Shot in the Dark

Things I’m Supposed To Hate, But Secretly Enjoy

I know, I know.  ABC was a Brit synth-pop band, famous for their haircuts and their beeping/squawking genre.

Worse?  It was part of the generation of “British Soul” that gave us a few useful apeings of sixties and seventies American soul music (Simply Red, Allison Moyet, Eurhythmics) and a whole lot of dreck.

And ABC, over the course of three major US albums (and many more in the UK) a bunch of the eighties music I’ve filed under the “I’d just as soon forget” file; The Look Of Love, Poison Arrow, When Smokey Sings, and on and on.

ABC – it’s really mostly singer Martin Fry, honestly – could largely be forgotten with no great loss…

…except for “All Of My Heart”, the third and least-known single off of their US platinum-seller Lexicon of Love…

…which is a song Smokey Robinson and the Miracles or the Four Tops (or, in the deeper recesses of my imagination, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes) could have done with a straight face.   Of the whole mediocre raft of eighties Brit synth-“soul” singers, Fry was one of precious few that could carry Smokey’s gig bag (in the same way that Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall could at least hint toward the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs’ vocal chops).

And it doesn’t get much better than that – among eighties Brit “soul” haircut pop.

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Mitch Berg

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2 responses to “Things I’m Supposed To Hate, But Secretly Enjoy”

  1. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    I agree that ABC’s not a great band, but I admire Martin Fry’s ability to deliver the bon mot. The best example is this one from “Date Stamp,” another song on the “Lexicon of Love.”

    I get sales talk from sales assistants
    When all I want to do girl, is lower your resistance
    Everything is temporary, written in the sand
    Looking for the girl that meets supply with demand

  2. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    If all bands were great, none of them would be. I think that a good musical era has lots of pretty decent bands that score a hit once and a while. It makes for a great mix and a great stroll down memory lane years later when you hear that song they played every 20 minutes on your listening device for a couple weeks, then that you rarely, if ever, hear again for about 20 years.

    Then it all comes back to you; where you were then, who you were seeing, who you were trying to be. Everything but the name of the group that did it. To me, at least, the songs named by Mr. Berg are in that category.

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