Frankie

This was written by Denise Rich, the wife of the controversial American billionaire Marc Rich. After falling asleep on a plane going from the US to Switzerland, she dreamt the song, after which she woke up and started singing it before quickly writing it down.

Marc Rich fled with his wife Denise from the United States to Switzerland in 1983 in order to avoid prosecution on charges of tax evasion and illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis. Bill Clinton granted him a pardon shortly before leaving office as the President of the United States. By now Marc and Denise were divorced but as the latter had made large donations to the Democratic Party during Bill Clinton's time in office, it was widely alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought. Denise had originally taken up songwriting to address her failing marriage. This was her first major songwriting success and she has gone on to write songs for Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Diana Ross and Mandy Moore amongst others.

Kathy Sledge in the book 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh recalls, "A lot of people think the song was written about Frankie Goes To Hollywood, but Denise Rich actually wrote it about Frank Sinatra. We had almost finished our latest album When The Boys Meet The Girls, when we heard the song. We all said we didn't know if it was the song for us or not, but we gave it to our producer Nile Rodgers, who listened to it and hated it. He came back to us a week later and said 'I can't stop singing that damn song, you've got to record it.'"