“Relax” is a glorious act of subversion often mistaken for a celebration of perversion. It brought gay sensibility to popular culture without camp or self-deprecation—something that very few mainstream hits, either before or after, have done.

Hold on a sec. Gay sensibility doesn’t quite describe things. “Relax” lives in the world of hardcore gay sex: leather, S&M, dimly lit clubs, and so on.¹ That’s not my interpretation. It’s what the band intended. Here’s the video:

The prurience isn’t the whole story, though. It’s the timing, not the titillation, that makes “Relax” an important and consequential milestone in gay music.

The song was released in 1983 and became a smash in 1984. There were plenty of hits before “Relax” that had a gay subtext, but most relied on innuendo, ambiguity, or plausible deniability.

Examples: “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man” (both from 1978), “I’m Coming Out” (1980), and “It’s Raining Men” (1982).²

There’s nothing ambiguous about one man telling another:

Relax, don’t do it
When you wanna go do it
Relax, don’t do it
When you wanna come³

Wait, How Did This Become a Mainstream Hit?

“Relax” reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. I see two reasons why it was so successful.

First, “Relax” was too good a song to ignore. It sounded like nothing that came before it: urgent, driven, and catchy as hell. That three-note synth riff (dum-dum-dum) is the best use of dums in music since Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (dum-dum-dum-DUM).

Even the BBC, who originally banned the song, couldn’t ignore it forever. They lifted the ban and invited Frankie Goes to Hollywood to perform “Relax” on the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops in 1984.⁴ It was the second best-selling song of the year, after all.⁵

Second, mainstream audiences didn’t object to the gay subtext because they were oblivious to it. They simply didn’t have the frame of reference to truly know what they were hearing.⁶

Coming to a Realization

It wasn’t just mainstream audiences that didn’t fully understand the song. It was also naïve 12-year-olds living sheltered lives in the suburbs of London. I’m referring to myself, of course.⁷

When “Relax” came out, I bought the single and album and played them repeatedly. I also tuned in to watch Frankie Goes to Hollywood perform on Top of the Pops. I even got ZX Spectrum game, which came on cassette and was bundled with an exclusive remix of “Relax.”

The commanding beat pulled me in; the pulsating rhythm wouldn’t let me go. was the commanding beat that grabbed me at the first note. The lyrics went right over my head.

Today, I understand both the music and its meaning. It’s a milestone in gay history that, more than four decades later, makes me and a lot of other people want to dance and sing along.

And, with that, I think it’s finally time for me to come … to the end of this post.

Dum-dum-dum.

Frankie Say Footnotes

1. These, of course, are things I have no first-hand knowledge of because I’m a nice Jewish boy and my mother might read this someday. ↩︎
2. I’m not linking to any Village People songs. I don’t like the company they keep these days. ↩︎
3. Not entirely convinced? Play to the song again and listen for the part that goes “Relax, don’t do it / once you’re inside of me.” ↩︎
4. On the other side of the Atlantic, MTV banned the video. Instead, they played a video of Frankie Goes to Hollywood performing it live. In 1984, the band released a straightwashed version that was directed by Brian De Palma and incorporated a bunch of clips from his movie Body Double. ↩︎
5. It was beaten out by “Do They Know It’s Christmastime,” which does not hold up nearly as well as “Relax” all these years later. ↩︎
6. It was a Miss Fame–level case of not seeing what’s right in front of you. ↩︎
7. Stop trying to do the math. I’m in my 30s. There’s a perfectly cromulent explanation for the apparent age discrepancy, which I will share as soon as I concoct it. ↩︎