"Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood released “Relax” on Octo­ber 23, 1983. Although it got off to a slow start, “Relax” even­tu­ally charted at #1 in the U.K. and #10 in the U.S.  “Relax” won Best British Sin­gle at the 1985 Brit Awards.

Orig­i­nally from Liv­er­pool Eng­land, Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood took their name from a poster show­ing singer Frank Sina­tra arriv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia to start his film career, with the head­line FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD.

The BBC banned “Relax” and it shot to #1 for five con­sec­u­tive weeks.  The fol­low­ing sin­gles, “Two Tribes” and “The Power of Love” also went to #1, mak­ing Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood only the sec­ond act in UK chart his­tory to reach #1 with their first three sin­gles.  By May of 2006, “Relax” became the sev­enth best-selling sin­gle of all time.

After hear­ing Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood per­form on John Peel’s radio pro­gram and on tele­vi­sion, ZTT Records co-founder Trevor Horn signed the band and pro­duced the sin­gle and sub­se­quent album, Wel­come to the Plea­sure Dome.  Horn’s ZZT co-founder, Paul Mor­ley, used a shock approach to pro­mote the sin­gle by empha­siz­ing band mem­bers Holly John­son and Paul Rutherford’s bla­tant homo­sex­u­al­ity in mar­ket­ing the song and music video.

Ver­sions

1983/1984 Ver­sions
Relax [Move] 3’52
Relax [Sex Mix] 16’24
Relax [From Soft to Hard] 4’21
Relax [New York Mix] [Sex Mix Edit] 8’20
Relax [U.S. Mix] 7’20
Relax [Disco Mix] 6’15

1993 Ver­sions
Relax [MCMXCIII] 3’42
Relax [Ollie J. Remix] 6’38
Relax [Jam & Soon Trip-O-Matic Fairy Tale Remix] 7’52
Relax [Jam & Spoon HI N-R-G Remix] 7’55
Relax [Trip-O-Ship Edit] 6’12
Relax [Ollie Je’s Seven Inches] 3’30

2001 Ver­sions
Relax [Peter Rauhofer’s Dooms­day Radio Mix] 3’45
Relax [Peter Rauhofer’s Dooms­day Club Mix] 9’47
Relax [Saeed & Palash Addic­tive Jour­ney] 11’16
Relax [Cold­cut Remix] 4’59
Relax [Peter Rauhofer’s Dooms­day Dub] 6’27

Music Video

Bernard Rose directed the first video for “Relax,” which takes place in Wilton’s Music Hall and fea­tured gay S&M imagery.  Both the BBC and MTV banned the video, so a tamer video fea­tur­ing lasers was made and shown on TV. Film­maker Brian De Palma also fea­tured the band per­form­ing “Relax” in his motion pic­ture, Body Dou­ble, which was released as a third music video.

My most dis­tinct mem­ory of “Relax” is singing along to it in my car in early 1985 and sud­denly real­iz­ing that the song is about sex.  In hind­sight, it seems so obvi­ous, but it never occurred to me that main­stream radio would play any­thing with such bla­tant lyrics.

I’ve also been sur­prised at the last­ing impres­sion this song has made on other mem­bers of my gen­er­a­tion.  While at an 80s-themed party a few weeks ago, sev­eral dif­fer­ent peo­ple came up to me and requested this song.

What are your mem­o­ries of “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood?