Boys Don’t Cry – 4 Play (EP Review)

In today’s review on Music Review World, we shall encounter a glorious comeback from a band that managed to reach semi-commercial success in the past and has gone through many trials and tribulations to get back to where they were. Meet Boys Don’t Cry.

If you’ve diligently clicked on the hyperlink, you’ll come to realise that this act is a deviation from most of the acts featured on this platform, with a recorded history and a somewhat sizeable Wikipedia page. The band was formed in 1983, as the brainchild of lead vocalist and keyboardist Nick Richards, who at that time just purchased the Maison Rouge Recording Studios in London.

The members of the group had a history with other musical acts, having played with Sad Cafe, Meatloaf, Waterboys, Lotus Eaters, Jackson Heights and Mike Oldfield collectively, showing a general consensus of experience within the music industry. The other members of the group included Brian Chatton, Nico Ramsden, Mark Smith and Jeff Seopardi.

They released ‘Heart’s Bin Broken’ and were then signed to the US label Profile Records in the mid-80s. Afterwards, they secured an immediate hit single with the track ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’, charting on several charts and even featuring Motörhead’s Lemmy in the music video. It reached number 12 in the US charts in 1986 and was the first indie single to chart on Billboard for 17 years. The subsequent single ‘Cities on Fire’ failed to repeat its success, which led to the group switching labels to Atlantic Records.

Under new leadership, they released ‘Who The Am Dam’ in 1987, which performed well in the UK but not in the States. Drummers Cozy Powell and Phil Collins replaced Jeff Seopardi on this album.

Boys Don’t Cry then went on to release a single in 1991 titled ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’, featured in the film ‘The Last Boy Scout’, and then pretty much went on hiatus ’til 2009, when Nick Richards and Brian Chatton teamed up in Los Angeles to write an album and put the group back in rotation, with a new line-up and an incoming tour. Unfortunately, on 2 November 2009, the band’s former bass player, Mark Smith, tragically passed away and was intended to join the tour.

They then continued, releasing music in 2014 and going back and forth with several ventures as recently as 2020. Now, however, in 2025, they are back with an EP titled ‘4PLAY’, released under Richards’ online label, HEADGAMES. It contains four tracks and is meant to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the track ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’.

I’d say, for a comeback album, musically this is quite superior and on-par. It has the natural essence of what Boys Don’t Cry should be, with a lot of musical variation injected into these four tracks. I hear a lot of unique qualities within these tracks, such as the infusion of technological synthesizers as well as a vocoder mixed with a lot of funk and groove embellished into the structure of these songs. One thing that definitely sticks out to me is the work on the keyboard- it presents itself as a series of trills, but are coherent enough to be a passage, giving the EP the sophistication and honestly slightly jazzy edge it needs to turn from just a simple track into a composition.

The production and mastering within this EP is frankly quite exceptional as well, taking the music into another dimension and making it feel like as if you’re part of the project instead of just being a listener and a spectator. Everything is balanced quite well with important instrumentation and vocal chops put at the forefront to definitely serve as a delight. It has a bit of a folksy, world and indie vibe mixed into it, reminiscent of multifaceted rock acts of the late 90s and 2000s- think of people like Depeche Mode, Lenny Kravitz, or even Sade (with her 90s work) to a degree with a bit of mid 2000s A.R. Rahman mixed into it.

The vocals definitely match the feel of the project, adding a bit of edginess and accentuating the sensuality behind it as well. I think this would definitely perform well with the right audience, and can also spill-over to success with a different audience, as the instrumentation is frankly too superior for one to simply ignore. This EP certainly boasts a high quality.

SCORE/Excellent – 4PLAY, besides its selection of interestingly worded puns infused within the singles, is surprisingly a wonderful body of work that technically bends genres and stands its own ground. It’s exciting, fresh, sassy, and full of character, all while sticking true to the bounds of music and having an ear for complexity.

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]

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