“Tears are Not Enough” by ABC

"Tears Are Not Enough" was the song ABC introduced themselves with, their first single, out on 7-inch and 12-inch in October 1981, and the take that later landed on The Lexicon of Love in 1982 isn't the one the early buyers took home. Steve Brown produced the original; for the album, Trevor Horn gave it a fresh mix.

Martin Fry sings lead, Mark Lickley plays bass and Andy Gray blows trombone, with Gary Langan engineering, and the writing credit is shared by Fry, Lickley, Stephen Singleton, Mark White and Anne Dudley. It's new wave pop with funk in its hips and ambition in its collar. NME put it 7th in its ten best tracks of 1981, it got to 19 on the UK singles chart, and in America it ended up as the flip side of "Poison Arrow".

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