Erasure – Chains Of Love

Other than "A Little Respect", this is probably Erasure's biggest hit. It has aged well too, like most of the "Innocents" album. The Shep Pettibone "remixes" are pretty lame, like most of what he did. He was one of those guys that was an editor rather than a remixer -- US record companies (especially Sire) would turn to him a lot in the 80s to pump out lazy edits of big tunes to try and garner interest in a song. Pettibone was huge then, and I never understood why, and I still don't. His formula was basically this: tack on a few minutes of beats, and loop a vocal sample over and over. His edits were very predictable, and predictably boring at that. The two other remixes here from Phill Legg and Mark Maguire are far more interesting, and actually take the song in slightly different directions while creating a new production around the original -- essentially what a remix should be. There are two levels of remixers out there: the Razormaid remix service level, and the professional/artistic level. It's basically McDonalds vs. The Four Seasons, and Shep Pettibone is the happy meal of club culture.

Classic Erasure and a career highlight for the band. This song was all over the radio and in the nightclubs in 1988 and still gets airplay in retro nightclubs today. Essential Erasure choon.