Madness: We were under immense pressure to write hits

After their meteoric rise with songs like Our House, Baggy Trousers, and House of Fun, British ska band Madness felt an increasing pressure to keep the success going well into the mid 80s. They said that if we stopped, wed never work again, says frontman Graham Suggs McPherson. The constant pressure, augmented by a desire to keep evolving, eventually culminated in the band struggling with its identity and splitting up around 1988. In our head we needed to shed this Happiness. That became one-dimensional then because we wanted to be too serious. It was all warped, because you can have both, serious and Happy. That was the whole point of the band in the beginning.