Frankie Goes To Hollywood will reunite to play at a Eurovision Song Contest concert next month.
Thirty-six years after they originally split up, the group – fronted by Holly Johnson – will perform at the ‘National Lottery’s Big Eurovision Welcome’ outside of St George’s Hall in Liverpool on May 7, following reports of a reunion earlier this month.
Confirming the one-off performance, the singer shared: “Frankie Goes To Eurovision. To celebrate the UK hosting the Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine in our hometown of Liverpool, I’m happy to announce that Frankie Goes To Hollywood will reunite to perform at the opening concert of this very special event.”
According to a press release, the show will “celebrate Liverpool’s incredible musicality” and feature performances other acts connected to the city, including Atomic Kitten, The Real Thing, and The Lightning Seeds.
Meanwhile, Austria’s 2014 Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst and Ukrainian winner Jamala from 2016, will also take part in the concert, hosted by AJ Odudu and Joel Dommett.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – also starring Paul Rutherford, Mark O’Toole, Brian Nash and Peter Gill – scored a run of hit singles, including the chart-topping Relax, Two Tribes, and The Power of Love, before splitting in 1987.
They last reunited in 2003 for VH1’s ‘Bands Reunited’, however they did not perform.
The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Liverpool with last year’s runners up, the United Kingdom, hosting on behalf of Ukraine. The Grand Final takes place on May 13, following a pair of Semi-Finals on May 9 and 11, with preparations well underway at the Liverpool Arena.
Production design is being helmed by Australian-born, New York creative Julio Himede, who opened up on the undertaking in an exclusive interview with RETROPOP’s May 2023 issue, admitting that Eurovision is “more unique than any other show that I can think of around the world”.
“We very carefully spent a lot of time looking at camera angles and floor plans to make everything feel united,” he said of the show, which has the slogan ‘United By Music’. “The arena’s quite big, so how do we make it feel like it’s all part of this ‘hug’, this welcoming message that we want to portray. So there’s a lot of production values that we bring into it.”
Referring to the set as “an immersive environment and a landscape that includes the audience and the artists performing on stage as one,” there are more than 450 square metres of staging, bringing together another 220 square metres of independently moving and turning video screens, as well as over 700 video tiles integrated into the floor and more than 1500 metres of LED lights.
“Lighting plays a major factor in how the viewers at home experience the set design, as well as other effects like pyro, smoke,” he added, revealing there are elements of automation and lighting in this year’s show that have never been seen at Eurovision before. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors that we bring to make it feel immersive.”
A big part of that, he reveals, are expansive video screens. “Eighty per cent of the architecture of the set is made out of video panels and video surfaces – not only on the back walls, but also on the floor, the ceiling, and the side sections – so that allows us to transform the stage design in a matter of seconds, whoever is performing,” Julio shared.
“We are having conversations with each country, showing them this design, what it has to offer, and the different areas within the stage. We’ll show them some of the tricks that the stage can do, because there are a few areas that automate and we want to give them access to that element.”
He added: “Then they bring their own creative which we help them elevate, so it’s a back and forth and we’re in the middle of that right now. What you have seen in some of the performances from the countries so far, some of them are sticking to what they have and some of them are bringing in other elements that extend the creative even further.”
