No massive personal input into this choice, but more a throwback to our musical coming of age, which happened to most people in their teens. That being 1977 to 1984 for me.
A great period for music with pop, punk, reggae, disco/funk, new-wave, reggae, guitar bands, and electronica all coming into prominence and into the listening habits of "our generation".
Gradually we start to find our niches and originally I gravitated toward disco-funk and electronic music....Chic to Kraftwerk and all points in between. Probably why Heaven 17 resonated.

One type of music was here before this teenage period though, throughout this time, and carried on afterwards....SOUL.
I always listened to it, and it did seem to be the one constant coming out of the windows of the streets where I lived.
From Motown to Stax to Atlantic etc. Otis Redding to Marvin Gaye to Mary Wells to Gladys Knight to Stevie Wonder to George Benson to Luther.
Loads of different musical sounds around these great voices. Eventually I realised that I was choosing to listen to one type of soul more than the other during my late teenage year....the Philadelphia sound...epitomised by TSOP.
The smooth vocals surrounded by the lush strings just hit home. I will always have a soft spot for many of them, such as The Stylistics, but one group showed the best of it. Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes.
By all accounts, old Harold was a hard taskmaster/bastard, and eventually Teddy Prendergrass took his vocals off elsewhere. But for a while they were brilliant at chucking out funky soul and smooth ballads. Their purple covered Best Of LP is well worth checking out.

Amongst all this was this subtle protest song.
I hope you agree that the words still mean something almost 50 years since it was made.
The dreamer in me still hopes it will.

Version sung live on Soul Train.

version with the full (beautiful) intro