Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Look At This Photograph, Everytime I Do It Makes Me Laugh

"Look at us! We're serious and we're wearing sports gear!"

This is probably the single most mismatched single cover of all time. They've brought back the black background, but suddenly there's colour! Colour everywhere! There's tracksuits, ties, jerseys, denim... but it doesn't quite work all together. It's a bit of fashion overload. Still, no black, which is nice. But it looks too photoshopped and artificial.

Bryan put it best when he said (and I quote): "That is crap. That is a crap cover. Isn't it? It's like... the West Ham United team song."

Now, onto the b-sides. One is When You're Looking Like That, which was released as a single in Australia and Asia, but not in the UK, so they popped it on as a b-side. The other is the very first ever band-written b-side. Titled Reason For Living, it's a darling little example of acoustic pop. Everyone had a hand in writing it, everyone gets a go at singing, and it works perfectly, with just a guitar accompaniment from Kian. It's an obvious backlash at the record company's hesitation to allow them to release their own songs, and proves them wrong with every single note. It's raw, basic, and low-budget, and is absolutely brilliant.

There was actually another cover to this single, but it's basically the same thing, just a bit more zoomed in, with their heads photoshopped closer together.

But for all the shortcomings, I do have to admit that I like Nicky's tie.

1 comment:

Grace Suter said...

Yeah, from this one onwards they wrote every b-side themselves, except for two.

And they're the best songs they've ever released.