[3] They hired Buggles founder Trevor Horn to remix the Diamond track "Instinction" in order to have another single to promote the release of the LP, but Spandau songwriter Gary Kemp was concerned about putting the most pop-sounding song on the record in the hands of a pop producer.

[13] The plan was to have them produce just one single to get a sense if they were right for the group before committing to anything more, and although "Communication" was considered, the song Jolley chose for their assignment was the "up-tempo, more obvious pop sing-along" "Lifeline".

Johnny Black of Smash Hits found fault with the lyrics and complained that Spandau Ballet "wail[ed] in a manner barely distinguishable from notable Californian leisure-lovers like the Eagles".

[22] Record Mirror's Mark Cooper lumped it in with "classy, well-produced funk ballads with strong choruses and no personality" and summarized it as "hummably bland".

[33] Kemp acknowledged that the clothes they wore for the "Lifeline" music video were "drab" and that the shift to pop left them "caught in a moment of not knowing what to wear".

"Lifeline" was listed on the reports that MTV provided to Billboard that indicated what videos were in rotation on the cable network and made its first appearance there in the 7 May 1983 issue, which indicated that it had been added to their playlist as of 27 April.

[34] In his autobiography Pop Stars in My Pantry: A Memoir of Pop Mags and Clubbing in the 1980s, music journalist Paul Simper detailed Graham Smith's reactions to a couple of singles by Spandau Ballet, who initially wanted to make "white European disco music"[35] to appeal to the patrons of the Blitz, a weekly Tuesday night club the band had been attending.

[5] Smith, a Blitz regular who had designed the cover art for Spandau Ballet's first two albums and their singles, encountered Simper while delivering the cover he had produced for "She Loved Like Diamond" and was already losing interest in the band, but upon receiving a copy of "Lifeline" several months later, Smith was visibly disappointed as he played a cassette of the new "mop-top-flavoured" song for Simper, who concluded, "Spandau were no longer making records for the cool kids.