Wiki
-
Release Date
9 September 1987
-
Length
13 tracks
Released on September 10, 1987, "Songs About Fucking" is the second LP by the post-hardcore/noise rock band Big Black. It placed 54th on Pitchfork Media's 'Top 100 Albums of the 1980s'.
Included was covers of Kraftwerk's "The Model" and Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore".
The band had already decided to split up before the album was recorded, prompted by guitarist Santiago Durango's decision to enroll in Law School, and the band's desire to quit while at their peak.
References / tributes include Jason Lescalleet's "Songs About Nothing", The Copyrights and the Dopamines' "Songs About Fucking Up", and Kid606's "Songs About Fucking Steve Albini".
Steve Albini has said that Songs About Fucking is the Big Black album that he is most satisfied with. In a 1992 interview with Maximumrocknroll magazine, Albini said:
The best was side one of 'Songs About Fucking'. I was real pleased with the way we did that. We just hopped into the studio, banged all the songs out and hopped out. Didn't take long, didn't cost much, just real smooth. Side two we recorded at a more leisurely pace and I think that hurt us. And that Cheap Trick song got on the tape and the CD by accident, and we just left it on.
Songs About Fucking has been called "certainly the most honest album title of the rock'n'roll era". Lyrical themes on the album include South American killing techniques ("Colombian Necktie"), bread that gets you high ("Ergot"), and how "slowly, without trying, everyone becomes what he despises most". While the album's title (commonly blanked out when displayed in shops on its release) and the sleeve were controversial, according to one reviewer, "as brutal as that cover is, the music is even more so", and it was considered "as dark and frightening as the band name suggests" by another, Treble's Hubert Vigilla, who goes on to say "Songs About Fucking is loud, it's abrasive, it's unattractive in the extreme … So really, it's everything that made Big Black so great in the first place". Dave Henderson of Underground magazine gave the album a two and a half out of three rating, calling it "a napalm attack that sticks to your skin like burning party-jell, spiced with hundreds and thousands, a prickly sensation that's as all-consuming as it is repellent".
Dave Riley – bass guitar
Santiago Durango (credited as Melvin Belli) – guitar
Steve Albini – guitar, vocals
"Roland" (an E-mu Drumulator drum machine) – drums
NME 9/10
The Rolling Stone Album Guide 4/5 stars
Select 5/5
Spin Alternative Record Guide 9/10
Underground 2.5/3
The Village Voice A−
Length 31:45
Label Touch and Go
Album descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
