SECRET SERVICE TOP SECRET COMPILATION ALBUM STOCKHOLM RELEASE: NOVEMBER 13, 2000 REVIEW: DECEMBER 15, 2000

I honestly thought I had forgotten all about Secret Service. That was before I put this greatest hits record on and memories started flooding over me. I must have heard some of these songs not once or twice, but something like a hundred times back when I was too little to know the names of bands or songs.
Secret Service is hardcore nostalgia in Sweden, the very definition of early eighties synthesizer sleaze. It is also one of the early huge export successes of the Swedish music industry. Tracks like their first single "Oh Susie" and a later international hit, "Flash in the Night", make it very clear why they broke so big: think ABBA mixed with The Beegees, bathed in cheesy synthesizer sounds. Like ABBA and Army of Lovers, Secret Service was the kind of Mediterranean gaydisco outfit that very rarely shows up on our northern shores. When it happens, it inevitably conquers the world.
"Top Secret" includes a few new songs written by original members and notably with a little help from a certain Mr Bard, previously in the aforementioned Army of Lovers. But the new songs can hardly compete with the stuff from around 1982, that has the power of sentimentality as well as almost nauseatingly perfect disco choruses.
I feel very ambivalent in writing this review. On one hand, it sounds terribly kitsch, stale and devoid of any kind of depth. At the same time, it forces me to look back at the time when I happily listened to Howard Jones and Fancy. One can not deny that Secret Service knew how to work their songs into your head. Let's just say this is an important document of a time long gone by.

MATTIAS HUSS