Howard Jones is a British musician, singer and songwriter. He had ten top 40 hit singles in the UK between 1983 and 1986; six of those 10 singles reached the top ten. He appeared as a solo artist in local venues in High Wycombe before inviting mime artist Jed Hoile to perform improvised choreography as Jones played behind him. In 1983, he hired the Marquee Club in London and invited record labels to come and see him perform. After a BBC Radio 1 session, Jones obtained support slots with China Crisis and OMD before signing to Warner Music in mid-1983.
His first single, “New Song”, was released in September 1983. It reached the Top 30 in the US and the Top 5 in the UK. He made his debut performance on Tops of the Pops on 22 September 1983, and he watched his tape-delayed performance on a borrowed television resting on an ironing board before a concert.
He had four more hits over the next twelve months and a UK Number 1 album, Human’s Lib, which eventually went double platinum. Bill Bryant was credited with jointly writing the lyrics for six songs on the album. “New Song”, “What is Love?”, and “Pearl in the Shell” all did well during 1983 and 1984. Human’s Lib was certified gold and platinum in several countries. Jones had developed a loyal teen following. His parents ran his fan club.
In the summer of 1984, he released “Like to Get to Know You Well”, which he said was ‘dedicated to the original spirit of the Olympic Games.’ Although it was not an official Olympic anthem for L.A Games that summer, it was a worldwide hit. It reached Number 4 in the UK Singles chart. The sleeve featured the song title in ten different languages while Jones sang the title line in French and German on the extended 12″ version. The song also appeared in the filmBetter Off Deal (1985) and the the game Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories (2006).
Jones’ second LP was a remix album.It contained six songs, all but one of which had been previously released, but which appeared in elongated formats, including the multilingual version of “Like to Get to Know You Well”. The album was certified gold in the UK.
In 1985, Jones released his second studio album, Dream Into Action, which included backup work by the trio Afrodiziak. One of the album’s tracks, “No One Is To Blame”, was later re-recorded, featuring Phil Collins as drummer and producer, and performing backing vocals. (This second version appears on Jones’s U.S. EP “Action Replay, Jones’s most successful album, Dream Into Action was popular worldwide; it reached number two in the UK and number 10 in the US and remained on the US chart for almost a year. The singles “LIfe In One Day”, “Things Can Only Get Better”, and “Look Mama” appeared on this album. In July 1985, Jones performed at Wembly Stadium as part of the Live Iad concert, singing his 1984 hit “Hide and Seek” and playing piano. He also embarked on a world tour.
The EP Action Replay was released in 1986. It included the remixed version of “No One Is to Blame”. The song was Howard Jones’s biggest US hit, reaching number 4 on the chart. However, by this time, his fortunes were changing in his native UK, and “No One Is to Blame” peaked at number 16. His next single, “All I Want”, peaked at number 35, and would be his last UK Top 40 hit. Jones released his third studio album, One to One, in October 1986, which peaked at number 10 in the UK and would be his last UK hit album, despite achieving gold sales status. Stateside, however, Jones continued to fill large arenas, and the single “You Know I Love You… Don’t You?” went top twenty in 1986 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.
