The sound of the 1980s – the surging synths, the mellow grooves, the seductive vocals – is alive and well today, but there was once a time when synthetic and electronic music dubbed new wave was out of fashion. “When we started, it was tough,” Terri Nunn, vocalist for Berlin, tells HollywoodLife. Speaking ahead of her band’s tour with Culture Club and Howard Jones – which kicked off on July 13 and runs throughout August — Terri remembered a time that electronic music had to struggle to find any mainstream spotlight. “When we started, it was punk. This was 1977. It was punk, it was pop, power pop, it was arena rock. So, this electronic thing was, ‘What’s that?’ It was hard to get taken seriously and for people to get it. ‘Where’s the guitars?’ They just wanted what was going on.”
“Now, we are fortunate because it’s still going,” Nunn tells HL. “I took my daughter to see Billie Eilish recently, and it’s all electronic, completely. Finneas is on a keyboard, and there’s a drummer, her singing and electronic tracks. I love it. And it makes sense to me. That’s why I loved electronic music to begin with because all these sounds were available.”
Though numerous genres of music found momentum in the 1980s – post-punk, early hip-hop, thrash metal, soft rock, dance-pop – the decade has become synonymous with electronic sounds and synthesizers, as they captured the optimism and potential of the times. It was that experimental spirit that caused John Crawford to co-found the band that Terri would eventually join.
“Before electronic music, it was just set sounds,” explains Nunn. “It was keyboard and guitar and drums and vocals, and that was it. Maybe some horns, but not really in rock. So, all of a sudden, John’s playing me these bands from overseas, and they’re weird sounds. We got a keyboard, we got a synthesizer, and it’s doing all this f–king great stuff. It’s endless what you can do and what you know can add. So, I think that’s really why it has continued because it’s endlessly fascinating.”
It wasn’t just the synths and compositions that led to Berlin’s success. It was the pairing of the brand-new sonic technology with Terri’s powerful voice. This marriage of machine and organic, of a classic pop starlet and synth soundscapes saw Berlin become one of new wave’s brightest acts. They entered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with “The Metro” and followed with songs like “Sex (I’m A…),” “No More Words,” and “Now It’s My Turn.” In 1986, the band hit No. 1 with “Take My Breath Away,” a song used on the Top Gun soundtrack and the band’s fourth album, Count Three & Pray.
“When we started working together, John and I, and his soundscapes against my… I’m a very emotional person,” says Nunn. “And, back then, everything was intense and wild, and I would just freak out a lot. So, that emotion, with the backdrop of machines, was just such a cool [pairing]. That really works. You haven’t heard that before. You heard it little — I mean, Alison Moyet. I felt that when I heard Yazoo, what became Yaz, because she had such a soulful voice, and then again she had those machine-like backdrops to this voice.”
Now, with the synth-pop sound that Berlin pioneered all over steaming services, playlists, commercials, and movie soundtracks, it’s time for those at the forefront of the sonic revolution to collect their flowers. It’s why Berlin and Howard Jones have joined Culture Club – fronted by Boy George – for the summer’s The Letting It Go Show tour. “It is a privilege for me to play with both of these bands because they’re iconic, and they are themselves,” Terri tells HL.
“We’ve done a few shows recently, and I think that’s why this all came together because those shows went so well,” she explained. “We, as bands and crews, got along so well. It was just a great time. Watching Culture Club show it’s its own thing. It’s not rock, it’s not pop, but it’s both of those things. It’s just its own vibe.”
From there, Terri likens this “vibe” to that of Steely Dan, the “yacht rock” band that has taken hold of Millennials (Publications have remarked about Donald Fagen and Walker Becker’s resurgence for years with articles like “How Millennials Came To Unironically Love Yacht-Rock Kings Steely Dan” and “Are You Relivin’ the Years?: How Steely Dan Became a Cult-Favorite for Millennials“) When asked her thoughts on why these younger fans are vibing on these older songs, Terri offers this: “It’s good music.”
She explains how this vibe permeates electronic music. “It has that combination of emotion with modernity,” she says. “It just sounds fresh. It’s unique, and you can make it yours in ways nobody else ever has because of all the sounds you can create. So, maybe that’s why it resonates with them. It can be theirs, and they’ve made it theirs.”
Though Terri and Berlin have weathered a few storms over the decades, she and the band sound like they were plucked from the 1980s. They recently performed at Cruel World in Pasadena, wowing longtime fans who saw them in the ’80s and new listeners discovering the group beyond their radio hits.
For Terri to maintain this vitality over the years, she shifted her lifestyle and mindset. “I have a career, and it takes a lot of energy. It’s good because I love what I do, but it also, it’s a very physical job, so it’s important to stay healthy,” she says. “I can’t party like I did when I was in my twenties. I’m vegan now. My body just likes it. It stays healthier, and it works better that way.”
Thankfully, it’s easier for Terri to stay vegan and maintain her health on the road. “Especially since Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers came out,” she said. “It’s just becoming easier and easier for restaurants to include healthier food. So, in my twenties, it was hard, and the only thing open in the middle of the night was Waffle House.”
In addition to her diet, Terri stays active – and stays positive. “I work out because I don’t get away with sitting around anymore like I used to. And A good marriage, staying happy. My mom said that ‘being happy keeps you healthy,’ and I understand that.
“Being happy, everybody wins around you,” she adds. “It just makes everything better and feels better, and it’s lighter. So, I work at being happy.”
Speaking of which, Terri reveals that the writers behind No More Words — a biopic focused on KROQ DJ Richard Blade and Terri’s romance – wanted her to play a part in the film. “They asked me to play [my] mother,” she said. Terri has the chops, appearing on shows like T.J Hooker, Lou Grant, Trapper John, M.D., and more. Plus, the role would be near and dear to her.
“My mother was really a huge influence on me,” she explains.” She was a great support, especially at times when nobody else was supporting me with this music thing. She was great. She was so wonderful.” However, Terri didn’t take the role – but she didn’t write off a possible cameo. “Who knows? Maybe. But most of all, I want to see it. I want to see this movie.”
No More Words takes its title from a chapter of DJ/tastemaker Richard Blade’s 2017 biography, World In My Eyes (which itself is named after a Berlin song.) The part of the book discussed Blade and Nunn’s forbidden love affair that started after Richard gushed on the air about the model on the cover of Berlin’s The Metro single art (the “model” was Terri herself.) With KROQ being one of the few stations playing Berlin, the band’s management worried that if Blade and Nunn broke up, KROQ would stop playing them.
Though Terri and Richard did call it quits in ’83, she tells HL that she and Richard are still close. “We’re much better friends than we are lovers,” she says. “It just wasn’t meant to be. We were just taking off in different directions at that time. I thought I wanted a relationship, but I wasn’t a partner, I wasn’t home. I don’t know how I thought I was going to manage to be somebody that anybody would want to be with, because I was never around, and you can’t do that.” [But], we’re great friends now. He is just a great guy, great person.”
There’s also no need for Terri to worry about how she’ll be depicted in No More Words. “I’m an executive producer on the film,” she shares. “I will have a say in how it goes. I mean, it’s just got all the elements. It’s a rock and roll nightmare. It’s everything: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, all that you can imagine. All the good stuff and all the bad stuff that… It’s going to be a good movie.”
Berlin is on tour now. Click here for tour dates.