 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2009) |
| Blue Is the Colour | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 21 October 1996 | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, pop rock[1] | |||
| Length | 49:56 | |||
| Label | Go!, Ark 21 | |||
| Producer | Jon Kelly | |||
| The Beautiful South chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Blue Is the Colour | ||||
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| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| Christgau's Consumer Guide | A[2] |
| The Guardian | [3] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [4] |
Blue Is the Colour is the fifth studio album from English band the Beautiful South, released in October 1996 through Go! Discs and in America through Ark 21 Records. The album was released following the two singles "Pretenders to the Throne" and "Dream a Little Dream", which never featured on any album until the release of the second greatest hits Solid Bronze in 2001.
The album continued the melancholic tone of its predecessor Miaow, and is generally considered to be the band's darkest effort, reflecting Heaton's life at the time. This comes across in songs such as "Liars’ Bar" (about alcoholism), "The Sound of North America" (a sarcastic look at capitalism), "Mirror" (Prostitution), "Blackbird on the Wire", "Have Fun" (which Heaton has cited as his saddest song), and the self-explanatory "Alone".
The album spawned four singles, the first being "Rotterdam", which peaked at No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart in September 1996. The follow-ups were "Don't Marry Her", which reached No. 8 in December, "Blackbird on the Wire", which peaked at No. 23 in March 1997, and "Liar's Bar", which stalled outside the top 40 in June. On "Liars' Bar", Paul Heaton's vocal consciously imitates the style of Tom Waits, while in "Alone" the bass line serves as another allusion to him. The album debuted at #1 on the UK album chart on 2 November 1996 and went on to sell over 1.5m copies, becoming the group's best-selling studio album.
- ^ a b Schulte, Tom. "Blue Is the Colour – The Beautiful South". AllMusic. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- ^ Christgau, Robert (2000). "The Beautiful South: Blue Is the Color". Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s. St. Martin's Griffin. p. 22. ISBN 0-312-24560-2. Retrieved 6 July 2022.
- ^ Sullivan, Caroline (25 October 1996). "Beautiful hit machine". The Guardian.
- ^ Harris, Keith (2004). "The Beautiful South". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. p. 55. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.