ABC / How to Be a Zillionaire / 1985
Tower of London
glossy, restless, ambivalently celebratory
A glossy synth-pop travelogue through 1980s London landmarks that doubles as a meditation on history's permanence versus the city's current fashion and violence. ABC use the Tower of London as a pun and symbol -- literal monument, but also a stand-in for accumulated weight, memory, and the idea that nothing done can be undone.
urban pageantry history vs. present national pride and irony surveillance/violence beneath glamour nostalgia
Who's speaking
A tour-guide narrator addressing a companion or listener directly, inviting them through London's landmarks; the voice is confident and performative, possibly unreliable in its breezy tone given the violent details it slips in almost casually.
What happens
The song moves geographically and emotionally from one London square to another, each stop offering a glimpse of style, danger, or spectacle, while the chorus keeps returning to the Tower as an anchor -- a fixed point of history against which the narrator measures the city's restless present. By the end the narrator dismisses New York as a rival, insisting on London's historical primacy through secondhand images rather than direct experience.
How it's built
Verse-chorus pop structure with two main verses functioning as a sightseeing itinerary, followed by a recurring chorus that shifts from historical weight to compulsive repetition ('tower up'). The final verse breaks pattern by naming New York, creating a late contrast that recontextualizes the preceding London tour as a defense of place.
Section by section
Opening verse
The narrator positions himself as guide, inviting the listener into a performative, fashionable vision of central London as if it were a runway.1 The tone is light, but the choice of landmarks already signals a city built on display.2
First chorus
“What's done cannot be undone”
The chorus pivots from sightseeing to something heavier, framing the Tower as a symbol of accumulated history that cannot be erased, hinting at both pride and unease about the past's permanence.
Second verse
“target practice in the open air”
The guide's tone darkens as the tour reaches a scene of surveillance and threatened violence, with a glancing mention of youth subculture reacting to it, suggesting the glamorous city is also an uneasy, watched one.
Bridge/chant section
The repeated 'tower up' phrase becomes almost mantra-like, shifting from a description of the monument to a verb suggesting rising tension or wasted momentum, blurring the line between admiration and anxiety about stasis.
Final verse
“New York, don't make me laugh”
The narrator breaks from the tour-guide persona to directly dismiss a rival city, revealing the song's underlying competitive nationalism and suggesting the whole travelogue has been building a case for London's unmatched historical depth.
Craft
- pun
- The title plays on 'tower' as both the historic building and the verb meaning to loom or dominate, letting the chorus describe London's history literally looming over its present.
- catalogue/list
- The verses list specific squares and streets, giving the song a map-like structure that mimics an actual walking tour.
- irony
- Scenes of fashion and glamour are juxtaposed with casual mentions of violence, producing a tonal dissonance that undercuts the surface celebration.
- repetition
- The chorus's insistence on what 'cannot be undone' and the repeated phrase 'tower up' create an incantatory, almost obsessive quality, reinforcing the theme of inescapable history.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a tongue-in-cheek civic anthem: it celebrates London's fashion and spectacle while acknowledging, almost uneasily, the violence and weight of history embedded in its streets. The Tower functions as a metaphor for inescapable national memory. An alternative reading sees the song as pure stylistic pastiche typical of ABC's mid-80s period, where the London imagery is more about constructing a glamorous aesthetic than making any serious historical or political statement.
Context
Released on 'How to Be a Zillionaire' (1985), an album where ABC moved toward a brighter, more electronic, almost cartoonish pop sound compared to their earlier Lexicon of Love era. The song's London-as-spectacle theme fits the album's broader interest in surface, wealth, and image. I don't have confirmed biographical detail about the writing process for this specific track.
Listen for
- the shift in tone between the fashionable verses and the darker imagery of violence
- the way 'tower up' functions both as description and as a rising, chant-like hook
- the late, almost throwaway dismissal of New York that reframes the whole song as a defense of London
- the production's bright, synthetic sheen contrasting with the lyric's historical weight
About ABC
ABC are an English pop band which formed in Sheffield, South Yorkshire in 1980, evolving from the earlier electronic band Vice Versa. Associated with the new pop movement of the early 1980s, ABC blended synth-pop with disco and rock influences.
1980 - present / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue