All of My Heart
A UK number five single that Pitchfork ranked first among new pop singles.
ABC, from The Lexicon of Love (1982)
- Released
- 1982
- Album
- The Lexicon of Love
Released in 1982 as a single, it peaked at five in Britain. Its B-side, Overture, was an instrumental orchestral medley of songs from the album arranged by Anne Dudley. Fry compared it to Bridge Over Troubled Water. Dudley said she first thought it rather weak, until Horn added the dramatic pause at the end of the chorus before the line all of my heart. Timpani were mixed in, and she saw the fadeout as a chance for an English pastoral moment. She thought it probably Fry's best vocal. Horn said a Fender Rhodes doubles a grand piano throughout.
It was the last track mixed. The computer broke down halfway, and the final mix was finished around midnight on a Sunday. Singleton, listening, spotted a little wow on his saxophone at the end, which turned out to be a worn bearing in the half-inch tape machine. Horn's team had to find another machine at two in the morning and print the mix again before another session began at Sarm East at nine. In 2005 Pitchfork's Jess Harvell put it first on his list of new pop singles, calling it ABC's slickest and most gorgeous single and possibly their most bitter. Fry said in 2013 that it was interesting to come back to it and sing it as a man rather than a boy. In 2014 the band's own demos of the song, from before Horn's involvement, turned up among a dozen rediscovered master tapes.
More songs by ABC
Tears Are Not Enough, Poison Arrow, The Look of Love, When Smokey Sings
Sources
- All of My Heart, Wikipedia
- Now That's What I Call New Pop!, Pitchfork (2005-09-11)
- How we made: ABC's Martin Fry and Anne Dudley on The Lexicon of Love, The Guardian (2013-01-21)
- Classic Tracks: ABC The Look Of Love, Sound On Sound (2016)
- ABC (band), Wikipedia