One hit wonders: T’Pau “Heart and Soul”

Hailing from Shroshire, T’Pau became a one hit wonder with the song, “Heart and Soul”, which peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts in 1987 after being featured in a commercial for Pepe Jeans. The group was going to call itself Talking America but then changed to T’Pau, a name lifted from a Star Trek episode called “Amok Time”. In this episode, T’Pau was a Vulcan priestess played by Celia Lovsky (Soylent Green). Trekkers will no doubt recall that T’Pau was the first person Spock would salute with his famous “V” hand gesture. I doubt Celia was aware that a British pop band would adopt her character’s name, or that the elaborate costume that she was wearing would sell for $45,000 at auction forty years later.

The song owes its origins to the JX3P keyboard, which was top of the line at the time. One of the band’s guitarists, Ron Rogers programmed the unforgettable bass riff and everything else flowed from that. When I first saw the video, I thought the band was fronted by a pair of red-headed twins: one who liked to wear her hair down and rap, and the other who liked to wear her hair up and sing. But that is not the case – there was only one female lead singer, the amazing Carol Decker.

T’Pau actually went on to have several more big hits in the UK, but never again in the US. I don’t quite understand why. Carol Decker has an incredible voice and lead guitarist Dean Howard, who played with Deep Purple, brought solid rock credentials to punch up their pop sound. Maybe things would have been different if Decker accepted a role to play Don Johnson’s wife on this hit show Miami Vice, which would have inevitably led to a duet. Check out their 1993 compilation, “Heart and Soul – The Very Best of T’Pau” for an excellent retrospective of this underrated band.

Here is a 2011 acoustic performance by Decker, singing their biggest UK hit, "China In Your Hand":