Music
Plus One
The 11 Best Simple Minds songs
The Glasgow legends might be best-known for their deathless Breakfast Club hit – but here's 10 other reasons not to miss them live this summer
The metamorphosis of Simple Minds from post-punk square pegs to stadium gods is one of the greatest stories in rock ‘n’ roll. Those who dig through the Glaswegians’ late-’70s catalogue will find a sunken treasure trove of criminally underrated early albums, all of them pulsing with angular, artsy alt-rock, none of them selling a bean.
It’s a period championed by connoisseurs (including superfan James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, who says those first records “were like learning a new language”). But as the decade turned, Simple Minds suddenly became a very different kind of band, discovering their talent for epic, cinematic, widescreen anthems that make stadiums quake and our hearts leap out of our chests.
These are the 11 Simple Minds songs we’ll howl for when co-founders Jim Kerr (vocals) and Charlie Burchill (guitar) lead Simple Minds to the stage for their 2025 tour – including a few cult curios the hardcore will be hoping make the setlist.
11. ‘Waterfront’
(Sparkle In The Rain, 1984)
It’s surely no coincidence that Simple Minds debuted Waterfront in August 1983 as openers for the mighty U2 at Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The throbbing one-note bassline felt like a parting nod to their post-punk roots, before the triumphant synth fanfare and Burchill’s glassy guitar lick announced Simple Minds’ pitch for the stadium league. It’s the sound of a band shifting gears, still the stuff of shivers today.
10. ‘Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)’
(New Gold Dream 81–82–83–84, 1982)
The sessions for Simple Minds’ fifth album marked a charmed period for the band (“Everything we tried worked, there were no arguments, we were in love with what we were doing,” reflected Kerr). No song on New Gold Dream bottles that blue-sky spirit better than ‘Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)’, whose hypnotic verse and lift-off chorus feels like a lost weekend in the hazy heat of festival season.
9. ‘Love Song‘
(Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, 1981)
Don’t be fooled by the title: Kerr’s take on a love song was no boy-meets-girl fluff, but a relentless, piston-pumping electronic judder touched by the influence of the German motorik scene. It’s nobody’s idea of a stadium singalong, but squint and you’ll detect a band with big ideas in that wide-open sound.
8. ‘Changeling’
(Real To Real Cacophony, 1979)
A nugget of gold panned from the band’s freeform jams, ‘Changeling’ is darkness you can dance to. Burchill’s guitar sounds thrillingly shredded, while Kerr’s vocal oscillates from David Bowie to Jim Morrison, but perhaps the song belongs most of all to bassist Derek Forbes – a vital early member – whose thundering-yet-funky low end gives the song substance alongside the style.
7. ‘I Travel’
(Empires And Dance, 1980)
With Simple Minds outgrowing the sticky-floored clubs of their native Glasgow and making forays into Europe, Kerr penned this kinetic travelogue as he observed the world flashing past the tourbus window. The socially charged lyric (“Evacuees and refugees/Presidents and monarchies”) and fluttering synth captures the band’s twin states of excitement and unease as they headed out into this unknown world.
6. ‘Let There Be Love’
(Real Life, 1991)
By the early-’90s, Simple Minds could write a stadium-shaker with their eyes closed, and from the route-one sentiment to the propulsive beat and Celtic-sounding synth-squiggle earworm, this highlight of Real Life seemed precision-engineered for pumping fists. By the time the choir kick in for the final minute, resistance is futile.
5. ‘Promised You A Miracle’
(New Gold Dream 81–82–83–84, 1982)
A good song made great by Burchill’s instantly catchy guitar hook, whose sugar-rush jangle seems to fizz with possibilities. Kerr called the song “a story of ambition”, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with ‘Promised You A Miracle’ hitting No.13 and earning the band their Top Of The Pops debut. The boulder had started to roll.
4. ‘Real Life’
(Real Life, 1991)
Even with the musical landscape shifting as grunge blew in from across the pond, Simple Minds still made No.2 with their ninth album – and the massive title track is the standout. Led in by Burchill’s eerie plucked riff, it’s a classic story-song of two young lovers with their backs to the wall, and Kerr’s bellowing of the final chorus feels like a warning to the new generation that he’ll go down fighting.
3. ‘Belfast Child’
(Street Fighting Years, 1989)
As a young rocker, Kerr had disowned the folk music of his upbringing. But as the jaded lineup gathered for their eighth album, the singer heard something in the centuries-old lament of ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ that called to him. Not exactly a cover, nor an original, ‘Belfast Child’ reworked the music, rewrote the lyric and gave Simple Minds a much-needed shot in the arm. Sung almost a capella at points, it might be Kerr’s purest and most beautiful vocal.
2. ‘Alive And Kicking’
(Once Upon A Time, 1985)
Not for nothing were Simple Minds dubbed “the Scottish U2” by the mid-’80s music press, and this highlight from Once Upon A Time stands shoulder-to-shoulder with anything Bono and co produced in the period. From the mysterious swirl of synth to the whistle of feedback and that immortal first line (“You turn me on…’) ‘Alive And Kicking’ is stadium rock par excellence, deservedly Simple Minds’ second-most-streamed song, and a live moment that will turn your whole body to goosebumps.
1. ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’
(The Breakfast Club Soundtrack, 1985)
What else? It’s sobering to think that Simple Minds initially turned down the all-time classic offered to them by songwriters Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff (“Being chippy Glaswegians, we said, ‘Nah, we write our own songs’,” Kerr told The Guardian). Fortunately, after Billy Idol and Bryan Ferry also passed, the Scottish band relented, rush-recorded’ Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ with improvised vocals – and watched as the success of John Hughes’ high-school drama The Breakfast Club fired the song to No.1. As Burchill now admits: “I’m embarrassed we dissed it so much…”
Simple Minds’ Summer Live 2025 tour of the UK and Ireland starts June 28. Find tickets here
