True (1983)

True is the third studio album by the English new wave band Spandau Ballet, released on 4 March 1983 by Chrysalis Records. The band's songwriter/guitarist Gary Kemp realised after the release of their second album that the nightclub audience they initially wanted to attract had lost interest in them in part because of the band's transition from dance music to pop. He no longer felt obligated to keep writing music for them and shifted his focus to soul and R&B influences such as Marvin Gaye and Al Green for this album. Kemp thought that bandmate Steve Norman's newfound interest in the saxophone would be well-suited to the sound he was going for, as would the decision to record most of the album at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas.

After an unsuccessful attempt to begin work on the album with producer Trevor Horn, the band tested out their working relationship with Tony Swain and Steve Jolley while recording its first single, "Lifeline", and chose to produce the album alongside them. "Lifeline" was a top ten hit on the UK Singles Chart, and its follow-up, "Communication", also did well. The album became available as the second single climbed the charts, and the overwhelming response to the title track dictated its release as the third single from the album, leading it to four weeks as the most popular song in the UK. It also became their first song to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, where it peaked at number four. A fourth single, "Gold", reached number two in the UK but only got as high as 29 in the US, which Kemp attributed to internal conflicts at their record label that took time away from promoting the band.

On the album charts, True reached number one in the UK and number 19 in the US while also having success in numerous other countries. It achieved platinum certification for sales of 300,000 units in the UK less than three months after its release. Most critics thought the album was enjoyable, but there were those who found something or much to dislike. The choice of suits for the album photos and "True" music video was thought to have misled US audiences by presenting them as too clean cut to have much else to offer other than soul ballads like the title song.

Background, development and recording

When Spandau Ballet first formed, their guitarist/songwriter Gary Kemp had been aware of how previous generations of Britain's youth culture had bands representing them, such as the Mods having the Who and the Small Faces. He wanted people to associate Spandau with the fashion-wise clientele of a popular Tuesday night London gathering called the Blitz, and had written songs that sounded like what was played there, what he described as "white European dance music".

Their first album, Journeys to Glory, was a successful culmination of this style of material that Kemp had written at his own pace and that had been tested in front of the Blitz crowd over an extended period of time, but coming up with songs for their second effort, Diamond, was more challenging. Although following a renewed interest in funk gave them a number 3 UK hit with its first single, "Chant No. 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)", the writer's block Kemp suffered as it climbed the UK Singles Chart resulted in his mimicking its use of horns and group vocals for the next single, "Paint Me Down", which had a number 30 showing in the UK, the lowest peak position there of any of their singles to date. An experiment with the eastern European sound from American film scores for the third single, "She Loved Like Diamond", fared even worse just as Diamond was about to be released; that inspired the idea to take another song from the album, "Instinction", and hire a new producer to remix it in the hope that it would perform better. Kemp described that track as being the closest thing to a pop song that Spandau Ballet had yet recorded. The band hired Buggles founder Trevor Horn to do the new arrangement of the song, which reached number ten in the UK and made Kemp realise that the clubgoers they had initially catered to were no longer interested in their music. He was now able to write songs without concern for their danceability or adherence to current tastes. In his autobiography I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau, he explained, "The freedom of not having to write just for Soho meant I could dive into that great big reservoir of pop, deep with melody and soul, and hopefully surface with the pearls I wanted."