Pete Byrne, frontman of British new wave band Naked Eyes, dies aged 74 — SkimNews
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- Pete Byrne died peacefully in Los Angeles on 14 September after a brief illness, the band announced on its website and social media Wednesday; he was 74.
- Naked Eyes, the synthpop duo Byrne co-founded with Rob Fisher after their earlier bands Studio and Neon (which included future Tears for Fears members Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal), scored a US, Canada and Australia Top 10 hit with their debut single, a cover of Burt Bacharach's "Always Something There to Remind Me."
- The band landed three more US Top 40 hits — "Promises, Promises" (No 11, featuring Madonna on unreleased remixes), "When the Lights Go Out" and "(What) In the Name of Love" (remixed by Arthur Baker) — but split after their 1984 second album Fuel for the Fire because Byrne and Fisher lived on different sides of the Atlantic and EMI lost faith in the project.
- Byrne recorded backing vocals for Stevie Wonder's 1985 US No 1 "Part-Time Lover," released a solo album (The Real Illusion, 2001) and rebooted Naked Eyes as a solo project after Fisher's 1999 death, eventually becoming a regular on '80s revival tours alongside the Go-Go's and Human League.
- He is survived by three children — Merlin, Dylan and Chloe — from his marriage to ex-wife Elena, as well as siblings Eileen, Sandy, Carol and Steve.
Why it matters: Byrne's death closes a chapter of the early-1980s "second British invasion," when MTV-era synthpop acts like Naked Eyes broke big in the US even while underperforming at home. His trajectory, from a band featuring future Tears for Fears stars to backing vocals on a Stevie Wonder No 1 and a decades-long solo run on '80s revival bills, traces how one mid-tier UK new wave act outlasted the genre's commercial peak.
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