Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 14

Thompson Twins - "Lay Your Hands on Me" & "King for a Day"





(Album Release: September 1985)
When Here's to Future Days was released in the fall of 1985, I had already been a Thompson Twins fan for a couple of years. Having already released two albums in those two years (a feat that somehow now seems gargantuan considering the pace of most of today's bands), they had produced several hit songs including "Love on Your Side," "Lies," "In the Name of Love," "We are Detective," "Hold Me Now," "Doctor Doctor," "You Take Me Up," and "The Gap." When I look at these songs from a distance, including the two that are the subject of this post, I realize that they are very similar. They are all about the transforming power of love in some way. After all, isn't "Lay Your Hands on Me" just another way of saying "Hold Me Now?" Of course it is, but I still dig this band anyway. There was something about these songs on Here's to Future Days that went beyond the mere pop song structure and into fantastical realms of romanticism. There was a sophistication to the songwriting that was not present in past releases. This new direction of sophistication, ornate orchestration, and psychedelic whimsy was heralded by the inaptly named trio (yes, I know it's a Tintin reference) covering the Beatles' "Revolution." Though it may have been disregarded at the time, time has been kind to the Twins and this album in particular. The Allmusic entry is just one example, in which the short review is negative, there are no "checked" songs indicating standout tracks, yet the album rating is 4 out of 5 stars. "King for a Day" is sickly sweet earworm, able to lodge itself in my brain for days. XTC would write a song with the same title and similar sentiment four years later. It may be easy to dismiss these songs as pop candy, but they were my personal crush soundtracks back in junior high.