Live those dreams, Scheme those schemes

February 25, 2024 11:16 PM

Todd In the Shadows undertakes an epic troll of Brits with ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
posted by rongorongo (40 comments total)

Haven't watched it yet, but "epic troll" is obviously true... FGTH were "one hit wonders" in the same sense as baseball's annual US competition is a "world series". And I see from the YouTube comments that he calls Blur one hit wonders as well: is this even going to be safe for me to watch without a defibrillator to hand?
posted by rory at 12:47 AM on February 26 [5 favorites]

Great video! He mentions that he's pushing the boundaries of "One Hit Wonder" as far as it will go this time. But technically they had only one entry in the US Billboard Top 40 Singles, which he's mentioned before is his criterion. Mike Oldfield was another "oh really" one for me.

But this was worth it just for that clip of Lemmy Kilmister desperately trying to be as straight as possible in the gayest possible environment.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:54 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I mean, I'll watch it, because his stuff is entertaining, and if he wants to go all Humpty Dumpty on the title of his own YouTube series that's up to him. But for me personally, "one hit wonder" means more than "one Billboard Top 40 wonder" or "one song Millennials and Gen Z have heard of wonder".

(Wow, most Americans really didn't get into Blur, eh. Bad luck for Americans. Gorillaz, on the other hand...)
posted by rory at 1:15 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Thanks, that song came out about the time I departed pentecostalism the first time. Relax felt very trangressive at the time, way more edgy than Duran, more like The Tubes or Ian Dury.
posted by unearthed at 1:37 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Frankie were so ubiquitous in 1984 in the UK that I was surprised by the notion they only had one hit in the US. Two Tribes - with its multiple 12 inch mixes - was very much part of things here - the Annihilation Mix - with its reminder to tag the body of your now dead grandmother before putting the body outside, for just one example.
posted by rongorongo at 1:53 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Heres a Annihilation Mix video that works in the states. (I can't tell if it's the same video.)
posted by Pronoiac at 2:08 AM on February 26

Well, Americans think Madness were a one-hit wonder. Very odd.

Frankie were a phenomenon more than a band - A perfect storm of the the band themselves, Trevor Horn and his merry crew, Paul Morley and the weirdness the country was settling into as the Thatcher Government established a kind of cultural hegemony. The fact that they seem relatively normal now doesn't change the fact that they felt quite despotic at the time.
posted by Grangousier at 2:18 AM on February 26 [5 favorites]

Having watched it now: good video, thumbs up; sufficiently self-aware about how he's stretching the boundaries of the concept, but going for it anyway because hey, it's a chance to talk about the whole Frankie phenomenon—why wouldn't you?
posted by rory at 3:03 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Cliff Richard.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:37 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Frankie still feels to me like the great thing that never truly happened. I think I'm one of five people on the planet who bought their second album and I really quite like it. I even saw them on their Liverpool tour in Germany!

Their reunion for Eurovision this year had me quite hoping for a tour or even maybe an album, but I'm sure that ship has long since sailed.

I found it interesting that Todd did all this research but didn't mention once how the track was actually recorded, which was by studio workers in the middle of the night without the band involved at all.

I can't find the piece that outlined how it all went down, or I would like it here. If I do find it, I will put it in another comment. But there's a video online where they go through all the original stems for the track and really break it down.
posted by hippybear at 6:45 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

What's really going to blow British people's minds is that Kylie Minogue was a one-hit wonder in the US.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:03 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I think I'm one of five people on the planet who bought their second album

It sold over 800,000 copies in the first two years after release!
posted by Dysk at 8:08 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I don't know...there's something willfully ignorant about calling FGTH "one hit wonders" when their absolute chokehold (pun intended) on the UK charts in 1984 was well-known in the US.

More than just well-known, it was part of the lore around the first release of "Relax," then again around "Two Tribes," and then again when "Relax" had its top-10 run on the US charts in 1985.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:11 AM on February 26

"You know, sometimes I get asked, 'Todd, why do you do this show?' And the answer is, 'to make the British angry at me."

So mission accomplished there.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:22 AM on February 26 [5 favorites]

I was certain I had (and played far too often) a copy of Welcome To The Pleasuredome as a teenager but I can't find it among my MP3s today. The version I found streaming isn't like the album I had.

Poking around discogs.com, it looks like:

1) This "one hit wonder" provoked 193 different versions of that album alone, with different song mixes and even different track lists, and

2) I probably just had the bog-standard major-label US CD release, which is apparently not living on in the cloud forever like we were all promised.

So I guess Todd's video has led to me feeling angry, too, even though I'm not British and it's for the wrong reasons.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:32 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]

It sold over 800,000 copies in the first two years after release!

