The Freeze (song)

Last updated
"The Freeze"
The Freeze single cover.jpg
Single by Spandau Ballet
from the album Journeys to Glory
B-side "The Freeze" "Version" version [dub mix]
Released12 January 1981
Recorded1980
Genre
Length3:30(single version)
4:35 (12-inch version)
Label
Songwriter(s) Gary Kemp
Producer(s) Richard James Burgess
Spandau Ballet singles chronology
"To Cut a Long Story Short"
(1980)		"The Freeze"
(1981)		"Muscle Bound" / "Glow"
(1981)

"The Freeze" is a song by the English new wave band Spandau Ballet, released on 12 January 1981 as the follow-up to their debut single, the number 5 UK hit "To Cut a Long Story Short". As was the case with that release, the 7-inch single of "The Freeze" featured a dub mix on its B-side, and the 12-inch single had two additional mixes of the song geared toward dance clubs. The cover art used for both formats of the single also repeated its predecessor in having a simple black-and-white classical motif. This design, however, was also seen on the sets of the music video for the song. Reviews of "The Freeze" were mixed. It reached number 17 on the UK Singles Chart.

Contents

Background and recordings

Spandau Ballet gained the attention of record labels eager to sign them through a television documentary that included footage from a concert attended by A&R executives, [2] but the representative for Arista Records was unable to attend. To catch up with what he missed, he offered to pay for the recording of a demo of some of their songs, so on 31 August 1980 the band recorded "To Cut a Long Story Short", "The Freeze", "Confused" and "Reformation". [3] Before they were signed they also recorded a demo of "To Cut a Long Story Short" for BBC Radio 1 DJ Peter Powell to play regularly on his show. [4] As other DJs at the station also added that song to their playlists, the demand grew for its availability as a single to purchase, [5] and the record labels competing to sign the band agreed that the chosen one would pay for however much studio time they had racked up to record "To Cut a Long Story Short" and start on their first album. [6]

Gnome-mime-sound-openclipart.svg
"The Freeze"
"The Freeze" includes "two-fingered synth arpeggios, plus enough percussive kick-drum snaps underpinned with bassline rhythms to fill dancefloors."
Problems playing this file? See media help.

"To Cut a Long Story Short" became a number 5 hit on the UK Singles Chart, [7] and "The Freeze" was selected to be released on 12 January 1981 as the next single. [8] Puzzled by the opening line, "Blue sing la lune, sing lagoon", former Evening Standard and music magazine journalist David Johnson did not see the song as an obvious choice to follow their top 5 hit but pointed out that "'The Freeze' was not chosen for singability but for its New Romantic clubbing credibility. In 1981 the pathfinding band were consolidating the new approach they had styled White European Dance Music — led on 'The Freeze' by Gary Kemp's two-fingered synth arpeggios, plus enough percussive kick-drum snaps underpinned with bassline rhythms to fill dancefloors." [9]

While working on "To Cut a Long Story Short", the band's guitarist/songwriter Gary Kemp reminisced with producer Richard James Burgess about the reggae dubs and remixes done by producers King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry dating back to the sixties, and they used those recordings as inspiration for the remix of "To Cut a Long Story Short". [10] One dub version of that song was put on the B-side of its 7-inch single and simply subtitled "Version" in the way those producers labeled their dub releases [11] and a different one was on the flip side of its 12-inch dance remix. [12] The B-side of the 7-inch single of "The Freeze" was also labeled "Version" to indicate that it was a dub track, [13] while side two of the 12-inch was labeled "Special Mix". [14]

Cover art and music video

The same classical motif used for the cover art can be seen on the walls, floor and ceiling of the music video set. The Freeze screen shot.jpg
The same classical motif used for the cover art can be seen on the walls, floor and ceiling of the music video set.

Camberwell College of Arts graphics student Graham Smith continued the work he began with the design for the "To Cut a Long Story Short" cover where he intended all of the singles from Spandau Ballet's first album, Journeys to Glory , and the album itself to have matching art work. He said, "I wanted to create an overall corporate visual package for Spandau that was cutting edge and reflected their aspirations. It had to have style." For the cover art featured on the single for "The Freeze", he selected an image of a chariot from a reference book on Egyptian icons that he thought was symbolic of the album's title. Johnson pointed out that the classical motif that frames the chariot can also be seen on the walls of the set for the music video for the song. [9] Shot in two rooms that are mostly bare, the video shows lead singer Tony Hadley in one room with a young woman and the other band members in the other playing their instruments. Hadley described the video as "strange… A girl lay on a sofa in a cobweb shroud. It was around this time I started to wonder about the kind of people that came up with the concepts for our videos." [15]

Critical reception

At the time of its release, Ronnie Gurr of Smash Hits was ostensibly positive, writing that the song "glides along on one of those disco bass lines and again shows a certain amount of two-fingered prowess from the keyboards." [16] Mike Gardner of Record Mirror , however, was negative, asserting that Spandau Ballet "completely blow the favourable impression made with 'To Cut a Long Story Short' by thinking that superbly chunky dance stance drums are enough to compensate for a lack of imagination. Much as it sounds good loud, there's still an aftertaste of being somehow shortchanged." [17] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Dave Thompson included "The Freeze" on a list of Spandau Ballet songs that were "utterly convincing white boy Funk". [18]

