![]() Its endurance was in part down to ZTT drip-feeding the market with new 12” remixes. 1 in the UK and sold more than 1.5 million copies, but its nine weeks at the top was the longest of the decade. This was all underpinned by a dramatic, menacing Trevor Horn production and a music video in which US President Ronald Reagan was depicted wrestling the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko. Released at a time when nuclear holocaust remained a real and ever-present threat, the song juxtaposed its dark theme of the Cold War with joyful lyrics about impending conflict. It also became the group’s first Top 10 hit in the United States.įGTH’s second single “Two Tribes” was just as controversial and almost as successful. 1 where it stayed for five weeks and sold 1.8 million copies, making it one of the UK’s 10 biggest-selling singles of all time. ![]() As a consequence, “Relax” was banned by the BBC, instantly giving it new-found notoriety and priceless promotion. ![]() One morning the breakfast show host of the BBC’s flagship national pop station Radio 1 announced live on air his disgust about the single’s sexually-charged lyrics and artwork. It was at that point that Frankie were gifted the most unexpected boost of their fledgling careers. However, by January the next year it had climbed into the UK Top 10 and been performed on Top Of The Pops. The Hits (Relax, Two Tribes, The Power Of Love, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, Rage Hard)įrankie Goes To Hollywood’s pounding, hi-energy debut single “Relax” garnered little attention following its release in the fall of 1983. The year after the release of their second album Liverpool, the group imploded, leaving behind some of the most era-defining music of the 80s. 1.īut like the Sex Pistols nearly a decade before, it was all over almost as soon as it had begun. With Horn’s deliberately overblown production, the double album shipped 1 million copies pre-release in the UK, while the group’s first three singles all went to No. Utilizing what at the time was the only computer sampler in existence, he made a series of bombastic, but lavish-sounding recordings that made up their 1984 debut album Welcome To The Pleasuredome. Horn – who was then fast gaining a formidable reputation thanks to his work with ABC, Malcolm McLaren, and others – was looking to literally produce the future sound of music. What made Frankie Goes To Hollywood such a successful group was a brilliant combination of attitude, aggressive, in-your-face marketing (including a series of “Frankie Says” T-shirts that were everywhere), and, most significantly, highly original music under the expert direction of record producer Trevor Horn.įGTH became the first signings to Horn and his wife Jill Sinclair’s new label ZTT Records, and Horn set about creating a product that sounded like KISS meets Donna Summer. ![]()
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