VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Style Council was emblematic of its creator. Paul Weller, smart, fearless, audacious, with a social conscience totally unafraid to push the possibilities of pop. With their generous slew of U.K. chart hits, The Style Council were one of the defining pop bands of the ’80s. And they didn’t need big hair to get there.
And now, finally Long Hot Summers—the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated definitive career anthology teaming with all the greatest hits and more is released on October 30th. Named with a nod to the band’s biggest hit, Long Hot Summers is endorsed and co-compiled by Paul Weller himself. As well as the huge U.K. hit “Long Hot Summer,” the album also includes the band’s sterling debut top 5 U.K. single “Speak Like A Child” as well as other masterpieces such as the languid “You’re The Best Thing,” “Ever Changing Moods,” and dance floor filler “Shout To The Top.”
Long Hot Summers includes two unreleased tracks—an intriguing demo of the U.K. top 5 single “My Ever Changing Moods” with strings, and the extended, 5-minute plus version of “Dropping Bombs On The Whitehouse.” Of course, it also includes all the band’s classic singles—12 U.K. top-20 hits—including the debut single “Speak Like A Child” and the utterly sublime “Long Hot Summer.” The album also features key album tracks and fans’ favorites such as “Headstart For Happiness” (full tracklisting below).
Long Hot Summers features rare photos, an introduction by Paul Weller, a new essay by Lois Wilson, and sleeve-notes from ‘super-fan,’ actor Martin Freeman. The album was remastered at Abbey Road Studios.
When Paul Weller announced The Style Council’s arrival in March 1983, he’d come a very long way. In fact, at the age of just 24, he was already a musical veteran with six albums and nine U.K. Top 10 singles under his belt with The Jam. As their leader he had become a deity-like figure and for his fans, The Jam’s split was unimaginable.
But creatively restless and of inquisitive mind, Paul jettisoned them at their height to form a collective with an eventual core line-up of Paul with Mick Talbot, Dee C Lee and Steve White. In a quest for new sounds, the group travelled to realms previously unchartered for a pop group incorporating musical influences as wide ranging as Blue Note jazz and Chicago soul, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, Chicago House and Jacques Brel.
At the same time, as battle lines were drawn in a decade under Margaret Thatcher culminating in the miner’s strike of 1984-85, Paul’s lyrics spoke with the language of the activist and his state of the nation addresses were both fierce and eloquent. Over four albums and 17 singles, The Style Council made a stand and became the standard bearers of progressive soulful pop and social comment. And it’s all here on this exceptional anthology.
As well as digitally, the album will be available on triple vinyl—limited editions of both black vinyl and a highly covetable colored vinyl version.
3LP TRACKLIST
Standard black/color vinyl
Disc 1
Side 1
Headstart for Happiness
Long Hot Summer
My Ever-Changing Moods
Walls Come Tumbling Down!
Party Chambers
Side 2
Wanted (or Waiter, There’s…)
Shout to the Top!
It Just Came to Pieces in My Hands
Come to Milton Keynes
Why I Went Missing
Waiting
Disc 2
Side 1
Ghosts Of Dachau
Down in the Seine
The Paris Match
Life at a Top People’s Health Farm
Dropping Bombs On The Whitehouse (Extended version) #
Side 2
Speak Like a Child
The Lodgers (Or She Was Only…)
Money Go Round
You’re the Best Thing
How She Threw It All Away
Disc 3
Side 1
A Man of Great Promise
The Piccadilly Trail
A Solid Bond in Your Heart
Sweet Loving Ways
Promised Land
It Didn’t Matter
Side 2
Have You Ever Had It Blue
Spin’ Drifting
Here’s One That Got Away
Changing of the Guard
My Ever-Changing Moods (Demo) #
