Not really into 80’s music, never have been, it is what it is. Here is the power of love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, from 1984:
Here are the first (and last) lines of the song (on spotify, at least):
I'll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door
Why look into the lyrics of a song I’ve never heard before by a group I’ve never (really) listened to?
Because this past week I saw the beautiful film all of us strangers throughout which that song is woven: lyrically, thematically and even through similar images.
A knock on the door, two soon-to-be lovers meet. A first, brief, conversation. The visitor, just before he’s denied entrance, drunkenly whispers:
There are vampires at my door
The final image of the film:
All of us strangers ends with the beginning of the power of love.
Which makes a lot of sense.
For,
watching the film, one is reminded that,
- even though heartbreak and loss are inevitable
there really is nothing better to do
then
make love your goal
Good luck.
—-
Miscellaneous threading material:
Andrew Haigh directed the film. He also made ‘Weekend’ which is also quite beautiful.
“I wanted to throw the notion of time up in the air. I feel strongly that you can be dragged backward and forward through time so easily. Go onto the dance floor, listen to a song, and you can be back to where you were 10 years ago. You can feel what you felt 30 years ago.”
A song like ‘the power of love’ for example?
More? Read this this interview.
More?
“It’s not easy to say things to people that you love, to tell people how you feel, but secretly we all wish we could,” Andrew Haigh says. “The film delves into that idea: If we could in some metaphysical realm connect like this, wouldn’t that be an amazing thing?”
That would be an amazing thing. More, here.
Following threads is fun.
“Specifically, Adam (the protagonist)—and Haigh, and you—is drawn back to the mid-1980s, a period that might be the gayest era of pop music ever. “From 1981 to around 1986, British pop music was the queerest thing in the world: You had Culture Club and Wham! and Bronski Beat and the Communards, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Like: Was anyone not gay?””
I had NO idea what the song ‘Relax’ was about. Well, I thought it was about relaxing. Silly me. Here’s the video clip which was very quickly banned from MTV:
Some lyrics:
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna go do it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna come
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna suck, chew it
Relax, don't do it
When you wanna come
When you wanna come
The top YouTube commenter has a point when commenting ‘I don’t see any relaxing in this video.’
Huh, indeed. Weird.
One more quote then:
“Crucial to the film is “The Power of Love,” a very operatic 1984 ballad by the very gay Liverpool band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. “This is a song that was made when people were starting to die of AIDS,” Haigh says. “A time when people were losing their partners very, very young in horrendous circumstances. And here is a band who are saying love is gigantic, the possibility of it is gigantic.”
Last interview here, with one more quote then:
“Listen, life is very complicated, and it usually ends in a complicated place for all of us. Most of us lose our parents, and half of us might end up losing our partner before we're gone. Life is about dealing with loss. But the love that comes from that is the essential, important thing.”
Last Frankie Goes to Hollywood song. Yes, with depressing comments reminding us that history does seem to repeat, and repeat, and then, yes, repeat, but also with a hilariously great ‘80’s video clip. I’m beginning to understand this whole 80’s fad…
And, ok, one more quote then.
Let’s give the final words of this thread to Andrew Haigh:
It sounds so cheesy, but I feel like love really is the thing that remains.
—-
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