1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)", and the conflict between producer Richard James Burgess and lead singer Tony Hadley that began with that song continued as they recorded the vocals for "Paint Me Down".

As Spandau Ballet's first album, Journeys to Glory, was being completed, the band's guitarist/songwriter Gary Kemp noticed a resurgence of funk in the clubs around Soho that he wanted to emulate in his own songwriting,[1] and an encounter with the British jazz-funk group Beggar and Co led to their collaboration on one of his first attempts to do so, "Chant No.

[3] In his autobiography I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau, he explained how the songs for their debut came much more easily, having been written, re-written and then tested in front of club audiences for months before they were signed to a record label.

"[10] When "Paint Me Down" was released as part of the Diamond album in 1982 with a separate box set of additional remixes, Richard Cook of the New Musical Express found its remixed version to be something of an improvement: 'Paint Me Down', originally a rather plain and dolorous clap-chant, is stretched on a tightrope between rock and dub, the instruments cued in and out with ironic precision until the morse of the concluding vocals seems to combine with the brass (inverting the customary call and response style) for a climax that has power in reserve.

"[12] In retrospective reviews on AllMusic, Dan LeRoy described it as a "tuneless single" that was "all chattering rhythm guitar and popping bass",[13] but in dividing the band's oeuvre into "the Funky years and the wimpy ones", Dave Thompson felt that "Paint Me Down" "represented the peak of Spandau's ambition".

"[19] Spandau Ballet again chose to work with director Russell Mulcahy[20] and decided to combine two genres for the "Paint Me Down" video—the large-scale feel of an epic like they did in the video for "Muscle Bound" and the look of a documentary that would provide a recap of the band's career.

Hadley was filmed lying in bed ostensibly naked for his lip synching segments with, as Kemp described it, "so much paint flying around and so many really quick cuts and edits required [that] Tony had to keep running upstairs to shower himself clean while the technicians changed all the sheets so that we could start again and get it right.

[30] Another scenario, in which band member Steve Norman was tied to a tree and blindfolded, had a resident of the area concerned enough to call the police because of what they thought might be a satanic ritual in progress.

[38] The band's manager, Steve Dagger, felt another single should be put out to help sell Diamond,[39] and the track from the album that most resembled a pop song, "Instinction", was remixed[40] and got them back into the top ten.