domingo, junio 08, 2025

Rocktrospectiva: The Commercially Succesful and Acclaimed "Our Favourite Shop" Turns 40

Released on 8 June 1985 "Our Favourite Shop" (released as Internationalists in the United States) was the second studio album by the English band the Style Council. Recorded ten months after the band's debut, Café Bleu. The album spawned the singles "Shout To The Top!", "Walls Come Tumbling Down", "Come To Milton Keynes", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" & "The Lodgers."

It was The Style Council's most commercially successful album, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, and remained at the top of the charts for one week, displacing Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. The album was the Style Council's only number one album in the UK. 

One of the most appealed thing on the record was the multigenre incorporateed on the album, such a diverse stylistic influences, including soul, rap, jazz and rock styles. Recording was completed in March 1985. The cover, depicting the band posing inside a shop, was designed by Paul Weller and British artist Simon Halfon.

The album featureed fourteen original compositions (eight by Paul Weller, four co-written by Weller and Mick Talbot, and one co-written by Weller with Steve White), with one instrumental from Talbot, in its original British form.

The Lyrics targeted racism, excessive consumerism, the effects of self-serving governments, the suicide of one of Weller's friends and what the band saw as an exasperating lack of opposition to the status quo. All of this pessimism is countered with an overarching sense of hope and delight that alternatives do actually exist—if only they can be seen. They also took a more overtly political approach than The Jam in their lyrics, with tracks such as "Walls Come Tumbling Down", "The Lodgers", and "Come to Milton Keynes" being deliberate attacks on 'middle England' and Thatcherite principles prevalent in the 1980s. "A Man of Great Promise" was Weller's eulogy to his school friend and early Jam member - Dave Waller - who had died from a heroin overdose in August 1982.

The track "With Everything to Lose", featuring a political lyric written by Steve White, used the backing track of the then unreleased song "Have You Ever Had It Blue" which had been written for the soundtrack to the film Absolute Beginners. Re-recorded with the original lyric and released as a single in 1986, "Have You Ever Had It Blue" charted in the top 20 in the UK and top 10 in Ireland. The majority of the album's material was released (with different sequencing and packaged with an entirely different cover design) in the USA as Internationalists by Geffen Records (which has been a sister label to Polydor Records, the band's UK label, since 1998, under Universal Music Group).

Critically the album received mixed reviews but practically it was considered to be the band's best work by contemporary critics. Retrospectively, "Our Favourite Shop" was a quite eclectic album, more cohesive and stronger indeed.
 
Our Favourite Shop Track List: 
 
1. Homebreakers
2. All Gone Away
3. Come To Milton Keynes
4. Internationalists
5. A Stones Throw Away
6. THe Stand Up Comic's Instructions
7. Boy Who Cried Wolf
8. A Man Of Great Promise
9. Down In The Seine
10. The Lodgers
11. Luck
12. With Everything To Lose
13. Walls Come Tumbling Down 

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