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Forever Young 1984
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Forever Young

When Alphaville were shaping their first album, Forever Young, released in 1984, they encountered an unexpected situation. The single "Big in Japan" came out before the album was complete, and its success was so sudden that it took them by surprise, both them and the record label. Suddenly, they went from a more carefree image to a reality of hotels and airports, with half the material still to be composed. This early success influenced the rest of the creative process.

Year
1984
Songs
10
Duration
39 min 27 seg
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About the album

Forever Young, according to DoReSol

The band recorded the first pieces, including "Big in Japan" and "Forever Young". The latter, in its initial conception, was a more upbeat track, but they weren't entirely satisfied. It was producer Andreas Budde who proposed transforming it into a ballad, giving it the form we know today. Originally, they planned for "Forever Young" to be the second single. However, the record label requested an additional song between the two releases. Thus, "Sounds Like a Melody" was born, written and arranged in just two days. For Marian Gold, this represented a tension between his ideals and commercial pressure, even feeling like a compromise, although it also opened doors to new possibilities in pop music. In fact, this experience led Gold to avoid playing the song live for over fifteen years.

The album, which was recorded between January and August 1984 at Studio 54 in Berlin, featured the use of equipment such as the Roland TR-808 and Linn LM-1 drum machines, a Roland System-100M synthesizer, an ARP String Ensemble, and a Roland SDE 200 digital delay unit. The recording was done on Tascam 8-track tapes, and they used a Friendchip SRC machine to synchronize everything. Although some songs were composed in German, such as "Blauer Engel" or "Leben Ohne Ende", they were not included in the final release of the album, but appeared on B-sides or later compilations. The album was well received in Europe, reaching the number one spot in Norway and Sweden, and entering the top 20 in six other countries.