Bryan Ferry’s essential solo songs span five decades and include “Slave to Love,” “Let’s Stick Together,” and “Kiss and Tell.” These tracks reveal an artist who built a singular career by refusing to separate the roles of songwriter and interpreter, a rare feat in rock history .
The Signature Solo Hits
“Slave to Love” is Bryan Ferry’s definitive solo ballad. Released on 3 May 1985 as the first single from his sixth solo album, Boys and Girls, the song spent nine weeks on the UK singles chart and peaked at number 10 . It reached number 5 in Norway and number 8 in Ireland . Ferry performed the song at Live Aid on 13 July 1985 at Wembley Stadium, cementing its place in mid-1980s pop culture .
“Let’s Stick Together” became one of Ferry’s most recognizable solo tracks after its release on 28 May 1976 . The single reached number 4 in the United Kingdom and topped the Australian chart for two weeks in November 1976 . It earned a Silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry in August 1976 .
“Kiss and Tell” remains Ferry’s only U.S. Top 40 hit. Released in 1988 from the album Bête Noire, the single debuted on the US chart at number 95 on 27 February 1988 and peaked at number 31 on 30 April 1988 . It reached number 41 on the UK Singles Chart .
Original Compositions
Ferry’s fourth solo album, In Your Mind, released in February 1977, marked a turning point as his first solo effort consisting entirely of original songs . The album arrived after Roxy Music entered a four-year hiatus, supported by an extensive tour . Tracks like “Tokyo Joe” and “Casanova” demonstrated Ferry’s ability to translate the sophistication of his Roxy Music work into a solo framework.
Later originals such as “Limbo” and the title track from Bête Noire showed continued songwriting depth across the late 1980s and 1990s. These songs were included on the 2024 compilation Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023, which organized his solo career into thematic categories including Best Of, Compositions, Interpretations, and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra .Quick Bio: Bryan Ferry
The Art of the Cover
Ferry’s first solo album, These Foolish Things, released on 5 October 1973, was an eclectic collection of cover versions . The album featured reinterpretations of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears” . A 1973 essay on Ferry’s official website described the album as “pop’s jailbreak,” arguing that Ferry challenged the rock convention that serious artists must write their own material .
The Dylan cover was particularly radical, transforming an acoustic protest anthem into a throbbing electronic scenario. Ferry’s approach to covers was never reverent imitation but reinterpretation, a practice he continued on subsequent albums until In Your Mind . The Retrospective box set included a new version of Dylan’s 1965 song “She Belongs to Me,” demonstrating that his engagement with the songwriter’s catalogue remains ongoing .
The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
In 2012, Ferry formed The Bryan Ferry Orchestra to radically re-record his catalogue in a 1920s jazz style . The resulting album, The Jazz Age, was an instrumental set with no vocals from Ferry . Musical director Colin Good, who had overseen the 1999 standards album As Time Goes By, arranged the material .
A BBC review described the project as “as fascinating as it is perplexing,” noting that “Love Is the Drug” was “completely transformed without its bass hook, yet still wickedly alluring” . The album included reworkings of “Virginia Plain,” “Avalon,” and “Slave to Love,” the latter becoming “a strangely jaunty jitterbug” . The review concluded that Ferry’s sincerity and musicianship made the project “anything but obvious, and therefore to be applauded” .
New Directions
Ferry’s first original song in a decade, “Star,” was released in 2024 as a collaboration with performance artist Amelia Barratt . The track began as a sketch by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails and was developed by Ferry and Barratt into what Classic Pop Magazine described as “an anxious, darkly gleaming slab of pounding post-techno” . Ferry said of the collaboration: “I was very impressed by her writing, and this is the first song we did together. I’m very excited about this new work” .
The song appeared on the 81-track album Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 . A follow-up album, Loose Talk, released in 2025, featured Ferry’s music paired with Barratt’s spoken word vocals, with some music lifted from unreleased demos dating back decades . Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon once compared Ferry’s lyrics to “open-heart surgery,” a description that underscores the precision he brings to even his most experimental work .
A Singular Career
What distinguishes Bryan Ferry’s songs is their refusal to choose between the roles of writer and interpreter. These Foolish Things arrived in 1973 as a deliberate challenge to the era’s authenticity politics . In Your Mind in 1977 proved he could write entirely original material of equal sophistication . The Jazz Age in 2012 showed he could dismantle his own catalogue and rebuild it in another idiom . And “Star” in 2024 demonstrated that at 78, he remains willing to place his music in unfamiliar hands .
Across more than 50 years and two dozen studio albums, Ferry has built a body of work united by a signature mood of cool detachment and meticulous craft . Whether singing his own words or someone else’s, whether fronting Roxy Music or conducting a jazz orchestra, he has consistently treated the song as a canvas rather than a monument. That approach has produced some of the most enduring popular music of the past half-century, and it continues to yield surprising results.
What is Bryan Ferry’s biggest solo hit?
“Slave to Love” is widely considered his signature solo song. Released in 1985 from the album Boys and Girls, it reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart and number 5 in Norway . Ferry also performed it at Live Aid in July 1985 .
Which Bryan Ferry song charted highest in the United States?
“Kiss and Tell” remains his highest-charting US single. Released in 1988 from Bête Noire, it peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 . The song also reached number 41 on the UK Singles Chart .
What was Bryan Ferry’s first solo album of all original songs?
In Your Mind, released in February 1977, was Ferry’s first solo album consisting entirely of his own compositions . It followed three solo records dominated by cover versions. The album includes tracks such as “Tokyo Joe” and “Casanova” .
What is The Bryan Ferry Orchestra?
Formed in 2012, The Bryan Ferry Orchestra reinterprets Ferry’s catalogue in a 1920s jazz style . The project produced the instrumental album The Jazz Age, featuring radically reworked versions of songs like “Love Is the Drug” and “Avalon” . Ferry does not sing on the album .
What new music has Bryan Ferry released recently?
Ferry released “Star” in August 2024, his first original song in over a decade . The track is a collaboration with painter and writer Amelia Barratt, built from a musical sketch by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails . A full collaborative album, Loose Talk, followed in 2025 .
