Red Red Wine

Red Red Wine is not just a song, it's the kind of track that grabs you by the collar and doesn't let go until you're humming it. UB40's version sounds like a Sunday afternoon with the sun beating down on the window, but with a rhythm that makes you move your shoulders without realizing it. It's not the original version by Neil Diamond —that acoustic and melancholic folk ballad— but a reinvention with a British reggae flavor, where the sadness of the lyrics dissolves into a groove that invites dancing. The detail that makes it unique is that added verse by Astro, the band's trumpeter, which opens with a 'Red Red Wine, you make me feel so fine' before the main melody kicks in. That little twist, almost a greeting between friends, gave the song a festive air that the original lacked.

The story behind this version begins in 1983, when UB40 recorded Labour of Love, their first album of covers. As Astro recounted years later, the group only knew Tony Tribe's version and had no idea the author was Neil Diamond. Even when they saw the credit as 'N Diamond', they thought it was a Jamaican artist named Negus Diamond. The recording, produced by Ray “Pablo” Falconer and with Howard Gray as engineer, took just enough time to capture the freshness that characterized British reggae of the era. The track was released as a single in August 1983 and reached number one in the UK, selling over half a million copies that year. But the success didn't stop there: in 1988, after being included in the playlist of a Phoenix radio station by programmer Guy Zapoleon's decision, the song resurfaced in the United States and climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. By then, it had already sold a million copies in the UK and, in 2023, the Official Charts Company ranked it 134th on the list of best-selling singles in British history.