B-Movie

Long after the new wave outfit B-Movie had disbanded, its signature track achieved far greater recognition. Taking its name from an Andy Warhol canvas, the group assembled in 1979 around Steve Hovington on vocals, Paul Statham on guitars, Graham Boffey on drums, and Rick Holliday on keyboards. Drawing from synth-pop trailblazers such as Ultravox and New Order, the band produced infectious material layered with keyboard textures. In the early 1980s they signed with the Some Bizarre label, and in 1981 they contributed to one of its compilation albums alongside then-emerging acts like Depeche Mode, Blancmange, and Soft Cell. Europe embraced the 1982 single “Nowhere Girl,” which nevertheless never reached the American Top Ten yet remained a staple on stations’ ’80s flashback programming. Hovington’s frosty vocals and Holliday’s brooding synth lines shaped the song into a lasting portrait of adolescent isolation; it reappeared on the 1992 Just Say Yesterday compilation and came to be viewed as an ’80s standard. Oddly, the recording outlasted the band itself. B-Movie issued the album Forever Running in 1985 before splitting. Boffey later joined Slaughterhouse 5, Statham worked with Peter Murphy, and Hovington started the techno project Amethyst.