The Promise by When In Rome

By 1988, synthpop and other dance-oriented electronica music was starting to achieve significant mainstream success, in both the US, the UK and other markets as well. Manchester's When In Rome was a notable one-hit wonder, who's "The Promise" hit #11 on the Billboard charts, although it barely scratched the top 100 in the UK, scraping up to about #75 or so.

I keep the When In Rome CD as an object lesson; I bought it early on, shortly after converting to CDs, when I still didn't even have very many, and I quickly discovered that other than "The Promise" itself, nothing on the CD was even listenable, much less enjoyable. If I'd been patient, I could have bought it on a compilation later, no doubt, or if I'd been really patient, I could have bought it as a single mp3 file.

Or I could have saved a few bucks picking it up as a CD single. Either way... great song. Too bad it was legitimately a one-hit wonder.