Prefab Sprout
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Prefab Sprout
| For The Record... |
| Members include Neil Conti (born February 12, 1959, in London, England; joined group 1984), drums; Martin McAloon (born January 4, 1962, in Durham, England), bass; Paddy McAloon (born June 7, 1957, in Durham), vocals, guitar, keyboards; and Wendy Smith (born May 31, 1963, in Hartlepool, England; joined group c. 1982), vocals. Former members include Michael Salmon, drums. Band formed in early 1980s; recorded first single, “Lions in My Own Garden,” and signed with Kitchenware Records, 1982; signed with CBS Records, 1983; released first album, Swoon, 1984. Addresses: Record company —Kitchenware Records, Saint Thomas Street Stables, Saint Thomas Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4LE, England. |
Pop band
Paddy McAloon, visionary and front man of England’s Prefab Sprout, has been called a clever bastard, a god, an eccentric genius, and a wimp; critics either adore or abhor him. McAloon has been compared to everyone from immortal bard William Shakespeare to soul singer Marvin Gaye. "Suddenly," said London’s Independent on Sunday of McAloon’s appearance on the music scene, "[he] was [British Pop icon] Elvis Costello with a sweet tooth, or he was [former Beatle] Paul McCartney with a degree in English and either way he was the smartest alec pop had seen in years." New Musical Experience put it bluntly, stating, "Though it is de rigeur among self-styled rock pigs to feign hatred and contempt for Prefab Sprout, the truth is Everybody likes them." Regardless of whether or not he is worshipped or vilified, this "last pop genius"—as RollingStonecalled McAloon—has been plugging away for over a decade, constantly reaching for the perfect pop hit.
McAloon and his brother Martin invented their band’s odd moniker in 1971 after hearing of strangely named bands such as Grand Funk Railroad and Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T. Rex). If ever they had a band, they would call it Prefab Sprout, the McAloon brothers decided. They also considered Grappled Institution, Dry Axe, and Village Bus. "I love our name because I know the naivete it came out of," Paddy told Rolling Stone.
Perfect Pop and Petrol
Still, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that the boys got to use the name. Between pumping gas at their father’s filling station in Consett, County Durham, a small town outside of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, they would play cover tunes behind the garage. As Paddy’s confidence in his own songwriting grew, they enlisted school chum Michael Salmon to play drums, while Martin played bass and Paddy took lead guitar and vocals. After that, all Paddy ever wanted to do was pump gas and write songs. McAloon’s early influences included T. Rex, Free, The Who, and the Beatles; the classy pop songs of Jimmy Webb, BurtBacharach, and Hal David; and staples of Broadway, especially Stephen Sondheim.
In 1982 gigs at local pubs earned Prefab Sprout enough cash to record a single, "Lions in My Own Garden," on their own label, Candle. The single and its "simply ears ahead" poster caught the attention of the independent label Kitchenware Records, which released "Lions" nationally.
Meanwhile, local school girl Wendy Smith had fallen for the band after seeing their early shows. McAloon asked
her and a friend to sing on their next single, and Wendy just kept on singing with the Sprout. Her first recorded appearance came on Prefab Sprout’s second single release, "The Devil Has All the Best Tunes." The band recorded their first album, Swoon, in 1983. It so impressed Kitchenware that the label took it to the considerably larger CBS Records (later purchased by Sony), which signed the band for an eight-album deal. Swoon was released in 1984, went straight into the Top 20, and started the music media’s passions rolling.
Swoon Impassioned Critics
Kitchenware had publicized the band a great deal and the notoriously temperamental British press was waiting to pounce, knives at the ready. In Melody Maker, Adam Sweeting deemed Swoon "virtually unbearable," calling it "drivel" and "a gigantic folly, a tour de force of self-indulgence." He concluded his remarks with, "As you can tell, I’m horrified." Melody Maker’s Ian Pye felt Swoon "suffered from a self-conscious desire to impress," and many others called it too clever. Yet Colin Irwin, also writing for Melody Maker, ventured, "All that anguish, preciousness and contrived wit took a bit of stomaching … but Swoon nevertheless still wielded an elusive, nagging magic that has continued to drag me back to it throughout the last year."
