Book Of Love

Synth pop outfit Book of Love stood out as reliable fixtures on dance floors throughout the 1980s. The quartet came together in Philadelphia in 1984 when four former art-school classmates—Susan Ottaviano on vocals, Ted Ottaviano handling keyboards and vocals, Jade Lee on keyboards and vocals, and Lauren Roselli also on keyboards and vocals—decided to form a band. Although Susan and Ted share a surname, the two share no familial tie and were never married. Earlier, Susan, Ted, and Lee had worked together under the name Head Cheese.

In 1985 the newly minted group cut “Boy,” a brisk, anxious snapshot of adolescent worries that reached DJ Ivan Ivan, who passed the track along to Sire Records chief Seymour Stein. Stein promptly offered the band a deal. “Boy” soon climbed the college and club listings, while the follow-up “I Touch Roses” reached the top of the dance survey. Their self-titled first album arrived in 1986, and the buoyant single “You Make Me Feel So Good” found mainstream Top 40 airplay. At a time when most synthesizer-driven acts were fronted by men, Book of Love supplied a distinctly female viewpoint that had been missing from the genre.

After supporting Depeche Mode on tour, the group issued Lullaby in 1988. A club-friendly rework of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells (Theme From the Exorcist)” topped the dance chart once more, and “Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls” tackled the still-sensitive topic of AIDS. Two additional studio albums followed before the members parted ways in 1993. A career overview titled I Touch Roses: The Best of Book of Love surfaced in 2001.