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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Music in the 80s: easy as ABC

      ...well, not exactly.
The band ABC was an English New Wave band formed around 1980 and hailed from Sheffield England. Their first full length album, The Lexicon of Love, released in '82 yielded 2 american top 40 hits with 'The Look of Love' & 'Poison Arrow' (#18 & #25 respectively). Their second album, 'Beauty Stab' from '83 pretty much flopped despite high expectations. It wasn't until '85, with the release of 'How to be a...Zillionaire', that they again found the Billboard charts with 'Be Near Me'. The song reached #9 and was their highest charting song to date.

After several lineup changes and a brief hiatus with lead singer Martin Fry being treated for Hodgkin's disease, the band released 'Alphabet City' in '87 which provided them with their highest charting single ever in 'When Smokey Sings'. The song was a tribute to Smokey Robinson and reached #5 late summer of '87. This was the bands final 'New Wave' album and final chart appearances. In '89 they released an album called 'Up' which was an experimentation with 'house music'.

Martin Fry still performs today using the bands name, but almost exclusively or with guest artists.

                  

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