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1984 – Two Tribes – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
The 80′s are full of great songs, 1984 is no exception, but there is only one song that represents that year for me. Two Tribes, by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
The song was number one for nine consecutive weeks, and to this day, whenever I hear it, it reminds me of that London. A time when Carnaby Street was still cool, and punks used to hang around Oxford Street in groups, whilst tourists would stop to snap their photograph as if they were exotic birds on display.
There were neon socks, in hideous yellow, green and pink, and everyone was wearing the Frankie Says white t-shirts with large black letters. The music on the radio was a mix of the usual pop rubbish that’s always been around, but you also heard bands like The Cure, The Smiths and many others.
P.S 1984 was also the year Bandaid came out and of course, everyone was talking about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
I remember this video well…
Alannah Murphy is a former rock musician turned writer, currently working on a rock'n'roll novel set in London. 
Sometimes I feel like I’m straddling so many musical periods. I guess my first love will always be rock but I also love folk/protest and today’s singers like Lady Gaga and Dave Mathews.
Not keen on Lady Gaga myself, but can understand why so many like her. I am mostly just rock, though I do like some classical and jazz, thanks to my dad, who loves Frank Sinatra
Music memories are wonderful! Certain songs wing me through time and space . . . to another place.
Definitely Nancy, it’s amazing how powerful of a time machine they really are, just a few minutes of a song, can really transport me to a specific moment in my life
“Relax don’t do it / When you want to go to it
Relax don’t do it / When you want to come…”
OMG! Can’t believe you just posted about Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Over the weekend, while shoveling horse shit (literally), I started thinking about Brian De Palma’s thriller “Body Double” in which the hypnotic “Relax” is effectively used in a bizarre music video sequence. Total brainworm… Oh man, the 80′s!!! Alannah, I Iove that you were around then and celebrate this stuff.
I remember that film! Brian De Palma was like the 80′s version of Hitchcock, or at least a Hitchcock wannabe. I’m glad I was around that time too, it was a cool decade…
1984 was also the year that I left school… I remember the weather being really good that year! I’ve not heard this song in a while (although I probably have since ’84!); the sirens at the beginning always get me. A horrible noise. I thought the video was good to this one! Thanks for the reminder, Alannah!
I heard it recently, on the radio, so it is what prompted me to realise it was THE song I remember for that year. I wasn’t living in London yet, and I’d come here with my father, so the song reminds me of all of that. The video is hilarious.
I was lying in the dark, in a daze from a fever, the first time I heard Frankie Goes to Hollywood. For some reason the radio played the entire “Welcome to the Pleasure Dome” album, and I was forever more hooked. I now have a large collection of Holly Johnson music.
Such good fun!
I used to have Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, pretty good stuff, will have to check out Holly’s music, I must admit, I am only familiar with what he did in Frankie.