"Brand New Lover" is a song recorded by the English pop band Dead or Alive. It was the lead single released from the band's third studio album, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know on Epic Records. It achieved international success when released as a single in 1986, including the United States and Japan, though it failed to enter the Top 20 in the UK.[1]
Background
Following a fraught six-month recording session with producers Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), which was marked by fights and disagreements between the band, record company and producers over the sound of their new material, lead vocalist Pete Burns claimed he struggled to get Epic Records to commit to a release schedule for the single.[1] He said this changed when Bananarama had major success with their Dead or Alive-inspired cover of "Venus", which Burns claimed encouraged the label to schedule "Brand New Lover" for release.[1] Later, Burns blamed the song's disappointing chart run in his home country on his then-ongoing war with his UK label, alleging that the company had failed to press and distribute enough copies of the single to make it a hit, and claiming the band had lost out on 67,000 UK sales as a result.[1]
Critical reception
Jerry Smith of the Music Week magazine described "Brand New Lover" as a "high energy dance track" with a "typically effervescent style", and praised Burns' "instantly memorable vocal" and SAW's "polished production".[2] By contrast, Ro Newton of Smash Hits considered "it's just the same old... Hi-NRG stomp" and "that's a lost thing" here, as there are "no surprises, no shocks and hardly worth the wait".[3] Retrospectively, in 2020, Daniel Griffiths of musicradar.com considered it a "criminally overlooked nine-minute-plus, rock guitar remix tour-de-force".[4] In 2021, British magazine Classic Pop ranked "Brand New Lover" number 31 in their list of "Top 40 Stock/Aitken/Waterman songs", adding that it "shared rhythmic similarities to their No.1 smash "You Spin Me Round" but leaned heavily on the synth-bass, with Pete Burns' goth-pop tones vocalising his need to flee his lover".[5]
Chart performance
"Brand New Lover" proved to be more successful in the US and in Japan than in the band's native UK, where it reached No. 31.[6] In the US, "Brand New Lover" peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the band's second and last single to reach the Top 20),[7] and spent two weeks at No. 1 on the American dance chart in December 1986.[8]
^Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 85. ISBN0-646-11917-6. N.B. The Kent Report chart was licensed by ARIA between mid 1983 and 19 June 1988.
