Why are The Beautiful South
a “C1 band”?
Mainly
because Heaton’s lyrics are ironic, sarcastic, with great vocabulary and
structures you should pay attention to. He cannot write about first loves, he
says, because he is too old to remember, so he writes wittily about what’s
around him and that makes his songs a fantastic way of understanding the
British.
The Beautiful South were an English pop/rock group formed in
1988 by some former members of the Hull group the Housemartins. After the band's first
album (recorded as a quintet), they were joined by a succession of female
vocalists, all of whom performed lead and backing vocals alongside Heaton and
Hemingway – Briana Corrigan for albums two and three after appearing
as a guest vocalist on one, followed byJacqui Abbott for the fourth through seventh albums,
and finally Alison Wheeler for the final three Beautiful South
albums.
The band's first album Welcome to the Beautiful South was released in 1989 and promptly
produced a Number 2 UK singles chart hit, "Song For Whoever".
With the follow-up single "You Keep It All In" reaching number
8 and "I'll Sail This Ship Alone" reaching number 31, the band were
soon set to equal or surpass the success of The Housemartins, while the songwriting
built on and expanded the trenchant social critiques which the previous band
had been known for (topics included nationalism, domestic violence, football
hooliganism and the self-serving industry of love songs ).
In 1990, The Beautiful South released their second album, Choke.
Two singles - "My Book" and "Let Love Speak Up Itself" -
charted outside the Top 40, but the album also provided the band's only Number 1 hit, a Hemingway/Corrigan duet called "A
Little Time". The video - featuring the aftermath of a domestic fight -
won the 1991 BRIT Award for Best Video.
Both Choke and 0898
Beautiful South illustrated
the growing fullness of the band's sound. Both featured Corrigan as lead
vocalist on several tracks. Her contribution helped to characterise the
bittersweet kitchen sink
dramas played out in the band's
often barbed songs and allowed Heaton and Rotheray to explore and express
female perspectives in their songwriting. However, the latter approach had
mixed success, demonstrated later in 1992 when Corrigan chose to leave the band
to pursue a solo career. Although her decision was partly prompted by a desire
to record and promote her own, she had also had ethical disagreements over some
of Heaton's lyrics, most notably "Mini-correct", "Worthless
Lie".
In 1994, St
Helens supermarket shelf-stacker Jacqui Abbott was brought on board to fill in as the
new third lead vocalist for the band. Heaton had heard her sing at an
after-show party in St Helens and remembered her vocal talents. Abbott's first
album with the band was Miaow in
1994. Hits included "Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)" and a cover of Fred Neil's "Everybody's
Talkin'”.
November 1994 saw the release of Carry
on up the Charts, a "best of" compilation consisting of the
singles to date plus new track "One Last Love Song". Released at a
time when the group's album sales had been waning, the album was a huge
commercial success. It
secured the Christmas number one spot on the charts and became the second best
selling album of the year.
The 1996 album Blue Is the Colour sold
over a million copies and featured hit singles "Rotterdam" and
"Don't Marry Her". The album demonstrated the band's gradual
shift towards a country
music sound, and was well
received by the public and on BBC and commercial radio.
The album Quench (1998)
was released with similar commercial success, again reaching number one in the
UK album charts. "Perfect 10", the first single to be released
from the album, also provided the band with uncharacteristic singles chart
success.
Although 2000's Painting It Red (2000)
made number two in the UK charts, the album suffered promotion and touring
difficulties, and a substantial number of the CDs were faulty. Jacqui Abbott
left the band in the same year, discouraged by the pressures of touring and
needing to concentrate on looking after her son, who had just been diagnosed
with autisSolid
Bronze) in 2001, and took time time off to refresh themselves.
m. After completing their tour obligations, the band marked
time with a second greatest-hits album (
The Beautiful South regrouped in 2003, with new recruit Alison Wheeler taking on the role of female singer.
This lineup recorded Gaze in 2003, following it with 2004's Golddiggas,
Headnodders and Pholk Songs, an album of unusually arranged cover tunes
including "Livin' Thing", "You're The One That I
Want", "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "I'm Stone in
Love With You". One track from the album, "This Old Skin",
was presented as a cover of a song by an obscure band called "The
Heppelbaums"; it was later revealed to be an original Heaton/Rotheray
composition.
The final Beautiful South album Superbi was
released on 15 May 2006. Paul Heaton's hand is recognisable in quirky
song titles such as "The Rose of My Cologne", "The Cat Loves The
Mouse" and "Never Lost A Chicken to a Fox".
After a band meeting on 30 January 2007, they decided to Split.
They released a statement on 31 January 2007, in which they joked that their
reasons for splitting were "musical similarities" – an ironic
reference to "musical differences" which are often cited as the
reason for a band's split. "The band would like to thank everyone for
their 19 wonderful years in music," the statement also said. They
broke up having sold around
15 million records worldwide.
