Visage - Fade to Grey

What better way to start the new I Love 1981 series than this seminal single by seminal eighties "group" Visage which finally hit the top 30 in January 1981.
Fade to Grey, penned by Ultravox's Billy Currie, Midge Ure and Tubeway Army/Gary Numan collaborator Chris Payne, was officially released in 1980, and was in fact Visage's second single, the first being Tar which failed to either set the charts alight or stop people from smoking. Group 'leader' Steve Strange merely put the voice and the,er, visage ("face" in French dontcha know) to the song making it into the 'new romantic' track par excellence. Famously he also claims to have had the idea for the French vocal (the words of the verse translated) which were done by one madamoiselle Brigitte Arendt, although our Midge reckons he thought of it first. So there.

Any road up, Devenir en Gris at the time achieved plenty of airplay and was a hit in the discos, setting the trend for the new kind of dance music (and dancing, see right), and sweeping aside the likes of Chic, Gloria Gaynor, Ottowan et al, at least for the time being.

The single hung around the Top 40 for a couple of months despite there being no 'live' TOTP performance, which was more than made up for by the rather tasteful video which was shown a couple of times and sort of paved the way for many of its kind.
New styles, new shapes, new modes...let 1981 begin.

You've probably got Fade to Grey on a thousand 'eighties' compilation albums already but LiM strongly reccommends the debut Visage album to hear it in a more fitting context.