ABC (band)

ABC
Martin Fry in the Albert Hall 2017
General information
origin	Sheffield , England
Genre (s)	Synth pop , new wave
founding	1980, 1997
resolution	1991
Website	abcmartinfry.com
Founding members
singing	Martin Fry
guitar	Mark White (1980-1991)
saxophone	Stephen Singleton (1980-1984)
bass	Mark Lickley (1981-1982)
Drums	David Robinson (1981)
Current occupation
singing	Martin Fry (since 1980)
former members
Drums	David Palmer (1981-1982, 2004-09)
singing	David Yarritu (1984-85)
singing	Fiona Russell-Powell (1984-85)

ABC is a British pop band from Sheffield , founded in 1980 , who became famous in the 1980s with songs like The Look of Love and When Smokey Sings . Since 1997 ABC has been the solo project of singer and founder Martin Fry, who works with changing musicians.

history

ABC was founded in Sheffield in 1980 after Martin Fry met the two musicians of the band Vice Versa, Mark White and Stephen Singleton, during an interview for his fanzine Modern Drugs and was invited by them to work as singers in their electro-pop band. Fry soon took artistic control of the band through his presence as a singer and the songs he wrote. With the musicians Mark Lickley and David Robinson, the line-up was complete, the latter being replaced by drummer David Palmer even before the first album was recorded.

Their first single Tears Are Not Enough (still with Robinson on drums) reached a position in the British Top 20 in 1981 , in 1982 they got three top 10 chart positions within seven with the singles Poison Arrow , The Look of Love and All of My Heart Months. The group's greatest success to date: In the same year, the album The Lexicon of Love, produced by Trevor Horn (including the song Valentine's Day ), reached the top of the British album charts . He was later given a key role by Martin Eichhorn in the 2004 novel Kommste, willste, Kriegste .

But for ABC there were no further successes in the Lexicon of Love dimension . Before the release of the second album Beauty Stab , Mark Lickley left the band, the success of the first album could not be connected. Only the single That Was Then but This Is Now briefly reached a top 20 position. The second release from the album, SOS , also lagged far behind the success of the first singles. David Palmer left the band after completing the studio recording to work with Ryūichi Sakamoto's techno band Yellow Magic Orchestra . In 1984 Stephen Singleton also went his own way.

Martin Fry and Mark White continued to work as a duo, supported by frequently changing studio musicians . For their 1985 album How to Be a Zillionaire , Fry and White brought David Yarritu and Fiona "Eden" Russell-Powell into the band for more visual reasons. The hoped-for success largely failed to materialize, despite the first top 10 hit in America, Be Near Me , they didn't make it into the top 20. Further extracts from the album were Vanity Kills , How to Be a Millionaire and Ocean Blue .

In 1987 the single When Smokey Sings was released . With this homage to the soul singer Smokey Robinson , ABC achieved another hit for the first time. The album Alphabet City was released and highly acclaimed by music critics and compared to the hit Lexicon of Love . The other releases The Night You Murdered Love and King Without a Crown only achieved chart positions in the midfield. The Night You Murdered Love , however, was the band's biggest single success in Germany.

In 1989 ABC made another change in their music style: With the album Up , the group now embarked on the pop- house track. One Better World and The Real Thing were released as singles , without being particularly noticed by the music world.

In 1990 Neutron Records ended the collaboration with ABC and released the best-of album Absolutely , which combined all of the band's successes.

In mid-1991 Abracadabra was released on the Parlophone label. ABC delivered two moderately successful dance floor hits with Love Conquers All and Say It . In 1992 the band broke up and it was initially quiet around the two musicians. Mark White has since given up ABC and music and works as a Reiki teacher.

Martin Fry played together with guitarist Keith Lowndes and Heaven 17 singer Glenn Gregory under the name Magic Skulls a few more experimental dance songs that were ultimately not released.

From 1997 Martin Fry worked single-handedly under the band name ABC. The album Skyscraping was released with the support of Glenn Gregory . With Seven Day Weekend , ABC provided a song for a soundtrack for the first time , which is also included on the album. The singles are: Stranger Things , Skyscraping and Rolling Sevens .

