A-side "Bachelor Kisses" Format 7" vinyl | B-side "Rare Breed" | |
Released November 1984 (1984-11) Recorded May 1984
Miraval Studios, Le Val, France Genre Rock
Jangle pop
indie pop | ||
"Bachelor Kisses" was the second single released by The Go-Betweens from their third album, Spring Hill Fair. It was released in August 1984 by Sire Records. In the UK a 12" single was also released on Sire. "Bachelor Kisses" was the Go-Betweens' first real attempt at a commercial single.
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Forster later said of the song, "Grant wrote this. It sounded like a pop song right from the word go. He was a very, very melodic songwriter. "Bachelor Kisses" was just something that rolled off and felt very natural and beautiful. It's amazing."
Originally recorded with John Brand with the other songs on Spring Hill Fair, the song was re-recorded with producers Colin Fairley and Robert Andrews for the single release at the insistence of the record label. Forster complained of, "new producers, more days on the bass drum, and a version of the song of no great variance to the Miraval take."
The single and the album failed to chart in the UK or Australia resulting in the band being dropped by Sire Records. "Bachelor Kisses" was however voted in at No. 72 in Triple J's Hottest 100 for 1989
Sire paid for a promotional video, featuring the band miming mixed with beach scenes. Forster said, "the black-and-white stuff of the band playing is actually very, very good. Then we shot some stuff, down at Brighton, of the water and stuff. They can print up colours. And they just went mad."
Swedish band, The Radio Dept., recorded an exclusive cover of "Bachelor Kisses", for the August 2007 issue of the Swedish fanzine I Godan Ro. Only 10 copies of that issue were printed. The track was subsequently included in their compilation album Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002–2010.
Reception
We came back from Christmas in New York having lost our record company [Rough Trade] somewhere along the way. I wrote this in immigration having been refused entry to the United Kingdom. The first person who heard the song was my sister. She said that Marianne Faithfull should sing it.
In a review of the song on Allmusic, Ned Raggett, comments that such a comparison is both worthwhile and not misplaced. He goes on to state that the song "has the rich, world-weary beauty one might expect from that singer in her 1980s work, but the song is very much a Go-Betweens song through and through. There's the same gentle but clear tension in the rhythm section, the crystalline but never overbearing guitar, the sense of deeper roots but a clearly modern performance"
In Mat Snow's review in the October, 1984 edition of NME he states "Only when we're confronted with a song so perfectly turned, lines so finely balanced and a melody so achingly sweet as Bachelor Kisses are we forced to notice how hollow most contemporary pop rings." Elsewhere in NME, Biba Kopf called the song, "an affecting male rejoinder to "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".
Track listing
All tracks written by G. McLennan, R. Forster.
All tracks written by G. McLennan, R. Forster.