Except for a few live dates, 1989 was a low-key year for Voice Of The Beehive. The band members, exhausted from the last few years of non-stop activity, eagerly seized the opportunity to decompress. Tracey went home to California for the months of October and November, then joined Melissa for a trip to New York City at Christmastime. The only other activity in 1989 was the recording of the band's cover version of The Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You." The song was intended for an album called Guilty Pleasures, a compilation of current bands covering kitschy '70s pop classics, but the project never really got off the ground.

Unaware of this fact while they were recording the song with super-producer Don Was, the Beehive even made London Records agree that the song would not be included on their forthcoming second album. Aside from the relatively unknown "I Walk The Earth," Beehive cover versions had generally been relegated to b-sides. The band didn't have a problem with cover songs (indeed, they were quite well known for covering a wide variety of songs in concert and on vinyl), they just didn't want "I Think I Love You" to be turned into a novelty hit. Surprisingly, London Records agreed. In January of 1990, Tracey and Melissa returned to London, and Tracey started to work on songwriting ideas for the second album. In April, she joined Steve Mack and That Petrol Emotion in New York City to shoot the video for "Sensitize," the first single off the Petrols' new album, Chemicrazy. The video featured various passers-by dancing to the song, and Tracey was filmed along with the dancing New Yorkers, but the video's director left her scenes on the cutting room floor. Video cuts aside, Tracey enjoyed her time with the Petrols, so much so that she decided to join them on their early summer tour of the U.S. as well. That tour commenced in June and ran through early July, and Tracey found the atmosphere extremely conducive to songwriting, which she'd been putting off for quite some time. Upon returning to England in early July, she presented the fruits of her labor to the rest of the band and they immediately went into rehearsals to give the songs some shape. Later that month, they played a one-off gig at London's Marquee club to test the material, and Tracey wore a shirt onstage during the encore that said, "No, we haven't broken up!" The fans liked the new stuff, as did (apparently) the head honchos at London Records, so the Beehive entered the studio and spent the rest of that fall recording the new album. In December, the girls again returned home to be with their family in L.A., and they stayed through much of January. When they returned to England in early 1991, though, they quickly discovered that London Records was not happy with the previous fall's recorded results. London was hungry for its next hit (a la "Don't Call Me Baby"), but they didn't hear one. So they forced the Beehive back into the studio with a bevy of hired-gun producers and had them meddle and mix with the ten already-recorded tracks. "I Think I Love You" (which had now made the album, thanks to the fizzling of the Guilty Pleasures project) was remixed so drastically it barely resembled Don Was' original production (Don's version, by the way, can be found on the "I Think I Love You" CD single). "I'm Shooting Cupid" lost a couple of sped-up, but infectious, verses because London Records thought it sounded like two different songs. And "Perfect Place" and "Monsters and Angels," among other songs, were tarted up with a few thick layers of record company gloss. At the end of the day, Honey Lingers' ten tracks had the fingerprints of no less than seven producers on them. Then, regrettably, the band was forced to play the name game. The first round came when the suits at Polygram balked at Melissa's originally-suggested title for the album, Honey Lingus (and, yes, she very much meant the pun). After much haggling, Lingus became Lingers and everything seemed fine. Then came round two. Brad Nack, who wrote "I Walk The Earth", recalled that he had once suggested the phrase "Monsters And Angels" to his former girlfriend, so a hasty compromise was whipped up and Brad was given the credit of "title concept." Wonder how long it took the suits at London to think that one up?

Legal and business frustrations aside, the band started gearing up to promote the late spring/early summer release of Honey Lingers. The band wanted to emphasize that they were growing (or at least were growing up) as artists, so a more stylized image was cooked up to replace the kooky, colorful facade that ruled during the Let It Bee era. The album's elegantly pretty cover art was based on the "Think Pink" number from the classic Audrey Hepburn film, Funny Face. Classy, but still fun. When it came time to shoot the video for the first single, "Monsters And Angels," the band went with Edward Hopper's classic painting, Nighthawks, as a visual guide. The end result was an artful,

