| Living Years | ||||
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| Studio album by Mike + The Mechanics | ||||
| Released | 28 October 1988 | |||
| Recorded | The Farm Surrey 18 April – 18 August 1988 |
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| Genre | Adult contemporary | |||
| Length | 47:11 | |||
| Label | Atlantic (US/Canada) WEA (Rest Of World) |
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| Producer | Christopher Neil, Mike Rutherford | |||
| Mike + The Mechanics chronology | ||||
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Living Years is the second album by Mike + The Mechanics, released in 1988. The album reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the UK Albums Chart.[1]
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Mike Rutherford began writing songs for the album in September 1987, shortly after the conclusion of Genesis's Invisible Touch tour. However, he found himself immediately stricken with writer's block, a circumstance he attributes to stress over the complications with his wife's current pregnancy, which nearly ended in the death of the child. The baby (Rutherford's third) was safely delivered in November, and Rutherford said that the relief made him feel "like a new man". In January he entered an extremely prolific songwriting period, and by the end of the month he had what he and producer/co-writer Christopher Neil felt was a good album's worth of material. In light of this, Neil wanted to move up the recording sessions, which had been scheduled for April. Rutherford vetoed the idea, however, and with his burst of inspiration still running, most of the songs that eventually appeared on the album were written over the next two months.[2]
The first single taken off the album, "Nobody's Perfect," peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next single off the album, "The Living Years", was a worldwide number one hit, reaching that mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week ending 25 March 1989. The song also reached number one on the Australian ARIA singles chart the week ending 13 May 1989. In the United Kingdom, it spent three weeks at number 2 in January and February 1989, behind Marc Almond and Gene Pitney's reworking of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart."
The song was co-written by Rutherford and B. A. Robertson, both of whose fathers had recently died. However, the lyrics were written solely by Robertson, and dealt with Robertson's strained relationship with his father and the birth of his son three months after his father's death.[3] Paul Carrack, who would sing lead on the recording, had himself lost his father when he was only eleven years old.[4]
A third single off the album, "Seeing is Believing", reached number 62 on the Billboard chart.
Phil Collins and Tony Banks, Rutherford's Genesis bandmates, made a guest appearance playing the riff on "Black & Blue" (a sample by Banks of Collins and Rutherford playing a riff during the Invisible Touch sessions).
| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [5] |
Allmusic's retrospective review summarized 'Slickly produced with rich vocals from Paul Carrack and Paul Young, The Living Years moves smoothly between anthemic ballads such as the title track and more up-beat numbers such as "Seeing Is Believing."' They commented that the album was inconsistent, however, at times venturing into genres that the group could not handle convincingly.[5]
All songs by Mike Rutherford and Christopher Neil, except where noted.
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