This one is interesting. The band's original line-up consisted of eight members for the first two albums. Management narrowed the group down to three members. The classic line-up of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway were actually looking to start another band on the side, but they ended up staying and keeping the name, Thompson Twins. If they were to be inducted it would only be the three of them, but they won't be.

Thompson Twins

01. Tom Bailey (1981-1993; vocals, bass, keyboards)
02. Alannah Currie (1981-1993; vocals, percussion)
03. Joe Leeway (1981-1986; vocals, percussion, synthesizers)
04. Pete Dodd (1981-1982; vocals, guitar)
05. John Roog (1981-1982; guitar)
06. Chris Bell (1981-1982; drums)
07. Jane Shorter (1981; saxophone)
08. Matthew Seligman (1982; bass)

STUDIO ALBUMS

01. 1981 - A Product of ... (Participation)
02. 1982 - Set / In The Name Of Love (UK/US)
03. 1983 - Quick Step and Side Kick / Side Kicks (UK/US)
04. 1984 - Into the Gap
05. 1985 - Here's to Future Days
06. 1987 - Close to the Bone
07. 1989 - Big Trash
08. 1991 - Queer

SINGLES

In The Name Of Love * Love On Your Side * Lies * Beach Culture * If You Were Here * You Take Me Up * The Gap * Hold Me Now * Doctor! Doctor! * Lay Your Hands On Me * King For A Day * Nothing In Common * Get That Love * Sugar Daddy * Come Inside

Posted by Roy on Wednesday, 04/3/2013 @ 21:17pm

Fun band, but too lightweight and nowhere near influential enough.

Posted by Jason Marley on Tuesday, 04/21/2020 @ 20:33pm

The Thompson Twins ,they deserve to enter the rock n roll hall of fame for their 80's pop archetypal genius.

Posted by alvaro bertolini on Sunday, 11/13/2022 @ 16:33pm

IRA ROBBINS(Creem) for Trouser Press_ Thompson Twins:
The name notwithstanding, there were no twins and no Thompsons in this globally successful modern pop band. Once an obscure, loose collection of as many as seven Sheffield-to-London players led by singer/synthesist/songwriter Tom Bailey, the Twins wisely pared down to the efficient trio of Bailey, New Zealander Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway and became one of the world's leading purveyors of occasionally adventurous, invariably danceable modern chart fare.

All six musicians credited on A Product of… play percussion in addition to their primary instruments — sax, guitar, keyboards, etc. The cleverness and variety of the tracks, however, eliminate any potential monotony that might have resulted from the heavy reliance on rhythm. And although the music is designed to incite maximum motion, there isn't one track that skimps on lyrical, melodic or structural depth. The album isn't uniformly wonderful, but the textures and sounds make it pleasurable and energizing. (The 1987 Richard Skinner radio session was recorded at this early stage of the band's career.)

Set adds one member (onetime Soft Boys bassist Matthew Seligman) but is otherwise not very different — in cast or content — from its predecessor. Exemplified by such great numbers as "In the Name of Love" and "Bouncing," Bailey and his cohorts make totally listenable dance music that doesn't beg suspension of critical faculties. Producer Steve Lillywhite and Thomas Dolby also pitch in, making Set a very nice record.

The Thompsons got their first exposure in America via In the Name of Love, which consists of two tracks from the first album and eight from the second.

Building on the popular dance sound of "In the Name of Love" (in fact, deftly quoting it on the first track, "Love on Your Side"), the three Twins emerged mature, motivated and commercially focused on their third album, Quick Step & Side Kick. A model of varied and skilled songwriting and extraordinary self-contained music-making — the trio plays almost everything you hear on keyboards — the album bounces from start to finish, but no two tracks have much in common other than a good mood and a strong beat. (The American label perversely altered the title and rearranged the tracks a tad. The British cassette includes a bonus side of remix.

Consolidating their stardom, Into the Gap is a virtual new greatest hits on arrival, containing as it does "Hold Me Now," "Doctor Doctor," "You Take Me Up" and "Sister of Mercy," which were all radio, chart and club staples for many months. The Twins' strength was always their avoidance of repetition; the songs swing widely in tempo, style, instrumentation, subject matter and vocal arrangements. (All three sing.)

By Here's to Future Days, which was co-produced by Bailey and the estimable Nile Rodgers, the hit machine was starting to run on a cracked wheel. "Lay Your Hands on Me" is brilliant, but "Don't Mess With Doctor Dream" is boring, "King for a Day" is cute but overly familiar and "Tokyo" is corny. And who needed to hear a new version of the Beatles' "Revolution"? With all its ups and downs, Future Days is not significantly inferior to the Twins' best albums, but it lacks their freshness and vitality.

Posted by Alex Bertolini on Sunday, 11/13/2022 @ 16:44pm

Piero Scariffi the most famous Italian music critic writes in his book:
Thompson Twins (singers and multi-instrumentalists Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie) were perhaps the most sophisticated proponents of 1980s electro funk-pop in Britain.
They were originally a six or seven unit combo that played complex dance-music on A Product Of (T, 1981). Set (T, 1982) refined the formula with In The Name Of Love and Bouncing. In The Name Of Love (Arista, 1982) summarizes the first two albums.

Quick Step And Side Kick (Arista, 1983) and Side Kicks (Arista, 1983) contained perhaps their best material, namely Love On Your Side and We Are Detective, but Into The Gap (Arista, 1984) is the album that made them international stars, thanks to Doctor Doctor and Hold Me Now.

Lay Your Hands On Me and King For A Day, from Here's To Future Days (Arista, 1985), were the last hits. Close To The Bone (Arista, 1987), Big Trash (Warner Bros, 1989) and Queer (Warner Bros, 1991) were as uninspired as the early ones, but the fad had passed.

The duo reinvented itself as Babble and release two more awful albums, The Stone (Reprise, 1994) and Ether (Reprise, 1996), that incorporate elements of world-music, ambient and techno.

Posted by Thomas Black(england) on Sunday, 11/13/2022 @ 16:50pm