Pheel Somerville

Scottish-born singer Jimmy Somerville became a surprise success in the mid-'80s. Instead of being Duran Duran-cute, Jimmy Somerville looked like the average boy next door. Instead of belting out his musical repertoire with a self-conscious urgency to prove himself as a singer (like Rick Astley or George Michael), Somerville possessed a dramatic, piercing falsetto that made the Associates' Billy Mackenzie sound like Tom Waits. But what really made Jimmy Somerville distinctive was his openness about his sexuality. The 1980s was the decade of androgyny, with artists like Annie Lennox, Boy George, and Poison emulating the gender-bending approach of 1970s-era David Bowie. Other performers such as Morrissey and the aforementioned George Michael kept their fans guessing about their sexual orientation.

Read My Lips is the 1989 debut solo album by Jimmy Somerville, former lead singer of the successful synthpop groups Bronski Beat and The Communards. The album was released through London Records. Singer Jimmy Somerville lent his soaring falsetto to two of the premier dance-pop outfits of the '80s, Bronski Beat and the Communards, before embarking on a solo career. Born in Glasgow, Scotland on June 22, 1961, he co-founded Bronski Beat in 1984; from the band's debut single "Smalltown Boy" onward, Somerville's songs dealt openly with his own homosexuality, a recurring theme that met with surprisingly little commercial resistance, as both the record and its follow-up, "Why?," cracked the U.K. Top Ten.

By the end of the '80s, Jimmy Somerville's records with Bronski Beat and the Communards sounded unpleasantly dated and of their time. By 2004, when a new generation of bands were taking Bronski Beat's take on skeletal dance-pop as one of their primary influences, Somerville's Home Again sounds both entirely in keeping with his earlier work and utterly contemporary. Songs like "Under a Lover's Sky" and the lovely ballad title track wouldn't sound out of place on a circa-1984 dancefloor musically, but Somerville's voice is a richer and more complex instrument decades on.