Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Welcome To The Pleasuredome Deluxe Edition (UMR). Oh honey, they REALLY think we care about this bloated monstrosity?
Oh, Trevor Horn, you say? 🤔 A “genius,” they claim. More like a guy who stumbled upon lightning in a bottle and then spent the next 40 years trying to recreate it with diminishing returns. 🙄 This “gigantic boxset” (because bigger = better, right?) supposedly reveals that Frankie Goes To Hollywood wasn’t his idea. Groundbreaking! 🤯 Next, you’ll tell me water is wet.
The “key disc” in this Welcome To The Pleasuredome Deluxe Edition‘s 7CD+Blu-Ray set (because who doesn’t need seven different versions of the same songs?) is the “early years CD1.” Apparently, ZTT only glommed onto Relax, Two Tribes, and The Power Of Love AFTER they already sounded “fantastic.” Wow, what insightful music executives! 🎉 They have ears, who knew?
Holly Johnson “sings like a dream.” 😴 Yeah, a dream you have after eating too much cheese before bed. “Powerful, commanding, but also lean and hungry.” More like “desperate to recapture past glory.” 🎤
We’re told it’s “important” that Mark O’Toole and Ped Gill were a “mighty rhythm section.” 🙄 Sure, if you consider “mighty” to mean “adequately competent.” And before Brian Nash joined, O’Toole’s bass “invents Blur’s Alex James.” 🤣 Oh, the historical revisionism! I’m sure Alex James is just THRILLED to be compared to…that. 🎸
Frankie supposedly lacked an “obvious direction,” which is why labels were “too blind to start a bidding war.” 💰 So, they were a confused mess? Got it! Love Has Got A Gun (eventually becoming Wish) is “pure funk” (if you’re tone-deaf), Krisco Kisses is “frantic post-punk” (aka a hot mess), Two Tribes is “speedy urgency” (like running from a bad haircut), Welcome To The Pleasuredome is “louche disco” (because nothing says “sexy” like the 80s), and Relax on John Peel is…well, it’s still Relax, and we’re all still trying to figure out what the fuss was about. 🤷♀️
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
