‘If You Leave Me Now’, ‘Keep on Loving You’, ‘All by Myself’: what two things do these songs have in common? Yes, they’re all proto-power ballads from the late ’70s and early ’80s. And secretly, you love them. Admit it, you all do.

The daddy of all these guilty pleasures, though, is Air Supply’s ‘All Out of Love’, a song now so synonymous with supermarkets and elevators you’d think it was commissioned by Wal-Mart. But while this muzak-al melodrama has become a staple component of our atmosphere, you’d struggle to visualise its makers. Maybe those ludicrous ’70s Afro-cuts helped consign them to invisibility (‘Hair Supply’, anyone?), but who are these mysterious balladeers – and why do they seem to play here twice a year?

The core duo hails from England and Australia: Graham Russell (songwriter/ guitar/vocals) and Russell Hitchcock (lead vocals), respectively. America is their commercial heartland – I use the word advisedly, since nearly all their peak-era hits contain the word ‘love’. But they’re massive almost everywhere – not least Asia, a macro-territory the Russells have been comprehensively wooing for two decades. Their 1995 album Now and Forever...Greatest Hits Live topped China’s charts for 16 weeks.

Though adrift in a sea of sentiment, there’s actually a rather touching innocence to Air Supply. Hitchcock’s undeniably excellent voice, alongside uncluttered arrangements, prevents their better ballads (‘Lost in Love’, ‘My Best Friend’) from sounding smothered in schmaltz. Even when backed by strings and piano, they rarely sound overwrought. The midtempo ‘rockers’ (‘American Hearts’, ‘Don’t Turn Me Away’) have dated less well, coming across now like rejected ’70s copshow themes. Concept albums, monstermullets, frankly hilarious videos: in the pre-irony ’80s, they even named a song ‘I Can’t Get Excited’. Sportingly, they allowed ‘All Out of Love’ to soundtrack a feminine-hygiene product ad.

But while relentlessly pursuing the title ‘world’s least credible band’, they’ve also amassed a vast fan base of incurable romantics. Soft rock has yielded few acts as prolific, enduring or successful: the duo racked up an astonishing seven consecutive top-five entries on America’s Billboard Hot 100 between 1980 and 1982, and soon releases its fifth album since 2001.

Radiohead fans need not apply, but ‘Airheads’ (irony bypass No 2: they really are called that) wouldn’t dream of missing this superannuated slushfest. Singapore adores them, and where there’s demand, you can be sure there’ll be Supply.

See here for further information about Air Supply.