Everything But The Girl have released a new single ‘Nothing Left To Lose, the first taste of upcoming album ‘Fuse’, which marks their first LP in more than 24 years.
The new track by the husband and wife duo, comprising Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, is out now along with a music video directed by Charlie Di Placido. ‘Fuse’ comprises 10 tracks and is described as a “modern take on the lustrous electronic soul” that they once produced in the mid-’90s.
The album was largely recorded in secret at their home across the spring and summer of 2021, with additional sessions taking place in a studio outside of Bath with friend and engineer, Bruno Ellingham.
The mid-eighties was a transitional period for bands who traded in synthesizers and post-punk guitar earlier in the decade. Along with The Style Council, Aztec Camera, Sade, and others, Prefab Sprout was one of the vanguard in England to adapt that earlier and increasingly dated (at the time, anyway!) sound with more textural and thematic sophistication. They did so by infusing the dynamics of post punk and new wave with warmer and more soulful atmospheres in instrumentation, arrangement, and production values. It even had a name as christened by the music press; sophisti-pop.
This song is one of the greatest examples of that musical movement. This was not just about the elements of jazz pop and soft rock that can be found here. It’s also about the song’s subject matter and how communicating it to an audience stood in contrast to the less emotionally direct styles of songwriting found at the height of the new wave and post punk era. This is a long way from Joy Division. In this new paradigm, it was time for songwriters to face the music when it came to matters of the heart.
Created mere months after the Roland TR-707’s 1985 debut, “Need You Tonight” was a massive smash. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987 and two on the UK Singles Chart the same year. Sampled within an inch of its life, it’s as indelible a pop song as any ever released. Somehow “Need You Tonight” keeps bouncing back and still hits as hard as it did on its initial release.
In fact, the track, which was the initial single off the band’s record, Kick, has an ageless appeal. When an INXS documentary came out in 2014, the immortal track charted once again in Australia from download sales alone.
The Knack was an American Power Pop rock quartet based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, “My Sharona“, an international number one hit in 1979.
“My Sharona” by The Knack was an ode to a raven-haired teenager with a wonderfully unique name, Sharona Alperin, and a great, catchy pop tune fueled by a lot of angst and longing. It also was a song that developed an incredible life of its own, living on for decades after The Knack fell apart in the early ’80s.
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