Key facts
- Origin
- Camden Town , London, England
- Genres
- Two-tone ska pop new wave rocksteady
- Years active
- 1976–1986 1992–present
- Spinoffs
- The Madness The Fink Brothers The Nutty Boys Crunch!
- Members
- Chris Foreman Mike Barson Lee Thompson Graham "Suggs" McPherson Dan Woodgate Mark Bedford
- Past members
- Cathal "Chas Smash" Smyth John Hasler Dikran Tulaine Gavin Rodgers Garry Dovey
- Website
- madness .co .uk
via Wikipedia infobox
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Madness are an English ska and pop band from Camden Town, north west London, who formed in 1976. One of the most prominent bands of the late-1970s/early-1980s two-tone ska revival, they continue to perform with six of the seven members of their original line-up. Madness's most successful period was from 1980 to 1986, when the band's songs spent a total of 214 weeks on the UK singles chart, jointly holding the record with English reggae group UB40 for most weeks spent by a group in the UK singles chart during the 1980s.
Madness have had 16 singles reach the UK top ten, including "One Step Beyond", "Baggy Trousers" and "It Must Be Love"; one UK number-one single, "House of Fun"; and two number ones in Ireland, "House of Fun" and "Wings of a Dove". "Our House" was their biggest US hit, reaching number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2000, the band received the Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors for Outstanding Song Collection.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Madness” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.