True

I think this song could be about wanting to discover truth within oneself or with wanting to confess love for another person. Like Steve, I believe that the biographer interpretation is too staid and doesn't fit with the dreamy quality of the music. As beautiful ones pointed out, the lyric about the pill and the slow rhythm does make it seem as if the singer is on drugs, or at least relaxed from downing half a bottle of wine. Actually, the song seems very sexual. The singer's mind id obviously clouded with passion, for he finds it "hard to write the next line". There's an allusion to Marvin Gaye (does anyone else hear strains of "Sexual Healing"?) The "head over heels, toe to toe" could be recalling the act of dancing together or the thrill of the first intimate encounter with someone. Not to mention that the sighing in the chorus sounds semi-orgasmic. All these elements combine that sexual tension with the enamored satisfaction people feel when they're in love. What a beautiful effort.

to me, this is a mix of unrequited love and the difficulty of the writer to express it over the sheet. "Listening to marvin all night long" is one of my favourite lines from a song ever, and it also enhances the belief that this song deals with a soul, an injured one.

when steve norman's saxophone starts playing in the instrumental break, that's when you really feel it, inside your soul. at least for me.

"It was composed by group leader Gary Kemp who wrote the song at his parents' house, where he lived at the time.[4] It is a six-minute (in its original album version) slow pop-ballad love song that in part pays tribute to the Motown artist Marvin Gaye, who is mentioned in the lyrics, and the sound he helped to establish.[5] The song was recorded before Gaye's murder a year later. The song was also partly about Kemp's platonic relationship with Altered Images singer Clare Grogan. Some phrases in the lyrics (including the much-quoted reference to "seaside arms") were adapted from Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, a copy of which Grogan had given Kemp.[4]" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_(Spandau_Ballet_song)#cite_note-5

The song is indeed about unrequited love, and was confirmed as such by Gary Kemp who wrote it.

has anyone ever thought of the name of the band?to me it refers to the dogfights of ww1.spandau was the name of the machine gun mounted on the wing of the german biplane and the ballet was the dogfight itself,being that these planes didn't fly more than 125 mph it looked like they were dancing when they did their dives and rolls and turns.looked like a ballet in the air.thats my interpetation.

I have to agree with the other two posters that have said the song is about drugs and drug addiction.

"I bought a ticket to the world, But now I've come back again".

A ticket to the world is the drugs, but now I've come back again is him saying his high has warn off.

"Why do I find it hard to write the next line, Oh I want the truth to be said"

He finds it hard to admit that he is an addict, but he wants the truth to be told.

"With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue"

Pretty much speaks for itself. He has his drugs again and it thrilled about it.

"Dissolve the nerves that have just begun"

The drugs are relieving his anxiety.

"Listening to Marvin (all night long)"

As another person said this shows that this person has an injured soul. His addiction is hurting his soul.

my fave-genious!

ohms: wikipedia says the following about how the bandname came to be...

"The term Spandau Ballet may have two likely origins: referring to the spasms of Nazi war prisoners as they "danced at the end of the rope", when they were hanged at Spandau Prison, or according to others, referring to lines of enemies being gunned down by the infamous WW2 German machine gun MG42 "Spandau" (both origins pointing anyway to the same macabre Nazi heritage). This is a contentious point. The more likely source of the name came in fact from graffiti on the wall of a lavatory in The Venue, London (Victoria) in 1978/9, where members of the originally named band worked"

I visualize this man who realize that a part of him could not let go a love one, whom he met just suprisingly in the right time, but unfortunately due to personal conflict with interest outside of love, the lovers where not in the same MIND frame, even if the heart was. (Love is so easily overlook when times get rough.)

Anyways, he tries to get away, bought a ticket to the world for different perspective, but a part of him was missing...missing that comfort from what love brings. But to numb that loneliness he takes a pill to create hallucinations of thrilling, elevating moods of happiness each time he gets a butterfly in his stomach,so to speak, thinking about that special someone to forget and move on from.

But no matter how much he stops himself from feeling those memory bliss that has been drifted, undeniably he still feels for that person to the point of confusion. So many things in his mind he wants to say, and thats where "huh, huh-huh, huh, huh" comes in. Whatever he wants to say, sometimes WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH DESCRIPTION TO DESCRIBE WHAT HE FEEL IS TRUE. But no doubt even towards the end of the song he keeps convincing himself he must be really in love with this person, yet at the same time fear lingers that no matter how much what he says that he feel is TRUE, does not guarantee the future of love lasting long.

But we all know, he will never know until they meet again to try once more the unfinished business of commitment to love for better or worse. The song has no end.

Interview of the bands thoughts of the song: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/may/14/how-we-made-true-spandau-ballet