Release and commercial performance

"The Freeze" debuted on the UK Singles Chart dated 24 January 1981 and reached number 17 over the course of 8 weeks. [19] Bassist Martin Kemp found this chart performance to be "a little worrying" when comparing it to how well "To Cut a Long Story Short" had done: "All those people who congratulated you the week before are waiting for the moment when they can revel in your failure." [20] "The Freeze" got as high as number 14 in Ireland [21] and number 16 in Spain. [22] In the US, Billboard magazine paired the song on the Disco Top 100 with their first hit, and eventually they got as high as number 28. [23] In the July 2021 issue of Classic Pop magazine, Spandau Ballet's guitarist/saxophonist, Steve Norman, said, "Looking back, I’m not really surprised 'The Freeze' didn’t turn out to be as big a hit as 'To Cut a Long Story Short'. It doesn’t have a chorus, for one thing – my guitar acts as the chorus." At the same time, however, he notes, "'The Freeze' is such an arrogant song that it didn’t really need a chorus, and I like that about it. It’s from the same camp as 'To Cut a Long Story Short', of our certainty about ourselves at that time. It’s another of those songs you can only write when you’ve suddenly found a tribe of like-minded, disillusioned teenagers." [24]

Formats and track listings

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes for Journeys to Glory : [25]

Charts

Chart (1981)Peak
position
Ireland (IRMA) [21] 14
Spain (AFYVE) [22] 16
UK Singles (OCC) [26] 17
US Dance Club Songs ( Billboard ) [23] 28

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References

  1. ↑ "Spandau Over Europe: The Conquest". Number One . No. 28. 12 November 1983. p. 22.
  2. ↑ Dagger, Steve. "40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet at The Scala – May 13th, 1980". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 6 August 2021. "We are London Weekend Television and we would like to make a documentary film about the band and the scene surrounding it and film your next performance"…. And the record companies were impressed.
  3. ↑ Dagger, Steve. "40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet and the Arista Demos – August 1980". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
  4. ↑ Kemp 2009 , p. 125: He… asked us to do a four-song studio session for him that he could play during his show…. The resulting tracks were highly potent, and the ever-ebullient Peter Powell played them endlessly, although one more than any: "To Cut a Long Story Short".
  5. ↑ Dagger, Steve. "40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet Sign with Chrysalis Records – October 10, 1980". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 7 August 2021. Such was the positive response to the session from the listeners when it was broadcast that other Radio 1 shows started to play it, and quickly the session version of "To Cut A Long Story Short" was playlisted on the station. The listeners loved it and wanted to know when they could buy it.
  6. ↑ Dagger, Steve. "40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet Sign with Chrysalis Records – October 10, 1980". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 7 August 2021. So simultaneously to finalizing our negotiations for our record deal, we… started to record our album and single at Trident and then Jam Studios. Such was the clamour for the group's signature, the record companies agreed that whoever we chose would pick up the studio bills.
  7. ↑ "To Cut a Long Story Short – full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  8. ↑ Gimarc 1997 , p. 119
  9. 1 2 3 "1981 ➤ Why naked heroes from antiquity stood in for Spandau on their first record sleeves". Shapersofthe80s.com. 24 January 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2021.
  10. ↑ Burgess, Richard James. "40th Anniversary: To Cut A Long Story Short - Forty Years On by Richard Burgess". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 2 August 2021. Most 45 rpm singles had another song on side two. Gary thought we might try a remix for the flipside. The track had strong up-tempo dance elements. We bounced influences and preferences around and Gary reflected on the Jamaican dub reggae mixes: the pioneering sixties and seventies work of King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry.
  11. ↑ Burgess, Richard James. "40th Anniversary: To Cut A Long Story Short - Forty Years On by Richard Burgess". spandauballet.com. Retrieved 2 August 2021. There was no attempt to emulate the reggae forefathers, but we tipped our hat to their inspiration by subtitling the B side "Version".
  12. ↑ "'To Cut A Long Story Short' 40th Anniversary Vinyl and Digital Release". spandauballet.com. 30 October 2020. Retrieved 1 August 2021. 27th November sees a reissue of the 12" single in its original die cut sleeve on 180g vinyl featuring the groundbreaking extended and dub mixes of the track
  13. 1 2 The Freeze (7-inch Single liner notes). Spandau Ballet. Chrysalis Records. 1981. CHS 2486.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  14. 1 2 The Freeze (12-inch Single liner notes). Spandau Ballet. Chrysalis Records. 1981. CHS 12 2486.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  15. ↑ Hadley 2004 , p. 84
  16. ↑ Gurr, Ronnie (22 January 1981). "Reviews: Singles". Smash Hits . No. 56. p. 28.
  17. ↑ Gardner, Mike (24 January 1981). "Singles: Slippin' an' Slidin'". Record Mirror . Vol. 28, no. 4. p. 12.
  18. ↑ Thompson, Dave. "The Singles Collection - Spandau Ballet". AllMusic . Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  19. ↑ "The Freeze – full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  20. ↑ Kemp 2000 , p. 57
  21. 1 2 "The Irish Charts – Search Results – The Freeze". Irish Singles Chart.
  22. 1 2 Fernando Salaverri (September 2005). Sólo éxitos: año a año, 1959–2002 (1st ed.). Spain: Fundación Autor-SGAE. ISBN   84-8048-639-2.
  23. 1 2 "Spandau Ballet Chart History (Dance Club Songs)". Billboard. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  24. ↑ Earls, John (19 July 2021). "Making Spandau Ballet: Journeys To Glory". Classic Pop . Anthem Publishing. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  25. ↑ Journeys to Glory (record sleeve). Spandau Ballet. London: Chrysalis Records. 1981. CHR 1331.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  26. ↑ "Spandau Ballet: Artist Chart History". Official Charts Company.

Bibliography

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