In hindsight, it baffles me that ABC's previous album, How To Be A...Zillionaire! wasn't better than I thought it would be. When I first heard it, I wasn't all that impressed, which was disappointing to me since it has my favorite tracks from the band. Apparently, this wasn't an opinion limited to me, since the album would break their streak of sales certifications.
After a brief hiatus, and concerned that it would be their final album, Martin Fry and Mark White began work on what would become Alphabet City. Fry would say of it, "It's a record where we sort of caught up with ourselves. For a while we were making records that just seemed to confuse people. It was necessary for us to work from a firm foundation and in a way, we figured Alphabet City might be the last record we ever made anyway, for a lot of reasons. So, we figured, let's just make it a statement of our work that drew on all the other records we've made."
The efforts paid off, rewarding the band with a gold certified album in both the UK, and Canada. It also garnered them their highest charting Billboard Hot 100 achievement, with When Smokey Sings, peaking at number five.
Upon its release, Alphabet City took full advantage of CD technology. While the LP and cassette versions featured eleven tracks, the CD added four additional tracks. However, two of these are just remixes of songs already included.
Unlike my previous listening session of The Lexicon Of Love, Alphabet City isn't what I'd call a perfect album. Truthfully, it has what I think is one of their weakest songs, the aforementioned hit, When Smokey Sings. It was never one of my favorites, and simply got added to my collection for the sake of checking a box.
With that said, it is a song that's grown on me a little. Additionally, I did find some other gems hidden about. These included, Think Again, and Rage And Then Regret.
What I also noticed is that some of the songs sounded familiar with previous material produced by the band. For example, you could easily fit the lyrics of Be Near Me over the music for Rage And Then Regret. Perhaps it's because of this that I like the latter, since Be Near Me is my all-time favorite from them.
ABC would release a final album in the decade, 1989's Up, which would coincidentally also be their last with Polygram Records. I'll dive into that one tomorrow.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS December 27, 1980 |
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS December 27, 1986 |
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