Songoftheday 9/9/12 - When your world is full of strange arrangements, & gravity won't pull you through...

ABC - "The Look Of Love (Part One)"
from the album The Lexicon Of Love (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (three weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is by the New Wave quartet ABC, who took England and then America by storm in the early 80s by being the most "debonair" of the New Romantics. Singer Martin Fry, a witty lyricist that seemed to me to be the "city mouse" to the B-52s' Fred Schneider's "country mouse", led the group as they released their first single, "Tears Are Not Enough", in England in 1981. That song got them to the UK top-20, and led them to producer Trevor Horn, former "Buggle" and "Yes"-man who brought studio musicians Anne Dudley, JJ Jeczalik and Gary Langan to fill out the orchestral-based sound of their debut album, The Lexicon Of Love. (Later on, those four would form the pioneer electronic act Art Of Noise.)

The first song released in England was "Poison Arrow", which went top-10 there, and the next would be their American debut, "The Look Of Love". Part of a four-part suite, with part two the instrumental, three the remix, and the fourth the reprise from the album, the song was written by the band....

Abc - The Look Of Love Age of love by funkyhousbreaker

"The Look of Love"was the bands highest charting single in the UK, making it to #4, and topped the pop charts in Canada as well as Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. It also nabbed a spot on the mainstream rock radio top-40, one of the first British new wave songs to do so.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


In 1990, "The Look of Love" was remixed for their Absolutely compilation, and the re-released song was a minor hit in the UK, as well as a top-40 single in Germany and Ireland...

Another dance act, Eclipse, did a "Black Box" treatment on it...

Finally, another dance-oriented act, Horny United featuring Irvin Doom, filter-sampled the song for their "Why Do You Call" in 2002..

But I really recommend picking up the original ABC Lexicon of Love album. It's by far the best of the new wave albums from front to back.

Up tomorrow: a two-time top-40 Break Out hit for a trio of sisters.