This apparently exasperating music has been described in a variety of ways. Sylvie Simmons of Creem called McAloon "a sort of Marc Bolan [of T. Rex] spirit in Steely Dan’s body listening to [Bob] Dylan and the Beach Boys while fasting for Lent." The music is profoundly nostalgic, harkening back to a time of beautiful, simple melodies. McAloon mixes a poetic wordiness with an eccentric compositional style. Melody Maker deemed the songs a blend of "sculpted, elaborate melodies and achingly beautiful chord changes." Creem called it "melodic, high-gloss pop," noting "colorful impressionistic lyrics sung in Paddy’s naive, soulful voice."
Critical blather notwithstanding, Swoon caught the ear of several influential pop artists, including Thomas Dolby, who offered to produce the band’s next album. The result was 1985’s Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the U.S.), with drummer Neil Conti newly on board. Hailed by many critics as the best album of the year—even the decade—several felt it stood alongside eclectic gems like the Beatles’ Revolver, the Byrds’ Notorious Byrd Brothers, and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Melody Maker’s Pye called it "an incredible achievement; its melodic and textural qualities are stunning enough, but the vision behind it all has produced a work that is not just consistently excellent but positively inspirational." Rob Tannenbaum, on the other hand, wrote in Rolling Stone that "while the rich, fresh writing tempts you back to Two Wheels Good, the music often makes listening a chore—like sifting through mud to uncover a few specks of gold."
Commercial Success Elusive
Although beloved by many a critic, Prefab Sprout has never been much of a commercial success. Their biggest hit was a throwaway tune off their fourth album, 1988’s From Langley Park to Memphis. Ironically, "King of Rock ’n’ Roll" was a song about a one-hit wonder that McAloon whipped off in 20 minutes.
Langley countered the critical cries of "fey," "wimpy," and "precious" that had held the band back, though McAloon had dismissed such name-calling all along. "I’m not a wimp," he told Creem’s Simmons, "I’m physically frail. I’m also guilty of being poor, so the songs I’ve recorded in the past haven’t had a brilliant sound because I couldn’t afford the right guitar. But that’s not wimpy. I’m not eccentric; in fact I’m probably cold-bloodedly straight ahead in what I do. I’m not a clever bastard genius."
Indeed, McAloon is a product of his environment and thus can’t help that he always sounds "so bloody academic," as he put it to Simmons. Educated in a Catholic seminary from the ages of 11 to 19, McAloon holds a degree in English literature and can hardly help writing intelligently. "And I relish my reputation as this introspective, precious brooder, because I know that’s not me," he told David Wild in Rolling Stone, "I know I’m not the guy in the moody picture." In fact, the inward-looking songs he writes are most often a product of his imagination. "A song’s just a point of view," he explained to David Stubbs in Melody Maker. "I just try and be consistent to the law of that particular song, even if it isn’t how I necessarily feel."
Some of the critical hubbub surrounding the band can be attributed to writers who just didn’t get it—they missed the jokes and McAloon’s wry sense of humor, taking him much too seriously. Though expressing some misgivings about the record, Melody Maker’s Chris Roberts, for one, did locate the humor in Langley. "Prefab Sprout get away with things which should normally be stomped on from a great height. Quite why the melodic and crafted Langley Park\s a truly delicious record is making me scratch my [head]…. It’s something to do with a poignancy which is too happily coloured with good-natured tricks to be maudlin…. I am baffled as to why this, like its noble predecessor Steve McQueen, hangs my guts from the lampshade every time."
