"When I Get it Right" (1981)

Oh, the humiliations they put artists through in the name of record promotion. Bad enough to be contractually obliged to stand there (super-imposed or otherwise) lip-syncing your song in a neighbourhood where you buy your groceries, but to have a mob of uniformed English schoolboys caring more about your record label's camera than you and your song, well, it was the height of Margaret Thatcher's England (1979-1990) when this video was shot, and we don't know much about 1981, do we?

Love and Affection (1976)

I love this song. I loved it when I first heard it over the house PA before a CANO concert at the Queen E in 1977, and I have loved it to this day, especially while driving between the Okanagan, Vancouver and the Northern Gulf Islands.

The video above is a "live" performance from Armatrading's appearance on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test (1971-1988). The highlight for me comes at 1:24, when Armatrading delivers that wicked upstroke -- the musical equivalent of Stanley Kubrick's great match-cut.