#heartbreak beat

[wekissedandyousaidwow]

Kuzlina song of the day <3

[deadbranch]

"We've got the radio on

and it feels like love."

[the-picked-last-club]

PSYCHEDELIC FURS/”HEARTBREAK BEAT”

[gojiro]

In honor of it’s 30 year anniversary, the Vinyl of the Day is ‘Midnight to Midnight’ by the Psychedelic Furs, 1987. This album was the Furs response to their big breakout hit ‘Pretty In Pink’, the version used in the massively popular John Hughes teen film of the same name. Frontman Richard Butler later claimed that the success of ‘Pretty In Pink’ caused the band to be pressured into recording a follow-up release before they were ready, and the result was ‘Midnight To Midnight’, their greatest commercial success, yet an album Richard Butler later characterized as “hollow, vapid and weak”. A more overtly commercial effort than the Furs had ever recorded before, the album also featured the single ‘Heartbreak Beat’ which proved to be the Furs’ biggest Top 40 entry in the US at that time.

For the most part regarding Furs fans, there are pretty much two kinds; the ones that like this album, and don’t really like the rest, and the ones that hate this album and love the rest. I’m of a different mind though - yes, ‘MtM’ moves away from the band’s most punkish roots, but all bands evolve and try new styles, and I recognize that fact and so I not only like their earlier works, but also find this a really terrific and listenable album, one of my favorites.

You might say, yes, this album is stewed in the cheap cologne and saxophones of Patrick Bateman’s New York circa 1987. Cocaine, hardbodied blondes in tight black dresses, tons of hairspray, fast cars and fast money, it’s all in there. There’s even a song about Crack. Yes, Crack. “Shock” is a song about Crack, or as it was more widely known in the 80s, “Freebase”. On the surface, this album is complete and total kitsch, a John Hughes movie for hedonistic adults doing lines off the toilet seat of some overpriced club in Manhattan. But that also makes it kind of amazing. What’s even more amazing, is that in spite of the ritzy/seedy veneer that’s been pasted over it, this album does have a lot of depth. Butler, as narrator, seems the reluctant party boy in this saga. It’s clear from the tone of the song lyrics that this scene just isn’t for him. He clearly doesn’t belong in the box his mid 80s success has forced him into. And it’s precisely this push/pull dynamic that makes this a remarkable album. It’s actually almost cheesy and false at times, but the feelings of alienation, reluctance, and regret are all very authentic. The Furs are one of my favorite 80s bands, and they should be yours too. 

Diffuser FM review by Nick DeRiso 30 Years Ago: Psychedelic Furs Finally Hit the Big Time (Briefly) With ‘Midnight to Midnight’ The Psychedelic Furs had been building toward blockbuster success for a while. When it finally arrived in the late ’80s, however, the good times didn’t last long.Midnight to Midnight followed a pair of gold-selling albums in 1982’s Forever Now and 1984’s Mirror Moves, but this February 1987 release took another huge retail step – becoming the Psychedelic Furs’ first Top 40 U.S. smash. “Love My Way” had initially broken the group on American radio in ’82, then an update of “Pretty in Pink” – reworked for a 1986 John Hughes film of the same name – set them up for this breakthrough. Questions quickly followed, however, for a band that had begun life in the late ’70s with a witty post-punk attitude, blending elements of David Bowie, the Sex Pistols and Roxy Music while darkly ruminating on love (“Sister Europe”), consumerism (“We Love You”) and the political scene (“President Gas”). Brothers Tim and Richard Butler, who co-founded the Psychedelic Furs with guitarist John Ashton, tried to push back at first.“People think that because we’ve gotten to the Top 40, we’ve sold out. We haven’t,” Tim, the band’s bassist, told the Orlando Sentinel in 1987. “What’s happened is that people are coming around to our music after all these years. It’s not that we’re changing to fit the market. We’re still saying ‘Think for yourselves, don’t follow leaders.‘”

Still, as the Midnight to Midnight single “Heartbreak Beat” rose to a career-best No. 29, it was clear that the Psychedelic Furs’ “overnight” success (some five albums in) had come at a price. Richard Butler, who fronted the band, didn’t exactly admit to dumbing things down to get to this level of success – but he came close.“I wanted to do some songs that were more easily understood,” singer Richard Butler told the Los Angeles Times. “I had never done an album like that and I wanted to try one. Lyrically, I wanted this one to be simpler than any album I had done before. It took a lot of paring to make it simple. I find it easy to sit down and write wildly abstract, stream-of-consciousness material. I feel comfortable with the looser form. You can go off on tangents. But writing in this simple style takes discipline.”

Pretty in Pink, which used a sleeker, more stylized version of a song originally found on 1981’s Talk, Talk, Talk, brought a larger, but not necessarily more sophisticated group of ears to the group.

“It got us across to an audience that doesn’t usually buy records or go to see bands really,” Tim told the Sentinel in 1987. “A movie-going audience is very different from a rock ‘n’ roll audience, I think. It brought us a younger audience, so now we have a big, healthy cross section – 13 to 30 and beyond.”

Later, talking to the Lincoln Journal-Star in 2016, Tim admitted that “it also lost us a few of the hardcore fans who had been following us, after that movie and tour. You had all these young girls turning up in pink T-shirts dressing like Molly Ringwald.”

As quickly as they flocked to the Psychedelic Furs, however, they skittered away. Midnight to Midnight, which boasted a similarly polished production aesthetic, didn’t produce another Hot 100 single. In fact, “Heartbreak Beat” was the last one ever, as the Furs began shifting back to their core aesthetic.

All of a sudden, a decade passed. When the Psychedelic Furs finally reformed at the dawn of the 2000s, they had a new perspective on their biggest album.

“For a while, we were staying away from Midnight to Midnight,” Tim Butler told the Journal-Star. “That was the only album we feel fell into being overproduced. But we’re playing ‘Angel’s Don’t Cry,’ a song never played live, even on the Midnight to Midnight tour. It’s getting really good reactions. Maybe that album isn’t so bad.”

[deadbranch]

It's a Psychedelic Furs kind of day.

[jamieroxxartist]

" #HeartbreakBeat " is the compilation album by #THEPSYCHEDELICFURS. It was released on September 27, 2005.

[oooklathemok]

The Psychedelic Furs - Heartbreak Beat (Official Video)

[socalledmixtapelife]

Good morning world, let’s do this…