The spiky synth pop of Spandau Ballet's first single, "To Cut a Long Story Short," owes more to the seemingly uncommercial likes of early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark than to the smooth, soulful pop hits that turned the bandmembers into megastars within the year. Built on not much more than a dirty, overdriven synth sound and a stomping Gary Glitter-like backbeat under Tony Hadley's herky-jerky vocal tics, "To Cut a Long Story Short" is almost minimalist, but it has an infectious, bubblegummy quality that links it to the kind of gloriously dumb glam rock one-hit wonders that undoubtedly helped inspire the future Spandaus at an impressionable age. If the group had never gone on to much, this would likely be considered a minor lost classic of the early-'80s U.K. synth pop scene; as it stands, it's so unlike Spandau Ballet's later, bigger hits that it's largely forgotten.

Spandau Ballet - To Cut A Long Story Short