FEATURE:
Second Spin
Spandau Ballet - True
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I have been thinking about…
albums released in the year I was born. That would be 1983. There were some classics released that year – including Madonna’s eponymous debut. I think that there were some albums released that year that are underrated. In 1983, we still had the New Romantic movement. Bands like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were ruling the charts. I have always had a soft spot for Spandau Ballet. I think True was the number-one single when I was born on 9th May, 1983. The True album is one that is far stronger than many have given it credit for. Aside from the iconic, chart-topping title track, it also has the unstoppable Gold. Some have dismissed the rest of the album as being weak in comparison to those two tracks. I feel True is well worth investigation. Maybe it seems dated in 2021 (it was released in March 1983) as we do not have any sounds like this today. Defining it as purely New Romantic is taking something away from an album that is incredible. With all eight tracks written by the band’s guitarist, Gary Kemp, there is much to enjoy through True. I particularly like Communication and Heaven Is a Secret. If their first couple of albums made them big names in the U.K. and Europe, the success of their third studio album elevated them to worldwide stars. I want to bring in a couple of reviews for True – to show what some critics have said about the album.
Before coming to them, I want to zero in on the album’s title cut. In 2012, Gary Kemp discussed the story behind the classic track:
“On the most romantic day of the year, read the inside story on the classic eighties song True by its writer Gary Kemp.
True was one of the songs on our third album. Spandau Ballet were quite established in Europe by this time but not at all in the US. We were kind of a cult band.
Our first two albums were electronic dance records, very much influenced by the New Romantic scene. The second was also in the club vein and we'd had about six hit singles but we were never going to remain a culty London band forever - we'd done Top of the Pops half a dozen times and for me there was a sense of 'do we just want to keep up with the dance scene or do we really want to sell records around the world', which is what I always wanted to do. I'd grown up on pop and it seemed to me that with True it was time to go back to what I'd been doing since I was 11; writing a song, as opposed to finding what the groove is and writing a song on top of that, which is what we'd been doing.
My three biggest influences were David Bowie, punk and soul music. I could play records by Chic and the Sex Pistols at the same sitting. True was trying to make an amalgam of all those influences.
At 22 I'd had two hit albums but I'm a working-class boy. Working class kids don't move out until they get married. The song was written at my parent's house off the Essex Road, sitting on my bed.
I had a passionate unrequited love for someone who will remain nameless... I was partly writing a song about her too.
I had a passionate unrequited love for someone who will remain nameless. I was a bit obsessed with her, and she with me, but nothing was ever going to happen. She also listened to a lot of Al Green and Marvin Gaye. I was partly writing a song about her too. The tune came from trying to write a song a bit like I'm Still In Love with You by Al Green. I loved the way he looped the 'I' around. There was another song by John Lennon - I was watching Let It Be and he sang ‘I'm so tired and I-I-I-I....’ I really wanted to do that. I ended up with ‘I know this much is true’, about how hard it is to be honest in a love song. So the line came into my head ‘Why do I find it hard to write the next line, I want the truth to be said’.
The girl I was obsessed with had given me a copy of Lolita by Nabokov and I adapted two lines for the song, one was 'seaside arms', the other 'with a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue' which I loved as soon as I read it; it was the story of our lives at the time. I wanted to mention Marvin Gaye, I kind of liked that because the song was a homage to different soul singers.
My first choice of producer was Trevor Horn, but I'm glad we ended up with Simon Jolley and Tony Swain, two white guys who did the Imagination records, understood the 12” record, understood the remix, but the song was there.
We said ‘we’re not making an English record, it’s an international record, we can’t make it in London’. The album was recorded at Compass Point in Nassau. I loved that whole Island Records, Chris Blackwell vibe. We hoped it would rub off on the record, and it did. We had a great new keyboard that gave us that chord sound on True, but the big thing was the backing vocal. We decided that the ‘I-I-I-I’ bit wasn’t something that Tony did. I recorded it and Tony put an effect on it.
I’ve got the video from Compass Point, and everyone is singing along in the mixing room and at that moment we knew this was the biggest record we’d ever made.
When the album was released, True started getting crazy radio plays and took on a life all of its own. In those days it wasn’t easy to get to Number one. It was there for four weeks. It got to number four in the US but its legacy is that it’s a black radio favourite, we’re up to four million airplays on the record”.
