Songoftheday 5/22/14 - You don't know how to play the game and you cheat you lie, you don't even know how to say goodbye...

Godley & Creme - "Cry"
from the album The History Mix Volume 1 (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's Song of the Day is by the duo of (Kevin) Godley & (Lol) Creme, who had both come from the Lancashire area of England, and joined the art-rock group 10cc in the early 70s, and were there for the band's biggest hit "I'm Not In Love" in 1975. However with the group's gaining popularity and disputes over the direction of their sound, the pair left 10cc the year after in order to pursue more experimental music. They released their first album in 1977, and while it's Prince-like expansiveness got the cold shoulder from the buying public, their hipster cred grew with each of their succeedingly reined in follow-ups. In 1979, they had a minor hit in Germany with a track from their third album Freeze Frame called "An Englishman In New York" (not to be confused with the Sting song). For its single release, they directed their own music video, and this trippy special-effects-laden clip would point them in the direction of where their most lasting fame came.

Their fourth album in 1981, Ismism, brought them a wider audience, scoring a pair of top-ten singles in Britain, with "Under Your Thumb" topping out at #3. But instead of that being a springboard for their music, their next album Birds Of Prey went rather unnoticed. In that time, they started directing music videos for others, and in the first half of the 80s their work has become some of the most iconic visual work of the medium, with classics like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes", Duran Duran's "Girls On Film", Herbie Hancock's "Rockit", Culture Club's "Victims", Sting's "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free", and his band the Police's "Every Breath You Take". As such their name was as well known to MTV addicts as the bands they were shooting, and by the time 1985 rolled around, their cache' was enough to make them an A-list addition for the channel. So in releasing the part-retrospective part-new album The History Mix that year, they gave themselves a song and a video just as memorable as their greatest.

"Cry", written and produced by the duo with The Buggles' Trevor Horn (ironically the guy with the hit "Video Killed the Radio Star"), was a slow, building march to an emotional climax that was visualized by various faces both famous (Mr. T) and not along with Godley and Creme in a stylistically simple yet technically complex fades where each lipsynching face would transform to another, all the while forcing you to focus on the eyes. It was mesmerizing...(the final lipsynch was done by Horn)...

"Cry" became Godley & Creme's first and only top-40 pop hit in America in October of 1985, while reaching the top-10 on both the Mainstream Rock (#6)  and Adult Contemporary (#5) radio charts in Billboard magazine. A more midtempo mix even made the dance chart at #22. Internationally, the single made the top-10 in both Germany and Canada, and in their native Britain peaked at a respectable #19. It would be their only time as a duo on the American charts, though, as the duo went back to specializing in video, releasing only one more album before splitting up. In the meantime, they continued to prospect on MTV with clips for Huey Lewis ("Hip To Be Square"), Peter Gabriel ("Don't Give Up"), and most noticably, Wang Chung, whose "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" brought them to a much wider audience.

After the split Lol would continue to delve into art-rock, joining the Art Of Noise by the end of the 90s, while Kevin would still churn out more memorable videos for the likes of Erasure ("Blue Savannah"), Bryan Adams ("Can't Stop This Thing We Started"), and U2 ("Even Better Than The Real Thing").

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The same year of Godley & Creme's hit, American dance singer Tom Hooker released a club cover as T.H...

Australian singer Lisa Edwards hit the top-10 in her native country with a Soul-II-Soul-ish rework of the song in 1992...



Another act having a hit with the song were the Canadian soul/rock group the Philosopher Kings, who went to #13 in their country with the cover in 1997...

Belgian trip-hop faves Hooverphonic also took a shot at the song for a B-side in 2008...



Midwestern indie-rock act Gayngs not only released a version of "Cry" in 2010, but they got Kevin Godley himself on the remake of the video...

Finally, here's the pair promoting the single on TV in 1985...

Up tomorrow: some rock vermin put things to rest.