No Road Warriors
With each record, critics and a cult of fans in the U.K. and U.S. continued to rave, but the band was unable to achieve mainstream popularity. This could be attributed to their disinclination to tour in support of their albums. Prefab Sprout toured very early in their career and again in the early 1990s, but never in the U.S. McAloon told the Independent on Sunday, "I can do it, and I will do it, and it doesn’t break my heart to do it. But it’s possible that it destroys the mystery which surrounds the records and I’d rather be at home trying to write the big one." Many hinted that the band could not recreate their complex sound in a live setting. But McAloon told Robert Sandall in the London Sunday Times of his concern that "you see what certain songs do to your audience every night, and you start writing to please them." To Rolling Stone’s Wild he admitted, I’m burnt by every day that I don’t [write]. It reduces me."
McAloon spent years working on Langley’s follow-up, Jordan: The Comeback, which was almost universally lauded as his masterpiece. "Exquisite, sumptuous, marvelously intricate, angelically forceful," wrote taste-maker Simon Reynolds in Melody Maker. In the same magazine, Paul Lester enthused, "Prefab Sprout have, alongside their knowingness and intelligence and postmodern deliberation, a certain incidental beauty that could never be contrived." Lester went on to sum up McAloon’s gift: "[His] genius is his ability to take those few breathtaking seconds from your favorite record— the thrilling intro or swoonsome chorus that you play over and over—and construct whole songs of them…. In [Jordan] there are numerous instances of Paddy’s ability to sustain freak moments over three or four sublime minutes."
Jordan was an ambitious record, lengthy and ranging in themes from God to Elvis Presley. Where most reviewers gushed shamelessly, some found the disc a little too perfect. In the Guardian, Adam Sweeting opined that "nothing [Prefab Sprout] ever do appears to spring from impulse. It’s always a pastiche, an echo or a gesture, as if McAloon has studied music from books and old movies and set about turning his discoveries into a crossword…. It’s skillful, but it’s a little like sitting in an examination." Nonetheless, Sounds contributor George Berger represented the majority when he noted McAloon’s simple "knowledge of beauty, in itself rare," calling the songwriter "a Shakespeare in a world of cheap novels."
After a brief U.K. tour for Jordan, McAloon again sat down to a mammoth project: Earth: The Story So Far. In the meanwhile, the rise of a new radio format in the U.S. called Adult Album Alternative boded well for the band’s commercial prospects; this type of radio station, which plays a softer, singer-songwriter-oriented form of "alternative" rock, including older songs befitting such tastes, had already taken a liking to Prefab Sprout. For the first time, radio listeners in America could hear Prefab Sprout on commercial airwaves.
Selected discography
On Kitchenware Records/Sony in the U.K., Epic Records in the U.S.
Swoon, 1984.
Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the U.S.), 1985.
Protest Songs, 1989.
From Langley Park to Memphis (includes "King of Rock ’n’ Roll"), 1988.
Jordan: The Comeback, 1990.
A Life of Surprises, The Best of Prefab Sprout, 1992.
Sources
Billboard, September 20, 1988.
Consumer’s Research Magazine, March 1993.
Creem, February 1986; October 1988.
Guardian, August 23, 1990.
Independent on Sunday (London), June 28, 1992.
Melody Maker, March 10, 1984; June 1,1985; June 8,1985; February 6, 1988; March 12, 1988; March 26, 1988; June 24, 1989; August 4, 1990; August 18, 1990; January 5, 1991; June 20, 1992.
New Musical Express, August 18, 1990; June 20, 1992.
Q, September 1990.
R/M, August 22, 1990.
Rolling Stone, October 24, 1985; June 16, 1988; March 7, 1991.
Sounds, August 22, 1990.
Spin, January 1991.
Sunday Times (London), September 9, 1990.
Time Out, August 22, 1990.
Today, August 31, 1990.
Vox, August 1990; July 1992.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from Kitchenware Records publicity materials, 1994 and 1995.
