So Red the Rose

So Red The Rose is the platinum-selling album by the Duran Duran-spinoff group Arcadia, which was released in 1985 — the only album the band ever released. It included the singles "Election Day", "Goodbye is Forever" and "The Flame".

There were many musical guests on the album, including David Gilmour, Herbie Hancock, Grace Jones, and Sting (who provided backing vocals on "The Promise").

The album's artwork featured painted ink drawings inspired by the sketches of Jean Cocteau as well as an innovative "light space" photograph of the band by Dean Chamberlain, who also directed the video for the song, "Missing".

Encrypted messages
Some versions of the album and related singles contained a numeric code in their artwork, though versions in some countries simply used randomized numbers which did not decipher to anything intelligible. The code was a simple substitution cipher, numbering the letters of the alphabet. A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.

Track listing

 * 1) "Election Day"
 * 2) "Keep Me in the Dark"
 * 3) "Goodbye is Forever"
 * 4) "The Flame"
 * 5) "Missing"
 * 6) "Rose Arcana"
 * 7) "The Promise"
 * 8) "El Diablo"
 * 9) "Lady Ice"

Singles

 * 1) "Election Day" (October 85)
 * 2) "Goodbye is Forever" (January 86)
 * 3) "The Promise" (1986)
 * 4) "The Flame" (July 1986)

Personnel

 * Arcadia are:
 * Simon Le Bon, vocals
 * Nick Rhodes, keyboards
 * Roger Taylor, drums
 * Alex Sadkin, producer