By contrast, Pearl Jam's second album sold that many copies in its first week!
posted by hippybear at 8:33 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

hippybear, is this the video you mean? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIlQhhAUs4

I didn't know Trevor Horn had produced this. I can't help but think it's the production more than anything else that made this song a hit (probably like a lot of other stuff he produced).
posted by mokey at 9:42 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I don't know...there's something willfully ignorant about calling FGTH "one hit wonders" when their absolute chokehold (pun intended) on the UK charts in 1984 was well-known in the US.

Todd acknowledges that, but then points out that the "one-hit wonder" designation is based on the US charts, not the UK charts. He even goes a step further in this particular video and spotlights some of "Two Tribes" - and says that he's not just doing so to share "another UK hit", he says he's doing so because he thinks it's an awesome song and personally doesn't know why it didn't take off more here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:19 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

As mokey posted above - my money would be on Stephen Lipson's video about the production process for the song. . There is also this re-construction by Dr Mix - if you have an hour to spare.

However - this original recording from 1983, featuring the band playing the song live - shows that it was already something special before Trevor Horn got hold of it (and replaced everything recorded by the band other than the sound of them jumping into a swimming pool).
posted by rongorongo at 11:14 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I've always thought it was a better cultural statement than a song. Also, being a one-hit wonder doesn't mean that a band hasn't sold a lot of records. A lot of very famous bands have zero top 40 singles.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:47 PM on February 26

Also, can we give a shout out to side 3 of Pleasuredome, which is mostly cover songs? Ferry Cross The Mersey, Born To Run, Do You Know The Way To San Jose, and then the nasty nasty Wish The Lads Were Here. It's a fine little part of the album.
posted by hippybear at 1:33 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Western Infidels, it took me a lot of searching but the vinyl double album was remixed for CD release, and since then there have been a ton of various remixes and remasters. So most of the digital copies you can find are sadly not the one you know and love.

My brother has my double LP set with all the wonderful art, but there’s a rip of the original vinyl on Soulseek if you look. You’ll probably download a few of the wrong’uns before you get it right, but oh, oh how it’s worth the trouble.

Also the original video for Relax is incredible, it’s like the opening of Babylon, looks like it was great fun to make!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 2:28 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I always remember the Relax scene in Brian DePalma’s Body Double
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:21 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

For some reason, for many years I remembered the opening few seconds of this video with the extremely louche guy in the doorway wearing a Breton-like shirt instead of the leather getup. It's strange because it's such a specific memory and yet it's totally wrong (well, as "sailor" clothing, it's not completely out of the genre of Stuff Gay 80s Dudes Might Wear to the Underground Club, I guess, but still not very close).
posted by praemunire at 6:32 PM on February 26

from TFV:

This is Frankie Goes To Hollywood's second single, "Two Tribes" and it is the fucking jam.

(raises glass)
posted by Sauce Trough at 6:33 PM on February 26

(Also worth noting that at the time this memory would've been had to have been formed, I would've had less than zero idea of what gay clubwear might've consisted of, so that I landed even in the genre vicinity is baffling to me.)
posted by praemunire at 6:35 PM on February 26

....So I rewatched the original video for "Relax" just now, and it reminded me strangely of the video to Peaches' song Rub - so much so that now I want to show them both at some art house movie theater as a double feature or something.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:55 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

By contrast, Pearl Jam's second album sold that many copies in its first week!

So what? We're talking about Frankie here, not Pearl Jam. You said you were one of five people worldwide to buy the album, implying it was a massive flop. You were off by five orders of magnitude. Yes, it wasn't a decade-defining super-hit like whatever Pearl Jam record, but it was decidedly not a flop. 800,000 copies is a lot. It was a top ten album in both the UK and Germany.
posted by Dysk at 8:54 PM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Yes, and I was living in Germany when I bought it, and living in Germany when I saw them in concert, and hurrah, fewer than a million people on the planet bought the album. Eight NASCAR stadiums worth of people.

I think Liverpool is an amazing album and if you want to have a deeper conversation about that we can have it. It's a statement about the need to separate oneself from the world and recognize that its infighting and violence isn't something that one has to participate in. It's a great commentary on late Cold War mentality, inviting the listener to stop participating in that paradigm and instead pursue pleasure and love and connection as a lifestyle.
posted by hippybear at 9:10 PM on February 26

Eight NASCAR stadiums worth of people.

Or in plain English, a lot.

A heck of a lot more than "five".
posted by Dysk at 9:16 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Dysk: do you own a copy of Liverpool?

