Rocktrospectiva: The Wonderfully Synth Album "Forever Young" Turns 40

 

Released on 27 September 1994 "Forever Young" was the debut studio album by German synth pop band Alphaville, the album spawned four singles "Big In Japan", "Sound Like A Melody", "Forever Young", & "Jet Set, the album charted well in ix European countries, but in the UK and the United States failed to make a huge impact. 

 

The band decided to released first "Big In Japan" before to finished to record the album, achieving huge success, practically, the single boosted the fame of the band while they were in the middle of finish the album, certainly, the sudden success affected the rest of the album, inspired by a British band named Big In Japan, Marian Gold the singer recalled, talking about a huge market music in Japna, so if you wanted to become huge, then you have to released an album there first, and that what happened then, the story is about about a couple of drug addicted lovers and moreover provided the title for the prospective song.

 

The first three tracks the band recorded were "Big in Japan", "Seeds", which was released as the b-side to "Big in Japan", and "Forever Young", which was originally recorded as an up-tempo track. The band was not happy with the fast version of "Forever Young", and recording of the track had come to a halt while the band figured out what to do with the song. It was producer Andreas Budde who suggested turning the track into a ballad, which is how the song was released, so the band wanted to released it as a second single but the label decided to released "Sounds Like A Melody", according to singer Gold, this was something the band don't want it, writing music exclusively for the sake of commercial success seemed like the sell-out of our virtual beliefs, in the end, this cause huge pressure on singe who refused to play it live for over 15 years. 

Other tracks for the album were sung exclusively in German "Blauer Engel", "Traumtänzer", and "Leben Ohne Ende",  but none of the songs ended up making it on the actual release, instead being released as b-sides or on later retrospective albums, others such as "Summer in Berlin" contains references to the East German uprising of 1953, which occurred on 17 June 1953. When the compilation album Alphaville Amiga Compilation was assembled for release in East Germany in 1988, the song "Summer in Berlin" was submitted for inclusion, but rejected "for political reasons. "Fallen Angel" was written after "Big in Japan" was released, and the band said "everything changes when you're Number One. The world becomes a big shopping mall where all is for free, people, objects, what-everm so there is something vulgar about all this. The track "'In The Mood" is very likely about us, about how we felt in 1984, though we didn't realize that when we wrote it. The rocket-like success of "Big In Japan" was mind-blowing and irritating at the same time and we were scandalized by a horror of losing our artistic innocence ever since we had signed that record-deal,  the track "The Jet Set", Gold said of the song, "We didn't intend to write a proper song; it was supposed to be some kind of jingle that advertises things money can't buy: anarchy, freedom, love, fun and a piece of the end of the world.

 

The album did well in many parts in Europe, in some other countries in Latin America, the singles "Big In Japan" and "Forever Young" were the only ones to gained radio exposure, and performed-well too., in the United States the single "Big In Japan" achieved No. 66 in the Billboard Hot 100, and "Forever Young", reached No. 65 despite the single was re-released several times, same situation in the UK in where "Big In Japan" reached No. 8 and "Forever Young" only managed to reached No. 98.

The critics reviews were generally positive, with one called it a classic synth pop album enjoyable from start to finish, with catchy and consistently songs, a good production, to make the album perfect and emotionally compelling statement of the 1980s electronic pop rock music 

 

Forever Young Track List:

 

1. A Victory Of Love

2. Summer In Berlin

3. Big In Japan

4. To Germany With Love

5. Fallen Angel

6. Forever Young

7. In The Mood

8. Sounds Like A Melody

9. Lies

10. The Jet Set