Diamond Smiles

"Diamond Smiles"
Single by The Boomtown Rats
from the album The Fine Art of Surfacing
B-side"Late Last Night"
Released9 November 1979 [1]
Genre
Length3:54
LabelEnsign Records (UK)
Columbia Records (USA)
Songwriter(s)Bob Geldof
The Boomtown Rats singles chronology
"I Don't Like Mondays"
(1979) 		"Diamond Smiles"
(1979) 		"Someone's Looking at You"
(1980)

"Diamond Smiles" was the second single from The Boomtown Rats' album The Fine Art of Surfacing. It was the follow-up to their successful single "I Don't Like Mondays" and peaked at Number 13 in the UK Charts. The band has suggested that it might have fared better had it not been for a strike of lighting technicians on the powerful UK TV programme Top of The Pops at the time that the record was released and rising in the charts.[3]

Dealing with death, as had "I Don't Like Mondays", the song tells the story of a glamorous debutante ('Diamond') who commits suicide and is remembered only for her low-cut dress.[4] Some of the staff of Duke Street Hospital, in Glasgow, filed a petition with the IBA and the BBC demanding that the song be banned due to the lyrics exploiting a real-life suicide.[5]

The song also featured as one of four songs on an Australian EP called Surface Down Under that also featured past hits "Rat Trap", "Looking After No.1" and "Like Clockwork".[3]

The song was covered by Jay Bennett (of Wilco) on his posthumous album Kicking at the Perfumed Air, with the album's title also being derived from the song's lyrics.[6]

  1. ^ "Boomtown Rats singles".
  2. ^ "The Fine Art of Surfacingby the Boomtown Rats – Classic Rock Review". 23 December 2014.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference official was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference lyrics was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference standard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference pitchfork was invoked but never defined (see the help page).