Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood

Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood was The Blow Monkeys' 1989 follow-up album to She Was Only A Grocer's Daughter, released two years before.

Contents

• Track listing
• Singles taken from the album
• Quotations
• Personnel
• Musicians
• Production
• Staff
• Songs
• References

The album, the fourth issued from the band, represented a further step towards the incorporation of more dancey elements, started with their third 1987 LP, especially with the UK hit "It Doesn't Have to Be That Way", which, getting to Number 5, made that their highest-charting song ever.

The first single was "This Is Your Life", still a pop rock/new wave track, which didn't get higher than Number 70. The next version of the song, its 1989 remix, which turned it into a properly dance tune, fared much better, reaching Number 32 in Great Britain. After the flop of the second single, the politically oriented "It Pays to Belong", written following Dr. Robert's tradition of criticizing England's political reality, which didn't enter the UK Top 75, the lead singer scored a hit together with soul singer Kym Mazelle, which reached Number 7. The album track list was quickly rejigged, "Wait" recredited as a Blow Monkeys song and included on the album, together with the more successful, reworked version of "This is Your Life". The original version was added to the CD version, and miscredited as a "1988 remix".

The original track listing is still reflected in the order of the lyrics in the CD booklet, and on the vinyl inner sleeve. As planned before the inclusion of "Wait" and the "This is Your Life" remix, the track list went:

1. "It Pays to Belong"
2. "No Woman is an Island"
3. "This is Your Life" (original version, aka the 1988 "remix")
4. "Come on Down"
5. "Squaresville"
6. "Sweet Talking Rapist at Home"
7. "Bombed Into the Stoneage"
8. "Let's Emigrate"
9. "The Love of Which I Dare Not Speak"

Presumably, at 50 minutes, both the vinyl and CD versions would have been identical, with the LP side break being between tracks five and six (with the four last tracks being longer than the opening five).

The released version of the album, with its 10 tracks (on the vinyl edition), can be ideally divided into two parts, more or less corresponding to the two sides: the first displays more traditionally pop-rock tunes (also embracing the first two tracks of Side 2), approximately lasting 3 to 5 minutes; the second presents instead more new wave-oriented tracks, the timings of which are much longer, 6 to 8 minutes. In perfect accordance with the group's habit of describing their home country's social life, most of the lyrics deal with such topics, though there is not a particular unifying theme here, as in the previous disc, which made that a real concept album, against Thatcher's iron politics.

The final CD edition included three bonus tracks; the original version of "This Is Your Life", its B-Side, "The Love of Which I Dare Not Speak" (having been bumped off the final album for time reasons) and an extended mix of the album track "Squaresville".