If anything was the role model, clearly Duran Duran's massive success had gone to Burns' head, from the dry slap-bass to the synth melodies. Pretty much everything on the album came from somewhere else: the squiggly early-'80s keyboards/beat neo-disco production, the occasional blasts of clattering drums, the gang shout choruses, and the overall air of sex, sex, and more sex. By this time, the murky gloom of earlier singles was starting to give way to a more freely mainstream approach, though the combination of Burns' outrageous appearances and his utterly over-dramatic singing style helped ensure they never went down totally easy on the charts. Burns and his crew created a weird sort of landmark with Sophisticated Boom Boom, though ultimately it's a bit more memorable as being the dry run for later successes as opposed to being fully notable on its own. Whether or not Dead or Alive was the first synth-goth band in history is a bit open to debate, but they were unquestionably in on the ground floor somewhere.
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