Songoftheday 1/24/20 - You give me just a taste so I want more, now my hands are bleeding and my knees are raw...
from the albums Gorgeous George (1994) and Empire Records (Original Soundtrack) (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3
Today's song of the day comes from Scottish post-punk artist Edwyn Collins, who comes from Edinburgh. Moving to Glasgow, Collins' formed the group Orange Juice, who released four studio albums in the early 1980's, and had a top ten hit in Britain in 1983 with "Rip It Up". The next year, Collins' had a minor hit with Paul Quinn, the folkish "Pale Blue Eyes", that was a minor hit in the UK at #72. That band broke up in 1985, and by the following year he started his solo career. He had a couple of minor British hits in 1987, including "Don't Shilly Shally" (UK #93), but after the label imploded it took until 1989 for his first full-length album, Hope and Despair.
In 1994, Collins released a 4-song EP named Expressly, that included two mixes of a song called "A Girl Like You", and went to #42 on the singles chart in the UK. That song would be re-released on his this album Gorgeous George. The first single from the album, the Paul Weller-ish "If You Could Love Me", spent a solitary week on the British chart at #98. Then the decidedly retro "Girl Like You", written and produced by Collins, was re-released, and became his biggest British hit, before crossing the Atlantic to be his American breakthrough after being used prominently in the record store movie Empire Records, and released as the first single from its soundtrack...
"A Girl Like You" became Edwyn's first and only charting pop hit in the U.S., reaching the top-40 in November of 1995. The song was a huge success on modern rock radio, cresting at #7 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart. Internationally, the song went to #4 in the UK (his biggest success homeside), and was a big hit overseas, topping the chart in Belgium for five weeks (#1F/#5W), and reaching the top ten in Germany (#3), France (#4), Sweden (#4), Australia (#6), Austria (#7), Norway (#7), Ireland (#8), and Switzerland (#9). It also got to #11 in Finland, #16 in Canada, and #18 in the Netherlands. The Gorgeous George album would go to #8 on the British albums sales chart.
Collins returned in 1996 with the album I'm Not Following You, with lead single "Keep On Burning" just missing the British top-40 at #45 despite the retro production that made "A Girl Like You" a winner. But just like that latter song, the next release "The Magic Piper (Of Love)" would be helped by a movie, this time the first Austin Powers movie, and scored him a scored British top-40 hit at #32. But the third release, "Adidas World", would stall at #71. A third album on the Setanta label, Doctor Syntax in 2002, went pretty much unnoticed.
In 2005, Collins suffered from a major stroke, that ended in years of rehab to be able to talk and sing again. An album he recorded before that happened, Home Again, was put out in 2007 and nicked the albums chart at #90. He has since released two more album recorded after, with his last charted set, Understated, going to #66 in 2013. In 2015, on the release of a documentary of his life, "A Girl Lie You" re-entered the chart in the UK at #56. Last year, he released the album Badbea, with the single "Outside" keeping his career alive.
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Here's Collins appearing live on Conan O'Brien to promote the single...
And here he is on Jools Holland performing "A Girl Like You" and the title track to the Gorgeous George album...
Fast forward to 2012, after his stroke...
and finally, a very nice intimate gig with Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera and Tim Burgess of the Charlatans...
Up tomorrow: Jam band have the insects in line.
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