Me and my babe go to heaven

Belgian new wave produced its share of dark rooms and colder synths, but “Beats of Love” is the one that escaped onto every dancefloor. Nacht und Nebel was the project of Patrick Nebel, born Patrick Schools in Merksem, and this song — written by Nebel himself, released in 1983 — climbed into the Belgian top three the following spring and sold some 150,000 copies across Belgium and France.

The promise at its center is as simple as pop gets: “me and my babe go to heaven, me and my babe gonna have a good time.” Delivered over those pulsing synths it sounds less like romance than like an escape plan, which suits the story around it. Nebel was not a well man — he struggled with his weight, with alcohol and pills, with his heart — and he died in March 1986, twenty-seven years old, taking the band with him.

So the record stands as the good time he kept promising. Turn it up and take him up on it.