“You ask if I love you.
Well, what can I say?
You know that I do,
and that this is just one
of those games
that we play.”

About the song:

“Hold Me Now” is a song from The Thompson Twins, written by the band members (all three), and produced by Alex Sadkin, with the lead vocalist Tom Bailey. The song is a mid-tempo new wave song that uses a varied instrumentation, including synthesizers, a Marimba, a piano and Latin percussion.

The song was released in November 1983 as the first single of their 5th studio album, Into the Gap.

The song peaked at # on the U.K. Singles Chart in November, the month of release, and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), in 1983, becoming the band’s biggest-selling single, and their first Top 5 in that country.

The song was released in the U.S. in February 198, and became the band’s highest charting single there, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, in May, remaining on the chart for 21-weeks.

The music video (see below) was directed by Rupert James, produced by Tim Bevan, and edited by Brian Grant and Nick Morris.  The video features the Thompson Twins in a set with a blue background. Each member is standing on a platform, singing or playing a different instrument, a guitar or a piano for Bailey, a Marimba or another percussion instrument for Currie, and a bass guitar or congas for Leeway.

The video is heavily edited, with frames sliding from the sides, doubling or tripling, split-screen edits, and close-ups of the band while singing or dancing. At the end the background changes from blue to red, and the three members are featured together singing and clapping while the song is fading out.

 

My thoughts:

I know this song is more break-up than love song, more end of a shaky relationship than the start of love, but this song has always tugged at me more in the love side of things than anything else. I associate it immediately with adolescence, with high school dances and “slow” dances specifically, and a first young love I had back then.

If I push play and close my eyes I can see those dimly lit church basements, the creaky wood floors, the slight crackling of the over-sized speakers that sat playing in the corner. We may have been a religious school with small classes and a strict moral conduct that the faculty tried to lord over us (pun-intended), but those dances sure did cater to the alternative, the new wave and the more indie (not that “indie” was even a word then) versus a Top 40 menagerie of sound.

I hated so much about the school, but I loved those dances.

Hold Me Now (1983) :: The Thompson Twins
from the album, Into the Gap