Welcome to the Beautiful South, 1989

Some shops refused to take a CD in stock that shows a woman aiming with a gun in her mouth. For those a second cover was designed. With cute fluffy teddy-bears.

The actual meaning of the covers is obviously: "Smoking kills! It's like firing a gun through your head." Hence I'm a strict no-smoker, I like the cover very much :-)

1. Song for whoever
2. Have you ever been away
3. From under the covers
4. I'll sail this ship alone
5. Girlfriend
6. Straight in at 37
7. You keep it all in
8. Woman in the wall
9. Oh Blackpool
10. Love is
11. I love you (But you're boring)

Choke, 1990

Choke refers to the fact, that many groups get worse after their first album, they "choke". You can be sure, The Beautiful South hasn't choked!

1. Tonight I fancy myself
2. My book
3. Let love speak up itself
4. Should've kept my eyes shut
5. I've come for my award
6. Lips
7. I think the answer's yes
8. A little time
9. Mother's pride
10. I hate you (But you're interesting)
11. The rising of Grafton Street
12. What you see is what you get

0898 Beautiful South, 1992

0898 was a prefix number in the UK for all kind of expensive "sex-hotlines"

1. Old red eyes is back
2. We are each ohter
3. The rocking chair
4. We'll deal with you later
5. Domino man
6. 36D
7. Here it is again
8. Something that you said
9. I'm your no.1 fan
10. Bell-bottomed tear
11. You play glockenspiel, I'll play drums
12. When I'm 84

Miaow, 1994

You can also find two differnt covers for this album. The first cover showed a part of Michael Sowa's painting "Their Master's Voice". HMV, a big chain of music stores, thought that the cover looked to much like their own logo. This shows a dog who looks in an old grammophon. HMV didn't run to court with this but simply refused to sell the album. So, once again, a second cover was created. It is this on the left and it shows also a painting by Michael Sowa. Meanwhile HMV has becom quiet cooler: The re-release of "Miaow" shows again the original cover and is also sold by HMV.

1. Hold on to what?
2. Good as gold (But stupid as mud)
3. Especially for you
4. Everybody's talkin'
5. Prettiest eyes
6. Worthless Lie
7. Hooligans don't fall in love
8. Hidden jukebox
9. Hold me close (Underground)
10. Tattoo
11. Mini-correct
12. Poppy

Carry on up the Charts - Best of The Beautiful South, 1995

This one became the third fastest selling album in the UK ever, with Millions of sold copies only in the UK. You will find that some songs on "Carry on up..." sound different to the versions from the albums. Some songs are remixed, some are even re-recorded. Thus there are some songs, which were originally sung by Briana Corrigan, that are sung by Jaqueline Abbott on this CD. Besides the greatest hits there are also two previous unreleased bonus tracks: "One Last Lovesong" and "Dream A Little Dream". Last on is taken from the soundtrack to the movie "French Kiss", but is only included in the German release of "Carry on up the Charts", not in the UK one.

Besides the "normal" "Carry on up..." exists also a version with two CDs. The second disk includes a lot of their previous single B-sides.

1. Song for whoever
2. You keep it all in
3. I'll sail this ship alone
4. A little time
5. My book
6. Let love speak up itself
7. Old red eyes is back
8. We are each other
9. Bell bottomed tear
10. 36D
11. Good as gold (But stupid as mud)
12. Everybody's talkin'
13. Prettiest eyes
14. One last love song
15. Dream a little dream

Blue is the Colour, 1996

One of the singles was "Don't Marry Her", sung by Jaqueline Abbott. The original album version of this song was edited into a "clean" radioversion. The well known sentence "Don't marry her, have me" of the radio version is in the original, album version "Don't marry her, fuck me"

1. Don't marry her
2. Little Blue
3. Mirror
4. Blackbird on the wire
5. The sound of North America
6. Have fun
7. Liar's bar
8. Rotterdam (Or anywhere)
9. Foundations
10. Artificial flowers
11. One God
12. Alone

Quench, 1998

Norman Cook, a former Housemartin, these days known as Fatboy Slim, was the "Rhythm Consultant" for "Quench". You can indeed hear this, e. g. on the first single "Perfect 10". It's upbeat reminds you a bit of the good old Housemartins times. Other singles are "Dumb" and "How Long's A Tear Take To Dry". "Dumb" could have been heard before in another version as B-side of the UK single "Liar's Bar" from the "Blue is the Colour" album.

1. How long's a tear take to dry
2. The lure of the sea
3. Big coin
4. Dumb
5. Perfect 10
6. The slide
7. Look what I found in my beer
8. The table
9. Window shopping for blinds
10. Pockets
11. I may be ugly
12. Losing things
13. Your father and I

Painting It Red, 2000

This album is available in three versions: First, there is the standard britisch 19-track version. The European version misses two songs, namely "Who's Gonna Tell?" and "Chicken Wings". And finally there is the Limited Editon with only 60.000 copies. This exclusive Double CD-set with 10 songs on each disc features one additional song: "White Teeth".
Unfortunately there was quite a confussion in the first days after the GB release (not to surprisingly with such a variety of different versions!). The regular GB-cases had only the European 17-track CDs in it, therefore those were soon recalled and taking out of the shelves. Thus in the first week practically only the Limited Edition was  sold. This might be the reason for PIR "only" to reach #2 in the British album charts.

The first single to be released was "Closer Than Most", it got on place 22 in the Britisch charts. The second single, with an edit of "The River" and a 'remix' of "Just Checkin'" a double-A-aingle, reached #59 in the charts.
In Germany no single at all was released, what obviously resulted in almost no airplay. Also taking in account that the German label MotorMusic did virtually no promotion for the album, it's almost a surprise that PIR reached #39 in the German album-charts.

1. Who's Gonna Tell?*
2. Closer Than Most
3. Just Checkin'
4. Hit Parade
5. Masculine Eclipse
6. 'Till You can't Tuck It In
7. If We Crawl
8. Tupperware Queen
9. Half-Hearted Get
10. White Teeth**
11. The River
12. Baby Please Go
13. You Can Call Me Leisure
14. Final Spark
15. 10.000 Feet
16. Hot On The Heels Of Heartbreak
17. The Mediterranean
18. A Little Piece Of Advice
19. Property Quiz
20. Chicken Wings*

* British version only
** Limited Edition Double CD only

Solid Bronze - Great Hits, November 2001

Already the name of their second best of compilation reveals Beautiful South's typical irony: Besides the go a the various best of's of other artist titled "Solid Gold", they do without the superlative "greatest" and just deliver "great" hits. Of course a massive understatement! Most of the one hit wonders dominating the charts these days could only dream of a "Great Hits" album featuring 13 songs which made into the UK top 30.