The Golden (Del)Age
Picking up where Mel & Kim and Bananarama left off, the 'Lage (as their fans probably referred to them) had a very sprightly, yet sexy, girl group sound with all the twinkly synths and rockin' dance beats one would hope to find in such a package. Singles "Rock the Boat" and "Running Back for More" stunned pop fans as they missed their mark on the charts and slid into almost instant obscurity. Why they flopped has sometimes been attributed to the mythical anti-PWL backlash, but I imagine European people were getting pretty sick of the signature handclaps and fairlights by that point anyway. (Still not a justification!) In any case, a year later Boy Krazy would avenge their demise with their US hit "That's What Love Can Do."
Until an extensive S/A/W anthology sees the light of day (and with a rumored reunion looming, it seems more likely now than it did a decade ago) , we highly recommend hunting down Delage's two best songs, "Running Back for More" and "I Wanna Shout About It." The former is a SoniaKylie treatise on the nature of love and the failure of intellectual instinct, the latter a bunch of electrobeats and some screaming.