Although True has not received many all-out positive reviews, there are some who have pointed at highs and reasons to listen. Sputnikmusic reflected on True back in 2007:
“Spandau Ballet is sort of a weird band in terms of popularity. At the forefront of the 80’s New Romantic movement, Spandau Ballet's success was a mixed bag. They entered the British charts in 1980 with the song ‘To Cut A Long Story Short’,(which was the only good song on their debut album, Journeys To Glory) only to have mixed results with their follow up Diamond which was a lot stronger as a whole, but didn’t deliver much success on the charts. Hence we come to True, which showed a stylistic change in the band’s sound and image, going for a sleek adult contemporary feel along the lines of Make it Big era Wham!. The album’s singles garnered international success, and was the last (and perhaps, only) album to get critical acclaim.
Like so many other 80’s pop albums, True was written with a specific goal in mind, to get singles on the charts. As an album as a whole, this makes for an unvaried batch of songs in terms of sound and composition, while not necessarily bad tracks on their own. All of these songs are essentially driven by synth sounds and bouncy basslines, which allows vocalist Tony Hadley to be put at the forefront of the mix. There is unfortunately so little variation amongst this sound combined with a strong dogma to follow traditional pop song structure that this album only works in doses.
That said, the band did manage to spew out two fantastic songs. ‘Gold’ more or less makes up for the repetitive songwriting, and showcases the best vocal performance on the album(although also some of the cheesiest back-up vocals you will ever hear). The band’s biggest hit, ‘True’ is essentially a tribute to the Marvin Gaye sound, and is a nice break as it has a somewhat different sound from the rest of the album as it’s very laid back.
The weaker songs like ‘Lifeline’ and ‘Foundation’ don’t work because of the faster, upbeat tempo the band wanted to give these songs and the annoying layered and/or backing vocals don’t help either. Though the band gets points for effort, they are simply much more effective when Hadly can sing his lungs out and sustain to his heart’s content. Though this is Spandau Ballet’s best studio album, casual fans of the band are better off buying Gold: The Best of Spandau Ballet, a greatest”.
Perhaps 1983 was a year of transition and change. One where Spandau Ballet were out of fashion or had to change their sound. With some incredible Pop emerging that year, the New Romantic scene was dying down. I think, it we take True out of 1983 and listen to it with fresh ears now, there are songs on the album that resonate. I think it is a very solid album. Critics have been a bit mixed in their views. This is AllMusic’s take:
“By 1983, with the new romantic movement they'd sprung from a rapidly fading memory, the members of Spandau Ballet showed they had no intention of traveling the same path. Always ambitious, the British quintet really got down to business: Gone were the kilts, frilly shirts, and makeup -- as well as the sometimes chilly electronics of their first two albums. Instead, after recording at Compass Point Studios in the sun-soaked Bahamas, the group turned up in smartly tailored suits, with a sleek and mainstream sound to match. That came courtesy of producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain, who gave Spandau the sort of pop-R&B sheen that had produced hits for clients like Imagination. And it also reflected the growing skill of guitarist Gary Kemp, the band's primary songwriter, who crafted a set of tunes aimed squarely at the charts.
The one that succeeded most spectacularly, of course, was the title cut, a glossily-updated Motown-style ballad that became one of the decade's biggest hits -- aided by a video that cast singer Tony Hadley as a young Frank Sinatra, crooning about the sound of his soul. But Kemp had more arrows in his quiver, as well; the catchy soft disco of "Communication" and "Lifeline" coyly suggests, rather than demands, listeners' presence on the dancefloor, while the suave, spy flick-inspired "Gold" finally gives Hadley an appropriately rich setting for his dramatic warble. Some listeners at the time called the album an MOR sellout, but its slick surfaces remain tough to resist, and while none of the cuts generate the excitement of past singles like "To Cut a Long Story Short" or "Chant No. 1," True remains Spandau Ballet's most consistent and best all-around album”.
With the band in great form and Tony Hadley delivering some of his finest vocals, True is an album that will definitely win you over. Whilst not every track is gold, there are plenty of fine cuts to keep people more than invested. I don’t think you need to have been around in the 1980s and loved Spandau Ballet to appreciate Gold. Many albums from the 1980s have dated and faded in the years since. I think that Gold is an album that…
HAS lost none of its currency.