The Communards

British synth-pop duo, active 1985 to 1988

Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles recorded together as The Communards between 1985 and 1988, pairing Somerville’s falsetto with Coles’s keyboards and a hi-NRG pulse. Their 1986 reading of “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, with guest vocalist Sarah Jane Morris answering Somerville in a startlingly deep contralto, went to number one in the UK for four weeks and finished the year as the country’s biggest-selling single. It is a genuinely inventive arrangement and the reason a whole generation knows the song at all — the only thing wrong with the popular credit is the date.

Who recorded it

Songs credited to The Communards that are covers

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