sleek video, which made Tracey especially happy because she got to wear her beloved babydoll dress in it. In May of 1991, "Monsters And Angels" was released on the British market, and it slowly proceeded to climb the charts (eventually getting close to "Don't Call Me Baby's" highwater mark of 15). In June, as Honey Lingers was being released, the band embarked on a UK tour, which culminated in the now legendary Orgy Under The Underworld shows. Touted in advertisements as "the squalid tale of two innocent girls' descent into the moral quagmire that is rock 'n' roll," the Orgy shows were specifically planned to be decadent multimedia events, not just your ordinary concert. To that end, the Underworld nightclub was tacked up in fake fur, cheesy lighting, and softcore porn videos were projected onto the walls. The sexy, sleazy atmosphere was apparently a huge success. No one who was there for any one of the three Orgy shows will likely ever forget it. Legend has it that a few concert-goers even took the orgy theme so seriously, they got sexual right there in the club. The media ate it up. The album did well in its opening weeks and things were looking good. In September, London Records released the second single from Honey Lingers, "I Think I Love You." Cannily capitalizing on the Orgy shows' publicity, London packaged the 7-inch and 12-inch singles with the Underworld concerts' poster art on their covers. The 12-inch even came with a limited edition "Orgy Print" and a remix was dubbed the "Orgy Mix." The video for "I Think I Love You" also ran with the Orgy theme. Set in a hip, underground club, it featured the girls, in super-stacked platform shoes and feather boas, dancing with a group of beautiful drag queens and glammed-out clubgoers. The CD single was released in a limited edition heart-shaped pack, with Don Was' original version as an additional track, as well as a techno-styled remix by Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones fame. The single did fairly well on the British charts, reaching a high point of 25 in early October, just as the girls were heading to America to drum up support for Honey Lingers on their home soil.

The October 1991 press tour was designed as a quick sampler to whet fans' and industry types' appetites for the Beehive's upcoming November/December tour of America. The girls stopped in several large cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and New York) to meet and greet the press. In each city, the girls performed a short acoustic set at the local Hard Rock Cafe, then sat down for quick question and answer sessions with the press. In some cities, the girls also made appearances on local radio and television talk shows.

In mid-November, they returned to America again with the full band in tow, and rising band The Odds as their support act. As they traversed the American landscape, "Monsters & Angels" was making its own modest mark on the Billboard charts. The Beehive's first single to crack the American Hot 100, "Monsters & Angels" would reach a peak position of 74. But the tour was only a mediocre success. In some cities, they played to packed houses, while in others fan turnout was disappointingly sparse. Near the end of the tour, the band was forced to cancel a few shows because both Tracey and Melissa lost their voices. Fortunately, they were back up to snuff in time for the last two shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which were soldout smashes. The band returned to England in mid-December, just as London Records was getting ready to release the third single from Honey Lingers. For the third time, "Perfect Place" had been completely re-recorded, but again it turned out to be an overproduced, glossy affair that didn't sound much like the plaintive and pretty, but very simple song that Voice Of The Beehive played live. London just didn't know when to stop meddling. Fortunately for the fans, the single's cover art and video were something truly special. Dressed in black, their hair done up in springy curls, Tracey and Melissa veritably glowed from the inside out. Shot in sepia-like tones, they looked like heartbroken angels, ruminating on the failures of the world. Perhaps because the song's tone was so sad, the single did not perform as well on the charts as the previous two had. "Perfect Place" only just managed to graze the bottom half of the British Top 40, peaking at 37 in the end of January. It was the last Voice Of The Beehive record that London Records would ever release in the UK. In early 1992, London Records also gave "Perfect Place" a whirl in the US (for some reason they put the more obvious single, "I Think I Love You," on the b-side), but the record got next to no airplay and very few rabid Beehive fans even knew the record had been released. A few months later, "Adonis Blue" was released in the US, but only as a promotional CD. Sadly, American DJs didn't take to the song, so it was never commercially released. The slow fizzle of Honey Lingers at the end of 1991 and into early 1992, both in the UK and the US was surely a disappointment to everyone involved, but darker days were ahead. In the next two or three years, Voice Of The Beehive would very much earn the right to their third album's title, Sex and Misery. Jump to Part 3

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