Sophisticated Boom Boom
Dead Or Alive

Sophisticated Boom Boom was the debut album from UK synth pop/new wave act Dead Or Alive, released in 1984. Fronted by the imposing figure of Pete Burns, latterly a fixture on UK television – not least through his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother – it gave the band its first UK Top 40 single, with a re-make of KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘That’s The Way I Like It’.

That single, as well as ‘Misty Circles’, were also hits on the US Hot Dance and Club Play charts – when the latter was reissued as the b-side to ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’. ‘Misty Circles’ and further single ‘What I Want’ were co-written by later Sisters Of Mercy and Mission guitarist Wayne Hussey, but it was Burns’ confrontational press image that generated column inches. Dead Or Alive were embraced by the New Romantics as well as clubbers, and Burns engaged in a series of entertaining press spats with Boy George about who minted that image of extravagant gay front-man/outrageous dresser first. This re-release, on CD for the first time in the UK.