Dolby promoted himself as a kind of mad scientist, an egghead that had successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, using them to make catchy pop and electro-funk. Before he launched his solo career, Dolby had already worked as a studio musician, technician, and songwriter. After starting out as a teenaged live sound man, mixing The Fall, The Members and others using a PA he built himself, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club (also known as Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club) with Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich’s backing band and gave her his song "New Toy", which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges", on the English independent label Armageddon. By the autumn, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins", which nearly cracked the UK Top 40.
Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. That year, he played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders. His most distinctive session credit is that keyboard line after the chorus on Foreigner’s "Waiting for a Girl Like You". In that eventful summer, Dolby also collaborating with New York rappers Whodini to create "Magic’s Wand" – a pivotal early hip hop track (the first rap single to shift 1 million copies), and it also single-handedly started the new jack swing movement.
Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby’s first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982, the landmark album reaching number 13. "Windpower", the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit in the late summer. Other cuts from the album include "The Airwaves", and "One of Our Submarines", a meditation on the futility of empire.
In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which includes what would become his most well-known track, "She Blinded Me with Science" featuring a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song’s video. "She Blinded Me with Science" was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became a major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV’s heavy airplay of the video. Eventually, the song reached number five on the US charts and it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.
The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984, and harkens back to a time when songs mattered more than the video, even as MTV was discovering its strength. Opening with "Dissidents", conjuring up images of blacklisted authors and ugly snow, gray from oppression, with Matthew Seligman’s bass at the fore, lavish, growling, popping through octaves, funk-a-fied and twinkling with harmonics throughout the album. The title track is an R&B daydream of piano and Motown stabs of rhythm guitar. "Screen Kiss" has a similarly ethereal quality, and the lyrics are lush with imagery. The cover of Dan Hicks’ 1967 "I Scare Myself" is a balmy jazz club cocktail – faithfully nostalgic, right down to a bittersweet trombone solo from Peter Thomas. "Hyperactive" is one part bizarre to two parts infectious; guest vocalist Adele Bertei fuels the fire to what was already destined to be a memorable diversion beyond the reach of Top 40. The single became Thomas’ biggest UK hit, peaking at number 17.
During 1985, Dolby collaborated with artists including Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield and Herbie Hancock; and notched up some more high-concept production credits. George Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog were all midwifed by Dolby, who also was musical director for David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, for which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. (That credit led to a lawsuit from the Dolby Labs, who eventually prohibited the musician from using the name "Dolby" in conjunction with any other name than "Thomas.")
Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to a mixed reaction, although "Airhead" became a minor British hit. That same year, Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller. For the rest of the late 80s and early 90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and building his own computer equipment.
1992’s Astronauts and Heretics, features guest stars such as Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ofra Haza. The album opens with "I Love You Goodbye", one of Thomas’ most evocative songs, and ends with "Beauty of a Dream" which is also a contender for that honour. Highlights found inbetween include "Cruel" (a duet with Fairground Attraction’s Eddie Reader), "I Live in a Suitcase" and "Close But No Cigar".
The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace in Silicon Valley, releasing The Virtual String Quartet as its first program, and also pioneered technology for music on mobile phones. For the rest of the 90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a soundtrack to the animated short film Mind’s Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.
Thirteen years after Astronauts and Heretics, Dolby returned to live performance in 2006 with his solo Sole Inhabitant tour, which covered North America and the UK, with Thomas recreating the highlights of his earlier work from scratch, with a camera mounted like a miner’s lamp on his head, and a big screen showing the view from the artist, turning what would be a fairly dull one-man-and-a-rack-of-synths into a fascinating audio visual experience and an unintended masterclass for music technology students.
UK indie label Invisible Hands Music released a CD and DVD box set recorded on the Sole Inhabitant tour. These fresh and modern reinterpretations of Thomas’ work to date precedes a new studio album due in 2008, which is as-yet untitled, but does include a song about Britney’s ex Kevin Federline (“K-Fed”) who used an uncleared sample from "She Blinded Me with Science" and did not respond to legal approaches until a ‘cease-and-desist’ was posted in the comments field of his MySpace page. That song is called "My Karma Hit Your Dogma", and bodes well for a mighty return to form, combining Thomas’ humour and intelligence with a unique musical vision.
2011 saw Dolby get busy by returning with a new studio album A Map of the Floating City on 29 October. The album is broken down into three genres of Urbanoia's tales of city experiences; Amerikana as Dolby's take on his years living in America and it's roots music; and Oceanea: songs of life by the sea in his home country of England. The music was debuted first as download EPs to Dolby's online community and then previewed by a transmedia interactive game also called the FloatingCity.com.
Thomas Dolby is taking the music back on tour as a solo artist and with varying line-ups of bands, doing two tours of the UK in 2011, and has his first trip to Australia in February 2012 followed by dates in Japan. In March Dolby kicks off the Time-Capsule.tv tour at the SxSW Festival in Austin playing dates in USA and Canada through April. He will have a trailer parked at venues on his tour where you can produce a 30 second video offering words of wisdom to whoever will be walking the earth in the future. Dolby wants to give people a chance to “explain to an alien visitor what went wrong with our civilization. Our species may not be around on this planet much longer, so you might as well leave a welcome message for the next guys.”
