Fanon Discontinuity: When the Crazyshow box set released in 2003, some fans considered it a Marian Gold solo project instead of an Alphaville one, as Bernhard Lloyd announced only days earlier he was exiting the band and made no contributions to Crazyshow.note Technically he did contribute, since he is credited on one original track, "Giants." This track, however, is a demo recorded during the Salvation sessions in 1996.
First Installment Wins: Debut album Forever Young remains their best-selling, best-known, highest-charting effort. Your mileage may vary on whether or not it's actually their best work.
Genius Bonus: The lyrics of the first verse of "Inside Out" is made up almost entirely of the titles of poems by Romanian-born, German-speaking poet Paul Celan.
Forever Young contains the credit: "Comfort by Wolfgang Neuhaus." After Frank Mertens quit, Wolfgang Neuhaus would become a member of the band, going by the stage name Ricky Echolette.
After Frank Mertens quit the band, he moved to France. After Ricky Echolette quit the band, he moved to France.
Alphaville's Catching Rays on Giant and Romy Haag's Moving On, which were released within a month of each other, both feature cover art of the singer holding a mask of their own face in their right hand. Not long after, Marian Gold and Romy Haag released a duet, "Love Will Find a Way."
Lyrical Dissonance: they have a number of cheery-sounding songs with serious or dark themes:
"Forever Young" is about the Cold War and the looming possibility of nuclear war.
"Summer in Berlin" throws some jabs at the East German dictatorship.
Sweet Dreams Fuel: If you don't love "Forever Young" for being the quintessential cheesy 80s ballad, you probably love it for it for it's dreamy, etherial synths and unapologetically romantic lyrics.
Retroactive Recognition: The music video for "Jet Set" features Thomas Hermanns, future German TV host and founder of Quatsch Comedy Club, as an audience member in a white dress and sunglasses. He is later seen out the cockpit of the plane dancing with a red handbag.
The movie
Fan Nickname: Older American film collectors who came across posters/reels of the film used to nickname it Dick Tracy on the Moon, so much that it's still listed by that subtitle on some database sites.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Beeps and other electronic noises are scattered piecemeal throughout the film. In one chase scene near the end, while Lemmy is driving backwards to escape his pursuers, it sounds like he's using a backup beeper.BEEP The backup beeper was invented in Japan in 1963, so it likely wasn't in widespread use in France when Alphaville was released in 1965.
.BEEP 