THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH – "A Little Time"

a Beautiful South version of “I’m Not In Love” with Brianna Corrigan popping up between verses going “ACTUALLY YOU ARE IN LOVE REALLY!”.

LOLZ

No, but the FIRST Beautiful South album is fantastic, Tom! Paul Heaton is doing this sort of thing for the first time, the topics are more eccentric and surprising, the tunes are better, and there aren’t any female vocals shoehorned into the thing.

Which is why ‘A Little Time’ was the harbinger of a letdown for my 18-year old self, the point that comes with so many acts you like when you realise that “Oh, so they’re not going to change, then”. The second album isn’t very memorable, more self-consciously wry and has only got one song that I really like, ‘Tonight I Fancy Myself’, about trying to ignore the sound of other people in the next room having sex when attempting to masturbate. Which is a more novel premise than ‘A Little Time’.

Although The Beautiful South didn’t really speak to me much after this point, I was always glad when they re-entered the scene because Paul Heaton is just about my favourite pop interview – always an interesting reflection, rooted in everyday life, but looked at from an odd perspective. A pity that it rarely comes over in the songs.

TOTPWatch: The Beautiful South twice performed ‘A Little Time’ on Top Of The Pops;

11 October 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Sisters of Mercy (yes!), The Chimes and Nenah Cherry. Bruno Brookes was the host.

25 October 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Belinda Carlisle and Jason Donovan. Jakki Brambles was the host.

Light Entertainment Watch: The Beautiful South often turned up on UK TV;

FRIDAY NIGHT WITH JONATHAN ROSS: with Martin Scorsese, Cilla Black, Johnny Vegas, The Beautiful South (2004)

LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with Sinéad O’Connor, The Beautiful South (1994)

LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: with The Beautiful South, Metallica, Catatonia, Donovan, Horace Andy (1996)

LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND: The Beautiful South In Concert (1997)

THE O ZONE: with The Beautiful South, INXS, Damage (1997)

T•F•I• FRIDAY: with Will Macdonald, Andrew the Barman, Baby Bird, The Beautiful South, The Bluetones, Martin Clunes, “Vladimir Horowitz”, Ulrika Jonsson, The Longpigs, Cleo Rocos (1996)

V FESTIVAL 2006: with Dave Berry, Hard-Fi, Faithless, Paul Weller, The Dandy Warhols, The Feeling, James Dean Bradfield, Starsailor, The Charlatans, The Beautiful South (2006)

WOGAN: with The Beautiful South, Jo Ann Dearing, Nigel Planer, Patricia Routledge (1989)

WOGAN: with The Beautiful South, Paul Channon, Joanne & Kathy Gillespie, Gayle Hunnicutt, Daniel O’Donnell (1989)

WOGAN: with David Attenborough, The Beautiful South, Leslie Grantham, Don Henderson (1990)

WOGAN: with Elisabeth Glaser, The Beautiful South, Diana Quick, Patrick Malahide, Little & Large (1991)

WOGAN: with Marjorie & Jeremy Paxman, Ruby Wax, Millicent Martin, The Beautiful South (1991)

THE WORD: with Jennifer Beals, The Beautiful South, Kym Mazelle, Christopher Quinten, Shabba Ranks (1990)

The song’s new to me… but it doesn’t sound at all like a #1 – no real melodic hook, indifferent vocals, lyrics just OK (on one of pop and country’s big topics; we all know what good regretful and nasty stuff sounds like and this isn’t it). I quite liked the Housemartins, and ALT wouldn’t have made the cut I believe on any of their main albums. Domestic violence vid. played for laughs is pretty horrific:
2 or 3

In my experience the people who The Beautiful South really register the most with are heavy drinkers with little curiosity about music (i.e. they don’t know that ‘Everybody’s Talking’ is a cover version and don’t recognise it as a dissimilar song to the other South hits).

I think it’s the combination of songs about ordinary but careworn lived experience, undemanding melodies, choruses that you can sing along to (the wretched ’36D’ being a very good example) and above all, a tone that’s aiming for wry but comes over as bitter (“Don’t marry her, fuck me”) that chime with people who drink quite a lot most days, and have heartfelt emotional conversations and encounters that they can’t properly remember.

Re 11: I think you’ve nailed it.

