Limahl

Best known for his pair of glossy synth-pop smashes carried by a rich, sultry vocal timbre, Limahl first rose to prominence in 1983 fronting Kajagoogoo. Their alluring club track “Too Shy” claimed the top spot on the British singles chart and in several other territories while climbing to number five on America’s Hot 100. After an early split from the band, he scored another international success the following year with his solo rendition of the theme to the fantasy feature The NeverEnding Story. Although his final British chart entry occurred in 1986, Limahl continued to record intermittently and appeared at occasional nostalgia festivals. Kajagoogoo regrouped to issue the single “Death Defying Headlines” featuring Limahl in 2008, and after he was depicted in two 2019 installments of American Horror Story: 1984, he issued the new song “Still in Love” in 2020.

Born Christopher Hamill in Wigan, England, in 1958, he derived his stage name from an anagram of his surname. He began as an actor, securing minor roles in stage productions and television programs in the late seventies. Under his birth name he made an initial solo bid for a recording contract and moved through several short-lived groups before winning an audition for Kajagoogoo in 1982. The band’s debut single, “Too Shy,” produced by Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and David Bowie associate Colin Thurston, reached number one in Britain, Ireland, and Germany during the early months of 1983 and landed inside the American Top Five. Their first album, White Feathers, followed in April 1983 and peaked at number five in the U.K. and number 28 stateside.

Kajagoogoo parted company with Limahl toward the close of 1983 and kept charting in Europe behind bassist Nick Beggs’ lead vocals. Limahl was then selected to perform the Giorgio Moroder-composed title song for the 1984 fantasy film The NeverEnding Story. The track became a transatlantic success, entering the Top Five across the U.K. and six additional European nations while reaching number 17 on the Hot 100. It was promptly included on his EMI debut solo album, Don’t Suppose, released in late 1984. Retaining the same production approach, he collaborated more extensively with Moroder on the 1986 follow-up Colour All My Days. The record failed to chart, yet the single “Love in Your Eyes” managed a modest placement inside the British Top 100. Six years passed before his third solo effort, Love Is Blind, appeared on the German imprint Bellaphon in 1992.

Following an initial period spent on the eighties nostalgia circuit, Limahl joined the retro revue What a Feeling! in autumn 2000 and spent the next year touring the U.K. with a set of period pop covers. In late 2003 he rejoined Kajagoogoo for a 2004 installment of VH1’s Bands Reunited and subsequently guested on German and British reality programs such as Comeback and Hit Me Baby One More Time. A handful of European festival performances with the group took place in 2008 alongside the release of “Death Defying Headlines,” their first new recording with Limahl on lead vocals in twenty-five years. A remix EP surfaced the next year. In 2012 Limahl issued the solo track “1983” on Dig Music along with a companion remix EP on Rödtopp Records and later self-released the seasonal single “London for Christmas.” He maintained a presence on eighties package tours through 2018.

A fresh wave of interest arose when “The NeverEnding Story” featured in the season-three finale of the Netflix series Stranger Things in mid-2019. Actor Misha Crosby recreated Limahl’s signature high-contrast blond-and-black hairstyle for appearances in two episodes of American Horror Story’s ninth season, subtitled 1984, that November. The singer himself surfaced again with the original song “Still in Love” in June 2020.