A-side Streets of Your Town Released July, 1988 Genre Jangle pop
indie pop | B-side Wait Until June Format 7" vinyl Length 3:34 | |
"Streets Of Your Town" is a song by Australian indie group The Go-Betweens, a single from their 1988 album, 16 Lovers Lane. Featuring polished production, a prominent backing vocal by Amanda Brown and a guitar solo by bassist John Willsteed, "Streets of Your Town" is one of the band's most recognised songs and is arguably the closest the group had to a mainstream hit. It was released in July 1988 in the UK on Beggars Banquet, where it reached #80 on the singles charts and in Australia in August 1988 on Mushroom, where it reached #70. In New Zealand, the song was issued in November 1988, and was a top 40 hit, peaking at #30 -- the band's highest-ever placing on any national chart.
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The single was re-released in the UK in 1989, in an attempt by Beggars Banquet to encourage the band's commercial momentum. However, it only peaked at No. 82.
Details
Written by Grant McLennan, the sunny, upbeat music is contrasted with darker lyrics: "Don't the sun look good today but the rain is on its way, watch the butcher shine his knives, and this town is full of battered wives". McLennan said of writing the song, "I was listening to 'Under the Milky Way' and I was just working it out - cause I'm a big fan of The Church. And that afternoon I came up with a chord progression and a chorus." Mclennan had not played the song to Forster before entering the studio. "It remains an odd fact - the one Go-Betweens song Grant and I never played before recording," Forster wrote.
Forster later said, "This was obviously the most commercial thing we'd ever done, and it came out around October '88, which caught the summer here. It was re-released in summer and it sat fantastically on Australian summer radio and then it sat well on English summer radio. We were walking around Soho and we'd hear it on the radio, every jean shop and café. It was on Radio 1 and so we were hearing it as we were walking around."
Lines from the song were included by U2 when they played "Elevation" and "With or Without You" on the opening of the Pacific leg of their Vertigo World Tour in Brisbane, in dedication to McLennan. The song was also played after the band's second encore. The song was covered by Ivy, appearing on their 2003 album, Guestroom. The opening guitar chords from the song are sampled on "Just the Way You Are" by Italian dance production group Milky. The song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay chart in October, 2003.
This song was used as the theme song for Prime Television in Australia in 2001-2002 and for television advertisements for The Courier Mail in 2006/2007, though in both cases the song was edited so that the darker lyrics were omitted. The song was also featured in the 2008 Australian/British AFI award-winning drama-based feature film The Black Balloon. A cover version of the song by Dave McCormack featured in the soundtrack to the movie All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane (2007).
There were two video clips filmed to promote the song. One, directed by Paul Goldman and filmed in black-and-white which is included on the CD remaster, featuring footage of the band performing the song and the town of Rainbow, Victoria. The other, more often played videoclip, directed by Kriv Stenders, mixes evocative city images of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The Guardian describes it as, "slabs of bright blue sky behind terrace houses, telephone lines, clock towers, apartment blocks and train stations. There are glimpses of the Sydney harbour bridge, overhead tram lines in Melbourne and buildings in central Brisbane. And lots of sun glittering on water."
Original 7" Vinyl release
- "Streets of Your Town" - 3:34
- "Wait Until June" - 3:05
Original 12" Vinyl release
- "Streets of Your Town" - 3:34
- "Quiet Heart" - 5:20
- "Bow Down" - 3:45
- "The House that Jack Kerouac Built" - 4:46
Original CD single release
- "Streets of Your Town" - 3:34
- "Spring Rain" - 3:06
- "Right Here" - 3:53
- "Wait Until June" - 3:05