ABC

When the vocalist of the English electronic band Vice Versa quit, members Mark White and Stephen Singleton asked fanzine owner Martin Fry to take his place. The group renamed themselves ABC and soon scored a record deal. Their first single “Tears Are Not Enough” was a top 20 hit in the UK and named one of the best songs of 1981 by New Music Express.

ABC’s debut 1982 album Lexicon Of Love followed and spawned three more UK hits, all of them reaching the top 10. “Poison Arrow” and “The Look Of Love” took the band’s success overseas, reaching the top 40 in several other countries including the US. Beauty Stab followed in 1983, giving ABC two more UK top 40s with “That Was Then But This Is Now” and “SOS”, but generating little success elsewhere.

By the time 1985’s How To Be A Zillionaire! was released, ABC consisted of Fry and White joined by British journalist Fiona ‘Eden’ Powell and American photographer David Yarritu (both of whose input was largely visual, not musical). The album gave the group two major hits in the UK and US with “Be Near Me” and “How To Be A Millionaire”, while its third single “Vanity Kills” was a minor hit.

After Fry battled illness from 1985-1987, he & White achieved ABC’s highest-charting and final US hit to date with “When Smokey Sings” from 1987’s Alphabet City. Three songs from the album performed well in the UK. Up, released in 1989, gave the band their last UK top 40 to date.

After a greatest hits release in 1990 and 1991’s moderately successful Abracadabra, Fry left the music business until 1997 when he alone released the UK-only Skyscraping. The band spent the next 10 years focusing on live performance, meanwhile regaining David Palmer (the drummer on their debut album) in 2004 after a failed reunion attempt by the VH1’s show Bands Reunited. In 2008 Traffic was released to little fanfare.

White and Singleton relaunched their old band Vice Versa in 2015. Fry continues to release music under the name ABC, most recently The Lexicon Of Love II in 2016 and the 2020 single “Look Good Tonight”.