Thompson Twins – Hold Me Now
#quotefromthe80s
Whoa-oh, hold me now
Whoa, warm my heart
Stay with me
Let loving start
#ThompsonTwins #HoldMeNow
In the 80’s there were several groups with love feelings between group members; sometimes it was something that kept the groups together, and sometimes it generated conflicts. The purest example, in my opinion, is probably Nu Shooz, the group of I Can’t Wait and Point of no Return, whom I had the pleasure to interview: Valerie and John have been together forever since their youth years, married for decades and are still living their story of love, music and life.
In other cases love has given way to an artistic collaboration, I am thinking for example of Eurythmics, who became a world class group when Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox continued to collaborate without being a couple any longer.
Some of Culture Club’s music, including Do You Really Want to Hurt Me was inspired by the love fighting between Boy George and Jon Moss, and Matt Bianco broke up when the beuatiful Basia left with David, thus leaving good Matt alone.
In the middle, we find perhaps more normal couples, stable but with moments of discussion, and among them we find the couple formed by Englishman Tom Bailey and New Zealander Alannah Currie, who together with the good Joe Leeway formed Thompson Twins.
In the autumn of 1983 Thompson Twins, who took their name from detectives Thomson and Thompson from The Adventures of Tintin, were at the classic turning point of their career: their second album Quick Step and Side Kick had been absolutely successful thanks mainly to the hit Love On Your Side, and now they were ready for the release of their new album, Into the Gap, which would have been released in February 1984, but obviously a single anticipated the album by a couple of months, generating a bit of curiosity while the album was finished, recorded and distributed.
And this first single, Hold Me Now, was just a song born after a hot discussion between Tom and Alannah, and above all after the two had reconciled thanks to their love. And the song talks about this, and we see it in Tom’s pleas, begging Alannah to hold him and stay with him, and of course love flourishes again after the sorrow for the quarrel.
However, we must not think that this was a trivial or obvious song. Tom Bailey was a perfectionist and had an excellent musical preparation, which allowed him to create very accurate although always catchy songs and melodies. Thompson Twins had always been open to a large use of electronic instruments in their songs, but in this case they decided to use many acoustic instruments, just to convey the idea of purity and depth of feeling.
The video was apparently simple but with many effects. The three boys literally share the screen, with special graphics between the various parts of the screen, even in the basic context of a blue studio with few accessories, just the instruments played by the three boys.
Hold Me Now was very successful thanks to the TV promotion of Top of the Pops; the song went to the top of the charts and is still the most successful single by Thompson Twins, who will have a couple of years of great satisfaction and great celebrity ahead of them. I think Alannah did the right thing when she forgave Tom!
Thompson Twins on Wikipedia
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