Top 100 10s: 89. SCISSOR SISTERS - "Invisible Light" (Patreon)

What makes “Invisible Light” such a treat is the involvement of Sir Ian McKellen, who brings a wicked relish to the spoken word break, imbuing phrases like “sexual gladiators” with all the wizardly power at his disposal. He sounds like doing the voiceover on a gay techno banger is crossing a long-held desire off the bucket list, and who knows, it very possibly was.

The reference point, of course, is Vincent Price’s turn on “Thriller”, but where Price’s hamming is a glorious B-Feature in a track already stuffed with hooks, McKellen’s stretch of “Invisible Light” acts as the song’s denouement - “Come to the light...the Invisible Light”... and cue the promised bacchanal. Price’s monologue is a scaly rubber hand placed knowingly on your shoulder; McKellen’s is a pair of opened arms, and the emotional point of the Scissor Sisters’ song, a promise of self-discovery through pleasure, desire and dancing. 

But that’s not to say the rest of the track doesn’t earn such a lavish payoff. Patience was rarely a great virtue of the Scissor Sisters - their tracks tend to make an entrance, chorus and hooks on full display. But their other truly marvellous slow-burn track - first album closer “Return To Oz” - does take its time cataloguing the horrors of meth-ravaged San Francisco. And “Invisible Light” is as redemptive as “Oz” was scouring: it pulses and ripples, keeping its synths restrained while Jake Shears unfurls himself across them, urgency gradually building through the Bee Gees-style choruses before release arrives. In the form of a fruity English thesp? If the light was obvious, it wouldn’t be invisible.