Music Notes

Hold Me Now

My fifteenth track is Hold Me Now, from defunct band The Thompson Twins. Released in 1983, it's a "big eighties" song in the best sort of way.

I've liked this song from pretty much the first I became aware of it, sometime in 2017. The emotional tone of the lyrics appealed to me, as the narrator deals gently with a confusing relationship. Whenever it crops up it's a bright spot in the creepiness of cheap eighties surface hits which are all one hears in public from the era.

When I decided to add it to my offline playlist last April or thereabouts, I designed a special cover art for it (as I did with dozens of my chosen tracks) using my favorite generative AI app, Wombo Dream. I prompted the AI with the words "vintage retro eighties style filter photo of a teenage boy and girl happy memories" and it gave me an image of twins It looks exactly like the opening words of the song. At the bottom I'll include the screenshot of my media player.

The more I listen to Hold Me Now with increasingly better sound quality, the more I appreciate it. I love the slowly measured "bells and whistles" production, and the backing vocals which come in at the end to balance the gaps in the chorus.

In order to write knowledgeably about the song, I read the Wikipedia   page for The Thompson Twins, which I thought for sure I had looked at several times over the years. I was surprised to find the "real story" of the band: how they derived their name from The Adventures of Tintin, and how they changed it to Babble in the nineties to reflect a shift in musical style to something called "dub-influenced chill out…" don't ask me. I had no idea.

Now that I do know the band's backstory, it makes the song more meaningful. I'm glad I chose to do this project, because I honestly thought The Thompson Twins was something like a brother and sister duo, similar to the image I created for the cover art

Words: 368.