Kaiser Chiefs have issued a surprise triple-bill of covers of The Power of Love for Valentine’s Day. In a series of videos released via YouTube, the band provided their own take on three very different identically-titled tracks: Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s 1984 baroque pop chart-topper; Jennifer Rush’s epic romantic tearjerker from the same year; and Huey Lewis and the News’ Back To The Future pop-rock fist-pumper.
In a post on the Kaiser Chiefs’ Instagram account accompanying their rendition of Rush’s classic hit – which has also been covered by the likes of Celine Dion, Laura Branigan and Air Supply in the past – the group wrote: “They say that good things come in threes, so here is the final instalment in The Power Of Loves trilogy. Some might say THE definitive trilogy.”
The Yorkshire indie-rockers – named in recognition of the South African football club associated with Leeds United legend Lucas Radebe – first burst onto the scene in 2004 with two memorably chaotic singles, Oh My God and I Predict A Riot. The following year their debut LP Employment reached number #2 in the UK Albums chart; eventually shifting over 2 million copies and winning an Ivor Novello award. Its 2007 follow-up Yours Truly, Angry Mob topped the albums chart, and spawned the group’s only number #1 single to date in Ruby.
The Leeds outfit would go on to release two more gold-certified records in Britain (2008’s Off With Their Heads and 2014’s Education, Education, Education & War), albeit with less of a reliance on the flamboyant singalong choruses that powered their earlier successes in the singles chart. Their last charting single was the melodic Coming Home, released back in February 2014. Since then the band have also supplemented their musical output through an eclectic range of means; including a successful commercial partnership with Yorkshire Tea and frontman Ricky Wilson undertaking a stint as a judge on The Voice UK from 2014-2016.
The group’s seventh and most recent LP, Duck, reached number #3 in the UK Albums Chart in 2019 and received broadly positive feedback from fans and critics. The NME‘s Andrew Trendell wrote: “They’re not Arctic Monkeys and unlikely to make a mind-blowing concept record about living on the moon. They won’t follow in The Killers’ footsteps and headline Glastonbury. But while Kaisers have never changed the world, they’re certainly going to remain very much a part of it.”
The disruption of the pandemic has resulted in a relatively quietly year-and-a-half for the Kaiser Chiefs; though there was a Halloween single for fans to enjoy last year in the form of the madcap Zombie Prom. The vaudevillian five-piece – whose reputation was forged in part by their energetic live shows – have spoken of their desire to get back on the road. In an interview with The Sportsman, bassist Simon Rix said: “I miss gigs. We did two socially-distanced gigs in September and it was weird, cars in the field stuff. It was great to get up and play as that’s part of me, you don’t realise it’s such an important thing. I feel sorry for people who have just released their first album; this is it, this was their moment. If this happened to us in 2005, my entire life would be different.“
