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REWIND: Suede - 'By The Sea'
From one of my favourite albums from the glorious year of 1996, here's Suede with the stunning piano tearjerker 'By The Sea'. As oppose to the previous album 'Dog Man Star', where former guitarist Bernard Butler composed music for Brett Anderson's lyrics, the number 1 LP 'Coming Up' was a more collaborative project in terms of writing, with the large majority of it being composed by Anderson, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling. At the time Oakes and Codling had only been in the band for a short while. But along with the single 'Lazy', the beautiful 'By The Sea' was written solely by Brett. No less than five Top 10 singles were released from the album, and the remaining five tracks also could have been hits. Quite simply one of the all-time great LPs, that often doesn't get the acclaim it deserves. The album sold 1.5 million and was nominated for the 1997 Mercury Prize and is regarded as the record that introduced Suede to a worldwide audience, in places such as Europe, Canada and Asia.
Great song from a great album! While I'm partial to the Butler-era Suede stuff as their best, Coming Up is fantastic and apart from a handful of tracks on Head Music and A New Morning, was the last good album they made until Bloodsports. They showed how to do a reunion the right way...something I wish Blur would take a lesson from!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! 'Bloodsports' was a rare thing: a comeback album that they could be truly proud of, up there with their best stuff! and yes I agree, Blur need to take a leaf out of Brett's book... AGAIN! ;)
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