(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover / Gotfryd Bernard / Library of Congress)
Wed 1 April 2026 7:00, UK
A lot of artists think they want success: to be one of the biggest pop acts around and to tour endlessly. That’s what Trevor Horn, a musician-turned-producer from Durham, thought he wanted, until he actually got it.
Before he worked full-time as a producer and record label owner, he saw a great deal of success in his band The Buggles, who had a huge hit with ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. Horn found himself on the road, travelling around the world and taking the song to the masses. Sounds like fun, right? Well, not quite.
“I’d dragged my arse all the way round Europe with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’,” he said when discussing a newfound disdain for the song’s popularity. “I’d been on so many TV shows in so many different countries, miming all the time. The boredom of having to do that over and over again put me off being an artist. I really wanted to get back in the studio because that’s really where I came from.”
Horn did exactly that, as he left being an artist behind and decided to look for new talent instead. This is where the real challenge began, as he needed to get himself out into the world to try and find the next big thing. There were plenty of different bands trying to push boundaries, and so he was spoilt for choice, but it was hard working out who would be the ones to capture the public’s imagination.
Horn had an epiphany when he was watching The Tube, a TV show that was a platform for all things music in the UK. While watching, Frankie Goes To Hollywood were playing an early rendition of ‘Relax’, and Horn heard the potential. The song played on the radio again when he was driving home one night, and he knew immediately that the band had serious potential.
“I was driving home from the studio one night and I heard it again,” recalled Horn, “On the radio, and when I heard it again the song really registered with me. I thought, ‘that’s a really catchy song’.”
Horn was worried about trying to sign the band, as he was still establishing himself in the industry and assumed that, because of the quality of the song, a lot of people would be trying to get them on board. However, when he eventually reached out to the band, he found that they hadn’t had so much as a phone call. While the song was good, the look of the band and the racy lyrics in their lead single proved a bit too much of a risk for labels.
“We thought that we were gonna have to fight all the record labels off,” he said. “We thought that all the record labels would be after them. Nobody wanted them, because it was all too gay and violent.”
This was the general reception to the band when their song ‘Relax’ began to climb the charts. It was incredibly controversial, with some radio stations going so far as to ban it from being played. The lyrics were explicit, and the over-the-top look of the band also put people off. Horn said they ended up dialling back their luck in a bid to become more marketable, as they knew they had the potential to be successful if they just left some of their more flamboyant looks by the wayside.
“The band did it themselves because there comes a point where people want success, and you get a chance to be on Top Of The Pops,” said Horn. “They weren’t very keen on people who were wearing leather bum splitters with knives between their legs. It just doesn’t go down very well.”
