Work on Prostitute, Alphaville's fourth studio album, began in 1992 and spanned over two years — a lengthy gestation that followed a five-year gap since 1989's The Breathtaking Blue and reflected the band's ambitious attempt to push well beyond their synth-pop foundations. Produced by Marian Gold, Bernhard Lloyd and Ricky Echolette, and recorded almost entirely at Lunapark Studios in Berlin with only Fools and Beethoven mixed at Sarm West in London, the album was released on 26 August 1994 by WEA Records and represents one of the most stylistically adventurous releases in their catalogue — veering across prog rock (Euphoria), romantic ballad (The Impossible Dream), electronic-infused dance (Fools), and the angular, philosophical song structures that prompted Pan-European magazine Music & Media to describe the band as "sometimes Germany's answer to Japan and Depeche Mode."
The lead single Fools, accompanied by a video shot in Mexico, and the follow-up The Impossible Dream both achieved only modest chart performance, and worldwide sales reached an estimated 200,000 copies — a commercial disappointment that prompted the band's return to more accessible synth-dance territory on 1997's Salvation. It is also the last Alphaville album to feature Echolette, whose departure the following year left Gold and Lloyd as the core duo. Marian Gold later told fans it was the album he'd recommend to anyone who only knew Alphaville from Forever Young and Big in Japan.
This 2023 deluxe edition reissue, released in November 2023, presents the album remastered at Scape Mastering Berlin by Stefan Betke — a Berlin-based mastering engineer also known as the minimal techno producer Pole — alongside a second CD compilation compiled by Bernhard Lloyd and Gold, with Lloyd also overseeing the tape transfers and archival research. The second disc notably includes the Fools Revenge Big Club Mix, described by Discogs contributors as previously unreleased commercially.