Madness

Madness took its cue from other British ska revivalists such as the Specials and the Selecter, but where those bands took aim at social issues, Madness went in for goofy fun. In the early days of MTV, the group had several stateside hits, but nothing to match its success at home. Starting in the mid-1980s, the band became an on-again, off-again affair, buoyed mostly live performances of older material, but in 1999, they returned to the studio to record their first new songs in more than a decade.

• rock
• reggae
• ska
• pop rock
• 1970s
• 1990s
• 1980s
• 2000s