Beyond The Guess Who: Lime- "Guilty" & "Babe We're Gonna Love Tonight"

Welcome to Beyond The Guess Who. Each week I cover a lesser known musical artist. This week: Hi-NRG dance act Lime.

Welcome to Beyond The Guess Who. Each week, I cover a lesser-known musical artist. This week, it’s Lime, a Hi-NRG dance act with roots in disco. If you like what you’ve read, please hit like, comment and subscribe. Thank You!

This week’s act came under my radar when I discovered my brother’s cassette copy of the 1983 compilation album Can’t Stop Dancin’. Although there were some forays into the last days of disco (Boystown Gang’s cover of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You”, for example) the compilation skewed closer to the new wave pop side of things.

Somewhere in between was Lime. I hadn’t read much about HiNRG at that point and I was a couple of years off from discovering Italo disco via my cousin’s aforementioned record collection (and a 12” of “Hey Hey Guy” by Ken Laszlo). At the time, “Guilty” seemed like danceable 80’s pop music. It was catchy as Hell and I liked it.

I buried them in the back of my head for a couple of years until I went to college in the mid-2000s. It was the beginning of YouTube becoming a thing. MySpace was also massive. I was taking a Communication Arts/Print Journalism course, didn’t own a laptop yet, and would spend a large chunk of time in our computer lab working on projects and checking out MySpace.

I’ve never really been into current popular music, my taste has always been a bit “old”. There would be periods when current artists appealed to me. At that time I loved stuff like Franz Ferdinand and The Hives. MySpace was a great place to check out newer music, but I became drawn to pages for older artists. I discovered some pretty great stuff that way like “I Wanna Be Your Boy” by the 70’s British band Deaf School. I also heard more tracks by Lime via their page. Their 1982 single “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight” blew me away. It’s nearly seven minutes of 80’s dance music perfection with a persistent synthesizer riff.

I hadn’t read much about Lime before and started to read about them. It turned out that they were Canadian and not European. Like many artists I cover here, they hadn’t popped up as a Canadian airplay item. It appeared they had a pretty big following, though. So, who were Lime?

Lime consisted of the married couple Denis (later Nini Nobless) ¹ and Denise Lepage. The former had already scored a #3 disco hit in 1979 with the insanely catchy classic “The Break” as Kat Mandu. Nobless also had a career in music spanning back to the 1960s playing with several Quebec-based groups. Nobless also provided strings and horn arrangements on Beyond The Guess Who favourite France Joli’s first two albums.

Lime came into being a couple of years later with another disco hit, “Your Love”. The song topped the US Billboard Dance charts and in a better world would have hit the pop charts too, but this being during the disco backlash, it didn’t stand a chance of even denting it. It was still a huge European hit, however.

A string of singles followed, none of which replicated this success. The pair scored a hit for Canadian disco duo Voggue with “Dancin’ The Night Away”. The single was also a hit in Europe and crossed over briefly into the UK Top 40 where it peaked at #39. It also hit #109 on the Billboard Bubbling Under charts.

The duo finally scored a second dance hit with the catchy “Come And Get Your Love” in 1982. It’s a bit shocking that Lime didn’t score at least lower-tier chart hits or bubbling under entries with the singles they were releasing during this time.

Lime released three subsequent singles back-to-back that all hit on the dance charts. “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight” came first. A single version was released and a video was made.

The video for “Guilty” just featured actors in a bank heist plot. As well as very prominent Canadian flags. It peaked at #22 on the dance charts. “Guilty” alongside “Babe” are easily the best tracks Lime ever released. Lime is less disco than their other hits, falling more into the synth-rock side of things. Even though I mentioned that the duo were probably better at writing/producing than they were at singing, the lyrics make this catchy. Give it a listen here:

The third hit, “Angel Eyes” doesn’t seem to have a video. It’s an Italo-sounding dance track that was a bigger hit than “Guilty”, peaking at #12 on the dance charts.

Subsequent singles failed to do much, but the duo had one more dance hit with the #6 peaking “Unexpected Lovers” in 1985. It was also their sole UK chart entry (#78). The song isn’t awful, but much of their output post-1983 isn’t my cup of tea. “Unexpected Lovers” had a pretty elaborate video featuring many extravagant 80’s cars and clothes. It almost plays like the pilot to some prime-time adventure show. Despite the song being a dance hit, I don’t care for it as much as their earlier stuff. Even the synth riff is super cheesy.

Lime soldiered on til the early 1990’s. 1988’s “Cutie Pie” is one of their (slightly) better efforts.

The couple divorced towards the end of the decade but continued to record together. “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight” popped up briefly in the infamous 2001 Mariah Carey film Glitter. Nobless came out as Transgender and changed their name to Nini Nobless. Later, according to a CBC obituary, they identified as Non-Binary and used their professional names and pronouns interchangeably. Nobless died last summer at the age of 74.

Even though Lime is hit or miss aside from “Guilty” and “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight”, I’m happy they were around to put a distinct spin on things.

Next Week: Two rock bands from the late 1970’s.

1. Denis Lepage later came out as Transgender in the early 2010s and became Nini Nobless. According to a CBC obituary written upon Nobless’ death, they later identified as Non-Binary and used their professional names and pronouns interchangeably in their final years.