Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Welcome To The Pleasuredome

THE REVIEW

In 1984, a group of musicians from Liverpool chose a bizarre name for their band, seemingly inspired by a Frank Sinatra concert poster, and literally "threw" the double album "Welcome To The Pleasuredome" onto the market, which destabilized the music world for a few months.

With this record, 'Frankie Goes To Hollywood' quickly climbed the world charts, shattering some records, and established themselves as a new phenomenon in the pop-rock scene of the 80s (years that absolutely need reevaluation).
Critics pondered a lot about it, having never granted their approval to this work; they wondered, in fact, why such success for a work that, according to them, was well-crafted but, in the end, was just banal disco-funky.

Their astonishment increased in the face of the enormous sales volume within a market already heavily saturated by the genre. The reason for that triumph, in my opinion, is to be found in the perfect mix of almost all existing genres at the time in the modern music world. It is therefore simplistic to place it solely in the disco-funky category.
"Welcome To The Pleasuredome" ranges from catchy melodic pop (The Power Of Love), to electronica (Title Track and other tracks), to disco (Relax), to more or less successful covers (War, Born To Run and San José), to rock'n'roll (Krisco Kisses), to afro (Two Tribes), to funky (Happy Hi and Black Night White Light) and with some sprinkles of prog here and there.

Perfectly recorded, for the time, with a richness of arrangements that was unparalleled at that time, the album immediately caught the public's attention precisely because it found followers among fans of all genres. It is still the freshness and the desire to break free from classifying preconceptions that dominate the album.
It almost seems like the 'FGTH' enjoy composing or rearranging musical pieces according to their whim and it doesn't matter if in the same track it jumps from classical to hard rock in a few notes: the important thing is that everything follows its own logic and is not unpleasant to the human ear.

The problem with this album was another. The 'FGTH' preferred to deliver a double album (a rarity for debut works) and pour all their love of music and spontaneity into this little masterpiece, not realizing that they had produced a copious and ambitious work that quickly led them to exhaust their creative vein. After "Welcome To The Pleasuredome," in fact, they only produced a carbon copy album ("Liverpool") which had relative success and led them to self-destruction in a few years, amidst quarrels and illnesses (the singer Holly Johnson was diagnosed with the HIV virus and retired from the scene).
With "Welcome To The Pleasuredome," the 'FGTH' succeeded in merging all (or almost) genres bearable to our hearing and I believe it's time to reevaluate the entire work, hoping for a historical revisionism from the critics, who have somewhat forgotten this masterpiece.

If nothing else, as a shining example of a sublime exaggeration which has, as its exact opposite, a brief but unique and unforgettable life.