An Electric Combination: Philip Oakey And Giorgio Moroder
The collaboration between a master producer and a British musician who blazed his own trail in electro-pop.
The latter-day reappraisal of Giorgio Moroder by the modern club community has been deserving recognition of one of the great dance music producers and creators we’ve ever known. Much of the retrospective appreciation of his career rightly focuses on his work with Donna Summer, and his Grammy-winning writing and composing for the films Midnight Express and Flashdance. But we’re looking today on his collaboration with a British musician who blazed his own trail in electro-pop.
On August 10, 1985, nearly a year after Moroder and Philip Oakey of the Human League had hit the UK Top 3 with their movie theme song “Together In Electric Dreams,” they made the British charts with a whole album together. This came during a period when the Italian writer-producer was in huge demand for major movie scores, leading to another UK hit with Kajagoogoo frontman Limahl on “The NeverEnding Story” and then his score for the blockbuster hit Top Gun.
Although Electric Dreams is now largely forgotten as a film, its theme song became a much-loved pop classic of its time, rising to No.3 in the UK during a five-week run in the Top 10 in 1984. Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder rather missed the momentum of the hit, as it wasn’t released until July of the following year, by which time two more singles from it, “Goodbye Bad Times” and “Be My Lover Now,” had come and gone, missing the Top 40.
The album debuted on the UK chart at No.52, but spent only one further week in the Top 75. It turned out to be Moroder’s last studio album in his own name until his acclaimed return in 2015, at the age of 75, with Déjà Vu, which featured guest appearances by Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Kelis, and many others.
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