![]() While all the members of UB40 genuinely love reggae, Campbell describes his own passion for the music as downright obsessive. We just wanted everyone to love what we loved.” “So we thought we’d do an album of our favorites. “The one thing that everybody always asked was, ‘Why do we play reggae?’” Campbell explains. This time around, the band covers dancehall cuts from the late ’80s, originally recorded by such Jamaican stars as Beres Hammond, Dennis Brown, Barrington Levy, Cocoa Tea, and Culture - artists whom Ali and Astro refer to as “our heroes.” Last March, UB40 released A Real Labour of Love, which returns Ali Campbell to his rightful place alongside founding keyboardist Mickey Virtue and Astro on the mic. “We don’t talk about that thing,” Astro cautions. “We’ve always believed that if everybody else got to hear songs like ‘Cherry O Baby’ by Eric Donaldson and ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ by Jimmy Cliff, they’d love them the same as we did.” Their hunch was right: the Labour of Love franchise has expanded to multiple volumes since 1983, with new installments in ’89 and ’98, not to mention the infamous fourth volume, released in 2010 (after Ali left the band for a time) featuring his brother Duncan on lead vocals. “They were all classics in our world,” recalls lead vocalist Ali Campbell. That was it - once you’re smitten by the reggae bug, it’s very hard to shake off.” “We used to sneak out of our bed and go and listen to this music for a couple of hours, hoping that our parents wouldn’t realize we’d escaped. “When we were young, there wasn’t anywhere to listen to reggae music other than house parties, which would start on a Friday night and finish on a Monday morning,” Astro recalls.
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