Erasure are an English synth pop duo band consisting of keyboardist Vince Clarke and singer Andy Bell.
Erasure entered the music scene in 1985 with their debut single "Who Needs Love Like That" (see 1985 in music). They established themselves on the British charts and became one of the most successful artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s. From 1986 to 1997, Erasure achieved twenty-four consecutive Top 20 hits in the UK. By 2007, 34 of their 40 singles have made the Top 40, with 17 climbing into the Top 10. Although most popular in their native UK, the duo has also achieved success in Europe, the USA, Japan, and Latin America. To date, Erasure have recorded worldwide album sales of over 25 million.
From the start, Erasure's success was founded upon their songwriting skills. Vince Clarke's talent for writing melodic and catchy pop songs was evident from his years with Depeche Mode and Yazoo. As a lyricist and melodist, the singer Andy Bell added depth and character to Clarke's electronic style.
Albums such as The Circus, The Innocents, Wild!, Chorus, I Say I Say I Say, Erasure, Loveboat and Nightbird demonstrated a further diversity of sound. As pop craftsmen, the pair's work bears comparison with that of Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), a-ha, Roxette, Tears for Fears, The Lightning Seeds, and other enduring pop songwriters originating from the 1980s.
The duo's singer, Andy Bell, is openly gay and has often reflected this through his outfits and gestures on stage, at a time when Western society as a whole was less accepting of homosexuality than it is today — making Erasure's success all the more notable.