I was about to post an indignant comment here about how much I like The Beautiful South whilst not being an alcoholic or a Radio Two listener, but having given it further thought there are really only a clutch of Beautiful South songs I think are better than average, and this isn’t one of them (if you’re interested, the singles of theirs I do rate are “I’ll Sail This Ship Alone”, “My Book”, “Old Red Eyes Is Back”, “Bell Bottomed Tear”, and “Blackbird on the Wire” – most of these are on “Carry On Up The Charts” which I own along with millions of others, although I picked my copy up cheap from Music and Video Exchange).

Tom underlines the problems with the lyrics of “A Little Time” well – to me, it always sounded like a soap opera scene set to music, which is probably exactly what they were aiming for, but it’s all drama and no feeling (or at least all spite and no tenderness). Corrigan’s voice also grates way more on this single than on most other BS tracks, as she seethes, yelps and spits through the lines to really hammer the point home. I’ve just checked Chartstats and observed that this was a one-week wonder at the top, and I have to say I’m not terribly surprised – it certainly feels like a stop-gap chart-topper from a band with a strong fanbase. It’s just a shame they couldn’t have had their moment in the sun with one of their better singles.

A lot of the comments above also seem to be defining their fanbase quite rigidly, which I think is a mistake. Plenty of studenty Housemartins fans stuck around for at least the first few albums (and beyond), they had a middle-aged audience through Radio Two, and even a certain degree of support from the corner of the market we would probably refer to as “Asda CD buyers” these days. At university I even knew quite a few indie kids who liked them, and I’ve always thought of them as being one of those rare bands who managed to cross over to a wide spectrum of the record buying public, as the bafflingly huge sales of “Carry On Up The Charts” eventually proved. Was there not a story in the NME at the time which revealed that Phonogram were so bemused by the demand for the album that they actually carried out market research to find out how they were shifting so many units, just to note for future reference? Of course, Oasis repeated the “cross over potential” trick to an even greater effect with “Morning Glory” a year later.

Yeah the Beautiful South could be a bit Radio 2-bland (which is what they ultimately, seemingly permanently ended up as), or too clever-clever lyrically (I think “Song For Whoever” and “My Book” both failed on this latter point – “Back to bed, back to reality”, indeed. And “36D” was almost unlistenable). Or, sometimes, just unbearably smug, or irritating (“Don’t Marry Her”)

But..when it all fitted together, and when they were hiding that they were trying too hard, they could put together some damn fine music. Which I think they did, on numerous occasions, certainly in the earlier part of their time together as a group. By no means really challenging, avant-garde stuff, but…well, that wasn’t the point, was it?

I think about half the tracks on “Miaow” (1993/94ish) are really fine bits of whatever genre of music you categorise this stuff as… – “Worthless Lie”, “Hidden Jukebox”, “Hooligans Don’t Fall In Love”, “Mini-Correct” and “Poppy” (I think I’ve remembered the titles correctly) – are all…miniature gems, almost. “A double arsenic for Mr Le Pen…”

(I remember listening to that album a lot in my incense-laden, windswept, seaside, room in my first year at university)

And I also join my praise to that of others for “Bell Bottomed Tear”. Which is tender and fragile and a lovely thing.

And “A Little Time” – I think it DOES work as a song, rather than simply an episodic story. I’m still fond of it, and was glad to see it make number 1 at the time.

And in halfway defence of Ms Corrigan, well… Lorraine Macintosh could be far more irritating on Deacon Blue singles around this time than Corrigan was here. Although, right around this time, I think, “Love And Regret” – – how gorgeous – and almost overlooked and then forgotten – a single was that. Kelvingrove Park in the autumn. Ahhh). Corrigan’s vocals almost go in the direction of Kirsty Maccoll at some points….what can be wrong with that?

I don’t know the Beautiful South very well (though I remember reading their first big interview in the NME just before ‘song for whoever’ was released, on a coach on Friday 19th May 1989 I think, and thinking gosh, they’ll be lucky to be popular), but I feel a bit of a discrepancy somewhere in it all (in the way critics et al don’t like them? in the way they are considered bland and harmless?) due to the fact that I always associated them with the political Left, perhaps just because I am sure that The Housemartins were strongly associated with the political Left and I find it hard to believe that this successor band would entirely have abandoned such an affiliation.

#19 Paul Heaton was, and as far as I know remains, a staunch socialist and I’m sure as much of the Beautiful South millions went to good left-wing causes as went to the breweries of Britain. But they weren’t really an act of the Left in the way Billy Bragg was (or even the Housemartins) – and certainly I doubt they had a particularly politicised fanbase. If anything their views show up in the songs they (mostly) DON’T sing – for a band so occasionally dyspeptic and boozy there’s a general lack of saloon bar politics.

