Typically Tropical - Barbados (August 8, 1975) - TopPop

The song is about a bus driver who escapes Brixton, London for the tropical island of Barbados, where he’s going to see his girlfriend. The song has a tropical feel and a reggae vibe, but the Typically Tropical duo of Jeffrey Calvert and Max West are from a very different climate: Wales. They were engineers at Morgan Studios in London when they wrote this song. Calvert had been on vacation in Jamaica, and they wanted to write a reggae song. They came up with “Barbados“ in two hours on a guitar and piano. Calvert and West didn’t have a record deal when they wrote this song, but they were able to record it at Morgan Studios, where they worked, after sessions for clients were over. They used backing tracks and instruments that were lying around the studio, but when Gull Records signed them, they re-recorded the song using top studio musicians, including guitarist Chris Spedding, The Tornados’ drummer Clem Cattini, and Blue Mink’s Roger Coulam on keyboards. Jeff Calvert