FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD – "The Power Of Love"

Sounds like bad form on behalf of your guests Tom. As much as it is enjoyable to watch the squirming of the newlyweds, I’ve always been led to believe people should start joining in at around the second verse stage.

this was first dance at my brother’s wedding too. rest assured no one at all joined in with the mortified shuffling, nor for the second song (he and his wife picked one each) minnie ripperton’s “loving you”.

This being Frankie, you have to wonder whether “make love your goal” has an implied comma or dash in the middle. With the heavy emphasis in Johnson’s delivery on MAKE LOVE, I rather suspect that it does.

credit should go to Anne Dudley (of Art of Noise) for the orchestration (in this and previous Trevor Horn productions) – she later released an album: ‘Ancient and Modern’ which combined English Hymns with Philip Glass-like arrangements – very soothing.

what was (mildly) subversive about this tune was its blurring of sacred and profane love. Its celebration of the artifice and excess of Christmas emphasised the camp spectacle of what was considered straight culture.

This was another number four for Frankie in Oz, where the tailor-made Christmas pop song has never been as big a tradition (no procession of ghastly Cliff singles for us, thank you). It’s always been hopelessly muddled in my mind with its bunny-baiting namesake, so I came to it today reasonably cold. It’s the first Frankie number one that doesn’t feel ground-breaking, and the first that stretches Holly Johnson’s vocal powers beyond their limits; he doesn’t sound weighty enough or angelic enough for the song’s aspirations, and his previous strengths of dirty enough and shouty enough sure won’t cut it here. Only a 5 from me, I’m afraid.

Tom OTM about the wrongfooting effect that the single’s lack of irony had upon us kids of 1984. What it does share with its two predecessors is, of course, a sense of vastness and gravitas. You rather have to surrender to the will of this to enjoy it – I can’t imagine it ever playing in the background. To this effect, I found that there was something slightly embarrasing about this as a twelve year-old. The sort of thing that demanded that you had to defend it.

Apart from the video, I suppose that the only religiosity to be found in this is in the slightly old testament phrasing, “purge the soul” – a steeper order than most love songs!

Shouldn’t that illustration of the sleeve strictly show the Frankie insignia-adorned envelope that it came in?

TOTPWatch: As we all know what’s coming next, heres the listing for Xmas 1984.

25 December 1984. In the studio were; Frankie Goes To Hollywood (performing all three hits), Howard Jones, Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw, Culture Club, Thompson Twins, Jim Diamond, Paul Young and Band Aid! The Appearing Artists were the hosts. IIRC this all-star spectacular was broadcast live, with Wham! due to appear but held up in traffic, and it was, alongside ‘Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani’ that March, just about the most exciting thing that I’d ever seen on television.

The only one of their chart toppers that was an actual “song” and not just a string of slogans, And a lovely song it is too, at the time I don’t remember being puzzled or let down that Frankie had made a “conventional” love song while the previous two had been grand conceptual pop events. In some ways I thought it was just as much a piece of conceptual art, except that it was Frankie doing “sincerity”.

“The Power Of Love sounds like religion, simultaneously bogus and grand” explains my dislike of Let It Be, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and this. Bit of an overcooked dirge to my ears; certainly not as much fun as Huey Lewis’s song of the same title.

And it isn’t straight faced, is it? Rory points out Holly’s “make love” smirk, pretty lame in a world where sex and horror were new Gods.

Still, I don’t want to piss all over Tom’s first dance! “Ours”, sort of accidentally, was The Hollies’ I Can’t Let Go which didn’t involve a clinch but made it a cinch for everyone else to join with gusto in on the second verse.

