Song · ABC
“Vanity Kills” by ABC
From the album How to Be a… Zillionaire! (1985)
“Vanity Kills” by ABC appears on 2 radio countdowns from 1 station between 1985 and 1989. It was first released in 1985 on the album How to Be a… Zillionaire!. Its best result is #55 on the KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1985. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #120 alternative song of 1985 and #5,367 alternative song of all time.
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"Vanity Kills" was the third single from ABC's third album, How to Be a ... Zillionaire!, in 1985, and it's Martin Fry and Mark White doing glossy synth-pop with a sneer behind the smile. The two wrote and produced it together, Fry sings lead, White arranged it, Guy Barker adds trumpet, and Julian Mendelsohn mixed it for Mercury.
The song ticks along in C major at a brisk 125 beats per minute, and it got two different videos: a UK clip of the four band members moving against black in simple stop-motion tricks, and an American one by Peter Care that casts Fry and White as noir detectives investigating a string of shady characters. It stalled at 70 in the UK and 91 on the Hot 100.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | 55 | KROQ Los Angeles, CA | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1985 | 107 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 257 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1989) | 495 |
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