One of the great incidental pleasures of cruising around and hanging out with old friends is the chance to occasionally rediscover in their music collections things that I haven't heard in... well, 20 or 30 years, in some cases.
On this trip, the standout musical experience in this category has been Welcome To The Beautiful South, the 1989 debut album from The Beautiful South, which I got to know when I was sharing a flat with my college buddy Ned for a year or so in the mid-90s. I never much liked Paul Heaton's voice, but he was an outstanding songwriter, and his output with this band was consistently rich - an album every couple of years for nearly twenty years, and not a dud amongst them. I suppose 1996's Blue Is The Colour was the one that made the biggest splash for them commercially, but I rather think Welcome was the best of the lot: it's packed full of tremendous melodies and tremendous arrangements; every song is strong, different, and distinctive. And it opens with this, Song For Whoever... a brilliantly witty reminder of why it is unwise to go out with a writer.
2 comments:
Great song, so sharp and witty.
Great album all the way through. I think From Under The Covers is my favourite of the lot - great punchy melody carried by a horn section.
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