Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Watching The Wildlife

The seventh and final UK single from the controversial 80s band Frankie Goes To Hollywood, was the third track to be lifted from their second studio album Liverpool.

You can watch the official ZTT video on the main FGTH page, but for this page I have included the band's very last live performance.

The 12 inch versions were, as always with Frankie, particularly good, featuring real orchestral string arrangements. However, I remember many fans complaining at the time that Frankie should've released Maximum Joy instead of this track. I have to agree, although the track would have needed a remix with a stronger drum track added to make it more single/radio friendly.

Watching The Wildlife Vinyl dolphin - Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Released on Feb 23rd 1987, Watching The Wildlife reached Number 28 in the UK singles chart and #23 in Germany. It was the band's worst performing single in the charts, although this was inevitable.

After all the controversy over the lyrics in the "Relax" single - "Relax Don't Do It" was basically telling everyone to delay ejaculation and not to use protection during sexual intercourse - Frankie caved in to the media frenzy over Aids becoming a global epidemic, and decided that this single should feature the message "Use A Condom".

Frankie T-shirts

Promotional singles with a free condom attached to the single were issued (and are very rare), and this idea was intended to be applied to the singles distributed to record stores. However, new chart rules would have meant that sales of the single would not have been counted towards the band's chart position, so this idea was quickly scrapped.

Two sleeves were released for both the 7" and 12" vinyl UK versions. I bought the 12" featuring the dolphin and never realised (at the time) that a sleeve with a panda had been released. The B-side featured an atmospheric new track called The Waves.

A cassette single was also released and this was included free with the 2011 deluxe reissue of the Liverpool album which featured 23 tracks, including The Waves.

Liverpool Vinyl - Frankie Goes To HollywoodBUY from AMAZON

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FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD "WATCHING THE WILDLIFE"

Frankie Say Wear A Condom