#sophistipop

When in Rome - "The Promise" 1987 Synthpop / New Wave / Sophisti-Pop / New Romantic

When in Rome's "The Promise," one of those terrific doses of dancy UK synthpop from the 1980s that employed a whole lot of super effective contrasts that made the whole thing feel like the musical equivalent of a firm mattress that'd been draped in satin sheets, always seemed like such a perfect tune to slot in with one of those classic coming-of-age flicks. And as such, it received that proper treatment in 2004 when it was included in Napoleon Dynamite, but here we have a certain YouTuber imagining what it could've been like had it been used in 1987's Some Kind of Wonderful as well, a film that'd been directed by Howard Deutch, who had also done Pretty in Pink the year prior, and was written and produced by the guy who'd been most synonymous with all of these coming-of-age 80s flicks in the first place, John Hughes. Seems to me that this idea could've worked, especially given the film's romantic subject matter, but its release date would've had to've been pushed back in order to make it all feasible, since the song was released a bunch of months after the movie.

Moments In Love #17

Andrew Wasylyk - ‘Last Sunbeams Of Childhood’ (Parallel Light version)

The Avalanches - ‘Ghost Story pt1′

Phil Lynott - ‘One Wish’ (demo)

The Avalanches - ‘Dial D For Devotion’

??? - ‘More Than A Man’

Laura Groves - ‘Red’

Eddie Chacon - ‘Wicked World’

The Blue Nile - ‘Seven AM’

The Zenmenn - ‘Homage To A Friendship’

Scribble - ‘Mr. Calico’

Andrew Wasylyk - Adrift Below A Constellation

Prefab Sprout - Desire As (Acoustic)

Suzanne Kraft - Waiting (Single version)

ABC - “VIVA LOVE”

It takes absolutely massive balls for an artist often considered a forgotten 80s has-been to turn around and drop a direct follow-up to their most famous and successful work roughly thirty-five years later, and especially to go right ahead and title said follow-up “Magnum Opus 2.” And yet this is exactly what ABC’s Martin Fry has done, with 2016′s The Lexicon of Love II.

Much like the original Lexicon of Love, home of iconic hits “The Look of Love” and “Poison Arrow,” The Lexicon of Love II is something of a concept album, all of whose tracks involve lurid and dramatic tales of thwarted romance ripped from pulp novels. The composition of the cover is a clear homage, as is the cover photograph, which casts Fry as a mysterious interloper as opposed to the leading-man role he had on the original cover. The instrumentation is also a match--slickly produced and lush orchestral pop, full of swelling strings that give it an almost disco-ish pomp.