In the entire ABC history, live appearances were rather rare, so Fry decided in 1999 to release recordings of the Skyscraping tour under the title Lexicon of Live on the independent label Blatant Records as a CD.

In 2001, new studio recordings began, Peace and Tranquility should be released as a single, but was withdrawn shortly before the release without giving reasons, only a few copies were sold. The piece will be published together with the new song Blame on the further compilation Look of Love - The Very Best of ABC .

In 2004, the TV station VH-1 tried to reunite the band in their original line-up for a one-off appearance as part of the program Bands Reunited . The performance took place, but only Martin Fry and drummer David Palmer from the original cast took part. Together with other musicians from the 1980s, Martin Fry is still on tour with the ABC hits, including Tony Hadley , the singer of the band Spandau Ballet , who also released a live CD and a live DVD for their joint tour were.

On April 14, 2008, the eighth studio album Traffic was released in Great Britain as well as on several download platforms . In addition to Martin Fry, David Palmer from the original formation of the band was also involved in the production of the album.

After an eight-year break, ABC released their ninth studio album on May 27, 2016, now reduced to Martin Fry as the only original member of the band. The title The Lexicon of Love II explicitly refers to the first publication from 1982. The same applies to the design of the album cover. As with the debut album, Anne Dudley took over the orchestration of the songs. The songs Viva Love and Kiss Me Goodbye had already been released as bonus tracks for the download version of the Abracadabra album , albeit in a different version.

Discography

Albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1982	The Lexicon of Love	DE23 (18 weeks) DE	-	-	UK1 platinum (50 weeks)UK	US24 gold (39 weeks)US	First published: June 25, 1982
1983	Beauty wand	DE50 (2 weeks) DE	-	-	UK12 gold (13 weeks)UK	US69 (14 weeks) US	First published: November 14, 1983
1985	How to Be a… Zillionaire!	DE58 (4 weeks) DE	-	-	UK28 (3 weeks) UK	US30 (41 weeks) US	First published: October 14, 1985
1987	Alphabet City	DE20 (21 weeks) DE	-	CH26 (3 weeks) CH	UK7th gold (10 weeks)UK	US48 (25 weeks) US	First published: October 7, 1987
1989	Up	DE38 (10 weeks) DE	-	-	UK58 (1 week) UK	-	First published: October 16, 1989
1991	Abracadabra	DE22 (10 weeks) DE	AT39 (1 week) AT	-	UK50 (1 week) UK	-	First published: August 12, 1991
1997	Skyscraping	-	-	-	UK97 (1 week) UK	-	First published: March 24, 1997
2016	The Lexicon of Love II	-	-	-	UK5 (7 weeks) UK	-	First published: May 27, 2016

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

More albums

• 1999: Lexicon of Live (live album)
• 2008: Traffic

Compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1990	Absolutely	DE40 (10 weeks) DE	-	-	UK7th gold (12 weeks)UK	-	First published: April 9, 1990
2001	Look of Love - The Very Best of ABC	-	-	-	UK69 silver (2 weeks)UK	-	First published: July 23, 2001

More compilations

1988: The Suburbs of Alphabet City 1991: Fantastic Compositions (box with 4 CDs) 1991: Remixes and Others 1992: 1 1992: 2 1993: The Remix Collection 1993: Tears Are Not Enough 1994: Remix Collection 1996: The Collection 1997: ABC 1997: Master Series 1999: Classic ABC: The Universal Masters Collection

2000: The Best of ABC 2000: One Better World 2000: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of ABC 2000: Millennium Edition 2001: Hello! An Introduction to ABC 2002: Poison Arrow 2004: The Ultimate Collection (3 CDs) 2006: gold 2007: Look of Love: The Very Best of ABC 2007: The Anthology 2007: Never More Than Now - The ABC Collection 2008: Worth It

