Naked Eyes

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Naked Eyes is a British new wave band  that rose to prominence in the early 1980s. Originally a duo, the band is known largely for its four US top 40 singles.

The first, a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David standard "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me". The band had subsequent hits with their own compositions, "Promises, Promises" (not to be confused with the Bacharach/David musical number), "When the Lights Go Out," and "(What) In the Name of Love."

Naked Eyes was formed by two college friends from Bath, England. The band features Pete Byrne on vocals and Rob Fisher on keyboards. The two had formerly played in a band called Neon, which also featured future members of Tears For Fears.

Naked Eyes was one of the first bands to make significant use of the Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer on a recording. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush had used the instrument on prior efforts, but the usage had been far less than Naked Eyes would employ on their debut effort.

The debut album Burning Bridges was produced by Tony Mansfield, along with the follow-up album Fuel for the Fire, which also featured two titles produced by Arthur Baker. Their second and third singles, "Promises, Promises" (the 12" mix of which features vocals from Madonna) and "When the Lights Go Out", were also hit singles.

Following the release of the band's second album, Byrne moved to California and immersed himself in session work. He performed on Stevie Wonder's "Part-Time Lover", sang backgrounds with Rita Coolidge and Princess Stephanie among others, and wrote and produced for the Olsen twins. Fisher also explored other projects, doing sessions in London and forming Climie Fisher with Simon Climie.

The group never toured because in the early 1980s technology was not advanced enough to reproduce their multi-layered, multi-synthesizer sound in concert. According to Denis McNamara, who was the program director at New Music station WLIR during the band's heyday, this has led to a "curiosity" about the group over the years. Rob Fisher died on 25 August 1999, aged 42, following surgery.

Byrne released a solo album The Real Illusion in 2001, which featured some of the last tracks he wrote with Fisher for a proposed third Naked Eyes album. In 2005, Byrne put a band together to play some Naked Eyes shows and has been touring regularly since. In 2007, Naked Eyes released Fumbling with the Covers, an acoustic album which consisted of covers of Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Elvis Costello, among others, along with the Naked Eyes hits.

In the summer of 2008, Naked Eyes completed a U.S. tour along with Belinda Carlisle, ABC and The Human League. In the summer of 2014, Naked Eyes did a U.S. tour with The Go-Go's, Scandal and The Motels.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blwc8myYLWA

Twenty years after its composition, "Always Something There to Remind Me" (so titled) reached the US Top Twenty for the first time via a synthpop reinvention of the song by Naked Eyes which reached the Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1983.

Vocalist Pete Byrne and keyboardist Rob Fisher first cut "Always Something There to Remind Me" as one of a number of demos recorded in Bristol upon forming the duo later known as Naked Eyes in early 1982. Byrne would recall: "I had always loved [the] song ["Always Something There to Remind Me"], so we called a friend who had the record, he read the lyric over the phone and we put it together from memory."

On the strength of the demos cut in Bristol Byrne and Fisher were signed to EMI Records in May 1982 and the track "Always Something There to Remind Me" was cut 1 September 1982 in a session at Abbey Road Studios produced by Tony Mansfield. Byrne would recall: "The record was recorded at Abbey Road, and we were invited to a party downstairs, with Paul McCartney and many other stars...When we returned upstairs to the studio around 1 a.m., I decided to have a go at the vocal, It was the first time I have ever recorded a vocal in one take".

Released in the US in January 1983, Naked Eyes' "Always Something There to Remind Me" gradually gained attention entering the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1983 to peak at #8 that June.[7] The cachet of entering the US Top Ten allowed the single, previously overlooked in its performers' United Kingdom homeland, to make a July 1983 UK chart debut, although it only rose to #59. "Always Something There to Remind Me" did afford Naked Eyes' Top 10 success in other countries besides the United States: Australia (#7), Canada (#9) and New Zealand (#2).

In Brazil, the song was included on the international soundtrack of the soap opera "Guerra dos Sexos/War Of the Sexes" in 1983.

Naked Eyes re-recorded the song as an acoustic version for the 2007 album Fumbling with the Covers.

In the Philippines, the song was one of the most popular singles released in 1983.