Editing Animotion (section)

=== Departures and decline (1987–1990) ===
In the midst of recording their third album, Animotion went through personnel changes, as all three of the remaining founding members (Ottavio, Plane, and Wadhams) departed, along with Blair. The split was not amicable; Ottavio and Plane (who by this point were a couple, and later married) were fired from the band at the behest of the management, while Wadhams' departure was the culmination of a refusal of the record label to allow him to continue to write songs for the band (on their first album he had served as principal songwriter and, along with Kirkpatrick and Smith, had performed the same role on the second), a condition which he felt uncomfortable with.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.popmatters.com/193333-animotion-talks-about-the-hit-song-thats-been-an-obsession-2495532710.html|title=Animotion Talks About the Hit Song That's Been an 'Obsession'|date=July 24, 2015|author=Chiu, David |website=[[PopMatters]] |access-date=August 6, 2019 }}</ref>

Actress/dancer/singer [[Cynthia Rhodes]] replaced Plane as female lead singer, and former solo artist/[[Device (pop-rock band)|Device]] member [[Paul Engemann]] replaced Wadhams as the male lead for Animotion's second self-titled album, informally known as "[[Room to Move]]" (due to the success of this song) to distinguish it from their first [[Gramophone record|LP]]. Incidentally, Engemann's former band, Device, had also included Holly Knight (co-writer of "Obsession"). By the time of this third album's release, only Kirkpatrick and Smith remained officially in the "band" along with Rhodes and Engemann, and a slew of session musicians contributed to the recording. The single "Room to Move", a remake of a 1988 song by the group [[Climie Fisher]], became a radio hit in April 1989, and the band's second Top 10 hit in the US, aided by its inclusion in the movie ''[[My Stepmother Is an Alien]]''. However, the album itself did not crack the top 100 on the charts, and Animotion broke up afterwards.