Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson; 14 October 1958 - London, UK) i… Read Full Bio ↴Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson; 14 October 1958 - London, UK) is an English musician and producer. He is one of the legends of electronic music. His career as a solo artist includes two of the most unique and recognizable hits of the genre," She Blinded Me With Science" and "Hyperactive!".
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.”
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.”
That's Why People Fall In Love
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
We have lyrics for these tracks by Thomas Dolby:
17 Hills The city rises on seventeen hills Seventeen hills from the …
Airhead I buy her all the right clothes and pretty jewels…
Airwaves Strange how the scale forms In tiny patterns On my atenna An…
Armageddon Inamoena tempora! ( Unhappy times! ) Bella ecce barbara! …
Beauty Of A Dream The beauty of a dream is you don't let it…
Blinded Me With Science It's poetry in motion She turned her tender eyes to me As…
Blinded with Science It's poetry in motion She turned her tender eyes to me As…
Budapest By Blimp On the corners of boulevards I call your name Now and…
Close But No Cigar You came close Close but no cigar You didn't miss by far You…
Commercial Breakup Night so bright - transmission smooth I take my head and…
Cruel Cruel, what a thing to do I've been cruel to you…
Dissidents One more young writer slid away in the night Over the…
Don't Turn Away I don't know why you're not talking to me I don't…
Eastern Bloc Here in England, it's so green Martian men can move unseen …
Europa Amd The Pirate Twins I was fourteen She was twelve Father traveled, hers as wel…
Europa And The Pirate Twins I was fourteen She was twelve Father traveled, hers as well,…
Evil Twin Brother I wasn't there That wasn't me It must have been my evil…
Field Work Better brush up on my field work Gonna brush up on…
Flying North Metal bird dip wing of fire Whose airlanes comb dark Earth T…
Hot Sauce They call her Hot Sauce She's hot and spicy But twice as…
Hyperactive Tell me about your childhood At the tender age of three I…
I Live In A Suitcase When all the lights go down This dirty desert town Is thea…
I Love You Goodbye I would never normally go bowling On a friday morning in…
I Scare Myself I scare myself just thinking about you I scare myself when…
I'm Not Your Dog Let it be Let it bleed Mother Mary On my knees I'm like a…
Leipzig Thirty nine and you need some leeway Soon you're eyeing the…
Leipzig is Calling Thirty nine and you need some leeway Soon you're eyeing the…
Love Is A Loaded Pistol Billie crept softly into my waking arms Warm like a sip…
May The Cube Be With You Late one night a happy martian with nothing to do Made…
Mulu The Rain Forest If I'm not sleeping It's because I'm frightened Of what I …
My Brain Is Like A Sieve My brain is like a sieve All the bad things you…
N.E.O N.E.O. Near Earth Object. A solid body whose orbit lies wi…
Neon Sisters (This song is for a friend because I never had…
Nuvogue That Sugar - I like that Sugar Sally but all she…
Oceanea Cannonballs Ricochet around the room I hurry home to lick my…
One Of Our Submarines One of our submarines is missing tonight Seems she ran agrou…
One of Our Submarines (Hardfloor Remix) [...missing... missing... missing... missing...] One of our…
One of Our Submarines (Thomas Dolby Live Mix) One of our submarines is missing tonight Seems she ran agrou…
Pedestrian Walkway Pedestrian walkway Pedestrian walkway Pedestrian walkway …
Pulp Culture I drove all over Hollywood Looking at the stars First I ate…
Puppet Theatre One more night in the puppet theater and i'm dancing on…
Quantum Mechanic Quantum Mechanic the matrix mathematic my Honda is erratic…
Radio Silence Caroline Makes the final adjustments In her rear,view mirror…
Road To Reno He was a crooked politician She sold brassieres at Sears H…
Sale Of The Century My economist's been in touch My commodities don't mean much…
Screen Kiss Miller time at the bar where all the English meet She…
She blinded me wih science It's poetry in motion She turned her tender eyes to me As…
She Blinded Me With Science It's poetry in motion She turned her tender eyes to me As…
She Blinded Me With Science (U.S. mix) "Yes, but as a known scientist it would be surprising…
Silk Pyjamas Silk pyjamas, silk pyjamas She was wearing silk pyjamas Usua…
Simone A dustbowl spread across the prairies The runway shimmered …
Spice Train I was drifting for days Where the sun don't shine While th…
The Ability To Swing Everybody talking Talking pretty hard Everybody talking 'Bou…
The Devil is an Englishman A poet walks amongst the Gods But jealous men have pulled…
The Flat Earth The Earth can be any shape you want it Any shape…
The Key To Her Ferrari There was one room in her house that was always…
The Wreck Of The Fairchild Spoken: Whiskey Zulu: Whiskey Zulu a torre …
To The Lifeboats In dreams the skies are azure blue The sea's a mirror…
Urban Tribal She'd talk to boys From the far side of town And in…
Urges Early evening he get these urges Skin tension under leathere…
Valley Of The Mind's Eye Ma chère Josephine, Que le monde a changé depuis ma dern…
Weightless Some nights he's weightless He has to travel His mouth is gr…
White City Keith was the sole inhabitant Keith was the sole inhabitant …
Windpower Switch off the mind and let the heart decide Who you…
Windpower (High Power Extended Switch off the mind and let the heart decide Who you…
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