Guardian Angel by Alphaville

I only have one Alphaville song on this blog, and the video I linked is now gone.  So, you can't listen to any Alphaville!  That's not right.

The prior post I made was for "Forever Young", their major claim to fame.  Perhaps a too easy choice.  I've actually got quite a bit of Alphaville material, and I think a lot of it is really good.  Some of it is, in fact, quite a bit better than "Forever Young" which suffers a bit from over-exposure.

Alphaville is one of those bands that continued on after the "synthpop crash" of the early 90s.  Although they were never big hitsters to begin with, their incarnation during the 90s was marked by being even further underground.  I bought a German import in about 1997 of Salvation.  It was, about three or four years later, released domestically for less money and with bonus tracks.  Grr.

Anyway, an interesting thing about Alphaville, or at least that album, is that the more "old fashioned" songs, including especially "Guardian Angel" and "Control" are quite a bit better than the more "modern" sounding ones, like "Monkey in the Moon" or "Wishful Thinking" work, but not as well.  In general, Salvation is considered a back to roots album, but relative to what, exactly, I wonder (since I never picked up Breathtaking Blue or Prostitute; the albums that came out between Afternoons in Utopia and Salvation.  To me, most of the album feels more then-current techno/club focused rather than back-to-roots synthpop.)

Forever Young by Alphaville

While not commercially incredible successful as a single release per se, Alphaville's 1984 poignant anthem "Forever Young" became an instant cult classic, notable for having been covered many times, included on many TV shows, movies, and commercials, and playing probably as the final, teary-eyed song at most proms and other teenaged dances during much of the 80s (I know they did at mine, and I didn't graduate high school until 1990!)

Notably, less than a year after it's release, Laura Branigan covered it, and sang it as part of her encore at every concert until her untimely death in 2004 (I'll probably eventually include some Laura Branigan here as well… although I might give this one a pass, since I tend to avoid covers except in exceptional circumstances.)

It's a cult classic for a reason. Give it a listen if you haven't heard it in a long time, and you'll see what I mean; this is one of the most beautiful and emotional pop songs in my collection. Alphaville's debut album is actually full of all kinds of undiscovered gems, and while they wandered "astray" for many years experimenting with different sounds, their 1997 "back to roots" CD Salvation is a fun one too.