#17 But while we’re talking Briana C, and we have the Pinefox here, time to mention Tim Hopkins’ pet theory (gleefully borrowed by me) which is that this single’s big pop legacy is that Belle And Sebastian were inspired by it to stick Monica Queen on “Lazy Line Painter Jane”

I quite like the idea of a song where a couple interrupt each other, but it seems like an idea which would require some skill and effort to pull off without it being grating – skill and effort which don’t seem to have been in effect here. Can anyone think of a song that’s made it work? Not Fairytale Of New York, they don’t really interrupt each-other there.

Re: #15 – It really does seem like a bit of a stopgap in between two bigger number ones, yes – one of those minority interests that gets a moment in the sunlight because there’s nothing else around.

@22 re “Mini-correct”, that would be the “They say `always use a condom’, I say `always use a whip'” number. Hmmm.

Agreed re “Let Love Speak Up Itself”.

Paul Heaton’s got to be the most over-rated lyricist ever “Sad into unsad” is as bad as “They build so quick it makes you sick” Having said that I do like some of their stuff.

Surprised that no one’s mentioned “Liar’s Bar” their unlistenable Tom Waits pastiche which I’d nominate as one of the Top 5 worst singles of all time.

#27 Yes, “Liar’s Bar” was a daft choice to release as a single. Pastiches generally wear out their welcome pretty quickly so if you’re gonna do one at least make it short, not almost 6 minutes long! I would have released the sublime “Have Fun” instead. Liar’s Bar is the sort of thing you’d put on as the last track on a CD single and hope nobody notices.

One thing I forgot to mention was how Paul Heaton appeared to become morbidly obsessed with his own mortality as his drink problem set in. The word “grave” appears on their later albums a frankly disturbing number of times…

This is closer to Dean Friedman’s Lucky Stars than Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.

A friend of mine went to see a Dean Friedman show a few years back. Between songs someone called out “Dean! DEAN!!”

Dean looked up, expecting a request.

“Dean! Why hasn’t your career been more successful?”

Embarrassed sniggers and coughs. Dean mulled this over and was about to reply when he hears:

“…because Billy Joel has sold millions of records and his stuff’s quite similar to yours.”

Dean sighed, re-arranged his sheet music, and continued the set.

@31. Thinking more on ‘interrupting’ songs, I guess that raps of various sorts probably do literal interruption best. Louis Jordan’s Open the door Richard (one of the best records ever!) from the ’40s; Eminem and Dre and Snoop constantly jumping in on one another; that reboot of Just be good to me with Lily Allen and Green is all interruption; and, ‘Heh, shut up chick, he’s a friend of mine’ from early Wham (!) are examples that came to my mind. There must have been some full-on couple-fight raps. Maybe we can tempt Lex or someone to fill us in on that?

Re: #34 Part of it, surely, is to do with the kind of record and the kind of band this is – a middlebrow one that is hard to either love or hate. I don’t think that if somebody genuinely had a passion for this record they would be intimidated into toning down their praise, and I for one would like to hear their reasons.

Oh, and cheapo video ahoy! That image of the teddy bear with its head on a knife is probably why my parents showed me the song to be honest

#34 – Did my comment genuinely come across as buckling under peer pressure? If so, I’ll just give a bit more context – I thought long and hard about my reply, poised myself to type a huge comment about how great The Beautiful South were, but when it finally came to doing so realised that I was being over-defensive. I like the band and I think Heaton’s lyrics are astonishingly good when he’s on form, but I could count on two hands the number of times I’ve listened to songs of theirs which aren’t “Old Red Eyes Is Back” over the last five years (I don’t need to count using my fingers, actually – Last.fm has saved the day for me by automating the process).

When participating in Internet forums or blogs like “Popular”, I think there’s a tendency to over-react to mild criticism of acts you quite like purely for the sake of provoking further discussion or re-assessment, especially when there are one or two baity comments – but in my case it wouldn’t have been terribly honest. I own two Beautiful South albums, haven’t listened to most of their others, and therefore can’t really call myself a fan. The New Beautiful South also did a gig about a hundred yards from my flat last year, and I didn’t go to see them despite the convenience of it. So instead of going in with all guns blazing defending a number one which I don’t think is one of their stronger efforts, I tried to take the more moderate position.

