Take a little time to meet The Beautiful South

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.

(from Wikipedia)