Urges
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Skin tension under leatherette
A back bar somewhere in clubland
Cigarillo and the scene is set
See the bodies, now things're moving
Little twitches people can't explain
Young bodies, listen to them talking
New languagism in their veins
Same face in a new situation
The mirrorball holds mesmerised
He looks around, he's the new Clark Gable
Urges, urges, he get these urges
Don't want to talk about
Heartfelt urges, he get these urges
He's not supposed to talk about
Urges, urges, these restless urges
He don't want to talk about
Urges, urges, can't stop the urges
Lock them out.
She's here, the heat is rising
He move slowly she's a china doll
By degrees, he'll loosen her composure
She knows he knows she knows he knows.
One word to the man in the pulpit
She start twitching and she can't sit still
Seven inches of a black star liner
Try to contain the stuff that's in your body
Bit silly when your head's no good
When you're ashamed of things about your body
You keep drinking like you knew you would
In the foot light the ape in motion
Spins circles all across the floor
Mouth the words, assume the positions
For a second we can fool them all
Girl this time it's a new sensation
It's never been this way before.
I look at you and I feel half human
The opening lines of Thomas Dolby's song Urges introduce the listener to a scene in a club where a man is compelled by inexplicable desires coursing through his body. The song is a commentary on societal expectations of male behavior, particularly around sexuality and repression of feelings. The singer is dealing with hidden urges that he is afraid to talk about, and the lyrics hint at a sense of shame or guilt surrounding these desires. Dolby paints a picture of a seedy nightclub, complete with a back bar and cigarillo smoke, as the man tries to resist his urges but ultimately succumbs to them when a woman enters the scene.
The lyrics in Urges are cleverly crafted to convey the feelings of tension and temptation present in the story. Dolby makes references to pop culture figures like Clark Gable and uses words like "languagism" to create a sense of newness and confusion around the singer's feelings. The imagery of the mirrorball and the woman as a "china doll" add to the idea that this is a manufactured experience, as if the man is performing a role rather than acting out of genuine desire. The song overall is an exploration of the societal expectations placed on men and the ways that these expectations can lead to feelings of discomfort or even shame around one's own desires.
Line by Line Meaning
Early evening he get these urges
In the early evening, he experiences strong impulses
Skin tension under leatherette
He feels tense and excited under his leather clothing
A back bar somewhere in clubland
He is at a bar in the back of a club somewhere
Cigarillo and the scene is set
He is smoking a cigarillo and the atmosphere is perfect
See the bodies, now things're moving
As he watches the people around him, everything starts to move in sync
Little twitches people can't explain
The people around him start making small movements that they can't explain
Young bodies, listen to them talking
He hears the conversations of the young people around him
New languagism in their veins
The young people around him are speaking a new type of language that he finds interesting
Same face in a new situation
Even though he's in a new place, he's still the same person
The mirrorball holds mesmerised
He is mesmerized by the spinning disco ball
He looks around, he's the new Clark Gable
As he surveys the crowd, he feels like he's the new Clark Gable
Urges, urges, he get these urges
He experiences strong and persistent urges
Don't want to talk about
He doesn't want to discuss these urges with anyone
Heartfelt urges, he get these urges
His urges come from deep within his heart or soul
He's not supposed to talk about
He feels like he shouldn't talk about these urges because others might not understand
Urges, urges, these restless urges
His urges are making him feel restless and uneasy
He don't want to talk about
He really doesn't want to discuss his urges with anyone
Urges, urges, can't stop the urges
He can't control these urges and they are consuming him
Lock them out.
He wants to lock these urges away and forget about them
She's here, the heat is rising
A woman has arrived and the atmosphere is becoming more intense
He move slowly she's a china doll
He moves slowly towards her because she appears fragile like a china doll
By degrees, he'll loosen her composure
Gradually, he will make her feel more at ease with him
She knows he knows she knows he knows.
They are both aware of the sexual tension between them
One word to the man in the pulpit
He says one word to the man preaching in the club
She start twitching and she can't sit still
The woman starts to make nervous movements and can't sit still
Seven inches of a black star liner
He has a black star-shaped object that is seven inches long
Try to contain the stuff that's in your body
He is trying to control the urges that he feels within his body
Bit silly when your head's no good
It's pointless to try to control these urges when his mind is clouded
When you're ashamed of things about your body
He feels ashamed of some aspects of his physical being
You keep drinking like you knew you would
He keeps drinking alcohol to try and numb his feelings
In the foot light the ape in motion
In the spotlight, he moves around like an ape
Spins circles all across the floor
He spins around in circles on the dance floor
Mouth the words, assume the positions
He mouths the words to the song and takes on different dance poses
For a second we can fool them all
For a brief moment, they can pretend to be different people
Girl this time it's a new sensation
This time, the experience is new and different
It's never been this way before.
He has never felt this way before
I look at you and I feel half human
Looking at the woman makes him feel more alive and human
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: MORGAN, THOMAS DOLBY, THOMAS ROBERTSON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind