Relax (song)
B-side “One September Monday”, “Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey”
Released 24 October 1983
Format
7″ 12″ MC CD
Recorded 1983
Genre Hi-NRG, new wave
Length 3:53
Label ZTT
Songwriter(s)
Peter Gill Holly Johnson Brian Nash Mark O’Toole
Producer(s) Trevor Horn
“Relax” is the debut single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released in the United Kingdom by ZTT Records in 1983. The song was later included on the album Welcome to the Pleasuredome (1984).
Although fairly inauspicious upon initial release, “Relax” finally reached number one on the UK singles chart on 22 January 1984, ultimately becoming one of the most controversial and most commercially successful records of the decade. The single eventually sold a reported 2 million copies in the UK alone, making it the seventh best-selling single in the UK Singles Chart’s history. Following the release of the group’s second single, “Two Tribes”, “Relax” rallied from a declining UK chart position during June 1984 to climb back up the UK charts and re-attain number-two spot behind “Two Tribes” at number one, representing simultaneous chart success by a single act, unprecedented since the early 1960s.
Upon release in the United States in late 1984, “Relax” repeated its slow UK progress, reaching number 67 upon initial release, but eventually reaching number 10 in March 1985.
The song won Best British Single at the 1985 Brit Awards.
The song featured on the soundtrack to T2 Trainspotting and also in the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories in the fictional in-game radio station Wave 103.
Relax (Demo) excerpt
An excerpt from Relax (Demo)
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Singer Holly Johnson has claimed that the words of the song came to him as he was walking down Princess Avenue in Liverpool: “… I mean they were just, you know, words that floated into my head one day when I was walking down Princess Avenue (in Liverpool) with no bus fare, trying to get to rehearsals – I mean there was no great sort of calculated, ‘Oh I’ll sing these words and this record’ll be banned’.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia