YMMV / Frankie Goes to Hollywood

• Archive Panic: ZTT's penchant for releasing a myriad of edits for each single, often across every format available at the time, causes this. The 2012 compilation Sex Mix was the first time many of their cassette singles were digitized. All of their singles were finally re-issued in their original tracklists by record label Salvo between 2012 and 2014, which was great…until the Inside the Pleasuredome box set came out with even more unreleased mixes.
• Awesome Music:
  • "RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANNA GO TO IT! RELAX, DON'T DO IT, WHEN YOU WANNA COME!"
  • "We're a long way from home, Welcome to the Pleasuredome."
  • "Two Tribes", to the point that its 12" "Annihilation Mix" is widely considered the best 12" mix of the 1980s.
  • Their cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" is also highly praised, even being considered by some to be better than the original. The song features a ripping bass solo replacing the original's saxophone solo, and is also played with a faster, punkier energy more reminiscent of New Wave bands from the era. Then when you throw in Holly Johnson's unique voice and flamboyant attitude into the mix, you get a cover that's really special.
• Covered Up: "The Power of Love" was covered by Gabrielle Aplin for a John Lewis advert in 2012; said cover reached number 1 in the charts 28 years after FGTH's version did.
• Epic Riff: Interestingly, Welcome To The Pleasuredome is loaded with epic bass riffs, including possibly the most epic one-note bassline ever recorded in "Relax".
• Genius Bonus:
  • The rare Hibakusha remix of "Two Tribes", found on a limited edition release housed in a company sleeve and the Japanese "BANG!" remix EP, was named after the Japanese term for the victims of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • "Krisco Kisses" is named after a gay slang term for anal fisting, which typically used Crisco as lubricant during the '70s and '80s.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Fitting the trope's name, the band had a huge fanbase in Germany, with two songs that never made it to #1 in the UK ("Welcome To The Pleasuredome" and "Rage Hard") reaching #1 there.
  • Following the release and success of Body Double, the band became pretty popular in America. They toured America following the release of "Welcome To The Pleasuredome", and Island reissued "Relax" in response to their new-found success, resulting in a successful Top 10 hit.
• Memetic Mutation: "FRANKIE SAY..." T-shirts were popular around the height of the band's popularity.
• Nightmare Fuel: Patrick Allen reading advice on dealing with a nuclear attack (essentially parodying his work on the infamous Protect & Survive films) on the extended mixes of "Two Tribes". And if that didn't get you, all the facts and figures about nuclear weapons on the single sleeve just might. Basically, we're all going to die horribly. Probably by 1990.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: There was an official Frankie Goes to Hollywood computer game released in 1986. Rather than playing as anyone from the band (indeed, the band itself never even appears), you play as the silhouette of a person from the band's logo, trying to become a real person. The gameplay is a mixture of action-adventure and action minigames, and overall regarded as a very, very good game.
• Refrain from Assuming: "Wish (The Lads Were Here)" is not "Wish You Were Here", although a lot of magazines from their active period used to make this error.
• Tough Act to Follow: Welcome to the Pleasuredome, and indeed their phenomenal success in 1984 in general. Just about anything would have been a disappointment after that. Case in point: in 1985, when their fourth single debuted at #2 on the chart instead of #1, some critics began to jump off of the Frankie bandwagon.

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