Spandau Ballet was an exteremly popular band in their native U.K., releasing two albums and hitting the top of the album and singles charts prior to this release. True was their third album and breakthrough release in America. They rode in on the coattails of Duran Duran and other video-friendly English acts. The band are members of the New-Romantic movement which backed R&B styled vocals with 80's synth-beats. The movement's main influence was Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music and Tony Hadley clearly is a Ferry devotee. He has an incredibly smooth and expressive voice and songs like "Code Of Love", "Communication" and "Lifeline" show it off. "Gold" was a minor hit in America and was England's theme song at the '84 Summer Olympics. With its soaring vocal and uptempo beat, it does provide an inspirational theme.. The real gem on this album is the title track. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful track and is one of the ten best songs of the 80's. It encapsules the styles of the era, but its melody is timeless and could be a hit today. The song was remade by PM Dawn as "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss" in '91 and hit number one and was featured at the end of The Wedding singer. The band's version hit number four in the fall of '83 and was their only top ten hit in America. Sadly, after scoring a minor hit with "Only When You Leave" on their next album, Parade, the band fell off the music scene in the States. They disbanded in '86.

This album is a solid, state of the art production with catchy pop hooks and keyboard laden arrangements. This album was released in the heyday of MTV, in which the band from England received attention in the United States from regular video exposure, most notably for its high powered signature ballad, the title track to this fine album. Written by Gary Kemp and equipped with the powerful and emotive vocals of Terry Hadley, this classic serves as one of the quintessental pop tunes that appears on numerous 1980's music compilations as well on innumerable movie soundtracks (It was recently featured in Adam Sandler's film "The Wedding Singer," several years ago.) In the early 1990's, the group PM Dawn sampled riffs from the song "True" for its debut single, "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss," which topped the pop charts. Even today, it still remains a timeless ballad, one of my favorite tracks of the 1980's.

This album contains several other chart hits: "Gold" is a high fueled, relentless pop track espousing the importance of believing in oneself, trusting your inner knowingness, following your heart. "Communication" explodes as an upbeat opener on the cohesive collection that was a moderate hit for the band as well.

"Pleasure" is a pop ditty in which a teenage soul is desperately soul searching to open his heart to feeling and experiencing love. "Code Of Love" is a song in which the group explores the intricasies of relationship. "Lifeline" continues on the theme of relationships and contains the lyric "so live and let live in love" delivered with a passionate sense of exploring all that life has to offer to the fullest. This segues into the upbeat "Heaven Is A Secret" and the track "Foundation," in which Hadley sings with urgency about the importance of laying a loving and truthful base to their relationship." The album consummately reaches a spiritual, uplifting climax with "True."

The album linear notes is complete with lyrics to all 8 songs. Although this set only clocks in at a mere 36 minutes, it serves a succinct and an imporatnt introduction to a fine pop band that unfortunately only experienced brief exposure in the US. The inside flap of the CD booklet has some beautiful sketches along with a colorful illustration on the cover of this classic disk. Pop purists will appreciate Spandau Ballet's cool, suave, romantic sophistication that is highly reminiscent of Bryan Ferry's vocals with the band, Roxy Music.

Even if you dread the term "yuppie" in your vocabulary, you can't deny the sleekly crafted sounds of Britain's criminally underrated Spandau Ballet, who were themselves musical yuppies. Nonetheless, with just 8 songs, this album helped define a decade, and perhaps well beyond.

Though most just know this band from the rich textures of the sensitive balld "True," (featured in the heartwarming Molly Ringwold box office hit, "Pretty In Pink"), there is definitely much more to this talented band, who boast the flair of Duran Duran, with the musical progress of Human League (another criminally underrated 80's band).

I like the hooks that abound on this slinky record, from whizzing keyboards to dance-style beats. Spandau Ballet truly were ahead of their time, and many a band owes its influence to these pop pros. But let me dispense with all the hype. Buy this one for your baby, or just buy it for yourself. Da Peace Dogg thinks you can't go wrong with Spandau Ballet, and Da Peace Dogg never gets it wrong when it comes to hot music!!

Viva La Ballet!!

This is the only Spandau Ballet album that everyone has (or should have) in their collection, and it's easy to understand why. In the band's brief journey from innovation to irrelevance it was the moment they set aside the baroque, art-disco theatricality of their earlier New Romantic work and offered up something original, innocent and pure - a white-soul antidote to the tedious excesses of punk and 70s rock. It's essentially a suite of eight modern love songs, carefully crafted by producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain from the simplest of arrangements - funk guitar, a super-tight rhythm section, occasional keyboards, and some beautiful percussion and sax neatly deployed, often to spine-tingling effect. But the real star is vocalist Tony Hadley, who at last dropped the artsy, melodramatic edge from his performance and demonstrated that he has one of the finest pop voices ever recorded. Even Gary Kemp's whispery falsetto backups don't sound too ridiculous here. The album contains two classic tracks - "Gold" and "True", which were actually the band's career highlights (matched only by the well-deserved late hit "Through the Barricades"). Spandau's career went south shortly after this early peak as they sought to commit to record the more vibrant energy of their live shows. The results were mixed. "Parade" (1984) was moderately successful, but super-smooth Jolley and Swain were perhaps the wrong men for the job. On "Through the Barricades" (1986), Gary Langan captured a harsher guitar-driven sound, but apart from the brilliant acoustic title track it just wasn't credible. "Heart Like a Sky" (1989) saw the band revert to a smoother sound wrapped in a lush late-80s mix, but the magic had fled and so had the fans. Kemp's writing was arguably still strong, and Hadley's voice was better than ever, but the moment had passed. Pop had moved on, and the band members were sadly left to squabble over the spoils of a brief but memorable career. Some listeners at the time called "True" a MOR sellout, but its slick surfaces remain tough to resist even today. It's Spandau's most consistent and best all-around album.

Aside from the trademark "True" and "Gold", this 8-song album has all very strong songs. No filler whatsoever here. While artists today try to fill an album with 15 songs and half of them are garbage, Spandau Ballet doesn't do this with True. You get eight brilliant songs, and nothing else.