The 1980s File Feature
Communication
Communication — The Power Station Returns with a PurposeSupergroups have a complicated relationship with time. Assembled for a specific creative moment, they…
01 The Story
Communication — The Power Station Returns with a Purpose
Supergroups have a complicated relationship with time. Assembled for a specific creative moment, they tend to either burn bright and vanish or drag out long past the moment's expiration. The Power Station were the former kind: a project born from ambition and mutual respect among musicians who had enough individual success to make a collaboration genuinely interesting rather than a career move. By 1985, when Communication appeared, the band had already demonstrated with their first single that they could compete at the highest commercial level. This follow-up asked whether that was a one-time event or the beginning of something larger.
The Players and the Project
The Power Station brought together Robert Palmer on lead vocals with John Taylor and Andy Taylor from Duran Duran, along with drummer Tony Thompson, whose CV included extended work with Chic and considerable influence on the shape of 1980s rhythm sections. That combination of new-wave pop pedigree and deep funk credibility gave the group a sonic fingerprint unlike anything else in the charts. The band was assembled as a deliberate creative experiment, not a commercial exercise, and the results across their debut album showed what happened when musicians of that caliber took the time to find a shared sound rather than simply layering their individual brands.
The Texture of the Track
Communication has a rawer edge than some of its contemporaries on mid-1985 radio. The production favors a physical impact over textural refinement; the rhythm section commands the center of the mix, Thompson's drumming providing a foundation that most pop productions of the era couldn't match, and the guitars cut rather than shimmer. Palmer brings a contained, slightly menacing authority to the vocal that suits the material's aggressive qualities. The song pushes forward with the confidence of a band that knows exactly what it wants to sound like.
Ten Weeks and a Peak of 34
The chart arc of Communication tells a story of moderate success in a competitive market. Debuting at number 65 on September 7, 1985, the single made consistent progress and reached its peak of number 34 on October 12, 1985, where it spent 10 weeks in total on the Billboard Hot 100. That performance placed it well below the band's breakthrough single Some Like It Hot, which had reached the top ten, but it confirmed that the group had genuine radio appeal beyond a one-track audience. The fall 1985 chart environment was competitive, with strong material from established artists in every genre pushing for position.
The Brief and Brilliant Arc
The Power Station's existence as a recording and touring unit was limited by the individual commitments of its members: Duran Duran were a global phenomenon with their own demands, Robert Palmer was a significant solo act, and the coordination required to sustain a side project at this level proved difficult. Communication stands as one of the last major statements from the group's active period, capturing a sound that no individual member's separate work could quite replicate. The album they made together has gained a particular reputation among 1980s pop enthusiasts precisely because it represents a genuine creative convergence that only happened once.
Power, Groove, and the Ghost of Chic
What makes Communication worth revisiting is the way it synthesizes the funk tradition with the harder edges of 1980s rock, a combination that was theoretically available to many acts of the period but that very few executed with this kind of authority. Thompson's Chic background runs through the rhythmic structure; the guitars are tighter and more aggressive than anything Chic would have produced; and Palmer's vocal sits at the intersection of those two worlds. Press play and hear what happens when musicians of this caliber choose to give a genre-crossing experiment genuine effort.
“Communication” — The Power Station's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Communication — Breakdown, Desire, and the Signal That Doesn't Get Through
There is an irony embedded in Communication that the Power Station seem to have savored: a song about the failure of connection delivered with an intensity that makes the delivery itself the argument. The track's energy, its insistence, its almost aggressive drive, all stand in contrast to the theme of messages that don't land and connections that don't form. The result is a piece of writing that works on two levels simultaneously: explicit content and formal enactment.
The Breakdown as Subject
The song's central concern is the breakdown of meaningful exchange between people who want to connect but keep falling short. This is a recognizably modern anxiety, the sense that the machinery of human communication, language, gesture, touch, all of it, keeps failing precisely when it matters most. The lyrics circle around this failure without offering solutions, which gives the track an honest restlessness. The narrator wants something and knows what it is but can't make the channel work. That is a frustration that requires no translation across time or geography.
Power and Vulnerability
The Power Station's musical identity was built on a particular combination: enormous rhythmic force deployed in the service of songs about human need and connection. Communication exemplifies that combination. The music radiates power while the lyrical content maps a vulnerability; the gap between the two creates a productive tension that explains much of the track's appeal. Robert Palmer's vocal style had always operated in this territory, projecting cool authority while describing emotional situations that are anything but cool. Here, that contrast is especially sharp.
1985 and the Technology of Disconnection
The mid-1980s were, by any measure, a moment of rapid transformation in how people communicated. Answering machines, fax machines, and the early stages of personal computing were changing the infrastructure of daily life. The anxiety about communication failure that runs through many songs of the period registers this transformation, even when the songs don't reference technology directly. Communication does not name these technologies, but its concerns belong to the same cultural moment: a period in which the means of exchange were multiplying while the quality of genuine human contact felt, for many, like it was receding.
The Groove as Argument
One of the most interesting things about the song's meaning is how its musical form comments on its lyrical content. Tony Thompson's drumming is the most communicative element in the track: precise, powerful, and completely legible in its emotional expression. The rhythm section communicates perfectly even while the lyrics describe communication failing. Whether this is intentional irony or happy accident is less important than the fact that it works: the song demonstrates connection through sound even as it describes its breakdown in words. That tension is where the track lives, and why it has lasted.
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