Just in case my comment about bands with across-the-board appeal seems a bit sneery, by the way, that’s also something I didn’t intend to do. Whilst familiarity can breed distress, I think bands who appeal to a wide cross-section of the record buying public usually display one of two qualities – either they’re producing rather inoffensive and pleasant music which won’t upset the horses, or they’re very able songwriters able to reach a broad audience despite the elements of their sound which non-fans of their genre might otherwise find off-putting. Outkast’s “Hey Ya” (not a number one!) is a good example of the latter, whereas Lighthouse Family’s “Ocean Drive” would probably be an example of the former. I think the best bits of the Beautiful South catalogue break through despite the MOR-ness of their work which might usually alienate the indie kids or the twenty-something Asda buyers who wouldn’t be seen dead with a Gilbert O’Sullivan album – or at least wouldn’t have in the nineties, they might be OK with it now… He seems to have had a slight criticial reappraisal in the last few years.

Tom, #38. You are right, I was more focussed on what others had said than the record itself. This was deliberate, however. As I said, I genuinely feel that there isn’t a hope of defending – less still praising – this song. As Flahr says, lately we’ve been taking lessons in what’s uncool.

I will try to move on. I will try to make a case for the song, as I think this would be in the spirit of Popular.

“A Little Time” came out on the same day as “So Hard” by Pet Shop Boys. At the time, it felt incredibly exciting that two bands of Northern songwriters would be successful with songs which thematically were so similar to each other, yet relatively unusual. Pop is all about love and dancing, and there are plenty of other lyrics that deal with the issues of doubt, deceit and the genuine dilemma of wanting to show commitment whilst still wanting freedom. They do not come too easily to mind, though, and I have no recollection of any that do it as well as these two, each with such sly and dry humour. Furthermore, each single had a feeling of being an event; each was a new, strong first-single-from-an-as-yet-unreleased-album.

The two recordings are both full of character, and compete for the listener’s attention by making their points in original, lyrically engaging and very different ways. However, they are not making very different points.

And as much as that applies to the two recordings, it applies to the couple in A Little Time. As a listener gets drawn in, the argument raised by either half is made easier to appreciate by the pettiness of its counterpoint – though it would be a stretch to say they complement each other.

20 years on, I love both records, and I never think of or play one without thinking of the other. And this makes me more than doubly happy. 9.

#34 – When we get to the late 1990s there’s going to be a lot of songs that are extremely evocative of my childhood and hold some very happy memories, but I already know that there’s next to no chance of them being highly appraised. I’ll be a tad disappointed if they’re all just glossed over as a manufactured pop production line, as I think there’s some great fun tracks in there. I’ll be here making sure they get at least a bit of praise, even if I am the only one :p

The Beautiful South are one of those bands that I knew of their songs seperately for years, but didn’t realise they were all from the same act. Didn’t think they were quite so unpopular as this thread suggests, as there’s some huge classics they’ve released – Song for Whoever, Rotterdam, Don’t Marry Her and Perfect 10 I still love, and the slightly lesser-remembered ones like Bell Bottomed Tear, Good As Gold and How Long’s A Tear Take To Dry. This one I’ve somewhat overplayed in recent years and so it’s lost its spark for me, but it’s still not too bad.

The career of the other Housemartins spinoff act to make number one in 1990 is perhaps a key case in the argument against lyrical entryism in pop, its longevity far outdoing the “bomb to London – delivered from Scotland” that was allegedly Hue and Cry’s “Labour Of Love,” though the Beautiful South were more concerned with the minutiae and facades of interpersonal relationships, and in turn their relationship to music and how we receive, interpret and absorb it. Their 1994 greatest hits collection Carry On Up The Charts can reputedly be found in one out of every four British households (including this author’s) but did any of its millions of listeners not already aware of the songs’ subtexts bother to listen to the words, or read the lyric sheet? The question bears asking since their debut single “Song For Whoever,” an unremittingly violent examination of what might be termed the impotence of cheap music set against a pretty tune and arrangement, soared to number two in the summer of 1989, and subsequent hits looked at such apparently radio-unfriendly topics as wife-beating (“You Keep It All In”) and self-immolation (“I’ll Sail This Ship Alone”) – but thanks to their alternately jaunty and ruminative MoR structure and production they were taken at face value by millions of Simply Red and Dire Straits followers. Despite the remote possibility that the Beautiful South might have been a sort of North Country nineties equivalent of Arthur Lee’s Love – i.e. a bunch of murderous psychopaths politely fulminating against lush musical backdrops – one has to ask whether there was any useful difference in the end. The question marks inherent in the musical designs of “The Red Telephone” or “You Set The Scene” seem decidedly absent.

