He made his first public performance in 1978,[1] and was soon after approached by songwriter and keyboardist Kristian Hoffman (Mumps, the Swinging Madisons), who offered to help Nomi put together a band.

[13] Hoffman's arrangement of the song is relatively straight, with Nomi using "his piercing voice to subvert the lyrics' smarmy, swinging-bachelor heteronormativity," according to a Pitchfork review.

[14] Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" from 1963 has often been regarded as a feminist anthem,[15][16] and Nomi's cover "lets the power of the original do most of the talking for him," Pitchfork opined.

"[14] The album's third pop cover, "The Twist", is reinvented as a slow "bass-driven space-out" in which Nomi uses his "upper range and Germanic diction to make one of the most overplayed songs of all time sound disorientingly unfamiliar," Pitchfork said.

"[13] Hoffman's "Total Eclipse" enters the same new wave territory as "Nomi Song,"[10] and with its "nuclear panic," Pitchfork stated, it "wouldn't feel out of place on a Devo record, except of course for the singing.

"[10] Nomi's self-penned "Keys of Life", a "Bowiesque" track complete with synthesizer drones and multi-layered vocals, introduces an alien visitor with a message that's both messianic and apocalyptic about the future of Earth.

"The Cold Song" is based on an aria from baroque composer Henry Purcell's King Arthur, on which Nomi transforms the original bass vocals to his countertenor voice.

The latter serves as an introduction to the album's final track, a live recording of composer Camille Saint-Saëns's aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" from the 1877 opera Samson and Delilah.

[17] The exaggerated Weimar-style suit[1] was influenced by a similar outfit David Bowie wore on their Saturday Night Live performance,[2] which again was based on Sonia Delaunay's design for 1920s Dadaist artist Tristan Tzara in the play The Gas Heart.

"[20] Ira Robbins of Trouser Press wrote that the album stretches from "hauntingly beautiful (Purcell's stunning 'Cold Song') to hysterically funny (a somber reading of 'Can't Help Falling in Love,' a languid dissection of 'The Twist')".