I guess I don’t remember this seeming as ‘out of character’ for Frankie as the lead essay describes. The 12″ mix included a dj impersonator reprising the on-air banning of Relax (check), followed that with the Reagan impersonator doing various stuff including the Lord’s prayer, (double check – recall that part of the standard left-ish criticism of Reagan/Thatcher was that they shared a simplistic, unhelpfully Manichean/’cosmic war of good and evil’ world-view – reprised by Bush 2 – that would probably kill us all), and IIRC the marketing included Frankie sending vibrators stamped with “Frankie presents the power of love” to 100(?) or so djs and sundry other tastemakers (triple check/strike 3).
In sum, this struck me as business as usual for Frankie, and then, since it was rather good, as Frankie firing on all cylinders. I don’t even rate the ‘music style’ change as that significant, since, really, Frankie’s musical genre was just max-ed out/studio/technology/Horn-prog-soul. ABC got ‘All of my Heart’ buffed to an incredible high gloss by Horn/Dudley, Frankie now got the same luxe treatment for their song. Slightly sick-making possibly (pop as high manipulation gets old, and the Smiths were definite ear relief at this point), but for me it’s a killer:
9

@#21 Wichita Lineman. In some parts of the world, Frankie’s PoL came out in 1985, making that year the year of *three* PoL’s, all of which got at least close to #1! Not just the Huey Lewis one you mention, which was fun alright, but also Jennifer Warne’s (which has since been immortalized as the soundtrack for a chilling scene in Michael Haneke’s early masterpiece _The Seventh Continent_). There are at least three distinct, great, high-charting ‘Look of Love’s out there, but they didn’t all happen within 12 months of one another. Weird.

A little disappointing after the fireworks of their previous effort but a pretty decent single all the same. I didn’t twig any religious connection until seeing the video and it did seem a little tacked on although any attempt to subvert the increasingly cloying traditional Xmas single was welcome.

Not much to add – others have got there first. I recall George Michael sourly celebrating them not getting the christmas number one. He must have been rueing not releasing “Last Christmas” a week earlier.

I think Frankie did well to make it to the top since this was released only a fortnight or so after the LP which most people found disappointing and over-priced. I remember retailers over-ordered it and were left with a lot of spare copies. There was enough good material to make a cracking single LP but their talents seemed over-stretched on a double. I’ll be kind and not mention their second album.

This is an entry for completeness, really, as unlike Frankie’s other two number ones, this one sailed right over my head.

Two reasons for this, I think. One, the lease on my flat in St Neots had expired which meant that I was living in Notting Hill permanently now and reverse commuting while I looked for a job in London. This meant getting up at 6.30 to the sound of Farming Today on Radio 4, and returning at about 7.30 pm to relax in the jukebox-free Sun in Splendour in Portobello Road (which used to be a really good pub in those days, with an excellent pint of draught Bass). So no opportunity to hear any pop.

The other, I suspect, is that this one hasn’t endured in the non-pop-enthusiast canon.

Knicker-flash: By this time the pub quiz team at the Wheatsheaf was so far ahead in the league that we’d already won it by the beginning of December, so I was able to tell the guv’nor that I’d fulfilled my promise and would now retire from the side. The champion-of-champions knockout the following spring was another story – I came out of retirement to lead the team to the championship of East Anglia!

For me, this is one of those records you like for unfathomable reasons. Never liked Frankie, don’t like power ballads, don’t like long songs… For me the bit that makes it work is the “I’ll protect you from the hooded claw…” part.

#32: sorry, that should be early c16…

What took it up to another level for me was the sudden outburst at “my undying, DEATH-DEFYING love for you!” The phrase “death-defying”, sounding straight out of Marvel Comics, was so of a piece with the “Flame On” and “Hooded Claw” references I alluded to above, that, bizarrely, it’s only just occurred to me: gay love must have seemed almost literally death-defying in the 80s. “Love is danger” indeed – in that context the song becomes a bold and brave statement.

@Erithian 37. I’ll see your ‘death-defying’, and raise you an ‘envy will hurt itself’. That’s a really surprising, odd line I think, and a strangely moving one. It allows ‘let yourself be beautiful’ to not sound soppy immediately after it. Good stuff I reckon.