AMG AllMusic Guide: Pop Artists:
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Prefab Sprout
- Genres: Rock
Biography
One of the most beloved British pop bands of the '80s and '90s, Prefab Sprout have had a minimum of chart success in the United States, where they're all but unknown outside of their devoted cult following, but singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon is regularly hailed as one of the great songwriters of his era. Critics regularly compare McAloon favorably to Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, and even Cole Porter, but the self-effacing and publicity-shy performer modestly prefers to let his increasingly rare albums speak for themselves.Prefab Sprout were formed in Newcastle, England, in 1977 by McAloon (who sings and plays guitar and piano) and his bass-playing younger brother, Martin. In the group's early days, McAloon spun several fanciful tales about the origin of their odd name (one favorite was that the young McAloon had misheard the line "hotter than a pepper sprout" in Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood's "Jackson"), but the prosaic truth is that an adolescent McAloon had devised the meaningless name in homage to the longwinded and equally silly band names of his late-'60s/early-'70s youth. With an early fan, Wendy Smith, drafted into the lineup to sing helium-register backing vocals, the trio released its first single, "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)," on its own Candle label in July 1982. Written for a girlfriend who had left Newcastle to study in Limoges, France (check the acronym of the title), the song was exceedingly clever but obviously heartfelt. The single's warm reception, including many plays on John Peel's radio show, led to the Sprout's signing to CBS subsidiary Kitchenware Records, which reissued the single in April 1983. Another single, "The Devil Has All the Best Tunes," followed later that year.
Prefab Sprout's first album, Swoon, was released in March 1984. Containing neither of the first two singles (but leading off with the delightful "Don't Sing," their third), Swoon is in retrospect a surprisingly brittle record, full of difficult songs that take unexpected left turns and have all but impenetrable lyrics. That said, there are more ideas per bar in Swoon than in any chart record released in 1984, and the songs' charms reveal themselves after a few listens. Shortly after Swoon's release, drummer Neil Conti joined the group, and in a rather brilliant move, Thomas Dolby was tapped to produce the second Prefab Sprout album, 1985's Steve McQueen (retitled Two Wheels Good in the U.S. due to litigation from the late actor's estate). Dolby smoothes out the kinks a bit, and his keyboards help enrich the album's sound; it also helps that the songs are much better, lyrically opaque but not impenetrable and melodically satisfying. Prefab Sprout returned to the studio without Dolby in the summer of 1985 and quickly recorded an album's worth of material that was initially meant to be released in a limited edition as a tour souvenir. However, several months after Steve McQueen was released, its song "When Love Breaks Down" (which had been released as a single four different times in the U.K. without chart success) finally became a hit, and CBS feared a new album would hurt its predecessor's sales, so the project was shelved.
The "proper" follow-up to Steve McQueen was 1988's From Langley Park to Memphis. Although it was their biggest hit, thanks to the massive U.K. chart success of "The King of Rock and Roll" (about a one-hit wonder stuck performing his silly novelty song on the nostalgia circuit forever; ironically, it was Prefab Sprout's sole U.K. Top Ten hit and remains their best-known song) and the U.S. college radio success of the genial Bruce Springsteen parody "Cars and Girls," many Prefab Sprout fans consider this the group's weakest album due to the too-slick production and a few subpar tunes. Following that chart action, CBS dusted off the shelved acoustic project from 1985 and released it (in the U.K. only) under the title Protest Songs in June 1989. Issued in 1990, Jordan: The Comeback, which McAloon describes as a concept album about Jesse James and Elvis Presley, was released to enormous critical acclaim in late 1990, but unfortunately, its ornate, lush production and suite-like structure doomed it to commercial failure in the U.S., though it was another big hit in the U.K. A fine but unimaginative best-of, A Life of Surprises, met similar respective fates in the summer of 1992.