Do you know anyone who owns a copy of Liverpool?

Do any of your relatives know anyone who owns a copy of Liverpool?

You say it's a lot, but when it comes down to it, atomized across the world, its not even enough molecules to blow up a balloon.
posted by hippybear at 9:23 PM on February 26

I'm queer and live in Britain, so yes. Rage Hard was a top ten hit here. The album itself was a top ten.

800,000 is a lot. If you don't think it is, you can just say 800,000. You didn't, you said 5. Which again, five orders of magnitude.

800,000 is huge numbers for the type of album that it is, and for queer art at that point in history more generally. If it is considered disappointing, it is only because of the unexpected and bizarre next-level popularity of Pleasuredome. For the album that Liverpool is, 800,000 (plus whatever sales after 1988!) is a heck of a lot of units, and the only reason anyone might think otherwise is over-inflated and unrealistic expectations of a repeat of Pleasuredome.
posted by Dysk at 9:36 PM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Anyone else get the sudden urge to murder Southeast-Asian heads of state?
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:18 PM on February 26

It's all about perspective, like the Housemartins' liner notes for Now That's What I Call Quite Good: "In New Zealand meanwhile sales reached the prestigious '60' mark."
posted by kirkaracha at 8:30 AM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Their cover of "Born to Run" on Saturday Night Live is great.

this original recording from 1983, featuring the band playing the song live

That bass part is awesome! Here's the performance without the announcers' intro.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:42 AM on February 27

The "men realized they were straight when they heard 'Born to Run'" joke was pretty great.

I feel like I talk about Frankie Goes to Hollywood way more than most people do.

I liked this well enough to watch some of his other videos, but to be fair, I almost just only watch YouTube now.
posted by edencosmic at 7:08 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I liked this well enough to watch some of his other videos, but to be fair, I almost just only watch YouTube now.

I also watch a lot of YouTube.

Todd's videos are generally pretty good. He's a solid channel with good content.
posted by hippybear at 7:12 PM on February 27

Also, to address the "is this a one-hit-wonder" comments:

And I see from the YouTube comments that he calls Blur one hit wonders as well: is this even going to be safe for me to watch without a defibrillator to hand?

In this video, and in many of his others, he is very quick to acknowledge that several of the "one-hit-wonders" he's doing are only "one hit wonders" in the United States, and the bands actually enjoyed more hits in the UK or elsewhere. In fact, the mention of Blur in this video is him saying that that's why he has not done a video for Blur's "Song 2" - because even though it's their biggest/only US hit, they've got a mammoth career outside the US, and so calling them "One Hit Wonders" feels stupid. He adds that he almost didn't do a video for "Relax" for the same reason - and adds that what pushed him to do one after all was that it'd be a chance to give "Two Tribes" a wider audience, and that was worth it right there.

The usual format for his videos touches on each band's career before their hit, a study of the hit itself, and then a segment on what happened afterward, and why it did or did not chart in the US. Usually here is where he mentions that "it did get really big in the UK/Sweden/Japan/etc. though, so yeah they're not really one-hit-wonders anywhere but here." His video for Yello's "Oh Yeah" mentions that their song "The Race" was actually a bigger hit for them in the UK than "Oh Yeah". He ends with an opinion as to whether the band deserved wider fame, and with rare exceptions, he says that they usually did (I think with Yello, he acknowledges that they probably did, but the band themselves didn't actually WANT anything more so it was hard to say).

So - not only do I think this will be safe for you to watch, I think you will be pleasantly surprised and possibly educated.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:16 AM on February 29 [2 favorites]

Mr. Bad Example: What's really going to blow British people's minds is that Kylie Minogue was a one-hit wonder in the US.

I'm sorry, but chart pedantry needs me to point out that she had two top ten hits in the US, The Loco-Motion and Can't Get You Out of My Head. Admittedly, nothing like the cultural omnipresence she's had in the rest of the English-speaking world.

One weird consequence of that was that when Zadie Smith based a character in her novel Swing Time very heavily on Kylie Minogue, American reviewers just assumed it was Madonna with an Australian accent.
posted by Kattullus at 2:28 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

So - not only do I think this will be safe for you to watch, I think you will be pleasantly surprised and possibly educated.

In general, that's good advice; as for me, I watched it an hour or so after my off-the-cuff response, and have seen several of his other videos before. As a Gen X Australian-turned-Brit and longtime denizen of Popular, I knew about pretty much everything he had to say about Frankie, but the refresher was fun. (Tom Ewing's Popular entries on Frankie's three UK number ones are well worth reading, as all of his posts are.)
posted by rory at 2:54 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]