Who isn't a Victim?

Aaah, Erasure. This band was too good to me.

As a person whose identity really formulated in the 80s, the music of that time (sadly) had a profound effect on me. In 1987, Erasure released Circus, a follow up album to their widely successful debut, Wonderland. The song "Victim of Love" climbed up the charts in both the UK and US simultaneously, reaching #7 in the UK, and #1 on the US Dance charts.

The song is almost completely synthesized. Truly a pop song if there was ever one (actually, the true genre would be SynthPop), the simply danceable beat and the light melody hooked listeners quickly. In fact, I witnessed this song and their previous dance hit, "Oh L'Amour" lip synced on the dance floor so many times that it became infectious.

The song is all about a person not wanting to look like an idiot in a relationship. Still it's quite upbeat. Musically, this song is sugar. No Guitars. Electronic claps, drums, keyboards. In fact, one would be hard to pick out even what type of voices (organ, Electric piano, etc) the keyboards are replicating. Vince Clarke's engineering on the song (and indeed, on many of the albums to date from the band), along with Andy Bell's vocals mesh well with the overall mood of the song, almost eclipsing the lyrics.

Today's dance tunes, sadly, are beat driven, and not actually popular anthems or lyrical in nature. Not a lot of young people on the dance floor these days lip syncing songs. Watching old people do so is kinda pathetic. What am I to do? I hate to keep saying it, but the 80s were good for something.

Erasure's next album, Total Pop! -- The First 40 Hits, gets to stores on Feb 23rd. Please be kind to the old guy in too tight parachute pants waiting by the door.
-om