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1981	Tears Are Not Enough The Lexicon of Love	-	-	-	UK19 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 16, 1981
1982	Poison Arrow The Lexicon of Love	-	-	-	UK6th silver (11 weeks)UK	US25 (15 weeks) US	First published: February 5, 1982
	The Look of Love The Lexicon of Love	DE36 (15 weeks) DE	-	-	UK4th silver (14 weeks)UK	US18 (25 weeks) US	First published: May 3, 1982
	All of My Heart The Lexicon of Love	DE67 (4 weeks) DE	-	-	UK5 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 22, 1982
1983	That Was Then but This Is Now Beauty Stab	-	-	-	UK18 (4 weeks) UK	US89 (3 weeks) US	First published: October 24, 1983
1984	SOS Beauty staff	-	-	-	UK39 (5 weeks) UK	-	First published: January 9, 1984
	(How to Be A) Millionaire How to Be a Zillionaire!	-	-	-	UK49 (4 weeks) UK	US20 (14 weeks) US	First published: October 29, 1984
1985	Be Near Me How to Be a Zillionaire!	-	-	-	UK26 (4 weeks) UK	US9 (22 weeks) US	First published: March 25, 1985
	Vanity Kills How to Be a Zillionaire!	-	-	-	UK70 (2 weeks) UK	US91 (4 weeks) US	First published: June 3, 1985
1986	Ocean Blue How to Be a Zillionaire!	-	-	-	UK51 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: December 30, 1985
1987	When Smokey Sings Alphabet City	DE52 (7 weeks) DE	-	-	UK11 (10 weeks) UK	US5 (19 weeks) US	First published: May 25, 1987
	The Night You Murdered Love Alphabet City	DE20 (16 weeks) DE	-	-	UK31 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 23, 1987
	King Without a Crown Alphabet City	-	-	-	UK44 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: November 16, 1987
1989	One Better World Up	DE51 (12 weeks) DE	-	-	UK32 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: May 15, 1989
	The Real Thing Up	-	-	-	UK68 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: September 11, 1989
1990	The Look of Love 1990 Mix Absolutely	DE31 (10 weeks) DE	-	-	UK68 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: April 2, 1990
1991	Love Conquers All Abracadabra	DE36 (10 weeks) DE	-	CH22 (2 weeks) CH	UK47 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: July 15, 1991
	Say It Abracadabra	DE52 (14 weeks) DE	-	-	UK42 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: November 20, 1991
1997	Stranger Things Skyscraping	-	-	-	UK57 (1 week) UK	-	First published: March 10, 1997
	Skyscraping Skyscraping	-	-	-	UK93 (1 week) UK	-	First published: May 5, 1997

More singles

• 1982: Valentine's Day
• 1997: Rolling Sevens
• 2001: Peace and Tranquility
• 2005: Not Enough Tears ( Rebel H. Stanley vs. ABC)
• 2008: Love Is Strong
• 2008: The Very First Time
• 2016: Viva Love

Video albums

• 1983: Mantrap
• 1990: Absolutely ABC: The Videos
• 2002: Made in Sheffield: The Birth of Electronic Pop (with The Human League , Heaven 17 , Cabaret Voltaire and Pulp )
• 2004: 20th Century Masters - The DVD Collection: The Best of ABC
• 2004: Absolutely DVD
• 2005: Classic ABC
• 2005: Tony Hadley vs. Martin Fry & ABC
• 2007: Essential Videos

Awards for music sales

Golden record

•  Canada
  • 1982: for the single The Look of Love
  • 1987: for the album Alphabet City

Platinum record

•  Canada
  • 1983: for the album The Lexicon of Love

Note: Awards in countries from the chart tables or chart boxes can be found in these.

Country / Region	silver	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Canada (MC)	-	2 × gold2	platinum1	200,000	musiccanada.com
United States (RIAA)	-	gold1	-	500,000	riaa.com
United Kingdom (BPI)	3 × silver3	3 × gold3	platinum1	1,160,000	bpi.co.uk
All in all	3 × silver3	6 × gold6th	2 × platinum2

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: Singles Albums UK US1 US2
2. ^ The Billboard Albums by Joel Whitburn , 6th Edition, Record Research 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7 .

Web links

• Official website of Martin Fry and ABC - extensive information about the band, including illustrated discography, track lists and all lyrics
• ABC at Allmusic (English)
• ABC at Discogs (English)
• ABC at MySpace Music