Many thought Prefab Sprout disbanded at that point, and indeed, Conti did leave the band at some point in the '90s. However, McAloon had written (and in some cases, recorded) several albums' worth of material during the first half of the decade, abandoning them all before finally releasing the crystalline Andromeda Heights in 1997. The album wasn't even released in the U.S., but it was another deserved U.K. hit. An album of subtle beauty, Andromeda Heights shows how far McAloon had come as a songwriter and singer since Swoon.
A much-improved two-disc anthology, The 38 Carat Collection was released by CBS in 1999 as the group was leaving the label. (Unexpectedly, the group's U.S. label, Epic, belatedly reissued this set as The Collection in early 2001.) Smith left the group during this period, after the birth of her first child. Prefab Sprout, by this point consisting solely of the McAloon brothers, signed to EMI in late 2000 and delivered their Western-themed concept album, The Gunman and Other Stories, in early 2001. Unfortunately, the album's release was delayed several months when Paddy McAloon was diagnosed with a medical disorder rendering him partially blind. After an eight-year layoff, McAloon returned to recording as Prefab Sprout and released the self-produced, performed, and recorded Let's Change the World with Music. This set's songs and concept date to 1992 and were originally to be recorded as the follow-up album to Jordan: The Comeback; for various reasons, those sessions never happened. It was initially issued by Ministry of Sound and later in the year licensed by Sony/BMG in the U.K. In 2010, the independent Tompkins Square imprint issued the album in the United States. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Prefab Sprout
| Prefab Sprout | |
|---|---|
| Origin | County Durham, England |
| Genres | Pop rock, New Wave, Sophisti-pop |
| Years active | 1978–present |
| Labels | Kitchenware EMI Liberty Epic (US) |
| Website | The band's official site closed in 2004 |
| Members | |
| Paddy McAloon Martin McAloon |
|
| Past members | |
| Wendy Smith Feona Attwood Neil Conti Michael Salmon Graham Lant Steve Dolder |
|
Prefab Sprout are an English pop rock band from Witton Gilbert, County Durham, England who rose to fame during the 1980s. Eight of their albums have reached the Top 40 in the UK Albums Chart, and one of their singles, "The King of Rock 'n' Roll", peaked at number seven in the UK Singles Chart.[1] The band formed in 1978 in Newcastle.[1]
Prefab Sprout had minimal chart success in the United States. Their 1985 album Steve McQueen was released in the US with the title Two Wheels Good and peaked at number 180 in the Billboard 200. Frontman Paddy McAloon has been hailed as one of the great songwriters of his era.[2]
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Contents
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Career
Prefab Sprout debuted in 1982 with their self-released single, "Lions In My Own Garden: Exit Someone" - songwriter Paddy McAloon wanted a song title where the first letters of the words spelled out Limoges, the French city where his former girlfriend was staying at the time.[2] Music journalist Stuart Maconie, described the track as "enigmatic, melancholy, tuneful and therefore perfect for a jobless literature graduate with girlfriend problems".[3] Their debut album, Swoon, was released on the Kitchenware label in March 1984.[2] The following album, the Thomas Dolby-produced Steve McQueen, (released in America as Two Wheels Good after McQueen's estate expressed their displeasure with the title) was highly praised by critics.[2] Their Protest Songs album was recorded next, but was not released until 1989. It included the song "Life of Surprises", which later became the title track for their greatest hits compilation album.
Their biggest commercial success in the UK came with the 1988 single "The King of Rock 'N' Roll", taken from the album From Langley Park to Memphis. It reached #7 in the UK Singles Chart, their only single to reach the Top 10. From Langley Park to Memphis included guest appearances from Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend.[1]
In 1990, Jordan: The Comeback, again produced by Thomas Dolby, was nominated for a BRIT Award. Though the music was more accessible than their earlier material, the lyrics and subject matter remained characteristically oblique and suggestive (McAloon has often cited Stephen Sondheim as an influence).[citation needed] McAloon has alluded in interviews to several albums-worth of songs that he has written but are unreleased/unrecorded including amongst others, concept albums based on the life of Michael Jackson (Behind the Veil), the history of the world (Earth: The Story So Far) and (Zorro the Fox) about a fictional superhero.[citation needed]
Their greatest hits, A Life of Surprises - The Best of Prefab Sprout, gave them their biggest US hit, "If You Don't Love Me", which spent several weeks in the Top 10 on the dance chart. McAloon joked in the album liner notes about the band's lack of touring over the past decade.
