Flirts - Passion

JUL 01 1982 · 12:00

Flirts - Passion (1982) Era: Early MTV Era / Hi-NRG Dawn (1982) - Coinciding with the explosive growth of music video as a promotional medium and the birth of Hi-NRG as a distinct genre out of New York's underground dance scene. High curatorial value as a primary audiovisual document of Hi-NRG at its commercial breakthrough moment, produced by one of the genre's acknowledged founding figures on his own independent label. The video's anonymous direction and low-budget production aesthetic are themselves historically significant, illustrating how early dance music scenes operated outside mainstream industry infrastructure. The song's documented influence on the Pet Shop Boys and its strong European chart performance make it a key node in the genealogy connecting New York underground dance to global synth-pop. Context: Released in 1982, 'Passion' by The Flirts sits at a precise cultural inflection point: the dawn of MTV (launched August 1981), the explosion of the 12-inch dance single as a club format, and the crystallisation of Hi-NRG as a genre distinct from post-disco. The Flirts were a concept group designed by Bobby 'O' Orlando, a one-man production entity widely credited as a founding father of Hi-NRG, featuring a rotating cast of models and session vocalists presented as a fixed blonde/brunette/redhead trio. The single achieved crossover success in Europe (particularly Germany and the Netherlands) where Italo-disco and Hi-NRG were dominant club formats, while also charting on the US Billboard Dance Chart. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys have cited 'Passion' as a direct influence on their own early sound, cementing its place in the genealogy of synth-pop. Director notes: Released in 1982 to promote the single 'Passion' from The Flirts' debut album '10¢ A Dance' on Bobby Orlando's independent 'O' Records. The video features a trio of models performing lip-sync to the track in a staged environment, consistent with the low-budget promotional video conventions of independent dance labels in 1982. The single peaked at #21 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart and reached #4 in Germany and #22 in the Netherlands. A performance on Dutch television program TopPop in December 1982 further boosted European visibility. No production company, cinematographer, or director credit has been identified in any archived source.