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**ABC - The Lexicon of Love**
★★★★☆

In the pantheon of early '80s new romantic excess, few albums managed to balance theatrical bombast with genuine emotional depth quite like ABC's stunning debut, "The Lexicon of Love." Released in June 1982, this masterpiece of synth-pop sophistication arrived at the perfect cultural moment, when Britain was ready to embrace both the glamour of escapism and the sting of romantic reality wrapped in golden lamé.

The Sheffield quartet's journey to this triumph began in the ashes of post-punk pragmatism. Martin Fry had initially started as a fanzine writer, interviewing the avant-garde outfit Vice Versa before being seduced into joining them. When that experimental phase dissolved, Fry reinvented himself as ABC's frontline crooner, recruiting guitarist Mark White, saxophonist Stephen Singleton, and drummer David Palmer. What emerged was something unprecedented: a band that could make heartbreak sound like a Hollywood musical number while never losing sight of the genuine pain beneath the sequins.

The album's genius lies in its collaboration with producer Trevor Horn, the mad scientist behind some of the decade's most sonically adventurous recordings. Horn, fresh off his work with Dollar and still buzzing with ideas that would later define his productions for Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Yes, brought an orchestral grandeur to ABC's romantic melodramas. The result sounds like Phil Spector's Wall of Sound fed through a synthesizer and conducted by a lovesick Broadway composer with unlimited studio time.

"The Look of Love (Part One)" remains the album's calling card and perhaps the most perfect encapsulation of new romantic ambition ever committed to vinyl. Fry's vocals soar over layers of strings, horns, and that unforgettable synth riff, creating something that's simultaneously artificial and deeply affecting. It's a song about the intoxication of attraction that sounds exactly like being intoxicated by attraction – dizzy, overwhelming, and slightly dangerous. The track's success wasn't accidental; it became a Top 5 hit in the UK and established ABC as masters of the three-minute emotional epic.

But the album's secret weapon might be "Poison Arrow," a bitter kiss-off disguised as a dance floor anthem. Here, Fry's romantic vulnerability curdles into something more venomous, backed by a rhythm section that hits like a stiletto to the heart. The song's central metaphor – love as a weapon that leaves its victims bleeding out on the dance floor – captures the album's central tension between romantic idealism and cynical reality.

"All of My Heart" showcases the band's softer side without sacrificing any of their dramatic instincts, while "Date Stamp" and "Many Happy Returns" explore the archaeology of failed relationships with the kind of literary sophistication that separated ABC from their more simplistic new romantic peers. Even the album's lesser-known tracks, like "Show Me" and "4 Ever 2 Gether," maintain the high standard of songcraft and production that makes "The Lexicon of Love" such a cohesive artistic statement.

What's most remarkable about the album is how it manages to sound both utterly of its time and completely timeless. The synthesizers and drum machines clearly place it in 1982, but the emotional territory Fry explores – the gap between romantic fantasy and messy reality – remains eternally relevant. His vocals, influenced equally by David Bowie's theatrical instincts and classic crooners like Frank Sinatra, give weight to lyrics that could have easily become throwaway dance-pop fodder.

The album's influence has only grown with time. Bands from Duran Duran to Arcade Fire have cited ABC as an influence, and "The Lexicon of Love" regularly appears on lists of the greatest albums of the '80s. Its sophisticated approach to pop music helped pave the way for everything from Pet Shop Boys' intellectual dance-pop to the more recent wave of indie bands incorporating orchestral elements into electronic frameworks.

ABC would never again reach these heights – subsequent albums, while containing moments of brilliance, couldn't recapture the perfect storm of circumstances that created this debut. But "The Lexicon of Love" stands as proof that intelligence and emotion need not be sacrificed on the altar of danceability, and that sometimes the most artificial-sounding music can contain the most authentic feelings. In an era often dismissed for its superficiality, ABC created something genuinely profound: a love letter to love itself, written in the language of heartbreak and orchestrated for maximum