Our lives at 45 rpm

Ninth in a series on one Dullard's collection of 45s. Read the previous post here.

Song: "Two Tribes"
Artist: Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Year released: 1984
Highest U.S. chart position: 43
Video available? Yes, in this remix.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood is one of music's most notoriously contrived bands, bridging the gap between the Village People and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. The famous "Frankie Says" T-shirts showed that the band was more about marketing than music. For a brief period, Frankie ruled the charts of Britannia, but the band never made it big in the United States the way similar U.K.-based exports such as Wham! did.

The real genius behind Frankie was producer Trevor Horn. Horn, one of the Buggles who was also briefly a member of Yes, was the clever architect of the over-the-top construct that became Frankie. Without Horn behind the boards, it's unlikely Frankie would have recorded anything memorable.

Even with Horn's help, the band only came up with two memorable tracks: "Relax" and "Two Tribes." Where "Relax" attempted to arouse an absurd sense of the hypersexual, "Two Tribes" tapped into the basic fear of annihilation.

"Tribes" was released against the backdrop of the Cold War, as Ronald Reagan and his U.K. ally, Maggie Thatcher, rattled sabres with their counterparts in Moscow. The tension was high in Europe, a likely battleground in any nuclear exchange. "Tribes" takes on these issues of war and politics, but whether the band sincerely believed these were important issues is unknown. It's entirely possible that Horn and the band members saw a way to stir up controversy politically the same way "Relax" did sexually.

Whatever the motivation, Frankie plays to its relative strengths with "Tribes." Vocalist Holly Johnson, one of the most obnoxious singers of the time, captures the cynical side of the political situation. This climactic line redeems the clunky "one is all that you can score" chorus: "Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods?" The answer would seem to be yes. Horn adds whiny sirens, sinewy guitar lines and a propulsive backing track, making "Tribes" a nuclear apocalypse you can dance to.