https://www.discogs.com/release/157622-Alphaville-Forever-Young
As written before, Alphaville came to my attention because of a student in my second year of studying. I don’t think I remember that much about her, except she was into books. A lot. Of books. I admired her house, it was filled with old musty tomes in big wooden book cases. I know, this has nothing to do with Alphaville, but hey.
This music never gets old for me. Indeed, it is forever young. The namesake of the album is not the first single that was published. That honour fell to Big in Japan. The story goes that singer and band leader Marian Gold heard the story that if you want to sell records, you do it in Japan. When you later publish in Europe you can say you are big in Japan. Japan was known to have a huge market.
Big in Japan skyrocketed the starting band into the charts. After that, the music executives wanted more, so before Forever young would come out, they wanted another guaranteed hit: Sounds like a melody. The band did it, but they didn’t have to like it. Marian Gold later said: ‘Writing music exclusively for the sake of commercial success seemed like the sell-out of our virtual beliefs‘. They refused to play the song live.
