“How To Be A Millionaire” by ABC

"How To Be A Millionaire" was the opening shot from How to Be a… Zillionaire!, ABC's third album, from 1985, and Martin Fry and Mark White kept the controls to themselves: they wrote and produced it, White arranged it and Fry sang lead. Julian Mendelsohn mixed it, David Williams added guitar, and Jackie Challenor, Lorenza Johnson and Mae McKenna chipped in backing vocals.

Home turf shrugged, stalling it at 49 in the UK, but America bit: the Hot 100 took it to 20, and the dance club chart went as high as 4. Neil Tennant, then reviewing for Smash Hits, wasn't having it, hearing a band aping American dance records with no originality and no feeling. The animated video turns cartoon Fry and White into victims of their own loot, buried under luxury goods that keep swelling, with the other two members dropping in briefly.

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