@@icequeen917 Yes! I met Depeche backstage in Houston in the early years. Played in a college auditorium! I was lucky to have been invited backstage. They were cool - Dave asked "if I always dressed that way", Fletcher wanted my booklet on them w/their autographs & I said "no"! Was super cool!
Lead singer Andy Bell was one of the first openly gay singers and he has an amazing voice!! His falsetto gives me goosebumps. Another big hit of theirs is "Chains Of Love". Check it out!
No disrespect but the bands name is pronounced E-Ray-Shure. Might be an accent thing. Your way sounds like a fantasy video game with wizards and dragons. Saw Erasure at Cyndi Laupers True Colors Tour for Equal Rights. They were awesome. They have so many good songs.and they cover Abba songs too, like Take A chance . So good
Oh Erasure… One of my favourite bands of all time. Their live shows back in the day were amazing. Andy Bell’s voice is one of the most over-looked voices in pop music. They helped with the AꓭBA “comeback” of the early 90s with their EP “ABBAEsque”. They have a s**t load of amazing songs.
Andy Bell's voice is wonderful. Oh, and as others have mentioned, they're pronounced like the word "eraser," so it's "e-ray-sure." Check out "Oh, L'Amour," "Sometimes," "Chains of Love," "Blue Savannah," "Chorus," "Love to Hate You," "Breath of Life," "Always."
They're even better live! I've seen them twice in concert, and it was amazing both times. And yeah, on the pronunciation of "Erasure", it's a regular English word meaning the erasing of something.
Me, too! So amazing in concert! One of the best of the 80’s. I loved when Andy was demanding respect while stomping across the stage in 8” stilettos, a corset and black feather boa to the ground.
The other guy playing the instruments was in another group called Yazoo in the early 80's. The singer in Yazoo was Alison Moyet. You should check them out too.
Yup... and brought Depeche Mode into the spotlight with 'Just Can't Get Enough' and wrote all but 1 of the songs on their first album.... before leaving and joining Yazoo...
Erasure were my teenage years! I was lucky enough to finally see them live last November and it was worth the 35 year wait, they were as amazing then as they were back then x
This is the 1st time I've ever seen somebody react to erasure. I love this band. In about 1990 I saw them performed live At the open air theater and San Diego state. It was 1 of the best live performances I have ever seen
The 80s charts were by no means only about love. At least no more than the charts in any other decade. Love has always been the largest theme in pop music. It may be more to do with which songs and artists you're listening to, from each decade. There was a lot more political stuff in the 80s than in subsequent decades and pleny of darker and more mature themes too.Including by artists like George Michael. Even the song you've just listened to had a socio-political edge. The lead singer of Erasure (ee-raze-shur) is gay and the 80s wasn't a great time for gay people. Especially as it was at the height of the aids epidemic. Homophobia was rife, across all sections of society and anti gay violence was commonplace. Nor were there equal rights. Knowing this, the song takes on a different tone. When you talk about less introspection, bear in mind that this was the decade that brought us the goth genre and saw trip-hop develop. It was also the last decade before dance music completely took over the charts. Acts like The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure and The Specials weren't exactly known for their upbeat themes and as illustrated by this song, a lot of songs had more to them than a first glance may reveal. Songs like Oliver's Army, by Elvis Costello, and Enola Gay, by OMD, sound like upbeat pop songs. Of course they're actually about the troubles in Ireland, from Oliver Cromwell onwards, and about atomic war, respectively. :)
YES! oh L’amour is my favourite song of theirs, and probably of the whole of the 80’s! I finally got to see them live a few months ago and my now 49yr old self screamed in 15yr old when they started singing L’amour 😍
This is such an incredible song. It has such deep meaning to the LGBTQ+ community as a plead to society to respect us and treat us as humans. The HMI remix is just as epic.
Wow....havent heard this song in almost 30 years. I remember my older brother had their album and as a 6 or 7 year old I'd play this track on repeat. Loved it. Still know 90% of the words.
Great reaction video. I find it mind blowing that some people have never heard this song. I guess in the States they were less well know than here in the UK and since the turn of the millennium you don't hear their stuff played on the radio. They have done a LOT of other great songs though which shouldn't be overlooked. Ship of Fools, Always, Love to Hate You, Sometimes and Blue Savannah to name a few
Still going with a new album out last year. I read that Vince wanted to go back to the original Erasure sound so dug out some of his early synths - check out Nerves of Steel from the last album - anyone who has not heard it, it goes back to their best. BTW it's pronounce E - raise - sure.
All Erasure's early music was tongue-in-cheek with the production. They began to take themselves seriously around the production of the album I say, I Say, I Say and is when they began to lose mass appeal. That album though I'd say is their best work where Andy pushed vis vocal abilities to the max (check out his pitch in 'Blues Away'), and Vince showed us there wasn't any sound he couldn't make a synthesizer do.
I first heard this song in 1989. I was in flight school in Florida, and we had some British students who introduced me to Erasure. I was a metal-head at the time, but this song hooked me. I bought the album, The Innocents, and I played the hell out of it. It's a great album from start to finish. I played it for my then fiancé and she loved it too.
They have pumped out so many hits and albums since their first Album 'Wonderland' in 1986 (Oh L' Amour), then the Albums 'The Circus' 1987 (Sometimes, Victim of Love, Circus,), and 'The Innocents' 1988 (Ship of Fools, A Little Respect, Chains of Love,) .... was lucky enough to see them in concert in April 88... WOW... Best band ever... and they are still pumping out albums.
Believe it or not another reactor didn't like this song - which I LOVE!! - I couldn't believe it!! I was in my 20's then - a LONNG time ago I know but people of your age sometimes like ERASURE, thank God!!!