Prefab Sprout released Andromeda Heights in the UK in 1997 and embarked on a short UK tour in 2000. This tour, and the subsequent album, did not feature Wendy Smith, who by this time had reportedly left the band. A double album anthology, the 38 Carat Collection was released by CBS in 1999 as the group was leaving the record label.[2] Unexpectedly, the group's US label, Epic, belatedly reissued this set as The Collection in early 2001.[2] Smith left the group during this period, after the birth of her first child.
In 2001 the band released The Gunman and Other Stories a concept album themed on the American Wild West. The opening track "Cowboy Dreams" was a hit for the British actor-singer Jimmy Nail. Though critically acclaimed, neither enjoyed major commercial success.
After being diagnosed with a medical disorder that seriously impaired his vision, Paddy McAloon released the album I Trawl The Megahertz under his own name in 2003 on the EMI Liberty label. As of 2006, McAloon had suffered another setback: his hearing had deteriorated, reportedly due to Ménière's disease. In early 2007 a remastered Steve McQueen was released in a two-CD package, containing new versions of eight of the songs from the original album, in radically different arrangements performed by McAloon on acoustic guitar.
Prefab Sprout's first album of new material since 2001, Let's Change the World with Music, was released on 7 September 2009. Reviews in the UK press were favourable (e.g. 5/5 in The Times, 4/5 in The Guardian, 4/5 in Record Collector). The release was also accompanied by a few interviews (e.g. Mojo).
Band name
According to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, the band's name was a mondegreen from the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood song, "Jackson", misheard by frontman Paddy McAloon.[1] The correct opening lyrics for "Jackson" are "We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout", which McAloon misinterpreted as 'hotter than a prefab sprout'. However, Allmusic reckons that the prosaic truth is that "an adolescent McAloon had devised the meaningless name in homage to the longwinded and equally silly band names of his late 1960s / early 1970s youth". But it is equally valid that, because of the proliferation of pre-fabricated houses in the North East (due to World War II - and commonly called Prefabs), the former is true due to word association.[2]
Core members
- Paddy McAloon (born Patrick Joseph McAloon, 7 June 1957, Durham[4]); vocals / guitars / keyboards
- Wendy Smith (born 31 May 1963,[4] Middlesbrough); vocals / guitars / keyboards
- Feona Attwood (born, Chester-le-Street, County Durham); vocals - now Professor Attwood teaching Media and Communication Studies at Sheffield Hallam University.[5]
- Martin McAloon (born 4 January 1962, Durham[4]); bass guitar
- Neil Conti (born 12 February 1959,[4] Luton); drums / percussion
- Michael Salmon (born Durham); the band's first drummer and co-founder - left January 1983 replaced by Graham Lant. Steve Dolder joined in mid 1983 before Conti joined in late 1984[6]
Discography
Albums
| Year | Album | UK Albums Chart | Billboard 200 | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Swoon | 22 | - | - |
| 1985 | Steve McQueen | 21 | 180 | Released in the US as Two Wheels Good |
| 1988 | From Langley Park to Memphis | 5 | - | - |
| 1989 | Protest Songs | 18 | - | Recorded in 1985 |
| 1990 | Jordan: The Comeback | 7 | - | - |
