It was the year of the massive success of Prince’s "Purple Rain", Bruce Springsteen’s "Born In The USA" and Cyndi Lauper’s "She’s So Unusual", but on the other side of the Atlantic a bunch of stern looking chaps were making chart hits with keyboards, synthesisers and questionable haircuts. More than 30 years on, the hair is thinner and the po-faced music videos are laughably dated, but these UK electro pop tunes from 1984 still sound remarkably solid.
Pet Shop Boys – "West End Girls"
New Order – "Thieves Like Us"
Blancmange – "The Day Before You Came"
Depeche Mode – "Blasphemous Rumours"
Tears For Fears – "Shout"
Bronski Beat – "Smalltown Boy"
Re-Flex – "The Politics Of Dancing"
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – "Relax"
Talk Talk – "It’s My Life"
Thompson Twins – "Hold Me Now"
Fans of these electro pop classics should take a look at the Pet Shop Boys definitive Catalogue: 1985-2012 series of reissues of all their Parlophone studio albums. The PSB albums Please from 1986, Actually from 1987 and 1988’s Introspective will be reissued on March 2nd 2018. The albums have been remastered and repackaged, and will be accompanied by ‘Further listening’ albums of master quality bonus tracks - including demos, extended mixes and remixes of tracks from the albums and others created in the same period as each record.
The three albums will be packaged with an extensive booklet in which Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe discuss each song, illustrated with many archive photographs. The entire project is designed by Farrow.
