“Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls” by Book of Love

"Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls" went out ahead of Lullaby, Book of Love's second album, in 1988: sleek synth-pop with something serious under the gloss. It was one of the first songs to take on the AIDS epidemic, pushing safe sex at a time when, as Susan Ottaviano put it, people weren't talking about it. Ted Ottaviano wrote it and produced it with Flood, and Alan Meyerson mixed it.

The clubs ate it up, sending it to number 5 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart during an 11-week run, and it became their only crossover into mainstream pop and their highest Hot 100 placing, at 90. On the album it follows a short take on Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells", and the single's B-side covered the same piece, sampling member Lauren Roselli channeling Linda Blair in The Exorcist. On the 12-inch, Scott Blackwell and Bob Brockmann stitched the two into a fourteen-minute medley.

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