| 1992 | The Best Of - A Life Of Surprises | 3 | - | - |
| 1997 | Andromeda Heights | 7 | - | - |
| 1999 | 38 Carat Collection | 95 | - | Last album for Sony/Columbia |
| 2001 | The Gunman and Other Stories | 60 | - | Only album for EMI-Liberty to date |
| 2003 | I Trawl the Megahertz | 167 | - | Paddy McAloon solo project |
| 2007 | Steve McQueen | 155 | - | Remastered Legacy edition with second acoustic disc recorded by McAloon in 2005 |
| 2009 | Let's Change the World with Music | 39 | - | - |
- All chart positions takes from Chart Log UK <http://www.zobbel.de/cluk/CLUK_P.HTM>
Singles
| Year | Song | UK Singles Chart [1][6][7][8] |
US Billboard Hot 100 | Album |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | "Don't Sing" | 62 | - | Swoon |
| "When Love Breaks Down" | 88 | - | Steve McQueen | |
| 1985 | "Faron Young" | 74 | - | |
| "Appetite" | 92 | - | ||
| "When Love Breaks Down" (reissue) | 25 | - | ||
| 1986 | "Johnny Johnny" (called "Goodbye Lucille #1" on the album) | 64 | - | |
| 1988 | "Cars and Girls" | 44 | - | From Langley Park to Memphis |
| "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" | 7 | - | ||
| "Hey Manhattan!" | 72 | - | ||
| "Nightingales" | 78 | - | ||
| 1989 | "The Golden Calf" | 82 | - | |
| 1990 | "Looking for Atlantis" | 51 | - | Jordan: The Comeback |
| "We Let The Stars Go" | 50 | - | ||
| 1991 | "Jordan - The EP" | 35 | - | |
| 1992 | "The Sound of Crying" | 23 | - | The Best Of - A Life Of Surprises |
| "If You Don't Love Me" | 33 | - | ||
| "All The World Loves Lovers" | 61 | - | ||
| 1993 | "Life of Surprises" | 24 | - | |
| "I Remember That" | - | - | ||
| 1997 | "A Prisoner of the Past" | 30 | - | Andromeda Heights |
| "Electric Guitars" | 53 | - | ||
| 1999 | "Where the Heart Is" | 153 | - | 38 Carat Collection |
| 2001 | "Cowboy Dreams" | - | - | The Gunman and Other Stories |
| 2009 | "Let There Be Music" | - | - | Let's Change the World with Music |
Sources
- Myths, Melodies & Metaphysics: Paddy McAloon's Prefab Sprout - ISBN 978-0-9558832-0-0
References
- ^ a b c d e Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 433. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Biography by Stewart Mason". Allmusic.com. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p5174. Retrieved 4 December 2008.
- ^ Maconie, Stuart (2004). Cider With Roadies (1st ed.). London: Random House. p. 161. ISBN 0-09-189115-9.
- ^ a b c d Roberts, David (1998). Guinness Rockopedia (1st ed.). London: Guinness Publishing Ltd.. p. 327. ISBN 0-85112-072-5.
- ^ Feona Attwood Website
- ^ a b Strong, Martin C. (2000). The Great Rock Discography (5th ed.). Edinburgh: Mojo Books. p. 760. ISBN 1-84195-017-3.
- ^ "Chart Log UK: Rodney P. - The Pussycat Dolls". Zobbel.de. http://www.zobbel.de/cluk/CLUK_P.HTM. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
- ^ "Prefab Sprout". Chart Stats. http://www.chartstats.com/artistinfo.php?id=4016. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
External links
- "Sproutnet" - with media and message boards
- "The longest running Prefab Sprout fansite" - now largely archival and rarely updated[dead link]
- "Life of Surprises" in English and Spanish
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Mentioned in
Prefab Sprout: The Best of Prefab Sprout
(1992 Music Film)
Raintown
(1987 Album by Deacon Blue)
Country Catalog
(1998 Album by The Relationships)
Paddy McAloon
(Rock Artist, '80s-2000s)
Hello, Blue Roses
(Rock Band)
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