Erasure is by far my favorite all time listening & sing along groups of all time. BTW, they were big here in the states also. That is to those of us who had good taste in music back then. That is just 1 of 20 of their greatest hits. So many great songs by them.
Vince Clarke (father of synth-pop) and Andy Bell were a winning combination with many club hits in the late 80’s and 90’s. Vince Clarke was a founding member of Depeche Mode in the late 70’s. Left and hooked up with Alison Moyet to form Yazoo with hits “Don’t Go” and “Situation” and then formed Erasure with Andy in 1985 and the rest is history. Lots of songs to choose from. Chains of Love, Star, Drama, Blue Savannah, Stop!, Chorus, Take a Chance on Me, Always, Sometimes, Oh L’amour.
So amazing in concert! One of the best of the 80’s. I loved when Andy was demanding respect while stomping across the stage in 8” stilettos, a corset and black feather boa to the ground. This was a gay anthem - it had to be more subtle unfortunately during the AIDS epidemic. But IYKYK.
Ahh Erasure and New Order in the 80s prepped me for Dance, techno, and house music when I was finally hitting the clubs in the 90s! New Order “Perfect Kiss” “ Bizarre Love Triangle” are great. Erasure’s “Oh L’amour” is my favorite.
Bronski Beat/ Smalltown Boy Lays an extraordinary soundscape. It has the big, transcendent wall of sound you favor. Emotive-- nothing neutral about that song. Anton, also.... Flock of Seagulls / Space Age Love Song (cinematic, dreamy, big)
Haha yes. Your pronunciation of erasure is completely wrong. Make me laugh every time 😂 nice review though. Check out other songs. They were brilliant. Check out their violet flame album. And chorus. 👌🏻👌🏻
It's Interesting that you found the motives and deep meanings in beetween of some of the 80's classics... For me was always the way how they sounded, those synthesizers and effects are very characteristic from that era... of course it could be produced like that nowadays if the intention was to sound like that way, but every technology available in that decade years and subsequent were like quote marks for me...
It always baffles me that people (especially Americans doing these reaction videos, British people usually get it right) can’t pronounce the word “Erasure” properly. Like this guy said it wrong a dozen times… I mean, “erasure” is an English word! As in “the erasure of black history from school books is evident…”, for example. WTF?
I was surprised to see the hand written lyrics displayed at The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2016 on my 50th birthday trip with my late brother (he passed away in 2021 from stage 4 cancer) I stood there reading it before I took a picture of it. I read a lot of people said this song helped them from depression when the song came out.
In order to really understand this song, and indeed a lot of Erasure's music, you need to know that they were gay in a time when being openly gay was dangerous. I don't know what it was like in the UK, but growing up in the South in the 1980's that fact needed to be kept secret, especially with the songs they sung. Wrestling with coming to terms with, and accepting, my sexuality, Erasure's music was life changing, even though I wasn't sure if they were gay or not (from the songs, I was guessing they were). "What religion or reason would cause a man to forsake his lover?" could pass as something straight, but "lover" was language gays were using. If you want to hear the power these songs had, and still have, listen to them from the perspective of a gay teen or young adult in the 1980s. Scared, feeling all alone, that there was noone out there that understood or that you could turn to. Erasure helped to keep me from turning some very dark thoughts into permanent actions. Their music - and not only their's - gave me hope, courage, comforting, of.not being alone, that I had a right to exist, that I could be loved, that I was not broken or a monster, that while I might not believe in me that they did. Erasure often gets written off as cheesy pop, and that's okay. Those people didn't need all that Erasure had to offer, and so didn't scratch beneath the surface. Erasure helped us survive the worst of the AIDS epidemic by giving us something to dance to in between the funerals. They made us feel happy amidst all the sorrow. If you weren't there, living in the time of Erasure's heyday, you can't fully understand their genius and power. And I'm so incredibly glad and happy if you can't fully understand because that means you didn't have to go through it, and all the blood, sweat, and tears we put into the fights we fought were successful.
the 1980's music and culture is all about partying (don't need nothing but a good time) because of the cold war the world can end at any moment from 99 luftballons (99 nuclear warheads) and the apocalypse is gonna be here in 2000 (party over, ooops out of time - so party like it's 1999), free love (because we thought AIDS only affected heroin users and homosexual men), ecstasy and cocaine (because heroin needles spread AIDS), neon colors (Miami Vice), big hair (cause we didn't know hairspray killed the environment), music videos, video games, boomboxes, etc. - you didn't need a band anymore, you could program the drums and play the bass on the synthesizer and bring in someone to play a guitar solo, it was more important to look good in the video and if you didn't, it didn't matter how good you looked (video killed the radio star) and you'd end up playing the songs but the lip syncing models would be the stars (Milli Vanilla, C&C Music Factory) - a couple of years into the 1990's Grunge Happened - they turned the lights on and stopped the music and we had to pay the bar tab, the 90's is the hangover after the party ends, depression, regret, anxiety, it got cold and everyone threw on their flannel shirts and started wearing gang colors. rock songs had to have a purpose or message to them and the party songs about women and drugs moved from rock and pop to hip hop and gangsta rap. we still had Y2K to worry about but people started switching from coke to crack and heroin. the grunge singers all over-dosed and died or killed themselves, the rappers shot each other, pop music got turned into a Disney machine of boy bands and Britney Spears with their voices made perfect with autotune, metal came back fused with rap and grunge and gave us corporate nu-metal bands like Limp Bizkit and Nickelback.
You noticed the tongue-in-cheek visuals at the bottom of the video, where they quite literally represent the lyrics. Most reactors don't catch that humour.
