I Want Candy
The Overlooked Genius of Bow Wow Wow
MTV played Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” video constantly in 1982. I liked the song, but I was even more fascinated by the band: four people smiling on a deserted beach. The drummer pounded away in red shorts, the guitarist and singer had mohawks, and three of the four members weren’t white—which, as a biracial ten-year-old obsessed with rock, pulled me in. The music wasn’t punk, but it wasn’t quite new wave either. It was bright, tribal, surfy, and weirdly tough. Then I saw the video for “Baby, Oh No,” and it hit me harder.
When the singer hit the chorus—“But my baby, oh no, you make me lose my self control”—it felt like a door opened. Her voice vibrated in my chest, the rhythm section shook my guts, and the guitar shimmered in a way I wouldn’t feel again until I heard Johnny Marr a couple of years later. And this was just through the tiny speaker on our thirteen-inch TV. I needed to hear it on my record player, loud.
This was when music wasn’t always available when you wanted it. If a record store didn’t have what you were looking for, you just… couldn’t hear it. That kind of scarcity felt physical. My mother and I had recently moved from New York City to Salt Lake City, which, surprisingly, had plenty of record stores, but felt a year or two behind culturally. So when my mom called a shop and they said they had the Bow Wow Wow album in stock, we practically ran out the door.
In the store, I went straight to the B section. I hadn’t seen the cover before, but it looked exactly right: the singer, naked like a bronze statue, knees pulled in to cover her chest, same mohawk as on MTV, “BOW WOW WOW” in all caps above her head, and the album title—I Want Candy—down the side. I studied the record the whole ride home.
The album exceeded every expectation. It wasn’t just the two MTV tracks—I Want Candy was solid all the way through. “Louis Quatorze” and “Cowboy” sounded massive. The drums and bass locked in like a machine, and the guitar—muscular and strange—looped in my head while I fell asleep at night. Now that I owned the album, I knew the singer’s name was Annabella Lwin and the guitarist shaping those sounds was Matthew Ashman. They didn’t sound like anyone else I’d ever heard.
No one I knew owned the album, so whenever the band came up, I got to be the ten-year-old record store snob describing it in detail. Our small apartment wasn’t fancy, but my record collection gave me status. It gave me a way to bring friends into something—into music, into discovery, into a little world I was building for myself.
In early 1983, Bow Wow Wow released a new album, When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going. I’d just turned eleven when I found out that Annabella was only sixteen. I’d heard the line in “Louis Quatorze” where she screamed, “…’cause I’m just… fourteen!”—but I hadn’t realized she meant it. She was barely older than me. While she was on MTV and touring the world, I was still in elementary school.
When Bow Wow Wow came to play the University of Utah, my mother and I showed up hours early to get close. We caught a glimpse of their sound check from a stairwell and I locked in on the drummer, Dave Barbarossa, who hammered out rhythms on odd-shaped cylindrical drums that echoed through the hall. After sound check, the four band members walked right by us. I froze, too nervous to say a word to the larger-than-life Mohawked band. I wish I’d had the guts to say hello. My mother always had the guts—we’d met a lot of bands thanks to her fearless New York attitude—but she later admitted she was also intimidated by Annabella’s star power. These were real people, of indeterminate racial origin, playing music that affected me deeply, who offered a realistic glimmer of hope that someday I could do what they did.
Even with a new album out, they played most of I Want Candy—a record I’d later learn was just a U.S. compilation of UK singles. But to me, I Want Candy was always Bow Wow Wow’s first album. It was the one that found me—and the one I had to chase down.
We’ve launched Season 2 of my podcast Identified! So far, my guests include Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, Neko Case, TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Chase Jarvis, and Laura Lee from the band Khruangbin . Stay tuned for a rapidly growing list of musicians, comedians, authors and friends talking about family. Identified is available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, 100% free and ad free. LISTEN
My memoir is called My Life in the Sunshine. You can order it here, or listen to the audiobook on Spotify.
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Nabil Ayers / Brooklyn
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I was talking to my sister about how the eighties music was just SO different, and experimental. People were rebelling, creative, larger than life, pushing limits, and MTV videos helped all of that shine. We had some great radio stations bucking the system and playing good stuff in Utah too. I loved Bow Wow Wow, this song and others. The drums and guitar, and her strong voice! Strong like Pat Benetar and Joan Jett. Terry Nunn, Michelle Shocked!