Your socks smell of angels, but your life smells of Brie

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

15/12/96 : Blue Is The Colour - The Beautiful South

I don't mind The Beautiful South at all, with their well titled best-of, Carry On Up The Charts, being a particularly fine collection of tunes with often extremely pointed lyrics.  I don't believe I've ever listened to this one though, so was looking forward to it.

And it opens with "Don't Marry Her" which reminds me that Alison bought this album on the strength of that single and thought it would be a nice tuneful thing to put on after one of her boy's christenings when all the aunties were round.  And she was amusingly the other side of the room from the CD player (remember them, kids?) when the band launched into the considerably less radio-friendly chorus that appears on the album.  "Derek!  DEREK!  Change the music NOW!!!"

Most of the album continues in similar "upbeat yet also downbeat" vein, with the pointed exception of "Liars Bar" which is very Tom Waitsy - done well enough I guess, but a bit of an oddity.  The singles ("Don't..." and "Rotterdam") are definitely more upbeat than most of the rest of the album - I can imagine that repeated listens of the whole thing might prove to be a bit of a downer.  Their sound has definitely moved more in a more folk/country vein when compared with their previous work - I guess that's what growing up does for you.  All in all, I'd say it was an enjoyable listen but I'm not sure whether it would be a grower over time given the chance that I'm most certainly not going to give it.  I'm intrigued as to what's going on on the cover but it's another one we've never owned - 0/3 (we haven't started this year very well, have we?)

We're at #3 this week in their eighth of a 46 week run - they debuted at #1 and this week was the start of a seven week run at #3.  You forget how big they were at the time - I suspect I'm going to be saying that about a few bands over the course of the year.  It also managed two further two week runs - one in '98 and one in '99.  How very peculiar.  Above it in the charts were Spice Girls and Robson & Jerome and, in a change for '96, we do have a new entry in the charts this week - Arctic Spirit's Pan Pipes Christmas Special.  Without even listening to it, words fail me to tell you how much I know I'd hate that.

Wikipedia tells me this is considered to be their darkest album - "reflecting Heaton's life at the time", but giving absolutely no context for that statement.  And that's about all it tells me, other than that it sold 1.5m copies in the UK.  It was their most popular studio album, their fifth album out of ten and is also pretty much the half point chronologically before they split up in 2006 - "due to musical similarities", which was a nicely Beautiful South-ish way in which to depart the scene.

"Customers also listened to" Paul Heaton, The Housemartins and Kirsty MacColl - and it had never occurred to me how similar TBS and Kirsty MacColl were, but there are certainly links there.  I enjoyed checking this out, but maybe found it a bit down as a whole.  Hopefully Paul Heaton's life is in a better place now - he's still hanging in there.

08/12/96 - Another astonishingly popular album
22/12/96 - Mystifyingly popular