Their fourth album – DREAMĬOME TRUE (1986) – was a radical departure from their classic sound,Īnd when the album didn’t fare well in the charts, the remaining trio went Throwing their creative trajectory off its axis. STORY OF A YOUNG HEART (1984) – before Reynolds left the band, – the darker LISTEN (1983) and the ambitious concept album THE Oh, and did I mention that they won a Best Rock Instrumental Performance Grammy for “DNA” from their debut album? These four musicians created their own musical world and for a few years, they were untouchable. It’s a guitar and synth instrumental that just happens to have vocals. Take a listen to the glorious “Space Age Love Song”, for example. The band may have been lumped into the ‘Synth Pop’ category, but Reynolds’ guitar work was just as important to their sound as the keyboards and Score’s voice and futuristic lyrics. With their self-titled album, Mike, his brother Ali Score (drums), Frank Maudsley (bass) and Paul Reynolds (guitar) set the bar extremely high, both for themselves and for their contemporaries. But apart from that big hit, did the band have much else to offer? Oh, yeah.

When the single “I Ran” was released (before Score’s hair grew wings), the timing was perfect and AFOS’ career began to soar. Mixing mood-inducing synth work with delay-laden guitar licks, A Flock Of Seagulls straddled the line between the cool coldness of early OMD and the bold bravado of U2, bringing both worlds together while adding a bit of sci-fi imagery and immediate commercial pop hooks. And THAT is a shame because for a few years there, AFOS was one of the finest Pop bands of the era. While it earned the band plenty of attention back in the heady days of MTV, it ended up hurting their musical legacy in the long run. Nearly 40 years after the release of their debut album, Liverpudlian quartet A Flock Of Seagulls is still best remembered for Mike Score’s aviation-approved hairstyle.

Flock of seagulls hair 2019