Graham Parker: The Rumour, "Discovering Japan" and "Mercury Poisoning"

Photo: SusanLesch / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham_Parker-07182010.jpg

Graham Parker is an English singer-songwriter, best known as the frontman of Graham Parker & the Rumour. U-Rock® has logged 3,313 plays of his music, nearly all of them for "Discovering Japan" and "Mercury Poisoning."

From Deepcut to the Rumour

According to Wikipedia, Parker was born in Hackney in 1950 and grew up loving soul music, especially Otis Redding. He worked jobs in Guernsey, Gibraltar and Morocco before coming home, working at a petrol station and getting serious about songwriting. A demo played on Charlie Gillett's BBC London show led to a deal with Phonogram, and Dave Robinson assembled the Rumour. Nick Lowe produced Howlin' Wind, which came out to acclaim in April 1976.

The two songs

"Mercury Poisoning" was aimed at his label. Wikipedia says Parker had long been unhappy with how Mercury Records handled his career, and in 1979 he released it as a B-side, a song that took direct aim at the label. "Discovering Japan" was a single from Squeezing Out Sparks (1979), which Rolling Stone later listed among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The photo here shows him in Minneapolis in 2010.

Why it matters on U-Rock®

Graham Parker was angry and literate before punk made that popular. One of these songs is a direct attack on his own record label.

U-Rock® play data: 3,313 plays logged across the BROADCAST and CORE histories (2026-07-02 to 2026-10-12), using the higher of the two logs.

Sources 1. Wikipedia, "Graham Parker" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Parker 2. Wikimedia Commons, "Graham Parker-07182010 (SusanLesch)" — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham_Parker-07182010.jpg 3. U-Rock® BROADCAST (AzuraCast) and CORE (airplay_spins) play logs