for an ongoing series of ska-punk movements in the decades that followed, they used their music, arresting black-and-white imagery, and neo-mod fashion to deliver a powerful anti-racist message. Formed in 1977, the original lineup released only two albums, infusing ska with a punk edge and complementing Terry Hall's laconic cry with the avuncular toasting of Neville Staple. The band’s Elvis Costello-produced self-titled debut album garnered success, and 1979 single “Gangsters” served up a strong working-class critique of Thatcherism and established a fervent political ethos within the group’s ebullient ska-punk hybrid. In 1981, Hall, Staple, and Lynval Golding left to form Fun Boy Three while keyboardist and primary songwriter Jerry Dammers held the band together, rebranding it as The Special AKA. He released the hit “Free Nelson Mandela” in 1984, but without its original singers, the group soon dissolved. The Specials have reunited in different iterations in the years since, although never with Dammers in the mix. Hall died in 2022 at the age of 63.
Hometown
Coventry, England
Genre
Pop