#38. Ha, ha – I was one of those smooching couples, and it was indeed a beautiful moment. Although, as a straight man smooching a (I think) straight girl at a celebration of being gay, the beauty was tempered by the thought that maybe I was treading on cultural toes.

It remains the greatest triptych of pop singles, one of the most ravishing of all pop schematas; after tackling sex and war there was only religion left – only religion? – and so the video for this particular “Power Of Love” depicted Holly Johnson as an avenging angel. Chris Barrie returned for the 12-inch to recreate Mike Read’s “Relax” ban (much to the chagrin of Read, who had in the meantime done the voiceover for the TV adverts for Welcome To The Pleasuredome and would have been more than happy to come in and redo it himself) and then Reagan again, musing on faith and the passing of beliefs and people.

And yet, as befitted what surely and knowingly was intended as the last will and testament of this thing called New Pop, faith and belief were finally all that mattered. Just as the Martin Fry of “All Of My Heart” finally faced the fear and looked himself in his postmodern mirror, realising that, yes, although love can be analysed, disseminated and deconstructed, it cannot necessarily be put together again, and that the only way to stay meaningfully alive is to surrender to it and embrace it, there is no apparent irony in the Holly Johnson who sings on “The Power Of Love,” cajoled by Horn to sing better than he’d ever sung before. There is a glimpse of his impish grin in the opening pledge of “I’ll protect you from the Hooded Claw/Keep the vampires from your door” but this doesn’t even begin to mask the real and warm smile of reassurance which lies beneath.

Johnson has never been as astute and deft a wordsmith as Fry, but this works to “The Power Of Love”‘s advantage; the lyric is largely composed of slogans and homilies – “Love is the light,” “When the chips are down,” “Let yourself be beautiful,” “Make love your goal” – but Johnson’s blunt candour pulls the song through; on the verge of tears in the line “Sparkling love and flowers and pearls and pretty girls,” his double octave-leading emphasis of “death defying” to reinforce “undying,” the comforting arm around the shoulder of “This time we go sublime.”

What it all conveys is a desire for the revelation that sex can be beautiful and not tacky, that war and death can perhaps both be defeated. And Horn’s production and Anne Dudley’s string arrangement rise with an urgency especial even for them; for both “The Power Of Love” may be their finest hour. Listen to how the strings cushion the suddenly ajar door of Johnson’s first “Make love,” coming in to the solitary acoustic guitar, how the track crescendoes after the second verse, following which there is an unsettling moment as a Fairlight-manipulated Johnson vibrato is echoed by sinister low fuzz guitar as if he’s about to be atomised – but no, we return to the piano of “Moments In Love,” the guitar now high and yearning, the final pause before Johnson, Horn and Dudley (and Morley) summon up everything they know for the rapturously cathartic climax; as everything rises on Johnson’s “dove” one feels the Earth’s axis momentarily disturbed. That having been achieved, Johnson walks off into the long, echoing distance, Dudley’s strings engendering a near-unbearable sadness of sustenato (but isn’t this supposed to be a happy ending?) before Johnson repeats his opening promise and the dream fades into warm unreality.

For the dream was over, and everybody involved in “The Power Of Love” knew it; for those fortunate enough to have experienced the miraculous magic of New Pop it is almost impossible not to become tearful when listening to this record, for it carries within its generous arteries the portents of its own end – it is saying goodbye to New Pop, reluctantly relinquishing all its unfulfilled dreams; and yet the Frankie Goes To Hollywood trilogy ended up being as close to perfection as New Pop could possibly get.

Once you’ve reached the top, of course, the only way to go is down. But, to paraphrase Larkin on the Beatles, what if New Pop couldn’t get down? Instead, it proceeded to spread itself over the landscape in ways unexpected yet inevitable.

Extremely good point, and that journey in Popular terms will culminate (and find its true progeny) in entry #956 (phone the advance ticket hotline now!).

This was also played at our wedding and “I’ll protect you from the hooded claw” became our phrase to the extent that our kids (not born until years’ later) recognise it even today.