In 1986, Cutting Crew was just another new band trying to make it in music. The group's debut single, "(I Just) Died in Your Arms," was released in England over the summer of that year, going on to an impressive #4 showing on the British charts. Cutting Crew was signed to a small label which just so happened to be connected to Richard Branson's Virgin Records. Given the band's success in their home country, he decided to kick them up to the main label for release in America.
"We were signed to Siren records which was part of Virgin, so we were always a little bit on the outside," Cutting Crew frontman Nick Van Eede told Songfacts. "But it was the '80s, and they certainly put their money where their mouth was. We were flown to New York for the initial recordings of the album and then we were flown to Australia to shoot videos... all a bit crazy really."
Cutting Crew would officially release "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" in America on January 1, 1987. Branson's investment would pay off: the song topped the Hot 100 for the first two weeks of May 1987. It was the Virgin label's first US No. 1. The song would finally be dethroned on May 16 by U2's "With or Without You."
"Yes, I cannot tell a lie. It's a song written about my girlfriend (who is actually the mother of my daughter)," Van Eede revealed. "We got back together for one night after a year apart and I guess there were some fireworks but all the time tinged with a feeling of 'should I really be doing this?' Hence the lyric, 'I should have walked away.' I know it sounds corny but I awoke that morning and wrote the basic lyrics within an hour and wrote and recorded the demo completely within three days."
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