Steve McQueen (1985)

Steve McQueen is the second studio album by English alternative pop band Prefab Sprout, released on 22 June 1985 in the UK by Kitchenware Records. On 3 September 1985, the album was released by Epic Records in the United States as Two Wheels Good in anticipation of legal conflict with the estate of American actor Steve McQueen. The album cover references McQueen's lifelong passion for Triumph motorcycles and his 1963 film The Great Escape.

The album received highly positive reviews from critics and was a modest commercial success, reaching number 21 in the United Kingdom. Four singles from the album entered top 100 of the UK Singles Chart, with "When Love Breaks Down" reaching the top 30. Retrospectively, Steve McQueen has received lasting critical acclaim, widely credited as an indie pop benchmark and ranked by many British publications among the greatest albums of all time.

In 2007, it was reissued as a "legacy edition" double CD, featuring a remastered version of the original album and a bonus disc featuring acoustic versions of the songs recorded in 2006 by the band's frontman, Paddy McAloon.

Recording

On an episode of the BBC Radio 1 programme Roundtable, musician and producer Thomas Dolby, a panelist on the programme, spoke favourably of Prefab Sprout's "Don't Sing", a track from their 1984 album Swoon. The band subsequently contacted Dolby, who met with frontman and songwriter Paddy McAloon in the latter's County Durham home. McAloon presented Dolby with a number of songs he had written, "probably 40 or 50" by Dolby's estimate, some written as far back as 10 to 12 years prior. Dolby then picked his favourites and asked McAloon to make demo recordings of them; these recordings served as the basis for Dolby's initial process of planning the album's recording.

In the autumn of 1984, Dolby and Prefab Sprout began working on the album's songs in rehearsals at Nomis Studios in West London, after which they moved to Marcus Studios for proper recording. The sessions were amicable, with the band being respectful of Dolby's edge over them in recording and musical experience, and Dolby keeping into account the band's wishes, knowing that McAloon "wouldn't want to be diluted" by Dolby's additions to the album. Subsequent mixing was carried out at Farmyard Studios in Buckinghamshire.

Music and lyrics

Musically, Steve McQueen is informed by Dolby's lush, jazz-tinged production. Pitchfork said the album "was McAloon's stab at pop, a suite of literate songs that draw as much from 1950s rock and country as from Elvis Costello." Wendy Smith's backing vocals have been described as "serv[ing] as guide rails" on the album. McAloon's lyrics on Steve McQueen touch on a number of themes, including love, infidelity, regret, and heartbreak. Alex Robertson of Sputnikmusic described the album's songs as lyrically "literate and humorous without being condescending in the slightest".

Singles

"When Love Breaks Down" was first released as a single in October 1984, before the album was released, but failed to chart in the top 40, peaking at No. 89 on the UK Singles Chart. It was reissued as a new single in March 1985, but again failed to chart, peaking at No. 88. It was only after the album's release, and on the single's third issue in October 1985, that it finally broke through the top 40 and peaked at No. 25 for two weeks in November and December 1985.

Between the second and third releases of "When Love Breaks Down", two further singles were released: "Faron Young" (referencing the country music singer of the same name) in July 1985, peaking at No. 74, and "Appetite" in August 1985, peaking at No. 92.

"Goodbye Lucille #1" was renamed "Johnny Johnny" for the final single release from the album in January 1986, peaking at No. 64.

Critical reception

Steve McQueen was critically acclaimed at the time of its release. Record Mirror's Graham K. Smith awarded it a score of five out of five, championing it as "the finest album you will hear this year" and Paddy McAloon as "the country's best (by a mile) songwriter". Rating the album nine out of ten in Smash Hits, Chris Heath praised McAloon as one of the best writers of "depressingly precise songs about the joys, fears and disappointments of love" and lamented that listeners might be put off by the "obscurity and complexity" of Prefab Sprout's music.