ABC – Beauty Stab (1983) Vinyl LP Record
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Product Description
Track Listing
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Album Introduction
Beauty Stab is the second studio album by ABC — Martin Fry, Mark White and Stephen Singleton — released in October 1983 on Neutron Records. The Sheffield trio had made one of the most celebrated British debut albums of the decade with The Lexicon of Love (1982) — produced by Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley, with full orchestral arrangements by Dudley and J.J. Jeczalik of Art of Noise — and Beauty Stab was a deliberate and emphatic rejection of everything that had made it successful. The orchestras, the Fairlight, the lush production and the ironic romanticism were stripped away entirely, replaced by raw guitars, minimal arrangements and a harder, more direct rock sound. The album was widely regarded as a commercial and critical disappointment on release, reaching only No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart compared to The Lexicon of Love's No. 1. It was also the last ABC album to feature Singleton, who left the band shortly after its release. In retrospect, Beauty Stab has been reassessed as a brave and genuinely interesting artistic statement — a band refusing to repeat themselves at the cost of commercial success.
Stand-Out Tracks
- That Was Then But This Is Now — The album's lead single and its most immediately accessible track; a driving, guitar-led pop song that announces the new direction with complete confidence and gives the album one of its most commercially effective and melodically direct moments. UK No. 18.
- S.O.S. — One of the album's most energetic and rhythmically compelling tracks; a driving rock-pop song that demonstrates the harder edge of the new ABC sound and gives the album one of its most viscerally exciting and immediately replayable moments.
- United Kingdom — The album's closing track and one of its most politically engaged; a driving, anthemic rock song with a lyric of social commentary that gives the album a conclusion of real force and demonstrates Fry's ability to combine pop melody with genuine lyrical ambition.
- The Power of Persuasion — One of the album's most melodically sophisticated and lyrically complex tracks; a mid-tempo rock-pop song that demonstrates the continuity between the new sound and the lyrical intelligence that had distinguished The Lexicon of Love, and one of the most rewarding tracks for collectors willing to engage with the album on its own terms.
- Beauty Stab — The title track and the album's most sonically distinctive moment; a raw, guitar-driven track that captures the album's aesthetic most completely and gives the most direct statement of the band's determination to move beyond the sound that had made them famous.
Record Details
- Artist: ABC
- Title: Beauty Stab
- Year: 1983
- Label: Neutron Records / Phonogram
- Catalogue No.: NTRON 1
- Format: Vinyl LP
- Pressing: UK original pressing
- Genre: New Wave / Pop Rock
- Decade: 1980s
- Barcode: 094638929222
Condition
Condition: VG+/VG+ — see our Condition Grading Guide.
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