Communards by The Communards

Communards, the debut album from Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles, came out on London Records in July 1986, and it's a record with two hearts. Producer Mike Thorne, who had worked with Somerville in Bronski Beat, gives the Hi-NRG tracks a pounding, sweat-drenched pulse, while the classically trained Coles gets his turn on piano ballads that let Somerville's soaring voice breathe. There's even a straight jazz reading of the standard "Lover Man", sung as a duet.

The singles released ahead of it made only modest waves, but their storming remake of "Don't Leave Me This Way" sat at number one in the UK for four weeks and was the country's best-selling single that year, pulling the album up to number seven. The politics are right there in the sleeve notes: the single was dedicated to the GLC, and "Reprise" to Margaret Thatcher. Even the band's name nods to the rebels of the 1871 Paris Commune.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.