Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Are "Friends" Electric? is an electropop ballad written and recorded by Gary Numan with his band Tubeway Army, and included on the 1978 album Replicas. It was Numan's first single to chart at #1 in England. It is the tale of a lonely and paranoid man whose only friend is a robot that has broken down; its lyrical themes of alienation and isolation were a Numan hallmark at this time in his career. Musically the song is notable for its plaintive, emotional qualities, which were in stark contrast to the deliberately cold and computerized sound preferred by other synthesizer-based artists like Kraftwerk. The track was heavily sampled in 2002 on the track Freak Like Me by The Sugababes. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.