“Poison Arrow” by ABC

"Poison Arrow" came off ABC's 1982 debut The Lexicon of Love as its second single, and it's heartbreak dressed for the ballroom. Trevor Horn produced it with Gary Langan at the desk, and the sound is all sweep and sheen, stabbing and swooning over a disco bottom end from Mark Lickley's bass, with Martin Fry crooning his romantic wounds like a matinee idol who's just been stood up. Fry, Lickley, Stephen Singleton and Mark White wrote it together.

The flip side offered a lounge-music reworking called "Theme from Mantrap", and in America the B-side was "Tears Are Not Enough", the band's first British hit. A later US 12-inch "Jazz Remix" has since turned up on compilations and reissues of the album. New wave had rarely sounded this lush, or this wounded.

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