Holly Johnson

Born in Liverpool in 1960, Holly Johnson first emerged in the late-1970s local punk and new wave scene as the bassist for Big in Japan, before releasing his first solo singles, “Yankee Rose” in 1979 and “Hobo Joe” in 1980. Johnson then took a central role in Frankie Goes to Hollywood as lead singer and one of the main songwriters, at the time when the band established in the mid-1980s a taut, heavily produced pop sound drawing on dance, synth-pop and provocative imagery. After the group effectively split, Holly Johnson launched a solo career with Blast in 1989, followed by Dreams That Money Can’t Buy (1991), Soulstream (1999) and Europa (2014), developing a more personal voice that mixes electronic pop, melodic choruses and dance-pop formats. His work is not limited to music: in 1994 he published the autobiography A Bone in My Flute, collaborated the same year with Ryuichi Sakamoto on “Love & Hate” and has pursued a parallel career as a painter and visual artist, exhibiting notably in Liverpool. In 2023 Johnson briefly reunited with Frankie Goes to Hollywood on stage in Liverpool for a special reunion.