GEORGE MERRILL AND SHANNON RUBICAM

Following their meeting at a wedding at which the two were hired to perform, Seattle natives George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam formed the pop group Boy Meets Girl. Their eponymous 1985 debut featured the single “Oh Girl,” but it was the duo’s penning of two hits for Whitney Houston that established them as songwriters. “How Will I Know” topped the pop and R&B charts, while “I WannaDance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Returning to Boy Meets Girl, Merrill and Rubicam issued Reel Life in 1988. “Waiting for a Star to Fall” reached the top 5 in the US and went #1 in Europe; “Bring Down the Moon,” its follow-up single, also charted. Boy Meets Girl also recorded the 1991 album New Dream, but it was shelved before release in an inter- record company shakeup. Merrill and Rubicam worked mostly as songwriters throughout the 1990s, scoring hits for the UK dance-pop groups OTT and Girlthing. Then in 2003 they revived Boy Meets Girl with the self-released Wonderground. A quiet, charming album, it dealt with their past as soft rock hitmakers, the dissolution of their marriage, and the state of life in the present. In 2005 the duo released fully remastered versions of Boy Meets Girl’s recordings, including the never-released ’91 album New Dream.

Their most recent and fifth record ‘Five’ was released digitally in 2021 and came about after they felt their songwriting was returning to their more traditional sound… as they explain – “Although we never stopped writing, 2019/20 brought on the urge to record some particular songs. We felt amongst some of the things we had written there was a return to the brighter, upbeat sound of Boy Meets Girl and it felt right to get the band back together, so to speak!”

‘Five’ is getting its physical release in December, coming out on vinyl. With the A-side being the original EP, the B-side includes instrumental and alternate mixes of the tracks including their bubbly new mix of ‘How Will I Know’.