As with nearly all of their singles, “A Little Time” is an immaculately constructed deconstruction of a love duet, although its parallel male/female dialogues – both of which could have been drawn in thought bubbles, since the song concerns the internalisation of fraudulent love and the moral courage to reject it – strongly reflect “I Know Him So Well.” Dave Hemingway takes the role of the satirically mopey New Man (“I need a little space/Just on my own/I need a little time/To find my freedom”) while Briana Corrigan immediately doubles the vocal tempo as the sardonic Other (“You need a little room for your big head/Don’t you? Don’t you!”) before the otherwise placid song (tasteful late-period Van Morrison piano, drifting Style Council horns) halts for a low, sinister, electronic bass pause as Corrigan considers the death of unlove (“Trust into mistrust,” “Just into unjust”), each time leaving an abyss of silence, almost daring Hemingway to restart his mewling. Eventually Corrigan walks away (“I found a little courage/To call it off”) and the song ends with the two divorced individuals, each utterly in their own world, restating the central motif of “I’ve had a little time.” The Blade Runner bass hovers for some time at the record’s end like a sword, or a hatchet. But most of its consumers took it as a straightforward love duet, a streamlined Nancy and Lee, or even Peters and Lee, thereby reinforcing the notion that for true pop entryism of radical ideas to be achieved, the music has to be as radical as the sentiments, or at least far less sedate and somewhat more ruthless than the Beautiful South’s purposely misleading pleasantries; and even at the other extreme, “Song For Whoever” demolishes the notion of ruthlessly constructed “love songs” but does not suggest a viable alternative, unlike its ancestor, Matching Mole’s “Signed Curtain,” which after three utterly functional verses (“This is the first verse,” “This is the second verse” etc.) shuts down resignedly as Wyatt sings, as only Wyatt can, “It doesn’t hurt…it just means that I lost faith in this song, ‘cos it won’t help me reach you.” That is punctum.

#45 My feeling is you’re either overestimating the radicalism of the South or underestimating their audience here. From memory the BS were always marketed as being pretty jaundiced (or clear-eyed, take yer pick) about the realities of human relationships. I think they appealed in the same way Coronation Street appeals – a blend of sharpness and cosiness. But the audience are in on the sharpness as well as the cosiness in both cases.

I agree with most people here, I’ve always hated The Beautiful South – it’s not just their smugness, it’s the smugness about being small-minded and parochial and cynical in the most tedious pub bore way (no insight or original thought about it whatsoever). Their entire ethos seems to be about reflecting people as less than they are, but in a horribly mean, petty way – I bet Paul Heaton would love to fucking think he’s being barbed and venomous, but his jabs are fairly toothless really.

That said thanks to an inspired poll on ILX, “Song For Whoever” always makes me think of Petey Pablo’s “Freek-A-Leek” – “Jennifer, Alison, Philippa, Sue, Deborah, Annabel” vs. “Shameka, Keisha, Tara, Shonda, Sabrina, Crysta, Daronda, Teresa, Felicia, Tenisha, Sha’von, Monica, Monique, Christina, Yolanda”.

@33 Not all with actual interruptions. But some excellent examples of poisonous male/female argument-duets are:

– Nivea & R. Kelly’s “Laundromat” (“Aw girl, quit playin’ – I’m the only thing you got”; “You’re the only thing I got? Well, then I must not have a lot”)
– Sparkle & R. Kelly’s “Be Careful” (“two years ago, promises is all I heard – wait a minute, let me finish”)
– Sway & Stush’s “F Ur X” (“Does my girl tink mi a dunce? Bellin off ya bloodclaat phone when she wants”)
– Jazmine Sullivan & Ne-Yo’s “U Get On My Nerves” (“You should’ve known I was done when I busted your windows”)
– Trick Daddy & Trina’s “Nann Nigga” (“Hold up, who the fuck this nigga think he is? He got me fucked up, I ain’t ashamed of nothin I do”)
– Demon & Lady Fury’s “Gash” (“I don’t give head but / I give headbutts / a punch in the gut for calling me a slut”) (that’s a d/l link cuz it’s not on youtube)

And I guess Dizzee’s “I Luv U” would count too! I can’t believe that girl was never credited. “That boy’s some prick ya know”!