Top 102 Albums⁺ No 30 Hello Young Lovers

Top 102 Albums⁺ No 30 
Hello Young Lovers - Sparks

"The olefactory sense is the sense
That most strongly evokes memories of the past
Well screw the past"

This album has been flagged by me in a post from a number of years back. Although in terms of this list of my favourite albums this is dangerously recent it dates to 2006 which is seven years ago, a stretch of time I once thought long. Although their early album Kimono My House contains Sparks most famous song - This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us - and is generally considered (by Morrissey at least) their best I find that this is now my go to Sparks album.


Playful, smart and full of hooks, this shows how pop music can be avant-garde and fun at the same time. Perfume and Metaphor are my two favourite tracks but the album works better as a whole, dissecting various aspects of love and sex with tongues firmly in (someone's) cheek.

Perfume should have been a huge hit. This, their TWENTIETH album should have reaffirmed their position as the biggest band in the world but instead it barely troubled the charts.

But the band who can sing "Oh baby baby can I invade your country" with the gusto they manage here don't need any sympathy, only envy. Let them invade your heart.

I mean, who else writes lyrics like these:

"Soft passages, they get you into trouble
They imply a certain faux respectability
A certain measure of weakness
They get you into trouble
A certain level of maturity

I promise that I'll rock, rock, rock
Don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me
I will rock, rock, rock
Like a mother, like a mother, like a mother, like a mother"