Kajagoogoo

Play Radio
Listen to Kajagoogoo Radio, featuring artists like Limahl, Arcadia, Living In A Box, Thompson Twins and more…

865,463 plays (192,776 listeners)

Shop now at Amazon | Send Kajagoogoo Ringtones to Cell
More options
Add to my Library

Leighton Buzzard, United Kingdom (1979 – 1986, 2008 – present)

Kajagoogoo is an English pop band best known for its first single, “Too Shy”, which reached Number 1 in the UK and Number 5 in the U.S in 1983. The single was produced by keyboardist Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and Colin Thurston who was, at this time, Duran Duran’s in-house producer.

The band was founded in Leighton Buzzard in 1979 as a four piece avant-garde instrumental group called Art Nouveau, with Nick Beggs on bass guitar, Steve Askew on lead guitar, Stuart Neale on keyboards and Jez Strode on drums. Art Nouveau released a track called “The Fear Machine”. The single sold a few hundred copies, and was played on the John Peel show, but the band could not get a record deal.

In 1981, they advertised for and auditioned lead singers, and finally chose Christopher Hamill. He made his profile, and therefore that of the band, catchier by using an anagram of his surname for his stage name, becoming Limahl. The name of the band was then changed to Kajagoogoo. Writing out the phonetics of a baby’s first sounds gave them “GagaGooGoo”. With a little bit of “casual” alteration it became Kajagoogoo.

The band attracted the interest of three record labels (and Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes) while performing at the Embassy Club in London. The band was signed to EMI in July of 1982, and Rhodes was signed to produce their first album, White Feathers. The debut single “Too Shy” was released in January of 1983 and went to the top of the charts (before any of Duran Duran’s singles had done so, Rhodes noted ruefully). Follow-up releases “Ooh to Be Ah” and “Hang on Now” both reached the UK top twenty as well.
Read more… Edit

Popular tags: 80s, new wave, pop, new romantic, synth pop  See more

Shouts: 75 shouts

Share this artist:

Top Albums

See more

Top Tracks

1
1,520
2
75
3
59
4
48
5
45
6
27
7
24
7  
24
7
24
10
23
11  
22
12
18
13
17
14  
16
15
15
Buy all tracks at Amazon MP3
See more

Shoutbox

Leave a comment. Log in to Last.fm or sign up (it’s free).
See all 75 shouts

Videos

See more

Top Listeners

See more

Recent Activity

Related Journals

See more

Groups (38)

See more

More Information

Links
Band Members
Labels
“Leggo my Last.fm!”

More Last.fm Sites: Blog | Music Manager | Build | Playground (Subscriber VIP zone) | Best of 2011

© 2012 Last.fm Ltd. All rights reserved. | Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | Updated Feb 11, 2009
Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
Text may also be available under the GNU Free Documentation License.